Recent reviews by Gunman

Sephonie is a bit of a let down following Anodyne 2 but overall I think there's a game to recommend to certain people if they think the premise is interesting and already have in interest in Analgesic's style. I've been anticipating this one for some time now after becoming familiar with Anodyne 1 and 2. Anodyne 2 is a really well made game with tons of great storytelling, and a really nice throwback artstyle from that early era of 3D games. It's game play wasn't next level or anything but it set itself apart with its atmosphere, world building and very believable and bizarre characters, alongside its awesome music. Sephonie doesn't really recapture that magic but it might be worth your time over a weekend if you pick it up on sale.

Sephonie is a solid if a bit bare bones 3d platformer punctuated by block matching puzzles at objectives. Beyond those 2 ideas, there's the story, which is presented through text box dialogues with what are either abstract representations of people the main trio know, or the various creatures you link with in order to begin your block matching. The game has some really old school level design slowly introducing new movement mechanics like air dashes, wall runs and jumps, speed power-ups, and obstacles like bounce pads to make the game gradually more difficult. The block matching puzzles aren't particularly great, a decent enough distraction between the jumping on stuff but it's far less substantive than the periodic Zelda style dungeons offered in Anodyne 1 and 2. They require your attention at least to win but it definitely feels like an incomplete concept.

Sephonie is a mysterious setting and learning more about it is a functional hook to get the story rolling. The visuals are primitive but it captures the inviting visual simplicity and clarity of the 5th and 6th gen, before post processing and overblown lighting have made modern games require effort to simply look at them. The characters have well detailed histories and clearly distinct personalities. A lot of what a player will be reading are essentially the three characters' "shower time thoughts." In isolation they are mostly interesting stories but I think as a whole they too often lack a serious connection with the focus of the story. Reading these ponderings and memories constantly really started to wear on me over the course of the game. I would sometimes ask "Why am I reading this?" If I want to think about how many more times I'll get to go on a trip in my lifetime I'll just do that myself I don't necessarily need a game to trigger this emotional state. The supporting cast mostly consists of the creatures you Onyx Link with, and while the amount they have to say isn't substantially less than Anodyne 2's helpless dust blighted supporting cast, they say way less with the same amount of text. Side characters in Anodyne 2 had mental hang-ups, skeletons in their closet, coping habits, emotional scars, hopes and dreams. Side characters in Sephonie are for example, a bird that when you read its thoughts contextualizes building its nest like scoring a rare drop in a video game. Many other side characters are visual abstractions of people who are not actually present in the story, making for characters who feel more like nodes with directionless, pointless statements to share.

Character design has also taken a step back. Anodyne 2 had these creatures that bordered on the uncanny and disturbing, a memorable design for the protagonist Nova and her mentors Palisade, Psalmist and Visionary. The animals in Sephonie look interesting but they don't leave me walking away feeling much of anything. Sephonie itself makes me think of Evel Knieval and Elvis with its huge collar and pointed shoulders, plus the white coloration. I guess I don't know what they were going for.

The story has a lot of interesting moments but it never seems to coalesce into anything with a focused theme or message, and its integration of current events and politics is rushed and clumsy. Gamers become very polarized recently when games get political. I also think the side that is usually providing the backlash is unfocused and struggles to vocalize what's bothering them but I think I can sum it up concisely. When game writers tackle these current day issues they often don't say anything new. I think Sephonie tries way too hard to be topical and it muddies the narrative of the game. There are 2 games gamers always give the politics pass which are Deus Ex, and Metal Gear Solid 2. I think that comes from the fact that those two games were talking about political talking points well beyond just the classic high school line-up of abortion, immigration, environmentalism, LGBTQ rights, and race relations. Deux Ex made us think about how many secrets are our governments hiding, the power of big pharma, whether our well being is truly in their interest, what effect could globalization have on our world and is it actually beneficial for everyone, are our governments prepared or care about the threat of a plague? MGS2, while not a perfect story, makes the player think about the spread of information, group think, nuclear disarmament, government social conditioning and the control of the flow of information, the effects of entering the digital age, information overload and how we will all decide what gets passed on and its clever comparison to Snake's genetics and what legacy he and Raiden decide to leave behind. Keep in mind I'm leaving out its constant twists on sequel expectations and psychoanalysis on player consumerism. These games spoke predictive politics and therefore were truly original thoughts. Instead of simply inserting a plot element that has some vague connection with the virus because there's a looming pandemic and that mirrors today vaguely, why not have a story taking place after a pandemic and propose ideas on how our lives will be different in a post pandemic world? Sephonie's thoughts on the pandemic seem to start and end at mentioning it. There is some thoughts on what the trio should do with all this new knowledge and data, who should have control of this information? Can we use it to help us? Is that ethical? The game barely scrapes the ice berg on the concept and throws it aside for an ending where the data is just a plot device to resolve a story that could have ended 15 minutes prior with no effective difference.

