Remember that corridor before the Death boss fight in Castlevania 1, usually regarded as the hardest segment in the game? Yeah you do, enemies all around, hard to telegraph their movement, you had to be resourceful, every step was important, literally no room for mistakes or improvisation; it was challenging in the first game, but it felt good to beat it once you learned how it worked, at least it was just one room, right?
Now imagine that corridor, but it is now an entire game, this is Castlevania III. Yeah, technically speaking it is better than its predecessors, I mean, wow, 4 playable characters, that's awesome, and soundtrack fucking slaps! But that's where it ends, at least for me, this game isn't nowhere near as fun as Casltevania 1, I swear I tried, but it's just frustrating, facing the same reused bosses, falling in the same stairs, taking damage from the same fucking bats, even with save states this shit is annoying.
It just wasn't fun.

--Nintendo team meeting circa 1984--

"Hey, let's make a game about jumping."

"Yeah, let's also make the jumping itself horrendously homophobic."

"Sounds fantastic, it'll sell mucho copies."

All of them immediately shit their pants and start scooting their asses across the floor

So, I haven't finished this game yet. I don't know if I ever will, I always strive to finish every game I buy, let alone review, but this one...this one might fucking kill me if I have to play even one more second of this miserable, horrific little mistake of existence. This score is locked in and nothing the game can throw at me past the point I've played will ever change my mind.

This is the worst game I've ever played, in my entire life.

I want to say that this game was a gift from a dear friend, and I hope they don't get the wrong kind of idea or hold any guilt; I saw the game and footage of the first few levels, thought it looked great, put it on my wishlist, you know how it goes. It was entirely my own judgement and if you're reading this, please don't feel responsible in any way bestie <3

But, this game is like a fucking anglerfish is what I'm saying. Cute low poly aesthetic, nice character designs, fun sounding gimmick - what could go wrong? The borderline aneurysms I had trying to navigate the twisted, logicless grids of these abhorrent worlds say it all.

Every single fundamental rule of game design has been violently obliterated here. The core gimmick is borderline useless within the first world. Renata, the protagonist, only has one speed: SLOW. Waddling around at a very modest pace, the only way to make her move any faster is by grappling onto a surface with her titular frogun. Unfortunately, aiming it is just the worst fucking thing ever.

The gun only fires forward in a straight line from where Renata is facing. There's actually a button you can hold down to aim in a 360 degree fashion, but the vast majority of platforming is done in mid-air, where this function flat out does not work. So you instead have to manouvre Renata around in mid air in a circle, and chances are that you have to do this in less than a second due to breaking or moving platforms that result in instant death if you're a frame too slow. Argh.

This game just desperately wants to be its own Kaizo hack past world 3. Insane precision platforming in a game that controls about as well as a drunken gorilla in an ice rink leads to a world of agony and disaster. The devs make you go to ridiculous lengths to manage one-in-a-million jump timing, hitting switches, and if you fuck up along the way, you have to do it all over again when you respawn at a checkpoint.

Writing this review is hard because all I feel right now is boiling rage. Utter contempt and hatred for this miserable wreck. I swear, the amount of basic game design rules that the devs have failed to understand, I genuinely think it was intentional that they set out to make this game as bad as it could possibly be. Combat is a nightmare too, it's either as simple as pointing your gun at an enemy (and praying that it's aligned correctly and won't send you careening into a pit) and shooting, or getting fucking juggled by enemies that are inexplicably impossible to jump on or grapple onto without taking damage. The logic of the game is completely inconsistent, and feels like they make it up as they go along.

What else is there to even talk about? The music is utterly whatever, only memorable because of the total absence of variety in tracks. Boss fights are fucking nothing. Dodge incredibly basic and boring attack patterns for what feels like forever, then hit them when they inexplicably become dizzy.

Also, don't talk to me about the fucking races. Just a load of shit trying to outrun someone who can skip entire sections of the level, but balances it out by taunting for long enough for you to catch up. It feels barely thought out and poorly incorporated into the core gameplay.

Frogun is a masterclass in deception, and how not to make a 3D platformer. I don't have a single nice thing to say about it beyond anything on the front fucking cover. Dark Souls fucking wishes it broke me this badly. Completely miserable experience, and one I'm sure won't get any better in the sequel.
Seriously, a sequel to this shit. What a world we live in.