Preface: This review is made after completing the SAGE '21 demo.

Just feels lackluster overall, for some reason the sound mixing is really bad; the coin pickup is the loudest thing in the game by a mile and they're everywhere.

The movement feels real slow and seems to be a fixed speed until you get to a borderline scripted section where you use the signature Frogun to cross a few gaps.

I think my biggest disappointment with the game is that the main gimmick, the Frogun, doesn't actually achieve anything that can't be done without (besides debatably crossing those one-off gaps that have no sense of timing or urgency).

I know it's a demo, but it's a really bad sign when you can't utilize its 1 gimmick in any significant capacity within the entire first world. A game with a similar gimmick that does a lot more with it would be Chameleon Twist.

Release update: Didn't fix my issues with the game, camera having zero guide later is ridiculous. Say what you want about SM64's camera etc., at least it attempts to give you a usable angle to jump with and for the most part succeeds in doing so. They didn't even try here, you're on your own claw-gripping or otherwise making a custom rebind to have full camera control.

Ages ago I was worried this would be mid-ification of a platformer I hold dear to my heart but those fears were alleviated almost as soon as I heard a piece of the OST and played the first level. In a lot of ways I think this one's better honestly, more mature level design that's generally more difficult and grander in scope with a fantastic OST. Not as much of an emotional gut punch as the first, but had me teary-eyed by the end of it. The level design is fantastic in the way of symbolism for the themes touched on by the game, my favorite level in this regard is probably the mirror maze.

Controls are tight as well but my only minor complaint is the run state Klonoa enters after a bit, he loses friction and it can make platforming later harder than it should be.

Plays perfectly via PCSX2 with only one notable graphical issue that I saw using the hardware renderers after tweaks besides faint lines on UI, I have a drag 'n' drop setup for anyone who wants it in the notes on my list.

Tangently related, kinda bugs me how people are flocking over from Phantasy Reverie and rating based on that.

Don't know why this game's as gassed up as it is with its autoscrollers and leaps of faith and borderline nonfunctioning sections (in co-op)

It's cute, but it quickly wears its jokes thin and the shameless meta advertising gets old and leans into gross.

All said it controls well otherwise and is still a bit removed from awful territory, and the minigames help mix up the pacing slightly. The mech fights are bad tho. Surprisingly high quality samples for SNES too.

Beaten with @Nowhere.

Barely functional mess with no minimap on a pitch black map running at single digit FPS, with your only guidance forward being entirely over the voice comms that don't actually know where you are, sending you in circles through this indistinguishable lab that's constantly exploding directly under your feet making the directional sensitive platforming even clunkier than it already is. Controls like people pretend Mega Man Legends does but 2x worse and actually demands more of you in the process.

Add it to the list of BEST SEGA SATURN GAMES because it's technically true LMFAO

At least it looks cool I guess? I dunno, tired of being recommended post-Genesis Sega games to the tune of commercials; "3D GRAPHICS, SO COOL! GENERIC ANIME INTRO! OLDHEAD DEVELOPERS!!" Still wanna give this another shot but can't help but feel if this were a PS1 or N64 title it'd be slammed way harder than it is, Sega always gets a pass because {vaguely alludes to 90s marketing aesthetics}. I"d love to be able to eat my words on replay, truly.

"WOw, I can't believe it's 4P PS1 and not dogshit!" #3

Klonoa Beach Volleyball has the misfortune of being a PS1 multitap game, making it get drowned out for most og console owners (who mostly don't own multitaps) and overshadowed by the gigantic Crash Bash and Crash Team Racing and for whatever godforsaken reason Twisted Metal; however I'd put this right near the top of enjoyable party/sports games alongside Crash Bash/CTR. It works extremely well as a 2 player co-op game for those who don't own the multitap as well.

It's fairly complex as far as the actual game flow goes but inputs boil down to just dpad/stick, square, cross, and sometimes circle (for supers); although they're awful at explaining what supers actually do for each character. Leorina's cracked, her AI cheats and her super is unreactable. I do NOT recommend doing simultaneous control method, it's not fleshed out at all in a way like Wii Sports Tennis is. AI is VERY good in this though, mostly. You also have to beat the tournament mode in one go, as it doesn't offer to save or checkpoint progress at all in the middle. This can be grueling on even normal mode, especially vs Leorina.

