This is the worst game I've ever loved.

Afrika is bad in ways that made me laugh almost every time I picked it up. Because I could tell this game was made by people who had never made or played a video game before, but damn if these National Geographic dudes weren't trying their hardest to rise to the challenge.

It's much harder for a bad game to be enjoyable than, say, a bad movie, or a bad book, because a game still has to be a functional piece of software. Movies will progress through linear time no matter how cringe they are. You can skip over a few paragraphs of flowery descriptions when an author is being self-indulgent. But if a game is bad in the wrong ways, you can't play it. And if its bad in other ways, you won't want to play it.

So how did Afrika keep me hooked until it's completion? Because I could feel the love these developers had for animals. The sincere desire to educate. This objectively bad "video game" feels like a herculean task and accomplishment for those who set out to make it. I was charmed and endeared by the nature of its faults when compared to the earnestness of its endeavors.

Let us begin. By which I say that it takes like five god damn minutes to load into your save file! After the game has already made an installation onto the PS3 system! The save file for Afrika is near half a damn gigabyte! In any other game, these would be insulting. I mean, it still is, but once I saw the PS2-era .jpg trees that were the result of all this loading, I burst out laughing.

Afrika is a photography safari game. You get missions to take pictures of specific animals, and eventually gain access to better cameras and more areas as the diversity of fauna blooms.

But the opening hour is brutal. Your camera sucks, all your photos look like crap, and the tutorial level is so sparsely populated you barely have a giraffe and a zebra to rub together. Worse, you have an NPC tour guide who drives you to your photograph spot, taking the most round-about sight-see-y routes imaginable.

Which made me laugh so damn hard. Because there's such majestic orchestral music playing. It's an original piece that's rousing me to adventure! But fucking nothing is happening while I'm watching an NPC drive me across a barren game map with a repeating grass texture, terrible trees, all to arrive at an "oasis" that is little more than a muddy puddle with two zebras idling by it.

I get the impulse! They want to show off! To ease players into what the gameplay loop is going to be like before you start driving the car yourself! But it is so embarrassingly meek a showing that the intention is farcical. Especially since the music unceremoniously cuts out the second you dismount the car. The exclamation point the game accidentally puts on its own misguided hubris is comedy gold.

When you get to start actually playing the game, it's curbside appeal remains low. Animals run away when you approach them. Climbing a tree or hiding in a bush is boring as hell while you're waiting for animals to saunter into snapshot range. You can see the stiltedness of their transition animations as they turn like tanks to run if you so much as sit too loudly.

But as you stick with it, there's something real to that experience.

As a launch year PS3 game, they had to throw that gyroscope in somewhere, and here it is to turn the controller to switch between horizontal and vertical shots. And you know what, I really like it! Same with using the PS3's pressure sensitive buttons for pressing the shutter button on the camera. That half-press to focus, full press to take a picture was nostalgic to when I had cameras in my hand and not my phone.

When I got my first camera upgrade, it was life changing. Optical zoom! Auto-focusing! The ability to take pictures that were kinda cool instead of "will let me pass this mission" levels of lameness! For a moment, I almost learned what all the different specifications of the cameras and lenses meant! (But only almost.) Most importantly, I felt empowered to keep playing the game in a way that made me rethink the same basic actions and behaviors I'd be learning before.

Mind, everything about the game experience was still slow and tedious. Afrika has 5 main areas and no way to fast travel between them. It has a day-night cycle with minimal ways of altering time besides sleeping to the next day. There's no way to bring your car immediately to your side if you wander too far and forget where it is. Driving uses tank controls, and your car will instantly lose all momentum the instant you hit a .jpg of bushes. You can't take pictures until your car comes to a complete stop.

