KIRBY!!! :)

Yeah this game is really good, Kirby games don't usually keep my interest past the first few levels but the levels in this game were really well designed and full of cool new ideas. Kirby's moveset translated perfectly to 3D and the platforming still felt as good as all the 2D games. I was kinda dissapointed by how few copy abilites there were but the upgrades for them added a lot to make them more interesting then they otherwise would be, so it's fine I guess. I'm not a big fan of the story, and usually just opted to skip cutscenes to get right to gameplay, but there was a lot going on in that department so I'm happy for all the Kirby lore enthusiasts that get to eat with this one. And finally the bosses, especially the ones towards the endgame, were actually really sick and sort of difficult, which I thought was really cool for one of these games. I regret not playing much of this when it came out, this game rules and it was a nice change of pace from all the heavier stuff I've been playing lately.

The PlayStation 3 was the first home console I ever got to myself, back during Christmas of 2009. I was pretty young back then, so when I saw it in commercials prior to that, I wanted a PS3 because of EyePet.
It looked cute and adorable, and it pleased my young self's mind. But the console bundle that came with it also contained another game... Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty.

Now, that game is not the subject of this review, but it holds extreme significance to me, not only for being the game responsible for introducing me to this series... but it was also the first 3D Platformer I had ever played.
I'll detail more my thoughts of that game when I get to reviewing it, but short into the point, that game made me a Ratchet & Clank fan, and while I'm not as active with the series as I used to be, it still is a franchise that holds a special place in my heart.

During the next few years, many of the games I would get for my PlayStation 3 were either Sonic games or Ratchet & Clank games, with the ocassional odd-ball thrown here and there. I got three different Ratchet & Clank games in 2014: Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time; Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus; and the game that's being reviewed today, Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction.

I was pretty happy when I got the game because I would be seeing the events that were told to me at the beginning of Quest for Booty. But as I progressed through it, I started to notice that the game was much harder than that one. So much so that I experienced one of my first rage-quits, one that I'm not very proud of.
It wouldn't be until 2020, where I decided to go back to Tools of Destruction, start it from scratch and finish it. I even got all of the Gold Bolts and RYNO IV Holo-Plans, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
You guys might be wondering what Ratchet & Clank even is?
Well, let's begin.

Ratchet & Clank is one of Sony Interactive Entertainment's flagship series, mixing platforming with third-person shooting. The game stars the titular duo, as they go around various planets, using various weapons to blow shit up and defeat the antagonist of the game in question.

With Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, that is no different. Although, for Japanese and North American players, the game's title is actually Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction.
While the game is not a reboot or even a soft-reboot, as the series jumped into the PlayStation 3, there was a different perspective on how to approach story-telling.

While I still have yet to play the PS2 trilogy and Deadlocked/Gladiator, from what I understand, those games had simple stories but with a lot of good jokes featuring various characters you would meet in the many planets the duo would visit. Many of those jokes made fun of capitalism and stuff related to it.

With the PS3, the team over at Insomniac Games wanted to make a more ambitious story, delving into the origins of the duo and tell something that would branch over multiple games, thus creating the Future saga.
Did they succeed? Kinda.

In a vaccum, Tools of Destruction's plot is not much different from the plots presented in previous games. In spite of game's more serious nature, it's not afraid to make jokes and to have cool characters Ratchet & Clank meet throughout the story.
The number of characters they meet is lesser than those games, but those characters stick with the duo through most of the game.

There are interesting things that are set-up in this title, like the whereabouts of Talwyn's father, Max Apogee, or the origin of the Lombaxes, Ratchet's race.
Thing is, not all of them have a pay-off in the game itself, or in future games. And this boils down to the game's rather problematic development.

At the time, Insomniac Games had a very big crunch culture, putting out a Ratchet & Clank game every year. With the PS3 era, in order to make sure they wouldn't have burnout, they decided to make the Resistance series, and they would release a Resistance game one year, and a Ratchet & Clank game the next.
This strategy blew up in their faces, but I'll discuss this more in the Quest for Booty and A Crack in Time reviews.

Point is, because of this and various other problems going on at Insomniac around this time, the plot and the game as a whole were rushed to hell and back.
I'm honestly shocked that the game we got is as polished as it is.

