MagneticBurn
2014
golfing in real life:
-slow
-beloved by feds
-probably involved plowing over indigenous lands
golfing in video games:
+haha ball go brrr
+g e o m e t r y
+Z axis optional
-slow
-beloved by feds
-probably involved plowing over indigenous lands
golfing in video games:
+haha ball go brrr
+g e o m e t r y
+Z axis optional
2008
I've played a lot of sequels in the 'higher highs, lower lows' cesspool but I think DMC4 might take the cake on that namesake. I can't name any other game that left me whiplashing so frequently between wonderful ecstasy and utter disgust. It's the consequence of upping the ante on all the highlighted fronts - more worldbuilding, more flair and weight to the story, more mechanics, - without streamlining the fat left over from prior endeavors. At this point DMC has all but severed itself thematically from its RE4 prototype roots, and yet it still insists on droning exploration and puzzle-solving - which worked in 1 because of its vision and direction, but make no sense here!
If there's one thing that unanimously shines amidst 4's final results, it's story. DMC1-3 all have these very focused, interpersonal stories, with extremely limited casts that exist to directly foil and complement Dante and the trails he overcomes. The same rings true of Nero and his conflict with the Order, but the expanded cast of characters, wider world, and (gasp!) NPC's work in great service of Nero and the faith he places in himself and Kyrie against a troupe of oligarchic demons who use their religion to veil their selfish ambitions. It's still a largely personal narrative, but now supported by a heart and weeps and fights for others - not just self-serving power. Even bosses reflect this by contrast to 1 and 3: 1's bosses are dedicated keepers of this decaying castle, and 3's bosses are these guardian knights of sorts that fight viciously but respect Dante as a worthy adversary. 4's bosses are these feral demons though; they're here to terrorize and destroy brazenly, and as such, they fight dirty. No wonder Nero's so hotheaded when he has to put up with their shit.
Dante's a fucking riot too - yadda yadda foil to Nero's brashness yadda yadda distant mentor figure - HOLY SHIT HE DESTROYED A MONOLITH BY THROWING NEEDLES AT IT IN THE SHAPE OF A HEART WHILE PLAYING FLAMENCO MUSIC AND DESCRIBING HIS PEGGING SESSIONS.
It's just a shame everything else wildly weaves between anywhere from 10/10 quality to 0/10 tedium. This game has some of my favorite DMC boss designs and concepts, but so many of them can feel terrible to fight as Nero because his toolkit relies so heavily on Buster for damage and it just, doesn't work unless the fight says so. Like, the cinematic grapples are raw as hell, but I wish they didn't come at the compromise of not being able to Buster normally. I liked Agnus' fight a lot for that reason - using Buster to throw his swords back at him gave me an immediate and gratifying pool of damage. For other encounters its uses are not only more limited, but it can feel vague in their telegraphs. That really goes for every enemy? I feel like so much damage I take in this game is because I'm experiencing enormous sensory overload and can't react to these funky hitboxes and hazy pre-attack animations. "There's audio cues tho" yeah there's also always 20 other sfx playing backed by this loud-ass music. And as much as I appreciate how focused Nero's moveset is, I don't vibe too much with a lot of the tools that comprise it. I felt EX moves were just way to hard to efficiently use: You gotta slow yourself down to do this awkward charge revving motion, then you gotta close your distance and make sure the hit actually lands - and even if it does, it's not drastically stronger enough than my other tools to feel like it really paid off. I don't like his combos and special inputs either - I'm sorry, but I should never have to do a street fighter charge motion in a 3D space while jumping. Dante gets the brunt end of the criticism for being filler but I feel a lot of smaller enemies don't feel designed around him. It's kinda hard to criticize tho, because for some reason his level 2 Stinger just destroys everything, like just an obscene amount of damage on top of forwards movement, quick cooldown on hit, knockdowns and combo potential. If nothing else, you already know how to deal with a lot of shit once you get to his end of the run, so he tends to be a little less stressful.
