2023
Guard over there! Look, a guard! Guard over there! Guard! Look, a Guard! Piece of shit drill! Guard over there! Guard! Guard over there! Guard over there! Gaurd! Look, a guard! It's a civ! Guard over there!
I have a tendency to buy new releases, whether at launch or after months of carefully monitoring prices for a good deal, but Payday 3 was the rare "eh, I'm gonna get a month of Game Pass" game. Not like you can do crimes with bots, this is online only, and when the servers inevitably shut down it's game over for everybody. Ah, the future of ownership.
Thankfully, I wasn't stuck partnering up with a bunch of random weirdos (for the most part.) The majority of my time in Payday 3 was spentpanic spraying a full clip into crowds of civilians doing heists with my good friend Larry Davis, and one session with Appreciations and TransWitchSammy. I think your mileage with these kinds of games is dependent in no small part to who you play it with, and I had good company throughout.
The game itself is fine but, as of this writing, also feels stuck in the same state a lot of online-only multiplayer games are near launch. It doesn't feel robust, having only eight missions which you can burn through pretty quickly. So quickly that you'll likely tire of Payday 3 well before working your way through the game's lengthy weapon and skill trees. Though there are multiple ways to approach each mission, they are not deep enough to keep the game engaging for any reasonable person to earn a bunch of high level unlocks. Personally, I made it to about level 25 before I fell off.
The cost of unlockables and the amount of money you earn playing missions also feels wildly unbalanced, though it's in the player's favor. Unless you're constantly shooting civilians and intentionally botching missions, you'll earn so much cash that you can freely buy every gun and mod the second they become available. It will be a matter of personal preference, but I do wish Payday 3 made me consider what I could afford and what was best for my build, but as it is, you have no reason to not buy everything. It's liberating, but also makes progression feel a bit thoughtless.
The missions themselves are fun, even if they aren't fun enough to play more than three or four times apiece. There's nothing as crazy as the meth lab from Payday 2 but they all feel distinct enough. Some common tasks like standing in circles to boost wireless signals do feel a bit arbitrary and incongruous with your primary objectives, but I still had a very good time overall. I just wish there was more.
As with any live service game, all of this could change. No doubt Starbreeze intends to add more missions, more guns, more operators... It's just a matter of when, how far they're willing to go, and what the life of the game will end up being.
In a way, I feel weird passing judgement on something so amorphous, especially at such an early stage, but Deep Silver is charging money for this right now. It's not free-to-play, the closest you'll get to that through any legitimate means is if you managed to stack a bunch of one-dollar subscriptions to Game Pass, and even then, it's not like you really own it. This is a long walk to say that while I love pointing directly at a guard's face with the homies while whispering "Guard! Look, it's a guard!" I'm not sure it's good enough to justify its current price tag, but also maybe it will be a year down the line. Who knows!
Piece of shit drill. Fuckaroonie.
I have a tendency to buy new releases, whether at launch or after months of carefully monitoring prices for a good deal, but Payday 3 was the rare "eh, I'm gonna get a month of Game Pass" game. Not like you can do crimes with bots, this is online only, and when the servers inevitably shut down it's game over for everybody. Ah, the future of ownership.
Thankfully, I wasn't stuck partnering up with a bunch of random weirdos (for the most part.) The majority of my time in Payday 3 was spent
The game itself is fine but, as of this writing, also feels stuck in the same state a lot of online-only multiplayer games are near launch. It doesn't feel robust, having only eight missions which you can burn through pretty quickly. So quickly that you'll likely tire of Payday 3 well before working your way through the game's lengthy weapon and skill trees. Though there are multiple ways to approach each mission, they are not deep enough to keep the game engaging for any reasonable person to earn a bunch of high level unlocks. Personally, I made it to about level 25 before I fell off.
The cost of unlockables and the amount of money you earn playing missions also feels wildly unbalanced, though it's in the player's favor. Unless you're constantly shooting civilians and intentionally botching missions, you'll earn so much cash that you can freely buy every gun and mod the second they become available. It will be a matter of personal preference, but I do wish Payday 3 made me consider what I could afford and what was best for my build, but as it is, you have no reason to not buy everything. It's liberating, but also makes progression feel a bit thoughtless.
The missions themselves are fun, even if they aren't fun enough to play more than three or four times apiece. There's nothing as crazy as the meth lab from Payday 2 but they all feel distinct enough. Some common tasks like standing in circles to boost wireless signals do feel a bit arbitrary and incongruous with your primary objectives, but I still had a very good time overall. I just wish there was more.
As with any live service game, all of this could change. No doubt Starbreeze intends to add more missions, more guns, more operators... It's just a matter of when, how far they're willing to go, and what the life of the game will end up being.
In a way, I feel weird passing judgement on something so amorphous, especially at such an early stage, but Deep Silver is charging money for this right now. It's not free-to-play, the closest you'll get to that through any legitimate means is if you managed to stack a bunch of one-dollar subscriptions to Game Pass, and even then, it's not like you really own it. This is a long walk to say that while I love pointing directly at a guard's face with the homies while whispering "Guard! Look, it's a guard!" I'm not sure it's good enough to justify its current price tag, but also maybe it will be a year down the line. Who knows!
Piece of shit drill. Fuckaroonie.
Licking the plate clean of the bland gruel that is Doom 3: BFG Edition. The Lost Mission was added in 2012, continuing the fine Doom tradition of adding one final helping of content well after the main course. The after dinner mint of Doom 3, as it were. Food analogy.
BFG Edition and Resurrection of Evil feel like mechanically and visually gutted versions of a better game, but The Lost Mission is action oriented by design and ends up being a whole lot better for it. Any attempt at steeping the player in darkness is excised, just run around and shoot demons. You get the super shotgun almost immediately and I might be going a bit crazy, but I swear it's better than it was in Resurrection of Evil. No hard evidence to substantiate that.
The Lost Mission is also ridiculously short, clocking in at just a little over an hour. That briskness is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, Lost Mission never overstays its welcome, on the other, it feels like it's getting going once you reach Hell. Although this does raise a question I hadn't yet considered posing in these reviews: why can't you run in Hell? I mean, yes, you can run, but you have to hold down L3 the entire time rather than having it on a toggle like you would on Mars. What's the logic behind this? It also didn't dawn on me until this late in my whole Doom 3 playthrough, but there's no subtitles in this game. Hard of hearing? Id don't care.
It's nice that the full Doom 3: BFG package ends on a high note, but I'm still walking away from all of this thinking it's at the low end of my overall ranking of Dooms, sitting right under Doom 2 and above Master Levels.
Doom 3: BFG Edition review
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil review
BFG Edition and Resurrection of Evil feel like mechanically and visually gutted versions of a better game, but The Lost Mission is action oriented by design and ends up being a whole lot better for it. Any attempt at steeping the player in darkness is excised, just run around and shoot demons. You get the super shotgun almost immediately and I might be going a bit crazy, but I swear it's better than it was in Resurrection of Evil. No hard evidence to substantiate that.
The Lost Mission is also ridiculously short, clocking in at just a little over an hour. That briskness is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, Lost Mission never overstays its welcome, on the other, it feels like it's getting going once you reach Hell. Although this does raise a question I hadn't yet considered posing in these reviews: why can't you run in Hell? I mean, yes, you can run, but you have to hold down L3 the entire time rather than having it on a toggle like you would on Mars. What's the logic behind this? It also didn't dawn on me until this late in my whole Doom 3 playthrough, but there's no subtitles in this game. Hard of hearing? Id don't care.
It's nice that the full Doom 3: BFG package ends on a high note, but I'm still walking away from all of this thinking it's at the low end of my overall ranking of Dooms, sitting right under Doom 2 and above Master Levels.
Doom 3: BFG Edition review
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil review
Played on the PS5 as part of the BFG Edition. Unless I'm missing something, there's no individual listing on the site for this expansion on non-PC/Xbox platforms.
Id saw Half-Life 2's gravity gun and thought "Hm, me too," and then did nothing interesting with it. What a game!
Seriously, there's not much to say about Resurrection of Evil. It's really just more Doom 3 with a few new weapons thrown in, including the aforementioned gravity gun which is rarely ever the best choice in a firefight, a dampened super shotgun (this is a crime), and a heart that can be used to enter slow motion and increase your damage. The latter is all but mandatory if you want to make the super shotgun as powerful as it deserves to be.
The new boss fights are at least a step up from the base game, and levels flow a bit better. A few areas in the base Doom 3 overstayed their welcome, comparatively Resurrection of Evil hits a near perfect pace. Then again, going off of howlongtobeat dot com, I finished this in half under par, so maybe I'm just built different. I got the sicko speedrunner gene, but it's only activated in Doom 3 and REmake. Point is, you might feel this is more of a slog than I did, because you aren't built like me. Sorry.
Overall, I'd say this is marginally better than BFG Edition even though the added weapons lack punch, but it still suffers from a lot of the same issues. At least it's short enough that you might as well jump right into it after finishing Doom 3 to tie up narrative loose ends, as Ressurection of Evil essentially serves as the true ending. If you care about that. I don't.
Id saw Half-Life 2's gravity gun and thought "Hm, me too," and then did nothing interesting with it. What a game!
Seriously, there's not much to say about Resurrection of Evil. It's really just more Doom 3 with a few new weapons thrown in, including the aforementioned gravity gun which is rarely ever the best choice in a firefight, a dampened super shotgun (this is a crime), and a heart that can be used to enter slow motion and increase your damage. The latter is all but mandatory if you want to make the super shotgun as powerful as it deserves to be.
The new boss fights are at least a step up from the base game, and levels flow a bit better. A few areas in the base Doom 3 overstayed their welcome, comparatively Resurrection of Evil hits a near perfect pace. Then again, going off of howlongtobeat dot com, I finished this in half under par, so maybe I'm just built different. I got the sicko speedrunner gene, but it's only activated in Doom 3 and REmake. Point is, you might feel this is more of a slog than I did, because you aren't built like me. Sorry.
Overall, I'd say this is marginally better than BFG Edition even though the added weapons lack punch, but it still suffers from a lot of the same issues. At least it's short enough that you might as well jump right into it after finishing Doom 3 to tie up narrative loose ends, as Ressurection of Evil essentially serves as the true ending. If you care about that. I don't.
2012
BFG? Yeah, pal, this is a Bad Fucking Game.
[gets hit by chairs and beer bottles until unconscious]
Alright, alright, Doom 3: BFG Edition is not a bad game, it's just a depressing and sometimes boring one. It's not Doom, even if it may be lousy with monster closets and big fat EXIT buttons that whisk you to the next stage. The pacing is slow, there are few open areas, and there's a significant emphasis on plot, and I do not find any of that to be inherently bad. In fact, I respect Id for trying to do something different. Sticking the player with a dogshit shotgun and wimpy BFG is unforgivable, though.
Doom 3 is much more of a horror game than it is a "boomer shooter," and that's totally fine, even if it might be a bit ill-advised to make it a numbered entry. The problem that I have with the BFG Edition is that it interferes too much with the atmosphere Id tried to build by nixing dynamic shadows and lighting and making the infamous "flashlight mod" the default. Now, I'll admit I haven't actually played the original Doom 3 (I have bought a copy and am waiting for it to arrive), so it's hard to give a full-throated denouncement of these changes. But I can also look at side-by-side comparisons and, god damn, one of these pictures is not like the other.
It's also not that hard to take in how Doom 3's levels flow, what locations Id chose to make pitch dark, and intuit how the flashlight was meant to place you in risky situations where your gun is not drawn. Sure, I need to close my eyes and imagine a game where firefights are lit only by muzzle flash and fireballs, but I can appreciate how this might build more stress in the player and foster doubt that a room is truly safe. It sounds interesting. Wish I was playing that game!
