As a huge bumbler myself, I felt inclined to play the game from which my theme song originates.

It is impressive how smooth this controls for the time, but it lacks variety in objectives and especially the music. The loops are so short that they become mind-numbing, and there's so little music, which is a surprise given how fun the menu theme is.

It honestly plays really well though, the hitboxes are generally really tight, the controller sensitivity is just right to be able to hit things consistently. It isn't perfect but the limitations feel like a part of the experience. Shame that, while the core is good, the objectives are anything but exciting.

The two previous works from Jeppe Carlsen—Limbo and Inside— are about humans. Two kids to be exact. They infiltrate a facility of some sorts to find something, they see very fucked up stuff, they die a lot in gruesome ways. There is something to get attached to there: you see a human and you see them die and go "fuck, that's brutal." At the end, after everything they went through, you think "it must have been for something" and start to imagine things in your head. You begin to make theories. I have my own about both games. The issue with those games for me, however, was that theories would always get cut short. Because everything in there is about humans, things are human-made, things are within the sphere of human understanding.

Cocoon is a game about fucko aliens watching other fucko aliens, beating up fucko aliens, turning into even more fucked up fucko aliens. There is almost nothing human to attach to. There's little guys that follow you around or these big bosses, but these shapes, movements, creatures, they're not anything I can point my finger towards to and go "ah, that came from this." Sometimes it has spider legs, but then it is stuck inside some weirdo crystal and makes brain mass pulsate on the floor. Sometimes it has tentacles but then it's also kind of a plant of some sorts? I just can't really explain anything.

All that's sort of human is that there are answers to the puzzles. Everything is designed, but none of it really operates logically. Things inside things, thing inside itself, things moving between different worlds or realities in ways they seemingly shouldn't. Things materialize and dematerialize, and there is consistency to everything. There is some plan. This game has an ending, your character has an end-goal. Maybe logic is not human after all. The universe existed before us, and it worked in its own way. Maybe logic is inherent. So is there anything human here?

It is on the player to insert that humanity into this game somehow. Thinking about this game as I played it, I have not really encountered a stopping point yet the same way there is with Limbo (the girl must mean something to the main character) or Inside (the creature you become at the end must mean something to the scientists and this facility, as well as the whole meta-narrative), though maybe I will, given that the game does have an ending. But not for now.

There is some form of infinity to this game's alien presentation. The little sound effects of the metal wings or the cybernetics of the robobuds make things feel tactile, familiar, but its constant reliance on the unfamiliar and that cool as fuck ending make it feel infinite in scale. It feels like I can reach into this game and it will keep on giving for a long time. Time will tell, but this is a far more interesting feeling, far more special feeling than anything these types of games have ever given me before. An interaction between the player and the game that doesn't feel gamey. Something truly special.

A terrifying game. Its bone-chilling nature, if it is engaged with earnestly, comes from two factors. First, the obvious one, the nuclear threat, portrayed through a mixture of three different tragedies: Chernobyl, a failure of a mission by the American troops, and the looming presence of an even bigger nuclear disaster. The second, likely less noticable if this was to be someone's first CoD game, is the horror that technological advancement brings to armed conflict. It struck me first on the second American mission, when you put on the night goggles and see all these lasers coming from the guns of your allies contrast with the lack of lights on the side of the enemy. Then, you use the Javelin missiles, you also get some aid from air support. If you die as much as I did, you're likely to see the messages popping up—a staple in the series—however, there's less of these inspirational, detached quotes about war. They are replaced by the costs of the weapons of destruction that have been assisting you. Soon after you get to see from the perspective of air support, where targets are no longer people, they're white outlines—the allied ones are pulsating, the enemies are not. It's the most I've been invested in a CoD title up to this point. It was a truly challenging piece of media, one that doesn't stray from not only cleverly, but also very openly criticising the actions taken by certain governments. The best writing in the series up to this point—a plausible, slightly hyperbolized political thriller with very memorable moments.

The setpieces are undeniably the best ones in the series so far. Modern Warfare has one of the best defensive sections—where you defend a point waiting for extraction together with your sniper teammate who is unable to move due to injury—while also having undeniably the best offensive sections, so many that I can't even choose one, but pushing through enemies towards a point of any kind is intense, difficult and satisfying, upping the stakes and, subsequently, investment in the story.

