A charming and unexpected dungeon crawler. There's a flow state you enter by the third town where you spend your time diving into the dungeon slowing accruing power and town pieces and coming back to the town building. It's ahead of its time for a PS2 launch title.

It's a very punishing game if you do not prepare yourself accordingly. Dark Cloud rewards you for experimentation and diversifying your power between your party members. Though there's a spike in difficulty towards the later half, making grinding annoying to do, I enjoyed my play through enough.

This game is good as hell when you don't got a bitch in your ear telling you it's bad. Bro you blow up the White House! Like this shit is cool as hell!

Yeah the PS3 port is pretty bad, but...so was everything released on PS3 in 2008. So what the game is short, there wasn't really much more needed to be told story wise. It is a weird gateway between the more deliberate cover based first-person shooters with iron sights that we would get post-modern warfare and the classic Medal of Honor style of gameplay.

I just can't get over how cool this game is and how well it executes on its premise. One of the best openings to a game I've played since Prey 2006. It sucks you right into the war and gets you ready to kill Nazis and save New York. I didn't really find it all that difficult, as you can run and gun your way through the entire game. Especially with the Human shield mechanic, its almost like a first person Dead to Rights...minus the dog and the slow mo.

hey. so this game is pretty cool. its like a satire of trendy start-up culture or whatever and ngl its sometimes a lil cringe and wont age well but thats okay. i know roguelikes are poppin but thats a big ask upfront sometimes. i gotta put in alot of work before i even know if the game sucks or not lol. im a renaissance man, you gotta court the yalp. anyway i kinda like this “series of mini runs” approach cuz the investment to payoff ratio is a bit more consistent and thats just like….. better

speaking of better, going under is set up in a very non-egghead way. instead of crunching numbers, combat focuses on a more “chaos baller” style of engagement. things are exploding, youre grabbing chairs and keyboards, victory is determined by how much you can go wit the flow, think on your feet. most of the skills make more things explode, or give you command of the explosions, or make people date you. i thrive in chaos, i love to go hyatt (she makes that noise cuz its like zelda) and i too hate capitalism and love spongebob

anyway games pr sick
see you later gamer dweebz xoxo

Do you ever stumble in one of those games that, despite not being perfect, it manages to cover certain specific things in such a smashingly perfect way that you can't help but give it the highest score ? Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is that game.

It has debated to hell and back how this game is definitely less balanced than its predecessor, especially due to its slow start and the not-exactly-ideal tutorials which omit some key info and also feel more tedious than they could've been if streamlined better. Yet, despite this, Xenoblade 2 managed to slip into my heart, right next to the first game.

The graphics, of course, make full display of the artistic creativity of Monolith Soft, which is able to put very unique spins on what could feel like familiar views in any other JRPGs, where the classic green plains are placed on the back of an enormous quadrupedal titan, while a complex set of caves, a massive lake and a medieval town are all stored inside the stomach of a huge whale-like beast.

The character-design has been another source of debate, but I've never found it bad, if anything I welcome a JRPG protagonist that seems to be coming out of the 90's in terms of weird, yet uniquely striking fashion. I prefer it to normal-looking clothes at the very least. The rest of the cast pretty much follow suit, going for an unapologetic vibe that fits the previous works of the main character designer, while also featuring some guest artists for some of the non-story Blades, including Tetsuya Nomura at his best on designing the main villains of the game.

As with the first game, the title shines in its main story cutscenes where the animators display an amazing craft in how they handle expressions and movements. I've been a huge fan of their direction ever since the first game.

The gameplay is where those previously mentioned problems start to pop up. Xenoblade 2 isn't a bad game, it's legit great once you understand its mechanics, but it's one of those games that will give to you as much as you're willing to give it back in return. its battle system based on elemental combos requires constant attention and a familiarity of the roles and abilities of the different blades, which can be unlocked through the story, side quests or through an in-game gacha system (one that thankfully doesn't involve real money).

Each blade is also crucial for exploring the world as, depending by their skills, they'll be able to unlock shortcuts or secret passages, some of which will be mandatory for some of the side quests. It's a very intriguing system, but unlocking the different abilities and tiers will take time and the game might sometime block the player's progress because of this, forcing them to grind away at the requirements to unlock the abilities needed to progress.

It all feels a bit too tedious for most people, while others might find themselves just vibing with the game and exploring around, clearing side quests and finding all the side-story content that the different blades will unlock through their own requirements.

