It's fine.

When folks decry Super for being a blasphemous take on the tried-and-true formula of Classicvania with it's eight-directional whipping, they're absolutely justified in their thought. It takes away the strategical element that made us love the thinking person's aspect behind the careful movement. An entire sub-system becomes a complete afterthought, with them only being convenient at hyper-specific instances rather than something that was there to truly compliment our whipping prowess to help with entire courses and encounters. Taking a death becomes less threatening as losing a sub-weapon essentially turns into a very minor slap on the wrist at worst, as an empty sub-weapon box may as well had been what it felt like the entire time we had been playing.

It's an ordeal that can't be simply ignored in a self-imposed challenge like the charged mega buster in every NES era Mega Man past the third game, and you're left with Simon being able to skillfully twirl his whip better than any other Belmont before or after him. Perhaps Simon was always meant to be presented as the most headstrong and bullish of the family? Characterization through mechanics? It remains to be seen if that was the intent, or if it was supposed to be an "evolution". An evolution that no doubt would've made this entry an even bigger target of contempt, especially if the stage design would continue to fail to compliment the new system beyond smattering a few bats flying down from odd angles, and if we could still easily thwart Axe Armors from below the floor they're standing on. Luckily for all of us however, this would be the only time such a new take would be used, and instead of being a deplorable turning point for the series, it is in fact unique and now it's own experience.

A retelling of the original that shows Simon's entire journey from beyond Devil's Castle, braving the horrors that crept from the onset of the horrid manifestation of Dracula's power within what was once a peaceful forest accompanied by strings of a violin within a purple and grey console. A walk through the caves with beautiful woodwind arrangements, and mesmerizing illusions brought upon by the seventh mode conjured by unknown forces presumably under the control of the dark lord himself. The approach to familiar scenery from the beginning of our original story of the legendary quest partnered by intimidating percussion for nightmares to come. We make our way through the retold portions of Simon's tale, and upon completion hear echoes of our past one last time before we must move on to beginnings of a new generation. The slow haunting keys of an organ cue the entry of Dracula to the main stage. Simon's Theme of which signaled the entrance of the hero at the very start, returns once again at the final moment the Count is nearing his defeat to build the audience's tension to the epic conclusion of the adventure. The orchestra plays to the agonizing death of the villain, and rings in daylight's victory over the darkness.

The fabled saga, retold and reimagined with added flare of chilling drama and suspense. Not to replace the original, but to remember it through a more cinematic lens. Forever immortal.

After sinking more than a hundred hours into Rebirth, I know the last thing I should do is try to bite off more Final Fantasy. I've already had too much, I'm bloated on chocobos and moogles and nearly ready to burst, and yet I've been eyeballing Final Fantasy IV and thinking "I can handle it." Comparatively speaking, 23 hours of gameplay is light, downright brisk. Rebirth's after dinner mint... Why shouldn't I indulge?

Well, back-to-back negative reviews from mutuals - both of which abandoned the game - should be reason enough for me to pass, at least for the time being.

It's so over.

Or is it? I'm Weatherby, when have I ever listened to anyone about how bad a game might be? Especially for a game I already paid my money for. The cellophane on this unopened Final Fantasy Chronicles is coming off, baby!

We're so back!

It's probably worth pointing out up front that by going with the Chronicles version of the game, I am effectively playing the real Final Fantasy IV, which originally released stateside on the SNES as a port of Japan's easy mode. For babies. I'm not a baby, how hard can this version of the game be?

Turns out very, at least in fits and bursts. Final Fantasy IV is a very inconsistent game in a lot of ways, and I think a lot of this inconsistency is born from the unique space it occupies in the overarching trajectory of the franchise. The SNES allowed Square to do so much more than what they previously accomplished with the NES trilogy, especially in regard to story, but a lot of FFIV's mechanical features feel as though the game has one foot firmly rooted a generation behind. Things like a highly restrictive inventory is just unnecessary thanks to the SNES' expanded memory space, and the encounter rate is just as bonkers as it was on the NES, sometimes sending you from one daunting battle to the next with only a mere tile separating them.

