Huh?

Way back when I was still in the target audience for Kingdom Hearts, I thought Kingdom Hearts was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. This wasn't because I was some supreme arbiter of taste at the age of eight — my favorite game at the time was Shadow the Hedgehog, if you need further clarification — but it was an initial conception that never really left me. While a lot of the media that I had dismissed as a child tended to seem a lot more favorable once I grew up and started developing a taste of my own, I've always thought of Kingdom Hearts as being this woefully lame and eternally bad series that was beloved only by children and Disney adults who had played it as children. Grown adults who liked it only did so because they'd never reached an understanding of the idea that something you liked as a kid doesn't need to be something you still like as an adult. But that's an unfair assumption. After all, there are a lot of people I respect who have said that there's something about this game that got to them. Elements that they loved, gameplay they adored, story beats that brought them to tears. There's something about Kingdom Hearts that has managed to hook people, and, as I said in my 2023 year-end list, we owe it to ourselves to get out of our comfort zones and play things we'd never otherwise think to play if we ever want to take ourselves seriously. If I continued to dismiss Kingdom Hearts out of hand because I decided that it looked stupid twenty years ago, then I'm no better now than I was when I was in the third grade. It's only fair — only right — that I investigate it for myself.

I hate Kingdom Hearts.

Either I'm just unable to see the mastery hidden behind Kingdom Hearts that everyone else is, or I'm the only sane man in the madhouse. It hardly matters which one is the actual truth, because the outcome is the same: a lot of people like Kingdom Hearts, the ones that don't like it don't seem to despise it, and I can't fucking stand it. I'm the odd man out.

This camera is atrocious. Controlling it with the L2 and R2 buttons is bad enough when we live in a world where the right stick is purely just a second D-pad, but the lock-on acts as more of a gentle suggestion. It simultaneously has very little interest in actually tracking enemies that move off-screen while also swinging around so violently that it's difficult to keep track of where anything is. Enemies seem to wait until they're off-screen to attack, which certainly makes sense for them, but is incredibly frustrating when you eat a fireball to the back of the head that you literally could not see coming nor tech even if you did. The camera is also a physical object that can't pass through terrain, which means that it's constantly smashing against walls and giving you completely worthless angles the second you enter a hallway that's just a bit too tight. It does everything wrong.

I also found the combat to be a complete mash-fest, largely just focused on getting directly in front of an enemy's face and spamming the attack button as fast as I humanly could. Hopping into the air for a moment before spamming the attack button seemed to make Sora hit things faster, so that wound up becoming a core part of the rotation. Not helping matters is how obscenely delayed most of Sora's kit actually is, with a dishonorable mention going specifically to his jump; there's what feels like a half-second of delay before he actually becomes airborne after you hit the button, which is bad in combat sections and unforgivable in the parts where you need to platform. There's a jump over a couple of mushrooms in the Alice in Wonderland world long before you get the high jump or the glide, and combined with the terrible camera was probably the single most difficult challenge in the entire game. I nearly burst a blood vessel when I found out that your partners have collision and can push you off of edges if you aren't careful. In some areas, this only means needing to hop back up to where you just were. In others, it means needing to transition through several different loading zones as you slowly climb your way back up.

It is a very pretty game, though, both graphically and sonically. Certainly moreso the former than the latter; this might have the single worst rendition of Night on Bald Mountain I will ever hear in my life. It's not hard to look at this and be impressed, especially in the original areas; the final set piece is an absolute treat, with you fighting waves of Heartless in a pitch-black room and only being able to tell where they are by the glow of their eyes. There are a lot of visual elements here that I know get expanded upon in Kingdom Hearts 2, and I think it was pretty smart of the team to keep going further down that path.

For as much shit as people talk about the narrative, I thought it was far and away the strongest thing Kingdom Hearts had going for it. Not the bulk of it, though; the overwhelming majority of the game is spent traipsing through abridged recaps of Disney movies, primarily the more middling ones that the Walt Disney Company presumably weren't all that protective of. Like, Hercules isn't a good film just because you and I and everyone else want Meg to look at us like we're living pieces of trash. Even still, Kingdom Hearts breezes right through a significant amount of plot beats, largely resulting in more of a Disney-World-tour sensation rather than one of occupying an actual world. You're going through the theme park version of these different films and getting the Cliff's Notes of just enough plot to give you an idea of what you're meant to be doing. Characters in the Disney worlds act less like characters and more as mascots. They're wildly flat and underdeveloped caricatures. No, the interesting parts of the Kingdom Hearts narrative are the parts that are wholly original to it.

