It is a worthy sequel to a saga particularly appreciated and never forgotten by bar-cab lovers. A beautiful title, never frustrating, enhanced by graphics that give even more value to it and high gameplay. Satisfying longevity and a sound department with attention to every detail manage to give a new look to a timeless classic.
Noteworthy PSP releases are not that many, so a "pulled-together and polished" classic from the past that should not be missed for any reason in the world cannot go unnoticed. You will literally stay "in your underpants" in front of this highly entertaining episode of one of the most successful series made in Capcom.

If I could give a game zero stars on this website this would be it. It's hard for me to say that Alex Kidd is "a product of it's time" when it dropped in the mid 80s and there was already more than plenty of decent stuff by then.

Levels are a disorganized mess, Alex controls like he's wearing butter shoes to the point where its actually really fucking hard to have any degree of precision with him, one hit kills with nothing at all to remedy it, ontop of RNG being in blocks and the Janken matches you're faced with throughout the game.

How this game was a success and spawned a franchise is beyond me. It definitely has it's place in SEGA's history but it's no shock to me as to why they dropped Alex after Sonic came into the picture.

Whenever I think of SEGA games, there's a bit of a loop to most of them that makes you want to replay it. Either just getting better for higher ranks, or having a ton of fun. Alex Kidd severely lacks that appeal for me alongside the issues it has as a game that has aged poorly.

Genuinely, not worth your time.

A fun experience with friends, but alone a troubling RNG journey that can really bend your patience.

After being a big supporter for many years for Crash Bash. I finally decided to sit down and attempt a start to finish play through on my own since I was a kiddo. I tried and I caved near the end.

The grind to get trophies in the mini games winds up feeling like a chore. Half of the games are paced poorly or rely heavily on RNG elements to either cripple or enhance your chances.

In the later warp rooms I don’t really feel that my skills are being tested, but my will to have fun and push to the end. This recent play through was a harsh reminder that nostalgia is a hell of a drug and everyone was right. CTR is much better than Bash.

It does however have some solid mini games like crates, tanks, and the polar levels. However, the experience is highly recommended in co-op or a group.

Despite being a combination of two things I hate in video games, roguelikes and cards, my Eternal Optimist (Dumbass) status led me to giving this a shot. It looks pretty cool, actually! People say it "goes places"!

The problem is, when a game "goes places," those Places should be better than where you're Going From.

The first part of the game, like pretty much all games of this type, comes down to trial-and-error, and hoping to get a random loadout that breaks the game and allows you to overcome the enemy player's horseshit. Get a high-damage card with the 3-attack sigil and it's ogre for the bad guy. Then, you get to the second part of the game, which consists of the card game from the first part, but with a very boring art style, meant to evoke the Pokemon TCG game boy game.

At this point I lost interest, and the plot about creepypasta haunted games or whatever the fuck wasn't interesting to me, either. I love when games insert random FMV segments (you know I'm looking forward to Alan Wake 2), but this wasn't even a particularly good implementation of it. And from what I've heard, the third part of the game is even worse. I will never know.

4/10 - One third of the game is alright, and one bonus point for neat integration of DualSense features in the PS5 version.

This'll probably be my longest Backloggd review. I didn't think I'd have too much to say but here goes. If you want the tl;dr just scroll down at the bottom.

Master of Disguise is Wario's most jaded release by far; It's reputation as the touch screen gimmicky black sheep of the series is hard to ignore and its a label that it'll stick with probably for good. That said, I do have PLENTY of thoughts.

I've seen a three-way split between opinion on the game: "It's underrated!", "It sucks ass!", and "It's alright." The 2nd viewpoint tends to critique the game for it being a weird marriage of Wario Land and WarioWare. The game is very much its own thing, while it does take some elements from both, the elements are peppered onto the main course of the game which is the exploration based puzzle solving.

Watching footage of the game doesn't really do it justice, MoD is one of those games where its extremely boring to watch (I streamed it for my friends one of em fell asleep) but engaging to play once you get ahold of it's quirks.

The disguises are kinda similar to Wario Land's transformations except Wario turns into them on his own accord rather than it be an environmental hazard forcing the transformation against his will. Wario uses each disguise to solve certain puzzles, take out certain obstacles, you know, standard stuff, and the way to activate them is with the stylus and drawing a shape near Wario that corresponds to each outfit. I did find the disguises fun to use, but I really wish they were easier to cycle through. It wasn't a big deal when I had 3 costumes to keep track of, but once I've unlocked most (and eventually, all of them) there were times I was drawing the shape of a certain disguise I wanted only to put on a disguise I didn't want. It was pretty annoying to deal with especially in boss fights. A flaw like this could've been mitigated with cycling through the disguises with the L&R buttons but the devs didn't think to use em. Attacks and inputs for each disguise are also done with the touchscreen (with the exception of one that uses the DS Mic). Wasn't too hard to attack and do what I wanted with the disguises, but the finicky nature of the touchscreen did lead to me triggering misinputs from time to time. If you're wondering how Wario can move, he moves with the Dpad (or face buttons if you're a lefty, I can only imagine how annoying this game would be for a left handed person on original hardware)