Guest characters, something Final Fantasy II leaned on with its rotating fourth party slot, are commonplace in the early half of FFIV, and a some of them feel more like a hindrance, resulting in a lot of stretches where you need to nanny idiots like Edward, who has no useful abilities, low health, and straight up runs off screen when you try to heal him up. Likewise, you'll occasionally be gifted with guest characters that are too good, creating this pendulum swing of the game being "too annoying" and "too easy."

This combination of antiquated design elements and inconsistent party composition makes the early game a drag, and it's no wonder I ditched the GBA version around Mt. Ordeals back when I originally played it in 2005.

It's so over.

Final Fantasy IV's story also struggles in the early half of the game and spends a bit too long meandering around. It is interesting to play this right off the heels of Final Fantasy III as both games feature numerous character sacrifices, though the greater scope of FFIV means you'll get to spend more time with them rather than coming upon each character briefly before they like, chuck themselves into a furnace or whatever. Each death feels meaningful, which is why it's a bit upsetting that FFIV walks back most of them, sheepishly shrugging and going "I don't know, they lived I guess."

Thankfully, both the story and gameplay eventually find their focus, and once FFIV dials things in, I found that I was starting to have a really good time with the game. Turns out a stable party of well-rounded characters who share a clear and common goal is just what you need to get me invested, even if it may not address every single problem I had with the game up to that point.

By the time the party awakens the Lunar Whale and takes a trip up to the god damned moon, I was fully in it, and I loved the way the game handles the reveal of its true antagonist, Zeromus, who is less a singular consciousness driven by focused malice and more representative of the game's greater themes concerning good and evil, its presence in all men, and the cyclical nature of war and peace. I am a noted Necron defender, so the idea that the party has to do battle with something more representative of a thought or manifestation of man's own nature is my kind of thing.

Also, he's got a sick battle theme.

We're so back

Unfortunately, actually fighting Zeromus is another matter entirely. I thought the Cloud of Darkness was a motherfucker, but this might be the most I've struggled with a final boss in any Final Fantasy game. Apparently this guy can cast Meteo, Holy, Bio, AND Flare, but you'd never know it because he spends 90% of the fight spamming Big Bang over and over again. The solution here is to let Rydia stay dead as all of her spells will result in an immediate counterattack that operates separately from the fixed timer that dictates Big Bang. This also buys you better healing as Rosa only has to split Curaja between four characters instead of five. At the 11th hour, Final Fantasy IV deigned it necessary to saddle me with more dead weight, and the constant run back through several floors with high encounter rates and ~ten minutes of mashing through mandatory dialog is a steep price for failure, which unfortunately sucked a lot of the wind out from Final Fantasy IV's ending.

it's so over. literally, i am done playing this video game

Rating games in a series can be a little tricky, but I think I've more or less settled on a curve when it comes to Final Fantasy. I gave the original game a 3.5/5, which seems a bit high when you consider how approachable, engaging, and bombastic later titles are. All qualities I would assign to FFIV even if I think it spends a little too much time playing around in the protoplasmic puddle left behind by the previous three entries. That's why it's simultaneously the easiest of these four for me to sit down with, yet it's also a 3/5.

Maybe one day I'll check out the SNES version. I am genuinely curious if the easier difficulty curve results in a more evenly paced game, or if it simply makes combat dull and predictable.

Anyway, the next game has a protagonist name Butz. We're so back.

Fruitless back-and-forths over Tomb Raider often put me in the same headspace: thinkin' about Oddworld. Now there's a solid cinematic platformer for the PlayStation 1, one with expressive characters, imaginative environments, a great sense of humor and actual messaging to compliment it's fun and often challenging puzzles. Lara can't like, mind control a bear and make it explode. I rest my case.

But opening up my copy of Abe's Oddysee immediately presents something bleakly funny: the definition of a quintology. Oh Lorne. Poor Lorne. They screwed the man at every turn. From pressing the first run of discs with a repeatable, game breaking bug (in Lorne's words, the person who made this call was not "a Gamer"), to Gamestop publishing a guide that immediately funneled new players into the most difficult hidden screens of the game, to his regrets over Exoddus and Sony throwing Soulstorm up on PS+ to die... Like Xenosaga and Shenmue, it doesn't matter if you have a story to tell or the creativity and temerity to do it, the games industry will chew you up and spit you out like some form of tangy meat popsicle. New n' tasty indeed.

