AG147
hehehe, hi, um... so we have a problem. So Sonic Frontiers came out, very recently, as of writing the speedrun.com boards are only like half open (you can only submit cyberspace ILs)... and it kinda did shit, shit that kinda impacts shit that I've been saying in this review series, I think I straight up need to make an addendum on the Knuckles review, once I can get a whole picture on what it did because hey, I can't actually play the game right now. Thanks me of a few months ago, you really planned this shit out. You know what tho, this is good actually, I think the bits I've seen and the discourse I've had with friends over this has clarified the points I wanted to make but didn't know how to, because you know what time it is. It's the Big Time. Let's talk about Sonic's Friends.
Quick history rundown I guess, it all starts with Tails in Sonic 2, a genesis game, so there's not much to him in-game besides some tidbits and the gameplay feature of flight, a mechanic that I know some of my friends were pretty convinced that it just didn't exist in that game, so that's funny. After we have Amy, it is what it is. Finally of this era we have Knuckles, the og rival of Sonic 3 who turns ally in & Knuckles, also positioned as an optional character for a separate campaign which unlocks no content afterwards. These are the OGs, the squad that due to the nature of their origins, not to mention the fact that they are the origins, no one really has a problem with them, so this really is not historically what people derisively refer to as "Sonic's Friends" and that fact almost makes it kinda clear the sentiment of "Sonic's Friends mucking up the franchise" is mostly used by ultra boomers wanting to return to their "golden age", but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Also not normally a consideration when talking about "Sonic's Friends", Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel, the Japan only arcade debuting SegaSonic homies. Even while Mighty will go on to be a part of heavily derided game Knuckles Chaotix, the game which birthed the absolute certified "Sonic Friends" Espio, Vector, and Charmy, Mighty himself does not seem to be a consideration when talking about "Sonic Friends", granted because he's obscure, but also because he and Ray seem to garner enough respect from important fan dev, and absolute certified coward and boomer, Christian Whitehead, in order to become playable characters in Sonic Mania, a game filled with fanservice for many, many characters from a very specific timeframe within the Sonic franchise.
Also not included in the discussion are the countless scrimblos of Sonic animated TV series', comics, side games, and no, not even Chris, Donut Lord, or the Sonic Adventure Man who Owns The Building. The specific subset of characters who were a major negative talking point for a long period of Sonic's history, were the additional playable characters, that have speaking roles, are required to unlock 2% of their respective games, in Sonic Adventure, Heroes, and 06, and continue to appear on some level throughout the mainline series. There is admittedly something kinda funny imagining a single bee sending AVGN knock-offs into enough rage as to spawn Sonic 4 as well as the entire game design direction from Unleashed onwards,but damn does it feel like this one ancient piece of discourse just poisoned this franchise.
Let's start breaking down some shit, is Sonic's wider cast as playable characters "padding"? I mean, sure, there's really nothing to say to stop you from defining it as such. If we define just playing as Sonic as, da game, then it would follow that these other campaigns are just filling for playtime. Question, is Mighty and Ray Mania Plus padding? They are side characters that are by all means, injected into levels that already existed before them, they're hardly a fully fledged inclusion. Is the Werehog padding? I feel most people would be inclined to say yes, it's ultimately viewed as an alternate gameplay style that takes away time from engaging with the core Sonic gameplay, the fact you're still playing as Sonic isn't quite relevant. Is Shadow The Hedgehog of SA2 padding? He's roughly the same gameplay style as Sonic and has his own levels, even if he is a different character. Is solving a GameMaker tile puzzle in order to spawn grind rails and stat-increasing collectibles in an open world padding, or is it the alternate gameplay style in the physically and structurally different Boost style cyberspace levels? The answer may shock you. Is Super Sonic, the alternate gameplay style locked behind all these other alternate gameplay styles, also ultimately padding? I spent 2 years not playing SA after beating Sonic's Story, could it really be that important? I'd like to think I made my point, that regardless of how one may answer any of these questions that actually defining an airtight criteria for what is the equivalent of an anime fan looking at Eva and saying that "Magma Diver" is the only "filler episode", is ultimately kinda arbitrary and just not as helpful as just calling Amy's story mid and moving on.
Perhaps more to the core is if there is any room for alternate playstyles at all and again we mostly just see more line drawing. Generally it seems like people are more appreciative when the alternate characters are only kinda alternate playstyles in the form of Shadow, Blaze, and the whole classic crew, maybe bringing a few mechanical changes but still ultimately engaging with the game in a manner that is comparable to Sonic... but the Chao Garden is also generally fine. Sitting around a square and feeding a creature in order to make its numbers go up is pretty much the least Sonic that you could be doing,but people value it anyway, it's a cute pace breaker and distraction for those that enjoy it, and for everyone else it's just out of the way, they don't force you into it like Unleashed or deny the human brainworm called "Closure" its satisfaction by delaying the true ending that you definitely absolutely cared about. Calling it a brainworm seems a bit dismissive, it kinda is "a brainworm" but, we live with it so I will admit that having some compulsory factor for engaging with all these modes that you just may not care for regardless of execution, is ultimately a bit of wrinkle. Were not for that tho I think there wouldn't be a whole lot of disagreement to be had that these non-core modes, tho not all conceptualized and implemented equally, do ultimately fill out the experience of these games.
Beyond that tho is just how low-key essential all these scrimblos are to actually writing these games. Like it cannot be over-stated just how much more interesting thing and flavorful things are when these games are an ensemble cast dealing with Deities and Government Conspiracies and not just Sonic and Tails fucking around in an amusement park. Like I know I spent a long time in my last review establishing Amy as one note, but the problem is definitely in like, how boring of a note it is, none of Sonic's characters are particularly full of depth no matter how many youtube video essays get thrown around. The character with the most is easily Shadow, he has like 3 character arcs over 4 games that can be easily summarized as "I wanted revenge but now I remember what my friend truly wanted, I will now sacrifice myself for everyone", "My past doesn't matter, I am myself and that's all that matters", "Ok that was kinda raw, let's make that a whole game instead of 3 cutscenes", and "Even as the world will turn against me, I will stay true to my beliefs". It's not much, and one of those was literally from 06, but it's cool, and rather importantly, Shadow isn't the only character in the game, not even in Shadow the Hedgehog. Just looking at these characters through that kind of lens doesn't really capture the effect they have as they bounce off of each other and the events of the games. Big the Cat is ultimately just a dumb fisherman, but part of what makes him hilarious is the fact that he's a dumb big cat fisherman that gets so wrapped up in the events of SA for no reason that he ends up having to fish his friend out of a god, you can't not have a big dumb smile on your face as it's happening.
This feels like very basic writing shit, right? Yet it feels like after 06 they simply became absolutely afraid of doing much of anything with Sonic's cast in the mainline. The last real non-antagonistic addition to the cast was Chipp, a nasally scrungo that they knew would be disposed of by the end of that game. After that you have... Classic Sonic, which like... no. Then you have "The Recruit", your oc of Sonic Forces, so again not really much of a character. The returning cast doesn't exactly fare well either, Shadow basically becoming "Hey, you remember this guy, right? That cool edgy guy from SA2! Buy our dlc". Where am I going with this tho... let's talk about Sonic Frontiers. Only bits and pieces tho, it's all I know after all. How does Frontiers handle the cast? Well besides Sonic you got Amy, Tails, Knuckles, and Eggman... I'm obviously not gonna say that the entire Sonic cast should be active at the same time all the time, that would be ridiculous, but damn, if that's not a cowardly selection if I've ever seen one. So the story has Sonic going around Islands as he works to save his friends, all the while his friends are left with not much to do besides reflect on the Island they're trapped on as well as their own past,the most important of these for our discussion being Tails... in essence kinda just going through his SA arc again. In a long running multi-installment thing like this, I'm not exactly entirely against characters falling back into old trappings, that's an incredibly human thing to depict. The thing I want to illustrate here is that, in the approach lacking much of anything new in regards to what the characters deal with, with the mission being to investigate the more melancholic aspects of these characters, then yeah, of course the one course of action is to simply re-iterate on the places these characters have already been, the road's been paved, there's no where else to go, "damn am I glad the characters are acting like themselves again". This is ultimately what I landed on as the importance of all those new characters just showing up to the story pre-Unleashed, even if it's something small like Big, or as Ultimate as Shadow, it's a new deal brought to the table, it's something new for the characters to bounce off of. You can argue for Frontiers that it isn't the point... the point might be kinda mid tho, and besides, Frontiers also illustrates this, because there is a new character. Sage like all the other Sonic characters has a simple deal going on, she's an AI character like many AI characters, and introduces herself as an antagonistic force against Sonic... and not Eggman. Eggman has had robot helpers before, that's nothing new, but Sage's screentime in this game is spent slowly showing a father-daughter relationship which, succeeded if the fan art of Eggman getting Sage McDonalds is any metric, and also created this facet of Eggman that wasn't there for the other 30 years of his existence and simply wouldn't exist without a character like this by which to create this dynamic. So old begets old, new begets new, that seems like a simple point to take away from this. If they don't let Ian Flynn throw in new fucked up Sonic ocs into the next game like they do for the comics regularly then I think it's safe to say that the whole "Frontiers experiment" has flopped tremendously, and that not even Sonic can outrun the culture of stagnation.