DMC4 is also unfinished, blatantly, but not to the degree that I feel people often complain? Like, there's fewer levels and you replay the back half as Dante, but the content in those spaces feels just as well-realized as 3 - if not more. Again, it REALLY just comes down to the combination of enemies and bosses I don't like fighting, in levels I don't like progressing through. Some of these areas just leave no lasting impression and feel entirely codified around 'video game level' themes. Even in 3's mid-ass castle, its sectors feel like natural areas that match the universe's fictionalized rules. But 4? Play the fuckin' juuuuuuungle level. Go to the faaaaaaactory. Go to the tooooooown. Play the gunstar heroes dice maze. And even with these 'gameplay first' worlds, they're still ass to play in! Cramped spaces with awkward camera angles and uneven terrain that makes a lot of ordinarily fights that much more stressful. It pisses me off how 7th gen's redefining of 'good combat' is so narrow-minded - being all that matters for an action game to be good is for your character's immediate techniques, toolkit and gamefeel to be good. All this effort gets poured into perfecting the persona that you take on, without any consideration for the world you inhabit. What the hell is ""good combat"" without rooms that vie as an appropriate arena? What good are my tools if the enemies I have to use them against are a pain in the ass? You can't divorce individual parts of game design from each other - 4 having the 'deepest systems' or 'most complex combos' means nothing to me when I have such a pessimistic attitude for the material I have to engage those mechanics with.
This was an extremely disorganized review - it's 1AM, I'm tired, it's hard to designate where and how to discuss some of the game's elements because of the unruly way they clash with each other, the ten yards. I liked my time with DMC4, I Gamer Pogged when I heard a sample used in DDR's Drop Out during the Bael bossfight, I lost my shit twice every cutscene and was floored every time I used buster on someone's ass - but I was upset too often at it and felt like I wouldn't have lost much by just watching the cutscenes and moving onto 5. I can't really remember a game that made me frequently this angry since like, playing shitty arcade modes in 90's fighting games.
Onward to 5!
If there's one thing that unanimously shines amidst 4's final results, it's story. DMC1-3 all have these very focused, interpersonal stories, with extremely limited casts that exist to directly foil and complement Dante and the trails he overcomes. The same rings true of Nero and his conflict with the Order, but the expanded cast of characters, wider world, and (gasp!) NPC's work in great service of Nero and the faith he places in himself and Kyrie against a troupe of oligarchic demons who use their religion to veil their selfish ambitions. It's still a largely personal narrative, but now supported by a heart and weeps and fights for others - not just self-serving power. Even bosses reflect this by contrast to 1 and 3: 1's bosses are dedicated keepers of this decaying castle, and 3's bosses are these guardian knights of sorts that fight viciously but respect Dante as a worthy adversary. 4's bosses are these feral demons though; they're here to terrorize and destroy brazenly, and as such, they fight dirty. No wonder Nero's so hotheaded when he has to put up with their shit.
Dante's a fucking riot too - yadda yadda foil to Nero's brashness yadda yadda distant mentor figure - HOLY SHIT HE DESTROYED A MONOLITH BY THROWING NEEDLES AT IT IN THE SHAPE OF A HEART WHILE PLAYING FLAMENCO MUSIC AND DESCRIBING HIS PEGGING SESSIONS.
It's just a shame everything else wildly weaves between anywhere from 10/10 quality to 0/10 tedium. This game has some of my favorite DMC boss designs and concepts, but so many of them can feel terrible to fight as Nero because his toolkit relies so heavily on Buster for damage and it just, doesn't work unless the fight says so. Like, the cinematic grapples are raw as hell, but I wish they didn't come at the compromise of not being able to Buster normally. I liked Agnus' fight a lot for that reason - using Buster to throw his swords back at him gave me an immediate and gratifying pool of damage. For other encounters its uses are not only more limited, but it can feel vague in their telegraphs. That really goes for every enemy? I feel like so much damage I take in this game is because I'm experiencing enormous sensory overload and can't react to these funky hitboxes and hazy pre-attack animations. "There's audio cues tho" yeah there's also always 20 other sfx playing backed by this loud-ass music. And as much as I appreciate how focused Nero's moveset is, I don't vibe too much with a lot of the tools that comprise it. I felt EX moves were just way to hard to efficiently use: You gotta slow yourself down to do this awkward charge revving motion, then you gotta close your distance and make sure the hit actually lands - and even if it does, it's not drastically stronger enough than my other tools to feel like it really paid off. I don't like his combos and special inputs either - I'm sorry, but I should never have to do a street fighter charge motion in a 3D space while jumping. Dante gets the brunt end of the criticism for being filler but I feel a lot of smaller enemies don't feel designed around him. It's kinda hard to criticize tho, because for some reason his level 2 Stinger just destroys everything, like just an obscene amount of damage on top of forwards movement, quick cooldown on hit, knockdowns and combo potential. If nothing else, you already know how to deal with a lot of shit once you get to his end of the run, so he tends to be a little less stressful.