Veteran is rarely unfair in this title, my only complaint is that the enemies behave a bit inconsistently but the sections where I truly got stuck for longer than I'd want to are few and far between, and they are placed appropriately, given how they would clearly be the most difficult ones for real people as well. You absolutely need to use certain tools at your disposal, the flash grenades especially are key to finishing the last missions, in particular the epilogue plane section.

Modern Warfare is a gaming pioneer and a tough pill to swallow. It holds up fantastically. The moment of eeriness, as well as those of overwhelming noise and pressure—the haunting vignettes of people who got to experience war in its most devastating version so far.

It's weird to me that this game would get overlooked for such a long time when discussing the evolution of Zelda. A sequel from the same team as Link to the Past, bearing so many new ideas, both mechanically and story-wise.

So much of Link's Awakening is up my alley. A large chunk of the items are focused on upgrading the movement: the jump, the pegasus boots improving the jump further while also making you faster, the returning hookshot stretches through the entire screen. All these items find use in exploration and in combat.

Exploration is so smooth thanks to the map being once more split into squares, with hints being saved on it, but there are also the hint houses, working much, much, much better than the ones in LttP. The game relies a bit too much on recognizing stuff from previous games: puzzle types, ways in which items are used or even enemy names play a part in this adventure.

But this amalgamation of the three previous Zelda games with, uh, Mario, is a product of a beautiful, timeless story. Another reason why this title feels tailor made for me is how strange encountering this mish-mash is. The main path has you fight the coolest designed enemies in the series so far, no doubt. The bosses look phenomenal and super unique, and they tend to utilize the upgrades you get in their dungeon extremely well, showcasing the possible depths of combat. None of them ever really require you to combine two, which would be pretty fun I think, but maybe switching between items too much during a fight would be annoying.

The game is generally very easy, but I wouldn't say it's much easier than Link to the Past, playing which I died a LOT. I would simply say this game doesn't have any major flaw, there are no hitboxes that are off, and controlling is as snappy as it was back on the NES.

But perhaps the key to my enjoyment was the art and animations. So many phenomenal sprites and so many clever ways of utilizing the minimalistic beeps and bops of the Gameboy's soundtrack possibilities. So many secrets are elevated by, for example, finding a big, funny fish inside a cave who does a little dance, and the perspective switches between side-scrolling and top-down add so much to the world design. I adore the variety of not just the actual ways of hiding things, but, for the first time in the series, their contents. There are some caves that just have a heart piece of course, but those are usually the most fun when it comes to the process of discovering them, while most of the simpler secrets have very fun contents.

Also just the humor of the game. Zelda was always pretty funny, Link to the Past leaned into it, but this is so lighthearted. It uses sound, animations, everything it has to add to it. Oh, and the pictures are a phenomenal addition. They are so pretty that they make me question how pretty could the Gameboy Color truly be at its best.

Love this game, love that it got its second wind in the form of a remake, love the direction it took the series in, love the weirdness, love every emotional and tonal whiplash, love the story so much, love the ending, love the dungeons, love the items, love the mechanics, love the art, love the humor, love the Mario, love the Link, love the little moments of peace and quiet, the ones of joy and laughter as well as the melancholy sinking in as you move along. Gameboy's masterpiece.

Hard to say whether it's my experience with future Zeldas or my experience with knowledge-based progression games as of late, but I found so much of this game intuitive when others didn't. There really are objects that stick out, contrast with areas you've seen before, or contradict the design of all other areas, and if I just thought what would work on them, well, a lot of the time those ideas simply worked. A lot of the hints are really good too.

It all falls apart in Level 7. What do you mean "there's a secret in the tip of the nose" old man? It has 0 connection to the actual layout of the level, the thing you could consider a nose is not the way forward, and doesn't help with traversing the level at all. What doesn't help is the level of overreliance on bombs. Level 7 and 9 both share this problem. It is stated in a different hint that every 10 enemies the player should receive a bomb drop, but what's the point.