All of this is to say, Sonic's friends are cool.
How great it is then, that this is a Big the Cat review.
"You like fishing, shitty jungle shacks, loitering in strange places, and a frog. You can't fly, you can't spin dash, and you can't fight more than a monkey. Face it, you're never gonna make it." I don't wanna make it, [I just wanna-][This joke is still under construction, please come back at the end of these reviews]
Big is the Mystic Ruins' local cryptid. He's a simple creature, he hangs around his humble makeshift house, goes fishing, and takes care of his friend Froggy. Perhaps he is a role model to surpass even Man Who Owns the Building. At the start of his story Froggy gets possessed by the tail of Chaos, and Big takes it upon himself to chase down his friend. As we make it to the city, we find the Man Who Owns the Building, playing the role of the Man Who is Scared Shitless by Frogs, he is truly a multi-faceted building owner.
So Big's story has you go fishing your friend froggy inside pools of water in small isolated sections of existing levels. The devs clearly knew that this is a simplistic departure from any of the gameplay styles going on so they clearly didn't get too distracted making anything new for it, nor did they ask much of a minimum amount of playtime to be spent on it. The objective, Froggy, is set to a fixed spawn that is never really too far from Big. Ice Cap, the second of three levels, has one additional pool with an upgrade that you can explore for, but Froggy is always swimming around under the first fishing hole you see spawning in (Ice Cap is also kinda jank, you're gonna want to not be standing on the ice while you fish, the water tends to reject you otherwise). Fishing itself is of course not as complex as say, Sega Bass Pro, you cast your line, you move it bit by bit til the creature you cast it at bites, then you pace yourself, reel it in, move the rod with the fish, don't let the line get too tense. It's probably a familiar formula for this kind of minigame game, the Yakuza series fishing mini-games don't tend to be much more than this either. It is very much a mode that despite the patient aesthetics of fishing, knows that it doesn't really want to keep you waiting long, nor really do much of anything testing, it's hardly uncompromising.
To say that anything bad you can say about it hardly lives up to the performative anger of youtube Sonic reviewers is a given really. You're either kinda unimpressed for 30 minutes, or find it a cute distraction, not too dissimilar to the admittedly less compulsory Chao Gardens. Then of course you fish Froggy out of Chaos, which, is definitely one of the top 10 Sonic moments that will ever occur. There's absolutely something to be gained out of approaching these things not so seriously, not in the ironic "haha, there's no way his name is seriously Doc Ock" sense, but just actually indulging in these silly moments. Big just is what he is, and that's cool.
Lazy Days -Living in Paradise-, is a very silly song, and spawned some serious arguments in vc over if the lyrics is a convo between a metaphorical Chicken and Egg or just Big and Froggy.
Come around next time as we explore Gamma's story and why Eggman is the ultimate lifeform.
Quick history rundown I guess, it all starts with Tails in Sonic 2, a genesis game, so there's not much to him in-game besides some tidbits and the gameplay feature of flight, a mechanic that I know some of my friends were pretty convinced that it just didn't exist in that game, so that's funny. After we have Amy, it is what it is. Finally of this era we have Knuckles, the og rival of Sonic 3 who turns ally in & Knuckles, also positioned as an optional character for a separate campaign which unlocks no content afterwards. These are the OGs, the squad that due to the nature of their origins, not to mention the fact that they are the origins, no one really has a problem with them, so this really is not historically what people derisively refer to as "Sonic's Friends" and that fact almost makes it kinda clear the sentiment of "Sonic's Friends mucking up the franchise" is mostly used by ultra boomers wanting to return to their "golden age", but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Also not normally a consideration when talking about "Sonic's Friends", Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel, the Japan only arcade debuting SegaSonic homies. Even while Mighty will go on to be a part of heavily derided game Knuckles Chaotix, the game which birthed the absolute certified "Sonic Friends" Espio, Vector, and Charmy, Mighty himself does not seem to be a consideration when talking about "Sonic Friends", granted because he's obscure, but also because he and Ray seem to garner enough respect from important fan dev, and absolute certified coward and boomer, Christian Whitehead, in order to become playable characters in Sonic Mania, a game filled with fanservice for many, many characters from a very specific timeframe within the Sonic franchise.
Also not included in the discussion are the countless scrimblos of Sonic animated TV series', comics, side games, and no, not even Chris, Donut Lord, or the Sonic Adventure Man who Owns The Building. The specific subset of characters who were a major negative talking point for a long period of Sonic's history, were the additional playable characters, that have speaking roles, are required to unlock 2% of their respective games, in Sonic Adventure, Heroes, and 06, and continue to appear on some level throughout the mainline series. There is admittedly something kinda funny imagining a single bee sending AVGN knock-offs into enough rage as to spawn Sonic 4 as well as the entire game design direction from Unleashed onwards,but damn does it feel like this one ancient piece of discourse just poisoned this franchise.
Let's start breaking down some shit, is Sonic's wider cast as playable characters "padding"? I mean, sure, there's really nothing to say to stop you from defining it as such. If we define just playing as Sonic as, da game, then it would follow that these other campaigns are just filling for playtime. Question, is Mighty and Ray Mania Plus padding? They are side characters that are by all means, injected into levels that already existed before them, they're hardly a fully fledged inclusion. Is the Werehog padding? I feel most people would be inclined to say yes, it's ultimately viewed as an alternate gameplay style that takes away time from engaging with the core Sonic gameplay, the fact you're still playing as Sonic isn't quite relevant. Is Shadow The Hedgehog of SA2 padding? He's roughly the same gameplay style as Sonic and has his own levels, even if he is a different character. Is solving a GameMaker tile puzzle in order to spawn grind rails and stat-increasing collectibles in an open world padding, or is it the alternate gameplay style in the physically and structurally different Boost style cyberspace levels? The answer may shock you. Is Super Sonic, the alternate gameplay style locked behind all these other alternate gameplay styles, also ultimately padding? I spent 2 years not playing SA after beating Sonic's Story, could it really be that important? I'd like to think I made my point, that regardless of how one may answer any of these questions that actually defining an airtight criteria for what is the equivalent of an anime fan looking at Eva and saying that "Magma Diver" is the only "filler episode", is ultimately kinda arbitrary and just not as helpful as just calling Amy's story mid and moving on.
Perhaps more to the core is if there is any room for alternate playstyles at all and again we mostly just see more line drawing. Generally it seems like people are more appreciative when the alternate characters are only kinda alternate playstyles in the form of Shadow, Blaze, and the whole classic crew, maybe bringing a few mechanical changes but still ultimately engaging with the game in a manner that is comparable to Sonic... but the Chao Garden is also generally fine. Sitting around a square and feeding a creature in order to make its numbers go up is pretty much the least Sonic that you could be doing,but people value it anyway, it's a cute pace breaker and distraction for those that enjoy it, and for everyone else it's just out of the way, they don't force you into it like Unleashed or deny the human brainworm called "Closure" its satisfaction by delaying the true ending that you definitely absolutely cared about. Calling it a brainworm seems a bit dismissive, it kinda is "a brainworm" but, we live with it so I will admit that having some compulsory factor for engaging with all these modes that you just may not care for regardless of execution, is ultimately a bit of wrinkle. Were not for that tho I think there wouldn't be a whole lot of disagreement to be had that these non-core modes, tho not all conceptualized and implemented equally, do ultimately fill out the experience of these games.
Beyond that tho is just how low-key essential all these scrimblos are to actually writing these games. Like it cannot be over-stated just how much more interesting thing and flavorful things are when these games are an ensemble cast dealing with Deities and Government Conspiracies and not just Sonic and Tails fucking around in an amusement park. Like I know I spent a long time in my last review establishing Amy as one note, but the problem is definitely in like, how boring of a note it is, none of Sonic's characters are particularly full of depth no matter how many youtube video essays get thrown around. The character with the most is easily Shadow, he has like 3 character arcs over 4 games that can be easily summarized as "I wanted revenge but now I remember what my friend truly wanted, I will now sacrifice myself for everyone", "My past doesn't matter, I am myself and that's all that matters", "Ok that was kinda raw, let's make that a whole game instead of 3 cutscenes", and "Even as the world will turn against me, I will stay true to my beliefs". It's not much, and one of those was literally from 06, but it's cool, and rather importantly, Shadow isn't the only character in the game, not even in Shadow the Hedgehog. Just looking at these characters through that kind of lens doesn't really capture the effect they have as they bounce off of each other and the events of the games. Big the Cat is ultimately just a dumb fisherman, but part of what makes him hilarious is the fact that he's a dumb big cat fisherman that gets so wrapped up in the events of SA for no reason that he ends up having to fish his friend out of a god, you can't not have a big dumb smile on your face as it's happening.