That's not to say Doom 3's faults are entirely isolated to the BFG Edition, though some of the most egregious ones are. I am not a fan of replacing color-coded key cards with numerical codes, mostly because you need to dig those out of PDA documents that are incredibly dry and bereft of humor. Late into the game I saw a monitor that read "Download hell portal safety tips" and it was like this brief flash at a better game that was about a decade down the road. Not that Doom can't have any story, or even a very self-serious one, but I just don't think any character is particularly well-written in Doom 3 and I found the beat-to-beat moments of the plot to be dull.
I also got the Speedrunner trophy because I beat the game in about 7 hours which is surprising to me, because I feel like I played it for a least twice that. See you all at GDQ, I guess.
I'll be moving on to the DLC next, but I'm not too excited for it. Real bummer that I had a more bone-chilling experience with Bomberman Act:Zero but I guess that's what happens when you completely gut your game of atmosphere to appease those who (somewhat understandably) wanted more Doom in their Doom 3.
[gets hit by chairs and beer bottles until unconscious]
Alright, alright, Doom 3: BFG Edition is not a bad game, it's just a depressing and sometimes boring one. It's not Doom, even if it may be lousy with monster closets and big fat EXIT buttons that whisk you to the next stage. The pacing is slow, there are few open areas, and there's a significant emphasis on plot, and I do not find any of that to be inherently bad. In fact, I respect Id for trying to do something different. Sticking the player with a dogshit shotgun and wimpy BFG is unforgivable, though.
Doom 3 is much more of a horror game than it is a "boomer shooter," and that's totally fine, even if it might be a bit ill-advised to make it a numbered entry. The problem that I have with the BFG Edition is that it interferes too much with the atmosphere Id tried to build by nixing dynamic shadows and lighting and making the infamous "flashlight mod" the default. Now, I'll admit I haven't actually played the original Doom 3 (I have bought a copy and am waiting for it to arrive), so it's hard to give a full-throated denouncement of these changes. But I can also look at side-by-side comparisons and, god damn, one of these pictures is not like the other.
It's also not that hard to take in how Doom 3's levels flow, what locations Id chose to make pitch dark, and intuit how the flashlight was meant to place you in risky situations where your gun is not drawn. Sure, I need to close my eyes and imagine a game where firefights are lit only by muzzle flash and fireballs, but I can appreciate how this might build more stress in the player and foster doubt that a room is truly safe. It sounds interesting. Wish I was playing that game!
That's not to say Doom 3's faults are entirely isolated to the BFG Edition, though some of the most egregious ones are. I am not a fan of replacing color-coded key cards with numerical codes, mostly because you need to dig those out of PDA documents that are incredibly dry and bereft of humor. Late into the game I saw a monitor that read "Download hell portal safety tips" and it was like this brief flash at a better game that was about a decade down the road. Not that Doom can't have any story, or even a very self-serious one, but I just don't think any character is particularly well-written in Doom 3 and I found the beat-to-beat moments of the plot to be dull.
I also got the Speedrunner trophy because I beat the game in about 7 hours which is surprising to me, because I feel like I played it for a least twice that. See you all at GDQ, I guess.
I'll be moving on to the DLC next, but I'm not too excited for it. Real bummer that I had a more bone-chilling experience with Bomberman Act:Zero but I guess that's what happens when you completely gut your game of atmosphere to appease those who (somewhat understandably) wanted more Doom in their Doom 3.
2006
"As knowledge increases, the attitude of science towards the things of the invisible world is undergoing considerable modification." - Tulpa: Thought Forms
Frequent excursions into the retro games market have left me with less and less to collect. All that remains are those holy grails, with their inflated rarity and high price tags, which my better judgement prohibits me from purchasing. I've had to broaden my collection to keep my addiction fed, venturing into the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 libraries, which are still relatively affordable across the board. However, I am now nearing the edge of what is notable or worth playing. On my last expedition I came across Bomberman Act: Zero, which I stared at for some time, like Father Merrin face-to-face with the statue of Pazuzu... only with a dirty old Gamestop sticker on the side.
"USED $5.99" it read.
"Condition - Acceptable, $14" said the listing.
Seemed like a good deal at the time, but do I really want to play Bomberman Act: Zero? No. No I do not. Not even as a joke.
Around the same time, I was looking into matters of the occult, in particular the creation of Tulpas, or "thought-forms." These beings created from intense thought can be given material form and might be better understood to some as doppelgangers. If I were to fashion a thought-form of myself and task it with completing Bomberman Act: Zero for me, then I could log the game on a technicality without dirtying my hands...
With my mind made up, I purchased some material to study, including the predominant text on the subject: "Tulpa: Thought Forms" by C.W. Leadbeater. You know you're dealing with 1900s magic when passages like "magnets are found to be possessed of uncanny powers" are sprinkled between praise for the practice of mesmerism.
After several attempts ended in catastrophic failure and the destruction of malformed Tulpas (which I still do not know how to properly dispose of), I was able to generate a thought-form which perfectly replicated my shape and image and, hopefully, my talent for playing video games. There were still some imperfections. He continually leaked a viscous and fowl black substance, spoke in a language I do not understand nor am I able to identify as being from this Earth, and he exhibited signs of aggression whenever I tried to teach him the button layout of the Xbox 360 gamepad. I was, however, able to placate him with salty foods - pickle brine and V8 juice being particular favorites.
Out of concern for my safety, I purchased a lock and shut him off in the game room with a few jars of olives and NOS energy drink in case he got thirsty. I also set up a basic Raspberry Pi powered camera system and a monitor so I could observe his progress. My Tulpa took to Bomberman Act:Zero's upgrade system pretty quickly, often placing a priority on health upgrades to shoulder damage and corner squirrely opponents, but the third-person camera system - present only in one game mode - seemed to encumber him. He would progress through 20 or so stages, game over, and then make more or less the same amount of headway on the next run. I considered the first night of the experiment to be a success and went to bed.
I was awoken hours later by a tremendous noise, one that physically shook the space around me. Silence followed for two minutes as I sat stunned in bed. "You're alive. Get to the next stage" echoed through the wall soon after. I rushed to the monitor only to find it smeared in the same black substance my Tulpa had been producing since his creation. I decided to venture into the game room to clean the camera lens but was halted by a disturbing thought... Why does the female Bomberman have jiggle physics?
It was around when my Tulpa got stuck inside the walls of my apartment that I started to question if this whole misadventure was worth it. His body flattened, scurrying about like a cockroach, zipping room-to-room with the horrid scratching of his nails digging into my head. I smacked the wall to coral him back to the game room, then entered while banging two pans together to keep him at bay, but I was unable to find his point of entry. I quickly wiped off the lens again and retreated. I don't think I got any of this right. Maybe I should've had the courage to play Bomberman Act: Zero myself, or else had the self-restraint to not buy it in the first place.
Hudson Soft's bloodletting of Bomberman's signature style and charm and subsequent transfusion of grim-dark edge is no doubt born from a cynical perception of what "Gamers" were in the market for circa 2006. Games like Shadow the Hedgehog arguably exist for the same reason, but at least they have a sense of humor about it. Bomberman Act:Zero is so dry, so lacking in content and identity, that despite playing fine it's just uninspired. As I watched my Tulpa near level 80, I found myself reminiscing on Saturn Bomberman. Maybe I was unfair towards it. Perhaps I should play it again, approach it from a different perspective. But it's locked in the room with him. Drats.
The Tulpa died again after clipping into the side of a block and getting stuck. Fusion Frenzy 2 was made with the same engine. How could this happen? I cursed Hudson for not implementing a save system in their 99-level video game. Though each run came with a bit more progress, it was only prolonging the existence of my Tulpa and the clawing madness of keeping him under control. Every time I passed by the game room - his cage - his hand grasped the bottom of the door and jerked it loudly in the frame, then he whispered to me my fears. I began to feel sick and retched into the toilet something that momentarily appeared jet black, then clear. A trick of the eyes, perhaps. I hadn't slept in days.
Level 99. Dehydrated and weary, I watched as the battle played out, my Tulpa struggling against the last of his computer opponents. Blocks began to fall, closing in around the two. It was a matter of mere position that led to my Tulpa's victory. As Bomberman looked to the sky, gates opening overhead to grant him freedom from his prison, I felt calm for the first time in days. It was over. A bit anticlimactic, like Hudson never had any faith someone would play that much Act:Zero, but at least the nightmare was at its end.
I don't think Bomberman Act:Zero is a good game, and I can't even respect it for being different. It kowtowed to the Western market's hunger for muddy, brown, edgy games out of some pessimistic belief that something was wrong with Bomberman. There is no vision here, and beyond its lackluster aesthetic, it's a skeleton of a game. Even at $14 it feels anemic. Like other multiplayer arcade games, I thought that playing with another person might improve my opinion of it, and so I offered to face my Tulpa in a one-on-one battle. He knocked me over and bit my hand. It still burns and the wound continues to widen, but I was able to escape and lock the door once more.
When C.W. Leadbeater pontificates about the power of mental projection and the ability to will thought into form, it's hard not to consider the relation of these occult beliefs to the act of creating media. After all, what is a book, a drawing, or a game if not the manifestation of our thoughts into something tangible, which can be expressed to others with such vividness and clarity as to be understood as it exists in our mind?
You also got a lot of Tulpamancers out there trying to will My Little Pony characters into existence. It's an interesting field of study!
I don't think Hudson Soft set out to make something bad, but the terrible end result of their efforts now exists with a life of its own. So too did I approach the creation of my Tulpa with the best of intentions, only to release a great evil into the world.
And I must now destroy it.
Frequent excursions into the retro games market have left me with less and less to collect. All that remains are those holy grails, with their inflated rarity and high price tags, which my better judgement prohibits me from purchasing. I've had to broaden my collection to keep my addiction fed, venturing into the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 libraries, which are still relatively affordable across the board. However, I am now nearing the edge of what is notable or worth playing. On my last expedition I came across Bomberman Act: Zero, which I stared at for some time, like Father Merrin face-to-face with the statue of Pazuzu... only with a dirty old Gamestop sticker on the side.
"USED $5.99" it read.
"Condition - Acceptable, $14" said the listing.
Seemed like a good deal at the time, but do I really want to play Bomberman Act: Zero? No. No I do not. Not even as a joke.
Around the same time, I was looking into matters of the occult, in particular the creation of Tulpas, or "thought-forms." These beings created from intense thought can be given material form and might be better understood to some as doppelgangers. If I were to fashion a thought-form of myself and task it with completing Bomberman Act: Zero for me, then I could log the game on a technicality without dirtying my hands...
With my mind made up, I purchased some material to study, including the predominant text on the subject: "Tulpa: Thought Forms" by C.W. Leadbeater. You know you're dealing with 1900s magic when passages like "magnets are found to be possessed of uncanny powers" are sprinkled between praise for the practice of mesmerism.
After several attempts ended in catastrophic failure and the destruction of malformed Tulpas (which I still do not know how to properly dispose of), I was able to generate a thought-form which perfectly replicated my shape and image and, hopefully, my talent for playing video games. There were still some imperfections. He continually leaked a viscous and fowl black substance, spoke in a language I do not understand nor am I able to identify as being from this Earth, and he exhibited signs of aggression whenever I tried to teach him the button layout of the Xbox 360 gamepad. I was, however, able to placate him with salty foods - pickle brine and V8 juice being particular favorites.
