Its so refreshing to play a game that is so completely opposed to what gaming and common design conventions have deemed acceptable. Ueda's perspective of being an outsider in the games industry gives him a really unique lens that makes his approach extremely valuable. The gameplay is really simple and even a bit mundane but just like the rest of the game it feels like that's exactly what they were going for here. If something doesn't serve its core idea of companionship its discarded and while that rigid approach to game making can be polarizing it can be just as interesting. Just like Shadow of The Colossus this game has such a great feel to it I don't even know how to describe it but there's this insane sense of artistry and intentionality that pervades the entire experience. Everything is here to ground in this experience from the interconnected design of its castle to its lack of hud elements and invisible walls. All you have is yorda and the the way the game utilizes its loop and mechanics to evolve that dynamic is amazing. Everything about this game just screams less is more and it takes that concept to the absolute limit from the subdued ambient music and sounds to the the serene mystical atmosphere it all comes together to create a one of a kind experience that uses the medium excellently.

My favorite story's thesis translated and told through the language of video games and game design. I love how it’s dedicated to creating this therapeutic experience and how it communicates that just through how it’s built. There’s so much value in immersing yourself in the unfamiliar, savoring all these little pockets of existence not just the grand or eventful. Your goal looms overhead and literally shapes the landscape you traverse, your destination is in constant reminder but choosing to engage with all these little interactions that’s where this games truly shines. Your willingness to be in the moment and enjoy these little activities despite your destination there's so much value in that and games are uniquely built for exploring player agency like this. The claire and mom phone call is cute and heartfelt and contextualizing your journey as this reluctant reprieve is something I really like. You really don’t know how valuable an experience is until you choose to take the plunge yourself and even if its not for you "its all a part of the experience" and that should be cherished.

Damn dude, you shit with that ass???

Spore is the type of game you should never turn your back on, for when you do, there will be something much more twisted waiting for you to reveal your face again. Do not make eye contact with a creature’s one eye lest you’ll be sent into the inner shackles of your own mind, imprisoned for an eternity of suffering from your own morbid curiosity. Having owned this game as a kid, I was never able to actually get it installed and therefore the disc was doomed for a life of collecting dust in a storage unit. Today however, I was finally able to raise the question, “What does it truly take to transform from just a lil’ guy into peak performance?”

I want to first give Spore a lot of credit for just being itself. Let your freak flag fly, brother!!!! With the main priority being the evolution of your own species through 5 stages of wildly different gameplay. Starting with the cell, where you’ll have to decide whether you want to eat fruit or tear the heads off of everything you meet moving forward. Me? I’m a peaceful creature. I had suspicions that playing as a carnivore would technically be the easier choice that probably everyone makes, so I veered left. Turns out, I was actually right because playing as an herbivore in the first two stages is asking for your spine to get ripped out. Ow!! Ow!! My beautiful creature has gone extinct before it even has a chance to live. I’m being bullied for eating green leaves!!

But, nevertheless we persevere and hardened creatures grow into monsters. The Creature stage is what separates the boys from the men who still laugh at penis jokes. The Creature stage is where most of the meat of the game lies. As you obtain DNA through befriending or killing your neighbors, you’re tasked with adding on unlockable additions to your creature that will truly mold them into an animal in their own right. Being an herbivore, this stage is still pretty difficult since other creatures seem to really love bum rushing you out of nowhere. But guess what, it’s harder to be oppressed when you’re strapped with an Ankylosaurus mace for a tail. Keep it moving, buddy. My friends and I are breakdancing the house down and you’ll never be up to our speed. Try evolving better next time.

