Finished the middle route and got through about half of the top route before deciding to move on.

The framerate is definitely something to adjust to, but it didn't end up hindering me in most cases. I often found the screen pretty readable in terms of where enemies are and where their projectiles are heading. The main killer for me here is the lack of a reticle and how tilting/rolling feels. Aiming just feels unsure in this game, I eventually got a bit of a feel for it, but I did infinitely better in levels where you go in first person and actually get to have an aiming reticle. There are also these levels where you have to carefully maneuver, tilt, and adjust the speed of your Arwing to make it through tight corridors, and while they accomplish their main goal of making you go "oh shit star wars", they're not very good. As someone whose reference point for Arwing gameplays is Star Fox Assault, the lack of an instant roll is deeply felt, and pulling off a barrel roll in this game never felt right.

Now, all that being said, I did come out of this game fairly positive on a lot of stuff. Obviously, the music rules, nearly every iconic Star Fox song comes from this game, and it all goes in so hard. I honestly do think the look of this game holds up, it creates this surreal world of abstract shapes and strange alien forces, I mean just look at Andross and tell me that doesn't rule. And like I said, with some adjustment, I did acclimate to the game's quirks and enjoyed a decent amount of it. Getting good at this game feels pretty fun. Finding out the way to avoid a lot of the missiles from the second-to-last boss of Venom is to boost forward made me feel like a genius (please don't tell me you knew this immediately).

The thing is that knowing 64 exists and is so much more advanced and developed than this makes revisiting it a bit of a hard sell, but I think it's worth seeking out at least once. I ended up bailing on the second route because the levels went on a lot longer than I liked, so I doubt I'll come back to finish this, but maybe someday.

A decent puzzler with a story that gets off to a seriously rocky start, finds its groove, but ultimately outstays its welcome. Also made by the developers of Fall Guys, against all possible odds.

As a lover of picross, and enjoyer of the occasional visual novel, this game sure seemed like it was calling to me - I mean, the picross alone is enough to entice me. Sadly, I'm left pretty underwhelmed, as while the puzzles were fine, they start off very easy, with no form of adjustable difficulty - if you're a picross pro, the earlygame will put you to sleep. If you're a picross beginner, you'd better be taking notes as the game goes on or the final chapter will kick your brain's ass.

There are hints, but using any hints beyond the indicator that points you in the right direction will lock you out of some of the bonus puzzles that you get from getting a high enough grade on a chapter. Solving puzzles get you points to increase your grade, and your reward are extra story bits - but miss a puzzle in a chapter or use hints, and you get less points, thus locking you out of it. And if you do screw up? You have to restart the whole chapter again.

Come to think of it, this game is just sort of unpolished in general. The hint system that doesn't deduct points works fine, but turning it back off screws up the way the numbers grey out to tell you what you've filled in, which can be very disorientating. I've also heard of bugs regarding loading save files, and bugs preventing dialogue progressing, even full on softlocks: seriously not a good thing to have. There is an autosave, but still.

The story itself is endearing, but gets off to what I consider to be a very bad first chapter. Characters are introduced with incredibly stereotypical and unlikable personalities; K.C. in particular has no character beyond being British, and being gay. He actually does get proper writing in later chapters, but that's more than can be said for other characters, such as Becky, who...is just generally toxic, narcissistic and awful. Characters come and go throughout at the drop of a hat, abruptly cutting off their arcs and leaving them behind without any form of closure, as the story gets increasingly sidetracked.

Honor and Scout are an entertaining and likable pair of protagonists, though Honor maybe relies too heavily on Scout for basic problem-solving. Her own lifestyle issues dominate the first half of the game, in a way that's sympathetic if a little overbearing. The second half of the game puts the ball into Scout's court, but given Scout is just a quirky funny robot, it's more about the mystery surrounding his origins, which I find to be satisfactory, but at the cost of a lot of other character writing that gets left behind.

The game also can't pick a tone; people getting murdered is, of course, terrible and awful upon the initial discovery - now shut up everyone and blast one of the like, 3 or 4 puzzle solving tracks that are all super happy and upbeat and WILL get stuck in your head. Also, lots of wisecracking for someone right next to a dead body. I get that this is Ace Attorney inspired, but the balance of comedy to seriousness was not matched.

All in all the game is fine, but disappointing and I would only recommend it if you really like picross, as it certainly does pic the ross. Some of the laughs land, but the jokes such as the games low budget (the unpacked boxes joke got REALLY OLD) don't, and the story both starts and ends poorly.

