Reroll was pretty fun. $30 seems a tad steep for the amount of content sans replaying levels for the best scores. I bought it on sale for $20 and that’s a fair price for the game.

Level design is genius and truly appreciated the further you get in the game. Music is pretty hit or miss for me. Some tracks bop, others get so grating that I turn something else on over it. Controls feel a little awkward at first but once you adjust, it’s fun to accomplish tasks in spite of the physics. Unless it clips you in a gap you can’t escape.

As an introduction to Katamari, Reroll makes a compelling case for reigniting the franchise, perhaps with We Love Katamari next. When Reroll goes on sale for $20 again, it’s a fun game to chill out and feel satisfaction in watching small balls grow big.

Honestly, the worst thing about the game is how Namco, despite helping develop Smash Ultimate, decided it would be in any way a good idea to release it on the SAME DAY as Ultimate. I cannot wrap my head around it.

The gunplay is great and while Haven City is mostly void of distractions, driving around does have a certain charm to it. But GOD the checkpoint system blows.

The first third is great, but the other two thirds add so much shit that just isn’t fun. Even aggravatingly so. And almost every level has very limited numbers of checkpoints, so dying means doing the same shit over and over until you want to strangle a baby. The animations are the highlight. Ever since PS1, Naughty Dog has been the kings of game animation.

Jak 2 was a big part of my childhood and now that I’ve finally conquered it, I can put it to rest.

The story is simultaneously the most basic space war story ever and very incomprehensible. I can give the cliffnotes just fine but the specifics are scattershot.

You play as John-117 aka Master Chief who is as badass as he is devoid of character growth. No one undergoes an arc in the story, it's all just a chain of events to act as window dressing to the shootouts. The difference between level one MC and level ten MC is his body count. Cortana is fun but only shows the faintest hints of meaningful character moments like the upside down teleporting before she goes back to "no growth" mode. The peak of the story comes when the Flood are introduced and when 343 Guilty Spark becomes a Disney/Pixar twist villain.

My favorite moment is when you stumble upon a tired soldier driven to insanity by the Flood infecting his comrades. He shoots at you, goes on about how he played dead and doesn't want to be taken by the Flood, and you can freely choose to put him out of his misery. That was good.

The gameplay, mwah it's satisfying. Almost every gun is fun and gratifying to use. I think Halo has the best sniper rifle in all of gaming, because snipers are usually my least favorite guns in shooters. But the kickback, sound and power makes it a total joy. Shotgun also kino. The pistol is badass, the assault rifle spray-and-pray, and the grenades that either just go boom, or stick to an alien and then goes boom as he runs for his life. I gotta say, wasn't big on the alien weapons. Plasma pistols and rifles just ain't as satisfying as the UNSC guns. The vehicles have sloppy controls, but I think that was the intention, because if they didn't, they'd be broken to fuck.

The level design is baffling. You'd think an FPS with pseudo-open worlds would be disastrous, but ironically, I preferred them to the interior levels. The open levels are ingeniously designed to subtly guide you toward the critical path while still feeling like an open area to explore. The interior levels are samey corridors and spaceship rooms that are easy to get lost in and get reused at least once each throughout the game. There's an objective marker in the game but only when it feels like it. When so many interior levels have similar doors and designs that it's like getting lost in a cyberpunk IKEA, having it on at all times would've been very helpful.

The music, bro. One of the best in an FPS. The Halo theme is legendary among video game themes, but the trick about Halo 1 is that they cocktease you with remixes and short samples of it until the endgame, where they hit you with the full track in a tense, exciting mission, and you feel the "BA BA BA BAAAA BA BA BA BAAAA"

There are a lot of little details in the game; some fun, some not. The Covenant grunts being characterized as pussy cowards makes me want to learn more about their race and why we fight them (something we never learn in Halo 1 because it's a space war and we gotta fight SOMEONE). The enemy variety is great with striking designs and silhouettes, but they can pull some pretty cheap instant kill moves, like throwing sticky plasma grenades in tight corridors or those stupid fucking one-shot energy swords held by invisible dudes. And you don't even get one.

