Chat is this real?? With this second entry, do we have a great time in our hands? It took so long! (0 further console generations) we get new insights into a world of politics, with charismatic new faces and dialogue that still hits as hard, and gamers are invited to go outside touch seagrass for the first time 🥶😱😱 go yonder as you play a force of nature. Playing a game as an enemy type has its perks ngl there is so much soul in that. You're no Big but you're still Daddy, with your very own Little-Not-Sister-Not-Little to scrounge up. Which leaves me puzzled as to why there's still the option to harvest little sisters, the way I'm treatin Delta like "he don't bite tho" i aint no pitbull sugar mama I sweaaaaar

Eke out a living with the sweetness of violence, for the first step to salvation is through the game's big arsenal. Thanking whoever made weapons and plasmids a dual-wielding bundle, next time I play a Pokémon Nuzlocke i'll name one of the critters after you. Huh speaking of critters, I guess I need to talk about new enemy types, Big Sisters and Big Uncles. Ok, not uncle but the big splicers. Who aren't splicing. They're lame who cares atleast we got sisters now and new daddies to toy with (pause). Any family tree is fraught with drama, gang.

Weapons? Well there's a hacking tool, hacking has been improved, it seems easy until you realise that actions have consequences ; game doesn't pause and your life is in very real danger. What else improved? Well, photos methinks, they're videos now. Outside of the lore implications of this technological marvel, it's also less punishing. Delta is loaded to the brim, most of the weapons are the same as good ol' BioShock but reskinned to fit la creatura, it's harder to run out of ressources to my mixed reception, I'm alluding to running out of special ammo effective against armored enemies or french enemies or other types like that, this doesn't seem to happen ever.

hey. so this game is pretty cool. its like a satire of trendy start-up culture or whatever and ngl its sometimes a lil cringe and wont age well but thats okay. i know roguelikes are poppin but thats a big ask upfront sometimes. i gotta put in alot of work before i even know if the game sucks or not lol. im a renaissance man, you gotta court the yalp. anyway i kinda like this “series of mini runs” approach cuz the investment to payoff ratio is a bit more consistent and thats just like….. better

speaking of better, going under is set up in a very non-egghead way. instead of crunching numbers, combat focuses on a more “chaos baller” style of engagement. things are exploding, youre grabbing chairs and keyboards, victory is determined by how much you can go wit the flow, think on your feet. most of the skills make more things explode, or give you command of the explosions, or make people date you. i thrive in chaos, i love to go hyatt (she makes that noise cuz its like zelda) and i too hate capitalism and love spongebob

anyway games pr sick
see you later gamer dweebz xoxo

only took three and a half years, but through my innovative technique of playing a handful of missions every four months I have finally taken down this beast. absurd how structurally lazy this game is: 89 single-player missions, all back-to-back with no side quests or key quest system or any sort of progression/organization beyond "play a mission and then unlock the next one." it should be obvious that most of these missions bear more than a small resemblance to one another due to the comparative dearth of maps and enemy types, so throwing the player into this many mandatory missions just exacerbates the repetition. sure, this is a game oriented around an endless grind for weapon and armor drops, but evidently the game's bounty of missions vastly exceed the bounds of the game's weapon pools given that identical pools appear in many of the missions on a given difficulty and rarely give new items. the weapon level drop curve is such that even running the first couple of missions on inferno, the highest difficulty, primarily gave me weapons I already had from midgame on normal, three difficulties below it. this would be more bearable if at least the weapon pools between all four classes were shared... but they aren't, so good luck if you played through the campaign with one class and would like to switch on the next difficulty up, because you won't have shit to work with. the developers recognized these unforced errors because edf5 rectified a fair number of them (primarily shared weapon pools and an upgrade system when you pick up a dupe), but it stings a bit that this entry completely fumbles these elements here.