I think Sephonie is a novel game and once again worth a playthrough over a weekend or a couple rainy days if you have an itch for more Analgesic games or are Jonesing for a 3D platformer. I wouldn't make this a max priority game though, and I'm still going to eagerly await Analgesic's next project.

Outer Wilds is a cool game that blends some ideas from Majora's Mask and No Man's Sky or Starlink Battle for Atlas to create a pretty original concept. I expect people to still talk about Outer Wilds 10 years from now, it's a true modern classic and I don't feel that way about a lot of recent releases.

To keep it as spoiler free as possible, your goal is to explore a real time revolving solar system stuck in a 22 minute time loop in order to prevent catastrophe. The game lets the player take full control of their space ship and decide for themselves where and when they would like to explore, and what trails of information to follow. The entire game in essence, is collecting information that leads to a place that will hopefully, have more information about your strange situation, until all the pieces of the game's story come together and you understand what's happening.

The game's greatest strength is the one thing it has that's unique to almost any other game, its explorable solar system that revolves around its sun in real time. The planets, satellites, and other celestial bodies need to be navigated with their revolution in mind. Events that transpire during the 22 minute loop may affect your ability to get around. Players will have to use a bit of planning if they want to succeed. The gameplay here mostly consists of navigation, a few logic puzzles and reading. While this is incredibly bare bones, luckily the writing here creates a compelling mystery that drives the player to discover the truth Outer Wilds hides. It's impressive how the mystery unfolds in a way that's compelling no matter the order in which the player decides to explore the system. In a strange way, the atmosphere of this game gives me a similar sense of urgency the original Pikmin had, where it was you against nature itself, a feeling that the sequels failed to recapture.

The music here ranges from fantastic to just okay. The music is at its best when it is instilling a haunting sense of existential terror, realizing you are a pea in an always moving, unfeeling mechanical universe that feels nothing of your mortal coil. Some of the weaker songs in the game are incredibly sentimental in a way I don't feel always meshes with the vibe the game really gives off. The best songs in the game feel indifferent to the player and more focused on establishing a lonesome, desolate and forgotten atmosphere rather than pulling emotional strings if that makes sense. I think the composer wanted to see many of his tracks in comfy video game music playlists on YouTube, but maybe didn't think about the consistency of the sound in the game all the time, but it's still a much better than average soundtrack.

The same can be said for Outer Wilds visuals. An issue consistent with many Unity games, objects and places on close inspection can look a bit bare and maybe too simple (the ship however has a very good looking interior), but Outer Wilds makes up for that in spades with its sense of scale. Outer Wild's art direction is at its best in open spaces with distant massive objects. It allows players endless opportunities to see the solar system's revolution in action, and scenic views are right and left. It's clear the developers knew their limits and focused on the most important aspects of the game's visuals. I'd say Mobius Digital did a great job overall.

Outer Wilds isn't a perfect game though, because it fails to learn tough lessons from Majora's Mask's mistakes and puts key events of certain areas pretty far into the 22 minute cycle with no means for the player to jump straight to that point in time. I'd say it actually handles this aspect worse than Majora; Majora at least let you jump between several different key times within its cycles, and allowed you to increase and decrease the speed of time's flow. There are a handful of puzzles that require the player to sit through almost the entire cycle to achieve specific objectives or reach certain places. With a few exceptions, and the Echoes of the Eye expansion certainly being one of them, the 22 minute time limit doesn't feel suffocating, so its damage to the game is pretty minor.

