Mattt
2023
Just an absolute fucking mess on all accounts. In my brief experience with the game, I've found it to be an absolutely user-hostile experience with no intention of actually gathering a playerbase - as is evident by the playcount. The menu is an overdesigned disaster, the shooting is incredibly clunky, and the stealth mechanics are dubious at best. The tutorial only explains the bare essentials, and trial-by-fire is the only other way to find out anything. All I found out is that the game is not fun, not designed to be fun, and likely never will be fun.
EDIT: in my rage, i forgot to add - microtransactions and a battle pass in a paid game. How incredibly bold of them. If I didn't get this in a humble bundle I'd be actively offended.
I give the servers a year at the absolute most.
EDIT: in my rage, i forgot to add - microtransactions and a battle pass in a paid game. How incredibly bold of them. If I didn't get this in a humble bundle I'd be actively offended.
I give the servers a year at the absolute most.
N-Gage has decent games, what are the odds?
Resident Evil Degeneration is based on the movie of the same name - a distinction no other Resident Evil movie would receive, to my recollection. I watched the movie itself before playing this tie-in; in terms of accuracy, there's not really any point comparing because this game only covers the setting of Degeneration's opening act, heavily padding it out and expanding on it to the point of being a videogame's worth of content. Despite this, it still clocked in at a measly sub-2 hours; there's an achievement for beating it in under 45 minutes.
Graphics are about on par with early PS1, but on a phone screen - both remarkable for the time, but also pretty paltry compared to say, the DS, and utterly ugly to witness now. Leon's character model is the only one that received much love; the other human characters are ugly and kind of misshapen, Senator Ron Davis in particular having a head that looks like it came out of Goldeneye with cheats on. Environments aren't so bad, with some neat effects on offer. I did, however, get a chuckle out of the endlessly reused "Flying to the UK?" poster, plastered about 4 times on every wall. It can't have been a memory issue, because the same poster appears in at least 4 different colours throughout - I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the dev's offices to see what the reasons were for the many unique decisions made throughout the 15 month development.
Most of the effort likely went into gameplay - which is a legitimately impressive distillation of Resident Evil 4's mold-breaking gameplay style, crammed down onto a Nokia phone. The aiming, the knifing, the ability to kick enemies and doors alike, it's just about all here. Even the sodding instant-kill quicktime events, which are almost as annoying here as they were in actual RE4. I noticed a bit of unresponsiveness with inputs, and it took me a long time to adapt to the limited assortment of available buttons.
I'd make a point about how easy the game was, even on normal - zombies appear in small numbers, and are easily felled by headshots. Even the knife, if timed right, can dispatch a zombie with little resistance. This might be the easiest knife-only run in the franchise, with the short length and abundance of healing items at every turn. By the end, I still had 3 first aid sprays and 10+ green herbs on me, and not for lack of using them! Yellow herbs also appear to increase Leon's maximum HP, and you don't even have to mix them with green herbs...because herb mixing, understandably, did not make it in. The inventory sorting system was also cut - again, entirely reasonable. However, having played this via an emulator, and mapping the inputs to a controller, it likely offered a far greater precision than an actual Nokia phone ever could have. So with all this considered, the game may be far more appropriately difficult on actual hardware. Still, there are a lot of concessions made...
You simply have a (pretty gargantuan) amount of storage available compared to past Resi games, which can be expanded further by buying from the merchant. No, sadly not the cloaked weirdo with the funny voice from RE4 (actually, almost no voice acting at all, other than Leon's iconic death moan from RE4), but other special forces soldiers who went in to fight the infected, and uh...decided to set up shop instead? Everything is pretty cheap even to begin with, but with the sheer amount of money that enemies dropped (THOSE DOGS HAD $300 ON THEM?! EACH!?) there are treasures adding to Leon's immense wealth even further. It's very, very easy to end up with every weapon fully upgraded around the three-quarters point - and the knife is still all you really need anyway.
Altogether, it's a very short plod (Leon is slow as hell here), through handfuls of easily dispatched zombies, poorly rendered character models, and brain-dead bosses (there are no less than THREE separate Tyrants in this game. Which, in case you were wondering, is three more Tyrants than there were in the movie.). But between the technical achievements, enjoyable banter between Leon and Hunnigan (when not endlessly repeating the mission objectives) and attempt at cinematic cutscenes...I can't help but have a certain fondness for this game! They made something that was very much designed to be played on an old shitty mobile phone with fuck-all battery and inconvenient buttons that are ill-suited to gaming. To make a fully-functioning Resi game that plays like a scaled-down Resi 4 while still catering to these limitations has earned my respect...and it's not entirely unfun, either!
I don't know much about the actual quality of the N-Gage library, but this feels like a must-play as far as that service is concerned. As far as Resi in general goes? If you have the means to play it, I genuinely think it's worth a quick try - maybe you'll take as much a liking to it as I did!
Resident Evil Degeneration is based on the movie of the same name - a distinction no other Resident Evil movie would receive, to my recollection. I watched the movie itself before playing this tie-in; in terms of accuracy, there's not really any point comparing because this game only covers the setting of Degeneration's opening act, heavily padding it out and expanding on it to the point of being a videogame's worth of content. Despite this, it still clocked in at a measly sub-2 hours; there's an achievement for beating it in under 45 minutes.
Graphics are about on par with early PS1, but on a phone screen - both remarkable for the time, but also pretty paltry compared to say, the DS, and utterly ugly to witness now. Leon's character model is the only one that received much love; the other human characters are ugly and kind of misshapen, Senator Ron Davis in particular having a head that looks like it came out of Goldeneye with cheats on. Environments aren't so bad, with some neat effects on offer. I did, however, get a chuckle out of the endlessly reused "Flying to the UK?" poster, plastered about 4 times on every wall. It can't have been a memory issue, because the same poster appears in at least 4 different colours throughout - I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the dev's offices to see what the reasons were for the many unique decisions made throughout the 15 month development.
Most of the effort likely went into gameplay - which is a legitimately impressive distillation of Resident Evil 4's mold-breaking gameplay style, crammed down onto a Nokia phone. The aiming, the knifing, the ability to kick enemies and doors alike, it's just about all here. Even the sodding instant-kill quicktime events, which are almost as annoying here as they were in actual RE4. I noticed a bit of unresponsiveness with inputs, and it took me a long time to adapt to the limited assortment of available buttons.
I'd make a point about how easy the game was, even on normal - zombies appear in small numbers, and are easily felled by headshots. Even the knife, if timed right, can dispatch a zombie with little resistance. This might be the easiest knife-only run in the franchise, with the short length and abundance of healing items at every turn. By the end, I still had 3 first aid sprays and 10+ green herbs on me, and not for lack of using them! Yellow herbs also appear to increase Leon's maximum HP, and you don't even have to mix them with green herbs...because herb mixing, understandably, did not make it in. The inventory sorting system was also cut - again, entirely reasonable. However, having played this via an emulator, and mapping the inputs to a controller, it likely offered a far greater precision than an actual Nokia phone ever could have. So with all this considered, the game may be far more appropriately difficult on actual hardware. Still, there are a lot of concessions made...
You simply have a (pretty gargantuan) amount of storage available compared to past Resi games, which can be expanded further by buying from the merchant. No, sadly not the cloaked weirdo with the funny voice from RE4 (actually, almost no voice acting at all, other than Leon's iconic death moan from RE4), but other special forces soldiers who went in to fight the infected, and uh...decided to set up shop instead? Everything is pretty cheap even to begin with, but with the sheer amount of money that enemies dropped (THOSE DOGS HAD $300 ON THEM?! EACH!?) there are treasures adding to Leon's immense wealth even further. It's very, very easy to end up with every weapon fully upgraded around the three-quarters point - and the knife is still all you really need anyway.
Altogether, it's a very short plod (Leon is slow as hell here), through handfuls of easily dispatched zombies, poorly rendered character models, and brain-dead bosses (there are no less than THREE separate Tyrants in this game. Which, in case you were wondering, is three more Tyrants than there were in the movie.). But between the technical achievements, enjoyable banter between Leon and Hunnigan (when not endlessly repeating the mission objectives) and attempt at cinematic cutscenes...I can't help but have a certain fondness for this game! They made something that was very much designed to be played on an old shitty mobile phone with fuck-all battery and inconvenient buttons that are ill-suited to gaming. To make a fully-functioning Resi game that plays like a scaled-down Resi 4 while still catering to these limitations has earned my respect...and it's not entirely unfun, either!
I don't know much about the actual quality of the N-Gage library, but this feels like a must-play as far as that service is concerned. As far as Resi in general goes? If you have the means to play it, I genuinely think it's worth a quick try - maybe you'll take as much a liking to it as I did!
2002
First of all: big credit to Draco from Gatorbox for unearthing this unreleased prototype for the world to see - he did a great writeup on the game and its history which can be found here: https://battlebotsupdate.com/the-battlebots-prototype/
Battlebots - a tv show with one hell of an iceberg to it. Based on an idea called Robot Wars, coined by the late Marc Thorpe, it was to be the biggest event in America - arguably even the world - for budding engineers and roboticists who want to build radio-controlled death machines and make them fight. While the first event was streamed online (in the late 90s, so...yeah, I think that one's lost media) and the second was broadcast as a pay-per-view event, it was Comedy Central of all channels who picked it up for 5 seasons, from 2000-2002. What was basically packaged and advertised as "watch these two loud-ass commentators make jokes about this lame nerd war" accidentally became big enough to dethrone South Park, for a brief period. A series of circumstances would, unfortunately, lead to its cancellation after its fifth season - some claim it was due to the forced sketches, or the devolution of the meta towards tanky wedge-bots with no actual weapon, or a lawsuit that Battlebots filed against one of Comedy Central's sponsors. Either way, the show was halted, and wouldn't find a new network until 2015 - a run that, after a brief second cancellation, continues to this day (well, not to jinx it - it has not currently been renewed for another season as the time of writing) on Discovery Channel.
Thing is, that initial cancellation from Comedy Central had a knock-on effect - the cancellation of this very game. Despite developer Warthog having it almost ready to go, after another round of bugfixing, publisher THQ figured that Warthog's efforts were best spent elsewhere, than for a game for a just-cancelled show. So, everything went to waste and what's left is a mostly-functional prototype. It's seemingly feature complete, but not fully playable. Several bugs can cause the game to freeze, and certain things are just not quite right.
In terms of gameplay, this is easily the best officially licensed robot combat game. The Robot Wars games were varying degrees of terrible, though some more lovable than others in spite of their low budgets and awful physics. The physics here are incredibly arcadey and not true to life at all, but makes for some very enjoyable combat, particularly when spinners are involved. Each bot has four different HP bars: Armor, Frame, Weapon, and...I think motors? I've virtually never seen any meaningful damage done to that last category, but it makes the most sense. Armor can absorb frame damage, and if the weapon HP reaches zero, you're offenseless. Frame HP is the most important part, as your robot immediately breaks into pieces upon it hitting zero. The actual damage is pretty great to watch, with armor pieces having different models depending on HP value, and it's good fun watching parts (or entire robots) be sent flying to the other end of the arena, oil puddles in their wake (despite motor oil being a fairly uncommon sight in most bots...).
That being said, damage values and what affects them can be fairly janky. A weapon to weapon hit can often be as bad for you as the opponent, but this even applies if your robot's powerful spinning disc impact the opponent's pathetic metal spike. Frame damage can come from very weak hits, and it can all seem a bit unfair. Not to mention, some bots are simply better than others (Nightmare FTW).
The arena itself can be a dangerous place too - the main Battlebox is fitted with a handful of the hazards seen in the real thing (though scaled down and not nearly as many of them). They basically amount to "don't drive onto this part of the floor or you take damage from underneath". The exceptions are the corner hammers - "pulversiers" - which strike from above. In arcade mode, these are pretty much all removed, but replaced by random power ups that appear out of nowhere and temporarily buff your weapon, speed or just straight up gives you some seconds of invincibility. It can also disrupt your opponent's drive or give them contact electrical damage - the only negative effect you can receive is having phantom killsaws appear on the floor around your robot. The powerups are a fair idea to make arcade mode more, well, arcadey, but balance is assuredly not a factor with them around. That being said, balance isn't much of a thing in this game to begin with.
The roster is pretty good, all things considered - a fair mix of actual bots from the show, and shitty-looking OCs with the built-in editor. While you're meant to unlock these through gameplay, its unreleased state left me with no idea how, or even if you unlock them, so I used the save file provided by Draco. Robots are separated into four weight classes; lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight and super heavyweight. Curiously, within arcade mode, you have to defeat four robots in each weight division, starting from lightweight and working your way up. This leaves no real reason to pick anything other than a super heavyweight (or a very good heavyweight), as lighter weight classes are virtually guaranteed a loss once you reach the higher divisions.
Once unlocked, the bots from the show make for a nice enough variation of weapon types. That being said, the heavyweight bot Nightmare is essentially the best choice. His giant vertical spinning weapon can absolutely launch opponents, and its biggest real-life weaknesses - tilting to one side when turning due to the gyroscopic forces of the spinning weapon, and being unable to self-right when overturned - don't apply here, as tilting the analog stick in a particular direction magically turns the whole bot over. You can also build your own bot, but the editor is understandably limited and you're not going to have an easy time to start with, on account of the limited budget (shockingly realistic). You can certainly make some viable builds, but I think most people would rather just throw Mauler or Ziggo into the ring and actually look good while smashing things.
Graphically, the arena and bots look pretty solid and show accurate - though the scaling for both are pretty wildly off in certain cases. Sometimes you'll get a shot of the drivers after winning though, and they're so pathetically low-poly that I can't even tell if those are the builder's likenesses or not. Not really sure why they bothered, honestly. You can fight in other arenas that aren't the Battlebox, but I couldn't tell any real difference other than the theming. Robot Wars games had some really crazy arena variations, with minefields, molten steel pools and nuclear missile silos, so it feels a little pointless to have 9 variations of the same design. Perhaps more was planned, but didn't make the final completed build. The same is supposedly true of the bot roster.
In terms of audio, the music isn't taken from the show (as far as I remember) but it does match the vibe. Damage noises are mostly goofy stock sounds, but the show dubbed those over the actual arena audio anyway, so I suppose that's authentic! My favourite part of all, though, is ring announcer Mark Beiro reprising his role and having recorded his trademark goofy intros for each bot in the roster - even the shitty OC bots. They're a good laugh, though there's only one intro for each bot so they sadly get old quick.
Now, while all is well and good on paper, there are a few key issues. Certain things are just outright broken in this build - first and foremost, Biohazard. A heavyweight robot built by Carlo Bertocchini, it was a low-profile bot armed with a four-bar lifting arm. It's insanely low ground clearance allowed it to get right under and overturn opponents, with side skirts to hinder similar bots from doing the same. Winning two heavyweight divisions in the original US Robot Wars, followed by four Battlebots championship titles, it was the most successful heavyweight combat robot of its era.
And it immediately crashes the game upon being selected.
Yeah, bit of a bummer that one. And in case you're wondering, it's broken to the point of crashing the game if the AI selects it as well, which is certainly a rude way to end an Arcade Mode run. Other instances include some of Mark Beiro's voice lines tending to break, instead playing some corrupted garbage file as audio and damaging my poor ears in the process. The game usually locks up not long after that. Certain UI elements also break often, and that's just the bugs I came across.
Still, altogether, Battlebots had the making of a genuinely fun game. The physics are goofy yet fun, the bots look good, and some testing could easily eliminate the remaining problems. Sadly, this wasn't to be, and to this day there's not many robot combat games out there. Robot Arena 2 is in-depth (for it's time), but old and broken, in spite of the modding community. Robot Arena 3 is a scam, Robot Rumble 2 is ridiculously complicated for better and for worse (and is still in early alpha after all these years). Hell, there are some roblox games that offer a decent pick-up-and-play alternative. But nothing truly big has appeared yet, in spite of the continued run of the show to this day (knock on wood). Still, it's a really fortunate outcome that despite this game being cancelled, we can still play...most of it. And given the lack of alternatives, I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to any robot combat fan who's reading this. I'm sure there's dozens of us!
Battlebots - a tv show with one hell of an iceberg to it. Based on an idea called Robot Wars, coined by the late Marc Thorpe, it was to be the biggest event in America - arguably even the world - for budding engineers and roboticists who want to build radio-controlled death machines and make them fight. While the first event was streamed online (in the late 90s, so...yeah, I think that one's lost media) and the second was broadcast as a pay-per-view event, it was Comedy Central of all channels who picked it up for 5 seasons, from 2000-2002. What was basically packaged and advertised as "watch these two loud-ass commentators make jokes about this lame nerd war" accidentally became big enough to dethrone South Park, for a brief period. A series of circumstances would, unfortunately, lead to its cancellation after its fifth season - some claim it was due to the forced sketches, or the devolution of the meta towards tanky wedge-bots with no actual weapon, or a lawsuit that Battlebots filed against one of Comedy Central's sponsors. Either way, the show was halted, and wouldn't find a new network until 2015 - a run that, after a brief second cancellation, continues to this day (well, not to jinx it - it has not currently been renewed for another season as the time of writing) on Discovery Channel.
Thing is, that initial cancellation from Comedy Central had a knock-on effect - the cancellation of this very game. Despite developer Warthog having it almost ready to go, after another round of bugfixing, publisher THQ figured that Warthog's efforts were best spent elsewhere, than for a game for a just-cancelled show. So, everything went to waste and what's left is a mostly-functional prototype. It's seemingly feature complete, but not fully playable. Several bugs can cause the game to freeze, and certain things are just not quite right.
In terms of gameplay, this is easily the best officially licensed robot combat game. The Robot Wars games were varying degrees of terrible, though some more lovable than others in spite of their low budgets and awful physics. The physics here are incredibly arcadey and not true to life at all, but makes for some very enjoyable combat, particularly when spinners are involved. Each bot has four different HP bars: Armor, Frame, Weapon, and...I think motors? I've virtually never seen any meaningful damage done to that last category, but it makes the most sense. Armor can absorb frame damage, and if the weapon HP reaches zero, you're offenseless. Frame HP is the most important part, as your robot immediately breaks into pieces upon it hitting zero. The actual damage is pretty great to watch, with armor pieces having different models depending on HP value, and it's good fun watching parts (or entire robots) be sent flying to the other end of the arena, oil puddles in their wake (despite motor oil being a fairly uncommon sight in most bots...).
That being said, damage values and what affects them can be fairly janky. A weapon to weapon hit can often be as bad for you as the opponent, but this even applies if your robot's powerful spinning disc impact the opponent's pathetic metal spike. Frame damage can come from very weak hits, and it can all seem a bit unfair. Not to mention, some bots are simply better than others (Nightmare FTW).
The arena itself can be a dangerous place too - the main Battlebox is fitted with a handful of the hazards seen in the real thing (though scaled down and not nearly as many of them). They basically amount to "don't drive onto this part of the floor or you take damage from underneath". The exceptions are the corner hammers - "pulversiers" - which strike from above. In arcade mode, these are pretty much all removed, but replaced by random power ups that appear out of nowhere and temporarily buff your weapon, speed or just straight up gives you some seconds of invincibility. It can also disrupt your opponent's drive or give them contact electrical damage - the only negative effect you can receive is having phantom killsaws appear on the floor around your robot. The powerups are a fair idea to make arcade mode more, well, arcadey, but balance is assuredly not a factor with them around. That being said, balance isn't much of a thing in this game to begin with.