I'm dedicated to fencer (the armored suit class) through and through, and in this particular entry fencer gets an essential (if perhaps not intended) dash cancel that lifts the weight of the rest of the game on its back. by firing the otherwise mediocre javelin catapult directly after executing a side dash, the ending lag of the dash will get overwritten with extremely fast javelin recovery frames, enabling quick dash spam across the battlefield. a couple weapon types possess the side dash as an auxillary ability, with perhaps no one more busted than the blasthole spear lineage, which provide rapid-fire, high-DPS shots at close range. the synergy is quickly clear: hit-and-run tactics with the spears and the dash cancel can easily depose even spongier enemies as long as one manages their cooldowns. of course, if this was the whole gameplan, the game would stale over such a long campaign, but luckily the fencer uniquely possesses switchable item sets. I kept a mid-range cannon and long-range mortars on deck in the other set for most of the ride as heavy artillery to deal the majority of my long-range damage, and since these remove the incredible mobility of the javelin/spear combo, you have a comfortable role trade-off to deal with in each fight. switching sets can't be done willy-nilly, and outside of wakeup animations most recovery lag will keep you from swapping, preserving the commitment of the most truly heinous fencer weaponry. the sluggish movement of the fencer normally would not necessarily be fun to use, as it would submerge the game into wading through enemies and tanking shot after shot, but this particular dash-cancel wrinkle helps sell a hot-and-cold playstyle that one rarely finds in a third-person shooter.

scenario-wise, probably one of the best examples I can think of where simply mass-spawning identical enemies makes for very solid encounters. although my brain would like to call it a TPS musou, it really hews closer to a wave shooter or arena shooter due to the centralization of the battle around the player character. you may enter with allies to assist you, but they rarely last past the first wave, and thus the game devolves into controlling the mass of enemies following you and you alone around the map. at its worst, it's a lot of kiting, either soothed by the need to stop to unleash your best weapons or agitated by the need to build up a healthy distance from the enemies before you unleash your best weapons, depending on how you look at it. only the cheap fodder succumb to pure tracking tactics, however, and with enough alternate opponents that lockdown certain parts of the map, roam, or patrol, you can find yourself properly flanked in a way the fodder can't do alone. of these the most fundamental are the hectors: large bipedal robots with an assortment of heavy weaponry and shields. getting in one's sights can subject the player to anything from full-map range plasma shots to short-range sheets of sparks, the latter of which portends poorly for any fencer player clamped to the ground by it. the variety of these and the use of different AI routines for each make hectors an essential flavor for any environment, especially maps with lots of enemy spawn points. other large enemies are equally fascinating (the segmented quadruped deroys and their long-range leg melee are rather fierce), yet the bosses tend to make clear how much of the game relies on hundreds of adds running around the screen at once due to their gigantic hurtboxes and rudimentary behavior. perhaps this is why the final boss opts for a much smarter strategy of smothering the earth with artificial ceiling of weaponry, with the top hurtbox only accessible when openings in the ceiling plates have been cracked open.

Mf thinks life is all sunshine and rainbows

Despite my fondness for the Kirby series and the pink ball’s equally adorable friends, it’s kind of surprising how I haven’t played many of this cute eldritch horror’s older adventures. Case and point, it was only relatively recently that I finally played Kirby’s Dream Land,  and while it was certainly a simple and fun enough adventure —and a necessary stepping stone all things considered—, it didn’t quite click with me the same it does for others. It has its moments and highlights, like the shoot ‘em up boss fight, and as a short, easy-to-access platformer, it does a good job, but I find it reaaaaally hard to get invested in its not-so great levels, and Adventure’s existence and how fun and complete that game feels while also accomplishing everything Dream Land does doesn’t exactly help things.

All this to say I had no  clue what to expect from the sequel; I knew I had to play this, this is the first outing in Shinichi Shimomura’s less action oriented take on Kirby compared with what Sakurai would end up pursuing in Super Star and that fact alone made it far more interesting, and I also knew some other things here and there, like the fact it features copy abilities and what-not, but overall… Yeah, I didn’t know much about aside from ‘’this is the direct continuation to Dream Land’’. I wasn’t expecting anything bad, hell, I don’t even consider the original game a bad work at all, but I would lie if I said I had high expectations going in…

… so what if I told you I kinda really jammed with this game?