For people that will be willing to put in some time, Xenoblade 2 will have lots of rewards of course, but it's undeniable that it won't be worth everyone's time, especially as the game sometimes does lack a bit of guidance as mentioned before.

The other side of contempt regards the game's story, which takes quite a bit to get going. It's not bad by any means, but the first part of the game is clearly a huge, careful setup that, much like its gameplay, will reward people who will be patient enough to wait for the game's plot to be ripe enough and show its real flavor, which, to be honest, has moved me to tears, as the characters shown their motivations and stories. Unluckily it's hard to talk about the plot without spoiling anything and one might have to make their own essay about just the plot of the game, as it's rich with interconnected themes about one's purpose, life, death and the dramatic nature of a Blade's life. It's a hell of a ride once it gets going, I assure you.

All of this is topped by an absolutely fantastic soundtrack. It shouldn't be a surprise given the track record of the series, but this second title manages to repeat the success of the first game, by having several bangers in its song selections, both in battle themes and location themes, as well as its emotional tunes.

The lows of Xenoblade 2 are quite low due to an excessively tedious gameplay loop that might scare most at first and a plot that has a slow start, but the highs are also among the highest I've ever experienced in the genre. it's worth all of it in my opinion and it's one of those special games that, despite having quite a few crucial gripes, manages to hit me right in the heart and has been worth the whole experience.

se "Mega Man Legends" é "Castelo no Céu" do Miyazaki, "The Misadventures of Tron Bonne" é um episódio de "Lupin the IIIrd" dirigido pelo próprio Miyazaki. recheado de um anti-heroísmo caótico e divertido, mas com um coração bem forte por trás.

eu não gostei de algumas das missões: as chamadas "Digout RPG" são dungeon crawlers bem monótonos e não muito engajantes, e as recompensas encontrada nas "Ruins" são bem poucas pra compensar a exploração de labirintos bem básicos. tendo dito isso, o jogo é generoso o bastante para te deixar zerar a campanha principal sem ter que engajar com todas elas, e eu só tive problema com essas duas mesmo. eu também não gosto muito das piadas feitas às custas do sofrimento dos Servbots porque eu acho eles muito fofos mas elas são infrequentes o bastante para que a experiência não se prejudicasse tanto.

no final das contas a maioria dos momentos cômicos funciona: eu amo a policial failgirl que consegue fazer um suplex em um robô 2x maior que ela e as interações dos tripulantes do Gesellschaft me colocavam um sorriso na boca com frequência. também gosto muito que o final tomou seu tempo para dar destaque em todo o elenco e completar seus mini-arcos (em especial os Servbots!!! eles aprenderam tanto!!!! eu amo eles).

se você está jogando a série Legends, esse aqui tecnicamente é pulável mas se o charme e o humor do primeiro título te cativou o bastante, acho que você deveria dar uma chance para esse aqui. até porque é bem curto.

At the hearts of these rings lies a beautiful tangent of open-endedness.

Sat somewhere between full-on simulations where grenades stick to carapaces and the toy-box arcade of closed arenas, a kill in the Silent Cartographer was never just a kill, with pillars sinking into the subterranean, tubes of halogen concrete harnessing an old mass of secrets to which we already have an answer. It's not that the history of these places is irrelevant but what more can be told, exactly? The means have been laid out in front you - a floor of rifles is coming alive. Jet-engines in direct conversation with the sand. Rocket spores prong out of lush warthogs. Every round unearthing new verbs to wield in tacticality or pure idiocy. Say what you will about its cheesy renditions but Combat Evolved still feels like the most violent Halo - perhaps the only truly violent one. When I blow up a Grunt and watch their meagre corpse flail in the air searching for purchase there's shits and giggles, yes. But they’re also so obviously there. It's not drama. Not quite. But a body is flung all the same.

Immense places in my mind.

