I don't know what it is about Artoon/Arzest making games with artstyles that look pretty cool, but once you start playing them they range from kinda weaksauce to genuinely painful. There's Ghost Vibration, Balan Wonderworld, Swords of Destiny... and, sadly, this one seems to make up the list as well.

I have nothing to criticize about the game art-wise. The music is sick and fits the game like a glove, and the artstyle is really cool, and i aboslutely love Blinx's chesire-cat design made by the designer of Sonic himself, Naoto Oshima. (even though the western cover of the game makes him look like a really dumb 90's 'tude mascot, which probably contributed to poor sales)
The biggest problem with Blinx is the gameplay, and the problem with Blinx's gameplay is the pacing. You play Mario 64, Rayman 2 or honestly pretty much any other 3D platformer for 10 minutes, and even if you've never touched a single platformer before, it all clicks within those 10 mins and you get better at the game from there. Blinx? I've played this shit for hours, and it still feels like i'm playing it wrong. The game seems to place an emphasis on being fast with the grades for levels that pretty much only factor how fast you beat them, yet the game features one of the slowest moving videogame characters i've ever played with, with really basic combat based around picking up trash and throwing it at enemies, which requires careful aiming. So you're trying to go fast with some of the most slow-as-molasses physics for a 3D platformer and with not-so straightforward combat. It's a recipe for tilting.

It wasn't until i looked up high-level playthrough clips of this game online that i figured out that this game actually does have a speedrun skill ceiling, i even realized that through a combination of Fast Forward pieces + Super Bombs you buy at the store, you can jump up to high areas you weren't meant to reach. The thing is, nearly every single pro-level gameplay vid i've seen seems to have mostly to do with spamming fast forward whenever available, and the other time pieces were at best only used to beat a few puzzles on levels. Other than a few sections where you can use Rewinds with falling platforms or breaking pillars to reach higher areas, FF feels like the only power that matters for beating levels fast. And some of the other tricks like the bomb jumping feel really pinpoint. Most intuitive hacks also just don't work. Try stacking barrels on top of eachother? The lower one will just get crushed.
Yeah, sometimes you have to get on some secret areas to get the cat medals, but they rarely ever seem to connect with the fastest routes for beating a stage. It feels like an artificial attempt at replayability by having some of the medals far-apart from the levels themselves so you have to choose between a beating a stage fast and getting a good grade, or getting the cat medals, on top of the fact that you'll have to replay some stages to grind for gold or get time pieces for another level sooner or later.
That's the thing about this game. Blinx isn't actually too hard to beat in and of itself, but it's REALLY hard to play in a satisfying way. Either you're concrete-scraping your way across the game with no style or regard for time or grades whatsoever, or you looked up playthroughs and guides and learned how to beat a level in 20 seconds. The learning curve is almost non-existant. It's no wonder why this game has such a small speedrunning community despite feeling literally built around that.

I had no idea it was possible to make a 3D platformer feel grindy until BLiNX came around. The earlier levels in the game only have about 100-400G to collect, so you have to be scoop up a shitton of gold in order to get Sweepers, Health Upgrades and Time Holders to make your job less annoying and it becomes yet another way for the game to try and make you replay stages for the hell of it. On top of that, you have to rebuy sweepers you've replaced. Swapped out the TS-16000 for the vacuum that sucks up water for a few secret cat medals on Deja Vu Canals? That'll be 4000 Gold plus tip.
For extra insult to injury, the best sweeper in the game is a 100% completion reward and still has to be bought at the Shop for 90000 gold. What's the point? By the time you even unlock this item you will already have done everything worthwhile in this game. It would have been better off as an unlockable for beating the game normally or just really expensive but available at World 7 or so.