Continuing on, let's talk about the gameplay!
Like previous games, Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction remains a platformer mixed in with a third-person shooter. Many of Clank's various abilities that he had with Ratchet are still here, like the Heli-Pack and the Hydro-Pack.
Ratchet can still hit enemies with his wrench and use various gun-fire, like previously. Starting with this game, many of the weapons Ratchet would receive going forward would be from this game. It was nice getting unique weapons per game previously, but a lot of these weapons kick ass, so I don't have many complaints on reusing them for later titles.
In my most recent run, I actually got a lot of use out of two particular weapons, the Groovetron and the Alpha Disruptor. The Groovetron is a device that makes enemies dance, holding them in place for you to attack them.
And the Alpha Disruptor is a big fuck-you weapon. It may not have a lot of ammo, and needs to be charged up, but considering this game's difficulty, it really came in handy.

And yeah, let's talk about the elephant in the room, the difficulty. Now, I'm not sure how hard previous games were, so I can't comment much on them. What I can say is that Tools of Destruction can be quite stingy with checkpoints, and the enemies deal a lot of damage.
Even if you go out of your way to buy armors to upgrade your defenses, you'll still die in 2 to 3 hits, even at the end of the game. It's quite fucking ridiculous, but thankfully, I have a tip for y'all, in case you want to play the game. Whenever you're low on health, stop everything that you're doing, and try to reach the nearest shop.

There are 3 types of shops in this game, and not all of them may appear in the same area. There are Weapon Shops, the most common ones. There are Device Shops, where you can buy smaller weapons like the Groovetron, and there are Armour Shops, which are self-explanatory.
The point is, whenever you enter and leave a shop, you regain all of your health back, and that can be a life-saver at many points in your journey.

Another thing that can help you is Raritanium! Outside of the main currency, bolts, you'll find these purple crystals in certain chests. These allow you to upgrade your weapons in the shop, outside of their usual level-up system. You can make them have more ammo, deal more damage, or have a special effect that is specific to each weapon. These are upgraded via a Skill Tree, and while changes are small per upgrade, completing a weapon's Skill Tree does produce some great results!

And then, there is the RYNO IV. This weapon continues a Ratchet & Clank tradition, where some of the games contain a RYNO for you to obtain. It stands for "Rip Ya a New One", and they're the BFG's of the series. I believe in the first game, it was the most expensive weapon to obtain.
But in this game, you obtain it via different means. Throughout most levels, there is a Holo-Plan for you to collect. You might find a few of these by accident, but if you obtain all of them, then you'll be able to get the RYNO IV.
I didn't get to use it much, especially as the last Holo-Plan needed is in the last level of the game, but it can quite satisfying.
But we can get better, I assure you.

In some portions of the game, you'll encounter some Star-Fox like sections, where you control the ship Aphelion, shooting at many things. These are fine, they don't require much of the player, I say. I do like you're able to control the ship and reticle independently from one another though.

You may also get Gold Bolts from these levels. Gold Bolts are the series' main-stay when it comes to hidden collectibles. In this game, if you gather enough of them, you'll be able to unlock a skin for Ratchet. Whether it'd be one of the game's side-characters, a snowman, or Dan Johnson (a former Insomniac developer, that sadly passed away before this game released), I find this to be a pretty cool feature.
I used the Mustachio Furioso skin through my adventure, the best skin of all time, and you can't argue that with me, that's just facts.

The last thing I'd like to talk about is the presentation. And sweet mother of fuck, this game looks fucking gorgeous! Even though this game is almost two decades old, it holds up like fine wine, thanks to a mixture of great coloration, nicely-done textures and a great art direction! The combination of cartoony character designs with realistic environments works really well here! Character expressions are top notch, and the voice acting is simply stellar.
The music is pretty decent, I'd say. Not a whole lot of it is memorable, as the game goes for a very cinematic vibe, but when the songs hit, they really hit. The music for the first level in the game has been in my mind ever since I was a kid, playing the demo of this game for the first time. It's pretty epic, I'd say.

Overall, while Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction suffers from weirdly-developed difficulty and some plot issues here and there, the series transitioned very well into the PlayStation 3 thanks to tight controls, great characters, varied environments and fantastic presentation!