I actually really like the story that Riku and Sora have got going on here, with Kairi mostly taking a backseat until the final couple hours of the game. People have spoken a lot about some of the gay subtext, and I think it's largely difficult to miss — Riku offering a fruit to Sora with the prompt that sharing it will bind their two souls together for eternity may as well have been delivered while he was on one knee — while still being pretty interesting. Sora is probably the worst fucking friend ever. I get that he thinks of Riku as more of a rival than a buddy, but he only responds to Riku openly lamenting how inadequate and lonely he feels with either literal silence or general disinterest. It's hardly a surprise that he ends up falling to the darkness when he's gotten rebuked at literally every single turn, all the while being manipulated further into thinking he has no other choice. It's neat, and it comes to a nice close when Riku manages to break free of Ansem's control and his own insecurities to help Sora close the door to Kingdom Hearts. Regrettably, he is also forced to share the conclusion of his arc with fucking Mickey Mouse.

Kingdom Hearts has an interesting story running through it, but, again, it's constantly being silenced by the game interrupting itself to say "holy shit, you're in Aladdin world". I don't fucking care about Aladdin. I've seen Aladdin. Aladdin is a fine movie that's significantly more interesting and better written as a movie, and not as this shitty pastiche with Dan Castellaneta doing Homer voice while trying to fill Robin Williams's shoes. God, so many of these actors just aren't doing a good job. It's kind of impressive that the child actors fucking crush it, and not even by comparison; Haley Joel Osment just kills it. Billy Zane's Ansem is pretty solid, as is Mandy Moore's Aerith. The rest I'm ambivalent about, or actively hostile towards. Brian Blessed sounds fucking terrible in this.

I did have a moment while I was playing Kingdom Hearts, right near the end when I was climbing back up to the top of Hollow Bastion. I had the realization that my keyblade looked like a flower. I was mostly just equipping whatever had the best stats, and it just happened to be that the Divine Rose gave me exactly what I needed. It very suddenly occurred to me, at that moment, that I never would have been using it if I had played this when I was a kid. Flowers are for girls, after all. Even if it meant equipping a strictly worse weapon that didn't do what I wanted it to do — one that actively harmed my build, even — I wouldn't have equipped the flower keyblade.

I was a bit of a fruity kid growing up. I wanted to wear nail polish, I liked watching a lot of shows for girls, I didn't really feel the revulsion that a lot of other people seemed to feel at doing things that weren't "for" their gender. Of course, it all kind of ended up making sense once I realized I liked dudes, but it was a pretty strange feeling to have while growing up when I wasn't really allowed to correctly guess the reasoning behind it. My dad made every effort to beat all of that out of me. To mold me into a Man. I think I gravitated more to a lot of these hyper-edgy pieces of media like Shadow the Hedgehog and whatever garbage aired on Spike TV in the hopes that it would impress him. Obviously, this was more than a little misguided. He would have been a lot happier had I picked up a football helmet and a drill and a cigar and acted like what people thought men were supposed to be in the 1950s, but I figured it was worth trying. It wasn't. When you're not allowed to be the person you are, you tend to do a pretty bad job of acting like the person you're expected to be. The flower keyblade was for girls, and that meant the flower keyblade was justification to be punished if I used it. Today, I equipped the flower keyblade and used it all the way until the end.

There's a part of me I lost a long time ago that's made it impossible for me to like Kingdom Hearts.

I don't know if it was a childhood whimsy that allowed me to see the good in anything, or if it was a childish naivety that allowed me to see anything as good.

I don't care this is a Smash clone (even though I think what it did was interesting). I don't care that it features DiNO instead of Dante (well, I WAS a little salty about that back then, but I digress). I don't care that it didn't live up to its potential (though, I lament the fact Dart and Abe were cut, along with the titlescreen overhaul, and that Spyro and Crash were never brought in).

This game, despite some flaws, was very much a dream come true. I loved Smash back when I played it at a friend's place (original, Melee, and a little bit of Brawl), and I had always wished for Sony to do the equivalent. I knew they had a great deal of exclusive titles and IPs at the time, and was the only console that could come remotely close to competing with Nintendo's absolutely mammoth roster at the time (I love you Xbox, but I can count your significant exclusives on one hand by 7th gen).

While the roster was much weaker than any of the more modern installments of Smash, it had quite the very interesting cast to pick from, all with contrasting artstyles and playstyles that help give the game quite the differing flavor during matches. I've yet to see a platform fighter utilize characters from FPS/TPS titles (like Killzone, Bioshock, or Dead Space), along side action brawlers like Cole, Kratos, Heihachi. There are just some fun combinations you can get.

