So I've recently been reading through some old Nintendo Power issues I got my hands on. They serve as great little time capsules of a completely different era of games, as well as an interesting look at the things Nintendo prioritized at the time. All four of the issues I have are the months before and after the release of the Nintendo Gamecube. All of the big previews and reports are on its presence at that year's Spaceworld, each issue has several pages dedicated to a different launch game, they're making this console sound like it's gonna make Luigi real. And yet, this is kind of an awkward time for Nintendo when it comes to their console releases. The N64 is winding down with games like Madden 2002 and Tony Hawk 2, so there isn't a lot for Nintendo Power to try and sell their audience on. Because of this awkward middle period between the N64 and Gamecube, the GBA and GBC saw quite a lot of coverage. I mean, games like Pokemon Crystal and Advance Wars were always gonna get promoted heavily, but I noticed a lot of games that I'm pretty sure would have never gotten the features they ended up getting if it hadn't been for this vacancy. Every issue I read had multiple pages dedicated to Dragon Quest Monsters 2, and when it finally got a review from the outlet it got a 7. Lara Croft on Game Boy Color, several Jurassic Park games, Klonoa on GBA, Spyro on GBA, obviously these aren't all the same level of quality, but seeing them getting large previews or multi-issue game guides was just odd. Among those games, the one that stuck out to me the most was Lady Sia. See, all those games I mentioned in that previous sentence are all either well known or at least from series that are well known, and yet here's Lady Sia, a completely new game and character from a company that dealt almost exclusively with licensed games before this one. Each issue I have has a full-page advertisement for the game, and one of them even has a guide for the first two worlds of the game. Not only that but in the letters to the editor section, someone sends a message complaining about the lack of girl characters in games, and the editor's response has this quote: "...there's not a gamer alive who wouldn't call Joanna Dark, Samus Aran, or Lady Sia a hero." OK, so, the game literally hadn't even come out yet, so I think several living gamers wouldn't call Lady Sia a hero and be reasonable in saying so. But more importantly, this certainly gives an idea of how they were trying to make this game a thing, which is why I was so curious about it that I had to play it for myself.

So it turns out Lady Sia is incredibly basic. Like, to the point that I was pretty disappointed, it's a bad ending to the paragraph of setup I did and now it makes even less sense for me to have gotten this invested. It's a very basic platformer with very basic combat. You run-up to an enemy and mash the B and R button over and over until they die, they usually manage to get one hit in on you, but who cares because there's almost always a health pick-up nearby. Platforming is mostly okay, except you're weirdly slippery, which can trip you up but it's still completely manageable. The story is very generic fantasy, except there's also some technology, but I wouldn't call it steampunk, things just kind of show up in this game. Some bird enemies started showing up and they were really bad to fight, but I still made it past them and up to the end of the second world. That's when the Retroid Pocket I was playing this on decided to start having really bad controller issues and made the game basically unplayable. It was here that I had to decide if I wanted to do all the levels I did again on a different platform in order to finish the game, or just end my playthrough here. I simply stopped playing.

I guess if I had to give the game some points, the animation on the opening cutscene and the character sprites are kind of impressive, it's not a bad-looking game. I could see someone back in the day being won over on the visuals alone considering this is very early in the GBA's lifespan. If I were a child and the only game I had on the GBA was Lady Sia, I would finish it, I might even finish it a second time. Again, if I were a kid and this was the only game I had.

