In the mid to late 2000s there was a bunch of 3rd person, over the top action games which I would call dumb fun. Games like Saints Row 1, Just Cause and Crackdown were not particularly graceful games, but they were fun to play. They often had dumb enemy AI, ugly graphics, horrible dialogue and a style of gameplay that focused on action but wasn't very refined. Mercenaries 2 is another one of those game. It gives me a certain style of nostalgia going back to play these games because they are really a window to video games at the time, when having a cool concept and a trailer with some nice explosions would sell a game. Looking back, these games kinda suck but they are fun which is the most important factor.

Mercs 2 puts you in the middle of a fairly insensitive for the time fictional Venezuelan civil war. You and your group of mercenaries start off trying to kill the president, but you end up in a big free-for-all with a bunch of different factions trying to blow everything up. The gameplay is peak PS2 style GTA loving open world 3rd person shooting. The enemy AI is horrible and the gameplay is pretty glitchy, plus it has some very tough missions that can be very frustrating.

Aside from the main story, you also have the constant battle for resources and turf with the rival gangs throughout the map. You can attack these bases on foot or by vehicle, with a huge number of weapons and some nice destructible buildings. They throw in a lot of random mechanics also. You can call in air strikers and air support from your home base. These require you to spend certain resources such as oil and money, which also need to be collected (via helicopter pick up which you call in) and are normally guarded by a bunch of enemies. It's a very time consuming ebb and flow, with enemies and bases respawning and various groups controlling different areas.

It reminds me of a mix of different mechanics from games of a similar era such as Far Cry 2, The Godfather and Just Cause. It's a classic case of dumb fun, these extra elements of open world gameplay are a nice distraction when you get stuck on some difficult campaign mission, yet you could find yourself totally engrossed in them. A dated buggy and ugly mess, Mercs 2 is a classic mid 2000s copycat game with its dated humour and gameplay design. Still enjoyable though.

I normally only write reviews for games that I have a satisfying understanding of. This one will be an exception, I spent a solid evening trying out the various games in this collection and am going to drop some impressions. Let it be stated that I gave some of these games barely any chance. I have nothing that could be mistaken for mastery in any of them, and no interest in pursing it.

Anyway, I enjoyed checking out this collection. It didn't sell me on Pac-Man as a franchise, but it was quite interesting to try each game. I love game compilations, they're a treat to explore as a game designer. Trying new games is my favorite part of gaming, so compilations like this appeal to me quite strongly.

The first thing to talk about here is the framing that Pac-Man Musuem+ presents. You have a little arcade that you can customize, each game exists on a machine that both costs coins to play & rewards coins from play, and you can spend coins on a gacha for new decorations. I'm pretty narrowly split between "I sure don't care" & "this is actually a pretty neat idea and I can respect it". If this was a game I had any intention of ever revisiting I could start to see the value add, meanwhile it's hard not to get annoyed at the unlock popups after exiting a game.

I love the idea of creating a system that gives meaning to inserting new credits into games, although this implementation doesn't have enough punch to meaningfully succeed at recreating the context of spending coins in an arcade. I don't think that experience is something the developers needed to have tried for here, but I've definitely gained an interest in playing a game that does successfully emulate that context.

The first open of the game is a little rough. You're bombarded with pac-man-machine sounds and have like a dozen popups to go through. The arcade tutorials are reasonable, the "you've unlocked some holiday wallpaper" ones shouldn't be allowed to appear literally right after you've read through the tutorial.


I was excited that each game had a history blurb. Unfortunately they didn't put anything interesting in there. They're all pretty much rehashes of the game description. This was an awesome opportunity on the museum side of the experience, so that feels like a bit of a shame. Video game history is so interesting, I'm sure there's plenty of cool stuff to learn about all these games.

Now I'll go through my impressions of each game included in the collection


PAC-MAN

I've never really found PAC-MAN fun, I'm pretty apathetic to it. It's probably some before my time "you had to be there" thing. I dislike how the game incentivizes camping power pellets so that you can bait some ghosts and gobble them up. Yeah the ghost AI is cool, but it's not enough to make the game feel dynamic to me.