Out of concern for my safety, I purchased a lock and shut him off in the game room with a few jars of olives and NOS energy drink in case he got thirsty. I also set up a basic Raspberry Pi powered camera system and a monitor so I could observe his progress. My Tulpa took to Bomberman Act:Zero's upgrade system pretty quickly, often placing a priority on health upgrades to shoulder damage and corner squirrely opponents, but the third-person camera system - present only in one game mode - seemed to encumber him. He would progress through 20 or so stages, game over, and then make more or less the same amount of headway on the next run. I considered the first night of the experiment to be a success and went to bed.
I was awoken hours later by a tremendous noise, one that physically shook the space around me. Silence followed for two minutes as I sat stunned in bed. "You're alive. Get to the next stage" echoed through the wall soon after. I rushed to the monitor only to find it smeared in the same black substance my Tulpa had been producing since his creation. I decided to venture into the game room to clean the camera lens but was halted by a disturbing thought... Why does the female Bomberman have jiggle physics?
It was around when my Tulpa got stuck inside the walls of my apartment that I started to question if this whole misadventure was worth it. His body flattened, scurrying about like a cockroach, zipping room-to-room with the horrid scratching of his nails digging into my head. I smacked the wall to coral him back to the game room, then entered while banging two pans together to keep him at bay, but I was unable to find his point of entry. I quickly wiped off the lens again and retreated. I don't think I got any of this right. Maybe I should've had the courage to play Bomberman Act: Zero myself, or else had the self-restraint to not buy it in the first place.
Hudson Soft's bloodletting of Bomberman's signature style and charm and subsequent transfusion of grim-dark edge is no doubt born from a cynical perception of what "Gamers" were in the market for circa 2006. Games like Shadow the Hedgehog arguably exist for the same reason, but at least they have a sense of humor about it. Bomberman Act:Zero is so dry, so lacking in content and identity, that despite playing fine it's just uninspired. As I watched my Tulpa near level 80, I found myself reminiscing on Saturn Bomberman. Maybe I was unfair towards it. Perhaps I should play it again, approach it from a different perspective. But it's locked in the room with him. Drats.
The Tulpa died again after clipping into the side of a block and getting stuck. Fusion Frenzy 2 was made with the same engine. How could this happen? I cursed Hudson for not implementing a save system in their 99-level video game. Though each run came with a bit more progress, it was only prolonging the existence of my Tulpa and the clawing madness of keeping him under control. Every time I passed by the game room - his cage - his hand grasped the bottom of the door and jerked it loudly in the frame, then he whispered to me my fears. I began to feel sick and retched into the toilet something that momentarily appeared jet black, then clear. A trick of the eyes, perhaps. I hadn't slept in days.
Level 99. Dehydrated and weary, I watched as the battle played out, my Tulpa struggling against the last of his computer opponents. Blocks began to fall, closing in around the two. It was a matter of mere position that led to my Tulpa's victory. As Bomberman looked to the sky, gates opening overhead to grant him freedom from his prison, I felt calm for the first time in days. It was over. A bit anticlimactic, like Hudson never had any faith someone would play that much Act:Zero, but at least the nightmare was at its end.
I don't think Bomberman Act:Zero is a good game, and I can't even respect it for being different. It kowtowed to the Western market's hunger for muddy, brown, edgy games out of some pessimistic belief that something was wrong with Bomberman. There is no vision here, and beyond its lackluster aesthetic, it's a skeleton of a game. Even at $14 it feels anemic. Like other multiplayer arcade games, I thought that playing with another person might improve my opinion of it, and so I offered to face my Tulpa in a one-on-one battle. He knocked me over and bit my hand. It still burns and the wound continues to widen, but I was able to escape and lock the door once more.
When C.W. Leadbeater pontificates about the power of mental projection and the ability to will thought into form, it's hard not to consider the relation of these occult beliefs to the act of creating media. After all, what is a book, a drawing, or a game if not the manifestation of our thoughts into something tangible, which can be expressed to others with such vividness and clarity as to be understood as it exists in our mind?
You also got a lot of Tulpamancers out there trying to will My Little Pony characters into existence. It's an interesting field of study!
I don't think Hudson Soft set out to make something bad, but the terrible end result of their efforts now exists with a life of its own. So too did I approach the creation of my Tulpa with the best of intentions, only to release a great evil into the world.
And I must now destroy it.
Shin-ra is experimenting on hunks to make them hunkier-- somebody do something!!!
I skipped Crisis Core when it first released, having already decided to pass on the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII after "dilly-dally shilly-shally" entered my mind like a leucotome to carve out the part of my brain capable of giving a shit. I loved Final Fantasy VII but expanding on that story felt somehow wrong to me. It was fine as-is, I didn't need to see where the characters went after Meteor fell (I prefer the ambiguity and mystery of FFVII's ending), and I definitely didn't need to learn more about Zack beyond what the optional Nibelheim flashback provided.
But something is going on at Square, and it seems to me like their physical releases go out of print faster than any other publisher still pressing discs. I only wanted Crisis Core: Reunion for completionists sake, as a collector, but if I buy something then I'm also going to play it. So, fear of missing out made me finally take the plunge, and I gotta say... Think Zack might be my new favorite FFVII character. I've become Zackpilled and an Angealcel, it's fucking over for me. Throw my body in a pyre so the disease cannot spread.
Crisis Core did not make such a positive impression on me at first, however. The initial few hours feel pretty lacking mechanically, offering a combat system that's perfectly competent but somewhat weightless and dated. A roulette wheel constantly spins between character portraits depicting the people in Zack's life who are important to him, and while the game tries to convey what each possible combination will result in, it was way too much information for me to commit to memory. I gave up trying to understand it immediately. In the words of David Clayton-Thomas, sometimes you gotta just "let the spinning wheel spin."
Likewise, I opted to ride the painted pony through the rest of Crisis Core's ho-hum mechanics, its lackluster shops and Materia fusion system, and tedious missions that are clearly designed around playing the game on a mobile device. A lot of Crisis Core: Reunion reminds me of Peace Walker HD, you don't need to be told it was a seventh-generation handheld game. However, in Crisis Core's case I wouldn't call any of it bad, just dated.
The story, which focuses on Zack's favorite boy band breaking up and how that eventually leads to his death, takes a while to get going and at times feels disassociated from where it's headed. More than once I started the game up after taking a little break and felt like I was missing time. Why is Zack here now? I don't know. Either I failed to retain what literally just happened the last time I played or the story has leapt ahead by an indeterminate amount of time. Whenever something important happens, the story is quick to drop it and move to the next thing, with the in-world time between beats feeling at once prolonged yet brief. It lacks the presence of time and as such left me with this gnawing sense that none of this new material would matter, that it exists only to justify having a game based on a thin strip of plot from a 1997 RPG.
In a lot of ways, Crisis Core feels like it's trapped in an endless cycle of getting started. But then you finally get to Nibelheim...
SPOILERS FOR THE LAST ACT OF CRISIS CORE AHEAD:
Crisis Core isn't the Final Fantasy Remake, none of these characters are going to escape their fate, Nibelheim is as inevitable as Zack's final stand outside of Midgar. The assignment then is to make this climax as impactful a decade removed from the original game, and it accomplishes this by building upon Zack's character and getting the player more emotionally invested in his journey.
Through much of Crisis Core, Zack is portrayed as a try-hard goofball with an appropriately grating voice who views this whole SOLDIER thing as some kind of game. He wants to be a hero like his best bud Angeal or Sephiroth, but maybe not like Genesis because that nerd reads shitty poetry and is literally falling apart. Angeal's supposed betrayal and the revelation of Shin-ra's experiments shakes Zack, but he never completely loses faith that things will turn out ok. That he won't be a hero. By the time he sets foot in Nibelheim, he's still impetuous but has largely mellowed out. He's got a girlfriend back in Midgar (Aerith), has formed a tight bond with Cloud, and has befriended Tseng and Cissnei of the Turks. He has people to fight for, it's not just about his own glory. And then everything starts to rapidly fall apart.
Zack limps back home with a near comatose Cloud in tow, much as he does in Final Fantasy VII, only with a couple of detours to tie up loose ends with Genesis and Angeal. Closing the loop on these plot threads is not something I expected myself to become so invested in. By the time Genesis is nearing the last few passages of Loveless, my opinion of his character had mostly turned around, and the final scene shared between each of these characters is very touching. Despite being injected into the middle of an existing story, it doesn't feel out of place, and it makes good on some of the earlier moments in Crisis Core that I felt were listless.
This trek back to Midgar also feels more emotionally significant. In the original game, you got the sense that Zack was just trying to do the right thing. He's in SOLDIER, after all, he's not just going to leave someone behind. In Crisis Core, the context of Zack and Cloud's friendship is different. It's deeper. Zack begs Cloud to finish off Sephiroth, they nearly died together, they share something deeper than just being a subordinate and superior who had a handful of friendly conversations while on the job. Likewise, the deeper context of Zack's relationship with Aerith makes this journey more painful. The guy really has nothing left except her and his honor.
Even mechanically, any shortcomings Crisis Core has are made up by those last stretches of combat, where Zack struggles to lift his sword and the roulette wheel constantly glitches out on Aerith's portrait. It almost feels like someone had the idea in mind for that one moment and built everything backwards, for better and worse.
Zack never gets to revel in the popularity his heroic deeds bring, but that's not really what being a hero is about.Being a hero is really about getting filled with the most bullets to ever enter into the human body in recorded history It's about protecting and doing right by others, even at great personal cost. He doesn't get to see Aerith again, but he saves Cloud and preserves his legacy, and that at least brings him some comfort.
So, congrats Square, you got me incredibly invested in a character who was to me just a clump of ugly early-PS1 polygons as of a week ago. Was not expecting to feel "Big Boss saluting The Boss' grave" levels of fucked up over a game that starts with characters repeatedly asking if Zack's heard of "dumbapples," or that has a main villain that would unironically refer to himself as a thespian. Granted, a lot of Crisis Core is saved in its last act and it's far, far from perfect, but I had a great time with it and it's no doubt my best panic-buy of 2023.
I skipped Crisis Core when it first released, having already decided to pass on the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII after "dilly-dally shilly-shally" entered my mind like a leucotome to carve out the part of my brain capable of giving a shit. I loved Final Fantasy VII but expanding on that story felt somehow wrong to me. It was fine as-is, I didn't need to see where the characters went after Meteor fell (I prefer the ambiguity and mystery of FFVII's ending), and I definitely didn't need to learn more about Zack beyond what the optional Nibelheim flashback provided.
But something is going on at Square, and it seems to me like their physical releases go out of print faster than any other publisher still pressing discs. I only wanted Crisis Core: Reunion for completionists sake, as a collector, but if I buy something then I'm also going to play it. So, fear of missing out made me finally take the plunge, and I gotta say... Think Zack might be my new favorite FFVII character. I've become Zackpilled and an Angealcel, it's fucking over for me. Throw my body in a pyre so the disease cannot spread.
Crisis Core did not make such a positive impression on me at first, however. The initial few hours feel pretty lacking mechanically, offering a combat system that's perfectly competent but somewhat weightless and dated. A roulette wheel constantly spins between character portraits depicting the people in Zack's life who are important to him, and while the game tries to convey what each possible combination will result in, it was way too much information for me to commit to memory. I gave up trying to understand it immediately. In the words of David Clayton-Thomas, sometimes you gotta just "let the spinning wheel spin."
Likewise, I opted to ride the painted pony through the rest of Crisis Core's ho-hum mechanics, its lackluster shops and Materia fusion system, and tedious missions that are clearly designed around playing the game on a mobile device. A lot of Crisis Core: Reunion reminds me of Peace Walker HD, you don't need to be told it was a seventh-generation handheld game. However, in Crisis Core's case I wouldn't call any of it bad, just dated.
