Between Cybershell's rundown of Sonic Adventure DX's problems and "The Ultimate Guide to SADX Sins," I think the book has been written on why this is such a bad port. I'd tell you to just watch Cybershell's video, but he'd tell you to read the Dreamcastify article, and that means I'm already too far down the chain to add anything new when it comes to this game's busted lighting, plasticy characters, or its issues with sound scripting. Most reasonable people playing SADX in the Year of our Jericho 24 will address these issues with mods, like PkR's Dreamcast Conversion, which is pretty comprehensive and can be paired with other mods like SonicFreak94's Lantern Engine and ItsEasyActually's Character Restoration mod to bring DX closer to the Dreamcast release.
I am not a "reasonable person," though. In fact, I'm pretty god damn unreasonable, which is why I decided to play SADX off my Wii's hard drive. Call it tradition, or laziness, or whatever, but I needed my Sonic Adventure DX raw, just the way grandma made it back in 2003. Twenty years later, nothing has changed.
Obviously, I agree that all the issues with lighting, textures, and models are detrimental and make the game look substantially worse both from the perspective of fidelity and aesthetic charm. What I have a larger issue with is the amount of collision detection issues that I'm pretty sure are introduced in this version of the game. Perhaps it's just dumb luck, but I played the original Sonic Adventure not too long ago and did not have nearly as many issues with Sonic getting stuck on walls, clipping through barriers, or breaking out of scripted events and flying into the void.
What I'm pretty sure is less an issue with DX and more integral to the Sonic Adventure experience as a whole is the game's rancid camera, which much like Sonic has a tendency to hang on geometry and disobey your commands. The travel distance on the Gamecube's shoulder buttons is ridiculous, and the extremely slow pan of DX's camera really makes it feel like you're operating a heavy piece of machinery, like the lens has been loaded onto some huge industrial crane. It fights you every step of the way too, constantly trying to jerk back into position, and God help you if you took a shortcut or broke off the standard path, because the flag to change the camera's position probably won't trip and it'll just lock into position under the floor or something.
It's never so bad that it complicates beating levels normally but does become annoying in the mission mode and more broadly through sheer prevalence. The missions added to SADX really run the gamut from being braindead easy and dull to functionally broken and badly designed. Special shoutouts to collecting the flags during the boulder sequence in Sonic's Lost World, an act of rote memorization and praying Sonic's shoulder doesn't clip into the side of the wall and slow him down, and Tails' flag collection in Windy Valley which I had to look up a guide for because bad draw distancing never rendered in a single flag while the camera was trained on it.
Nothing is worse than Mission 53, which tasks you with hitting a line of rings near the end of the snowboarding sequence in Sonic's Ice Cap by landing a frame perfect input on the final three ramps. If your timing is off, you'll shoot under or over the row of rings you need to hit, requiring you to restart from the checkpoint and sit through 2-3 minutes of the most dogshit snowboarding I've ever experienced in a video game. I had a bunch of episodes of Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak playing in the background while attempting this and now the Beef Log song has been stuck in my head for several days. it broke me, it fucking broke me, i am broken
I did all of these because at some point, probably while Freddie Prinze Jr. was snorting like a pig, I got it in my head that SADX is the only way for me to play all of the Game Gear Sonic games on my CRT, since Sonic Gems has an incomplete set. This of course meant fucking around in the Chao Garden, and I just happened to roll a Chao with the worst luck imaginable - a hidden stat! - so he constantly tripped and fell asleep during every race despite having the running, power, and swimming stats of a god. Catch my ass at 1am shouting "STOP DANCING!" because this little idiot had to do a jig every time he ate a nut in the Emerald course. Suffering through this and getting hit with "TAILS' SKYPATROL UNLOCKED" felt like getting stabbed directly through the heart, and I have nobody to blame but myself.
The only nice thing I have to say about SADX is that it runs at 60fps, but I'm not sure the hefty amount of graphical compromises was worth the bump in performance, and I'm the kind of guy who typically will turn off superfluous graphical enhancements to buy a few extra frames. Apparently the Gamecube version is the better release, and some of DX's problems have only gotten worse with subsequent ports. The real unfortunate thing is that Sega, much like they do with the Game Gear games, seem to be treating the demonstrably worse version of a game as the document of record.
Anyway, sound off in the comments! Are you a beef log boy or a cheeselogger? Me? I like a good cheese log. It's my favorite saturated fat.
I am not a "reasonable person," though. In fact, I'm pretty god damn unreasonable, which is why I decided to play SADX off my Wii's hard drive. Call it tradition, or laziness, or whatever, but I needed my Sonic Adventure DX raw, just the way grandma made it back in 2003. Twenty years later, nothing has changed.
Obviously, I agree that all the issues with lighting, textures, and models are detrimental and make the game look substantially worse both from the perspective of fidelity and aesthetic charm. What I have a larger issue with is the amount of collision detection issues that I'm pretty sure are introduced in this version of the game. Perhaps it's just dumb luck, but I played the original Sonic Adventure not too long ago and did not have nearly as many issues with Sonic getting stuck on walls, clipping through barriers, or breaking out of scripted events and flying into the void.
What I'm pretty sure is less an issue with DX and more integral to the Sonic Adventure experience as a whole is the game's rancid camera, which much like Sonic has a tendency to hang on geometry and disobey your commands. The travel distance on the Gamecube's shoulder buttons is ridiculous, and the extremely slow pan of DX's camera really makes it feel like you're operating a heavy piece of machinery, like the lens has been loaded onto some huge industrial crane. It fights you every step of the way too, constantly trying to jerk back into position, and God help you if you took a shortcut or broke off the standard path, because the flag to change the camera's position probably won't trip and it'll just lock into position under the floor or something.
It's never so bad that it complicates beating levels normally but does become annoying in the mission mode and more broadly through sheer prevalence. The missions added to SADX really run the gamut from being braindead easy and dull to functionally broken and badly designed. Special shoutouts to collecting the flags during the boulder sequence in Sonic's Lost World, an act of rote memorization and praying Sonic's shoulder doesn't clip into the side of the wall and slow him down, and Tails' flag collection in Windy Valley which I had to look up a guide for because bad draw distancing never rendered in a single flag while the camera was trained on it.
Nothing is worse than Mission 53, which tasks you with hitting a line of rings near the end of the snowboarding sequence in Sonic's Ice Cap by landing a frame perfect input on the final three ramps. If your timing is off, you'll shoot under or over the row of rings you need to hit, requiring you to restart from the checkpoint and sit through 2-3 minutes of the most dogshit snowboarding I've ever experienced in a video game. I had a bunch of episodes of Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak playing in the background while attempting this and now the Beef Log song has been stuck in my head for several days. it broke me, it fucking broke me, i am broken
I did all of these because at some point, probably while Freddie Prinze Jr. was snorting like a pig, I got it in my head that SADX is the only way for me to play all of the Game Gear Sonic games on my CRT, since Sonic Gems has an incomplete set. This of course meant fucking around in the Chao Garden, and I just happened to roll a Chao with the worst luck imaginable - a hidden stat! - so he constantly tripped and fell asleep during every race despite having the running, power, and swimming stats of a god. Catch my ass at 1am shouting "STOP DANCING!" because this little idiot had to do a jig every time he ate a nut in the Emerald course. Suffering through this and getting hit with "TAILS' SKYPATROL UNLOCKED" felt like getting stabbed directly through the heart, and I have nobody to blame but myself.
The only nice thing I have to say about SADX is that it runs at 60fps, but I'm not sure the hefty amount of graphical compromises was worth the bump in performance, and I'm the kind of guy who typically will turn off superfluous graphical enhancements to buy a few extra frames. Apparently the Gamecube version is the better release, and some of DX's problems have only gotten worse with subsequent ports. The real unfortunate thing is that Sega, much like they do with the Game Gear games, seem to be treating the demonstrably worse version of a game as the document of record.
Anyway, sound off in the comments! Are you a beef log boy or a cheeselogger? Me? I like a good cheese log. It's my favorite saturated fat.
1996
Adjusting your options, as you know, is an excellent way to customize your gameplay.
Music: On
Difficulty: Hard
Handed: Right
Bouncing Breast: On
Favorite Food: Hot Dogs
I have very little love for early 3D fighters. This is known about me. I look at Virtua Fighter and I start to seethe and write ill things in my Yu Sazuki rage journal so that my negative thoughts might cause him psychic harm. In private, I've expressed that the earliest 3D fighting game I can recall liking is Dead or Alive 2, which sparked some discussion with my friend Larry about whether it was with the original DOA or Soul Edge that the genre finally came into its own.
Well, it's not like copies of Dead or Alive are that expensive, and Soul Edge or Blade or whatever you want to call it are pretty reasonable, too. I could trust the reviews on this, run the numbers and put my faith in Backloggd's average ratings, but DOA currently has a 2.8 average to Virtua Fighter Remix's 3.3 and I know that can't be right, so I'm afraid I just have to buy both of these games and determine for myself when 3D fighters got good.
Starting with DOA, which I have a more personal connection to, was a good idea. Character movement feels fluid, controls are responsive, there's a surprisingly deep combo system, and attacks carry enough weight to feel impactful. More refined than its stiff and clunky contemporaries, robust in modes and unlockables, yet still low-fi, DOA feels like a proper half-step between 3D fighters of the Saturn era and the looming sixth gen. It is just a shame Ayane can only be unlocked after sinking a significant amount of time into the game, but hey, that's why you always keep an Action Replay cart in your Saturn. Well, that and to play burned discs and bypass regional locks.
The AI does have a tendency to fluctuate between being insanely punishing and outright braindead, sometimes from round-to-round, but I don't think it's any better or worse than other 3D fighters of this period. Which is to say, I have a hard time taking any of these seriously enough to dig into how the AI operates, they're all drenched in protoplasm and even DOA has a few drops coming off its frame. The more important element here to me, personally, is the overall feel of the game, and the fast-paced nature of combat and responsive controls definitely put DOA ahead of the pack.
That said, it's not my favorite game in the series (toss-up between 2, my first, and 3 which looks incredible on the Series X), and the jury's still out on whether or not Soul Blade is the better game, but I still had a great time with Dead or Alive. It's a very strong first outing and a solid step in the right direction given the slew of dire 3D fighters hitting the Saturn around this time.
Music: On
Difficulty: Hard
Handed: Right
Bouncing Breast: On
Favorite Food: Hot Dogs
I have very little love for early 3D fighters. This is known about me. I look at Virtua Fighter and I start to seethe and write ill things in my Yu Sazuki rage journal so that my negative thoughts might cause him psychic harm. In private, I've expressed that the earliest 3D fighting game I can recall liking is Dead or Alive 2, which sparked some discussion with my friend Larry about whether it was with the original DOA or Soul Edge that the genre finally came into its own.
Well, it's not like copies of Dead or Alive are that expensive, and Soul Edge or Blade or whatever you want to call it are pretty reasonable, too. I could trust the reviews on this, run the numbers and put my faith in Backloggd's average ratings, but DOA currently has a 2.8 average to Virtua Fighter Remix's 3.3 and I know that can't be right, so I'm afraid I just have to buy both of these games and determine for myself when 3D fighters got good.
Starting with DOA, which I have a more personal connection to, was a good idea. Character movement feels fluid, controls are responsive, there's a surprisingly deep combo system, and attacks carry enough weight to feel impactful. More refined than its stiff and clunky contemporaries, robust in modes and unlockables, yet still low-fi, DOA feels like a proper half-step between 3D fighters of the Saturn era and the looming sixth gen. It is just a shame Ayane can only be unlocked after sinking a significant amount of time into the game, but hey, that's why you always keep an Action Replay cart in your Saturn. Well, that and to play burned discs and bypass regional locks.
The AI does have a tendency to fluctuate between being insanely punishing and outright braindead, sometimes from round-to-round, but I don't think it's any better or worse than other 3D fighters of this period. Which is to say, I have a hard time taking any of these seriously enough to dig into how the AI operates, they're all drenched in protoplasm and even DOA has a few drops coming off its frame. The more important element here to me, personally, is the overall feel of the game, and the fast-paced nature of combat and responsive controls definitely put DOA ahead of the pack.
That said, it's not my favorite game in the series (toss-up between 2, my first, and 3 which looks incredible on the Series X), and the jury's still out on whether or not Soul Blade is the better game, but I still had a great time with Dead or Alive. It's a very strong first outing and a solid step in the right direction given the slew of dire 3D fighters hitting the Saturn around this time.
2023
Thin crust, pepperoni, banana peppers, crushed red peppers, a little bit of grated parm of sean cheese, anchovies. You gotta have anchovies.
