the jump button was the best part of Elden Ring, Another Crab's Treasure very clearly proves that soulslikes were meant to be 3D platformers all along - and that stamina bars are overrated. i enjoyed Aggro Crab's debut title Going Under a fair bit, it had a great sense of humour and perfectly committed to its corporate satire but ended up let down a bit by being a roguelike (with the inherently sloppy area/encounter design that follows) and having combat that needed a lil more extra to it. Another Crab's Treasure has the same bitter hatred for the structure of society and scavenge-heavy gameplay as Going Under but with way more depth in every aspect. i'm a sucker for exploring colourful, cute areas and collecting stuff. its got intricate levels, a healthy variety of enemies, a very appealing artstyle, a final boss who would own a tesla, and a really adorable crabtagonist. it has some issues with balancing (the tentacle adaptation is busted) and boss design depth but i liked it a lot!!! enough that i played about 20 hours of it in four days, it's really meaty for an indie of its size. felt very well-realized, extremely charming but a lot more sincere and sad than i expected. very clever with its allegories in how it uses Souls tropes. it was kinda like the crab version of Char's Counterattack, in a way.

Another Crab's Treasure's existence is phenomenal to me. I love soulslikes so much, but also many platformers are some of my favorite games of all time. The marriage of the two genres is not something I thought I'd ever see, but here we are.

To get it out of the way, this game is closer to Sekiro more than anything. You only have one main weapon and you are forced to master it or you won't get very far (like Sekiro), however you are given many tools to also assist you alongside your main weapon (also like Sekiro) via the shell system.
The gameplay is done very well, it's super responsive and I never had any issues with the controls itself, besides some camera struggles at rare times.

The shell system is the main mechanic that differentiates the combat from souls/sekiro. There are many different shells you can find lying around the levels and they essentially act like shields that you can pick up and swap out. All shells have different properties like weight, defense and ability. The weight determines whether you are fatrolling or not, defense is defense, and ability is the thing you want to look out for the most. Each shell has a unique ability that can turn the tides of battle. There are so many abilities that they can range from simply healing you, or buffing your stats, to things like shooting magic or freezing everything around you. There is no 'best' shell here. You want to play around as some shells can benefit you more than others depending on the area you or are in or the boss you are fighting. I love this system and trying to find every new shell and seeing what they do kept the shell system very exciting all the way till the very end.

The glaring difference between this and souls games is the setting, and artstyle. We are so used to having realistic dead dark horror fantasy worlds as the backdrop for these types of games, but here we have something that feels more like a Saturday morning cartoon, and it is a very refreshing deviation to the typical backdrop of the genre.

The setting allows this game to also be a platformer at the same time, which is done very well here. Jumps cam easily be controlled through the air as you are given moves and tools to help your air control, including grappling hooks. Obviously it's no Mario Odyessy, but for a game that nails combat, it also surprisingly nails platforming too. Usually it's one or the other, and not both.

The difficulty is what you expect from a soulslike. It's not Sekrio hard, but it's not a walk in the park either. Each boss challenged me fairly and each took me a few tries, always feeling that the deaths were on me. Like Elden Ring though, if you do your fair share of exploring optional areas, you can find some stuff that can break bosses and trivialize the difficulty.

Exploration is close to Dark Souls 1 and Sekiro where levels are quite linear with branching paths with a lot of collectables that can greatly help you on your journey if you explore each area to the fullest. Exploring in ACT is even more fun than it is in other souls games as there is the requirement of having to platform around. As previously mentioned there are also some optional areas you can go to to get some great abilities and upgrades.

Unlike From's games, there is a lot of dialouge and cutscenes. The writing is the typical in your face humor that you'd see in something like a saturday morning cartoon, where they replace swears with puns like "shuck off". It's pretty funny and there is a decent story here, but it's nothing too deep and the game knows to not take itself too seriously either. There are some seriously funny moments though I will say, the devs got some good sense of humor.

Playing this at launch, it's not the most polished game, but it feels up to the standard that most AA games should feel. I know the team are very dedicated to supplying the game with post launch updates very frequently so we'll just have to see how much it improves from here.