Bioshock is a game about free will. It's about choices. You are told what to do in each chapter/level. You are expected to kill whoever get in your way in an once glorious city for everyone who wanted to leave the postwar power relations of the world and strike out on their own which called Rapture. Rapture is a city built by people who don’t want to follow God and consider God as something that stops them from being great. So they live their own way, doing their own thing. There are no rules except for the ones they want to follow. And it doesn’t matter who gets hurt along the way. Bioshock shows that this is a very dangerous philosophy by spending most of its time with characters conversations that developed through extensive audio logs and villains monologues throughout the story. It is both visually and aurally beautiful but also haunting at the same time that hooked me from the start. And that's why it still holds up pretty well after 17 years.

This game nearly gave me carpal tunnel. A childhood game I suddenly remembered playing that I loved playing that was weirdly my first square enix game way before I even knew what final fantasy was at all. It's a fun sports game better than some of the modern Mario sport games since it has more personality with the gameplay and court design. It uses the 2nd touch screen very well as you dribble with the stylus. That being said the cpus have the classic Mario party game that you will have any bs come at you in the form of items and doing perfect shots from the other side of the court(I swear the cpus have invisibility frames) but the game is still a fun time for short bursts of time (carpal tunnel rip) It also brought one of the best designs of white mage ever (which definitely didn't turn out to be a beta Rosalina)

This is one of those games I hate dearly.

There was a time that I was obsessed with collecting as much as ps3 exclusive games as possible, because other than japan studio's games, almost every other ps3 exclusive is dirt cheap and also I thought exclusive = quality. But you see this game proved me wrong even tho actually this game is not that different compared to that era's fps games.

You know actually at surface level, it uses samey rules where gears of war, killzone etc. uses. Hella spongy enemies, million amount of waves of enemies, vehicle sections, turret sections, a campaign that balanced for coop not for singleplayer and saying war is bad hrrr drrrrr angry constantly.

But what makes resistance a failure is, it just doesn't have any character. Bland zombie like Aliens? Check. Gruff angry bald main soldier character that I can't even remember his name of? Check. Friendly? characters that you will literally forget the moment you close the game? Check. Samey looking environment like town houses and churches? Check.

You will probably want to counter this with saying "look at the interesting weapons!" To me. But I will also counter this with how bad and samey every one of them feels "to you". Think about a game where using a shotgun or machine gun have the same kill time. This sentence alone gives my feeling about them. I mean maybe later levels give good weapons but for me? They are damn boring because for me none of them have any big advantages maybe other than the one weapon that can shoot from the walls that just enables you to cheese the game as long as you have the bullets for it. Yay. That's what fun right? Cheesing the game?

Then the question is, is there nothing else that this games does new? I think there is one... And that is dynasty warriors levels of enemy numbers. Think about any shooter game, it's probably have 5-10 enemies per combat zone right? But this game have 50 per combat level! And all of them have lots of health!... Is this sounds fun to you? No. No it's not. It's just fu##s the pace even further beyond the realm of this universe of this already bland game.

But still... This doesn't make this game bad right? I mean it's still a working fps game after all. But you see, I review games with looking at my enjoyment, not how good they function or perform good with stable fps. So what I mean is this games bores me to tears to the point stopping me from playing the rest of the game.

Normally I don't like saying this but I just can't see the love of this game. You either love this game for it's multiplayer that I can't experience anymore or you played it as a child. Or your standards are low as the any forgotten underground cave maybe.

IT’S SUMMER BAYBEEE, LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

“What? You paid for rain?” Man, we been paying for rain since 2007. For good reason. The Seasons expansions are always the peak of the entire franchise no matter which game it is. Give me the realism of freezing my balls off in a blizzard, thanks!! I’ll take the liveliness of summer sunsets anyday, boss. Plants that actually grow in season? Everyone now has two extra clothing options for both extreme heat and extreme cold. Just as God intended.

But the buck does not stop there, a new addition here is the ability to celebrate holidays. The Sims Team have finally killed Christmas. Father Winter (Santa Claus) is my new dad, and the dad of several neighbor’s children turns out. You got your typical real-world festivities already built into the system. Love Day, New Year’s Eve, Prank Day, Thanksgiving, and… Neighborhood Brawl? Suns out, guns out I say. If that ain’t your style, customize a holiday yourself. I have now made today a national holiday to appreciate the friends we’ve made along the way. Thank you, friends.

