I love this foundation so much, constant speedy platforming, minigames and sonic stages scattered throughout an open world, while discovering sonic lore through a well written plot that ties in with even the adventures games. The character interactions are so good in this game!

Even despite Frontier's mindless puzzle challenges and more than often reused assets it is a fun sonic sandbox to mess around with welcoming you with a liberty to play at your own pace and decision of what to do or don't in whatever order you would like.

The cyber-stages while lacking in aestetical variety are still fun with branching paths, shortcuts and varied gimmicks. The way sonic team has combined objectives for these stages is honestly the most seamless implementation they've ever done for collectables. The red rings are mostly easy to catch on the go, while ring collecting has reasonable criterias.

Sonic's steering sensitivity and speed output can be adjusted to your liking, but only outside the cyberspace levels, Sonic controls okay, there are a few areas where movement can be slippery for smaller platforms while the momentum gain for midair can be pretty lacking for jumping precision. Sonic's boost is different from his other boost formula games and is more in tune with a fast dash similar to what was presented in Sonic Lost World with no damaging hitboxes to rush down enemies. The air boost gives you a higher increase in elevation as well as a major push forward, whereas the trade off is you can't use it again until you've a landed on the ground. The drop dash is brought back and is great fun to use for any slope both down and upwards completely defying any forms of physics.

Frontier has plenty of technical liberty to completely wack around with, though there are moments the automation takes the spotlight, mainly through the rail grinding and the more annoying boost pads. But for the most parts they are leniently placed in a manner you can see where they'll take you.

Pop-in issues aside the 60 fps is super nice and the flow of constant speed of the game is just beautiful!

Oh and the bossfights! Hooly shit

Ok desu ka?
-Shigesato Itoi

Earthbound is a pleasantly quirky game of fuzzy moments.
A journey that spins from the witty, surreal to dark as you explore a high scope world of different cities and dungeons.

Playing similarily on basis as an old school Dragon Quest game, Earthbound walks the park with its own twist of rules and refinements.
Item management and party members roles are very centric and adds a lot of good flavour to the entire battle system, with a vast and ridiculously creative set of enemy designs.

Complementary to the journey goes a direct narrative style which adds much feels of involvement and impact on many segments, while the soundtrack and sound design does a remarkable job in painting up the surreal and ambient nature of the moments.

Awesome game for the awesome people.

You know when a game hits that expectation curve of following up on a game it really doesn't do.
That's this game.

With it's defect physics and cube terrains all gloriously wrapped in an disgustingly overpriced package of NEW Zones spontaneously dishing out the most creative gimmicks the series has seen in a very long time there is that unhinged Sega quality that simply puts a stupid grin on my face.

Yes, it's no mania, it's secretly sonic 4 episode 3 & Knuckles and balance is at last restored.

I occassionally revisit this one since its not a very lengthy game to play for the story and play around in the areas for some of the weird ass minigames. It's a very charming action adventure game with a very B plot styled storyline, a cozy little open world setting to play around with earning medals for clearing dozens of odd achievements, awesome music and a fun combat system, despite being a bit clunky at times.

A few plot thread were even left hanging for a potential sequel, though its too bad the game flopped so hard after all its anticipation during its delayed development that it never happened, with more polish this gameplay formula could've turned into something amazing.

This game is very easy not to like. It has one of the craziest motion control mechanics grazed on a platformer and Sonic's movement at the beginning course of the game is not great. Slow acceleration, slow jumps, and over sensitive maneuvering becomes intially apparent and it doesn't help that you have to slowly keep unlocking better maneuvering mechanics as well as other beneficial abilities that you won't get until at least midgame unless you decide to replay levels over and over and over, or grind out through exciting filler stages like clear this stage with 0 rings and kill 1 enemy etc.

Once past that treshold it can be a lot more fun to control Sonic, with some fun mechanical depth and a nice sense of flow from your movements. That is to say whenever the level design is up to par, which unfortunately the game leaves a lot to be desired for outside the 7 main stages.