Listen to Lorne Lanning talk about Oddworld for any length of time, and it becomes quickly apparent just how passionate and creatively driven he is. Ars Technica's extended War Stories interview is something I throw on at least once a year because I find his background to be fascinating, and his recollections on navigating creative and industrial fields leading to the formation of his studio, Oddworld Inhabitants, provides a considerable amount of insight as to how his worldview - and consequentially, the themes of Oddworld - formed.

Abe's Oddysee was always intended to have a message, and so gameplay was appropriately designed around the particular anxieties and beliefs Lorne wished to express. As funny as it would be to find Abe strapped, you don't shoot guns, something that was a point of contention with staff at Oddworld Inhabitants. Instead, you "shoot words" (and farts) through gamespeak, a mechanic that allows the player to interface on a more personal level with the game than simply pulling a trigger... Though through mind control, you do still do that. Sometimes the creative process demands compromise.

One complaint I would have about this system is that much of your time rescuing Modokons is front and backloaded, with an extremely lengthy middle game chronicling Abe's trials outside of Rupture Farms tucking most Modokon rescues behind hidden screens and portals. To a certain extent, loading the game so full of secrets is good and provides replayability, but I found the puzzles in which you're trying to disarm a hazardous area and lead as many Modokons to safety as possible to be more engaging than the segmented puzzle rooms of Paramonia and Scrabania. Elum, Abe's mount, does fill this role somewhat, but I twice had him despawn requiring me to reload a save and lose progress, so I'm a little upset with him right now.

The end game also gets absolutely brutal, placing checkpoints far and between sequences that require precise timing and manipulation of enemies. Controls are rarely the issue so much as understanding the order of operations to get through the multiple levels of Rupture Farms, but when everything clicks and you execute on a perfect run, it feels good. The end of Abe's Oddysee has some of the most genuinely tense moment-to-moment gameplay on the system, it is agonizing as it is great. Wait, what do you mean I didn't save enough Modokons? Hold on, why am I being teleported back to the start of Rupture Farms, wait--

While the experience of playing Oddysee can at times be a bit uneven and even frustrating, I do think it comes together into something really special. The texture of the pre-rendered environments, the clay-like quality of the character sprites, the ways in which Rupture's oppressive and hostile factory gives way to barren wastelands drained of resources and life all for the sake of capital, and how that is conveyed humorously both through the game's writing and the player's own machinations... it's great. I really like Abe's Oddysee. 3.5 out of 5 smooches on the cheek for Mr. Lanning, but not 5 because Lorne is apparently never allowed to have a quintology of anything. I don't make the rules.

I thought the aftermarket for PlayStation 1 games was more cost prohibitive, but you can get a complete copy of The Unholy War for only twenty dollars. What a steal for a demo of The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.

The truth is, I've had a cinematic platformer itch for a while now that only Lorne Lanning can scratch, so I was in the market for both Oddworld games when I came across a bundle that had Oddysee, Exoddus , and a copy of The Unholy War. Nice, a free game [Note: if you get something extra as part of a bundle, you still paid for it.] I'd never heard of The Unholy War until then, and my suspicion is that it holds very little relevancy outside of 90s kids who enjoyed playing it with friends and have developed nostalgia for it.

After spending the better part of my morning with it, I could see that being the case had I actually played The Unholy War back in '98. It's a perfectly serviceable early 3D arena brawler with a good spread of characters, but there's nothing really remarkable outside of "strategy" mode, which attempts to marry the arena fighting with SRPG board navigation. This is where counterpicks matter the most, as it's very easy to lose one of your units if you put yourself against an enemy they're weak against, and it's likewise important for you asserting control over the board.

But this mode still feels like it's lacking something. The strategic layer is very bare and actual board movement feels crummy. There's an idea there, but the execution leaves something to be desired and it ultimately just feels like more steps to get to the brawling.