I… Wow, if we see this and the two previous games and some sort of original trilogy, then the evolution is clear as day; as I said, I knew this game lifted some elements from Adventure like the copy abilities, but I never expected to see so many translated so well to the charming brick that is the Game Boy. Levels once again have the adorable introductory cutscenes, but instead of being limited to one-stage run-throughs, there are actual defined hub-worlds, and while there’s less optional stuff than in Adventure (by less, I mean none), the hub areas themselves feel much more compacted and representative of the world they are set in, and it’s hard to describe how, but these areas and the game as a whole manage to feel very lively despite normally featuring no color at all.

And on the levels themselves… You can play as a hamster, so I think that says more than enough. The original Dream Land attempted things such as vertical challenges and annoying mazes, and while those are very much present here, they are accompanied by far more interesting overall lay-outs; the game is still easy, but beating the stages feel like an accomplishment either way thanks to the more varied and fitting challenges, mini-bosses that are actually super fun,  and a but more of a puzzle-like feeling thanks to the collectables and the varying paths.

There are still 1ups here and there, but the existence of star bits and being rewarded with a life after collecting enough is a incredibly simple change that goes a long way in encouraging you to approach the stages in a slower-paced, different way, and that’s not even getting into the main collectables that give you the real ending.

Most of the stuff in or added to Dream Land 2 seems like the most basic shit imaginable, and maybe it is, but it’s all done with such care and intent that it’s hard to not be profoundly enthralled by simply getting a new power-up or uncovering a secret. The design, the animations, so reminiscent of both games that came before yet even more adorable, and charming, even the music for crying out loud! Most are rather short loops, sure, but what they lack in length, they deliver in quality, have you even heard Coo’s theme? You know this bird is the real deal when this starts playing.

Oh, that reminds me of the friend animals, actually… Nah, just kidding, I could never forget Rick and his incredibly silly dance, I smiled so much when I saw the lil’ guy go… Rick, Coo, and Kine are so much more than what they seem at first; they aren’t only  funny fellas that give new ways to move around, they are also broken as hell in every sense of the word! Each power-up acts different depending if you are accompanied by them or not, and they are pretty much the key to finding the game’s more hidden secrets, and… I don’t know man, they are just so much fun to play as and make you view levels in a completely different way.

Out of the bunch, Kine is probably the least useful: his land movement is ass and pretty frustrating, and it’s not like it makes swimming easier than it already is, and getting him without the possibility of getting rid of it can make certain sections into a nightmare. Other than that, they are genius additions that not only seem like an inspiration for the sections in Kirby 64 alongside other friends of Kirby and even the ability combination mechanic, but also feel like a sort of preview for the far more complex move-sets Super Star would give us.

It's a super charming and fun experience that only has two big problems, those being The Iceberg and the Dark Castle; the former is an ice world, and even tho that alone doesn’t have to mean anything negative, it sadly has some of the most annoying, stressful, and frustrating levels in the entire game, with a vertical sections that is either the easiest thing ever or the most bullshit platformer challenge I’ve ever tried depending on if you have an animal pal or not. And the latter is relying solely in drawn out sections that aren’t that fun to begin with and content to see in other worlds, which is a huge shame considering how cool the whole setting is. Two whole worlds that drag down what’s otherwise a fun and wonderfully simple platformer, it's still Kirby after all, but what intrigues me is how it manages to be Kirby, if that makes sense.

It's clear to me now how much this game not only would highly influence both Dream Land 3 and 64, but after also the Kirby series in general: other playable characters aside of the main puffball, puzzle-like elements  and collectables that would return at full force in the modern 2D games, the long running tradition of Dedede getting possessed, and the beginning of the whole Kirby background story as we know it. What surprises me is not so much that it introduces these elements, but just how well they work right here, right now.

It's true that it has two worlds that feel like a bit of a chore, it’s true that most of the puzzle can be summarized as ‘’you need x ability to break x block’’, it’s true that it borrows a ton from Adventure, and all of that matters, but it also matters just how much of a fun and well-thought out adventure this is. I’ve used the word ‘’charm’’ a couple of times, but it’s the word that defines it best….