There was still a bit to be desired. The game can be completed in about 18 hours, and 100%ed in 22 hours, which is 10 hours too short of what a souls game should be. It could have used one or two more areas to feel more like a fuller game. I'm still happy with all the content and I just enjoyed the game so much I wish there was more.

Aggro Crab has created something that could be a flagship franchise. There is some room for improvement and if there is work on a sequel, there is potential for one of the best soulslikes of all time. They have something good in their hands and they just need to keep the momentum going.

I highly recommend you give this at least a try if you are a fan of soulslikes, or want to get into the genre of soulslikes and want a solid place to start. Great game, loved every second of it - just wished there was more of it.

A game by absolute freaks, for absolute freaks. If you don't lab kart racers everyday like they're fighting games and try your hardest to complete EVERYTHING in those games, this game is NOT for you.
Almost avant-garde in how little it cares for the casual kart racer audience, forcing you to complete an excruciating tutorial that can take between 30 minutes and 1 hour. To complete one grand prix before you can unlock multiplayer (or use a cheat code). To complete FIVE grand prixes before you can unlock the ability to use old SRB2kart MODS! (or use a cheat code). To stay with one color for your character unless you collect the others, and collect all 82 to unlock time trials. Never has there been a game so obsessed with making players master its mechanics before letting them play with others, as if they were preparing you for real-life war or something.

The game even opens slowly walking you through every option, unlocking each thing in the menu, everything contextualized with Tails and Eggman speaking to you, as Metal Sonic. Clearly, the devs tried to defeat Sonic Robo Blast 2's unnecessarily long intro cutscene, and in their quest for Genesis nostalgiawanking, they made the awful choice of only having the button prompts of the Genesis controller in menus and tutorials, not a huge issue in controller, it is on keyboard, especially because this game just has way too many mechanics and when you finally have to use an obscure one, you gotta press every key or go to the menu to check what key you assigned as the Y Genesis button.

Back to the tutorial, what did they think they were making here, Final Fantasy XVII?? It doesn't even explain things that clearly and there's so much dialogue, no option to reread, just once and trial and error.
It'd be one thing to make a kart racer with a lot of complex mechanics if they all feel cohesive and the races really push you to your limits, like Sonic Riders or even Bomberman Fantasy Race, but I don't think this is it when the mechanics are like 8 different types of boosts, one for each hazard, a charged melee attack? A parry? Two different types of roulettes that by default you have to stop manually???
A lot of this doesn't even come up in the races, it's for the single-player challenges, if it is in the race, you can also probably brute force it and use boost mechanic #54 instead of boost mechanic #301 as originally intended.

There's potential here, but it doesn't feel as good as SRB2kart to be honest. I gave up at the drift section in the tutorial cuz I just couldn't get it to work and the only drift you HAVE to do to proceed is the ultra charged one that gives you max boost #302! If the kart stops moving while you try to drift you instead initiate, you guessed it, another boost mechanic, one that has its own separate dedicated button so why make the drift worse by putting it on that button as well?

I usually don't rank games if I know that they're just not for me or if I played that little, but I don't see how the things I complain about would really do any good to any game in any genre, and even if all players use a save file with everything unlocked, I'll have to stand my ground unless they rework everything.

They tried to make a kart racer with more complex mechanics than Sonic Riders, and thought they had to have THE MOST mechanics to do that. They saw that some Riders players missed mechanics because of the lack of a tutorial and thought they had to overtutorialize EVERYTHING and demanded they mastered the game before even letting them race.
Don't think this will ever catch on and most will probably continue to just play SRB2kart.

In one of its previews, Hideaki Itsuno was deliberately evasive when asked about why Dragon’s Dogma II’s title screen initially lacks the II, saying only “nothing in this game is unintentional.” You can draw whatever conclusion you like from that, but I think I’ve a different interpretation from most – it’s less a signal that this is a reimagining or a remake or whatever else in disguise than a display of confidence in how well he and his team understand what makes it tick.

