Well well well, nothing like a trophy list to make you reassess a classic game from your childhood.

Ratchet and Clank is one of my favorite franchises, and when I first played Size Matters as a kid, I couldn't get enough of it. Played through it like 4 times, and all this time since I've said that I basically "Platinum'd it.
Well, now it actually has a platinum, and spending the last 13 hours trying to get it has made me realize that this game isn't quite the game I loved as a youth.

For the things I do like, the combat is as satisfying as ever. It's even more clearly an imitation of the originals, which I can tell now as I've played some of the original trilogy. But it's still fun to rank weapons up and nail tricky jumps. Remaping the shoot button to R2 and using the right stick to rotate the camera makes the game even feel more like it's older siblings on the home consoles. And while I don't know if I can be critical enough to call its score "good", I can say that these songs are super iconic to me. The beach theme alone might as well be the internal elevator music that plays in my head when my mind lies idle. I even found some things here that I didn't as a kid, like the hidden treehouse.

The R&C formula is near perfect, and the game does have the addictive weapon and character leveling of earlier games. But the game is just so impossibly difficult that it feels like a joke. You start the game with only 5 hit points and can level up to have 75 at most, but for the entire game, any enemy can kill you in as little as 2 hits. The only way to mitigate damage, outside of jumping out of the way, is to equip armor sets, but the most useful of them are held for the late or post-game. It's infuriating. Even if some levels didn't end up being as difficult as I remember, due to me just being more familiar with games, now I can see that the difficulty of this title isn't intentional, but a strange oversight.

I skipped all cutscenes, as the story is not why I care about this game.
So, without those, I got to the final boss in roughly 4 hours, which felt way shorter than I remembered. But more tragically, this game is only like 60% the combat I loved. Nearly half of the game is comprised of Clank levels and mini-games. All of these games are kneecapped by the fact they are all controlled with one stick, thanks to this being a PSP game. Plus, many of these games just didn't receive the amount of polish the rest of the game got.

These are the two core issues I have with the game, but I wouldn't have even noticed these issues until replay to earn the new trophies. You need to play SO many mini-games to earn some of these trophies, and often to even progress the story itself. The frustrations with the difficulty are really noticeable before the end game, where a shield ability is eventually sold to you. It made grinding for bolts, what should be the most fun aspect of any R&C game kinda annoying. And, for a game all about arena battles with Clank, there's no wave-based mode for Ratchet at all, which makes late-game grinding for the RYNO a pain. At the time of writing, I haven't even unlocked it yet because I don't have it in me to fast travel from planet to planet, resetting boxes for bolts, for hours and hours just to unlock the last 4 trophies.

The one thing I'll say about these issues is that their finickiness and unfairness definitely made me engage with the rewind features and save states of Sony's emulator more than I ever have. I've come to value these features way more now but at the cost of valuing a childhood classic just a little bit less. Still love Ratchet and Clank, and when they eventually port the PS2 series to the PS5, I will re-platinum R1, finally platinum R2 & Deadlocked, and finally play R3. But when it comes to Size Matters, it is no longer a game I love, just one I like, with some major caviats.

This is a repost of a review from my old Tumblr Blog, the original can be found here: https://ejsponge61.tumblr.com/post/148247100015/call-of-juarez-bound-in-blood

Just beat Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. Got it for free with PlayStation Plus this month, so I figured I should give it a shot since I love FPS games. It was definitely an interesting experience.

Similar to how I loved Mafia II for it’s story, but it’s gameplay could have used some work, this game has the same issue.

This is a Techland game, and they are also the developer behind Dead Island. This game feels a lot like the gunplay in that game, which is to say, not particularly amazing. Aiming was a bit tough at times, especially when there were multiple enemies at far distances. I was playing on medium difficulty, but it felt like I would be near death way to quickly and way too often.

You could play (almost) every chapter as either or the McCaw brothers: Ray (the dual-wielding muscle) or Thomas (the long-range, rope-swinging brains). Switching between the characters left me feeling like I was missing out on features when playing as each brother, and the fact you can only choose at the beginning of each chapter didn’t help with that. In addition, there was no real feel of progression in the game. No RPG elements or anything, no upgrades to speak of. You can only collect money to buy shinier, more powerful guns at fairly rare gun stores, but I would have appreciated a bigger incentive to keep going.