Nintendo Power gives this 4 1/2 stars out of 5, higher than the scores they gave to Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, Mega Man Battle Network, and Pokemon Crystal, games that are also covered in the issues that I have. The score is high but no one in the review really says anything all that glowing about it. "It's not bad, just a little too straightforward" "The gameplay isn't very challenging, but that may just make the game more accessible to younger gamers" "With stylized art, great control, and a lot of variety in action, Lady Sia is a very pleasant surprise. The only thing that keeps me from giving it a perfect five is the repetitive music" I know Nintendo Power gives out high scores like candy, but there's so little about what the reviewers say that sells the score, even the quote of one person saying they would give it a perfect score. It's just a little baffling, trying to figure out why this game got pushed so hard, besides the most cynical and obvious assumption of being paid to do so. If so, I guess if a publisher like TDK interactive had to push any game, it would be their original property. According to MobyGames, RFX Interactive went back to licensed games after this until RFX Interactive closed down in 2003, along with TDK getting bought by Take-Two. There even was a Lady Sia 2 in development, and it seemingly got decently far in production until the closure of the studio. It's kind of sad now that I think about it, this developer that's only known for making licensed games trying out the start of a big new franchise, getting this big Nintendo Power bump, only to end up getting all that cut short due to the brutal nature of the industry. I don't think Lady Sia is a bad game, and I bet a sequel could have made things better, but regardless of quality, I find it to be a pretty interesting case of a game just totally falling into obscurity despite its best efforts. I know this isn't much of a review, but I felt like I needed to let people know about this strange obsession I've had over the past couple of weeks. I might even try to go back and finish Lady Sia someday, because I bet there is some cool stuff I haven't seen yet. I don't wanna let the Lady Sia fandom down.

I don't know how to accurately rate Lego titles. They're games meant for young children that offer zero challenge and are really just an excuse to run around and collect a million different things. Which, turns out, I'm down for. Every few years when one of these games pops up and is based on a franchise I'm actually interested in, I hop on board for a bit, because they're the kind of simple, mindless fun I think you need once and a while.

The Skywalker Saga is very much of that same mold, although on a seemingly much larger scale. The individual levels of each movie have been abridged to a greater degree than past Lego Star Wars titles (perhaps too much so), but alongside them come much larger, open environments that constitute the meat of this particular one. Side-by-side they offer a lot of variety and I never really found myself bored with each level's gimmicks or the surprising amount of different puzzles, even if it did leave me yearning for a few more character classes to break up some of the more monotonous abilities.

In terms of other criticisms I have about the game, I wish they'd go a bit more off-script from the movies at times. When they do it's really a highlight, but cutscenes stick more to doing word-for-word line reading of the film dialogue and letting the humor fill the background instead of bringing it the forefront. In addition I encountered several annoying bugs that disrupted side quests and collecting tasks, though to the game's credit, it is very good about saving everything so I rarely had to redo something I already accomplished. Also no amount of lampooning could make up for having to re-experience The Rise of Skywalker again, but I suppose that was unavoidable given the game's premise.

Ultimately I'd say this game's biggest strength is simply letting you exist and breathe in the Star Wars universe. The breaks in-between levels where you can just roam around, meet characters, explore the vast array of planets, or just take in the ambience of the extremely detailed environments coupled with the classic Star Wars music and sounds makes for a really relaxing experience. Lego games will never be the most compelling things you'll ever play, but every once and a while I think it's worth it to play something like this for a change of pace. Considering this game delivers on that and then some, I'd say it achieved its goal.

UPDATE: Lowering my score one star. At this point in time I've almost 100% the game but due to a bug I have been unable to do so. Truthfully my entire experience with trying to platinum The Skywalker Saga has been an exercise in frustration due to the constant bugs, glitches, and crashes, little of which I experienced through my main playthrough of the game, but have become overwhelmingly apparent in my attempt to complete everything. I know there are players out there who have experienced even more severe, game-breaking bugs than I have, so I can't even say I've gotten the worst of it.

Adding to that frustration has been the fact that we're now going on nearly a month without any sort of patch to fix these problems, and radio silence from the developer on when we can expect one. Quite frankly that is inexcusable and has really soured my opinion on the game overall, even if a lot of the praise I heaped upon it earlier still stands. I'm sure at some point in the future this game will be fixed and these complaints will be rendered a non-issue, but I simply cannot ignore how long this game has been left to flounder in is post-release window.

this is a title that feels downright oppressive at first. your protagonist takes up an absolutely absurd amount of screen real estate; you have a wealth of complex techniques to master mapped to only three different buttons; there's six different weapons, not all of which are applicable in every scenario, and there are upwards of twenty different ways of representing your status and resources; the only available difficulties are SUPEREASY and SUPERHARD. this is unruly, frantic, and demanding, and you'll likely spend a fair amount of time dying repeatedly just to make heads or tails of the game because it shoves you right into the crossfire, before you might even be aware that the entire game is tantamount to a boss rush.