Part of what makes collecting fun - and buying bundles/lots of games in particular - is getting at stuff like this which you've never heard of or played before. The Unholy War might be a perfectly average game in my eyes, but I think it's neat. Probably won't play it again but would definitely pick it up off the shelf, hold it in my hands and think "I can play the demo to The Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver any time I want."

I'm tired.

Let's play armchair game designer, because lord knows we don't have enough of them on here.

Before you can run, you must walk, and boy does Nathan Graves enjoy walking. Nathan just adores going on a stroll in Camilla's castle while his master's getting his toenails ripped off in preparation for being slaughtered in a satanic ritual. Mr. Graves wouldn't know how to run even if I slapped his dump truck ass with the world's most painful block of wood. It's a godsend that Camilla's basement houses the very shoes he needs to be able to find the joys of exercise again after he forgot how to sprint when Count Dankula played his Trap Hole card in the introduction scene. One must wonder how long it would've taken if Drac's minions didn't make such a fuck up as to leave shoes for Mr. Graves to wear for his aching strolling feet. Even with these shoes Nathan only knows how to barrel forward with wanton disregard for his own being. Alucard had it figured out already, just run with care. That's all you gotta do. For Nathan though? Only two speeds exist. Tortoise, and drunken hare riding on a Kawasaki Ninja.

The input for running in this game is bad enough with requiring me to dash dance on the dpad and kill my thumbs, but Nathan's whip attack is noticeably sluggish compared to past Classicvania outings. It may not be noticeable at first, but try ducking and whipping and go back to playing as Simon in any of the past games and you'll definitely feel it. Nathan can jump like a stiff pong paddle and can even wall jump, and trust me I'm proud of him for being able to do so, but he should stick to his day job. Wall jumping in this is automated for at least two seconds as Nathan pauses on the wall and propels himself into the direction of enemy fire that sends him careening back down the pit that he was trying to make his way up from. You will encounter this scenario a lot, I assure you, especially with Circle of the Moon's obsession with slap dashing Armor enemies everywhere with annoying attacks that can bop you from the other side of the screen. No joke, I had a moment where I thought I was hitting an Ice Armor enemy in the underground waterway safely, only to get a very pleasant surprise in the form of another spear flying from off screen and stabbing me through the adam's apple thanks to the second Ice Armor that was behind him.

The primary system is collecting some shitty Yu-Gi-Oh cards and playing Blackjack with yourself to combine two of them and give yourself some form of power up, which could range from boring effects like your whip getting an elemental bonus, or actual cool shit like turning into a bone-throwing skeleton that dies in one hit. Unfortunately, the card for turning into a glass jawed skeleton is about 95% into the game and requires killing a very specific candle enemy that requires backtracking to a who-gives-a-shit area, and kindly asking it to drop the damn card sometime this week. This is where I get to bitch about the worst part of Circle of the Moon besides Nathan's completely useless movement, and it's the outrageous drop rates. That card that I'd need for the aforementioned skeleton transformation? The drop rate is zero point four fuckin' percent. That doesn't just effect the cards either. Health items? What are those?!

Seriously, I went for hours playing this game and didn't think healing was even a thing in Circle of the Moon besides the absurdly paltry potions that give a measly 20 hit points back, or getting to one of the sparse save points that fully heals you. Hell, you don't even get healed after boss fights. I beat probably six bosses before a piece of meat suddenly dropped from an enemy, where I double-taked and went back just to stare at it for a while. There is not a shop to speak of either, shopkeepers aren't welcome in Circle of the Moon. No buyable health items for you to help with the horrendous onslaught of tedium, but you can go ahead and enjoy all those completely useless armors you get to lug around on your person. Sure is a hard game we got here, would be nice if I could have some items, but Dracula is against formal goods trading.

