pyrrhickong
Tomba 2 is a game that has game design. It is unknown exactly what it's trying to do, but damn, it is designing its heart out. There is so much game about nothing in here, an absolutely fascinating pile of spinning wheels, fighting with controls, and weird, cozy endearment. I do not think Tomba 2 is a good game, but it's an INSANELY interesting game that I would LOVE to see anyone's impression of.
Outwardly, Tomba 2 is as close to a 2.5D platformer as you can get. You're locked to a 2D plane, but can cross over to other intersecting 2D planes whenever you come across one, giving each area this very neat sense of depth and interconnectivity. Tomba 2 then decides to couple this innovation with some absolutely lousy jumping controls. Tomba HATES the ground for some unexplained reason, and will spend as long as he can floating in the air, his prayers that he never has to hit the ground again slowing him down in midair. This is coupled with incredibly responsive midair controls that keep Tomba's momentum slip sliding all over the place, making simply jumping on anything far harder than it needs to be. Any sense of actual platforming in Tomba is an utter struggle...
... or it WOULD be, but Tomba is strikingly devoid of platforming for a platformer in its first half! There ARE jumps you need to make, but most of the difficult platforming is optional and can just be walked around, there are precious few difficult jumps you actually have to make, and enemies are generally ineffectual and easy to ignore. Tomba instead uses its level design for the sense of exploration, as surprise, the game is actually all about fetch quests! Explore the world, bring this specific thing to this specific NPC, wonder how you get a spoon lodged in between two water-filled plants and then wait for several hours as it sits in your inventory being unused without a clue as to what it should do! While this level of busywork might be off-putting, Tomba's world is actually fairly well-realized, very neatly interconnected, and the main path through it compact enough that any form of backtracking is hardly an issue. It even does the neat thing of going back to previous areas with new abilities to get new stuff, and sets that up fairly neatly!
Unfortunately, for a game all about talking to people, Tomba 2 has a REALLY rough English translation. Sure, it works well enough to convey basic information, but all dialogue is presented stiltedly, with sometimes inaccurate or very vague information on where to go. This gets especially rough the later into the game you get; whilst the game is very good at pointing you in a straight line through its world, once you've completed a loop, exactly who you have to talk to in order to do whatever becomes a rather confused game of "well just talk to everyone until you stumble into the answer".
This is ESPECIALLY trying as the game's two big objectives - the Evil Pig Door and the Secret Towers - are explicitly hidden from the player, Tomba needing to go up to the former located invisibly SOMEWHERE in the world, and if he's holding a specific item when in proximity, he'll be able to access a boss fight. The Secret Towers are even worse, with the player needing to get two special songs from sidequests per tower and just... play them. If a room seems sus? Play it. Didn't work? Move somewhere else. This creates an agonizing amount of guess work for basic progression in the case of the pig doors and secret hunting in the case of the towers, and whilst there are hints for both, the Pig Door locations suffer the most from translation issues, and said location-revealer is hidden behind a lengthy sidequest involving blooming flowers that isn't revealed to be any more important than any optional sidequest, and the towers have no better hint than an NPC in each area going "I'm looking for an invisible tower, I think it's here, better go explore every nook and cranny I guess".
And that exploration, weirdly, gets better as the game goes on. Y'see, the developers KNEW that Tomba's jump sucked, and decided to design the entire game AROUND how floaty and awkward his jump was! Power ups like the Flying Squirrel Clothes allow Tomba to glide a ridiculous horizontal distance, and the grapple allows him to... well, grappling hook his way onto most surfaces, swinging off of them to carry his momentum, which can then combo into the squirrel suit to float around. It is an incredibly weird combination where Tomba is usually not platforming, but going AROUND the platforms, abusing physics to ignore any sort of challenge beneath them. Imagine a Super Mario World where the level design was horrible to jump through, but the cape still felt good to control. That is the feeling of playing Tomba 2 at its best.
Sadly, the game does not stay at its best for long. Boss fights are incredible exercises in "why does this work like this", with elaborate platforming-based arenas constructed for Tomba to completely ignore as he patiently waits for the boss to teleport next to him, jump on their head, and throw them in a bag three times. Every single boss can be dispatched in this manner, the unique elements of their arenas entirely ignored. Tomba 2 also has mini-games, which range from innoffensive to "oh god you took the worst elements of your platforming and made a timed challenge around it" to perhaps the most brutally difficult mine cart mini-game out there. The world record speedrun finishes the mine cart course with one second to spare compared to the MINIMUM requirement to beat it. It has to be entirely learned via muscle memory, and doing it unlocks the hints for how to find the bosses... but you're not TOLD that these will unlock hints, these are just weird items in a mini-game that might or might not affect the mini-game itself for all you know! It is a backbreaking challenge of perfection, and a solid 15% of my 13-hour playthrough was just learning this mine cart game. Also you have to do it twice, and the second time is faster so it messes with your muscle memory. It's awful... I kind of love that it exists. Y'know those challenges that you hate going through, but want to see other people suffer through them? It's one of those.
The final bit I want to touch on is that this game is fully voice acted. Every single line of dialogue has voice acting that ranges from "we got a guy in the office to record these lines with no emotion whatsoever" to "actually these voice actors are making some fun choices". It is cheesy, it is endearing... it is WEIRD going from some legitimate vocal performances to some of the goofiest voices you will ever hear. All of these have very little proper direction, with some lines being perfectly delivered for their scene and others sounded like they were recorded in a vacuum just GUESSING where the line will show up. There is also an outtake left in the game where the voice actor is re-clarifying his accent and taking the line a second time. It is very funny, it is VERY endearing.
Tomba 2 is a game that only plays like Tomba 2. It is a clunky, unrefined mess that does everything it can make its good ideas try to stop being fun. But damn it, it has a LOT of ideas, like, ALL the time. It is a fascinating game where something is happening, and usually it's pretty mediocre, but there's so many things happening with so much awkward delivery that it becomes charming. Plus the international soundtrack is incredibly catchy and well-suited to its environments. Tomba 2 is a game of vibes. I don't know what those vibes are, but I want you to try them, because I want to see how you react to them.
Outwardly, Tomba 2 is as close to a 2.5D platformer as you can get. You're locked to a 2D plane, but can cross over to other intersecting 2D planes whenever you come across one, giving each area this very neat sense of depth and interconnectivity. Tomba 2 then decides to couple this innovation with some absolutely lousy jumping controls. Tomba HATES the ground for some unexplained reason, and will spend as long as he can floating in the air, his prayers that he never has to hit the ground again slowing him down in midair. This is coupled with incredibly responsive midair controls that keep Tomba's momentum slip sliding all over the place, making simply jumping on anything far harder than it needs to be. Any sense of actual platforming in Tomba is an utter struggle...