Also, if the three animal fellas don’t appear in the next 3D Kirby game (If there is one) I will RIOT, I NEED MORE OF THESE ADORABLE MACHINES OF DESTRUCTION AND THEIR SILLY DANCES, DAMMIT!

The last time I had played Battle for Bikini Bottom (the original at least) was in 2019. According to my PS2 memory card, I had played this in 2010 prior to 2019. Back then, I never did 100% the game but I did beat it. 2019 though was the first time I 100%ed the game and I remember being so happy I finally did so since this was a game I liked a lot as a kid. I remember thinking it was great back then, but I wanted to see how I'd feel nowadays. While I don't think it's quite as good nowadays, it's still a really fun time overall.

I'd say the thing this game does best is replicating season 1-3 of SpongeBob. It doesn't always hit but when it does, this game is super funny and is basically just like those early seasons. There's a ton of callbacks to the show and references you'd only get if you've seen specific episodes. For a kid growing up on SpongeBob, this is basically like playing through a couple episodes of the show. Every voice actor from the show is here too, besides Mr. Krabs and Mermaid Man, and they don't half ass it. They bring their A game in every scene. However, going back to those two outliers, it's unfortunate they couldn't appear here. Mr. Krabs isn't too terrible, and the voice actor at least sounds like he's trying to replicate the character. Mermaid Man though is totally off and sounds pretty bad, I think. Even with those two being different tho, it's still super authentic to the show and a lot of fun seeing each scene be reminiscent of the show. The game also really replicates the world of SpongeBob well. The overworld of Bikini Bottom is done super well. You have all the main characters homes represented here. You have the Krusty Krab, the Chum Bucket. All the staple locations. The areas themselves also represent the show well. Rock Bottom, the Mermalair, Kelp Forest..even SpongeBob's Dream from that one season 1 episode appears. The characters, their dialogue and the world itself just perfectly represents the early seasons.

Getting into the gameplay itself, it's a collectathon and is basically mimicking a game like Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie. While I don't think it's as good as either of those, for reasons I'll explain shortly, that type of game still works well in the SpongeBob universe. Instead of Stars or Jiggies, your main collectable in this game are golden spatulas. Thematically super fitting to the show, though I gotta say I never found them as satisfying to get as the aforementioned stars or jiggies. There's no jingle that plays, only a crowd cheering for the player (and SpongeBob's laugh if you're playing as him). It's just sort of a bummer since it never gave me a rush whenever I collected them like Mario 64 or Banjo did. Anyways, you collect these golden spatulas in each level alongside collecting any other assortment of collectables along the way. You have shiny objects which you get from tikis or the robots. These are used to spend on shiny object gates or to get golden spatulas from Mr. Krabs. Socks are a collectable that you can trade in to also get golden spatulas from Patrick. These are mostly easy to get but can be annoying in their placement depending on the stage. Some, mostly the first couple stage ones, require backtracking with abilities you get later on. This like barely happens at all though so if you're a Banjo Tooie hater, you might like this game. In fact, this game is maybe too linear for my liking. It's obviously no Tooie, but it's not even a Mario 64 or Kazooie in terms of its exploration. Very rarely will you travel off the beaten path to do a little side challenge but that's about it. I prefer the more open games I mentioned before for that reason, as it feels like you're being guided along a straight path most of the time. Still, what's here is mostly fun. The levels in general, besides being faithful to the show, are either pretty fun or harmless. The only two I didn't care for much were Mermalair and Kelp Forest. Both had songs that kinda got on my nerves and Kelp Forest is too dark a lot of the time and also has the worst slide in the game. My two favorite levels though, were Flying Dutchman's Graveyard and SpongeBob's Dream. I found neither annoying and they were both endgame levels so they were pretty fleshed out.