Even the secret item found there, the red candle, is largely useless when you find the book in the next level, though it may serve as a hint to the player that they should try using the candle more, which may lead them to the next entrance. I found it earlier though, through context clues like I mentioned.

But it makes me wonder, if they could have an upgrade for the candle, couldn't they also have one for the bombs? I mean, they do have an upgrade for the bombs in a sense, by allowing you to carry more of them, but why not just let the player use them freely at that point? Most enemies going forward don't even take damage from them.

I guess every issue boils down to wanting to extend playtime. While I had less of an issue with finding things, which is what a lot of people mention when discussing this game, I definitely had to grind a lot. I set out to play this game for as long as I needed to and use only the manual attached to the game. And it worked, I got literally every single thing I needed, I found entrances to level 8 and 9 before finding the fifth one. It was beautiful. All the way up until level 7, where a completely new block pushing puzzle popped up, and I just couldn't really figure out that out of the dozen blocks on screen that one had to be pushed. Had to look that one up.

That level is just such a bizarre mess of ideas, I can't stress that enough. There's also this room that also doesn't appear anywhere else, where "grumble, grumble" is supposed to indicate that you need to give the enemy meat to pass through? Something only found in the same shop as the blue ring, which boosts your defense, making it one of the most useful items at that point in the game, and costs basically the maximum amount of money you could hold, so you would obviously feel inclined to buy that and move on rather than grind for some meat? I mean, I went back and bought it, so by spamming everything I managed to get through, but still, why are all these weirdo ideas stacked in a single level?

That one dungeon really damages what is otherwise an honestly cool experience. I was surprised with how tight the controls were, there are these sections with statues shooting bolts that often have other enemies in them as well, and I had these genuinely great moments of weaving between these shots and the other threats. They were really tight.

So were a lot of the enemies and bosses. They were tough as nails and extended my playtime significantly, but I always felt like if I played better I could actually squeeze through them while taking less damage, and I often did. Too bad you don't respawn with full health, makes collecting all the containers feel somewhat worthless.

There's some surprisingly good stuff here, though it would be hard for me to recommend this as an introduction to the franchise. I'm usually big on playing games according to release order, but I think the knowledge of how certain items are used in other Zelda titles gave me ideas for solving puzzles and finding secrets. Hard to say whether I'd be able to figure them out otherwise.

Hard to say whether I enjoyed the game much, really. Though I didn't find the secrets to be as obscure, and I found the gameplay engaging, I think the actual designs really didn't grab me, and I was only ever excited to find stuff rather than go through dungeons. There were a lot of NES games that simply looked cooler even then. A lot of the designs and color schemes ended up being changed soon after, and for much better. Definitely not one of my favorite titles on the console, but an incredibly cool and inspirational one, even to me in current year.

An earnest, easily captivating story set inside a very alive city. The protagonist is just this absolutely perfect person without a flaw, except maybe that he is in the Yakuza, which is presented as a cutthroat, ruthless organization, full of betrayal and deception. Same for the police. Both of its main representatives are outlaws, who actively escape them.

Though, admittedly, there is a certain hope that both will work, somehow, an inevitability. Other than that, my only complaint is the fact that villains often get introduced the moment you have to go face them, rather than letting the feelings of anger towards them simmer.

But the main story beats are so simple to get behind. A helpless child, a person's sense of duty and honor. Kazuma is such an idealistic character that he goes to prison for 10 years on false accusations to protect those closest to him. And you'd think at some point he'd break, and he does for like a split-second I guess, but other than that he just doesn't. It's, well, inspiring to be honest, to have a protagonist like this, almost as if he's taken straight out of Kamen Rider or something like that. Just a bit more presentable to older audiences; though, in reality, there's little difference. And that's admirable, I thought it was brilliant.

All the ridiculous characters really shine in combat, though. Fighting Majima, Nishiki, or that fucking red-coat gunman. The fighting system is full of these high-impact hits and animations, but it has a solid enough depth too for the game's length.