However, there were a few mechanics I enjoyed. Each brother had a concentration mode, which (after downing a few enemies) would allow you to slow time to take out many enemies at once. Ray allowed you to paint targets, similar to John Marston in Red Dead Redemption. Thomas auto-targets enemies in his vision and shots them one by one. Triggering these and building the power-up was a fairly fun gameplay loop. Also, some chapters take place in massive open environments that allow you to take side quests and complete various missions. Those spiced up the campaign, but they also allowed you to ride on horseback. This game definitely has some of the smoothest horseback riding mechanics I’ve ever seen, and that is a huge plus.

But the main reason why I am not completely sour on this game is it’s story. Sure, as far as presentation goes, it borrows even more from Dead Island. The graphics are fine, and the animations are off sometimes. But the voice acting is great, and the characterization of everyone is excellent. The Brothers all have distinct personalities and it’s easy to empathize or hate them all. And the side characters are just as distinct.

In fact, by the end of the game, I could imagine the events of the story all unfolding in movie form. I can see Thomas being played by Christian Bale, Ray by Woody Haralson, William by Paul Dano, Daniel Day Lewis as Cornel Barnsby, and so on. I’m not sure if this is because I can so clearly see the inspirations of each character or if they add so much personality to everyone that I can approximate them so easily. But either way, I take that aspect as a plus.

This game might not hold a candle to the Western classic that is Red Dead Redemption, but it is definitely one of my favorite stories in the setting, albeit film or video games. It’s definitely a fun story, and I’d recommend it to anyone, but it’s up to you if you’ll be willing to overlook it’s gameplay shortcomings to experience it.

This game has the most Newgrounds energy I've ever seen, and I mean that in both positive and negative ways.

As an action game, it's really solid. Juggling enemies and keeping one horde at bay while focusing on another is satisfying, especially as you get more powerful weapons as you play. But other than new weapons, there are very few new elements to gameplay. There's even some light platforming too, but I would have loved at least one time-trial-esque sequence to really test my footwork. When I say the game has Newgrounds energy, this lack of long term progression or extra gameplay variety is what I'm referring to. The game is great to look at and play, but little about it feels substantially better than a really good Flash game.

The combat, though satisfying, can be a bit frustrating at times. Enemies telegraph moves in a split second, and dozens of them get thrown at you at once, so it can be hard knowing when to dodge and avoid damage. This lead to several somewhat frustrating sections where I could find the time to swing my chainsaw or blash the shotgun when I was busy trying to wrangle enemies or dodge bullets from the other end of the screen. Also, many of the boss fights require a specific action to open them up to substantial damage, but the environment doesn't telegraph this much at all. Instead, after dying, a newly added tooltip would clue me into that info. This feels like an obvious design flaw, but the pace is so fast that it comes off more as just a minor speed bump.

Another element that feels Newgrounds-ish is the tone. This is grindhouse to the fullest extent, and the 2d animated style that is a hallmark of Klei Entertainment makes the graphic violence a little less abrasive and easier to swallow for me. I'd never be able to watch a movie like this, as live-action gore makes me sick. But in a game, I can handle it, and the artstyle makes that even easier to stomach. But man, the violence really is all this game has to offer it seems. There is a story, though a bare-bones and generic one, and I do appreciate the very decent voice acting here, though a subtitle option is sorely missing.

Shank is a fun game and a very gamey game. But there's not much about it that really blows me away. Played Shank 2 through PS+ way back on PS3, so I always wanted to complete the series. Now that I have, I can say Shanke 2 is the superior game, but the gap in quality barely exists. These games are so similar that they might as well be one, and I will remember both fondly. There are better 2D platformers, better 2D hack & slashers, and
even more satisfyingly gratuitous power fantasies. But the over-the-top adolescent edge of these games gives them a soft spot in my heart that they may not fully deserve, but will have anyway, likely for some time.