Circle of the Moon is about inconvenience. It inconveniences you with movement that isn't convenient for the challenge that is set up for you as it would be for past entries. The only way to make your pathetic movement less inconvenient is to find cards inconveniently hidden away in an unknown enemy's back pocket that could potentially make certain encounters flat out trivial, like the normally problematic ice element in the underground waterway, or Dracula's nigh-impossible to dodge meteor attack in the final battle. It's all an inconvenient excuse to grind if you lack information, which this game inconveniently gives you none assuming you're not playing the Advance Collection version, which was the only convenient bit from my experience. Thanks M2.

It took me about three months to finish the save file I started on the Advance Collection a ways back after I completed Harmony of Dissonance and it's toilet noises, and it's mindbogglingly to me to realize that it was around last Christmas that I replayed and finished Aria of Sorrow again on the same collection. It wasn't necessarily a skill issue, it was a thumb issue from the horrendous dash input, and my complete apathy to this game's entire philosophy of wanting to train me on it's solitaire system only for the battle arena to give me the middle finger, and take that same system away in the ultimate show of disrespectful inconvenience. It was optional, sure, but it's existence is more than enough to make me want to transition into a volcanic state. It was even more aggravating to find out that Konami apparently bumped the experience requirements up for the western releases, thus demanding me to update the list for all the times they fucked us in the ass. I needed a lot of Picross breaks, and apparently a detour to that Peach game I didn't care about.

It kinda goes without saying, but the thought of replaying this on original hardware with the bad GBA screen, no suspend save, or in-game overlay hints of what enemies are carrying cards is less appealing to me than taking an epilator to my ballsack. I'll give it a pity star for Dracula's final boss design, I guess. I guess.

Thus concludes armchair game designer session, if you enjoyed what you've read, please like, comment, subscribe, ring the dingaling, and maybe sing me a nice song.

I'm going to bed now. Goodnight.

hoooooonkmimimimimi.

+Nathan Graves dump truck ass
+Rakugakids reference
+Yo Camilla call me
+Proof of Blood

-Nathan Graves dump truck ass
-Sinking Old Sanctuary?! More like Stinking Old Sanctuary!
-Why is my hair not as nice as Hugh's
-Where's my burrito

Now that the dust has settled, what do we all think of Sneak King?

Before this last playthrough, I would've said Sneak King was the best of the trilogy with Big Bumpin' being the worst, but nearly twenty years removed, I'm afraid to say the BK hierarchy has changed.

It's tragic, because Sneak King's opening sets you up for something special. A still shot of a darkened driveway... The King appears from the shadows, stalking about like a predator, his visage a cruel mockery of the human form intended to disarm and draw in his prey. But this beast is no man, and his attempt mimicry is all wrong, glassy-eyed and without life. And then you boot up the game proper and find that it's just a crusty stealth title that asks you to do the same exact thing over and over and over again.

If Pocket Bike Racer's problem was too little content, then Sneak King's is that there's too much. Twenty missions spread out over four levels, but every mission tasks you with essentially the same objective: deliver delicious Burger King meals to hungry masses. The most variety you'll get in how you go about that is in what order you'll need to hit up the various NPCs sulking around the map or how often you're allowed to make a mistake. Sometimes you'll need to deliver [X] amount of meals without getting caught or by climbing into trash cans (coincidentally where I found my copy of this game, I think someone threw it out by mistake) or popping out of houses, but the amount of repetition here really sucks all the fun out. The King doesn't even need to take pentazemin to stop his hands from shaking when delivering Original Chicken Sandwiches™, this game's got no meat on its bones!

The controls are also horrible, which is something I actually wouldn't accuse the other two games of. Say what you will about Big Bumpin' and Pocket Bike Racer, but movement at least feels serviceable. Sneak King inverts the Y-axis and makes climbing into cover so laborious that your mark will likely move away or collapse from hunger before you're able to get into position. The King shrugging his shoulders and shaking his damn head because I botched the timing on his sandwich delivery while the camera was juttering behind a tree branch, what the fuck do you want from me, man? When we get to the sawmill I'm throwing your ass in a woodchipper [Warning: do not do this. The King cannot be killed by conventional means, he will come back and he will be stronger.]

