I never enjoy giving a well-regarded game a lukewarm review, and I promise I'm not doing it to be contrarian, but... have you ever experienced that "oh, crap" moment playing a strategy game like Civilization when you move your club-wielding cavemen to attack another player only to find yourself faced with tanks and fighter jets? That's kind of like how Jazz Jackrabbit 2 feels like.

It's a much more competently-made game than the original, free of its most egregious flaws (less slippery momentum, less screen crunch, enemy placement that is tricky but has less instances of "gotcha!"). It has plenty of the same virtues - nice visual design with a good variety of level aesthetics, nonlinear-ish level layouts with a good amount of secrets to discover, and a great soundtrack. The selection of guns are probably the gameplay's strongest suit - from the pitifully short-range flamethrower which is effective against erratically-flying enemies because the flames linger in the air slightly longer, to the motion-controlled bombs which are great against bosses because they allow you to damage a boss while you're safely on the other side of the screen, every weapon has at least a fringe use.

...it was also released in 1998. (for reference Klonoa came out in '97!)

I'm not saying that every game needs to break new ground, but if a game is treading familiar territory then I'd at least hope for it to be polished. Jazz Jackrabbit 2 has plenty of rough edges - its visual design is confusing, and it's hard to tell which platforms can be landed on and which are part of the background. The final level has the most egregious example of this - a floor that appears to be made of flowing lava but can be walked on like a normal floor! The controls are inconsistent, particularly in the execution of Jazz's ear propeller and Spaz's double jump. There's a pretty sizable catalogue of bugs - I softlocked myself multiple times, mostly by clipping into walls, but I also (twice) used the motion-sensor bomb and blew a boss clear out of the screen, with no choice but to reload an earlier save!

I do see that this game filled a very specific niche when it came out; in an era where developers were throwing out plenty of bathwater (and some babies) in their rush to cash in on the 3D craze, a functional old-school mascot platformer from a niche franchise scratches a very specific itch. But as someone without an emotional connection to this game, it comes across as an anachronism - archaic by 1998 standards, but not refined enough to count as homage.

Look, this game came out in 1984 so the chances of it being a deep and realistic racing simulation are exactly nil. But it still manages to deliver a cool experience!

There's a deceptive amount of skill to be put to the test here, from leaning backwards to avoid tumbling over speedbumps, to tilting your bike in the air to maintain speed when you land, and multitasking to make sure your engine doesn't overheat. And while the game's rudimentary physics aren't the most satisfying, it still manages to be a very compelling "chaos simulator" thanks to the sheer amount of stuff happening onscreen at once, with the wack collision physics meaning that at least one racer is taking a spill at any given time. The difference between winning and losing spectacularly is often mercurial and seemingly down to blind luck, yet losing is... still kinda fun actually!

The game's structure embraces this emphasis on fun - you can select any track to race on at any time, with no content walled behind any arbitrary skill checks! And you can design your own tracks, as seriously or as terribly as you want!

If you play this game trying to win it you'll probably end up frustrated (I could never finish the 5th level myself). But if you treat it as a fun little playground, it's pretty good!

"They always feel new - constant, but constantly surprising. They become part of your private autobiography and every time you [play] them a new layer of memory is added to the bond between you. Each performance is a collection of the experiences you have had together. Not many friendships last so long - I suppose the unchanging nature of the music simplifies the dynamic between you - but what would be an unhealthily one-sided affair in your personal life provides a great deal of comfort throughout your professional one. It is even richer if you can always remember the initial naivety, wonder, and thrill that accompanied your first 'date'."

This is a quote from an orchestral conductor about his evolving relationship with great pieces of classical music, but I suspect it's pretty easy for many of us to substitute a couple of words and apply it directly to our experiences with our favorite games. And in the case of RE4 it was a first date to remember.

It was the late spring of 2005, my friend had just bought the game, eight of us crammed into his dorm room at midnight, turned the lights out and the volume up as we played through the first 3 chapters more or less blind. The idea was that we'd pass the controller around whenever the player died, but the first guy somehow stayed alive all the way until chapter 3-2! Us seven spectators had one of the most intense watch-sessions ever, alternating between "AHHHH!" and "EWWWW" and "LOLOL Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks".

Two years later, I bought the Wii version - now I could shoot a Ganado in the leg and then in the face a split second later! It was so damn addictive that I completed the game (for the first time) in one single 16-hour sitting. A friend picked me up to go to a party right after, and I spent the entire time in a hazy half-asleep stupor hovering between RE4 and reality. And while I don't remember this, he said (while laughing his ass off) that at one point I stood in front of a vase and swiped my right arm back and forth in the "break vase" Wiimote gesture for a few seconds.

I've returned to Resident Evil 4 at so many different seasons of my life - playing quick rounds of Mercenaries mode with a warm bottle of milk in my lap waiting for my infant daughter to start fussing, doing a handgun-only pro run when COVID lockdowns first started - that it has to be a five-star game for me. It's not just that I have plenty of memories of it; it's that the game was addictive and fantastic enough that I kept coming back to it to make those memories in the first place, and that's something that no amount of plot contrivances or anticlimactic final acts can take away from it.

Plenty of reviews have waxed lyrical on this game's virtues better than I can, but I wanted to point out how impressed I am with how the iconic village brawl really teaches the new player how to play the game. It establishes from the outset that unlike the zombies from previous games, these guys are capable of running, moving intelligently to flank you, and following you up stairs and through windows. And through a mix of its large enemy swarms, the presence of sloping terrain which means that you will eventually hit an enemy in the face even if you just spray and pray, and the fact that enemies sometimes stagger forwards when hit in the face, and you've created the conditions for even a complete newbie to discover the melee options by accident. And the melee options are part of the extraordinarily robust but viscerally simple gameplay loop that has sustained my interest in this game through countless playthroughs.

I know that this represents the start of the shift away from survival horror that culminated in the all-action RE6 (that's a review I'm kinda dreading to get to) - but taken as it is it's a blockbuster in all the right ways. It looks and sounds fantastic even today, is exceptionally refined in execution, is a bundle of scares on the first run and then unadulterated fun on subsequent playthroughs, and... it's just good, man. Play it!