The way you improve is through gathering EXP or finding people who can teach you techniques. This is where the living city comes in. Aside from being an excellent backdrop to this crime thriller, there's all these individual stories, which are even more ridiculous. The main story and the side-content were actually written by different people, and several, even crazier ones were rejected because they would just go too far with how silly they were. Imagine that.

Somehow, despite the fact that traveling takes a good while, I did feel inclined to check the side-activities out from time to time. Not enough to complete the game 100%, but enough to get immersed in the setting. The game really shows just how effective side-content can be when it is able to complement the core gameplay. The game is very heavy-handed and has these crazy high-stakes scenarios one after another. So go play baseball for a little while. Go visit a girl, spend some of that money you've gathered up.

Overall, even in this first entry, I'm entirely captivated by this series. I honestly can't believe how many of these games exist, and it makes me so glad to know how much more is in store. It's a game I'll need every once in a while. And maybe you will too.

Several small steps forward, several massive steps backwards. Zelda II's core gameplay is tight and tough; the combat on the classic side-scrolling plane is some of the most exciting and dynamic you'll find on the console. Reinterpreting the mechanics from the previous game and incorporating them more meaningfully into the experience: shields are now a key aspect of melee duels, not only ranged ones; the items are replaced by the spells which improve your core abilities; instead of killing to try and grind for money, here you kill to grind exp, to, again, make your basics stronger.

But it's just too much for the poor, old NES. The level of precision required for some of these enemies is so intense that every failure feels like the end of the world. And there's the insta-kill death pits too. The punishment is so much more severe than anything from the previous game. Losing all lives means being sent back to the very beginning, the spawn point, no matter if you choose to continue or not. And the map is so much bigger. You unlock some shortcuts but that doesn't help much.

And the player will lose so many resources trying to find the way into the next dungeon. Though undoubtedly the first game is obscure as well, through the use of the attached manual you can make your way through it for the most part. There are even simple and effective visual clues, plus the other secrets are largely consistent. Not here. Some secrets still get hints, but others? Good luck bumbling in the dark, trying to touch any and all tree in hopes it contains a secret. Tiles that look exactly the same as others may hide a heart container, or even a required NPC, without whom you can't progress the game. It's bizarre because the game has the first few locations like this placed with actual visual clues to guide the player, but further on there is just nothing.

This design feels like a natural extreme—it is testing how dedicated players can actually be to finding these things. In some ways then, I'm glad this thesis was tested so early and discarded soon after when it comes to Zelda. It is a huge step backwards in that sense. But it is unfortunate that the perspective was completely abandoned. Not that the other games on the NES don't do it justice, but there is something about these shield-to-shield duels that can make for something really exciting. I guess we'll never know.

Definitely give it a try without reading anything else about it and see how you feel. Rain World has that potential of eliciting very unique reactions that shouldn't be soiled by any previous experience.

Play it, drop it, play it again, drop it again, play it again, ask someone how to get through the area that's literally just pitch black, play it with them, beat the game.

Ask such existential, heavy-hitting questions as: "why is there an enemy right outside my spawn location that I cannot get past?" and "how was I supposed to know that ever?"

Realize that, honestly, who cares? Watch two lizards chase a zappy bug for 10 minutes. Die to the rain. Lose an hour of progress. Stop playing for a few days. Realize that "that was pretty cool." Go back. Get help. Grow, get better. Realize that, maybe, a part of the game is also the human interaction which arises through discussing this experience.

I hated parts of it. Absolutely despised them. Irredeemable stuff in my mind. It owns.

And to throw epic cool buzzwords because how else could I gain credibility
"Masterclass of storytelling without dialogue" (screw you Playdead)
"Dark Souls of platformers"
"Game journalists am I right?"

Confused. Stupefied, even.

So horribly mismanaged. It almost feels like the devs didn't know that this was to be split into two parts. But they did! This was announced two years before this game. And they also had more time to work on it than most previous Harry Potter games. But there is clearly so much filler that it is so difficult to wrap your head around the process and decision making behind the creation of this game. I mean, even aside from the fact that this is a COVER-BASED SHOOTER... that doesn't even utilize cover!

