Playing this makes me feel like a lab rat at best.
2005
I think just like Heroes, this game is very misunderstood. It's got the exact same goofy writing, high skill ceiling emphasis on combat tying into a bit of a learning curve, with a structure built on replayability that detractors always use against the game for some reason. So all the things that made Heroes a bit divisive, wrapped in decades of being memed on for the "dark and edgy" tone. Making people even less willing to learn the game, which is to say, not willing at all.
Before I get into the insane amount of baggage the game has attached to it, I'd like to just talk about the moment to moment gameplay really quick so it's not buried under said baggage. Long story short, I find Shadow to be one of the most satisfying Sonic games to go fast in. The routing for killing aliens to fill your chaos control meter and have it be worth it is cool. Mastering the gunplay with a bit of memorization lets you do many of the Kill all X enemies missions just as you would any other sonic game. Running full speed blasting the correct enemies as you're going is so fun. I think they really refined a lot of the adventure era gameplay by this point. The spindash is often called worthless for not functioning how it traditionally does, but it has a LOT of utility. The momentum it gives you allows you to jump extremely far, or if there's even a slight incline, extremely high. You don't really need it as a speed up button like usual, because your base movement speed is good enough. Grind rails now have a dedicated switch rail button so they work better than ever. And you get INSANE amounts of speed if you spindash into one. The light speed dash also works better than usual especially because important trails leave transparent rings that still work when you've collected them. Level design, while usually very linear, has a lot of obstacles and decent platforming. Lava Shelter is one of my favorites to go fast in, I really like the platforms slanted downwards towards lava that you have to jump between. This game absolutely utilizes momentum in a way a Sonic game should. Yes it CAN be hard to go fast as the levels are quite cluttered a lot of the time but that's the point of these games being made for repeat playthroughs. Not that it's a very difficult trial and error type game, but it's got room to master it and feel how satisfying it is to play once you're good at it. VS. if it was completely mindless from the start and there was nothing to overcome.
The bosses are nothing special necessarily, but the nuance in trying to kill them fast is also quite enjoyable. Especially the Sonic and Diablon fight is hugely different on your first time vs. when you've gotten good at it. Finding ways to fill up your meter to get infinite ammo, and timing it exactly with a moment where the weak spot is vulnerable...Lets you shred any boss and it's always a joy.
To get into the previously mentioned baggage-
There's a lot of commonly believed aspects about this game that aren't quite true. People often criticize the missions, and wish they'd just let you rush past everything and get to the end as fast as you can like a normal sonic game, instead of combing for enemies to kill. And I definitely understand this view, it can absolutely be pretty unfun to get to the end of a level and be met with 34/35 soldiers slain. But the frequency of these missions is a bit overstated. Counting the final level there's 55 different missions across 23 different levels. 25 of these missions are strictly just getting to the end goal like a normal sonic game. And 10 more of these are extremely linear missions that have you playing the levels like normal. Difference with those ones being you have to say, destroy 5 green crystals that are directly in your path and basically impossible to miss. With those 10 I'd personally say those are basically reach the goal type levels as well. There's 11 Kill X amount of enemies missions, 2 of which actually do have more than the bare minimum required amount. And honestly a few of these could be argued as being one of those linear missions that are impossible to miss the goals in I mentioned earlier. You have to kill 20 GUN soldiers? Have you tried going down the path with all the gun soldiers lined up in homing attack lines? Then there's 9 misc. missions. These vary but honestly a lot of them are very self explanitory and not something that would leave you lost. 3 of them are simply Destroy this ship before it escapes and the level is chasing it down and trying to do as much damage as quick as possible. There's a get 400 rings level which really isn't bad considering you only lose 10 rings on hit in this game.
Not every mission is a winner, but I genuinely don't think they're as fundamentally game breaking as many believe. A lot of the time it really is just Finish the level or ignore the goal ring and reach another exit further back And the freedom the game gives you with having 326 routes, really lets you flat out ignore more or less any mission you just don't want to do. Personally the only mission I actively have an issue with is the destroy all 30 bombs one in mad matrix. It's just not very intuitive, otherwise I've really come to enjoy most of what the game has to offer. Especially the Lost Impact Hero mission (Destroy all 35 Artificial chaos) has become one of my favorite levels in the series. I realize I'm a bit of a masochist on that one, but doing that level as fast as possible is extremely satisfying and the somber tone is so unique for a Sonic stage. If you'll forgive me projecting a bit here, I honestly don't understand why SA2 fans will put up with learning RNG emerald locations with hints that are actively trying to be as useless as possible...But learning where the one Alien they missed on their first playthrough of this game is, that's there every single time you play it (During a mission you likely don't even have to do if you don't want to), is a complete deal breaker. It's weird to me how HUGE of a complaint the missions are and how much people want to say the game would be so much better if it were just reaching the end of stages like normal, but only a small fraction of the missions are actually what's being complained about. One of the many things telling me Sonic games aren't often given the time of day and are judged largely by first impressions.
The gunplay is mocked immediately but it's one of the many attempts at making combat more integral to the series without devolving into traditional button mash-fare seen in generic platformers. The idea with heroes was a combat system that could deliver formidable enemies, that when mastered would allow you to shred enemies extremely fast without really breaking your flow in the level. This ended up proving to have too much of a learning curve for a lot of people, so Shadow simplifies it by adding guns to the equation. No more learning movesets and enemy reactions and counter play, etc. Just point and shoot with a wide variety of weapon types. This does a great job at mostly retaining the presence enemies had in Heroes, while simplifying the whole process to streamline the gameplay to be more standard sonic-fare. BUT, the idea of shadow using a gun is just too much for the world to handle for some reason. It genuinely all works really well and most of the gun types not only feel good to use but also are all very useful in different situations. From getting tons of ammo for an automatic gun, filling up your chaos meters for infinite ammo which lets you shoot pistols as fast as you can press the button, picking up a rocket launcher for some quick big damage and switching back to a more accurate weapon. It's all pretty seamless and there's some really helpful weapons you unlock from the Shadow crates every time you finish one of the ten main routes.
On the topic of guns, this game has the rep of Sega taking it too seriously. But honestly, looking at the actual content in the game, I gotta say it's more like the fans/general internet taking it too seriously. Shadow's here skating around with a massive gun shaped like a toilet seat that shoots out energy rays. He just takes the weapons from the enemies you slay. Goofy alien stuff from aliens, which includes a vacuum that just sucks enemies in. Literal NERF pistols from Eggman's robots. Torches or road signs from fallen debris as melee attacks. And more standard weaponry he gets from, naturally, G.U.N., the government agency who's been in the series using real guns (And comically huge unrealistic ones as well) for a while at this point. With cutscenes like Team Chaotix trying to hack a computer, only for shadow to waltz in and karate chop the keyboard, opening a portal, allowing him to chase eggman into the government's mainframe. With swearing levels not really any worse than the 2 recent sonic movies. Come on bro the game's E10+ it's nothing actually remotely edgy, it's so tame it's hard to even pretend it's trying too hard. I really don't think a lot of what the game brings to the table in this area, is actually new to the series. SA2's dark route opens with Eggman breaking into a government base with the ultimate goal of being a terrorist threat. SA2 has Sonic say the fabled, dreaded "Darn" word in one of Knuckles' rap songs, albeit not in his voice of course and sure most people don't notice that to be fair. SA2's the one that started the "Government kills child and then Eggman's grandfather" plotline. Shadow's writing is just as goofy as heroes, it's just following up where SA2 took the series. It's just a good time laughing at some premium B-movie dialogue. "Edgy the Hedgy" featuring characters like Charmy the Bee yapping in your ear about how wacky and fun the level you're playing is. Truly so dark and oppressive that we gotta joke about how edgy it is for 20 literal years in a row.
