I'm not sure I understand this game.
I'm sure someone would want me to bring up the PS1 version, so let me say that the games look about the same, but PS2 definitely has bloat that's kind of inoffensive to me, and some long load times. So that aside...

This game makes me confused as to what some developers thought a platformer should be back in the day. I kinda like the feel of the game, Rayman has a nice jump. But there's weird parts where there's just silence, and it's deafening (I appreciate it's trying to be a dynamic soundtrack in general, but it's weird.).

The platforming is really straight forward.... You don't want to glide much because it's slow, but the game makes you glide more as it goes. Jumps aren't threatening. You have a lot of health. Your monkey-bar climbing is slow. The swinging is cool but the game doesn't demand a lot...

You need to do plodding tasks like carry balls and barrels around. You need to walk with and escort Clark and Glowbox. The combat is really mediocre. Destructible things (or even cages) don't really stick out much visually.
I hate controlling the Walking Missile, with its shallow, delayed jump and weird collision, and I hate taming it to do it all over again. The swimming isn't really much. I don't get why we're fighting Pirates, of all things...

The game is a collectible nightmare, since you need to do whole level over if you really wanted those few lums you missed, which you might've definitely missed while riding a missile or going on a slide (I didn't have a compulsion to do this, but I did a few times)...

And then it was the Sanctuary of Earth and Fire that really made me give up.
The plum is a neat idea. But it's also another barrel/orb... and I'm just standing there shooting... So I can move this thing... and it's not really going as fast as I'd like...... And the level is really really long. And then we get to the slide and I'm trying to steer this stupid thing at speeds, that on the other hand, it shouldn't achieve when it's asking you to avoid insta-kill lava and ride walls to get lums...

I was just kinda done with it. And I'm kind of left wondering what part of the game was supposed to really be fun. What it was going for, exactly. It wasn't that bad though, I guess. I feel like I'm not really the right person to judge this game, in a way.

If I'm going to talk about this game, I'm going to have to say some things about Ape Escape 2 I might change my mind about at some point. But I think I'm okay with that. I want to give more positive reviews and takes on here too. But that takes a good amount of time and effort sometimes.

Ape Escape 2 was kind of disappointing to me, it felt like a pretty average platformer. The vibes and music weren't great, the way the game felt wasn't to my tastes (the jump and the hover gadget especially arent smooth), they made the Slingshot and RC do stun less, there's less puzzles or creative thinking with the gadgets, the monkeys are really hard to deal with, the level design was made into something really tunnely with the most basic of platforming, which makes stealth less encouraged as well...
It was just really disappointing to me. A lot of the things that made the first game special were just sapped from the second, and I felt like I was going through the motions.

Ape Escape 3 didn't exactly change the general approach in design. It stuck to being kinda similar to Ape Escape 2. But if the games were gonna be like this instead of how Ape Escape 1 was, then 3 really manages to perfect what 2 was trying to do.
The levels have a stronger identity and theme, there's a stronger and more active sense of pacing to the levels and what you're doing with a larger sense of fun, they shave off the gadgets that didn't matter (well except--...RIP the Water Cannon) but add transformations which act as gadgets all of their own and were probably a ton of fun for kids especially, the monkeys are made less strong (especially the missile monkeys), the levels are bigger but don't feel elongated...
It almost feels a bit intangible as to what makes this game better. And I do feel 2 can be more creative at times, and it also has a much much stronger final few levels. But the game is undeniably solid and a ton of fun.

To get into more specifics would be a lot though, especially for that reason. And I already make these kinda long. But there's a lot of thoughts I had about the nuances of the game in general.
Like, part of why Morphs are so fun for example is because it really doesn't feel like the game forces them on you much at all outside their first appearance, but if you want to you can almost be morphed for the majority of a stage (Not my style really). It's very freeing. But the game also puts a lot of teleborg enemies around monkeys which makes you feel pressured to use them, or else go about things a lot more slowly. Additionally catching monkeys with any of the Morph tools is a lot more reliable and quick than your time net, and it eliminates some of that thrill of trying to catch a monkey the old fashioned way, but when monkeys will just dodge your nets a lot...... All in all what I'm getting at is I wondered if I was almost forced into liking the Morphs, because otherwise I'd come up against tension and things that I wouldn't like.
Teleborg enemies can be annoying in general, but also you do get better and better at just getting them on their wind-ups that one shot them. So I feel a bit two-ways about them too.
While Ape Escape 2's gacha machine was a bit of a pain, the Monkey Stories and things were a lot better in that game. The mini-games are also slightly less creative in 3, but they're also a lot more fun (Mesal Gear Solid aside, which is. Wow. So cool).
And one last thing: The boss battles are awesome (maybe not enough health) and you can do Monkey White, Blue, Yellow and Tomoki in under 25 seconds. Princess Ace and Miracle Ninja are crazy good for most things.