I wouldn't say I've been resistant to playing Pizza Tower, but I've definitely been dragging my heels. A classic case of Weatherby preferring to wait until something releases on console, or until a friend (thank you, Appreciations) buys it for me. Many cases of this happening. I am contractually mandated to play and finish The Evil Within 2 now because Larry Davis knew the only way I'd pick it up is if the overbearing weight of obligation forced me to. I guess you could say I get in my own way sometimes, but this sort of forceful nudging usually results in me having a good time, and Pizza Tower is no exception.
Barreling through enemies, charging through barriers, executing split-second rolls and leaps, careening into and up walls, and letting your momentum carry you to new areas all feels very Wario-esque, but I was surprised to see how much Pizza Tower took from other fast paced platformers like Sonic (I swear the sirens at the start of Not Legally Actionable Noid's boss fight are from Stardust Speedway), and even Super Metroid with how often you need to make tall vertical leaps à la Samus' shinespark. If you told me Pizza Tower was assembled and baked specifically for people suffering from terminal speedrunner brain, I'd believe you.
However, Pizza Tower is still very approachable for those who don't. I definitely had my share of botched inputs and there were a few sections that took me a number of attempts before I had the execution down, but once you fall into the right rhythm and embody Mr. Pepperoni or whatever the fuck his name is, it feels really good. It's also one of those games where executing on what it expects of you makes you feel like a speedrunner, even if it's actually taking you 30 whole minutes to beat the golf level.
My only real complaint is that you're never really at risk of losing a life until the chase sequence at the end of every level, and if you botch that you get to do the whole thing over again, which given the length of some levels is a bit of a problem. Though the game is checkpoint adverse, this is a somewhat minor complaint as I only managed to die probably four or five times during the course of the game.
I surprisingly don't have too much to say about the aesthetics other than that they're very good. Very 90s Nicktoons, lot of hyper-exaggerated faces and animations that lean so hard into the squash and stretch that you'd think everyone is made out of some kind of goop. That sort of elastic, malleable quality goes a long way towards selling the player on how chaotic, violent, and fast the game is. The soundtrack is terrific, too, and I especially like the full final boss suite and escape themes.
I think Pizza Tower is a pretty good game that I'm sure everyone reading this played months before I got to it, and you probably don't need me propping it up even more. I probably should've gotten to it much earlier in the year, but hey, better late than never. Excited for them to announce a physical edition for consoles in like, the next month.
I wouldn't say I've been resistant to playing Pizza Tower, but I've definitely been dragging my heels. A classic case of Weatherby preferring to wait until something releases on console, or until a friend (thank you, Appreciations) buys it for me. Many cases of this happening. I am contractually mandated to play and finish The Evil Within 2 now because Larry Davis knew the only way I'd pick it up is if the overbearing weight of obligation forced me to. I guess you could say I get in my own way sometimes, but this sort of forceful nudging usually results in me having a good time, and Pizza Tower is no exception.
Barreling through enemies, charging through barriers, executing split-second rolls and leaps, careening into and up walls, and letting your momentum carry you to new areas all feels very Wario-esque, but I was surprised to see how much Pizza Tower took from other fast paced platformers like Sonic (I swear the sirens at the start of Not Legally Actionable Noid's boss fight are from Stardust Speedway), and even Super Metroid with how often you need to make tall vertical leaps à la Samus' shinespark. If you told me Pizza Tower was assembled and baked specifically for people suffering from terminal speedrunner brain, I'd believe you.
However, Pizza Tower is still very approachable for those who don't. I definitely had my share of botched inputs and there were a few sections that took me a number of attempts before I had the execution down, but once you fall into the right rhythm and embody Mr. Pepperoni or whatever the fuck his name is, it feels really good. It's also one of those games where executing on what it expects of you makes you feel like a speedrunner, even if it's actually taking you 30 whole minutes to beat the golf level.
My only real complaint is that you're never really at risk of losing a life until the chase sequence at the end of every level, and if you botch that you get to do the whole thing over again, which given the length of some levels is a bit of a problem. Though the game is checkpoint adverse, this is a somewhat minor complaint as I only managed to die probably four or five times during the course of the game.
I surprisingly don't have too much to say about the aesthetics other than that they're very good. Very 90s Nicktoons, lot of hyper-exaggerated faces and animations that lean so hard into the squash and stretch that you'd think everyone is made out of some kind of goop. That sort of elastic, malleable quality goes a long way towards selling the player on how chaotic, violent, and fast the game is. The soundtrack is terrific, too, and I especially like the full final boss suite and escape themes.
I think Pizza Tower is a pretty good game that I'm sure everyone reading this played months before I got to it, and you probably don't need me propping it up even more. I probably should've gotten to it much earlier in the year, but hey, better late than never. Excited for them to announce a physical edition for consoles in like, the next month.
2012
"You need to replay Max Payne 3" gotta be in my top ten intrusive thoughts I've acted on, right up there with "fill your whole entire fridge with cans of NOS."
Unlike my fridge full of NOS, the compulsion to revisit this game wasn't as sudden as waking in the middle of the night, drenched in a cold sweat and driven by chemical dependency, though I suppose the fact we both nurse our problems rather than confront them does make Max somewhat relatable (well, that and the baldness.) Rather, Max Payne 3 has ended up in front of my face several times over the past few weeks by pure happenstance, with the untimely passing of James McCaffrey acting as the catalyst to sit down and start it up for the first time since 2012.
McCaffrey's performance is of course outstanding, effortlessly selling you on an older, even more broken version of Max from the second he sets foot in his clean new apartment. Monologuing about the need to move on and start fresh with a few cracks at the expense of his weight and the poor choices that have led him to Brazil. The scene devolves pretty quickly as Max sets aside unpacking and decorating for drinking, stumbling, and self-pity.
The strobing effects, neon after-images, and punctuation of key words and phrases cutting through the cacophony of visual noise places the player right into the middle of Max's delirium, and while I'm sure some people were upset that Rockstar pushed away from the film noir design of the previous games, I am 100% into this sort of Man on Fire "tape roll" editing style, and I think it's used to great effect, keeping the player spinning in Max's fucked up headspace.
Despite how fundamentally broken Max is as a person, there was some real risk in inadvertently casting him as the "white savior," but I think this trope is pretty effectively subverted. Max is notoriously bad at saving anybody, and in fact makes most situations substantially worse by simply being there, drunk on the job and armed to the teeth. He is unwilling or perhaps unable (again, due to his inebriation) to understand any language that's not New Jersey English, frequently resulting in misunderstandings and botched attempts at negotiations, resulting in the loss of human life. I don't see how Max hopes to save anyone when he intentionally blows up an organ farming operation without making sure anyone got out, or by shooting up an entire airport, later revealed to be avoidable had he simply taken a ride offered to him to go directly to the bad guy's private hanger. As he puts it, "I'm a dumb move kind of guy." Sure, he gets the bad guy in the end, but when the game is popping accolades for killing 1000 enemies, you have to wonder if the math shakes out.
The shootout in the favela, which occurs about halfway through the game, feels heavily borrowed from Elite Squad. There are a couple notable moments during this sequence that are lifted from the movie, but one thing Max Payne 3 lacks over Elite Squad is that element of humanization, particularly for those in the favela. There's plenty of lip paid to the class divide and the animosity the rich have for the poor, and vice versa, but the fast pace of the story and action doesn't really provide time to peel back those layers and examine them. That's not what Max Payne 3 is about, it's more action than drama, and to do so would also mean providing subtitles and having Max not go "huh, what?" and immediately shoot dodge into a wall, so Rockstar probably made the right call there, too.
On the more mechanical end of things, Max Payne 3 carries over enough systems from the previous two games to feel authentic to the Max Payne experience and is otherwise just a very refined third person cover-shooter. A bit punishing, but in a way that feels satisfying. The action never dries out, and there's some really great set pieces, especially during the climax in the airport, which includes one of my favorite needle drops in games. At this point it feels trite to say a game feels like playing a movie, but Max Payne 3's action is paced in this very specific way that makes it feel like possibly the best translation of an action movie into interactive media I've come across.
Remedy has announced remakes of the first two Max Payne games, and I've been told there's plenty of allusions to the character in Alan Wake 2, potentially setting up something more. I haven't played that game and my friends have been careful to avoid spoilers until I do, so I really only know the vague points, like Sam Lake's character being voiced by McCaffrey. I'm curious where they go from here, though at the same time I don't want to speculate, as it feels a bit too callous to do so in the wake of McCaffrey's passing. Perhaps the best answer is to not do anything at all. Max Payne 3 is an excellent final chapter to Max's story and maybe my favorite entry in the series.
Unlike my fridge full of NOS, the compulsion to revisit this game wasn't as sudden as waking in the middle of the night, drenched in a cold sweat and driven by chemical dependency, though I suppose the fact we both nurse our problems rather than confront them does make Max somewhat relatable (well, that and the baldness.) Rather, Max Payne 3 has ended up in front of my face several times over the past few weeks by pure happenstance, with the untimely passing of James McCaffrey acting as the catalyst to sit down and start it up for the first time since 2012.
McCaffrey's performance is of course outstanding, effortlessly selling you on an older, even more broken version of Max from the second he sets foot in his clean new apartment. Monologuing about the need to move on and start fresh with a few cracks at the expense of his weight and the poor choices that have led him to Brazil. The scene devolves pretty quickly as Max sets aside unpacking and decorating for drinking, stumbling, and self-pity.
The strobing effects, neon after-images, and punctuation of key words and phrases cutting through the cacophony of visual noise places the player right into the middle of Max's delirium, and while I'm sure some people were upset that Rockstar pushed away from the film noir design of the previous games, I am 100% into this sort of Man on Fire "tape roll" editing style, and I think it's used to great effect, keeping the player spinning in Max's fucked up headspace.
Despite how fundamentally broken Max is as a person, there was some real risk in inadvertently casting him as the "white savior," but I think this trope is pretty effectively subverted. Max is notoriously bad at saving anybody, and in fact makes most situations substantially worse by simply being there, drunk on the job and armed to the teeth. He is unwilling or perhaps unable (again, due to his inebriation) to understand any language that's not New Jersey English, frequently resulting in misunderstandings and botched attempts at negotiations, resulting in the loss of human life. I don't see how Max hopes to save anyone when he intentionally blows up an organ farming operation without making sure anyone got out, or by shooting up an entire airport, later revealed to be avoidable had he simply taken a ride offered to him to go directly to the bad guy's private hanger. As he puts it, "I'm a dumb move kind of guy." Sure, he gets the bad guy in the end, but when the game is popping accolades for killing 1000 enemies, you have to wonder if the math shakes out.
The shootout in the favela, which occurs about halfway through the game, feels heavily borrowed from Elite Squad. There are a couple notable moments during this sequence that are lifted from the movie, but one thing Max Payne 3 lacks over Elite Squad is that element of humanization, particularly for those in the favela. There's plenty of lip paid to the class divide and the animosity the rich have for the poor, and vice versa, but the fast pace of the story and action doesn't really provide time to peel back those layers and examine them. That's not what Max Payne 3 is about, it's more action than drama, and to do so would also mean providing subtitles and having Max not go "huh, what?" and immediately shoot dodge into a wall, so Rockstar probably made the right call there, too.
On the more mechanical end of things, Max Payne 3 carries over enough systems from the previous two games to feel authentic to the Max Payne experience and is otherwise just a very refined third person cover-shooter. A bit punishing, but in a way that feels satisfying. The action never dries out, and there's some really great set pieces, especially during the climax in the airport, which includes one of my favorite needle drops in games. At this point it feels trite to say a game feels like playing a movie, but Max Payne 3's action is paced in this very specific way that makes it feel like possibly the best translation of an action movie into interactive media I've come across.
Remedy has announced remakes of the first two Max Payne games, and I've been told there's plenty of allusions to the character in Alan Wake 2, potentially setting up something more. I haven't played that game and my friends have been careful to avoid spoilers until I do, so I really only know the vague points, like Sam Lake's character being voiced by McCaffrey. I'm curious where they go from here, though at the same time I don't want to speculate, as it feels a bit too callous to do so in the wake of McCaffrey's passing. Perhaps the best answer is to not do anything at all. Max Payne 3 is an excellent final chapter to Max's story and maybe my favorite entry in the series.
I often confuse The Adventures of Batman & Robin for being a Traveller's Tales game, and not because Gamehut did an excellent video explaining how many of the it's graphical tricks work. Rather, like Traveller's Tales' games often are, Batman & Robin looks very impressive but is a total chore to play.
