I started Unleashed as my next big lunge into this series but I found myself really wanting to play some smaller shit here and there, Ive been wanting to take a stab at larger games less and less if i already have so much media im consuming already on my plate
So naturally that's why youll see bursts of me messing around with things such as 007 GoldenEye tiger electronics or the Home Improvement Game or peeking at the Postal series
Or even swinging into something that has a gnarly hook thats totally off base from anything else i've been doing :)
It's the spice of life, babes.. spice of life

With that being said, Sonic Battle is something Fiercly different.. it's an arena fighter on the fucking Gameboy Advance and it plays like it in every way youd expect
You get some fun combos and fine enough looking stages, though only a couple of them were really stand-out as visually interesting to me with others just kind of devolving into "Gee I hope I get to play on one that Doesnt have annoying terrain blocking my depth of field all the time"

This gameplay is very unique but the tedium here is so harsh it makes me grit my teeth in agony..the execution of it all is effective enough in short bursts but when youre playing this shit back to back to back to back against CPUs you start to notice little.. cracks in it all..
the depth of field misses, getting juggled, the guessing game of how strong you are against your opponent because you can't see their HP bar.. all of this and more really wears on you.

And thats all just shit you find in the multiplayer
I played all of the story mode stuff almost in one sitting and let me tell you

And ill explain Why

Sonic Battle's campaign presents itself as this sort of Sonic Adventure style story structuring at first glance
each character having a different perspective in the overall narrative with one consistent thread that ties them all together and unites all the perspectives in the final showdown of tearing some colossal threat's ass asunder(which rocks)

But the most baffling thing to me is that when you beat the first story you get booted out to the title screen for picking another one, and this is in a completely linear fashion too. You dont really get the whole "Oh i finished sonic now alll these are open" kind of feel, when the stories youre playing through are more conjoined like chapters of the overarching story than perspectives you can watch in any order
you can replay them as much as you want(not sure why you would)
but for the first time experience it's absolutely railed into the script

But.. it's a nice script im ngl
Apart from Amy's characterization of being flighty and nearly psychotically in love with sonic
( ermm, jodie you cant say that..,, god forbid women do ANYTHING jodie, what da heck.. loser. )
and yes u in the back youre right, i dont have a problem with Amy crushing on Sonic. I just think there's something cataclysmically ironic and funny about how Shadow has better characterization than her in this game

There is a moment in this game when Amy straight up hallucinates up a Sonic ghost to try to beat Rouge's ass
FOR SOME REASON and then hes gone and its like what just happened lmfaoooo
I love her though just pointing it out because the actual narrative of the game and interactions are kinda fun
I really like Emerl as a main character and how each character has something important to rub off on him with.

from sonic he gets that heroic kinda charisma and not giving up, tails that independency, knuckles the willpower to be tough for himself, rouge the quick thinking and kinda wound up makin him a bit zesty which was hilarious LMAO
amy reaffirmed his dedication to protecting but cream helped him have a reasoning for that protecting with genuine love and understanding
and that understanding is brought home with shadow's affirmations of existence and the pursuit of life

It's dope! It's aggravating being told it through a series of
"ok kill that guy 10 times maybe"
[dialogue inbetween]
"ok now kill that guy 10 More times.. maybe"
and then you do that and it just goes and goesss
The best thing about this game is by far the customization though and the sheer amount of characters you can play as is a double edged sword

On one hand, you have so many different kits to mess around with and apply to your Emerl build... on the Other Hand.. this game is too FUCKING L O N G!!!!!!!!!!!! oH MY G O D.
I enjoyed the narrative and the conclusion to it is actually really sad, one of the more bittersweet ones in the series actually that I don't think is talked about in how beautiful it is enough even though it's similar to SA2's ending in a handful of ways

final thoughts: this game can fucking SUCK a lot of the time, some fights got stupidly unfair for no reason at ALLLLLLLLLLLLL bleaugh. I almost wanna just give it 2/5 stars but I really do like a handful of things about it as a side game
the art is nice, the story is simple and sweet and i like how satisfying some of the ass kicking is for the characters
my favorites to play as were cream, rouge and shadow
im incredibly surprised this game is gamma's true final throes, its... confusing.. like why did they do him like that..
Oh well, atleast Omega is funny
Emerl fits right at home and exemplifies some of the best aspects about Shadow, Sonic and Gamma all rolled into one which is W E I R R RR RR RR D but hey it works for me, i like the little dude

hm, repulsive! Interesting aesthetics and premise, tim allen is absolutely deserving of eating shit on these dinosaurs though
regardless of how i actually think the action platformer moveset is fun
these levels suck and i hate gettin the crates
but at the same time
i cant help but cling to thinking about how i wish there was a game for Everything like there used to be </3