Despite how bad it is, Sneak King is often the entry in the BK Trilogy that people talk about, because it is the most conceptually interesting of the bunch and the one to lean the hardest into the marketing that gave life to this iteration of The King. Tactical Burger Delivery Action is such a good-dumb idea that at least one man has dedicated his time and income to collecting any copy of the game he can find, and by a magnitude of cents it is the most consistently expensive title in the series on the aftermarket. Curiously, graded copies of the game are actually worth less than open CIBs. I understand the economics of this and why that's the case, but it's very funny to think Sneak King inherently has more value when played.

Ohhhh, wait a minute... Sneak King sounds like sneaking. Shit, I just got it.

My intention was to flame broil you up an ironic treatise on the destructive nature of capitalism passed off as a review for a fast-food slop video game, but I can't nail the satire any more than my tiny hands can hold a Whopper™, and I've watched Brooke Burke eat shit failing to corner her way through a BK drive-thru on her stupid, dumbass looking clown bike so many times that I no longer have the mental capacity to anyway.

Pocket Bike Racer offers up four circuits and three CCs, which at first glance might deceive you into thinking there's a decent amount of game here, but you'll barely make it into your six-finger pour of Ten High you use to dull the sting of living before you realize there's only five tracks. Damn, not even the cheapest whiskey west of the Rockies can save you now. How do they stretch that out? Well, each circuit is just a different game mode, and it's all rote kart racer mainstays like free battle. This game cost about 3.99$ when it released in 2006, I don't know that it's fair to expect more from it, but the dearth of content and unimaginative gameplay makes this the least interesting of the three games in the BK Trilogy and the easiest one to drop.

As with Big Bumpin', the controls do feel competent at least. Nothing about the game is broken, it's just that like the King himself, there's no life behind its eyes. How is it possible that a game cynically released to capitalize on a successful marketing campaign for a fast-food company could lack a soul? A sobering thought.

How do you follow up a game that took 139 hours of your life to complete? Big Bumpin' babyyyyyyy wooo hell yeag they put wWhopper in a bumpber cart !!

I am suffering from acute Final Fantasy VII Rebirth dissociative disorder. The idea of playing any video game right now sounds dreadful, but I have a backlog full of games and I gotta stick to that grind, so I had to find something I could stomach. The Burger King Trilogy seemed like as good a choice as any. Each of these three games are short and require little skill, and frankly, they're all on par with some of the minigames in Rebirth. Sounded like a real smooth transition to me, like checking myself into the gaming equivalent of a methadone clinic. Dr. Drew is here, and he's going to ensure I don't get better for maximum profitability.

The last time I played Big Bumpin', or any of the Burger King games for that matter, was back in 2006 when they came out. A real banner year for me and the Xbox. I had these three games and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), and then my console red ringed a few months later when I rented Chrome Hounds. I was, however, at the right age for BK's bizarre "wake up with the king" campaign, and I was not impervious to its ill-effects. I bought all three of these when they released and tossed them years later, only to have one errant thought about the King waking up in some poor soul's bed which resulted in me grabbing them all again. It might surprise you to know you can easily find boxes full of unopened copies of Big Bumpin' behind Goodwills and on the side of freeways.

Big Bumpin' is a largely inoffensive collection of bumper car minigames, most of which play totally fine but offer very little whether played solo or with friends. Look, nobody had any expectations for this game when it came out, and its most notable qualities are being one of three Xbox/360 hybrid discs, a celebration of a very weird and very specific moment in fast food marketing and having the worst hockey minigame I've ever played. The standard hot potato, destruction derby, and keep-away modes are serviceable if dry, but that hockey game... I don't think a single point was scored that didn't come from the AI or myself knocking the puck into our own goal. I was drunk and listening to Loveline, I don't know what their excuse is.

"How do you guys kill yourselves over there in Korea," Adam asked Minka as I was running a clinic on Brooke Burke and a gigantic man-chicken with a gut full of grain alcohol at 1 in the god damned morning. I don't know the answer to that, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to go out from overconsumption of minigames. I want The King to lower my casket into the cold embrace of the Earth by pushing it in with a bumper car. It's what I deserve.

Marked as "mastered," even though having owned two copies of this game proves I have no willpower and am the master of nothing.

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