SUPER PAC-MAN

I don't like the zoom-zoom-invincibility-power-pellets. The gates & keys are interesting. It's especially funny how they set up situations to trap yourself. There's probably some potential here, I can imagine a pac-man where the state of the maze is a huge component of what the player has to keep track of. This is not that hypothetical pac-man, and super pac-man is only hypothetically fun

PAC & PAL

This one was a pleasant surprise! I quite like the card mechanic that directs you to a random objective on the maze. This is a step closer to some of the dynamism that I feel is missing in PAC-MAN. Then they play to PAC-MAN's strengths by introducing another AI agent for you to keep track off. Unfortunately PAC & PAL lacks the depth that would make me want to keep playing it, but this is a solid start to reaching pac-gameplay that's more my style. I'd happily take a galaxian blaster over a power pellet any day.

PAC-LAND

Got filtered by that lake jump. I actually have no idea how to get past it. I do like the troll level design (like the log bridge), but that feels like going a step too far.
Not a fan of repeatedly slamming the stick right to buildup speed, but that would probably feel better on a arcade machine joystick. Otherwise it's neat idea.

PAC-MANIA

"Let's give Pac-Man a jump" - a statement dreamed up by the utterly deranged. Maybe Pac Mania ends up using this jump well, but from what I played this drains the little game essence pac-man had. This is basically the equivalent of the parry plague that many modern action games suffer from. Who cares about positioning when you just have to time your answer to enemies correctly?

PAC-ATTACK

Awesome to see a puzzle arcade game here. This is a pretty interesting take on the genre, especially since it doesn't have a concept of color groups. I am intrigued by the nuances of ghost placement and consumption, if i were to return to any game in the collection it would be this one.

PAC-IN-TIME

I got softlocked in the first level. Didn't give it any more chance, and thus don't really have any thoughts on it. I like how this collection added English translation subtitles. One of the items made me question why I was playing this when i could have been continuing my Saint playthrough in Rainworld.

PAC-MAN ARRANGEMENT Arcade version

This could have been the best one, but the ghosts are a menance to society. They move so fast that it doesn't really feel fun to avoid them or fair when you get caught. That's a huge shame, because the presentation, vibes, and variety are excellent. They do a great job of both staying true to pac-man and remixing it cool ways. In theory the BS ghosts are counterbalanced by the helpful stage gimmicks, but in practice my deaths didn't feel enough like skill issue.

PAC-MAN ARRANGMENT Console Version

This is like PAC-MAN Arrange, but they violently ripped out its soul. The ghosts aren't frustrating anymore, but the presentation isn't nearly as charming. This one just isn't very interesting, despite changing the one thing that ruined the former game

PAC-MAN CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION

The fruit and pellet reveal system is nifty, but the game felt pretty boring.

PAC Motos

...

PAC 'N ROLL REMIX

Kinda fun, although it's too fast for my tastes. I'm fairly certain the ludicrous speed is the point, but it doesn't stick the landing for the experience to feel good.

PAC-MAN BATTLE ROYALE

I've actually played this before in an arcade. Too bad I don't remember how that experience went, must not have been very memorable. It's a decent setup for an arena experience. The escalating speed, bounces and ghosts that drift in & out of the forefront of your attention all work together well. That said, this game is smoked by its competition in the same genre. I don't know why I would want to play this if I'm in a scenario where I have nearby friends to fight.


PAC-MAN 256

Huh i didn't know the Crossy Road developer made a Pac Man game. I'm sure this game has caused a lot of money to change hands. It's pretty cool to experience the game without the monetization being the central parasite on your attention. It seems well designed for what it is, but i don't find what it is very interesting

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The cool part of playing a compilation is that many of these game I would have never otherwise tried, even if a game misses for me I can still enjoy the process of quickly checking it out

Spider-Man meets Streets of Rage in this competent, yet fairly unremarkable side-scrolling brawler. It’s essentially Maximum Carnage without the coolness factor. It does everything you would expect it to, right down to the (overly) familiar assortment of fan-favorite members of the webhead’s iconic rogues' gallery you'll face. The controls are a touch stiff as you would probably expect given you're using a keypad and boss battles consist solely of dodging all of their attacks until they get tired enough to leave you with an opening to strike back, but honestly the worst aspect might simply be that it's based on the Ultimate universe version of the character so everything Peter says is painfully unfunny, annoying, and not at all how an actual teenager would talk. Well, that and the fact that you apparently can't read any of the collectible comics you find. This is altogether entirely skippable for even the wall-crawler's most devoted fans, but you won't necessarily have a bad time should you choose not to. Just know the highlight of the whole experience is a single stage where you dodge oncoming obstacles as Mary Jane on a moped because that's the only part where it does something unique enough to be somewhat interesting.