The draw distance also rears its ugly head especially with enemies spawning in a spare centimetres in front of you. There's often not enough time to react or align to what's infront of you, and what's worse is that jumping requires charge up which completely contradicts fast reactions. This and also the fact that you can only slowly walk backwards without any camera aid just makes the entire mechanic trip over itself.

It's just too bad those issues take such a huge precedence, since the motion controls and the flow of the game can be so good when the game gets it right.

There's merits to Sonic and the Secret Rings novelty and sense of style, not to mention the gloriously catchy OST, but that doesn't aid the experience any better when such a huge potential flair lies buried beneath inconsistent design choices.

Super short, but also sweet and very replayable for upping up the ranking scores. A good arcade rush bullethell for the n64 along with its highly entertaining nonsensical cutscenes, cheese dialogues and headbopping stage tracks.

Controllers may take some time getting used to, but the training mode tells you all you need to know and gives you the leisure you need to ease into the mechanics.

Easy is a nice breeze with a generous handout for CREDITS to try again if you fudge it, while normal and hard are there for you to cry with stronger goons and bosses boasting more menacing attacks.

Tropical Freeze is automatically better than its predecessor due to button mapped controls and overall less trial and error design.
Generally an easier game, though the Kong levels are certainly not.

David Wise's compositions are your typical earmelters with bungabunga bangers and the level themes are more unique and gives Tropical Freeze more of an identity of its own.

When you get stuck in random animations like bouncing off walls by simply tapping the wall in midair or sliding at slopes or ice and being unable to cancel out with rolls it can be pretty damn frustrating. This happened a lot to me in the final world, the ice drifting was not a very pleasant combination to the mechanics. And I honestly don't like the final world since it leans back towards the trial and error design again.

Outside of that, I adore all the variety and otherwise excellent level design Tropical Freeze offers and it's easily one of my favourite 2D platformers, very much so as DKC 1 and 2 in most merits.

Banger remake of one my favourites in the series, scary and for the most parts faithful to the story bits and the good old traditional survival gameplay. Though not without its own pieces of different alterations and set pieces that makes the experience a little more fresh.

The only disappointments I had were the exclusion of the iconic weapon shop moment from the original and the omitted variations between the story scenarios which originally altered som story scenes depending on whether you played as leon or claire's Scenario A first.

I played scenario A with the new soundtrack and scenario B with the original ost, it's really hard to top the original ost, but the devs did a good job with the new compositions too.

Grab a headset, turn on the 3D audio, douse the lights and you're in for a horrifying treat.

This old reboot initial pull lies in its cosmetic pop, strong celshading and appealing designs of our two main characters that makes for a promising premise with their sparkingly sarcastic personalities.

And really while the ingredients are all present here, the saturation often pales in dull monotony and predictability through the progressional structure and repeated use of similar assets, hurting the otherwise stronger merits that precides to engage.

The gameplay overall is fairly challenging but not unforgiving.
The platforming is fun, the puzzles do their job and doesnt overstay their welcome, while the combat is entirely like/dislike depending on whether you like half seconds reactionbased battles with spontanous qte prompt or not.
As long as you can be at peace with a predictable narrative pattern, some drawn out collectaton grinding and recycled everything you might find some good spots worth your precious time.

5 star game, but the remaster's performance leaves a bit to be desired. Erratic framerate jumping between 30-60 and at worst below. Some minour graphical bugs and input delays.

The new battle UI looks nice, but also a lil buggy (ailments icons not going away after recoverying) and the main menu for setting magnus cards, equipping etc looks awesome but has its share of unintuitive design choices. Instead of directly swapping cards in your deck you need to manually discard them to add new ones...and for equipping magnus you need to hotkey with the bumpers instead of having the option to select it on the main menu. It's just odd, but the hotkey implementation is quite nice when you get used to it.