The second big caveat with this game is how little replay value there is here. Outer Wilds leans too much on your first time experience for there to be much reason to return to the game for a second run. Once you've solved the game's mystery there's very little reason to come back, as nothing stops you from instantly ending the game on a new playthrough, you'll make identical discoveries and see the same story unfold. The only variation is the order in which you can make the discoveries and few bonus endings that you can experience all of on your first run of the game. This is why Echoes of the Eye is a bit disappointing, as a second scenario, which would only require rearranging preexisting assets and new written text would have gone much further to increase the value of the game. It would be a tall order, but no taller than 7 to 8 hours of a new explorable area that Echoes of the Eye was.

I'd also really recommend reading both the positive and negative reviews of Outer Wilds's expansion, Echoes of the Eye, as it is a pretty divisive DLC. Personally paid expansions have been ruined after being spoiled by the likes of Undead Nightmare, ODST, Half-Life 2's Episodes, and Ballad of Gay Tony. Those are unfair comparisons on a production standpoint to an indie studio like Mobius Digital, but I think a 2nd written scenario would have had a comparable impact on the amount of content in Outer Wilds as those expansions did for their respective games. It's too bad I heard the game's lead writer left Mobius Digital before Echoes of the Eye began development. So I guess that simply wasn't possible.

If you're a big fan of games like Majora's Mask, are into exploring space like in games such as No Man's Sky or Starlink, you love a lot of video game sci-fi such as Halo or Mass Effect, or enjoyed story driven games with a lot of reading like Planescape or Disco Elysium, you'll likely enjoy this one. Just approach the DLC with caution.

Solid remaster of Mass Effect 1, packaged with versions of ME2 and 3 that have some texture enhancements, HDR, 2 and 4k, and 144hz support. I say wait for a sale!

Mass Effect 1:
I think ME1 is the best game this series has even before the remaster, but Legendary Edition further distinguishes it in my mind. It was wonderful to revisit, and it's the game that got the most love from BioWare. Controls, vehicle exploration, HUD, combat banter, the guns all have been tweaked or balanced in a way that improves the overall experience while preserving the feel. ME1 has always been my personal favorite because its uncharted worlds, while definitely needing an increase of content, still delivered the novelty of exploring deep space, finding new planets. It's level tree is larger, side quests are more lore-rich, plentiful and involved than in the sequels, there's an antagonist that takes a proactive role in the story and interacts with Shepard often, you have equipment with stats, the soundtrack is easily the series strongest and most distinct, the ending is just as badass and inventive as 2's, and characters are a little less specialized than in future entries. The guns sound powerful and deadly, unlike its sequel. Shepard has the most convincing in-game movement animations, and the pacing and overall structure of the game is more even.

The remaster is the definitive way to experience ME1, with a lot of bug fixes and QOL changes like quicker ways to sift through equipment and armor and revamped combat controls. Bioware claims that there are tons of bug fixes, but the only two bugs I noticed in the original game are still intact in Legendary. Both involving elevator news casts. One plays before instead of after completing a quest, while the other reports an entirely different outcome than what happened. Minor bugs, but pretty obvious ones every player experienced that remain here in a supposed remaster. The only real trade off for this version is some of the stylish hard shadows of the original game have been significantly softened, but I would say the overall look of the game has been preserved loyally, and the gameplay has been improved.