This is a run-and-gun, because Batman famously only does battle with his rogue's gallery by chucking a hundred and fifty thousand batarangs at their faces. This isn't really a bad thing, but levels drag on and on and on, often inundating you with ceaseless waves of spongy enemies. Your batarang can be upgraded by picking up power-ups similar to your typical shot upgrades in a shoot-em-up, and much like an average shoot-em-up, starting from a game over on a particularly hard stage with your piddly basic shot is abject misery, though far worse here give how resilient enemies become towards the middle to later half of the game.
There's also several levels that straight up are shoot-em-ups, with Batman gliding around in an overhead view taking on waves of attack helicopters and battleships, and these feel like total trash. Your sluggish movement coupled with how often enemies want to ram into you or fire bullet-hell barrages pointblank makes these incredibly irritating. Your best strategy to carry you through these levels is to pause the game and tap B, A, down, B, A down, left, up, C and just skip the god damn stage. Consider that code a Christmas gift from me to you.
Damn good looking game, though. There's some really impressive parallax scrolling to give the illusion of 3D, and the title cards before each chapter are incredibly detailed and faithful in style to those of the 90s cartoon. I feel that moreso than any other game in my Genesis collection, Batman & Robin is best experienced on a CRT. It's not too surprising to see a 1995 Genesis game swinging for the bleachers with its graphics, the tail-end of the system's library is full of titles that are more preoccupied with making an immediate impression with their visuals, often at the expense of good gameplay.
I decided to add this to my yuletide shortlist alongside holiday favorites like Clockwork Knight and Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, and I guess nothing says "Christmas" more than sitting hunched forward, glaring at the TV, controller in a death grip while constantly sighing and muttering "Jesus..." under my breath. Happy holidays!
This is a run-and-gun, because Batman famously only does battle with his rogue's gallery by chucking a hundred and fifty thousand batarangs at their faces. This isn't really a bad thing, but levels drag on and on and on, often inundating you with ceaseless waves of spongy enemies. Your batarang can be upgraded by picking up power-ups similar to your typical shot upgrades in a shoot-em-up, and much like an average shoot-em-up, starting from a game over on a particularly hard stage with your piddly basic shot is abject misery, though far worse here give how resilient enemies become towards the middle to later half of the game.
There's also several levels that straight up are shoot-em-ups, with Batman gliding around in an overhead view taking on waves of attack helicopters and battleships, and these feel like total trash. Your sluggish movement coupled with how often enemies want to ram into you or fire bullet-hell barrages pointblank makes these incredibly irritating. Your best strategy to carry you through these levels is to pause the game and tap B, A, down, B, A down, left, up, C and just skip the god damn stage. Consider that code a Christmas gift from me to you.
Damn good looking game, though. There's some really impressive parallax scrolling to give the illusion of 3D, and the title cards before each chapter are incredibly detailed and faithful in style to those of the 90s cartoon. I feel that moreso than any other game in my Genesis collection, Batman & Robin is best experienced on a CRT. It's not too surprising to see a 1995 Genesis game swinging for the bleachers with its graphics, the tail-end of the system's library is full of titles that are more preoccupied with making an immediate impression with their visuals, often at the expense of good gameplay.
I decided to add this to my yuletide shortlist alongside holiday favorites like Clockwork Knight and Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, and I guess nothing says "Christmas" more than sitting hunched forward, glaring at the TV, controller in a death grip while constantly sighing and muttering "Jesus..." under my breath. Happy holidays!
2023
I previously wrote an exhaustive and frankly unfocused review on the base version of Sonic Origins, a game I paid 45$ for because I just had to get at a disorganized collection of improperly labeled music and borders for the bastardized 4:3 mode. I won't bother to link that review and save you all the trouble of trying to parse my thoughts. The short version is this: I own these games across an obscene number of platforms, but to have them in 16:9 and playable on my TV sounded nice. It's just too bad Sega put a buggy product to market that was outshined by fan projects like Sonic A.I.R., which released years prior.
But that was way back in June of last year. Sonic Origins has now received its first and presumably only major content update and physical release in the form of Sonic Origins Plus, and as I've established numerous times throughout the last two years, I am bad with my finances. At least I waited for the physical edition to hit 20$ this time!
Plus is a mixed package. It proudly advertises new characters, plural, but only justifies this by adding Amy and making Knuckles playable in exactly one more game than he previously was, Sonic CD. Mechanically, Amy plays very similarly to Sonic, albeit with a wider insta-shield and a weaker drop dash. Though I wish her drop dash had more oomph and lasted longer, I can respect the fact that she doesn't play wildly different, as she needs to slot comfortably into the level design of four whole games. Amy's sprites are excellent, and she has a lot of cute animations, like her victory pose in Sonic 3. She is arguably the main draw to Plus and while she could've felt a bit better to play as, I had enough fun to justify another run through each game.
You also get all the Game Gear Sonics, and if you've been following me as I played through those this year, I think they're pretty bad. However, my problem isn't so much their inclusion (it's good they're on here at all), rather that Sega and Sonic Team still refuse to acknowledge the better Master System versions of some of these games. Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Spinball are still absent despite being represented in the music gallery and in the main menus, and I know Sega has the ROMs and a good Genesis emulator. I guess they're saving those and Mean Bean for Sonic Origins Plus Deluxe.
I still think Origins is a disappointing collection, and I wouldn't recommend getting it or Plus at full price, but if you don't have multiple Sonic 3 carts laying around, can't be bothered to set up A.I.R., or an emulator for that matter, then... yeah I guess 20$ is ok.
But that was way back in June of last year. Sonic Origins has now received its first and presumably only major content update and physical release in the form of Sonic Origins Plus, and as I've established numerous times throughout the last two years, I am bad with my finances. At least I waited for the physical edition to hit 20$ this time!
Plus is a mixed package. It proudly advertises new characters, plural, but only justifies this by adding Amy and making Knuckles playable in exactly one more game than he previously was, Sonic CD. Mechanically, Amy plays very similarly to Sonic, albeit with a wider insta-shield and a weaker drop dash. Though I wish her drop dash had more oomph and lasted longer, I can respect the fact that she doesn't play wildly different, as she needs to slot comfortably into the level design of four whole games. Amy's sprites are excellent, and she has a lot of cute animations, like her victory pose in Sonic 3. She is arguably the main draw to Plus and while she could've felt a bit better to play as, I had enough fun to justify another run through each game.
You also get all the Game Gear Sonics, and if you've been following me as I played through those this year, I think they're pretty bad. However, my problem isn't so much their inclusion (it's good they're on here at all), rather that Sega and Sonic Team still refuse to acknowledge the better Master System versions of some of these games. Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Spinball are still absent despite being represented in the music gallery and in the main menus, and I know Sega has the ROMs and a good Genesis emulator. I guess they're saving those and Mean Bean for Sonic Origins Plus Deluxe.
I still think Origins is a disappointing collection, and I wouldn't recommend getting it or Plus at full price, but if you don't have multiple Sonic 3 carts laying around, can't be bothered to set up A.I.R., or an emulator for that matter, then... yeah I guess 20$ is ok.
This year's had a real drought of good character creators. Street Fighter 6 is almost entirely designed for generating monsters, and Silent Hill Ascension is... well, you know. So Wo Long made a very strong first impression simply by letting me create an attractive human being. I'm a man who loves some good hair options, and this game left me straight up indecisive. With my feudal warrior properly yassified, I bounced into the main game... literally. Whole lot of jiggling going on here.
Oh right, this is a Team Ninja game. I almost forgot.
I have a real love/hate relationship with Team Ninja, in that I love Dead or Alive and hate everything they release that doesn't have "dead" and "alive" in the title. I've been told Ninja Gaiden Black is good, but I got filtered out by the second boss. Metroid Other M is the worst old game I've played this year. Nioh never left much of an impression on me and I grew bored of it a few hours in. I'll hoot and holler at the top of my lungs for the DOA movie - my username is a direct reference to one of its characters - but trying to experience any other Team Ninja property feels like torture.
And as I was diving into Wo Long's early missions, struggling with combat that felt just as weightless and floaty as my character's chest, I worried that might be the case here as well. But after trading out swords for weightier pole arms and getting a better feel for the more unique systems, like the spirit gauge, I found that I was actually starting to have a good time.
It helps that, unlike other games I've played this year with combat that is heavily reliant on countering enemy attacks, Wo Long is pretty forgiving and plenty generous with its parry timing. I've complained at length that stagger meters are often used to prolong battles in these types of games, effectively severing as armor that must be depleted before you can do "real damage." While it is the case that draining your opponent's spirit gauge will leave them stunned and open them up to a finishing attack that deals a high amount of damage, your basic attacks and spells are all pretty effective on their own. Combat does not feel nearly as rigid as something like Lies of P, and not needing to be surgical with my timing and actually having versatility felt refreshing.
In fact, there were times where I felt the game might be a bit too easy. Thankfully, you can always even that back out by summoning AI partners. You'd think that would trivialize the game but considering Wo Long abides by Souls rules and buffs enemies and bosses when summons are present, and considering AI partners are effectively braindead, they become such a liability that it actually raises the difficulty.
Wo Long is also lacking in variety. By about halfway through the game, you'll have likely seen every weapon, every piece of armor, and every enemy that you'll ever encounter. There is so much loot to pick up, and yet it's always the same low-level swords and axes, clogging up your inventory with dozens upon dozens of duplicates. The shop rarely updates, so selling excess items feels a bit pointless, and breaking them down for upgrade material is about as trivial.
Though much of my enthusiasm for Wo Long is bottled up in its combat, there's thankfully enough offff iiiiiiit thaaHHHHT IIIII HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHHHH-DRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH
Uh oh. The review slowed down. Hold on, let me back out to the main page and start again. At least it autosaved before it crashed...
Wo Long updated a few days ago, and something about this particular patch broke the game. For me, personally. I can't find anyone else bringing up any of this crap.
I have no idea what happens narratively in the last quarter of the game, as every time a cutscene loaded it would suddenly freeze and audio would grind down to a demonic growl. These softlocks happened over and over again and required relaunching the app every single time. I've never seen a game do this before, and I suspect the uniqueness of it is due to the proprietary nature of the Katana engine.
I also began encountering persistent notifications that I had been disconnected from online play, despite remaining logged into my PSN account and experiencing no actual service interruptions with my internet. These notifications pop up using the PS5's UI, and I could go on a whole rant about how it should be standard for notifications like this to pause a game, especially when Wo Long does have a pause function built in, but unfortunately having to hit the O button to dismiss this mid-combat just became a natural part of the game for the last three or so hours I played.
I could've reinstalled the whole game, go offline and keep it at a more stable version, but that felt like too much of a hassle when I was so close to the end, so I just pushed my way through until I rolled credits.
So, yeah, Wo Long is pretty fun but marred by a lack of variety, an abundance of systems that the player is rarely incentivized to use, a stunning lack of variety, and (in my case) glitches that made the game borderline unplayable. I guess that's what I get for playing a Team Ninja game. Now if you'll excuse me, I left the stove on and I really need to touch the burners with my bare hands, again.
Oh right, this is a Team Ninja game. I almost forgot.
I have a real love/hate relationship with Team Ninja, in that I love Dead or Alive and hate everything they release that doesn't have "dead" and "alive" in the title. I've been told Ninja Gaiden Black is good, but I got filtered out by the second boss. Metroid Other M is the worst old game I've played this year. Nioh never left much of an impression on me and I grew bored of it a few hours in. I'll hoot and holler at the top of my lungs for the DOA movie - my username is a direct reference to one of its characters - but trying to experience any other Team Ninja property feels like torture.
And as I was diving into Wo Long's early missions, struggling with combat that felt just as weightless and floaty as my character's chest, I worried that might be the case here as well. But after trading out swords for weightier pole arms and getting a better feel for the more unique systems, like the spirit gauge, I found that I was actually starting to have a good time.
It helps that, unlike other games I've played this year with combat that is heavily reliant on countering enemy attacks, Wo Long is pretty forgiving and plenty generous with its parry timing. I've complained at length that stagger meters are often used to prolong battles in these types of games, effectively severing as armor that must be depleted before you can do "real damage." While it is the case that draining your opponent's spirit gauge will leave them stunned and open them up to a finishing attack that deals a high amount of damage, your basic attacks and spells are all pretty effective on their own. Combat does not feel nearly as rigid as something like Lies of P, and not needing to be surgical with my timing and actually having versatility felt refreshing.
In fact, there were times where I felt the game might be a bit too easy. Thankfully, you can always even that back out by summoning AI partners. You'd think that would trivialize the game but considering Wo Long abides by Souls rules and buffs enemies and bosses when summons are present, and considering AI partners are effectively braindead, they become such a liability that it actually raises the difficulty.
