This game series fulfills my dream game wish: an aimless life sim with no bigger purpose than simply chatting and interacting with cute mascot critters. You select a Pokepi, one of these creatures in the game, to be your partners and from there you can teach them words for plenty of things and topics in real life and they will have conversations about them with you. They might also randomly ask you questions about them to better inform themselves about such topics, and you can play a quiz minigame in order to earn points (which i assume measure your friendship with these characters) by guessing from words you've previously teached them. The more words you have taught them, the more their "IQ" stat grows, and the more you will be rewarded for this minigame. Every day, they will also leave notes on an in-game diary about things they've done while they were away, or other thoughts, and at the end, you will be allowed to save these diaries to a memory card.
Although the game is mostly cutesy, as more days pass and you build a stronger relationship with them, sometimes the topics they talk about can take serious turns, like how Jun once brought up things such as "hikikkomori life" and her bad childhood memories. Never in my life i thought i would see a game from the PS1 era with an alcoholic pink cartoon bunny talking about being a NEET. It might sound like BS, but this is actually in the game. It genuinely shocked me when i thought i had already heard everything the character had to say.
As far as i know, there are different endings. A bad ending can happen if you don't interact with your Pokepi for days, prompting them to leave out of loneliness, with a sad note on their diary. The good endings usually happen after a bit more than 10 days have passed, when you interact more actively and, well, are simply nice to them, and they end similarly, only with heartwarming notes instead. Either way, no matter what, it always ends with the characters leaving. The director was often told by many people that they were upset that their Pokepi would leave and asked if there was any way to keep them for longer, or even indefinitely. But i think that's something that kinda encapsulates the beauty of this experience. Toro and all the other Pokepi are not just virtual pets. They're Pocket People, with autonomy, living their own lives, who wish to learn more about the real world through you, with different goals in mind. Such as Toro wanting to become a human.

You have to keep in mind that this game has a huge language barrier: It was a game released to promote the PocketStation, a playstation accessory that only ever released in japan, and the japanese language and kana are so integral to the interactions in this game that i think it's pretty easy to see why these games never got localized outside of a few spinoffs like the PSVita social game "Toro's Friend Network". I tried playing it with the google translate scanning the japanese words, but even at minimum text scrolling speed, all the speech crosses automatically so fast and with no way to scroll back up that the shitty and slow Google UI just can't keep up with 70% of the dialogue at any moment. There's really no way around learning Nihongo in order to have the smoothest experience with this game. It also doesn't help that there's also very little documentation of the PS1 game out there.

I'm really only rating it lower than most other reviews because it seems this one version has pretty much been bested by latter titles and feels somewhat lacking in dialogue options in comparison. I'd suggest starting with the PSP version, the PS3 game Mainichi Issho, or some other latter entry for anyone interested in this series, specially since you won't need to track down a PocketStation in order to play it. That said, for this version at least, if you have a pocketstation already this game is worth checking out for playing the authentic way. A very kokoro-touching game, if you have a strong sense of suspension of disbelief.

Basically a Nintendo 64 era collectathon but on a OG Xbox disc. It translates the gameplay from the first ToeJam & Earl game very faithfully into a 3D world. The presents are a very fun way to break the game and some of them make the levels feel almost sandboxy in the freedom they give you, although you still have to use them intelligently as presents appear randomly and are limited for every level, even when bought from mailboxes or vendors. To break the repetitiveness, there's also many bonus and secret levels sprinkled around the worlds. I thought the idea of music albums being the main collectibles for reaching other worlds in the game, as well as the way to unlock more in-game soundtracks, was very nice and fitting for the "funkyness" of the game.

I find it interesting just how for as much as Sega was allegedly propping the Original Xbox to be the "Dreamcast 2", out of all the franchises Sega could have granted Xbox exclusivity, they went with some of their weirdest, nicher "core SEGA fan" IPs like ToeJam & Earl, Rent-a-Hero, and Panzer Dragoon. I feel that treatment would have been more important for Virtua Fighter 4, Sonic Adventure 1 DX/2 Battle or for a port of Shenmue 1, but hey, that would be playing it safe. And this just feels right at home with the weirdness of original Xbox exclusives like Mad Dash Racing or Munch's Oddysey.
Kudos to Back to the Groove for remembering Latisha!

This is Syphon Filter. A game where you play as Superman 64 Clark Kent lookalike Gabe Logan in a stealth suit, in a mission to stop terrorist warlord Eric Rhoemer and eliminate all traces of a new, Nazi wet dream chemical weapon: Syphon Filter, a virus that can target and wipe out any specific genetic group at choice.