I genuinely love the idea of this stage just from a creative standpoint alone. Although it can feel repetitive after a while, there’s nothing quite like transforming your abomination into something even more cursed. You really do get a decent range of warping the animal’s appendages and body however you want, although bear in mind that messing with the legs will definitely mess with your movement. But, who cares!! It’s funny. Probably the most interesting occurrence though was when I was befriending some random guy and out of nowhere, a spaceship came and abducted him right in front of my eyes. Skill issue tbh, but put a pin in it though. The curtain hasn’t been lifted quite yet. You’ll be spending a pretty decent amount of time as a creature, which is why it’s probably taken over most people’s memories of this game. It’s also definitely the best stage out of the 5, as it’s the only stage that allows you to use the creature creator in-game, the main draw of the whole thing. What’s unfortunate is that you can’t really unlock the best parts, like gliding, until late into the stage so in reality you only get to use the abilities for an incredibly short period of time, unless you forgo evolving when asked.

Personally, I didn’t really mind the Tribal or Civilization stages as much as everyone else. It is, however, disappointing that the act of editing your creature falls to clothes, buildings, and vehicles only from that point onward. Where I think Spore falters the most is how it’s constantly changing genres between life stages and never properly explains any of the gameplay changes. One stage you’ll be in a fully controlled third-person creature romp around and then in the next, now it’s an RTS civilization-esque city builder with conquest mechanics. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, although I do think it is quite ambitious. I would be lying though if I said that playing through a whole life session didn’t come with recurring confusion. Aside from the basic movement controls, the game never goes any deeper than the surface and just sort of makes you wing it in terms of how to build your tribe or city. Because of this, the Tribal stage was nothing but pure chaos the moment it actually opened up. Eventually, it will come naturally though as the game is piss easy anyways and the strategy portion of each stage is completely doused by just simply giving gifts to every tribe as soon as they appear and decking out your vehicle to extreme levels of weaponry no matter what route you’re playing as. Nonetheless, they’re not terrible stages to play through but they definitely aren’t challenging enough to be super memorable either.

I was actually cruising real good in my playthrough until I hit the brick wall that is the Space stage and that is where I think the game takes a nosedive for me. Here you’ve pretty much hit the apex of all life and it turns out that being on top is rather… boring. Again, the playstyle shifts into what feels like a business tycoon set in the Mass Effect universe and while the tutorial is longer, I still found myself seriously lost with all the new shit the game just throws at you in the final inning. It’s still really funny to stumble upon a worse looking creature than the last, but traveling from planet to planet and trading spice for badges or items to purify the atmosphere is dull enough to put the game down before you even hit the halfway mark of the progress bar. It doesn’t help that there is also an extremely eerie lack of music and ambiance for a game that was made by Maxis, often leaving you with nothing but pure silence a lot of the time. With that I decided we probably saw what we could and put it to rest, but I was genuinely curious if playing as a carnivore offered up a challenge or noticeable differences to any of the game’s stages.

Nope, in fact it’s actually way easier since eating everything you run into is 500 million times more convenient than playing the prey avoiding all the danger. Who woulda thunk? What I did learn though was that the game saves every creation you’ve ever made and will slip them into any new playthroughs you create, which I found quite endearing. I got to murder the shit out of my previous creature in the Tribal stage, which made me realize that the space abduction I saw before was supposed to be a placeholder for myself since, at the time, I hadn’t built my own spaceship yet. It turns out that I was the bad guy, which is actually.. a really fucking cool idea. Not to mention, the Civilization stage just tosses in these kaiju freaks of nature that don’t really do anything other than throw a wrench in your plans sometimes. I love them so much though because they’re usually ugly as sin and shoot massive fucking fireballs, one shotting everything they touch. It’s these things here that make Spore really special despite its flaws and it’s really unfortunate to see that we still haven’t seen anything quite like it ever since. I did however get to the Space stage again and immediately fell off for the second time though. It was crazy for me to read that there were apparently supposed to be several more stages that were scrapped and I honestly can’t tell if they would have made the game any better or worse. We’ll never know!!!