The japanese va which is a big prop for this one and then there's the lack of the english..good news for your poor ear drums, and the alcoholic censorship has a lot of charm and creativity with their name alterings. I for one oh love me some of that wheat tea over a brand of beer..

The sound mixing is top notch and unlike the original the creatures all have their own death screams, as well as some environmental sound effects aren't as overly saturated/compressed as the original. By comparance the sound design is a large improvement.

There's also the extra toggles for no encounters, game speed adjustments in and out-battle which are nice for the impatient ones and for the later sidequesting. A instant kill toggle and finally an auto-battle function which is pure memes and doesn't work well at all.

Underneath it all it's the same beautiful game and you should play if want to try something unique in the jrpg genre. I want these games to be supported, but I'd recommend the original over this one unless you want the japanese cast and spot the differences from the original of which there are plenty minour ones.

Then again. The remasters also include new game plus with hard modes so I'll hold on to that for now.

The tingling excitement of finally getting to play this game back on christmas in 2006 after an infinite period of prolonged delays still remains unmatched for me and is a feeling that always rekindles every time I decide to revisit Twilight Princess.

It's not the most unique Zelda game, and it is probably the most linear adventure in the series with a weirdly stretched out, but heavily underutilised overworld, but what it does well is absolutely everything else from its well designed dungeons, locales and epic narration, as well as introducing some really cool new items at the final half of the game.

The story is beautifully presented with well animated cutscenes, and a strong synced up soundtrack that hits the sweetspots at the right moments.

The mood in this game strikes with every note from its sweet and touchy moments to the darker and grittier which complements the entirety of the journey so well.

The HD remaster adds a decent amount of textures and added polygons which really makes Twilight Princess look a lot less muddy than its original predecessors on Gamecube and Wii.

The input latency is unfortunately a bit iffy and is especially noticeable when riding epona or when you want to change directions, it's weird , but not too intrusive except for a few moments when you're at tight platforms and need extra precision.

Other than that there's several additions that just makes me prefer HD, faster climbing animation, gyro aiming plus a realtime map and menu with the gamepad is easily a go to.

Oh, and Midna best sidekick.

Psychonauts 2 follows its predecessor's equally bizarre and witty narrative through it's course of mindbending levels and set pieces.

Comparatively Psychonauts 2 shares the same mechanics and sense of progression as you unlock new abilities while sweeping through segments of platforming, puzzle solving and the oddity out-of-nowhere concepts.

It is also a much easier game occasionally suffering from its more railroad venture of basic platforming segments with less of the grandiose puzzle solving concepts which were a big thing with the first game.

Mind the word occasional since there are still a good string of strong and daring segments that are an absolute blast playing through.
Even despite the level design at times being simplistic, the aestetical value, sound design and insane narrative never fails to capture the same fun and surreal energy throughout the game.

It is nice to see mysteries unsolved from the first game being explored and fleshed out, and while each character don't get much time for individual development, it oddly works fine as the game never really takes itself serious enough anyway and you get enough from everyone to either like or dislike
them as well as understand their motivations and ongoing roles.

Outside of the main story there's a reasonably sized hubworld to explore with some extra character sidequests, which are worth doing for the character interactions and dialogues. the side content is just enough for a good cooldown at your choosing until you wish the main story to hold your hand again.

I had fun with Psychonauts 2 and despite its occasional simplicity, the narrative style and core personality kept me hooked until I suddenly finished it.

More linearily reserved and higher emphasised on its narrative prospect, Fusion is progressively a confined metroidvania. Leaving you with much more segmented sections to route as you constantly get pointers as to where to get your next power up or to advance the plot.

Whereas destinations are already defined, what Fusion does excel in is playing out its stack right in tide to its journey.
In between every destination there are varied puzzles, set pieces and challenging bosses enriched by the retained and polished staple mechanics you would expect from Metroid.

Fusion is a mechanical marvel, both fun and challenging through a spectacle of its 32 bit grandeur enemy designs and environments that sticks out in good manner.