Another souvenir; piercing the Elites’ precious metal at age nine and hearing a death rattle that sounds like the growls of puberty. Moving on, with our guns. A frumious loudness. This assault rifle was always an absurd feat of sound-design, the kind of auditory blast that only ever sounded right with a low-polygon count. Without it Combat Evolved would be more hostile - an eco-manifesto lacking the punchline - spreading the atoms of the island instead of knitting them a little closer together with each bullet salvo. It's charmingly inelegant - only useful within the logics of Halo's choreographic freedom. During a recent playthrough I found myself spending a good minute or two facing a single Elite inside the sophomore forests of the Cartographer, desperately trying to finish him off, a whole crowd of collisions standing between me and him. But this gun’s a funny thing - only inflicting meaningful damage at intimate distances - and I was happy to dance amongst the tree trunks. Its shields are a fucking pain in the way they force you to repeatedly engage until one of us gets tired of waiting and the tango ends in short, purple murder. These spaces have to be negotiated by the both of us even if their programming only serves my curiosity when the dust settles. Kinesthesia drags out these encounters - before the squeeze of level-design - tentatively pushing me to prod around their geometries in order to decipher an imaginary arc; I shoot by artistry and kill by necessity. A life-injecting headshot.

They stood no chance.

Robert McFarlane, the great nature writer of the Anthropocene, once said that "trees make meaning as well as oxygen." I think about this often. I think about it now because Halo, though it has grown progressively bleaker over Bungie’s - and now 343’s - tenure, remains an object fascinated by hypernature springing forth from its epic vistas and how one may blend themselves within their stone foliage. In industry years, Combat Evolved is a time-worn artifact. Games felt more unknowable back then. The machine will transform again and we’re never going back. But what if? And what of the technologies and the trees? The needlers and the strings? Guns make meaning as well as death. Echoes in a brutalist mausoleum. Halo has always been about grooving in the remnants of ancient engines. No one lives here anymore. Every time you choose to look at the paint too closely it dissolves before your very eyes just like any other game. But these colours are all yours and what matters is the wish - a wish to stay here forever - and how it is sustained in the countenance of air - this idea that spectacle could truly be the place.

I think about the meaning shooters impart onto us - fantasies of metal evergreens, from Jupiter to Iraq, a vehicle for violence so deeply imbedded in the sense of identity games have built for themselves that we’re bound to a halfway vision. “If only you could talk to the monsters…Now that would be something.” I think not. Silence is worth its weight in salt. Yeah, we can talk about encounter flows and how good the gun feels to shoot - reduce language to a concise excision of meaning from game verbs - but I prefer the stop-start interrogations of synergy to immediate shotgun intents. A relationship to space told through thorough imprecisions. Shits and giggles and awe - and all the wonderful, terrible things in between. And maybe the Silent Cartographer ain’t all that in the end - a Library rocks harder indeed - but it’s given me the most juice for all these years. Green guy standing between these trees and those guns. Sacrificing my little marines, seeking the grand chorus within the pulp. Now two decades later, still idling on those shores, looking ahead to Destiny. All alone.

Gun pointed at the head of the universe.

The game started pretty strong, with fun visuals, interesting story and great music, but over time it became really stale and pretty boring. I look 2 breaks to finally 'beat' the game.

My thoughts:
(+ = (mostly) positive; - = (mostly) negative)
- Gameplay;
The combat never really clicked. Most characters felt like a one trick pony and there wasn't much to strategize. Items felt useless and barely any minigames/side activities.

+ Music;
The music there is, is very good. But I really wish there was more. Almost all areas used the same music which is a real shame.

+ Graphics;
The visuals were the first thing that got me interested in the game. It's fun discovering new areas and enemies.

- Story/Characters;
Only sylvando did it for me. All other characters were super boring to me. I really dislike the main character was silent. Especially when that important thing with his family happened and he just doesn't respond with any emotion.

Recommend?
No, I'd recommend others JRPG's over this one.

Forgive me for letting you down.

Phantom Liberty just can’t keep the 2077 heat up, which is all the more surprising when you consider that it’s an expansion to an already (allegedly) finished game, and not at all held back by being a wholly original work. Phantom Liberty’s linear gameplay is pushed forward by boring writing, and is then packed into a tiny slice of Night City that’s remarkably dense and remarkably shallow. Never has this world felt so artificial, barring back when the base game ran so poorly that Sony pulled it from their storefronts. Speaking of, this is the perfect place for your thirty dollars to go if you’ve missed those days of poor performance; even on a brand-new rig, Dogtown still chugs when trying to draw rays. Maybe this is like Crysis and they designed this tiny piece of Pacifica for a computer that’ll exist in the future.