Would be a decent collection with some fun and challenging missions (Though there isn't many) with a cool new story mode and 16:9 but is ruined by lacklustre and short cutscenes though are animated well, Dumb and unesscessary DLC that makes no senese from a business standpoint, poor optimization due to denevo, weaker prototype music, some sprite bugs being unaddressed, game looking blurred and lack of any real customizability, at least the bonus content is decent.

Still if you just want the missions and maybe the story mode wait for a discount, there's many better ways to play the classics thanks too fans and sega delisting them is stupid too.

impressively, all of sonic team's greatest minds have come together to fuck up remastering already great ports of 30 year old games


if you'd love to pay five dollars for expansive day one content such as... the characters moving in the menus, then this is the game for you. integer scaling? fuck you. everything is blurry, play at 320x224 for the authentic Sega Genesis experience. shitty DRM to protect these untouchable, pirate proof genesis games? check. do you like your games optimized, because we don't, god bless whatever rig you're using because it won't get past the title screen. high quality audio? nope, it sounds and loops like shit. also we couldn't get the sonic 3 songs back so here are awful rearrangements of the prototype tracks that sounded fine lmfaooooo. welcome to the museum featuring NEVER BEFORE seen content such as youtube.com sonic mania adventures part 2. it's a 2d platformer but sorry! you're not allowed to bind anything to arrow keys.

you get the idea. somehow, this isn't all of it. sucks because somewhere under the slew of baffling decisions and technical issues is a great collection, but I suppose sonic being run through a shit filter a few dozen times is par for the course now. better versions of these games exist already via Sonic 1 Forever, Sonic 2 Absolute, Sonic 3 AIR, and Sonic CD Restored, but if you want to play the last two legally, you're probably out of luck - because both sonic 3 and CD have been delisted.

at least the cutscenes are boss

Happy Birthday to Sonic the Hedgehog, a franchise that’s both brought me great joy and dread and I hope people have been enjoy Sonic Origins because man i’ve had to play Sonic 06.

This game huh? The number one defacto game to note as the one of the worst games of all time, people have clowned on this game for it’s story and gameplay then and now, but instead of being a unanimous agreement, Sonic fans have Stockholm syndrome and have convinced themselves this game was great and that critics were too harsh on it, I think i’ll be the judge of that Today.

I feel mentioning how 06 did critically is impossible to ignore, it’s a game specifically tied to it’s reception, there’s no going around it and to say the game being called the worst thing at release is completely justified, it was supposed to be Sonic’s grand next-gen masterpiece and it to flop so hard with only a few people to like it makes it totally justified. However, I do think the stigma of this game is slightly overdone.

I would love to do a deeper dive into why this game doesn't work as well as it does diving into the story, gameplay everything and maybe at another time but 06 could and can be fun but everything in the game feels rushed, Everyone looks & feels wack, everyone either feels way too slow, stiff, precise, limiting or in the case of silver just not fun to play. The Hub Worlds have nothing fun to do in them and the NPCs are so boring to talk to as they give the most bland boring missions in the game with too many loading times along with the most cookies cutter dialogue in a Sonic game. Gimmicks in levels are way too undercooked and feel frustrating at points, mainly vehicle, Silvers Gameplay, character swapping, Elise, Snowboarding and that damn ball stage all are terrible when they could be so great to me.

That’s the funny thing about 06 which is why it’s not complete horseshit, 06 has it’s moments sometimes, Level Design while not as good as the adventure games due to the over reliance of the not fun combat in this game with the boring enemies, but going past that it can be fun once you get used to the controls it’s some very limited Sonic Fun, Barring the god awful rival bosses and Iblis the bosses can be fun sometimes.

Presentation wise it’s probably due to the PS3 having more flatter textures and basic lighting but this game did not impress looking in the lens of someone in 2007, compared to games like Super Mario Galaxy or Ratchet Tools of Destruction, The Game looks so flat and has some weird frame drops for some reason when nothing of note is going on, and the models just look off to me for everyone being too realistic but not doing anything to suit the new style. I do think the music is decent with high quality of vocal songs from previous games being upheld and the music taking a slightly more atmospheric vibe from SA1 instead of being more action-packed but other osts out of it for me by a considerable mile.