It feels like to actually talk about the game in full depth, I'd have to go into a million of these kinds of things. But that's the kind of thing that is a good sign for a game or franchise being interesting.
Ape Escape 2 and 3 in general make me feel like Ape Escape has a lot of missed potential as a franchise, if I'm honest. But I had a lot of fun being able to play these games in general, and I had a lot of fun with this game! It's fulfilled something I've always wanted to do, and I can't replace that. Definitely replaying all of them, but especially 1, in the future.

My laptop is fucked up cause of bullshit. So I went back to my Switch; Got some stuff on there I ought to play anyway.
Saints Row seemed like a good game to kinda soothe my emotions but… boy. The mood of this game is bad, it does not feel fun and Im not into the matrix stuff. The game also does not control well.
Feels like it throws a bunch of bullshit to do at you too without ever properly settling you in. Cops and aliens on your ass are annoying, collecting clusters is busy work. And… The game doesnt really have many choreographed missions?

It makes me wanna go back to 3 just to see if it holds up. I assume the controls are still about the same there but it isnt an issue when you dont have super powers, and I assume the missions are still good and cool.

This game is categorically worse than Pac-Man World 1 in almost every single way. That's the take-away from this.

It's a good game in its own right, and it pretty much follows the exact same design philosophy the first game does, with a emphasis on precise platforming, and step-by-step processes to getting items, often triggering switches and backtracking (Bit of a surprise considering one of the big sells of the game is more open 3D environments, and this game uses its openness in a fine way.) It manages to do some things that Pac-Man World 1 simply wouldn't have been able to do.

But I think everything Pac-Man World 2 tries to do, Pac-Man World 1 succeeds better. Pac-Man World 1's more theatre-stage (I call it 2.5D) type levels and camera lends the game a level of density that highlights all of that game's strong suits. Precision Platforming is far harder and more engaging in that game, and the levels are a lot more multi-layered and interesting in terms of the things you need to do to gather all the items.
(Edit: I wanna give a big example to look out for in 2, by the way. Notice how little the game asks you to find a particular type of fruit in order to open a treasure chest. The doors in Pac-Man 1 are one of the defining pieces of its puzzle, and Pac-Man World 2 uses its equivalent so rarely, especially since it's clearly uncomfortable putting switches inside)
The level themeing is worse. It's like Pac-Man World 1 already used a lot of the cool go-tos, so Pac-Man World 2 had to scratch its head a little. Snow and Volcano back to back is kind of a smoking gun.
And the soundtrack in the first game kicks ass compared to this one.

The game had some promise to me when I was in the forest levels, which are really creative and fun and instantly stop messing around like in the first World, with death pits littered around. But... After that the Snow and Volcano levels are just a lot more linear, boring, and standard, and it kind of highlights why the new perspective the game uses to me is really just a concession for people who are a lot more comfortable with a game like this. If you're going to do a change like that, why not use it more by making cool, actually open levels instead of easy-peasy hallways?

A lot of little things add up too. Like the camera itself in this game for instance is shockingly terrible, it's baffling how how many times you have to make a bad or blind jump because it won't turn the way you want it to.
Or in the Volcano there's a lot more times where you feel like you want to die or death abuse on purpose because you messed up a step to get a item (and the game barely gave any lives before the Snow area for some reason).
The bosses are terrible, especially Blinky.
Or the fact that there literally doesn't seem to be a reason to collect items and go for completion; It's fun anyway, but at least PW 1 gave you lives based off your score, and it had the locked up family members which meant that you needed to do a lot of completion at least for some levels to beat the game.

It just doesn't feel like a very noteworthy game. Most other platformers I've played are a lot more exciting than this in one way or another. This is just about as average as average gets, with a good few warts included.
If you can't tell I did stop after the Volcano as well, and I'm not in a rush to finish. But I will soon. If the Water levels somehow blow me away as hard as Down The Tubes in Pac-Man World 1 did, I'll eat my hat, but I needed to talk about this now.
EDIT: Oh my good lord, the water levels are terrible. And the last levels aren't exactly spectacular by any metric either.