Anyone who’s played tabletop games for long enough knows the dangers of letting a campaign go on for too long. Unless the DM has made some pretty solid plans — and assuming that the players haven’t gone too far off of the rails — properly handling escalation tends to be difficult. Ramp up the stakes too slowly, and your players will get bored; ramp them up too quickly, and you’ll have nowhere left to go. 2077 ends with an assault on Arasaka Tower, ensuring that V gets to be remembered as one of Night City’s legends. As Silverhand before them, as Blackhand before them, as Spider Murphy before them, as Rogue before them; V leads a charge against one of the deadliest corps in the setting to defeat Adam Smasher, destroy Mikoshi (unless you pick the obvious bad ending), and separate their mind from Johnny’s once and for all. It’s a strong ending, giving you an unequivocal victory in a world where you aren’t meant to get those. Phantom Liberty seems to assume (and reasonably for a $30 expansion) that you’ve seen this ending before. As such, it needs to escalate. It’s placed right in the middle of V’s story, but it needs to wow returning players who have seen everything that the original game built up to, and it does this by turning into a cartoon.

V gets contacted via their Relic by the world’s greatest netrunner, who’s currently working for the New United States of America. She informs you that she’s onboard the Space Force One alongside the president of the country, they’re going to crash, and they need your help. V swoops in, rescues the president of the NUSA, agrees to be a spy for the government, and then goes on little James Bond adventures with Idris Elba for the promise of a cure. The netrunner, Songbird, is also so fucking good at what she does that she’s managed to harness the power of the Blackwall. There’s a part at the end of her path where V jacks into her and gets to use the Blackwall powers for themselves, letting you click your fire button to UNLEASH BLACKWALL and glitch an entire army of secret service supersoldiers to death. Reed’s (Idris Elba’s) path features you directly taking on MAXTAC in order to pull Songbird out of their grasp. All of this happens immediately after V deals with the Voodoo Boys in Act 2. V goes from some snotnose merc who’s still on the come-up to an NUSA super spy, capable of harnessing the Blackwall like a magic spell and slaughtering a full squad of MAXTAC soldiers before they’ve even heard the name “Anders Hellman”. It’s far too much, far too quickly. V is the strongest fucking person who has ever lived and it isn't close. It’s silly.

Not helping matters is how synthetic this setting is, made all the worse by the story structure. Most of what you’ll be doing in Dogtown amounts to little more than going to a place and then going back. You might even get to kill someone if you’re really lucky, but it’s not something you should expect to be doing much of. It’s more like a little treat. A lot of these meetings could have been holocalls. You'll drive to Alex's bar, drive to Mr. Hands's hotel, drive back to Alex's bar, drive to an airdrop, drive back to Alex's bar, drive to a Voodoo Boys hideout, drive back to Alex's bar, drive to a radio tower, drive back to Alex's bar. Dogtown itself is mercifully small, so these to-and-fro drives don't take especially long, but they serve only to illustrate how fake this world really is; the same NPCs will be shaken down by the same goons every time you pass by the same street corners, likely in pursuit of one of the same airdrops that's landed in the same spot to be picked up by the same set of guards. This was a problem in the base game, but nowhere near to this extent; Dogtown being so tiny and so dense reveals only that these characters are like actors in a play. They de-materialize the second they're no longer needed. Night City being fucking massive — despite having very little to do within it — at the very least provided some level of obfuscation for how surface level the NPC routines and placements were. Even then, there were some NPCs that would stand around in the same spots and actually have dialog that advanced as you progressed through the story. I remember there being a corrupt cop who always talked to the same two Tyger Claws on a street corner in Kabuki, and he would tell them about different schemes he had cooked up whenever you drove past. Not so in Dogtown. Everyone gets one line, one routine, one action, and they do it over and over again in the hopes that you won't be paying attention long enough to see them repeat themselves.

Regardless, it's the missions themselves that show just how far CDPR's level design chops have slipped. These are some of the most aggressively linear levels I've seen in any modern game, and they're easily on par with the worst Call of Duty campaigns. Most offensive of the lot is You Know My Name, where V is tasked with infiltrating a cocktail party. The game has a very clear idea of how it wants this to go — you enter through the sewers, silently take out the few guards they have posted, snipe everyone blocking Reed's path, schmooze your way through the party, find Songbird, download personality profiles of two hackers hired by Kurt Hansen, and then get out. The problem with this, to go back to the DM analogy, lies in how on-rails this entire mission is. There is so little room for player expression, and taking it on any other way feels like you're going off-script in a way that the game isn't equipped to handle. The building you're breaking into has some of the tightest security in all of Dogtown, patrolled by dozens upon dozens of BARGHEST guards, and V is reminded over and over again how key it is to remain stealthy. If you go guns blazing, and get caught at every single opportunity provided to you, the only thing that actually changes is whether or not Reed gets a black eye when you're escorted out of the building at the end. Something like thirty guards all get mowed down by you and your superspy friend who doesn't understand how cover works when you're guiding him around, and nobody bats an eye. You just walk about, do exactly what the game tells you to, and your actions are ignored if you try to do anything else. Even some of the most basic gigs in the base game offered more player expression than this. Being locked in place on a stationary sniper rifle and telling an NPC where to go for ten minutes is not what I play Cyberpunk 2077 for.