Genuinely the only caveat is how much of a temporary crybaby your Sim becomes if you don’t celebrate any given holiday when they appear. Oh no, you missed counting down the clock at midnight? COPE. Reverse realism on my Sims when they have work in the damn morning. Hurts, doesn't it? Thunderstorms tend to have this annoying effect because it turns out all Sims are petrified of lightning, sending them all into a full on panic whenever one randomly starts. There’s nothing quite like leaving your house on a 3PM sunny day, just to be met with a torrential thunderstorm at the location you’re heading to. Alright, guess I’ll come back later. Although, watching people get cracked on the head by lightning for just standing outside for 2 seconds never gets old. If you get struck more than once there's a solid gamble that you’ll either turn to ash or become a lightning bender but I am too chicken shit to find out the odds. Standing outside in the cold/heat for too long without the proper attire will murder you every time though.

But look, we got all this cool stuff!! I need you to live long enough to get full enjoyment out of the water slides and decked out greenhouse items. I’m your weirdo neighbor with bees in my backyard, yoinking their honey for financial gain. SUE ME. Leaves are all over the damn yard, Timmy. I haven’t built a snowman in years due to living in a warm climate now, so I will live vicariously through my Sim instead. I still have yet to win the lottery though, that shit is rigged.

You can purchase a scarecrow that comes to life, but mine turned out with the worst traits and is diabolically mean. I’d kill him if it didn’t feel unethical somehow, so I just put up with him coming over to torment me. At least he has the decency to garden for me in the meantime. There are no Aspirations unfortunately, because personally I would have loved one. And aside from a few added collectibles to already existing Collections, we just have the new Flower Arranging skill to work with. It’s just another “watch your Sim” craft things on a table for hours, but you can sell or give away the finished vases to make up for it. This means you can give someone the smelliest bouquet ever and literally piss them off with it. I’d maybe treat your Mom a bit better though.

Honestly, it’s pretty agreeable to most that this is a must have just due to the sheer amount of gameplay injected into 365 days worth of game. It’s life simulation with the background life functioning at the same caliber as everything under your direct control. They know this is the case too, that’s why they give it away for free and toss it into a ton of cheap bundles all the time. If I could only recommend one pack to a new Simmer, it would be this one hands down every time. You just ain’t living life until you’ve blessed your Sim with true art.

💜 This game was gifted to Catizens Curations for review.

Minicactus Games once again delivers an amazing puzzle game, this time with a lovely pixel art style and SO MANY CATS! Cats Balance is such a fun balancing puzzle game with a bunch of different stages with varying levels of difficulty, a fantastic soundtrack that is very calming and a cute black cat cheering you on all the way to the end.

It's super cheap and great quality for what it is worth. My only complaint was that it felt like the game was completed a little too fast, so there could have been something more in it. Can't really say what that more could have been though, haha.

Either way, its an amazing little game and I definitely recommend this wholeheartedly! It was such a blast to play!

Kinda crazy how, even tho it didn’t end up using any of Bloodborne’s characters and locations directly and spawning as a joke game of sorts with a really silly idea, it still is a far more interesting and cool use of the IP than whatever Sony has done with it for the past 9 years.

Nightmare Kart is one of those weird anomalies in which I’m completely baffled with how amazing it is even tho I really shouldn’t be; some months ago I watched my girlfriend play the entirety of Bloodborne PSX and I’m still super impressed at how much effort went to what’s essentially a re-imagination of the beginning hours of Bloodborne; all the enemies and NPCs look incredible in all of their polygon glory, the sound effects and compression is top notch, and the whole final section is completely original and has a focus on my man Gilbert! Basically, what I’m trying to say is that Lilith Walther is the GOAT, and that I’ve should have totally seen coming that what was originally meant to be Bloodborne Kart was going to be far more than a thing to point at and say ‘’HA! That werewolf is on a giant wheel-shaped kart!’’… I mean it’s also that but you get my point.

