According to my own scale, this would be a 5. But I made this game, so I don't want to be too biased 🙂. Mahjong solitaire is a genre I learned to love through the creation of Sparrow Solitaire, and my time playing (and developing) this game is something I'll never forget.

In Sparrow Solitaire, I believe we've created a definitive version of the mahjong solitaire tile-matching genre. The game has hundreds of layouts, 16 beautiful tileset designs, multiple play variants, a two player mode, and my favorite feature: in-depth stat tracking including line and pie graphs! Just a few of these things would have been a good stopping point, but against our better judgement we kept polishing and polishing until we included every idea on our list and then some.

If you have never played mahjong solitaire or bounced off it before, this is a great starting point. I was a complete novice when beginning the project, so we really tried to make it as accessible as possible. It includes detailed in-game manual with examples, a small tutorial, and plenty of accessibility options like a screen zoom and blocked tile shading.

Although we did a lot to complement the Playdate's feature set, perhaps the biggest issue with the game is that it's not also on PC. The tiles are kind of small on device, and although a 2x zoom exists, I don't believe it's the optimal way to play (you really need to be able to see the whole layout at once). I've grown used to the tile size, and like many Playdate games, it shines best in bright lighting. But it could be a deal breaker for some. And although we have a high-tech cursor navigation system especially among other console solitaire games, it's still never going to be as fast as clicking with a mouse. There are a couple other missing features due to processing constraints, such as not ensuring solvable deals for shisen-sho layouts.

If you might be interested in a relaxing tile matching experience and can live with the limitations of the Playdate, I encourage you to check this game out.

So…I’ve been putting off this review for a while, it’s mainly because I’ve been afraid, afraid that I’m gonna fuck this review up somehow. But it’s time I face my fears and finally returned to review this game and finish the 90’s sonic games. When it comes to Sonic Adventure 2, I’ve always preferred the original, however I’ve had a slight soft spot for this game and that’s why it has a similar score to SA1. So let’s get into it and see what I can say about a very loved sonic game.

We have quite a few new characters, mainly shadow and rouge. The story is split into the hero and dark sides though they all culminate with the same end. Basically eggman finds that his grandad left him a secret weapon named shadow, who is a hedgehog just like sonic. So him and eggman decide to find all the chaos emerald to conquer the world, with rouge joining later as she secretly works for the government. Later it all culminates in the ark where we find out shadow was doing all this naughty shit because of a girl he used to know, named Maria, told him to help mankind yet he interpreted it differently. Basically getting it completely confused and almost completely obliterating Maria’s wishes. So him and sonic defeat the finalhazard and that’s the end of that for now. And there was a lot of piss on the moon.

In terms of gameplay, it’s similar-ish to sonic adventure 1 with a few very clear differences. The structure is much more linear and follows a straight path. Instead of getting to choose characters, you’ll simply go from one level where you play as someone like sonic and then move onto another with playing as knuckles or someone. After every level as well you are forced to be into the chao garden which I’ll talk about a little bit later. The level types as well are mainly inspired by sa1 or at least the better level types. The sonic levels and knuckle levels made it over and the gamma levels somehow made it through though a little modified to make it fit with tails and eggman’s levels.

The chao garden also makes a return. We have 3 gardens actually: the neutral garden, the hero garden, and the dark garden with the latter two being unlocked after raising a hero and dark chao. you basically just raise the chao like you did in the last game. Raise the insufferable, puny, disgusting, cute, adorable, funny, little guys.

The music is also absolutely brilliant. Crush 40 return to do their work on the game and this is probably the only part of the game which I believe completely outshines the last. The music is phenomenal in every single way. I did like how sa1’s ost did have neat callbacks to the older sonic games, especially sonic cd, but this soundtrack is just absolutely exceptional. If anyone hates city escape then you clearly are just hating for the sake of it.

Unfortunately, after sonic adventure 2 released, it was soon announced that the Dreamcast would be discontinued and Sega would end up becoming a third party publisher. So sonic adventure 2 ended up being the end of an era, one full of lots and lots of creativity and experimentation. Even though later games would also experiment I felt that it was a lot more grounded through the Sega genesis (mega drive) era to the Dreamcast era. So with that, it ends my talk on some of the main sonic games for now. But who knows, maybe I will talk about 06…nah.

Great story, decent characters, excellent music, chao return, how do you like that Obama?

man..... thank god this is free.

im giving points here to both environmental design and monster design (for the singular monster featured) since they're both really cool. the soundtrack is good as well, for what few songs are here. it also seems like there was a lot of nods to silent hill 4? but ive yet to play that one so i wont really talk about it.

the rest of the game though... this is a pretty bad representation of suicide and suicidal ideologies. there were occasional point where it felt like the message came across okay, but the execution here is so messy and bad it just feels off. none of it felt really authentic and i honestly felt like the bits of child abuse that was brought up had better representation than this. and while im glad they have a suicide hotline message popup when launching the game, they show it like 5 more times in the game when anything remotely bad happens. its almost comical. this is a very "im 14 and this is deep" representation of mental health and dealing with suicidal thoughts. it feels like a Life is Strange game set in the Silent Hill universe.

also! how the fuck are you going to try to explain Silent Hill?!?! i know that it probably raises questions, since this is the first time its been outside of the US (and probably will again with the other new gaming coming out), but you don't explain the mystery! thats just lame!!

gameplay wise i can kinda give this a pass; i see lots of comparisons to PT but this honestly feels like it took more inspiration from Outlast if anything. there's almost no puzzles and the chase segments are VERY linear (and also very awkwardly inserted at random spots). i dont think i found myself bored or frustrated except for the very last chase segment, which puts you in a non-linear area and has you collecting images. the lack of player direction here is laughable and makes that segment way longer than it should be. or im just bad idk

if you're a diehard silent hill fan, id still maybe pick this up if you wanna kill some time, but dont expect it to make you hopeful for the rest of the stuff konami is working on. it definitely didnt do that for me.

I really want to like this game. The sense of speed is super satisfying to keep up, and behind some massive issues there is actually a good game. One thing I do like are the tricks, the upward one especially is super handy.

Screen crunch is here and worse than ever. The game wants you to barrel through it as fast as possible but you literally can't see what's happening.

Dimps is the developer so obviously bottomless pits galore. Need I say more?

All the boss fights suck. Half the time you can't even see most of the boss since the screen crunch cuts half of it off.

The lives are also super strict. 3 lives and that's all. Game over and you're back to Act 1 of the zone (luckily it keeps Zones with a save).

If Sega ports this game and makes it 16:9 and zooms the camera out this could probably gain an extra 1.5 stars but as of now it's just not very fun to play.

Incredibly influential game in my life, racking up hundreds of hours as a kid. There is an incredible breadth of replayability here; a story mode with multiple difficulties and optional co-op, arcade league full of challenging matches and a wealth of unlockables, arcade custom where you could sit down and play matches with friends, challenge mode with a decent variety of additional and usually silly challenges, and personally for me the crowning jewel: the map maker.

I have entire memory cards full to the brim with maps made in TimeSplitters map makers. It was simple enough a child could use it but decent enough to allow for a vast amount of creativity. I made hundreds of levels in that thing, entire campaigns with stories I wrote to link it all together.

Regardless of how the game holds up now, its legacy for me is that it made me believe I could make my own games and pushed me towards my current career path. For that alone it's 5 stars.