Mass Effect 2:
Mass Effect 2 starts off disappointing with its patronizing, frighteningly linear opening, and doesn't pick up until the player reaches Omega. I find myself enjoying 2 much less than 1. Shepards movement feels stiff in combat, he's been made noticeably less mobile than 1. As a vanguard, I used to go deep in combat, always approaching and doing reliable damage with a shotgun rather than relying on the actual cover mechanic, because I was always on the move and getting in enemies' mugs. The sprint meter didn't last long, but provided fast movement in short bursts. In 2, shotguns are now only really effective in a 5 meter range. In 1 shotguns were reminiscent of old school shooters providing reliable damage even at medium range. The sprint feels slow and unsatisfying now. Cover now has a button input to use, but it's not as generous or responsive as Gears or Uncharted. You cant organically slide into and out of cover, it's finicky. Often cover inputs are lost into the void because you weren't close enough for ME2 to recognize you wanted to enter cover, while in Uncharted or Gears if you were far the character would dive into place to close the distance. Players might miss the first cover input, only to tap it again and maybe one more time to accidentally vault over cover or exit it entirely on accident. I also feel the pacing to be suffocating, you barely get to know one of the late-game characters before you jump the Omega-4 relay. The level tree has been boiled down to almost nothing, there's no music on the Normandy for some reason. You don't get the opportunity to explore and talk to natives of a lot of these planets, which is my largest qualm with ME2. Omega is the size of a city block, Me2's Citadel feels like an apartment block instead of a shopping district, and Illium is the only other explorable area with world building of any sort. The rest of the game's locales are more like shooting galleries with dialogue trees scattered across them. In contrast, most story locations in ME1 had a town hub of some sort where you could converse with NPCs. The Galaxy Map now requires navigating the Normandy with fuel (which they should've removed) in contrast to the original game's simple, faster and elegant cursor, and probing is a soul-sucking boring task. N7 side missions are also mostly combat in small levels instead of the flawed, but still present true exploration of ME1. Mass Effect 2 clocks in at a similar time as ME1, but ME1 had only one or two expansions and they were only an hour long, while 2 has about 5 or 6 expansions to bolster the amount of content, and it only barely manages to last as long as 1. Armor has only minor stat changes when customized, and there are no stats to toy with weapons wise.

Mass Effect 2 is still a great game despite all my issues.
It's weapon pool is much more diverse, even if they sound tinny and lame now. The tone is grittier in a perfect way, characteristic of leaving the colonies and exploring the lawless Terminus Systems. It has a ton of post launch content that is now included with the game. Excellent characters abound here. Interrupts are a fun addition to the dialogue trees. The Illusive Man is an awesome character, and his morally gray alignment lends him complexity other characters don't have.

I can't fail to mention how crazy the Suicide Mission is even by modern standards. Any character can die during it depending on your decisions, and it's a magnificent setpiece to finish the game off. There's many factors to play into how it turns out, and there's even a few red herrings to throw the player off and see if they really understand the characters, their strengths and weaknesses.

This remaster leaves me wanting a little though. In more obscure areas of the game like N7 missions, assets often can clash or look stock, and the remaster has done nothing to rectify that. Glitches I noticed in the original release are still here. I'm referring to the Renegade points you receive for granting Grunt the choice to join Gatatog instead of Urdnot, vice versa. There's this ugly vignette in every ME game that becomes quite obvious in 2, and there's no option to disable it. It's still a serviceable version on PC, and includes the DLC I don't think the original Steam version did.

Mass Effect 3:
BioWare was under the impression that 1 was the game that needed the most attention in Legendary Edition and they are wrong. ME3 makes humongous improvements to the combat, fixing my problems with cover, increasing movement speed, expanding the arsenal, weapon sounds being way better, the PC controls are awesome and allow aggressive play, Shepard can roll, bigger level trees, weapon and armor customization is expanded. The crew moves around the Normandy. It grants closure on some of the series's biggest plot points. Characters are still strong except the Illusive Man and Anderson. This release eliminates the sting of the tons of Day 1 DLC.

It's too bad this game is horribly rushed and had an unnecessary MP mode that isn't even included here. I'm not asking for extensive rewrites or restored content, just some reasonable fixes to a decent but very flawed game. The remaster could've done a lot here, the journal is still a useless wreck that provides no useful quest info. The audio engineering still leaves tons of awkward areas and cutscenes with no ambient sound. Reused music everywhere. Waypoints still are unreliable and buggy, not appearing or not triggering quest progression, not disappearing. There still isn't game over states for certain setpieces, copy-pasted assets in the final level. A decent game with a bad reputation could have been healed to some degree here but its opportunity wasted. Again EA proves it serves all its products, even rereleases, a bit undercooked.

I can only offer you an extremely cautioned recommendation to Sonic enthusiasts. While it is overall a disappointing follow up to Sonic and Allstars Racing Transformed, Sumo Digital makes the best out of what was likely some poor decision-making from up top. If you are itching for some fresh tracks and were a fan of Transformed, the single player will keep you occupied for about 20 hours.