So yeah, it’s not the greatest game ever made but I really like the ideas that were attempted here. It’ll probably be sticking with me for a while anyways since it was a the perfect amount of goofy to get me through a shitty week, but at the end of the day it really just made me want someone new to pick up the mantle and create a similar Spore-like game to mess around in. There’s definitely a foundation here for something to build off of and there’s gotta be some weirdo game designer out there who played the fuck out of this game as a kid.

Also hey, if you’re photo-sensitive just be careful streaming or watching someone stream this game. For some reason in a game capture, it’ll turn every black screen into a crazy fucking rainbow light show of glitched textures. I ain’t posting an example, but I did not know this would happen and got clotheslined by a wall of radioactive lava lamp fluid. Not really sure why this happens, but it is a common bug apparently tied to the game’s v-sync and resolution settings. From what I experienced, it does not do this if you play it normally and only happens in the video capture while recording it. Just doing my part for whoever finds this information relevant. 👍

I had a sneaky suspicion that Handsome Jackpot was gonna be a fluke but Im sad to be proven right - Guns, Love, And Tentacles commits the same tragic lack of understanding of how to balance the Serious / Funny equation as the base game of Borderlands 3. I can only guess that Gearbox thinks they understand what people want to see (who knows maybe Im the weird one here) and are committed to designing touching character dramas before anything else - but the issue I have is that I dont really have a reason to give a fuck about these characters the way the narrative thinks I should.

I mean, the saving grace is that the setting is fun; Lovecraftian, spooky, fantastical and alien in a compelling mixture that I think suits Borderlands pretty well. I think the boss fights are also the most coherently designed so far, striking the right balance of dramatic presentation and actual playability. Ultimately, this has more going for it than Borderlands 3. But Im gonna be real: I just straight up dont care about Wainwright, or the personal life of Hammerlock. You want me to be emotionally invested in your gay couple? You should have made Torgue gay. Id show up for Torgue. Gaiges character also feels written to just be a cheap knockoff of Tiny Tina, and after that who am I left with to care about? Mancubus Bloodtooth? Fuckin Burton Briggs? The DLC is called “Guns Love And Tentacles” and yeah, it does sort of feel like this content was constructed from a series of words drawn at random from a hat like that.

My first Assassin's Creed game.

I had fun with the game in the first 10 hours, but it quickly lost all its steam past this threshold. The game never tries new things at any point, the gameplay is always the same... and so I felt like it really dragged on near the end.

The positives:
- Ezio's movements were smooth. I played 'Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones' a few months back, which is the last PoP they made before they brought AC, and I'd say the parkour mechanics were about as good as this game's.

- I appreciate the effort they put into the atmosphere. The city feels pretty alive, especially thanks to the AI of NPCs, sound effects & the environment themes. And I also dig the historical setting the game takes place in. Exploring Italy during the Renaissance era has a lot of charm (at least during the first few hours).

- The missions to find the Assassin's Sarcophagus were very nice. It focuses entirely on parkour and it felt a lot like its predecessor Prince of Persia.

- The little puzzles to uncover the Truth were pretty cool. These are good brainteasers, and I enjoyed the ominous music playing during those segments.

That's it for the game's qualities. Now I should explain why I was disappointed. The game felt generic and barren.
The main reason I got bored is because the gameplay is soooo repetitive.

'Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones' had the advantage of being relatively short (took me 14 hours to finish) so I didn't have time to get bored. But AC2 took me exactly twice as long (28 hours) so I was eager to reach the end after some point.
The game is banking hard on its story, but it's just bland & sterile. There's no emotion, the characters fall flat, and there are inconsistencies. There are a few moments where the good guys let the main vilain escape for free, and it upset me.

The game's visuals aged poorly. The textures aren't great, and it looks like they only used one colour for the whole game: gray.

And last but not least: the combat. It was frustrating AND boring.
70% of all the encounters were me using the dagger to one-shot guards before the fights even start, for the better.
And when I had no choice but to engage in combat, it was terrible. Especially with those enemies that reflect most of your swings and make the fights even longer... Thank you Smoke Bomb for making my Life a bit easier ❤

Oh well, I'm still glad I played it. It's always nice to discover popular franchises for the first time.
If I play another Assassin's Creed game in the future, it's gonna be Black Flag. I've heard good things about it, and it seems to be a fan's favorite.