What emphasized the topsy-turvy nature were the stage mashups, which I thought were quite interesting and dynamic in of themselves, even without the stage hazards (which can be turned on and off). Even more so when the stage itself slowly evolves over the course of the match from one design to the other, with certain exceptions.

The light character customization in the game was also a neat little bonus, changing colors/costumes, intros, outros, win/lose music, and even taunts, making the characters you play feel that much more unique to you.

Now, again, the game is far from perfect, with some characters being quite overpowered compared to others, the knock-out system being a bit limited, and the roster not reaching the potential it could have. I really do get that. However, I just can't help it. The fact that this game exists at all at the tail end of the PS3 lifecycle was kind of a miracle in of itself.

I don't play it NEARLY as much as I used to back in the day, and the online servers have been shut down for some time now, but once in a while I have a small craving to pop the game in, mess about in Vs. modes with my main (Sir Dan), and putz about in Arcade mode once in a while.

It was a fun, albeit flawed, festival of fighting with a small portion of Playstation's history.

Though, as novel as it is, the final boss in the arcade mode IS kind of crap...

a well-meaning but ultimately underwhelming attempt at giving sony a super smash brothers equivalent. Unlike a lot of other criticisms towards the game, I think that the roster isn't exactly the worst. Yeah, theres no crash, spyro, solid snake, or cloud, but they got a lot of other interesting games represented by both characters and stages, which is honestly really cool in the same way getting an unknown thing in smash is. You get to learn a lil bit more about sonys various IPs that you might not have otherwise known, I guess. Gameplaywise though this is definitely not smash brothers. You can only score points and defeat players by using super moves which makes most of the actual fighting kinda feel like irrelevant filler...? The game also lacks the special level of polish and attention to detail that nintendo puts in smash as well, which just makes the overall experience underwhelming. However, I'd still say this is worth at least a curious play, since especially with modern sony being the party poopers that hate fun with the playstations legacy of IPs, we ain't seeing most of the first-party characters in this game ever comin back. It's kinda like nintendo land in like getting that last little table scrap of content for neglected IPs that I enjoy. I'm glad this game came out when it did because if they did this concept again now it'd have the most uninspired roster known to man, mark my words.

I was so thirsty after the Ratchet & Clank PS5 announcement that I decided to finally check out the one game in the series I'd never played before: the side-scroller made for Java-based flip phones in 2005. I even sought out and played through the completely different, barely-functional Series 40 version as well (though I did not 100% complete that one, as it takes playing through half the game to level up a single weapon one time).

The main Series 60 iteration of the game is surprisingly solid, provided you find the 1.0.10 version that actually runs at a decent frame rate without hitches. The controls, if you try to play it on an Android-based emulator (or, I assume, an actual 2005-era phone), are godawful, but if you use a PC-based one and plug in a gamepad, you can create a fairly comfortable control scheme of your own.

Going Mobile isn't a great game by any stretch of the imagination, but considering that it's a mobile game released two years before the original iPhone, it's a miracle it's any fun at all. The level design and combat aren't particularly good but work well enough within the massive constraints provided by the hardware, and the game features nearly all the series' staples - upgradeable weapons, an arena with different modifiers, rail grinding, both small currency bolts & large collectible ones, and a challenge mode (though more of a straight new game+ with no real differences here). It's incredible how much they packed into less than 300 KB.

There are about five sound effects total and no in-game music, but the game still retains some of the series' charm with its graphics (I actually love the pixel art renditions of Ratchet/Clank and Maximillian) and silly storyline about the characters being trapped inside your cell phone. This is also technically the first entry in the series where you unlock the RYNO by hunting for collectibles instead of grinding money.

While nothing to write home about outside of its status as one of the few genuinely playable pre-smartphone mobile games, it's hard not to be impressed by what Handheld accomplished here as a huge fan of the main series. If they'd been assigned to develop this for the PSP instead, I think they could've made something really special and we'd still be seeing 2D R&C spin-offs to this day.

It's the Mario game that most understands the character's status as the ultimate video game icon. The structure is simple and has been repeated since 1985, but the decision to transform Mario's "world to world" visits into a trip around the globe (with a tour guide) is brilliant.

While I was playing Super Mario Odyssey I couldn't stop thinking about how it's a game similar to One Piece (it'll make sense, I promise). Firstly because: it's a lot about recognizing that the strong feelings you have while playing come much more through the journey than through any conclusion that may exist (and One Piece may end someday, but Mario never will).