There's just so much repeat content. In-between the actual story beats which follow the movie, the game presents a set of three small maps every once in a while. You will often return to these locations during the main story or vice versa, making very few areas feel actually unique. The first set is somewhat special, with one mission involving an escape from a dragon cave. Because, you know, going into a dragon cave only to escape it while being hunted is a great idea. But there is also one that's... in an abandoned nuclear powerplant?

Yes, a nuclear powerplant. Not only that, but you return to it later as part of the main story. For some reason they fit in a section where the main characters find Dean Thomas and Griphook traveling and discussing how they're trying to avoid Snatchers (which always conveniently spawn right behind them and in front of you), which gives Harry a lead on Gryffindor's sword. But... he doesn't even catch up to them. Why? And to make matters worse, you have to go back through the level to find a resting spot (this happens often by the way, you run through a level from the back. Filling in time at its finest). The resting spot Hermione decides on is in a cylinder, where, previously while passing it, immortal zombies resided, and in-between which a hundred Snatchers were spawning around every corner.

These are only some of the multitudes of nonsenses which the game throws at you to actually put in some gameplay. Another one worth mentioning, and perhaps the single most egregious one, is that after escaping the Ministry (which Hermione specifically mentions is the single most dangerous place they could be at given their current situation during their attempt at sneaking in) when the trio are on the run, Harry still somehow gets tips about people being held in various locations, and so he RETURNS TO THE MINISTRY TO FREE 6 RANDOM PEOPLE. WITH THE HORCRUX.

And I'm not trying to make it out as if some of the other games don't change the original stories significantly or without much sense in order to add some gameplay, the GBA version of Prisoner of Azkaban comes to mind as it has Malfoy guard the cage Sirius is locked in so there can be a final boss, but this is seriously out there, and in a very serious part as well. Also, it's quite difficult not to nitpick everything, when the actual gameplay is so boring.

Everyone in their mother heard at this point that, for some insane reason, EA decided to make the Deathly Hallows games for mainline consoles be third person shooters. What some may not know is that the shooting is very bad. You unlock spells as you progress the game (There is a level system. Yes, a level system), and while there is only one strict upgrade, they all feel either awkward, look silly, or both. You can make comparisons to guns in other shooters, Stupify is a pistol, Confundo is a sniper (which zooms in Sniper Elite-style when shot by the way) and there is even a rocket launcher. Some spells cause the enemy to fall over, which is incredibly effective as it takes them out of a fight for a time. Others simply deal damage. Confusingly, however, some spells cause a paralyzing effect... like the shotgun one. That's right, you PARALYZE with a SHOTGUN instead of DOING DAMAGE WITH THE SHOTGUN SPELL.

When I said this game is confusing, this truly extends to nearly every aspect of this game. Some things are passable, the music is nice (they even reuse a melody from the very first Philosopher's Stone video game soundtrack very early on, which I found very heartwarming after this whole binge) but it all fails when you just look at what you're doing. Worth noting is that every boss fight is also very weak, you just kinda spam the same spells as always, sometimes literally spam as you just have to press the button a shitload of times aiming at a specific spot. This just wasn't the part that needed this sort of a game. The second has the Battle of Hogwarts, that's where these systems could shine perhaps, but this mellow, character-driven story of part I just doesn't fit, and that's why so much nonsensical content was created, to make it more gamey. The stealth sections in particular stand out, just such a horrible mechanic, though it is kinda cute that, even in the last part, there will always be stealth in Harry Potter games in one way or another.

I had this realization somewhere around the mid-point that I am playing a shitty shooter that is a Harry Potter movie tie-in game, and the location I spent the most time in is an abandoned nuclear powerplant. Again, in a Harry Potter game.

Why?

Games like this aren't entirely about your first impressions, or second, or third really. Many of my favorite NES games are ones that operate best when you just know them front to back, know how to move, know the patterns, know the rules. It's about how satisfying a full run of these games is once you learn them, and how fun the learning process is.

Jurassic Park is incredibly tedious and annoying to learn. It's all patterns. The Triceratops stampede can be beaten without memorization but you will lose several lives, and there are only so many continues. The T-Rex boss is an escort mission where if you or the guy who follows you at certain intervals touches his face, you lose a wholeass life. It is tough to memorize his entire pattern, but it's doable. Then there are the positions of each egg, knowing which doors to do in which order, knowing which consoles to do in which order, knowing which drops are health and which will instakill you (they look identical).