So many decisions would be made differently by anyone with more familiarity with how games work. Someone dyed in the gamer impulse to remove all frictions, to let player desire translate to action as quickly as possible. But at the same time, there's a rhythm that develops that builds real relationships with these cumbersome mechanics. When a request comes in to take a picture of an animal at sunset, I groaned instinctively. But when I submitted those requests, they always felt special. Because I knew the annoyance that went into them. (Maybe I was primed to know how to enjoy parts of this game by another I played earlier this year.)

Thinking about the game separate from its clunky and fricative user experience, Afrika makes several decisions that are pretty bold and kind in a way most games wouldn't dare. Multiple animals don't have any missions assigned to them - you can complete the campaign missing several entries in your animal encyclopedia. Past the tutorial area, animals rarely have more than one mission assigned to them, and multiple have gimmick encounters. For every instance where it looks like Afrika is stalling for time or padding with its copy-pasted assets, it surprised me with moments of unique scenarios or animal models that appear once and never again.

It's not that the people making this game don't care. They're just bad at this.

The perfect capstone to the experience was the final mission, where you board a hot air balloon as a final send-off to the terrain you've been driving across for the last couple dozen hours. They try to stuff every character model they have in there, and the frame-rate TANKS. It looks so bad. The texture repeats are egregious. The grass almost shines. And it plays the EXACT SAME MUSIC TRACK AS THE TUTORIAL LEVEL BECAUSE THEY ONLY WROTE ONE SONG. But then a few minutes later during the credits, there's another orchestral arrangement of the same song that's just... better?? They even show video clips of the orchestra playing the song (they're so proud)! But they don't even show the recording of the part in the song that's playing! And the conductor's not even in tune with the music you can hear! Aughhhhhhh!

I want to complain about some other parts of my experience. Like how I almost gave up on the game in the first couple missions waiting for a damn hippo to yawn. How I never took a picture of an eland because I could not tell the difference between a gazelle or an impala or any of the other million animals that have horns and all look the same. How I missed taking a picture of the hyrax, which cut off a whole chain of new missions, and when I did unlock them, there weren't any ostriches around anymore and I had deleted all of my old ostrich photos, meaning scouring pages of decade-old forum posts to find someone with my exact same problem to force the RNG seed to spawn some ostriches in the termite nests (labeled Anthills on the map).

But for all my complaints, Afrika was still functional as a game. Which meant that I could still find ways to engage with it that might be inaccessible for a game trying harder to be "good".

I still can't recommend it. Anyone watching me play this game cringed out of their skin and thought I was crazy for sticking with it. But you know, maybe Afrika was just too real in expressing through game form how being a wildlife photographer kind of sucks for a reward that is only kind of neat to anyone who doesn't work at National Geographic.

Ask me to talk about Afrika and I will only have complaints, but if you pay attention, you will see that I only have a smile on my face.

recommend it if you're a tetris weirdo, but i will never really love to play this verison, yet i love returning to it every now and then.

this is my go-to tetris pallete cleanser when i'm fully in tetris brain, something that hasn't been the case for a little over a year now. this era of tetris is quite fascinating, and of all console versions of tetris, this feels the most like a home computer version with its single rotation, only hard drop and less-conventional lives system. the controls feel as if they were intended to be mapped to arrow keys where a player could have their fingers on multiple separate digital actuators at all times.

this era around the late 80's was probably the most interesting period in the overall splintering and iteration of tetris as it was unleashed up on the world, they were all just learning how to cook up those quadruple rectangles and it resulted in a genuine mechanical variety that unfortunately isn't found in any tetris released in the current era. i have no idea what BPS was even trying to do here, still feels as if they're in the progress of figure out how to make tetris work on a pad. it is of zero surpise that that shortly after this, BPS would devise their own system with lock delay as a core principle of tetromino arrangement. one of the the strains of tetris that BPS would, towards the end of the 90's, overcook and would demand that to be the only tetris dish served. BPS's impending near-strangulation of tetris started here, and on many days, i would rather play this over NEStris. thankfully BPS would figure out how to cook it just right for a bit in their successor to this one (plus bombliss!)