Wo Long is also lacking in variety. By about halfway through the game, you'll have likely seen every weapon, every piece of armor, and every enemy that you'll ever encounter. There is so much loot to pick up, and yet it's always the same low-level swords and axes, clogging up your inventory with dozens upon dozens of duplicates. The shop rarely updates, so selling excess items feels a bit pointless, and breaking them down for upgrade material is about as trivial.
Though much of my enthusiasm for Wo Long is bottled up in its combat, there's thankfully enough offff iiiiiiit thaaHHHHT IIIII HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHHHH-DRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH
Uh oh. The review slowed down. Hold on, let me back out to the main page and start again. At least it autosaved before it crashed...
Wo Long updated a few days ago, and something about this particular patch broke the game. For me, personally. I can't find anyone else bringing up any of this crap.
I have no idea what happens narratively in the last quarter of the game, as every time a cutscene loaded it would suddenly freeze and audio would grind down to a demonic growl. These softlocks happened over and over again and required relaunching the app every single time. I've never seen a game do this before, and I suspect the uniqueness of it is due to the proprietary nature of the Katana engine.
I also began encountering persistent notifications that I had been disconnected from online play, despite remaining logged into my PSN account and experiencing no actual service interruptions with my internet. These notifications pop up using the PS5's UI, and I could go on a whole rant about how it should be standard for notifications like this to pause a game, especially when Wo Long does have a pause function built in, but unfortunately having to hit the O button to dismiss this mid-combat just became a natural part of the game for the last three or so hours I played.
I could've reinstalled the whole game, go offline and keep it at a more stable version, but that felt like too much of a hassle when I was so close to the end, so I just pushed my way through until I rolled credits.
So, yeah, Wo Long is pretty fun but marred by a lack of variety, an abundance of systems that the player is rarely incentivized to use, a stunning lack of variety, and (in my case) glitches that made the game borderline unplayable. I guess that's what I get for playing a Team Ninja game. Now if you'll excuse me, I left the stove on and I really need to touch the burners with my bare hands, again.
1996
It's been a while since I last visited my Retro Games Bucket List. I swear I didn't push off the last entry to coincide with some sort of arbitrary milestone (my 500th review if Backloggd's metrics can be trusted), but it was either this or Sonic Origins Plus. No, I just find it very difficult to discuss Super Mario 64 and have struggled for a while with how I want to approach it.
My apprehension doesn't come from the fact that Mario 64 and its legacy have been so thoroughly discussed, at least not necessarily. That certainly does pose a challenge, after all it is one of the most influential and historically significant games in the medium, and it's been documented to death for good reason. All I can really add is my own personal experiences with it, but that's where the real difficulty comes in, because I've so deeply linked the game to my late grandfather, and framing a whole review for a Mario game around parsing his death just sounds a little bit silly.
I could instead talk about how my first exposure to Super Mario 64 didn't actually come from my grandpa despite how much I tie it to him. When the Nintendo 64 came out, the arcade I used to hang out in had one hooked up to a big TV and roped off with velvet. Ten bucks for ten minutes with Mario, a damn good racket. The save already had all 120 stars unlocked, and the very first thing I did was jump into the cannon outside Princess Peach's castle, which takes you to the castle's roof and face-to-face with Yoshi. The next day I kept insisting to all my friends that Yoshi was in Mario 64. I was called a liar and relentlessly mocked. I knew what I saw, damnit! There's a Yoshi up there! He's gave me 100 lives!!
Anyway, I really hate Yoshi games for some reason.........
It's snowing out, and there are elk roaming in my grandpa's backyard - his house is large and remote, the massive fenced off satellite dish he gets TV from is bordered by miles and miles of pure nature. I'm playing Dire Dire Docks, and by that, I mean I'm mostly drowning to death over and over again, but the music and atmosphere is serene. Grandpa laughs warmly when I die, then he offers some advice, but mostly he just watches and lets me figure it out, as he did whenever we played games together. I don't know it at the time, but I would never be there again.
Ah, yeah, that sounds kinda dumb. But the most insightful thing I have to share about Mario 64 isn't some hot nugget of development history, or a unique perspective on its mechanics, how Mario handles or the way its levels are designed. As much as I would love to tear into it as I would any other game, I can't. Every time I try to write about how important the game was for establishing analog controls or the way it shaped the next several years of 3D platformers, I just get lost in a nostalgic haze, thinking about how much fun I had on the title screen alone, molding Mario's face like that scene from The Hundred Days of the Dragon. Mom walking in, asking "what the hell are you playing," and grandpa answering very curtly, "Mary-oh." I'd correct him. He'd never get it right. To the grave, it was "Mary-oh."
Nowadays, the scene around Super Mario 64 is still lively, though its greatest contributions are so codified in the medium that you'll likely take them for granted. Instead, it lives on more fervently through trite analog horror and speedruns which may or may not be influenced by stray cosmic particles. It occupies such a weird space; one I would've been far more fascinated by as a child. "L is real" captivated me, if you told me back then that every cart was personalized, my eyes would be as wide as saucers. I'm pretty dumb, but I was straight stupid in the 90s.
Super Mario 64 felt like an impossibly huge game to me. Peach's castle was large and full of secrets, and though I eventually got a Nintendo 64 of my own, I could only explore Mario 64 when visiting my grandpa. It was a strange omission from my collection, yet that always left me excited to play more when I visited his house. How much further had he gotten? What cool new things could he show me? What new games did he have, did he get any more promo tapes? The last one had a couple of guys put Mario's head in a damn vice, that was pretty fucked up!
There's a reason Mario 64 was the last game I wanted to get to in my bucket list, as the whole impetus behind making one in the first place was a form of retreat. It felt somehow appropriate to close the whole thing out with it. I really appreciate everyone who stuck with me as I went through my list, reviewing classics like Contra Hard Corps and hot liquid shit like Aero the Acro-Bat. I promise I'll get back to reviews like that soon.
Super Mario 64 is a great game. Bad camera, and it's gotten trendy to write off other parts of it that are antiquated, even despite the fact that for what it doesn't get right, it was still one of the first to do it. But I can't go in on that, even if I see a lot of those rough edges, too. I'm just too emotionally invested in it.
My apprehension doesn't come from the fact that Mario 64 and its legacy have been so thoroughly discussed, at least not necessarily. That certainly does pose a challenge, after all it is one of the most influential and historically significant games in the medium, and it's been documented to death for good reason. All I can really add is my own personal experiences with it, but that's where the real difficulty comes in, because I've so deeply linked the game to my late grandfather, and framing a whole review for a Mario game around parsing his death just sounds a little bit silly.
I could instead talk about how my first exposure to Super Mario 64 didn't actually come from my grandpa despite how much I tie it to him. When the Nintendo 64 came out, the arcade I used to hang out in had one hooked up to a big TV and roped off with velvet. Ten bucks for ten minutes with Mario, a damn good racket. The save already had all 120 stars unlocked, and the very first thing I did was jump into the cannon outside Princess Peach's castle, which takes you to the castle's roof and face-to-face with Yoshi. The next day I kept insisting to all my friends that Yoshi was in Mario 64. I was called a liar and relentlessly mocked. I knew what I saw, damnit! There's a Yoshi up there! He's gave me 100 lives!!
Anyway, I really hate Yoshi games for some reason.........
It's snowing out, and there are elk roaming in my grandpa's backyard - his house is large and remote, the massive fenced off satellite dish he gets TV from is bordered by miles and miles of pure nature. I'm playing Dire Dire Docks, and by that, I mean I'm mostly drowning to death over and over again, but the music and atmosphere is serene. Grandpa laughs warmly when I die, then he offers some advice, but mostly he just watches and lets me figure it out, as he did whenever we played games together. I don't know it at the time, but I would never be there again.
Ah, yeah, that sounds kinda dumb. But the most insightful thing I have to share about Mario 64 isn't some hot nugget of development history, or a unique perspective on its mechanics, how Mario handles or the way its levels are designed. As much as I would love to tear into it as I would any other game, I can't. Every time I try to write about how important the game was for establishing analog controls or the way it shaped the next several years of 3D platformers, I just get lost in a nostalgic haze, thinking about how much fun I had on the title screen alone, molding Mario's face like that scene from The Hundred Days of the Dragon. Mom walking in, asking "what the hell are you playing," and grandpa answering very curtly, "Mary-oh." I'd correct him. He'd never get it right. To the grave, it was "Mary-oh."
Nowadays, the scene around Super Mario 64 is still lively, though its greatest contributions are so codified in the medium that you'll likely take them for granted. Instead, it lives on more fervently through trite analog horror and speedruns which may or may not be influenced by stray cosmic particles. It occupies such a weird space; one I would've been far more fascinated by as a child. "L is real" captivated me, if you told me back then that every cart was personalized, my eyes would be as wide as saucers. I'm pretty dumb, but I was straight stupid in the 90s.
Super Mario 64 felt like an impossibly huge game to me. Peach's castle was large and full of secrets, and though I eventually got a Nintendo 64 of my own, I could only explore Mario 64 when visiting my grandpa. It was a strange omission from my collection, yet that always left me excited to play more when I visited his house. How much further had he gotten? What cool new things could he show me? What new games did he have, did he get any more promo tapes? The last one had a couple of guys put Mario's head in a damn vice, that was pretty fucked up!
There's a reason Mario 64 was the last game I wanted to get to in my bucket list, as the whole impetus behind making one in the first place was a form of retreat. It felt somehow appropriate to close the whole thing out with it. I really appreciate everyone who stuck with me as I went through my list, reviewing classics like Contra Hard Corps and hot liquid shit like Aero the Acro-Bat. I promise I'll get back to reviews like that soon.
Super Mario 64 is a great game. Bad camera, and it's gotten trendy to write off other parts of it that are antiquated, even despite the fact that for what it doesn't get right, it was still one of the first to do it. But I can't go in on that, even if I see a lot of those rough edges, too. I'm just too emotionally invested in it.
You might not believe it based on its reputation, but Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I sold and reviewed well when it released. It was fans, who at the time were critical of yet bound by a blood oath to Keep Buying This Shit, that really went in hard against Episode I, posting videos of its wonky physics and deriding it for failing to live up to the promise of its namesake. Glowing praise like "the differences between this and the old Sonic games are so few and far between that playing it involves existing in a constant state of deja vu," and "it takes a step back to a time when Sonic was awesome" started to fade, drowned out by videos of Sonic casually walking up walls in a world made of plastic. For Episode II to succeed, Sonic Team and Dimps needed to make some changes.
Episode I's development took it from a cheap mobile game to a supposed continuation of the Genesis series, and while it may have initially passed for such, key elements like Sonic's physics just weren't there. I mean, you might not know that if you read its Wiki page, which says it has "momentum-based gameplay," a straight up lie given Sonic's propensity to drop straight down out of the air when releasing the D-pad, or to roll more slowly down inclines if you aren't holding right. Episode II addresses this by giving Sonic more weight, and though it's not as close an approximation as the Retro Engine, it is acceptable. Platforming feels far better when your forward momentum isn't determined by how firmly you're keeping the D-pad depressed, and the design of Episode II's four-and-some-change levels feels more thoughtfully crafted around the way Sonic moves.
It even looks better, with sharper and more expressive character models, cleaner textures, and art direction that helps give Episode II an identity beyond being a soupy mess of borrowed levels. Sure, you could say Sylvania Castle is a riff on Aquatic Ruin, Oil Desert is just Oil Ocean, and Sky Fortress is a (better) Wing Fortress, but this is conveyed more in their tropes than it is in their visual design. About the only area where I feel Episode II plays to the audience's nostalgia a little too hard is its special stages, which are designed after Sonic 2's, and by including yet another Sonic CD style fight against Metal. These were less played out at the time, but going back in for a replay, they feel agonizingly tired.
My stomach is starting to hurt really bad, which means it's time to talk about Jun Senoue again. I'm replaying Sonic Adventure (DX, unfortunately. Gotta stay humble.), and I think it's incredible that this man is both capable of composing the best soundtrack in the entire series and also this. Admittedly, he has some good melodies here, but his choice of instrumentation steps all over the good he's doing. It could be worse, but it's far from perfect, and he's still turning in some incredibly short, nasty loops that play during long gameplay sequences.
Like during boss fights! Superstars has caught a lot of shit (deservedly so) for having bosses that are unreasonably long, but Episode II wades into very similar territory, giving most of its bosses protracted attack phases before opening up to allow a modest amount of damage. I've been sharing this observation elsewhere, but it seems appropriate to make a point of it here, too: bosses with set attack and vulnerability phases are antithetical to Classic Sonic's design.