For as high as the stakes are, this is a remarkably boring narrative. Setting aside the bog-standard secret agent man schlock — which was already done and better in the base game — these might be some of the most same-y characters I've seen in a long time. Between Reed, Myers, Songbird, and Alex, every single one of them has the base, singular trait of "competent", and all later develop the secondary trait of "backstabber". Songbird backstabs Myers who backstabs V who backstabs Reed who backstabbed Alex who backstabs V and Songbird who backstabs V. They go through all of this with the excitement and fervor of Sam and Ralph clocking in. They're fucking bored by the entire narrative. Everyone seems like they'd rather just go home and be done with it. Johnny isn't even allowed to be wrong about anything anymore; he's been reduced to a voice in your head who mugs the camera and glibly recaps everything that happened every ten minutes to make sure that you're still paying attention. Base game Johnny had a lot of moments where he was an abject moron too blinded by his ego to see obvious answers, but none of that exists here. It doesn't even make sense in the timeline: he can give you that whole teary speech about how Songbird must have just wanted her freedom more than he did and that's why she got a happy ending instead of him, and then slip right back into his dipshit asshole persona the second you get back to base game. Again, CDPR is writing Johnny under the assumption that you've already seen him go through his character arc, but that doesn't work when you willingly set the events of your follow-up story before the point where his arc actually happens.

All of this just makes me wonder if CDPR ever actually had a clue what they were doing with Cyberpunk, or if it was just luck and a lot of outside consulting that got them where they are. V being able to take on MAXTAC in a 2v4 and coming out not just alive but victorious is so fucking stupid that it actually annoys me. I know I'm being a lore freak, but it's ridiculous. V may as well have recruited Bugs Bunny for the mission. There's no sense in pretending as though this is still a fairly normal story operating within the bounds of reality when you're so willing to break the hard rules of your own setting so easily. This goes double for the idea of harnessing the Blackwall and using it like a Bioshock plasmid. I'd call it pure fanfiction, but most fanfiction coming out these days has more restraint. Beating Adam Smasher was similarly pretty out there in the base game, but it at least had some narrative heft; two Night City legends taking down the last of the old guard, and it was one of the last things V ever did. You can canonically wipe a MAXTAC squad or shoot the Blackwall out of your fingers in this and the game just keeps on going as if V isn't a fucking god. Again, this is placed chronologically right after V deals with the Voodoo Boys, and there's still a lot of base game left after that. How the fuck are the Tyger Claws meant to be considered a serious threat after this? The Raffens? Kang Tao? Arasaka? You can't set your character to a level of strength and ability this fucking high and then bring the stakes back down afterwards. At least Reed's route has the good grace to offer ending your playthrough; finish the expansion by sending Songbird into space and you're dropped right back into Night City to go and get yourself a different ending.

Phantom Liberty is a massive disappointment. The opening section — while roughly about as linear as the game means to go on — at least manages to promise some interesting developments that ultimately never come. I think I'd like to stop offering so many chances to this studio, now. Thank goodness CDPR is taking a breaking from the Cyberpunk universe, and is instead shifting gears to beat some more life out of The Witcher horse. There is still supposed to be a sequel game coming out at some point in the future; if this is what we can expect moving forward, count me out.

They yassified Mr. Hands.

Spyro 2 is always held as the best one in the trilogy, and this recent replay was me trying to see if I will finally get it. Unfortunately, it did the complete opposite and further amplifies why this game is the weakest one in the trilogy in my eyes.

Spyro himself is still such a joy to move around with, and the world visually is very creative. However, while the level design is still good, it’s still a step backwards from Spyro 1 due to focusing less on exploration or pure platforming. It is now scattered with mini-games that are either mindlessly easy or end too quickly to leave any impression on me. These meaningless variety that this sequel offers somehow makes me feel more fatigued towards it than Spyro 1. As repetitive as that game gets, it doesn't have any fat to it for me to get tired of replaying it each time.