Played on PAL initially just to do the tutorial and learn menus but switched to JP because god the redub in PAL sucks lol (also JP is 60Hz, tho PAL plays at the correct speed as far as I can tell for 50Hz too)

I highly recommend this for an incredibly satisfying party sports game if you've got the patience to finish the tutorial, I think jumping straight into a match would make the game suffer immensely. For a lot of party games this is a bad thing imo, with the Mario Party series being a notable major exception, but I think this is an exceptionally well built package even if the AI does impossible saves sometimes.

Shoutouts to Beach for reminding me this existed.

Going to subtract a point every time Nintendo cuts corners on this one.

Firstly, fuck Nintendo for doing the absolute bare minimum and just remaking a watered down Mario Party 3 party mode experience with maybe the worst map selection between entries 1 through 8. We have like what, reasonably 9 titles to pull from here and they bring home Peach's Birthday Cake, Yoshi's Tropical Island and Space Land? Woody Woods also just doesn't work well at all without MP3's item system which it was clearly balanced around. But hey at least Horror Land's here so easily half of the play sessions are going to default to it, right?! -1 star.

The item system is also watered down, the actual pool of items being like half the size of most of the others yet still being dominated by mostly just item variants (Mushroom -> Double -> Triple, Warp Block -> Super Warp Block, those weird coupon card things which only confused everyone I ever played this with.) -.5 star

The minigame selection is kind of baffling to say the least. This is the most amount of minigames in a single Mario Party, sure, but it's also the most bloated with borderline duplicates (3 minigames that are all just a vertical ascent platforming challenge) and utterly notoriously awful ones like Tug o' War. It reeks of "hey guys let's google what the most trending minigames are" and because they saw Tug o War at the top of the search results, it must mean good, right? The kicker is they PUT A WARNING NOT TO USE THE PALMS OF YOUR HANDS BECAUSE YOU MAY DAMAGE THE CONTROLLER OR YOUR SKIN. AND STILL PUT IT IN. There's also no way to really curate your own playlist of minigames despite them once-upon-a-time offering it in Mario Party 4 (why has this never come back? tf) -1 star

In a series first, two things: They added online and it's actually relatively decent, +1 star. They also made it so players can no longer hot swap with CPUs which has actually greatly impacted me and my family's ability to finish games. We're all adults, with bedtimes and some of us kids to tend to, we're okay with swapping out for a CPU if something collides with our schedule; so why remove it for the first time ever? -.5 star.

All in all it's a very middling Mario Party, that unfortunately will probably ride its way to the very top of most peoples' lists because of the online alone. But for people like me who want to play this locally with family, there hasn't been a less inviting entry besides 9, 10 and Island Tour. The fact they want $50($60?) + the cost of online for this minimal collection of nothing original whatsoever that somehow features less maps than ANY of its numbered predecessors is the last kick to the nuts here. (Mario Party 1 has 7 maps, and mini-game Island...) I could also go on and on about little details being tossed away assuming "nobody will notice, anyways", like how every character in Mario Party 1 had unique animations for being cut away in Shy Guy Says, or how most remixes sound weirdly muted and flat compared to even the farty midi tracks of the N64, but a bullet point list of everything like that would be boring and depressing. Oh well.

Imagine a world where Magnavox and Atari didn't throw fits at each other both in patents and publicity over who made the first game, when both were beaten to the punch by nearly a full decade at minimum. This, itself, is debatably not even first, and depends on your definition; but in the traditional sense this might as well be, and it's significantly more complex than Pong and absolutely more complex than Magnavox's "games".

What pains me is that this, and Tennis for Two even, were documented and cited as early as the 80s and 90s publications, yet hardly anyone knows about it or even references it specifically in the context of pioneering video games.

If Pong is your grandfather, Spacewar! is the weird prehistoric lizard thing that would probably beat your grandfather up in a fight.

I highly recommend anyone watch Ahoy's video if you have even a passing interest in video game history.

Oh wow I'm back in Beta Minecraft again, weird!

Anyways, my initial impressions of this mod are, to put lightly, underwhelming. While I think what they have done mainly in regards to simplifying install and performance is great (though much of the former is credited to MultiMC more than anything), I feel kind of actively mislead about what this mod would be.