In the Genesis games, your pace was often influenced by the design of the level itself - set pieces being broken up by platforming, for example - but the player still had agency, and the speed in which they finished a level was largely up to how well they played. Likewise, the length of a boss fight was mostly determined by how the payer engaged with the boss' attack patterns rather than having set periods of attack and vulnerability. It was sometimes the case that a fight was rigidly paced out, but even Lava Reef Act 2's boss fight doesn't feel quite as protracted and dull as Oil Desert's.
The best Sonic bosses are the ones where you can bash Robotnik on the head eight times before he gets one attack out, is what I'm saying.
So, yeah, I think Episode II feels good to play and that the improvements Sonic Team and Dimps made worked out in the end. But if you pull back and look at the duology of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 as a single game, which ostensibly is what it's meant to be, it's hard not to feel like you're left with an inconsistent and unfinished mess. Because, you know, it is.
Sonic 4's episodic model was popular at the time, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles had established its own weird precedent within the series itself. But if you tried to evaluate it like S3&K, as one whole piece of media that was merely divided into two, it just doesn't work. Each episode looks, feels, and is designed differently, they have their own endings and though their overarching story is connected, the narrative is so threadbare in Episode I that it feels wholly unimportant to Episode II. Hell, most of the setup exists in a four-level side story that only unlocks if you own both games in the same library.
It ends on a real down note, too. Sonic and Tails stop Eggman, but they fail to prevent the Death Egg from being completed and essentially doom Little Planet. This was supposed to be the "dark middle chapter," and presumably they would return (with Knuckles in tow) for a much happier ending in Episode III. Supposedly, Christian Whitehead was also set to collaborate on the third episode, meaning it likely would've resulted in the game feeling even more different than the previous episode. The promise of making Sonic 4 even less cohesive than it already is doesn't sound great to me, but at the same time, I really wish they just stuck to the project and finished the damn thing. Knowing there is a Sonic 4 and it's this half-finished nightmare that fails to continue the Genesis games and is wildly uneven in presentation and design, but which has that name on fucking lock is just depressing.
I guess I just find the larger story of Sonic 4 to be fascinating, because it exists at this sort of post 2006 inflection point where Sega and Sonic Team were still recalibrating, turning the nob and looking over their shoulder trying to figure out what the hell people wanted from them. Starting with a clear conception in mind, changing course when fans vocally rejected it, only to end up cancelled and abandoned as Sonic Team veered towards other projects... a perfect encapsulation of where Sonic was at. As a game, an episode, I don't think Sonic 4: Episode II is bad, but it's also not great. It tows the line between mediocrity and fun. It's a Sonic-ass Sonic game.
Episode I's development took it from a cheap mobile game to a supposed continuation of the Genesis series, and while it may have initially passed for such, key elements like Sonic's physics just weren't there. I mean, you might not know that if you read its Wiki page, which says it has "momentum-based gameplay," a straight up lie given Sonic's propensity to drop straight down out of the air when releasing the D-pad, or to roll more slowly down inclines if you aren't holding right. Episode II addresses this by giving Sonic more weight, and though it's not as close an approximation as the Retro Engine, it is acceptable. Platforming feels far better when your forward momentum isn't determined by how firmly you're keeping the D-pad depressed, and the design of Episode II's four-and-some-change levels feels more thoughtfully crafted around the way Sonic moves.
It even looks better, with sharper and more expressive character models, cleaner textures, and art direction that helps give Episode II an identity beyond being a soupy mess of borrowed levels. Sure, you could say Sylvania Castle is a riff on Aquatic Ruin, Oil Desert is just Oil Ocean, and Sky Fortress is a (better) Wing Fortress, but this is conveyed more in their tropes than it is in their visual design. About the only area where I feel Episode II plays to the audience's nostalgia a little too hard is its special stages, which are designed after Sonic 2's, and by including yet another Sonic CD style fight against Metal. These were less played out at the time, but going back in for a replay, they feel agonizingly tired.
My stomach is starting to hurt really bad, which means it's time to talk about Jun Senoue again. I'm replaying Sonic Adventure (DX, unfortunately. Gotta stay humble.), and I think it's incredible that this man is both capable of composing the best soundtrack in the entire series and also this. Admittedly, he has some good melodies here, but his choice of instrumentation steps all over the good he's doing. It could be worse, but it's far from perfect, and he's still turning in some incredibly short, nasty loops that play during long gameplay sequences.
Like during boss fights! Superstars has caught a lot of shit (deservedly so) for having bosses that are unreasonably long, but Episode II wades into very similar territory, giving most of its bosses protracted attack phases before opening up to allow a modest amount of damage. I've been sharing this observation elsewhere, but it seems appropriate to make a point of it here, too: bosses with set attack and vulnerability phases are antithetical to Classic Sonic's design.
In the Genesis games, your pace was often influenced by the design of the level itself - set pieces being broken up by platforming, for example - but the player still had agency, and the speed in which they finished a level was largely up to how well they played. Likewise, the length of a boss fight was mostly determined by how the payer engaged with the boss' attack patterns rather than having set periods of attack and vulnerability. It was sometimes the case that a fight was rigidly paced out, but even Lava Reef Act 2's boss fight doesn't feel quite as protracted and dull as Oil Desert's.
The best Sonic bosses are the ones where you can bash Robotnik on the head eight times before he gets one attack out, is what I'm saying.
So, yeah, I think Episode II feels good to play and that the improvements Sonic Team and Dimps made worked out in the end. But if you pull back and look at the duology of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 as a single game, which ostensibly is what it's meant to be, it's hard not to feel like you're left with an inconsistent and unfinished mess. Because, you know, it is.
Sonic 4's episodic model was popular at the time, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles had established its own weird precedent within the series itself. But if you tried to evaluate it like S3&K, as one whole piece of media that was merely divided into two, it just doesn't work. Each episode looks, feels, and is designed differently, they have their own endings and though their overarching story is connected, the narrative is so threadbare in Episode I that it feels wholly unimportant to Episode II. Hell, most of the setup exists in a four-level side story that only unlocks if you own both games in the same library.
It ends on a real down note, too. Sonic and Tails stop Eggman, but they fail to prevent the Death Egg from being completed and essentially doom Little Planet. This was supposed to be the "dark middle chapter," and presumably they would return (with Knuckles in tow) for a much happier ending in Episode III. Supposedly, Christian Whitehead was also set to collaborate on the third episode, meaning it likely would've resulted in the game feeling even more different than the previous episode. The promise of making Sonic 4 even less cohesive than it already is doesn't sound great to me, but at the same time, I really wish they just stuck to the project and finished the damn thing. Knowing there is a Sonic 4 and it's this half-finished nightmare that fails to continue the Genesis games and is wildly uneven in presentation and design, but which has that name on fucking lock is just depressing.
I guess I just find the larger story of Sonic 4 to be fascinating, because it exists at this sort of post 2006 inflection point where Sega and Sonic Team were still recalibrating, turning the nob and looking over their shoulder trying to figure out what the hell people wanted from them. Starting with a clear conception in mind, changing course when fans vocally rejected it, only to end up cancelled and abandoned as Sonic Team veered towards other projects... a perfect encapsulation of where Sonic was at. As a game, an episode, I don't think Sonic 4: Episode II is bad, but it's also not great. It tows the line between mediocrity and fun. It's a Sonic-ass Sonic game.
They claim this is lock-on technology, but when I try to attach Sonic 4: Episode 2 to America's Army I don't get to play Blue Spheres. What the FUCK is UP with THAt???
For Episode Metal, you can mostly refer to my review for Sonic 4: Episode 1, because all you're really getting here is a character skin and four acts from that game's four zones, played in reverse. They are remixed somewhat, with more hazards, enemies, and altered routes to make this second jog through more challenging, but the structure of each zone still results in Episode Metal getting easier as it goes.
It's wafer thin, but it's also hard to complain too much about it when it's free... With your copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 and 2, that is. I actually forgot how this stupid thing worked when I was going back and buying these games again (yeah that's right, I rebought the Sonic 4 duology. My stupid ass paid 25$ just to be able to play this on the couch and not in front of a damn computer. Why am I still allowed to be in control of my own finances, why haven't you people done something!?) I thought that you'd need to grab this on the side, but it doesn't appear anywhere in the Xbox marketplace. For a while I thought it just wasn't compatible with the Xbox version of the game, then read that it unlocks after you beat the first level of Episode 2, which I did, and nothing happened. What fixed this was opening up the DLC menu in Episode 2 and selecting the install for "Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 Full Game" and look, none of this makes any sense to me. Do you remember they made a bunch of Xbox avatar items for Sonic 4? Well good news, you can still buy, like, a Tails hat for 3 real dollars. I did, because I'm in too deep.
I guess it's "neat" they did this, even if it's hanging off the much better Episode 2 like a tumorous mass. Gotta play it if you want the full story! Won't know how Metal came back otherwise (he got zapped with electricity and then ate some stuff he found on the ground in Not Labyrinth Zone.) A must play for anyone who wants the full Sonic 4 experience. Thank god it's like, 20 minutes long.
For Episode Metal, you can mostly refer to my review for Sonic 4: Episode 1, because all you're really getting here is a character skin and four acts from that game's four zones, played in reverse. They are remixed somewhat, with more hazards, enemies, and altered routes to make this second jog through more challenging, but the structure of each zone still results in Episode Metal getting easier as it goes.
It's wafer thin, but it's also hard to complain too much about it when it's free... With your copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 and 2, that is. I actually forgot how this stupid thing worked when I was going back and buying these games again (yeah that's right, I rebought the Sonic 4 duology. My stupid ass paid 25$ just to be able to play this on the couch and not in front of a damn computer. Why am I still allowed to be in control of my own finances, why haven't you people done something!?) I thought that you'd need to grab this on the side, but it doesn't appear anywhere in the Xbox marketplace. For a while I thought it just wasn't compatible with the Xbox version of the game, then read that it unlocks after you beat the first level of Episode 2, which I did, and nothing happened. What fixed this was opening up the DLC menu in Episode 2 and selecting the install for "Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 Full Game" and look, none of this makes any sense to me. Do you remember they made a bunch of Xbox avatar items for Sonic 4? Well good news, you can still buy, like, a Tails hat for 3 real dollars. I did, because I'm in too deep.
I guess it's "neat" they did this, even if it's hanging off the much better Episode 2 like a tumorous mass. Gotta play it if you want the full story! Won't know how Metal came back otherwise (he got zapped with electricity and then ate some stuff he found on the ground in Not Labyrinth Zone.) A must play for anyone who wants the full Sonic 4 experience. Thank god it's like, 20 minutes long.
Sonic the Hedgehog 4 feels bad, looks bad, sounds bad too (uh-huh, that's right).
About the only positive thing Episode 1 did was trigger a mass discussion about Sonic's physicality in the Genesis games, and this deeper analysis of what made them feel so good to play is (I believe) part of what made Sonic Mania so marketable years later. It also resulted in the phrase "momentum based gameplay" getting played out to the point of derision. I've seen people make the argument in the years since Episode 1's release that a 2D Sonic game doesn't need to replicate the physics of the Genesis era, and they're not wrong even if I think it should be part and parcel with a game billing itself as the fourth entry in that specific series. However, Sonic 4's physics are so bad that the lack of momentum directly interferes with the level design and platforming. Muscle memory makes me release my thumb from the d-pad, but Sonic drops like a rock into a pit of spikes. That feels bad no matter what the game is called.
Like, yes, the expectation is there and Sonic 4 is certainly worse for it, but even if you called it by another name, it just isn't good. The reuse of old level themes, badniks, and bosses felt cheap at the time, clearly playing to an audience Sonic Team didn't really know how to cater to beyond surface-level nods. The in-game explanation for Bubbles and other badniks being around is essentially "Dr. Robotnik ran out of fuckin' money," an almost perfect allegory for Sonic Team and Dimps hitting their creative bottom, destitute of ideas.
This desperate pandering went on to define the series for such a long time after, best exemplified by the incessant trotting out of Green Hill game after game. Though I hate to evoke Mania again, it is the game to get this right, and that was the result of bringing in outside blood that actually knew what pieces Sonic Team was missing. Perhaps the comparison is a cheap way to further denigrate a game and developer that has been thoroughly run through the mud, but it's also taken them 13 years to stop reusing old Zones, so I don't really care.
And you all know that already, because Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 is nearly as infamous as Sonic 2006 and Sonic Boom. It's a well-covered laughing stock, wrung so dry of content that it is as brittle as the bones I'm now sucking marrow from. Sonic standing perfectly parallel to the ground with his feet glued to a wall is an image that will outlive me.