Being absolutely fair I get that it's somewhat disingenuous to imply nothing's different about the way this game presents itself compared to the other Sonic games, and there's nothing wrong with laughing at its E10+ edginess, I get it. The stock gunshot sound effect every time you select something in the menus is infinite comedy. Still it feels very Sonic to me in the way it faces its absurd premise from a very genuine, non ironic place. Never agreed with the crowd that lists off the crazy premise of Sonic as an excuse to write off the insanity some of the titles hit. "He's a super fast blue anthro hedgehog trying to stop an egg shaped fat man from powering robots with animals why's it have to take itself so seriously?!?!?" like bro the absurd premise is precisely why stuff like Shadow or the Kaiju dragon ball battles in space work. An absurd premise isn't a reason to play it safe and predictably it's an excuse to go all out with no regrets. It's not "taking it too seriously" to have a little fun with it. I'd certainly take it over the "NO FUN ALLOWED" banner looming over the series these days, as they're too afraid to do anything that reminds people of the franchise's embarrassing teenage years. Now we're just wacky ironically and actually Green Hill is Sonic's home even though it was just a place he ran through in 2 minutes 30 years ago 'cuz lord forbid a series grows past its first entry.
That said I'll never defend the story itself. The presentation more often than not is genuinely quite bad, and anything important is given the bare minimum amount of screen time and explanation. (The answer to whether or not the Shadow you're playing is a robot or the original is only given to you in some throwaway line if you end up spending 8 minutes on the final boss and also don't interrupt the line)Scenes are rarely coherently connected given there's over 300 routes you can take. And it's pretty lame that no matter how much you help out Eggman, you can never actually end a playthrough on his side.
But yeah, gameplays mostly a lot of fun if you're willing to stick with it. The "Edgy the hedgy" stuff the internet can't let go of lead to a combat system that maintains core principles Sonic was founded on while also simplifying a previous attempt to do that very thing. The cutscenes are good for a laugh though fans will likely be left disappointed by how bare and poorly told the plot is, given it's more of an attempted follow up to SA2 this time around. A lot of the music has grown on me a LOT over time. Tracks like GUN fortress and Lost Impact are so unique to the series in their tone and instrumentation. It's great to see a series known for such amazing music try some new styles here and there. Level themes are quite decent, I especially like the Halloween themed cryptic castle. Digital circuit's got a bit of a TRON aesthetic which is cool. Some classic Sonic in space levels and Eggman's base levels. Cool stuff!
The game's definitely a bit sloppy on the smaller details. Like maybe to progress in a mission you have to knock down an alien bat. Black Doom will be like SHADOW, USE THE DARK SOLDIER TO FLY FORWARD then you smack it to be able to ride it and Black Doom is like SHADOW YOU TRAITOR! There's a lot of instances of this kind of thing and really it's simply just a goofy surface level issue that doesn't truly effect anything at all. Sure if you do the dark mission and have points for killing your own team, those points count against you. But the A rank is locked behind speed more than anything this time around which all around works quite well. Also there's an expert mode run where you play through every level once you get A ranks in every mission which is a lot of fun. Most of the missions in that mode are simply reaching the end of the level too.
Truly a Man's game tbh.
Before I get into the insane amount of baggage the game has attached to it, I'd like to just talk about the moment to moment gameplay really quick so it's not buried under said baggage. Long story short, I find Shadow to be one of the most satisfying Sonic games to go fast in. The routing for killing aliens to fill your chaos control meter and have it be worth it is cool. Mastering the gunplay with a bit of memorization lets you do many of the Kill all X enemies missions just as you would any other sonic game. Running full speed blasting the correct enemies as you're going is so fun. I think they really refined a lot of the adventure era gameplay by this point. The spindash is often called worthless for not functioning how it traditionally does, but it has a LOT of utility. The momentum it gives you allows you to jump extremely far, or if there's even a slight incline, extremely high. You don't really need it as a speed up button like usual, because your base movement speed is good enough. Grind rails now have a dedicated switch rail button so they work better than ever. And you get INSANE amounts of speed if you spindash into one. The light speed dash also works better than usual especially because important trails leave transparent rings that still work when you've collected them. Level design, while usually very linear, has a lot of obstacles and decent platforming. Lava Shelter is one of my favorites to go fast in, I really like the platforms slanted downwards towards lava that you have to jump between. This game absolutely utilizes momentum in a way a Sonic game should. Yes it CAN be hard to go fast as the levels are quite cluttered a lot of the time but that's the point of these games being made for repeat playthroughs. Not that it's a very difficult trial and error type game, but it's got room to master it and feel how satisfying it is to play once you're good at it. VS. if it was completely mindless from the start and there was nothing to overcome.
The bosses are nothing special necessarily, but the nuance in trying to kill them fast is also quite enjoyable. Especially the Sonic and Diablon fight is hugely different on your first time vs. when you've gotten good at it. Finding ways to fill up your meter to get infinite ammo, and timing it exactly with a moment where the weak spot is vulnerable...Lets you shred any boss and it's always a joy.
To get into the previously mentioned baggage-
There's a lot of commonly believed aspects about this game that aren't quite true. People often criticize the missions, and wish they'd just let you rush past everything and get to the end as fast as you can like a normal sonic game, instead of combing for enemies to kill. And I definitely understand this view, it can absolutely be pretty unfun to get to the end of a level and be met with 34/35 soldiers slain. But the frequency of these missions is a bit overstated. Counting the final level there's 55 different missions across 23 different levels. 25 of these missions are strictly just getting to the end goal like a normal sonic game. And 10 more of these are extremely linear missions that have you playing the levels like normal. Difference with those ones being you have to say, destroy 5 green crystals that are directly in your path and basically impossible to miss. With those 10 I'd personally say those are basically reach the goal type levels as well. There's 11 Kill X amount of enemies missions, 2 of which actually do have more than the bare minimum required amount. And honestly a few of these could be argued as being one of those linear missions that are impossible to miss the goals in I mentioned earlier. You have to kill 20 GUN soldiers? Have you tried going down the path with all the gun soldiers lined up in homing attack lines? Then there's 9 misc. missions. These vary but honestly a lot of them are very self explanitory and not something that would leave you lost. 3 of them are simply Destroy this ship before it escapes and the level is chasing it down and trying to do as much damage as quick as possible. There's a get 400 rings level which really isn't bad considering you only lose 10 rings on hit in this game.
Not every mission is a winner, but I genuinely don't think they're as fundamentally game breaking as many believe. A lot of the time it really is just Finish the level or ignore the goal ring and reach another exit further back And the freedom the game gives you with having 326 routes, really lets you flat out ignore more or less any mission you just don't want to do. Personally the only mission I actively have an issue with is the destroy all 30 bombs one in mad matrix. It's just not very intuitive, otherwise I've really come to enjoy most of what the game has to offer. Especially the Lost Impact Hero mission (Destroy all 35 Artificial chaos) has become one of my favorite levels in the series. I realize I'm a bit of a masochist on that one, but doing that level as fast as possible is extremely satisfying and the somber tone is so unique for a Sonic stage. If you'll forgive me projecting a bit here, I honestly don't understand why SA2 fans will put up with learning RNG emerald locations with hints that are actively trying to be as useless as possible...But learning where the one Alien they missed on their first playthrough of this game is, that's there every single time you play it (During a mission you likely don't even have to do if you don't want to), is a complete deal breaker. It's weird to me how HUGE of a complaint the missions are and how much people want to say the game would be so much better if it were just reaching the end of stages like normal, but only a small fraction of the missions are actually what's being complained about. One of the many things telling me Sonic games aren't often given the time of day and are judged largely by first impressions.