This game is so delightfully silly that I wish it had even more cutscenes to showcase it; there’s nothing better than to see Father Gascoine’s cutscenes being played completely straight only for a bike to appear out of thin air followed by Akira shot for shot references. It keeps the sensibilities and character mannerisms that made the original Yharnam so unique and adds on top of that a flare of stupidity that by doesn’t feel out of place ‘cause of how dumb yet self-serious the whole premise is. Seeing a Skeleton driving on Gherman’s wheelchair fucking sent me for some reason, and the Boar being one of the vehicles is such an obvious decision that I cannot believe I didn’t see it coming, yet is genius!

Till now I’ve been referring to all characters by their original Bloodborne monickers, and even tho all locations and faces are clearly meant to represent the original game and it’s still a shame that Lilith and her team had to rework all of the characters in some way or another, that’d be a huge disservice to the admittedly creative or fucking hilarious some of these characters have received. The main Good Hunter design goes HARD, I love how the Dream Watchers’ heads are replaced by big funny eyeballs, the Matilda Sisters are honestly WAYYYY cooler than their real game counterparts and, to be utterly honest, I’m so glad the rebranding happened if only because it gave us the absolute best change to Nicholas: he still keeps the similar dialogue and big head-cage… BUT HE ALSO GETS A BIRD. A COMICALLY SMALL CARTOONY BIRD THAT SITS ON TOP HIS HEAD WHILE HE DARTS AROUND THE CORRIDORS WHILE SHOOTING A GUN LIKE A FUCKING MANIAC. NOT ONLY THAT, BUT THE CAGE IS ALSO A SELECTABLE KART THAT LETS YOU RUN ALONG THE TRACKS, BUT IT ALSO GIVES YOU THE BIRD. If getting to hear his scream when he dies in any part of the track didn’t already make way cooler and funnier than Micolash, then the bird for sure does.

It gains a ton thanks to its amazing presentation, and on that note, I really like how this one still keeps the whole PSX theme while not being completely binded by it: in Bloodborne PSX it made complete since the whole point of that game was to be a reimagination of how Bloodborne would work on the original console, while in Nightmare Kart is more of a visual throwback than anything else. There still is some sound compression on dialogue and the UI elements are clearly still referencing those of the PS1, but the controls are clearly influenced by more modern Kart racers and the music sounds SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD, the OST is hella strong, not really sound like anything in the original game at all, but a perfect fit, nonetheless.

But it wouldn’t be enough to make a hilarious kart parody game, ‘cause why not make the gameplay rock? I think I usually like the idea of combat-racing games more than playing them, so keep that in mind when I say that it’s been a while since I’ve had this much fun driving in a game. It all feels so hectic and buttery smooth, the track design is surprisingly great —both as references to the source material and tracks on their own to race on—, the act of shooting enemies both behind and in front on you or using the main selectable weapon is incredibly satisfying and responsive (most of the time), and the sheer variety in battle modes and creativity in the bosses during the campaign had me drooling, the only thing that that I can think of that comes close in what is trying to pull off is that mission mode in Mario Kart DS, and even that would be a bit of a far-fetched comparison considering the amazing hob his game does in adapting Bloodborne’s bosses into this whole new environment.

I even went for the secret ending which grants the final boss, and even if 9I wished at least one of the other two endings also gave some sort of final fight, the lack of any previous final boss made it even more special and cool, phase 2 particularly was simply unbelievable, and honestly, probably better than Bloodborne’s secret final boss. There’s nothing like seeing an eldritch abomination ride a go kart and running for dear life!

Tho if anything, the controls being so good and the battles being so creative makes the game’s biggest downfalls stick out even more, since it makes it the more noticeable when somethings feel more finnicky or unresponsive, like the weapon lock on or how basically all races become incredibly easy once you gain a bit of an advantage and where only one item can hit you. Plus, the enemy AI are clearly not the best, tho that seems to be something that’s being fixed with each update, and with the last one, 1.08, I’d say bosses like Nicholas that were damn easy or dumb have been given a very welcomed upgrade in that regard, and I can see things getting even better as more patches roll.

And that’s the thing, even more work is being continuously put on this game, more hours on top on an already amazing project and brimming with detail, effort, and even content and secrets. What could have been a one-not fan game resulted in an incredible homage, a game that stands on its two legs and offers a racing experience that it’s everything but monotonous. I really need to try free play with friends one day, ‘cause this is honestly an experience I wouldn’t mind going back to in the slightest, running along the nightmare or dashing through libraries in a wheelchair…

… and now that this isn’t tied to the Bloodborne IP at all, you know what that means? We can have merch of Nicholas and the Bird! Forget Bloodborne for PC, this is the real good ending, it was to happen!