Really though, i think the biggest thing holding this game back from being fun is the fact that they wanted you to beat ALL the enemies in order to beat levels. It's bad enough that time monsters become absolute hitsponges on latter levels and some of them like the frogs or the rolling spikes take an annoying amount of care, timing and precision to get rid of quickly, but it also really breaks the flow of levels that may initially seem big, open-ended and incentivizing to carve your shortcuts to the end of the level, by instead forcing you to basically follow a breadcrumb trail of enemies to complete them. You'll just have to accept the fact that stages in this game are a lot more linear than they seem.

Not to be a heretic and try to reform the Holy Blinx, but i feel this game could have been much more fun with two simple changes
1) Every stage having a 'minimum' amount of enemies to beat in order to clear it, this can vary depending on the size and difficulty of the stage, so that you can beat levels much faster with alternative paths.
2) Being allowed to buy the time pieces you need at the item stores. It would eliminate the need to replay levels just for the sake of getting the necessary time pieces for other ones. The game lets you do this with bombs and hearts already, so why not do the same for rewinds, fast forwards and such?

This game is basically an ongoing trainwreck of mechanics with decent potential just smashing into one another without any consistency. It is one of those "i really wanted to like it" kinda games for me. It's really hard for me to say i actually hate this game because... just fucking look at it, my god.
It's the official mascot platformer of the XBOX. The same console brand i always associated with fratbro american football games and Military Industrial Complex manly testosterone shooters, and it looks like a cartoony scrimblo furry fever dream. And with the Original Xbox itself being sometimes seen as a home for challenging games like Ninja Gaiden and all those Fromsoft titles, i do feel it's pretty fitting that the official mascot platformer is one built around speedrunning and tricks. You could probably even consider Blinx to be a pioneer in that territory, but Jesus Christ, if i was a nine year old in 2002, i wouldn't have known what the hell to make out of this game either.
I kinda wanna play the sequel now but i heard with that one they just ran out in the opposite direction and made the game really easy. I just hope it doesn't trivialize time controls too much.

I told myself "oh man if this is just Jumping Flash 1 but better, it's a sure 4.5 star for me!"
Well... it's weird. More than anything, i consider this game to be just Jumping Flash+.

The levels are clearly different, larger and more challenging than the original but the overall structure of the game seems the same. Six worlds, Bonuses on the first levels per world, enclosed levels, conveyor belts and fans, you know, all the gimmicks from the 1st. The stage themes are really interesting too, moving from generic mario level theme stuff like Desert World, Water World, Space World... To a feudal japan themed world, another one set in a factory, another in a theme park, and such. All of which are trapped akin to ships in a bottle by some Kabuki Ballerina guy. Also, you are now rescuing the enemy of the first game and his helper floating pod things called Muu Muus, which is pretty wholesome.
Other than that there are also a few new powerups, bosses that are somewhat harder (although honestly none as good as Shadow Robbit from the 1st game) and a slew of extra levels and the super mode after beating the game, as well as collecting Medals which are basically the game's Achievements for doing certain stuff, although i felt some of these were a bit too easy to get.

Sooo yeah, it's Jumping Flash! 2 for sure. There are no flaws or negative changes worth taking stars away for but also no big improvements or new mechanics worth giving them either. The only thing that really made me consider giving it a slightly lower score was lacking the novelty factor of the 1994 original, but eh, i think this score is more fair. Now i wanna tackle 'Robbit Mon Dieu!'

Probably the most spectacularly pointless videogame sequel ever made.

Croc: Legend of the Gobbos was certainly not some sort of Wabisabi flawed masterpiece hidden gem. It was just an adequate 3D platformer working with the unfortunate limitations of trying to make a 3D platformer for PC, Sega Saturn, and PlayStation. Three platforms for which analog controllers were still pretty much a fetus of a thing. Something which i can't imagine most of the people complaining how the tank controls in the original ever keep in mind and probably just think that every dev team back then mastered 3D movement overnight after the release of Mario 64.