The gunplay is mocked immediately but it's one of the many attempts at making combat more integral to the series without devolving into traditional button mash-fare seen in generic platformers. The idea with heroes was a combat system that could deliver formidable enemies, that when mastered would allow you to shred enemies extremely fast without really breaking your flow in the level. This ended up proving to have too much of a learning curve for a lot of people, so Shadow simplifies it by adding guns to the equation. No more learning movesets and enemy reactions and counter play, etc. Just point and shoot with a wide variety of weapon types. This does a great job at mostly retaining the presence enemies had in Heroes, while simplifying the whole process to streamline the gameplay to be more standard sonic-fare. BUT, the idea of shadow using a gun is just too much for the world to handle for some reason. It genuinely all works really well and most of the gun types not only feel good to use but also are all very useful in different situations. From getting tons of ammo for an automatic gun, filling up your chaos meters for infinite ammo which lets you shoot pistols as fast as you can press the button, picking up a rocket launcher for some quick big damage and switching back to a more accurate weapon. It's all pretty seamless and there's some really helpful weapons you unlock from the Shadow crates every time you finish one of the ten main routes.
On the topic of guns, this game has the rep of Sega taking it too seriously. But honestly, looking at the actual content in the game, I gotta say it's more like the fans/general internet taking it too seriously. Shadow's here skating around with a massive gun shaped like a toilet seat that shoots out energy rays. He just takes the weapons from the enemies you slay. Goofy alien stuff from aliens, which includes a vacuum that just sucks enemies in. Literal NERF pistols from Eggman's robots. Torches or road signs from fallen debris as melee attacks. And more standard weaponry he gets from, naturally, G.U.N., the government agency who's been in the series using real guns (And comically huge unrealistic ones as well) for a while at this point. With cutscenes like Team Chaotix trying to hack a computer, only for shadow to waltz in and karate chop the keyboard, opening a portal, allowing him to chase eggman into the government's mainframe. With swearing levels not really any worse than the 2 recent sonic movies. Come on bro the game's E10+ it's nothing actually remotely edgy, it's so tame it's hard to even pretend it's trying too hard. I really don't think a lot of what the game brings to the table in this area, is actually new to the series. SA2's dark route opens with Eggman breaking into a government base with the ultimate goal of being a terrorist threat. SA2 has Sonic say the fabled, dreaded "Darn" word in one of Knuckles' rap songs, albeit not in his voice of course and sure most people don't notice that to be fair. SA2's the one that started the "Government kills child and then Eggman's grandfather" plotline. Shadow's writing is just as goofy as heroes, it's just following up where SA2 took the series. It's just a good time laughing at some premium B-movie dialogue. "Edgy the Hedgy" featuring characters like Charmy the Bee yapping in your ear about how wacky and fun the level you're playing is. Truly so dark and oppressive that we gotta joke about how edgy it is for 20 literal years in a row.
Being absolutely fair I get that it's somewhat disingenuous to imply nothing's different about the way this game presents itself compared to the other Sonic games, and there's nothing wrong with laughing at its E10+ edginess, I get it. The stock gunshot sound effect every time you select something in the menus is infinite comedy. Still it feels very Sonic to me in the way it faces its absurd premise from a very genuine, non ironic place. Never agreed with the crowd that lists off the crazy premise of Sonic as an excuse to write off the insanity some of the titles hit. "He's a super fast blue anthro hedgehog trying to stop an egg shaped fat man from powering robots with animals why's it have to take itself so seriously?!?!?" like bro the absurd premise is precisely why stuff like Shadow or the Kaiju dragon ball battles in space work. An absurd premise isn't a reason to play it safe and predictably it's an excuse to go all out with no regrets. It's not "taking it too seriously" to have a little fun with it. I'd certainly take it over the "NO FUN ALLOWED" banner looming over the series these days, as they're too afraid to do anything that reminds people of the franchise's embarrassing teenage years. Now we're just wacky ironically and actually Green Hill is Sonic's home even though it was just a place he ran through in 2 minutes 30 years ago 'cuz lord forbid a series grows past its first entry.
That said I'll never defend the story itself. The presentation more often than not is genuinely quite bad, and anything important is given the bare minimum amount of screen time and explanation. (The answer to whether or not the Shadow you're playing is a robot or the original is only given to you in some throwaway line if you end up spending 8 minutes on the final boss and also don't interrupt the line)Scenes are rarely coherently connected given there's over 300 routes you can take. And it's pretty lame that no matter how much you help out Eggman, you can never actually end a playthrough on his side.
But yeah, gameplays mostly a lot of fun if you're willing to stick with it. The "Edgy the hedgy" stuff the internet can't let go of lead to a combat system that maintains core principles Sonic was founded on while also simplifying a previous attempt to do that very thing. The cutscenes are good for a laugh though fans will likely be left disappointed by how bare and poorly told the plot is, given it's more of an attempted follow up to SA2 this time around. A lot of the music has grown on me a LOT over time. Tracks like GUN fortress and Lost Impact are so unique to the series in their tone and instrumentation. It's great to see a series known for such amazing music try some new styles here and there. Level themes are quite decent, I especially like the Halloween themed cryptic castle. Digital circuit's got a bit of a TRON aesthetic which is cool. Some classic Sonic in space levels and Eggman's base levels. Cool stuff!
The game's definitely a bit sloppy on the smaller details. Like maybe to progress in a mission you have to knock down an alien bat. Black Doom will be like SHADOW, USE THE DARK SOLDIER TO FLY FORWARD then you smack it to be able to ride it and Black Doom is like SHADOW YOU TRAITOR! There's a lot of instances of this kind of thing and really it's simply just a goofy surface level issue that doesn't truly effect anything at all. Sure if you do the dark mission and have points for killing your own team, those points count against you. But the A rank is locked behind speed more than anything this time around which all around works quite well. Also there's an expert mode run where you play through every level once you get A ranks in every mission which is a lot of fun. Most of the missions in that mode are simply reaching the end of the level too.
Truly a Man's game tbh.
2003
This is by far one of the most engaging games in the series. I really think they were onto something great with this one. From the increased depth in combat that adds a lot to the moment to moment gameplay, to having 4 different ways to play the game. The game's a lot closer to the originals as far as level design style and structure. In that it's a lot more video gamey obstacle course driven rather than SA1's relatively "grounded" locations or SA2's brand of hallways. And it absolutely demands you engage with its mechanics. Thing with Heroes is that it's totally ok with you having an absolutely miserable time. This used to be one of my most hated Sonic games, levels were just so long and frustrating and enemies could be such a pain. For one, I was playing the ps2 version so the controls weren't as responsive as they are on other versions due to the framerate issues. But even on the ps2, I ended up loving the game once it all clicked.
