A legendary parody of Metal Gear Solid that surely ranks up there as one of the funniest games ever made. Few games have communicated comedy through their gameplay mechanics as effectively as killing Revolver Ocelot in about 5 seconds by just going into first person mode and shooting him.

Yeah, obviously it's not the way you should play Metal Gear Solid, because it isn't Metal Gear Solid. It's The Twin Snakes. And it's hysterical.

The cutscenes especially are absolutely incredible. If you complain about Snake surfing on a missile you are factually a loser I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you

You ever played a game that unapologetically reflects the person who created it? That's The Wonderful 101 for you.

The Wonderful 101 is like if Hideki Kamiya gifted himself a birthday present, and for that reason, it's why I feel this game was naturally going to sway a lot of people off from it. I mean really, how do you market this kind of game? It's like a big melting pot of action game ideas from Kamiya work fit straight into a game about controlling a crowd of superheroes you collect to fight giant aliens or mechs. Casually looking at gameplay of it, you'd think it was just a Nintendo-published Pikmin clone but with more sensory overload.

Now imagine actually booting up the game and playing it for yourself. My first hour of this game was a nightmare of fiddling with controls and testing buttons while the game assaulted me with neon HUD elements and tutorial prompts, as the game also is presenting you new gameplay ideas such as new characters with their own weapons you got to draw, and not even 10 minutes in you start unlocking new moves for them and leveling up your health or your battery gauge that's used to determine how much you can use the Wonder-Liner. Despite how much tutorialization it throws at the player, the game doesn't give you the dodge or block at the start of the game which means you have to buy these very important moves from the shop. Granted these are cheap to buy, but it's also baffling they didn't just give you these from the start. Kamiya and his team shove a lot of stuff at the player from the start with barely any breathing room to really take it all in, so I can't exactly say TW101 has a very graceful start to its premise.

But man, I was so wrong lol.

It didn't take long for the game's combat to really click with me once all the tutorial prompts got out of the way. I was surprised to see how many elements Kamiya took from his old games and managed to make it work as well as it does. You got the juggling combo system from DMC and Bayonetta, Ukemi from Viewtiful Joe, Witch Time from Bayonetta, and most notably, the drawing system from Okami but transformed into the main gimmick of this game.

Rather than a traditional weapon switching system, TW101 asks the player to draw the weapon (preferably on the analog stick) to get the desired weapon. The bigger they draw the shape, the bigger their weapon will be, which will be slower but deal more damage, compared to a smaller one that will be faster but deal less damage, but also take up less battery gauge... you see the depth here offered already by this system? The biggest skill mastery is not only learning to draw these shapes (which the game is very intelligent at knowing since they are all distinct from one another) but you also have to know which weapon is useful for each situation, as some enemies will have certain strategies that are more effective for each weapon. But then you learn how to open up enemies with each weapon, and you learn that you can use your team, or Wonder Green's gun, to stun the enemy and then put them in a juggle state.

Juggling is really when the game turned into something special for me because pulling out certain weapons to keep the opponent in the air for a long time is when the drawing system becomes outright impressive. You never feel like you are going to do the same combo in this game. They are creative spectacles of skill mastery because of the flexibility offered by the game's freeform weapon drawing system. Masters of the game's drawing system can outright demolish a giant mech with their 100 man team, and it's probably the most stylish combo system I've ever seen. Not only for the fact a team of superheroes comboing an alien dragon mech is fucking rad, but it also asks more from the player while doing so, creating a combat system that's all-around more rewarding to master.

All the little niceties the game throws to the player too also make TW101 a very welcoming experience. As mentioned before, a lot of Kamiya mechanics from his older games return here, but there's also a lot more. You have very tightly designed enemy encounters that Kamiya is known for, along with gameplay systems Kamiya has explained he likes that return, with surprisingly good and fair boss fights all guided by probably the funniest video game I've ever played. I really vibed with what Kamiya was putting on offer here. The game oozes with passion all the way through and the more I played of it, the more and more I really appreciate every bit of it. It just kept getting better and better. Even the climax of the game was like 12 endings on top of each other. It's like if Kamiya took all of his favorite toys and smashed them together, which really highlights the toy-box like wonderment the game offers here.