This feels like very basic writing shit, right? Yet it feels like after 06 they simply became absolutely afraid of doing much of anything with Sonic's cast in the mainline. The last real non-antagonistic addition to the cast was Chipp, a nasally scrungo that they knew would be disposed of by the end of that game. After that you have... Classic Sonic, which like... no. Then you have "The Recruit", your oc of Sonic Forces, so again not really much of a character. The returning cast doesn't exactly fare well either, Shadow basically becoming "Hey, you remember this guy, right? That cool edgy guy from SA2! Buy our dlc". Where am I going with this tho... let's talk about Sonic Frontiers. Only bits and pieces tho, it's all I know after all. How does Frontiers handle the cast? Well besides Sonic you got Amy, Tails, Knuckles, and Eggman... I'm obviously not gonna say that the entire Sonic cast should be active at the same time all the time, that would be ridiculous, but damn, if that's not a cowardly selection if I've ever seen one. So the story has Sonic going around Islands as he works to save his friends, all the while his friends are left with not much to do besides reflect on the Island they're trapped on as well as their own past,the most important of these for our discussion being Tails... in essence kinda just going through his SA arc again. In a long running multi-installment thing like this, I'm not exactly entirely against characters falling back into old trappings, that's an incredibly human thing to depict. The thing I want to illustrate here is that, in the approach lacking much of anything new in regards to what the characters deal with, with the mission being to investigate the more melancholic aspects of these characters, then yeah, of course the one course of action is to simply re-iterate on the places these characters have already been, the road's been paved, there's no where else to go, "damn am I glad the characters are acting like themselves again". This is ultimately what I landed on as the importance of all those new characters just showing up to the story pre-Unleashed, even if it's something small like Big, or as Ultimate as Shadow, it's a new deal brought to the table, it's something new for the characters to bounce off of. You can argue for Frontiers that it isn't the point... the point might be kinda mid tho, and besides, Frontiers also illustrates this, because there is a new character. Sage like all the other Sonic characters has a simple deal going on, she's an AI character like many AI characters, and introduces herself as an antagonistic force against Sonic... and not Eggman. Eggman has had robot helpers before, that's nothing new, but Sage's screentime in this game is spent slowly showing a father-daughter relationship which, succeeded if the fan art of Eggman getting Sage McDonalds is any metric, and also created this facet of Eggman that wasn't there for the other 30 years of his existence and simply wouldn't exist without a character like this by which to create this dynamic. So old begets old, new begets new, that seems like a simple point to take away from this. If they don't let Ian Flynn throw in new fucked up Sonic ocs into the next game like they do for the comics regularly then I think it's safe to say that the whole "Frontiers experiment" has flopped tremendously, and that not even Sonic can outrun the culture of stagnation.
All of this is to say, Sonic's friends are cool.
How great it is then, that this is a Big the Cat review.
"You like fishing, shitty jungle shacks, loitering in strange places, and a frog. You can't fly, you can't spin dash, and you can't fight more than a monkey. Face it, you're never gonna make it." I don't wanna make it, [I just wanna-][This joke is still under construction, please come back at the end of these reviews]
Big is the Mystic Ruins' local cryptid. He's a simple creature, he hangs around his humble makeshift house, goes fishing, and takes care of his friend Froggy. Perhaps he is a role model to surpass even Man Who Owns the Building. At the start of his story Froggy gets possessed by the tail of Chaos, and Big takes it upon himself to chase down his friend. As we make it to the city, we find the Man Who Owns the Building, playing the role of the Man Who is Scared Shitless by Frogs, he is truly a multi-faceted building owner.
So Big's story has you go fishing your friend froggy inside pools of water in small isolated sections of existing levels. The devs clearly knew that this is a simplistic departure from any of the gameplay styles going on so they clearly didn't get too distracted making anything new for it, nor did they ask much of a minimum amount of playtime to be spent on it. The objective, Froggy, is set to a fixed spawn that is never really too far from Big. Ice Cap, the second of three levels, has one additional pool with an upgrade that you can explore for, but Froggy is always swimming around under the first fishing hole you see spawning in (Ice Cap is also kinda jank, you're gonna want to not be standing on the ice while you fish, the water tends to reject you otherwise). Fishing itself is of course not as complex as say, Sega Bass Pro, you cast your line, you move it bit by bit til the creature you cast it at bites, then you pace yourself, reel it in, move the rod with the fish, don't let the line get too tense. It's probably a familiar formula for this kind of minigame game, the Yakuza series fishing mini-games don't tend to be much more than this either. It is very much a mode that despite the patient aesthetics of fishing, knows that it doesn't really want to keep you waiting long, nor really do much of anything testing, it's hardly uncompromising.
To say that anything bad you can say about it hardly lives up to the performative anger of youtube Sonic reviewers is a given really. You're either kinda unimpressed for 30 minutes, or find it a cute distraction, not too dissimilar to the admittedly less compulsory Chao Gardens. Then of course you fish Froggy out of Chaos, which, is definitely one of the top 10 Sonic moments that will ever occur. There's absolutely something to be gained out of approaching these things not so seriously, not in the ironic "haha, there's no way his name is seriously Doc Ock" sense, but just actually indulging in these silly moments. Big just is what he is, and that's cool.
Lazy Days -Living in Paradise-, is a very silly song, and spawned some serious arguments in vc over if the lyrics is a convo between a metaphorical Chicken and Egg or just Big and Froggy.
Come around next time as we explore Gamma's story and why Eggman is the ultimate lifeform.
Sonic has a lady problem... no, no, Sonic has a problem with... Sonic can sometimes... Soni-... So when one hedgehog and another... uhhhhh... So classic Amy kinda low-key blows yeah?
So the story of a 80s/90s platformers is really just there, yeah, it's not the main attraction... but it is... there, you know. Like evil man is fucking up the world isn't exactly the most creative hook ever, but with the whole nature vs tech angle, there's something there, it's kinda resonant, it's neato. I think that's one of a good couple of things that puts early Sonic ahead of the... frustratingly inevitable to bring up Mario in this regard. Mario's story is like... an excuse of an excuse for just having a story to set the gameplay in. Like they just reuse this plumber character that they've been using for all their arcade games, and uh... oh no, the Princess is being kept hostage in the castle by an evil dragon creature, oh if only a gamer would come save her... calm down man, I just wanna stomp on some... KOOPAS. Like not to revive the, super ultra dead-and-buried-and-is-what-it-is-as-fuck discourse about the trope... but it's boring as shit yeah. So glad that our blue friend has always simply dealt in more interesting matters than fighting for the Monarchy... anyways in Sonic CD Amy is a small pink girlhog and also she gets kidnapped 10 seconds after she appears, whoops.
At least things get better in Amy's next showing... in Sonic R where she drives a car and also she's one of the worst characters even after mods to rebalance the game, whoops.
Hey at least it's better now that all these characters have dialogue now. Now with modern Amy, her character is that she wants to marry Sonic..... at least she isn't really just existing to be kidnapped anymore, now let me take a big sip of caffeinated beverage while I double check the premise of the plot for Sonic Frontiers.
She do have a big hammer so... that's something to be a fan of, pretty cool thing to be a fan of really, like her goal is kinda questionable and boring but she can sometimes give off that "nothing is gonna stop me" vibe when it comes to it, so I kinda gotta respect that.
So Amy is kinda a victim of circumstance all things considered, it's kinda hard to break out of the cycle of being one-note and having to constantly bang on that one-note. Is there anything to be done to compensate? I'd argue that we did have a solution for that. Let's talk about Blaze. Blaze is fuckin cool. Cool design, cool demeanor, is blatantly an alternate dimension Sonic, to just really give off just the right kind of OC vibes. Say what you about Sonic Rush's levels, you're correct to, but I believe this very easily demonstrates that there is value massive value to be had in just lettin another team come and just go off with your work, in this case succeeding where the mainline tends to struggle, and it's a practice that really should not end with Mania.
So overall, Sonic is coo-... well, Sonic could be... So-, if you brought the right people on, you could really, you know, make something that-
This formula is killin me, here is the Amy review.
So here's the first problem with talking about this like it's 1/6th or 1/7th of the game... there are 3 Amy levels. 3 and a boss. I get the distinct feeling they didn't take out a lot of dev time for this.
So in this campaign Amy gets chased around levels by an indestructible robot named Zero, who's kinda like Nemesis if Nemesis was a massive pushover, you kinda just give em a bonk with the hammer and move on. Between levels 1 and 2 Amy gets captured, oh no... we've been over this. After getting freed you can play a fucked up little whack-a-mole minigame for upgrades, that's neat. There's one movement tech that Amy has, which is that if you're running fast enough you can bounce with your hammer swing, it's pretty good. At the end of the day, after one of SA's many famous nae-nae ass boss fights, you reunite a bird with its family.