... or it WOULD be, but Tomba is strikingly devoid of platforming for a platformer in its first half! There ARE jumps you need to make, but most of the difficult platforming is optional and can just be walked around, there are precious few difficult jumps you actually have to make, and enemies are generally ineffectual and easy to ignore. Tomba instead uses its level design for the sense of exploration, as surprise, the game is actually all about fetch quests! Explore the world, bring this specific thing to this specific NPC, wonder how you get a spoon lodged in between two water-filled plants and then wait for several hours as it sits in your inventory being unused without a clue as to what it should do! While this level of busywork might be off-putting, Tomba's world is actually fairly well-realized, very neatly interconnected, and the main path through it compact enough that any form of backtracking is hardly an issue. It even does the neat thing of going back to previous areas with new abilities to get new stuff, and sets that up fairly neatly!
Unfortunately, for a game all about talking to people, Tomba 2 has a REALLY rough English translation. Sure, it works well enough to convey basic information, but all dialogue is presented stiltedly, with sometimes inaccurate or very vague information on where to go. This gets especially rough the later into the game you get; whilst the game is very good at pointing you in a straight line through its world, once you've completed a loop, exactly who you have to talk to in order to do whatever becomes a rather confused game of "well just talk to everyone until you stumble into the answer".
This is ESPECIALLY trying as the game's two big objectives - the Evil Pig Door and the Secret Towers - are explicitly hidden from the player, Tomba needing to go up to the former located invisibly SOMEWHERE in the world, and if he's holding a specific item when in proximity, he'll be able to access a boss fight. The Secret Towers are even worse, with the player needing to get two special songs from sidequests per tower and just... play them. If a room seems sus? Play it. Didn't work? Move somewhere else. This creates an agonizing amount of guess work for basic progression in the case of the pig doors and secret hunting in the case of the towers, and whilst there are hints for both, the Pig Door locations suffer the most from translation issues, and said location-revealer is hidden behind a lengthy sidequest involving blooming flowers that isn't revealed to be any more important than any optional sidequest, and the towers have no better hint than an NPC in each area going "I'm looking for an invisible tower, I think it's here, better go explore every nook and cranny I guess".
And that exploration, weirdly, gets better as the game goes on. Y'see, the developers KNEW that Tomba's jump sucked, and decided to design the entire game AROUND how floaty and awkward his jump was! Power ups like the Flying Squirrel Clothes allow Tomba to glide a ridiculous horizontal distance, and the grapple allows him to... well, grappling hook his way onto most surfaces, swinging off of them to carry his momentum, which can then combo into the squirrel suit to float around. It is an incredibly weird combination where Tomba is usually not platforming, but going AROUND the platforms, abusing physics to ignore any sort of challenge beneath them. Imagine a Super Mario World where the level design was horrible to jump through, but the cape still felt good to control. That is the feeling of playing Tomba 2 at its best.
Sadly, the game does not stay at its best for long. Boss fights are incredible exercises in "why does this work like this", with elaborate platforming-based arenas constructed for Tomba to completely ignore as he patiently waits for the boss to teleport next to him, jump on their head, and throw them in a bag three times. Every single boss can be dispatched in this manner, the unique elements of their arenas entirely ignored. Tomba 2 also has mini-games, which range from innoffensive to "oh god you took the worst elements of your platforming and made a timed challenge around it" to perhaps the most brutally difficult mine cart mini-game out there. The world record speedrun finishes the mine cart course with one second to spare compared to the MINIMUM requirement to beat it. It has to be entirely learned via muscle memory, and doing it unlocks the hints for how to find the bosses... but you're not TOLD that these will unlock hints, these are just weird items in a mini-game that might or might not affect the mini-game itself for all you know! It is a backbreaking challenge of perfection, and a solid 15% of my 13-hour playthrough was just learning this mine cart game. Also you have to do it twice, and the second time is faster so it messes with your muscle memory. It's awful... I kind of love that it exists. Y'know those challenges that you hate going through, but want to see other people suffer through them? It's one of those.
The final bit I want to touch on is that this game is fully voice acted. Every single line of dialogue has voice acting that ranges from "we got a guy in the office to record these lines with no emotion whatsoever" to "actually these voice actors are making some fun choices". It is cheesy, it is endearing... it is WEIRD going from some legitimate vocal performances to some of the goofiest voices you will ever hear. All of these have very little proper direction, with some lines being perfectly delivered for their scene and others sounded like they were recorded in a vacuum just GUESSING where the line will show up. There is also an outtake left in the game where the voice actor is re-clarifying his accent and taking the line a second time. It is very funny, it is VERY endearing.
Tomba 2 is a game that only plays like Tomba 2. It is a clunky, unrefined mess that does everything it can make its good ideas try to stop being fun. But damn it, it has a LOT of ideas, like, ALL the time. It is a fascinating game where something is happening, and usually it's pretty mediocre, but there's so many things happening with so much awkward delivery that it becomes charming. Plus the international soundtrack is incredibly catchy and well-suited to its environments. Tomba 2 is a game of vibes. I don't know what those vibes are, but I want you to try them, because I want to see how you react to them.
1991
Popeye 2 is a game about fisting. You get cans of spinach and that causes your fist to grow as large as your entire body, which you can then use to punch. I used this with a technique called "fist boosting", wherein I would fist mid-air in order to gain momentum to make jumps. I later discovered that you just hold B to move faster. I was very disappointed. When you reach maximum fist, you can shoot spinach cans out of your fist. Enemies do not love spinach the way you do, and will die.
This is a game that has levels. It also has enemies. And design, sometimes. You go up, you go down, at one point you swim. It has music, and some of it is good, and some of it is actively painful, and you don't hear the Popeye theme until the credits and that's sad. It has hitboxes, and sometimes they work, and sometimes you just get hit twice by the boss' attack because your invincibility frames barely exist and get you combo'd easily, but it's ok because sometimes you can just jump on the fireball and it'll be ok. Sometimes the game has checkpoints at bosses, and sometimes it'll make you do the penultimate level again if you die to the final boss. But not the boss directly before the final boss that the level precedes, just the final boss immediately after the penultimate boss. As a treat. Popeye 2 fulfills the minimum requirements of being a video game, and it has Popeye with a giant fist. If you would like to speedrun a video game, this game functions, and competition will be low enough that maybe you could get the world record pretty easily. Otherwise, this is a game that does enough to function. I do not think it's a bad game - I like video games a lot, I think anything above a 1 is still better than not playing a video game - but it sure is something that exists and works sometimes.
Would you believe that this is probably still the best Popeye game? I love the guy dearly, but MAN, he just can't catch a break games-wise.
This is a game that has levels. It also has enemies. And design, sometimes. You go up, you go down, at one point you swim. It has music, and some of it is good, and some of it is actively painful, and you don't hear the Popeye theme until the credits and that's sad. It has hitboxes, and sometimes they work, and sometimes you just get hit twice by the boss' attack because your invincibility frames barely exist and get you combo'd easily, but it's ok because sometimes you can just jump on the fireball and it'll be ok. Sometimes the game has checkpoints at bosses, and sometimes it'll make you do the penultimate level again if you die to the final boss. But not the boss directly before the final boss that the level precedes, just the final boss immediately after the penultimate boss. As a treat. Popeye 2 fulfills the minimum requirements of being a video game, and it has Popeye with a giant fist. If you would like to speedrun a video game, this game functions, and competition will be low enough that maybe you could get the world record pretty easily. Otherwise, this is a game that does enough to function. I do not think it's a bad game - I like video games a lot, I think anything above a 1 is still better than not playing a video game - but it sure is something that exists and works sometimes.