As much as I’ll never wrap my head around how they got the first Dragon’s Dogma running on 7th gen hardware (albeit just about), I would’ve said it was impossible not to feel how much more II has going on under the hood in even the briefest, most hasty of encounters if it weren’t being so undersold in this respect. While my favourite addition is that enemies’ individual body parts can now be dragged or shoved to throw them off balance, tying into both this new world’s more angular design and how they can be stunned by banging their head off of its geometry, yours might be something else entirely with how many other new toys there are to play with. One particularly big one’s that you and your pawns can retain access to your standard movesets while clinging to larger enemies if you manage to mantle onto them from the appropriate angle, but you’ve gotta watch out for the newly implemented ragdoll physics while doing so, since the damage received from getting bucked off now varies wildly depending on your position at the time and the nearby environment as a result of them. Successive strikes create new avenues of offence akin to Nioh’s grapples, pressuring you to get as much damage in as you can before letting one loose and taking your target out of its disadvantage state, while also enabling you to keep them in a loop if you’re able to manipulate their stun values well enough. Layers of interaction just keep unravelling further as you play – controlling the arc you throw enemies or objects in, tackling smaller enemies by grabbing them mid-air, corpses or unconscious bodies of bosses now being tangible things you can stand on top of instead of ethereal loot pinatas… I would’ve taken any one of these in isolation. To have them all, plus more, every one being wholly complementary and faithful to the scrambly, dynamic, improvisational core of Dragon’s Dogma’s combat? It’s i n s a n e to me that someone can undergo even a confused few minutes of exposure to any of this and reduce it to “more of the first” or what have you.

Your means of approaching enemies or general scenarios which return from the first game’re further changed by II’s more specialised vocations. Having spent most of my time with Warrior in both titles, I love what’s been done with it in particular. They’ve taken the concept of timing certain skills and applied it to almost every move, anything from your standard swings to its final unlockable skill becoming faster and faster as you time successive inputs correctly – this is only the slow, basic version of the latter and I still feel bad for whatever I batter with it – with chargeable skills now also doubling as a parry for attacks they collide with, similar to DMC5’s clashing mechanic. It’s emblematic of the devs’ approach to vocations in general; Archer’s relatively lacking melee options and litany of flippy, full-on Legolas nonsense encourages keepaway where its four predecessors were all slightly differing flavours of “does everything”, Thief trades access to assault rifle-like bows and invites stubbiness for being able to navigate this world’s much rockier terrain like it’s a platformer, Fighter no longer has to waste skill slots to hit anything slightly above your head and has more versatile means of defence in exchange for melee combat being more punishing in general, etc. It’s to the extent that choosing between any two vocations feels like I’m switching genres, man. In a landscape where people are demonstrably content with having no means of interacting with big monsters other than smacking their ankles, how is even a pretty simple interaction like this not supposed to feel like a game from the future?

On simple interactions, much of this would be lessened if it weren’t for the loss gauge in tandem with the camping system and how these accentuate the sense of adventure which the first game built. The persistent thoughts of “how do I get there?” are retained, but only being able to fully recuperate your health via downtime with the lads and/or ladesses fills every step of the way toward the answer with that much more trepidation, bolstered further by the aforementioned verticality and on the more presentational side of things by how your pawns actually talk to each other now. It leads to some very memorable, emergent experiences which are personal purely to you – one I’m especially fond of involved resting after killing a drake, having my camp ambushed in the middle of the night by knackers who were too high up for me to exercise my k-word pass and having to trek all the way back to Bakbattahl with barely a third of my maximum health as my party continually chattered about how freaky the dark is. I take back the suggestion I made regarding potential changes to the healing system in my review of the first game, because even superfans (or, maybe, especially superfans) can, and do, think too small.

I realise in retrospect that even I, on some level, was wanting certain aspects of Dragon’s Dogma to be like other games instead of taking it on its own merits, something II’s seemingly suffered from all the more with how much gaming has grown since the original’s release, the average player’s tolerance for anything deviating from the norm and, presumably, frame of reference growing ever smaller. Look no further than broad reactions to dragonsplague and its effects (which I won’t spoil) being only the second or third most embarrassing instance of misinformed kneejerk hostility disguised as principled scepticism which enveloped this game’s release to the point you’d swear Todd Howard was attached to it – we want consequences that matter, but not like that! Even if you aren’t onboard with this being the coolest, ballsiest thing an RPG has bothered and will bother to do since before I was born, how can you not at least get a kick out of starting up your own homegrown Dragonsplague Removal Service? You thought you could escape the great spring cleaning, Thomyris, you silly billy? I’m oblivious like you wouldn’t believe, had her wearing an ornate sallet by the time she’d first contracted it and still noticed her glowing red eyes every time, so I’m at a loss as to how it could blindside anybody. It vaguely reminds me of modern reactions to various aspects of the original Fallout; a game which you can reasonably beat in the span of an afternoon, designed to be played with a single hand, somehow commonly seen as unintuitive because it just is, okay? Abandon all delusions of levelheadedness: if a Fallout game with a timer were to release now, the world’s collective sharting would result in something similar to that universe’s Great War or, indeed, Dragon’s Dogma II’s own post-game.