Croc 2, i have my reasons to have a lot less sympathy for. And it's not from a lack of nostalgia because i played it almost in conjunction with the first one as a kid. Launching in 1999, Croc 2 feels outdated than the original Croc was in 1997. In fact, it just feels like an inferior Banjo Kazooie clone at times.
All the "improvements" over the original here are just like a small drip feed of superficial things that were already standard for every other 3d platformer by then. Binoculars, mediocre racing sections and an item store don't make a platformer good on their own. You're still stuck with the same super short-range tail attack as your defense throughout the whole game, enemies still respawn after you kill them, the boss fights are still numb (the final one against Dante being basically a fucking escort mission) and the outside of the wholesome thing about Croc seing his family again, the story elements still doesn't have anything memorable, or interesting, or appealing to people above the age of 8. I might be having expectations way too high for what may or may not have always been meant to be a babby game, but what i'm basically saying is that Croc 1 was a game that was flawed but felt like it was made with soul, while Croc 2 feels like an early example of "more mechanics = gooder" game design thought.

I don't hate Croc 2 because it's worse than Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. It's not and it's honestly why i didn't rate it any lower than 2.5 as i would've liked to. I just hate it because it simply isn't better. I liked Croc 1, but not enough to want a carbon copy repeat of it that improves and adds literally nothing.

I remember watching screenshots and trailers for this game on the internet as a kid, seeing the big 3D Cul-De-Sac and being really hyped thinking it was some sort of open world sandbox game like Simpsons Hit & Run with lots of stuff to interact with. Eh, nah, just a very standard low budget adventure game. It lives up to it's aim to feel like a bunch of playable EEnE episodes with the nice cel-shaded artstyle and lively character models (it even has the vibrating line thing), but with only 8 levels, 6 not counting the extra ones, it's extremely short even compared to other licensed tie in cartoon games and you could beat it or even 100% it in a day.

This is a game i always wanted to play as a kid seeing info for it back in the day, which i never got to actually play until a while ago. (I was a PC-only kid and i never even knew it got a PC port until a few years ago, i beat it there and then recently replayed on XBOX) I just loved everything surrounding it. The designs of the Babylon Rogues which i absolutely adored, (Jet is just completely cool, Storm is like a cursed yet badass mix of Shadow and Big the Cat, and Wave is my first vidya crush), as well as the animated intro and 2D renders with that cool flat artstyle. Despite all it's flaws, this game is really fun and i'm glad to it gets to see some redemption in the public eye. It's funny to think that back in the day plenty of magazines were saying that this game was just a desperate cashgrab copy of SSX, Which to me sounds as idiotic as saying Super Mario Strikers is a poor man's PES 6.

I've heard many complaints about this game being hard to understand how to play, but it's actually really simple. All you have to do is watch the "how to play" attract mode video after letting the game idle for a while on the main menu, and then you'll understand that you're supposed to hold the jump button in ramps juuuust at the right time in order to jump higher and do better tricks with the left stick while mid-air. The hoverboards characters race on run on compressed air as fuel, and thus air management is also a big element of this game. It really adds a lot to the challenge, since moves like boosting, the Tornado and drifting cost air, and successful trick jumps can help you get it back. How much air you can hold on your board depends on the board level which you can upgrade by picking up coins throughout the map, and there's plenty of different boards to unlock or purchase from the Black Market which have different stats and can consume more or less air for moves. There are some items that can get you a slight edge over your rivals and help you level up your board faster, but no amount of items is going to help you if you keep burning through your air bar quickly. NEVER fall off tracks as not only you will be wasting time but you will lose your coins and your board will also be downgraded all the way back to Lvl. 1.
Even something as simple as starting the race becomes part of the skill curve, as you have manually cross the starting line just as the timer starts, and a few miliseconds of difference can either get you zapped at the starting line or get a head start over other racers.