cleared on dreamcast some time ago but it was the naomi version for the day. ive fallen off lmau (lifting my arms up. duck duck go dot com search "shruggie" to see what i mean)

it's a sicko mode, raw version of tetris in the spirit of sega's 1988 interpretation, the foundational single button primate neuron activator. this time it's got some very light wall kicks (only against the walls of the field, not the "ceiling". this requires a delay between the piece entering the field and your ability to rotate) and 2 buttons for rotation rather than one. firmly still in the old school of tetris, before the dreary days of 7-bag and hold piece. that randomizer pulls no punches, yet not quite to the degree of the one seen in strange creature that resides within the Zeroes of nintendo's Tetris v.1.1 (1989) for their dot matrix game handheld (with! stereo sound!). as a completeable solo iteration of the soviet four blocks dropping a lot, it's solid, challenging endeavour. as i don't tend to like tetris multiplayer i haven't really tried the VS mode without absolutely mopping the floor against friends whose brains have not been poisoned by TGM. it's scoring system is tied to some unfortunate imagery, but here it's always earned.

the incredibly chaotic way its randomizer works makes it a slight bit behind the changes arika started introducing to their interpretation of sega's 1988 primate neuron activator. you will at some point get absolutely bodied by the randomizer on some credits, and it will absolutely put your ability to recover while maintining a relatively clean, gapless stack through its paces. the speed peaks and valleys, a staple amongst the sega school of tetris, are always loved, tripping up a player if they're a bit too lost in the sauce. in particular, the speed fluctuation and eventual upward curve seems to impact pre-hard/firm drop tetris a bit more, as that addition to piece control tends to make it way less noticeable if a player's just going full full voltage through those darn neurons. and precisely why arika's TGM sits alongside Sega Tetris (1999) as one of the best full oldhead, pre-SRS, pre guideline iterations of the timeless chaotic tetromino assortment by way of recognizing patterns computer program. it gets fast, but the lock delay makes higher gravity manageable in a way that nintendo's tended to lack for a while.

it's got the Homie, that large green friend. tetris effect for the freaks, not without flaws but always a straightforward, lovely tetris. mildly prefer this to ТЕТРИС SEMIPRO-68k, but TGM1 still hits everything just right when it comes to the oldhead sega tetris (1988) and its descendants. the 3D backgrounds here get nuts but some too are a bit unfortunate (but not the one with The Homie, and the Best Video Game Thinking Music to ever grace speakers)

Played a TON of this at release and climbed the ranks using the ultimate badass: Crustle. If your team doesn't have that nasty motherfucker you might as well surrender.

Look, they'll kill me for saying it, but I fucking love this doofy ass game. I love a MOBA that doesn't require hiring private tutors to grasp (DOTA 2) or a MOBA that doesn't require you be on the sex-offender registry (League of Legends) to play.

What I think I like about it in comparison to other MOBAs is that the cast hasn't been infested with Anime Badass Action Heroes. Because it can't. Because it's Pokemon. All the Pokemon are so visually distinct that you always know who you are up against and what to look out for, instead of every League character becoming a variation of "Shonen Hero" who has 12 different abilities and can't die and also his ultimate is always off cooldown.

Hey, speaking of that. Is there a character better designed than Blastoise? Like, visually, how did they nail that? The original designer probably was nervous to show it to his boss because he was certain that Blastoise had already been thought up, I mean, he HAD to have been. I fucking love Blastoise.

Basically, if I can play as Blastoise I will play your game.

Man, nothing more me-core than "I should play some gizmondo while waiting for fedex to deliver my CD-i" today. I gotta play all like 12 of the games on that thing before it melts, yanno? Honestly this game has no right being this solid when it's stuck as an exclusive for a console more known for being linked to a mafia than being an actual system for playing games.