I'm not saying this game is bad. It's fun, it's a fine game. But that's all it really is to me, fine. I'm about 50 % in of total game completion atm, and let's go down the list.
The bosses? Really nothing special.
The difficulty? Apparently some people really struggle, but to me it's super easy. I have 24 seeds that I haven't planted because I don't really need the health going through the levels. Just don't attack when it's obviously a bad idea, stick and move a little, and use a lot of magic arrows. Being easy isn't a problem, of course though, but it's a very simple action game.
You have a simple few-hit combo, a charge, and a hard to use dodge-roll attack, plus the magic. And all the upgrades this game gives you either stat-wise or through new magic and weapons won't radically change anything. I wish it had couple of different combos ala DMC 1 with diff timings. Or charging your weapon with diff timings does something else. Or the weapons actually changed your attack more.
You don't have any bullet-hell kind of action so your spatial awareness or positioning doesn't actually have to be that good. The game doesn't really pressure you with too many enemies. And the bosses aren't gonna be aggressive or fast like Dark Souls or Hollow-Knight (and there's only been 2 bosses so far, and the frog guy kinda just sits there and throws bombs at you.). The biggest curve-ball is that some enemies have some delayed attacks, or poor tells between their 1 and 2 hit combos.

The music is fine, but isn't the best you've heard, and the style of the game is nice, but not ground-breaking. The writing doesn't have a lot to it. Just like in terms of design, Urn Witch has a much better story than the Frog King.
And lastly, the dungeon: Most of the puzzles in this game involves finding your way to a vertical spot in a room from which you can light a torch from afar, and things like that. They aren't exactly high-tier puzzles, but I like them, keeps the flow going. The layouts are fine though, and the enemies are good.

I really wish this game at least had better movement. You spend so much of this game just dodge-rolling just like you would in 3D Zelda. Your new abilities just boil down to new barriers you can unlock now, sometimes through back-tracking. And you can't go out of order in the game either because harder areas are blocked by things you can't open yet, like not being able to bomb a cracked wall.


I was really really looking forward to the game, but it's just kind of alright. I'd recommend some cooler action games instead of Death's Door, and I'm just kind of confused why there's such a big love for this game now that I've had gotten around to it.
(Review copy-pasted from my steam, lol)

There's two main problems in this game, in my opinion. One is that the rubber banding is too strong. This game never feels like you're able to put distance between you and the people behind you. It'll last for a little bit, but sooner or later they will catch up, it hardly matters how fast you think you're taking those turns and going, it'll happen. This'll lead to some races that are lost just due to one slip up at the end and just makes the presence of the other racers feel meaningless.

The other issue is that this is a rare example of a racing game where it feels like like when you're behind other cars it's always the straight-aways that are winning you your gain on other cars. Unless it's a more technical racer usually most racing games are decided by how well you can take a turn, as turns are a prime area to gain or lose time in subtle ways and necessitate you keep a balance so you don't crash.
In this game the A.I of the other cars always seem to be able to take a turn better than you can. You can try and take the turn in different ways but at the end of the day you'll still come out feeling like it the turn was a trial so you could turbo out of it and keep your position.
And on the straight aways there is no real skill-test. So it doesn't really feel like you raced better to get the gold, they more feel like endurance tests and making sure you don't screw up before getting to the finish line. If you don't come out with a gold and didn't screw up you feel a bit cheated , even if you know there were some points where you weren't as fast as possible.

There's also the repetitive nature of the game, but that's fine. I don't necessarily hold it against it. Though I do wish this game had a free-play mode where you could just run the continous track(s) that you can tell this game was built to be, outside of any missions.
My last gripe about the game is actually with visibility. I feel like your car is pretty close to the camera and that in general, especially if you're far from your TV, oncoming cars and such can be very tricky to spot ahead, which is a bit problematic for a game that has you building up speed for being on the wrong side of the road, and when the game asks you to squeeze through narrow gaps in police blockades. This is the hypothetical skill-test of straight-aways and it mostly works, but it was more than once that I felt I couldn't see anything coming. Sometimes you'll just eat a hit, and how well things go from there, or the small minutia of speed, will probably be the deciding factor.

In the year of our lord 2023 and at 23 years old I have finally played the first game in one of my favourite platforming series. And I have to say I fucking loved it. Let's talk about the save and death system a bit though since those basically make up the entirety of this game's shortcomings.

I played this game with save states… but not a lot of them. I used them mostly as a normal save, once mid-level (Usually around when you’d get the bonus round on your first go-around), and after bosses. I actually feel like this game is pretty well-balanced for the most part and it was rare I made a save state as a precaution just in the middle of a level, but these concessions I made for myself I think were pretty crucial.