The roster is pretty good, all things considered - a fair mix of actual bots from the show, and shitty-looking OCs with the built-in editor. While you're meant to unlock these through gameplay, its unreleased state left me with no idea how, or even if you unlock them, so I used the save file provided by Draco. Robots are separated into four weight classes; lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight and super heavyweight. Curiously, within arcade mode, you have to defeat four robots in each weight division, starting from lightweight and working your way up. This leaves no real reason to pick anything other than a super heavyweight (or a very good heavyweight), as lighter weight classes are virtually guaranteed a loss once you reach the higher divisions.
Once unlocked, the bots from the show make for a nice enough variation of weapon types. That being said, the heavyweight bot Nightmare is essentially the best choice. His giant vertical spinning weapon can absolutely launch opponents, and its biggest real-life weaknesses - tilting to one side when turning due to the gyroscopic forces of the spinning weapon, and being unable to self-right when overturned - don't apply here, as tilting the analog stick in a particular direction magically turns the whole bot over. You can also build your own bot, but the editor is understandably limited and you're not going to have an easy time to start with, on account of the limited budget (shockingly realistic). You can certainly make some viable builds, but I think most people would rather just throw Mauler or Ziggo into the ring and actually look good while smashing things.
Graphically, the arena and bots look pretty solid and show accurate - though the scaling for both are pretty wildly off in certain cases. Sometimes you'll get a shot of the drivers after winning though, and they're so pathetically low-poly that I can't even tell if those are the builder's likenesses or not. Not really sure why they bothered, honestly. You can fight in other arenas that aren't the Battlebox, but I couldn't tell any real difference other than the theming. Robot Wars games had some really crazy arena variations, with minefields, molten steel pools and nuclear missile silos, so it feels a little pointless to have 9 variations of the same design. Perhaps more was planned, but didn't make the final completed build. The same is supposedly true of the bot roster.
In terms of audio, the music isn't taken from the show (as far as I remember) but it does match the vibe. Damage noises are mostly goofy stock sounds, but the show dubbed those over the actual arena audio anyway, so I suppose that's authentic! My favourite part of all, though, is ring announcer Mark Beiro reprising his role and having recorded his trademark goofy intros for each bot in the roster - even the shitty OC bots. They're a good laugh, though there's only one intro for each bot so they sadly get old quick.
Now, while all is well and good on paper, there are a few key issues. Certain things are just outright broken in this build - first and foremost, Biohazard. A heavyweight robot built by Carlo Bertocchini, it was a low-profile bot armed with a four-bar lifting arm. It's insanely low ground clearance allowed it to get right under and overturn opponents, with side skirts to hinder similar bots from doing the same. Winning two heavyweight divisions in the original US Robot Wars, followed by four Battlebots championship titles, it was the most successful heavyweight combat robot of its era.
And it immediately crashes the game upon being selected.
Yeah, bit of a bummer that one. And in case you're wondering, it's broken to the point of crashing the game if the AI selects it as well, which is certainly a rude way to end an Arcade Mode run. Other instances include some of Mark Beiro's voice lines tending to break, instead playing some corrupted garbage file as audio and damaging my poor ears in the process. The game usually locks up not long after that. Certain UI elements also break often, and that's just the bugs I came across.
Still, altogether, Battlebots had the making of a genuinely fun game. The physics are goofy yet fun, the bots look good, and some testing could easily eliminate the remaining problems. Sadly, this wasn't to be, and to this day there's not many robot combat games out there. Robot Arena 2 is in-depth (for it's time), but old and broken, in spite of the modding community. Robot Arena 3 is a scam, Robot Rumble 2 is ridiculously complicated for better and for worse (and is still in early alpha after all these years). Hell, there are some roblox games that offer a decent pick-up-and-play alternative. But nothing truly big has appeared yet, in spite of the continued run of the show to this day (knock on wood). Still, it's a really fortunate outcome that despite this game being cancelled, we can still play...most of it. And given the lack of alternatives, I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to any robot combat fan who's reading this. I'm sure there's dozens of us!
2022
I've heard this described as the fidget cube of videogames, and I think that's the undeniable summary of this experience - right down to all those times you accidentally drop the cube and curse in anger as you lean down to pick it up.
If I were rate this one on enjoyment alone, I'd probably be more inclined to give this one a 4/5. Critically, though...despite the risks taken, and the effort to differentiate itself from every prior Sonic title, it does just end up falling back into the middle of the road (a notoriously bad place for a hedgehog to be).
GAMEPLAY
The big selling point of Frontiers is the "Open-Zone" setup. Not an outright open world, but a set of 5 (well, 4 and a half) islands that Sonic can explore at will. Freedom of movement is the main appeal, and finally being able to do this in a Sonic game for what feels like the first time since Sonic Adventure really took me back. Picking a direction, blasting away at top speed and seeing where I end up, blissful. It's the baseline of what I want to feel from a Sonic game, and one that I rarely get to actually experience.
Of course, the manner of Sonic's controls have always been hotly debated by the ever-warring fandom. Sonic Team had the perfect solution: do it yourself! Sonic has a number of sliders to tune his handling to virtually whatever you'd like; regardless of whether it's actually remotely controllable or not. People who set his default running speed to maximum were gonna be in a rude awakening when they get to the parkour challenges, but they're completely free to do so. I had the luxury of playing close to a year post-launch, though; Sonic had harsh jump deceleration to start with, losing all momentum when jumping. Fortunately, Sonic Team listened to fans and let you turn that shit off - and it really, really helps.
So, you've got a Sonic you can tune to your liking, and huge areas to let him lose in. And yet, the game begins by almost immediately dumping you into a short, linear level with a completely different, fixed control scheme. Cyberspace levels are thrown into the experience to provide more traditional Sonic levels, and I appreciate and understand why; it's far easier to break them off into separate instances than build the levels naturally into the open world (which there is usually at least one instance of per island, so I'm glad they actually gave that a go). I also understand why the control scheme is different; the levels themselves rely a lot on scripted sequences that could potentially break if the player has set their acceleration outside of the accepted parameters. Unfortunately, while I understand the choices made, it doesn't stop Cyberspace from being a source of frustation, bordering on total misery. Sonic's turning circle becomes immense, and the levels themselves are automated to the point of failure, with the homing attack frequently failing to lock on when it needs to, and just generally being clumsy. One level even adds a drift mechanic that is completely embarassing in how much worse it is compared to previous games.
Moving away from Cyberspace, one other massive shakeup to the formula is the addition of a real, proper combat system. We haven't had such a thing since the dreadful Unleashed Werehog stages, and fortunately it's not nearly as limited. That said, it's no Devil May Cry either. Sonic can still homing attack to kill or notably injure the small fry, but larger enemies and minibosses will require much mashing of the X button. As you gain skill points, you can expand Sonic's reportoire to include dodge attacks, Rider Kicks, and just straight up shooting lasers from his shoes or something. There's enough variety in there to make it so that the varying enemy types may only be susceptible to specific moves, but admittedly there's also little stopping you from just persistently mashing X against at least half of the encounters.
Further adding to Sonic's moveset is the Cyloop. Holding Y will leave a trail behind Sonic, and allow you to draw circles, Pokémon Ranger-style, around enemies. This is often best suited to breaking an enemy's guard, but can also be used in the open world to activate events, solve puzzles, and (if you're persistent) gather a limitless supply of rings and other important resources. It's a neat trick, although I find it cuts out far too easily whenever you hit the slightest imperfection in the floor. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing such a move become a more permanent part of Sonic's skillset - where applicable.
At the heart of it, Sonic Frontiers is a big ol' collectathon. Each of the hundreds of grind rails and platforms that awkwardly pop into existence as soon as you're 10ft away lead to a small bounty of riches. Rings, obviously, still keep Sonic from dying to damage. However, depending on your ever-increasing stats, Sonic can both hold more maximum rings, as well as lose less of them when taking damage, more akin to a health bar. As well as that, you can find seeds that raise Sonic's attack and defense, skill points to unlock new moves, and memory tokens; needed to advance the plot. That's not forgetting about Emerald Vault keys, for getting the Chaos Emeralds, and Portal Gears from downed minibosses for playing the Cyberspace levels (the main source of the aforementioned Vault keys). That's a lot to collect, and sounds like a challenging, if time consuming gameplay structure. Of course, if you don't actually have any interest in playing the game, Big the Cat has you covered. Yes, if you collect enough purple coins, you can go fishing, and use your gains from that to just buy everything - everything - and theroetically max out Sonic's stats and get every mandatory collectible to beat the story within, say, an hour or so total of fishing. It's such a bizarre way to break the game that they might as well have admitted "Use this if you're a games journalist with a tight deadline!".
The fishing itself, by the way, is mindless - essentially a rhythm game without the rhythm. Cast the rod (doesn't matter where), wait for a bite (won't take more than 10 seconds), tap A, tap A again when the ring is within the red areas. Boom, fish. One part of getting 100% is to catch every fish at every spot, but that won't even be hard because it's as if the game's rigged to not give you any duplicates until you've 100%ed a fishing spot. The key rewards for fishing that you can't get anywhere else are the Egg Memos. They're simply snippets of random trivia, as well as Eggman's perspective on current events. It's mostly a checklist of references and fanservice, but more - much more - on that later.
So, the game plays fine, has a decent smattering of content, but not all of it good. A lot of it is just simple stimulation - pass by a dash pad or spring, get distracted, and get taken on a brief rollercoaster ride with high speed and minimal input. But the freedom of movement is key here, and that freedom to just go anywhere and forcibly glitch yourself up anything is simply liberating, which is very Sonic. Using the grind rails and springs is fun and all, but the real big brain gaming is finding the way to sequence break these pathways and take the collectible by force. It's what made those first two islands, in all their generic appearance, a real good time in my experience.
Sorry, I specified "the first two islands" just then, didn't I? Yeah, that whole "freedom of movement" thing sadly gets shut down by the third island, where the game decides that Cyberspace didn't fill its mandatory 2D quota and forces almost every single one of the hundreds of platforming sections on the island to lock Sonic into a 2D perspective. Doing so shuts down most of the controls, including the combat system, and stops you from leaving without finding some gap in the platforms to break out of it. This horrible downgrade in quality hangs over the third island almost entirely, and a good chunk of the fifth island as well. I really hated my time with these 2D segments, and it made me less inclined to collect every memory token as I had for the first two islands (but it didn't stop me in the end). To make an open world and liberating Sonic, only to shackle him back to these confines so soon after really makes me wonder what the circumstances surrounding this decision was.
This gameplay loop culminates in finding each of the Chaos Emeralds on each island(save one). Once all Chaos Emeralds on an island are obtained, you get to challenge the island's boss. Said boss holds the last Emerald, and when you finally grab it, you get to engage the boss as Super Sonic. On paper, this is a really fun implementation of Super Sonic, as opposed to a reward for clearing (often annoying) special stages, or only showing up in the final battle. It's a shame that Super Sonic remains unusable in the open world, but it's not like you really need it. You sure need it for the boss fights though, because they're proper slugfests. They unfortunately aren't the most inspiring fights, though - despite the soundtrack's best efforts. Mashing X remains the most worthwhile tactic until the boss chooses to throw an attack that you can parry - only then is the major damage dealt. Some bosses unfortunately tend to spam attacks that Sonic needs to do a quick time event to avoid or deflect, and some of the things they throw at you are downright confusing in how to deal with it. The spectacle is appreciated, but I had more fun watching other people do these fights than playing them for myself. The ring limit may seem like a tricky thing to deal with, but seeing as you can gain infinite rings before the right by holding Y and running in circles, it's really no big deal.
And before I wrap this up, there are a few little weird breaks in the formula scattered throughout the main story. These range from herding children, to mowing the lawn(seriously), to playing an actual sh'mup(seriously). They're usually kinda clunky, but at least don't outstay their lack-of-welcome. Except pinball. Oh, I hope you like pinball.
Well, that's more than enough about the gameplay - it's got grand ideas but a confused execution of them in the back half of the game, which is pretty disappointing.
STORY
I won't get too into spoilers, but I can describe how the story made me feel - pretty unimpressed. The premise is as basic as it gets - Sonic and co. get stuck on a strange land, and everyone else gets imprisoned while Sonic alone has to save their asses, while guided by a mysterious voice telling them to kill all the big stompy gits. All while a weird cyber-ghost girl keeps wishing death upon Sonic to his face every 10 minutes. It just sets up the gameplay loop pretty directly, and you probably already guessed where it's going as you get to reading this part. There's nothing new or inventive here, and I can't say I'm even disappointed - the deeper a Sonic story tries to go, the more awful is usually is.
Where the real appeal and attention is directed is the writing itself. Ian Flynn is no new name to Sonic, but for his first game rodeo it's not a bad effort. Not a bad effort, but I have a handful of bones to pick nonetheless. Flynn generally has a good grasp on when to be sincere and when to throw in the goofs - an increasingly difficult challenge for most fiction these days, and there are a few stumbles, but I appreciated that not every serious moment was clobbered by a crowbar layered in irony. If you're particularly jaded on Sonic, it might even seem ridiculous how serious the story takes itself sometimes, but I appreciate that the risk was taken. However, the dialogue - particularly the more optional "side stories" - are also heavily, heavily weighed down with a thick layer of fanservice. You're telling me Sonic and friends touch down on Unreal Engine 4 default landscape, and they all immediately get reminded of virtually every single previous game? I can appreciate an attempt at real continuity, and no hate to anyone out there who ate it all up, but the references were laid on way too thick. I'd settle for maybe a third of the total random call-backs to past games that made their way into the script - and sure, you can also keep the incredibly heavy handed attempts to force Tangle and Sticks into canon - but they really stretch to try to bring up the older games and it really took me out of it after a while.
"Heavy-handed" can also be used to describe Flynn's attempts to wrangle the characterisation of Sonic and co. back in a direction resembling what the fans screaming at the writing since Colors wanted - and it's amusing how visibly hard Flynn is turning the wheel here. Tails in particular gets the blunt end of it, even blurting out "Then I'm wildly inconsistent!" verbatim when he brings up his infamous character regression in Forces, versus his heroism in Adventure. It manages to highlight the problems such moments created for these characters, without resorting to relentless irony and/or outright retconning. Eggman also gets a particularly unique character arc, though it's so disconnected from other media, and most of the game itself, that it's hard to really talk about without going full spoilers. I like where it could be going, I only hope that future games follow up on this change.
PRESENTATION
Of course, a story - and the rest of the game - rely strongly on how its presented. Frontiers, visually, is rather unremarkable. It's not an ugly game (or at least, normally - I may have had to turn all settings to minimum to get it to run) but there's still something almost double-A about this game, in spite of the price, runtime and Sonic's legacy. Lighting isn't optimal, and the environments go for a low-budget realism look that both clashes hard with Sonic as well as all the grind rails and springs thrown into them. The worlds may be fun to run through, but they're sure not pretty to look at. Even looking back at Sonic Unleashed - the last real AAA Sonic game - there's just so much more life in the animations and environments. Even going into Cyberspace, it's almost entirely comprised of regurgitated Generations/Forces assets. As such, every single level is either Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, or assorted stuff from Forces. It's pretty distracting given that every level is also ripped from an older game in terms of layout, so now all your old favourites have been Green-Hillified. It's just not a pretty game. Oh, and of course, how could I forget - the pop-in. It's been discussed to death, I've no idea why it's as bad and egregious as it is, and while it never felt like a game-breaker to me it's really not something you want in a full-price game. I don't know if it's an engine limitation, or if they dialled it back for Switch and didn't let the other platforms cook, but...it's bad. Raw, even.
Cutscene-wise, well, we've yet to surpass the Unleashed intro, unsurprisingly. The in-game cutscenes are rarely anything more than sub-standard animation and lip-flapping, though it looks passable whenever they need a serious action sequence. The pre-rendered stuff obviously looks better, but still uses the in-game assets for everything, so it's not a marked improvement. Enemy design is pretty original for the series, but almost all of them are the same shades of dark grey, so they're not especially striking.
It's really not the best the series has looked, at all, and either Sega need to give them more budget, they need a better art director, or they need to ditch the Hedgehog Engine and find a better solution.
MUSIC
I'm no music expert, I don't normally have much to add. That being said, I've seen complaints levelled at the more atmospheric soundtrack of the game. Honestly, I didn't have a problem with it at all - I found it just about suited the mood for almost every kind of scenario. I did, eventually, have to switch on the jukebox when I started grinding everything out - a post launch feature allowing you to collect legacy songs from the franchise and listen to them throughout regular exploration. The highlight are the vocal themes that play during bosses - much different than what I'm really used to from Sonic games lately, but most of which really stuck with me. Real good tunes.
CONCLUSION
I'm writing this about the main game, and I've not played The Final Horizon as of yet because I want to review that addendum separately. Ultimately, I think my perception of this game is coloured more positively than many due to a.) parts of this game appealing to my own desires from a Sonic title, and b.) playing it after every major update was out allowed me to experience a more complete and fixed-up product than what people who played at launch did. As it is, I think Sonic Frontiers is a perfectly OK and functional game - but with many caveats that stop me short of recommending it wholeheartedly. If you tried it, and didn't vibe with it, it ain't for you. And judging from this page, it definitely isn't for a lot of people. I'm fortunately to be able to appreciate this for what it is...but it doesn't stop me from being disappointed at what it isn't.
If I were rate this one on enjoyment alone, I'd probably be more inclined to give this one a 4/5. Critically, though...despite the risks taken, and the effort to differentiate itself from every prior Sonic title, it does just end up falling back into the middle of the road (a notoriously bad place for a hedgehog to be).
GAMEPLAY
The big selling point of Frontiers is the "Open-Zone" setup. Not an outright open world, but a set of 5 (well, 4 and a half) islands that Sonic can explore at will. Freedom of movement is the main appeal, and finally being able to do this in a Sonic game for what feels like the first time since Sonic Adventure really took me back. Picking a direction, blasting away at top speed and seeing where I end up, blissful. It's the baseline of what I want to feel from a Sonic game, and one that I rarely get to actually experience.
Of course, the manner of Sonic's controls have always been hotly debated by the ever-warring fandom. Sonic Team had the perfect solution: do it yourself! Sonic has a number of sliders to tune his handling to virtually whatever you'd like; regardless of whether it's actually remotely controllable or not. People who set his default running speed to maximum were gonna be in a rude awakening when they get to the parkour challenges, but they're completely free to do so. I had the luxury of playing close to a year post-launch, though; Sonic had harsh jump deceleration to start with, losing all momentum when jumping. Fortunately, Sonic Team listened to fans and let you turn that shit off - and it really, really helps.
So, you've got a Sonic you can tune to your liking, and huge areas to let him lose in. And yet, the game begins by almost immediately dumping you into a short, linear level with a completely different, fixed control scheme. Cyberspace levels are thrown into the experience to provide more traditional Sonic levels, and I appreciate and understand why; it's far easier to break them off into separate instances than build the levels naturally into the open world (which there is usually at least one instance of per island, so I'm glad they actually gave that a go). I also understand why the control scheme is different; the levels themselves rely a lot on scripted sequences that could potentially break if the player has set their acceleration outside of the accepted parameters. Unfortunately, while I understand the choices made, it doesn't stop Cyberspace from being a source of frustation, bordering on total misery. Sonic's turning circle becomes immense, and the levels themselves are automated to the point of failure, with the homing attack frequently failing to lock on when it needs to, and just generally being clumsy. One level even adds a drift mechanic that is completely embarassing in how much worse it is compared to previous games.