For as many hours as I’ve poured into the Everfall and Bitterblack across two copies of the original, they’re not what I think of when I think of Dragon’s Dogma (or particularly interesting, in the former’s case), which is adventuring in its open world. In that regard, I can’t be convinced that II’s post-game isn’t far more substantial, comparatively rife with monsters either unique or which you’re very unlikely to encounter prior to it, changes to the world’s layout beyond a hole in the ground of one city, its own mechanics (one actually a bit reminiscent of Fallout’s timer), questlines and even setpieces. It’s got a kaiju fight between a Ray Harryhausen love letter and a demonic worm thing which, as of the time of writing, roughly 2% of players have discovered, and instead of being praised for the sheer restraint it must’ve taken to keep something like that so out of the way, it’s chastised for it?

I’m not sure any other game’s ever made me realise how divorced what I want out of games seems to be from the wider populace. So much of this is 1:1 aligned with my tastes that the only thing that feels potentially missing’s the relative lack of electric guitars, but even then I’d be a liar if I told you that Misshapen Eye, the dullahan’s theme, the griffin’s new track, the post-game’s somber piano keys or the true ending’s credits song among others haven’t gotten stuck in my head at some stage anyway or didn’t perfectly complement the action through dynamically changing. It manages this despite clearly not caring about what you or I or anyone else thinks or wants from it. It’s developed a will and conviction all of its own. It’s Dragon’s Dogma, too.

I feel like this game had a weird domino effect with how people view the character because for as middle of the road it’s general gameplay is it’s attempt at being a fun adaptation of the character is fucking awful.

Deadpool as a character has been flanderized as hell over the years and I mostly blame this game and the movie. He went from somewhat of a goofy character with some layers that made his character much more than just a joke machine; giving him some reason behind his madness. Now he's something I can only describe as what annoying middle schoolers think is “cool”, I don’t 100% blame the High Moon team since from what I’ve read up on this game was just kinda thrown at them and told to make rather than something they actually cared about. I’ve been playing through their Cybertron series of Transformers games and honestly that game has so much more heart and love for the series then this game could have ever had. You can tell they at least tried but they just didn’t have that well of an understanding of his character just taking it at face value and as a result we have a very one note version who only really has like a handful of jokes that get old after like an hour.
Jokes like
Deadpool saying “The fuck word”
Sex Jokes/gratuitous amount of naked woman boring on objectification
Fourth wall breaking at least every 30 minutes
Funny rainbows and late 2000’s gamer lingo like noob and others
Repeated use of the word chimichangas
Being a dumbass
Having two different voices in his head saying unfunny banter, AND MANY MORRRRRRE (Fun fact one of those voices was retconned out of the comics like a year after the game released and it was discovered that the voice wasn’t a weird split personality but rather it’s actually just a D-list Captain America villain named Madcap who got absorbed into Deadpool because they both have a powerful healing factors……….yes it is dumb welcome to comic books)