But I know what you’ve been waiting for the story, it’s not that bad but still doesn't work, straight and simple. Awkward Dialogue with some mixed delivery, unexplained and nonsensical time-travel rules in the universe, a forced romance that doesn't feel earned or satisfying to watch not even barring the human hedgehog relationship as both Sonic and Elises characters aren't fun to watch and most of the characters aren't fun to watch, new and old, they’re braindead and have all the charm sucked out of them and when they do have it, it feels cheap. But I feel the saving grace with the story is easily Shadow who’s arc is better than his Heroes incarnation along with Rouge and Mephiles, his character is decent throughout, he’s up against a lot and the ending is pretty lit along with Sonic’s Action-packed ending.

So conclusion, Is Sonic the Hedgehog the worst game of all time? Hell no I don't think it’s good not all not even the worst Sonic game but I hate to admit but 06 was slightly enjoyable and it’s issues are overhyped like the story though I can easily see why someone would despise this game for many reasons like for instance starting a huge decline in Sonic which I’ll cover at some point but feel like everyone should play base 06 at some point (no amount of mods or remakes will fix it it’s broke to it’s core and needs a complete restart). But for know i’m taking a bit of a break from covering Blue rat games and taking a bit more of sneaky direction soon so take care all!

Hell yeah this is what i'm talking about, the game is way better than the first game due to having a more versatile character system, the new ball gimmick for passing, better power-ups, the campaign and the pitch selection, which not only has some great new pitch ideas but most of the ones from the original game, which is unfortunate since there's basically no reason to revist it other than for morbid curiosity.

But the highlights have to be the music and the characters, which is why I gave this a 9/10 instead of a 8/10. The music for each character and stage is very mereable and unique giving them a great sense of personality. And the characters, holy crap, every single one of them are fucking badasses, showing both rare raunchy and the same endearing traits (even Mario), this is where I would list highlights but all of them, seriously! All the characters in this game are amazingly written.

There are some issues like the lack of content, some odd difficulty balancing, the extra challenges kinda suck and some level gimmick are really bad but overall the offbeat characterisation of the Mushroom Kingdom cast and the fun addicating gameplay make this one of the best Mario Spin-offs.

November 15th 2005 must have been both weird, strange and terrible for both Pac-Man and Sonic Fans huh? 2 games that radically change up the tone and the gameplay of the series with very mixed results. (At least Rush was good).

Preamble: Originally never planning on covering this game but since i’m on a role with Sonic Games as of now, might as well do a bit more before Origins comes out.

Shadow The Hedgehog absolutely confuses me even though i’ve played like 4-5 Routes, it’s probably one of sonic’s worst outings yet I can’t help myself to laugh at it.

The story is one of the worst yet funniest Sonic stories ever made due to the pretty weak script, Heroes dialogue in stages returning and the awfully directed 4Kids cast who debuted in this game, things such as “Disgusting Black creatures” and “That Damn fourth Chaos Emerald!” Is probably the most tryhard lines in a game i’ve seen, the concepts of this game are also pretty funny like how Shadow straight up kills Eggman & Sonic, his new back story with the aliens and due to how the morality system works, Shadow’s character is all over place, like Heroes wrapped up his arc and bringing him back so well even though it was so simple, though I would think staying dead would have been better though i’m not opposed to him coming back, it’s just so try hard and edgy.

Gameplay wise, this would probably a so bad it’s good game but it’s not, gunplay while absurd for the idea of Sonic characters welding realistic fire-arms is surprisingly decent and in-depth but feels a bit too mindless for my liking though is probably the best shooting gameplay in the series, The Level design while not up to the standards of the other 3D games are still fun but are ruined due to the horrid morality system involving you to kill ALL the enemies in the stage or some awkward mission goal as you can tell these stages weren't made to have all of it’s objects to be ravaged like this leading to when you have collected almost empty for stages being pretty empty and mindless, even doing these missions isn't fun and pretty boring, especially when your “allies” are barking orders at you (which by the way you can play as with 2P). But even then the games is killed by it’s horrid physics and this is coming from someone who loves Heroes. They feel way worse for some reason to me as the level design can't suit for the slippery controls as your doing these mundane tasks and not going fast. There’s also hand to hand combat which is laughable bad as it barely does any damage. But I think just getting the goal in Shadow (Mostly Neutral routes) can be fun enough though definitely weaker than most Sonic games.

And the Presentation of this game is awful, boring environments, same glossy models from Heroes look even worse and the music is really forgettable to me.

So uh overall this game would be a so bad it’s good kinda game but unfortunately it sucks.

Now uh I guess 06 is next lol.

Honestly, hearing that there was a sequel to NiGHTS into Dreams at all felt like a gift of sorts. Most of Sega's oddball IPs from the 90s have all but been left to rot these days. Then again, creating a sequel to something so beloved by diehard fans can severely backfire if the new product doesn't meet their expectations. So, does Journey of Dreams meet my expectations? It's complicated.