Something as simple as a name can take a village to come up with, a lot of peeps have pondered over names for their music track or their OC's ultimate attack harder than some have regarding their third-born son, and sometimes you can get away with "Crysis" or "Fallout". I think LIMBO isn't the first name I'd think of for this game, but it fits like a glove. The game's presentation and mechanics are much like a game made on Unity before its heyday, only this was done on its own little engine. You'd be foregiven if you thought Limbo's claim to fame was to be slow as fuck 😂 our little black & white friend is NOT making waves! Playing a non-descript shadow of a boy adventuring into the unknown cuz we don't know shit, to end with fuck all information... chat wat just habbened!! That's the part where you think long and hard about what you experienced, and how the peculiar gameplay ties into the lore implications...

...this will come off as me just taking the gameplay at face value, but maybe 2010 was too early for this. INSIDE worked. But here, it's like "Oh! See that part right there? You died! Yup. You're shit out of luck, aren't you?". That is roughly what came up in interviews as well, so that raises even more questions out of me. Sorry... I did.. not.. gel... with this. One may even call the attempt lazy, but I'll spare the insult to the injury. What this little boy needs to find... is a damn school application. Unless he's dead. That is quite possible! No person alive has been in a rotating room before. Being this sluggish, or "dummy thicc" as they call it, and watching your character die from a minor slip-up as you havent accounted the neurodivergent movement... 😅 yep here we go again, pain.

Most of its simple are puzzle as a bitch, BUTT there were times of rare "le swag" and then I had to look up guide because I couldn't see an interactable... the 101 of level design mf, you be actin different but I'm not sure you should ignore primal rules like that gung ho miscreant 🤓☝️ you thought you was eating. It is met with a very simple control scheme. The game is short and you're doing different things, so there's that. Winston Churchill once said in 2024 "I like LIMBO like I like my women. I DONT" and damn was this a powerful statement at the time. What you like or don't isn't as black and white as LIMBO, so I hope the scrunkly indie with soul community has foregiven me. I don't know why lately I've not been moved by legendary indies like Undertale and Outer Wilds. But then I give Zelda II a whopping 8.5/10 rating. Nature is fickle. But maybe there's not much to think about. Unlike this game...

Lastly, while the spider was the highlight, and its encounters intuitive... that's the thing, betting on your best horse at the start is kinda like... false advertising! No cap, this be concussing me. Maybe a revisionist me will finally get it after suddenly realizing why the scrunkly searched for the wobbly. Welp. Not much else I can say without delving into the finer details of the beast. If you're looking for an unconventional game that challenges your patience and may reward you for your wits... it LIMBO tiem... if you're looking to become an influencer, chase your dreams lil bro, maybe u really will influence me more than this. I belive in gaming supremacy

The third installment of the Uncharted series was the first one I played, and despite not knowing much about the story from the first two games, I still enjoyed the hell out of it. It was also the first game I ever earned a trophy in, which adds a personal touch to my experience.

Once again, Nate is searching for an ancient mythical city, this time: Iram of the Pillars. The Islamic myth of Atlantis of the Sands is a neat idea that originates from the Quran, and truth be told, I know of it only because of this game. I like it when games revolve around mythical places that aren't the most mainstream thing ever, adding a unique flavor to the narrative.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception builds upon the foundation set by its predecessors with refined mechanics and new gameplay features. The melee combat system was significantly improved, making fights more dynamic and fluid, allowing for seamless transitions between punches, counters, and contextual actions. You can use the environment to your advantage during fights, such as slamming enemies into walls or using objects to attack.
The gunplay felt good, with shooting mechanics that are more polished, better aiming, and recoil management. Drake's climbing and traversal abilities are smoother and more intuitive thanks to improved animations and control responsiveness. The game features a variety of puzzles integrated into the environment and story, adding variety to the gameplay. Drake's journal often contains clues and hints that help solve the puzzles.
This game also features more robust stealth mechanics, allowing you to silently take down enemies and avoid detection. This adds a layer of strategy to certain encounters. There were sections where I would restart if detected and keep trying until I cleared the area undetected, but this was hard to achieve on higher difficulties. Surprisingly, the multiplayer was great, and I had a lot of fun playing it. It's a shame it's no longer available.

