Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes

Sure, let's just take one of the greatest 3D Platformer Collectathons ever created and make it play objectively worse than it did nearly 20 years and two console generations ago with one of the clunkiest, spazziest, glitchiest, least intuitive game engines in recent memory. And hey, let's also make the art style look like Halloween candy barf and promise a ton of cut content we didn't deliver on (save for a thoroughly shitty, puny multiplayer mode that barely qualifies as anything)! Gotta love how Nickelodeon rushed this game to come out alongside The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run and then when the movie got delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic this still had to come out at the previous date well over HALF A YEAR before the movie was even released (with a quiet whimper, by the way) so the rush was somehow, against all odds even more pointless than it would have been before. This is all not to mention them making the difficulty for - what I can only assume to be - actual babies. Fundamentally shit, but the only reason it isn't rated any lower is because the bones of that original experience are still here somewhere - under bugs and terrible mechanics and stupid meme callbacks it's at least able to be recognized a little. The God-tier music of its predecessor is present mostly untouched, the humorous writing and voice acting still stands (including the hilariously scuffed Krabs that I've grown to love), and the classic mission design is kept intact. It fails at everything it set out to achieve, granted - but hey there are worse things to be than a reminder to go out and play the original instead.

A delectable sensorial flex that wows in the moment but is forgotten almost as soon as you're done with it. Now granted, this is a notably beautiful game - but it's not unlike the lot of these Journey knockoffs which were popular around this time: vibrant graphics peddle intentionally weird controls, basic gameplay, and esoteric + pointless collectibles for a runtime that feels way too short for what you paid for. It doesn't really help either that it starts right off with the best looking stuff and loses interest gradually afterwards - but I have a soft spot for these types of things, so this was okay enough for me. I liked all the funny looking fish.

Butt-ugly colors, the PS Vita's miserable .png cutscenes, a spectacularly bad open world, and dumb elevator music loop soundtrack (which starts to grate hard early on) cripple really inventive gameplay. I still don't really think this deserves its title as unsung hero of its original system, because even as much as I'll praise the entire concept it just does not always work - it doesn't. As many times as I've air-kicked an enemy directly on target and slid right off for no reason is infuriating. But when it does work, this is a tight yet content-heavy experience I find to be mildly enjoyable - I actually even find much of the menial tasks in the DLC missions (and even the base game) to be kind of cool simply because this is a damn good gimmick sadly trapped within the confines of a system that its creators didn't even believe in. As it stands, it's fine but heavily flawed.

I think this sometimes feels too much like an extended QTE segment - where you just watch things happen for a bit and uninvolvingly press the A button a few times. Though where with weaker games I would write that off as 100% a bad thing, with this imo it can be at least partially excused due to it being used as a window into this game's wonderful energy - a sight-and-sound display of some phenomenal art direction in a series already chock full of it. Aquarium Park and Planet Wisp have some of the best music in SEGA's entire already stacked catalogue, and there isn't a single world here that doesn't look simply dazzling. The wisps I feel are also rather unjustly maligned, as not only are they visually creative but if there's any series that could benefit from even a couple more possibilities in its formula it's modern Sonic - so I'm all for being able to whip across the level as a spike ball or drill underground, shoot back up, then dive back into the ground again. Laser still kind of sucks though. On the one hand I think this gets a little too much praise (for me, putting this above Sonic Generations seems like actual insanity) but on the other, it is a damn fine experience that shows the texture this franchise is capable of when it actually tries.

Diverting, but virtually zero actual nutritional value. As per usual the music is great, the gameplay is completely fine too - but there's just not a lot going on here. Obviously bringing Classic Sonic back was a based move, and the customization stuff is fun without being more than it needs to be - though it always feels akin to a Sonic Generations-lite at its core, the level design + themes really aren't as interesting here. That medal system or whatever that was feels kind of arbitrary. And of course the story is bullshit but what did you expect? I'd 100% play this again in a flash, but also can't pretend like it didn't become kind of an empty chore my first time around. Not a whole lot different at all from Sonic Colors or honestly many of the other modern Sonic games, sporadic turn-off-your brain fun.

Barely even 45 minutes of gameplay, not sure you can count this as a legitimate DLC with how little there actually is to it - obviously weaker than the base game but provides the same brand of competent-but-empty entertainment. It's just ludicrous they couldn't do more than a few tedious textboxes for this character on the franchise's 25th anniversary. How have we still not learned about the consequences of rushing game devs on major projects?

Far and away superior to the dreadfully boring thud of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, somewhere on par with the first two games. Even still, if there's one major flaw here - aside from the ruinous ending which of course sucks hard - it's that the gameplay feels really dumbed down in a lot of areas despite appearing to add way more features on the surface. I know a lot of people hate this stuff but anytime there's a game-within-a-game, I love it - and there's a fair bit of that here which I'm all on board for. It also happens to be one of the greatest looking games on the PS3 - with seriously stunning art direction and well-designed hub areas, this game's Feudal Japan section is the most beautiful level in the franchise. But the story feels like it was written in three seconds (then again all of them do I guess), Tennessee is the only one of Sly's ancestors worth a damn (the rest have attributes locked only to a few super specific instances and feel like a weaker Sly), and the already underwhelming final boss is a fucking QTE sequence (this is the seventh gen after all). Feels like it should be fantastic, but a surfeit of new material can't entirely mask a lack of any real difficulty. Still like it though, worthy sequel.

The fact that this is still very reasonably fun with friends or even by yourself despite its near unprecedented bloat of new mechanics/modes is a real testament to both its core gameplay and infectiously joyous art style. Granted, I was over the whole battle royale/arena shooter craze barely even two years after it started - but this one has always been one of the more approachable ones. Playing created maps is still way more limited than it needs to be, not to mention the actual maps being churned out have well past stagnated - you can only play the exact same deathrun variation so many times before it gets stale. And obviously the store is predatory, but what live service store isn't these days? I don't think this really got any better or worse, people are just nostalgic for the times before we all got old, tired, and burned out - same attitude towards the CoD games. Resoundingly okay.

Horror design fetish hysteria - an LSD-dripped chainsaw to the side of the neck. Just endlessly filled with blood + guts, bonkers storytelling, one meticulously detailed aesthetic for the ages, effective jolts, and enough batshit horror setpieces to last multiple lifetimes. Calling this a genre masterpiece would obviously be an understatement imo, RE4 was okay I guess but this is vastly superior without question - much closer to Silent Hill levels of kino. I'll never forgive the way this game got shit on at release because people wanted more "We have to be less fun in order to be taken seriously!" games around this time (thanks, The Last of Us). Ripper. Literally nothing about this can be described as 'bland'. This series might be the best thing Bethesda ever put its fingerprints on.