Frogun is a unique game to write a review of for me because it quickly went from very cute and enjoyable throwback platformer, to frustrating trial-and-error broken mechanics low budget mess. Thankfully I emerged on the other end of my Platinum trophy journey enjoying the game overall, but I won't lie that I was tempted to uninstall the game on several occasions.

The first few worlds/bosses are easy to finish, yet challenging to complete 100%, which is absolutely what one should expect from a nostalgia 90's-inspired platformer. Crash Bandicoot (the first one) and Chameleon Twist are 2 big ones to reference as the titular Frogun is used like the tongue in Chameleon Twist to attack enemies and latch onto items and surfaces. The jumping and platforming is grid based, easy-to-fall-and-die platforming like the original Crash, and the whole game is colorful, whimsically scored and feels exactly like a hidden N64/PS1 gem. There's tons of coins and hidden items to collect in each level, time trials, and an even more challenging no-death challenge for each stage. The bosses all have their own unique attacks and move sets too, so thankfully you won't be seeing any copy and paste.

The difficulty ramped up exceptionally when getting past the 3rd boss, and from this point there is a huge emphasis on perfect platforming, and perfect aiming for your Frogun, as there are countless gaps to cross that require you to chain your Frogun shots together onto several bouncy platforms or to shift your aim in mid-air to make a complex turn and shoot. This is where the game shows its cracks, and while I completely applaud the small indie developers that made this game for making very faithful package for what they were aiming for... it feels a little broken and janky here. The aiming kind of just works when it wants to, and sometimes your character is looking right at the item or surface it needs to shoot at to survive a gap, but just doesn't. There's an aiming mechanic that allows you to pinpoint your reticle more accurately, but it only sometimes helps.

Needless to say, I got through this one, and finished all levels and bosses. I was almost satisfied and ready to call it quits, when I noticed I was a few trophies away from the Platinum. That required me to complete the boss rushes, including the "brutal" boss rush, and to collect all hats and artwork. I'll divide this section into 3 parts:

1. Where Frogun lost me
2. Where Frogun completely lost me
3. Where Frogun won me back

1. Where Frogun lost me
I went into the boss rush levels and easily got my way through the first few bosses. These levels are generously sprinkled with checkpoints so dying never feels like a total punishment. However, in the "brutal" boss rush level, there is a garbage checkpoint right before a segment that requires you to use spiked bouncing platforms to get to the last 2 bosses. This is the last checkpoint in the level, and dying during either of the 2 bosses sends you back here, BEFORE the spiky bouncing platforms. The chances of getting damage from these spiky platforms before the bosses is very high due to the perfect jumping and aiming that is required to pass this section, so the chances of you entering the final 2 back-to-back bosses with less health is pretty high. An added challenge, or a "fuck you" from the devs, I can't tell. And the final boss has a phase so bullshit, that you more or less absolutely require at least 3 to 4 HP left to survive it, or expect to fumble and die during (also don't even try the brutal boss rush without upgrading your health to full). I'm talking about the electric floor phase, if anyone's curious. Fuck that phase so hard. After finally beating the boss rush, I was feeling pretty done with Frogun.

2. Where Frogun completely lost me
Where do I start with the grind needed to unlock all of the hats and artwork. Yikes! Repetitive grinding in games for trophies is not something I do often, or really ever, so don't ask me why I did it for this. I knew it was obtainable, and I found a level in the last bonus world with the boss rushes where you play as the dude you race throughout the game, that allows for around 370 coins per run, and the level is easily beaten in a minute and a half or less if fast. There is however 1 little gap in this level that requires perfect aim, and a few water/enemy obstacles that can also get you if you're not focused. But I grinded that level for a few hours, and started to feel the typical "I'm wasting my life" feeling that some games give you. Devs, if you're going to charge thousands and thousands of coins for your silly unlockables, please make getting them natural when beating the game, maybe require a few extra replays of the some levels, but nothing this extreme. You could get every coin in every level 100% and still be way off, so this is absolutely a grind. I ended up putting on Youtube and listening to a podcast to have a distraction during this. This is where Frogun felt like a chore and the Platinum trophy quest felt stupid and not worth it.