This game is by far the hardest and most precise of the entries in the series. More than any other game the level design itself will test your patience and set up obstacles that are deliberately meant to trip you up if you’re not paying attention. What this results in is a rare delight for the series: A Crash game that actually pushes you a bit.
This feeling was actually helped by the death stipulation for all the crates too. I was on the edge of my seat trying to clear a segment before getting to safety and realizing I had been holding my breath. It’s great as an optional challenge and it’s a lot different than a time trial as well which you could argue has some similarities of demanding sustained perfection and not wanting you to die.
I would’ve loved it to be a thing in the rest of the series, especially since the others are so easy.

Part of what makes this game work though—and what also causes most of its major problems-- is that this game is straight up jank to control; It’s not just the level design that makes this game harder, the same fucking platforms and challenges with either Crash 2 or 3’s physics would be astronomically easier by-default. The jump arc is stiffer than any other in the series and Crash has that classic need to slow-down after you stop moving him forward which is common for a lot of first entries in highly acclaimed platformers (Usually this is a negative, but it ain't all bad depending on execution).
This makes the need to aim the jump, to control how long you hold the button and whether or not you adjust the jump backwards a bit all much more difficult endeavours than you ever thought they’d be. You get the hang of it the farther you go, but this game will be one you death-grip the controller with a lot. (And don’t even think of using the analog stick if you’re playing on emulator—It’s not worth it at all. It will absolutely get you killed.)
Honestly, like I said, the physics actually make the game fun in its own way too, but there’s absolutely no denying that the vast majority of frustration comes from it. It’s very difficult to count on yourself doing things right every single time, and it’s not like, say, Mario 64 where usually there’s no large threat from messing up an execution—Usually just a failure to get where you need to go.
This is why the save states are such a god-send. Half the time in gem-runs of levels there was at least one part I regarded as a bit too unfair or a gem path that was going to make everything that much harder and make you start all over again if you mess up.
I already grew a bit tired and frustrated with my conservative use of the save-states, so if I had to wait through load-screens or always have restart from the beginning late in a difficult stage from one slip up (gem-route especially) ALL the time, I’d have been livid.
The game’s still fun and I did do some actual perfect runs, but the control's just not consistent enough. It’s no wonder they made the checkpoints how they are in the later games, holy hell. Maybe they swung too hard in the other direction, but shifting the focus and being better safe than sorry was probably the right choice
And I aid I’d like a collectible related to no-deaths but coupling it to crate collection was just too much-- especially for this game. (Maybe Time Trial was indeed the right answer once Crash 3 came around. Not sure.)

Some simple fixes that would have immediately helped the game but preserve some of its feel:

Mid-Level checkpoints and/or Checkpoints after Bonus Rounds
Free deaths for Bonus Rounds
Communication that full crate collection for Tawna levels is not mandatory
Save Points after bosses (Seriously though, it’d be better if you just got to save whenever though. The way saves work is weird as fuck)

And really: Better physics would make a world of difference. I keep thinking that Crash 2 and 3 with a no-death challenge would work way better. It’s just hard to say whether you’d make the game worse overall by making that different, or if it’s nice that it is jank how it is for good and for ill.
And on that note: When you use things like save states—even conservatively—It’s hard to say how much something actually brings down a game. Not to mention how much you should let it off because of age or not. And that's how I kind of feel about the game. It could fall in a broad range of quality, but it's undeniably flawed.

To wrap things up though, let me say a bit about the rest of the game
It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but that more panicked looney-tunes creature going on a long adventure in treacherous environments feel really gives this game something special compared to the others. Though at the same time the almost complete lack of story and characterization, and the lack of Coco hurts the game.
The sound-track is actually great but as you know it’s a lot less melodical than either of the other entries. And the environments are the same, but just like with the soundtrack… They pale in comparison to how much 2 ups the ante, and even if some of 3’s elements are a bit cliche and boring to me 1 doesn’t do much to inject flavour. It reuses elements quite a bit even in the very endgame.
The bosses I would say are relatively clever or fun. The trick with them is more about figuring out how you damage them. After that they sort of become a joke. I like most of them more than N.Tropy in Crash 3 at least, which is the worst boss between 2 and 3.

This game very well could’ve been better than 3 for my money. It IS better if you’re mostly focused on the casual experience instead of the 100 %. And I like how this game doesn't expect you to make large leaps in logic for its coloured gems like 2 and 3 do, if I'm going to compliment the 100 %, and it's not like I didn't have any fun doing it. But it’s impossible to deny the variety and fun that Crash 3 brings, especially with the wealth of content it has when you start doing the time trials.