"Better Than Adventure is designed to appeal to [older] players who enjoy the simpler gameplay of the old beta versions of Minecraft, yet also want to try something new and exciting. Think of it as an "alternate universe" version of Minecraft that attempts to maintain the look-and-feel of beta 1.7.3, while also keeping things fresh with new features and additions such as new blocks, biomes and quality of life improvements. Despite what the name implies, this mod isn't necessarily trying to offer something inherently better than modern Minecraft, just something different. Think of it as a long-lost branch of Minecraft, what could have been if Notch and Jeb took the game in a slightly different direction." - excerpt from the "Introduction" section on their site.

Slightly is the key word here, despite lofty claims such as saying it's so big it might as well be its own "fork" of Minecraft (never officially claimed as a category, but leaned on due to being similar to Forge with how invasive it is), it really is Beta 1.7.3 with some extra bells and whistles. Now, if you read their site, you might be wondering how I'm mislead about this, and really it's just word of mouth. Gullible or naive, whatever you deem fit, I decided to click on yet another "why Minecraft is losing its feel and why beta 1.7.3 is the Golden Age Of Minecraft" type videos. The video itself was fine, but I think they massively oversold what the mod does; which is ironic, because due to how invasive the mod is, many beta 1.7.3 mods don't work; what's being sold here is essentially a modpack more than anything that makes negligible tweaks that change little about beta 1.7.3's gameplay while ruining mod compatibility; you do gain rock solid performance, though.

As for notable features the mod has, it strips away the debug screen of its commonly useful info unless holding appropriate items like a compass or the new calendar, which frankly I think is an alright thing. The seasons thing is a nice touch too, but one I've seen for literally over a decade. Same version, too... A far more positive change is the reimplementation of all the old world types, as well as creative mode with a much appreciated proper no-clip attribute to flying. I'm kind of meh on the biomes added so far, I mean I guess I appreciate them existing rather than not but of all the ones to backport why bring the savanna?

A change I see only as utterly pretentious is adding the "cloth" item and changing bed recipes to include them, which only zombies drop; their reasoning is to "force players to actually survive the first night." which I think is hilarious given how riddled their support is with "what's the bed recipe? what's the bed recipe?" That's another thing, their documentation/wiki is very unfinished despite being two years deep; imo mods should have equal parts documentation/wiki developed alongside the actual mod which would alleviate the need debloat support channels by passive-aggressively creating a bot that automatically replies to keyphrases like "bed recipe?" with the recipe... Also, it's MAD ANNOYING TO HAVE TO JOIN A DISCORD FOR BASIC INFO ABOUT ANYTHING :V

Do I think this is a bad mod? Not at all, in the context of beta 1.7.3 mods and vanilla-style mods as a whole, I think it's well put together, poor documentation aside; but it rubs me the wrong way on a lot of levels like the aforementioned auto-reply bot, the tongue-in-cheek "Better Than Adventure" name (which they only justify because it's referencing an old forum post called "Better Than Wolves" which was someone becoming incredibly heated over the introduction of wolves in beta 1.4...), and version naming scheme ("continuing" the beta in a faux-official capacity by calling it beta 1.7.4, etc.)

I'm also just deeply tired of the narrative tossed around the community lately by people who don't actually read the blogposts/updates they complain about, of how the game is "actually limiting the player's creativity by..." checks notes "..adding completely optional things to do." ... 9_9 This of course actively discrediting how far people take the game's new mechanics or blocks in both engineering and expressive player creations. In a nutshell, there's a growing sect of Minecraft that has become incredibly gatekeepy about "the right way to do XYZ", and I hate it. This is allll deserving of a much longer post though, far more encompassing of Minecraft as a whole of which I may not bother writing.

I recommend this mod if you really wish you could play a mildly expanded upon Beta 1.7.3 (mostly in biomes), I don't recommend if you'd be disappointed they didn't also backport Lena Rayne's wonderful compositions. Good night.

A now $14 game with mobile-isms such as a grind not too dissimilar to the more generous town builders of iOS circa 2011-2013, i.e. Battle Nations. Despite this grind, I trudged through it with a level of aversion to its molassesity largely thanks to my depression. It's still a source of comfort food in a way, as I remember playing probably 8 Bloons games from the Flash era and participated in the Bloons Monkey City beta.