Again I don’t 100% blame High Moon I more put the blame on the writer they got for the game Daniel Way; which I shouldn’t really even be saying since he was a writer on the mainline Deadpool run of the late 2000’s and the early to mid 2010’s. While I’m not the biggest fan of Daniel Way’s portrait of the character in since I feel the humor is a little too much sometimes but his run does show of Deadpool's suicidal tendencies and depression along his with constent problem of pushing people close away with his annoying and pigheaded personality, I found the more introspective aspect of his run pretty interesting but basically none of that is in this game and most of the time it dosn’t even feel like he really tried. Way had a problem with balancing the humor of the character a lot in his run and here he pretty much didn’t bother, the plot is so paper thin me describing it probably would be longer then the amount of time the game takes to tell it. Deadpool pretty much just bumbles around for most of it saying unfunny jokes and killing D-list Xmen villains until he’s told to go kill a slightly bigger D-list Xmen villain and after doing so you find out he’s a clone and you do it all over again, this happens 3 times over the course of the game.
Sure you could make the dumbass argument like “Well maybe writing for a comic is different then writing for a video game so that’s why it’s not on par with his comic work”. First that’s a really dumb argument and second no there have been other comic book writers whose written for super hero games that did a MUCH better job, off the top of my head there's Paul Dini who wrote Batman Arkham Asylum and City; prior to those he was a writer for Batman TAS and Batman Beyond; some of the best cartoon adaptations of the character to date. They brought back Brian Michael Bendis to write for the Ultimate Spider-Man game, and while he pretty much just rewrote most of his more popular runs of Ultimate Spider-Man into video game form he did a pretty great job with the transitioning. Hell Garth Ennis’s work on the Punisher game did an amazing job capturing his portrayal of Punisher while also having a pretty bear bones overarching narrative so really Daniel Way has no real excuse other then being fucking lazy.

I could seriously go on and on about how much I really don’t like this version of the character, so for the sake of your own time I’ll just stop it there. I know I sound crazy and very autistic talking about a character that most people just kinda write off as a joke gag character but if you really bothered to look through his backlog of stories you’ll find what I personally think is a pretty good character. Something this game didn’t even bother to do.


(edit) I’m writing this at like 6AM and I just now realized I didn’t talk about the combat or gameplay once so I’ll make this quick. It’s you're basic third person hack and slash that feels like the poor man’s X-Men Origins Wolverine. It’s mind numbingly simple at times with boring locations to fight in and very little enemy variety to mix things up. The game’s not horribly long but the gameplay never reaches out of just standard to really have anything to write home about it. If this was a cheapo game I’d say if you wanted a whatever hack and slash to play you could go for much worse but since the game has been delisted and finding a second hand copy is expensive I’d say just don’t bother.

Ok gameplay portion done now I can finally sleep

are you using your time to properly think and talk with art? are you listening? or do you plug your ears anytime it tries to talk with you, to challenge you and make you rethink what you're engaging with?

i don't think i have any common ground with most people who like videogames, actually. but i don't think this is just videogames anymore, this is endemic in all of the arts. people stopped being listeners, started being consumers. no long a plot twist will make your heart skip a beat, now it's the author "betraying" your trust. no longer can complicated concept be presented before your public, now you're "fumbling", "overdesigning" or whatever new word people will invent to use as analytical shortcuts. like, really, you spent 90h with this game and all you could get back from it was that it has "Ubisoft-like" design because it has towers? i don't care if you gave the game 4 or 5 stars or if that was a compliment, is it that hard to think more about it? am i setting the bar too high? probably.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is not a product, it's an art piece which you converse with (that's honestly 99.9% of games too btw). hefty admission price for sure, but it does not need to cater to you at any moment. it needs to be heard, seen, felt, I think running around the grasslands felt incredible and vibrant, i love how every map changes its whole design based on the chocobos, i love how sidequests have their own little songs to them with battle music included, i love how every character gets explored a whole ton more because now they have the time to do so, I love how Tifa can be herself instead of Cloud's past, I liked every change, I think this game is probably one of the most courageous games ever made and that will ever be made and people won't appreciate it enough, but that's fine because I will.

the more i think about it, the more i think about its last hours, the more i think how they handled -that moment- the more I like it. I like this and Remake for entirely different reasons, but Rebirth made me feel things I don't think i was even aware I could feel playing a game and I don't mean crying i cry for everything and i cried super hard at several moments in this game, it's something else, which i would only dare to explain if I had spoilered this text but i don't want to do so.

like i said i think i finally realized my lack of common ground is what makes it really hard to talk about videogames outside of my circle, people who only wear "videogames are art!!" as a mantle for feeling validated, but not really treating them much differently than the hamburger they'll buy for lunch. i don't mind if you didn't like the game but i only ask for something of substance, an interesting read, at the very least a personal perspective, not internet gaming buzzwords i can see in like 60 other reviews. i just want to think and challenge myself and i feel like i'm always going into a hivemind. but i guess that's fine i get to cherish good things when i see them at least.

i just need to remind myself of this

After the incredible drop that was this and Wild Arms 2 on Playstation Plus Premium with trophy support it was a tough call which one to go with first, but ultimately I went with The Legend of Dragoon and I was not disappointed. This was my first time playing it and I really enjoyed it.