My main critique though is because this is a Kamiya passion project, it also features probably my least favorite Kamiya trope often and that is introducing new gameplay elements from old arcade games. There's a punch-out mini-game, an isometric 3D shooter, some side-scrolling space shooters, and of course, the fucking space harrier level Kamiya just loves to put in. None of these are poorly designed mind you, but it wrestles time away from the main combat I ended up craving the most from TW101, and I really hope Kamiya's next project isn't as egregious with these as this game featured.

But despite that, going into TW101 was a very pleasant experience, especially given that I was already a fair fan of Kamiya's old projects. But this is elevated to a whole new level. Kamiya sought out creating a game that he wanted to play the most, and there aren't many creators out there that have the balls to do that. Clover Studio, the studio he worked at before Platnium Games, was a studio designed to create wild and new ideas, but none of those games ever found their audience outside of Okami, causing their eventual shut down. The Wonderful 101 is kind of like a Clover Studio game. A very ambitious action game designed solely to introduce a brand new experience unlike anything else. It wasn't designed for everyone in mind, but only for those who would appreciate these mechanics in mind... like a Kamiya fan. Maybe that's all it needed to be in the end. As for me, I say you should stick with it. It's pretty wonderful! ba dum tiss

I'm very emotional as I write this. This is my favorite single player game ever - it's not even close. I could talk about some of it's flaws, but while they might be flaws to most people, they're not to me. I love everything about this game.

Tonight I finally did it. I wish I had an audience to witness me. My 120th star - 100 Coins in Hazy Maze Cave - and I went outside, got shot out of a canon and met that scum bag rat fuck son of a bitch bastard Yoshi for my very first time!!!

My childhood is complete <3 this is a true coming of age moment for me.

echo-commentary, cyberpunk platformer. really good, even if odd designed - very labyrinthine levels that may seem strange if you play this after 2 and "worse" when thinking about it on 3. turns out, though, that it is way better replaying it than playing for the first time - some levels that may seem gigantic, after recognition, you can finish them pretty quickly. the future/past mechanics are very well implemented, because it not only sustains the environmentalist message but also the levels has big linear spaces and loops for you to use or creates challenge where losing your momentum is losing the time-travel. love the bosses!! they are fast and smartly designed. the music rocks too!! really a sonic masterpiece and after replaying, thinking if it could be my new favorite . . .

"If a stupid pothead with barely enough time spent enjoying this game like me can do it on Level-Die, I have no idea what is wrong with certain people whose job it is to inform the gaming public."

This quote was in the description of a video that was meant as a response to IGN's now infamous review of this game by a user named Saurian, 14 years ago. All there was to the video was a demonstration of the user's skill with the combat system. (You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyfbtSyX3mc)

Everyone knows of IGN's infamous 3/10 review. Before I knew of God Hand, I knew of that image that compared this game's 3.0 score to Imagine Party Babyz 7.5 score, which was meant to show the sheer incompetence of IGN. Now for me, I'm a little more laid back when I see mainstream game reviewers' scores since the majority of them are written by independent writers which may not reflect the whole staff's opinion, yet is put onto review aggregate websites as the companies score, rather than the independent writer. Chris Roper, the man who wrote the God Hand review, didn't even do the review for Imagine Party Babyz, but people look at both reviews as it was written by one entity, which I feel is a major problem with mainstream game reviewing outlets as a whole.

That being said though, Chris Roper's review is still awful, the whole thing is written with a clear level of frustration towards the game, to the point where it becomes condescending, but that doesn't mean there aren't valid points within the review. It's got weird tank controls that feel out of place for a 3rd person action beat 'em up. The level design revolves around basic geometry and shapes and textures look very low-res (The cage that's used for the Chihuahua race isn't even textured), the game uses random elements for spawning items and even spawning demons from dead enemies, and the game doesn't refill health upon entering new sections in a stage.