DMC4 is also unfinished, blatantly, but not to the degree that I feel people often complain? Like, there's fewer levels and you replay the back half as Dante, but the content in those spaces feels just as well-realized as 3 - if not more. Again, it REALLY just comes down to the combination of enemies and bosses I don't like fighting, in levels I don't like progressing through. Some of these areas just leave no lasting impression and feel entirely codified around 'video game level' themes. Even in 3's mid-ass castle, its sectors feel like natural areas that match the universe's fictionalized rules. But 4? Play the fuckin' juuuuuuungle level. Go to the faaaaaaactory. Go to the tooooooown. Play the gunstar heroes dice maze. And even with these 'gameplay first' worlds, they're still ass to play in! Cramped spaces with awkward camera angles and uneven terrain that makes a lot of ordinarily fights that much more stressful. It pisses me off how 7th gen's redefining of 'good combat' is so narrow-minded - being all that matters for an action game to be good is for your character's immediate techniques, toolkit and gamefeel to be good. All this effort gets poured into perfecting the persona that you take on, without any consideration for the world you inhabit. What the hell is ""good combat"" without rooms that vie as an appropriate arena? What good are my tools if the enemies I have to use them against are a pain in the ass? You can't divorce individual parts of game design from each other - 4 having the 'deepest systems' or 'most complex combos' means nothing to me when I have such a pessimistic attitude for the material I have to engage those mechanics with.
This was an extremely disorganized review - it's 1AM, I'm tired, it's hard to designate where and how to discuss some of the game's elements because of the unruly way they clash with each other, the ten yards. I liked my time with DMC4, I Gamer Pogged when I heard a sample used in DDR's Drop Out during the Bael bossfight, I lost my shit twice every cutscene and was floored every time I used buster on someone's ass - but I was upset too often at it and felt like I wouldn't have lost much by just watching the cutscenes and moving onto 5. I can't really remember a game that made me frequently this angry since like, playing shitty arcade modes in 90's fighting games.
Onward to 5!
2020
Does to SOR what Mania did for Classic Sonic - a nearly-perfect retranslation of the original's invisible magic. They could've taken the easy way out and turned this into an anime button masher, but SOR2's delicate spacing and timing are present with just the perfect additional seasoning of QOL changes and additional moves.
So why not 5 stars? Cause I have two really cynical pet peeves about this game - the soundtrack and the length. The music's perfectly listenable, but in trying to capture modern EDM influences, it trades the memorability of the original trilogy's sound. I can't hum a single new track from here, let alone recall what they sounded like. And as for length, 12 stages for an arcade beat-em-up is just too fucking long. SOR already had a problem with being a bit too long for such a replay-intensive genre, and this game goes even further overboard. Just starting a run is difficult because the first level is so long and draining.
So why not 5 stars? Cause I have two really cynical pet peeves about this game - the soundtrack and the length. The music's perfectly listenable, but in trying to capture modern EDM influences, it trades the memorability of the original trilogy's sound. I can't hum a single new track from here, let alone recall what they sounded like. And as for length, 12 stages for an arcade beat-em-up is just too fucking long. SOR already had a problem with being a bit too long for such a replay-intensive genre, and this game goes even further overboard. Just starting a run is difficult because the first level is so long and draining.
