Turquoisephoenix
I have several questions about this game, like "Why did they make a top-down open world collectathon game for the Tazmanian Devil on a system ill-suited for this genre due to screen crunch?", "Who designed this banger soundtrack?", and "Did no one on the dev team look at the many Aboriginal peoples you kill in the first level and think "hmm, maybe we should change that"?"
I love that this game answers the question "Do the other creatures cook and eat the anthropomorphic food in Cuphead?" with "Yes they do, and it's a horrifying act of murder".
1994
I love early oddball Mario games where these characters are not firmly established entities yet so Nintendo's just doing whatever. Nothing in this puzzle game became concrete Wario lore at all and I kinda dig it? His main enemy is Toad. He conquered a forest using black magic. He has a necromancer, a mermaid, and a dragon as evil minions. At one point he says "I have exceptional strength, power, wit, and charisma!" after using a bike pump to inflate himself. Birdo is there.
I feel like me and my fellow 90's gamers all owe The Lion King an apology because we all let this game completely squeak under the radar when it feels way more actively spiteful towards its target audience than The Lion King ever did. This game's first level with its spike traps, time limits, and relentless enemy placement definitely made small children cry. At one point they place a spider directly above some collectibles purely to fuck with you.
Disney's Beauty and the Beast is a wonderful testament to just how bad a level's design can get while still being something that you can look at and go "Yeah, I GUESS this is a finished product that can be beaten". Every level is a labyrinthine trial of slow platforming and even slower combat with terrible hit detection. The second level - the second level of the game! - is an autoscrolling "race the spikes to the top" level where there's these timed fire traps in his own castle and the spikes rubberband worse than a Mario Kart AI. The Beast can roar and freeze enemies in place, which seems like a harmless addition to his moveset until it's also worked into the platforming somehow. Sometimes you have to roar to make floating platforms move (because magic...?) and there is a very terrible section in this game where The Beast has to roar at these tiny "barely-can-see-the-pixels-on-a-CRT-TV" sized bats that are flying around in his castle so that they freeze in place, just so he can platform on the tiny bats to get to the next area. The tiny bats also fall the moment you step on them. This game hates you.
The Beast can also wall climb, which is cool until you take damage from tiny enemies because you can't dodge very well while wall climbing. Read the last sentence of the previous paragraph again for emphasis.
Also, seriously, why did every game developer in the 90's look at this movie and decide that The Beast was a slow-moving block of wet tissue paper who throws slow punches and gets his shit rocked by rats, spiders, and frogs? The Beast feels like a character that would've been a slam dunk for a fun 2D platformer like Aladdin was, but instead I have to watch this giant dog/boar monster laboriously plod around his environments until a small animal ruins his day. It's hard to even say which Beauty and the Beast game is worse - the SNES game or the two Sunsoft Genesis games - because they're all uniquely terrible in their own magical ways.
Game at least gets an extra half star for the level where Belle and The Beast have a snowball fight and The Beast just dies if he misses three snowballs. Perfect.
Disney's Beauty and the Beast is a wonderful testament to just how bad a level's design can get while still being something that you can look at and go "Yeah, I GUESS this is a finished product that can be beaten". Every level is a labyrinthine trial of slow platforming and even slower combat with terrible hit detection. The second level - the second level of the game! - is an autoscrolling "race the spikes to the top" level where there's these timed fire traps in his own castle and the spikes rubberband worse than a Mario Kart AI. The Beast can roar and freeze enemies in place, which seems like a harmless addition to his moveset until it's also worked into the platforming somehow. Sometimes you have to roar to make floating platforms move (because magic...?) and there is a very terrible section in this game where The Beast has to roar at these tiny "barely-can-see-the-pixels-on-a-CRT-TV" sized bats that are flying around in his castle so that they freeze in place, just so he can platform on the tiny bats to get to the next area. The tiny bats also fall the moment you step on them. This game hates you.
The Beast can also wall climb, which is cool until you take damage from tiny enemies because you can't dodge very well while wall climbing. Read the last sentence of the previous paragraph again for emphasis.