I’d like to give the game an 8. Maybe it deserves it, especially if I do consider that I could’ve went even harder with the save-states, and think to myself that this is the “right” way to play the game nowadays anyway.
But I just can’t. It wouldn’t feel right. So what can you do? The game’s a 7 even though its brothers are pretty much 10s, and even though this game has plenty to edge over them.

Okay, so, the 1998 sequel isn't on this site, but it's fine. I want to actually make a note of this game after watching a little long play of it.
This game is actually pretty interesting cause it's just point and click hide-and-seek, and it has a couple of games that are pretty neat but it ain't really all that, even among edutainment games.
So uh. Why a 6 still? I'll tell you why: Sound design. Sound design in this game rules. It carries its charm so hard, it's incredible. Everything in this game pretty much has a weird, unique, fun sound. It's hard not to be charmed. Also the art is actually really good too. It makes up most of what this game is, really. Especially when the best mini-games are the comic, shield and castle builder. Cool shit.

Actually used to be a go-to feel-good game to me. I just love every single part of it. The bosses rock, each mini-game is fun, the soundtrack slaps, the escalation and twists on the games are good and the Crystal and Relic challenges are ball busting. I really like it and have no problems with it, aside from needing to unlock every mini-game via story mode. Story Mode is the highlight, but it'd be better if there was every mini-game (minus secret ones) plus maybe one other variation of each at least unlocked from the start.

A perfect score for me is a game that lives up to every expectation I have of it or can barely be improved, moreso than being better than other games of lower ratings. Crash 2 is exactly that. It's still one of my favourite games in this case, but it's no pinnacle of gaming. But it wouldn't feel right to give anything but a 5 given the fact that only the bosses could use some improvement -- And that's discounting N.Gin and Tiny who ARE nothing but good. So yeah. Great game, the best Crash game, in fact.

Final Fantasy X... A very dear game to me that I've soured on oh so much nowadays.
I love everything but its gameplay. Story, characters, music, locales... FFX is one of the strongest and most immersive RPGs with its world.
The gameplay on the other hand... Every single part of the gameplay, walking, battles, leveling, bosses, end game, mini games... Every part has really big and obvious flaws or annoyances that just make it kinda unfun... And overall boring.
Like I really really breezed through the game. Bosses have clever concepts but are never to tough to overcome sans Yunalesca, and regular enemies are just a Simon Says of looking at the enemy type and switching in the one character for free.
So yeah. Im a bit unenthused by the game. But I still do kinda love it.

Dark Souls is the peak of gaming. Nah, just joking. Funny enough actually, like most masterpieces it still has a few flaws, but Dark Souls 1 is easily one of my favourite games and one of the best games of all time.
The biggest thing it has over its contemporaries is story and world. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 are the only Souls games where I really care about the story, unfortunately. I want to care more about them but they lack the same cohesion, clarity, themes, and impact as the first 2. And while Demon's Souls is very very interesting in its own right, Dark 1 knocks it out of the park.
And as far as the world goes, I feel like I don't need to reiterate what everyone know about it's Zelda/Metroid-like open world. It's a real shame they never repeated that.
But that only scratches the surface of why it's so much better, of course. There are all sorts of things big and small that really make it stand out. I think, one big thing is that aside from Pyromancy, it has the best overall balance with stuff. Discounting Bloodborne, which has less and different variables (but also very annoying Runes and Gems). The Estus system is perfect in Dark 1, all builds do a really solid amount of stuff, it has the only poise system that really, truly works, there are overpowered things, but most are fine, some are fun, and they're not as annoying as some stuff in the other games...
I'm not gonna sit around making the ultimate case for Dark Souls 1 or anything, but the game really really changed my view on video games and stuff in dramatic ways, and it really does click with me with a magic that none of the others really have as much.

Bloodborne is a rather mixed game for me in the scheme of the Souls series, but even despite that it's brilliant, gameplay easily being the strong suit and possibly being the best in the series.
I think the thing that bugs me most other than the game having a pretty steady tone even when it gets downright scary, is my difficulty to relate to its story. I've thought a lot about Bloodborne, and I really don't have much to take away from it thematically. I feel it has a lot of subtext and imagery, but I can't put the puzzle pieces into a very cohesive whole, unless I perhaps spent an ungodly amount of time making charts and notes, the plot and such is rather straight forward, and every faction essentially goes down the same path except for the Vampires, and the individual stories never made the biggest impression.
Again, unless I went out of my way to examine each piece very very thoroughly, I don't think I'm ever really gonna walk away satisfied. It just doesn't fully click. The emotions are strong playing the game, concepts are interesting, but I feel like I can't grasp the substance. In the face of the eldritch, it seems I'm lost.