The various LEGO games that have been released over the years, particularly the ones in the 90s and early 2000s, are all pretty much the textbook definition of "games-for-kids". Essentially, they were all about taking already established genres, both simple and complicated, and making them easy for anyone to understand and get into, whilst also being filled with tons of love and charm. LEGOLand was a tycoon game, LEGO Rock Raiders was an RTS, LEGO Chess…There's a reason that despite being nothing but a collection of below-average minigames, the original LEGO Island is still beloved by 90s kids worldwide: It oozes charm and personality from every crevice in a way that its sequel – the game I myself grew up with, for the record – doesn't really match. You tend to get exactly what you expect with LEGO games, and they tend to only really stick out from the crowd thanks to their personality. Which is what makes 1999's LEGO Racers so fascinating to me, because even though it very much is still a simplified game of its genre like its ilk, it goes the extra mile in a surprising amount of areas. There's so many small little things that still keep this game in my thoughts all these years later, and I feel like it doesn't get enough credit for it all.

But we do still need to unpack that personality-topic before anything else, because it smacks you in the face right as it starts. I think LEGO Racers is the closest any video game has come to having actual Penis Music make up most of its soundtrack with complete confidence: Everything is loud and insane, the speed boosts make the cars rocket away like they're being launched from a slingshot of chaos, the game makes the harshest sounds imaginable with every drift and cars bounce around like they're made of rubber. Yet its not some floppy ragdoll-physic nightmare, everything is chaotic and zany in a way that feels completely expected. The best way I could really describe it, really, is that it’s like a group of kids frantically playing with toy cars, swerving them around a racetrack whilst making obnoxious sound effects as they go. Okay, sure, that sounds on-the-nose, but I dare you find any other comparison that truly captures the game's style, the feel of ridiculousness still kept controlled by a fun-loving basis. When a child gets invested in the game they're imagining in their heads, no corners will be cut to make it more pleasant for others. Its their ride, and you're just along for it.

There's of course also an inherent kind of childish wonder to the game's main advertised feature, you get to build your own car! Its a surprisingly easy to understand system, you get pieces from different famous LEGO sets and the more of the game's bosses you beat the more pieces you're given access to. Its a little clunky, designed with a controller in mind which means you can't just mouse-drag-and-drop pieces to your car, but the simple shapes and plain templates to work with meant even as a kid I could try a bit of artistry, in a way I barely even did with my own LEGOs in my room.

That childish whimsy I feel also extends to just how intuitive the game is, truly succeeding at its goal of being a "kids game" in ways other than being simplified. For being touted so often as the ultimate family game, Mario Kart to me really doesn't succeed in being intuitive in a lot of areas despite its simplicity. There's the obvious talking point, "why do I have to accelerate halfway through the countdown for a speed boost to go fast", but I would argue that the drifting system is pretty poorly communicated to new players. Different vehicles drift in different ways, the vehicle jumps in an offputting way that doesn't really convey "start of a turn" at all...its the kind of system you need someone more experienced to explain to you to really get, and thats always bugged me given drifting is essentially the game's core mechanic. Now yes, LEGO Racers has drifting too, and while it IS a lot snappier and easier to immediately understand comparatively, it's also not nearly as fundamental to being good at the game as in Mario Kart. No, the real core of the game is in the items, and how you “build” them as you race. Just like Mario Kart’s item boxes, every track in LEGO Racers has colored bricks strew about in formations to be picked up, usually in horizontal lines. The difference here is that the item you obtain isn’t randomized, Red bricks always give you the cannonball projectile, Blue bricks always give you the barrier which protects against said projectile and so on. To then make these items better before you use them, you build upon them by collecting the smaller White bricks, which are a third of the size of the main colored bricks. The end result is a fascinating system that rewards those holding on to items for longer with better results than just using items as soon as you get them, which makes the dynamics of damaging other racers even more interesting as each hit from a Red brick item makes the hit player lose one white brick. This in return makes it easier for players in the back to get better items, as Reds only attack ahead and the Yellow brick items which do attack racers behind you don’t make them lose White bricks. That’s a lot of words, but the player experience is beautifully understandable: Red means danger, Blue means protection, Yellow means reassurance, Green means speed, and White is an enhancer to all of them. Its simultaneously unique, intuitive, and has the potential for endless amounts of depth.

Which, yeah, that is where the game does start to lag behind. Item enhancing is a fascinating system, in large part because enhancing isn’t always optimal: The unenhanced Red brick item is is easier to hit and use than the grapple hook it turns into with one enhancement, but the grapple hook in return can give the player mayor speed alongside its offensive power by slingshotting off of the grappled player. The problem comes with how most items sadly just aren’t balanced in this way, and that the Green brick in particular is absolutely busted in power. Get one Green brick, get all three White bricks to fully enhance it, and then use it to essentially Bullet Bill-skip one quarter of the racetrack through warping, from any position in the race. Including first. Not to say it isn’t satisfying to do, the warphole visual effect looks fantastic and its endlessly rewarding to build up to this power move with each White brick collected, it leads to a form of play that can only be countered by doing the exact same strategy back. Yet as a kid, I could only find this awesome, especially after realizing that the track of the final boss - Rocket Racer - was specifically designed to allow both you and him to chain together several Warps in succession. Replaying the game now as an adult, I even found a new piece of tech using it that I’m dubbing the Collectwarp. Because of the slight delay between using the item and your racer entering the Warp hole, by using the item right as you’re about to collect a new brick, you’ll both warp and get that brick at the same time, letting you start your next build with a head start.

I think it speaks a lot to just how fun the game is at a conceptual level that I was able to come up with new things to do with such a dominant strategy, rather than simply settle for victory with using it. I think the track designs also help with that, simple as they may be in some ways all twelve tracks are still made up of a lot of interesting shortcuts and item placements that make each one feel different to play on beyond their setpieces. On Magma Moon Marathon, the player needs to drive through colored gates in a specific order to unlock a big gate that saves a sizeable chunk of time, wheras on Desert Adventure Dragway a well-placed cannonball shot opens up an extensive secret route through the pyramid the course otherwise runs around, also containing three white bricks to collect in its sharp 90 degree turns. It’s not all winners, but it has a level of interactivity with the environment and rewarding exploration that a lot of tracks in the more recent Mario Karts just don’t really reach.

But let me be clear: for as hard as it tries, with as many ideas as it has, LEGO Racers does not manage to be as good as Mario Kart. If you’ve read this entire review seeking that to be proven otherwise, I’m sorry. For whatever small faults I could accuse Mario Kart of having, its still a thoroughly polished, well crafted, balanced-enough experience, that LEGO Racers can’t really seriously compete with the same way a game like Crash Team Racing can. And, yknow what? That’s not a bad thing in my eyes. LEGO Racers still had its own audience of kids in love with LEGO, and it succeeded eons better than many other racing games aimed at an even younger crowd than Mario Kart. Just because a game isn’t the biggest success in the world, or much of a champion in any field, doesn’t mean that it’s lacking purpose! This game’s style and presentation still occupies a very special place in my mind to this day, and I’m constantly taking reference from all aspects of the game’s design to further my own design work in games and more.