Also, seriously, why did every game developer in the 90's look at this movie and decide that The Beast was a slow-moving block of wet tissue paper who throws slow punches and gets his shit rocked by rats, spiders, and frogs? The Beast feels like a character that would've been a slam dunk for a fun 2D platformer like Aladdin was, but instead I have to watch this giant dog/boar monster laboriously plod around his environments until a small animal ruins his day. It's hard to even say which Beauty and the Beast game is worse - the SNES game or the two Sunsoft Genesis games - because they're all uniquely terrible in their own magical ways.
Game at least gets an extra half star for the level where Belle and The Beast have a snowball fight and The Beast just dies if he misses three snowballs. Perfect.
"It's not the ball that's super, it's the monkey inside" - a key line of dialogue, delivered during the secret ending you only get if you 100% this game.
1999
I originally gave this website - the original website, not the broken mess it is now - four stars for being an important part of my childhood, but that was before the massive security breach where user data was leaked and being sold on the dark web.
Dumbasses really thought they could sell NFTs while still using Internet security from circa 2002, damn.
Dumbasses really thought they could sell NFTs while still using Internet security from circa 2002, damn.
There's just enough little annoyances that keep me from giving this a perfect score (Room limits, villager limits, bad music, bad camera, Hargon's speech taking forever, accidentally talking to Malroth when I want to switch my tool, that one animal breeding achievement...) but this game hits that sweet spot of being a digital form of crack for me. I turn this game on and the hours melt away. I carefully place lily pads and flower petals into large bodies of water as I forget to eat. My character sleeps more than I do. I talk to Malroth more than my own mom. It's an endless cycle.
2013
Nintendo tries their hand at making Kaizo levels and then charges 20 dollars for it.
I've played a lot of difficult precision-heavy 2D platformers in my time, and never have I ran into one from a big studio where the Game Feel™ felt this bad. Luigi moves like a half-melted gummi bear dipped in Vaseline and not once did his lack of traction and floatiness "click" with me. Playing this game alongside Tropical Freeze only made Luigi feel less graceful than a 150 kg gorilla.
That being said, I do prefer the levels being this bite-sized over the regular length of the main game's levels. Just wish the physics didn't feel so awful and they just didn't give us the same bosses as the main game. Come on, at that price tag, at least give us something besides Boom Boom.
I've played a lot of difficult precision-heavy 2D platformers in my time, and never have I ran into one from a big studio where the Game Feel™ felt this bad. Luigi moves like a half-melted gummi bear dipped in Vaseline and not once did his lack of traction and floatiness "click" with me. Playing this game alongside Tropical Freeze only made Luigi feel less graceful than a 150 kg gorilla.
That being said, I do prefer the levels being this bite-sized over the regular length of the main game's levels. Just wish the physics didn't feel so awful and they just didn't give us the same bosses as the main game. Come on, at that price tag, at least give us something besides Boom Boom.
For the first hour or so of gameplay, I was really charmed by this game and was ready to give it the "10/10 Game Freak better take some notes, Capcom is running laps around you" rating, but then the honeymoon period started to wear off and I was left with a JRPG that does some things better than Pokemon while doing other things worse than Pokemon. This is less of a "this is Legends Arceus but good" situation and more of a "this is a 7/10 but hey at least the graphics look nice" thing.
This game does do a lot of good things! The catching gameplay loop is really satisfying and I loved hunting for eggs like it was Easter Sunday just so I could hatch and finagle several overpowered dragons using the Rite of Channeling system. Unlike Legends Arceus, the graphics don't look like shit and there's a lot of varied locations to run around in. The battle system has a lot of little things and mechanics that make it feel like you're playing a turn-based Monster Hunter game rather than a Pokemon ROM hack with Monster Hunter characters awkwardly placed in there, with each random encounter feeling like a boss battle as you're gradually wearing these monsters down. Equipment progression is always fun and requires a lot of monster part harvesting and satisfies the portion of my brain that likes swinging giant swords at things and material crafting more giant swords out of the things I swung my giant sword at.
Alas, all is not well in Monstie paradise. Once you endure the frankly terrible English voice acting for long enough before finally relenting and switching to the Japanese track, that's when you start to notice that, in handheld mode, this game is devouring your battery faster than Breath of the Wild, so check "not very optimized for the system it's on" off the list.