Halo 1 is far from the best game ever (it's one of the best launch titles, though) and it ain't even the best FPS. I've had more fun with modern Doom, and they have stories to enhance their gameplay, not just stand next to it breathing regularly. I look forward to Halo 2.

The best parts of Spyro 3 are the new playable characters and said characters being charming additions to the world. It’s a shame only Hunter joins us from the Avalar trio but Bianca and the new playable characters are all endearing and quirky.

The gameplay is Spyro 2 but more varied and backtrack-y due to coming back with new characters later which is still annoying compared to Spyro 1’s simple and direct formula.

The big issue is that this is the least technically sound of the trilogy. I’m sure the PS1 original isn’t this glitchy but on the Reignited Trilogy, I found myself getting screwed by the physics in the flying and vehicle sections. My rocket board would clip the side of a slope and instantly kill all my speed, I’d touch an enemy and get shoved far, etc.

Even more so than Spyro 2 the missions would continue to irk me. Anything with a vehicle made me wanna blow my head off, escort missions are as shit as ever, and I even got softlocked on one mission with the dog and the ball that forced me to essentially do it twice.

One of the big kickers that irreversibly soured this game for me was the 100% reward. Spyro 1’s was awesome, giving you essentially a free-roam playground to collect gems in. Spyro 2’s was a lamer minigame fest but at least the super fire breath could carry to new playthroughs.

Spyro 3’s reward is another bonus level similar to Spyro 1’s, but it’s the worst of the three. The vehicle sections return, including the hardest board race yet where one screw up means the CPUs blitz your ass at the last second. You get nothing to use and it’s not even fun.
Spyro 1 was a 7, Spyro 2 was a 6, and now Spyro 3 is a 5/10.

Maybe the experience is better on the PS1 originals, but I was disappointed to find that (at least to me) there’s only one good Spyro game. That being said, between this and Crash 4, I would love to see a Spyro 4.

I like Spyro 1 more. I enjoy just romping through a level, combing it for gems and eggs more than I do completing a myriad of tasks that are either pretty fun or just monotonous. A lot of challenges just ask you to do things again.

I also don't like being forced to come back later to a level to 100% it once I have a new move. It's somewhat acceptable in something like Battle for Bikini Bottom where the levels are larger and more open with areas accessible only to other characters.

Also Gulp is one of the worst bosses I've ever seen in a 3D platformer. Crush was easy and Ripto was a satisfactory final boss, but Gulp is harder than anything else in Spyro 2. He's only pretty tough if you're trying to just beat him and go, but to 100% the game, you have to beat him without getting hurt to get a skill point, and without healing to get a trophy. His charge attack is easy to avoid, but his electric guns that HOME IN ON YOU with splash damage and a lingering AoE hitbox are retarded. Plus the means to hurt him are scattered randomly. After dropping 50 lives trying to beat him without getting hit, I just said "fuck it" and beat the game, got the infinite superflame power, came back and one-shot him.

If Spyro 1 was a 7/10, then Spyro 2 was a 6/10. I'd rather have a game of consistent peaceful quality rather than a mixed bag of missions, often paired with repeats. Hopefully Spyro 3's all new forms of gameplay won't be an issue for me.

Compared to PS1, while the graphics received an upgrade, the aesthetic was lost. PS1 Spyro had a god-tier color palette and made a lot out of the environments with very little. Character models are objectively better in Reignited, but something about the color palette and layouts felt not as sharp or cool as the original.

On its own merits, Spyro 1 is pretty fun. It’s a relaxing romp that flows pretty nicely from one level to the next, and for you completionists, 100%-ing a level only takes 5-10 minutes. Bosses suck chimpanzee schlong. I died WAY more to common enemies than bosses, even Gnorc.

Biggest problem with Spyro 1: there isn’t a real drive to collect things besides its low difficulty to do so and your own want. PS4 achievements help, but that’s an outside force rather than an actual part of the game. I would’ve preferred worlds open up alongside collecting. It took me 8 hours to 100% the game, but a feeling of repetition starts to set in if you play for more than a couple hours at a time. I’ve heard Spyro 1 is the weakest in the trilogy, so I’m excited to see how Insomniac improved the series from there.