I don't really have much to say about this game that some other reviews haven't said already. I don't consider the gameplay to have aged that badly as everyone says. On the contrary, the strafing, dodging and leaning from walls coupled with the "danger meter" where enemy bullets can only hit you if you stay as an easy target in the open for too long, all make me think they knew there would be some inherent clunkiness to the combat in a game like this on the PS1 with hitscan bullet physics and digital controls (the game does have dualshock support but it's very unreliable, you might as well aim with the dpad), so these were some pretty functional workarounds they came up with. Being able to run and roll past enemies who miss all their shots for a few seconds also gives it another pinch of 'playable 90's action spy flick'. It honestly makes me wonder how a modern TPS with a similar mechanic would play like or experiment with it.

Moreover, i think the real flaws in the game are found in the missions themselves. As other reviews have mentioned, yes, the first level gives a good, yet very misleading first impression with it's massive size, with most of the other levels in the game being linear and more of what you'd expect from your other PS1 TPS. Although Washington Park being basically a MGS stage and Pharcom Warehouses with the infighting enemies and underground tunnels came close to replicating that. The Stronghold levels in the Cathedral were also neat, along with the plot twist that follows.
Many of the latter levels, though, just feel like the game repeating itself. "Rhoemer's Base" is basically the park level except with planting explosives instead of defusing them, and with stealth where if you get caught too early you might as well restart as enemies will spawn infinitely once that happens, The Stronghold Catacombs level is just a worse version of the Expo Center level with a mix of trailing and stealth, now followed by an escort mission, which makes me think this game was probably patient zero for all those escort levels in 6th gen games.
And Mission 19 might just be the worst mission in the whole game as it's just an endurance test with no real checkpoints through a long, pitch-black tunnel so dark that even your flashlight is useless so your best way to see what's ahead is to use the Viral Scanner you got from Pharcom Warehouses every few steps, and you have to inch your way through and slowly pick out enemies with Nightvision Sniper Rifle headshots, or else you'll be quickly killed or lose a lot of health because there's barely any cover until your reach the end of the stage. Oh, and there's also a few blind pitfalls just for funsies.

The game also ends on a very anticlimactic note. Basically, a missile carrying the Syphon Filter virus is complete and about to launch, you climb some ledges leading to a computer by the missile that conveniently contains the self-destruction codes you were looking for all along, Markinson pops out of nowhere and goes "everything according to Keikaku" and affirms that he was indeed working for Rhoemer, who then appears and shoots him before he can reveal his intentions for the Syphon Filter virus, whatever they were. Then there's a really hype timed sequence where you race through the facility to reach the mainframe and detonate the Syphon Filter missile, and then it's followed by the really anticlimactic Rhoemer bossfight. I thought you'd have to do something smart like shooting at his grenade launcher or hide behind pillars for him to blow them up and make the base collapse on top of him... but nah, just throw a gas grenade at him and he's out.

All in all, i would say the game has decent mechanics and a very great presentation but the more i kept playing it after the 14th mission or so the more i wanted to get over with it. It does make me want to give it's sequels a try though, and see how the story and gameplay build up from here. I can definitely see why this was successful enough to save the studio after the disaster that was Bubsy 3d.

I get i'm not the audience for this game anymore. I lost all interest ever since tix got removed, and having tried it again back in 2022, boy it was different. The games section looks like the games section of the Google Play Store and all the popular games seem to be clones of real games, Avatars are now far more dynamic to the point where the devs have toyed with the idea of making second-life style realistic human ones at some point as the default, and most games have in-game stores now and you can now actually get Robux by selling items in the market. Still, I miss all the aimless chill hangouts like Roblox Bowling Alley and Robloxaville, and classic simple games like Rocket Arena (which roblox paywalled for some fucking reason and thus nobody wants to play), all the shitty obbies and tycoon games with those VIP rewards for beating them, and older versions of SFOTH and Work at a Pizza Place. I miss when it was just a MMO blockland and when it had the broken advanced place editor where you could just search up a massive list of prefabs made by other players and paste them into your Place for free.
Even if i don't like what the game has become, i have to commend the Roblox team for reinventing some lego bricks mmo that was on it's way to obscurity along with all other non-VR virtual worlds, into something kids these days can be interested in, and even allowing them to make a real-life profit off their games

Flesh Robocop Simulator. One of my favorite first-person shooters of it's generation, and probably the very best singleplayer FPS on the PS2 side. While i see it compared to BLACK a lot on that spot, i think Urban Chaos is the far better game with it's more arcadey gameplay, yet fulfilling length, amount of content, and engaging combat.
The presentation is top notch and adds a lot to the game's well-deserved 8.5 status, with the few story there is being told through well-made spoof TV news segments, the death screens with Burners mocking you before finishing you off and fellow policemen mourning your death, and just the whole overall immersive feeling of the game, specially when the action takes place inside a burning building.
The weapons are super satisfying too. Among an arsenal of unique guns such as a one-hit kill Magnum revolver or a stun gun that can set enemies on fire Syphon Filter-style, You're blessed with the best shield in gaming that's fully immune to bullets, fire, melee and explosions, all with no strings attached! Sometimes even using it to get through leaking fire from gas valves or flames from backdraft doors, or to shield NPCs from ambushes. There's also the Hostage Situations, which while a bit repetitive and predictable, always end levels on a great note.