The story, which focuses on Zack's favorite boy band breaking up and how that eventually leads to his death, takes a while to get going and at times feels disassociated from where it's headed. More than once I started the game up after taking a little break and felt like I was missing time. Why is Zack here now? I don't know. Either I failed to retain what literally just happened the last time I played or the story has leapt ahead by an indeterminate amount of time. Whenever something important happens, the story is quick to drop it and move to the next thing, with the in-world time between beats feeling at once prolonged yet brief. It lacks the presence of time and as such left me with this gnawing sense that none of this new material would matter, that it exists only to justify having a game based on a thin strip of plot from a 1997 RPG.
In a lot of ways, Crisis Core feels like it's trapped in an endless cycle of getting started. But then you finally get to Nibelheim...
SPOILERS FOR THE LAST ACT OF CRISIS CORE AHEAD:
Crisis Core isn't the Final Fantasy Remake, none of these characters are going to escape their fate, Nibelheim is as inevitable as Zack's final stand outside of Midgar. The assignment then is to make this climax as impactful a decade removed from the original game, and it accomplishes this by building upon Zack's character and getting the player more emotionally invested in his journey.
Through much of Crisis Core, Zack is portrayed as a try-hard goofball with an appropriately grating voice who views this whole SOLDIER thing as some kind of game. He wants to be a hero like his best bud Angeal or Sephiroth, but maybe not like Genesis because that nerd reads shitty poetry and is literally falling apart. Angeal's supposed betrayal and the revelation of Shin-ra's experiments shakes Zack, but he never completely loses faith that things will turn out ok. That he won't be a hero. By the time he sets foot in Nibelheim, he's still impetuous but has largely mellowed out. He's got a girlfriend back in Midgar (Aerith), has formed a tight bond with Cloud, and has befriended Tseng and Cissnei of the Turks. He has people to fight for, it's not just about his own glory. And then everything starts to rapidly fall apart.
Zack limps back home with a near comatose Cloud in tow, much as he does in Final Fantasy VII, only with a couple of detours to tie up loose ends with Genesis and Angeal. Closing the loop on these plot threads is not something I expected myself to become so invested in. By the time Genesis is nearing the last few passages of Loveless, my opinion of his character had mostly turned around, and the final scene shared between each of these characters is very touching. Despite being injected into the middle of an existing story, it doesn't feel out of place, and it makes good on some of the earlier moments in Crisis Core that I felt were listless.
This trek back to Midgar also feels more emotionally significant. In the original game, you got the sense that Zack was just trying to do the right thing. He's in SOLDIER, after all, he's not just going to leave someone behind. In Crisis Core, the context of Zack and Cloud's friendship is different. It's deeper. Zack begs Cloud to finish off Sephiroth, they nearly died together, they share something deeper than just being a subordinate and superior who had a handful of friendly conversations while on the job. Likewise, the deeper context of Zack's relationship with Aerith makes this journey more painful. The guy really has nothing left except her and his honor.
Even mechanically, any shortcomings Crisis Core has are made up by those last stretches of combat, where Zack struggles to lift his sword and the roulette wheel constantly glitches out on Aerith's portrait. It almost feels like someone had the idea in mind for that one moment and built everything backwards, for better and worse.
Zack never gets to revel in the popularity his heroic deeds bring, but that's not really what being a hero is about.
So, congrats Square, you got me incredibly invested in a character who was to me just a clump of ugly early-PS1 polygons as of a week ago. Was not expecting to feel "Big Boss saluting The Boss' grave" levels of fucked up over a game that starts with characters repeatedly asking if Zack's heard of "dumbapples," or that has a main villain that would unironically refer to himself as a thespian. Granted, a lot of Crisis Core is saved in its last act and it's far, far from perfect, but I had a great time with it and it's no doubt my best panic-buy of 2023.
I grew up poor. My mom didn't have money to throw around on expensive electronics like a Sega CD, and I refuse to believe anybody in America owned a Sega Saturn, so I spent several years holding onto PC copies of Sonic CD and Sonic R that I was only able to play when I visited friends and family fortunate enough to own a PC. That changed when I moved in with my dad, but I was swiftly banned from using the computer after shorting out his Sony Vaio, which put me back to square one.
I didn't take good care of my games back then, and by the time Sonic Gems Collection released in 2005, I'm not even sure either of those discs would've worked. Not that I needed them to anymore. I could play Sonic CD at my leisure now. And yeah, Sonic R and a bunch of Game Gear crap... cool, whatever-- SONIC CD, hell yeah!!!
Regardless of my own situation, Sonic Gems made available several games that were becoming increasingly difficult to find and play even in the early aughts, and I think that's pretty cool. It's also far from perfect and falls short of being a truly great collection in a way that was so perfectly in-character for Sega not just then, but now and probably always.
Multiple Game Gear titles are absent, like the original 8-bit Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Drift, though their direct sequels are part of the compilation. And again, no Master System versions because Sega has never deemed them to be historically valuable. I doubt preservation of media was at the forefront of Sega's mind when they put this package together in 2005, but even disregarding the significance of availability, being able to play the better versions of these games and having a more complete catalogue to choose from would've been nice!
Other notable exclusions include Bonanza Bros. and the Bare Knuckle (see: Streets of Rage) games, which can be unlocked in the Japanese version of Gems but were omitted from the American release, likely to avoid a Teen rating. Which, it's worth mentioning, is very stupid. SegaSonic the Hedgehog and Knuckles' Chaotix are also absent, though it wouldn't surprise me to find that difficulties in porting/emulating these titles made it more trouble than it's worth for Sega. All of this leaves Gems feeling incomplete and were it your intention back in '05 to build a comprehensive collection of Sonic's pre-2000s games, then both Mega Collection and Gems would've left you frustratingly short of your goal.
Despite being overpriced and underbaked, it let me play Sonic CD and Sonic R at my convenience, and it holds some importance for being the first home release of Sonic the Fighters after the Saturn port was unceremoniously cancelled. The museum also features a ton of key art and promotional material, much of which has been made widely available since Gems and in higher quality, but which was at the time harder to come by. So, it's not without its positives, even if its main draw is Sonic CD.
In fact, this is still the only way for me to play Sonic CD on a CRT. I never did get a Sega CD, and the high prices they fetch today coupled with how cheaply they were made makes it highly unlikely I'll ever get comfortable enough to invest in something so prone to failure. But that's alright, I can just pop Gems into my GameCube... or at least I'd like to, but it's scratched in just the right spot to cause the game to crash on the final act of Metallic Madness. I thought Gems was a bit too expensive at the time, so the idea of dropping at least 45 dollars on another copy today is unappealing. That means the only option left to me is loading the game off my Wii or PS2's hard drive. Even today I am jumping through an innumerable amount of hoops to play fucking Sonic CD. I guess some things never change.
I didn't take good care of my games back then, and by the time Sonic Gems Collection released in 2005, I'm not even sure either of those discs would've worked. Not that I needed them to anymore. I could play Sonic CD at my leisure now. And yeah, Sonic R and a bunch of Game Gear crap... cool, whatever-- SONIC CD, hell yeah!!!
Regardless of my own situation, Sonic Gems made available several games that were becoming increasingly difficult to find and play even in the early aughts, and I think that's pretty cool. It's also far from perfect and falls short of being a truly great collection in a way that was so perfectly in-character for Sega not just then, but now and probably always.
Multiple Game Gear titles are absent, like the original 8-bit Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Drift, though their direct sequels are part of the compilation. And again, no Master System versions because Sega has never deemed them to be historically valuable. I doubt preservation of media was at the forefront of Sega's mind when they put this package together in 2005, but even disregarding the significance of availability, being able to play the better versions of these games and having a more complete catalogue to choose from would've been nice!
Other notable exclusions include Bonanza Bros. and the Bare Knuckle (see: Streets of Rage) games, which can be unlocked in the Japanese version of Gems but were omitted from the American release, likely to avoid a Teen rating. Which, it's worth mentioning, is very stupid. SegaSonic the Hedgehog and Knuckles' Chaotix are also absent, though it wouldn't surprise me to find that difficulties in porting/emulating these titles made it more trouble than it's worth for Sega. All of this leaves Gems feeling incomplete and were it your intention back in '05 to build a comprehensive collection of Sonic's pre-2000s games, then both Mega Collection and Gems would've left you frustratingly short of your goal.
Despite being overpriced and underbaked, it let me play Sonic CD and Sonic R at my convenience, and it holds some importance for being the first home release of Sonic the Fighters after the Saturn port was unceremoniously cancelled. The museum also features a ton of key art and promotional material, much of which has been made widely available since Gems and in higher quality, but which was at the time harder to come by. So, it's not without its positives, even if its main draw is Sonic CD.
In fact, this is still the only way for me to play Sonic CD on a CRT. I never did get a Sega CD, and the high prices they fetch today coupled with how cheaply they were made makes it highly unlikely I'll ever get comfortable enough to invest in something so prone to failure. But that's alright, I can just pop Gems into my GameCube... or at least I'd like to, but it's scratched in just the right spot to cause the game to crash on the final act of Metallic Madness. I thought Gems was a bit too expensive at the time, so the idea of dropping at least 45 dollars on another copy today is unappealing. That means the only option left to me is loading the game off my Wii or PS2's hard drive. Even today I am jumping through an innumerable amount of hoops to play fucking Sonic CD. I guess some things never change.
1996
Played as part of the Sonic Gems Collection for the Nintendo GameCube.
"Put away those suicide notes," proclaims Sega Saturn Magazine in their February 1996 issue, "Sonic is back!" Oh thank goodness, the only thing keeping me bound to this mortal coil was the release of a jank-ass 3D fighting game starring Sonic the Hedgehog, I'm saved!
Sarcasm aside, I see just as much potential in a Sonic the Hedgehog fighting game as I do an on-foot racer, and just like Sonic R, I view Sonic the Fighters as a pretty weak attempt to make good on the concept.
Maybe I'm just saying that because I don't care much for Fighting Vipers either, and there sure is a lot of Vipers' DNA here considering Sonic the Fighters practically gestated in its womb. It all started when one of Fighting Vipers' programmers added Sonic and Tails to the game in their spare time, and after Yu Suzuki found out about it, it was kicked up the chain to AM2 head Hiroshi Kataoka. Kataoka wasn't sure Yuji Naka would be into the idea of Sonic characters beating each other senseless, but Naka was reported as saying "Oshima's animals must suffer," and the rest was history.
Oshima himself was rather impressed seeing his character animate in 3D, telling Sega Saturn Magazine "I feel that the punches and kicks are very well done - they look realistic." No doubt he said this shortly after seeing Sonic's hands inflate to three times their size and clap around Knuckles' head. It's cutting-edge stuff, and suffice it to say, Sonic Team was pretty happy with the direction AM2 was taking. Me? Not so impressed.
Like other early 3D fighters, I just don't think there's a whole lot of meat here. Strafe around and whack your opponent in the back of the skull with a full combo for like, a third of their health. Rinse and repeat. Something about these games with their high damage outputs and clumsy special attacks makes them easier to play (for me) by mashing punch and kick, and the AI seems to allow this as a valid way of winning. If I were to play this with another real human being, or possibly some sort of copy of myself made manifest through intense thought, I might get a little bit more out of it, but if I'm in a position to play a fighting game against someone else then why not go for something on the Neo Geo or like, Street Fighter 3? Hell, loading MUGEN up with Sonic characters sounds more fun to me.
