Top 50 Favorites: #25

A masterclass in medieval gothic pop style. I'll be honest, I thought this was just kind of okay when I first played it - a little mid of a remake in a way that feels hollow (even cheap), not unlike Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated. But boy does this thing know how to sit with you and settle right on in... you'd really have to try hard to forget any of these luxurious-looking levels (of course that would ultimately be a futile fight anyway). Sir Daniel is such a lovable lead character despite (perhaps - in part - because of) having zero audible lines of dialogue, and like the rest of this game is designed to soaring standards. There's also something satisfyingly squishy about the combat here, nothing beats busting out that big ole' mallet and going to town on zombies, imps, pumpkin plants, and fish monsters and whatnot. An aura of authenticity coats this entire thing corner-to-corner, what initially might seem thin ends up seeming so lovingly crafted - so lived-in. So charming and freakish, it's even a shade creepy at some points - it being hard to deduce whether that's unintentionally so or otherwise makes it even moreso imo. Essential adventure game that's refreshing in its simplicity. Love, love, love it.

this is the worst 3d beat em up the video game landscape will ever see

i like the first Legend of Spyro game i think its a decent albeit basic beat em up with insanely good looking world design

this game however is abysmal and throws everything promising out the window

first problem: the combat

from the very beginning of the game Spyro gets the ability to slow down time whenever he wants this doesn't really come up at all in the plot its just a new gimmick for your playset

however to try and balance this all of the enemies do insane amounts of damage even in the first fucking level so you'll be hit by the most basic grunts and lose 1/3 of your health bar which is really small in this game because they added God of War health upgrades to this for whatever fucking reason

the time slow ability also slows down Spyro at all which defeats the entire purpose of the ability please stop fucking doing this shit with time powers in video games

there are no i frames in this game which also means if you get hit at all you will likely be dogpiled by the 6 other enemies that spawn in every single encounter and die immediately without any chance to defend yourself great fucking game design there guys

the hitboxes in this game are laughable you will die due to something either not hitting you or just from nothing at all numerous amounts of times during the game and you have to deal with it

enemies will also break out of your combos at complete random and immediately attack you which again will lead to instant death in almost every scenario

the slow mo effect on attacks is back too and makes the already terrible combat drag to a fucking halt because for no reason at all they removed the ability to turn it off so every time you do an air combo its gonna take twice as long because of the shitty slo mo

it is also added to the screen nuke attacks and they also take fucking forever to activate because of it

problem 2: Spyro's control

A New Beginning did not have much of an emphasis on platforming this is because the game was designed as a beat em up through and through

Eternal Night does away with this and makes Spyro jump across incredibly tiny platforms that he can barely make because of the momentum he carries when he glides

the camera is also fucking terrible in every platforming section and often obscures the platforms you need to cross
there is a platforming section in the last level of the game where it is pitch black with a GIF file of snow falling on your screen at all times and the game genuinely expects you to maneuver a cliff jumping from moving platform to moving platform under these conditions

these platforms in question are also completely black with little green glowing lines you can barely make out

final problem: the boss fights
this game has the worst set of boss fights i've seen in any game i've played ever they amplify every issue with the games combat immensely with horribly telegraphed attacks that come out the exact frame they start up which will hit you almost every time because they are borderline impossible to avoid and yet again will almost always lead to instant death

if you want to experience this madhouse of game design go right on ahead but if you're a sane individual who wants to experience the entire trilogy then just watch a cutscene comp on youtube its not worth it

The game being as flabbergasted at the fact 18-Volt is a nine year old as much as I was probably one of the most hilarious part of a game that quite literally made me smile and laugh every single moment I was playing it.

When making a game which its main premise is that it re-uses content from past entries, developers are faced when simple yet ever-present question: ''How in the all living hell do we make this worth it?''. Nostalgia and getting to re-experience past games or parts of them in brand new systems can be cool incentives, but I'd be hard-pressed to say they are strong ones; the content by itself it's nothing new, so why would we, as players, be interested on not only re-experiencing content that we have already played, but also pay for it?... Well, turns out WarioWare Gold found an answer, a trick...


The trick of haVING JIMMY T. ON THE GAME WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LET'S-A FUCKING GOO, GETTIN' FIT AND FUNKY BABY!