And when all is said and done and you do know how the game works... it's good! There is a bit of an issue with not being able to stop and shoot diagonally, and not being able to jump above certain obstacles, but its got tight hitboxes, different powerups that you can preserve between levels, the dinos look nice and their movements are interesting to work around. Dinos drop as much ammo as they take, and if you get a different weapon you can stack your regular one in the meantime with those pickups. It's also always clear as to what you're supposed to do as long as you read. If I had this game as a kid, I would be very satisfied with it... after the first week of beating my head against the wall to learn it that is.

It's just that... this is not a Jurassic Park game is it? You're a guy shooting dinos, murdering their population, collecting eggs. It's nothing like the movie. This is just an action game, and would maybe be better received if it was not titled "Jurassic Park."

The music bangs though. Maybe the budget from it being a licensed IP went to the music. I don't know.

I loved the first Psychonauts the most for its weird movement system which revolved around circus acrobatics and the psychic levitation ball. It was perfectly weirdo. But I grew to appreciate so much more on my replay before this game. I got to see every interaction the game has to offer, and noticed just how clever it all is. I've seen how easily replayable the game is and how effortless going through all the interactions is, how fast things just fly by. And they're all incredibly clever, from dialogue to collectible placements, their shapes, colors, just everything. So much is explained in-universe too. It's just such a fantastic world, one of the best video games have to offer. It deserved a sequel so much.

Playing this game, I couldn't help but be disappointed by the changes made to the levitation ball and to how the minds were structured. So much of this game is just room after room with collectibles placed for you to see without much effort, rather than these big, open spaces. It was a whiplash. But the more I went on, the more engrossed I got by the story. Once again, everything is so well thought out. The direction they took this world is so compelling. The art style is so well preserved. They're doing weirdo camera and perspective stuff, as they should for a new title in this franchise. This is Psychonauts.

I disagree with the statement that this is less weird of a game. Sasha seeing his father's thinking about his dead wife is perhaps undefeated, but, I mean, one of the greatest Psychonauts ever only becoming one because he blew up an entire animal shelter? It's up there. There's this great line that this game rides, where it is unabadeshedly open about death, suffering, even mass murder in this case, but it doesn't stray away from humor for a minute. It grabbed me in the first game and it grabbed me here again, it's still such a fresh approach in the world where players expect games that "don't break immersion." This game owns. Absolutely loved the story and the cutscenes and the emotion when it did come through.

The writing is not as clever in the moment-to-moment, and there is simply too much of it to be honest. I could totally do without the dialogue system, there's either too many jokes or too little of anything interesting in each dialogue tree. The comedic pacing is largely killed in them. Cutscenes are still largely very good, but it only shows that the best stuff comes from not what you select, but what the characters say on their own, without your input. Let them talk damn it.

I really undervalue the combat in this because I just don't care much, it wasn't much of a challenge and I really just wanted to get to the next segment, but I feel this need to say that it is very good platforming combat. You use the exact same stuff in the exact same way as you do when platforming, it's snappy, it works ideally, there is never a disconnect between the combat and the rest like there is in the first game. It owns, perhaps the best platformer combat ever.

And while there aren't that many true exploration segments, the ones that are here are genuinely fantastic. The movement system, though different and less suited for my preferences, absolutely shines when it is allowed to. When you can set a task for yourself and go at it, rather than follow a predestined path, it is so, so, so good. And the collectibles are best hidden in those. There's more of these as time goes on, and it only makes me wish the entire game was like that.

But, so many years have passed. This is no longer a tiny critical darling, this is an Xbox Studios-published game with Jack Black and Elijah Wood voice acting in it. In the time between the two games, indie 3D platformers have rose to the occasion, and there's plenty of those with weirdo movement systems and even more weirdo geometry. But there are still moments where Psychonauts can hang with the best of them, I kept thinking about Sephonie which I played a few months back, how I approached collecting and exploration in a similar way, and that is one of the best games of that type I've had the pleasure of playing.