Never write off any game you play. Every game is a learning experience, both for the developers, and for you. Because that's what it means to grow up.

[Playtime: 5 hours]
[Key word: Influence]

The reveal in 2015 that Sanzaru Games had been developing another handheld Sonic game was one of the biggest shocks this franchise had ever produced.

On a retrospective first glance, this may seem odd to say. It wasn't like Sega had ever been opposed to keeping their contracted developers around for more games, for one. With the Sonic Rivals duology, for instance, they’d made pretty clear that mediocre reviews weren't going to lead to any bad blood between them and a promising developer. Plenty of Sonic games otherwise seen as mediocre had received sequels, and plenty more Sonic games out there had far more bizarre concepts bound to cause more discussion upon their reveals, so what was it about Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice’s reveal specifically that set the fanbase ablaze for a few days?

Well it's right there in the title, isn't it? It's Sonic Boom.

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric left the brand scarred in a way it hadn't been since after Sonic 06, now released in a time where online video game content was many times hotter than it was before. Essays, lets plays, reviews and breakdowns came out every week detailing how Sonic Boom marked the end times of the franchise, the new low, the sign that it was finally time for Sonic to give up. Most people, especially those not invested in the franchise, weren't really aware of the decent 3DS game, or the pretty good TV show, because the main thing the brand was pushing was an absolute failure of a product with "Sonic Boom" as the big headline. So while games like Sonic Rush, Advance, and even the handheld version of Colors were discussed and perceived on their own terms, the splash zone of Rise of Lyrics explosive failure was simply too large, and Shattered Crystal kind of got caught in the blast because of it.

So when it all settled, one year after it’s reveal, Fire & Ice's release itself had far less fanfare to it than just the fact it existed at all. Despite being Sonic's lone 2016 game, and despite an "infamously high" 7.5 score from IGN, the game wound up forgotten and lumped in with Sonic Boom as a whole as a large failure. Which sucks for many reasons, but to me stings most because Sanzaru Games as a developer had an edge with Shattered Crystal that Sonic Team and SEGA as a whole rarely ever had: Improvements in Iteration.

Sonic Team's Sonic games, even at their worst, are very rarely lacking in ambition or new ideas. That goes the other way too: Many of Sonic Team's biggest smash-hit games, from Sonic Adventure to NiGHTS into Dreams, stem from radical departures and daring new risks, rather than a gradual sense of improvement from game to game. Its a design quirk kind of synonymous with Sega as a whole: One second you're drawn to Yu Suzuki's work on tightly-packed fighting games, then his next game is a grand RPG-esque adventure. So in the great westernizing process of Sonic Boom's many branches, Sanzaru Games had no reason at all to try and adhere to that kind of mantra with the second chance they had been given. Within all of Shattered Crystal scatterbrained design and seemingly rushed production lay a surprisingly stable groundwork, Sonic controlled absolutely beautifully and levels would often allow the player to truly express themselves in how they chose to navigate them as effectively as possible. Rather than reinvent or tweak the controls to fit a radical new direction, Fire & Ice keeps everything that made the controls in Shattered Crystal work and plainly improves upon them. The same great mix of double jumps and airdashes is still here, but Sonic’s airdashes now no longer stop him briefly to charge, and the speed gained in the airdash is maintained moving forward, much like it works in games like Colors or Rush. Levels in the prior game had a great sense of scale yet often felt like they could go on for too long, so now instead of one big level per world each area has three to four smaller ones, now also no longer requiring collectibles to progress. It’s a rare instance in the Sonic series of a game being made seemingly entirely with player feedback in mind for the entire creative process, where the creative vision was simply to iterate and improve rather than make the game stand on its own.

Which of those two is better is debatable, but it’s really interesting that the areas in which the game suffers the most are the ones where it remains too stubborn to change. The implementation of multiple characters in Shattered Crystal was a flaccid inclusion alleviated somewhat by how most of their “required” uses could be bypassed with Sonic, but now in Fire & Ice it’s as if the developers really wanted to double down on forcing you to use Sonic’s entire crew. Amy is added to the mix with her sole purpose being to move walls only she can move, and Tails is given a new puzzle-solving laser to solve pace-breaking puzzles occasionally sitting in the way. Pair that with a quick-select function that asks you to fiddle with the touchscreen with your imaginary third hand, and that the aforementioned smaller levels means more of these obstacles are bound to appear in your main path, and it becomes a weird clash of genuinely better game feel and pointlessly re-included gimmick mechanics. The game’s main claim to fame, the Fire & Ice system itself, also kind of feels like this: You use either shoulder button to switch between being lit on fire or emitting a cold aura, which freezes blocks of water and melts blocks of ice. It’s nothing more than a reflex game, like Ikaruga’s polarity system for dummies, and feels only slightly less tacked on than the additional playable characters. What’s worse, having to use L and R means that bottom screen navigation now requires using the touch screen, whereas before pages on the bottom screen could be switched between with them.

I want to reiterate: Every good element from the previous game feels as if Sanzaru Games made a genuine effort to improve upon them. The shorter and snappier levels are all filled with great level design, the enerbeams swinging physics work amazingly with Sonic’s airdash, the environments and music are all leagues above what they were before, and the pacing of the game as a whole feels far less like a game struggling to even be released and more like a full-on polished product. It’s all of the things surrounding that, the mediocre mechanics they were too stubborn to let go of and the pointless gimmicks that were included despite sometimes harming the preexisting foundation, that end up souring the pot more than it needed to. In some ways, it reinforces why the developer’s direction was never optimal for this franchise: They lack the confidence in their new ideas to truly build the game around them yet feel obligated to include them to make the game still stand out in some way. You compare that to Sonic Team, who without hesitation made an entire game centered around swordplay because they thought it would be a cool evolution of the Storybook gameplay, who gave Silver the Hedgehog equal screenspace with the series’ protagonist because they wanted to use the Havok physics engine for something new, and so on, and it’s in a way understandable why a game as otherwise safe and standard as Fire & Ice has fallen by the wayside.

Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice isn’t bad, and despite its missteps still feels like a genuine, heartfelt attempt to improve upon Shattered Crystal’s foundations, and I’d say it still is a pretty good game. But it’s a game that makes complete sense: Every decision made in its development has clear, predictable reasons, everything about its buildup and release went pretty much exactly as one would expect, and its new mechanics wound up just as unremarkable as you would expect by how safe the game otherwise plays it. That cutting-edge feel, that strive to be different, that conviction to whichever new idea is being pursued that Sonic and SEGA fans in general have come to adore is missing here, and that in my eyes is the main reason this game has wound up so forgotten. In its aim to satisfy, in its attempts to fix the flaws of its predecessor, flaws which arguably has made that entry stand out more in retrospect, Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice just became yet another entry in the series. Despite being a fun time with lots to like about it, even well after its release, the most shocking part about the game still just wound up being the fact that it was able to exist at all.

[Playtime: 12 hours]
[Key Word: Crowdpleaser]

Sonic's always had a strange, yet interesting history on handhelds. Its history spans five different developers, from Sonic's birth to 2016, with each year gradually changing what the point of the games should be. In the 90s it was Ancient and Aspect, trying to replicate the creative, varied, ball-rolling and feel-good adventures or Sonic 1, 2 and 3, cramming them into tiny 8-bit Game Gear games. While they aren't fantastic or even, good, really, you get a sense that they really tried to capture what people were enjoying about Sonic on the genesis at that point and time, and distilling it into a new format. You see this further with Sonic Pocket Adventure by SNK, a lovely tribute to the Genesis games that gets really close to actually feeling like them despite its 8-bitty visuals, yet feels somewhat restrained by not being much more than just a recreation. From there you get Dimps' Sonic Advance games, now latching onto Sonic's striking new identity after Sonic Adventure: It was still a series about feel-good adventures, of course, but now there was a bit more flair to it all. Sonic in Adventure wasn't just a cool design with a cheeky idle animation, he now had a voice, several fluid animations, strikingly expressive graffitti-esque art, he comments on situations and does cool breakdance tricks after beating levels. Somewhat like the Game Gear games before them, the original Sonic Advance became a game trying to distill the essence of Sonic Adventure, the style, the vibes, even the dramatics in the game's memorable Egg Rocket stage, into a format befitting of a handheld. Advance 2 and 3 are obviously much the same thing but for Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes respectively, with Advance 2 channelling the high-octane adrenaline of SA2 levels like Green Forest and Sky Rail into a 2D sidescroller plane, and Advance 3 taking Heroes' team-up mechanics into its own direction.

Yet with Sonic Rush, things began taking a new direction. Not only had there not been a big new Sonic game to try and channel after Heroes, but Dimps had also begun finding their own voice. Sonic Advance 2 had been a monumental triumph in terms of both sales and reviews, and its bold adaptation of 3D gameplay into 2D gave Dimps a somewhat unique basis to build off of – to make Sonic games entirely their own. Even when SEGA would try to reel this back after 2008, instead only having them work on games specifically branded as derivative of others, Dimps now took these games on with a distinctly their-own approach, seen in games like Sonic Colors DS, Sonic Lost World 3DS, and most infamously Sonic 4. In short, Sonic's handheld games had gone from cute imitations, to games driven by their source, to full on original games, to original games using their source as a baseline.

Which now brings us to our fifth and last, developer, for the final Sonic handheld ventures: Sanzaru Games, and Sonic Boom on 3DS.

Shattered Crystal was always going to be fighting an uphill battle compared to its handheld siblings: Mainly, it had little to no foundation to build off of, with Boom as an entity being made specifically to reinvent the series, in a more Americanized direction. For the big debut home console game, Big Red Button was a great choice for this: Jak & Daxter-ifying Sonic with some of that game's lead developers at the helm, whilst not seeming like a great direction to a lot of Sonic die-hards, at least seemed like a great way to get a solid product out. Thing is, unlike games like Advance and Pocket Adventure, Shattered Crystal didn't have a pre-existing thing to try and replicate: Due to being developed in parallel with Rise of Lyric, Sanzaru didn't have much to work off of beyond a few core concepts for the world, and a general idea of teamwork. On top of this, unlike Big Red Button or even Dimps, Sanzaru were in no way known for their excellence in 2D game design, or even known as good developers in general. And so, in a way, Shattered Crystal ended up a hodgepodge of all the different eras of handheld games, trying to both share the brand identity of its console counterpart, yet also be its own thing, but still building its foundations off of some core ideas from the main game, althewhile being fertile ground for the games' developers to grow and learn.

I wanted to give that rundown both because I find it incredibly fascinating to think about, but also because it makes the end product of Shattered Crystal make a lot more sense. Its a messy little game, filled both with ambition to be like what handheld Sonic once was, yet also embrace elements of the 2000s western-made platformers. The game's levels are uncharacteristically large for one, and a lot of the game is focused on exploring them to find collectibles manditory to unlock later levels. The other playable characters, Tails, Knuckles and Sticks, can be switched to on the fly, yet all they really offer is unlocking passageways or access to aforementioned collectibled. Its a very arbitrary inclusion of multiple playable characters, and it combined with gargantuan levels you're forced to explore could have very well ruined the game to be as bland and boring as its Wii U counterpart. So its a good thing, then, that they somehow managed to make Sonic himself feel absolutely fantastic to control. I'm serious: I have no clue how they did it, but Sonic controls like such a dream and has so many movement options, yet remains at a comfortable enough speed to make exploring levels still feasible compared to Dimps' best outings. Its a distinct feel to the character, yet immensely fun to play around with, mainly due to the fun interplay between the airdash and double jump.

To break it down, at any point in midair Sonic can dash either to his sides or straight up, after which he regains his double jump if it was used before. After a double jump he can airdash one additional time, but not in the same direction as the previous airdash, and this repeats until you've airdashed in all directions. What this means is that you can get crazy airtime by doing all of these interlinked airdashes and double jumps correctly, giving you more distance than Tails' flight in most instances the game wants you to switch to him. Jump, doublejump, airdash forward, doublejump, airdash up, doublejump...its reminiscent of those cool strings of moves you execute for long jumps in Mario Odyssey, only far more compelling due to being attached to get-to-the-goal speedrunning stages that still have a lot of options on how to best progress through them. What this means is that when the level asks you to switch to Knuckles to tunnel up a steep cliff, or switch to Tails to cruise over a bed of spikes, and so on, you can almost always execute it faster and more satisfyingly through mastery of Sonics controls. Add to this the fact that the doublejump maintains all of your speed, and the fun Enerbeam that has some really satisfying swinging physics, and you get some levels with some genuinely great flow to them. It takes a similar formula to the Wisps in the mainline Sonic games, switching to far simpler playstyles to clear very specific-to-them challenges, and instead gives you the tools to completely skip them if you're skilled enough with Sonic.

Granted, this doesn't always hold water, and the rushed nature of the game does sometimes catch up to it. Sticks exists to hit switches with her boomerang and she is the ONLY one who can do so, meaning there will inevitably be sections like the start of Scrapyard Zone where you're arbitrarily required to use her. The collectible grind can also halt your flow a lot of the time, like with the strangely out of place Tails Submarine levels where you play a slow and boring diving minigame for 2 minutes each in the middle of an otherwise fast paced game. Or rather, its a game where you can otherwise MAKE the pace faster than it in reality wants to be.

