It's prettier than it plays.

Specifically, I get the impression that it seeks of video games something very different from what I seek from it, and that's not necessarily bad, but I couldn't relate to it.

All I'll say is that I wish they'd focused on more reasons for players to care about the fish and the world - to have more interactivity other than just pinging sonar at them, so that they'd be more than just pretty things to look at and feel for just because, hey, nature being affected by technology! Don't you feel bad?

But maybe that might have gotten in the way of the experience they wanted to craft. That's fine - it's just not for me.

It probably explains why it took me six months to put in a cumulative one-and-a-half hours to finishing this game.

I should also report slight performance issues on Switch, including framerate drops, but more importantly, instances of sound peaking and distortion near the end of the game that very much detracted from the experience, especially on headphones.

If I'm ever coming back to this, it's because the fish meditation is genuinely really charming and calming, but I think this game offers little for me as an interactable work.

Thirty star points short of absolute perfection.

"We, the Mario team
poured our hearts and souls
into creating this game
for your entertainment.

It is full of secrets.
Enjoy!"

I should start this review by saying that I absolutely loved the first Spyro the Dragon. If anything could give Super Mario 64 a run for its money, it was it.
Spyro had an amazing sense of terrain; every single inch of level felt deliberately designed to test the player's understanding of jump arcs, gliding distance and steering while dashing.

Essentially, it was to Super Mario 64 what Sonic the Hedgehog was to Super Mario World: trading off a more diverse moveset and list of abilities for a focused design that challenges players to consider the level design carefully, and how your movement works in relation with it.

So it was at first very disappointing seeing Spyro 2 betray its roots. A quick list of minor issues:
- The gems tally carries over from level to level, making it less obvious at a glance how much of the level you've completed.
- Moneybags. I hate Moneybags. There's absolutely nothing redeemable or charismatic about him, and there's very little catharsis regarding him at all.
- Spyro 2 is awfully paced compared to the other two games, especially in terms of level-to-hub distribution.

But there were major design changes that I had issues with.
I preferred saving dragons over the NPCs who hand out Orbs for missions, for one thing. Between the missions and the generally smaller level design, it almost felt as though Spyro 2 wasn't confident in its platforming; and not only that, but dragons just make for more interesting banter, especially from Spyro's side that you don't see enough of in this game.
For another, the unlockable moves largely don't add much meaningful depth to the platforming and exploring, aside from swimming, and feel like padding, forcing players to backtrack. Coming straight from a game that required absolutely none of that, this was a very painful change.

Spyro 2 isn't a bad game. It iterates on the powers very briefly explored by the first game in interesting ways, especially the supercharge and super flame; swimming genuinely adds to the series and what it's capable of in terms of environments and level design, and adds some important new mechanics, most importantly the hover that lets you do a small double jump in exchange for ending your glide.

But it feels like a game that lacked conviction regarding its platforming - something the previous game never suffered from - and falls under the very trappings that that game avoided, but Rare's collectathons suffered from.

Sections where it's almost impossible to not take damage? Check!
Trial-and-error level design that sometimes drops you straight onto an enemy when going downwards? Check!
Random health and ammo drops from enemies in a game without backtracking and respawning enemies? Check!

If you're here for Kodaka's music, check Blaster Master, Gimmick or Hebereke instead. If you're here for a good NES run-and-gun, just stick with Mega Man or something.
You're going to end up relying on save states anyway, and at that point it's kind of a moot point to "experience the game."

I've played them all. Championship Edition, DX, Pac-Mania, Arrangement, even Super Pac-Man and Pac & Pal.
This one is my favorite one. No, I'm not kidding! Please hear me out.

I think the Championship Edition games as a whole are some of the best that Pac-Man has to offer: great flashy visuals and music along to a speedy reinterpretation on the classic Pac-Man formula based around scoring as high as you can within a fixed amount of time.

The original Championship Edition was great; you can tell it was Toru Iwatani himself behind the design of the game from start to finish. Ghosts are genuinely threatening, and their positioning based on your movement is key to keeping a combo going and ultimately scoring high...
But it's a little basic when you look at the games that came after.