Moving away from Cyberspace, one other massive shakeup to the formula is the addition of a real, proper combat system. We haven't had such a thing since the dreadful Unleashed Werehog stages, and fortunately it's not nearly as limited. That said, it's no Devil May Cry either. Sonic can still homing attack to kill or notably injure the small fry, but larger enemies and minibosses will require much mashing of the X button. As you gain skill points, you can expand Sonic's reportoire to include dodge attacks, Rider Kicks, and just straight up shooting lasers from his shoes or something. There's enough variety in there to make it so that the varying enemy types may only be susceptible to specific moves, but admittedly there's also little stopping you from just persistently mashing X against at least half of the encounters.
Further adding to Sonic's moveset is the Cyloop. Holding Y will leave a trail behind Sonic, and allow you to draw circles, Pokémon Ranger-style, around enemies. This is often best suited to breaking an enemy's guard, but can also be used in the open world to activate events, solve puzzles, and (if you're persistent) gather a limitless supply of rings and other important resources. It's a neat trick, although I find it cuts out far too easily whenever you hit the slightest imperfection in the floor. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing such a move become a more permanent part of Sonic's skillset - where applicable.
At the heart of it, Sonic Frontiers is a big ol' collectathon. Each of the hundreds of grind rails and platforms that awkwardly pop into existence as soon as you're 10ft away lead to a small bounty of riches. Rings, obviously, still keep Sonic from dying to damage. However, depending on your ever-increasing stats, Sonic can both hold more maximum rings, as well as lose less of them when taking damage, more akin to a health bar. As well as that, you can find seeds that raise Sonic's attack and defense, skill points to unlock new moves, and memory tokens; needed to advance the plot. That's not forgetting about Emerald Vault keys, for getting the Chaos Emeralds, and Portal Gears from downed minibosses for playing the Cyberspace levels (the main source of the aforementioned Vault keys). That's a lot to collect, and sounds like a challenging, if time consuming gameplay structure. Of course, if you don't actually have any interest in playing the game, Big the Cat has you covered. Yes, if you collect enough purple coins, you can go fishing, and use your gains from that to just buy everything - everything - and theroetically max out Sonic's stats and get every mandatory collectible to beat the story within, say, an hour or so total of fishing. It's such a bizarre way to break the game that they might as well have admitted "Use this if you're a games journalist with a tight deadline!".
The fishing itself, by the way, is mindless - essentially a rhythm game without the rhythm. Cast the rod (doesn't matter where), wait for a bite (won't take more than 10 seconds), tap A, tap A again when the ring is within the red areas. Boom, fish. One part of getting 100% is to catch every fish at every spot, but that won't even be hard because it's as if the game's rigged to not give you any duplicates until you've 100%ed a fishing spot. The key rewards for fishing that you can't get anywhere else are the Egg Memos. They're simply snippets of random trivia, as well as Eggman's perspective on current events. It's mostly a checklist of references and fanservice, but more - much more - on that later.
So, the game plays fine, has a decent smattering of content, but not all of it good. A lot of it is just simple stimulation - pass by a dash pad or spring, get distracted, and get taken on a brief rollercoaster ride with high speed and minimal input. But the freedom of movement is key here, and that freedom to just go anywhere and forcibly glitch yourself up anything is simply liberating, which is very Sonic. Using the grind rails and springs is fun and all, but the real big brain gaming is finding the way to sequence break these pathways and take the collectible by force. It's what made those first two islands, in all their generic appearance, a real good time in my experience.
Sorry, I specified "the first two islands" just then, didn't I? Yeah, that whole "freedom of movement" thing sadly gets shut down by the third island, where the game decides that Cyberspace didn't fill its mandatory 2D quota and forces almost every single one of the hundreds of platforming sections on the island to lock Sonic into a 2D perspective. Doing so shuts down most of the controls, including the combat system, and stops you from leaving without finding some gap in the platforms to break out of it. This horrible downgrade in quality hangs over the third island almost entirely, and a good chunk of the fifth island as well. I really hated my time with these 2D segments, and it made me less inclined to collect every memory token as I had for the first two islands (but it didn't stop me in the end). To make an open world and liberating Sonic, only to shackle him back to these confines so soon after really makes me wonder what the circumstances surrounding this decision was.
This gameplay loop culminates in finding each of the Chaos Emeralds on each island(save one). Once all Chaos Emeralds on an island are obtained, you get to challenge the island's boss. Said boss holds the last Emerald, and when you finally grab it, you get to engage the boss as Super Sonic. On paper, this is a really fun implementation of Super Sonic, as opposed to a reward for clearing (often annoying) special stages, or only showing up in the final battle. It's a shame that Super Sonic remains unusable in the open world, but it's not like you really need it. You sure need it for the boss fights though, because they're proper slugfests. They unfortunately aren't the most inspiring fights, though - despite the soundtrack's best efforts. Mashing X remains the most worthwhile tactic until the boss chooses to throw an attack that you can parry - only then is the major damage dealt. Some bosses unfortunately tend to spam attacks that Sonic needs to do a quick time event to avoid or deflect, and some of the things they throw at you are downright confusing in how to deal with it. The spectacle is appreciated, but I had more fun watching other people do these fights than playing them for myself. The ring limit may seem like a tricky thing to deal with, but seeing as you can gain infinite rings before the right by holding Y and running in circles, it's really no big deal.
And before I wrap this up, there are a few little weird breaks in the formula scattered throughout the main story. These range from herding children, to mowing the lawn(seriously), to playing an actual sh'mup(seriously). They're usually kinda clunky, but at least don't outstay their lack-of-welcome. Except pinball. Oh, I hope you like pinball.
Well, that's more than enough about the gameplay - it's got grand ideas but a confused execution of them in the back half of the game, which is pretty disappointing.
STORY
I won't get too into spoilers, but I can describe how the story made me feel - pretty unimpressed. The premise is as basic as it gets - Sonic and co. get stuck on a strange land, and everyone else gets imprisoned while Sonic alone has to save their asses, while guided by a mysterious voice telling them to kill all the big stompy gits. All while a weird cyber-ghost girl keeps wishing death upon Sonic to his face every 10 minutes. It just sets up the gameplay loop pretty directly, and you probably already guessed where it's going as you get to reading this part. There's nothing new or inventive here, and I can't say I'm even disappointed - the deeper a Sonic story tries to go, the more awful is usually is.
Where the real appeal and attention is directed is the writing itself. Ian Flynn is no new name to Sonic, but for his first game rodeo it's not a bad effort. Not a bad effort, but I have a handful of bones to pick nonetheless. Flynn generally has a good grasp on when to be sincere and when to throw in the goofs - an increasingly difficult challenge for most fiction these days, and there are a few stumbles, but I appreciated that not every serious moment was clobbered by a crowbar layered in irony. If you're particularly jaded on Sonic, it might even seem ridiculous how serious the story takes itself sometimes, but I appreciate that the risk was taken. However, the dialogue - particularly the more optional "side stories" - are also heavily, heavily weighed down with a thick layer of fanservice. You're telling me Sonic and friends touch down on Unreal Engine 4 default landscape, and they all immediately get reminded of virtually every single previous game? I can appreciate an attempt at real continuity, and no hate to anyone out there who ate it all up, but the references were laid on way too thick. I'd settle for maybe a third of the total random call-backs to past games that made their way into the script - and sure, you can also keep the incredibly heavy handed attempts to force Tangle and Sticks into canon - but they really stretch to try to bring up the older games and it really took me out of it after a while.
"Heavy-handed" can also be used to describe Flynn's attempts to wrangle the characterisation of Sonic and co. back in a direction resembling what the fans screaming at the writing since Colors wanted - and it's amusing how visibly hard Flynn is turning the wheel here. Tails in particular gets the blunt end of it, even blurting out "Then I'm wildly inconsistent!" verbatim when he brings up his infamous character regression in Forces, versus his heroism in Adventure. It manages to highlight the problems such moments created for these characters, without resorting to relentless irony and/or outright retconning. Eggman also gets a particularly unique character arc, though it's so disconnected from other media, and most of the game itself, that it's hard to really talk about without going full spoilers. I like where it could be going, I only hope that future games follow up on this change.
PRESENTATION
Of course, a story - and the rest of the game - rely strongly on how its presented. Frontiers, visually, is rather unremarkable. It's not an ugly game (or at least, normally - I may have had to turn all settings to minimum to get it to run) but there's still something almost double-A about this game, in spite of the price, runtime and Sonic's legacy. Lighting isn't optimal, and the environments go for a low-budget realism look that both clashes hard with Sonic as well as all the grind rails and springs thrown into them. The worlds may be fun to run through, but they're sure not pretty to look at. Even looking back at Sonic Unleashed - the last real AAA Sonic game - there's just so much more life in the animations and environments. Even going into Cyberspace, it's almost entirely comprised of regurgitated Generations/Forces assets. As such, every single level is either Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, or assorted stuff from Forces. It's pretty distracting given that every level is also ripped from an older game in terms of layout, so now all your old favourites have been Green-Hillified. It's just not a pretty game. Oh, and of course, how could I forget - the pop-in. It's been discussed to death, I've no idea why it's as bad and egregious as it is, and while it never felt like a game-breaker to me it's really not something you want in a full-price game. I don't know if it's an engine limitation, or if they dialled it back for Switch and didn't let the other platforms cook, but...it's bad. Raw, even.
Cutscene-wise, well, we've yet to surpass the Unleashed intro, unsurprisingly. The in-game cutscenes are rarely anything more than sub-standard animation and lip-flapping, though it looks passable whenever they need a serious action sequence. The pre-rendered stuff obviously looks better, but still uses the in-game assets for everything, so it's not a marked improvement. Enemy design is pretty original for the series, but almost all of them are the same shades of dark grey, so they're not especially striking.
It's really not the best the series has looked, at all, and either Sega need to give them more budget, they need a better art director, or they need to ditch the Hedgehog Engine and find a better solution.
MUSIC
I'm no music expert, I don't normally have much to add. That being said, I've seen complaints levelled at the more atmospheric soundtrack of the game. Honestly, I didn't have a problem with it at all - I found it just about suited the mood for almost every kind of scenario. I did, eventually, have to switch on the jukebox when I started grinding everything out - a post launch feature allowing you to collect legacy songs from the franchise and listen to them throughout regular exploration. The highlight are the vocal themes that play during bosses - much different than what I'm really used to from Sonic games lately, but most of which really stuck with me. Real good tunes.
CONCLUSION
I'm writing this about the main game, and I've not played The Final Horizon as of yet because I want to review that addendum separately. Ultimately, I think my perception of this game is coloured more positively than many due to a.) parts of this game appealing to my own desires from a Sonic title, and b.) playing it after every major update was out allowed me to experience a more complete and fixed-up product than what people who played at launch did. As it is, I think Sonic Frontiers is a perfectly OK and functional game - but with many caveats that stop me short of recommending it wholeheartedly. If you tried it, and didn't vibe with it, it ain't for you. And judging from this page, it definitely isn't for a lot of people. I'm fortunately to be able to appreciate this for what it is...but it doesn't stop me from being disappointed at what it isn't.
2000
Gotta admit, I sympathise with the enemies here. I want to kill this fucking kangaroo too.
Kao the Kangaroo, a 3D mascot platformer in the sea of many, just as the mascot platformer boom of the nineties was on the path to dying down. But this one was different...it was from Poland! This, of course, was before the likes of CD Projekt catapulted the country towards becoming the 4th largest export of video games in the world - humble Kao over here isn't any more impressive than the likes of Crash Bandicoot, leaving his adventure feeling pretty outdated from the start.
Despite what the title implies, Kao himself resembles a bipedal yellow rat moreso than a kangaroo, and his running speed is utterly woeful. There's a whole power-up dedicated to letting him actually hop like a kangaroo, but only for about 5 seconds, for each of the five times you'll probably come across it across the 30-or-so levels.
The controls are easily the worst part - alongside his slow running speed, Kao also turns pretty awkwardly. There's no native controller support, and the hackneyed-together Steam config gives him a clumsy turning circle that makes all the hurried precision platforming very difficult. Most jumps, even early on, demand Kao be at the absolute edge before jumping across. The camera also doesn't do much to help with this either, but I've seen far worse in 3D platformers of both this era and beyond, so props for that.
Enemies are pretty goofy and don't really do anything special beyond sprinting directly towards Kao when in range. Fortunately at your disposal is a punch attack, with a short range and embarrassingly poor collision detection, as well as a tail swipe with a slightly longer range and embarrassingly poor collision detection. Most enemies will likely hit you before your attacks connect with them, unless you try for a sneaky jump attack. To help mitigate this, you can collect boxing glove projectiles, but they're consumable and scattered around levels in a limited capacity.
Speaking of consumables, one challenging aspect I actually really appreciated is how your lives and checkpoints are handled. You can save in the menu after each level, while on the level select screen (you'd better keep that in mind because the game sure doesn't imply it), and you get extra lives for every 50 coins collected. Running out of lives kicks you back to the main menu, and if you haven't been saving, that's all your progress lost. As for checkpoints, they're also found in the stage like the boxing gloves, and - this is the fun part - you can put them down wherever you'd like. Next segment looking too scary? Throw a checkpoint down. It's shockingly tactical for an otherwise unassuming 3D platformer, and I'm wondering if it might be inspired from any other games at the time? If not, hats off to Tate Multimedia.
Levels themselves are plenty in number, and unfortunately unmemorable. Themes shift seemingly at random from stage to stage, often repeating, and don't have much going on beyond the tricky jumps, stock enemies, and bonus levels. The low points would have to be the vehicle stages, though - which see Kao zoom forwards uncontrollably where the slightest brush with the wall means instant death (and no, no checkpoints allowed). That, and the bosses. Everyone wants to stop Kao from rescuing his family from The Hunter. A bear, a pirate, even aliens and fucking ZEUS HIMSELF show up to kill that rat. Doing damage to the bosses range from embarrassingly obvious to mind-blowingly obscure, and I can't help but wonder if children even knew how to do this back in the day? I'm 22 and I had to look up a guide on how the Zeus fight even works!
Music is, well, nostalgic. In that way that cheap, bargain bin stock PC game music hits different. It's low-quality to an almost ethereal level, the compositions leaving my head almost immediately after they cease but leaving that dream-like aftertaste. I can't really rag on it though, because then I feel like I'd be punching down on it.
And that's the crux of the issue when it comes to reviewing Kao the bloody Kangaroo, really. It's a low budget game, made in Poland, which I don't recall having the strongest games industry circa. 2000, and despite how outdated it is in the grand scheme of things, these guys made a functional game with no shortage of actual content, repetitive though it may be. I didn't really enjoy my time with it, but I think this is a perfectly inoffensive little platformer that I could only ever recommend to the hardcore enthusiasts of the genre.
As a bonus, there was an entirely separate game made for the Game Boy Advance, and as it doesn't have its own page, I'll leave a quick review here. A-hem:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGHH.
Thank you.
Kao the Kangaroo, a 3D mascot platformer in the sea of many, just as the mascot platformer boom of the nineties was on the path to dying down. But this one was different...it was from Poland! This, of course, was before the likes of CD Projekt catapulted the country towards becoming the 4th largest export of video games in the world - humble Kao over here isn't any more impressive than the likes of Crash Bandicoot, leaving his adventure feeling pretty outdated from the start.
Despite what the title implies, Kao himself resembles a bipedal yellow rat moreso than a kangaroo, and his running speed is utterly woeful. There's a whole power-up dedicated to letting him actually hop like a kangaroo, but only for about 5 seconds, for each of the five times you'll probably come across it across the 30-or-so levels.
The controls are easily the worst part - alongside his slow running speed, Kao also turns pretty awkwardly. There's no native controller support, and the hackneyed-together Steam config gives him a clumsy turning circle that makes all the hurried precision platforming very difficult. Most jumps, even early on, demand Kao be at the absolute edge before jumping across. The camera also doesn't do much to help with this either, but I've seen far worse in 3D platformers of both this era and beyond, so props for that.
Enemies are pretty goofy and don't really do anything special beyond sprinting directly towards Kao when in range. Fortunately at your disposal is a punch attack, with a short range and embarrassingly poor collision detection, as well as a tail swipe with a slightly longer range and embarrassingly poor collision detection. Most enemies will likely hit you before your attacks connect with them, unless you try for a sneaky jump attack. To help mitigate this, you can collect boxing glove projectiles, but they're consumable and scattered around levels in a limited capacity.
Speaking of consumables, one challenging aspect I actually really appreciated is how your lives and checkpoints are handled. You can save in the menu after each level, while on the level select screen (you'd better keep that in mind because the game sure doesn't imply it), and you get extra lives for every 50 coins collected. Running out of lives kicks you back to the main menu, and if you haven't been saving, that's all your progress lost. As for checkpoints, they're also found in the stage like the boxing gloves, and - this is the fun part - you can put them down wherever you'd like. Next segment looking too scary? Throw a checkpoint down. It's shockingly tactical for an otherwise unassuming 3D platformer, and I'm wondering if it might be inspired from any other games at the time? If not, hats off to Tate Multimedia.
Levels themselves are plenty in number, and unfortunately unmemorable. Themes shift seemingly at random from stage to stage, often repeating, and don't have much going on beyond the tricky jumps, stock enemies, and bonus levels. The low points would have to be the vehicle stages, though - which see Kao zoom forwards uncontrollably where the slightest brush with the wall means instant death (and no, no checkpoints allowed). That, and the bosses. Everyone wants to stop Kao from rescuing his family from The Hunter. A bear, a pirate, even aliens and fucking ZEUS HIMSELF show up to kill that rat. Doing damage to the bosses range from embarrassingly obvious to mind-blowingly obscure, and I can't help but wonder if children even knew how to do this back in the day? I'm 22 and I had to look up a guide on how the Zeus fight even works!
Music is, well, nostalgic. In that way that cheap, bargain bin stock PC game music hits different. It's low-quality to an almost ethereal level, the compositions leaving my head almost immediately after they cease but leaving that dream-like aftertaste. I can't really rag on it though, because then I feel like I'd be punching down on it.
And that's the crux of the issue when it comes to reviewing Kao the bloody Kangaroo, really. It's a low budget game, made in Poland, which I don't recall having the strongest games industry circa. 2000, and despite how outdated it is in the grand scheme of things, these guys made a functional game with no shortage of actual content, repetitive though it may be. I didn't really enjoy my time with it, but I think this is a perfectly inoffensive little platformer that I could only ever recommend to the hardcore enthusiasts of the genre.
As a bonus, there was an entirely separate game made for the Game Boy Advance, and as it doesn't have its own page, I'll leave a quick review here. A-hem:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGHH.
Thank you.
What if more of DmC, but worse in every way?
Vergil's Downfall follows on immediately from the events of the base game, which is nice and all. Still, its plot is horribly cliche and only serves to colour in a blank that would be pretty easy to figure out on your own. It suffers from all the contrivances and selling itself as deeper than it actually is that the original story did. However, it lacks the absurdity and unique world of that story, leaving it feeling hollow and pointless.
The whole experience is like, a little over 2 hours at most, and encompasses 6 levels. One of those is just a boss, and another one is the first level but slightly different. There's really not a lot to chew on here, content wise. There aren't any hidden levels either, only hidden health bonuses.