And thats just what makes Shattered Crystal so interesting. Despite everything, it holds on to so many things that makes Sonic games so fun to play, like fast movement, levels you can explore for both items and shortcuts, hell they've even got Richard Jacques – composer of Sonic R and Sonic 3D Blast – doing the music, and its often quite good! The levels themselves are super cool in theming, mostly thanks to each level having a "foreground" and "background", putting new spins on the same level theme sort of like how Sonic Heroes handles its levels. In Shadow Canyons, for instance, you go from grinding on rails and running along scaffolding by these big imposing cliffs, to being flung into the mining facility going on in those mountains. I honestly don't want to spoil the final level because it is such a cool theme for a stage with this system, that it makes the entire game feel worth it just to get to.

Because at the end of the day, for as much cool stuff there is in Shattered Crystal, for as close as it really does come to being a successor to Dimps' handheld lineage, the game is sadly just too much of a chore to get through normally. Unlike a game like Sonic Colors, the explorative nature of the stages isn't just there for optional unlockables, but rather required for progression and beating the game. By the end, you will more or less need a 90% completion rate, meaning most stages need to be both combed through but also beaten with above 50 rings and under a specific time. Its not that this stuff is bad or unfun to do, the game has a super detailed map on the touchscreen showing you where you havent been yet and where things are and I actually really like the autorunner extra stages you can do inbetween levels. It's moreso that it leads to the game feeling at odds with itself: Its immensely fun to speedrun and try to go faster in, but so much of the game wants you to instead do the fun-but-not-nearly-AS-fun collectible hunt. Then, you add that with how the controls can start to really hurt your hands after a while: There's no D-pad movement, meaning you need to slam a somewhat-flimsy circle pad as far to the left or right as it can go to move quickly, whilst also holding down Y at all times to run, whilst also asking you to be ready to use B to jump and A or X to airdash and enerbeam...

It all adds up to Shattered Crystal being a game with truckloads of potential to be amazing, that holds itself back both due to a rushed development and a need for surface-level parity with the slow-as-molasses home console Sonic Boom game it has no business associating with. But when you're able to overcome all those restrictions, when there's no longer a need to collect things, when you've mastered Sonics controls to almost never need to switch to the other bozos, and when you get a true flow going with mechanics you would never expect to be so fun for what the game looks to be on the surface...

That's when you've broken free. Because trouble keeps you running faster.

Playtime: 20 Hours
Key Word: Shackled

So, here we are. Having written my Dual Destinies review (one of my favorites I've written, still) and almost being finished with Spirit of Justice, I feel its about time I toss my hat into the ring regarding AA4, possibly the most discussed Ace Attorney game of them all. There's a lot to unpack with AA4, and a lot of different ways to unpack it.

After AA1/2/3 wrapped up as a pretty much perfect, concluded trilogy, the 4th game had to be one to really break some sort of new ground, to not just seem as if the franchise was being stretched thin. And to outsiders looking in, be assured: They did far more than just give us a new protagonist. You meet Phoenix only to find out that he's completely changed, the perception of what makes a good defense lawyer has changed, your relation to the prosecution has changed, the story being told and, indeed, the very world of the game has shifted wholly. Its a remarkably ambitious game: One that, rather than just telling another story of a new character's growth like the old trilogy did, chose to readjust the lens of the series to focus far more on the law world at large, whilst subverting player expectations along the way.

I'll drop the dramatics and be blunt: In terms of ambition, ideas and themes, AA4 ranks as possibly my favorite game in the series. But as the finished game we got, I consider it the least enjoyable game in the series I've played.

Yet I can't even be sure if that's a bad thing. Because with so many of the issues I take with the game, there's a fascinating viewpoint that changes it into an interesting positive that also fits right in with the game's general direction of...well, misdirection, and subversion. Simply put, its an artsy game. For example, I noted halfway through my playthrough that the game's repertoire of characters are all mostly annoying, mean, or hard to work with, which leads to me as a player feeling miffed. Yet at the same time, Apollo is living in a new age of distrust and darkness in the legal world. He's living in an age where few feel like they can trust in others anymore, because people like Kristoph who desire results far above truth or fairness rule the justice system: The idea of "evidence" is so easily manipulated, that anyone can escape justice. Thus, Apollo's unable to have his perfect storybook journey of growth and support like Phoenix had because the world around him has changed to be hostile. So, is it really right of me to complain about the game doing what it sets out to do exceptionally well?

On the topic of Apollo himself, its very interesting that he himself is such a passive and static figure throughout most of the game, which underwhelmed me at first. But like I said: This isn't a character-driven story like the Trilogy, so is Apollo's lack of focus a BAD thing? Is the game trying to subvert what came before, rather than running with the tried-and-true optimistic hero's journey, a bad thing? Its a lot of these dilemmas I run into when thinking about the game, and its the reason why I respect it so highly despite the actual process of playing it being a lot more middling than the rest of the series in my eyes.

With all that being said, for as much intent as the game may otherwise have, it IS still Ace Attorney and comes with all the pros and cons of that. The animation is gorgeous, music is stellar, most of the overall mysteries are still pretty fun to unravel, and the whole gameplay of untangling testimonies is as fun as ever. The great fundamentals are still here and keep it enjoyable to play to a degree, and you can even sort of tell a new director is at the helm with this project.

Mitsuru Endo, previously a game designer first and foremost on games like Breath of Fire and Sengoku Basara, really rubs off his love for new gameplay systems and quirks in this game. Like usual for the series though, these systems end up being a mixed bag. Investigating evidence can be pretty fun and is a natural fit for the series, and Percieving is a cool and distinct power, iconic to Apollo. Yet then you have stuff like Ema's Forensics minigames, which feel really out of place and are uninteresting to engage with. There's no puzzle to them, just a good ol' DS touchscreen game. You get the feeling a lot of these things, and the systems exclusive to the third and fourth case, were added as a novelty, as fun toys for the player to engage with rather than being anything substantial...yet at the same time, as a game themed around magic tricks, isn't that heightened interactivity also part of the point?

In terms of writing and general direction, the main thing I think Takumi's games (those being the Ace Attorney Trilogy and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles) are worse at than his peers' is linking cases together to form a cohesive whole. Takumi excels in writing amazing and deviously clever singular cases, but in all his games its as if he can't resist including one or two bonus cases solely for how cool their mysteries are, rather than thinking of how their inclusion will affect the pacing of the game in its totality. Samurai, Big Top, Masked, Recipe, a lot of the individual mysteries in Ghost Trick, Speckled Band, Clouded Kokoro, the first two cases entirely in The Great Ace Attorney 2...don't get me wrong, I think his works are almost universally fantastic, but at times they can feel disjointed to progress through due to his unashamed love of "filler".