About the only positive thing Episode 1 did was trigger a mass discussion about Sonic's physicality in the Genesis games, and this deeper analysis of what made them feel so good to play is (I believe) part of what made Sonic Mania so marketable years later. It also resulted in the phrase "momentum based gameplay" getting played out to the point of derision. I've seen people make the argument in the years since Episode 1's release that a 2D Sonic game doesn't need to replicate the physics of the Genesis era, and they're not wrong even if I think it should be part and parcel with a game billing itself as the fourth entry in that specific series. However, Sonic 4's physics are so bad that the lack of momentum directly interferes with the level design and platforming. Muscle memory makes me release my thumb from the d-pad, but Sonic drops like a rock into a pit of spikes. That feels bad no matter what the game is called.
Like, yes, the expectation is there and Sonic 4 is certainly worse for it, but even if you called it by another name, it just isn't good. The reuse of old level themes, badniks, and bosses felt cheap at the time, clearly playing to an audience Sonic Team didn't really know how to cater to beyond surface-level nods. The in-game explanation for Bubbles and other badniks being around is essentially "Dr. Robotnik ran out of fuckin' money," an almost perfect allegory for Sonic Team and Dimps hitting their creative bottom, destitute of ideas.
This desperate pandering went on to define the series for such a long time after, best exemplified by the incessant trotting out of Green Hill game after game. Though I hate to evoke Mania again, it is the game to get this right, and that was the result of bringing in outside blood that actually knew what pieces Sonic Team was missing. Perhaps the comparison is a cheap way to further denigrate a game and developer that has been thoroughly run through the mud, but it's also taken them 13 years to stop reusing old Zones, so I don't really care.
And you all know that already, because Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 is nearly as infamous as Sonic 2006 and Sonic Boom. It's a well-covered laughing stock, wrung so dry of content that it is as brittle as the bones I'm now sucking marrow from. Sonic standing perfectly parallel to the ground with his feet glued to a wall is an image that will outlive me.
2001
Played as Elise Riggs because there's something about narcissistic Canadians that push their friends off cliffs and then go "you gotta get over it, honey" that I am drawn to.
I've never played an SSX game before, but Tricky has existed in the back of my mind ever since seeing the commercials for it back in the early 2000s. They don't make advertising like this for games anymore and we're all poorer for it. Don't give me some cinematic drivel, show me action, and cut it up with footage of kids spinning around really, really fast! SSX Tricky's attitude and the use of Run DMC's It's Tricky definitely made the game memorable, so on some level this advertising campaign worked... I just didn't buy it and instead thought about it for 20+ years.
Well now I have a hard drive I can load up with whatever the hell I want, and SSX Tricky is one of only two snowboarding games I threw on there, the other being SSX 3. Look I know about these and 1080 Avalanche, the only ice I've shredded prior has been in Sonic Adventure and freaking Snowboard Kids, which probably explains why I'm not all that good at Tricky. Clawing the controller like I'm trying to tear a crab in half with my bare hands felt awkward, but I eventually got enough tricks down to beat the game, and as Elise rose up the ranks, I too started to feel like the villain of some 90s snowboarding movie.
The learning curve for Tricky's stunt system meant I had more fun in races, although some courses overstay their welcome. They are made more interesting by a sort of protoplasmic Nemesis System, wherein some opponents may be friendly towards you or be out for blood depending on how their character relates to yours and what actions you take against them. Start shoving one particular opponent off cliffs and into walls and you might find that they're kind of pissed at you in the next race. Elise thinks it's funny because Elise is a fucking sociopath. At least she's not Psymon, this freak's all hunched over standing three feet from the camera, examining you like a piece of meat, I don't want to know what his deal is.
It's too bad the series died after 2012's SSX, because snowboarding games are such a rare breed now, and they're all lacking in personality. It's all stuff like Riders Republic, which looks stylish if you're judging a game by its cover, but is an Ubisoft game to the bone. I need more of this early-2000s edge, I want to see Elise crack Marisol in the knees with a ballpeen hammer so she can climb her way to the top of SSX. You say I dislike modern gaming because of undiagnosed depression, I say I dislike modern gaming because they don't put SSX games out anymore.
I've never played an SSX game before, but Tricky has existed in the back of my mind ever since seeing the commercials for it back in the early 2000s. They don't make advertising like this for games anymore and we're all poorer for it. Don't give me some cinematic drivel, show me action, and cut it up with footage of kids spinning around really, really fast! SSX Tricky's attitude and the use of Run DMC's It's Tricky definitely made the game memorable, so on some level this advertising campaign worked... I just didn't buy it and instead thought about it for 20+ years.
Well now I have a hard drive I can load up with whatever the hell I want, and SSX Tricky is one of only two snowboarding games I threw on there, the other being SSX 3. Look I know about these and 1080 Avalanche, the only ice I've shredded prior has been in Sonic Adventure and freaking Snowboard Kids, which probably explains why I'm not all that good at Tricky. Clawing the controller like I'm trying to tear a crab in half with my bare hands felt awkward, but I eventually got enough tricks down to beat the game, and as Elise rose up the ranks, I too started to feel like the villain of some 90s snowboarding movie.
The learning curve for Tricky's stunt system meant I had more fun in races, although some courses overstay their welcome. They are made more interesting by a sort of protoplasmic Nemesis System, wherein some opponents may be friendly towards you or be out for blood depending on how their character relates to yours and what actions you take against them. Start shoving one particular opponent off cliffs and into walls and you might find that they're kind of pissed at you in the next race. Elise thinks it's funny because Elise is a fucking sociopath. At least she's not Psymon, this freak's all hunched over standing three feet from the camera, examining you like a piece of meat, I don't want to know what his deal is.
It's too bad the series died after 2012's SSX, because snowboarding games are such a rare breed now, and they're all lacking in personality. It's all stuff like Riders Republic, which looks stylish if you're judging a game by its cover, but is an Ubisoft game to the bone. I need more of this early-2000s edge, I want to see Elise crack Marisol in the knees with a ballpeen hammer so she can climb her way to the top of SSX. You say I dislike modern gaming because of undiagnosed depression, I say I dislike modern gaming because they don't put SSX games out anymore.
2001
This review contains spoilers
THE BACKLOGGD BOOGEYMAN
Win Prize $ 500,000
REVIEW REQUIREMENTS
Prize reduction if requirements are not met
Total Likes - 100 over
Total Jokes - 20 over
Total Spoilers - 8 under
Bleeding - 20cc/min under
PUSH [A] TO SELECT CHARACTER
My first exposure to Illbleed came in the form of GameInformer's Super Replay, which I would say is a must watch were it not for the fact that Illbleed is such a must play. I'm a firm believer in the value of openly discussing old media, but Illbleed is still of such a relatively unknown quantity that you're statistically likely to ask "what the hell are you playing" when I post pictures like this to Twitter dot com. That's not some off-the-cuff claim, I ran the Illbleed numbers with a team of highly trained Monkillers (Appreciations and TransWitchSammy) and we reached the conclusion that Illbleed is best enjoyed blind. That said, I want to provide a bit of a companion piece to Sammy's review, something you can read after beating the game for yourself, which will dive a bit more deeply into specific mechanics, events, and the history behind the game. But before we begin, please report to the nearest Wood Puppet processing facility to have your brain removed. You'llprobably get it back when the review is over.
Minnesota Hell Cinema: It's Time 2 Get ILL
A bit of housekeeping before getting into the thick of things: I am logging my completion date concurrent with Sammy. Though I've played and beaten Illbleed in the past, this was pre-Backloggd and I don't remember what date it was that I rolled credits.
Sammy is a very amiable person and jumped into Illbleed sight unseen at the insistence of myself and Appreciations, a fellow veteran of Michael Reynolds' murderous amusement park. However, the game's unique mechanics and - I use this time very lightly - randomized "jump scare" hazards did leave us both struggling to recall exactly what Illbleed expects from the player. Ultimately, we referred to a guide whenever we needed to get our bearings, and if you're looking for a particularly unhinged example of "author's voice" seeping into a walkthrough, you really can't go wrong with GameFAQs user IAmYoFatha's Illbleed guide. Comprehensive when it comes to the meat and potatoes of the game, yet utterly deranged everywhere else, frequently devolving into tirades against users and political actors that have wronged the author, threats against entities named and unseen, generally the sort of stuff that reads like a manifesto all bottled up in a guide for a 2001 Sega Dreamcast horror-comedy game. First guide I've ever seen to have a "Special Spanks" section, one of the all-time greats and bizarrely appropriate for the game it covers.
None of this is terribly relevant to the review at hand, but in the immortal words banned GameFAQs user of IAmYoFatha: "The way I see it, when you log onto the world wide web, your time is public domain. It can't be wasted."
Armed with our guide and three brains addled on edibles and grain alcohol, I, Appreciations, and Sammy were finally able to make sense of Illbleed's most unique mechanic: The Horror Monitor. Although each chapter of Illbleed features its own distinct mechanics, the Horror Monitor serves as a constant, the bedrock that the rest of the game's systems are built off of, except for the second mission where it's suddenly taken away by a gang of horned up monkeys that are using it as X-ray specs to... to look at the ladies... Nowadays these Monkillers would be hold up with a goon box trading pics over a Discord sever, but you had to work for it in 2001.
The Horror Monitor is used in conjunction with your senses, which are laid out in a way that is almost as confounding and superfluous as System Shock's UI. If any of your core senses are triggered, that indicates that a jump scare or trap is nearby, which can be disarmed by tagging it with the Horror Monitor at the expense of adrenaline, a finite resource that must be wagered against your health, pulse, and blood.
It's a novel system which initially seems more complex than it actually is, though hiding the Horror Monitor at the start of each level is a bit much. Definitely a good gag when you're watching someone play for the first time, just getting their shit wrecked by falling signage and gigantic disembodied butts farting on them, but in isolation, I could see this as being pretty discouraging during a first experience. That "what is this, what am I supposed to be doing!?" moment is only really funny when you have friends who can start explaining the game to you after your first failed run, or if you have, like, the instruction booklet. Not a problem, you can just buy a used copy of Illbleed for (LOUD AND FRANKLY UPSETTING VOMITING SOUNDS)
Boogie's Fun Movies: Mandatory Brain Surgery
Illbleed is segmented neatly between a hub area and six levels, which unlock sequentially. Between levels, you can stop by Bloody Mary's shop for some salad, an ice cold Hassy, and adult magazines, or undergo invasive surgery to become more powerful. I went to Illbleed and came out lookin' like one of those body builders that inject themselves with synthol. I'd like to see OH NO MAN go toe-to-toe with me in the square circ-- oh hold on, my pecs are leaking again. God I don't feel good...
Though I think Illbleed is mechanically enjoyable and unique if a bit unrefined, its humor is where the game really shines. It cannot be overstated that there is nothing out there like Illbleed, except perhaps Blue Stinger, Crazy Games' previous title. However, Blue Stinger is a bit more self-serious, skewing a bit closer to the "so bad it's good" moniker that I think is often improperly assigned to Illbleed. I take issue with it because it implies Illbleed's humor is not by design, an unintentional consequence of trying and failing, and I think that's just a fundamental misunderstanding of this game's writing that borders on insulting.
Spoilers ahead, but you can't tell me that a man investing and losing it all in the worm market and ending up with a homegrown giant worm fed on a diet of gasoline is anything other than intentional. Illbleed is a horror-comedy, or maybe more accurately a comedy-horror, and it's a damn good one. This playfulness comes from creator and writer Shinya Nishigaki's appreciation for American B-movies, and it permeates through every part of the game, including the structure of its levels which themselves are presented as being attractions based on such films. I got a bit defensive when speaking with Sammy and Appreciations, adamant that unlike Resident Evil 4 where the comedy elements add levity to tension, Illbleed more often feels like comedy is in service of horror.
You get to the end of the game and you find yourself in the middle of a gallery displaying Michael Reynold's greatest creations, his monsters, his strange horrors... and also a digital eye exam, gigantic ass, and a bag of garbage. That's Illbleed, a game that is keenly aware of what it is and more than capable of making you belly laugh whether alone or losing your mind with a group of friends. If you disagree, well, I've got some bad news. You aren't getting your brain back. I dropped it in some sawdust and it really got in there, it's all stuck between the wrinkles and I couldn't get any of it out so I just had to chuck it in the trash. Sorry!
Hall of Resentment: I'll Bury You With Your Favorite Sexy Doll
To borrow from Sammy's review, you just can't make a game like Illbleed again, and I'd love to say that there's more out there like it, but sadly, Shinya Nishigaki passed away at the age of 42 from a heart attack, and his studio (founded with colleagues from Climax Entertainment) Crazy Games, shut down a couple years prior with only three titles to their name: Blue Stinger,Illbleed, and the co-produced The Maze of Kings.
