LLLLEEENNNNNNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Also, Dutch has a Plan. TAHITI. He just needs more money. Even though I have like $13,000 in my pocket.

I love this game. Insane graphics too

I'd love for TSA to be one of those games where I can look at all of its unquestionable flaws and shrug them off, toss them aside, then give it the perfect rating I know it deserves. Many of GHM's older games deserve that, and the same specter of a story that I know will stay with me for just as long inhabits Travis Strikes Again.

But... it doesn't quite deserve that level of praise. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, as a game, it's just not good. The gameplay's repetitive, unsatisfying and levels are long and tedious. Bosses are actually quite fun but they don't redeem the whole thing. To play Travis Strikes Again is to force yourself to endure mediocrity to experience its more clever moments. It hurts to see its overall mediocre reception from critics and consumers alike, but I get it. It's not just that this isn't a game for everyone, it's not for most people. It's not for me, honestly, I was getting pretty mad in the awful final level. (Although I think the DLC stage is overall pretty good)

Is it fanservice, then? Well, yeah, for sure. It literally admits that straight-up. They even reference the Kinect game where you throw baseballs at zombies for fuck's sake. Is it a soulless attempt to grab some cash before making NMH3? I don't think so. It's a very personal story, a story that only someone who's worked on videogames for as long as Suda has could tell, and that I'm glad he did. It's... maybe a bit of a vanity project, but a honest one. It's Suda51 putting himself on stage and just sharing every step of his journey, the good ones and the bad ones. There's discussions to be had, but I personally appreciate this melancholic look at the past a lot, especially in how it's embodied by Travis, who has grown up with all of us after the first two games (not me though I played NMH1 and 2 in 2021 lol), and is now a much sadder, more introspective man.

Even TSA's core message, though, I think has some holes in it. The pacing is awful, because the gameplay is still in the way. The visual novel segments while enjoyable are a bit hit and miss in terms of actually adding on to the actual themes of the story. Come to think of it, so are the levels themselves. A couple of them really don't feel as clever as the rest, despite still having heart put into them. So, I dunno, that's the core of Travis Strikes Again. It's a very flawed game that sometimes trips over nothing, stumbles and almost falls, but it ends up doing something special in the end. At least for me.