It's feature set and IP representation has been scaled back from Transformed. Even when tempering expectations to just a Sonic cast its pretty underwhelming, with Vector being robbed of his entire team and being shoved onto Silver and Blaze's, and Zavok taking a team slot from Eggman's crew.

Its Story Mode is scaled back from other Sonic racers like Riders which featured a full story with FMVs, and playing on higher difficulties offers no substantial rewards other than the added challenge. Story is mostly delivered with still images and voiced text bubbles. Personally the voice casting has become stale with the exception of Eggman. I can tolerate the voice acting, but I especially hate the casting for Rouge and Shadow. Be glad Sega is reauditioning the entire cast for the future games and Mike Pollock as Eggman is the sole survivor so far.

Despite these shortcomings and the dead online community, the quality of the tracks and controls cannot be understated. This is a solid racer, but it is overshadowed immmensely by its predecessor. Luckily a good collection of race courses and an excellent soundtrack from Jun Senoue, Tee Lopes and Hyper Poyions (I hope thus trio becomes the standard from now on) make this game worth a playthrough on 50% off discount if you've had your Transformed fill.

Ty 3 is the Jak 3 of the Ty series, but better. An increased focus on vehicle traversal + combat, toned down platforming, and a higher stakes story. If I had to pick between Jak 3 and this I'd definitely pick this though. This release, as I said with the releases of 1 and 2, is stellar. It comes with all the bells and whistles you'd expect with a PC release, visual improvements, tweaked controls, bug fixes, even keyboard and mouse support, extra graphical options, the works. If you are looking to relive a nostalgic game, it's a no-brainer, easy buy.

For those who are playing the series for the first time, this is Jak 3, but better. Mainly because the Crabmersible is a far more interesting and quirky vehicle than the buggy I barely remember in Jak 3 despite spending over half the game in it. It also at least has some platforming nuance to its use and has pretty unique handling. The sunset drenched outback with purple alien infested skies and the droopy but calming night swamps of this game are far more interesting landscapes than Jak 3's endless sand. Jak 3 also has like 1 platforming segment and Ty 3 has many more than that. Plus the new melee whacking with the rangs as simple as it is, is more fun than the jump-spin-shoot spam I did for the entirety of Jak 3.

You read that right, now rangs have a melee moveset. Its pretty bare bones but it gets the job done and it feels satisfying enough to hit things. The player now has the option to close in or fight with rangs from a distance. Rangs are now customizable, meaning you can blend all types of unlockable rangs from the previous games together which is pretty fun to play around with. Mix mega stones with doom stones and you have homing exploding rangs. Or mix multi stones and mega stones to get spammable homing rangs that hit multiple targets.

The mini games are much less pervasive, mostly focused on the kart racing missions and a few flying missions which are kind of like Crash Warped's plane missions. The kart racing is a pretty fun distraction and has a decent sense of speed, I really enjoyed it but I think the controls have been seriously tinkered with since the original launch, likely for the better. You'll spend a large fraction of this game driving the Crabmersible, which is an amphibious roll-cage mechanical crab that can transform into a boat when walked over water. It can pinch enemies or fire homing missiles. It's movement is very momentum and inertia based, it takes time to speed up and slow down, and jumps sort of catapult the machine into a rolling state, but it's definitely fun to drive.

The Bunyip mechs return, which I didn't mention in my review of the second game but you march around in them and punch things. I don't care too much for them but one of them can swim around in lava which is pretty satisfying. Otherwise you've got pretty similar gameplay to the first, expect the new enemies of this game require a decent thrashing in order to finish off.

As for the story, it's definitely an improvement over the 2nd game but not by a lot. It's still pretty light hearted and straight forward even if it has the post apocalypse vibe. The Thorny Devil character, Fluffy, get's a lot more focus and she's a fun addition to the main cast after causing so much trouble for you in the past. Most of the other cast members are pretty heavily downplayed and kind of show up cause they gotta be there. The only substantial new character is a black Tasmanian tiger that doesn't do anything but stand by the town gate. My biggest gripe is that like the 2nd game, the cutscene direction has an awkward impatience like its rushing to finish every scene so nothing feels like it has any drama at all. The game's natural environments look good, but anything man-mad ein this game is just plain hideous.