I feel like a lot of the "hate it" crowd in this love it or hate it game are big SA2 fans. Being a direct sequel to SA2, it's a DRAMATICALLY different game. For me, this is strictly a good thing. The combat system is very uniquely Sonic, it's very rewarding to be able to shred big enemies without breaking your flow once you get good at the game. This extends to bosses like the Egg Emperor. He can be an intimidating wall that is constantly slapping your rings out of you on top of having impenetrable defenses, but you absolutely can beat him incredibly fast once you know how to fully utilize your moveset. Since no other game does its combat quite like Heroes obviously it's a bit of a learning curve.
A lot of people also complain about having to beat it 4 times to have the final boss open up. I feel like this is missing the point. If you like the game, having 4 different ways of playing it is HUGE. If you don't like the game...Well what do you care? Stop playing. It's not like this is a story driven entry. The freedom to choose how you want to play the game adds so much more than it can possibly detract. Perhaps it would have been better to just unlock the final boss if you get all the chaos emeralds and have beaten one of the stories. I don't know, but worrying about unlocking another mediocre final boss in this series is far from what I'm thinking about when I talk about a Sonic game. What's important is the levels themselves.
If I want to play a more bite sized version of the game, with tension turned way down, there's Team Rose. Significantly shorter levels with an overpowered moveset. Team Sonic has meatier levels and a more balanced moveset. Team Dark is for people like me that think Eggmanland in HD Unleashed is the best level in the series. I love being able to choose between a more relaxed experience with short levels. Or one that's actively trying to kick me to the curb with absolutely massive stages. Like, forget the final boss, even if there wasn't one I'd be playing every team. Then there's team Chaotix, which admittedly I rarely play. I feel like their mission oriented gameplay doesn't fit quite as well into the more classic feel of the level design. Their style is improved on in the next game. Chaotix isn't a bad time but their stages don't really vibe with the appeal of the game for me. Though if I took the effort to really learn more of their levels they'd probably be cool too.
It's also nice they were able to include so many characters while keeping the game focused on a single gameplay style. While I do love the tech demo feel SA1 had where they were just showing off all the different things the Dreamcast could do, it is nice to have the most important parts of the game be as good as it can be with one focused gameplay style.
The game's got a bit of a reputation for being hard to control and really janky. To me this is only true when it comes to the pinball level and the special stages. The special stages are easy enough to beat anyway, but yeah that first pinball stage is pretty rough, the physics just did NOT show up for work on that one. Otherwise I really don't understand the complaints with controls or the acceleration being too high. You only really go as fast as you make yourself go. I never found it hard to navigate anything with the speed characters, they have a pretty comfortable speed when you're not actively trying to go as fast as possible. And I love that you CAN go extremely fast, it's entirely dictated by you. The rocket-accel move replaces the spindash in this game, and it's just one of the many things that fans of previous games may be thrown off by. But it's incredibly versatile and useful and a lot of fun. Rail switching is somewhat problematic just like in SA2, but I find it works where it absolutely needs to. Definitely tends to not work well when going super fast on turns but you'll never have to be switching during those moments anyway.
Soundtracks great. This is personally my favorite voice performances in the series. It's very goofy but with loads of charm. Even tails, who's voice in this game gets flack. I'm just saying he's always been a young child, it's cool he's actually voiced by one this time. For once he actually sounds his age and it's adorable. Deem Bristow as Eggman is great to hear one last time, even if the game's cheerful vibe doesn't let him hit that intimidating tone he did in SA1 at times. The cutscenes are borderline nonsense, and from what little I've looked into it, I gather there's layers upon layers of mistranslation going on. In a more story driven game this could be a problem, but the game's tone is so whimsical and carefree, and cutscenes go by so fast, the insanity is just a plus for me. Also nice to see the characters not animate like lifeless puppets in cutscenes anymore.
This one's more fun the more I play it, based game~
I feel like a lot of the "hate it" crowd in this love it or hate it game are big SA2 fans. Being a direct sequel to SA2, it's a DRAMATICALLY different game. For me, this is strictly a good thing. The combat system is very uniquely Sonic, it's very rewarding to be able to shred big enemies without breaking your flow once you get good at the game. This extends to bosses like the Egg Emperor. He can be an intimidating wall that is constantly slapping your rings out of you on top of having impenetrable defenses, but you absolutely can beat him incredibly fast once you know how to fully utilize your moveset. Since no other game does its combat quite like Heroes obviously it's a bit of a learning curve.
A lot of people also complain about having to beat it 4 times to have the final boss open up. I feel like this is missing the point. If you like the game, having 4 different ways of playing it is HUGE. If you don't like the game...Well what do you care? Stop playing. It's not like this is a story driven entry. The freedom to choose how you want to play the game adds so much more than it can possibly detract. Perhaps it would have been better to just unlock the final boss if you get all the chaos emeralds and have beaten one of the stories. I don't know, but worrying about unlocking another mediocre final boss in this series is far from what I'm thinking about when I talk about a Sonic game. What's important is the levels themselves.
If I want to play a more bite sized version of the game, with tension turned way down, there's Team Rose. Significantly shorter levels with an overpowered moveset. Team Sonic has meatier levels and a more balanced moveset. Team Dark is for people like me that think Eggmanland in HD Unleashed is the best level in the series. I love being able to choose between a more relaxed experience with short levels. Or one that's actively trying to kick me to the curb with absolutely massive stages. Like, forget the final boss, even if there wasn't one I'd be playing every team. Then there's team Chaotix, which admittedly I rarely play. I feel like their mission oriented gameplay doesn't fit quite as well into the more classic feel of the level design. Their style is improved on in the next game. Chaotix isn't a bad time but their stages don't really vibe with the appeal of the game for me. Though if I took the effort to really learn more of their levels they'd probably be cool too.
It's also nice they were able to include so many characters while keeping the game focused on a single gameplay style. While I do love the tech demo feel SA1 had where they were just showing off all the different things the Dreamcast could do, it is nice to have the most important parts of the game be as good as it can be with one focused gameplay style.
The game's got a bit of a reputation for being hard to control and really janky. To me this is only true when it comes to the pinball level and the special stages. The special stages are easy enough to beat anyway, but yeah that first pinball stage is pretty rough, the physics just did NOT show up for work on that one. Otherwise I really don't understand the complaints with controls or the acceleration being too high. You only really go as fast as you make yourself go. I never found it hard to navigate anything with the speed characters, they have a pretty comfortable speed when you're not actively trying to go as fast as possible. And I love that you CAN go extremely fast, it's entirely dictated by you. The rocket-accel move replaces the spindash in this game, and it's just one of the many things that fans of previous games may be thrown off by. But it's incredibly versatile and useful and a lot of fun. Rail switching is somewhat problematic just like in SA2, but I find it works where it absolutely needs to. Definitely tends to not work well when going super fast on turns but you'll never have to be switching during those moments anyway.
Soundtracks great. This is personally my favorite voice performances in the series. It's very goofy but with loads of charm. Even tails, who's voice in this game gets flack. I'm just saying he's always been a young child, it's cool he's actually voiced by one this time. For once he actually sounds his age and it's adorable. Deem Bristow as Eggman is great to hear one last time, even if the game's cheerful vibe doesn't let him hit that intimidating tone he did in SA1 at times. The cutscenes are borderline nonsense, and from what little I've looked into it, I gather there's layers upon layers of mistranslation going on. In a more story driven game this could be a problem, but the game's tone is so whimsical and carefree, and cutscenes go by so fast, the insanity is just a plus for me. Also nice to see the characters not animate like lifeless puppets in cutscenes anymore.