It's a physics based puzzle game where you knock balls around billiards-style in order to stick em together. If all of a color is stuck together, it clears out and you get points. Clearing all of the balls on a board takes ya to the next level, it's very arcadey. The depth comes from the fact that you have a limited number of shots, though connecting one loose ball to another of its color gets you your shot back. It's all about observing the board and knowing what the best course of action is for getting clear shots in the right order, and honestly given the solid physics there's a lot of player agency on board. Probably a decent skill ceiling, though I can't imagine many other people have played it enough to really wring out any potential depth here, considering the whole "gizmondo exclusive" thing this game has going on. It makes sense that this game is also so solid too, considering the fact it was made by the Pickford Brothers, of Plok and Wetrix fame. Apparently it was going to be a PSP game but somehow got relegated to the ol mafia. As it happens. I guess it got an iOS port though, so hey! that's something. If you are one of the statistically improbable that has a gizmondo, this is probably in the killer app territory. Which really isn't saying much. The game has a really funny name, too!

I'll be honest, I wasn't really wanting to play this close to playing the first one on FDS but one of my oomfs motivated me to and yeah it's alright. I think this was made to be harder but I found it easier and it doesn't even have that awful pillar jumping world the first game had. They even made the powerups better and brought in a new shield item.

It also feels almost identical to the same game. I'm almost wondering if this was only made to give cartridge owners a chance to play the game. Also at the end it tells you to press B 4 times, hold up and left and then press start but I don't know where or what it does. Does anyone know??

It's fine.

When folks decry Super for being a blasphemous take on the tried-and-true formula of Classicvania with it's eight-directional whipping, they're absolutely justified in their thought. It takes away the strategical element that made us love the thinking person's aspect behind the careful movement. An entire sub-system becomes a complete afterthought, with them only being convenient at hyper-specific instances rather than something that was there to truly compliment our whipping prowess to help with entire courses and encounters. Taking a death becomes less threatening as losing a sub-weapon essentially turns into a very minor slap on the wrist at worst, as an empty sub-weapon box may as well had been what it felt like the entire time we had been playing.

It's an ordeal that can't be simply ignored in a self-imposed challenge like the charged mega buster in every NES era Mega Man past the third game, and you're left with Simon being able to skillfully twirl his whip better than any other Belmont before or after him. Perhaps Simon was always meant to be presented as the most headstrong and bullish of the family? Characterization through mechanics? It remains to be seen if that was the intent, or if it was supposed to be an "evolution". An evolution that no doubt would've made this entry an even bigger target of contempt, especially if the stage design would continue to fail to compliment the new system beyond smattering a few bats flying down from odd angles, and if we could still easily thwart Axe Armors from below the floor they're standing on. Luckily for all of us however, this would be the only time such a new take would be used, and instead of being a deplorable turning point for the series, it is in fact unique and now it's own experience.

A retelling of the original that shows Simon's entire journey from beyond Devil's Castle, braving the horrors that crept from the onset of the horrid manifestation of Dracula's power within what was once a peaceful forest accompanied by strings of a violin within a purple and grey console. A walk through the caves with beautiful woodwind arrangements, and mesmerizing illusions brought upon by the seventh mode conjured by unknown forces presumably under the control of the dark lord himself. The approach to familiar scenery from the beginning of our original story of the legendary quest partnered by intimidating percussion for nightmares to come. We make our way through the retold portions of Simon's tale, and upon completion hear echoes of our past one last time before we must move on to beginnings of a new generation. The slow haunting keys of an organ cue the entry of Dracula to the main stage. Simon's Theme of which signaled the entrance of the hero at the very start, returns once again at the final moment the Count is nearing his defeat to build the audience's tension to the epic conclusion of the adventure. The orchestra plays to the agonizing death of the villain, and rings in daylight's victory over the darkness.

The fabled saga, retold and reimagined with added flare of chilling drama and suspense. Not to replace the original, but to remember it through a more cinematic lens. Forever immortal.

Hey, come back here. You big monkey.