Sonic the Fighters is a product of its era and one that meets the standard set for 3D fighting games of the mid-90s just fine, which is why I also find it lacking in the same way I do its contemporaries. Trying to translate the deliberate movement of 2D fighters to a 3D space with the quality of hardware available at the time, especially on console, left a lot of these games feeling stiff and clunky, even after three years of iteration following Virtua Fighter. That's my hot take. Sonic is not back, time to die
"Put away those suicide notes," proclaims Sega Saturn Magazine in their February 1996 issue, "Sonic is back!" Oh thank goodness, the only thing keeping me bound to this mortal coil was the release of a jank-ass 3D fighting game starring Sonic the Hedgehog, I'm saved!
Sarcasm aside, I see just as much potential in a Sonic the Hedgehog fighting game as I do an on-foot racer, and just like Sonic R, I view Sonic the Fighters as a pretty weak attempt to make good on the concept.
Maybe I'm just saying that because I don't care much for Fighting Vipers either, and there sure is a lot of Vipers' DNA here considering Sonic the Fighters practically gestated in its womb. It all started when one of Fighting Vipers' programmers added Sonic and Tails to the game in their spare time, and after Yu Suzuki found out about it, it was kicked up the chain to AM2 head Hiroshi Kataoka. Kataoka wasn't sure Yuji Naka would be into the idea of Sonic characters beating each other senseless, but Naka was reported as saying "Oshima's animals must suffer," and the rest was history.
Oshima himself was rather impressed seeing his character animate in 3D, telling Sega Saturn Magazine "I feel that the punches and kicks are very well done - they look realistic." No doubt he said this shortly after seeing Sonic's hands inflate to three times their size and clap around Knuckles' head. It's cutting-edge stuff, and suffice it to say, Sonic Team was pretty happy with the direction AM2 was taking. Me? Not so impressed.
Like other early 3D fighters, I just don't think there's a whole lot of meat here. Strafe around and whack your opponent in the back of the skull with a full combo for like, a third of their health. Rinse and repeat. Something about these games with their high damage outputs and clumsy special attacks makes them easier to play (for me) by mashing punch and kick, and the AI seems to allow this as a valid way of winning. If I were to play this with another real human being, or possibly some sort of copy of myself made manifest through intense thought, I might get a little bit more out of it, but if I'm in a position to play a fighting game against someone else then why not go for something on the Neo Geo or like, Street Fighter 3? Hell, loading MUGEN up with Sonic characters sounds more fun to me.
Sonic the Fighters is a product of its era and one that meets the standard set for 3D fighting games of the mid-90s just fine, which is why I also find it lacking in the same way I do its contemporaries. Trying to translate the deliberate movement of 2D fighters to a 3D space with the quality of hardware available at the time, especially on console, left a lot of these games feeling stiff and clunky, even after three years of iteration following Virtua Fighter. That's my hot take. Sonic is not back, time to die
1998
Played as part of the Sonic Gems Collection for the GameCube.
I played and reviewed the Sega Saturn version of Sonic R less than a week ago and did not anticipate logging it twice in such a short span of time, but what started as a jog through a couple of courses in the Sonic Gems version of the game became a full playthrough, and I must abide by the accord to review every game I play or else the people under the floor will steal my soul as I sleep.
It's been almost twenty years since I played the PC version of Sonic R, so prior to playing the Saturn release (and buying a wholeass reproduction copy) I was unaware that the PC edition made significant improvements to handling. Given that was my chief complaint and that I very arbitrarily set the expectation that I play a bit of everything before logging Sonic Gems, which uses the PC version, I figured I was obligated to jump in and check it out. And, yeah, it's definitely improved. I was expecting it to be very minor overall, but it's like playing a totally different game. The graphics are also a lot sharper and the added weather effects and time of day feature really adds to the presentation.
In the comments of my previous review, I mentioned being unable to beat Metal Sonic without first unlocking Super Sonic. The sloppy controls coupled with the unforgiving AI made it a cheap race that I could only clear through cheating, but I am happy to say that the improved handling in the PC version allowed me to beat Metal on the game's terms using regular Sonic. I think that's pretty significant! I also would not say it's so much of an improvement that it turns Sonic R into this incredible racing game that everyone is missing out on, but I did end up actually having fun with it the second time around and I think that's worth something.
If you get it into your head to play Sonic R, I'd suggest abandoning that thought and playing something exceptional like Ridge Racer Type 4 or Daytona USA and just like, imagining really really hard that your car is Sonic or whatever. If you're still so deadset, then for the love of god skip the Saturn version and find an iso of Sonic Gems Collection to play instead.
I played and reviewed the Sega Saturn version of Sonic R less than a week ago and did not anticipate logging it twice in such a short span of time, but what started as a jog through a couple of courses in the Sonic Gems version of the game became a full playthrough, and I must abide by the accord to review every game I play or else the people under the floor will steal my soul as I sleep.
It's been almost twenty years since I played the PC version of Sonic R, so prior to playing the Saturn release (and buying a wholeass reproduction copy) I was unaware that the PC edition made significant improvements to handling. Given that was my chief complaint and that I very arbitrarily set the expectation that I play a bit of everything before logging Sonic Gems, which uses the PC version, I figured I was obligated to jump in and check it out. And, yeah, it's definitely improved. I was expecting it to be very minor overall, but it's like playing a totally different game. The graphics are also a lot sharper and the added weather effects and time of day feature really adds to the presentation.
In the comments of my previous review, I mentioned being unable to beat Metal Sonic without first unlocking Super Sonic. The sloppy controls coupled with the unforgiving AI made it a cheap race that I could only clear through cheating, but I am happy to say that the improved handling in the PC version allowed me to beat Metal on the game's terms using regular Sonic. I think that's pretty significant! I also would not say it's so much of an improvement that it turns Sonic R into this incredible racing game that everyone is missing out on, but I did end up actually having fun with it the second time around and I think that's worth something.
If you get it into your head to play Sonic R, I'd suggest abandoning that thought and playing something exceptional like Ridge Racer Type 4 or Daytona USA and just like, imagining really really hard that your car is Sonic or whatever. If you're still so deadset, then for the love of god skip the Saturn version and find an iso of Sonic Gems Collection to play instead.
2015
I know I'm not seeing Pikachu under the Spanish announcer's table jabbing his forehead with the corner of a razor. You can't do that, you've got hepatitis!
Being in proximity to a lot of people who love Pokemon often leaves me thinking about my own relationship with the series. I tend to like a lot of the side games and spin-offs, whereas I couldn't give a shit anymore about mainline Pokemon. You could tell me they've set one of them in England and that you fight Sir Patrick Moore's gigantic, disembodied head in a Dynamax battle and you'd catch my ass sleeping. Pokemon mashed up with Tekken, however... Well, it's surprising to me I skipped over this to begin with, but I was less financially stable at the time and unwilling to play Nintendo's terrible pricing game.
I'm still not, which is why I picked up a $15 copy of the original Wii U release instead of paying 45-60 dollars for the DX edition. Sure, I'm missing out on five new fighters, additional support Pokemon, and DLC, but I still have Pikachu Libre and that's enough for me. Buying a game at a low price also helps soothe the pain of playing something bad and given how many mixed opinions I've heard for Pokken Tournament, it just seemed like the sensible move. I'm a real Michael Pachter over here, I'm very moneysmart average intelligence and dumb as all hell in every other arena.
Thankfully, Pokken Tournament is a pretty solid game, though it is perhaps better enjoyed with others than it is solo. The division of battles between "Field" and "Duel" phases is interesting, but I do wish the Field Phase was more substantial, as I often found it to be the case that I was in it for maybe two or three seconds before smacking my opponent back into Duel Phase. Attacks have satisfying impact, at least, and knocking your opponent between phases and against barriers feels good. I love crunching all of Weavil's bones and watching that little bastard get launched like, twenty feet in the opposite direction. There's a good selection of fighters in the base game, and the amount of support Pokemon you're given is plentiful and diverse. You can stick to supports that behave strictly offensively, or use ones that heal, open up counter opportunities, and more. There's a good amount of strategy to be had there.
The story mode, however, is pretty rough. The difficulty balancing is tilted too far in favor of the player for the first 2/3's of the game, I didn't even retain which button let me block until I faced off against Mewtwo for the last time and suddenly found myself scrambling to relearn it (right trigger, it turns out.) Pokken does settle on being more difficult after this, but it's a shame it only becomes so engaging so late... And well past the point of me being burnt out. There's a lot of game here, arguably too much. The leagues are all quite lengthy and there's three of them that must be completed before you're able to take on the truncated Mewtwo chapter, which feels like the end of the game. However, you have one more league to go before seeing credits, and after those wrap you unlock yet another league that eventually leads you to Ferrum's grandmaster. Thinking I finally beat the game a second time only for the Iron League to unlock made me audibly groan.
But, hey, this is a great game to play while leaving a podcast on, and god knows it gave me plenty of time to catch up on Behind the Bastards. I don't think Pokken Tournament should take seven separate sittings to complete, but at least I learned all about Ben Shapiro's horrid fiction novel while playing it. Listening to Ben's prose is rapidly turning me into an animal and robbing me of that which makes me human!!
I also don't want to dog too much on people's voice acting as I know it's not an easy or particularly well-paying profession, but the dialog in Pokken Tournament is stilted in ways you don't normally see anymore. It kind of gives me "we grabbed people around the office" vibes, but also just a bit too professional for that.
Pokken Tournament has some great ideas and makes good use of the Pokemon license, and I had a pretty good time with it overall. I just wish it were several hours shorter and I'm ready to move on to my next game, which is, uhh... Bomberman Act: Zero? Oh no. Well, my tulpa is complete, but he's just been standing at the corner of my room mumbling something in a language I cannot identify and leaking black fluid all over my carpet that will not come out. Hopefully he'll figure out how to work an Xbox 360 controller soon and I can use my extra free time to knock out the Iron League.
Being in proximity to a lot of people who love Pokemon often leaves me thinking about my own relationship with the series. I tend to like a lot of the side games and spin-offs, whereas I couldn't give a shit anymore about mainline Pokemon. You could tell me they've set one of them in England and that you fight Sir Patrick Moore's gigantic, disembodied head in a Dynamax battle and you'd catch my ass sleeping. Pokemon mashed up with Tekken, however... Well, it's surprising to me I skipped over this to begin with, but I was less financially stable at the time and unwilling to play Nintendo's terrible pricing game.
I'm still not, which is why I picked up a $15 copy of the original Wii U release instead of paying 45-60 dollars for the DX edition. Sure, I'm missing out on five new fighters, additional support Pokemon, and DLC, but I still have Pikachu Libre and that's enough for me. Buying a game at a low price also helps soothe the pain of playing something bad and given how many mixed opinions I've heard for Pokken Tournament, it just seemed like the sensible move. I'm a real Michael Pachter over here, I'm very money
Thankfully, Pokken Tournament is a pretty solid game, though it is perhaps better enjoyed with others than it is solo. The division of battles between "Field" and "Duel" phases is interesting, but I do wish the Field Phase was more substantial, as I often found it to be the case that I was in it for maybe two or three seconds before smacking my opponent back into Duel Phase. Attacks have satisfying impact, at least, and knocking your opponent between phases and against barriers feels good. I love crunching all of Weavil's bones and watching that little bastard get launched like, twenty feet in the opposite direction. There's a good selection of fighters in the base game, and the amount of support Pokemon you're given is plentiful and diverse. You can stick to supports that behave strictly offensively, or use ones that heal, open up counter opportunities, and more. There's a good amount of strategy to be had there.