This one's more fun the more I play it, based game~
2001
It's funny, despite being somewhat of a hater of this game, I find myself disagreeing with a lot of the criticisms thrown at it. It's a perfectly functional game. Nothing about it makes it hard to enjoy for what it is. My take is that it's just too dumbed down from the first Adventure game and/or forgets a lot of the core ideas the series was built on from the beginning. A more casual fan or someone who's new to the series, likely will have an ok time at worst with this game. I'm just in too deep with this franchise to honestly enjoy much of what this game offers anymore. I don't dislike this game, but as a genuinely huge fan of the series as a whole, this isn't even in the top half of my personal Sonic tier list. Less "it's bad" and more "I've outgrown it". This is a game I find myself both adamantly defending, and also thoroughly tearing apart. I certainly will never understand how people say the camera is this game's worst enemy. Like bruh you may as well be saying you can't see what's coming in Crash Bandicoot. The game's a bunch of hallways with preset camera angles that give you the best possible view 99.5% of the time.
A lot of people say the game's 1/3rd good, referring to Sonic/Shadow's stages being the only good part. But imo they're the worst part by a long shot. There's nothing that makes the levels hard to play or poorly designed, they're just VERY straightforward. Not in a It's linear and therefor it's bad kind of way, but in a I feel like I'm playing a precursor to Sonic Forces kind of way. Goodbye to the idea that you can play at your own pace, speed being a reward for mastery of a level, with the core gameplay being about using momentum to your advantage. Hello samey empty hallways that shove you through at full speed with little to no effort. The varied landscapes of SA1 stages are nowhere to be seen. The ranking system added in this game is a great addition to the series, but in this case it feels like a bandaid solution. Ranking systems in Sonic are meant to really push the idea of replaying stages to get better at them, they're a seamless addition to the appeal of the Sonic formula. But in SA2 the system is skewed so hard to just killing enemies and hitting tricks. This is because your first playthrough of a SA2 stage is going to look VERY similar to your 20th and beyond. There's not really any mastery to be had, you can't really run down an empty path filled with dash pads and automated loops any better if you tried. And while getting an A rank is inherently satisfying to an extent, it's not enough to change the fact that SA2's speed levels are some of the most bare bones in the series. And every level is designed the same way.
Keep in mind this is coming from someone who REALLY values replay value in Sonic games and has replayed every single game in the series to a probably unhealthy degree. The average person will likely find no issue in how SA2's speed stages are handled. But for the same reasons Forces is a very limiting and uninteresting game to replay, SA2's levels do hit an expiration date. You can only run down the same shallow pathways so many times, hitting the same tricks for bonus points before you'd rather just play literally any other game in the series. This game's more boost to win than half the actual boost games are.
Mechs are inherently a bit more engaging and getting a higher rank is more satisfying as the gameplay style is designed entirely around getting higher combos for higher scores. Stretching your lock on as long as possible to aim as close to a perfect combo as you can is fun enough. It does get pretty repetitive really fast though as besides a very select few exceptions, there's very little in the way of level gimmicks to make many of them stand out. And platforming is mostly an afterthought. Any challenge really just comes from enemies with obnoxious placements. Still this segment of the game fares a bit better than the speed imo as it's more than just watching sonic run down a hallway. The Mechs just aren't even as satisfying to play as Amy from SA1 let alone Gamma who's their direct counterpart. The mere fact that you play as Eggman during half of these stages is enough to carry them for the first playthrough at least.
Treasure hunting is an interesting one. On paper it's a huge improvement over the ones from SA1. They get their own stages instead of piggybacking off existing Sonic stages. They get progressively bigger and more complex. Knuckles' movement and combat is now more acrobatic and fast than before. But they decided to use these levels as hard padding unfortunately by gutting the radar to only being able to find 1 emerald at a time, in a strict order. I understand nerfing the hint system from SA1 but they could have just made it a stationary arrow or SOMETHING, because the hint system is completely worthless to 99% of players now. Let alone later in the game when they put the text given to you by the hints in reverse...noissap ym si ngised emaG. Like they were just trying to be as annoying and unusable as possible seemingly on purpose here. Despite my complaints though these are definitely the best levels in the game. There's actually a lot of nuance to these stages not really present in the rest of the game. It's the only style that feels rewarding to master because of it. Simply optimizing how you're navigating the levels and its obstacles, and finding a quick route to check the most areas as fast as possible, feels great! I never memorized many of the hints, as there's so many different emerald locations and so many of the worst hints ever written by man that it's beyond me. But, unlike the speed stages, your rank is largely determined by...your speed. This makes consistently getting A ranks actually satisfying since it's not just about I pressed A in the right spots and killed enough enemies like in the speed levels, and more about actually getting good at the stages. (Since there's ROOM to get good at these ones) but also leads into the problem that the treasure hunting stages are honestly best without worrying about your rank. They're such an RNG nightmare and the stages quickly get WAY too big for the radar they give you. Just flying around Pumpkin Hill and vibing to the music and aesthetic is enough to make Knuckles' portion enjoyable. But this game's entirely built around you wanting to get A ranks and rewarding you for doing so. I think more people would enjoy the treasure hunting stages for what they are, if they didn't feel like anything other than an A rank meant well gee now I just have to play it again It goes against the entire appeal of the style I think.
So speed has very lacking, repetitive, mostly unengaging level design. Mechs are the most unfun to control things in this series and also too repetitive to be replayable in the slightest. And treasure hunting has room to be a really fun portion of the game but is still held back by flat out bad design choices. Story presentation is honestly the ONLY area that was objectively improved over SA1. Sonic doesn't make goofy faces while delivering his goofy dialogue that means the game's better I suppose? Eggman has a mouth that can open this time around so that's huge.
It definitely feels like a more polished game from a presentation standpoint, but if you go for 100% it honestly pushes the engine REALLY thin for what it can handle. Every level has 5 missions and really the further I get into doing these the more exhausted I get by the game. Hunting for the mystic music flute for every character with very little idea which level it might be in and hunting for the chao gets really obnoxious in a lot of these stages. I just don't think most of these stages were good enough to warrant having 5 missions in each one. You'll quickly blast through all the decent ones and be left with the worst stages getting worse and worse with each mission. Gotta love doing 100 ring missions in a game that spawns enemies on top of your head. Or the chill vibes of the treasure hunting stages getting even more obliterated by having a time limit as one of the missions. The missions are all the same across every level and gameplay style, it gets so exhausting by the end of getting 180 emblems. And for what? An extra average level unlocked once you get all of them?
This game's got it all, a complete lack of depth leading to boredom and no replay value, and total frustration through trying to 100% it at the same time! As well as a Chao garden that's more charming than it is actually fun. Sonic fans will really hold a grudge for literal decades on perceived "non-sonic" gameplay ideas like Big the Cat, or Amy...And sit there watching their chao do 30 really slow races for hours. Not to talk too much trash on chao, I do really like them and have had my fun with them, especially on Dreamcast where there's a bit of a Tamagotchi angle from the VMU's. And the depth in raising them is super interesting and the exact kinda thing I love out of classic niche games. I just don't understand Sonic fans. I feel like this game is given a huge pass given it's what introduced a LOT of people to the series. But to me it doesn't really feature much I love about this series. Seems to me a lot of people fell in love with this game and proceeded to hate almost every game after it despite (imo) those games being more faithful to the Sonic Formula and therefor more engaging than this one. To make a probably weird correlation... SA2 is to Sonic what Skyrim is to Elder Scrolls/rpgs in general.