Ty 3 is a pretty good conclusion and a step up from 2. I still think the series never really got better than 1. 3's definitely worth a play through, easy to 100%. Maybe we will get an actual Ty 4 and not some 2D phone game.

If you're looking for a nostalgia trip for Ty 2, this game is a splendid rerelease of the game. Improved visuals, tons of graphical options, plenty of quality of life improvements over the original releases, modern graphics stuff like AA, btter and more shadows, everything you could ever want while being a authentic port of the original game. Does it hold up as a game for those playing through the series for the first time? It's tolerable, but I don't think it holds up quite as well as the first. A lot of it's additions are pretty superfluous and might take away more than they really add. TL;DR I see this as more of the same, with added mini games and some serious flaws.

None of the mini games or missions are bad, they are fun enough to play, but I think 2 lacks the sense of a progressing adventure 1 had. Longer stretches of time were spent with pure platforming and exploration. Here you get bite sized snacks of mild fun over and over until the game ends and it doesn't feel as cohesive as the first, simpler structured title.

Adding the Baramudgee hub world kind of just makes space the player needs to spend time walking through, the world map you drive the truck through segments the pure roaming adventure of the 1st game into snack size pieces. Rainbow Cliffs was pretty compact, it had some extra areas with collectibles out of the way to explore but it was super fast to get to the next level portal if that was your destination. All of the game's greatest parts are when the game finally goes balls deep platformer, but they feed it to you in pieces between the driving to the next place, going to the town shops, talking to quest characters. I think Krome took the popularity of Grand Theft Auto and it's mission structure too much to heart. My play times to 100% both the 1st and 2nd game are similar, but I spent the WHOLE time jumping on stuff in 1, and large portions of time driving to and from quests/shops, walking through town, playing quests that are more minigame based like driving helis or something. Imagine if the same time and resources were instead spent on expanding Ty's abilities which mostly remain the same as the first, or creating more space for dedicated platform play. You'd have a more refined game that's always the juicy bits. I definitelyt felt fatigue after passing through Baramudgee so many times, and its optimal to grab the motherload of respawning opals there but I just lost the patience for it by the end of the game.

I think the writing, which was pretty simple in the first game, has taken a pretty noticeable hit. Radio communication has relegated Maurie to mere mission briefings. So little time is spent talking to the supporting cast and the returning villain Boss Cass and is spent on one off new characters or generic quest givers. The voice direction is much worse for some reason, FMVs are gone, the in-engine cinematics aren't improved at all from the first game, sound design hasn't particularly improved. This game feels a bit rushed. The plot feels like it has zero stakes at all and you get the bad guy and "well that's the end see ya" is the sensation I get. It's probably my least favorite of the 3 games. Worth a play through but if you didn't play it it's not the end of the world.

Seeing this series lovingly brought to PC is a nostalgic blessing. This is beyond the work of Night Dive or even BluePoint; this kind of remastering can only be achieved by the original developer. I've only seen this level of remastering quality in Kingdom Hearts. Krome fixed bugs from the original and the ones created making this port, added graphical improvements that don't compromise the game's original visuals, high resolution and framerate support, improved sound quality, added sound effects where the sound design originally felt lacking, full range PC graphical options, upres'd textures, increased shadow quality and amount, tons of modern touches like AA. This is a godlike remaster, so much so it's simply called Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, it's the definitive version of the game. If you're looking for a nostalgia trip, buy the game, its perfect for you.

For those uninitiated, is it worth checking out? I'd say age has given Ty another chance. In an industry that was once saturated with this style of game, it had no chance of really standing out. In a modern games landscape Ty somehow has become unique. So if you are on the hunt for 3D collectathons, its not a bad choice. I'd say of the three this is the one I recommend the most, as it's probably the most polished and the purist platformer of the bunch.

Ty's controls are initially alarming, due to his incredible jumping and swimming speed and rather quirky gliding trajectory but overtime it becomes refreshing how fast this guy moves, he's on a mission. His offensive capabilities are kind of overpowered, due to the boomerang's effectiveness at both point blank and medium range; it might as well double as a melee weapon with its instantaneous throw time. Plus he has a Boomerang for almost any scenario later on.