You still collect gold and treasures like you would in Wario Land...Kinda. Money bags you blitz through and enemies you kill, they drop all that sweet valuables for keeps, but specific treasures are stored in chests. Red Chests have normal treasures that just increase your cash score when you beat a level, Green Chests contain gems that unlock your disguises and later upgrade them, and Purple Chests contain the episode exclusive items that help you progress. People tend to not mention the distinction between the three at all. If you're looking to just play the game and beat it then I highly advise focusing on the Purple and Green chests, ignore Red Chests. That said, the way to obtain the contents from any of the chests is to complete a small minigame from a pool of 8. This is where the WarioWare influence comes in. You're either tasked to connect dots, smash roaches, color a picture, etc. Green Chests always get the picture coloring minigame because it involves coloring a shape that corresponds to the disguise you unlock. Purple and Red Chests always pull a random minigame (excluding the coloring one). The minigames are fine, they're alot slower than microgames which isn't a bad thing, but I do wish there was more minigames (12-14 would've been great) just to maintain more variety. What we got is serviceable but I do understand the pace halting nature of having to do a minigame each time you wanna open a chest. Could've been mitigated if they went the microgame approach too, short challenges to obtain the contents of the chest.

After unlocking some disguises, you can revisit episodes you've completed and access new areas with outfits you didn't have before. Its an element shared between alot of Metroidvanias including Wario Land 3 where you revisited levels you beaten to access new places to progress. However, in MoD, revisiting old locales is optional and not required.

Bosses were fun, pretty easy as is, but I really enjoyed the puzzle solving you had to do with them since they all involved usage of the disguises in some way.

The game's writing is solid, while I wasn't too big on Wario leaning into the grossness, it didn't bother me and it was funny seeing Wario's brash attitude juxtapose against the semi-reserved/goofy nature of Count Cannoli, Carpaccio, Tiramisu, etc.

The visuals are...interesting. The characters look strange, Wario especially, but alot of the enemy designs look like they belong in different games. Pretty damn good spritework on the enemies and bosses though! The game also mixing in pre-rendered graphics was pretty odd too, kinda made the game look goofier than it is. The environments look very pretty though, best looking parts of the game by far.

The music is most likely the thing most people remember or know from the game. Its straight bangers from start to finish: Count Cannoli, Head Honcho Carpaccio, the standard Boss theme, Allegeria Gardens, etc. The soundtrack did NOT disappoint.


TL;DR Overall, I enjoyed Master of Disguise! Its a solid game that starts slow, and despite its flaws with its control scheme, I went into it with an open mind, and appreciated it for what it was and what it wanted to be, rather than criticize it for being something it wasn't trying to be (Wario Land and WarioWare). The music is great, the writing ain't perfect but it got some chuckles out of me.This adventure is something I won't forget.

I had always thought I disliked the Metroidvania genre, and attempts at playing games like Hollow Knight left me bored, lost and frustrated. Fast forward a year or two and I was playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and loved it. Then, more recently I tried Aria of sorrow, loved that too.

And now, Circle of the moon reminded me of all the bad experiences playing metroidvanias. Clunky controls reminiscent of classic linear Castlevanias, which don't work with these levels and enemies. the areas of the world themselves are huge, annoyingly so, it feels like the world was double the size it was meant to, making exploration extremely sloggy.

The level design itself only exacerbates this problem. The worst instances of long corridors filled with copy pasted enemies, rooms that zigzag in layout just to try and get the most time it can out of your day. Despite a pretty cool card collecting system with the DSS, giving you unique abilities based on your combination of these, the rest of the abilities you get to unlock and traverse the world feel extremely uninspired... there's the standard double jump, wall jump, big jump, slide and block pushing puzzles, the classic puzzle to pull out from nowhere when you're creatively bankrupt.

Thankfully playing these games out of order, I can see a much more fun experience in Aria of Sorrow, so I retain my hope for the rest of the series.

It's easy to write this game off for multiple reasons. It's safe to say interest in 3DS titles after the Switch's launch went down considerably. And after years of hearing that Pikmin 4 was "almost done", a Pikmin game that clearly wasn't 4 didn't do Hey! Pikmin any favors. That's certainly the camp I was in back when this game was announced.

Playing this years after the fact, however, I think I can approach this title with a clear mind. It's... not bad. I was pleasantly surprised at how they took the Pikmin formula and translated it into 2D. The controls certainly aren't perfect at times, but it did feel like I was playing a Pikmin game. The levels are generally short and sweet, and you can go out of your way for some neat collectibles. The game does throw a handful of frustrating levels here and there, especially towards the later half of the game (looking at you, 8-X) but nothing that soured my experience too much. It's also worth pointing out that the soundtrack is great. I haven't played the mainline Pikmin games in a good amount of years, so I don't know if any of these songs are reused or remixed, but this game does a great job of setting the Pikmin mood with its songs.

I'd say a lot of the flack Hey! Pikmin gets is because it came out at the wrong place, wrong time. Something that came to mind as I was playing is that I probably would've loved this game when I was younger. For me, this is the kind of game that would've released for the DS in the mid-2000s and I would've picked it off the shelf at GameStop and thought "Cool, a Pikmin game on the DS!" and taken it home. Years later, I'd look back at it as one of those weird DS spinoffs in the vein of Super Princess Peach or Wario: Master of Disguise that people kind of forgot about.

Still, where the hell is Pikmin 4?