This game's kind of the start of people preferring the dumbed down route for sonic games. The series even 20+ years later struggles to escape the shadow of the obscenely undeserved and double standard ridden pedestal SA2 is sitting on. SA2 being one of the most popular games in the series puts Sega in an unwinnable position. Trying to make a game more engaging than SA2 filters a LOT of people. But making a game as shallow as SA2 gets SA2 elitists scoffing and pretending their game is the Smash Bros Melee of Sonic when actually it's the Brawl at best. I don't mean to trash on other's opinions, I could just as easily talk about why I have a good time with this game. This is just my perception of SA2's place in the series and why despite me not actively disliking the game I find it doesn't hold up to much scrutiny.
It's fine but it's not even in the top 13 best sonic games available on the Gamecube alone. Still I've managed to get all 180 emblems on both Xbox360 and Steam, as well as beating it on the Dreamcast. Lotta highs lotta lows, more lows the more I play it though as I've honestly just outgrown the level design long story short.
A lot of people say the game's 1/3rd good, referring to Sonic/Shadow's stages being the only good part. But imo they're the worst part by a long shot. There's nothing that makes the levels hard to play or poorly designed, they're just VERY straightforward. Not in a It's linear and therefor it's bad kind of way, but in a I feel like I'm playing a precursor to Sonic Forces kind of way. Goodbye to the idea that you can play at your own pace, speed being a reward for mastery of a level, with the core gameplay being about using momentum to your advantage. Hello samey empty hallways that shove you through at full speed with little to no effort. The varied landscapes of SA1 stages are nowhere to be seen. The ranking system added in this game is a great addition to the series, but in this case it feels like a bandaid solution. Ranking systems in Sonic are meant to really push the idea of replaying stages to get better at them, they're a seamless addition to the appeal of the Sonic formula. But in SA2 the system is skewed so hard to just killing enemies and hitting tricks. This is because your first playthrough of a SA2 stage is going to look VERY similar to your 20th and beyond. There's not really any mastery to be had, you can't really run down an empty path filled with dash pads and automated loops any better if you tried. And while getting an A rank is inherently satisfying to an extent, it's not enough to change the fact that SA2's speed levels are some of the most bare bones in the series. And every level is designed the same way.
Keep in mind this is coming from someone who REALLY values replay value in Sonic games and has replayed every single game in the series to a probably unhealthy degree. The average person will likely find no issue in how SA2's speed stages are handled. But for the same reasons Forces is a very limiting and uninteresting game to replay, SA2's levels do hit an expiration date. You can only run down the same shallow pathways so many times, hitting the same tricks for bonus points before you'd rather just play literally any other game in the series. This game's more boost to win than half the actual boost games are.
Mechs are inherently a bit more engaging and getting a higher rank is more satisfying as the gameplay style is designed entirely around getting higher combos for higher scores. Stretching your lock on as long as possible to aim as close to a perfect combo as you can is fun enough. It does get pretty repetitive really fast though as besides a very select few exceptions, there's very little in the way of level gimmicks to make many of them stand out. And platforming is mostly an afterthought. Any challenge really just comes from enemies with obnoxious placements. Still this segment of the game fares a bit better than the speed imo as it's more than just watching sonic run down a hallway. The Mechs just aren't even as satisfying to play as Amy from SA1 let alone Gamma who's their direct counterpart. The mere fact that you play as Eggman during half of these stages is enough to carry them for the first playthrough at least.
Treasure hunting is an interesting one. On paper it's a huge improvement over the ones from SA1. They get their own stages instead of piggybacking off existing Sonic stages. They get progressively bigger and more complex. Knuckles' movement and combat is now more acrobatic and fast than before. But they decided to use these levels as hard padding unfortunately by gutting the radar to only being able to find 1 emerald at a time, in a strict order. I understand nerfing the hint system from SA1 but they could have just made it a stationary arrow or SOMETHING, because the hint system is completely worthless to 99% of players now. Let alone later in the game when they put the text given to you by the hints in reverse...noissap ym si ngised emaG. Like they were just trying to be as annoying and unusable as possible seemingly on purpose here. Despite my complaints though these are definitely the best levels in the game. There's actually a lot of nuance to these stages not really present in the rest of the game. It's the only style that feels rewarding to master because of it. Simply optimizing how you're navigating the levels and its obstacles, and finding a quick route to check the most areas as fast as possible, feels great! I never memorized many of the hints, as there's so many different emerald locations and so many of the worst hints ever written by man that it's beyond me. But, unlike the speed stages, your rank is largely determined by...your speed. This makes consistently getting A ranks actually satisfying since it's not just about I pressed A in the right spots and killed enough enemies like in the speed levels, and more about actually getting good at the stages. (Since there's ROOM to get good at these ones) but also leads into the problem that the treasure hunting stages are honestly best without worrying about your rank. They're such an RNG nightmare and the stages quickly get WAY too big for the radar they give you. Just flying around Pumpkin Hill and vibing to the music and aesthetic is enough to make Knuckles' portion enjoyable. But this game's entirely built around you wanting to get A ranks and rewarding you for doing so. I think more people would enjoy the treasure hunting stages for what they are, if they didn't feel like anything other than an A rank meant well gee now I just have to play it again It goes against the entire appeal of the style I think.
So speed has very lacking, repetitive, mostly unengaging level design. Mechs are the most unfun to control things in this series and also too repetitive to be replayable in the slightest. And treasure hunting has room to be a really fun portion of the game but is still held back by flat out bad design choices. Story presentation is honestly the ONLY area that was objectively improved over SA1. Sonic doesn't make goofy faces while delivering his goofy dialogue that means the game's better I suppose? Eggman has a mouth that can open this time around so that's huge.
It definitely feels like a more polished game from a presentation standpoint, but if you go for 100% it honestly pushes the engine REALLY thin for what it can handle. Every level has 5 missions and really the further I get into doing these the more exhausted I get by the game. Hunting for the mystic music flute for every character with very little idea which level it might be in and hunting for the chao gets really obnoxious in a lot of these stages. I just don't think most of these stages were good enough to warrant having 5 missions in each one. You'll quickly blast through all the decent ones and be left with the worst stages getting worse and worse with each mission. Gotta love doing 100 ring missions in a game that spawns enemies on top of your head. Or the chill vibes of the treasure hunting stages getting even more obliterated by having a time limit as one of the missions. The missions are all the same across every level and gameplay style, it gets so exhausting by the end of getting 180 emblems. And for what? An extra average level unlocked once you get all of them?
This game's got it all, a complete lack of depth leading to boredom and no replay value, and total frustration through trying to 100% it at the same time! As well as a Chao garden that's more charming than it is actually fun. Sonic fans will really hold a grudge for literal decades on perceived "non-sonic" gameplay ideas like Big the Cat, or Amy...And sit there watching their chao do 30 really slow races for hours. Not to talk too much trash on chao, I do really like them and have had my fun with them, especially on Dreamcast where there's a bit of a Tamagotchi angle from the VMU's. And the depth in raising them is super interesting and the exact kinda thing I love out of classic niche games. I just don't understand Sonic fans. I feel like this game is given a huge pass given it's what introduced a LOT of people to the series. But to me it doesn't really feature much I love about this series. Seems to me a lot of people fell in love with this game and proceeded to hate almost every game after it despite (imo) those games being more faithful to the Sonic Formula and therefor more engaging than this one. To make a probably weird correlation... SA2 is to Sonic what Skyrim is to Elder Scrolls/rpgs in general.