With 2023 underway, it would only make the most sense that I would begin the year of the rabbit with a first-person shooter about nefarious apes chucking rocks at me from behind foliage. This act of cowardice was brought about by me finding this game on Cheddar's list of games appearing in "I'm Too Young To Die", and remembering seeing very brief footage of this title on a sampler disc that came with my Saturn many many moons ago. I decreed "I will play Saturn Congo", and thus I did. I know, go me.

Upon beginning my boot up of Congo on Saturn I was greeted by the logo for "Sega Away Team", instantly jokes of "hweh, well if this were the home team this console would've died quicker" appeared in my head; these jokes I will refuse to make officially. This was apparently the last game with this team associated with it, so I assume they were taken out back afterwards. Already this is not a great look for Saturn Congo. RIP Sega Away Team, more like...Sega Took'em Away Team...bake'em away toys.

Unfortunately, I am not a movie buff or a reader of Michael Crichton's work; so I cannot verify how close to the movie or the book this particular video game is. For all I know I could assume that Crichton's book was nothing but non-stop descriptions of being assaulted by cartoonish spiders, and the amount of ways they could narrate the protagonist getting clunked on the head by stones or having an exploding spear shot into their face.

When I began Congo I was actually slightly disappointed that it wasn't that terrible, at first. It's most troublesome problem on the onset was that the reprehensible rogues' gallery of human-hating fauna sometimes enjoyed hanging out in the unnavigable part of the jungle stage of which I could not walk in. This required me to constantly pay attention to the minimap instead of the actual gameplay screen in order to see them approaching me while stealthed behind brush and trees. This would actually be pretty good at putting more of a survival element to the game in a way, but the evil spiders inhabiting Saturn Congo are as silent as the night, and more than capable of biting me in the bum if I don't look at the minimap constantly. It's not great, and it's made even better by the piss filter they throw onto the screen every some seconds to simulate you "having a fever" at the beginning of the game. Remember that.

What lowered this quickly from a "slightly troubling experience" to a "oh god why I do bother anymore" type of game is that later these problems would only get worse once the nefarious apes began appearing. These gorillas are on a huge coke binge and are capable of withstanding many shots, and unfortunately these assholes learned the very fine art of lobbing boulders onto my cranium. The first time I encountered these apes I didn't even know that projectiles were being thrown at me, because the jungle scenery was disguising their movements on screen. Once again, the minimap was the only reliable resource. During this same stage, my protagonist was apparently bitten by something "big" while they were sleeping. How they didn't realize this until they woke up is beyond me. This was the explanation for why the developers decided to bring back the temporary piss filter, and add a "we'll reverse your controls every several seconds" challenge to that particular stage.

Fantastic, if we're doing this you may as well send an ape to my house to mongolian chop me every ten seconds while I'm trying to play your game. Absolute nonsense. How about next you turn the TV upside down, and make the composite cables to my TV loose so that the picture goes in and out at random? I love that fake-ass shit, it's about as real as this game's idea of sending the world's quietest wildlife after me.

It's amazing how fast my opinion dropped on Saturn Congo once I delved deeper into it's shithole. Needless to say, I got annoyed enough at the fifth stage once it started tasking me with finding useless trinkets to make progress, on top of the polygonal ground having an aneurysm to simulate earthquakes as gorillas gave me knife-edge chops to the throat. A miserable experience of a game, why it's visage stuck with me from that sampler video is as unexplainable as this mushroom that only grows in Texas and Japan.

Perhaps I just always had an eye for this garbage.

An eight year old and the weird creature that may or may not be threatening him commit crimes against existence by building abominations of modern science. You can try to build normal animals, but eventually you WILL either slip, become curious, or reach a point in progression, and you will make a beast that cries for you to kill it.

It's coated with an extremely cute and strange veneer, the music is charming, the map makes sense, and the built in dual-language text is a huge blessing. It's more a toy than a game, with the gameplay becoming incredibly repetitive well before the credits roll. But it is INTERESTING. Which is always the bigger sell to me.

"Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created?"