3. Where Frogun won me back
Finally, I had unlocked all artwork, and all that remained was 2 hats. The last hat would unlock when I had all other hats, so the second last one needed was to get 30 complete emblems. This meant 30 levels beaten, 30 all coins collected, 30 time trials beaten, 30 no-death runs, 30 all green gems collected and 30 secret purple gems collected. This was easily obtainable in the first few worlds, but as the game goes on and the levels get harder, much more of a challenge, especially no death runs and the time trials, as some levels are a bit of a maze and have branching paths you need to memorize to maximize your time taken. I was dreading this, as so much of the last chunk of the game as I mentioned before is full of bullshit gaps and perfect Frogun aiming. But to be perfectly honest, this is where unlocking the last hat and earning the Platinum felt like a true accomplishment. Levels suddenly felt well designed and laid out. Gaps I was missing, or failing at before, I was clearing with ease. I was beating time trials first go and rushing past enemies, and somehow clearing areas that killed me several times before to get the no death runs. All of the boring-ass grinding and replaying of the level previously had given me more experience and practice to do this, and I started to really enjoy Frogun again. To be honest, when I got the last hat and the Platinum trophy, I was actually ready for a whole other world to unlock and to keep going, for a whole new challenge. This is where I realized how fun and rewarding Frogun is once you get to the end and suffer through the punishing challenges. This is exactly what we remember video games of the 90s being like.

Frogun is a sometimes 2.5 out of 5 but mostly solid 3 star experience for all that it offers, but I ended up bumping it to a 3.5/5 for the challenging but rewarding journey it asks of you for the Platinum. Expect annoyance, rage and tedium, but try to remember it's a small team of devs trying hard to give you a tailored, nostalgic experience, warts and all. Yes, it has some balance issues and jank, but I think that's what ultimately makes it the unique little package that it is.

Yet another of my long-shelved Fromsoft playthroughs that I have finally completed. As it's only from 2019, that will bring my average time-to-completion down just a smidgen before I finally take down the last outstanding title on my plate...

As for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice itself, this was a fantastic mixup to the Fromsoft action RPG formula. I don't think they nailed everything they attempted, but the important parts more than made up for that, making this one of the most distinct and memorable action titles in many years, even among its siblings. I do think its fated to be a bit more niche because of that uniqueness, however.

I'll start with what I found to be the most consistently good part of the game, and that is the visual design and graphical implementation. I played the PS4 version of the game, so not even the full fidelity possible (even with the FPS boost of playing on a PS5) and frankly I'm quite surprised by how good it looks 4 years later. It's soft, but not too blurry; detailed but not noisy; muted for the most part, but pops with color when it matters.

I'm pretty used to coming back to Dark Souls and seeing that 360 era mess, and even DS3 doesn't quite measure up to the AAA standard of its time, so I tend to forget that Fromsoft really picked up on this one. They didn't really improve the technical fidelity of their tech all that much, seemingly (save for maybe improved shading and LOD resolving), but the design of terrain, models, and textures goes one step up from DS3 in delivering a feeling of "fullness" and "cohesion" to the world.

Off the top of my head, I can't remember a single "bad" looking part or model in the game. Other than some normal-human character models still having that "Fromsoft" look to them, the seams of the world are quite well hidden.

And the world is just so darn interesting and pretty. Reminds me of how I felt playing Jade Empire as a kid, but now with a twist of dark, Japanese mythology.

The soundwork is great, too. Can't quite call it the most "inventive" since a lot of it is bells, chimes, metal clashes, and sound cues from Japanese tradition — the stuff you'd probably expect from a samurai/shinobi flick — but it is well executed. Each distinct cue has a distinct meaning and gels with the visuals.

Music is mostly background, but it's pleasant and sets the right texture for the proceedings.

With all of that out of the way, the gameplay is probably what most people are coming to this game for and where the depth of the discussion lies. Primarily, to me, because while the broad strokes remain very similar, Sekiro is a large depature from Fromsoft's most popular titles (at this point in time). In Dark Souls, there is a significant statistical element to combat and an expansive toolset of weapons, thus as players encounter its many challenges they can choose a path of least resistance by adjusting their stat advantages or pulling up one of many alternative strategies. As often comes up in discussions of its difficulty, it naturally tailors itself to the player, if the player cares to meet it halfway.