This game's kind of the start of people preferring the dumbed down route for sonic games. The series even 20+ years later struggles to escape the shadow of the obscenely undeserved and double standard ridden pedestal SA2 is sitting on. SA2 being one of the most popular games in the series puts Sega in an unwinnable position. Trying to make a game more engaging than SA2 filters a LOT of people. But making a game as shallow as SA2 gets SA2 elitists scoffing and pretending their game is the Smash Bros Melee of Sonic when actually it's the Brawl at best. I don't mean to trash on other's opinions, I could just as easily talk about why I have a good time with this game. This is just my perception of SA2's place in the series and why despite me not actively disliking the game I find it doesn't hold up to much scrutiny.
It's fine but it's not even in the top 13 best sonic games available on the Gamecube alone. Still I've managed to get all 180 emblems on both Xbox360 and Steam, as well as beating it on the Dreamcast. Lotta highs lotta lows, more lows the more I play it though as I've honestly just outgrown the level design long story short.
Played this for the first time as one of the first things I got on the PS5 a few years back. The more time this game occupies my thoughts the more I love it. Truly a fine wine kind of experience. Featuring almost entirely theoretical mechanics you just have to feel out on your own. Love the emphasis on freestyling over it simply just being about following the strict commands like any average rhythm game. Unfortunately the exact timing is apparently a tad botched in emulation and modern ports. Though knowing how bad it can get while trying to emulate the original, aside from a major difficulty spike in level 4 this remastered version is quite good. And besides, it being slightly busted in level 4 forced me to get really good at freestyling so it works out. Though I'm gonna have to track down a PS1 copy of this game someday to see exactly how it's meant to be.
There's nothing else quite like it. It's only got 6 songs but it's left an impression that lasts a lifetime.
There's nothing else quite like it. It's only got 6 songs but it's left an impression that lasts a lifetime.
2008
I'm not usually a big puzzle game guy but this game's beautiful and timeless. The puzzles and the variety of mechanics that they introduce as the game goes on increase in complexity but it never feels completely hopeless. And that's not to say you won't be stumped by some of these stages. I just think the freedom in the goo mechanics makes coming to a solution feel very natural, you're able to experiment a lot. The levels never feel samey or repetitive. In a lot of puzzle games I'm dreading the next stage but it's always a treat to see what's next in this one.
The story is simple but it presents itself in a very grand way despite also not taking itself very seriously. It's got a very unique feeling and the OST really helps double down on that feeling along with the art direction. I actually own the soundtrack on vinyl, it's so good with a lot of variety, all very distinctly World of Goo. I especially love "Red Carpet Extend-o-Matic" and "Screamer"...and every other song too. (The composer put up the whole ost for free download on his website btw) It's impressive how memorable so much of the game is to me even 15 years later.
There's also an optional area all the extra goo balls go to. With the goal of making the tallest tower you can. Not sure if the floating clouds showing other player's tower heights as you go are still working in any way, but I always really enjoyed this distraction and it encourages you to find better solutions in the levels to get more goo for your tower.
This game's best played on the Wii or Steam given it's made for pointer controls. Though you'll of course have to hack it into your Wii at this point unfortunately. It's on the switch as well and the gyro really isn't half bad but it's of course no match for using a mouse. Regardless, this is about as good as a game in this style can be. WORLD OF GOO 2 HYPE
The story is simple but it presents itself in a very grand way despite also not taking itself very seriously. It's got a very unique feeling and the OST really helps double down on that feeling along with the art direction. I actually own the soundtrack on vinyl, it's so good with a lot of variety, all very distinctly World of Goo. I especially love "Red Carpet Extend-o-Matic" and "Screamer"...and every other song too. (The composer put up the whole ost for free download on his website btw) It's impressive how memorable so much of the game is to me even 15 years later.
There's also an optional area all the extra goo balls go to. With the goal of making the tallest tower you can. Not sure if the floating clouds showing other player's tower heights as you go are still working in any way, but I always really enjoyed this distraction and it encourages you to find better solutions in the levels to get more goo for your tower.
This game's best played on the Wii or Steam given it's made for pointer controls. Though you'll of course have to hack it into your Wii at this point unfortunately. It's on the switch as well and the gyro really isn't half bad but it's of course no match for using a mouse. Regardless, this is about as good as a game in this style can be. WORLD OF GOO 2 HYPE
1997
Played this game for the first time recently and got 100% including beating all developer times. It's very impressive how well this game holds up. Rare's familiarity with making racing games definitely outshines Nintendo just barely getting used to the genre at the time.
There's some small quirks that once you understand, make the game very satisfying, and also not nearly as difficult as its reputation would have you believe. Specifically, holding B while drifting gives you a really sharp turn. Otherwise the drifting kind of has a bit of "Turn right to go left" energy. But the sharp turn button in addition to this lets you lean left or right just enough to reposition yourself to grab collectibles/hit speed boosts, while giving you the level of control needed to handle anything the tracks throw at you. You have such fine control here that going to more modern games like Mario Kart 8 feels stiff to me now despite getting into that game first. And even more importantly, if you let go of the gas while boosting, you keep the speed MUCH longer than you would if you just held onto it the whole time. The boosts feel so weak if you don't do this, and I imagine this mechanic being somewhat obscure is why the game is so infamous for being insanely challenging. Not to say mastering the game is a cakewalk but if you don't know this one weird trick Rareware doesn't want you to know, the final boss is near unbeatable.
But yeah very enjoyable game, the minor collectathon elements are very cool and appreciated. I kind of wish there was more to find in the hub world, but it just being there at all is very novel to this day. The boss races are a lot of fun. Just so much stuff that hasn't really been replicated in the genre very often, if at all. Makes this game a must play for all time. Great to hear more David Wyse music too. It being a racing game it allowed him to branch out a bit in style from what he normally does, and there's a lot of good stuff in the ost here. And it's really impressive that they made cars, boats, and planes all work so well so long ago. Wouldn't be until Sonic all stars transformed where we see something like it.
Only major complaint I could really have is that level theming leaves a bit to be desired. There's the generic grassy fields, desert levels, and ice caves. A vaguely horror themed one. And the space tracks are super cool. But generally speaking not a whole lot stands out as far as theming goes. Making a lot of the game not quite as memorable as it feels like it should be. But this was likely more of a technical limitation given how ambitious the rest of the game was for an n64 racer. The track designs themselves are all varied and loads of fun anyway.
There's some small quirks that once you understand, make the game very satisfying, and also not nearly as difficult as its reputation would have you believe. Specifically, holding B while drifting gives you a really sharp turn. Otherwise the drifting kind of has a bit of "Turn right to go left" energy. But the sharp turn button in addition to this lets you lean left or right just enough to reposition yourself to grab collectibles/hit speed boosts, while giving you the level of control needed to handle anything the tracks throw at you. You have such fine control here that going to more modern games like Mario Kart 8 feels stiff to me now despite getting into that game first. And even more importantly, if you let go of the gas while boosting, you keep the speed MUCH longer than you would if you just held onto it the whole time. The boosts feel so weak if you don't do this, and I imagine this mechanic being somewhat obscure is why the game is so infamous for being insanely challenging. Not to say mastering the game is a cakewalk but if you don't know this one weird trick Rareware doesn't want you to know, the final boss is near unbeatable.