I still loathe the grind, but I only find it somewhat tolerable because I knew how to quickly unlock the base tower upgrades, which through what feels like a miracle in contrast to the Daily Chests, Daily Challenges, Weekly Challenges (Odysseys, Boss Bloons), Weekly Events (Contested Territories), are all that's required to tackle the "CHIMPs" mode which completely disables all of the mobile-ism perma-upgrade dreck that is Monkey Knowledge, Insta-Monkeys and Powerups. Oh, but not Heroes. That part sticks. If you're lacking a hero that's clearly needed for a challenge but you don't have monkey money, you probably have to go grind half a dozen or so medals just for the one hero (there's 13 to unlock additionally.)

That said, the balance in this game is utterly masterful compared to BTD5, despite the reliance on heroes for expert maps and CHIMPs. Unfortunately they continue the long-running tradition in the series for only very rarely explicitly telling you what upgrades do. For example, did you know increasing range on the Super Monkey also increases pierce by 2? This is conveyed literally nowhere except the fan wiki, and there's tons of stuff like this. In their hopes that 3-5 word descriptors of an upgrade would suffice for the 12 year olds with mommy's credit card casual playerbase, I feel they've inadvertently turned the more brain-teaser maps/modes into what feels like wiki diving just to have any clue what works. The alternative is opening the challenge editor (not Sandbox as it's inaccurate to real gameplay on all but the base modes).

Another thing that's a major step back from BTD5 is the general progression, they haven't done anything to improve the tower upgrade unlocks, and now that there's more towers with even higher tiers (4 with tier 6s that have an additional 0 on their already 5-6 digit XP requirements) you need to play even more maps with towers you may not want to use at all purely for the sake of progression. The reason this especially sucks is because a lot of the daily/weekly challenges often rely on very specific synergies or ugprades, and if you lack it then you're boned out of participating at all. They also decided to lock the harder modes behind one another, PER MAP. In BTD5, you bought the Impoppable difficulty mode for $1k monkey money, and it was available to select thereafter on every map whenever you wanted. In BTD6, to play Impoppable, you need to play the map you're interested in on Hard first, then Alternate Rounds, THEN Impoppable; and if you want to do CHIMPs, the real meat of the game, you must also complete Impoppable additionally prior. It's utterly ridiculous.

And yet here I am, achievement hunting specific things like No Harvest (Beat Cornfield on CHIMPs without removing any Corn), because once you trudge through that wall of grind, you get to try genuinely neat daily/weekly challenges and play the #1 tower defense game via the mode CHIMPs. As someone with almost 200 hours in the game I still find myself needing to grind stuff out occasionally to attempt some challenges, usually lacking a hero. As a newcomer, I think the game is atrocious, and if you're not huge on tower defense or Bloons I don't know why you'd bother with this.

I love the Bloons series, but I fear whenever they're done milking this with quirky updates that whatever comes next will be not just filled even more with mobile-isms, but mobile-only and explicitly rely on Instas. It sure feels that way in this at a glance.

Calling this a remake is like saying Lord of the Rings Conquest is a remake of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (the game). At most it's a reboot but it's largely just a re-imagining of the Goldeneye film if it were a Daniel Craig Bond outing.

The game itself? It's okay. I thought the redone intro straight out of the actual Goldeneye film was great, fantastic performance by vocalist Nicole Scherzinger, though of course it doesn't compare to the marvelous set-work and choreography of the original from the film. The gunplay is pretty straight forward, if you played the astronomical 2007 hit CoD 4: Modern Warfare, you've already experienced most of what this game has to offer in regards to its weaponry; though there's some multiplayer-centric meta memes like throwing mines high in the air and shooting them trick-shot style to really embarrass your opponents.

The campaign still feels very Bond, with a lot of levels (particularly Facility from what I remember) offering alternate paths / more sneaky routes you can take if you prefer a stealth approach. Come to think of it, it's very bizarre how low-key Facility is as a level given that you and Alec/004 crash trucks around and blew shit up on the dam directly above it. Anyways, it IS basically a CoD campaign but there's a lot more Bond flavor and styled setpieces that I think any Bond fan would enjoy, though I do think its soundtrack pales in comparison to Goldeneye (N64) and 007 Agent Under Fire.

I'm not like a diehard Bond fan or anything, I've only actually seen 1 film to completion, but I've played almost all of the 3D game titles to varying degrees aside from the other 7th gen games and was pretty fond of the "master spy" stuff as a kid. In the end I think GoldenEye 007 (2010) was overhyped at launch, and overhated today. It's just alright, and is what I'd call the last serviceable Bond game, since the actual last Bond game produced, Legends, was a very boring disaster.