Sekiro throws that out, gives the player a sword, a couple arm gadgets, and a very limited set of playstyles (relatively), then requests the player learn those or stop.

There are still optional items, equipment, and potential stat bonuses but, in variety and effect, they function much more like power-ups in the action games of the 90s and early 00s. There are no stat-increase choices to make, you only get higher Health/Damage at curated points by killing elite enemies and exploring the secrets of the world. The only real "RPG" aspect is a combat skill tree that unlocks through experience, but in implementation its no more complex than what you'd find in many "pure" action games over the decades.

Thus, the real meat of gameplay revolves around you learning the dance of single sword combat. Thankfully, that alone has enough depth for the runtime of the game. The pattern of combat is very close to what you'd find in a fighting game, with multiple options for offense and defense and each coming with its strengths and weaknesses. And most fights will actually make you use at least the core set of those options, which is usually enough to create fairly complex, ryhthmic patterns to the fights.

And what really makes it jive as a combat system is the use of a "posture" guage separate from basic health, which rewards clean gameplay by allowing for accelerated executions of enemies. Keep a steady offense and a precise defense, and the enemy's posture will break well ahead of their health depleting, allowing you to land a deathblow then and there.

It is immensely satisfying when you get the flow down.

It can take quite a bit more trial and error to learn than even Dark Souls, though. It's worth it, but there will just naturally be people who can't grasp it. Not necessarily even because of lack of skill. If you only had one character in a fighting game, then even some pros at other games just aren't going to be all that hot on it.

That comparison isn't 1-to-1, though. Being singleplayer makes the process of adjusting to its rules much easier to do gradually than a competitive title, and the mechanics aren't actually as deep as most fighting games, so its open to a wider variety of players as a result.

And there are some suberb fights on gorgeous setpieces in waiting for you to enjoy once you do get a handle on the system system.

There are also a handful of fights where (for me) either the amount of learning effort required didn't really pay off in a satisfying conclusion or where the posture bar was effectively a non-factor so you just had to hit the bloody thing 80 times and pray you don't screw up too many times in the process. These were the minority of boss fights, however... but they were there.

And that's all fairly subjective. What more often frustrated me, however, were the movement mechanics' finickyness and the resource economy of the game.

It has to be prefaced before any talk of movement, that this is another big departure for Fromsoft. We've seen many 3D game franchises labor over the decision to have jumping or not, and this was Fromsoft's point to finally go all-in on having it. There's a grapple hook, there's wall jumping, there's ledge hanging and ducking, and stealth and all kinds of shinobi things.

And 90% of the time its really fluid and effective.

... but I'm an ape raised on twitch shooters so if given any leeway, I will turn that 10% into 30. The heavily animation influenced (not quite "based") movement was quite grumpy with the kinds of maneuvers I was trying to pull, but it also wasn't so inflexible that I was forced to accept it like I would with a Resident Evil game. So for the 30+ hours I've put into this title, I'm still struggling to meet it in the middle many times and find a consistent way to play it.

I don't necessarily think the implementation is "bad." I think there are improvements that could be made, but I'm willing to admit that I'm half the problem (or more than).

However, my other frustration is one I see more as bad design on the game's part.

It is practically tradition in a Fromsoft game at this point that you lose your money and experience on death, but in past games you could potentially recover all of it. In Sekiro, you lose half of what you have (or thereabouts) and have no recovery option. For experience this doesn't start bad initially, as it locks in at every new skill point, so only the visible bar is at risk...

... but money starts fairly scarce and experience becomes scarce halfway in. So eventually it reaches a point where "losing half" can mean losing an entire area worth of money and experience with no recourse. And even with the nifty option to self-revive on the spot without losing it "immediately," with its limited usages some of us will inevitably (or quite frequently) still end up with a hard death. And Lord help you if you're on a difficult boss: those bars are gonna hit 0.

I think the Dark Souls style checkpoint recovery is a much healthier system. Yes, you can still lose it all, but as long as you can keep getting back to the point you made it last time, you can get everything back, plus change for the latest attempt as an additional reward for being mostly consistent. Here though, you slip up and get screwed, end of story.

Thankfully, those resources really aren't nearly as important, but it comes too close to being a full-on negative feedback loop.