stick with it. conquer the game on SUPERHARD, no matter how arduous. it's the rare game that makes the most of every single mechanic on offer, where each design implementation is representative of an uncanny degree of fine-tuning and polish. i can point to any one detail in this game, no matter how consequential or intangible, and give you a sensible, informative, and well-articulated answer for why it was designed this way. doubtless the masters at treasure can, too. it's tooth-and-nail adrenaline-inducing frenzy condensed into an hour's run time

There's a certain feeling I hate getting when I'm playing a game, one that is a clear sign that what I'm playing is not worth the time of day. I was in the middle of the second level of Blasto when I said to myself "Oh god, is this all the game is?".

"Like Tomb Raider mixed with Duke Nukem" is the quote I would give this game if I was working for a game magazine in the 90s. The game's premise of "manly action hero full of one-liners wipes out a bunch of aliens and also there's Sexy Babes there" isn't the only thing this game borrows from Duke Nukem, as it seems to adhere to the boomer shooter tradition of "go here, hit a switch, ok now go back there, hit that switch, ok now that part is open, find the switch here, etc". Blasto's moveset resembles Lara Croft's in a couple ways, being a tank-controlled third-person shooter with a focus on jumping, though Blasto is much less focused on puzzle-solving, instead going full action. It's also a lot faster than Lara Croft, the jump is definitely more reliable for platforming. It's not like any of this is doomed to fail, but good god Blasto employs the most boring and annoying possible level design. On top of all the backtracking I mentioned, every couple steps you run into a section full of enemies spawning out of thin air, many times behind your back in such a way that getting to them before they hit you is impossible. The game is generous with health and extra lives, but that almost makes it worse because it feels like it knows it's shit and is trying to last-minute balance itself. Seriously, by the time I got to level 3 I felt like I was going insane with how much this game repeats the same tricks every couple seconds. The same flying enemies spawning everywhere in large numbers, the same on-foot enemies spawning right in front of you, the same switches and platforming challenges, it became miserable very quickly. Just, imagine Tomb Raider if instead of a Tomb to solve it was a big hallway and every 10 seconds you had to stop and fight 10 bats and 10 dogs.

There are a few redeeming qualities to Blasto, ones that keep me from giving it the lowest score possible. For one, Blasto doesn't actually control that poorly, if you're used to tank controls you mostly won't have a problem when it comes to trying to fight enemies or make jumps, it's really the level design and enemy encounters that kill this game. Secondly, hearing Phil Hartmann in anything is a joy, even in this. The lines he's given are pretty bad (the opening cutscene does 3 Uranus jokes and the game definitely takes place on Uranus only because it wanted to make those jokes), but he sells the hell out of them. A damn shame his talents were wasted on Blasto.

Anyway, check out the tcrf page for this game, it's got a naked woman on it.

This game made me realize (again) that I'm a bit useless with point-and-clicks - this was no exception. I was glued to a guide almost the whole way, basically amounting to me cheating the entire "game" part of this game. Even with that in mind, I cannot deny that this is a fiendishly clever piece of work with some of the wittiest cutscenes and puzzle outcomes. It's also very careful not to overstay its welcome, in spite of some backtracking issues (the rowboat kinda sucks and you have to use it to go back and forth three times).

I'm just saying a lot of words to convey "it's funny and ridiculous I like it"

don't care that the frame rate is awful; don't care that the combat is asinine; don't care that the game is unpolished, janky, ugly, and poorly considered in every respect; don't care that it was subject to predatory dlc; don't care that accord's requests are emblematic of some of the worst there is in side quest design; don't care don't care don't care

what i do care about is that this is the ultimate manifestation of YT's disinclination to work in games juxtaposed with his earnest belief in the medium as a vessel for greater things. in his grimmest failure, he finds light at the end of the tunnel. an astonishing exercise in empathy generation, one of the best finales in a game, and the only one of yoko taro's works that makes great use of backwards scripting + sequential playthroughs