The dissolution of Crazy Games followed after Sega cut Illbleed from its list of first-party games, passing it over to Jaleco, which itself was in financial trouble. Sega then pulled out of the hardware market and discontinued support for the Dreamcast right after Illbleed's Japanese release. Jaleco chairman Yoshiaki Kanazawa went on to found AIA, which handled the localization and release of Illbleed internationally but only an accumulative 50,000 copies sold - hence its rarity and exorbitant aftermarket price tag. This may be due in part to audiences failing to understand Illbleed's B-movie roots, as Nishigaki puts it "Illbleed requires a high degree of intelligence to play," which is true, I am very smart, I graduated from college with a degree in communications and I fucking love Illbleed.
All of this, of course, severely damaged Crazy Games, and the company eventually shuttered. A port of Illbleed was being worked on by Coolnet for the Xbox and was allegedly 90% complete, but it never materialized. Apparently, this would have required renegotiation with Sega and a release in Japanese markets before it could be sold internationally, and the Xbox's weak sales and low install base simply did not make this palatable to those who held the money. John Andersen, whose amazing write-up on Shinya Nishigaki for GameDeveloper I am mostly paraphrasing did his part to try to convince Coolnet to proceed with the ports of Illbleed and Blue Stinger out of passion for Nishigaki's body of work but was ultimately unsuccessful. Part of me hopes that we may still see these games on modern consoles, but realistically, you're probably better off grabbing Redream and a copy of the ISO.
Well this has been a hell of a downer. Did I mention a big chunk of Sonic Adventure 1 and 2's voice cast is in this game? Lani Minella (Rouge the Bat) plays the lead character, Eriko Christy, and Ryan Drummand voices Kevin Kertsman. Deem Bristow even shows up in Blue Stinger as Dogs Bower, but... I'll get to that game. Soon.
Illbleed may not be perfect, but it's a 5/5 for me. Any mechanical shortcomings are so effectively counterbalanced by its writing and general zaniness that it's easy to wave them away. It is a game that constantly tops itself, with the last level being some of the wildest shit I've seen in video games, and though it's perfectly enjoyable in isolation, being able to so easily play games with friends makes this perfect to experience in company, just like the B-movies that inspired Nishigaki.
Win Prize $ 500,000
REVIEW REQUIREMENTS
Prize reduction if requirements are not met
Total Likes - 100 over
Total Jokes - 20 over
Total Spoilers - 8 under
Bleeding - 20cc/min under
PUSH [A] TO SELECT CHARACTER
My first exposure to Illbleed came in the form of GameInformer's Super Replay, which I would say is a must watch were it not for the fact that Illbleed is such a must play. I'm a firm believer in the value of openly discussing old media, but Illbleed is still of such a relatively unknown quantity that you're statistically likely to ask "what the hell are you playing" when I post pictures like this to Twitter dot com. That's not some off-the-cuff claim, I ran the Illbleed numbers with a team of highly trained Monkillers (Appreciations and TransWitchSammy) and we reached the conclusion that Illbleed is best enjoyed blind. That said, I want to provide a bit of a companion piece to Sammy's review, something you can read after beating the game for yourself, which will dive a bit more deeply into specific mechanics, events, and the history behind the game. But before we begin, please report to the nearest Wood Puppet processing facility to have your brain removed. You'll
Minnesota Hell Cinema: It's Time 2 Get ILL
A bit of housekeeping before getting into the thick of things: I am logging my completion date concurrent with Sammy. Though I've played and beaten Illbleed in the past, this was pre-Backloggd and I don't remember what date it was that I rolled credits.
Sammy is a very amiable person and jumped into Illbleed sight unseen at the insistence of myself and Appreciations, a fellow veteran of Michael Reynolds' murderous amusement park. However, the game's unique mechanics and - I use this time very lightly - randomized "jump scare" hazards did leave us both struggling to recall exactly what Illbleed expects from the player. Ultimately, we referred to a guide whenever we needed to get our bearings, and if you're looking for a particularly unhinged example of "author's voice" seeping into a walkthrough, you really can't go wrong with GameFAQs user IAmYoFatha's Illbleed guide. Comprehensive when it comes to the meat and potatoes of the game, yet utterly deranged everywhere else, frequently devolving into tirades against users and political actors that have wronged the author, threats against entities named and unseen, generally the sort of stuff that reads like a manifesto all bottled up in a guide for a 2001 Sega Dreamcast horror-comedy game. First guide I've ever seen to have a "Special Spanks" section, one of the all-time greats and bizarrely appropriate for the game it covers.
None of this is terribly relevant to the review at hand, but in the immortal words banned GameFAQs user of IAmYoFatha: "The way I see it, when you log onto the world wide web, your time is public domain. It can't be wasted."
Armed with our guide and three brains addled on edibles and grain alcohol, I, Appreciations, and Sammy were finally able to make sense of Illbleed's most unique mechanic: The Horror Monitor. Although each chapter of Illbleed features its own distinct mechanics, the Horror Monitor serves as a constant, the bedrock that the rest of the game's systems are built off of, except for the second mission where it's suddenly taken away by a gang of horned up monkeys that are using it as X-ray specs to... to look at the ladies... Nowadays these Monkillers would be hold up with a goon box trading pics over a Discord sever, but you had to work for it in 2001.
The Horror Monitor is used in conjunction with your senses, which are laid out in a way that is almost as confounding and superfluous as System Shock's UI. If any of your core senses are triggered, that indicates that a jump scare or trap is nearby, which can be disarmed by tagging it with the Horror Monitor at the expense of adrenaline, a finite resource that must be wagered against your health, pulse, and blood.
It's a novel system which initially seems more complex than it actually is, though hiding the Horror Monitor at the start of each level is a bit much. Definitely a good gag when you're watching someone play for the first time, just getting their shit wrecked by falling signage and gigantic disembodied butts farting on them, but in isolation, I could see this as being pretty discouraging during a first experience. That "what is this, what am I supposed to be doing!?" moment is only really funny when you have friends who can start explaining the game to you after your first failed run, or if you have, like, the instruction booklet. Not a problem, you can just buy a used copy of Illbleed for (LOUD AND FRANKLY UPSETTING VOMITING SOUNDS)
Boogie's Fun Movies: Mandatory Brain Surgery
Illbleed is segmented neatly between a hub area and six levels, which unlock sequentially. Between levels, you can stop by Bloody Mary's shop for some salad, an ice cold Hassy, and adult magazines, or undergo invasive surgery to become more powerful. I went to Illbleed and came out lookin' like one of those body builders that inject themselves with synthol. I'd like to see OH NO MAN go toe-to-toe with me in the square circ-- oh hold on, my pecs are leaking again. God I don't feel good...
Though I think Illbleed is mechanically enjoyable and unique if a bit unrefined, its humor is where the game really shines. It cannot be overstated that there is nothing out there like Illbleed, except perhaps Blue Stinger, Crazy Games' previous title. However, Blue Stinger is a bit more self-serious, skewing a bit closer to the "so bad it's good" moniker that I think is often improperly assigned to Illbleed. I take issue with it because it implies Illbleed's humor is not by design, an unintentional consequence of trying and failing, and I think that's just a fundamental misunderstanding of this game's writing that borders on insulting.
Spoilers ahead, but you can't tell me that a man investing and losing it all in the worm market and ending up with a homegrown giant worm fed on a diet of gasoline is anything other than intentional. Illbleed is a horror-comedy, or maybe more accurately a comedy-horror, and it's a damn good one. This playfulness comes from creator and writer Shinya Nishigaki's appreciation for American B-movies, and it permeates through every part of the game, including the structure of its levels which themselves are presented as being attractions based on such films. I got a bit defensive when speaking with Sammy and Appreciations, adamant that unlike Resident Evil 4 where the comedy elements add levity to tension, Illbleed more often feels like comedy is in service of horror.
You get to the end of the game and you find yourself in the middle of a gallery displaying Michael Reynold's greatest creations, his monsters, his strange horrors... and also a digital eye exam, gigantic ass, and a bag of garbage. That's Illbleed, a game that is keenly aware of what it is and more than capable of making you belly laugh whether alone or losing your mind with a group of friends. If you disagree, well, I've got some bad news. You aren't getting your brain back. I dropped it in some sawdust and it really got in there, it's all stuck between the wrinkles and I couldn't get any of it out so I just had to chuck it in the trash. Sorry!
Hall of Resentment: I'll Bury You With Your Favorite Sexy Doll
To borrow from Sammy's review, you just can't make a game like Illbleed again, and I'd love to say that there's more out there like it, but sadly, Shinya Nishigaki passed away at the age of 42 from a heart attack, and his studio (founded with colleagues from Climax Entertainment) Crazy Games, shut down a couple years prior with only three titles to their name: Blue Stinger,Illbleed, and the co-produced The Maze of Kings.
The dissolution of Crazy Games followed after Sega cut Illbleed from its list of first-party games, passing it over to Jaleco, which itself was in financial trouble. Sega then pulled out of the hardware market and discontinued support for the Dreamcast right after Illbleed's Japanese release. Jaleco chairman Yoshiaki Kanazawa went on to found AIA, which handled the localization and release of Illbleed internationally but only an accumulative 50,000 copies sold - hence its rarity and exorbitant aftermarket price tag. This may be due in part to audiences failing to understand Illbleed's B-movie roots, as Nishigaki puts it "Illbleed requires a high degree of intelligence to play," which is true, I am very smart, I graduated from college with a degree in communications and I fucking love Illbleed.
All of this, of course, severely damaged Crazy Games, and the company eventually shuttered. A port of Illbleed was being worked on by Coolnet for the Xbox and was allegedly 90% complete, but it never materialized. Apparently, this would have required renegotiation with Sega and a release in Japanese markets before it could be sold internationally, and the Xbox's weak sales and low install base simply did not make this palatable to those who held the money. John Andersen, whose amazing write-up on Shinya Nishigaki for GameDeveloper I am mostly paraphrasing did his part to try to convince Coolnet to proceed with the ports of Illbleed and Blue Stinger out of passion for Nishigaki's body of work but was ultimately unsuccessful. Part of me hopes that we may still see these games on modern consoles, but realistically, you're probably better off grabbing Redream and a copy of the ISO.
Well this has been a hell of a downer. Did I mention a big chunk of Sonic Adventure 1 and 2's voice cast is in this game? Lani Minella (Rouge the Bat) plays the lead character, Eriko Christy, and Ryan Drummand voices Kevin Kertsman. Deem Bristow even shows up in Blue Stinger as Dogs Bower, but... I'll get to that game. Soon.
Illbleed may not be perfect, but it's a 5/5 for me. Any mechanical shortcomings are so effectively counterbalanced by its writing and general zaniness that it's easy to wave them away. It is a game that constantly tops itself, with the last level being some of the wildest shit I've seen in video games, and though it's perfectly enjoyable in isolation, being able to so easily play games with friends makes this perfect to experience in company, just like the B-movies that inspired Nishigaki.
2023
Sonic Superstars is so bad that it has me questioning the narrative of Balan Wonderworld.
Yuji Naka was famously booted off the Balan project by Arzest, an effort that supposedly involved former collaborator and creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, Naoto Oshima. Naka has since alleged that his ouster was the result of speaking out against the unauthorized use of fan music in one of Balan's trailers among other things, but a long history of abrasive behavior and eventual arrest for insider trading has cemented him as the villain in Balan's story. However, to see how poorly Sonic Superstars turned out has given me perspective on another of Naka's accusations: that Arzest was intent on putting out a buggy game and that he was trying to do his best to save it. I think the son of a bitch might've been telling the truth. Yuji Naka is being held as a political prisoner.
On paper, a classic Sonic game produced by series veterans Iizuka and Oshima sounds like a good idea. Even people with more functional neurons than me looked at Arzest's catalog and thought it might still turn out good. Great even. Sonic's pappy is back, it's a real meeting of the minds over there at Sega HQ. I'm sure they're both great guys, but I'm to the point where I think they're about as capable of leading a project as Keiji Inafune, they're so far from their lanes they're driving through a corn field. Nothing about Superstars captures the magic of the classic games or Mania for that matter, but instead parades around in its physics, no better at displaying reverence or understanding for the material it is inspired by than Sonic the Hedgehog 4.
Any sense of spectacle provided by Sonic's speed is dulled by bad stage design and an overuse of set pieces, which are applied cookie-cutter between levels along with gimmicks and enemies, even those that might at first seem bespoke in the way a classic Sonic game ought to be. The creative bankruptcy is astonishing even when viewed in a vacuum, two whole zones reuse the same pinball trope and one of them even has an extra act. The last level's second act is just the first act in reverse, and watching the counter tick down from the seven minutes it took to complete act 1 made my stomach hurt.