It's easy to shittalk these tracks for looking mostly sterile and mobile-core, but like, y'all are playing mario kart with friends and family and nursing home residents on oxygen machines. it's a fucking party game - in the grand scheme of things, more content is gonna win over less-but-aesthetically-consistent content every time.
the real problem imo is that most tracks they lifted from tour just suck hard, they have less interesting curvature and bite than even the SNES courses. Cool to have them in a real video game for posterity's sake I guess, who knows when Nintendo's gonna pull the plug on tour and erase millions of kid's mom's credit card dollars from existence
the real problem imo is that most tracks they lifted from tour just suck hard, they have less interesting curvature and bite than even the SNES courses. Cool to have them in a real video game for posterity's sake I guess, who knows when Nintendo's gonna pull the plug on tour and erase millions of kid's mom's credit card dollars from existence
2001
Look I gotta come clean, this analog shit is somehow less functional than cool cool toon, but this game had me tearing up as early as the intro CG and kept delivering into the 2nd half, the struggle was worth it.
Love Is The Power!!!
Love Is The Power!!!
No greater sign of Sega's crushing schedule and budgetary environment in the pre-Sonic 1 world than this. A gargantuan and visionary concept that can't even execute on 1/10th of its pitch, just totally devoid of anything emotionally meaningful or exciting.
dating isn't babysitting
1994
Firebrand is one of the most iconic enemies from 80's gaming: A blood-red demon who seethes with snarled aggression and makes short work of you with cunning movement tactics. He's the biggest douchebag inside what's already considered one of the hardest games of its era. So I can't help but be puzzled that the direction Capcom went for his solo outings were low-difficulty platformers with minimal combat.
There's lots of odd choices abound here. Like Quackshot, the game has linear levels but requires you to revisit them with keycard abilities in a metroidvania-esque setup. There's alternate attacks and transformations required for progression that take constant menu-ing to switch between - it was 94, why no shoulder button toggles ala MMX? There's an attempt at a hub world but it just amounts to 1 NPC and a few shops, was really wishing there'd be more to justify 100% exploration. You also get a lot of money to spend on 1-time items that I mostly didn't use. Bosses have really bloated HP bars and excessive i-frames.
And yet for all its weird choices, they rarely inhibit the core appeal. Vibes carry Demon's Crest very hard: The beautiful world, snappy movement and haunting orchestral music are great. I couldn't tell you a hook or mechanic I was really invested in, but the feeling of playing it is just as strong as any other Capcom game. A very low-key, sobering platform experience with a good edge to it. Oddly relaxing, moreso than something child-friendly like Magical Quest.
There's also three endings depending on how many items you get before confronting Phalanx, the final boss. I only got the first two, but I was content with that. It's really funny to me that in the 2nd ending, Phalanx just pussies out, screaming "I'm not owned! I'm not owned!" with his tail between his legs. I'm sure most people see it as an unsatisfactory victory because you don't get to finish him off with your own hands, but like, nothing's more empowering than knowing your nemesis is scared shitless by you.
There's lots of odd choices abound here. Like Quackshot, the game has linear levels but requires you to revisit them with keycard abilities in a metroidvania-esque setup. There's alternate attacks and transformations required for progression that take constant menu-ing to switch between - it was 94, why no shoulder button toggles ala MMX? There's an attempt at a hub world but it just amounts to 1 NPC and a few shops, was really wishing there'd be more to justify 100% exploration. You also get a lot of money to spend on 1-time items that I mostly didn't use. Bosses have really bloated HP bars and excessive i-frames.
And yet for all its weird choices, they rarely inhibit the core appeal. Vibes carry Demon's Crest very hard: The beautiful world, snappy movement and haunting orchestral music are great. I couldn't tell you a hook or mechanic I was really invested in, but the feeling of playing it is just as strong as any other Capcom game. A very low-key, sobering platform experience with a good edge to it. Oddly relaxing, moreso than something child-friendly like Magical Quest.