The original game left you in the dark on most of the story's concepts, and I can infer that many people enjoyed interpeting the meaning of that game in their own way. This'll probably sound like sacrelige, but I don't entirely mind the concept of telling us more about how Nightopia works, and what certain things symbolize. Unfortunately, the voice acting and dialogue itself is very stilted, and nothing much of value actually happens in the cutscenes. Some lines are also just...yeah. It also tends to suffer from overexplaining, or telling us too much. Worse yet, these cutscenes severely bog down the pace of the game. I'm pretty sure I was watching cutscenes for about the same amount of time I got to actually play the game. There's also one thing I can't ignore about the story cutscenes above all else, that being how all the in-engine ones are stretched in widescreen, which feels like a massive oversight. I can't be the only one who sees this. I have to wonder if switching to 4:3 makes them look more natural, but even then, that cuts down on your field of view in normal gameplay, and everything else looks fantastic in widescreen. What happened here?

The most controversial element introduced in these cutscenes (afaik) is giving NiGHTS a proper voice. To me, it feels like it draws away from their androgynous nature. In this game, NiGHTS is referred to by characters as a he, has a voice that's leaning toward female (but you could argue for "young boy"), and the same androgynous design from the 90s. It's a weird mix of elements that comes off more confusing than anything. The main plot for either character also doesn't seem to line up, from my perspective. I think they wanted to focus on the relationships between the children and their parents, but like, Will's Dad heads out to buy milk and never come home right in the opening cutscene. How am I supposed to connect with that? The original NiGHTS had simple plots that almost anyone could relate to, and it's hard to not see this as anything more than a confusing downgrade.

Okay. Cooling my jets on the negativity now. I don't hate this game, far from it, really.

Each world is split up into 5 missions, all of which are required to progress to the next world. The first mission is always the typical NiGHTS action stage you'd expect. The main change to the formula is that you're now chasing a target during each lap. In this context, having to repeat a lap isn't ideal; there's a bigger focus on getting everything done in one lap and moving on to the next lap ASAP. I actually prefer this change, in all honesty. Repeating laps for a higher score in Saturn NiGHTS was a cool concept, but in execution, it could cause the whole run to really drag. JoD NiGHTS puts more of a focus on unique setpieces for each lap in each area, and the setpieces are always delightful. There's a pillar of slot machines, a hall of mirrors, naturally growing musical notation, and more. After three laps, you'll face off against a truncated version of that area's boss (we'll come back to them later).

Missions 2, 3, and 4 of each world are all gimmick stages. Mission 3 is always a Link Challenge where you pursue Octopaw through the chase stage in an attempt to create the longest link chain you can muster. As for missions 2 and 4, anything goes. Sometimes you'll be paralooping Nightopians to safety, other times you'll be pushing small water orbs into a big water orb, and god forbid, sometimes you'll play levels dedicated to the kids alone. Yeah, what was originally a punishment for running out of time in the original NiGHTS has entire 3D platforming stages dedicated to them in this game. It's not even that they're outright bad; the controls are fine and the levels are fine, but they vastly overstay their welcome, and suddenly the only thing you can think about is "I wish I could go back to flying around as NiGHTS."

The fifth mission of every world is an extended standalone version of mission 1's boss fight. Just like the original NiGHTS, the bosses are pretty hit-or-miss. Some are self-explanatory, and pretty enjoyable as a result. Others range from mediocre to bad due to either being completely unclear, or simply unfun to begin with. One saving grace is that you can ask Owl for a hint at any time on the pause menu, and he's pretty good at telling you exactly what you should be doing. Doesn't stop Bomamba from being complete shit though.

Cutscene oddity aside, the one thing I cannot knock this game for at all is the presentation. All the environments are bursting with creative ideas and spectacle, and the music is excellent. I'm glad I switched to playing the game in the Dolphin emulator with a 60 FPS cheat about halfway through my playthrough, this game deserves it. (If you plan on playing this game, this is how I recommend you do it!)

When a sequel to a beloved cult classic is released, people are realistically going to have high expectations. However, even taking the original NiGHTS' legacy into consideration, I'm still not entirely sure where all the virtiolic hate for this game comes from. The story feels confused, and the game's content feels padded, but the underlying gameplay has never felt better, and the dream worlds have never looked more stunning. I can easily see myself returning to play the "chase" missions, if nothing else. Even with all my nitpicking and comparisons to the original, I still thoroughly enjoyed my time playing this one.