... yeah, that's all. Kinda a lazy write up for the actual game part but what ya want, this is easily as mid as this game gets, just not a whole lot goin on. Actually, there is one thing. While in free roam, if you touch the glowing orb in Station Square towards the beginning of the campaign, Tikal will talk to Amy about going to the Casino. So congratulations Sonic Adventure, you pass the Bechdel Test, kinda, sorta.
My Sweet Passion is a pretty cute fun little bubblegum track, it's neat. Did you know the lyrics for the song are supposedly "Bah bah bayah bayah", as opposed to anything about papayas, crazy.
Anyways, watch out, cuz next time around here, things are going to get Big.
So the story of a 80s/90s platformers is really just there, yeah, it's not the main attraction... but it is... there, you know. Like evil man is fucking up the world isn't exactly the most creative hook ever, but with the whole nature vs tech angle, there's something there, it's kinda resonant, it's neato. I think that's one of a good couple of things that puts early Sonic ahead of the... frustratingly inevitable to bring up Mario in this regard. Mario's story is like... an excuse of an excuse for just having a story to set the gameplay in. Like they just reuse this plumber character that they've been using for all their arcade games, and uh... oh no, the Princess is being kept hostage in the castle by an evil dragon creature, oh if only a gamer would come save her... calm down man, I just wanna stomp on some... KOOPAS. Like not to revive the, super ultra dead-and-buried-and-is-what-it-is-as-fuck discourse about the trope... but it's boring as shit yeah. So glad that our blue friend has always simply dealt in more interesting matters than fighting for the Monarchy... anyways in Sonic CD Amy is a small pink girlhog and also she gets kidnapped 10 seconds after she appears, whoops.
At least things get better in Amy's next showing... in Sonic R where she drives a car and also she's one of the worst characters even after mods to rebalance the game, whoops.
Hey at least it's better now that all these characters have dialogue now. Now with modern Amy, her character is that she wants to marry Sonic..... at least she isn't really just existing to be kidnapped anymore, now let me take a big sip of caffeinated beverage while I double check the premise of the plot for Sonic Frontiers.
She do have a big hammer so... that's something to be a fan of, pretty cool thing to be a fan of really, like her goal is kinda questionable and boring but she can sometimes give off that "nothing is gonna stop me" vibe when it comes to it, so I kinda gotta respect that.
So Amy is kinda a victim of circumstance all things considered, it's kinda hard to break out of the cycle of being one-note and having to constantly bang on that one-note. Is there anything to be done to compensate? I'd argue that we did have a solution for that. Let's talk about Blaze. Blaze is fuckin cool. Cool design, cool demeanor, is blatantly an alternate dimension Sonic, to just really give off just the right kind of OC vibes. Say what you about Sonic Rush's levels, you're correct to, but I believe this very easily demonstrates that there is value massive value to be had in just lettin another team come and just go off with your work, in this case succeeding where the mainline tends to struggle, and it's a practice that really should not end with Mania.
So overall, Sonic is coo-... well, Sonic could be... So-, if you brought the right people on, you could really, you know, make something that-
This formula is killin me, here is the Amy review.
So here's the first problem with talking about this like it's 1/6th or 1/7th of the game... there are 3 Amy levels. 3 and a boss. I get the distinct feeling they didn't take out a lot of dev time for this.
So in this campaign Amy gets chased around levels by an indestructible robot named Zero, who's kinda like Nemesis if Nemesis was a massive pushover, you kinda just give em a bonk with the hammer and move on. Between levels 1 and 2 Amy gets captured, oh no... we've been over this. After getting freed you can play a fucked up little whack-a-mole minigame for upgrades, that's neat. There's one movement tech that Amy has, which is that if you're running fast enough you can bounce with your hammer swing, it's pretty good. At the end of the day, after one of SA's many famous nae-nae ass boss fights, you reunite a bird with its family.
... yeah, that's all. Kinda a lazy write up for the actual game part but what ya want, this is easily as mid as this game gets, just not a whole lot goin on. Actually, there is one thing. While in free roam, if you touch the glowing orb in Station Square towards the beginning of the campaign, Tikal will talk to Amy about going to the Casino. So congratulations Sonic Adventure, you pass the Bechdel Test, kinda, sorta.
My Sweet Passion is a pretty cute fun little bubblegum track, it's neat. Did you know the lyrics for the song are supposedly "Bah bah bayah bayah", as opposed to anything about papayas, crazy.
Anyways, watch out, cuz next time around here, things are going to get Big.
What a timeless game. Real Higher-Mid ass combat, carried by an iconic soundtrack, some adrenaline pumpin vibes, and some unforgettable scenes.
What a real shame that this studio just dropped off the face of the Earth after this game.
#RIPBozo
What a real shame that this studio just dropped off the face of the Earth after this game.
#RIPBozo
Sonic's world is low-key the weirdest part of the franchise. Let's start back at Sonic 1. You know how it goes, right? It all starts in the lively and stylishly geometrical vistas of Green Hill, moves onward through damp ruins, eventually ending in the heart of the technological hellscape empire that a single Dr Robotnik threatens to expand. A simple formula its immediate sequels followed that is resonant with the growing environmentalist concerns of the 90's, concerns that only continued to grow since then but I digress. All that said, it makes sense that this series be set in some kind of modified version of Earth right? And it is, and was at the time... in Japan. Sega of America decided that the world of Sonic seemed otherworldly enough that they could actually sell it as another world, which does seem fair I guess. And so, the Mobius of all of the Sonic spinoffs ever except for Sonic X and Boom was born, sometimes a place resembling the games, sometimes a totally conquered planet, sometimes written by Archie so uh... you know how that goes. Weird thing about Sonic X is that despite Sonic's world effectively being Earth since the beginning in Japan, the plot of that series still has Sonic being unwillingly transported from His World™ to Earth and so he teams up with Chris Thorn-slur-for-lesbians to do Sonic things like... re-enact all of the events of Sonic Adventure 2 wait how does that-
The concept of Mobius, while completely incompatible with the games past Adventure, is still kept alive in the side content, such as the current Paramount movie series, in which Sonic is unwillingly transported from Mobius to Earth and so he teams up with-
As mentioned this idea being applied to the games comes to an end in Sonic Adventure where the setting becomes very apparently Earth but funky, the biggest giveaway being the appearance of a city-ass city, with human-ass people that aren't Eggman. The continuity started here is carried on and built on top of all the way to Sonic 06, and then Sonic Unleashed happens and all of that just kind of becomes irrelevant, and then Unleashed becomes irrelevant, and basically the writing goes from Saturday morning cartoon(tho, not like THE Saturday morning cartoon) to Friday evening. While the first half of the 3D era can be considered weird because it jumps from Sonic being arrested by Not-The-US-Military, to an alien race that helped Gerald Robotnik of earlier games achieve his goals coming to reap the seeds they've sown, modern Sonic's world is weird because... what is modern Sonic's world? It's just kind of this non-descript amorphous blob that doesn't really take shape unless we're viewing it at some moment in time. And you know, that's not necessarily a bad thing, they took the adventure continuity pretty far and now we're in territory where anything is possible, and that's fine. The later writing style has bigger crimes than continuity, just look at Shadow. Honestly it feels weird to even be talking about this before whatever's about to happen in Frontiers happens, so all I can say is, yeah that looks pretty wacky innit.
No matter where Sonic actually is tho, his world is always one filled with sunny blue skies, treacherous obstacle course shaped ruins, and cool robots. Overall, that's pretty cool.
Having said all that, it sure would be weird if this was a Knuckles review instead.
Knuckles is a simple guy, he sit by his emerald, emerald gets fucked up, he puts it back together. Focused, in his lane, dedicated to his own cause. The echidna of all time.Just like the humble building owner of Station Square. We don't know what his building is for, but he owns that building, and for that he is satisfied. Perhaps we can learn a lot from the inhabitants of Sonic world... nah building owners are cringe actually.
Exploration as an explicit gameplay element, a common part of games that I oddly do not actually see interrogated deeply by any usual suspects... I mean I'm not going to today either. All I can say is that, yeah, it makes sense for Knuckles' moveset, and that without a real relevant fail state being threatened, the main thing to take away from this side mode of play is just being able to vibe in these spaces. That's really cool when you're dealing with the idyllic streets of Station Square and their burger signs, the theatrical antics of the Casino and their pirate ship. This kinda just becomes some busy fetching tho when you're just flying around red cliffs, or dealin with the cute but ultimately gimmicky last level (why is there one lever). If there's another simple takeaway from this, it's that Sonic Adventure 2 fucked it. Everyone knows about the weird radar change they made in 2 but also Knuckles' moveset is more suited to these levels that are big and open with only some amount of verticality as opposed to SA2's involved and sometimes vertical to all hell stages. It's weird, Knuckles as a part of SA2 is weird, how fortunate we are that there is nothing weird about our Echidna friend in Adventure 1...