You're like "yeah, okay I can live with that" but as the hours wear on, you start to notice that all of the level layouts are starting to blend into each other and you're starting to memorize the layouts of all the so-called randomized monster dens. You want to hunt for more eggs and genes, but then you're starting to blaze through these dens as fast as you can, because not only are the dungeon layouts monotonous, but the random encounters are too.
Ah yes, the battle system. Fighting monsters in this game is equal parts a breath of fresh air for someone who's well acquainted with the Pokemon game mechanics and, miraculously, also very tedious. While there is an elemental attack system in place (one that will screw you over when you get to the snow level and your assigned partner has an Ice-type monster doing piss-poor damage against other Ice-types thanks for nothing Anivia), the main focus is the Rock-Paper-Scissors format where you try to gauge how your opponent will attack and try to choose the stronger attack pattern for the best parries and counterattacks. Here's hoping you have a good memory or a helpful guide open because the game will penalize you if you forget which monsters use what and they'll often change what types of attacks they use based on certain battle conditions.
On top of all of this, your average random encounter takes about 20 turns to beat (it IS a Monster Hunter game after all) with each monster feeling like a damage sponge as they just wait for you to make one little mistake in type input. I do like that they tried something new and it does feel unique, but there were also quite a few moments where I was spamming a Monstie with Roar because I just did not want to be bothered with the random spawns in front of me. I didn't hate the battle system but I had to be in the mood for it, y'know?
As for the story, it's neither here nor there. You are a blank slate protagonist that sometimes changes facial expressions while your bootleg Jibanyan is narrating everything and as you make your way through the world completely mute save for screaming battle grunts, you befriend a bunch of battle companions who range from Fun to Kyle. Soon you hatch and bond with a cursed/blessed/blursed Rathalos and, even if you barely use this guy in battle, the game will treat him as your Toothless in every cutscene as you protect him from persecution just because he sometimes goes Hulk Mode and nearly kills people a couple times.
At first you think the game's core messages are "don't kill a newborn monster just because an ancient tablet says that they're the harbringer of destruction and they're born with powerful energies that they have to learn to control when they're creatures with thoughts and feelings like you" and "don't go seeking revenge on a creature that was just acting like an animal even if they killed one of your loved ones" as you hang out with your bro Ratha and a character that went through this arc in the first Stories game, but then this lesson gets kinda thrown out the window when the final boss is also a newborn monster that an ancient tablet says is a harbringer of destruction and one that was responsible for the death of a loved one. Whoops?
There's also a plot twist and an apocalypse death cult, but they're barely in the game and are just there to have a stoic guy go all anime crazy eyed and start screaming about forging a new world while a monster starts turning the landscape into the pages of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
It's all worth it in the end - silly writing and the destruction of plot themes aside - because the final boss battle in this game is spectacular. It's brutal, it took me a couple of tries to beat, and requires constant vigilance of what your entire party is doing at all times and it rules. Everything in this game got payoff in this one moment and made the whole journey worth it, even if after the credits rolled, I was like "yeah I really don't like Kyle".
Ah well, once you get past the lukewarm story, the lukewarm cast, the lukewarm battle system, and the lukewarm dungeon designs, this game still satisfied that itch to catch them all in a game that doesn't have the Pokemon mechanics. Even if this game's core mechanic also has the shittiest little mascot saying "Mmm, pretty stinky don't you thinky?" after he sniffs something that was recently under a dragon's ass.
This game does do a lot of good things! The catching gameplay loop is really satisfying and I loved hunting for eggs like it was Easter Sunday just so I could hatch and finagle several overpowered dragons using the Rite of Channeling system. Unlike Legends Arceus, the graphics don't look like shit and there's a lot of varied locations to run around in. The battle system has a lot of little things and mechanics that make it feel like you're playing a turn-based Monster Hunter game rather than a Pokemon ROM hack with Monster Hunter characters awkwardly placed in there, with each random encounter feeling like a boss battle as you're gradually wearing these monsters down. Equipment progression is always fun and requires a lot of monster part harvesting and satisfies the portion of my brain that likes swinging giant swords at things and material crafting more giant swords out of the things I swung my giant sword at.