The story mode, however, is pretty rough. The difficulty balancing is tilted too far in favor of the player for the first 2/3's of the game, I didn't even retain which button let me block until I faced off against Mewtwo for the last time and suddenly found myself scrambling to relearn it (right trigger, it turns out.) Pokken does settle on being more difficult after this, but it's a shame it only becomes so engaging so late... And well past the point of me being burnt out. There's a lot of game here, arguably too much. The leagues are all quite lengthy and there's three of them that must be completed before you're able to take on the truncated Mewtwo chapter, which feels like the end of the game. However, you have one more league to go before seeing credits, and after those wrap you unlock yet another league that eventually leads you to Ferrum's grandmaster. Thinking I finally beat the game a second time only for the Iron League to unlock made me audibly groan.
But, hey, this is a great game to play while leaving a podcast on, and god knows it gave me plenty of time to catch up on Behind the Bastards. I don't think Pokken Tournament should take seven separate sittings to complete, but at least I learned all about Ben Shapiro's horrid fiction novel while playing it. Listening to Ben's prose is rapidly turning me into an animal and robbing me of that which makes me human!!
I also don't want to dog too much on people's voice acting as I know it's not an easy or particularly well-paying profession, but the dialog in Pokken Tournament is stilted in ways you don't normally see anymore. It kind of gives me "we grabbed people around the office" vibes, but also just a bit too professional for that.
Pokken Tournament has some great ideas and makes good use of the Pokemon license, and I had a pretty good time with it overall. I just wish it were several hours shorter and I'm ready to move on to my next game, which is, uhh... Bomberman Act: Zero? Oh no. Well, my tulpa is complete, but he's just been standing at the corner of my room mumbling something in a language I cannot identify and leaking black fluid all over my carpet that will not come out. Hopefully he'll figure out how to work an Xbox 360 controller soon and I can use my extra free time to knock out the Iron League.
1997
Tragedy today at Radical City after Sonic the Hedgehog took a turn too wide too quickly, breaking through the catch fence and injuring more than two dozen spectators. Experts are calling it the deadliest crash in Sonic R history.
I was such a huge fan of Sonic the Hedgehog back in the day that I had a copy of Sonic CD and Sonic R for the PC despite not having a computer to play them on. About the only time I could play either was when I stayed with family that did have a PC, which more often than not was my mom, who I stayed with for a few weeks each Summah. So, imagine my Sonic-loving ass holding onto this copy of Sonic R like it's some precious thing, a Sonic game I've never played before, getting on a plane for four hours and flying out to Montana in breathless anticipation, and then, finally, I put the disc in...
Oh, it's bad. Real bad. Can you feel the sunshine? Absolutely, brother. I'm gonna go lay down on the front lawn and stare at the sun for a while as penance for my foolishness.
The idea of a Sonic racing game where all the characters are on foot makes total sense and it's wild to me that it's considered more novel at this point than throwing them all in cars. At the same time, it's a shame that I can drive a car better than I can drive Sonic, so I can kind of understand why they haven't revisited this concept. Everyone's handling is awful and the dedicated drift is ineffectual, just keeping your racer aligned on the track and not bouncing between barriers or careening into water is a challenge in itself. Every racer feels like an out-of-control animal, and if you're persistent enough you might be able to get them to do what you want, but you cannot embody them.
Everything else Sonic R is wrapped in I'm pretty cool with. I think collecting tokens and chaos emeralds is a smart way to help the player learn the ins and outs of each track, and Metal Knuckles and the Tails Doll are some peak mid-1990s Sonic characters. The soundtrack, composed by Richard Jacques with vocals by Jane "TJ" Davis, is not something I was initially hot on back when I first played the game, but which I have warmed up to over the years. I still don't think any of these tracks are quite as strong as anything else Jacques has composed for the Sonic series (like Sonic Boom), and some of his best work lies elsewhere, like in Jet Grind Radio, but Sonic R's Eurobeat inspired soundtrack has an appeal all its own. I used to think people liked it ironically, but that's just a half-step towards liking it for real, and I've already crossed that threshold. It's too bad the official CD now sells for nearly $300, although if you have a totally official Sega Saturn disc, you can put it in your PC and just rip all the tracks, including some that didn't make it on the soundtrack.
I don't think Sonic R is good, but it's also not so frustrating that I ever felt I needed to bail on it, and after falling into a sort of Stockholmish trance from sheer over-exposure, I kinda had a little fun. Just a little, though. Not enough that I would recommend this over like, Daytona USA. That'd just be crazy.
ADDENDUM: I'm reading that the handling is improved in the PC version of the game, which is what Sonic Gems Collection uses. When I play Sonic the Fighters this week, I'll make sure to do a few courses and touch on this in my Gems review.
I was such a huge fan of Sonic the Hedgehog back in the day that I had a copy of Sonic CD and Sonic R for the PC despite not having a computer to play them on. About the only time I could play either was when I stayed with family that did have a PC, which more often than not was my mom, who I stayed with for a few weeks each Summah. So, imagine my Sonic-loving ass holding onto this copy of Sonic R like it's some precious thing, a Sonic game I've never played before, getting on a plane for four hours and flying out to Montana in breathless anticipation, and then, finally, I put the disc in...
Oh, it's bad. Real bad. Can you feel the sunshine? Absolutely, brother. I'm gonna go lay down on the front lawn and stare at the sun for a while as penance for my foolishness.
The idea of a Sonic racing game where all the characters are on foot makes total sense and it's wild to me that it's considered more novel at this point than throwing them all in cars. At the same time, it's a shame that I can drive a car better than I can drive Sonic, so I can kind of understand why they haven't revisited this concept. Everyone's handling is awful and the dedicated drift is ineffectual, just keeping your racer aligned on the track and not bouncing between barriers or careening into water is a challenge in itself. Every racer feels like an out-of-control animal, and if you're persistent enough you might be able to get them to do what you want, but you cannot embody them.
Everything else Sonic R is wrapped in I'm pretty cool with. I think collecting tokens and chaos emeralds is a smart way to help the player learn the ins and outs of each track, and Metal Knuckles and the Tails Doll are some peak mid-1990s Sonic characters. The soundtrack, composed by Richard Jacques with vocals by Jane "TJ" Davis, is not something I was initially hot on back when I first played the game, but which I have warmed up to over the years. I still don't think any of these tracks are quite as strong as anything else Jacques has composed for the Sonic series (like Sonic Boom), and some of his best work lies elsewhere, like in Jet Grind Radio, but Sonic R's Eurobeat inspired soundtrack has an appeal all its own. I used to think people liked it ironically, but that's just a half-step towards liking it for real, and I've already crossed that threshold. It's too bad the official CD now sells for nearly $300, although if you have a totally official Sega Saturn disc, you can put it in your PC and just rip all the tracks, including some that didn't make it on the soundtrack.
I don't think Sonic R is good, but it's also not so frustrating that I ever felt I needed to bail on it, and after falling into a sort of Stockholmish trance from sheer over-exposure, I kinda had a little fun. Just a little, though. Not enough that I would recommend this over like, Daytona USA. That'd just be crazy.
ADDENDUM: I'm reading that the handling is improved in the PC version of the game, which is what Sonic Gems Collection uses. When I play Sonic the Fighters this week, I'll make sure to do a few courses and touch on this in my Gems review.
2023
Lies of P copies from Bloodborne and Sekiro like a child does from his friend's homework, it has all the answers but it doesn't understand the assignment.
Developer Round8's main takeaway from Dark Souls is that you die a lot, and everyone seems to really like that about it. After all, it's telling you to Prepare to Die right in the title, so clearly that's what people show up for. Well, Lies of P would like you to die too, only it's not so invested in making anything about that loop fun. Round8 has not read deep enough to figure out what makes Dark Souls so engaging and has produced a frustratingly clumsy imitation for it, one that is at times mean-spirited and cheap because that's what Round8 assumes Souls to be.
Lies of P's combat system places a significant emphasis on perfect-parries, which are initiated by hitting the block button a few frames before the enemy's attack lands. Against normal field enemies who throw out one or two attacks at a time, this feels pretty good. Bosses, however, love to initiate absurd 15-hit combos full of staggered animations and straight up fake-outs intended to trip you up and punish you, and that's where I start to fall off with how Lies of P operates. The speed at which your parry is initiated and the level of precision involved makes this system unreliable against flurry attacks, and a severely neutered dodge roll gives you little to fall back on. The game also takes a very Dark Souls 3 "poise for me but not for thee" stance, so I hope you don't mind watching Timothee Chalamet slowly get his wooden ass back up until you save enough Quartz to upgrade his P-Organ so he can dodge while prone.
Perfect-parries, fable arts (see: Dark Souls 3's weapon arts), and charge attacks are all necessary for quickly building stagger damage, because of course this game has a stagger mechanic. It also makes no attempt to convey when you should be pressing the attack or playing defensively, because it obfuscates its stagger meter for absolutely no good reason. Almost all bosses have a second health bar, too, because they all want to be the giant monkey from Sekiro so badly. At this point, I think Sekiro's impact on game design has been a net negative.
Round8's rote copying doesn't end there, however. The door knights from Dark Souls 2, giants from Dark Souls 3, sawtooth blade from Bloodborne, and animation for attempting to use an out-of-stock consumable from Dark Souls are all here. A veritable greatest hits. Round8's wholesale theft isn't limited to Fromsoft, however. Skip this next paragraph if you don't want to spoil some late game character beats and reveals:
Lorenzini Venigni, a friendly NPC who upgrades your Legion Arm (think Sekiro's shinobi prosthetic), is an orphan turned playboy millionaire whose parents were murdered after watching a fantasy-adventure film with their son, leaving him in the care of his faithful butler. The identity of his parent's killer? The King of Riddles, of course. Italian Riddler saying "riddle me this" is as funny as it is brazen, but the biggest laugh Lies of P's borderline-litigious character writing got from me was the post-credits reveal of Giangio being a double agent, which is presented in an extremely Metal Gear-esque way, complete with a "Mr. President..." level name-drop that sets up a potential series of public domain Souls-likes.
Doing something new with something old seems to be the overarching theme of 2023, and Lies of P plays hopscotch on that thin line between inspiration and mimicry. Thankfully, Round8's attempts to recontextualize Carlo Collodi's Adventures of Pinocchio do often result in success, and a strong emphasis on narrative helps pull together borrowed and original ideas to tell a cohesive story that builds upon its primary source material in interesting ways. I was way more invested in the lore of Krat and its inhabitants - yes, even Italian Batman - than I thought I'd be, and some solid art direction and excellent music left me flirting with the idea of a second run.
I also had a great time with the crafting system. You can strap a gigantic blunt wrench head to a pole and use it like a spear, which is exactly the level of stupid I want out of something like this. Hilts determine scaling and attack animations, while blades affect speed and raw damage. Being able to configure a greatsword that's usable on a dexterity build made me feel more inclined to try out weapons without ever feeling like I built my character wrong or locked myself out of something. It's also nice that throwable items remain viable throughout the game, meaning I always had them in my kit whereas I typically phase them out pretty early in most Souls games.
I'm sure this game will attract some annoying people that are very good at video games who will insist Lies of P is beyond reproach, where every flaw is in fact borne from a lack of skill, asserted in a way that reads more as veiled self-aggrandizement than serious criticism. Par for the course with Souls games and the "get good" crowd they attract. I firmly believe that Lies of P is a deeply flawed and derivative game in dire need of re-balancing and new ideas, regardless of how long it took for me to realize I needed to continually dodge left to beat the King of Puppets.
Anyway, I should've stolen Larry Davis' review and changed one or two things about it. Really give you all the true Lies of P experience.