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on June 16th & finished on June 23th 2024]
Playtime: 28 hours
Main story complete.

Still charming and honestly still looks great. It was clearly designed to suck up coins which must have sucked at the time and is still frustrating today.

I casually played it solo in Street Fighter 6, probably better in co op. Being able to cover both fronts and flank enemies must help against the game's cheap tactics.

There are some clever ideas in it like you can deflect molotovs with a well timed attack

The ending is WILD, auto crossbow wielding wheelchair riding human shielded corpo guy wild.

The credits are filled with nicknames and monikers with names like Tissue and Prince. The music was credited to Youki Chan's Papa. Soul.

A very pleasant surprise. This game sat in my library for a while as I was a bit wary of what I suspected would be a needlessly complicated brutal slog of an RPG, but really, its not all that hard to grasp (for the most part).

I've come to realize that the single most decisive factor in an RPG which determines whether or not I'll be into it is the setting. Obviously, what makes a setting interesting is very subjective and Im usually at odds with most people with what I find boring. Case in point, everyone is creaming themselves over Re:Fantazio whilst I could not be less interested, given what I most enjoyed about persona was the contemporary urban fantasy setting rather than the regular standard fantasy of every other RPG. Anyways, Pillars 2 caught my attention because unlike most of its ancestry, its not a medieval fantasy where you hit each other with swords and bows; no! Its an early modern fantasy where you hit each other with swords, bows and hilariously inaccurate firearms (well, inaccurate IRL, in game I found myself hitting things well enough)!

That doesn't sound too different admittedly, but Pillars 2 really takes advantage of the slightly more advanced time period, by setting the game within essentially the age of sail with all it involves; namely piracy, discovery, rum, colonialism and slavery. The 3 main factions are so refreshing compared to the usual pastiches of late medieval england, wales and maybe norway thrown in for spice. The Valian trade company is reminiscent of the italian trade republics of the renaissance like Venice and Genoa, whilst carrying a bit of the dutch VoC and East India company in them. They are there to exploit the local resources of luminous adra, which are essentially used to power a sort of magic industrialism in the form of animancy - man harnessing the power of gods, magic and souls for their own benefit.

The Huana are a loose confederation of natives of the deadfire archipielago the game takes place in, part of the aumaua race. Whilst their role in the story's colonialism is reminiscent of native americans, their design suggests more of a polynesian theming, in particular of Hawaï from what I can tell: their war canoes equipped with cannons seem taken from Kamehameha the Great's navy irl. The most powerful leader in the Huana is Queen Onezaka II, who tries to play the opposing foreign interests against each other, using deft diplomacy to keep the wolves at bay, depending on your perspective; using leverage to limit the influence of foreign interests whilst strengthening her domain or capitulating to those foreign interests out of fear.

The Rauatai are also from the aumaua race, they are the biggest adopters of firearms and are in the archipielago establishing colonial outposts essentially to send food back to their homeland which does not produce much on account of its hostile climate. In aesthetics and motivation they remind me of the brief window of Sengoku era expansionism of Japan under Hideyoshi, their outposts have a lot of japanese stylings to them and the armies of the shogunate were arguably the most heavily reliant on arquebuses of their time. Their motivations to colonial exploitation under the guise of spreading order to their aumaua brethren and obtaining the resources inaccessible from their homeland do more closely resemble Imperial Japan from the 19th century though.

There's also the Principi, who are kinda like the Pirate Republic of the age of sail, but ngl I didnt really do their quests so idk.