Secondly, because like the Gear 5 transformation, it's a game almost entirely about the malleability of Mario's body, how he reacts to the environment, and vice versa. One of the best feelings you can have playing Super Mario Odyssey is catching one of the many Moons and thinking "was it supposed to be done like that?". It doesn't matter how you arrived at the goal, it matters how you played with the geometry of the levels and Mario's moveset.

It's bizarre to write so many words about the thematic importance of a Mario game, but the fact is that this game is very concise and rounded in what it wants to discuss about the character. It's a celebratory game about recognizing Mario's place in the global media canon, and in doing so it needs to recognize the most primal aspect of the character: he's an actor, a jack of all trades; He's a plumber, a kart driver, a tennis player, a doctor, he's Mario.

In this game, Mario is Bullet Bill, Goomba, Hammer Bro, Yoshi... Mario is whoever he needs to be when the situation demands his messianic presence. At first glance, the mechanics of transforming the game into 2D (several times) may seem out of place, but it is building precisely towards this point of adaptability of the figure of Mario.

Mario saved video games with Super Mario Bros., of course, but Mario is also Jump Man; his first appearance is not even in his own game, it is in the Donkey Kong franchise. How could THE video game icon, who was born in a franchise that is not his own, not take the freedom to visit any place? to transform into whoever he wants?

Super Mario Odyssey is a manifesto about freedom, it's a game full of expression and charisma in every corner, it's there to remind you to always be or do what you want. The game ending on the Moon is especially symbolic, because if for human beings visiting it was a moment of great evolution and celebration, for Mario it is another Monday. But it's another Monday that he can only have thanks to having grown up and matured with humanity. Mario has already had two games exploring planets, but the Moon's ambition is palpable; after 32 years Mario was finally able to see planet Earth from there. It's time to realize how great his achievements are, how many people he reached over during his journey.

"Thank you, Mario. It's been an honor walking a mile on your head".

this game has a fascinating gameplay loop, either you can't lead the flock and cry as they fail to maneuver anything short of an automated mario maker stage or you're the dipshit in turn who can't construct anything

being of the latter variety this is what the sequence of events in an average playthrough looks like every once in a blue moon

1. involuntarily made shaman

2. proceed to try to link two planks together (they will not link)

3. switch to balloons (they flew away)

4. blast everyone out of the map with cannonballs

5. receive eight unanimous death threats in chat

6. uninstall game

the french still got it

love it to bits but also why is this game so weirdly imposing for what on paper sounds like a super chill concept

one the one hand you have oak with the passive hook that consists of "take some pics of pokemon as they frollick in their natural habitat, help me with my research" which quickly morphs into

"oh but it's on rails hop onto my rickety transportation module of questionable origin and go pelt the little shits with pester balls, they like apples oh ok here HAVE ALL THE APPLES x 100 drown them in the fucking apples I have for you today NOW CENTER THE SHOTS HNGGGGG UNACCEPTABLE DO IT AGAIN BITCH

BLOW UP THE ELECTRODE AND GIVE ME PERFECT SYMMETRY WHEN YOU COMPOSE THE SHOT OF THE BLAST"

and then somewhere along the way we ran out of places to visit so now we're revisiting all the old levels taking photos of optical illusions to then fight mew in a shadow realm with a bubble that's impervious to cameras or some shit but shhhh is ok just bask in the magnificence of the moment

certainly didn't help that I had the german version which only excuberated the terrifying nature of Oak's rants and I later found this was a common mistake for a lot of PAL region residents who had parents that mistakenly bought it for them as kids because it was poorly labeled

as a catch the fruit player any opinion I hold on this game can immediately be discarded

quality fodder for degens who have and will never know the touch of a woman but felt chronic masturbation was not speeding up their nerve damage beyond the rookie numbers they were seeing at the time

all in all the skill ceiling is so high you'll find the only barrier the top ranking players are unable to surmount is the reinforced fencing at their nearest elementary school

The closest we'll likely ever get to a true Ape Escape 4. Ape Escape: Big Mission is a Japan exclusive PSP spinoff. If you are an Ape Escape fan, do yourself a favor and play this game! Don't be scared by the fact that it's in Japanese language only. This game can VERY easily be played even if you don't understand a single bit of it.

The story has Specter shrinking down Spike, Natalie, and the Professors lab to a miniature size. He's also kidnapped the Professor, Aki, and the previous protagonists Jimmy, Kei, and Yumi. Now Spike and Natalie need to pilot the miniature lab to save their friends and family and return to normal size.