Would you believe that this is probably still the best Popeye game? I love the guy dearly, but MAN, he just can't catch a break games-wise.
If Mario Kart is the Mario of kart racers, this is the Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze if kart racers, for all of the impressive good and odd quirks that might entail. Which is weird to say it's not the Sonic of kart racers, but we already have Riders for that, and Riders is off doing Riders things.
If there is something that All-Stars Racing Transformed is utterly unparalleled in, it's spectacle. The race courses that the game chooses to bring out don't just spread across Sega's history, but prove to be ever-evolving set pieces rather than simple circuits. Tracks very often crumble to pieces by their third lap, some invading force like the eruption of Death Adder's volcano, or the assault of the Death Egg crumbling away Sky Sanctuary, or a massive zombie dance party within the House of the Dead will cause the entire stage to morph, with first-place's reward being able to see exactly how everything changes and falls to pieces for leading the pack. It makes every single track exhilerating, as you wonder just how it's going to change, what laps will be the same and which ones will morph, what kind of set pieces will be thrown at you next. In terms of a first impression, All-Stars Racing Transformed is the top of its class; if you wanna play a racer for just two hours blind, this is absolutely brilliant.
But then ASRT decides to marry pretty fabulous track design with an engine that takes the greatest advantage of it. ASRT is patterned far closer to a game like OutRun than Mario Kart in terms of vehicle handling, and it makes every single turn feel silky smooth, figuring out just how much you wanna throttle or let off the gas and break respectively. The fact that it has essentially a revert for drifting to make s-turns a combo opportunity is absolute icing on the cake - driving is an absolute joy and is allowed to be endlessly more complex than the game's predecessor. This then leans into the game's main gimmick - your vehicle transforming mid-race into planes and boats - and these are handled pretty darn well too! The layouts of each course allow for a sort of freeform shortcut-making, where you need to decide how stringently you're gonna follow the suggested route that has turbo boosts and how much you're gonna try to cut corners to save time. The transitions between these sections are all absolutely seamless, and figuring out where to save items, what turns are the most dangerous, where your specific character can save the most time - THAT is when ASRT is at its absolute best.
Unfortunately, there are a few issues that hold it back. While ASRT's ambitions are incredibly lofty and the actual racing mechanics fairly solid, it doesn't quite adapt to the physics of these tracks particularly well. Any sort of diagonal surface is liable to cause a car to veer out of control, most notable in water sections where ramps can cause vehicles to launch real high into the air or stall out entirely. As the game is built on momentum, any time that it comes to a hault, it SCREECHES to a stop. But hey, that's no problem, this is a kart racer, crazy comebacks are a part of the whole shebang... except no, the item system is exceptionally poor. A vast majority of items are single-target, with the game essentially having two Green Shell variants (three if you count a forward-thrown blowfish), a red shell, a purely defensive item and two self-boosting items. As all of these only interact with either yourself or a single other racer (usually whoever's right in front of you), the middle of the pack is even more of a nightmare here than in other kart racers, where wild swings in position simply aren't possible and whoever's frontrunning is probably gonna have an easy time of things. There are two excpetions - the hornet swarm, which creates a skill check for the front of the pack to deal with in the form of walls of bees with a few gaps to race through, which can either turn things around or do absolutely nothing depending on player skill, and the all-star item, a Starman equivalent with some extra bonuses per character. The All-Star is basically the only comeback mechanic, usually only dropping once per player per race (if at all), so knowing exactly when to use it is paramount in a way similar to Mario Kart's Bullet Bill... but the lack of guarantee of its drop, dealing with everyone else's all-stars in the meantime, and need to still jockey into a good enough position to use it without the ability to use other items to hope for first makes it rather a struggle. Compounded with single-player AI that absolutely loves targeting you, specifically, and any issues with courses essentially leaving you in a position of "get All-Star or suffer", and it can make for real hopeless situations in instants, far more often than contemporaries like Crash, Mario, Diddy Kong, or even the game's own prequel might put you in.
Ultimately All-Stars Racing Transformed is a Sega love letter, through and through. It has incredible ambitions, and when it reaches those heights, it is an absolutely irreplaceable experience. Seriously, Burning Depths might just be the best kart racing course I have ever experienced, it is such an exhilarating rush with beautifully turns, and I'm uncultured and don't even know what a Burning Rangers is! But it does crumble under its own ambitions at times, with moments where the game stops working, odd gaps (why did you take Billy Hatcher out but still have a Billy Hatcher course that was a lot of new assets for the water section... which also is probably the glitchest part of the game?), and the crime of not having a race track for my beloved Space Channel 5. It is the best at what it does and sometimes pretty bad at what it's going for, and if it decided to stop being a kart racer and instead be purely focused on its racing elements, as the boost race sub-games imply, it might've just been the best mascot racer out there. As-is, it simply has to settle for being better than almost all Mario Karts and having some unforgettable moments more than worth showing off. What a terrible fate.
If there is something that All-Stars Racing Transformed is utterly unparalleled in, it's spectacle. The race courses that the game chooses to bring out don't just spread across Sega's history, but prove to be ever-evolving set pieces rather than simple circuits. Tracks very often crumble to pieces by their third lap, some invading force like the eruption of Death Adder's volcano, or the assault of the Death Egg crumbling away Sky Sanctuary, or a massive zombie dance party within the House of the Dead will cause the entire stage to morph, with first-place's reward being able to see exactly how everything changes and falls to pieces for leading the pack. It makes every single track exhilerating, as you wonder just how it's going to change, what laps will be the same and which ones will morph, what kind of set pieces will be thrown at you next. In terms of a first impression, All-Stars Racing Transformed is the top of its class; if you wanna play a racer for just two hours blind, this is absolutely brilliant.
But then ASRT decides to marry pretty fabulous track design with an engine that takes the greatest advantage of it. ASRT is patterned far closer to a game like OutRun than Mario Kart in terms of vehicle handling, and it makes every single turn feel silky smooth, figuring out just how much you wanna throttle or let off the gas and break respectively. The fact that it has essentially a revert for drifting to make s-turns a combo opportunity is absolute icing on the cake - driving is an absolute joy and is allowed to be endlessly more complex than the game's predecessor. This then leans into the game's main gimmick - your vehicle transforming mid-race into planes and boats - and these are handled pretty darn well too! The layouts of each course allow for a sort of freeform shortcut-making, where you need to decide how stringently you're gonna follow the suggested route that has turbo boosts and how much you're gonna try to cut corners to save time. The transitions between these sections are all absolutely seamless, and figuring out where to save items, what turns are the most dangerous, where your specific character can save the most time - THAT is when ASRT is at its absolute best.