In any case, none of the factions are 1 to 1 analogues to real life nations, I mean I'm pretty sure Enrico Dandolo never tried to develop teleportation by harnessing the powers of the human soul, and all factions have European Style Galleons, Arab Dhows and Chinese Junks (which btw fucking rules, galleons and caravels are cool but show some goddamn respect to the junks if youre doing an age of sail game). They simply all borrow from several sources to develop something truly unique which is such a breath of fresh air to me.

I could go over most major events and praise them but I want to highlight a particular mission I did for the Royal Deadfire Company (the Rauatai's Fleet in the Deadfire). Up until that point in the game I was often harassed by slaver ships, which early on were really dangerous to my small ill-equipped ship. At one point the Rauatai tasked me with inflitrating their headquarters so I could bring an end to their slave trade and a bunch of other tasks relating to the main plot. Anyways, I started blasting and slaughtered every slaver there. When I finished and left to report back I found a massive Rauatai fleet waiting for me. Conveniently, they had forgotten to tell me that after I had done the dirty work of murdering all the slavers and freeing the slaves (fairly unambigously good save for the whole murder part IG but not really) they were there to occupy the island and make use of its resources for their own ends. Hence I had unwittingly done the bidding of colonialism. And yet the slavers basically stop operating after that, and one can argue that the Rauatai occupation of the island preventing its re-introduction is a good thing. Its such a strength of the game's nuanced morality that mirrors real life that people cloak their bad actions under noble goals and viceversa. I am sad that woodaba is no longer on this site because her Pillars 1 review (which I have admittedly not played but it sounds similar to 2 by her account) puts it perfectly :

"likeable characters will hold quietly conservative worldviews that feel natural for them, people will say the right things for the wrong reasons, or the wrong things for the right reasons. friendly characters will have beliefs that are extremely distasteful to you but are so deeply held that there is no way to use the power granted to you by being the player character to dissuade them from their belief system with a few honeyed words. this is not a game where each element works towards a clear thematic conclusion, one that confidently knows what is right and what is wrong when discussing the things it brings up. it is a messy world filled with ugliness and argument and contradiction, and no clear definitive statement on its themes. it has a perspective, but it is not one held with immense confidence. it is a perspective mired with doubts and second-guessing that feels very conscious and deliberate"

Even the game's ending was relatively open-ended and uncertain in my case, whilst still being somewhat final and hopeful.

Its interesting now, having played Pillars 2 in the broader context of Director Josh Sawyer's work, Im all but certain he was thinking of making Pentiment when he was overseeing this game. As per a talk he gave, playtesters made him include an option to turn off the game's text ligatures feature, so its funny he quadrupled down on it for Pentiment's highly stylized manuscript text. The early modern setting and importance of religion holds a constant in all the games of his Ive played, all the way back to the New Vegas DLC of Honest Hearts. After Pentiment I watched so many interviews and talks he gave both before and after Pentiment that I got the sense that Pillars was somewhat of a frustrating period for him. Being a Kickstarted game sold on the promise of a throwback to the infinity engine games in a time before Divinity OS2, BG3 and the like showed that this was still a very much untapped market, it was somewhat limiting creatively. To develop is to please investors and fans, but what happens when the fans ARE the investors? The game did eventually sell but its launch and initial sales were rough in the lead up to getting bought out by Microsoft.

In truth I havent played those infinity engine games but I can see how Pillars 2 was made to not stray too far from the mold of those from what I can tell. I was quite surprised at how much I ended up NOT hating the game's Real Time with Pause system. Whilst it often made bossfights a bit of a shitshow, not having to do 30 hours worth of slow, turn-based battles with overlong animations against underleveled shitters who by all rights should be inmediately atomized by a single magical fart from my wizard was a nice change of pace (pun intended) from the usual non action RPGs I play. Its not without its faults, the complexity kind of melts my puny brain and most of the times going through the ability trees for upgrading my characters my eyes glazed over the 7 different skills doing 10 kinds of damage and 15 types of status conditions andjaddjsdoijsajlasjdkl Oh shit, sorry I fell asleep on my keyboard whilst typing this out. Anyways I ended up just quickly picking whatever looked the coolest and hoping for the best. For the most part on normal difficulty my party killed the enemy well enough, so whatever.