This had its hooks in me pretty much from the beginning, though I must admit the dialog took a little bit to get used to. The English translation here is not highly regarded and I understand why. Nearly every line ends with two exclamation points (!!) and some of the lines are a bit ridiculous. But part of this game's charm is it is unrelentingly a JRPG. I know that term has been a hot topic as of late, but I mean it in the most endearing way possible. This checks all the boxes of JRPG greats and does it with love.

As far as the narrative goes, for the most part I was into it, but towards the end I did kind of start to trail off. Overall I did still enjoy it though. It was cliche in the right ways. I enjoyed the characters, and the journey they went on. My only knock is that Shana is a pretty terrible character. Her emotional arc is paper thin, and she's hardly a person outside of her connection with Dart. However it's a complaint I can set aside when it comes to my enjoyment of the game.

The combat system is a lot of fun. I will say that I'm glad I had a rewind feature for this because I missed a lot of the button prompts that come with attacking, so it was great to go back and do it until I got it right. I like the dragoon mechanic but I do wish there was a way to switch back and forth from it so long as you had enough SP, because once you turn into a dragoon you're locked into it until you run out of SP, and you can't use items while you're in it. Aside from that frustration I still had a great time with the combat system. I'm glad that in today's day and age, turn based RPGs still do well. I know some people aren't a fan of it but when a game like this does it well, it's just so much fun.

Another frustration of mine was I felt that the amount of items you could carry was too low. Maybe I'm alone in that, but I was constantly having to manage my inventory and sell off or discard items just so I could have a comfortable amount of healing and reviving items. I made it work, though.

Overall if you like JRPGs this one is absolutely worth playing. It has a banging soundtrack, cool and interesting environments, fun characters, a good story and combat system. You can't go wrong!

Platinum Trophy #126
Platinum #2 of 2023

BLOOMIN' PIKMIN COCKTAIL

If you're looking for a refreshing Summertime cocktail to cap off your night, look no further than a Bloomin' Pikmin. This decadent drink is perfect not just for sipping, but pairs well with roasted Breadbugs and has a kick that will make your hairs stand on-end.

But first, a bit of history for you mixologists out there: The Bloomin' Pikmin owes its creation to my uncle Louie, who first concocted the drink using Pikmin he personally distilled using parts from his captain's marooned ship. Surely this drink helped him through such a harrowing ordeal. I fondly remember the night of Uncle Louie's return. We held a private get-together where several family dishes were shared. Uncle Louie had a saying: "Good food and good company is all you need... And some Pikmin, too." He introduced everyone to the Bloomin' Pikmin that night, and suffice it to say, it was a hit.

Regrettably, uncle Louie passed away after a long battle with disease brought on by constant exposure to cosmic rays and an appetite for the undocumented plant life and fungi he found on distant worlds. He was nevertheless a culinary genius - some would even call him a visionary - and he passed all he knew onto me, though he was at the time capable only of communicating in grunts, which I had to decipher by carefully considering the tone and timbre of each guttural sound. I will always remember those nights spent with Louie, scribbling down recipes for Pikmin pie, Snootwhacker sandwiches, and Bulbmin Wellington into a notebook which has since become well-worn. Though Louie has been laid to rest, his spirit lives on in these dishes, which I often prepare for my family as he once did. Indulging in his accomplishments and reminiscing about his adventures has become a tradition that I now share with you.

Although the Weatherby family today continues to cultivate and harvest our own Pikmin - which we use in a wide variety of dishes and drinks - anyone with access to even store bought Pikmin can get the job done. The only thing you'll need outside of the ingredients is a second glass, because you'll definitely want seconds.