Unfortunately, there are a few issues that hold it back. While ASRT's ambitions are incredibly lofty and the actual racing mechanics fairly solid, it doesn't quite adapt to the physics of these tracks particularly well. Any sort of diagonal surface is liable to cause a car to veer out of control, most notable in water sections where ramps can cause vehicles to launch real high into the air or stall out entirely. As the game is built on momentum, any time that it comes to a hault, it SCREECHES to a stop. But hey, that's no problem, this is a kart racer, crazy comebacks are a part of the whole shebang... except no, the item system is exceptionally poor. A vast majority of items are single-target, with the game essentially having two Green Shell variants (three if you count a forward-thrown blowfish), a red shell, a purely defensive item and two self-boosting items. As all of these only interact with either yourself or a single other racer (usually whoever's right in front of you), the middle of the pack is even more of a nightmare here than in other kart racers, where wild swings in position simply aren't possible and whoever's frontrunning is probably gonna have an easy time of things. There are two excpetions - the hornet swarm, which creates a skill check for the front of the pack to deal with in the form of walls of bees with a few gaps to race through, which can either turn things around or do absolutely nothing depending on player skill, and the all-star item, a Starman equivalent with some extra bonuses per character. The All-Star is basically the only comeback mechanic, usually only dropping once per player per race (if at all), so knowing exactly when to use it is paramount in a way similar to Mario Kart's Bullet Bill... but the lack of guarantee of its drop, dealing with everyone else's all-stars in the meantime, and need to still jockey into a good enough position to use it without the ability to use other items to hope for first makes it rather a struggle. Compounded with single-player AI that absolutely loves targeting you, specifically, and any issues with courses essentially leaving you in a position of "get All-Star or suffer", and it can make for real hopeless situations in instants, far more often than contemporaries like Crash, Mario, Diddy Kong, or even the game's own prequel might put you in.
Ultimately All-Stars Racing Transformed is a Sega love letter, through and through. It has incredible ambitions, and when it reaches those heights, it is an absolutely irreplaceable experience. Seriously, Burning Depths might just be the best kart racing course I have ever experienced, it is such an exhilarating rush with beautifully turns, and I'm uncultured and don't even know what a Burning Rangers is! But it does crumble under its own ambitions at times, with moments where the game stops working, odd gaps (why did you take Billy Hatcher out but still have a Billy Hatcher course that was a lot of new assets for the water section... which also is probably the glitchest part of the game?), and the crime of not having a race track for my beloved Space Channel 5. It is the best at what it does and sometimes pretty bad at what it's going for, and if it decided to stop being a kart racer and instead be purely focused on its racing elements, as the boost race sub-games imply, it might've just been the best mascot racer out there. As-is, it simply has to settle for being better than almost all Mario Karts and having some unforgettable moments more than worth showing off. What a terrible fate.
2001
After having not beaten Pikmin as a child because Puffstool turned all of my darling boys into violent delinquents who beat me up and got eaten, and then I decided "that's enough" and never came back to it, going back to play it is a fascinating task. What I'm presented with is essentially a simplified RTS where you simply drag one of your three units to the proper location for them to be useful, fulfill their function, and then repeat across a map before a time limit runs out. But sometimes they get caught on geometry or drown for no reason, because they have no idea what a bridge is and choose to dive into lethal amounts of water instead of following safety regulations that they themselves established. And it's here where Pikmin is at its weakest - its environmental puzzles are fairly rudimentary, the Pikmin themselves are clumsy, your actual throw is clumsy because it's tied to your walk so sometimes you'll just toss boys directly into the mouth of a lil' dwarf bulborb, and the actual matter of traversal is solved as simply as "did you make all the bridges and bomb the walls that are in your way?" Or just by throwing boys at the problem, typically nothing - enemies or puzzles - knows what to do when you throw Pikmin on its backside.
But it's that element - the enemies - that brings Pikmin to life. Due to the combination of the constant time limit and the fact that you have such limited resources - and they're ALIVE and make sad noises when they die and it's your fault like 70% of the time - every encounter with a new enemy type is a nerve-racking experience. You need to properly discern their behavior before they end up killing the battalion of boys you brought with you, and often times, ANY form of aggression ends up being an incredibly scary prospect! Things can turn from bad to absolutely untennable in Pikmin with just a single move, and god help you if more than one enemy is coming at you! Bosses, likewise, become a wager on how quickly you can figure out their gimmick before they wipe your squad and make you completely ineffectual. And this level of anxiety, trying to prevent things from going from bad to worse and failing constantly, is the heart of what makes Pikmin such an engaging experience. When you finally learn an enemy's patterns and manage to take 'em down no problem, using them as fuel for the fire, THAT'S the best of the game.
Ultimately, Pikmin isn't quite sure what it wants to be at this stage. It's an ultimately survivalist narrative with fantastic characterization for Olimar as this bumbling salaryman who's easily scammed but earnestly fascinated by the world around him, but it's presented as a score attack game where you wanna get better to have awesome speedruns with minimal losses. It wants to pressure you with a constant time limit, but there's true beauty in its world to appreciate. It wants you to be able to multitask between squads for ideal set-ups, but the learning process of enemies is the most fun part about the game! Ultimately, I think that Pikmin needed to grow from this first title - and I know in the future it did grow out from what this game set out to do - but I appreciate the unique little adventure all the same. It's clunky, but oddly accessible; if it didn't end up as an entire series, it'd be this fascinatingly unique cult classic! As-is... it's kind of that within its own series, anyway! A fun time to learn, but I eagerly await what future games hold for this series!
But it's that element - the enemies - that brings Pikmin to life. Due to the combination of the constant time limit and the fact that you have such limited resources - and they're ALIVE and make sad noises when they die and it's your fault like 70% of the time - every encounter with a new enemy type is a nerve-racking experience. You need to properly discern their behavior before they end up killing the battalion of boys you brought with you, and often times, ANY form of aggression ends up being an incredibly scary prospect! Things can turn from bad to absolutely untennable in Pikmin with just a single move, and god help you if more than one enemy is coming at you! Bosses, likewise, become a wager on how quickly you can figure out their gimmick before they wipe your squad and make you completely ineffectual. And this level of anxiety, trying to prevent things from going from bad to worse and failing constantly, is the heart of what makes Pikmin such an engaging experience. When you finally learn an enemy's patterns and manage to take 'em down no problem, using them as fuel for the fire, THAT'S the best of the game.
Ultimately, Pikmin isn't quite sure what it wants to be at this stage. It's an ultimately survivalist narrative with fantastic characterization for Olimar as this bumbling salaryman who's easily scammed but earnestly fascinated by the world around him, but it's presented as a score attack game where you wanna get better to have awesome speedruns with minimal losses. It wants to pressure you with a constant time limit, but there's true beauty in its world to appreciate. It wants you to be able to multitask between squads for ideal set-ups, but the learning process of enemies is the most fun part about the game! Ultimately, I think that Pikmin needed to grow from this first title - and I know in the future it did grow out from what this game set out to do - but I appreciate the unique little adventure all the same. It's clunky, but oddly accessible; if it didn't end up as an entire series, it'd be this fascinatingly unique cult classic! As-is... it's kind of that within its own series, anyway! A fun time to learn, but I eagerly await what future games hold for this series!