The main draw of the DLC is, of course, playing as Vergil, who if you remember from DmC, was a useless sack of shit. And while he's got a passable moveset here, going from Dante to Vergil is a massive downgrade that never ends up reaching that level of complexity that Dante's large weapon pool had. Vergil only has one weapon, the Yamato - sorry, the "Yuh-mad-oh" - and its initial combos are lacking. Even when you finally unlock the Angel and Demon movepools, you're left with some unimpressive combos for the Demon side, and better but more situational attacks for the Angel side. Vergil also can't double jump either, which is bound to lead you to screw up the platforming until you get the hang of it. He can also shoot swords with X instead of using guns, and it also works the same way as Dante's grapple in combat.
Graphics and visuals are mostly the same, with Vergil's design changing over the course of the DLC into something decent, if angsty, but still very much on-brand for this game. Levels go for a similar vibe, but due to the settings being almost entirely floating rocks, it lacks variety, like how the base game mixes in levels with more familiar urban environments being twisted by Limbo. As such, it's way less impressive.
Cutscenes are a huge departure, however, opting for an inFamous-esque comic-book style. They're ok, but I didn't particularly care for how minimalist the animation style was. I'm sure it'll scratch some people's itches, but not mine. I can understand the need for going in a different direction, because flying back everyone for a handful of new motion capture scenes would likely blow the budget of the entire DLC alone. That said, this ain't it.
Altogether, Vergil's Downfall is just a mundane rehash of things you already did in the base game, but a little bit worse in basically every way. All in the name of sequel bait for something I think we can all agree is not happening. You might as well not bother unless, for some reason, you really liked Vergil in this game.
Vergil's Downfall follows on immediately from the events of the base game, which is nice and all. Still, its plot is horribly cliche and only serves to colour in a blank that would be pretty easy to figure out on your own. It suffers from all the contrivances and selling itself as deeper than it actually is that the original story did. However, it lacks the absurdity and unique world of that story, leaving it feeling hollow and pointless.
The whole experience is like, a little over 2 hours at most, and encompasses 6 levels. One of those is just a boss, and another one is the first level but slightly different. There's really not a lot to chew on here, content wise. There aren't any hidden levels either, only hidden health bonuses.
The main draw of the DLC is, of course, playing as Vergil, who if you remember from DmC, was a useless sack of shit. And while he's got a passable moveset here, going from Dante to Vergil is a massive downgrade that never ends up reaching that level of complexity that Dante's large weapon pool had. Vergil only has one weapon, the Yamato - sorry, the "Yuh-mad-oh" - and its initial combos are lacking. Even when you finally unlock the Angel and Demon movepools, you're left with some unimpressive combos for the Demon side, and better but more situational attacks for the Angel side. Vergil also can't double jump either, which is bound to lead you to screw up the platforming until you get the hang of it. He can also shoot swords with X instead of using guns, and it also works the same way as Dante's grapple in combat.
Graphics and visuals are mostly the same, with Vergil's design changing over the course of the DLC into something decent, if angsty, but still very much on-brand for this game. Levels go for a similar vibe, but due to the settings being almost entirely floating rocks, it lacks variety, like how the base game mixes in levels with more familiar urban environments being twisted by Limbo. As such, it's way less impressive.
Cutscenes are a huge departure, however, opting for an inFamous-esque comic-book style. They're ok, but I didn't particularly care for how minimalist the animation style was. I'm sure it'll scratch some people's itches, but not mine. I can understand the need for going in a different direction, because flying back everyone for a handful of new motion capture scenes would likely blow the budget of the entire DLC alone. That said, this ain't it.
Altogether, Vergil's Downfall is just a mundane rehash of things you already did in the base game, but a little bit worse in basically every way. All in the name of sequel bait for something I think we can all agree is not happening. You might as well not bother unless, for some reason, you really liked Vergil in this game.
Argh.
I was no fan of Circle of the Moon. The RNG drops and grinding were horrible, the movement and combat controls clashed with each other, and the map was overly vertical and tedious to traverse.
With IGA himself, of Symphony of the Night fame, taking the reigns this time around it was to be assumed that Harmony of Dissonance was in good hands. And to its credit, it goes to great lengths to address complaints regarding Circle of the Moon!
Too many lengths, in fact. In attempting to correct the issues with CotM, Harmony overcorrects and creates many brand new problems in their place.
Juste Belmont is the protagonist, and he's fucking unstoppable. Balance? Restraint? Dead in the water. Juste not only whips almost instantly, he askews the hereditary Belmont Strut for a standard running speed, only ever walking if afflicted by curse. Not only that, but LB and RB can allow him to dash either left or right, with absolutely no cooldown. This instantaneous manoeuvre means you might as well dash everywhere instead of running, as it's much quicker. Not only that, the ability to dodge out of an attack within a single frame, then immediately dash back to where you were standing to resume your attack completely breaks the combat from the beginning.
Not that the enemies put up a fight to begin with. The enemy AI is about on par with the original NES Castlevania. That was pretty scary when you were controlling the human artillery machine that was Simon Belmont, but Juste moves like lightning in comparison. As such, the AI appears much, much dumber, as nothing they can do can counteract the movement speed.
Bosses, too, are embarrassing. You can genuinely beat at least one of them by crouching next to them and mashing attack, and you will NEVER get hit. These are by far and away the worst bosses in the franchises' history, with only the second-to-last one running any risk of killing Juste.
The map itself, while certainly less vertical, is annoying to traverse in a new way: the main gimmick is warping between two castles that are identical - except instead of being upside down like in Symphony of the Night, it's just the same castle with different enemy placement. However, the fast travel points don't take you across the castle you're IN, but to another warp point in the other castle. It gets really confusing until you eventually find the equivalent warp point that connects them...but then you also need to know to hit DOWN on the D-pad to be able to travel to OTHER warp points in the same castle. Even with the warp points, traversal isn't great, especially given how many inaccessible locations are scattered throughout the castle, forcing you to essentially backtrack through the entire game every time you unlock a new ability. Gets old real fast, especially when you use your ability to break through a wall only to immediately get walled off by ANOTHER obstacle you can't pass yet.
Graphics are another point of overcorrection. Circle of the Moon was criticised for being too dark for GBA users to see, what with the console having no backlight. As a result, Harmony of Dissonance is an insanely bright game. Not ugly or bad visually, but a bit blinding in places - especially Juste, with his bright blue outline and flashing afterimages wherever he walks. What was necessary then is really distracting now, and I don't think M2's emulation has any option to lessen this.
What M2's emulation does add is a handy marker to say if there are any unfound collectables or relics in the area you're in. It's not nearly as essential an inclusion as the card check in CotM, but that speaks more to CotM's terrible design in RNG drops. That, of course, is another area Harmony of Dissonance overcorrects in. Items are thrown at the player left and right, and while I prefer a mix of findable items and random drops, I think Harmony throws a bit too much at the player. Health increases are all over, on top of the gains from levelling. Supposedly you're meant to beat the game at around level 50, but I was a measly 41 and felt like I hadn't been challenged in the slightest.
Music, fittingly, is Harmony of Dissonance's sorest spot. I like some of the compositions, but according to IGA, they had to limit the instrumentation of the music to only use the GBC sound capabilities in order to make room for the rest of the game. As a result, the tunes are grating and sometimes even ear-piercing, with really harsh notes. I don't hate it, but it's definitely one of the weaker Castlevania OSTs.
Altogether, while I had more fun with this than Circle of the Moon, it wore off quick into a dull, monotonous cycle that never really got going. It felt as if this game was super rushed, and while I appreciate IGA's attempts to shake up the franchise formula, the design simply did not sufficiently accommodate these radical changes in mobility.
The GBA trilogy has really disappointed me so far, so here's hoping Aria of Sorrow can pick up the slack.
I was no fan of Circle of the Moon. The RNG drops and grinding were horrible, the movement and combat controls clashed with each other, and the map was overly vertical and tedious to traverse.
With IGA himself, of Symphony of the Night fame, taking the reigns this time around it was to be assumed that Harmony of Dissonance was in good hands. And to its credit, it goes to great lengths to address complaints regarding Circle of the Moon!
Too many lengths, in fact. In attempting to correct the issues with CotM, Harmony overcorrects and creates many brand new problems in their place.
Juste Belmont is the protagonist, and he's fucking unstoppable. Balance? Restraint? Dead in the water. Juste not only whips almost instantly, he askews the hereditary Belmont Strut for a standard running speed, only ever walking if afflicted by curse. Not only that, but LB and RB can allow him to dash either left or right, with absolutely no cooldown. This instantaneous manoeuvre means you might as well dash everywhere instead of running, as it's much quicker. Not only that, the ability to dodge out of an attack within a single frame, then immediately dash back to where you were standing to resume your attack completely breaks the combat from the beginning.
Not that the enemies put up a fight to begin with. The enemy AI is about on par with the original NES Castlevania. That was pretty scary when you were controlling the human artillery machine that was Simon Belmont, but Juste moves like lightning in comparison. As such, the AI appears much, much dumber, as nothing they can do can counteract the movement speed.
Bosses, too, are embarrassing. You can genuinely beat at least one of them by crouching next to them and mashing attack, and you will NEVER get hit. These are by far and away the worst bosses in the franchises' history, with only the second-to-last one running any risk of killing Juste.
The map itself, while certainly less vertical, is annoying to traverse in a new way: the main gimmick is warping between two castles that are identical - except instead of being upside down like in Symphony of the Night, it's just the same castle with different enemy placement. However, the fast travel points don't take you across the castle you're IN, but to another warp point in the other castle. It gets really confusing until you eventually find the equivalent warp point that connects them...but then you also need to know to hit DOWN on the D-pad to be able to travel to OTHER warp points in the same castle. Even with the warp points, traversal isn't great, especially given how many inaccessible locations are scattered throughout the castle, forcing you to essentially backtrack through the entire game every time you unlock a new ability. Gets old real fast, especially when you use your ability to break through a wall only to immediately get walled off by ANOTHER obstacle you can't pass yet.
Graphics are another point of overcorrection. Circle of the Moon was criticised for being too dark for GBA users to see, what with the console having no backlight. As a result, Harmony of Dissonance is an insanely bright game. Not ugly or bad visually, but a bit blinding in places - especially Juste, with his bright blue outline and flashing afterimages wherever he walks. What was necessary then is really distracting now, and I don't think M2's emulation has any option to lessen this.
What M2's emulation does add is a handy marker to say if there are any unfound collectables or relics in the area you're in. It's not nearly as essential an inclusion as the card check in CotM, but that speaks more to CotM's terrible design in RNG drops. That, of course, is another area Harmony of Dissonance overcorrects in. Items are thrown at the player left and right, and while I prefer a mix of findable items and random drops, I think Harmony throws a bit too much at the player. Health increases are all over, on top of the gains from levelling. Supposedly you're meant to beat the game at around level 50, but I was a measly 41 and felt like I hadn't been challenged in the slightest.
Music, fittingly, is Harmony of Dissonance's sorest spot. I like some of the compositions, but according to IGA, they had to limit the instrumentation of the music to only use the GBC sound capabilities in order to make room for the rest of the game. As a result, the tunes are grating and sometimes even ear-piercing, with really harsh notes. I don't hate it, but it's definitely one of the weaker Castlevania OSTs.
Altogether, while I had more fun with this than Circle of the Moon, it wore off quick into a dull, monotonous cycle that never really got going. It felt as if this game was super rushed, and while I appreciate IGA's attempts to shake up the franchise formula, the design simply did not sufficiently accommodate these radical changes in mobility.
The GBA trilogy has really disappointed me so far, so here's hoping Aria of Sorrow can pick up the slack.
2013
This review contains spoilers
"Our Dante's going to be way cooler than Japanese Dante. Gay cowboys aren't cool. You know what is cool? Tyler Durden from Fight Club. He's so cool."
- Ninja Theory (slightly paraphrased)
This is an absolutely fascinating video game, in which most of the damage it dealt to the brand was not through any direct part of the game, but simply the way in which it was marketing leading up to release. You can actually kind of see within the game the way they tried to course correct and embrace the source material near the end, but the damage had already been done. Sad thing is, it's not entirely Ninja Theory's fault - Capcom were the ones pushing HARD for a "westernised Devil May Cry", in what was an uncomfortably racist era of gaming that came to a head with Capcom's own Keiji Inafune declaring "Japan is over" in 2012. It's rumoured Inafune himself was a big factor in rebooting DmC like this, among other properties. Whatever you think of the end result, it's a fascinating glimpse into what could've been what may have become the new normal for Devil May Cry, and similar IPs.
As for what I think? I think the game is kind of alright. I'd even say I liked it more than DMC4. That being said, I think I know which one I'd rather have seen a sequel to, and I'm glad I'm living in that timeline.
STORY
So, to call this the elephant in the room would be putting it lightly. The story is probably the biggest sore point (other than the marketing and PR) that led to the complete rejection of this by fans, and for good reason. While basic elements of the lore remain similar, many finer details are changed. Some of these feel like changes for the worse, such as how Dante and Vergil are now Demon/Angel hybrids as opposed to Demon/Human, and how only someone of that breed can kill the Demon God Mundus. It's lore as a structure to dictate the plot, as opposed to lore that gives flavour to the story. Perhaps I'm talking out of my ass, but changes like that aren't just "different", they're lesser.
As for the actual story and characters, it's a bit of a mess. Dante is a really cool guy, he swears, he has SEX with WOMEN and don't need no-one's help. He wears a British flag on his jacket because he's cool and anti-establishment - it almost reads like parody and I'm still not certain whether it is or not. If it is parody, the game sure forgets about it quickly. He's recruited to fight the demons by The Order (definition of a placeholder name that stuck), consisting of Kat, a young woman with a tortured past that is brought up once and never has any real meaning again, and their leader Vergil, who is gasp Dante's long lost and forgotten twin brother. I'm guessing Dante never read the Divine Comedy, I mean, he's just too cool to read. Vergil, who continues the trend of Vergil voice actors being former Power Rangers, is a mild guy, and essentially the polar opposite of Dante. Right down to being completely powerless and useless in almost every single cutscene in which he's placed in danger. As for the rest of The Order, uh, well...they consist of a bunch of nameless extras who are first seen being gunned down halfway through the game while Kat cries about them being her friends.
Let that set the tone for how this narrative is approached.
The Order opposes Mundus, who was an unfathomably powerful Demon God who can't be completely killed...at least, he was in Devil May Cry 1. In DmC, he's just a bald white guy. Sure, he's still technically a Demon God underneath, but here's the kicker - the setting of DmC is a world in which the demons have infiltrated, and have total control of. The news is all edited and has an intentionally biased narrative against Dante and co., cameras watch every street (and yes, all the cameras are secretly demons), and then there's the number one energy drink brand, which is secreted directly from a succubus demon and is described by Kat as "lobotomy in a can". Even the advertisements for the drink are one step away from literally saying "we're DEFINITELY NOT evil! Nope!".
If you take this aspect of the plot and take it at face value, this is a completely deranged far-right conspiracyshit rhetoric, and one that hit very close to home - literally, considering I live with someone who genuinely thinks exactly these things. Vergil is absolutely someone who complains about "wokeism" online.
Now, not to exclusively compare the story to the regular games, but one thing gets me here. While I like this perspective of "what if Devil May Cry, but more grounded and closer to home?", the main appeal of Devil May Cry is how larger-than-life everyone is. DMC3 sees the likely deaths of thousands off-screen, but it's all in the background because it's not about how demons are affected the regular, mundane world, but about Dante, his crazy style and near-indestrucability, and how he fights his equally outlandish opponents. DmC takes these fundamentals and creates a story where...everyone's JUST a guy. Dante's just the cool guy, cool like the guy from Fight Club. Vergil is literally a guy, all the way until the final couple of missions. Kat is just a normal girl who spends most of the game as either emotional support, in peril, or not there, but a big driving point is that she's just a human. DMC3 did that whole thing much better with Lady - that's not me wishing DmC was more like DMC, this is me wishing DmC was good.
Despite the effort to create this grounded world run by demons, nothing is ever explored. The game sprints from one target to the next, never taking much time to dwell on how the world is shaped by the secret invasion - except for in the energy drink factory, which was embarrassingly heavy-handed. You never get much of an impression of these villains before they're immediately thrown out of the picture. It feels as if a lot was cut from the story, and maybe there was. A particular sore point was during a scene that lives in infamy; while exchanging Lillith (who's carrying Mundus' child and future heir) for Kat (who had been captured earlier) on a bridge, Vergil suddenly aims his FAMAS and directly shoots the unborn child. The result enrages Mundus, leaving thousands likely dead from his outburst, and endangers Kat's life (as she was nowhere near making it back to Dante and Vergil at the time). Vergil justifies this with "having no choice" (killing the unborn child and triggering Mundus' outburst leaves him vulnerable) despite Dante's protests, and...that's it! No further discussion! Next we see them, they're buddied up and taking on Mundus' base of operations together! It's a glaring hole in an already shaky narrative - and Ninja Theory agreed, because the remaster 2 years later added an entire new cutscene addressing exactly this. So I can't help but wonder exactly how deep into the worldbuilding they could have gone.
The story comes to a dreadful conclusion - after Vergil finally does literally anything at all and helps Dante kill Mundus, he pulls the ultimate gotcha - he was secretly planning on usurping Mundus and ruling humanity all along. Now, it wasn't exactly an out of nowhere heel turn, but the way he suddenly ramps it up at the very end feels like a desperate attempt to shoehorn in a Dante vs Vergil boss fight for the sake of it, rather than wait for a sequel (or god forbid, flesh the story out better). It's not even a good fight! But more on that later.
While going over the story, I just realised I never mentioned Phineas. He's the only named person of colour in the game, and he's an imprisoned demon who gives Dante a fetch quest, exposits, and is referenced exactly once afterwards. Everyone else I can remember was white. Between this and the whole anti-Japan stuff...man, this was a horrible time for gaming, huh.
I didn't think I'd have this much to be saying about the story, so I apologise for going on so long about it. But what ties all these elements together is the writing itself. I'm not sure what's up here, but I've never seen a script in my life that's so utterly British without trying to be - but it's being read by people doing American accents. I assumed the voice cast was American, but turns out Vergil's VA is from New Zealand and Dante's is Australian. Do you have any idea how much better these clunkily written swearing tirades would sound if they had kept their native accents? Alas, the voicework is stiff and uncharismatic. It doesn't help that Dante's "cool" insults and quips (which are way too frequent) don't land, but they're read in such an awkward matter, as the American accent does not lend itself well to British speech patterns. Seriously, I've never heard an American use "smashing" as a synonym for "good". For "having sex with", perhaps, but I digress. Vergil's VA gives a mostly lifeless performance, as if warming up while reading the script, and the director went "Perfect! Next line!". Mundus sounds deeply tired, to which I relate, but it's not a terrible performance altogether.
I really don't mind the concepts here, and the direction of certain cutscenes perfectly matches the tone they were aiming for, but it fails to total the sum of its own parts, either from neglect or whatever other excuse it could be. And one last little note about the story; throwing in a direct jab at the original games (A white wig lands on Dante's head, perfectly mimicing OG Dante's hair. He sees his reflection and discards it, claiming "not in a million years".) is a really, really dangerous way to start your story after the PR stuff. It's a cheeky jab that ends up being a brick joke, as Dante's devil trigger turns his jacket red and hair white, which later becomes his default look at the very end of the game. There's genuine appreciation for the original in there, but between Capcom's mandates and whatever the hell was up with the legendary "Dante is" conference, no wonder nobody stuck around to find out.
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay is what people mainly come to DMC for - not to downplay the story, but it was clear DmC put far more stock into its story than the classic DMCs. That said, it didn't entirely slack in the gameplay department either.