Ingredients

3 measures of White Pikmin spirits
1 measure of Red Pikmin spirits
1 cube of Flying Pikmin
2 teaspoons of Yellow Pikmin syrup
1 chilled Rock Pikmin
2 fully bloomed Purple Pikmin leaves


1. Start by adding a single cube of Flying Pikmin to a mixing glass, douse with Yellow Pikmin syrup and muddle until it is fully dissolved.

2. Fill the mixing glass with Ice Pikmin, add White and Red Pikmin spirits and stir vigorously with a bar spoon.

3. Strain into a rocks glass over a single chilled Rock Pikmin.

4. Express the oil of two fully bloomed Purple Pikmin leaves, twist over the glass, then add as garnish.

5. For some extra zest, add a few dashes of red nectar or a single spritz of Ultra-Spicy Spray.

6. Enjoy!

I am VERY CONFLICTED about Rift Apart. It's an absolutely stunning showcase for the PS5 in every way, and it feels like a legitimate masterpiece most of the time. But then it just has to do something dumb every once in a while to bring the experience down.

First: The Good!

I've said it in multiple reviews before, but I really am in love with the DualSense. The haptic triggers, advanced rumble, and speaker (when used correctly) create a thoroughly engrossing experience that I will never not be a sucker for. The way that you half-pull a trigger for certain functions feels amazing, especially with the gentle little stop in the middle. The sounds and voices that come out of the controller throughout are just fun, and the rumble does a great job of making each weapon you use and each surface you walk on feel different. I love it!

Beyond the controller, the weapons feel great to use in and of themselves. I leveled each weapon up fully and spent all the Raritanium you can acquire in a single playthrough. In the end, there were very few weapons I didn't adore. I was a particularly big fan of the Negatron Collider. Big laser good.

I played this game right after finally getting a 4K OLED TV, and it's easily the most visually impressive game I've played to date. It's easy to take incredible graphics for granted, but I try to stop and say "wow" every once in a while, and Rift Apart probably got more wows out of me than anything I've played since Uncharted 4. And can you believe how good all that FUR looks?!?

Anyhow, missions are fun, characters are enjoyable, weapons great, visuals stunning, music solid, blah blah blah. Why didn't this end up clearing a 4/5 for me even though I was absolutely enamored with it most of the time?

The Bad!!

The Clank astral projection mini game is... fine. Just felt like puzzles for puzzles' sake, there was nothing particularly compelling there, I'm not sure if it's filler or a misguided attempt to break up the near-flawless Ratchet/Rivet gameplay, but I think the game as a whole would be better off without it.

The Glitch mini game is worse. A tiny cute spider robot shoots viruses? Okay that's kind of cool I guess, but... it's in a game that already has a lot of fantastic shooting. Why are we interrupting that for some bland laser-zapping? They try to give Glitch her own antagonist here, but it just ends up feeling pointless and hollow. Playing the Glitch levels felt like watching a bunch of 4-minute webisodes that spun off from your favorite TV show. The showrunners swear that these matter and are worth your time, but... are they??

Those are both downers, but they don't ruin the main third-person shooting and platforming. You might even argue that they make you appreciate the main gameplay even more by giving you something bland and tedious to compare it to! But, unfortunately, even the Ratchet/Rivet stuff ends up stumbling once you try to go for 100%. (And let's be real, if I'm enjoying a 3D platformer collectathon, I'm gonna collect every single thing) In the first Ratchet & Clank, levels are wide open areas which give you a variety of options for potential paths between any two points. Rift Apart mostly eschews this approach (with Savali being the main exception), instead focusing on segmented levels built around scripted set pieces. These make for some great and exciting scenes, but once you're trying to navigate a world like Sargasso or Cordelion without just following objective markers, you realize there's often one railroaded path that connects islands or rooms together, with deviation not often being possible. In a more open setting, exploration is a joy and wouldn't invoke the term "backtracking" at all, but completing most areas of Rift Apart feels a bit too much like repeating levels of an on-rails shooter, hoping you don't accidentally miss something because you'll have to begin the sequence of island-hopping again.

It really is a great game, and I'm glad I played it. But man, it's such a shame that it's not as consistent as it could've been.