Enemies are quite expressive, but they aren't particularly varied. The only ones that get a lot of mileage are the two lizard types Cass employs. Probably the best implementation of spiders I've seen in a game, leave it to Australians. Spiders hilariously are fast as hell, enormous, convincingly animated and come with their own musical stinger so arachnophobes beware. Same goes for the hissing roaches that charge wings spread and somehow walk underwater. Nothing to amazing but serviceable.

The levels are pretty standard fare, usually fixated on a particular biome in the outback. They usually come with their fair share of unique setpieces and missions, and they play like a linear take on Banjo Kazooie levels with a few open bits here and there. Gets the job done but nothing remarkable but the size and scope of the two beach levels. This game, much like its sequels, is very painless to 100% and Sonic Adventure may be the only easier 3D platformer. If you are looking for a cozy platformer to relax to this will do but don't expect a challenge. The story is pretty straight forward, collect the macguffins and take on the bad guy. Nothing on Ratchet and Clank's level but the character writing is surprisingly fun. Plus this is the only entry in the series to have fancy FMVs.

Ty is sort of an no nonsense Aussie everyman that mostly stands out due to the more eccentric characters that surround him. He's down-to-Earth, honest, responsible, capable, helpful and seems to be generally respected as the dude to go to if you've got trouble. If he were anything else he would likely ruin the game and eventually drive the player crazy. It's clearly an intentional choice the voice direction has his accent and voice the most tame. I think overall I enjoy his presence in the series, and he's in stark contrast of other mascot platformer characters.

Most of the characters and their voice direction are at their series best here. I think a lot of effort was put into the character writing for a game with a pretty by the numbers plot. Maurie who get's the heftiest amount of dialogue in the game is smug, talkative and sarcastic, but is also surprisingly worldly; he's perfect for a character who constantly offers information to the player. The villain Boss Cass is incredibly pompous, condescending and hostile and makes for a perfect villain. These two have pretty fantastic voice work I immediately appreciated coming back after all these years. Julius is your obligatory gadget scientist games always need, but his peculiar but not exaggerated voice tick, vocabulary and spaciness make him seem respectable rather than an annoying Poindexter. Dennis, who's a flamboyant, pampered sissy, but also seems prety friendly and smart was pretty memorable too.

I recommend the game if you are looking for a throwback to the collectathon genre that's solid, but maybe doesn't reinvent the wheel. Give it a whirl.

A Hat in Time is a love letter to the Gamecube. Levels inspired by Mario Sunshine and Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door, art direction reminiscent of Wind Waker, the writing taking notes from The Thousand Year Door, guest composer Grant Kirkhope providing some music, Jontron as a guest voice, there's a lot of love for the 3D Collectathon genre from a bygone era. This game alongside Mario Odyssey, which released 22 days later, brought collectathons back from the dead.

Hat Kid is a pretty adorable design for a protagonist, she can't annoy due to her silence, but still manages to bring some sass to the game. She controls like a dream, with a moveset with a lot of potential, maybe not Sunshine or Odyssey potential, but it still leaves a plenty high skill ceiling while keeping the skill floor quite accomodating. The badges offer some nice character customization and minor game tweaks, such as letting you choose between gibberish voices like Banjo or Zelda, or the standard voice acting. The only voices really bringing much to the table are Snatcher's, the Conductor and DJ Grooves. Everyone else besides the Jontron cameo can be pretty grating. Moustache Girl's voice direction should probably been toned down a bit. If you feel that way the gibberish badge is always available.

Levels are quite varied, especially since Chapter 2 takes place over several different locales. It's admirable a single chapter gets so much production value dedicated to it. Fans of Psychonauts and TTYD will definitely get a kick out of it. Chapter 3, which I think is probably the game's most solid chapter, let's the game's platformer identity shine the most has the stand out character Snatcher, who is basically the cursed chests of TTYD fleshed out into a full character.