I'm curious now about playing Pillars 1 even if it looks a bit less interesting setting wise and a bit more mired in the conventions of the games that it borrows from but who knows? Either way it won't change the fact that I now have the game's sea shanties stuck in my head, please send help :(

Where’s the petition for shooters to go back to ripping off Halo campaigns instead of CoD campaigns?

Having played Halo 3 first, I’m really impressed with how much of what I liked about that game was here right from the start in Combat Evolved. The fluid control, the smart AI, the physics, the diversity of locales, the score, the atmosphere and I really took notice to the balancing in this one, how some weapons are godly at taking out certain enemy types, but useless against others, and how I was forced to pick and choose and think a lot more here than in Halo 3. It has some rough edges, I found a couple levels a bit confusing and repetitive to navigate, the Library level most notably. For the most part though, it’s a remarkably confident and well polished game for one that came from nothing, and honestly I think it still holds up better than an overwhelming majority of shooters today.

Ryse: Son of Rome is perhaps most notable for being one of the launch titles for the Xbox One besides Dead Rising 3, Killer Instinct, and Forza Motorsport 5, all of which were exclusive. It's tough not to feel bad for those games since in 2013, Xbox had garnered quite a bad reputation with its audience after the whole DRM snafu and Don Mattrick's attitude towards always-online connectivity. To smooth all that over, it seemed like the launch titles had to do even more legwork than they already were to get the system back in gamers' good graces again.

Since I was way more interested in the PS4 at the time, I didn't try out those launch titles for myself until much later, and certainly, of the ones I've already mentioned, I can confidently say that Ryse: Son of Rome has all the hallmarks of a launch title, for better or worse, by which I mean that Ryse goes all in on the style and little of the substance.

In terms of the visuals and performances, Ryse is genuinely impressive and definitely holds up today. By and large, it's a fairly generic Roman revenge story, but the acting and the vistas you're treated to throughout its ~5-hour campaign more than make up the difference. John Hopkins as protagonist Marius especially delivers an impressive performance; one that would no doubt help him land the role of Erend in the Horizon games or Lucas Grey in the Hitman reboot trilogy.

When it comes to gameplay, however, that's a different story. I cannot disparage Ryse too much for the gameplay being incredibly repetitive, given that it was originally meant to be a Kinect-only first-person game and officially started development in 2006. Crytek clearly had a rough go with trying to get this game finished and on store shelves, that much is clear from reading into this game's backstory. However, historical context or not, the gameplay here is still lacking.

It's a super basic hack-and-slash with finishers in the form of quick time events where enemies flash in the color of the button you're supposed to press. It's admittedly quite fun, even if it is basic, for the first hour or two. Less fun however when that ends up being the exact same loop for the rest of the game.

To be fair, they do try and spice it up every now and then when Marius commands his legion to march with him in a line and take on an enemy horde as a unit, but even this becomes monotonous after a while.

All in all, Ryse: Son of Rome is a game that undoubtedly looks and sounds much better than it plays, despite its attempts to switch things up every now and then. It's not a bad game by any means but it's certainly the definition of 'mid'. Thankfully the studio went on to make the much-cherished gothic horror shooter Hunt: Showdown so I'm glad they were able to put their talents towards more fun projects.

5/10

Man this game made me feel something, I think it's brought back my love for story games, the gameplay wasn't anything special and I'm glad it was on game pass for its length but wow.

The setting, voice acting and story hit like a truck, it's not too scary but has that awesome world setting horror.

Great game.

(This is the English translation of my Spanish review of this game)

Guys, what a pleasure. What a great pleasure. Sometimes it's hard for me to give a game a perfect score, but A Short Hike absolutely deserves it.