Alas, all is not well in Monstie paradise. Once you endure the frankly terrible English voice acting for long enough before finally relenting and switching to the Japanese track, that's when you start to notice that, in handheld mode, this game is devouring your battery faster than Breath of the Wild, so check "not very optimized for the system it's on" off the list.
You're like "yeah, okay I can live with that" but as the hours wear on, you start to notice that all of the level layouts are starting to blend into each other and you're starting to memorize the layouts of all the so-called randomized monster dens. You want to hunt for more eggs and genes, but then you're starting to blaze through these dens as fast as you can, because not only are the dungeon layouts monotonous, but the random encounters are too.
Ah yes, the battle system. Fighting monsters in this game is equal parts a breath of fresh air for someone who's well acquainted with the Pokemon game mechanics and, miraculously, also very tedious. While there is an elemental attack system in place (one that will screw you over when you get to the snow level and your assigned partner has an Ice-type monster doing piss-poor damage against other Ice-types thanks for nothing Anivia), the main focus is the Rock-Paper-Scissors format where you try to gauge how your opponent will attack and try to choose the stronger attack pattern for the best parries and counterattacks. Here's hoping you have a good memory or a helpful guide open because the game will penalize you if you forget which monsters use what and they'll often change what types of attacks they use based on certain battle conditions.
On top of all of this, your average random encounter takes about 20 turns to beat (it IS a Monster Hunter game after all) with each monster feeling like a damage sponge as they just wait for you to make one little mistake in type input. I do like that they tried something new and it does feel unique, but there were also quite a few moments where I was spamming a Monstie with Roar because I just did not want to be bothered with the random spawns in front of me. I didn't hate the battle system but I had to be in the mood for it, y'know?
As for the story, it's neither here nor there. You are a blank slate protagonist that sometimes changes facial expressions while your bootleg Jibanyan is narrating everything and as you make your way through the world completely mute save for screaming battle grunts, you befriend a bunch of battle companions who range from Fun to Kyle. Soon you hatch and bond with a cursed/blessed/blursed Rathalos and, even if you barely use this guy in battle, the game will treat him as your Toothless in every cutscene as you protect him from persecution just because he sometimes goes Hulk Mode and nearly kills people a couple times.
At first you think the game's core messages are "don't kill a newborn monster just because an ancient tablet says that they're the harbringer of destruction and they're born with powerful energies that they have to learn to control when they're creatures with thoughts and feelings like you" and "don't go seeking revenge on a creature that was just acting like an animal even if they killed one of your loved ones" as you hang out with your bro Ratha and a character that went through this arc in the first Stories game, but then this lesson gets kinda thrown out the window when the final boss is also a newborn monster that an ancient tablet says is a harbringer of destruction and one that was responsible for the death of a loved one. Whoops?
There's also a plot twist and an apocalypse death cult, but they're barely in the game and are just there to have a stoic guy go all anime crazy eyed and start screaming about forging a new world while a monster starts turning the landscape into the pages of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
It's all worth it in the end - silly writing and the destruction of plot themes aside - because the final boss battle in this game is spectacular. It's brutal, it took me a couple of tries to beat, and requires constant vigilance of what your entire party is doing at all times and it rules. Everything in this game got payoff in this one moment and made the whole journey worth it, even if after the credits rolled, I was like "yeah I really don't like Kyle".
Ah well, once you get past the lukewarm story, the lukewarm cast, the lukewarm battle system, and the lukewarm dungeon designs, this game still satisfied that itch to catch them all in a game that doesn't have the Pokemon mechanics. Even if this game's core mechanic also has the shittiest little mascot saying "Mmm, pretty stinky don't you thinky?" after he sniffs something that was recently under a dragon's ass.
As someone who has been with the series since the first game made its way to a GameCrazy shelf in 2002 (rip)...this is one of my favorite Ratchet and Clank games and the only thing keeping it from being my absolute favorite Ratchet game is that it feels about 1 or 2 planets too short and there was neither a level where we get to play as Dr. Nefarious nor an unlockable Dr. Nefarious skin via the Gold Bolts rewards. Could've been just a smidge more like ACiT is what I'm saying here.