I think what caused such backlash from game critics for God Hand was its time of release. God Hand was a late 2006 PS2 release, and the PS2 gen saw what was considered the golden age of character action games. We got Devil May Cry 1 & 3, Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Resident Evil 4, God of War, among other games. Comparing to all of those games that released within that time frame, God Hand's tank controls and basic level design looked outdated and primitive. The budget for this game was most likely 5 dollars and was used so Shinji Mikami could get lunch for the single day it was developed.

Here's the thing though: None of that fucking matters.

Never before have I played a game that didn't give a single flying shit about looking pretty or adding in less samey enemy types or making the game easier to give it more appeal. God Hand sacrificed all of those things to make it the game it is: a game about constantly testing the player.

God Hand's most notorious mechanic is the dynamic difficulty system. Similar to Resident Evil 4, the game will make enemy AI more aggressive, do new moves, or even group up in pairs more depending on what level you are at (it goes from Lvl 1, 2, 3, Die) but unlike RE4, God Hand doesn't hide it in the background. It's constantly in your face at the bottom left-hand screen at all times, letting the player know what level they are at and when they'll get to the next one. When playing the game for the first few hours, you'll most likely stay around the level 1-2 area, but later on, when you get more accustomed to the game's mechanics, you might start staying around the level 3 and level Die area, even if the game starts throwing more challenging enemy types at you.

That's when I realized something special about God Hand. It subtlety fixes one of the biggest hurdles in the action game genre: Ranking systems. Most action games have a system where at the end of each level, it tallies how well you did on certain aspect like time, combos, and even collecting currency and gives the player an award adjusted to how well they did (be it a higher letter or a shinier trophy.). While these are meant to encourage repeat playthroughs, they can also be frustrating to newer players, as they are constantly being told they aren't doing good enough, despite action games being about learning mechanics and repeating those levels to get better at them. You aren't encouraged to know what to look out for on each level to even get a good rank for your first time either, which that in itself causes more confusion or frustration to newer players.

God Hand instead takes those ranking systems and discards them, and rather than tally you at the end of a level, you are being shown just exactly how good you are doing, and at the end of each stage you are rewarded with more money based on how many enemies you killed at the rank you were in, rather than giving you a trophy that's only meant for bragging rights. I believe this is what makes God Hand so inherently fun on the face of it. It's not only a great action game with tightly designed combat, enemies, and bosses, but also a game that actively encourages the player to get better at it. I first feared that moment I hit level 3, but as the game went on, I kept wanting to get on level Die. Weaving effortlessly through your enemies punches and counter-attacking crowds of enemies with your sweep kicks, or launching them in the air and hitting them with a Shoryuken to a kick in the face sending them flying. Your adrenaline starts pumping as you see that meter go higher and higher. You think you are getting good at God Hand, and it's starting to take its gloves off for you, the player. But you start to feel like a god yourself. You feel like you can punch a hole through concrete, the game's challenge is just so exciting... and then it kicks your ass! You feel like you've been brutalized. I've had this happen to me with each death, but never once I did I ever get tired of this game. I kept going at it, because every time I hit level Die and survived those encounters, I never felt a more satisfying feeling in a video game.

I think about the quote I introduced in the first paragraph a lot, because despite God Hand being one of the most challenging games I've ever played, it is also a game I think anyone can enjoy, and I'm very glad I got to play it myself. It's compromised in so many areas, but what it does right left me with one of the most satisfying and memorable action games I've ever played. So, from the bottom of my heart: Play God Hand... it's probably better than Imagine Party Babyz.