⚠️SPOILERS⚠️
Uncharted 3 is known for its cinematic set pieces, such as the famous cargo plane sequence, the sinking cruise ship, and the collapsing castle. These moments are seamlessly integrated into the gameplay, making the game memorable. When I think about "Uncharted 3" these great moments pop into my mind.
Adding to the list of great sequences are the young Nathan moments in Colombia where he first met Sully, the chase in Yemen, the desert visions, the ghost town, the horse riding through the desert, and finally, Iram of the Pillars/Ubar. The mythical city is gorgeous, and I was mind blown when the gates of the city opened and I got to see this great interpretation of it.
But.... why the hell does everything that's ancient in this series need to be destroyed, what's up with that? If an Uncharted game was set on an extraterrestrial planet, that planet would be destroyed by the end of the game.
Just like in Uncharted 2, It ruins the ending for me, once again. The entirety of the game you chase the discovery of an ancient mythical city only to destroy it, every fucking time.
Anyway, I really liked the pacing of the story; it probably has the best pacing out of all the Uncharted games. The cast is great with the likes of Nate, Sully, Elena, Chloe, Charlie, and Salim. I especially liked Sully's bond with Nathan, which is central to the story, providing both emotional depth and invaluable support.

That being said, Uncharted 3 is my favorite out of the first three games for its memorable moments and the bit of nostalgia it holds for me. It's a standout entry in the series, filled with thrilling adventures, compelling characters, and unforgettable set pieces.

I think it’s about time that, after having been severely blue-balled by the lack of ninjas in Ninja Clowns, we get some more proper ninja action back in here, and what better way is there to do that by going back to the Shinobi series once again! We have covered quite a lot of Shinobi games on this website so far, from the best of them like Shinobi III, the whatever ones like the Game Gear games, and even the ones that make me wanna kill myself like The Cyber Shinobi. It has been one big ol’ roller coaster in terms of quality, but all in all, I’d say that I have had a great time exploring this series and all of the obscure titles within it. However, once again, it is about time that we get back to this series, and we are going to do so by taking a look it's not-so-monumental jump onto the Sega Saturn with Shinobi Legions.

I didn’t know much about this entry when going into it, but I did know that the game was sticking close to its typical 2D platformer roots, rather then trying anything new for the sake of this jump to a much more powerful console. That kinda sucks, but at the very least, I was hopeful that this game was gonna try to expand upon the typical Shinobi formula in some way, so that they could top themselves with what they did in Shinobi III, and make what would become a hidden gem for this system. So, did they manage to do that?................ no. What we get instead is yet another typical Shinobi game, one with everything you have seen before and loved/hated about it, with there being a little more added in there to make the game somewhat more memorable, but not enough to where I can say it is anything more than just good.

The story is typical for that of a Shinobi game, where in an age where ninjas and their warrior code are starting to die out, only three remain, those being Sho, Kazuma, and Aya, who are each training in order to master their ninjutsu training and to hopefully one day learn the ultimate technique. However, Kazuma, who is obsessed with nothing more than the prospect of ultimate power, demands that his master teaches him the ultimate technique, which he refuses, which leads to him building up a ninja army and a fortress, which he uses to take Aya hostage so that he could get the ultimate technique for himself, so it is up to Sho to step up to the plate and stop Kazuma from reaching his ultimate goal. It is a decent enough story, one that is even given live-action cutscenes in-game that play in-between each level, and these cutscenes are….. about as good as you would think they are, but they are at least not as laughably bad as the cutscenes from something like Mortal Kombat Mythologies.

The graphics are pretty good, having some very nice environments to travel through in the stages, even though they aren’t that different from previous games, and the animations on the characters themselves are also pretty great, with it taking a Mortal Kombat style on how the characters are presented, and it works out quite nicely, the music is good, having plenty of mystical and energetic tracks to accompany you throughout all of the stages, but it is indistinguishable from any other games similar to this, so it isn’t that much to write home about, and the gameplay/control is exactly what you would expect from a Shinobi title, with it all working well enough for fans and newcomers to have a good time with, even if it can be a pain in several areas.