6/10

This game represents everything streetpass was about: The connectivity with other people in your neighborhood who also had a 3ds, the fun of seeing the Mii of your friend slay a ghost, the excitement to see the green light... Dear God, that green light. I took my 3ds out every single day back then, just to have a chance to even see that thing turn on.
And it felt glorious when it did.
This game would not stand up on its own if it weren't for it's community: YOUR community. Combat is not that fun.
It was special because the people around you made it special, and I'm afraid we won't be seeing anything like it in a long time.
Thankfully Netpass helps with it, but it's still not the same. Perhaps another time...

The Forza Horizon games get a lot of love, and I can see why. It's a game series that really combined all of the racing game trends of the time into a well polished and fun package. You have a big detailed open world map, beautiful graphics, lots of cars and upgrade options and interesting online modes. It's really like an updated version of the Test Drive games for the mass market. There is so much to do in this game. Now this may be great for some people, but it felt a bit bloated for me. There are the collectables, finding new vehicles and smashing through boards. You have skill tasks and jumps. There are the speed traps that you need to drive through as quickly as you can. These all add to the bulk of the game and can make free-roaming around the beautiful map fun if you are into that type of thing. The races themselves are fine, they do their job, but one major issue I have is that the game wants you to complete each race multiple times with different car types. Of course, these are optional, it is just one of the ways that game goes down the "more is better" route. Now, I'm not a huge fan of open world racing, as I think specifically designed tracks and more fun to race on. This issue persists in this game a little, but the decent controls and other racers AI did keep it enjoyable. In this regard it is one of the better open world racing games in terms of the actual racing. It's probably a case of a good game, which is just not for me. I don't care about a clustered map full with collectables, we get enough of that from Ubisoft games. I also am not a fan of the Mid 2010s edgy banter and festival design. I don't love a lot of the features of modern racers with its open world races, rewinds and style points. However, if you do like these things, this is a great game and a pretty decent sequel to the first one on the console, without really changing much. In terms of pure racing, it's pretty fun and better than a lot of racers on the console, and I can recommend it based on that. I do still think its a bit vapid though.

PokéRogue is, in my opinion, very much too ambitious for its own good. It's an insane endeavor, for a browser game, to do all that it does (and indeed, even just on a mechanical level, a lot of abilities and moves are still not implemented, though obviously that will pass with time), and at a base level, it does it pretty well. Along the way to the final boss, you'll fight a bunch of wild pokemon trainers, gym leaders, E4+Champion and a rival, and after every fight you get a random item. It adapts Pokémon to a roguelite formula fantastically well- the more Pokémon you get, the more eggs you hatch, the more options you unlock. And on the other hand, every run is different, because while you will eventually start with your absolute best aces, you'll have to fill up the rest of the team with whatever else you run into (probably something like a Gyarados and an Ursaluna, if you're like me).

That is all well and good, but where it falls apart is just how much stuff there is. Mainline Pokémon has over 1000 critters now, 900+ moves and 300+ abilities- that is all just way too much for one game to feature. This isn't about Dexit, there's never been a Pokémon game where more than like, 150-200 Pokémon are available to catch before the credits roll, and I might still be highballing that number. And those games are some 20 hours long if you're rushing, PokéRogue is only... well it's like, 3 hours long, but we'll get to the length in a second. My point is, this is just too much. The sheer number of options means they cannot possibly be balanced at all, which paradoxically makes the game feel more repetitive because why the hell would I use most Pokémon when I could use much more versatile and minmaxed equivalents? A Pidgeot is never going to hold a candle to a Staraptor, and why would I ever use a Donphan when I have access to Great Tusk for just a few points more? Worse than that, only a few select strategies are really viable. By the late game every boss 'mon is going to be holding a few Lum Berries, which is going to make status effect-based strategies fare pretty poorly. On the other hand, stat boosts last until you enter a trainer battle, so anything that can do those well is automatically high tier (You can't take those buffs into Gym Leader fights, but you can against boss wild Pokémon. Plus, with the somewhat janky AI, you can definitely find some opportunities to set up a sweep). Also, the final boss and the Rival's ace are always the same, so you'll really want to build around them by the end. Starting with anything other than the "ol' reliables" you'll inevitably get a few of quickly begins to feel like a self-imposed challenge, and with how incredibly fucking long the game is, that's just not appealing.