There's also three endings depending on how many items you get before confronting Phalanx, the final boss. I only got the first two, but I was content with that. It's really funny to me that in the 2nd ending, Phalanx just pussies out, screaming "I'm not owned! I'm not owned!" with his tail between his legs. I'm sure most people see it as an unsatisfactory victory because you don't get to finish him off with your own hands, but like, nothing's more empowering than knowing your nemesis is scared shitless by you.
Castlevania intentionally inverts the Belmont's rigid and challenging action design for a graceful, shameless power fantasy. Alucard's boundless strength is portrayed both in his progressive control tweaks and the overindulgent arsenal of trinkets and touchpoints he gorges upon. 80% of his toolkit is all but useless or overly-situational; a god beyond peer, he doesn't even need to use his trump cards.
Never felt bothered by how easy the game tends to get: Threats have huge variability on a peak around 'moderately easy', keeping the adventure tense and foreboding while rarely punishing your actual progress. It's all to maintain a gorgeous tour through the unalive corridors of Dracula's castle, adorned with breathtaking architecture and a troupe of delightfully-devilish monsters. Konami weaponizes the PS1's 3D tools to garnish already-pristine sprite art with lucid psychedelia; a peerless case study for pixels as strokes of paint to a breathing canvas.
But uh, fuck the reverse castle and fuck konami for chickening out of the 'richter loses his shit' plot. Insane backpedaling to play it safe. Stretches out an otherwise perfectly-scaled game to 4-6 extra hours of meandering and it can't even end on good bossfights. Genuinely would say it's better to go in and just play the main castle & bad/default ending, unless you really want to play Richter/Maria.
Never felt bothered by how easy the game tends to get: Threats have huge variability on a peak around 'moderately easy', keeping the adventure tense and foreboding while rarely punishing your actual progress. It's all to maintain a gorgeous tour through the unalive corridors of Dracula's castle, adorned with breathtaking architecture and a troupe of delightfully-devilish monsters. Konami weaponizes the PS1's 3D tools to garnish already-pristine sprite art with lucid psychedelia; a peerless case study for pixels as strokes of paint to a breathing canvas.
But uh, fuck the reverse castle and fuck konami for chickening out of the 'richter loses his shit' plot. Insane backpedaling to play it safe. Stretches out an otherwise perfectly-scaled game to 4-6 extra hours of meandering and it can't even end on good bossfights. Genuinely would say it's better to go in and just play the main castle & bad/default ending, unless you really want to play Richter/Maria.
Drenched in "SO RETRO"-isms to the point of being indistinguishable from 99% of other budget indie 2D platformers, but the self-incestuous use of gamedev shortcut design feels totally appropriate to AVGN's doltish comedy language. Borderline gamedev tutorial tiers with how often its challenge boils down to cycle-based killboxes on sines and orbiters. Incredibly analogous to Rolfe's own B-movie practicals and direction choices, though the charm doesn't translate to gamedev and the player experience as well as these choices to do a motion picture audience. Exactly the kind of game an AVGN tie-in aught to be, nothing more or less.
1996
Creating afterimages to pummel giant Persian-influenced gods and mechanoloids is something truly special, though the inclusion of checkpoints at a few select stages puts this in a weird spot where you CAN credit-feed it but you'll be burning about 30-45 minutes routing out one specific boss rematch section, very bizarre
holy fuck bomberman hero 2
1995
I had the (mis)fortune of racing this with my wonderful friend Weatherby while Jenny read out a giant manifesto of Ken Penders' war crimes.
+The tether mechanic is obnoxious but I came around on it and actually had a lot of fun using it to vertically cheese the levels. With good timing you can do some fun tech like throwing your partner up, bouncing along with them, then grabbing them midair and repeating again, then chaining it into a glide to reach a wall. It took about 70% of the runtime to fully understand it, but I was having a good kick when it all made sense.
+The color palette and environmental art is super rich and inviting, very reminiscent of Ristar and Sonic CD, though admittedly a lot more directionless. You're in a lot of non-descript technological spaces that don't necessarily feel like part of a larger world, even with the carnival theme they attempt.