So the year is 1996, Sonic team are now on a mission to make the next game(crazy right). For inspiration on where the blue blur should blaze through next, the team went on a journey, to Central/South America. More specifically, the ruins of several separate cultures whom dotted the landscape long ago, getting a close first hand experience of the remains of these cultures, via long tourist trip. Their efforts culminate as large chunk of that game which would become Sonic Adventure, would be set in not South America, South America is in Sonic Jump, but rather an allegorical amalgamation simply called Mystic Ruins. A place where its main modern inhabitants are white men looking for rocks to plunder. Ok, I'm obviously not the person to talk to about cultural appropriation, what that even is, what effect that even has, especially in the context of a Sonic game, but I think we can all take a step back and acknowledge how weird it is, even tho it was common at the time, that the team went through so much effort to "get real knowledge of the ancient cultures" that they want to depict, and then shat out this motherfucker. Pachacamac, leader of the Echidna ethnostate, spearhead of the Chao massacre who was smitted by the god of the land Chaos for his arrogance and violence, this guy's existence kinda fuckin sucks lol. It's current year, I'm not taking John Sega to task on this or anything, besides for all legal purposes the weird cultural mine field of the wider Echidna family is entirely Ken Penders' problem now, but damn, what a weird ass slice that existed in this franchise huh.
Sonic Adventure 1 was a weird ass way start to the expansion of Sonic's world, and Knuckles is equally a weird way to explore it, but for all that it's worth, that station do be square tho.
Also you know how it is, Unknown from M.E., iconic. They simply don't do it like that anymore.
See you later as we enter uh... you know, there's something I must confess. This is not a review of Sonic Adventure DX as packaged from the Steam store. Ever since the Tails review, this has been the Sonic Adventure DX steam port, modded to be more like the Dreamcast version in all ways except for the water. You have been deceived. I have made FOOLS OF YOU ALL. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
The concept of Mobius, while completely incompatible with the games past Adventure, is still kept alive in the side content, such as the current Paramount movie series, in which Sonic is unwillingly transported from Mobius to Earth and so he teams up with-
As mentioned this idea being applied to the games comes to an end in Sonic Adventure where the setting becomes very apparently Earth but funky, the biggest giveaway being the appearance of a city-ass city, with human-ass people that aren't Eggman. The continuity started here is carried on and built on top of all the way to Sonic 06, and then Sonic Unleashed happens and all of that just kind of becomes irrelevant, and then Unleashed becomes irrelevant, and basically the writing goes from Saturday morning cartoon(tho, not like THE Saturday morning cartoon) to Friday evening. While the first half of the 3D era can be considered weird because it jumps from Sonic being arrested by Not-The-US-Military, to an alien race that helped Gerald Robotnik of earlier games achieve his goals coming to reap the seeds they've sown, modern Sonic's world is weird because... what is modern Sonic's world? It's just kind of this non-descript amorphous blob that doesn't really take shape unless we're viewing it at some moment in time. And you know, that's not necessarily a bad thing, they took the adventure continuity pretty far and now we're in territory where anything is possible, and that's fine. The later writing style has bigger crimes than continuity, just look at Shadow. Honestly it feels weird to even be talking about this before whatever's about to happen in Frontiers happens, so all I can say is, yeah that looks pretty wacky innit.
No matter where Sonic actually is tho, his world is always one filled with sunny blue skies, treacherous obstacle course shaped ruins, and cool robots. Overall, that's pretty cool.
Having said all that, it sure would be weird if this was a Knuckles review instead.
Knuckles is a simple guy, he sit by his emerald, emerald gets fucked up, he puts it back together. Focused, in his lane, dedicated to his own cause. The echidna of all time.Just like the humble building owner of Station Square. We don't know what his building is for, but he owns that building, and for that he is satisfied. Perhaps we can learn a lot from the inhabitants of Sonic world... nah building owners are cringe actually.
Exploration as an explicit gameplay element, a common part of games that I oddly do not actually see interrogated deeply by any usual suspects... I mean I'm not going to today either. All I can say is that, yeah, it makes sense for Knuckles' moveset, and that without a real relevant fail state being threatened, the main thing to take away from this side mode of play is just being able to vibe in these spaces. That's really cool when you're dealing with the idyllic streets of Station Square and their burger signs, the theatrical antics of the Casino and their pirate ship. This kinda just becomes some busy fetching tho when you're just flying around red cliffs, or dealin with the cute but ultimately gimmicky last level (why is there one lever). If there's another simple takeaway from this, it's that Sonic Adventure 2 fucked it. Everyone knows about the weird radar change they made in 2 but also Knuckles' moveset is more suited to these levels that are big and open with only some amount of verticality as opposed to SA2's involved and sometimes vertical to all hell stages. It's weird, Knuckles as a part of SA2 is weird, how fortunate we are that there is nothing weird about our Echidna friend in Adventure 1...
So the year is 1996, Sonic team are now on a mission to make the next game(crazy right). For inspiration on where the blue blur should blaze through next, the team went on a journey, to Central/South America. More specifically, the ruins of several separate cultures whom dotted the landscape long ago, getting a close first hand experience of the remains of these cultures, via long tourist trip. Their efforts culminate as large chunk of that game which would become Sonic Adventure, would be set in not South America, South America is in Sonic Jump, but rather an allegorical amalgamation simply called Mystic Ruins. A place where its main modern inhabitants are white men looking for rocks to plunder. Ok, I'm obviously not the person to talk to about cultural appropriation, what that even is, what effect that even has, especially in the context of a Sonic game, but I think we can all take a step back and acknowledge how weird it is, even tho it was common at the time, that the team went through so much effort to "get real knowledge of the ancient cultures" that they want to depict, and then shat out this motherfucker. Pachacamac, leader of the Echidna ethnostate, spearhead of the Chao massacre who was smitted by the god of the land Chaos for his arrogance and violence, this guy's existence kinda fuckin sucks lol. It's current year, I'm not taking John Sega to task on this or anything, besides for all legal purposes the weird cultural mine field of the wider Echidna family is entirely Ken Penders' problem now, but damn, what a weird ass slice that existed in this franchise huh.
Sonic Adventure 1 was a weird ass way start to the expansion of Sonic's world, and Knuckles is equally a weird way to explore it, but for all that it's worth, that station do be square tho.
Also you know how it is, Unknown from M.E., iconic. They simply don't do it like that anymore.
See you later as we enter uh... you know, there's something I must confess. This is not a review of Sonic Adventure DX as packaged from the Steam store. Ever since the Tails review, this has been the Sonic Adventure DX steam port, modded to be more like the Dreamcast version in all ways except for the water. You have been deceived. I have made FOOLS OF YOU ALL. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
So Sonic might have a bit of a first impressions problem, if my still intact review of Sonic's story is any sign. This is mostly because until Generations, Sonic's control has been massively volatile, simply not accelerating the way you expect, not steering the way you expect, and some other things I can't claim to fully know 2 years later. So people get salty, say it's aged, and then go play some shit like uh... "Mario goes to the park, and feeds a duck, that's pretty cute". And while the latter two parts of that ain't me, the former definitely was for about every Sonic game I played. Eventually tho salt fades and one can be convinced that, yeah actually, this hub, kind of a vibe. Sonic, pretty cool guy, he can even go to the park, and feed a duck to a creature, that's pretty cute. If one's inputs were to eventually adapt to the outcomes in this game, then they would see that Sonic is fucking busted. His spin dash simply achieving non-stop speeds and physics no over-worked Sega employee could possibly design around, and tho the levels are still designed for a kids platforming game, seeing this small furball just absolutely blast through it beyond his own creator's expectations makes my character-action lovin poisoned ass brain go "Ah, yeah, this is rad". This is of course a retrospective made at a distance, my blasting through it is sub-par all things considered, but again with my previously mentioned poisoned ass brain, I tend to respect games of higher heights to shoot for, even tho I can barely aim myself. What's truly the point of feelin like you mastered something anyway? It's the top of the mountain, a dead end. In that sense I do welcome a game that's a bit beyond me, tho probably not exactly like Sonic so that's perhaps something to elaborate on another time.
All of this is to say, Sonic is cool!
But this is a Tails review.
Everyone loves Tails, even the boomers because they remember him. People like to throw around the idea that the game would be better if they developed less characters and spent that time making the levels less cringe and for nae-nae babies, and there's something to that idea even if things rarely work out so simply. I've yet to play more than half of the equation in all this, but ultimately Tails is a fine addition to the game regardless of it being the correct timeline or not.