There might have been some changes that must have been made to accomodate the status that Psychonauts now holds within gaming, but among its AAA platformer peers, to me, there is no rival. Perhaps those things had to happen to accomodate this particular story, and if that's the case, then I am totally fine, I managed to adapt to this style at some point without even realizing how drawn in I was. I still have not only the first game to come back to at any time, but the dozens, perhaps hundreds of platformers that it inspired. The key emotional beats from the story of the Aquato family are strong enough to be worth anything, honestly.

You know it's good when every guide recommends beating a different game before this one, importing overpowered parts from it for even the earliest missions, and also get the bonuses from going bankrupt that make the game easier, which aren't normally available in this game without the save import. Great!

I somehow did it. After months of beating my head against the wall, trying to find a way to beat this game on my own terms, I simply caved in and took a mech from a guide. It worked. Woohoo. Just like with Armored Core 2, I do not like missions that are near impossible for any but one specific build. Here, they ramped it up by making it ACTUALLY impossible. Some missions cannot be beat if your boosters aren't strong enough and your mech doesn't have high enough output. Some enemies, like the final boss of AC2, are also infuriating unless you go at them with missiles and only missiles. But you don't know that until you go in.

I guess there's less punishment to be found here at least, you lose, you simply go back in whenever you want. You don't lose any money unless you spend more during the mission than you're paid. There's also zero stakes related to the story. In all the other Armored Core games, you get to choose your contracts, your missions, meaning you can skip any that you don't vibe with. Not here, you need to do them ALL here. All 90, just to reach the credits.

So many of them are so boring. There's no fun in having to stand and shoot at incoming enemies for a bit, or boosting through canyons and shooting stationary targets. It's just testing whether you have enough ammo or good enough boosters. I can do that in the testing arena, not in a mission.

This is particularly egregious early on, there's so many missions of this type. After caving in and eventually building a "well-rounded" mech, rather than the one I've been using for the entirety of AC2 and chose to import here, I did start to enjoy it more, but that's only because I got past the worst missions. The later missions are more varied and pretty, there's enemies hidden in snowstorms, there's jumping between planes and destroying them, there's seeing the progressive demise of a water base we previously defended, but which broke the mega-corporation commity rules and we now have to eliminate.

Like I mentioned previously, there's no story to speak of, this is the purest mercenary experience Armored Core ever got. You just pick missions from whoever, no matter how evil their requests are. You could try to avoid this in other Armored Core titles, it was a key part of this series' interaction with the player and what made these games work the best. Not here, you're a mindless merc, you can't progress until you literally just commit acts of terrorism by blowing up a train.

I think this is an absolute failure, there's gotta be a cool story that could be attached to these random vignettes that could only enrich them. You fight these cool, random ACs, and they're good fights mind you, but they're so much less memorable than something like the Human Plus escapee from Armored Core 1, Nineball, even the final boss of the last game is awesome. I appreciate the megarobot fight, that shit was cool as fuck, but how is something this awesome wasted on it being as important as a random encounter in a jrpg.

What a piss ending too. Nooo, skilled pilots are interfering with the government again, how could it beee. This time, it is some total rando who you hear about only one time. That's the final boss. Whatever. Beat them. No ending cutscene. Awesome, great. There's some superbosses after all is done, they're AC bosses from previous games. Kinda cool I suppose, but they're more fun in their respective games for me anyway. Extra parts that you can only use in the test chamber now I suppose. I never want to go through all this again.

PS1 platformers own because the developers did not quite yet figure out how to do precise platforming in 3D, while also could not do large, expansive levels on the hardware. There's also no well-defined movesets yet either, meaning you get a ton of different interpretations of a jump, a dash or an attack move.

As such, games like Emperor's New Groove rely on the variety of objectives in shorter levels, making for a lot of memorable little fun scenarios. Kuzco is such an asshole here, and a lot of objectives rely on that. Steal a baloon from a squirrel, knock a deranged guy who thinks he is a bird into a wall, destroy some dude's statues, knock a kid off his bike, then proceed to spit at a kid to throw him off his bike, THEN make him SMASH INTO ROCKS to throw him off his bike. Many of these activities repeat, but also evolve over time.