You can also play as both Patrick and Sandy, if you find a bus station in each level. They each have different abilities but basically, Patrick is strong and can throw heavy things while Sandy has a lasso she can glide with and can also swing from these lasso Texas things. Both characters change the gameplay up enough for it feel different and fun. Their move sets are simpler than SpongeBob's. His move set consists of a double jump, a bubble wand attack, a bubble butt stomp, a bubble helmet that shoots upwards, the bubble bowl which is a bowling ball you can throw to hit things and the cruise bubble which is this missile attack you can use to hit enemies or buttons from a far. Those last two abilities are ones you unlock as progress and I generally like the move set SpongeBob has. Only thing I wish he had was a movement ability. There's no long jump or talon trot here so he doesn't feel quite as fun to play as because of the lack of something like that.

Between each set of three levels, and also in some of the levels themselves, are the game's bosses. The bosses in the actual levels aren't that great imo but are fun references to the show at least. The main game's bosses you must defeat to proceed tho are actually pretty fun. They're more fleshed out and have cutscenes between phases. You also switch between characters between phases too, which again, changes up the gameplay somewhat. The final boss was definitely the best, it's a fun nod to SpongeBob's love for Karate and also to the anchor arm episode. But I also gotta give props to robot Patrick's fight. The atmosphere of the industrial park combined with the eerie music, always freaked me out a bit as a kid. Still does even now lol.

Speaking of the music, while I don't think it's that amazing overall, there are still some tracks I quite like. Jellyfish Fields is an upbeat classic, Industrial Park again is quite eerie but really good and the best track in the game is probably Flying Dutchman's Graveyard. That one just perfectly fits the level and also rocks on top of it. Like I said, there are some tracks I straight up don't like whether it's cuz the level annoyed me as a kid or I just don't like them in general, however the OST is still solid overall.

I will say, I never noticed how unpolished this game could be at times. Whether it's me clipping through a tiki that doesn't have hit detection, or the slide portions being really janky depending on how I jump, it's not as polished as thought it was back then. Still, this is super helpful to the speedrun community as the game has some well-known glitches and exploits that are actually super cool to see someone perform. I remember getting into these speedrun videos shortly before Rehydrated came out and being amazed I'm just now finding out about all them. Speaking of rehydrated, I'll just say one thing. Play this version, don't play Rehydrated for the love of god. It's so bad, the fucking warp boxes don't even animate.

One more thing I wanna mention before I end the review off, is the golden spatula warp feature. If you go into the menu, to the golden spatulas you've collected or have to collect still, you can take the taxi from the menu and warp to that location. Holy shit, this may be the best feature in this game. It's super convenient and frankly should be in more 3D Platformers lol.

This is a game I played as a kid and while I think it's not quite as good as once thought, and is not as good as Mario 64 (and definitely not as good as Banjo), it's still a fun time. It's not too long either so it's a game you can easily replay. Maybe I'd think lower of this game if I wasn't a SpongeBob fan or grew up with this, as it's just kind of an average 3D platformer, but it's still one of the best licensed games I've played because it represents the world of SpongeBob so well. Glad it holds up even to this day.

Que jogo BOM!!! Nessa minha empreitada de jogar todos os Castlevanias em ordem de lançamento, esse foi o primeiro Castlevania que me hypou DE VERDADE!

Tudo nele é incrível! Conseguiram adaptar e melhorar todos os aspectos da gameplay dos jogos antecessores sem sair nem um pouco da essência clássica da série.
As mecânicas de movimento e ataque são boas, os inimigos são diversos, as músicas e visuais são incríveis e as fases são FANTÁSTICAS! Sério, os temas das fases e principalmente os efeitos dinâmicos usados em várias delas são FENOMENAIS!!!

Claro que ele dá uma boa apertada na dificuldade da metade do jogo pra frente (com uma ou outra parte ou boss que são mais chatinhos de lidar), mas a escala de dificuldade sempre ficar dentro de uma medida justa - então, mesmo tomando um monte de porrada, eu não consegui deixar de ficar hypado com o jogo em nenhum momento.

De todos os Castlevanias pré-SotN que joguei, esse foi o 2° melhor de todos, então com toda a absoluta certeza esse daqui vale a pena jogar!