You see, counter to what I've written about Sonic, Tails is almost the Sonic Adventure hater's way of playing Sonic Adventure. His moveset is nowhere near as volatile as Sonic's (especially if you were to miss out on the flying speed upgrade), and he can soar past most of the level geometry. I feel like the clever thing in this is that instead of just ultra-capping his trademark flying ability, they simply light a fire under your ass by asking you to beat a guy that by all means should be faster than you, in a race. So Tails' levels consist of the same as Sonic's, but now re-contextualized as you're encouraged to just utilize your rather nice breezy fast hover to skip right through the level, while always bein pushed to move forward at that pace because Sonic is a rubber-banding motherfucker. It gets to the point where the final level barely even feels like the Sonic equivalent, which I guess lines up with his character motivation to not be in Sonic's shadow all things considered. Overall while simpler in playstyle, you're still breaking these levels over your knee, made more cathartic with the memory of being grounded by them, and that's pretty cool.
Also Believe in Myself is a pretty nice theme.
Expect the reviewin rust to get more shakin off as we dive into the rest of Sonic Adventure's cast... eventually.
All of this is to say, Sonic is cool!
But this is a Tails review.
Everyone loves Tails, even the boomers because they remember him. People like to throw around the idea that the game would be better if they developed less characters and spent that time making the levels less cringe and for nae-nae babies, and there's something to that idea even if things rarely work out so simply. I've yet to play more than half of the equation in all this, but ultimately Tails is a fine addition to the game regardless of it being the correct timeline or not.
You see, counter to what I've written about Sonic, Tails is almost the Sonic Adventure hater's way of playing Sonic Adventure. His moveset is nowhere near as volatile as Sonic's (especially if you were to miss out on the flying speed upgrade), and he can soar past most of the level geometry. I feel like the clever thing in this is that instead of just ultra-capping his trademark flying ability, they simply light a fire under your ass by asking you to beat a guy that by all means should be faster than you, in a race. So Tails' levels consist of the same as Sonic's, but now re-contextualized as you're encouraged to just utilize your rather nice breezy fast hover to skip right through the level, while always bein pushed to move forward at that pace because Sonic is a rubber-banding motherfucker. It gets to the point where the final level barely even feels like the Sonic equivalent, which I guess lines up with his character motivation to not be in Sonic's shadow all things considered. Overall while simpler in playstyle, you're still breaking these levels over your knee, made more cathartic with the memory of being grounded by them, and that's pretty cool.
Also Believe in Myself is a pretty nice theme.
Expect the reviewin rust to get more shakin off as we dive into the rest of Sonic Adventure's cast... eventually.
2021
ANYOIO🎐💀
2008
Day cannot exist without night. The comforting dark of night exists to give rest to the day which we cherish. A view at night is incomplete without the same view illuminated by day, for they are two sides of the same coin.
You cannot experience the most involved gameplay in this era of Sonic without experiencing the most bullshit that can be put into a Sonic game, holy shit, I'm not even referring to the werehog.
You cannot experience the most involved gameplay in this era of Sonic without experiencing the most bullshit that can be put into a Sonic game, holy shit, I'm not even referring to the werehog.
It's almost been 3 years since I posted a review on Bright Memory Episode 1, or rather just titled "Bright Memory" now, onto Steam, a forum which would absolutely not consider that version of the game to be anything less than one of the most praise worthy achievements around, especially since it was only made by "One person". It's a bit of a loaded sentiment really, yes FYQD handled many aspects on their own but the credits of the game also include different composers, voice actors, and also at many points, "UE Marketplace". Regardless it absolutely is impressive that the dev manged to release a functional game period, but it seems dishonest to bookend every single bit of praise or defense with that line all the way back at Episode 1, and absolutely now at Bright Memory Infinite.
Regardless let's talk about what's here, and what's here is... surprising. I was kind of prepared both to eat the words I shat out years ago or to otherwise do a smug little "I Told You So" little song and dance, but BMI leaves me in a position where I really can not fully do either because damn, this is just a different game than episode 1. Where episode 1 is a shooter with not so polished out design choices but filled with character action aspirations, Infinite is a game where gravity is absolute, movement is limited, and the move list is scaled way back, no more multi-button/ triple button press moves. Add the removal of the style meter altogether and it becomes clear this isn't a weird stylish action game but rather a very by the numbers "Playism published Indie" imitation of your standard triple A shooter.
Bright Memory Infinite is a game with big graphic, big QTE cutscene, big forced stealth section, big janked out vehicle section, big arrow on wall that points to where to go, big ammo everywhere, big 1 dollar dlcs in order to see the main character in a bikini, big gameplay element that serves to differentiate itself from other shooters in marketing but not really(that sword is still definitely just a gun), and not so big but bigger than the game's runtime upgrade tree where 20% is more button, 80% is to make button have better numbers. Who knows who decided this turn of direction but regardless what we're left with now is a serviceable shooty bang bang game if you don't expect too much.
Hey they addressed all the enemy design issues I had in episode 1. The melee enemies have projectiles so they don't just never touch you if you backdash away from them. The hitscan gun dude enemies, even in the worst areas in regards to cover, can be defended against with the defense button, returning all fire at the cost of meter, seemed a bit lame at first but there were plenty of times the button did not bail me out.
Speaking of say good bye to the 6 different cooldowns happening all at once in Episode one, now everything that isn't a gun is tied to one singular meter that refills faster by shooting guns. It works and as said before it balances the "I simply choose to not take damage" button, and while there is some redundancy in the moves you unlock for both your Exo Arm and your sword, that's fine especially since you're not likely to actually fully upgrade by the end (Unless you repeatedly pick up a collectible upgrade statue that is near a checkpoint repeatedly after dying, with the game remembering the upgrades and upgrade points, but still spawning the statue after each death anyways, but don't tell FYQD about that). The guns still gun, and gun differently enough that they work better in different situations yadda yadda, They each have special ammo but it's a potential waste to dump them into anything but a boss, against which it's basically just free extra damage. The defense button also is also used as a timed parry button in order to "stagger" bigger melee enemies, fun fact episode 1 used to include the dark souls bonfire, just the actual dark souls bonfire, had the "Bonfire Lit" text and everything, funniest shit anyone has ever seen apparently. Finally, you still can't dash forward, they give you the COD sprint now but for some reason you still have the dash that works in every direction but forward, it's the strangest thing, I don't get it.
All this gameplay breakdown is to say, it's absolutely the best Shadow Warrior game I've ever seen.
So I've made my point right? The gameplay of this gameplay-centric shooty game is fine but nothing seen before yeah. Let's talk about real shit. Let's talk about this fucking rain . There's a storm raging throughout the game you see. You got your standard droplets crashing down hard, you got the strong winds carrying mist, blowing leaves off trees, you got the outline of droplets stuck on the camera in gameplay and during cutscenes regardless of if it makes sense or not. As the game is it's mostly just something to look at during the downtime in between shootouts, but it's legit good stuff regardless, wouldn't be surprised to see it on @Rainingames .
The story is mostly nothing but it does have fun things like there simply being a black hole in the distance the entire time, The ancient general guy who's never explained and the guy who flies the helicopter simply having the voice acting in the English dub and I would not have it any other way, said helicopter guy nearly crashing into town trying to deliver a full on spy-car-ass spy car, said spy car being equipped with a mounted rocket launcher and this guy :). Antics like these that for one reason or another you just gotta have a nice smile or laugh when it happens.
The soundtrack is also kind of neat, no bangers really but it's neat in how it mixes some distinctly Old-fashioned "Chinese" sounds into what is otherwise just generic serviceable score.
And that's Bright Memory I guess, I'm not mad that I didn't get the game that was promised all the way back when Episode 1 came out, Ultrakill did go into Early Access since then after all, but I am surprised and confused that this is what came out of it all. I could make fancy musings about whether it would be better if they kept at it with their riskier less proven design directions. I could make possible but foundation-less conspiracies about big Playism man not wanting fun in my shooter, even though Episode 1 also displayed plenty of love for Triple A-isms and how those games are designed. In the end we have what we have, and what we have is not the biggest deal one way or another. Impressive that it exists, but goes nowhere fast.
If you read through all of this judging whether or not to buy this che- wait they sold this shit for $20? Well fuck. If you got it for having episode 1 prior to release and you're bored, go ahead. Otherwise it's probably best to play a different game, one made by multiple people probably, those tend to up well.
Regardless let's talk about what's here, and what's here is... surprising. I was kind of prepared both to eat the words I shat out years ago or to otherwise do a smug little "I Told You So" little song and dance, but BMI leaves me in a position where I really can not fully do either because damn, this is just a different game than episode 1. Where episode 1 is a shooter with not so polished out design choices but filled with character action aspirations, Infinite is a game where gravity is absolute, movement is limited, and the move list is scaled way back, no more multi-button/ triple button press moves. Add the removal of the style meter altogether and it becomes clear this isn't a weird stylish action game but rather a very by the numbers "Playism published Indie" imitation of your standard triple A shooter.