The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of Sho, go through a set of 9 different stages, each one taking you to one of many different generic locations that you will find in a Shinobi game, slash your way through many different enemies using your trusty katana,many different shurikens to get the upper hand from a distance, or one-use special attacks that will annihilate your foes, gather plenty of different items that will help you out through the journey by either healing you, giving you extra lives, or even temporarily power you up to give you an easier time against the threats ahead, and take on plenty of bosses, most of which are pretty manageable to take on, but of course, there are one or two that will definitely give you trouble as you take them down, and not in a good way. It’s an all-new Shinobi for an all-new generation of systems, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, as it relies heavily on the same tricks to get by, and it does work for the most part, but if you are coming into this hoping it will be as game-changing and incredible as Shinobi III, you may wanna reconsider what franchise we are talking about here.

Many of the trademark elements of the Shinobi series are found here, with its quick-reaction and high speeds platforming and combat, plenty of different tricks and traps that can easily cause your death if you aren’t careful, and level design that will test your might and patience to see if you are the proper ninja master that the plot is setting you up to be. Any veteran to the series knows this setup all too well, and they will be able to jump in and have fun with it right away, giving them what they have come to love and expect, and thankfully, for newcomers, it does offer a bit of leniency, as there are difficulty options that you can adjust, as well as an option to carry more shurikens with you from the start, so anyone could jump into this at whatever level of difficulty suits them best. Right alongside this are the benefits that come with being on the Sega Saturn, having plenty of improved animations and models for many different things you can see throughout the game, making this feel like a new and improved Shinobi that will definitely please long-time fans of the franchise.

However, if none of that makes you excited to slash dudes in the face with any sort of blade, then what you have here is just another typical Shinobi game, and that’s it. It doesn’t really do anything to further enhance or improve the gameplay found in previous titles, sticking too closely to what Shinobi III did to try to make itself seem more appealing and fun in nature, which is understandable, but it doesn’t make the game anymore appealing or fun to play over that previous game. Not to mention, it does have its share of annoyances, such as the case with the level design really kicking you in the ass, which can definitely be seen with the last couple of levels. Stage 7 in particular has these boats that you have to jump across and defeat enemies on, and while this is manageable for the most part, there are some jumps that are REALLY damn precise that you have to make, and if you don’t manage to do this, you are down one life, which happened to me PLENTY of times in that section.

That doesn’t even compare to the worst instance of level design bullshit in this game though, with that award going to Stage 9, which is without a doubt the worst stage in the game. A lot of it is fine enough, with it featuring plenty of power ups to get, enemies to take down, and secrets to find, but the main problem is that you will be constantly running down a corridor that just so happens to have giant bombs that will be sent towards you plenty of different times. You are meant to jump out of the way of these or get into small spaces underneath them to avoid them, but the problem is that the window of time you are given to do this in is MINISCULE, with there being many different times where I would try to jump over a bomb to get into the crawl space up above it, but I didn’t press the double jump at the precise millisecond that the game wanted me to, and I end up dying as a result. Yeah, fuck you too, Shinobi Legions….. you don’t even have any legions in your game!

Overall, despite a lack of change and some bullshit levels that you have to go through, Shinobi Legions is still a decent entry in the series as a whole, and a good jump from the Sega Genesis to the Sega Saturn for the series, providing the same fast-paced gameplay you know and love, plenty of challenges to overcome that can be balanced out in your favor, and plenty of cheap live-action cutscenes that you can watch and laugh at to make yourself feel better. I would recommend it for those who were big fans of the previous games, as well as those who are just wanting something new to play from the Saturn, because while it isn’t gonna blow your mind with anything original, it will still be a decent way to kill an hour or two, and that’s all one can really ask for from any game on this system. It’s too bad though that after this, the Shinobi series would be put on hiatus for a bit, never to be seen again until the distant future of 2002, but that was probably for the best, seeing how Sega was probably just gonna keep pumping out these things relentlessly otherwise. We don’t want another Sonic the Hedgehog on our hands, where the games just keep getting worse and worse with each entry…… nobody would like that.

Game #618