Developer Round8's main takeaway from Dark Souls is that you die a lot, and everyone seems to really like that about it. After all, it's telling you to Prepare to Die right in the title, so clearly that's what people show up for. Well, Lies of P would like you to die too, only it's not so invested in making anything about that loop fun. Round8 has not read deep enough to figure out what makes Dark Souls so engaging and has produced a frustratingly clumsy imitation for it, one that is at times mean-spirited and cheap because that's what Round8 assumes Souls to be.
Lies of P's combat system places a significant emphasis on perfect-parries, which are initiated by hitting the block button a few frames before the enemy's attack lands. Against normal field enemies who throw out one or two attacks at a time, this feels pretty good. Bosses, however, love to initiate absurd 15-hit combos full of staggered animations and straight up fake-outs intended to trip you up and punish you, and that's where I start to fall off with how Lies of P operates. The speed at which your parry is initiated and the level of precision involved makes this system unreliable against flurry attacks, and a severely neutered dodge roll gives you little to fall back on. The game also takes a very Dark Souls 3 "poise for me but not for thee" stance, so I hope you don't mind watching Timothee Chalamet slowly get his wooden ass back up until you save enough Quartz to upgrade his P-Organ so he can dodge while prone.
Perfect-parries, fable arts (see: Dark Souls 3's weapon arts), and charge attacks are all necessary for quickly building stagger damage, because of course this game has a stagger mechanic. It also makes no attempt to convey when you should be pressing the attack or playing defensively, because it obfuscates its stagger meter for absolutely no good reason. Almost all bosses have a second health bar, too, because they all want to be the giant monkey from Sekiro so badly. At this point, I think Sekiro's impact on game design has been a net negative.
Round8's rote copying doesn't end there, however. The door knights from Dark Souls 2, giants from Dark Souls 3, sawtooth blade from Bloodborne, and animation for attempting to use an out-of-stock consumable from Dark Souls are all here. A veritable greatest hits. Round8's wholesale theft isn't limited to Fromsoft, however. Skip this next paragraph if you don't want to spoil some late game character beats and reveals:
Lorenzini Venigni, a friendly NPC who upgrades your Legion Arm (think Sekiro's shinobi prosthetic), is an orphan turned playboy millionaire whose parents were murdered after watching a fantasy-adventure film with their son, leaving him in the care of his faithful butler. The identity of his parent's killer? The King of Riddles, of course. Italian Riddler saying "riddle me this" is as funny as it is brazen, but the biggest laugh Lies of P's borderline-litigious character writing got from me was the post-credits reveal of Giangio being a double agent, which is presented in an extremely Metal Gear-esque way, complete with a "Mr. President..." level name-drop that sets up a potential series of public domain Souls-likes.
Doing something new with something old seems to be the overarching theme of 2023, and Lies of P plays hopscotch on that thin line between inspiration and mimicry. Thankfully, Round8's attempts to recontextualize Carlo Collodi's Adventures of Pinocchio do often result in success, and a strong emphasis on narrative helps pull together borrowed and original ideas to tell a cohesive story that builds upon its primary source material in interesting ways. I was way more invested in the lore of Krat and its inhabitants - yes, even Italian Batman - than I thought I'd be, and some solid art direction and excellent music left me flirting with the idea of a second run.
I also had a great time with the crafting system. You can strap a gigantic blunt wrench head to a pole and use it like a spear, which is exactly the level of stupid I want out of something like this. Hilts determine scaling and attack animations, while blades affect speed and raw damage. Being able to configure a greatsword that's usable on a dexterity build made me feel more inclined to try out weapons without ever feeling like I built my character wrong or locked myself out of something. It's also nice that throwable items remain viable throughout the game, meaning I always had them in my kit whereas I typically phase them out pretty early in most Souls games.
I'm sure this game will attract some annoying people that are very good at video games who will insist Lies of P is beyond reproach, where every flaw is in fact borne from a lack of skill, asserted in a way that reads more as veiled self-aggrandizement than serious criticism. Par for the course with Souls games and the "get good" crowd they attract. I firmly believe that Lies of P is a deeply flawed and derivative game in dire need of re-balancing and new ideas, regardless of how long it took for me to realize I needed to continually dodge left to beat the King of Puppets.
Anyway, I should've stolen Larry Davis' review and changed one or two things about it. Really give you all the true Lies of P experience.
1990
Pilotwings is pretty impressive as far as launch games go, and a great technical showcase for the SNES' Mode-7. I was a bit too young at the time to fully appreciate it, but the leap from NES flying games like Top Gun to the far more believable 3D space of Pilotwings must've been incredible.
I've talked recently about getting a Super Famicom and buying games I'm confident I can play without knowing the Japanese language, but I might've underestimated the amount of reading you have to do in Pilotwings, because the majority of my playthrough was more-or-less spent flipping through my Japanese-only flight manual in a panic while "SINK RATE - PULL UP" blared from the console. Not that I'm good at this game to begin with. Even when I play the English version, I feel like I don't have a handle on things. I know I'm supposed to hit this draft and climb to 500 meters, but I can't even figure out how to keep my hang glider in the air and not accidentally dive-bomb the crowded stands of the USO show.
Unfortunately, I don't know if I'll ever get to play those late-game levels where Pilotwings suddenly morphs into a military shooter, but at least I got a cool looking box to put on my shelf.
I've talked recently about getting a Super Famicom and buying games I'm confident I can play without knowing the Japanese language, but I might've underestimated the amount of reading you have to do in Pilotwings, because the majority of my playthrough was more-or-less spent flipping through my Japanese-only flight manual in a panic while "SINK RATE - PULL UP" blared from the console. Not that I'm good at this game to begin with. Even when I play the English version, I feel like I don't have a handle on things. I know I'm supposed to hit this draft and climb to 500 meters, but I can't even figure out how to keep my hang glider in the air and not accidentally dive-bomb the crowded stands of the USO show.
Unfortunately, I don't know if I'll ever get to play those late-game levels where Pilotwings suddenly morphs into a military shooter, but at least I got a cool looking box to put on my shelf.
I think you can get a gist for how robust the hobbyist game development scene is by observing the current state of Sonic the Hedgehog fan games. After all, a not-insignificant amount of indie and hobby developers cut their teeth on Sonic ROM hacks, building faithful-as-can-be Sonic engines, and decompiling old Sonic games to uncover their many secrets. Ease of access to more powerful game creation tools and an ever-growing level of talent and passion among developers has caused such fan projects to balloon in size and scope as well as buy-in outside of the usual Sonic fanosphere. Take last year's Sonic Triple Trouble remake or Project 06 - we've come a long way from simply putting Dust Hill back into Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
Enter Sonic and the Fallen Star, a fan game which came out around the same time as the Triple Trouble remake, and which similarly emulates the gameplay style of the classic Genesis Sonics while shooting for a far different vibe and aesthetic. Fallen Star in many ways reminds me of Before and After the Sequel in that it's very much built from a place of reverence while trying to be different, and much like those games, the end result is a bit of a mixed bag that is ultimately enjoyable despite some of its flaws.
One major area in which Fallen Star differentiates itself from other fan projects is in how much it distances itself from established Sonic games, something that is otherwise still commonplace. Even games like the Triple Trouble remake liberally reuse sprite art from the Genesis Sonics and other games contemporary to them, and Project 06's entire premise is built on improving a fundamentally broken game. You can trace a lot of the DNA in these fan games back to specific official products, but I could probably count the amount of graphics Fallen Star repurposes on one hand, maybe two if I felt like each Chaos Emerald needed its own finger.
The quality of Fallen Star's bespoke artwork is just as impressive as its quantity. Sonic, Tails, Robotnik and the zones they race through are brimming with life and character, and I really got a kick out of all the extra cameos, like Amy showing up on billboards in Discount Districts Zone, and the statues of Mecha and Metal Sonic obscured by overgrowth in Gusty Greenhouse Zone. About the only areas where I felt the visual design was a bit off was in the cutscenes, which feel very herky-jerky and reminiscent of old flash animations. They also go on a bit too long and disrupt the flow of the game. If Fallen Star modeled its cutscenes after Sonic 3 - perhaps not in style but in brevity - then I'd say this game's presentation is flawless. But, unfortunately, it's like, 98% perfect. How horrible.
Fallen Star's gameplay is a lot rockier, however. At its best, it plays just like you'd expect a Genesis-style Sonic to. Momentum and physics both feel appropriate with occasional hiccups, and there's loads of branching pathways and routes specific to each character. Zones also feel a bit too samey, lacking in strong mechanical identity to set them apart, and at times feeling as if whole chunks of geometry were simply pulled from a consumer-grade Sonic the Hedgehog level editor. There are good gimmicks, yes, but the classic Genesis Sonics and even some other fan games are better at making those gimmicks feel like a cohesive part of each Zone's identity, whereas Fallen Star's gimmicks feel more spaced out in favor of long straight-aways and borderline automated tracks. Spectacle and speed are at the forefront while platforming takes a backseat. It's not bad per se, but as someone who generally favors the slower moments of the original Sonic the Hedgehog and the exploration of Sonic 3, I felt Fallen Star's design was a bit lacking and at times just dull.
Most of my venom, however, is saved for the special stages. You run along a linear track collecting blue spheres to gain speed and rings to add time to your clock while chasing after a Chaos Emerald - it's very Sonic Mania. Springs and boost-rings are littered about each stage, presumably to help you gain on the Chaos Emerald, but they're often unpredictable as their efficacy is based on Sonic's current speed. There might be a pit that can only be cleared by jumping into a boost-ring, but because you hit it so fast it overshoots you into another pit further off. Now you've fallen off the course, and because there's so few giant rings scattered about, you either get to reset the game or make peace with doing a second run for the true ending. It's not great.
So yeah, I've got some grievances with the way Sonic and the Fallen Star does things, but what fan game is perfect? At least it doesn't have some aggressive anti-cheat that acts as malware or gets mistakenly (legitimately?) flagged as a keylogger - I feel like you could do much worse. We'vecomealongway!
At times it feels like Fallen Star is carried by its art style, but I still had a great time with it, and I'm looking forward to seeing what developer StarDrop does next with Sonic and the Moon Facility. It definitely shows promise and the fact that they've specifically called out Fallen Star's level design as a key area to improve upon gives me confidence in where they're going, so I'll definitely be playing through that whenever it's ready.
Enter Sonic and the Fallen Star, a fan game which came out around the same time as the Triple Trouble remake, and which similarly emulates the gameplay style of the classic Genesis Sonics while shooting for a far different vibe and aesthetic. Fallen Star in many ways reminds me of Before and After the Sequel in that it's very much built from a place of reverence while trying to be different, and much like those games, the end result is a bit of a mixed bag that is ultimately enjoyable despite some of its flaws.
One major area in which Fallen Star differentiates itself from other fan projects is in how much it distances itself from established Sonic games, something that is otherwise still commonplace. Even games like the Triple Trouble remake liberally reuse sprite art from the Genesis Sonics and other games contemporary to them, and Project 06's entire premise is built on improving a fundamentally broken game. You can trace a lot of the DNA in these fan games back to specific official products, but I could probably count the amount of graphics Fallen Star repurposes on one hand, maybe two if I felt like each Chaos Emerald needed its own finger.
The quality of Fallen Star's bespoke artwork is just as impressive as its quantity. Sonic, Tails, Robotnik and the zones they race through are brimming with life and character, and I really got a kick out of all the extra cameos, like Amy showing up on billboards in Discount Districts Zone, and the statues of Mecha and Metal Sonic obscured by overgrowth in Gusty Greenhouse Zone. About the only areas where I felt the visual design was a bit off was in the cutscenes, which feel very herky-jerky and reminiscent of old flash animations. They also go on a bit too long and disrupt the flow of the game. If Fallen Star modeled its cutscenes after Sonic 3 - perhaps not in style but in brevity - then I'd say this game's presentation is flawless. But, unfortunately, it's like, 98% perfect. How horrible.