If I had to compare the gameplay to another game that's more modern, I would say it's like Mario Odyssey. The twist here is that instead of controlling Mario you can only control the cap that possesses things. That's this game in a nutshell. When you begin a level, you start off piloting the small lab and need to locate an Ape to possess and control before your battery runs out. From there, you move through a linear level swapping between apes with different abilities to clear platforming challenges. Catching apes feels almost exactly like it does in the console games, and playing as them feels like the different gadgets you use in those games as well. If you decide to play this game here's the basic controls so you understand what you're doing since everything will be in Japanese. X will always be jump no matter what you are controlling, triangle will always be the capture/unpossess ape button, and square and circle will always be the attack or special move button depending on what your ape specializes in. That's basically the gist of it and what you'll be doing throughout the whole game. Easy as hell to get!

Soichi Terada composed the soundtrack for this game and honestly, it's some of his best work for this series. If you don't want to play this game because it's japan exclusive then at least give the soundtrack a listen.

There are a few nitpicks. Sometimes the game spawns WAY too many enemies at once in some rooms and you can easily be overwhelmed. Also for some reason, the game only lets you have 2 lives and no more then that. A baffling choice but you likely won't be dying too often. If you get nervous feel free to save state. Further, when you are presented with an obstacle you are almost always given the ape needed to proceed through it, so it feels like there's not really much challenge in finding the apes like you do in the mainline titles.

Overall, this is a very good Ape Escape game and it's a shame it was never translated. It feels like a culmination of the previous games, bringing back all the protagonists from series history and having them work together against Specter and the Freaky Monkey Five by controlling all the apes they've fought before. If you are an Ape Escape fan that's hungry for more content, please play this game! You'll see what I mean when I say it feels like it could be the closest to an Ape Escape 4 that we'll ever get.

TNA Impact released around the time where TNA was probably at their peak with one of the greatest rosters in pro wrestling, shows being viewed by millions of people with people even hoping and thinking that TNA would at one point become an actual competitor to the WWE which why TNA's first video game was highly anticipated since it's not only TNA's first game but it was also the first major non WWE game in quite a while. TNA Impact released in 2008 and received luke warm reactions at best and is nowadays even viewed by some as a "bad" wrestling game. the game's roster selction while offering a lot of TNA's strongest draws at the time is a bit too slim and there are no female wrestlers found the matchtypes are also very bare bones with only 9 matchtypes that also don't offer a whole lot since every match in theory is a hardcore match so no DQ's though the only weapons at your disposal are a couple of chairs that lay on the ground. no tables and no chairs. the abscence of content is only a little understandable since it was TNA's first game and the first major non WWE in years so both TNA and Midway couldn't be quite sure how successful the game could become which is why I get that Midway tried to play things safe since every dollar you'd spend on feauteres could be a dollar you'd potentially lose. still a ladder match and having the ability to also use tables wouldn't have hurt. plus there aren't nearly enough moves in the game. a lot of wrestlers share at least 2 or 3 moves which does make them all play very similar to play. even though TNA Impact is very lacking in content and was very much begging for more variaty I still think it gets way too much hate since it's far from being bad. visually the game is simply stunning even today, the core gameplay is despite the lack of movesets, matchtypes and things of possibility still very smooth since it runs on 60fps and fun even. it's very arcady and I love it for that you can even catch people mid air with a dropkick when they try to pull off a top rope move which is awesome and it surprises me that no game prior gave you that ability. the moves also all feel so impactful, chairshots are straight up nasty with the way the wrestlers sell them, the ultimate x matchtype is also a lot of fun and probably one of more unique ones since no other wrestling game feautered it (probably bc it's a TNA original made for their X division so it wouldn't make sense to feauture it in a non TNA match or game), the story mode while feeling like it was written by Vince Russo while he was on a heavy drinking binge is also actually enjoyable. despite the difficulty spikes and the lack of arenas (which why TNA? like c'mon you got PPVs like No Surrender and Victory Road yet none of them are featured in the game) it still offeres an entertaining story that doesen't take itself seriously and the reversal system while unrefined is really cool with the player being able to reverse reversals there are moments where you will see a chain of reversals happening which is awesome shame though that timing on a lot of these is weird. TNA Impact had a lot of potential there are many puzzle pieces of a fantastic wrestling hidden throughout. puzzle pieces which could have been put together as one in a sequel which at one point was planned but unfortunately Midway declared for bankruptcy not long after however some of that potential was realized since the same development team then went to work on WWE All Stars which has TNA Impacts DNA all over it. TNA Impact is a flawed but earnest attempt which in my eyes didn't fail. is it as good as the WWE games that came out during the same console generations or even as great as the WWE games that came out the generation before that? no. but it remains a very unique game of it's kind that can deliver the Smackdown or rather the Impact!