The fatigue is also not helped by the unrewarding backtracking that feels so utterly pointless that I have asked why it’s even a thing. I don’t mind backtracking as long as it feels substantial, like unlocking new playable characters, which also gets you access to brand new sections with tons of gems to collect or decent mini-games that Spyro 3 offers. However, in Spyro 2, you only gain new abilities to collect a few gems and play a dull mini-game. That's all there is to it…

I will definitely say that the world and characters are a big step from Spyro 1, but it's like going from nothing to stale white bread. Outside of Moneybags and Hunter, I didn't care much about the other characters that just exist, like Elora, or they're supposed to be an effective villain but aren't, like Ripto, who acts more like a grumpy guy than a legitimate villain. The story just feels like autopilot to me, despite its clear improvements.

I know that I sound very harsh in this review, and that is partly true. I need to make it clear that Spyro 2 is still overall a solid game that I mostly have a fun time with. I would still revisit it over most other collectathon platformers, but for a game that is universally considered the best one by many fans, I just don't see it personally. In my eyes, the supposed perfect middle ground feels more like a watered-down version of its younger & older siblings (Spyro 1 & 3).

Featuring Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles!

I love Sonic 3K, and I can see why it's widely regarded as one of the best games in the series, it really feels like the full package of 2D Sonic (...and Knuckles).

While Sonic 2 rewarded speed in the level design, 3K emphasizes exploration again in a similar fashion to Sonic CD; the player needs to track down hidden large rings in a level to gain access to the special stages, where Sonic navigates across a maze-like board to activate blue orbs, while steering clear of red ones. Simple in theory, but certainly tricky at times. I would absolutely recommend going out of your way to do these special stages, because you'll unlock the ability to transform into Super Sonic after getting all seven Chaos Emeralds, and blazing through later levels in the Super Saiyan form is a joy. That's enough talk regarding the special stages though, as the actual main level design is the meat of the game.

With over a dozen different levels with multiple acts, Sonic 3K is the longest entry from the classic 2D games, and it's very nice to see how consistent the quality remains throughout its runtime. I'm not going to bring up every stage here (like in my Sonic 1 review), as I don't have extensive thoughts on all of them. There will also be a bunch of inevitable comparisons to other (Sonic) games, as I bear the curse of only recently becoming a fan in 2024 and those games just happen to be fresh in my memory.

Angel Island Zone is an amazing opening level, as it introduces the player right to the design philosophy of 3K and has many easily accessible special stages and multiple of the newly introduced elemental shields. For those who don't know, the elemental shields replace the shield power-up from the previous games and all are special in their own way. The lightning shield allows Sonic to double jump and attract rings, the bubble shield provides a move similar to Bounce Bracelet in Sonic Adventure 2 and allows him to breathe underwater (so the bubbles aren't required), while the fire shield gives immunity to fire (including lava) and a mid-air dash. In Angel Island Zone no shield is particularly better than another, so it's a good place to try their abilities before using them in later levels which make extensive use of their specific traits. One of those levels is Hydrocity Zone, which follows directly afterwards - here the use of the bubble shield is encouraged, as the bubble placements in the levels are only at certain spots and the ability to freely navigate underwater is very important if you actually want to explore there to find special stages without a rush. Marble Garden is arguably the longest and most confusing stage in the game, but it's still enjoyable in its own way. Carnival Night is plenty of fun to rush through too and has some nice underwater segments, while Ice Cap Zone is one of my favorites in the game with the snowboarding intro and overall satisfying level structure - this is particularly cool, because I was already very fond of Ice Cap in Sonic Adventure 1. Meanwhile, Flying Battery Zone is the result of "what if we made Wing Fortress Zone but actually good", taking the airship aesthetic of that level and making it more fun and sightreadable and Sandopolis is an innovative desert level, where the second half reminded me a lot of Pyramid Cave in Sonic Adventure 2. Afterwards follows Lava Reef Zone, which felt very reminiscent of Celeste's Core to me, but also stood out from the rest with its more vertical level design and great soundtrack, causing it to quickly become a favorite. Everything is rounded off with the Death Egg Zone, which gave me huge SA2 vibes again, as the atmosphere felt quite similar to the ARK levels in that game, same with the gravity switching mechanic. The final boss for 3K was also surprisingly fun compared to the other classic 2D entries, and Doomsday Zone is a great bonus for players who got all the Chaos Emeralds. Man, I love Super Sonic, no matter how basic the idea behind him is.