Fallen Star's gameplay is a lot rockier, however. At its best, it plays just like you'd expect a Genesis-style Sonic to. Momentum and physics both feel appropriate with occasional hiccups, and there's loads of branching pathways and routes specific to each character. Zones also feel a bit too samey, lacking in strong mechanical identity to set them apart, and at times feeling as if whole chunks of geometry were simply pulled from a consumer-grade Sonic the Hedgehog level editor. There are good gimmicks, yes, but the classic Genesis Sonics and even some other fan games are better at making those gimmicks feel like a cohesive part of each Zone's identity, whereas Fallen Star's gimmicks feel more spaced out in favor of long straight-aways and borderline automated tracks. Spectacle and speed are at the forefront while platforming takes a backseat. It's not bad per se, but as someone who generally favors the slower moments of the original Sonic the Hedgehog and the exploration of Sonic 3, I felt Fallen Star's design was a bit lacking and at times just dull.
Most of my venom, however, is saved for the special stages. You run along a linear track collecting blue spheres to gain speed and rings to add time to your clock while chasing after a Chaos Emerald - it's very Sonic Mania. Springs and boost-rings are littered about each stage, presumably to help you gain on the Chaos Emerald, but they're often unpredictable as their efficacy is based on Sonic's current speed. There might be a pit that can only be cleared by jumping into a boost-ring, but because you hit it so fast it overshoots you into another pit further off. Now you've fallen off the course, and because there's so few giant rings scattered about, you either get to reset the game or make peace with doing a second run for the true ending. It's not great.
So yeah, I've got some grievances with the way Sonic and the Fallen Star does things, but what fan game is perfect? At least it doesn't have some aggressive anti-cheat that acts as malware or gets mistakenly (legitimately?) flagged as a keylogger - I feel like you could do much worse. We'vecomealongway!
At times it feels like Fallen Star is carried by its art style, but I still had a great time with it, and I'm looking forward to seeing what developer StarDrop does next with Sonic and the Moon Facility. It definitely shows promise and the fact that they've specifically called out Fallen Star's level design as a key area to improve upon gives me confidence in where they're going, so I'll definitely be playing through that whenever it's ready.
2003
My past Mario Parties can be divided into two distinct but miserable circumstances: Mario Parties played years prior with friends that I forced myself to replay alone, and Mario Parties experienced purely in isolation. This ongoing experiment into Mario Party's effects on my mental health needed more variables, so for Mario Party 5 I decided to rope in two additional test subjects who I must assert were not tricked or coerced into participating. Appreciations (Toad) and TransWitchSammy (Boo) have even agreed to help me play through each subsequent Mario Party, a decision that was perhaps brought on by some sort of Mario Party mania or chemical changes to the brain caused by playing Curvy Curbs thirty-eight times...
This left one vacant spot which could've been filled with another human player, but we all agreed that leaving a single CPU opponent in play (Bowser Jr.) would result in more pandemonium and dickery. This was true for the first board, where Bowser Jr. ran a clinic and forced us to form a united front against him. Very quickly, Mario Party 5 became a man vs machine story, wherein we intrepid three mortals of flesh and bone formed a pact to undermine and defeat Bowser Jr. at the expense of our own individual victories. Not that we needed to, as Mario Party 5's CPU is wildly inconsistent, and whether we set Bowser Jr. to "normal" or "hard," he constantly flip-flopped between being a cunning strategist and cheater to ripping the ass of his pants and farting every turn.
It's also a bit hard to form a concentrated attack on any one player when so many of Mario Party 5's minigames are based purely on chance. Sure, no Mario Party prior has been a true "game of skill," but an overwhelming amount of MP5's games involve spinning a wheel and hoping you win. Take Random Ride, a 4 v 4 game where you place bets on which vehicle you think will win a race, with the most fortuitously named ride having the best odds. Whether you choose "100% Assured Destruction" or the "Dogshit Dumbasscopter" is wholly dependent on where you fall in the turn order. Other minigames like Bus Buffers have instructions that straight up say "yo, the controls suck," so that's fun!
Like all Mario Parties prior, MP5 loooves to re-roll minigames instead of showing you new ones. In our weeks long playthrough, I don't think we ever rolled Handy Hoppers, Fish Upon a Star, or Manic Mallets once. We did, however, get Quilt for Speed no less than four times during our last 25-turn game. Though this is the worst collection of minigames yet, Mario Party 5 does at least have Hotel Goomba, and there is something extremely funny to me about running through a hotel and decking Goombas in the face in what can only be described as an act of unprovoked savagery. Shout-outs to the minigames Coney Island and Heat Stroke for having names that make me giggle.
Bowser Jr. was our collective enemy throughout, but after the first night it was Toad Time all the time thanks to Appreciation's incredible luck and astounding ability to mash buttons with a ferocity I've never encountered before. Though they won the vast majority of our games, Sammy and Bowser Jr. did eek out their own victories whereas I struggled to the very last. I'll admit with some embarrassment that I got Mad For Real a handful of times due to the game's dickishness and Dolphin's shoddy netplay screwing me over mere spaces in front of stars, which usually resulted in me getting up to pour myself a drink and returning to bemoan my luck with an increasingly common refrain: "I just want to win a Mario Party."
At least boards are much more forgiving and easier to navigate than past games, featuring far fewer hazardous spaces while being overall less reliant on luck to move about. The inherent lack of gimmick spaces is meant to accommodate Mario Party 5's capsule system, which allows players to permanently alter individual spaces on the board, progressively making the game more chaotic. The layer of strategy capsules introduce is razor thin as you can rarely activate a capsule's effect on a space's occupant immediately, and you risk landing on a space you teed up to harm a specific player. New DK spaces allow players to compete for bananas that can be cashed in for varying amounts of coins, and Boo's star and coin stealing spaces are now represented by Chain Chomp due to his inclusion in the main roster.
Now if you want to become a true Mario Party professional, convince everyone to play on the Future Dream board, then spend a significant amount of the game doing loops around the upper-right section where the Chain Chomp lives and just keep stealing stars from everybody while occasionally grabbing one when it spawns in your territory. Do this enough and you'll humble Bower Jr. turning him into a pathetic fail son. His old man still shows up during the last five turns, permitting the player in last place to spin the wheel and alter the board because "it ain't Mario Party if it's easy." Of course it's Bowser Jr., who has been forced into a star deficit and ruined. "My own son," Bowser thinks, looking at him not in disapproval but disgust. Well guess who's the Dream Star now. Happy Waluigi Wednesday, bitch.
Mario Party 5's greatest asset is how it deepened my friendship with two of my best pals on Backloggd (you're all my pals, but we're just not on the "suffer through Mario Party for six weeks" phase of our relationship yet, sorry.) Were it not for Mario Party Thursdays I wouldn't have had the chance to make fruitless attempts converse with Appreciation's cat, nor would I have been on the edge of my seat as Sammy grappled with Gigabyte's flimsy hardware while trying to upgrade her PC, and neither of them would've had the pleasure of hearing my speech slur, two glasses of rum deep to dull the pain. A friendship forged in the fires of Mario Party's bullshit is surely one that will remain unbreakable. Thank you, Hudson.
2 out of 5.
This left one vacant spot which could've been filled with another human player, but we all agreed that leaving a single CPU opponent in play (Bowser Jr.) would result in more pandemonium and dickery. This was true for the first board, where Bowser Jr. ran a clinic and forced us to form a united front against him. Very quickly, Mario Party 5 became a man vs machine story, wherein we intrepid three mortals of flesh and bone formed a pact to undermine and defeat Bowser Jr. at the expense of our own individual victories. Not that we needed to, as Mario Party 5's CPU is wildly inconsistent, and whether we set Bowser Jr. to "normal" or "hard," he constantly flip-flopped between being a cunning strategist and cheater to ripping the ass of his pants and farting every turn.
It's also a bit hard to form a concentrated attack on any one player when so many of Mario Party 5's minigames are based purely on chance. Sure, no Mario Party prior has been a true "game of skill," but an overwhelming amount of MP5's games involve spinning a wheel and hoping you win. Take Random Ride, a 4 v 4 game where you place bets on which vehicle you think will win a race, with the most fortuitously named ride having the best odds. Whether you choose "100% Assured Destruction" or the "Dogshit Dumbasscopter" is wholly dependent on where you fall in the turn order. Other minigames like Bus Buffers have instructions that straight up say "yo, the controls suck," so that's fun!
Like all Mario Parties prior, MP5 loooves to re-roll minigames instead of showing you new ones. In our weeks long playthrough, I don't think we ever rolled Handy Hoppers, Fish Upon a Star, or Manic Mallets once. We did, however, get Quilt for Speed no less than four times during our last 25-turn game. Though this is the worst collection of minigames yet, Mario Party 5 does at least have Hotel Goomba, and there is something extremely funny to me about running through a hotel and decking Goombas in the face in what can only be described as an act of unprovoked savagery. Shout-outs to the minigames Coney Island and Heat Stroke for having names that make me giggle.
Bowser Jr. was our collective enemy throughout, but after the first night it was Toad Time all the time thanks to Appreciation's incredible luck and astounding ability to mash buttons with a ferocity I've never encountered before. Though they won the vast majority of our games, Sammy and Bowser Jr. did eek out their own victories whereas I struggled to the very last. I'll admit with some embarrassment that I got Mad For Real a handful of times due to the game's dickishness and Dolphin's shoddy netplay screwing me over mere spaces in front of stars, which usually resulted in me getting up to pour myself a drink and returning to bemoan my luck with an increasingly common refrain: "I just want to win a Mario Party."
At least boards are much more forgiving and easier to navigate than past games, featuring far fewer hazardous spaces while being overall less reliant on luck to move about. The inherent lack of gimmick spaces is meant to accommodate Mario Party 5's capsule system, which allows players to permanently alter individual spaces on the board, progressively making the game more chaotic. The layer of strategy capsules introduce is razor thin as you can rarely activate a capsule's effect on a space's occupant immediately, and you risk landing on a space you teed up to harm a specific player. New DK spaces allow players to compete for bananas that can be cashed in for varying amounts of coins, and Boo's star and coin stealing spaces are now represented by Chain Chomp due to his inclusion in the main roster.
Now if you want to become a true Mario Party professional, convince everyone to play on the Future Dream board, then spend a significant amount of the game doing loops around the upper-right section where the Chain Chomp lives and just keep stealing stars from everybody while occasionally grabbing one when it spawns in your territory. Do this enough and you'll humble Bower Jr. turning him into a pathetic fail son. His old man still shows up during the last five turns, permitting the player in last place to spin the wheel and alter the board because "it ain't Mario Party if it's easy." Of course it's Bowser Jr., who has been forced into a star deficit and ruined. "My own son," Bowser thinks, looking at him not in disapproval but disgust. Well guess who's the Dream Star now. Happy Waluigi Wednesday, bitch.
Mario Party 5's greatest asset is how it deepened my friendship with two of my best pals on Backloggd (you're all my pals, but we're just not on the "suffer through Mario Party for six weeks" phase of our relationship yet, sorry.) Were it not for Mario Party Thursdays I wouldn't have had the chance to make fruitless attempts converse with Appreciation's cat, nor would I have been on the edge of my seat as Sammy grappled with Gigabyte's flimsy hardware while trying to upgrade her PC, and neither of them would've had the pleasure of hearing my speech slur, two glasses of rum deep to dull the pain. A friendship forged in the fires of Mario Party's bullshit is surely one that will remain unbreakable. Thank you, Hudson.
2 out of 5.