I saw a few folk disappointed in how gamey this is, rather than something more about just being a cat. I understand that, but if it was just a cat sim then fuckin' nothing would happen. A robot asks for help and you just lick yer baws? I'm afraid I want more for my £25.

Luckily what I got was a lovely adventure game about being a small dude in a city of robots. A city that is both grimy and beautiful in equal measure. The devs have somehow made a shithole that you'd like to visit. The robot inhabitants themselves are often charming, sometimes tragic. They're clinging to a dreg of humanity in order to keep that light from going out completely.

Enter, the wee man. A ginger cat. He's lost down here, and with the help of drone housing an AI, and a backpack he really disnae want to wear, he's gonna save this piece of shit city.

They've done a cool thing with the movement system where you're not free jumping all over the place, but instead get prompts on surfaces you can jump to. Think late Assassin's Creed traversal. Just holding a button and aiming the stick gives you a satisfying series of hops that feel like considered movements the way a cat does in real life. No shitty moments of falling into a pit because you misjusdged distance, or boucing off invisible walls until a surface lets you onto it.

In regards to story, despite it being about cats and robots, there's not much new here. Much of its beats are predictable, but for me that didn't detract from it. A recognizable tale told well with a new kinda setting and protag worked for me. Something doesn't have to be groundbreaking to be good. Sometimes there's comfort to be found in the familiar.

His name is Terry, and we all love him.

This was sweet. Nice to see a new entry in the Marine Job Horror genre (I just invented it).

I'm a massive fan of games where you need to use buttons and levers etc to propel a vehicle with a restricted view. Using number dispays or maps to figure out where you must be. Bonus points if it's set underwater, a place statistically scarier than space.

Spend an hour with this claustrophobic wee man. He's only like £5.

Elements of Boku no Natsuyasumi and Shin-chan combining to make something not quite as good as either.

I'm pretty gutted about how this turned out. The peaceful vacation vibe is marred by essentially having a huge checklist that needs to be done, and that very same peaceful vacation vibe doesn't allow Shin-chan to really be himself. He feels watered down and one-note, as do most of the other characters. Everyone's so saccharine and nice. Misae doesn't lose it and give him a wee bonk on the head. Hiroshi never gets in bother by not thinking before speaking. Shin-chan doesn't get to do anything more than crap puns. Shiro's basically welded to a fucking doghouse.

It feels like such a surface level understanding of why people like Shin-chan, and maybe Boku no Natsuyasumi to the same extent. I can't speak with authority on that as Attack of the Friday Monsters is my only exposure to the series beyond gameplay clips over the years. But a big list of tasks to perform to progress a barely there story does not feel like what these games are supposed to be about.

Just a strange one, because the looping nature of your week's vacation makes it seem like things might go on forever, but then after finishing a certain mission, the game kinda completes itself. It was like I was walked through maybe eight different scenarios that all just suddenly ended missions I had gotten weeks earlier. It might as well have been cutscenes. Didn't feel like I had done anything to earn them. Just played long enough for them to end. Why am I even holding the controller?

He doesn't get his dick out once.

CRASH IS BACK

God it feels good to use that phrase and mean it without a hint of internet mind-poisoned irony. Toys for Bob get it. They get what was fun about classic CB, and where that formula can be taken. The introduction of new masks and traversal mechanics bring such a fresh spin to what's already solid platforming. However... Fuck me there are some brutal segments in here. Path of Pain shit. Finishing a level with 48 deaths made me feel like a very old man.

But then comes the animation and cutscenes. Pure Satuday morning cartoon stuff that has this ancient oaf feeling youthful again. Is this joy I am seeing? Wonderfully rendered worlds, inhabited by daft stretchy characters that make you feel like somebody cared. There's love to spare in this place, and you're being welcomed in.

To get back to the chat about feeling like god's most geriatric fool, I cannae see myself going back to 100% it. As much as younger me would have made a point of it, I just respect myself too much these days to bother with this kinda thing, and I'm glad for it. Gives me more time to enjoy other games, or to lie on top of the bed and wonder why that's a painful thing to do now.

I can barely remember what happened because I was enthralled by the texture and lighting on that blue cunt's dome.

That's about all it has goin' for it. Decade old patter still getting wheeled out. Hee hee da quippy robot.

I feel ancient. Fuck off.

In space no one can hear you shrug.

Some cool combat that gets completely dragged down with just a very boring story. I mostly had nae idea what was going on with the plot toward the end. Ranks and factions suddenly getting mentioned and I'm supposed to care. Infighting amongst... Some group. I couldn't tell you.

The game is at its best when a massive destroyer ship warps in, and you have to dismantle it bit by bit to expose the inner core, then do a smooth flight through the ship, a quick blast to the fucker, and out the other side as it explodes behind you. But what you mostly get is Nara whispering far too much to herself, and doing fetch quests around vast empty areas.

At one point I was heading to a far away quest marker, and had that moment of "Why can I hear the game but not see it?" before realising that I had begun to doze off.

I gave it a good fifteen hours but was bored. It's not terrible or anything, there's just nothing that feels new or interesting for me.

Feels like another game that's a variation on the same open-world "narrative epic" I've played a thousand times before. Picking shit up and crafting. Pinging my radar thing to find items, climbing big shit to unlock map stuff. Repeat.

No thank you.

It's wild going back to this when you're no longer 8 years old with cheats on simply blowing shit to pieces and running people over, and trying to just play it properly.

You're expected to traverse the city pretty quickly most of the time, but the roads and traffic combined with the camera are so dogshit that it feels impossible to drive at decent speed for more than five seconds before slamming into other cars or near invisible geometry. There's so much less here than I seem to remember.

I'm a bit angry at how much time young me put into this. You could've been playing Klonoa, idiot.

I was enjoying the challenge, and about the halfway point I just couldn't be bothered playing any more. Not a clue why. Like a switch flipped in my mind and went "You're done with this".

I've noticed this happening to me more and more, and I'm fine with it. I used to push on with games I was clearly going cold on, because in my mind I NEEDED to finish what I'd started. But since I hit my 30s, it's like I've managed to stop lying to myself, and allow me permission to just drop stuff if I'm not feeling it. It's very liberating. Try it sometime!