I love indie games that look and play like this. The game is like an extremely chill collectathon, but with a simple yet deep story. I felt that the character dialogues were very well thought out, always charmingly humorous and wholesome. I appreciate that the game doesn't force you to do anything and you can play at your own pace and this caters to many types of players. As someone who's quite neurotic about games, it definitely satisfied my need to see everything, explore everything, and collect everything.

Never before have I felt so relaxed and immersed in a game that feels so pleasant and straightforward, yet at the same time, it gives you a lot to think about. A meditative experience.

5 golden feathers out of 5 🪶🪶🪶🪶🪶

So far, the TMNT games that were made for the Game Boy back in the day have been…. lackluster as a whole, to say the least. The first of these games, Fall of the Foot Clan, was quite possibly one of the most generic and lazy platformers that I have ever played in my life, doing enough to where I couldn’t say it was bad, but oh look, is that a bed? DON’T MIND IF I DO! falls asleep........... wakes up suddenly Yeah, you get the picture. As for the second game though, Back from the Sewers, it was a minor, yet welcome improvement, adding some more variety to the stages and some interesting life mechanics, but as a whole, it was still your average TMNT platformer: nothing to get too excited about, even if it was still decent. Of course though, because the rule of threes is a great rule to go by, the Game Boy would get one more of these games before calling it quits, and this time around, there would actually be EFFORT put into this one, as can be plainly seen when you take a look at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue.

Not gonna lie, I was actually kind of excited to get to this game over the previous two games, which was a little surprising to say the least. I mean, after all, since the last two games were nothing more then just standard license game filler that you could easily dismiss as fast as you would discover this, how could this one stand out from the rest? Well, let’s just say that I heard from a little birdie that this game was different from the rest, and that little tidbit turned out to be completely correct, making this, without a doubt, the best game in the Game Boy trilogy. It is actually a really good game, introducing new elements to this series as a whole while still staying true to its roots, making for what I would say is one of the best TMNT games to be released from this era.

The story is only slightly different from your average TMNT video game plot, where while Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello are enjoying their time in their sewer home, they suddenly get a transmission on their TV that shows that April O’ Neil has been kidnapped, so they set out to go save her. Shortly after, Michelangelo arrives in the sewer base, noticing that everybody is gone, and wonders what happened to them. Soon enough, another broadcast emits on the TV, informing him that all of his friends have been captured, so it is up to him to set out to rescue all of his friends, defeat some dangerous foes, and find out who is really behind all of this…… even if it is painfully obvious. I will give the game credit for somewhat changing up the premise of your typical TMNT game here, but it isn’t too much more different from what you would expect, so I ain’t giving it too much credit.

The graphics are Game Boy graphics, and the locations, enemies, and character sprites aren’t really all too creative or impressive, but for what it is worth, they do look solid enough for this game, the music is alright, having plenty of neat tunes to listen too, both new and familiar for the TMNT series, but it is nothing all too exciting or memorable for me, and the gameplay/control is mostly what you would expect from your typical TMNT game, but with a new twist that adds a whole extra layer to the game, making it much more interesting and fun to play as a result.

The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of one of the four Ninja Turtles, primarily Michelangelo before you unlock everyone else, go through many different areas deep underground, whether it be through the caves, the sewers, or other places, defeat the many enemies that you will run into while using your trusty ninja weaponry both in and out of combat scenarios, gather plenty of different items such as pizza to heal yourself, and several other items that will help you proceed through the game, and take on several bosses that will actually provide you plenty of challenge if you don’t know what you are doing, but of course, with a little time and patience, they go down like nothing. Once again, most of it is your standard TMNT affair, and it works just about as well as you have come to remember, but even as soon as you start proceeding through the game yourself, you will notice that something is quite different here, all in the game’s favor.