The only thing i really, really don't like about this game is... the missions. The ones you get after beating the game where you do objectives like breaking robots, getting trick points, etc. stuff that you've already done throughout the entire game. Most of these missions are honestly just lame, repetitive and it feels like you'll never be done with them.
Originally i had a whole section bitching about how some of these required autistically hyperspecific frame-perfect jumps, in order to reach, but it's in fact not necessary, it turns out you simply needed to tilt the stick left stick in a certain vertical direction (seemingly forward for farther jumps, and backwards for higher ones) depending on the jump in order to make them more reliably, which is yet another thing the game never bothers to explain or give any indication that you're doing it wrong or right.
Unlocking stuff is also kinda grindy... The missions are barely rewarding until you've aced them all, instead of giving you reward boards right away for getting gold rank on missions you have to unlock them by getting "E-Gear Pieces" scattered on missions just so you have to replay them until you get enough to repair one, and on normal races you are also stuck with a lowly 100 Ring limit, which means you'll have to play a fuckton of races in order to buy some of the boards or get many Gold Medals in Grand Prix mode in order to get some of these boards.
The only reason i don't deem these missions horrible enough to take even half a star from my log is because they are pretty much just side content for the ultra dedicated, you don't really need to beat them for any noteworthy content outside of a few hidden characters such as Ulala from Space Channel 5 or Super Sonic once you clear all the missions.
I suppose there's a lot of things they could have explained somewhere in the game itself as well so people wouldn't skip over as easily. Sonic Riders is definitely not as 'pick up and play' as Mario Kart and can be quite rough to play with a friend or family member who isn't good at videogames, but honestly, i think all of these mechanics and not-so-accessible gameplay are what holds the game back from becoming yet another forgettable mascot racing game, and what makes the game so fun and engaging to play even on your own, let alone against another player who knows what they're doing.

Splash Canyon is also burned into my mind as hard as Luigi's Raceway or de_dust2.

I picked out this game in a random whim and i never imagined i would come out considering it one of my favorite castlevania games, as well as perhaps the best one in the 3D category. Even if that might not be an amazing feat when the N64 games are the series' black sheep, Lament of Innocence people are mixed on, and the Lords of Shadow games have come to be seen as casualised 7th gen slop.
The starting impressions for this game can be pretty weak. A crafting system in a castlevania game? Beasts that help you fight and can evolve? What is this? Digimon? It all sounds like a bunch of bells & whistles, but give the game some time and you'll see how well everything works out.

Innocent Devils were a pretty cool addition. There's six types of IDs which evolve accordingly to which weapon types you use to defeat enemies. Fairies with healing and supportive spells that can come in very handy, Battle-types that can ragdoll enemies around, Mage-types with a great range of powerful offensive spells as well as the ability, Bird IDs with long-range attacks that are also useful for gliding into previously unreachable areas, and Devil-type IDs which are far more limited evolution-wise than the others but are pretty balanced and not bad for combat. Plenty of badass ones like Rasetz and The End, and plenty of adorable ones like the Fairies or Brow. There's like 51 IDs, all of which have their own unique spells which are just fun to use in combat. And you're not even forced to use IDs at all, you can just send them back and take fights into your own hands if they feel too much like cheating.

The combat is simple, with combos definitely on the simplified "Square Square Square, Circle" side mostly as a way to standardize attacks for all the different weapon types. You don't get anywhere as broken as in SOTN and capable of spam-melting away Lv. 100 bosses in 3 seconds, but you are faster than most of the enemies you'll meet movement-wise and have a lot of freedom to maneuver around and dodge enemy attacks, specially when compared to Lament of Innocence. But what really makes the combat in this title shine, in my opinion, is Perfect Guard, basically this game's DMC3 Royalguard. It just fucking rocks. It is almost as mechanically important as Innocent Devils. Nearly every single attack in the game, including beams and energy blasts, can be immaculately parried away from any direction, even while mid-air, and sometimes even during some attack animations. The game will reward you for doing this with an opening for an attack or steal from an enemy, and a small amount of hearts every time you do it. This can be vital for long endurance test fights where you could burn out your hearts for your spells quickly.
It might be no Ninja Gaiden Black combat, but it's just so satisfying to juggle an enemy with aerial sword attacks while split-second parrying oncoming enemy projectiles in the air, all while your ID fights other enemies in the background. And i hold that any game that lets you do a Daigo and parry 99% of the attacks in the game (including lasers and explosions) has the authenticity seal of excellent vidya combat.