I think the nomenclature behind DX was a massive mistake. Too many people assume that this was the same game as the original that Toru Iwatani worked on, just slightly enhanced-- but that's not my point here.
DX is flashier, with more customizable options, more mazes with genuinely interesting designs, and more options like Ghost Train and Time Trials, as well as a practice mode and visualizations of your game speed...
But it's a lot more superficial. Ghost Trains end up making the AI much less interesting, and the slowdown and bombs end up affecting the game's pace too much that it becomes a nearly braindead experience. After all, what danger are you ever truly in when you get five whole seconds to decide whether to use a bomb in the face of a ghost or not?

Both of them have some very interesting concepts that I think were underutilized - and that's where Championship Edition 2 comes in.

Firstly, the dots. The reason why you don't need to eat every dot in order to progress is to increase how much more open the game's sense of pathing can be. Routes are now less about just following the most optimal paths through the dot trails, but more about figuring out the fastest way to the fruit while also spawning it. Score and game speed increases considerably the further you get into the maps; your goal is always to get to a 500 dot combo, then to eat the fruit as soon as possible.

I'm a little mixed about the bombs, but I think they're good overall. The points you accumulate from getting the early maps' bombs don't stack up to the sheer score you can rack up from later maps' ghost trains and fruit, so there's no real point to going out of your way to hoard them. The fact that they give you score might make players hesitant to use them, but it's always a tradeoff of whether using one might let you catch a blue ghost train faster, thus leading to more scoring time.
I think it's much better than in DX, honestly. It doesn't drop the pace of the game (which feels like a running theme with 2 vs DX), doesn't immediately punish you for using it but focuses more on risk vs reward, and most importantly - transforms what was originally a solely reactionary tool into a potentially proactive one.

I think the power dynamics between Pac-Man and the ghosts is made more equal by giving Pac-Man a brake (especially important in extreme!), removing one-touch kills and the bomb having more utility than ever - besides, angry ghosts can't go in to hurt you in the pocket where the fruit spawns, so you can camp there to calm the ghosts down... except they go in to kill you if you stay there for 30 seconds, at which point I'd argue that's not exactly how the game intended itself to be played anyway.

Finally, I like that the game is a lot more transparent than DX. Ghost patterns are clearer and more predictable if you put time into it; the fact that the ghost trains are all contained into the ghost box at the end of every power pellet maze effectively resets the ghost patterns every now and then, and even the blue ghost and fruit bubble behavior are predictable and possible to manipulate and intercept - even if the fruit moreso than the ghosts.

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 might be the most lab-able, the most solvable game in the series after the original, and I think that's a good thing. Its strategic elements are laid considerably more bare than any game after the original (yes, even more than the original CE), and if you take time to understand its mechanics and make the most out of them, I think CE2 proves itself to be a deep game that's more fun to master than the misnamed, flashy but superficial CEDX, and the slower, harder and more methodical almost-to-a-fault Championship Edition.

Knuckles' Chaotix is a very enjoyable game, but also a very flawed one. It's a game with mechanics and aesthetics so unique that someone who's given it enough time, someone who's figured it out inside out could genuinely have a really fun time making the most out of it...
but is that really worth it now when there's so many other games out there to be played?

I like the ring mechanic. I wouldn't say I'm an expert at it, but I've given the tutorial a fair chance, and I'd like to think I've gotten the hang of taking advantage of it for more interesting traversal. There's not much more to the game and its levels other than that traversal, but as someone who replays Super Mario 64 every now and then just because of how it feels to move in that game, it was enough for me.

But it's janky, and the compromises it brings to the game design are flat out not worth it. Enemies are sparse, level designs are less deliberate, and all the randomness it brings in to fluff out an otherwise basic game can be frustrating for those who aren't used to it. Its pacing is non-existent, just like its completion rewards...

I very much enjoyed my playthrough of Chaotix a few years ago, but I think there's a reason I didn't wait for another replay to add this to my list here. It's a good memory, but I'll leave it as just that - a memory.

Watch the Game Apologist's series of videos on this game, though. They're far more meticulous than I am here - and arguably more so than the actual developers themselves.

It's not the worst thing in the world if you know what you're getting yourself into. I liked having a dash, a sword, energy refills found within the stages instead of being random drops, energy tanks I could refuel myself

But I imagine I should probably just play Mega Man X if that's the case, huh?

Oh, and the final boss is trash.