There was way too much effort put into this, a game in the licensed movie tie-in genre. This is a project where no one would've been heartbroken if it sucked. Instead, the levels where you're just a toy running around in Andy's bedroom or in the Daycare really do feel like for-scale recreations of actual rooms, with so many unique textures and models that they feel like spaces you can live in, something I never felt for any other PS3 era game including AAA titles like Uncharted.
And there's other insane little touches like:
-There's a Star Trek: DS9 reference in one of the cutscenes said by an actual Star Trek actor.
-The co-op actually functions really well, better than many Switch games.
-They made an Al's Toy Barn for the Extras "menu" and the attention to detail as far as making it look like one of those big box toy stores is immaculate.
-They made a playable version of the entire opening sequence of Toy Story 2 just because they could.
-There's unlockable game developer interviews and concept art.
And my god, the Toybox section of the game. This is the part of the game that receives the most praise and it deserves every bit of it. I'm actually kinda mad that I didn't play this during the PS3 era because that open world area with all the little missions and funny little guys you can dropkick into cacti would've been my shit when I was younger. I can see why Disney looked at this and went "we could make an entire franchise based off of this" with Disney Infinity. Shame Disney Infinity wasn't more like this and was instead Disney Infinity.
The only two things holding it back are the length of the game (you can finish the story mode in about three hours, with several levels being only one or two rooms) and the fact that the controls only feel great about 80% of the time, with some cheap deaths happening because the game didn't let Woody grab a ledge he normally could. Otherwise, actually a fine game. Honestly belongs right next to Battle for Bikini Bottom in the pantheon of 3D Platformers Based Off Of A Cartoon That Actually Slap. B+, would shoulder charge Lotso directly into a lake again.
And there's other insane little touches like:
-There's a Star Trek: DS9 reference in one of the cutscenes said by an actual Star Trek actor.
-The co-op actually functions really well, better than many Switch games.
-They made an Al's Toy Barn for the Extras "menu" and the attention to detail as far as making it look like one of those big box toy stores is immaculate.
-They made a playable version of the entire opening sequence of Toy Story 2 just because they could.
-There's unlockable game developer interviews and concept art.
And my god, the Toybox section of the game. This is the part of the game that receives the most praise and it deserves every bit of it. I'm actually kinda mad that I didn't play this during the PS3 era because that open world area with all the little missions and funny little guys you can dropkick into cacti would've been my shit when I was younger. I can see why Disney looked at this and went "we could make an entire franchise based off of this" with Disney Infinity. Shame Disney Infinity wasn't more like this and was instead Disney Infinity.
The only two things holding it back are the length of the game (you can finish the story mode in about three hours, with several levels being only one or two rooms) and the fact that the controls only feel great about 80% of the time, with some cheap deaths happening because the game didn't let Woody grab a ledge he normally could. Otherwise, actually a fine game. Honestly belongs right next to Battle for Bikini Bottom in the pantheon of 3D Platformers Based Off Of A Cartoon That Actually Slap. B+, would shoulder charge Lotso directly into a lake again.
2020
For some reason my brain always forgets that this game is rated T for Language so I'll get into this groove of feeding french fries to my Wholesome Frog Uncle in this Studio Ghibli-styled time management game only for this cartoon hummingbird to look me in the eye and go "Shit man, these douchebags make me sick to my ass".
"This looks like a fun little game to play during my work breaks," I said. "I don't want to start Celeste or Hollow Knight just yet, I want to ease into the summer with something a little easier first," I said. Zone 2 in Aria's story is probably the farthest I'll ever go with this but I'm satisfied I even made it that far. Consider my ass thoroughly kicked.
Necrodancer has what I like to call "accessible cruelty". It's the perfect marriage of modern conveniences and old-school "fuck you, insert coin to continue" mentality from arcade cabinets, a "hardcore game" purely by design rather than by circumstance. There's a very satisfying gameplay loop with a tangible sense of progression, but also this is one of those games where you can be in the middle of a really good run and then accidentally press the wrong directional button once and be screwed over immediately.