2020
I mean, there's no meat on the bone here at all, just the scent of where meat once was. It's one Streets of Rage level but with Yakuza sprite edits. But it does make me happy, and I like that when you unlock Ichiban, it uses the Like A Dragon battle theme! Points knocked off for all three characters being Axel variants, though. Majima would never rapid punch without a knife, he is 100% a spinning bird kick super kinda guy.
I think this is a brilliant beginner's racing game. If you have heavy nostalgia for this title in specific, I absolutely get it. The drift system is Mario Kart's pumped up to eleven - drifting to get speed is EVERYTHING in this game. Your natural movement speed is so painfully slow and getting a drift boost is so easy and lasts for so long out of the initial drift that getting back up to high speed is an absolute priority. Additionally, the actual drift is smooth as butter, both letting you weave out and cut in depending on the strength of your control stick hold flawlessly. Maintaining speed all throughout a lap is both simple to get a hold of and feels good to do!
Additionally, dang for a first draft, they really nail character in this game. Sure, you can tell that the budget isn't exactly stellar, but there's some REALLY good pulls for Sega all-stars and vehicle designs! Big the Cat on a motorcycle far smaller than he is with Froggy colors is hilarious, Eggman on a big wheeler because he "wants to look down on everyone he passes" is great, the Chuchus IN a rocket is a fantastic little touch, and Opa-Opa alone is a celebration of silent characterization. Seriously the amount of animation flourishes on that little guy; zero attachment to him before and now I would protect him with my life!
Unfortunately, simplicity is Sonic & Sega All-Stars' greatest downfall. I call it a "beginner's" racing game because most of the track design is based around the drifts - long, shallow turns that let you get that boost sky high. It makes the actual navigation of tracks rather samey, the chokepoints where you would use items repetitive and basically identical as "where the hazards are" or "when the split paths converge". There IS a lot of personality in these environments, but the process of going through them doesn't change due to the simplicity of the track design and the game's base mechanics. And due to the lower budget of the game, it doesn't have the time to sell the spectacle of each track mechanically. Sure, the Samba de Amigo tracks are visual spectaculars, adore those, but you don't interact with those visuals in any meaningful way; they're just neatly there, off to the side as you do the same drifts you do anywhere else! It is a good-feeling game with a lot of love for its source material, but very rarely does it come close to meeting its potential. As-is, it kinda just peters out halfway through the mission mode.
Note that nothing I said about the tracks above applies to the Super Monkey Ball tracks. For no reason, ALL of the Monkey Ball tracks are rude, filled with 90 degree turns and obstacles, and handle gravity differently as your kart clings to it rather than jumping off of it most of the time. They are fantastic and singlehandedly show the potential of this original game being realized. Seriously, Monkey Target is an all-timer of a race course and I want that to be known.
Additionally, dang for a first draft, they really nail character in this game. Sure, you can tell that the budget isn't exactly stellar, but there's some REALLY good pulls for Sega all-stars and vehicle designs! Big the Cat on a motorcycle far smaller than he is with Froggy colors is hilarious, Eggman on a big wheeler because he "wants to look down on everyone he passes" is great, the Chuchus IN a rocket is a fantastic little touch, and Opa-Opa alone is a celebration of silent characterization. Seriously the amount of animation flourishes on that little guy; zero attachment to him before and now I would protect him with my life!
Unfortunately, simplicity is Sonic & Sega All-Stars' greatest downfall. I call it a "beginner's" racing game because most of the track design is based around the drifts - long, shallow turns that let you get that boost sky high. It makes the actual navigation of tracks rather samey, the chokepoints where you would use items repetitive and basically identical as "where the hazards are" or "when the split paths converge". There IS a lot of personality in these environments, but the process of going through them doesn't change due to the simplicity of the track design and the game's base mechanics. And due to the lower budget of the game, it doesn't have the time to sell the spectacle of each track mechanically. Sure, the Samba de Amigo tracks are visual spectaculars, adore those, but you don't interact with those visuals in any meaningful way; they're just neatly there, off to the side as you do the same drifts you do anywhere else! It is a good-feeling game with a lot of love for its source material, but very rarely does it come close to meeting its potential. As-is, it kinda just peters out halfway through the mission mode.
Note that nothing I said about the tracks above applies to the Super Monkey Ball tracks. For no reason, ALL of the Monkey Ball tracks are rude, filled with 90 degree turns and obstacles, and handle gravity differently as your kart clings to it rather than jumping off of it most of the time. They are fantastic and singlehandedly show the potential of this original game being realized. Seriously, Monkey Target is an all-timer of a race course and I want that to be known.
Infinite Wealth takes all of the good that was established in Yakuza: Like A Dragon and decides "you know, all of the weird, rigid things to make it more like a classic RPG made it weird and rigid. Let's smooth all those out". And then boom, the job system is suddenly a lot more flexible, the gameplay system is significantly better made to take advantage of positional combat, the simple addition of being able to wipe out an encounter for slightly reduced EXP if you're multiple levels over them is a godsend to traversal. To make up for your time not being held up by random battles as often, Infinite Wealth is filled to its gills with content, and goes to the furthest reaches of the LAD series' goofiness for its scenarios, substories, and general tone. This is among one of the most consistently funny titles that uses its absurdity to constantly add more animations, more gameplay systems, more mini-games that could be their own games to add in to the general level of zaniness. And when you are ping-ponging between taking pictures of perverts in a rail shooter segment, having Sam Rigel tell you puns while you try to mine enough gold ore so that you can make the golden statue of Goro Majima you want to make for the sleazy district of your resort island, petting the weird man dressed as Captain Crunch that agreed to fight for you in the underground sicko fighting ring because you NEED a water-type Sujimon with high attack, helping investigate this woman claiming her chicken was abducted by aliens, and learning how your friends somehow all know what a Sega Dreamcast is still, the game is an utterly daunting amount of content that refuses to stop giving.
It then decides to hinge its plot on two VERY important facets: the fact that you (as the player) likely REALLY like Ichiban Kasuga as a character and that he's just an inherently likable guy to the world around him, and the fact that Kazuma Kiryu is really, really tired and deserves a rest, but refuses to take it. The game milks these aspects for all they're worth, giving Ichiban every opportunity to show off his larger-than-life personality and weaponize it to win others over, whilst utilizing Kiryu to properly reminisce about the Yakuza series that came before, the overwhelming totality of his legacy, and his place in it moving forward. The game manages to create a beautiful balance between its bittersweet moments and its riotous future to make for an absolutely intoxicating adventure that seems to just KEEP going and CONTINUE expanding until well into the 70, 80 hour mark where you can drag yourself back to the main plotline.