Under Endo's directing, meanwhile, it does feel like effort was placed on giving all cases purpose, reigning in Takumi's style of writing just enough to get the best of both worlds. All cases have substantial meaning, yet are able to be as zany and clever as Takumi always loves to write them. Beyond being a crazy case of solving several crimes at once, 4-2 serves to highlight how much Phoenix has changed and how Trucy helps him. 4-3 features a murder that takes place during a series of live stage performances, asking you to rewatch its footage to catch specific details related to witness testimony. At the same time, it also has a great focus on Klavier as a character, and the corrupt police-force that's been able to thrive in this new age, asking questions on if the law is always just in what it stands for. Yet that being said, we run back to the original issue of fun: Despite its cool themes and depth, 4-3 remains the worst case in any Ace Attorney game to actually play, both because of poor gameplay pacing, but also because the writing doesn't feel fleshed out enough to properly convey its brilliant ideas.

The lack of Psyche-Lockes as well honestly destroys the fun of investigating, and the pacing across all three cases featuring investigations is honestly dreadful. The only substitute present for the lack of Psyche-Lockes is the aforementioned mind-numbing forensics minigames, which do little to help things. Now, I noted in my Dual Destinies review that that game also had underwhelming gameplay, but it to me was salvaged by still having a rock solid, well-paced story pace where things were always happening. The game lacks Psyche-Lockes (for most of it) as well but makes up for it with a steadier stream of discoveries, more interesting 3D crime scene investigations, and so on. Due to AA4s insistence on finding meaning in the mundane, it ends up far less fun to play.

So, its a really tough call. I don't think AA5 or 6 are as ambitious or nuanced in what they want to convey as AA4, yet but they make up for it by having more engaging story events and better pacing across the board, leading to a more enjoyable experience for me. They're stories that are told in a tighter and more fun way than AA4, yet it feels wrong to label the game as "the worst Ace Attorney!!" because, again, it tries so hard and has such a unique flair as by far the most artistic game in the series.

Had this been the final Ace Attorney as originally intended, it would've been an impactful note to end on. But I am glad we did get more games in the series, and it led to great things. The murky law world of AA4 begins to heal across the events of AA5, and AA6 gives you an insight into just how badly it could have escalated, emphasizing a theme of preparing the new generation to solve the issues that are inevitably going to occur through the old generation's stubbornness and evil. Apollo finally becomes a character with agency and goals, Trucy's relationship to the Gramarye's is given a sweet bookend, we get to see how Edgeworth and Klavier handle the growingly unjust law world, Ema is, there, and Phoenix takes on the mentor role he was destined to do.

What I'm saying is: I'm really happy with how AA4, 5 and 6 turned out as a trilogy, even though it makes AA4's ambition stick out in hindsight, and now just exists as "that one weird game" rather than "the crazy rug-pull finale of the series". Despite my grievances with it, I do still love AA4, and I'm glad its resonated with so many people. But its overambition alongside its stumbles, from pretty shallow gameplay additions to bad pacing, keep me from loving it wholesale and having it click entirely. Simply put, a lot of its "but its like this way on purpose"-isms just don't land with me the way they do in games like Suda51's work. Yet it remains Ace Attorney at its core, and the simple fact that they even tried in a series otherwise aiming for as much mass appeal as this one, is worth so much respect.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is forever going to be a standout game in the series, and for me that's both for better and for worse. Basically, I'm just glad it exists, even if its not for me.

[Play Time: 35 Hours]
[Key Word: Overzealous]

Note that I won't really attempt to dissect the story in much of any way in this review, mainly because at the time of writing I didn't have enough confidence in myself to be able to do much of any deep-dive story analysis about themes or whatever. There's plenty other analysies of this game online by bigger fans of the game than me for that.

This'll instead be my thoughts on the game as a more casual experience, and only really cover what the story and characters made me feel in that context. So yes, this is spoiler-free. Anyway!

I went into this game not really knowing exactly what to expect beyond a quirky murder mystery game and a lot of really tasteless elements, and yep, I did indeed get both of those. Let's get it out of the way immediately, compared to a game like Ace Attorney the experience was far more uneven, with elements that I both greatly enjoyed and elements that really put me off. What I'll say about the story in broad strokes is that its very well paced in unraveling the greater mystery from chapter to chapter, and even when individual chapters drag on for a bit too long, it always gives you just enough info on the story at large to make you interested in it. Ace Attorney, for comparison, makes its cases a lot more isolated, even when they hold weight for the game as a whole. They happen and the focus shifts almost entirely to them, and most of the overarching story beats don't really get much attention in comparison. Here, meanwhile, it feels like both parts get equal attention: An individual chapter will still focus on the chapter's big mystery, but events from prior chapters will linger in characters' thoughts, and some things set up won't be revealed at all until the endgame. This of course was obviously going to lead to the individual cases being weaker and less tightly focused than they are in Ace Attorney but even by those standards I felt as if the mystery-solving aspect of the game wasn't quite as strong as it should've been. A lot of plainly obvious details are ignored for a lot longer than they should be, characters argue sometimes just for the sake of arguing despite the path to solving the mystery being pretty clear, etc.

There's a lot of nitpicks you could make with how the writing in the Class Trials is set up of course, but at the end of the day it still feels satisfying and its all well directed, and it has a very distinctly its-own feel. In terms of Trial gameplay especially, the focus on stress and tension was an interesting change of pace compared again to Ace Attorney. In those games, the focus is on carefully looking over what you have and making careful choices, with suspenseful yet calm music setting the tone of adults overviewing things in a professional manner. Here meanwhile, the timer and more action-focused arguing system, with characters throwing insults over each other as they're testifying, it does a really good job of conveying that feeling of stress that comes from a group argument. The lack of punishment for dying may be a bit of a copout, but I'm glad they didn't try to make the game difficult or anything despite its stress-induced tone, and realized most people playing this do so for the story.

I have some small little issues with how its executed still: The controls aren't exactly ergonomic since you basically need to clawgrip the controller in order to Focus, Silence and Shoot quickly. (Holding R1, Pressing X, and LIGHT TAPS of Triangle since holding Triangle is a different action, being required to sometimes do all right alongside each other) Cycling through your Bullets with L1 without knowing which ones will be next in the list gives me terrible flashbacks to why I never L/R cycle in the Mega Man games, and I wish you could just quick select between up to four different ones with the four directions of the D-pad. It would free up L1 for absorbing statements and not make the only option for picking the exact statement you want be to pull up a menu that obscures the gameplay.