COMBAT
But hold your horses, don't praise Ninja Theory just yet. Their prior games are notorious for poor combat, so it was no surprise that Hideaki Itsuno, Mr. Devil May Cry himself, had to swoop in with a team of Capcom's finest and salvage the combat into something resembling the series. Dante still wields Rebellion, and swings are responsive. The moveset is expanded not through red orbs or the weird pride souls of DMC4, but a new skill point system earned for getting a certain amount of experience from kills and finishing levels. Its a decent system for unlocks, and you'll have most of each weapons' moveset unlocked by the end. For each weapon, Y is a light attack, and B is a heavy. A is jump, while X is a bit of a wildcard. While it's typically assigned to your firearm of choice, things get crazier when demon/angel mode are introduced.
By the end of the first third, Dante will have access to Demon and Angel mode, and a respective new weapon for each. Accessing these modes is achieved by holding Left Trigger for Angel mode, and Right Trigger for Demon mode. This changes Rebellion for one of the two weapons of each types you unlock over the course of the game, and can be switched between with the D-Pad. Angel weapons hit weaker and faster, with a wide range suited to crowd control. Demon weapons, meanwhile, are slower and heavier, and reward precise timing. It's a pretty clearly laid out system, if sacrificing the more personal feel for weapons in traditional DMC games. That being said, having to hold down the corresponding trigger whenever you want to use the weapon felt a little disorientating. This only gets more complicated when the grapple hook is factored in.
Early on in the game, Dante gets a grapple hook, clearly inspired by Nero's stretchy arm from DMC4. Functionally, it serves a similar purpose - pull enemies around, and grapple to parts of the level. Implementation, though, was not exactly great. As far as combat goes, what grappling does depends on which trigger you hold. It replaces the firearms button, and if used in Angel mode, it pulls you towards the enemy - the reverse is true for Demon mode. So you really need to think about which type of grapple you want to use - want to grapple towards the enemy to deliver an uppercut with Eryx? You've gotta switch triggers crazy fast. Other than the awkward trigger shifting, it's fun to use in combat, but, well, I'll get into the rest when I discuss level design.
One last thing about the combat is using the bumpers for a quick dodge. DMC traditionally either lacks this, or locks it behind a specific style. So to have this ability always available ...takes virtually all the challenge out of the combat. As soon as you nail how to dodge every attack, you'll never get hit enough for it to matter (and there are plenty of measures even if you get in danger). You can even combine it with the triggers to trigger effects like slowdown when executing a perfect dodge, Bayonetta-style. It's a fun addition, but completely overpowered.
One last thing to note is Devil Trigger - when activated, it causes Dante to regen health for the duration, and immediately suspends all non-boss enemies in mid-air, taking increased damage from aerial combos. I found this utterly bizarre and used it more for the health regen than for killing enemies, as I never saw the need to have to kill enemies by entirely taking away their abilities to fight back.
Overall the combat is fine, it's fun even, but the enemy quality leaves little in the way of variety to how you approach fighting them, and having so many crazy abilities at your disposal without restrictions leaves it feeling like a pale imitation of what Devil May Cry combat really means. Sure, it holds up on its own, but it's not as satisfying. I mainly used Eryx because the long wind-up versus the massive damage felt the most rewarding of all the weapons. If nothing else, they nailed how DMCs gauntlet weapons traditionally feel.
LEVEL DESIGN
As for level design, well. Let's push aside the visuals for later, and talk purely about how they're arranged as areas for the player to traverse. In a word? Thoughtless. Every now and then there may be a decent gimmick, but it's mostly corridor after empty corridor. Sometimes there are hidden paths that lead to collectables, but it's mostly just basic areas that offer no interesting terrain or hazards. I'd say the highlight is right near the start of the game, where there's an amusement park ride that you can uppercut demons into, and later on where there's a passing train that serves the same purpose.
Things become more depressingly repetitive once the grapple is unlocked; now, half of the mundane corridors are replaced with what are essentially quick-time events where Dante grapples from point to point, often switching between the Demon and Angel modes mid-swing. Fun the first time? Sure. How about the tenth? Fiftieth? Two hundred and seventy sixth? Boss fights aren't safe from overuse of the grapple either. I'm pretty sure I ended up using it more than any other weapon, through mandatory platforming alone. Certain ENTIRE LEVELS are just extended quick-time events that blend cutscenes with constant grappling, all the way to the end screen. Come to think of it, this might be the first Devil May Cry game to NOT stop you from throwing yourself into a bottomless pit - previous games always had an invisible wall against any ledge that doesn't lead to another area. This time, you can (and probably will) fall during combat, at the cost of a small chunk of health. It's not a big deal, but it felt a bit annoying when arenas contain such bottomless pits.
Also, remember puzzles? Yeah, there's like...one in the entire game, and not a hard one by any stretch. I see where they were coming from, gamers HATE puzzles, but including a single one feels weird, like it's almost a cheeky reference and not something actually thought out. The REAL challenge is finding those collectables - lost souls that give red orbs, secret doors that lead to secret levels that reward Dante with a health upgrade...and the keys to unlock those hidden doors with, because that's what the game needed. Extra busywork for the things that are already hidden to begin with. Finding them would provide the game with much needed replay value - WOULD. Instead it doesn't - these things are typically hidden at a point where the path branches. However, the instant you unknowingly head down the path that leads to the next part of the level and NOT the collectible, the path will almost immediately be blocked off for the rest of the level. There are these untelegraphed points of no return absolutely everywhere, and it sucks the fun out of hunting for these secrets.
BOSSES
Bosses in DMC came in two flavours - Epic, or What the Fuck Am I Doing With My Life. DmC has but a single flavour; "cinematic". You're basically asked to hit the glowing weakspot over and over, until you can trigger a cutscene that deals the REAL damage. People seem to really praise some of the bosses here for reasons I cannot entirely comprehend. Chief among them is Bob Bargas, the demon in charge of the Fake News. Now, his fight is visually great and all, but like...it's not good?? He simply spews parkour challenges out while you manoeuvre around to the glowing weak spot and get 10 seconds to spam Rebellion before the pattern repeats. This is occasionally broken up by having to wait through a horde of basic mooks while unskippable dialogue plays out. This is actually a common problem with the bosses of this game - segments where you basically have to wait through a segment that you can't deal damage in, that takes little to no skill to get through - simply stalling for time and padding the fight.
I think that actually sums up my main issue with the game design here - it's built like a rollercoaster. Sure, all the scripted sequences will get you the first time, and it'll seem like a blast when you don't know what's coming, but it'll turn into annoying and unskippable padding on future playthroughs.
VISUALS
I finally get to talk about a part of the game that I actually, genuinely like. This game looks fucking sick. You've got all the grimy urban locales, and as basic as they are they fit the vibe of the game perfectly. But then there's Limbo, the fucked-up demon version of the world, and it kind of blew me away when I first started playing. The oppressive red glare, the swirling effects that surround Dante, the way objects shrivel upon approach, and that's before they start fucking with the geometry. Levels often suddenly splinter and break apart into floating chunks of concrete, rocks and sometimes entire buildings, and the amount of care and detail that went into animating every inch of these hellscapes never got old to me.
Perhaps a more repetitive part of the imagery within Limbo are the weird, glossy black rocks that appear all over the place. While it does form a decent layer of the corrupted and deformed design of Limbo, a lot of sequences will involve running down a corridor only for the route to immediately be blocked off by these rocks that suddenly spike up out of nowhere. As such, it's easy to associate one with the other, and they become like a kind of sub-plot device to stop the player from going out of bounds.
Graphics in general are pretty good, for a game of its age. There are a few issues with texture pop-in within cutscenes, and the game will swap between in-engine and pre-rendered cutscenes on a dime, which is impressive if not for the sudden halved framerate. While I have grievances with the character designs themselves, the graphical fidelity with which they are realised is pretty good. The way in which the artstyle shifts in Devil Trigger is also pretty mesmerising. I have to hand it to Ninja Theory, they really did cook here. I'd love to see a non-DmC game that uses this kind of style - I've heard Hellblade has a decent amount to offer on that front? But that's for another time.
CONCLUSION
DmC is frustrating in that it's built on a bad foundation, but with genuine attempts to build something great on top of it. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to its namesake in terms of style or substance, but substitutes this for some pretty wonderful positives of its own. It's cursed to forever live in the shadow of its namesake, but to be fair it did very little to successfully break out of that shadow by itself. Ultimately, DmC: Devil May Cry is not a bad game, but it absolutely lacks the elements that could ascend it to be a truly great game. I'd take this any day over DMC2, and even over DMC4 personally, but an embarrassing story and limited upper potential for the combat holds it back hard. I feel like I could talk more about this game if I thought long and hard, but this review is long enough as it is and I wanna stop thinking about it already...and move on to Vergil's Downfall, which I'll review separately. I can't imagine how that waste of space sinks any lower, but I'll certainly see.
- Ninja Theory (slightly paraphrased)
This is an absolutely fascinating video game, in which most of the damage it dealt to the brand was not through any direct part of the game, but simply the way in which it was marketing leading up to release. You can actually kind of see within the game the way they tried to course correct and embrace the source material near the end, but the damage had already been done. Sad thing is, it's not entirely Ninja Theory's fault - Capcom were the ones pushing HARD for a "westernised Devil May Cry", in what was an uncomfortably racist era of gaming that came to a head with Capcom's own Keiji Inafune declaring "Japan is over" in 2012. It's rumoured Inafune himself was a big factor in rebooting DmC like this, among other properties. Whatever you think of the end result, it's a fascinating glimpse into what could've been what may have become the new normal for Devil May Cry, and similar IPs.
As for what I think? I think the game is kind of alright. I'd even say I liked it more than DMC4. That being said, I think I know which one I'd rather have seen a sequel to, and I'm glad I'm living in that timeline.
STORY
So, to call this the elephant in the room would be putting it lightly. The story is probably the biggest sore point (other than the marketing and PR) that led to the complete rejection of this by fans, and for good reason. While basic elements of the lore remain similar, many finer details are changed. Some of these feel like changes for the worse, such as how Dante and Vergil are now Demon/Angel hybrids as opposed to Demon/Human, and how only someone of that breed can kill the Demon God Mundus. It's lore as a structure to dictate the plot, as opposed to lore that gives flavour to the story. Perhaps I'm talking out of my ass, but changes like that aren't just "different", they're lesser.
As for the actual story and characters, it's a bit of a mess. Dante is a really cool guy, he swears, he has SEX with WOMEN and don't need no-one's help. He wears a British flag on his jacket because he's cool and anti-establishment - it almost reads like parody and I'm still not certain whether it is or not. If it is parody, the game sure forgets about it quickly. He's recruited to fight the demons by The Order (definition of a placeholder name that stuck), consisting of Kat, a young woman with a tortured past that is brought up once and never has any real meaning again, and their leader Vergil, who is gasp Dante's long lost and forgotten twin brother. I'm guessing Dante never read the Divine Comedy, I mean, he's just too cool to read. Vergil, who continues the trend of Vergil voice actors being former Power Rangers, is a mild guy, and essentially the polar opposite of Dante. Right down to being completely powerless and useless in almost every single cutscene in which he's placed in danger. As for the rest of The Order, uh, well...they consist of a bunch of nameless extras who are first seen being gunned down halfway through the game while Kat cries about them being her friends.
Let that set the tone for how this narrative is approached.
The Order opposes Mundus, who was an unfathomably powerful Demon God who can't be completely killed...at least, he was in Devil May Cry 1. In DmC, he's just a bald white guy. Sure, he's still technically a Demon God underneath, but here's the kicker - the setting of DmC is a world in which the demons have infiltrated, and have total control of. The news is all edited and has an intentionally biased narrative against Dante and co., cameras watch every street (and yes, all the cameras are secretly demons), and then there's the number one energy drink brand, which is secreted directly from a succubus demon and is described by Kat as "lobotomy in a can". Even the advertisements for the drink are one step away from literally saying "we're DEFINITELY NOT evil! Nope!".
If you take this aspect of the plot and take it at face value, this is a completely deranged far-right conspiracyshit rhetoric, and one that hit very close to home - literally, considering I live with someone who genuinely thinks exactly these things. Vergil is absolutely someone who complains about "wokeism" online.
Now, not to exclusively compare the story to the regular games, but one thing gets me here. While I like this perspective of "what if Devil May Cry, but more grounded and closer to home?", the main appeal of Devil May Cry is how larger-than-life everyone is. DMC3 sees the likely deaths of thousands off-screen, but it's all in the background because it's not about how demons are affected the regular, mundane world, but about Dante, his crazy style and near-indestrucability, and how he fights his equally outlandish opponents. DmC takes these fundamentals and creates a story where...everyone's JUST a guy. Dante's just the cool guy, cool like the guy from Fight Club. Vergil is literally a guy, all the way until the final couple of missions. Kat is just a normal girl who spends most of the game as either emotional support, in peril, or not there, but a big driving point is that she's just a human. DMC3 did that whole thing much better with Lady - that's not me wishing DmC was more like DMC, this is me wishing DmC was good.
Despite the effort to create this grounded world run by demons, nothing is ever explored. The game sprints from one target to the next, never taking much time to dwell on how the world is shaped by the secret invasion - except for in the energy drink factory, which was embarrassingly heavy-handed. You never get much of an impression of these villains before they're immediately thrown out of the picture. It feels as if a lot was cut from the story, and maybe there was. A particular sore point was during a scene that lives in infamy; while exchanging Lillith (who's carrying Mundus' child and future heir) for Kat (who had been captured earlier) on a bridge, Vergil suddenly aims his FAMAS and directly shoots the unborn child. The result enrages Mundus, leaving thousands likely dead from his outburst, and endangers Kat's life (as she was nowhere near making it back to Dante and Vergil at the time). Vergil justifies this with "having no choice" (killing the unborn child and triggering Mundus' outburst leaves him vulnerable) despite Dante's protests, and...that's it! No further discussion! Next we see them, they're buddied up and taking on Mundus' base of operations together! It's a glaring hole in an already shaky narrative - and Ninja Theory agreed, because the remaster 2 years later added an entire new cutscene addressing exactly this. So I can't help but wonder exactly how deep into the worldbuilding they could have gone.
The story comes to a dreadful conclusion - after Vergil finally does literally anything at all and helps Dante kill Mundus, he pulls the ultimate gotcha - he was secretly planning on usurping Mundus and ruling humanity all along. Now, it wasn't exactly an out of nowhere heel turn, but the way he suddenly ramps it up at the very end feels like a desperate attempt to shoehorn in a Dante vs Vergil boss fight for the sake of it, rather than wait for a sequel (or god forbid, flesh the story out better). It's not even a good fight! But more on that later.
While going over the story, I just realised I never mentioned Phineas. He's the only named person of colour in the game, and he's an imprisoned demon who gives Dante a fetch quest, exposits, and is referenced exactly once afterwards. Everyone else I can remember was white. Between this and the whole anti-Japan stuff...man, this was a horrible time for gaming, huh.
I didn't think I'd have this much to be saying about the story, so I apologise for going on so long about it. But what ties all these elements together is the writing itself. I'm not sure what's up here, but I've never seen a script in my life that's so utterly British without trying to be - but it's being read by people doing American accents. I assumed the voice cast was American, but turns out Vergil's VA is from New Zealand and Dante's is Australian. Do you have any idea how much better these clunkily written swearing tirades would sound if they had kept their native accents? Alas, the voicework is stiff and uncharismatic. It doesn't help that Dante's "cool" insults and quips (which are way too frequent) don't land, but they're read in such an awkward matter, as the American accent does not lend itself well to British speech patterns. Seriously, I've never heard an American use "smashing" as a synonym for "good". For "having sex with", perhaps, but I digress. Vergil's VA gives a mostly lifeless performance, as if warming up while reading the script, and the director went "Perfect! Next line!". Mundus sounds deeply tired, to which I relate, but it's not a terrible performance altogether.
I really don't mind the concepts here, and the direction of certain cutscenes perfectly matches the tone they were aiming for, but it fails to total the sum of its own parts, either from neglect or whatever other excuse it could be. And one last little note about the story; throwing in a direct jab at the original games (A white wig lands on Dante's head, perfectly mimicing OG Dante's hair. He sees his reflection and discards it, claiming "not in a million years".) is a really, really dangerous way to start your story after the PR stuff. It's a cheeky jab that ends up being a brick joke, as Dante's devil trigger turns his jacket red and hair white, which later becomes his default look at the very end of the game. There's genuine appreciation for the original in there, but between Capcom's mandates and whatever the hell was up with the legendary "Dante is" conference, no wonder nobody stuck around to find out.
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay is what people mainly come to DMC for - not to downplay the story, but it was clear DmC put far more stock into its story than the classic DMCs. That said, it didn't entirely slack in the gameplay department either.
COMBAT
But hold your horses, don't praise Ninja Theory just yet. Their prior games are notorious for poor combat, so it was no surprise that Hideaki Itsuno, Mr. Devil May Cry himself, had to swoop in with a team of Capcom's finest and salvage the combat into something resembling the series. Dante still wields Rebellion, and swings are responsive. The moveset is expanded not through red orbs or the weird pride souls of DMC4, but a new skill point system earned for getting a certain amount of experience from kills and finishing levels. Its a decent system for unlocks, and you'll have most of each weapons' moveset unlocked by the end. For each weapon, Y is a light attack, and B is a heavy. A is jump, while X is a bit of a wildcard. While it's typically assigned to your firearm of choice, things get crazier when demon/angel mode are introduced.
By the end of the first third, Dante will have access to Demon and Angel mode, and a respective new weapon for each. Accessing these modes is achieved by holding Left Trigger for Angel mode, and Right Trigger for Demon mode. This changes Rebellion for one of the two weapons of each types you unlock over the course of the game, and can be switched between with the D-Pad. Angel weapons hit weaker and faster, with a wide range suited to crowd control. Demon weapons, meanwhile, are slower and heavier, and reward precise timing. It's a pretty clearly laid out system, if sacrificing the more personal feel for weapons in traditional DMC games. That being said, having to hold down the corresponding trigger whenever you want to use the weapon felt a little disorientating. This only gets more complicated when the grapple hook is factored in.
Early on in the game, Dante gets a grapple hook, clearly inspired by Nero's stretchy arm from DMC4. Functionally, it serves a similar purpose - pull enemies around, and grapple to parts of the level. Implementation, though, was not exactly great. As far as combat goes, what grappling does depends on which trigger you hold. It replaces the firearms button, and if used in Angel mode, it pulls you towards the enemy - the reverse is true for Demon mode. So you really need to think about which type of grapple you want to use - want to grapple towards the enemy to deliver an uppercut with Eryx? You've gotta switch triggers crazy fast. Other than the awkward trigger shifting, it's fun to use in combat, but, well, I'll get into the rest when I discuss level design.
One last thing about the combat is using the bumpers for a quick dodge. DMC traditionally either lacks this, or locks it behind a specific style. So to have this ability always available ...takes virtually all the challenge out of the combat. As soon as you nail how to dodge every attack, you'll never get hit enough for it to matter (and there are plenty of measures even if you get in danger). You can even combine it with the triggers to trigger effects like slowdown when executing a perfect dodge, Bayonetta-style. It's a fun addition, but completely overpowered.
One last thing to note is Devil Trigger - when activated, it causes Dante to regen health for the duration, and immediately suspends all non-boss enemies in mid-air, taking increased damage from aerial combos. I found this utterly bizarre and used it more for the health regen than for killing enemies, as I never saw the need to have to kill enemies by entirely taking away their abilities to fight back.