If you haven’t already looked it up for yourself at this point, then let me go ahead and inform you on what this new twist on the game is: the game is now a Metroidvania. Rather than worrying about simply getting to the end of a linear level and taking down several bosses, you are tasked with exploring the depths of these chasms, seeing what new pathways you can find, gather plenty of items to help you rescue your reptilian brothers from their cells, and figure out how to reach new areas. This certainly came as a surprise to me when I started to play the game for myself, because while the genre wasn’t completely alien to video games at this point, you just didn’t see too many other Metroidvanias back around this time aside from….. well, Metroid. However, it is a change that I was able to quickly get used to, and it made me have a great time with the game as a whole, and while it certainly as complex, beautiful, or mechanically deep as others in the genre, it still has a lot of the trademark features you would find in one, like a handy map with markers and figuring out your way around, making clearing through many of these areas and rescuing the turtles that much more fun and satisfying.

Speaking of which, that is one of the key factors that plays into this entire game: the turtles. For the first time in any TMNT game, the Ninja Turtles actually feel like proper, unique characters here that you can distinguish between, all because each of them has a unique skill dedicated to them that you can use throughout the game. Michelangelo has the ability to hover through the air using his nun-chuks, Leo can drill through solid rock using his swords, Raphael can retract into his shell and roll around to get through tight spaces (even though they should all be able to do that, but whatever), and Donatello can climb up walls using his staff. Not only are all these abilities very helpful to use when you are caught in a jam, but they are essential for finding new pathways to hidden areas, making it feel very rewarding and satisfying whenever you do figure out what you are supposed to do with what turtle at what time.

However, not everything is quite perfect about this TMNT Metroidvania, as there are a few marks against it that don’t make it quite the completely solid package you would hope for it to be. First and foremost, this game does suffer when it comes to how it implements backtracking, which is a common thing that you will find in plenty of Metroidvanias, but for those who have played any of the games in these genres before, you know that there is a right and wrong way to do this. Radical Rescue decides to do things in the wrong way, making so that you have to travel a HUGE ways back just to get to certain areas to proceed forward, all with very little help to let you know where you are going, as the map just shows you the general layout of the whole area, not what parts lead to where and what is accessible or not. This can make it so that you will need to bust out a guide to help you get through, if you don’t have that much time or patience, like some random blue Backloggd reviewer you know all too well.

Secondly, this game has a boss rush in it, and you all already know how much I LOVE those, but when it comes to Metroidvanias, I don’t usually have too much of a problem with them when they show up there. Most of them work because, at that point, you most likely have plenty of new gear, upgrades, and powers that you can use to your advantage, making it so that you can approach these familiar fights in all new ways that you couldn’t possibly achieve before. Here, however, there are no new powers, upgrades, or gear that you get on your journey, making this all feel like a complete waste of time. Yeah, you do have all of the extra moves you get with each turtle, but those are only meant to help you in moving through these areas, not for combat. Instead, you have this dinky little thwap attack you use the entire time, which doesn’t help make this feel anymore tedious and annoying.

Overall, despite both the boss rush and backtracking being a real bitch in this game, this is the best game of the TMNT Game Boy trilogy by far, not only keeping the gameplay familiar enough for fans of those older titles, but adding plenty more so that both old fans and newcomers alike can have plenty of fun with it and enjoy one of the earliest examples of a Metroidvania that I can think about. I would recommend it for those who are huge TMNT fans, as well as those who think that all of these old TMNT games are just the same, because you…… may be right for the most part, but this one will show you just what these games can do when they are willing to take some kind of a risk, and it definitely pays off here. But anyway though, now that I covered that game, I think that…. that’s it. Sure, there are some Tiger Electronic games I haven’t touched, but I still have some dignity left in me, and there is this one other game called Manhattan Missions, but that one kinda scares me, so, for now anyway….. that is all of the TMNT old-school games played and reviewed. It’s kinda sad to say goodbye for a bit, not gonna lie….. we had so much fun together, too! Aw man…. well then, what other cultural, cartoon icon can I review games from and simultaneously make fun of at the same time now?............... oh, hey there, Michael Rat, what are you doing here?

Game #625