Thinking back though, I think the central criticism I hold toward the game's execution of its gameplay was how it just...lets you view all of your evidence, whenever, pausing the whole game. You can do this in Ace Attorney and other mystery games, absolutely, but remember that the element of stress is supposed to be what sets Danganronpa apart from its contemporaries. That feeling of rummaging through your counterpoints in your head while everyone is yelling over one another is almost entirely lost when you can at almost any point just pause the current discussion to look in your file and connect the dots calmly in your head. Its not even really something you can ignore doing: The Truth Bullets, the evidence you use per each argument, is only ever displayed with just the name of the evidence, which means that in cases with a lot of evidence you'll end up forgetting what stuff like "Aoi's Account" or "Chem Lab Shelf" even mean until you pause to check. A solution to this would've been to use a button to bring up the evidence's definition in real-time during the argument, since most descriptions are really short anyway.

The other elements of the game are fine enough, I like that you can choose to spend time with different characters and get different Skills to equip accordingly, gives the game a fun little twist for replays, even if I don't think there's enough here mechanically to warrant a lot of the skills existing. I enjoy the feeling of being in one location at all times but, again just like the Evidence system, the cool meaning and purpose this has is a little ruined by QOL, in this case a fast-travel system. Forcing the player to actually move around this one singular location for the entire game rather than giving them an easy teleport would be a really effective way to convey that feeling of being trapped, as well as opening up a lot of other possibilities that games like Shenmue tap into. Maybe you can get a peek into where each student spends their time every day, so that if you want to spend your free time with them you'll need to get some kind of understanding of where they tend to be in the school? You'd get to know characters on a deeper level by learning about their routines outside of just visual novel dialogue scenes, and hell learning the layout of the overworld through repetition can lead into challenge segments outside of Class Trials as well. Granted of course this could lead to the game focusing far too much on what is pretty obviously meant as just fluff inbetween the real game, but given that they even bothered to put a fully explorable hubworld in here it to me is a shame they don't do anything with it, especially when its such an easy way to sell good atmosphere.

Moving on to the writing, while I do think a lot of the more 'morbid' writing and jokes work well even when they catch you off guard, some parts of the game really, REALLY left a bad taste in my mouth, again back to that issue of inconsistency. It doesn't exactly pair well with the...perverted aura that hangs over so many parts of the writing. You could argue, of course, that it is all to aid the atmosphere of the game: The perverted little nudges paired with how little respect is shown to a lot of the characters killed add to a feeling of unease and wanting to get to the end. But personally, I'm not sure if I can gel with that. Still, it IS what Danganronpa chose to identify itself with first and foremost, and if you're looking for something with more teeth than the average visual novel then you'll find it here, but I do wish it just had a little more maturity to it. I'm fine with darker themes and crassness - I play Suda51 games for gods sake - but Danganronpa to me feels as if its constantly overstepping a line that goes from charmingly crass and with a point to make, to just foul for the sake of getting reactions.

Just a final personal grievance: I'm not good with death. I hate the feeling of seeing a character not get the proper closure they deserve, and so naturally this aspect of the games was always going to turn me off. Your mileage may vary, and I was never really crying sobbing over a character death here, moreso it just left me unfulfilled and annoyed in a lot of cases where characters were really not given the ending they deserve. At least one character does get a really satisfying and fun to watch arc throughout the whole game though, so he pretty easily became my favorite without contest.

But still, though it didn't click with me entirely, I am glad I'm playing these games and trying to get out of my comfort zone more. The first Danganronpa was enjoyable on the whole, yet so many elements of it, intentional or not, just left me with a big lump in my stomach. I don't think I'll want to revisit this first game again because of that despite its charm.

[Playtime: ~25 hours]
[Keyword: Despair]

(CAMPAIGN ONLY)

Its showing its age a lot more than Gears 2, especially in comparison to Ultimate Edition, but...god damn the game is still fun. What it obviously lacks in scale compared to its sequels, it makes up for in spades with consistency and pacing. All five acts of the story (except maybe 1 and 4) feel very distinctly their-own in terms of visuals, level design, and atmosphere, and the game does an excellent job keeping itself varied without forgetting why you bought the game, to shoot alien guys. Act 2 is the standout: As night falls, a horde of the bat-like Kryll swarm the sky, and they kill you near instantly if you stay in the dark for long. So mid-combat you'll need to light up specific safe areas by shooting bombs, whilst also avoiding being overwhelmed by the locust horde. Later in the game you ride minecarts in a cave system, effectively turning it into a rail shooter but still letting you take cover.

Basically, its a very "small" feeling game that implements variety in a way that really really works, never once bogging the game down (thats a lie, theres one chapter at the end of Act 2 sucks) and instead just being plain fun throughout.

The Co-op is pretty fun too, I really like how its a lot more lax due to the ability to revive your teammate. You can sink a lot of time into grinding out every shootout in the single-player strategically: What guns do you bring, which do you swap mid-fight, when do you use your Frags, what enemies do you prioritize...but you can also just turn the volume down and beat it at a lax but still challenging pace with your bud!

Overall, I really love Gears as a franchise, but out of the original trilogy I still think Gears 1 reigns supreme.

So, here we are, again. All six mainline Ace Attorney games finished, with two journeys to Britain taken care of as well. The resting point for the series for over half a decade reached, and the conclusion of the second trilogy. Needless to say, I was really excited to get to this one, and I recommend you read my reviews on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies, The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (in that order) to get a full understanding of my perception and view on these games. But in short: I'm a series-as-a-whole enjoyer and really respect what both Shu Takumi and Takeshi Yamazaki do for the series.

Spirit of Justice had a lot on its shoulders, just as Dual Destinies did before it. It needed to both finish the ongoing trilogy about the law's influence on people and the concept of trust, as well as be a conclusion to Apollo Justice's story arc and provide meaningful content for more characters than you can shake a stick at. It needed to answer crucial, unavoidable questions for a game seeking to end a saga, not just the end of one trilogy but to establish a comfortable resting place for the series at large.

The game had to do all of that, yet it also set out to be the most ambitious, jam-packed, content filled and best Ace Attorney game the series had yet seen. I'm not here to argue that it absolutely succeeded at exactly all of that, but what I can say is that it is definitely close to- or IS, my favorite game in the series, and a near perfect conclusion to Apollo Justice's character arc. Despite the troubled development of this trilogy I believe it still achieved its goals, of telling the story of the new generation of lawyers growing up in a world far more oppressive and distrustful than the storybook tale Phoenix went through. And while it's undeniably more flawed than the original Trilogy, I believe all three games ended up being more interesting specifically due to this ambition. Because, say it with me: A Dragon Never Yields.