Overall the combat is fine, it's fun even, but the enemy quality leaves little in the way of variety to how you approach fighting them, and having so many crazy abilities at your disposal without restrictions leaves it feeling like a pale imitation of what Devil May Cry combat really means. Sure, it holds up on its own, but it's not as satisfying. I mainly used Eryx because the long wind-up versus the massive damage felt the most rewarding of all the weapons. If nothing else, they nailed how DMCs gauntlet weapons traditionally feel.
LEVEL DESIGN
As for level design, well. Let's push aside the visuals for later, and talk purely about how they're arranged as areas for the player to traverse. In a word? Thoughtless. Every now and then there may be a decent gimmick, but it's mostly corridor after empty corridor. Sometimes there are hidden paths that lead to collectables, but it's mostly just basic areas that offer no interesting terrain or hazards. I'd say the highlight is right near the start of the game, where there's an amusement park ride that you can uppercut demons into, and later on where there's a passing train that serves the same purpose.
Things become more depressingly repetitive once the grapple is unlocked; now, half of the mundane corridors are replaced with what are essentially quick-time events where Dante grapples from point to point, often switching between the Demon and Angel modes mid-swing. Fun the first time? Sure. How about the tenth? Fiftieth? Two hundred and seventy sixth? Boss fights aren't safe from overuse of the grapple either. I'm pretty sure I ended up using it more than any other weapon, through mandatory platforming alone. Certain ENTIRE LEVELS are just extended quick-time events that blend cutscenes with constant grappling, all the way to the end screen. Come to think of it, this might be the first Devil May Cry game to NOT stop you from throwing yourself into a bottomless pit - previous games always had an invisible wall against any ledge that doesn't lead to another area. This time, you can (and probably will) fall during combat, at the cost of a small chunk of health. It's not a big deal, but it felt a bit annoying when arenas contain such bottomless pits.
Also, remember puzzles? Yeah, there's like...one in the entire game, and not a hard one by any stretch. I see where they were coming from, gamers HATE puzzles, but including a single one feels weird, like it's almost a cheeky reference and not something actually thought out. The REAL challenge is finding those collectables - lost souls that give red orbs, secret doors that lead to secret levels that reward Dante with a health upgrade...and the keys to unlock those hidden doors with, because that's what the game needed. Extra busywork for the things that are already hidden to begin with. Finding them would provide the game with much needed replay value - WOULD. Instead it doesn't - these things are typically hidden at a point where the path branches. However, the instant you unknowingly head down the path that leads to the next part of the level and NOT the collectible, the path will almost immediately be blocked off for the rest of the level. There are these untelegraphed points of no return absolutely everywhere, and it sucks the fun out of hunting for these secrets.
BOSSES
Bosses in DMC came in two flavours - Epic, or What the Fuck Am I Doing With My Life. DmC has but a single flavour; "cinematic". You're basically asked to hit the glowing weakspot over and over, until you can trigger a cutscene that deals the REAL damage. People seem to really praise some of the bosses here for reasons I cannot entirely comprehend. Chief among them is Bob Bargas, the demon in charge of the Fake News. Now, his fight is visually great and all, but like...it's not good?? He simply spews parkour challenges out while you manoeuvre around to the glowing weak spot and get 10 seconds to spam Rebellion before the pattern repeats. This is occasionally broken up by having to wait through a horde of basic mooks while unskippable dialogue plays out. This is actually a common problem with the bosses of this game - segments where you basically have to wait through a segment that you can't deal damage in, that takes little to no skill to get through - simply stalling for time and padding the fight.
I think that actually sums up my main issue with the game design here - it's built like a rollercoaster. Sure, all the scripted sequences will get you the first time, and it'll seem like a blast when you don't know what's coming, but it'll turn into annoying and unskippable padding on future playthroughs.
VISUALS
I finally get to talk about a part of the game that I actually, genuinely like. This game looks fucking sick. You've got all the grimy urban locales, and as basic as they are they fit the vibe of the game perfectly. But then there's Limbo, the fucked-up demon version of the world, and it kind of blew me away when I first started playing. The oppressive red glare, the swirling effects that surround Dante, the way objects shrivel upon approach, and that's before they start fucking with the geometry. Levels often suddenly splinter and break apart into floating chunks of concrete, rocks and sometimes entire buildings, and the amount of care and detail that went into animating every inch of these hellscapes never got old to me.
Perhaps a more repetitive part of the imagery within Limbo are the weird, glossy black rocks that appear all over the place. While it does form a decent layer of the corrupted and deformed design of Limbo, a lot of sequences will involve running down a corridor only for the route to immediately be blocked off by these rocks that suddenly spike up out of nowhere. As such, it's easy to associate one with the other, and they become like a kind of sub-plot device to stop the player from going out of bounds.
Graphics in general are pretty good, for a game of its age. There are a few issues with texture pop-in within cutscenes, and the game will swap between in-engine and pre-rendered cutscenes on a dime, which is impressive if not for the sudden halved framerate. While I have grievances with the character designs themselves, the graphical fidelity with which they are realised is pretty good. The way in which the artstyle shifts in Devil Trigger is also pretty mesmerising. I have to hand it to Ninja Theory, they really did cook here. I'd love to see a non-DmC game that uses this kind of style - I've heard Hellblade has a decent amount to offer on that front? But that's for another time.
CONCLUSION
DmC is frustrating in that it's built on a bad foundation, but with genuine attempts to build something great on top of it. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to its namesake in terms of style or substance, but substitutes this for some pretty wonderful positives of its own. It's cursed to forever live in the shadow of its namesake, but to be fair it did very little to successfully break out of that shadow by itself. Ultimately, DmC: Devil May Cry is not a bad game, but it absolutely lacks the elements that could ascend it to be a truly great game. I'd take this any day over DMC2, and even over DMC4 personally, but an embarrassing story and limited upper potential for the combat holds it back hard. I feel like I could talk more about this game if I thought long and hard, but this review is long enough as it is and I wanna stop thinking about it already...and move on to Vergil's Downfall, which I'll review separately. I can't imagine how that waste of space sinks any lower, but I'll certainly see.
2004
...nah, too easy. That title is way too inviting to jokes I could make at its expense, and I don't even need to considering the game does a good enough job at that anyway.
The early 2000s were a big turnaround for the racing scene. You were either a Gran Turismo, or a Ridge Racer. Then Burnout pretended to up the ante (it really didn't) while Need for Speed sneaked into the fray with NFS Underground. Now racing games weren't just about racing, they were about action, and style. Burnout had plenty of the former, while NFS veered further into the latter. But who's that approaching from behind, trying to overtake? Why, it's Flatout, who's claiming it can do a bit of both.
They weren't wrong, they did what technically constitutes "a bit" of action and style, but it's really not a lot.
Flatout has ambition, if nothing else. Multiple track terrains, a damage model, destructible objects and wacky ragdoll physics? Some of these things were already a thing in contemporary racers, but weren't the focus as seen here. Unfortunately, most of the tracks are on harsh terrain - usually dirt and sometimes snow - that makes handling incredibly harsh. Despite an emphasis to go fast - and a demand to with the nitro feature - flooring it on most of these courses will just send you straight off-course and into a tree.
And you really don't want to hit that tree. Flatout's big thing is how seatbelts were just outlawed in this universe, and thus any notable collision with an object that's not destructible will send your driver flying out of the car in slo-mo. You then have to wait a few seconds before respawning several meters backwards from where you crashed - and every second of that wait is agony. Burnout 3 was a game that also prided itself on crashes, but those were high speed and exciting. Not to mention, you'd quickly respawn either where you crashed, or even a few yards ahead. It kept the momentum of the race without condemning you to last place for crashing. Flatout doesn't care, you can't handle its poor driving physics and worse crashing physics? Go to hell, have fun coming last.
It's not even a skill issue thing, the physics are just piss poor. You'll notice that very quickly in its bonus modes - there's the dumb stuff like bowling and darts, which feel like something out of Goat Simulator despite predating it by a considerable margin. Demolition Derby though, that's where its at - or at least, it would be if not for how a minor bump in the road takes off 75% of your health. For how genuinely well done the damage model is for a game that probably has a lower budget than Burnout 3, the actual damage mechanics are simply sub-par. That's not to mention the physics of ramming into destructible objects. While you gain nitro from hitting these objects, any car from the first two-thirds of the game will take a massive hit to their speed when you hit them. If anything, it does less to incentivise you hitting these objects, and more to make them into a catch-up mechanic instead. It's not inherently bad, but a bit of a headscratcher to make one of your major selling points into a negative effect.
It's not all bad - as mentioned, the damage model is superb for its time and the graphics in general are ok. What really surprised me is how well it's running on modern PCs - well, except how controller support is a disaster. You can bind modern-style controls in settings, but this also has the knock-on effect of binding those to keyboard commands...including in menus. To explain: if you set accelerate to right trigger, and brakes to left, the right and left triggers are now UP and DOWN in the menus. Deeply silly.
The soundtrack goes the licensed route, but EA had booked all the good artists so Bugbear had to make do. There aren't many songs and you'll be hearing a lot of the same ones over and over, during the 9-hour runtime. They didn't really get me in the racing mood, I must admit, but neither did the game in general.
Flatout might be entertaining if you are a child and have never played any better racing game before, but I don't think it holds up to scrutiny. Crashing is more annoying than it is funny, the amount of poor terrain tracks is exhausting - and how come you can't sell your car to get money towards a new one? You only get to keep one at a time, and upgrade the hell out of them, so why I gotta give them away to buy a new one? Yeah, not great, could be so much better.
The early 2000s were a big turnaround for the racing scene. You were either a Gran Turismo, or a Ridge Racer. Then Burnout pretended to up the ante (it really didn't) while Need for Speed sneaked into the fray with NFS Underground. Now racing games weren't just about racing, they were about action, and style. Burnout had plenty of the former, while NFS veered further into the latter. But who's that approaching from behind, trying to overtake? Why, it's Flatout, who's claiming it can do a bit of both.
They weren't wrong, they did what technically constitutes "a bit" of action and style, but it's really not a lot.
Flatout has ambition, if nothing else. Multiple track terrains, a damage model, destructible objects and wacky ragdoll physics? Some of these things were already a thing in contemporary racers, but weren't the focus as seen here. Unfortunately, most of the tracks are on harsh terrain - usually dirt and sometimes snow - that makes handling incredibly harsh. Despite an emphasis to go fast - and a demand to with the nitro feature - flooring it on most of these courses will just send you straight off-course and into a tree.
And you really don't want to hit that tree. Flatout's big thing is how seatbelts were just outlawed in this universe, and thus any notable collision with an object that's not destructible will send your driver flying out of the car in slo-mo. You then have to wait a few seconds before respawning several meters backwards from where you crashed - and every second of that wait is agony. Burnout 3 was a game that also prided itself on crashes, but those were high speed and exciting. Not to mention, you'd quickly respawn either where you crashed, or even a few yards ahead. It kept the momentum of the race without condemning you to last place for crashing. Flatout doesn't care, you can't handle its poor driving physics and worse crashing physics? Go to hell, have fun coming last.
It's not even a skill issue thing, the physics are just piss poor. You'll notice that very quickly in its bonus modes - there's the dumb stuff like bowling and darts, which feel like something out of Goat Simulator despite predating it by a considerable margin. Demolition Derby though, that's where its at - or at least, it would be if not for how a minor bump in the road takes off 75% of your health. For how genuinely well done the damage model is for a game that probably has a lower budget than Burnout 3, the actual damage mechanics are simply sub-par. That's not to mention the physics of ramming into destructible objects. While you gain nitro from hitting these objects, any car from the first two-thirds of the game will take a massive hit to their speed when you hit them. If anything, it does less to incentivise you hitting these objects, and more to make them into a catch-up mechanic instead. It's not inherently bad, but a bit of a headscratcher to make one of your major selling points into a negative effect.
It's not all bad - as mentioned, the damage model is superb for its time and the graphics in general are ok. What really surprised me is how well it's running on modern PCs - well, except how controller support is a disaster. You can bind modern-style controls in settings, but this also has the knock-on effect of binding those to keyboard commands...including in menus. To explain: if you set accelerate to right trigger, and brakes to left, the right and left triggers are now UP and DOWN in the menus. Deeply silly.
The soundtrack goes the licensed route, but EA had booked all the good artists so Bugbear had to make do. There aren't many songs and you'll be hearing a lot of the same ones over and over, during the 9-hour runtime. They didn't really get me in the racing mood, I must admit, but neither did the game in general.
Flatout might be entertaining if you are a child and have never played any better racing game before, but I don't think it holds up to scrutiny. Crashing is more annoying than it is funny, the amount of poor terrain tracks is exhausting - and how come you can't sell your car to get money towards a new one? You only get to keep one at a time, and upgrade the hell out of them, so why I gotta give them away to buy a new one? Yeah, not great, could be so much better.
2021
You know, if an entire country can collapse from one guy setting off an EMP, I think your society might just be a lost cause.
Co-op gaming has been going interesting places lately. On the one hand, you have It Takes Two surpassing all odds to take Game of the Year 2021. On the other, you have Halo Infinite going out of its way to utterly fail to live up to previous entries by launching without co-op, and abandoning all plans for split-screen. Chances are, if there's a big co-op game that launches these days, it's a horde shooter. Operation Tango seeks to veer more towards the adventure-style gameplay seen in games like It Takes Two (as well as its Friend Pass system), but arguably veers closer to the We Were Here series. But what sets it apart from the rest is the asymmetrical gameplay that both players sit through.
One player picks the role of agent, while the other fills the role of the hacker. Agents do all the field work, while the hacker supports them from elsewhere. Both players have to communicate constantly to relay each others information to each other, as well as collaborate in several minigames. It's a really great foundation, and the early missions do a great job at introducing the concept before the later missions get really creative. Certain sections do feel a fair bit derivative of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, but the story elements that run alongside it keep the pace going strong.
Graphics are stylised to a degree, but it's certainly not a strong draw for the game by any means. It's cartoony, but not strikingly cel-shaded or anything along those lines. Music felt very much in-the-background and didn't grab me at any point, but it's acceptable, cliche espionage music, riffing off of the classic Bond vibes.
Sadly, Tango drops the ball in many places - though I think the games strengths outweigh the flaws, it's by a narrow margin. The final mission is just pure ass, opening with a mediocre stealth sequence that is incredibly brief, before going to a large, uninteresting environment with poorly explained mechanics that led to a lot of frustration for both me and the hacker guiding me. This then led to another, disastorous stealth sequence. Control-wise, you can only walk or run - no crouching or jumping. They're hardly necessary, but when confronted with instant fail stealth sequences the stiff controls become very noticeable.
Additionally, the game's just really short. Doing all the main story missions left it at just under 4 hours, and from what I understand the puzzle solutions either don't change or have very little variance, so there's zero replay value. There are post-game challenges, and I might amend the review if and when I check them out, but I just want a damn break after that last mission.
Most baffling to me was the performance. I'm not sure if this is just a me thing given I've seen no other complaints, but - this is one of the worst PC ports I've ever seen. There are no graphic options, like, legitimately none other than resolution and "low graphics mode". Despite this, the game inexplicably turns my PC up to 90 degrees Celsius (and based on my limited knowledge of Fahrenheit, that's about 520,000 degrees or something) and runs like utter shit. Doom 2016 is less demanding than this game.
Altogether, this game is in a weird spot for me. It has style and charm, but being so short and unreplayable leaves it feeling low-value. I almost definitely wouldn't have bought the game were it not for being in a Humble Bundle, and while the Friend Pass is a nice and welcome inclusion, there are a LOT of things that hold this game back. I wish the developers all the best if they choose to make a follow up - hopefully the first thing they tackle is basic PC optimisation.
Co-op gaming has been going interesting places lately. On the one hand, you have It Takes Two surpassing all odds to take Game of the Year 2021. On the other, you have Halo Infinite going out of its way to utterly fail to live up to previous entries by launching without co-op, and abandoning all plans for split-screen. Chances are, if there's a big co-op game that launches these days, it's a horde shooter. Operation Tango seeks to veer more towards the adventure-style gameplay seen in games like It Takes Two (as well as its Friend Pass system), but arguably veers closer to the We Were Here series. But what sets it apart from the rest is the asymmetrical gameplay that both players sit through.
One player picks the role of agent, while the other fills the role of the hacker. Agents do all the field work, while the hacker supports them from elsewhere. Both players have to communicate constantly to relay each others information to each other, as well as collaborate in several minigames. It's a really great foundation, and the early missions do a great job at introducing the concept before the later missions get really creative. Certain sections do feel a fair bit derivative of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, but the story elements that run alongside it keep the pace going strong.
Graphics are stylised to a degree, but it's certainly not a strong draw for the game by any means. It's cartoony, but not strikingly cel-shaded or anything along those lines. Music felt very much in-the-background and didn't grab me at any point, but it's acceptable, cliche espionage music, riffing off of the classic Bond vibes.
Sadly, Tango drops the ball in many places - though I think the games strengths outweigh the flaws, it's by a narrow margin. The final mission is just pure ass, opening with a mediocre stealth sequence that is incredibly brief, before going to a large, uninteresting environment with poorly explained mechanics that led to a lot of frustration for both me and the hacker guiding me. This then led to another, disastorous stealth sequence. Control-wise, you can only walk or run - no crouching or jumping. They're hardly necessary, but when confronted with instant fail stealth sequences the stiff controls become very noticeable.
Additionally, the game's just really short. Doing all the main story missions left it at just under 4 hours, and from what I understand the puzzle solutions either don't change or have very little variance, so there's zero replay value. There are post-game challenges, and I might amend the review if and when I check them out, but I just want a damn break after that last mission.
Most baffling to me was the performance. I'm not sure if this is just a me thing given I've seen no other complaints, but - this is one of the worst PC ports I've ever seen. There are no graphic options, like, legitimately none other than resolution and "low graphics mode". Despite this, the game inexplicably turns my PC up to 90 degrees Celsius (and based on my limited knowledge of Fahrenheit, that's about 520,000 degrees or something) and runs like utter shit. Doom 2016 is less demanding than this game.
Altogether, this game is in a weird spot for me. It has style and charm, but being so short and unreplayable leaves it feeling low-value. I almost definitely wouldn't have bought the game were it not for being in a Humble Bundle, and while the Friend Pass is a nice and welcome inclusion, there are a LOT of things that hold this game back. I wish the developers all the best if they choose to make a follow up - hopefully the first thing they tackle is basic PC optimisation.
You know, maybe if Dracula just moved his castle to the moon, he'd be bothered a lot less by the Belmonts. It worked for Rita Repulsa, so why not?
Circle of the Moon is a deeply confused game that can't seem to figure out how it wants to play. By this point the original formula, having peaked with Rondo of Blood, seemed to have been replaced by the new Metroid-esque one set by Koji Igarashi's Symphony of the Night. Attempts to bring the series into 3D led to a decent attempt, but took two attempts to make a product that people even sort-of liked, so it was looking rough on that front. So with the series' GBA debut - as a launch title, no less - it's clear that KOBE (developers of the 64 titles) wanted to try and recapture SotN's magic, despite not being the same team that made it. And boy, does it really show.
The critical issue I take with the design of the game is how there's an immediate juxtaposition with the way it controls. Symphony of the Night had slow, deliberate movement mixed with a default sword attack that was fast and responsive, making you feel very in control, if restricted. Within the first 10 minutes of CotM, Nathan Graves will be able to dash around at a double-tap of the d-pad(argh) and jump long distances. A mobile protagonist is not at all an issue, but the primary whip attack completely counteracts this by being as slow and delayed as it was in the original NES entries. It's such a weird contradiction, how you can manoeuvre with unprecedented agility but have to manage the whip swings. Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this game's issues.