Sonic 3's soundtrack is an interesting one to discuss, as I completed the game through Sonic Origins, which uses the prototype versions of a few songs, as I believe the licensing for Michael Jackson's songs ran out (don't quote me on this). I don't think those prototype versions are as horrible as some make them out to be, and I actually prefer Carnival Night's prototype rendition to the original. Can't say the same for Ice Cap though, the original song is iconic for a good reason and I love how it ties in with the snowboard section at the beginning. The prototype version just sounds a bit too upbeat for my taste here, considering the original track conveys the gloomy feeling of an icy cave perfectly fine. Putting the differences of MJ and prototype songs aside, some other songs I thoroughly enjoy are Angel Island Zone, Hydrocity Zone (Act 1) and Lava Reef Zone (Act 1).

Even 30 years after its original release, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles managed to provide me with a surprisingly good time and I hope that many more people will continue to play it over the years. I really wish I would have grown up with the Sonic games in my childhood...

existe algo de muito doce em Yoshi's Story. algo q vai além da sua estética bonitinha, da sua reputação como um "jogo conforto" ou um joguinho pra bebês. digo, meio q é pra bebês, mas é mais q isso tbm!

eu genuinamente amo a trilha sonora do Kazumi Totaka. ela consegue transmitir um adorável espiríto de aventura, com um leve e melancólico toquezinho de canção de ninar. ela n se sustenta tanto divorciada de seu jogo, mas se encaixa tão bem com toda a sua apresentação de livrinho de dobraduras e de todo resto do trabalho de som de Yoshi's Story. os barulhinhos dos Yoshies foi meio q um trabalho de mestre do Totaka, e hj em dia é muito difícil n imaginar a voz dele com o pitch no talo saindo de um desses carinhas no meio de um pulão. meio q arte!

eu gosto de como esse jogo é curtinho, incentivando o jogador a experimentar rotas diferentes e explorar os mapas ao máximo. muitas críticas da época apontavam a curta duração como um defeito, no comecinho da época em q críticos começaram a se preocupar demais com o "valor-hora" de um jogo. tenho opiniões bem fortes sobre esse tipo de coisa, mas é meio q óbvio pra mim q atender esse tipo de demanda nunca foi o objetivo aqui. Yoshi's Story é quase um livrinho de cabeceira, curtinho e acessível pra sempre q vc quiser tirar a cabeça do mundo por uns instantes antes de dormir. uma páginazinha pra uma noite um pouco mais feliz.

é um jogo doce, mas n completamente inofensivo. vc vai perder alguns Yoshies pelo caminho. criaturas do mal vão te descer o sarrafo. as frutas vão estar em lugares bem mais difíceis de alcançar do q vc imaginava.

mas o Yoshies vão viver felizes para sempre no final. e talvez vc tbm, um dia.

Kena é um ótimo jogo de aventura, tem um ritmo agradável, gráficos e direção artística bem bonitos com combate até que robusto e mais desafiador que eu esperava, mas ele tem seus tropeços, ele depois de um tempo acaba ficando levemente repetitivo, eu não curti o gameplay de controlar "espíritos" de animais pra fazer puzzles, ficou meio confuso de controlar, a história tem seus momentos legais e me surpreendeu na temática de recuperar espíritos na escuridão, mas se torna qualquer coisa pelo desenvolvimento fraco e possui alguns bugs, mas vale a pena jogar, principalmente numa promoção, 7,5.

Can I really be that harsh on a mfin atari 2600 launch title that seeks to replicate a simple gambling card game and nothing else? It's exactly what it says on the box, you want blackjack, you get blackjack. Only in the late 70's will you be able to find a card game that you play with a mfin paddle controller. It's pretty cool that this game supports up to four players though, even if its everyone vs the house rather than everyone vs each other. For the launch lineup this is probably one of the more social games in the bunch. You start with 200 chips and the chip counter resets at 1000 so I initially set that as my goal, but after getting to around 750 and then watching the house completely own me with enough back-to-back losses that I was back at basically square one again did I realize that huh yeah maybe this is why I shouldn't get a gambling addiction. Truly a cautionary tale from the dawn of console gaming that nobody seemed to heed, this game ran so Balatro and gacha games could crawl.