The level design is very memorable, and has plenty of simple secrets scattered around, like a crack in a wall or an arrow on the ground pointing towards a hidden passage. Each level has a certain amount of coins, and if you collect all you get a piece of concept art for the game and the movie. There are also hidden plushies, the Wampys, which reward you with a unique animation of the demonic PS1 llama model hugging the shit out of it.

The levels get progressively larger and more complex. You start off with very straightforward paths but eventually levels expand and you'll have to choose between multiple paths, all of which ultimately award you with a key to the end door. The keys, of course, are Kuzco's faces. The game absolutely triples down on making him an asshole egomaniac.

There's also a lot of gimmicky, on-rail levels, but even there they spice it up each time. There is an entire section of Kuzco and Pacha drifting through a river on the log they wound up on after leaving the jungle. There's your introductory level, there's a level where you race the bike kid in his llama-shaped inflatable boat, and you even get a sort of a boss battle at the end. The variety is just super impressive.

The least varied type of gameplay is the rollercoaster, but it is so fun. Quite tough on the last stage, but the fact that the game manages to somehow implement this adrenaline-pumping stage in the middle of everything else it does is so surprising.

On top of all that, there are also multiple transformations throughout the game, three to be exact. You get to play as a turtle, frog and a bunny. While the frog plays mostly as you'd expect, the turtle actually always results in a racing section, and the bunny is about achieving vertical height by jumping super high and gliding with his ears like Rayman does with his hair.

There's a lot of other ways in which this game spices up its gameplay, exploration and level design, but it's worth experiencing for yourself because this is genuinely one of PS1's most interesting platformers. It will take a while to get used to, just like all other titles on the damn thing, but that's what you should be here for too in some ways.

Even as a kid I found myself revisiting specific stages just to sort of get a feel for an idea or a vibe in a given stage. I'd replay the underground a lot because it was so creepy, or the turtle racing stages because they controlled like butter but had so much of the racetrack built around these softer turns.

This is perhaps the strongest aspect of level-based games: being able to jump into a whole new world in 5 minutes after launching a game, and then a whole other vibe 5 minutes later when choosing a stage from a different set. There's obviously way more to it, and I genuinely miss it. So many games require so much effort to get back to a specific point you yourself may enjoy. Why can't I just fight this boss right now, or do this section right now unless I finagle with saving or mods? Figure this shit out developers! Emperor's New Groove for the PS1 has you beat!

Ho-ly shit. What a game.

It emulates so much of what makes Sonic memorable within gaming at large while having this whole refined set of ideas and mechanics that is completely its own. While it's not quite like Adventure, which has you switch out gameplay styles entirely for a set of levels, here it's all either utilizing the same moveset in different ways or entering a vehicle for a part of a level.

And it controls so well, oh so well. The glitches from the second game were all eliminated, so much was added, so many movement options, all these ways to preserve momentum, speed up or correct yourself. The levels do not rely on spectacle during hands-off moments, they rely on constant control and awareness, seeing the challenge ahead from a mile away only to speed through it like a champ. Unlike Spark 2, where I drastically felt the removal of content from the first game within the 3D space, here it's a non-issue due to the sheer amount of options available to you from the get-go, and so many more inside the game's shop.

This game is an absolute miracle. Treats its 2nd game as a stepping stone and simply says: I will singlehandedly make that story cooler. It even has its own absolutely ridiculous story, weird cuts, sudden tone-switches, and more, meaning that Sonic fans should feel right at home. I absolutely do not want to spoil this, but the whole final level is singlehandedly one of the most unhinged things I've seen in gaming in a long while. This, inside a 3D Sonic-inspired game. The absolute freedom of a one-person game, a person who managed to make what is likely the best Sonic-type game since Adventure, is simply overwhelming, joyous and it OWNS.

I'll be revisiting this later down the line, when I will inevitably attempt to actually finish all the 3D Sonic games. I'm unbelievably excited at the prospect of forgetting parts of this game and seeing once again how cool these ideas are. There's just too many to fully remember them all.

Play it.