The only boss fights i really hated were the Skeleton Diver which loves to waste your time, and the final Dracula one which is basically the world's most intense game of Punch-Out. The rest are excellent. The Isaac ones basically put you on the shoes of the poor enemies you obliterated with your ID spells minutes ago, the Trevor ones force you to adapt and git gud, Saint Germain is a nice change of pace with an interesting time manipulation gimmick (he poisons you and then accelerates time to make it hurt faster, but you can use this at your advantage with Serum + Time Heal) and Nuculais is a certified "oh shit" moment and so nerve wrecking to fight it's no wonder why it's an optional boss. I even found myself keeping around old saves just to replay the Legion/Nuculais and Trevor boss fights until i beat the game and unlocked Boss Rush.

The crafting system is also neat. I admit i hadn't really done much with it until like halfway through the game since i had been fighting without lock-on, but finding out about Stealing from enemies and how it allows you to obtain certain unique materials which i thought you'd only get once made me enjoy the crafting a bit more by turning it into a bit of a treasure hunt, figuring out tactics to squeeze out rare materials from enemies. If you're so lacking in time-draining adult responsibilities that you feel you have the time to craft everything in this game, then i recommend you look through this website which contains a handy stealing guide for getting certain rare materials for crafting, and how to get them, although in most cases i recommend just using lock-on on certain enemies and figuring out yourself to make it more fun and so it doesn't feel too much like a grocery checklist.
This is also the most collectathon Castlevania out there. There's a big treasure trove of stuff to get or craft. Many weapons which while mostly just offering stat upgrades, some have their own special combo finishers, secret ID spells, two enemy endurance test towers which reward you with rare items, and of course, no IGA castlevania game is complete without some wacky anachronistic easter egg stuff, including special weapons like Gatling Guns and Bomberman Bombs, chairs and thrones in levels that get added to a collection, a lot of rare healing food items like burgers and tomato juice stolen from bosses, joke Innocent Devil evolutions that can actually be some of the most useful, like Iytei, a battle-type yeti doll thing, and even a whole secret ID type of cute pumpkin characters, which boost up your Luck stat and help you find rare items easily. Oh, after beating the game you also unlock the aforementioned Boss Rush mode, 'Crazy Mode' which is basically the main game but with enemy XP levels amped up, with a more souls-like weight to combat where you can't afford to get hit too much, and being able to play as Trevor Belmont, who has a different, although much simpler playstyle.

Exploration is definitely the weak point of the game, it's very "you hate it or you tolerate it". They were clearly attempting to get some of that "metroidvania" feel from SOTN with the massive halls, seemingly not understanding that it's important for these types of games to have interesting and fun ways to traverse such giant levels. Pretty much every room in the game is a corridor or a huge box/cylinder and you never get any significant speed boosts or any other sort of other movement upgrade to get through them faster. Just the warp thrones on every area and the Memorial/Magical Tickets, and i guess maybe the Shoulder Ride with the Iytei ID, but only if you can maneuver it right. I haven't played Lament of Innocence long enough to make more comparisons, but people seem to agree that it is the clear winner out of the two games in that department with it's platforming and obstacles that make it feel more faithful as a 3D conversion of a classicvania, whereas here it feels more like some weird flat 3D JRPG level design where you can just ignore and run past enemies. And it can all be pretty cryptic due to the fact that many important tips are only shown in the form of hieroglyphs in walls that can only be read with a Decipher spell learned by like, one specific Fairy ID branch, so once again, i really recommend just using a guide when playing this game if you're going completionist with the maps.
Though i'll admit none this didn't do much to water down my enjoyment of this game until i sought out 100%ing this game. Any other game with level design this non-existant would take two stars out of my review for me, but i think this game manages to pull that weight really well with it's combat and the encouragement to explore maps completely and find all sorts of secrets.