You'll see plenty of familiar aspects of beloved classics seeing implementation here, including a Wind Waker/Sly Cooper style stealth level with MGS1 musical stylings, classic 3D hub world that definitely isn't as memorable as the likes of Peach's Castle, Isle Delfino or even Station Square/Mystic Ruins but serviceable, floating abstract levels made of geometric shapes a la Mario Sunshine, Train level harkening back to TTYD, sometimes dreamlike otherworldly settings of the 5th generation, a segment taking inspiration in the sound design and mechanical minimalism of modern horror games. It's the amalgamation of these disparate styles from a bye gone era blended in a single game that gives A Hat in Time its unique identity.

It's constant variety can also be its weakness, as it never really settles into a gameplay groove. It is constantly throwing ideas new and old school at you. It's a more than competent game, but not superbly polished. It's cinematic presentation is pretty barebones. While the music is full of bangers, the sound design is pretty limp. Bosses are in that 3D Mario realm where they play okay but aren't awesome with one exception.

The expansions are solid, two additional levels and a new challenge mode for those wanting to squeeze every hour they can out of the game. Plus the game got the free addition of massive multiplayer lobbies and couch coop and a new protagonist Bow Kid, who I hope we might see again in a sequel. It's an easy recommend from me, a Kickstarter that could that's partly responsible for the revival of the genre that made me love games, an admiration the game itself clearly shares. I'd certainly love to see Hat Kid in another adventure someday.

A cult classic returns with a new, very saturated coat of paint, all luster and warts intact from what I can surmise. I haven't played the original, but the authentic gameplay of a 6th generation collectathon and the touch of jank are present and accounted for. There's certainly value in a release like this, a cult classic is now easily purchasable and convenient to play on modern machines. Plus collectathons are a rare, resurfacing breed of game. Battle for Bikini Bottom is fine game, but its defining feature is how on brand it is.

Battle for Bikini Bottom is a definitive SpongeBob game experience. Its modest visuals do the show plenty of justice. Almost anything you could ask for is here. It really is the SpongeBob video game grand tour. The places and jokes should be familiar to both the younger fans, and those who likely moved on when Hillenburg stopped writing the show. It's a dream game for SpongeBob fans, with almost every iconic locale, spot on music, and a dedication to the licensed brand only seen by the likes of Star Wars games, made in an era where licensed games were considered the bottom of the barrel (and in some ways still can be). The game features all the shows voice cast besides Mr. Krabs/Mermaid Man's who did not provide his voice for the game. BfBB even has the ffort in to write its own original material rather than always regurgitating voice clips and quotes from the source material. One huge missed opportunity is only playing *part* of the show's intro rather than the *full* intro FMV sequence at the main menu. When it started I was giddy and immediately a tad disappointed when it transitioned to an in-engine screen with SpongeBob in front of his house.

As for the gameplay, it's great how the game, intentionally or not, lets the player circumvent many obstacles and terrain if they know what they are doing. The original has a very dedicated speedrun following. For those who love games like Banjo-Kazooie, Mario 64, Sunshine or Odyssey, Hat in Time, this is right up your alley, home turf for me.

As for the jank, theres a few headscratcher places in some levels like dead ends with a single Shiny Object as a consolation prize for exploring there, some quirky hitboxes and a glitch here and there especially in cinematics. I'd like a few more distinctions between the three playable characters and maybe a swap on the fly system for them. Maybe tone down the knockback, it often kills you Mega Man style. Would also have liked for enemies not to return once you have destroyed the spawners.

It's a worthy buy if you're familiar with the show. If not it's still likely to scratch your desperate collectathon itch.

I made this so long I actually had to make a TwitLonger for it, what is wrong with me?

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sree2n?new_post=true

FFXII feels like the one where the producers have finally wrested full control over the direction of the series they've so desired for years. The game turns out okay enough, but you've got a bad feeling about the next game. You've seen it a dozen times. Usually comes with far more accessible or less niche genre/mechanics to accommodate a wider audience, because the way the previous games played has become less popular. Maybe some character designs have been made a little bit safer, less stylized. This is why Steam fails me yet again, as FFXII is more of a mixed bag than a solid recommendation from me. There's a game here that some will love but I think a lack of a singular vision for the game has it pulled in a lot of directions, and neither the gameplay nor the story really get to meet their full potential.

(full review linked)