The closest thing to a flaw that i could personally find here is probably the enemy AI. Even in terror mode, most regular burners feel like ez headshot pushovers that just kinda stand around blankly shooting or throwing stuff at you up until halfway through the missions, and only in the final few do they wisen up and start evading your aim like Elites in Halo on Heroic difficulty. Also, most grenade launcher enemies are basically unavoidable HP tolls unless you slowly inch through corners and snipe them, if the level design lets you do it that is.

And yeah, the whole "'murica fuck yeah, mow those terrorists down" and the overt Tolerance-Zero glorified police brutality were considered to be of very bad taste even when this game came out, But you have to at least commend the game for being so upfront and straight faced about it without a pinch of subversion or irony. I'd rather have these heartless puppy-kicking G.I. Joe villain terrorists blowing up things for no reason than the game trying and failing to be deep with a Deus Ex style conspiracy thing going on that you could see from a mile away. That said, there is one small plot twist that has to do with the origin of the Burners, and you kinda have to pay attention to the level surroundings to see it coming. The last two levels are also pure kino.

Solid 8.5
(Addendum: I recommend playing this game on Elite Mode at first since you get double the medals, and unlock useful equipment early on, i honestly didn't feel the difficulty changed too much between Veteran and Elite mode.)

Good game with good ideas, such as the bomb boost which is basically like a racing game rocket jump, but it's all buried under a storm of jank that i couldn't bear. 10FPS framerate, unforgiving walljumps and cliff jumps (see: Bakuzan Ski Course) that can place you 47 seconds behind and cost you the race if you miss, slippery turning designed with the digital controllers in mind, and laughably broken troll powerups like one that freezes you for five seconds so your Louie/Tirra takes a shit and another one that's basically MK lightning on steroids and timestops every other player in place. Much like those Pipeworks godzilla games, this is one of those games which are the bomb to play with friends but can give you an aneurysm if playing solo

It's the Pokémon Stadium of Digimon... or at least so i expected. This game essentially lets you transform your PocketStation into a v-pet that can hold 6 digimon at a time. I've never really owned a v-pet and i must say this one is rather nice, being able to talk to your mon, battle or Jogress evolve with another pocketstation v-pet, and go in a small RPG mode of sorts where you move across File Island and fight wild mons to unlock Museum unlockables, but there's not much to do on the game itself. Just look at unlockables like FMVs or Digital World lore, manage your v-pets at Jijimon's House, or a Pokemon Stadium style arena mode either against CPU or another player with a pocketstation. Despite the name it's certainly not like a Digimon World game.

It's worth mentioning that around this time, Bandai was implementing a lot of interconnectivity between Digimon gadgets and games. You could actually use your Pocketstation with your V-Pet data to transfer it to some Digimon game in the Wonderswan through the infrared sensor, and also apparently for D-1 Grand Prix in Digimon World 2. You can also use your Pocketstation data from PDW in Digimon Tamers: Pocket Culumon to unlock every single museum item, but then it kinda feels like cheating and defeats the whole point of the adventure mode here.
It's nothing too noteworthy unless you're some sort of veteran hardcore Digimon collector, as in owning a Wonderswan and having played saturn "Digital Monster Ver. S" hardcore.

I'm outing myself as a zoomer here, but i played it back when i was 13-14 because it was one of the few modern games my parent's shitty computer could decently run and i had no better concept of what AAA games at the time were like, and that certainly gave me a pinch of rose tinted glasses for it. Back in the day i just dismissed all the criticisms of it online as jaded contrarianism, but even back then i could tell some things were off the more i played this game and i consider it my first "redpill" to bad game design. The overarching civil war questline where both sides pretty much play the same and which changes basically nothing, 80% of the dungeons being Draugr caves that loop back into the entrances, the kindergarten-level puzzles, the lack of any class system at all favoring just being a spellsword with some stealth on the side for those sweet instant kills, the destruction spells all feeling the same, being able to kill the fucking final boss with Mehrune's Razor, and the list goes on. At the very least i thought it was a big step up from Fallout 3 in terms of fun and holding up, but yeah, i find myself agreeing with a lot of the criticism looking back at it now. I would have simply told myself to stop being stubborn about beating the game vanilla and install some argonian sex mods instead lol