As of writing this, LAYER 7 is the newest update. It feels a little disingenuous to review this game right now since it's not fully finished yet but what's here is INSANE. Every layer feels like it could be an entire game on its own, since they're constantly throwing new ideas, new enemies and new mechanics at you. Speaking of, DO NOT play with gyro controls like I did. I've been playing on steam deck which has BACK BUMPERS and I'm having to use every single button on the controller. If you do end up playing on controller (somehow), don't get too used to where your buttons are. the game will surprise you multiple times with a new mechanic that makes you compleltey rethink your layout. Keyboard and mouse is the best layout but that should be obvious.
I haven't even gone after all of the secrets or tried for higher rankings yet.. this game is going to keep me entertained for a LONG time

This game was pulled RIGHT out of the dreamcast era, which is both it's best and worst quality. its pure STYLE and that's sick as hell. My only real problem is that this game can be a bit obtuse sometimes. There were a few times I was left with just under the required amount out of REP and no idea where to find the last few graffiti spots I needed to progress. There are maps that show you what spots you haven't touched yet, but they're not accessible until after you beat the game for some reason. That aside, BRC makes up for being a little obtuse some of the time by being KILLER in all other aspects. I lost track of how many times I said "THATS SO FUCKING COOL" while playing this game. Sometimes its fun just to boot this game up and mosey around doing random tricks just because moving around is FUN. I adored lethal league, loved this, and can't wait to see what Team Reptile cooks up next.

Spider-Man and Spider-Man Miles Morales are some of my favorite games of all time so this was a no brainer
I can't believe they did it. Swinging especially feels SO much better, it's SO fast and it's going to make it nearly impossible to go back to the first game. There are a few combat abilities I miss but the new ones are awesome. I played this on the second highest difficulty and that made all of the boss fights an amazing challenge. I'm still making my way through the side content, but I'm thoroughly floored by the main story.

Unfortunately the game does have SOME technical issues, and lacks some quality of life features the other games have, like time of day settings, the ability to replay missions, and most egregiously, the lack of new game plus. once these get ironed over in a few months that will fix literally all of my complaints.

They added a bunch of cool fanservice which is neat but... I liked the original ending more? There's a bunch of cool moments but they end up being nothing more than twitter clips because the whole thing doesn't flow together very well. The extra playable characters don't really have a purpose- they have a bunch of cool upgrades but no tangible reward for getting them. Leveling the other characters revolves around finding a random koco in the open world rather than actually demonstrating any sort of skillful play, and there's no reason to play as them again past their very brief platforming sections. There's no reason to really explore the open world at ALL in this chapter.
The boss rush is cool, but why was there no way to replay the bosses before this point...? Why is it so BRUTAL, even on easy mode? Just having to fight all of them with a level 1 sonic would have been hard enough, but doing it all in a row with perfect parry, a mechanic that didn't even EXIST before this point, is way too much. Not to mention that 400 rings is BARELY enough to get through all 3 bosses, ESPECIALLY the second boss. It was genuinely a fun challenge to overcome though, and was my favorite part of the DLC.

why is the true final boss so obtuse though? why is the ONLY hint on how to actually hit it locked behind 100%ing the entire final chapter, in an era where you can just look things up I'm you get frustrated? It doesn't feel like a clever solution, either, it just feels like you're exploiting the wonky combat system. I 100% completed the base game when it came out, but I think it's going to be a long time before I play it again after this.

good ass game

took me 3 years to beat
I didn't like a lot of stuff about this game, stuff like grinding the same tasks over and over again for for money SUCKS, and not all of the bosses are fun and satisfying but I get what it's saying and I respect it for that. it helps that the game is REALLY good when it hits

too bad there won't be a sequel

I've heard nothing but good things about Spark 3, but I wanted to play Spark 2 first since it's been on my radar. It's a little short, only 3-4 hours at most, so it doesn't overstay its welcome. I didn't go for 100%, but even after a full playthrough it feels like theres so much stuff I'm missing. The story is intriguing, but you'll be a little lost if you don't know anything about Spark 1, but you can still follow well enough, even if there's a lot going on, and it can be a bit "anime" at points (WHICH IS AWESOME). Can't wait to see how spark 3 expands upon the formula and continues the story

replayed this game for the first time since 2017 and I love it SO much. it's not as straightforward as galaxy or sunshine, but it makes up for that by having SO much to discover. maybe an unreasonable amount of content, honestly. every corner of every level in this game has something to discover, and you can finish the game without seeing most of what it has to offer. Mario's control is the best its ever been. it's SO fun to move around and explore, so it helps that there's a lot to do, even if not every power moon in the game is equally fun to grab. some involve complex platforming challenges, and others are just... ground pounding at a specific spot. having a bunch of "easy" moons makes odyssey an excellent speed game though, and you can blast through the game in a few hours if you're good at it, and there's a bunch of optional content in the post game that will keep you playing for much longer.

this game is a BANGER fr fr. I can't think of anything it does poorly

i finished this game a few days ago and ive been dreading having to write a review. this game fucking sucks. I wanted to like it so bad, I've heard SO many good things and was unfathomably disappointed. So much of this game is just... waiting around for things to happen. Waiting for platforms to move, waiting for TNT to explode, waiting for the boss to reveal it's weak point, there's nothing interesting or engaging about it. The story doesn't even save this game, characters just appear and disappear from the plot with no explanation, character motivations are constantly changing, and this games idea of "humor" is just saying something thats so LOL RANDOM xD with no other punchline.

Crash 4 does everything this game was trying to do monumentally better, please just play that instead