... and it's, unfortunately, here where Infinite Wealth falters for me. The previous two Like A Dragon games have two of the strongest endings I have ever encountered in a game, as they end with incredibly personal stories coming to fruition and either resolving or continuing in some of the most emotionally resonant scenes I've ever seen in a game. Infinite Wealth was unlikely to reach these, but it spreads itself so thin with the minutea of the game that the main plot takes a bit of a backseat, reaching for all of these grand ideas and statements and political plans. Some of the twists in the middle of it are QUITE strong, but it seems like a lot of pieces that were thrown into the mix had to be consolidated and resolved in a hurry. Ultimately, the note that Infinite Wealth leaves on is a satisfying one, but the individual steps to get there are not nearly as thrilling as one would hope. I do think that I prefer the first of Ichiban's games for the stronger emotional arc it takes me on - which is hard to say, going back to it after Infinite Wealth's improvements is difficult! - but I will say that Infinite Wealth is probably the MOST Yakuza any Yakuza game has been. And that's worth something!
It then decides to hinge its plot on two VERY important facets: the fact that you (as the player) likely REALLY like Ichiban Kasuga as a character and that he's just an inherently likable guy to the world around him, and the fact that Kazuma Kiryu is really, really tired and deserves a rest, but refuses to take it. The game milks these aspects for all they're worth, giving Ichiban every opportunity to show off his larger-than-life personality and weaponize it to win others over, whilst utilizing Kiryu to properly reminisce about the Yakuza series that came before, the overwhelming totality of his legacy, and his place in it moving forward. The game manages to create a beautiful balance between its bittersweet moments and its riotous future to make for an absolutely intoxicating adventure that seems to just KEEP going and CONTINUE expanding until well into the 70, 80 hour mark where you can drag yourself back to the main plotline.
... and it's, unfortunately, here where Infinite Wealth falters for me. The previous two Like A Dragon games have two of the strongest endings I have ever encountered in a game, as they end with incredibly personal stories coming to fruition and either resolving or continuing in some of the most emotionally resonant scenes I've ever seen in a game. Infinite Wealth was unlikely to reach these, but it spreads itself so thin with the minutea of the game that the main plot takes a bit of a backseat, reaching for all of these grand ideas and statements and political plans. Some of the twists in the middle of it are QUITE strong, but it seems like a lot of pieces that were thrown into the mix had to be consolidated and resolved in a hurry. Ultimately, the note that Infinite Wealth leaves on is a satisfying one, but the individual steps to get there are not nearly as thrilling as one would hope. I do think that I prefer the first of Ichiban's games for the stronger emotional arc it takes me on - which is hard to say, going back to it after Infinite Wealth's improvements is difficult! - but I will say that Infinite Wealth is probably the MOST Yakuza any Yakuza game has been. And that's worth something!
1999
I just sat here until I got past the Mewtwo stage, which is about all the time I can properly give a pinball game before I begin to cry and remember that I'm terrible at pinball.
Pokemon Pinball is about as friendly of a pinball game as you can get without giving you a free practice mode. The ball can move unforgivingly fast, but board orientation will bail you out more often than not. There's a massive level of RNG in getting the Pokemon you want, but the game is incredibly generous in giving you a minute where you can fail all you want in getting them. The ability to control your multiplier through the CAVE system and three markers at the top of each board is incredibly generous. That weird little gravity well on the blue board is very helpful in getting you the result you want if you can only shoot toward the middle of the board. There is an incredible level of novelty that, even at a base level, just getting one or two new Pokemon or landing in a new location will make you wanna play more. Every consideration has been taken to make both Pokemon and pinball comfortable and familiar to a new player and a young target audience, with charming spritework and unique bonus stages as their own reward, and some VERY stringent timing on the final Mewtwo bonus stage. It's a good game!
This is as high as I can ever personally place it due to my inability to be good at pinball. I think very fondly of this game, but it is not my addiction. No matter how many hours I pour in, I will never actually be good, and I suppose that is my curse.
Pokemon Pinball is about as friendly of a pinball game as you can get without giving you a free practice mode. The ball can move unforgivingly fast, but board orientation will bail you out more often than not. There's a massive level of RNG in getting the Pokemon you want, but the game is incredibly generous in giving you a minute where you can fail all you want in getting them. The ability to control your multiplier through the CAVE system and three markers at the top of each board is incredibly generous. That weird little gravity well on the blue board is very helpful in getting you the result you want if you can only shoot toward the middle of the board. There is an incredible level of novelty that, even at a base level, just getting one or two new Pokemon or landing in a new location will make you wanna play more. Every consideration has been taken to make both Pokemon and pinball comfortable and familiar to a new player and a young target audience, with charming spritework and unique bonus stages as their own reward, and some VERY stringent timing on the final Mewtwo bonus stage. It's a good game!
This is as high as I can ever personally place it due to my inability to be good at pinball. I think very fondly of this game, but it is not my addiction. No matter how many hours I pour in, I will never actually be good, and I suppose that is my curse.
2015
The tragedy of Undertale is that it's become so well-known as a game that its schtick becomes almost rote. Every bit of wit and cute, small subversion practically expected. It's become an originator of a style, and as such, faces the same sort of scrutiny of such titles, where you can see every little thing it does in its imitators and all it inspired, but done to a more specialized degree in those titles.
Fortunately it's still really GOOD at being subversive and fun. Undertale is a game that wants to throw a little moment at you, a little something to remember it by, in every single second, and it does so with a little cheek and a knowing smile that it's gonna be a bit silly. It's a highly sincere game, irreverent but never disrespectful of its world, and willing to show vulnerability and care with all of its characters once all of the jokes have landed or gone off-course. All of its attacks a cute way of trying to surprise the player and get them invested in every individual encounter. It uses the simple premise of a punch-line as its way of expressing both challenge and sincerity, and while it's perhaps a tad clumsy and limited in how exactly it delivers its gameplay on the whole (facing new things all the time naturally leads to some vulnerability that doesn't work as well in an RPG compared to its bullet hell roots... and it also doesn't do the RPG stuff particularly well), it's exactly that amateur humbleness that makes Undertale feel like such a special experience, that has caused so many people to want to praise it, defend it, bond with it, and explore it even further. It's simultaneously a fantastic game and a beautiful template of creativity by staying altogether playful and relatable.
... anyway this playthrough I fought sans for the first time, since I felt guilty doing it on my original computer. Actually really brilliant fight, plays with Undertale's limitations incredibly well, the weight of failure is entirely on the player and their stamina and that's the entire point the fight's trying to make, but it's so mechanically fascinating and addictive in the sheer speed required of it at times that you can't help but go in repeatedly. In spite of everything, it's a good time. And it knows it, and it hates it. And that's GREAT.
Fortunately it's still really GOOD at being subversive and fun. Undertale is a game that wants to throw a little moment at you, a little something to remember it by, in every single second, and it does so with a little cheek and a knowing smile that it's gonna be a bit silly. It's a highly sincere game, irreverent but never disrespectful of its world, and willing to show vulnerability and care with all of its characters once all of the jokes have landed or gone off-course. All of its attacks a cute way of trying to surprise the player and get them invested in every individual encounter. It uses the simple premise of a punch-line as its way of expressing both challenge and sincerity, and while it's perhaps a tad clumsy and limited in how exactly it delivers its gameplay on the whole (facing new things all the time naturally leads to some vulnerability that doesn't work as well in an RPG compared to its bullet hell roots... and it also doesn't do the RPG stuff particularly well), it's exactly that amateur humbleness that makes Undertale feel like such a special experience, that has caused so many people to want to praise it, defend it, bond with it, and explore it even further. It's simultaneously a fantastic game and a beautiful template of creativity by staying altogether playful and relatable.