The decision of playing the rest of the series beforehand was one of the best I could have ever made, because what would still be a fantastic game into an even more impressive one; even if a majority of WarioWare Gold is stuff we have already seen, it manages to make it feel new thanks to a collection of elements that span the entirety of the series plus a new barrage of brand-new content. Gold is the best celebration the series could have ever hoped for: 316 micro-games are nothing scoff at, overpassing even Twisted and its almost 230 fast paced minigames, but as I said before, most of these are micro-games already seen in previous entries, including twisted, so what makes this number shouldn't be so special... but then you see the selection, and then realize this is pure FIRE. Because there was so much to choose from, they picked the best and ONLY the best minigames on the entire series; in the past, with maybe the exception of Twisted there were a few amount of stinkers that were clearly lacking in quality compared to others, and even tho they only lasted a few seconds, in a game so fast paced as WarioWare that still leaves a huge impression. Not anymore: every single one if the crème de la crème, even the new ones, and so everyone may not be here, but that doesn't matter 'cause the best sure are. It even has a Rhythm Heaven minigame thrown in there, you can't make this up! That isn't even going into the Challenges, where we find the expected but always welcomed micro-game towers, plus some new stuff like the fantastic Wario Interrupts, but most of all, the return of Wario Watch and Sneaky Gamer, the former my favorite mode in ANY of the previous games and the latter being the best part of Game & Wario, and after playing, I completely understand why. Now that I think about it, the only games that might not get any kind of representation are Snapped and D.I.Y, which makes sense, one is a departure from the series focused on creating the games, and the other one is... well, is WarioWare Snapped. The rest tho? All gameplay styles come back, even the microphone, and the one game you expect to not see, Smooth Moves actually has a ton of representation, with a couple of minigames being adapted to be controlled in the twisted section; if you think about a thing of the series which there is a way it could be implemented here, then it is implemented here, and that effort for consistency is commendable.

Now, I know I said at the beginning that Gold was more than a simple collection… to then proceed to list things that are returning, but as I also said, is how it manages that returning stuff plus the never seen content what makes it so special, and regarding that new content… Am I the only one that loves how this game handles humor? Like, I adored how past games handled story and humor: as the gameplay itself, it’s pure chaos, incredibly light of dialogue and centered around the bat-shit insanity that plagues everyone. Gold takes a different approach, not only having a pretty more involved story, but actual dialogue, like, REALLY good dialogue; the jokes and on point, and even when some cut-scenes are longer than in previous games, it truly doesn’t feel like it like it did in Touched; it’s still fast-paced and entertaining, only now with sublime voiceovers (in fact the Spanish translation and dubbing is also pretty phenomenal) and mini-stories that are as crazy as ever, only now they connect to the Wario and Lulu cinematics, which, I know that Wario is loved by everyone, including me, but here, his mannerism, his voice-over, his interactions with Lulu and the cast, the way he simply IS, this is by far the best iteration of the character in not only the WarioWare series, but in the entirety of the Mario series as a whole, I love this greedy bastard to death and love him to see him be as dastardly as much to see him fail, they just nailed him here. And that sentiment goes for everyone else, character shine like never before and whereas in the past I only really care about Jimmy T. and maybe Orbulon, I now adore this group of weirdos in a way I didn’t really see coming, like, this game made me like Fronk and fucking Joe, how do you even accomplish that?! This, with the more non linear game you can tackle the different leagues and how Diamond City is shown, makes it one of the most different WarioWare games by far, but every change introduced makes sense and it’s welcomed, and other new additions, like the missions and the store, on top of ALL the other stuff, like small side content like the extra minigames (which includes a Pyoro one and I for one I’m the happiest person on earth right now) and the ability to dub the cutscenes… yeah, this might just be the biggest package in the entirety of the series while also being the most fun by a landslide.

I knew I was gonna have fun, but MAN did this game make me happy; it made me feel rewarded for investing my time into this already amazing series, a love letter that even if released 1 year after the switch launched and doesn’t have a 3D option, I kind of really like that it’s on the 3DS? It still feels right a home, and hey, having two screens makes it possible to play Sneaky Gamer, so on that alone makes it worth it.

To me, Gold is the single best experience in the franchise, Twisted is to this day the best out the full-blown original games, but Gold fills me with such joy, is so fun, so consistently fucking amazing in almost every way, that I cannot for the life of me say it’s not my preferred game. I’m so glad I got to play this series in its entirety, and I’m so happy this is the send-off, or at least until Move It! releases, but until then, we found Wario peak…


…and you know, I could finish this review off with yet another Wario-related joke, but you know what? Nah, I’m good. For once, let the final note be how unironically great Wario is, and how this silly greedy garlic enjoyer, his crew and his dumb ass minigames can be so fantastic… holy hell, what a great franchise…

Boy am I glad I bought this game when I did, cause it’s delisted as FRICK now.

I liked it! A simple little beat em up based on a show I adore. Or rather, based on the PILOT. It’s in this weird nebulous void between the pilot and the show, it’s a neat little oddity where things are more refined from the pilot, but NOOOOOT quite there yet.

Honestly, the biggest problem is it’s a touch screen mobile game. It can be really frustrating positioning yourself where you want to be and pulling off the moves you want to do. But it’s functional! It’s fun enough!

The world and characters are just so charming. It’s not as refined as the show, but the environments are still very nice looking for a game like this, and it’s always a joy to talk to this cast.

That’s about it! It’s pretty simple, can be frustrating sometimes, but I had a good time with it!

Don't lament the death of your old favorite franchises, rejoice that they never got turned into Temple Run.

Crash actually adapts particularly well to this kind of game, one could almost mistake it for a Real Game if not for the Calarts-reject enemy models and whatever they've done to Coco.

Rest assured though that once you make a little progress the veneer comes off to reveal the familiar mobile game mechanics beneath: watch this ad to double the numbers of these dozen different "crafting materials" we keep throwing at you, and don't run out of crystals since it's 5 bucc for a 120-pack.

Designed, as always, to leech money off children, for mobile games are the workings of Zalambur.