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If I had any more points to make, I have forgotten them and this review is now too long for my liking. In summary: Game is good, you should try it. You might not "like" it all the time, but give it a good effort because it'll reward you with some very satisfying, memorable experiences.

Even if you have to chip away at it in bursts over several years, like me. 😂

Let's talk about scale.

Most media does not do a very good job of handling scale, because scale inherently requires contrast. Anyone who's made 3D models should know that a lot of objects tend to be created at much larger sizes than what they're going to be rendered at, meaning that you'll have plenty of geometrically massive source files that are shrunken down when they're to be displayed next to other things. Designing a toothbrush to be the size of the moon doesn't really matter so long as you can scale it back down when it's time to place it in your model of a bathroom. Scale isn't just when something is big, or when something is small; it's when something is big and something else isn't.

Scale in most video games is usually limited to simple matters, such as having a physically spacious game world to navigate, or larger-than-normal enemies to indicate increased danger. This isn't a problem, per se; in fact, this commonality that you can see between many major titles — Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, Grand Theft Auto V — likely indicates that public consensus deems this to be fine. Tropes and design philosophies become adopted en masse because they work. If the final boss is the size of a fucking apartment duplex ala Dead Space or God of War, it sells the scale.

But very few games are designed purely around scale. There tends to be a lot of focus on scope — more features, more objectives, more goodies — but not so much on scale. Scale often serves its purpose as more of a tool than a design document. For the second review in a row, I can bring up Shadow of the Colossus as an example of a game designed explicitly around scale; rather than an element or a one-off, the entire game is built and wrapped around embodying the concept of contrasting sizes. But Wander is always small, and the colossi are always big; again, not in any way bad, and completely appropriate for what the developers were shooting for! But what's uncommon about Shadow of the Colossus is its refusal to ever stop showcasing scale, rather than the fact that you're a small guy fighting a big guy. If that's all you're looking for, there are hundreds of games where you can fight a guy that's bigger than you. It's all about showcasing the scale from the start, rather than saving it for special occasions.

Katamari Damacy is one of the greatest examples of showing scale from both sides of the spectrum I've ever seen.

Again, if you've got any experience with 3D modelling, you're probably very keenly aware of the fact that not all models are created equally; the purpose of creating these models is usually to place them into a world as part of a greater whole, and not everything is as important as a main character or a cool weapon. Leaves, bottles, shelves, sticks, rocks: these aren't glamorous, but they're important. If you're on the creator-end of the product, you need all of these incidentals to make the world more cohesive, seem more lived-in. If you're the consumer, you probably never notice any of them. You'd notice if they were absent, but you kind of take their presence for granted.

Katamari Damacy puts quite literally all of its objects in the world at center-stage, demanding your attention for each and every one of them. No matter how big, no matter how small, all of them can — and eventually will — be absorbed into the katamari. This is what makes the game's use of scale feel incomparable; everything is important. Ants matter as much as batteries matter as much as fruit matters as much as houses matter as much as countries matter. Everything is rendered simply and lovingly, and you'll probably never notice while playing that these objects are only as focused on as they are because they were modelling practice for the art students who provided them. Of course everything matters. It wouldn't have been created if it didn't.

While the idea has certainly diminished since the mid-2000s common internet joke of Japanese media being "so weird!", a pervading perception of Katamari Damacy is that it's incomprehensible. Sure, the idea of rolling a sticky ball around and picking things up is easy enough to grok, but the surrounding narrative and theming is often read as just being surreal for its own sake. It would be silly to deny that the game is odd, sure, but the actual message the game is going for is simple. It's one of unity and togetherness. The songs — certainly good enough to justify the $20 asking price this had on release by themselves — almost all feature lyrics of love and longing, of having fun, of just enjoying life as it is. Some of the songs are You Are Smart, which kind of fucks up the whole point I'm making, but did still make me feel like a very very smart boy whenever it played. Animals flee and people scream when the katamari comes a-rolling at them, but all ends well when everyone gets together on their lunar vacation. There's a fascination with the breadth of the cosmos even down to the smallest and most incidental baubles that's infectious. No other game will manage to make you utter the line "yes, an eraser!" and mean it the way that Katamari Damacy inspires you to.

It's a wonderful little gem of a game. Completely phenomenal from top to bottom. I will never get the biggest cow on the Taurus level.