My only experience with the POSTAL franchise before this was watching highlights of Mat and Pat from Two Best Friends(i THINK it was them) pissing on some guy in one of the sequels, and watching the movie with one of my roommates. I think that did Not prepare me for what i was getting into lmfao

This game is fucked.
But I actually think it's fucked in a way that's more creative than people seem to give it credit for nowadays it seems. I already know the stories of news article thisss, and the devs being like thattttttttt and so on and on

But lets try to keep it condensed here hm?
This is a SOMETIMES isometric SOMETIMES top down shooter(idk why it alternates it doesnt really make the gameplay more challenging or fun) with some okay weapon variety and level variety and really not much else to write home about on that, its functionally sound

ANNNNNNNND thats kind of it when it comes to how i feel abt this game in gameplay like its a near mindless shooter thats aesthetic, sound design and what it is kind of carries it. My favorite parts about this game were these sorts of twisted mental reflections on the areas you were going to next in a demented self justifying tone of you doin what you gotta do,
the near eyestraining mental visuals that fuse in a slurry of corroding rust reds, the void and tinges of scarlet
it's no secret the game makes it known that the guy you control isnt necessarily Lying to you, the player, but genuinely believes everything thats happening right now for one reason or another
is it a withering piece of game design meant to take the piss out of violence as a whole or is it an edgy, demoralizing ironic romp speedrunning into your straightjacket?
The thing that really seizes ""The Dude""'s real mental state to me is when youre wandering... you cant find anyone
but you still need someone to kill
you still need to hit that percent goal or maybe youre curious and you REALLY RE ALLLY need to find that last guy you need to find that last guy and youre not really sure Why but you feel like you need to, is he strong is he an animal is he defenseless, is he hiding around the corner, is he more of a challenge than the last dozens you slaughtered??? the answers to these questions are simple
nope! probably! probably! big fat nope! but the clear paranoia and delusions that ensue that even follow into the ending make the whirring of empty cave echoes laced with faint tinnitus ring ever truer, with crickets and a full course serving of deafening silence and the writhing twinges of bodies' last clinging throes to life.. the kind where the game doesnt even let you "finish them off" or anything theyre just limping and youre waiting for the timer to clock in..

this isnt a horror game by any means and the "video games cause violence" PTA meeting of the month club in the 90s and early 00s still sucks fart nuggets but there IS some merit and a point being made here it feels. the final level in redux is very different but i think it does some things better AND worse than this game's ending

Redux in particular stages the ending with a longer walk to its climax of realization for the main character in a much more direct and choreographed way, and i like it i just also think it happening at the school with kids all being the same exact sprite is more interesting and gets your mind tumbling like "were all those kids just lookalikes of the mc when he was young.. were they not? were they a friend of his in his youth that caused him to spiral out of control and gain all these mental issues in a rolling stone kind of way?" the answer NEVER actually baring itself to you
I think that the asylum bit itself has much more unsettling and well done visuals in Redux as well but I still think its interesting, dark.. sad... an unhinged serial killer in a trenchcoat ala incel duke nukem wannabe spouting one liners for what he thinks is for the good of existence, just what he thinks will make the flames in his flesh die down

and yet when he finally sees white all hes left is the void and confinement, left to rot like the bodies he left in his wake

final thoughts: Now I'VE heard that everything going forward is apparently in an alternate universe that embraces dark comedy more than having something like this going on, which is Fine. But I think its kind of hard to think of this game as someone's edgy little mindless shooter they wanted to make with no substance to it whatsoever(though the gameplay is quite tedious after a bit)

The craziest thing is by the end of it I realized two things
1. I said all this shit just to say the game is "Okay" as a whole.. i THINK i liked it?
and 2. I think this game convinced me to pick Drakengard 1 back up because if I could stomach tedium here I think I can stomach it for the rest of that game