I appreciate this game for deciding that it wasn't going to take any prisoners - like requiring you to replay an entire zone all over again if you die at the dungeon's boss or by having a bunch of unlockable characters who are all some flavor of Geneva Convention violation - just like I appreciate the fact that I bought this game on a system that doesn't have any achievements tied to it so I won't trick myself into attempting an All Zones Mode run with Coda.
In short, great game! I'm not sure if I'm any good at it, but great game nonetheless!
Necrodancer has what I like to call "accessible cruelty". It's the perfect marriage of modern conveniences and old-school "fuck you, insert coin to continue" mentality from arcade cabinets, a "hardcore game" purely by design rather than by circumstance. There's a very satisfying gameplay loop with a tangible sense of progression, but also this is one of those games where you can be in the middle of a really good run and then accidentally press the wrong directional button once and be screwed over immediately.
I appreciate this game for deciding that it wasn't going to take any prisoners - like requiring you to replay an entire zone all over again if you die at the dungeon's boss or by having a bunch of unlockable characters who are all some flavor of Geneva Convention violation - just like I appreciate the fact that I bought this game on a system that doesn't have any achievements tied to it so I won't trick myself into attempting an All Zones Mode run with Coda.
In short, great game! I'm not sure if I'm any good at it, but great game nonetheless!
The graphics are nice enough to lull you into a false sense of security, but then you play for long enough and realize that the controls only work when they decide to. If they're going to give Chester Cheetah glass bones and paper skin, the least they can do is make his controls more responsive than "when I feel like it", but no, this is a luck based game and I had to use save states for a cheetos ad. I debased myself by playing this. Don't make the same mistake I did.
Ah yes, the "throw as many concepts to the wall and see what sticks" game in the PS2 trilogy. Thankfully, most of the revamps to the gameplay were general improvements that changed the feel of the series forever, but there's also a lot of unnecessary chafe in there mixed in with the new leveling systems. I'm so glad they never brought back Nanotech Boosts, the wonky glider segments that instantly kill you if a stray fart travels in your direction, or the mandatory racing segments after this installment.
Still a mighty fine PS2 game, all things considered - I'm still grading this a very solid 8/10 - but replaying this pretty recently has soured me on the whole "best game in the series" talk this game often gets.
For instance, I love the moment about halfway through the game when you can feel the crunch and the deadlines constrict around this game and the difficulty scaling, level design, and the bosses just get way shittier. Snivelak in particular feels unfinished. Grelbin wasn't so much "designed" as it was "puked out at the last minute". The last boss can literally be sniped to death from a distance if you position yourself near a vendor and don't get close enough to trigger his health bar.
Even the story is affected by this crunch because it sure makes a hard swerve from "Megacorp and unchecked capitalism is evil!" to "Something weird is going on at Megacorp, we gotta investigate the CEO!" about halfway through the game, with the story ending with Ratchet and Angela the Cool Freedom Fighter happily saving Mr. Fizzwidget, the guy that reduced several planets to near-lifeless wastelands in the pursuit of profit.
What about Tabora, Ratchet. What about Tabora.
Still a mighty fine PS2 game, all things considered - I'm still grading this a very solid 8/10 - but replaying this pretty recently has soured me on the whole "best game in the series" talk this game often gets.
For instance, I love the moment about halfway through the game when you can feel the crunch and the deadlines constrict around this game and the difficulty scaling, level design, and the bosses just get way shittier. Snivelak in particular feels unfinished. Grelbin wasn't so much "designed" as it was "puked out at the last minute". The last boss can literally be sniped to death from a distance if you position yourself near a vendor and don't get close enough to trigger his health bar.
Even the story is affected by this crunch because it sure makes a hard swerve from "Megacorp and unchecked capitalism is evil!" to "Something weird is going on at Megacorp, we gotta investigate the CEO!" about halfway through the game, with the story ending with Ratchet and Angela the Cool Freedom Fighter happily saving Mr. Fizzwidget, the guy that reduced several planets to near-lifeless wastelands in the pursuit of profit.
What about Tabora, Ratchet. What about Tabora.