Bright Memory Infinite is a game with big graphic, big QTE cutscene, big forced stealth section, big janked out vehicle section, big arrow on wall that points to where to go, big ammo everywhere, big 1 dollar dlcs in order to see the main character in a bikini, big gameplay element that serves to differentiate itself from other shooters in marketing but not really(that sword is still definitely just a gun), and not so big but bigger than the game's runtime upgrade tree where 20% is more button, 80% is to make button have better numbers. Who knows who decided this turn of direction but regardless what we're left with now is a serviceable shooty bang bang game if you don't expect too much.
Hey they addressed all the enemy design issues I had in episode 1. The melee enemies have projectiles so they don't just never touch you if you backdash away from them. The hitscan gun dude enemies, even in the worst areas in regards to cover, can be defended against with the defense button, returning all fire at the cost of meter, seemed a bit lame at first but there were plenty of times the button did not bail me out.
Speaking of say good bye to the 6 different cooldowns happening all at once in Episode one, now everything that isn't a gun is tied to one singular meter that refills faster by shooting guns. It works and as said before it balances the "I simply choose to not take damage" button, and while there is some redundancy in the moves you unlock for both your Exo Arm and your sword, that's fine especially since you're not likely to actually fully upgrade by the end (Unless you repeatedly pick up a collectible upgrade statue that is near a checkpoint repeatedly after dying, with the game remembering the upgrades and upgrade points, but still spawning the statue after each death anyways, but don't tell FYQD about that). The guns still gun, and gun differently enough that they work better in different situations yadda yadda, They each have special ammo but it's a potential waste to dump them into anything but a boss, against which it's basically just free extra damage. The defense button also is also used as a timed parry button in order to "stagger" bigger melee enemies, fun fact episode 1 used to include the dark souls bonfire, just the actual dark souls bonfire, had the "Bonfire Lit" text and everything, funniest shit anyone has ever seen apparently. Finally, you still can't dash forward, they give you the COD sprint now but for some reason you still have the dash that works in every direction but forward, it's the strangest thing, I don't get it.
All this gameplay breakdown is to say, it's absolutely the best Shadow Warrior game I've ever seen.
So I've made my point right? The gameplay of this gameplay-centric shooty game is fine but nothing seen before yeah. Let's talk about real shit. Let's talk about this fucking rain . There's a storm raging throughout the game you see. You got your standard droplets crashing down hard, you got the strong winds carrying mist, blowing leaves off trees, you got the outline of droplets stuck on the camera in gameplay and during cutscenes regardless of if it makes sense or not. As the game is it's mostly just something to look at during the downtime in between shootouts, but it's legit good stuff regardless, wouldn't be surprised to see it on @Rainingames .
The story is mostly nothing but it does have fun things like there simply being a black hole in the distance the entire time, The ancient general guy who's never explained and the guy who flies the helicopter simply having the voice acting in the English dub and I would not have it any other way, said helicopter guy nearly crashing into town trying to deliver a full on spy-car-ass spy car, said spy car being equipped with a mounted rocket launcher and this guy :). Antics like these that for one reason or another you just gotta have a nice smile or laugh when it happens.
The soundtrack is also kind of neat, no bangers really but it's neat in how it mixes some distinctly Old-fashioned "Chinese" sounds into what is otherwise just generic serviceable score.
And that's Bright Memory I guess, I'm not mad that I didn't get the game that was promised all the way back when Episode 1 came out, Ultrakill did go into Early Access since then after all, but I am surprised and confused that this is what came out of it all. I could make fancy musings about whether it would be better if they kept at it with their riskier less proven design directions. I could make possible but foundation-less conspiracies about big Playism man not wanting fun in my shooter, even though Episode 1 also displayed plenty of love for Triple A-isms and how those games are designed. In the end we have what we have, and what we have is not the biggest deal one way or another. Impressive that it exists, but goes nowhere fast.
If you read through all of this judging whether or not to buy this che- wait they sold this shit for $20? Well fuck. If you got it for having episode 1 prior to release and you're bored, go ahead. Otherwise it's probably best to play a different game, one made by multiple people probably, those tend to up well.
2016
What's more to say about OneShot? It's a cute rpgmaker game guiding a young cat-person, Niko, through a dying world and also the computer program talks to you. Very pretty game, the art and soundtrack creates some pretty potent vibes, and all the characters are likable. The game kind of hinges on you caring about Niko and that is definitely easy enough to do.
There is only one, maybe two puzzles that can legitamately give pause on how to solve, most of the time the puzzles are more about finding the keys than figuring out any mechanism or what not. You'll pick up a screwdriver at one place, "ah I'll have to figure out what to do with this", then not too far you'll find a camera and the item description is all like "A broken camera with a large submissive and unscrewable lens". All of this is completely fine tho, I did get a bit stumped at one point because it took me a bit long to find the bathroom in one area, that's my bad I think tho.
There's one aspect that I was wondering how to talk about but I ended up coming across the steam page (pretty sure I got the game off Itch) and found that they pretty much did it for me "CONTENT WARNING Although OneShot is not a horror game in the traditional sense, parts of the game may induce some paranoia. Please proceed with caution." Basically if you're a bitch like me that gets massively stressed over the implication that something might happen, then yeah like I said before, this game creates some potent vibes and stress-inducing dread is definitely one of them.
Can't say that all of its themes are executed perfectly but such is the case with many works, it's all good for the most part anyway. Overall it's a pretty lovely game that doesn't overstay its welcome.
Thanks to XenonXV for recommending me this game, it was sitting on my hard-drive for about over a year now
There is only one, maybe two puzzles that can legitamately give pause on how to solve, most of the time the puzzles are more about finding the keys than figuring out any mechanism or what not. You'll pick up a screwdriver at one place, "ah I'll have to figure out what to do with this", then not too far you'll find a camera and the item description is all like "A broken camera with a large submissive and unscrewable lens". All of this is completely fine tho, I did get a bit stumped at one point because it took me a bit long to find the bathroom in one area, that's my bad I think tho.
There's one aspect that I was wondering how to talk about but I ended up coming across the steam page (pretty sure I got the game off Itch) and found that they pretty much did it for me "CONTENT WARNING Although OneShot is not a horror game in the traditional sense, parts of the game may induce some paranoia. Please proceed with caution." Basically if you're a bitch like me that gets massively stressed over the implication that something might happen, then yeah like I said before, this game creates some potent vibes and stress-inducing dread is definitely one of them.
Can't say that all of its themes are executed perfectly but such is the case with many works, it's all good for the most part anyway. Overall it's a pretty lovely game that doesn't overstay its welcome.
Thanks to XenonXV for recommending me this game, it was sitting on my hard-drive for about over a year now
2021
Inscryption is a rougelike deckbuilder by the Pony Island dev in which the Pony Island dev asks themself "What if I made a rougelike deckbuilder by the Pony Island dev". And yeah, the most concise way to summarize it is that it's a singleplayer deckbuilder by the Pony Island dev. Did I forget rougelike in that last sentence? No, but the game does indeed contain a rougelike deckbuilder tho, just don't go into it if that's all that you're expecting.
The "game by the Pony Island dev"ness is definitely as cheesy as ever, and some of it's antics are definitely like "Really, this shit now?", tho the game does start off with a pretty foreboding atmosphere for a bit. The game is a bit easy but engaging enough (took 5 runs to beat the rougelike), new mechanics are introduced and re-contextualized as you go through. But overall what I'm trying to say with all this is that you know what you're getting into. I thought it was cute, and that's about all it had to be. It's not much more, and it's not much less.
The "game by the Pony Island dev"ness is definitely as cheesy as ever, and some of it's antics are definitely like "Really, this shit now?", tho the game does start off with a pretty foreboding atmosphere for a bit. The game is a bit easy but engaging enough (took 5 runs to beat the rougelike), new mechanics are introduced and re-contextualized as you go through. But overall what I'm trying to say with all this is that you know what you're getting into. I thought it was cute, and that's about all it had to be. It's not much more, and it's not much less.
2021
I made Grodd from CW's The Flash Aggressively Shit in front of Barrack Obama. How's your day?
2016
Top down shooty rouge-like with shoot em up and legend of zelda elements means that we're comparing this to Isaac right? Yeah.
Well for the first 29.3 hours spent over years of playing this on and off whenever I remember that it exists, this game feels like it has an answer to every problem Isaac's design had accumulated through its decade of development. Backtracking to the shop a bit of a pain? Once you find it you can just teleport there and back with the greatest of ease. Tired of enemies spawning on top of you and getting hit by the enemies death bullets cuz you forgot every enemy explodes on death in Isaac these days? Enter the Gungeon telegraphs both of those things. Your run lagging behind on power because you didn't get enough Devil/Angel deals (aka where the fuck did all the soul hearts go Edmund)? Enter the Gungeon rewards a health container upon clearing a boss after taking no damage, still encouraging doing particularly well in early sections of the game while not being the end of the world if you didn't get it either. Tired of getting a bunch of bullets and enemies trapping your big chonky hit box that sometimes just wonder how you're supposed to get out of the way? Besides sporting a much smaller hitbox-to-rest-of-the-screen ratio, there is also a dodge roll to get your still not quite touhou sized hitbox through some less than predicted scenarios, while also having enough commitment and recovery that you're not just dodge rolling every second of a fight and calling it a day. And for every other sticky scenario, you're also packing a couple blanks a floor for clearing a room of bullets, ala Touhou bombs but without the shit ton of damage or the ability to press the button a few frames after the fact.