Dracula's castle is as different as ever, and boy, is it vertical or what this time around? The general design of the castle is just really, really tedious to traverse, and the different areas feel uninspired for the most part. I can't believe the sewer section was one of the more refreshing segments, and even that was dragged down by tedious switch puzzles. I understand they were limited by the GBA, especially with it being a launch title, but that isn't going to get sympathy points from me. While you eventually gain abilities that make it easier to traverse the castle, it doesn't make it any more fun to explore - simply less tedious. Some of the obstacles that lock your progression are pretty embarrassing, as well. Iron Maiden doors unlocked by hitting a specific switch? Sure, I can tolerate that, but - wooden boxes? Wooden fucking boxes as obstacles, are you kidding me? Nathan can whip Death himself to, well, not exactly death but - but you're telling me his whip can do that but not break a wooden fucking box?? I even tried using a fire ability on it - more on that part later - but no, you need a lategame ability that allows you to slowly push them out of the way. I'm not expecting Nate to turn into a wolf or a ball of fog or anything, but is this the best they could come up with?
Level design aside, what really, really hurt this game for me was the RNG. While SotN had a healthy mix of items you could discover through exploration as well as random drops, and also a shop if you have the cash handy, CotM puts everything - EVERYTHING - behind random drops from enemies. And these drops can be in the realm of 1%, if the devs felt particularly cruel. Every armor, item and card is locked behind this asinine grind.
Yeah, card. The big gimmick that sets CotM apart is the addition of a card system. There are two type of cards, and about 10 of each. You can then mix and match them in pairs, which trigger different ablities that drain your MP. These range from shields, stat boosts, whip upgrades or new weapons altogether. As a system, it's pretty nice, though switching between card configurations can be pace-breaking in the middle of a fight. Unfortunately, every card is a rare drop from specific enemies. The Advance Collection port, by default, adds two features that do aid this. For one, it gives a pop up every time you hit an enemy that can drop a card, and whether you own it yet or not. Secondly, you can rewind at any point during gameplay. While I refused to use it to undo mistakes, it makes grinding for the card drops just a little bit less tedious. Simply rewind to just before you kill the enemy, hit it on a different frame, and pray. Even with luck boosting gear and rewind, it took me 20 minutes to get a card once. The fact that your stats can fall behind due to getting unlucky with armor drops as well is another side effect at this that I deeply dislike.
There's story, by the way, but it's as whatever as Castlevania plots usually are. Dracula's back, your master's in trouble, go save him while you get bitched at by some other loser who blundered in with you. I can't knock it when it's no less hollow than the typical Castlevania story, though I do miss the hammed up voice acting. Not that I'd expect it on GBA, but ah well.
Speaking of GBA sound, while I've never been too fond of the soundchip of the console, CotM's soundtrack is by all means OK. Not exactly an instant set of classics - actually, on the contrary, almost the entire soundtrack is reused from older games. They're fine remixes, though I think I like those tracks a little less now that I've heard them looped so many times while losing my will to live.
Altogether, I really think the team at KOBE should've made a more traditional Castlevania game as their GBA launch title. I appreciate what they tried, but the asinine design decisions made here leave it as just an OK, mediocre title that feels like a lesser imitation of SotN. As far as I'm aware, there's a romhack that turns the cards into pickups instead of RNG drops. That alone would've bumped this up a whole star, just saying.
Circle of the Moon is a deeply confused game that can't seem to figure out how it wants to play. By this point the original formula, having peaked with Rondo of Blood, seemed to have been replaced by the new Metroid-esque one set by Koji Igarashi's Symphony of the Night. Attempts to bring the series into 3D led to a decent attempt, but took two attempts to make a product that people even sort-of liked, so it was looking rough on that front. So with the series' GBA debut - as a launch title, no less - it's clear that KOBE (developers of the 64 titles) wanted to try and recapture SotN's magic, despite not being the same team that made it. And boy, does it really show.
The critical issue I take with the design of the game is how there's an immediate juxtaposition with the way it controls. Symphony of the Night had slow, deliberate movement mixed with a default sword attack that was fast and responsive, making you feel very in control, if restricted. Within the first 10 minutes of CotM, Nathan Graves will be able to dash around at a double-tap of the d-pad(argh) and jump long distances. A mobile protagonist is not at all an issue, but the primary whip attack completely counteracts this by being as slow and delayed as it was in the original NES entries. It's such a weird contradiction, how you can manoeuvre with unprecedented agility but have to manage the whip swings. Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this game's issues.
Dracula's castle is as different as ever, and boy, is it vertical or what this time around? The general design of the castle is just really, really tedious to traverse, and the different areas feel uninspired for the most part. I can't believe the sewer section was one of the more refreshing segments, and even that was dragged down by tedious switch puzzles. I understand they were limited by the GBA, especially with it being a launch title, but that isn't going to get sympathy points from me. While you eventually gain abilities that make it easier to traverse the castle, it doesn't make it any more fun to explore - simply less tedious. Some of the obstacles that lock your progression are pretty embarrassing, as well. Iron Maiden doors unlocked by hitting a specific switch? Sure, I can tolerate that, but - wooden boxes? Wooden fucking boxes as obstacles, are you kidding me? Nathan can whip Death himself to, well, not exactly death but - but you're telling me his whip can do that but not break a wooden fucking box?? I even tried using a fire ability on it - more on that part later - but no, you need a lategame ability that allows you to slowly push them out of the way. I'm not expecting Nate to turn into a wolf or a ball of fog or anything, but is this the best they could come up with?
Level design aside, what really, really hurt this game for me was the RNG. While SotN had a healthy mix of items you could discover through exploration as well as random drops, and also a shop if you have the cash handy, CotM puts everything - EVERYTHING - behind random drops from enemies. And these drops can be in the realm of 1%, if the devs felt particularly cruel. Every armor, item and card is locked behind this asinine grind.
Yeah, card. The big gimmick that sets CotM apart is the addition of a card system. There are two type of cards, and about 10 of each. You can then mix and match them in pairs, which trigger different ablities that drain your MP. These range from shields, stat boosts, whip upgrades or new weapons altogether. As a system, it's pretty nice, though switching between card configurations can be pace-breaking in the middle of a fight. Unfortunately, every card is a rare drop from specific enemies. The Advance Collection port, by default, adds two features that do aid this. For one, it gives a pop up every time you hit an enemy that can drop a card, and whether you own it yet or not. Secondly, you can rewind at any point during gameplay. While I refused to use it to undo mistakes, it makes grinding for the card drops just a little bit less tedious. Simply rewind to just before you kill the enemy, hit it on a different frame, and pray. Even with luck boosting gear and rewind, it took me 20 minutes to get a card once. The fact that your stats can fall behind due to getting unlucky with armor drops as well is another side effect at this that I deeply dislike.
There's story, by the way, but it's as whatever as Castlevania plots usually are. Dracula's back, your master's in trouble, go save him while you get bitched at by some other loser who blundered in with you. I can't knock it when it's no less hollow than the typical Castlevania story, though I do miss the hammed up voice acting. Not that I'd expect it on GBA, but ah well.
Speaking of GBA sound, while I've never been too fond of the soundchip of the console, CotM's soundtrack is by all means OK. Not exactly an instant set of classics - actually, on the contrary, almost the entire soundtrack is reused from older games. They're fine remixes, though I think I like those tracks a little less now that I've heard them looped so many times while losing my will to live.
Altogether, I really think the team at KOBE should've made a more traditional Castlevania game as their GBA launch title. I appreciate what they tried, but the asinine design decisions made here leave it as just an OK, mediocre title that feels like a lesser imitation of SotN. As far as I'm aware, there's a romhack that turns the cards into pickups instead of RNG drops. That alone would've bumped this up a whole star, just saying.
1996
Yes Barry, push random buttons on the computer connected to the bioweapon directly next to it. I'm sure that'll go great.
Resident Evil for the Playstation. While it defined an era of horror, not just in gaming but within media as a whole, it just doesn't really hold up. Between the graphics, the voice acting, and those awful tank controls, it just doesn't really hold up in the modern d - hahaHAHA just kidding, it's always been great and always will be. All of these things and more arguably do more to add to the experience, rather than take away.
The idea of survival horror wasn't really a thing at this point - hell, it was Resi here that coined the term itself to begin with. If you've seen or played Capcom's earlier Famicom game "Sweet Home", you can see some of the foundations that formed mechanics within Resi, itself originally intended as a remake of that game. Limited inventory slots, multiple playable characters with differing abilities, albeit both downplayed somewhat compared to their spiritual predecessor. I've always hated the sound of limited inventory and save items, but in practice, it's ingenious in how it establishes difficulty in this way.
For reference, I played this game through the Director's Cut, but specifically on the original mode - from what I'm aware of, this is the unchanged Japanese difficulty from the original release. The American version of the original censored certain things, as well as additional restrictions such as no auto-aim, which is probably the sole reason I hear so much complaint about the tank controls. I played both Chris and Jill's scenarios - Jill's first, as she's intended as the easy mode, but I also played on Director's Cut's own easy mode because I wasn't sold on the gameplay loop yet. Needless to say, Chris' scenario was played on Original. I'll review Director's Cut separately whenever I play the Arrange mode that it introduced.
Probably the most infamous thing about Resident Evil is the story - specifically the embarrassing voice acting and corny lines. Funnily enough, the game was to have a full Japanese dub, but the director found the performances inadequate, and figured the English ones were much better despite not understanding how they sound to native speakers. I feel like I've heard this argument before...but anyways. As silly as the lines are, it's hard to claim that they do anything but enrich the experience. I'd probably have been bored to death by the cutscenes if they were played completely straight with professional VAs, but the bad line reads give it something to remember it by. The story itself isn't necessarily bad by any means, and the way exposition is cleverly distributed via diary entries and logs found in the places you'd expect to realistically find them is a great touch. Every now and then though, a cutscene gets just a little bit too talky - moreso near the end. The live action FMVs, as few as they are, are also a treat to behold. Solid production values, particularly for a game of this era. What's lost in the cheesiness is made up for in some of the really gruesome gore.
As for the gameplay - it's fantastic. Armed with little more than a handgun, you're in a mansion full of zombies. Ammo is scarce, though not if you're good at looting and managing your inventory. You'll probably be able to find enough ammo to kill every zombie you need to, but not right away. Fortunately, zombies will tend to face the walls for a second or two while they pursue you, giving you the window you need to hold forward and dart past. The tank controls are a necessary thing here - the game uses pre-rendered backgrounds, which look fantastic, then renders the models over them almost seamlessly. Due to this, fixed camera angles are used. It can get disorientating if the angle changes at a pivotal moment, but it's rarely a game-ender. If you had traditional free movement, it would get very hard to keep control of your character as the definition of "forwards" is constantly changing.
It's also pretty damn easy to manoeuvre once you get the hang of how to "steer" with the D-pad. And because auto-aim is actually present in Director's Cut/the original Japanese version, all you need to do to shoot at an enemy is to hold ready, and blast. While you can aim your weapon up and down, I found there very little reason to do either. Supposedly aiming up at super-close range makes it easier to score an all-important headshot, but it'll typically just cause you to miss - unless your opponent is on the ceiling.
Getting grabbed by a zombie is usually cue to mash all the buttons to minimise damage, and there are plenty of healing items to find around. Some items will be important to get extra resources, or progress the plot. Of course, this is where limited inventory comes in, and it's fantastic at raising the tension. Do you bring the extra ammo, or use that slot for a healing item? Do you keep a spare slot open in case you find something important? Maybe you should leave that ammo there for now just in case...maybe you should bring this key item in case it's useful up ahead? Shit! Wrong key item! It adds this layer of strategy to the game that leaves you heading back to the item box - which mysteriously lets you access the same pool of stored items from each box, but hey I'm not complaining. If you need an item that you left in storage, you'll need to plot your path to the nearest Safe Room to grab it - and assuming you didn't take out every zombie on the way, that's another risky attempt you'll have to make at dodging them. Backtracking can still get a little tedious, but at least here it adds to a loop of tension.
I do still have some issues with the gameplay, though. Certain enemy types are just a little bit difficult to deal with, especially in larger numbers. It's one thing to have to weave among shambling undeads, but when things get faster - well, you obviously don't, so it becomes a case of "stand your ground and don't run out of ammo". This extends further to the boss encounters within the game, which I personally don't think entirely compliment the game design that it establishes. There are a fair few exceptions, but certain boss fights follow the Doom tradition of "shoot it until it dies" and while that's certainly possible, it doesn't feel especially right with the limited movement of your character. I much prefer the boss encounters that rely on you being able to utilise environmental elements to succeed, rather than just brute force, and there are a couple that are like this. Still, I'm hoping the sequel is better in that regard.
I've touched on the pre-rendered backgrounds, but the graphics in general are great. For one, I played this at the native resolution, as PS1 polygons simply don't look as good at higher resolutions. It creates a better effect when the details are more pixelated, and your brain sort of automatically fills in the detail itself. There's a surprising amount of work put into the blood and gore, such as dismemberment and the way playermodels bloody when killed. Beyond that, though, the janky animations also lend this uncanny feeling to the atmosphere already generated by the gameplay, and the sharp musical score. It's a great soundtrack, and it pains me that the Dualshock version exists as a substitute.
I didn't expect to like Resident Evil as a franchise, but just like that, the original game has immediately sold me on the series. It's goofy, it's primitive, and takes some learning to play by its rules, but the original game is still a fun and rewarding experience that I'm glad caught on the way it did.
Resident Evil for the Playstation. While it defined an era of horror, not just in gaming but within media as a whole, it just doesn't really hold up. Between the graphics, the voice acting, and those awful tank controls, it just doesn't really hold up in the modern d - hahaHAHA just kidding, it's always been great and always will be. All of these things and more arguably do more to add to the experience, rather than take away.
The idea of survival horror wasn't really a thing at this point - hell, it was Resi here that coined the term itself to begin with. If you've seen or played Capcom's earlier Famicom game "Sweet Home", you can see some of the foundations that formed mechanics within Resi, itself originally intended as a remake of that game. Limited inventory slots, multiple playable characters with differing abilities, albeit both downplayed somewhat compared to their spiritual predecessor. I've always hated the sound of limited inventory and save items, but in practice, it's ingenious in how it establishes difficulty in this way.
For reference, I played this game through the Director's Cut, but specifically on the original mode - from what I'm aware of, this is the unchanged Japanese difficulty from the original release. The American version of the original censored certain things, as well as additional restrictions such as no auto-aim, which is probably the sole reason I hear so much complaint about the tank controls. I played both Chris and Jill's scenarios - Jill's first, as she's intended as the easy mode, but I also played on Director's Cut's own easy mode because I wasn't sold on the gameplay loop yet. Needless to say, Chris' scenario was played on Original. I'll review Director's Cut separately whenever I play the Arrange mode that it introduced.
Probably the most infamous thing about Resident Evil is the story - specifically the embarrassing voice acting and corny lines. Funnily enough, the game was to have a full Japanese dub, but the director found the performances inadequate, and figured the English ones were much better despite not understanding how they sound to native speakers. I feel like I've heard this argument before...but anyways. As silly as the lines are, it's hard to claim that they do anything but enrich the experience. I'd probably have been bored to death by the cutscenes if they were played completely straight with professional VAs, but the bad line reads give it something to remember it by. The story itself isn't necessarily bad by any means, and the way exposition is cleverly distributed via diary entries and logs found in the places you'd expect to realistically find them is a great touch. Every now and then though, a cutscene gets just a little bit too talky - moreso near the end. The live action FMVs, as few as they are, are also a treat to behold. Solid production values, particularly for a game of this era. What's lost in the cheesiness is made up for in some of the really gruesome gore.
As for the gameplay - it's fantastic. Armed with little more than a handgun, you're in a mansion full of zombies. Ammo is scarce, though not if you're good at looting and managing your inventory. You'll probably be able to find enough ammo to kill every zombie you need to, but not right away. Fortunately, zombies will tend to face the walls for a second or two while they pursue you, giving you the window you need to hold forward and dart past. The tank controls are a necessary thing here - the game uses pre-rendered backgrounds, which look fantastic, then renders the models over them almost seamlessly. Due to this, fixed camera angles are used. It can get disorientating if the angle changes at a pivotal moment, but it's rarely a game-ender. If you had traditional free movement, it would get very hard to keep control of your character as the definition of "forwards" is constantly changing.
It's also pretty damn easy to manoeuvre once you get the hang of how to "steer" with the D-pad. And because auto-aim is actually present in Director's Cut/the original Japanese version, all you need to do to shoot at an enemy is to hold ready, and blast. While you can aim your weapon up and down, I found there very little reason to do either. Supposedly aiming up at super-close range makes it easier to score an all-important headshot, but it'll typically just cause you to miss - unless your opponent is on the ceiling.
Getting grabbed by a zombie is usually cue to mash all the buttons to minimise damage, and there are plenty of healing items to find around. Some items will be important to get extra resources, or progress the plot. Of course, this is where limited inventory comes in, and it's fantastic at raising the tension. Do you bring the extra ammo, or use that slot for a healing item? Do you keep a spare slot open in case you find something important? Maybe you should leave that ammo there for now just in case...maybe you should bring this key item in case it's useful up ahead? Shit! Wrong key item! It adds this layer of strategy to the game that leaves you heading back to the item box - which mysteriously lets you access the same pool of stored items from each box, but hey I'm not complaining. If you need an item that you left in storage, you'll need to plot your path to the nearest Safe Room to grab it - and assuming you didn't take out every zombie on the way, that's another risky attempt you'll have to make at dodging them. Backtracking can still get a little tedious, but at least here it adds to a loop of tension.
I do still have some issues with the gameplay, though. Certain enemy types are just a little bit difficult to deal with, especially in larger numbers. It's one thing to have to weave among shambling undeads, but when things get faster - well, you obviously don't, so it becomes a case of "stand your ground and don't run out of ammo". This extends further to the boss encounters within the game, which I personally don't think entirely compliment the game design that it establishes. There are a fair few exceptions, but certain boss fights follow the Doom tradition of "shoot it until it dies" and while that's certainly possible, it doesn't feel especially right with the limited movement of your character. I much prefer the boss encounters that rely on you being able to utilise environmental elements to succeed, rather than just brute force, and there are a couple that are like this. Still, I'm hoping the sequel is better in that regard.
I've touched on the pre-rendered backgrounds, but the graphics in general are great. For one, I played this at the native resolution, as PS1 polygons simply don't look as good at higher resolutions. It creates a better effect when the details are more pixelated, and your brain sort of automatically fills in the detail itself. There's a surprising amount of work put into the blood and gore, such as dismemberment and the way playermodels bloody when killed. Beyond that, though, the janky animations also lend this uncanny feeling to the atmosphere already generated by the gameplay, and the sharp musical score. It's a great soundtrack, and it pains me that the Dualshock version exists as a substitute.
I didn't expect to like Resident Evil as a franchise, but just like that, the original game has immediately sold me on the series. It's goofy, it's primitive, and takes some learning to play by its rules, but the original game is still a fun and rewarding experience that I'm glad caught on the way it did.
Ok, before we talk about the game itself - what in the Goosebumps is that title font?