for some reason this is probably the only time a piece of media has ever made me feel "triggered" to the point of trembling white hot panic and rage and I'm very lucky to be able to say that because it was a fucking horrible experience and I hated it a lot!!! As someone who watches a lot of "transgressive" or politically indefensible genre media and has a complicated fragmentary interest in it I'm no stranger to sadist exploitation and the justification of horrific, perverse acts committed against women as a callous means to reinforce a fictional world's steely hopelessness but JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. The way this game doles out such repugnant torments to its one female character, a child (who was previously presented as a duplicitous saucy nubile cartoon temptress in a way that felt indefensibly racist and pedophilic), granting her zero dignity or humanity and utilizing her sexualized abuse as some cheap suggestion of a new "darkly-real, Kiefer Sutherland's war on terror" stylistic direction for this series.. is just... fucking grotesque and too ghoulish for me to even process. Kojima's misogyny was always something I had to internally justify or excuse up until this point--undeniably objectifying and ignorant but mostly absurd in a schlocky horny genre way I was personally able to overlook--and i think part of what I found so fraught about GZ was how intensely it laid bare how adjacent to abject misanthropy and callous hatred his views on female characters always were. I mean there are hints of this in MGS4 as well with the BnB's--the body oil moaning nymphoid war crime victim sequences that immediately transition into narrated monologues (not from them of course) about how these women had dealt with like the most lurid and sensationally violent trauma possible and you freed them via murder actually bc that was your job and right 2 do! That was disgusting to me at the time as well, but something about the treatment of Paz: an unrelenting violation of a character as a means of stylistic/thematic transition and an intended vehicle to generate hype (Metal Gear pulls no punches now this aint your momma's genre game we put Liveleak ISIS torture in it!) just utterly revolts me and makes me feel queasy 2 my core. The insult to injury was seeing this games attempt at some hateful cruel stylistic baptism for the series and then having Quiet's design revealed... Ground Zeroes isnt even an honest statement of intent for the series; Kojima isnt heralding in a new misanthropic world of mutilated dignity and constant desecration... he's simply incorporating that into his world where women are also sexy cartoon sidekicks with coo coo pulpy character designs... I think part of what upset me so much about this is envisioning the mental landscape of someone who is able to justify a narrative universe in which both of these ideas can non-schizophrenically coexist, let alone communicate anything valuable about geopolitics or war crimes. Utterly vile / fuck this piece of shit 4eva and tbh while I found so much of death stranding to be arresting and sprawling and deeply felt I also am unable to remove the stain of this fucking filthy worthless game from any of his other works! u marred your library forever u fucker I hate you!!!!!

When someone plays a game you’ve recommended, don’t you get a warm and fuzzy feeling? It’s an odd thing to get excited about, but it makes sense in a way, since it shows a level of trust in you. That person took the time out of their day, chose not to play the games they were certain of, and committed to the investment that goes into starting up a new game, all because you assured them it would be worth it. That’s why I take recommendations fairly seriously, both in giving a chance to the ones I receive, and carefully specifying the audience when giving them out myself.

I recommend Crazy Taxi.

I feel like I can do that without the usual parentheticals because this is a game that was designed to recommend itself. An arcade game had no other option but to try and be the flashiest, easiest to pick up, and most exciting attraction in a room full of competitors doing the same thing, and as one of the most enduring titles from that setting, it naturally excels at all the criteria. You just push start and immediately have fun, the 90’s jams start blasting, your wheels screech towards your first passenger, there’s no wasted time where the game tells you to invest your patience to hopefully get a return later on. The controls require no explanation if you’ve seen a car before, you don’t have to memorize locations around town when a giant arrow points the way, picking up and dropping off passengers on a timer is a simple premise understandable to anyone, it all just makes sense and feels good no matter where you are on the skill curve. Importantly, rounds also only last a matter of minutes, so no one needs to commit their time to getting oriented or in the zone; you can pick it up and put it down no matter how much free time you have.

So, if the formula for a recommendation is weighing the time investment and learning commitment against the possible payoff, how can I do anything but recommend it when the former side of the equation is nearly zero? The risks are low, but the return is high. I can speak from experience, this was another game taken from my “Games YOU want more people to play” list, suggested by users LukeGirard and DustyVita, with the former even taking the time to explain some of the optional techniques from the manual as I streamed my first play session. Connections like that are why we’re on this site after all, so go give some crazy games a chance!