Obviously there are good items to get for a god run, wouldn't be that interesting of a rougelike otherwise, but I feel like it doesn't happen that often, I can't quite prove it but I feel like the power level of runs are pretty decent, as opposed to Isaac where you have items that can truly just be terrible. I suppose the weird part is that each item/gun tends to be it's own thing and do it's own thing while having a few hard coded upgrades for having certain thematically similar items in your inventory and sometimes you come across the occasional bullet upgrade, while in Isaac every item is being stacked on top of whatever it is you are doing, but it still works I think. The guns each have their own unique shots and quirks, with a little text blurb in the game's little in universe encylopedia, the "Ammonomicon", explaining what it do along with bits of flavor text to maybe hopefully cut down on searching shit up on the wikia (the wikia still has a lot of info not mentioned so it unfortunately still remains a bit of a necessity for getting through these kinds of games).
I could keep making direct comparisons with Isaac for how one game handles one thing and the other handles it differently but I think I made my point in how Enter the Gungeon is generally the less frustrating more level headed approach in comparison to Isaac's "Give you the powers of god one second and then beat you over the head with a rock the next" shenanigans, not that those don't have it's own appeal of course.
One might get the idea that I'm making this review because I'm mad cuz bad with Isaac and this game just gives a bunch of shit to make things easier. And yeah, I'll admit that I only really decided to try and beat this game after getting an Isaac tick with the drop of repentance and then subsequently getting really frustrated with it... after 7 or so wins. Those 29.3 hours I put into gungeon only translated into a single victory, this game does not care if you suck at it. and yet I feel like it's because of all of those bells and whistles I mentioned that makes each loss, while sometimes heartbreaking, a lot less frustrating than how Isaac can be a lot of time.
And that's why this game seems like a nice little thing you pick up for a hour or two, dodge some bullets, test a bit of your luck, and then move on and continue wondering why I'm not good enough to play against my friends in fighting games... you know, whatever it is you do. As decent as this game is it doesn't exactly have Isaac's dozen of final bosses and dozens more of normal bosses on top of that, so I can't make much of a recommendation beyond what I've said if you can deal with what is ultimately, a still pretty random, still mechanically simple, and still ultimately endless rougelike shoot em up.
... this game can actually just shut up with some of the references tho. Like ok, the music is ok if I don't feel like putting on some playlist, the in-game art looks fine, pretty neat, but this game really needs to shut up sometimes. wow, a box, a cardboard box, no one will see you in this thing, do you get it? Oh yeah I get it, real laugh and a half, now where's my real A rank item I spent my last key on you cheeky fuck?
Well for the first 29.3 hours spent over years of playing this on and off whenever I remember that it exists, this game feels like it has an answer to every problem Isaac's design had accumulated through its decade of development. Backtracking to the shop a bit of a pain? Once you find it you can just teleport there and back with the greatest of ease. Tired of enemies spawning on top of you and getting hit by the enemies death bullets cuz you forgot every enemy explodes on death in Isaac these days? Enter the Gungeon telegraphs both of those things. Your run lagging behind on power because you didn't get enough Devil/Angel deals (aka where the fuck did all the soul hearts go Edmund)? Enter the Gungeon rewards a health container upon clearing a boss after taking no damage, still encouraging doing particularly well in early sections of the game while not being the end of the world if you didn't get it either. Tired of getting a bunch of bullets and enemies trapping your big chonky hit box that sometimes just wonder how you're supposed to get out of the way? Besides sporting a much smaller hitbox-to-rest-of-the-screen ratio, there is also a dodge roll to get your still not quite touhou sized hitbox through some less than predicted scenarios, while also having enough commitment and recovery that you're not just dodge rolling every second of a fight and calling it a day. And for every other sticky scenario, you're also packing a couple blanks a floor for clearing a room of bullets, ala Touhou bombs but without the shit ton of damage or the ability to press the button a few frames after the fact.
Obviously there are good items to get for a god run, wouldn't be that interesting of a rougelike otherwise, but I feel like it doesn't happen that often, I can't quite prove it but I feel like the power level of runs are pretty decent, as opposed to Isaac where you have items that can truly just be terrible. I suppose the weird part is that each item/gun tends to be it's own thing and do it's own thing while having a few hard coded upgrades for having certain thematically similar items in your inventory and sometimes you come across the occasional bullet upgrade, while in Isaac every item is being stacked on top of whatever it is you are doing, but it still works I think. The guns each have their own unique shots and quirks, with a little text blurb in the game's little in universe encylopedia, the "Ammonomicon", explaining what it do along with bits of flavor text to maybe hopefully cut down on searching shit up on the wikia (the wikia still has a lot of info not mentioned so it unfortunately still remains a bit of a necessity for getting through these kinds of games).
I could keep making direct comparisons with Isaac for how one game handles one thing and the other handles it differently but I think I made my point in how Enter the Gungeon is generally the less frustrating more level headed approach in comparison to Isaac's "Give you the powers of god one second and then beat you over the head with a rock the next" shenanigans, not that those don't have it's own appeal of course.
One might get the idea that I'm making this review because I'm mad cuz bad with Isaac and this game just gives a bunch of shit to make things easier. And yeah, I'll admit that I only really decided to try and beat this game after getting an Isaac tick with the drop of repentance and then subsequently getting really frustrated with it... after 7 or so wins. Those 29.3 hours I put into gungeon only translated into a single victory, this game does not care if you suck at it. and yet I feel like it's because of all of those bells and whistles I mentioned that makes each loss, while sometimes heartbreaking, a lot less frustrating than how Isaac can be a lot of time.
And that's why this game seems like a nice little thing you pick up for a hour or two, dodge some bullets, test a bit of your luck, and then move on and continue wondering why I'm not good enough to play against my friends in fighting games... you know, whatever it is you do. As decent as this game is it doesn't exactly have Isaac's dozen of final bosses and dozens more of normal bosses on top of that, so I can't make much of a recommendation beyond what I've said if you can deal with what is ultimately, a still pretty random, still mechanically simple, and still ultimately endless rougelike shoot em up.
... this game can actually just shut up with some of the references tho. Like ok, the music is ok if I don't feel like putting on some playlist, the in-game art looks fine, pretty neat, but this game really needs to shut up sometimes. wow, a box, a cardboard box, no one will see you in this thing, do you get it? Oh yeah I get it, real laugh and a half, now where's my real A rank item I spent my last key on you cheeky fuck?
2020
I once wrote up a long winded review about this game that went off to point of hardly being relevant to the game in question. Now after a long time of writing other reviews and having this game out of my mind, with its notable art style, it's paper please-esque dynamic of having to determine the fates of people with their lives up to this point reduced to paper work on your desk you have little choice but to sort through, its plot about nihilism and the potential of humanity. I think now I have the ability to say about this game what I've really wanted to say all this time.
Shit's mid as hell and doesn't actually say much of worth, thanks for listening, bye.
Shit's mid as hell and doesn't actually say much of worth, thanks for listening, bye.
2021
Yup portals. Alot of these puzzles are real tricky but not overly complicated once you understand how the time portal mechanic works. There were many times that I would just put the game down and come back to it later with a fresher mind, which I would like to think implies a good deal of thinking about what I'm looking at, which I would like to think implies a good puzzle since I don't have a more formal criteria with which to describe what a good puzzle actually is.
The pacing of re-introducing elements from Portal 2 like lasers and lightbridges was fine, tho a sense of a difficulty curve is rather absent. You'll probably spend more time thinking on most of the puzzles in the first 7 chambers than you will on chamber 24 (there are 25 chambers btw)
The writing, NOT FUNNY. However the VA was fine and it was in the spirit of Portal 2 and Portal-based humor from the early 2010's, so while not the best execution it didn't really grate on me and I think the experience would have been emptier had the attempt not been there.
Overall I give this a "yeah, go give it a try, it's free anyway as long as you own Portal 2"/10
The pacing of re-introducing elements from Portal 2 like lasers and lightbridges was fine, tho a sense of a difficulty curve is rather absent. You'll probably spend more time thinking on most of the puzzles in the first 7 chambers than you will on chamber 24 (there are 25 chambers btw)
The writing, NOT FUNNY. However the VA was fine and it was in the spirit of Portal 2 and Portal-based humor from the early 2010's, so while not the best execution it didn't really grate on me and I think the experience would have been emptier had the attempt not been there.
Overall I give this a "yeah, go give it a try, it's free anyway as long as you own Portal 2"/10
2018
"If you can play through this game, you can sit down and practice that fighting game" - Me to my mirror