... anyway this playthrough I fought sans for the first time, since I felt guilty doing it on my original computer. Actually really brilliant fight, plays with Undertale's limitations incredibly well, the weight of failure is entirely on the player and their stamina and that's the entire point the fight's trying to make, but it's so mechanically fascinating and addictive in the sheer speed required of it at times that you can't help but go in repeatedly. In spite of everything, it's a good time. And it knows it, and it hates it. And that's GREAT.
2020
Petal Crash has an absolutely impeccable amount of charm. From its writing to its spritework, it's a legitimately engaging collection of short stories and cute characters with a clever enough hook to know exactly what kind of cute lil' game it is and get the most out of it. On top of that, when everything comes together with a fantastic crash, blocks all moved into position to knock into each other in one big string while you start to look for the next, there is a FABULOUS kinetic burst of accomplishment that really only Tetris Attack matches. It's a quick-adapt style puzzler that simultaneously allows you to build and actively participate in, and the dynamic system on which you score points - that being having a certain combo lead over your opponent to deal damage that diminishes the longer it goes where no one has scored a point - makes the need to go from intricate chains to well thought-out two-matches fantastic. It marries all of the best elements of puzzlers together in a fabulous burst... it's just that the board, inherently, is a bit more limited than other puzzlers due to being less freeform. The feeling of your opponent messing you up is felt MUCH more here than in games like Panel de Pon or any versus Tetris game, because the interference your opponent runs is directly in your play area, rather than purely above or below it to add pressure. I'm not entirely sure what the best solution to garbage blocks is, but it creates a situation where comebacks are far more difficult in Petal Crash than its (good) contemporaries. Perhaps I just need to git gud properly, though. Characters are still absolutely adorable, game is generally adorable, I really look forward to what a sequel will bring to the table for this game!
1999
If you are still friends with me after playing all six boards of Mario Party 2 with me, then not only is your patience incredible, this is a friendship that absolutely will last.
Mario Party 2 lacks the wild swings of titles like Mario Party 3 or Mario Party 6, where a bounty of items raining down from a random space or a Reverse Shroom in the right place can shift the trajectory of a game in one turn. It's the best slow-burn Mario Party, where you'll need to decide your game plan for the next five turns and perform well in mini-games in order to actually achieve it. Options are limited, but that creates a rather consistent game state within the first five turns compared to other titles, letting you properly set up. After this point, it becomes a weapon of debilitating psychological warfare, as you try to convince everyone else of who's going for Happening Star, who's leading in mini-games, what the best decision to steal at a Boo would be. Board design is probably the best equipped for its item layout of the series, with the very limited options all being well considered and making item play not an instant swing, but a stepping stone to get there. Plus Bower Land, Horror Land, and Western Land probably have the best, most competitive Boo placement in the entire series.
Mario Party is as fun as you want it to be. If it's just a time waster to you, then yeah, it's fairly mid. But if you are willing to make deals, throw games, stab people in the back knowing that they will never trust you again but you NEED this win right now, desperately try to dig yourself out of a 1v3 where everyone wants you to lose a mini-game and you skill your way to the top because you're just that good at Hot Bob-omb? There's few experiences like it. Mario Party 2 hits the perfect sweet spot for me between being charming and accessible in how quickly understandable its mini-games are and how oppressive you can be with board knowledge and proper play (plus it has 1v3's that aren't total gimmes sometimes, and that's hard for this series!). And it's got the funny costumes that everyone will assume is the entire reason you like the game, because they're blinded by the allure of the Reverse and Sluggish Shrooms! But you know the truth. The funny costumes are the way. Bowser giving you money from his secret bank account if you're poor is the way. Getting in horrible debt to the Baby Bowser Bankers to the point where they'll steal a star from you if you try to repay your loan with zero coins is the way.
Congratulations, DK. You are the true super star!!!
Mario Party 2 lacks the wild swings of titles like Mario Party 3 or Mario Party 6, where a bounty of items raining down from a random space or a Reverse Shroom in the right place can shift the trajectory of a game in one turn. It's the best slow-burn Mario Party, where you'll need to decide your game plan for the next five turns and perform well in mini-games in order to actually achieve it. Options are limited, but that creates a rather consistent game state within the first five turns compared to other titles, letting you properly set up. After this point, it becomes a weapon of debilitating psychological warfare, as you try to convince everyone else of who's going for Happening Star, who's leading in mini-games, what the best decision to steal at a Boo would be. Board design is probably the best equipped for its item layout of the series, with the very limited options all being well considered and making item play not an instant swing, but a stepping stone to get there. Plus Bower Land, Horror Land, and Western Land probably have the best, most competitive Boo placement in the entire series.
Mario Party is as fun as you want it to be. If it's just a time waster to you, then yeah, it's fairly mid. But if you are willing to make deals, throw games, stab people in the back knowing that they will never trust you again but you NEED this win right now, desperately try to dig yourself out of a 1v3 where everyone wants you to lose a mini-game and you skill your way to the top because you're just that good at Hot Bob-omb? There's few experiences like it. Mario Party 2 hits the perfect sweet spot for me between being charming and accessible in how quickly understandable its mini-games are and how oppressive you can be with board knowledge and proper play (plus it has 1v3's that aren't total gimmes sometimes, and that's hard for this series!). And it's got the funny costumes that everyone will assume is the entire reason you like the game, because they're blinded by the allure of the Reverse and Sluggish Shrooms! But you know the truth. The funny costumes are the way. Bowser giving you money from his secret bank account if you're poor is the way. Getting in horrible debt to the Baby Bowser Bankers to the point where they'll steal a star from you if you try to repay your loan with zero coins is the way.
Congratulations, DK. You are the true super star!!!
1999
Crash Team Racing is the perfect middleground between Mario Kart and F-Zero for me. With the combination of MK's coin system and a turning-based variant of boosting, every single pathing decision on CTR that you make matters to a crazy degree. Every bit of level geometry becomes something you can bounce off of to get a boost when you hit the ground, every slope a chance to maintain your momentum by bouncing around, every turn not a chance to break, but boost through even faster than a straightaway as you take a perfect line. While I ultimately prefer its remake's focus on maintaining turbo pad boosts rather than short hops to keep momentum from fading on the ground, that doesn't take away from how truly excellent Crash Team Racing is, and what a marvel and technical achievement it is on the Playstation. It FEELS like the only appropriate kart racer for a platforming character, where the bounce and speed of your kart matters most, and god it feels good.
Plus it just nails character. TINY SQUISH PUNY KARTSH! BANDICOOT POWER! SAY GOOODNIIIGHT.