Legacy of Darkness exists in a weird little spot. People complain about remakes and remasters happening way too quickly these days, such as The Last of Us Part I or Spider-Man Remastered. Leave it to Konami, then, to be over 20 years ahead of the trend - Legacy of Darkness is a weird, sort-of remake of the same year's Castlevania on N64, basically being the finished product compared to Castlevania's rushed release state. Most people consider it a direct upgrade. Me? I'm not sure it's quite that simple.
Rather than Reinhardt or Carrie, you only have one campaign unlocked from the start; newcomer Cornell. He's a man-beast who has a somewhat unique moveset compared to the original games' characters. His main attack is this projectile that takes the best parts of Reinhardt and Carrie's attacks - it deals as much damage as Reinhardt's whip, while having a range similar to Carrie's magic. It doesn't track, but it moves fast enough for it to not really matter. I found it surprisingly overpowered for most of the game, to be honest, though the new bosses won't all have you missing the old attacks.
Cornell can also assume a man-beast form with one of the triggers. This basically increases your stats a fair amount, but drains your crystals each second - which, by the way, are still used for your sub-weapons. It's a good idea, but with a crucial flaw: it cannot be disabled once activated. So if you accidentally trigger it, well, no more subweapons for you.
Speaking of subweapons, they're all about the same as before - knife for quick projectile attacks (which is almost useless for Cornell considering his basic attack is just the same, but better), axe flies in an arc, cross acts like a powerful boomerang, and holy water creates a damage area on the floor for a period of time. One big difference, though, is that collecting duplicate subweapons now upgrades them up to twice, massively increasing their area of effect and damage. It's a great change, though annoyingly they go back to level 1 upon loading a save file, be it from dying or powering off.
Cornell's campaign is the longest by far, adding in a bunch of new levels while overhauling the older ones. While it puts a lot more meat on the game's bones, I found it to become a little tedious, maybe outstaying its welcome. It makes better use of the day/night cycle for the dungeons compared to the original release, but mainly through a labyrinth of day/night doors. You can probably imagine how tedious it gets to keep going into the menu and using a sun card or moon card to change the time of day just to open a door - now imagine that 20 times in succession. Castlevania 64 was short, but I think I preferred that length compared to Legacy of Darkness' - and this is just one of four different campaigns in the game.
The second campaign you unlock is that of Henry, and it's the most unique of the campaigns between the four. You have 7 in-game days to find 6 children, scattered through a small selection of the levels. It's a fun change, but it relies on you knowing the layout of these levels to begin with. As such, I can't agree entirely with the notion that you can play Legacy of Darkness instead of Castlevania 64, as a campaign such as Henry's makes more sense after beating both Cornell's campaign, as well as Reinhardt and Carrie's from the original release. Now, while both of their campaigns are also in Legacy of Darkness, there's a reason I've not brought it up - they're unlocked for saving a certain amount of children from Henry's campaign. Even then, they use the remixed level designs from Cornell's campaign, so it's not quite the same experience.
If there's one thing that stands out about Henry's campaign though, it's his weapon. These losers brought a whip, some shitty magic and whatever those projectiles are to fight vampires and shit? Henry isn't messing around - he brought a motherfucking GUN to this fight. Not many games cause me to physically pogchamp, but pressing the attack button for the first time only to hear a gunshot was enough to illicit that reaction in me. Combat with Henry is such a one-sided joke with his firearm that I'd say it's best saved for last, when you've already beaten the other three stories.
Altogether, it's definitely got more going on than Castlevania 64, but it takes away a little from what made me like it. The camera controls are different - instead of three choices of automatic camera, there are only two now. I found the auto camera to be a lot worse in this game, but as it turns out you can now use the D-pad to manually adjust it yourself, so that counts for something.
What bothered me a little more is the music. I mentioned in my Castlevania 64 review how much I liked how they went for a more atmospheric, B-movie horror style feel. Legacy of Darkness retains some of the music, but also throws in a few more Rondo of Blood remixes. It's nice to hear them, but it takes away from the unique identity of the N64 titles in my opinion. Symphony of the Night got to go all out with their music direction, so it pains me to see this get stifled in that regard.
Altogether, I find this to be a decent little 3D platformer that makes gameplay improvements, but stylistic downgrades from its predecessor. They even took out the hammy voice acting! Still, it's worth a try. Begrudgingly, I'll admit that if you have to play only one of them, that you'll probably enjoy Legacy of Darkness more than 64, but I maintain that the optimal way is to play 64 first, and appreciate (or not) the changes that LoD goes on to make.
Legacy of Darkness exists in a weird little spot. People complain about remakes and remasters happening way too quickly these days, such as The Last of Us Part I or Spider-Man Remastered. Leave it to Konami, then, to be over 20 years ahead of the trend - Legacy of Darkness is a weird, sort-of remake of the same year's Castlevania on N64, basically being the finished product compared to Castlevania's rushed release state. Most people consider it a direct upgrade. Me? I'm not sure it's quite that simple.
Rather than Reinhardt or Carrie, you only have one campaign unlocked from the start; newcomer Cornell. He's a man-beast who has a somewhat unique moveset compared to the original games' characters. His main attack is this projectile that takes the best parts of Reinhardt and Carrie's attacks - it deals as much damage as Reinhardt's whip, while having a range similar to Carrie's magic. It doesn't track, but it moves fast enough for it to not really matter. I found it surprisingly overpowered for most of the game, to be honest, though the new bosses won't all have you missing the old attacks.
Cornell can also assume a man-beast form with one of the triggers. This basically increases your stats a fair amount, but drains your crystals each second - which, by the way, are still used for your sub-weapons. It's a good idea, but with a crucial flaw: it cannot be disabled once activated. So if you accidentally trigger it, well, no more subweapons for you.
Speaking of subweapons, they're all about the same as before - knife for quick projectile attacks (which is almost useless for Cornell considering his basic attack is just the same, but better), axe flies in an arc, cross acts like a powerful boomerang, and holy water creates a damage area on the floor for a period of time. One big difference, though, is that collecting duplicate subweapons now upgrades them up to twice, massively increasing their area of effect and damage. It's a great change, though annoyingly they go back to level 1 upon loading a save file, be it from dying or powering off.
Cornell's campaign is the longest by far, adding in a bunch of new levels while overhauling the older ones. While it puts a lot more meat on the game's bones, I found it to become a little tedious, maybe outstaying its welcome. It makes better use of the day/night cycle for the dungeons compared to the original release, but mainly through a labyrinth of day/night doors. You can probably imagine how tedious it gets to keep going into the menu and using a sun card or moon card to change the time of day just to open a door - now imagine that 20 times in succession. Castlevania 64 was short, but I think I preferred that length compared to Legacy of Darkness' - and this is just one of four different campaigns in the game.
The second campaign you unlock is that of Henry, and it's the most unique of the campaigns between the four. You have 7 in-game days to find 6 children, scattered through a small selection of the levels. It's a fun change, but it relies on you knowing the layout of these levels to begin with. As such, I can't agree entirely with the notion that you can play Legacy of Darkness instead of Castlevania 64, as a campaign such as Henry's makes more sense after beating both Cornell's campaign, as well as Reinhardt and Carrie's from the original release. Now, while both of their campaigns are also in Legacy of Darkness, there's a reason I've not brought it up - they're unlocked for saving a certain amount of children from Henry's campaign. Even then, they use the remixed level designs from Cornell's campaign, so it's not quite the same experience.
If there's one thing that stands out about Henry's campaign though, it's his weapon. These losers brought a whip, some shitty magic and whatever those projectiles are to fight vampires and shit? Henry isn't messing around - he brought a motherfucking GUN to this fight. Not many games cause me to physically pogchamp, but pressing the attack button for the first time only to hear a gunshot was enough to illicit that reaction in me. Combat with Henry is such a one-sided joke with his firearm that I'd say it's best saved for last, when you've already beaten the other three stories.
Altogether, it's definitely got more going on than Castlevania 64, but it takes away a little from what made me like it. The camera controls are different - instead of three choices of automatic camera, there are only two now. I found the auto camera to be a lot worse in this game, but as it turns out you can now use the D-pad to manually adjust it yourself, so that counts for something.
What bothered me a little more is the music. I mentioned in my Castlevania 64 review how much I liked how they went for a more atmospheric, B-movie horror style feel. Legacy of Darkness retains some of the music, but also throws in a few more Rondo of Blood remixes. It's nice to hear them, but it takes away from the unique identity of the N64 titles in my opinion. Symphony of the Night got to go all out with their music direction, so it pains me to see this get stifled in that regard.
Altogether, I find this to be a decent little 3D platformer that makes gameplay improvements, but stylistic downgrades from its predecessor. They even took out the hammy voice acting! Still, it's worth a try. Begrudgingly, I'll admit that if you have to play only one of them, that you'll probably enjoy Legacy of Darkness more than 64, but I maintain that the optimal way is to play 64 first, and appreciate (or not) the changes that LoD goes on to make.
Didn't exactly shatter my expectations, this one.
Glass Masquerade is a pretty nice, unique puzzler, and I wasn't complaining at the prospect of more. As for how they innovated? They didn't, this is literally more of the same. Is that a bad thing? Not in of itself, but this game is in a weird spot. It takes steps forward, but as many steps back. But the key element that causes me to score it below the original is the small, little issues with the original that went entirely unfixed this time around.
Positives first: puzzles now have 2 different difficulty settings. It's a cool change that vastly increases the maximum playtime, but it's incorporated in a weird way. Rather than change the difficulty in the menu, or before you start a puzzle, you can switch at any point during the puzzle. Obviously it removes all the pieces and starts again, but it's just...why do it like this? Hard mode basically makes it so that you have to rotate the pieces yourself to fit into the puzzle as opposed to them automatically being rotated into the correct position.
The art is as intricate and captivating as always - though I do miss the country-based theming of the original. Instead it's themed around these...proverb kinda things. Most people seem to really like these, so I don't wanna talk about them like they're bad but like...they come across as a little pretentious. But the art is nice, so hey.
The main menu is way more cluttered and busy compared to the original - I couldn't even tell which levels led to other ones. I can't fathom how hard they dropped the ball here. In terms of progression, each puzzle you finish either gives you a "key" for the next puzzle in it's line, or if it's the end of said line, shards for the big puzzle in the center. I guess it's cool to build up to a big "final boss" of sorts, but I feel like the devs didn't know how to implement it in any kind of meaningful fashion.
Another downgrade is the variety. GM1 had a lot of differing shapes for the various glass clocks, but these are all just basic circles - not even clocks, either. All these elements leave me thinking that this sequel was lacking in ambition and care compared to the original.
I only cared enough to beat every puzzle on normal, and the first one again on hard. The DLC previews are a nice gesture, but I think I've had my fill on Glass Masquerade. Even limiting myself to one puzzle per day left me burned out on these.
Also, as I mentioned before, all the little issues I had with 1 are unaddressed. The music is almost all the same, and it's just as tiresome after a while. You can't click any button on the main menu until the animations have settled into place, so that's like, 5 seconds of waiting before you can start/leave the game. It was infuriating the first time around and unbelievable that it was left in. I also took issues with the borders on the pieces being so thick that it often looks as if they don't fit in where they actually belong.
It's still a relaxing puzzle game that isn't entirely wrought with problems, and you should give it a shot if you want more after finishing GM1 - but please, play that one first. It's the better game by far.
Glass Masquerade is a pretty nice, unique puzzler, and I wasn't complaining at the prospect of more. As for how they innovated? They didn't, this is literally more of the same. Is that a bad thing? Not in of itself, but this game is in a weird spot. It takes steps forward, but as many steps back. But the key element that causes me to score it below the original is the small, little issues with the original that went entirely unfixed this time around.
Positives first: puzzles now have 2 different difficulty settings. It's a cool change that vastly increases the maximum playtime, but it's incorporated in a weird way. Rather than change the difficulty in the menu, or before you start a puzzle, you can switch at any point during the puzzle. Obviously it removes all the pieces and starts again, but it's just...why do it like this? Hard mode basically makes it so that you have to rotate the pieces yourself to fit into the puzzle as opposed to them automatically being rotated into the correct position.
The art is as intricate and captivating as always - though I do miss the country-based theming of the original. Instead it's themed around these...proverb kinda things. Most people seem to really like these, so I don't wanna talk about them like they're bad but like...they come across as a little pretentious. But the art is nice, so hey.
The main menu is way more cluttered and busy compared to the original - I couldn't even tell which levels led to other ones. I can't fathom how hard they dropped the ball here. In terms of progression, each puzzle you finish either gives you a "key" for the next puzzle in it's line, or if it's the end of said line, shards for the big puzzle in the center. I guess it's cool to build up to a big "final boss" of sorts, but I feel like the devs didn't know how to implement it in any kind of meaningful fashion.
Another downgrade is the variety. GM1 had a lot of differing shapes for the various glass clocks, but these are all just basic circles - not even clocks, either. All these elements leave me thinking that this sequel was lacking in ambition and care compared to the original.
I only cared enough to beat every puzzle on normal, and the first one again on hard. The DLC previews are a nice gesture, but I think I've had my fill on Glass Masquerade. Even limiting myself to one puzzle per day left me burned out on these.
Also, as I mentioned before, all the little issues I had with 1 are unaddressed. The music is almost all the same, and it's just as tiresome after a while. You can't click any button on the main menu until the animations have settled into place, so that's like, 5 seconds of waiting before you can start/leave the game. It was infuriating the first time around and unbelievable that it was left in. I also took issues with the borders on the pieces being so thick that it often looks as if they don't fit in where they actually belong.
It's still a relaxing puzzle game that isn't entirely wrought with problems, and you should give it a shot if you want more after finishing GM1 - but please, play that one first. It's the better game by far.
2022
So, I haven't finished this game yet. I don't know if I ever will, I always strive to finish every game I buy, let alone review, but this one...this one might fucking kill me if I have to play even one more second of this miserable, horrific little mistake of existence. This score is locked in and nothing the game can throw at me past the point I've played will ever change my mind.
This is the worst game I've ever played, in my entire life.
I want to say that this game was a gift from a dear friend, and I hope they don't get the wrong kind of idea or hold any guilt; I saw the game and footage of the first few levels, thought it looked great, put it on my wishlist, you know how it goes. It was entirely my own judgement and if you're reading this, please don't feel responsible in any way bestie <3
But, this game is like a fucking anglerfish is what I'm saying. Cute low poly aesthetic, nice character designs, fun sounding gimmick - what could go wrong? The borderline aneurysms I had trying to navigate the twisted, logicless grids of these abhorrent worlds say it all.
Every single fundamental rule of game design has been violently obliterated here. The core gimmick is borderline useless within the first world. Renata, the protagonist, only has one speed: SLOW. Waddling around at a very modest pace, the only way to make her move any faster is by grappling onto a surface with her titular frogun. Unfortunately, aiming it is just the worst fucking thing ever.
The gun only fires forward in a straight line from where Renata is facing. There's actually a button you can hold down to aim in a 360 degree fashion, but the vast majority of platforming is done in mid-air, where this function flat out does not work. So you instead have to manouvre Renata around in mid air in a circle, and chances are that you have to do this in less than a second due to breaking or moving platforms that result in instant death if you're a frame too slow. Argh.
This game just desperately wants to be its own Kaizo hack past world 3. Insane precision platforming in a game that controls about as well as a drunken gorilla in an ice rink leads to a world of agony and disaster. The devs make you go to ridiculous lengths to manage one-in-a-million jump timing, hitting switches, and if you fuck up along the way, you have to do it all over again when you respawn at a checkpoint.
Writing this review is hard because all I feel right now is boiling rage. Utter contempt and hatred for this miserable wreck. I swear, the amount of basic game design rules that the devs have failed to understand, I genuinely think it was intentional that they set out to make this game as bad as it could possibly be. Combat is a nightmare too, it's either as simple as pointing your gun at an enemy (and praying that it's aligned correctly and won't send you careening into a pit) and shooting, or getting fucking juggled by enemies that are inexplicably impossible to jump on or grapple onto without taking damage. The logic of the game is completely inconsistent, and feels like they make it up as they go along.
What else is there to even talk about? The music is utterly whatever, only memorable because of the total absence of variety in tracks. Boss fights are fucking nothing. Dodge incredibly basic and boring attack patterns for what feels like forever, then hit them when they inexplicably become dizzy.
Also, don't talk to me about the fucking races. Just a load of shit trying to outrun someone who can skip entire sections of the level, but balances it out by taunting for long enough for you to catch up. It feels barely thought out and poorly incorporated into the core gameplay.
Frogun is a masterclass in deception, and how not to make a 3D platformer. I don't have a single nice thing to say about it beyond anything on the front fucking cover. Dark Souls fucking wishes it broke me this badly. Completely miserable experience, and one I'm sure won't get any better in the sequel.
Seriously, a sequel to this shit. What a world we live in.
This is the worst game I've ever played, in my entire life.
I want to say that this game was a gift from a dear friend, and I hope they don't get the wrong kind of idea or hold any guilt; I saw the game and footage of the first few levels, thought it looked great, put it on my wishlist, you know how it goes. It was entirely my own judgement and if you're reading this, please don't feel responsible in any way bestie <3
But, this game is like a fucking anglerfish is what I'm saying. Cute low poly aesthetic, nice character designs, fun sounding gimmick - what could go wrong? The borderline aneurysms I had trying to navigate the twisted, logicless grids of these abhorrent worlds say it all.
Every single fundamental rule of game design has been violently obliterated here. The core gimmick is borderline useless within the first world. Renata, the protagonist, only has one speed: SLOW. Waddling around at a very modest pace, the only way to make her move any faster is by grappling onto a surface with her titular frogun. Unfortunately, aiming it is just the worst fucking thing ever.
The gun only fires forward in a straight line from where Renata is facing. There's actually a button you can hold down to aim in a 360 degree fashion, but the vast majority of platforming is done in mid-air, where this function flat out does not work. So you instead have to manouvre Renata around in mid air in a circle, and chances are that you have to do this in less than a second due to breaking or moving platforms that result in instant death if you're a frame too slow. Argh.
This game just desperately wants to be its own Kaizo hack past world 3. Insane precision platforming in a game that controls about as well as a drunken gorilla in an ice rink leads to a world of agony and disaster. The devs make you go to ridiculous lengths to manage one-in-a-million jump timing, hitting switches, and if you fuck up along the way, you have to do it all over again when you respawn at a checkpoint.
Writing this review is hard because all I feel right now is boiling rage. Utter contempt and hatred for this miserable wreck. I swear, the amount of basic game design rules that the devs have failed to understand, I genuinely think it was intentional that they set out to make this game as bad as it could possibly be. Combat is a nightmare too, it's either as simple as pointing your gun at an enemy (and praying that it's aligned correctly and won't send you careening into a pit) and shooting, or getting fucking juggled by enemies that are inexplicably impossible to jump on or grapple onto without taking damage. The logic of the game is completely inconsistent, and feels like they make it up as they go along.
What else is there to even talk about? The music is utterly whatever, only memorable because of the total absence of variety in tracks. Boss fights are fucking nothing. Dodge incredibly basic and boring attack patterns for what feels like forever, then hit them when they inexplicably become dizzy.
Also, don't talk to me about the fucking races. Just a load of shit trying to outrun someone who can skip entire sections of the level, but balances it out by taunting for long enough for you to catch up. It feels barely thought out and poorly incorporated into the core gameplay.
Frogun is a masterclass in deception, and how not to make a 3D platformer. I don't have a single nice thing to say about it beyond anything on the front fucking cover. Dark Souls fucking wishes it broke me this badly. Completely miserable experience, and one I'm sure won't get any better in the sequel.
Seriously, a sequel to this shit. What a world we live in.