+The special stages are cool-looking and fun (((WHEN PLAYED WITH SAVESTATES)))
+The music is amazing, I am so sad Deflemask doesn't have 32X support
-Barely any present level design, and way too many levels
-The stage with the clocks can go to hell
-Some of the bosses were insufferable because your partner can get KO'd, and sometimes the game will just kick you out of the fight when that happens. I'm sure there's a consistent trigger that causes it, but I could not find any pattern between whether or not my partner would re-appear or I'd be sent back to the hub
-Special stages are totally uncooperative at random points in the collision that can cause you to just lose out of nowhere, it's too damning a tech issue to make these rings worth collecting, even if the stages themselves are neat.
I probably would've rated this lower if played in isolation, but whatever. This is just one beautiful mess. It's insane this was the game they tried to sell the 32X through, tho - this feels like it should be a spin-off or companion piece to a larger Sonic project with better use of the 32X's rendering tech. Really goes to show how dire things were at corporate SEGA at the time.
Ken Penders should have his head dunked in toilet water
+The tether mechanic is obnoxious but I came around on it and actually had a lot of fun using it to vertically cheese the levels. With good timing you can do some fun tech like throwing your partner up, bouncing along with them, then grabbing them midair and repeating again, then chaining it into a glide to reach a wall. It took about 70% of the runtime to fully understand it, but I was having a good kick when it all made sense.
+The color palette and environmental art is super rich and inviting, very reminiscent of Ristar and Sonic CD, though admittedly a lot more directionless. You're in a lot of non-descript technological spaces that don't necessarily feel like part of a larger world, even with the carnival theme they attempt.
+The special stages are cool-looking and fun (((WHEN PLAYED WITH SAVESTATES)))
+The music is amazing, I am so sad Deflemask doesn't have 32X support
-Barely any present level design, and way too many levels
-The stage with the clocks can go to hell
-Some of the bosses were insufferable because your partner can get KO'd, and sometimes the game will just kick you out of the fight when that happens. I'm sure there's a consistent trigger that causes it, but I could not find any pattern between whether or not my partner would re-appear or I'd be sent back to the hub
-Special stages are totally uncooperative at random points in the collision that can cause you to just lose out of nowhere, it's too damning a tech issue to make these rings worth collecting, even if the stages themselves are neat.
I probably would've rated this lower if played in isolation, but whatever. This is just one beautiful mess. It's insane this was the game they tried to sell the 32X through, tho - this feels like it should be a spin-off or companion piece to a larger Sonic project with better use of the 32X's rendering tech. Really goes to show how dire things were at corporate SEGA at the time.
Ken Penders should have his head dunked in toilet water
Spark is cute: Endlessly huge and impressive in scope for a mostly 1-person project developed in such a short time. And it perfectly synthesizes Sonic's speed and platforming into a barrage of other 16-bit action flavors in a way that flows and pleases without a bump in the road. It has a ton of charming homemade anime cut-ins, loads of recognizeable setpeices from SEGA/Treasure/HAL projects, and a solid, well-fitting soundtrack.
It's also too long and - to be blunt, - braindead.
Spark gets speed and action feel right, and it's always shooting new things at you, but the game loop gets way too easy and repetitive too quick. Even though stage hazards and enemies change up constantly, the way you have to engage with them hardly matters. 10 minutes runtime per stage in a 16+ stage game is fucking obscene. Bosses don't dish enough heat to feel meaningfully fun. It's like if you maxed out all the things that make Sonic with good with all the things that make... Kirby bad, of all things?
Pacing is critical to these Sonic-style platformers - hell, even the best 2D Sonic games sometimes overstay their welcome. I love 3K, but it's got a few too many Zones that go on for ages while testing your patience. The trade-off is that each level is such a distinctly-experienced world, with land curvature and stage gimmicks that make you feel Sonic's gravity and presence in totally unique ways: The sound, sights, challenges and automation give even the weakest moments a strong identity and high memorability.
But Spark? I honestly couldn't tell you what makes one level different than another. It all blends together. I remember a lot of city, snow, factory and sewer stages, but couldn't give you a good timeline of how they connected, how they tethered from a 'symphonic' point of view, etc. A repetitive game loop can still be fun, but these high-energy games take a lot of wind out of me, and I need a good return on mental investment. It's different in Kirby when you're mostly shutting your brain off and moving around at a brisk jog, doing a few things here and there. But I can't watch this clown bounce around like a pinball for more than 15 minutes without feeling like I need some fat to chew, get my drift?