After Dual Destinies gave Phoenix such a perfect book-ended tale of rescuing both Apollo and Athena, it feels difficult to imagine a way where he would be able to get story relevance again in the series. Yet he IS the main mascot of the series, the appeal and key protagonist (yes, even in Apollo Justice). So how do we allow this relatively-concluded character to still play an important part in this conclusion to the second protagonist’s story, without just making it feel as if we’re treading on old ground? Simple: Focus on everything around Phoenix, instead of he himself. Thus the defining trait of this entry, Khura'in, becomes the focus of Phoenix's own cases, which gives Apollo and Athenas cases a distinct feel of their own whilst allowing them room to breathe and grow as characters. While I know Khura'in as a whole as a mixed reception with fans, it as a concept is a genius solution to so many things at once. Beyond mostly resolving the Phoenix issues up above, and giving AA6 its own distinct flair in the series, it gives the game a new perspective on the dark age of law theme that AA4 and AA5 established, showing us just what can happen when trust and humanity are forgotten in the law world: The outcome that AA4 very well could have led to, if it weren't for Phoenix's and Miles' efforts. I get that some find Khura'in's intensely aggressive anti-lawyer stance a bit ridiculous: executing all lawyers who align with criminals and all that, but given the traumatic origin of this law I can't help but draw parallels to some very real incidents and their outcome in real world countries. Its over-the-top in typical Ace Attorney fashion of course but I find it really thematically interesting and fitting for a trilogy exploring what happens when the law world fails to be trusted by the people. Its fitting for a law about punishing those who defend possible criminals to be tied to a land with heavy faith, where sin is actually thought of and reviled.

This thematic relevance of Khura'in extends to its main characters, who I almost all adore. People like Ahlbi, Rayfa, Inga and Datz are just plain fun to watch and be with, but then you have characters like Nahyuta, immensely layered with meaning and parallels to our main characters. Just like how Khura'in shows a world where the people completely gave up trust for the law, Nahyuta directly contrasts Apollo as someone who never learned the good nature of being a lawyer, of defending those you trust in. Apollo in AA4 defended weird, shady people he himself didn't trust or like, and it gave him a jaded outlook of his profession that he eventually snapped out of with the case of Clay's death in AA5. Nahyuta, just like his country, never had this revelation, staying loyal to his profession purely out of obligation, out of false hope that what he's doing might one day be leading to something good. His personality also contrasts Apollo really nicely, despite lacking personal attachment to the cases he takes on he's always calm, collected, and very respectful of all the details pertaining to the case. Whenever he snaps during a trial, it's not because he's angry that his argument's been dismantled: it's because he feels genuinely insulted that the defense disrespects the will of the dead to rest in peace. For Khura'in's anti-Lawyer stance seemingly being a gimmick, they weave it into its culture in a really natural way in that sense: Lawyers are seen as disrespectful of the dead by actively trying to twist the truth of their death, refusing to simply let the dead rest. This is why I LOVE Case 4, despite it often being derided as just filler: Its a case where, for once, we actually get to see a truly flawed defense of a client take place, and where Nahyuta and Khura'in's beliefs almost seem understandable for a moment.

I could genuinely go on for two paragraphs more than I just did on Nahyuta with Dhurke. This is the second time I'm trying to write this review, because my first got erased by Twitter acting up, and in that first one I genuinely could not shut up about Dhurke. He's an amazing character in the same way Nahyuta is: He parallels a main cast member, Phoenix, and shows just how different things could have gone had different things been prioritized in Phoenix's life. He's a great person, fighting for what he believes in with unwavering conviction, but in doing so faltered in caring for the new generation, his children: He felt it was his responsibility to save the world for his kids, rather than the other way, making sure his kids would be ready to take on the new world. Phoenix, however, after his defeat in AA4, reached out: He raised Trucy, played behind the scenes to rebuild the law world together with those around him, including seeking out Apollo and Athena to further reach that goal. Dhurke's flaws of being a determined good-hearted man failing in the sense of remembering the importance of our youth, makes him a super cool parallel to Inga, the tyrant of Khura'in who loves his daughter all the same. These kinds of analysies, contrasts, and connections to the themes of the game can be drawn everywhere, and its one thing I think all three games in this trilogy really excel at.

But cool theming and nice character depth can only get your game so far, yeah? Like I just said, I think AA4 nails its themes and meaning, yet I also think its by far the least fun game in the series to actually play. (Go read my AA4 review to find out why, I promise I like the game). Thankfully, I find Spirit of Justice to possibly be the most consistent quality game in the series: the only game where I would, honestly, say that EVERY case is a banger, both in terms of being fun to read but also in terms of being fun to solve. Sure, other games in the series have had far higher peaks than this game: The second halves of both Dual Destinies and Great Ace Attorney 2 are some of the best visual novel content I will probably ever experience, yet they're simply not able to contend with how constantly good and, most importantly, varied Spirit of Justice is. Thanks to the Khura'in setting and three lawyers in play at once, as well as the sheer amount of important characters present in the game, every case feels distinctly its own and goes to extreme lengths to fulfill the most of their potential. In a way it's like an Ace Attorney Greatest Hits album: An intro case that sets up so many mysteries in your head, a case that's very successful in being funny and unbelievable at every turn, a case that subverts everything you thought you knew about how an Ace Attorney case plays out, a case that's like a puzzle box of different interlinking mechanisms at play…these traits are shared with several golden cases in the series before, yet it doesn't at all feel derivative or redundant (except one moment in Case 5: You know exactly what I mean if you've played it, and it's the one part of the story I REALLY wish had been rewritten.)

But let's take a step back. This game at its core, as alluded to at the start, had to answer some very important questions, in order to truly allow the series to rest comfortably at its ending. -Where does Apollo Justice's character arc go and, finally, end, and
-How do we put a capstone on this entire saga of the Dark Age of the Law, after said age was unofficially ended in Dual Destinies? What message do we end the series with?

The game, in my eyes, delivers answers to those questions in the most satisfying way possible: After his Dual Destinies growth, Apollo now only defends people he genuinely cares and empathises with: be they friends like Trucy, complete strangers like Armie, or a mix of both like Dhurke. Unlike Athena, not knowing his client beforehand no longer stops him: He's learned the power and meaning of a mutual trust in your client, regardless of who they are. His newfound faith in others finally lets him take charge with newfound confidence and surpass Phoenix in a way we as players always knew was possible, but that he was just never able to do before due to his mentorship under Kristoph, and the looming distrust under the Dark Age of Law. Basically, he's someone who's risen above the effects of an age of distrust, and has become a more whole person than even Phoenix because of it.

The game, and series, ends on this note: That by not only banding together to solve the problems of the current day, but also ensuring that the next generation is given the help, care, mentorship and understanding that they need, the world will become a better place. If you ignore one, then the other will haunt you. It's a beautiful way to end the trilogy all about the new generation, passing the torch on in wonderful fashion, and putting a bookend on the Dark Age of Law once and for all.