Length, in fact, is in my opinion PokéRogue's biggest flaw. When I said the game took about three hours to beat, I was not kidding, runs go between 3 and 4 hours which is just nuts for a game that's mostly going to be you clicking the same move on a wild Pokémon 20 levels weaker than yours. It just doesn't need to be like that, too. You can get up to level 200 compared to the official games' cap at 100, but learn-sets still go up to 100 so the latter half of your journey will be a lot more samey (unless you replace some of your Pokémon, but it's not like the new ones will be learning anything new on their own too), and so much of any playthrough is just fighting wild Pokémon that it's really easy to see how a lot of that could be cut off. Make every 10th floor from 10 to 80 be a gym leader fight, 80-90 is the E4 and 90-100 is the finale, and you've cut off the runtime in half and the amount of actual content seen by like, 5%. The difficulty might feel better, too- a lot of the game is trivial, but you're eventually going to hit a brick wall that just sweeps you and have to restart from scratch (or just reload your browser page and start the fight over...). I just don't understand why this free game feels the need to have so much padding, there's even an infinite mode for those who do want the game to go on longer, but at least for me it does ruin a lot of the fun- it's incredibly addictive, so it's common for me to want to start a run, but I know that halfway through I'll be absent-mindedly clicking Waterfall after setting up a few Dragon Dances with my Gyarados, while watching a Youtube video. So I dunno, extremely impressive effort, but I do feel the result is only kind of ok.

When I was super young, I used to beg my mom to help me plug in the Atari specifically so I could play this and Keystone Kapers. I loved this game like nothing else (besides Keystone Kapers 🤪) because of how addicting its gameplay loop was. I loved the little details such as different colored cattle being more points than others, and I really loved the little (black?) calf that would RUN towards your character and completely mess up the rhythm you finally start to get down. I remember distinctly being able to see its legs wobble as it ran towards you, but that might have been part of my baby-brain imagination. I also loved how if you got too close to the cows, they’d get scared and quickly scamper towards the front. Stampede is always a game I plop in when I feel the mood to plug in that same Atari (now without Mom’s help!)

4/5

Everyone has that handful of games, books, or shows that they love with all of their heart even though they have some problems, and this is one of mine. This game is what it looks like on the tin to some degree, but I also feel like it's more than that. Outside of the harem nonsense, the characters in this game are fairly fleshed out, fun, and interesting. I get the sense that they all genuinely care about each other for legitimate reasons, rather than just because they're plot-mandated best friends or romantic interests. There are a lot of conversations that can play out between the characters to progress your relationship with them. They're much more in the vein of persona social links than fire emblem supports, and I personally (heh) really love that. The strategy portion of this game is pretty fun too. There are some abilities that break the game in half, but I don't think this compromises the game very much. There's a pretty sizable difficulty spike about halfway into the game that helps to compensate for the strong abilities and the last few bosses are really tough. Each character has their own unique gimmicks that are fun to learn how to use, and you have a light degree of customization that you can do with them through their equipment.

If harem anime BS really bothers you, then this probably isn't for you. But if you can tolerate and look past it, I think this is a gem worth trying out. This game is a pretty good example of "don't judge a book by it's cover".

Estuvo buenisimo. Me gustó la historia, los personajes, las misiones, mayormente todo. Si siento que le faltaron algunas cosas (uno o 2 gadgets mas) y algunas falencias en la historia (Mas que nada, me hubiera gustado que miles hubiera hecho su nuevo traje mas tarde en la historia, literal solo lo llega usar en una hora de juego). Pero en general me gustó mucho, Miles es el goat, las misiones secundarias son divertidas, me gustaron mucho las dinamicas de miles con ganke, su mamá y su tio, y tinkereer ta bien. Es una historia early callejera de Spiderman como me gusta.

Cuando salio hubo mucha polemica por ser muy cortó. Yo me demore 25 horas en platinarlo, y aunque 60k en su lanzamiento fue mucho, almenos hoy en dia te lo encuentras ya a 15k y vale mucho la pena. Aunque prefiero el original MSM, este sigue siendo un gran juego.