I guess what I'm trying to say is, too much candy will destroy your fucking gums
It's also too long and - to be blunt, - braindead.
Spark gets speed and action feel right, and it's always shooting new things at you, but the game loop gets way too easy and repetitive too quick. Even though stage hazards and enemies change up constantly, the way you have to engage with them hardly matters. 10 minutes runtime per stage in a 16+ stage game is fucking obscene. Bosses don't dish enough heat to feel meaningfully fun. It's like if you maxed out all the things that make Sonic with good with all the things that make... Kirby bad, of all things?
Pacing is critical to these Sonic-style platformers - hell, even the best 2D Sonic games sometimes overstay their welcome. I love 3K, but it's got a few too many Zones that go on for ages while testing your patience. The trade-off is that each level is such a distinctly-experienced world, with land curvature and stage gimmicks that make you feel Sonic's gravity and presence in totally unique ways: The sound, sights, challenges and automation give even the weakest moments a strong identity and high memorability.
But Spark? I honestly couldn't tell you what makes one level different than another. It all blends together. I remember a lot of city, snow, factory and sewer stages, but couldn't give you a good timeline of how they connected, how they tethered from a 'symphonic' point of view, etc. A repetitive game loop can still be fun, but these high-energy games take a lot of wind out of me, and I need a good return on mental investment. It's different in Kirby when you're mostly shutting your brain off and moving around at a brisk jog, doing a few things here and there. But I can't watch this clown bounce around like a pinball for more than 15 minutes without feeling like I need some fat to chew, get my drift?
I guess what I'm trying to say is, too much candy will destroy your fucking gums
1994
3&K takes over so much of this game's conversation I honestly forgot the two halves were playable separately - hell, that's how childhood me first played them! Even though I had the S&K collection, nobody in the family was smart enough to get past The Barrel - so the bits of the back half I saw were from booting &Knuckles directly. Toddler me didn't even realize 3&K was the two games combined until later - I just assumed it was a bonus version of 3 with Knuckles playable.
And honestly? S&K alone is a vibe. Something about it has this unspoken edge when treated as an isolated continuity - hard levels right out the gate, no tails to morally support sonic, mostly roboticized or harsh environments, and no save feature as a safety net. S&K also feels like a realization of Sonic 1's design philosophy, which focused most heavily on platforming supported by speed instead of the other way around. You get that scheme here but with infinitely more meaningful level design and much better pacing.
Main flaw is that (A) you're missing all the amazing content from 3 and that grander 'adventure' feeling, and (B) S&K has a pretty rough zone quality ratio. Mushroom Hill's my favorite Classic Sonic hill stage, and Flying Battery is raw, but then Sandopolis and Lava Reef are mid, followed by cool-but-short Sky Sanctuary and the overly-tedious Death Egg.
Cartridge shape is a bitch to organize on a shelf and I'm not stacking enough paper to buy a box for my copy rn. I got other financial priorities and shit
And honestly? S&K alone is a vibe. Something about it has this unspoken edge when treated as an isolated continuity - hard levels right out the gate, no tails to morally support sonic, mostly roboticized or harsh environments, and no save feature as a safety net. S&K also feels like a realization of Sonic 1's design philosophy, which focused most heavily on platforming supported by speed instead of the other way around. You get that scheme here but with infinitely more meaningful level design and much better pacing.
Main flaw is that (A) you're missing all the amazing content from 3 and that grander 'adventure' feeling, and (B) S&K has a pretty rough zone quality ratio. Mushroom Hill's my favorite Classic Sonic hill stage, and Flying Battery is raw, but then Sandopolis and Lava Reef are mid, followed by cool-but-short Sky Sanctuary and the overly-tedious Death Egg.
Cartridge shape is a bitch to organize on a shelf and I'm not stacking enough paper to buy a box for my copy rn. I got other financial priorities and shit