And I have small gripes with how all this is presented, of course. The Case 5 story detailed I mentioned: Phoenix being blackmailed again, instead of them committing to a true moment of having the torch passed to Apollo. There's also the matter of Ga'ran, who for being the "final boss" of the game and arguably trilogy as a whole might not be as deep of a character as she maybe should be, especially compared to Nahyuta and Dhurke. (I still think she works really well as just an intimidatingly authoritative figure to take down). If I really wanted to, I'm sure I could go picking like a fine-toothed comb through Spirit of Justice and find small things to bitch about, yet I'll probably also find half a dozen more things to appreciate. Have you ever noticed, for instance, that every returning character in Spirit of Justice is finally living more or less completely happily, chasing the dreams they've always wanted? Trucy, Maya, Ema, Blackquill, Phoenix…through finding and sticking to the passion of their goals, they're happier than they've ever been, contrasting beautifully with Nahyuta's sorrowful compliance with doing his occupation solely because he believes he's right– okay, I'll shut up about him now, despite those above minor flaws and more…the ambition, consistency in quality, variety, theming and just, overall tons of emotional pathos packed into Spirit of Justice, make it tie very closely at the top of the series' best games for me.

And all of this Ace Attorney goodness, wrapped up in an extremely Takeshi Yamazaki-paced and designed game and story, with all the good and bad that entails. Every case, yes even 6-4, has meaning, has weight that mounts up and builds to the insane finale. Things are foreshadowed at every moment, even in the most subtle ways (Dual Destinies' Case 2 foreshadowing of its biggest twist still haunts me). The game also feels very cohesive to itself and the rest of the series, never directly spoiling things from the previous games but still making damn well sure existing fans are aware this is a continuation. Okay, so the Divination Seances aren't always the most fun, and for as much as I didn't care at all about Forensics in AA4 it and the Psyche-Lockes are painfully underused in this game. Like I've said before, Yamazaki's main weakness is his inconsistency in making fun-to-use mechanics. And that's what I've really grown to love with Ace Attorney: Despite just being ten games of pointing, clicking, reading and solving, their directions allow them to be so good in so many different ways. This isn't like Kirby where I'll gladly say every game in the series is good, but a lot of them are good in similar ways: Every Ace Attorney game is great, and each one can be someone's favorite for its very specific strengths and appeal. Do you love artsy, subversive, meaningful games where maybe the feeling you have while playing them shouldn't always be satisfaction and empowerment? Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney might be for you! Do you love seeing things built up for you over an immense span of time be resolved in the most satisfying manner imaginable? The Great Ace Attorney 2 is like made for you! Do you love a story that can pull the rug under you at the last minute, despite subtly foreshadowing said rug-pull throughout the game's runtime? Justice for All - the one most fans consider the weakest of the original trilogy, is actually my favorite of those three games specifically because of that!

Or did you read this entire, enormous review, and loved thinking about just how well put together a package Spirit of Justice is, not for its high peaks but for its pitch-perfect consistency, for how well it pays respect to the past whilst celebrating a new future ahead? Then yeah, this game may just be a contender. It sure is for me.

[Play Time: 48 Hours]
[Key Word: Ceremony]
[Note: DLC not played]

Lets all be on the same page: This game's kinda stupid, yeah? Its a complete novelty of a game made to experiment with a new gimmick in a really weird way. Its not aiming to be some paragon of solid game design or emotionally invigorating, masterclass game, I'm sad to report. Its a stupid game at its core, and thats exactly what drew me to buy it for the five bucks I found it for. A platformer with no jumping, controlled with whats essentially a trackball? I HAD to see what the hell this even was, and if there's anything to be gained from its gimmick.

And, I mean, kinda?

It feels like a game that taps into knowing how inherently fun it is to interact with its systems, like how Mario 64 was made so open ended to make its fully analog controls really feel natural and worthwhile. What you get here then is a bunch of ramps, slopes, straightaways and seesaws that all highlight the simple joy of Being Ball, but unlike Monkey Ball its not made to be ballbustingly challenging and demanding you master its physics: Rather, it just asks you to have fun with them.

Honestly the vibe of the game in general feels extremely N64, not just with the aforementioned "lookit our cute gimmick" game feel that stuff like Glover or Chameleon Twist had but also just its visuals and sounds. Its a lot more vibrant, yet simple compared to Pac-Man World. It has that very specific "5th gen 3D game" kind of design where it kind of has objectives and escalating challenges, but it feels more interested in just letting you faff around, not really endangering you until way late in the game.

And sure, there are collectibles, much like the Pac-Man Worlds, which are more traditionally structured "escalating challenge" 3D platformers, yet it doesnt feel like Pac N Roll is all too interested in you getting 100% completion. (Though, having unique Time Attack layouts for all levels is a nice touch)

And, well yeah, the game does honestly feel quite nice to control to where I wouldnt have been opposed to 100%ing this if I was a kid. The Pacster stops with a still tap of the screen but otherwise rolls with the momentum you give him, mixed with whatever the slopes are up to. There's a level near the end of the game thats all just one big slide a la Mario 64, except here due to the great sense of Ball you have it feels really intense and satisfying to get through, but you still are able to stop yourself at any time. Its such an interesting setup! The last two worlds in general are when the gloves come off and the game actually starts doing stuff with its insane setup, having stuff like multiple seesaws in a row you need to manipulate carefully to move across, bumpers that send you careening off stage, etc

For as middling as the experience can feel theres a kind of charm to seeing them try to add depth to such a gimmicky setup. Like, the speed burst move you get by stopping the stylus at the very edge of the screen, or the power-up hats that make you lighter or heavier. Silly stuff for sure, and they dont really ever test your prowess in Gaming, but theyre there just to add a little more sauce to the weird meal you're having. Same kinda goes for the bosses, theyre not really that hard but just toss you about in a new way from before.

All around, yeah, its a pretty ho-hum game--EXCEPT that the final boss, I shit you not, is a 5-phase GAUNTLET that is as big in level design length as the game's actual levels. Its genuinely insane but it has some of the most creative concepts in the game. Controlling the ball in a pinball machine? How about controlling the ball on a platform thats teetering all kinds of wild directions unpredictably! How about controlling one in a funnel, where taking any moment to rest sends you rolling toward the pit in the center?

Its this kind of variety, paired with the game's unreplicateable control setup, that makes me sad we'll probably never get a game like this again. These kinds of medium-budget, "hey this idea seems funny" games just don't happen anymore outside of...idk, mobile? VR? Its sad, but we should appreciate the quirkiness we got. Go hunt down those weird games! Concept seem ridiculous? Try it!

Typing of the Dead, Yoshi Topsy-Turvy, DK Jungle Climber, Sonic & the Secret Rings...Are all of these games great? No, not really! But their attempts at the bizarre concepts nobody else dared to try are worth experiencing, remembering, and learning from

Playtime: 10 Hours
Key word: Silly