After my first session of Dokapon, I put a review up on this site maligning how I had been dead for about a quarter of the playtime thus far, beset by a whole pile of RNG bullshit and being fucked over by every other player in the game. I was having a fun time but sheesh.

Oh, how little i knew.

Dokapon Kingdom's sheer chaos starts at a level that makes Mario Party look like checkers. From week 1, straight up murder is on the table, with all players having the ability to fight both each other and enemies within a RPG battle system which is, of course, heavily luck based. All the while you're meant to be clearing towns of monsters and doing quests to earn the highest monetary worth.

And then things get worse.

The sheer amount of things that WILL fuck you over in full playthrough of dokapon, often completely out your control, is remarkable. The game will both continually mess with you with random events, broken enemies, stupid locations which are hard to get to, random drops, etc, whilst also giving your fellow players all the tools to make it worse. Want to send a killer robot after your friends? Sure. Want to nuke your friend across the map with magic? Go ahead. Want to ruin two sessions' progress for everyone by forcing them to your current position? Yeah.

With Dokapon, it's not a question of will you get fucked, it's when, and how. And somehow, I have no idea how, the game constantly one-ups itself. Just when you think it can't get any more stupid, it does. This is partially due to the map opening up slowly throughout the game, giving access to more places to lose, more insane dungeons to get caught up with, more places to be crabs in a bucket together. And it's an absolute riot.

I think the genius of Dokapon is that it gives you just the right amount of control. It's an RNG-fueled madness festival for sure, but the game lets you influence things, lets you play in enough different ways, lets you go about enough diferent means to progress and raise your own stonks that there's a true tension to when the best laid plans of mice and men fall apart, or very occasionally, don't.

During the 30 hour ish playthrough we did, there were just too many great moments to count. So many story arcs of each of us all murdering each other as we pursued one goal, so many times where we just murdered each other for dubious reasoning, about 10 different truces and agreements broken, a lot of lying, a lot of begging, a fair amount of stealing, a few times sparing people by exchanging their deaths for putting poop on their head and only two or three complete collapses of the economy.

I could not begin to tell you how fun it is. After a first session where i was feeling kinda peeved at the game, I slowly began appreciating the absurdity, and when it was at my expense, I started laughing more. And somehow, between all it's randomness it did tend to even things out and make for a game that was tense and surprisingly close the whole entire time, even after 700 turns - which is a testament for how good a manged chaos it pulls off, and maybe also a testament to how much we enjoyed fucking each other over constantly.

Of course the game has plenty of problems. Many of which are intwined with it's benefits. If you don't have the right sort of environment for this I think it could legitimately make you lose friends (which to be fair, is advertised). There's a level of camraderie needed at some point, and you kinda need to understand that being murdered is really quite funny. If you take this game too seriously, and focus too hard on the ultimate winner, you will not have the best of times.

There's also just a fair amount of broken stuff, and weird balance. There's a handful of routes to effectively infinite money that you basically need to ban as a house rule, Magic is either incredibly busted or useless iwth no inbetween as a stat, and a couple of the super secret classes are weirdly useless despite being a massive pain in the arse to even obtain. It's kinda dubious and i'd chalk up a lot of it to this game effectively being a straight remake of the original Super Famicom Dokapon - warts and all.

A natural consequence of the game system is also that the endgame gets a little stalemate-heavy if you're trying to guarantee first place. Because the game finishing relies someone beating the final dungeon and getting the big final reward, but that also takes quite a while, it creates a game state where it's arguably best to let some other fucker do it. It's not a huge issue, but I think it's something i'd probably house rule around in the future.

But who cares about that, because this game is incredible. It really did not take long for Dokapon Kingdom sessions to become the highlights of my week, eventually trying to sneakily suggest the sessions happen more often than usual in our group chat and finding that, for some fucking reason, everyone was as ok with that as I was.

I have outright never had as much fun in a Multiplayer game. It's a game where i got 30 Hours plus of scheming, dying, killing, and most importantly, laughing my ass off. Yes, you probably a group that is level-headed enough to not actively want to kill each other afterwords. But as a lens for sheer absurdity, comedy, and extracting the best moments out of group interactions, I am not sure i will ever experience something again quite like Dokapon Kingdom.

It is an absolute masterpiece.

Special shoutout to fellow players:
Sombes (This was her fucking idea)
Arnust (Schemer and no balls)
Tacos (Banged his head on the table at least once this playthrough)