Plus it just nails character. TINY SQUISH PUNY KARTSH! BANDICOOT POWER! SAY GOOODNIIIGHT.
Diddy Kong is the best 2D platformer character to control from a base level. While other characters like Zero or Alucard have multiple extension options that mingle with their enemies in fascinating ways, Diddy is just pure fundamental controls, looking to perfectly preserve momentum. And if you charge forward with him, every single level in DKC2 not focused on swimming or an animal buddy can be adeptly handled with him weaving through stages in a beautiful, seamless chimpy charge. The way that DKC2 organizes its levels to play with this, placing enemies that Diddy juuust has time to either avoid or use to extend a cartwheel, is absolutely immaculate. On that merit alone, the game is superb and deserves play.
But DKC2 isn't satisfied with this. If Diddy's technical ceiling is too high, Dixie exists to help ease you in and find new ways to abuse levels. Every high ground now becomes a new vantage point to blaze through levels from, and her obvious strengths are well taken into consideration. Teaming up is required to plunder every secret, making maintaining both kongs paramount in a way that DKC1 simply never achieved, and DKC3 perhaps was a bit too overzealous to toy with. Animal Buddies are given their own unique sections, and each one combines a level of absolute freedom with a new level of trepedation, having either very obvious horizontal or vertical strengths with great weakness in the other deparment in the case of Rambi, Enguarde, and Rattly, or having incredible versatility but being terribly pressured up close in the case of Squawks and Squitter. AND there's the incredible amount of character work and writing and world design to make everything feel so vibrant and lived in and funny and the bosses don't suck anymore!
DKC2 is the golden standard I judge all other 2D platformers on. It's scary at first, it rewards you for mastery pretty quickly, it makes you feel in control of your own destiny at all times, only challenging you to maintain it in the roughest of circumstances. Is it flawless? Nah, Glimmer's Galleon ain't the best and camera tracking on Squitter specifically wasn't given the most elegant solution. But it's a lot damn closer than anything else in its genre has gotten, and also I really like it!
But DKC2 isn't satisfied with this. If Diddy's technical ceiling is too high, Dixie exists to help ease you in and find new ways to abuse levels. Every high ground now becomes a new vantage point to blaze through levels from, and her obvious strengths are well taken into consideration. Teaming up is required to plunder every secret, making maintaining both kongs paramount in a way that DKC1 simply never achieved, and DKC3 perhaps was a bit too overzealous to toy with. Animal Buddies are given their own unique sections, and each one combines a level of absolute freedom with a new level of trepedation, having either very obvious horizontal or vertical strengths with great weakness in the other deparment in the case of Rambi, Enguarde, and Rattly, or having incredible versatility but being terribly pressured up close in the case of Squawks and Squitter. AND there's the incredible amount of character work and writing and world design to make everything feel so vibrant and lived in and funny and the bosses don't suck anymore!
DKC2 is the golden standard I judge all other 2D platformers on. It's scary at first, it rewards you for mastery pretty quickly, it makes you feel in control of your own destiny at all times, only challenging you to maintain it in the roughest of circumstances. Is it flawless? Nah, Glimmer's Galleon ain't the best and camera tracking on Squitter specifically wasn't given the most elegant solution. But it's a lot damn closer than anything else in its genre has gotten, and also I really like it!
1994
For me, Donkey Kong Country feels unfinished. Even as a kid, owning the entire trilogy since I could first actually play a game, DKC1 felt looser somehow. That the game was throwing a ton of ideas at the wall and didn't quite know how to make them stick. Animal buddies function a lot more like limited Yoshis, having some applications and rules but mostly serving as neat bonuses for the level they're in. Diddy is just outright better than DK unless you want to take DK's "take every banana back" literally and mug every single Kremling for a single potassium. Things are a bit slippery, edges feel more rounded, levels don't have a set pace and can end either way too quickly or way after they've worn out their welcome. It's a messy effort of a game.
Anyway Diddy's still the best-controlling 2D platformer character before combat is taken into account, level design is still incredibly snappy, the flow state that DKC has is absolutely unparalleled when it gets going, and it's still challenging enough that I die a couple times despite my dozens of clears over the years. DKC shows brilliance in understanding basic momentum concepts and utilizing them well - you're only brought to a stop when there's fear in your heart and you hesitate, otherwise there's very few games that let you make up lost ground as quickly or as confidently as DKC does. It makes every individual obstacle you get hung up on feel like a fantastic triumph rather than a slog trudging your way back there, and like... it just feels GOOD, okay? It's sloppy, most of the bonus stages suck to get to, it's not its sequels, but NONE of DKC's sequels with the possible exception of Returns play as fast and streamlined as this game does. It remains one of the best platformers to blaze through as levels lean into DK and Diddy's momentum and leave more opportunities to find optimal pathing or weird secrets. It's its own, weird little beast amongst the DKC series before the games discovered what they really wanted to be. And it's good! Big monkey jump good!
Anyway Diddy's still the best-controlling 2D platformer character before combat is taken into account, level design is still incredibly snappy, the flow state that DKC has is absolutely unparalleled when it gets going, and it's still challenging enough that I die a couple times despite my dozens of clears over the years. DKC shows brilliance in understanding basic momentum concepts and utilizing them well - you're only brought to a stop when there's fear in your heart and you hesitate, otherwise there's very few games that let you make up lost ground as quickly or as confidently as DKC does. It makes every individual obstacle you get hung up on feel like a fantastic triumph rather than a slog trudging your way back there, and like... it just feels GOOD, okay? It's sloppy, most of the bonus stages suck to get to, it's not its sequels, but NONE of DKC's sequels with the possible exception of Returns play as fast and streamlined as this game does. It remains one of the best platformers to blaze through as levels lean into DK and Diddy's momentum and leave more opportunities to find optimal pathing or weird secrets. It's its own, weird little beast amongst the DKC series before the games discovered what they really wanted to be. And it's good! Big monkey jump good!
If I were reductive, I would say that Spike Out is a somehow more shallow version of the Tekken Force mode they throw in random Tekken games. If I'm not reductive, Spike Out is a relatively crunchy beat 'em up with great sound design, trying its best to figure out how to be a 3D beat 'em up in 1998. When you get the timing down to properly air juggle someone, it does feel pretty nice, and the fact that Spike carries a child on his back the entire time that Mega Kangaskhan's himself off of you to help with fighting is really quite fun. However, as the game lacks any sort of defensive utility, and the game's solution to difficulty is "throw a bunch of dudes at you in a 3D space where you can only effectively counter in one direction", the game boils down to less of any sort of skill and more a war of attrition. There is some delightful ham to be had here, and the part where I beat all of The Undertaker's acolytes, only for a giant heaven stage to open up and a fancy heaven man with a rapier said "welcome to Hell" despite clearly being in heaven was cool, but the title is ultimately coasting on its crunchy arcade feel more than anything. It lacks the nuance of something like Streets of Rage 2 or Final Fight wherein skill with positioning or defensive options open up a world of optimization, but it's a neat enough relic if you just like mashing out a satisfying-feeling six string that combos into a double hit launcher.