Zones have an inconsistent number of acts, with some getting two, some three, and others one single monstrously sized act that can take as long to beat as a full zone. These single act zones play like a gamified lobotomy, with stage elements both unique and borrowed stagnating under their average clear time. Everyone who talks about Superstars likes to bring up how bosses can at times take as long to beat as a level, and this is both a true and fair criticism, but I think it's indicative of a larger problem the game has with its pacing.
You can speed these fights up somewhat by using one or two of your chaos emerald powers, and I do mean literally one or two. Most of these powers have such specific use cases that they're rendered all but useless outside of a small handful of instances, but the rush attack you get for collecting the first chaos emerald is good for getting two or three hits in the second a boss' invulnerability drops. That's my tip to you. Actually my tip to you is to not buy this game, and if you feel compelled to do so, smash all of your fingers with a brick so you cannot.
Superstars doesn't even get music right, man. Tee Lopes is credited among others, and you know how badly I'd love to say he's got another hit on his hands, but the dude just sounds like he's phoning it in on this one. I've never heard a single piece of music Tee has done feel quite so tired as some of what he's contributed to this game. Jun has also broke fucking containment AGAIN and is still pumping out dogwater 10 second loops that sound as close to real Genesis music as La Croix does to flavor.
There's a lack of cohesion across the entire soundtrack which also bothers me. You go from Tee's stuff to Jun's mess and then a bunch of other composers that are churning out crap that sounds like Mr. Blue Sky with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (this joke was submitted by Appreciations, age 9.) At least if you buy this game on PC - which, again, you should not - you can mod the soundtrack so it actually become listenable.
When Superstars was announced, I made a comment that the game looked like some tripe you'd download off the app store. I got pushback over this and changed my tune so I could fit in, a little lie I told because I didn't want to seem like an annoying pessimist. I should've held my ground because Superstar's art direction is pretty flat and its fidelity weak. Some zone have backgrounds that, without hyperbole, look like Nintendo 64 textures. I'm not even sure what I'm looking at here.(source.)
Iizuka recently made a statement that "pixel art isn't viable", and that does speak to an uncomfortable truth about how consumers view sprite-based games. Take a look at the Game Awards, which faced controversy after Nexon's Dave the Diver got nominated for Best Indie. A cynical assessment would be that it got the nom because it uses sprites and sprites = indie which means you can't reasonably charge full price. Counterargument: nothing about Sonic Superstars is worth 60$, it looks bad and plays bad too. I paid 35$ because, true to form, Sega put this out near Black Friday and their games drop in value faster than the coconut that hit me in the head and made me think it was still worth buying for nearly half price. I bought Sonic Mania four times, I'm willing to shell out for sprite games that I think are good, I am straight up mad I paid 35$ once for Superstars and I think I should be allowed to grab Oshima and shake him by his ankles until I get every cent back.
So, yes, you could say I went into this with some pretty negative biases. That's a fair criticism of me, the player. The fool, as it were, stepping in big mud pies for the amusement of everyone else. But somehow, Superstars managed to sink even further below my expectations. I thought I might walk out of this a little poorer, but that I may think the game is a 2.5. You know, mediocre. Didn't think I'd have a great time, but had no reason to believe I'd like it less than, say, Knuckles' Chaotix or fucking Sonic Frontiers. I didn't just step in another mud pie, I slipped on it and fell head first into a ravine. I got a neck brace on and I look all fucked up now.
You hurt me. We're not friends anymore.
Yuji Naka was famously booted off the Balan project by Arzest, an effort that supposedly involved former collaborator and creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, Naoto Oshima. Naka has since alleged that his ouster was the result of speaking out against the unauthorized use of fan music in one of Balan's trailers among other things, but a long history of abrasive behavior and eventual arrest for insider trading has cemented him as the villain in Balan's story. However, to see how poorly Sonic Superstars turned out has given me perspective on another of Naka's accusations: that Arzest was intent on putting out a buggy game and that he was trying to do his best to save it. I think the son of a bitch might've been telling the truth. Yuji Naka is being held as a political prisoner.
On paper, a classic Sonic game produced by series veterans Iizuka and Oshima sounds like a good idea. Even people with more functional neurons than me looked at Arzest's catalog and thought it might still turn out good. Great even. Sonic's pappy is back, it's a real meeting of the minds over there at Sega HQ. I'm sure they're both great guys, but I'm to the point where I think they're about as capable of leading a project as Keiji Inafune, they're so far from their lanes they're driving through a corn field. Nothing about Superstars captures the magic of the classic games or Mania for that matter, but instead parades around in its physics, no better at displaying reverence or understanding for the material it is inspired by than Sonic the Hedgehog 4.
Any sense of spectacle provided by Sonic's speed is dulled by bad stage design and an overuse of set pieces, which are applied cookie-cutter between levels along with gimmicks and enemies, even those that might at first seem bespoke in the way a classic Sonic game ought to be. The creative bankruptcy is astonishing even when viewed in a vacuum, two whole zones reuse the same pinball trope and one of them even has an extra act. The last level's second act is just the first act in reverse, and watching the counter tick down from the seven minutes it took to complete act 1 made my stomach hurt.
Zones have an inconsistent number of acts, with some getting two, some three, and others one single monstrously sized act that can take as long to beat as a full zone. These single act zones play like a gamified lobotomy, with stage elements both unique and borrowed stagnating under their average clear time. Everyone who talks about Superstars likes to bring up how bosses can at times take as long to beat as a level, and this is both a true and fair criticism, but I think it's indicative of a larger problem the game has with its pacing.
You can speed these fights up somewhat by using one or two of your chaos emerald powers, and I do mean literally one or two. Most of these powers have such specific use cases that they're rendered all but useless outside of a small handful of instances, but the rush attack you get for collecting the first chaos emerald is good for getting two or three hits in the second a boss' invulnerability drops. That's my tip to you. Actually my tip to you is to not buy this game, and if you feel compelled to do so, smash all of your fingers with a brick so you cannot.
Superstars doesn't even get music right, man. Tee Lopes is credited among others, and you know how badly I'd love to say he's got another hit on his hands, but the dude just sounds like he's phoning it in on this one. I've never heard a single piece of music Tee has done feel quite so tired as some of what he's contributed to this game. Jun has also broke fucking containment AGAIN and is still pumping out dogwater 10 second loops that sound as close to real Genesis music as La Croix does to flavor.
There's a lack of cohesion across the entire soundtrack which also bothers me. You go from Tee's stuff to Jun's mess and then a bunch of other composers that are churning out crap that sounds like Mr. Blue Sky with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (this joke was submitted by Appreciations, age 9.) At least if you buy this game on PC - which, again, you should not - you can mod the soundtrack so it actually become listenable.
When Superstars was announced, I made a comment that the game looked like some tripe you'd download off the app store. I got pushback over this and changed my tune so I could fit in, a little lie I told because I didn't want to seem like an annoying pessimist. I should've held my ground because Superstar's art direction is pretty flat and its fidelity weak. Some zone have backgrounds that, without hyperbole, look like Nintendo 64 textures. I'm not even sure what I'm looking at here.(source.)
Iizuka recently made a statement that "pixel art isn't viable", and that does speak to an uncomfortable truth about how consumers view sprite-based games. Take a look at the Game Awards, which faced controversy after Nexon's Dave the Diver got nominated for Best Indie. A cynical assessment would be that it got the nom because it uses sprites and sprites = indie which means you can't reasonably charge full price. Counterargument: nothing about Sonic Superstars is worth 60$, it looks bad and plays bad too. I paid 35$ because, true to form, Sega put this out near Black Friday and their games drop in value faster than the coconut that hit me in the head and made me think it was still worth buying for nearly half price. I bought Sonic Mania four times, I'm willing to shell out for sprite games that I think are good, I am straight up mad I paid 35$ once for Superstars and I think I should be allowed to grab Oshima and shake him by his ankles until I get every cent back.
So, yes, you could say I went into this with some pretty negative biases. That's a fair criticism of me, the player. The fool, as it were, stepping in big mud pies for the amusement of everyone else. But somehow, Superstars managed to sink even further below my expectations. I thought I might walk out of this a little poorer, but that I may think the game is a 2.5. You know, mediocre. Didn't think I'd have a great time, but had no reason to believe I'd like it less than, say, Knuckles' Chaotix or fucking Sonic Frontiers. I didn't just step in another mud pie, I slipped on it and fell head first into a ravine. I got a neck brace on and I look all fucked up now.
You hurt me. We're not friends anymore.
2018
The power of harassing Sega and Sonic Team about minor, mostly forgotten characters has made Sonic Mania: Encore manifest. Bullying does work!!
Sonic Mania's Encore DLC is novel enough to justify its (typically) low price tag, but it should be noted that I'm psychotic and bought the entire damn game again when it launched because Sega bundled it onto a physical release, which they previously swore up and down would not be a thing. That made it the third time I bought Sonic Mania, after getting the digital version on the Switch when my PC Collector's Edition was delayed. I've since bought it physically again for the PlayStation 4 so I could experience Sonic Mania on a proper video game console, and I've been eyeballing it on my newly acquired Series X, too. I guess I'm the Sonic Mania guy now, gonna turn out like that one lunatic sucking up all the copies of Sneak King. I will not stop until I've given Christian Whitehead power of attorney.
Despite my obligation to Sonic Mania, I mostly think Encore is just kinda alright. The main mode itself remixes every level in the game and presents them with altered color pallets, but a lot of the alterations mechanically and visually fall flat. Most of the new color pallets overuse earthy tones, resulting in levels appearing drab. There are a few cases where this does work nicely, I really like the look of Encore's Stardust Speedway and Hydrocity (one word, I will tear your esophagus out if you say Hydro City), but most of my run through Encore left me pining for Mania's more vibrant colors.
The new party mechanic is a smart way to address the antiquated lives system and is something I would love to see expanded on in future games, but this does mean that every level needs to be beatable with any combination of characters. This results in zones spreading character specific pathways pretty thinly, and I believe that's part of what contributes to remixed sections feeling so tucked away. At least the new pinball bonus stages feel far better paced than Blue Spheres and more in-line with the spirit of Sonic the Hedgehog 3's bonus stages - I'm a certifiable Blue Spheres freak so I hope you respect the authority that comes with this criticism.
Encore presents some good ideas and underdelivers in almost equal measure, but it's hard to pass up when it's so frequently on sale for 2.50$. A worthwhile admission fee to play as Ray and Mighty alone, even if Encore doesn't stick the landing with as much grace as the base game. I guess just keep in mind that I'm under no fiduciary obligation here, if I've convinced you to buy more Sonic Mania and you feel that this has hurt you financially, well, that's on you. Never listen to someone who owns four, maybe five copies of the same video game.
Sonic Mania's Encore DLC is novel enough to justify its (typically) low price tag, but it should be noted that I'm psychotic and bought the entire damn game again when it launched because Sega bundled it onto a physical release, which they previously swore up and down would not be a thing. That made it the third time I bought Sonic Mania, after getting the digital version on the Switch when my PC Collector's Edition was delayed. I've since bought it physically again for the PlayStation 4 so I could experience Sonic Mania on a proper video game console, and I've been eyeballing it on my newly acquired Series X, too. I guess I'm the Sonic Mania guy now, gonna turn out like that one lunatic sucking up all the copies of Sneak King. I will not stop until I've given Christian Whitehead power of attorney.
Despite my obligation to Sonic Mania, I mostly think Encore is just kinda alright. The main mode itself remixes every level in the game and presents them with altered color pallets, but a lot of the alterations mechanically and visually fall flat. Most of the new color pallets overuse earthy tones, resulting in levels appearing drab. There are a few cases where this does work nicely, I really like the look of Encore's Stardust Speedway and Hydrocity (one word, I will tear your esophagus out if you say Hydro City), but most of my run through Encore left me pining for Mania's more vibrant colors.
The new party mechanic is a smart way to address the antiquated lives system and is something I would love to see expanded on in future games, but this does mean that every level needs to be beatable with any combination of characters. This results in zones spreading character specific pathways pretty thinly, and I believe that's part of what contributes to remixed sections feeling so tucked away. At least the new pinball bonus stages feel far better paced than Blue Spheres and more in-line with the spirit of Sonic the Hedgehog 3's bonus stages - I'm a certifiable Blue Spheres freak so I hope you respect the authority that comes with this criticism.
Encore presents some good ideas and underdelivers in almost equal measure, but it's hard to pass up when it's so frequently on sale for 2.50$. A worthwhile admission fee to play as Ray and Mighty alone, even if Encore doesn't stick the landing with as much grace as the base game. I guess just keep in mind that I'm under no fiduciary obligation here, if I've convinced you to buy more Sonic Mania and you feel that this has hurt you financially, well, that's on you. Never listen to someone who owns four, maybe five copies of the same video game.