But yeah very enjoyable game, the minor collectathon elements are very cool and appreciated. I kind of wish there was more to find in the hub world, but it just being there at all is very novel to this day. The boss races are a lot of fun. Just so much stuff that hasn't really been replicated in the genre very often, if at all. Makes this game a must play for all time. Great to hear more David Wyse music too. It being a racing game it allowed him to branch out a bit in style from what he normally does, and there's a lot of good stuff in the ost here. And it's really impressive that they made cars, boats, and planes all work so well so long ago. Wouldn't be until Sonic all stars transformed where we see something like it.
Only major complaint I could really have is that level theming leaves a bit to be desired. There's the generic grassy fields, desert levels, and ice caves. A vaguely horror themed one. And the space tracks are super cool. But generally speaking not a whole lot stands out as far as theming goes. Making a lot of the game not quite as memorable as it feels like it should be. But this was likely more of a technical limitation given how ambitious the rest of the game was for an n64 racer. The track designs themselves are all varied and loads of fun anyway.
2024
Kind of tragic to me how often AA projects get no respect. Both from the average gaming public and seemingly the company that put it out. Small scale games that stand out are thrown out in favor of AAA focus tested experiences. Then we're stuck waiting 6+ years for any major releases, the only thing to tide us over in the meantime is an ocean of remakes from the days where boatloads of games of all types came out at a constant rate. Just as every kart racer is a "mario kart ripoff" or platform fighters will always be "bootleg smash bros" ... Games that aren't so generic that comparing them to other games is pointless - are scrutinized even harder than those who didn't even try based on surface level observations. Thousands of overproduced derivative experiences with little to no unique ideas of its own? Game of the year material. Something that only tangentially shares a similar root concept as something unique? It better be the best game ever and overthrow Fortnite in popularity or else it has no worth in the eyes of most. Heck, Palworld's "Pokemon with guns" thing isn't even an apt phrase as the gameplay barely resembles pokemon whatsoever and you don't even get guns til' like 15-20 hours in. So lucky for that game the internet is making fun of pokemon these days. But I digress.
The splatoon DNA lies in this being a third person shooter in a small arena, your team's foam (ink) being a means of map control. That's genuinely about it, you have more mobility on your own foam, and the more overwhelmed you are by the enemy's foam the harder it is to not almost literally get buried in it. Ironically I find this game is succeeding the Splatoon style better than Sploon 2 and 3 did. A big part of the appeal of Splatoon from the beginning was that it was truly fresh. Sick of the decade of samey online shooters? Here's nintendo's crazy take that completely flips the genre on its head. Less about kills and more about playing the maps effectively. There was such variety in maps and weapons, you could look down to your gamepad to send a nuke strike in a satisfying and immersive way. The amount of ways you could approach a situation being so vast just by the nature of your own ink changing the landscape of the battlefield, even without physically changing the shape of the map or anything. But then splatoon 2 came along and it was more of the same but with smaller maps that turned the focus more on face to face close range skirmishes. Then on the same console Splatoon 3 hit and really didn't fix or change much of anything. So many maps not featuring much verticality or well defined ideas to play around...Point being, close range claustrophobic combat in Splatoon kinda sucks. It was never the root of the design philosophy of the original game. It was part of it but it wasn't the ENTIRETY of it. And three games with almost no significant shake-up in formula or style kind of puts a damper on it being a "Fresh" break from the tired online shooter genre.
Foamstars feels like it's onto something. Your foam literally changing the shape of the landscape brings back the verticality and ergo the seemingly endless ways to approach situations. And even better, this game has no mode where the team with the most ground covered with ink wins, it's all focused on direct combat. The kind of combat sploon 2 forced because its dev cycle was too rushed to have bigger maps despite it not being designed around it. Being designed around combat centric modes from the beginning does a lot of favors to Foamstars feeling cohesive. At bare minimum, it's got very similar quality to something like the push a tower mode in ranked splatoon. I just find your movesets for combat are a bit more elegant here, leaning just a tad more into normal shooter territory while at the same time going all in on insane cartoon angle. I think this stands on its own very well as far as gameplay goes.
Still, I can't HONESTLY say I see myself playing this game a year from now. I don't know why games now refuse to offer any way to grind for costumes. Like bruh even if I have to play for 30 hours to get a single skin that's SOMETHING don't straight up charge 45$ for an outfit and give literally nothing for actually playing the game. You gotta have some kind of hook to get people wanting to come back and for that matter, spend money. And as an achievement dork, 12 achievements and no platinum is p'lame. Almost have all of 'em in a single sitting. It's also got a frustratingly mundane presentation, feeling like it kind of wastes its great art style and music. Feels like Square Enix just didn't have full confidence going into this game's release. But I can't honestly blame them too hard considering making anything remotely similar to a Nintendo style game is an uphill battle. Would have liked to see them try to come out swinging with a less heavily monetized system, that definitely would have helped their chances. I'll definitely be at least loosely following the game but I won't be shocked to find Squeenix was ready to pretend they never made this game before it even came out. Hecc you can't even see a hint of this game on the official Square Enix store.
Sad thing is despite liking this game and wanting to love it, it's kinda hard to feel any hope for it moving forward. And while I think it's a bit lame that this game was written off by most months before it even came out, that heavy monetization and lack of customization otherwise was absolutely the wrong way to launch this game despite it coming out day 1 on PSPlus. It's a fun game but that's ultimately not enough. It's exhausting how common it is now for a game to come out and have the conversation immediately be nothing but dead game? Even for games that actually manage to drum up initial hype. Like idk man we've all been playing Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, GTAV, Skyrim, CSGO, League of legends, and minecraft for over a decade bare minimum. I'm ready to move ooooon bro 2010 was 14 years ago can we play foamstars or nickelodeon all stars brawl or crash team rumble or something. Forgive me for projecting a bit I'm just a bit exhausted at all the DOA games that end up as wasted potential. The whole games as a service space is just getting depressing. I really wish a game growing a small group of fans was enough, but it's either a cultural phenomenon we can milk for an indefinite amount of time or it's a flop that will be used as an excuse for why games that don't take ten years to make just don't get made anymore. A game of this scope just doesn't stand a chance against the expectations of the industry, doesn't even matter if it's good or not and that's honestly kind of a bummer. I'm probably looking too deep into this but I think it's rad to see Square Enix try and branch out and consistently put out so much stuff every year. I kind of suspect once they stop due to constant failure hurting their wallets and reputation, we'll suddenly start seeing youtube videos about how Squeenix during this era was one of the few devs consistently putting out cool experimental stuff that wasn't appreciated during its time. I'd certainly take stuff like this over what's happened to so many other major players in the industry. With ten year outputs looking like: The Last of us 1, The Last of us 1, The Last of us 2, The Last of us 1, The last of us 2 online (cancelled), The Last of us 2
Also good heavens why do so many online games love to waste as much time between matches as possible there's gotta be a faster way to do this.
Would love to see this grow into something special but it's looking pretty dire Foambros. If you're at all remotely interested I'd get on ASAP 'cuz Squeenix themselves are probably looking to bury it with their 9th FF7 release.
The splatoon DNA lies in this being a third person shooter in a small arena, your team's foam (ink) being a means of map control. That's genuinely about it, you have more mobility on your own foam, and the more overwhelmed you are by the enemy's foam the harder it is to not almost literally get buried in it. Ironically I find this game is succeeding the Splatoon style better than Sploon 2 and 3 did. A big part of the appeal of Splatoon from the beginning was that it was truly fresh. Sick of the decade of samey online shooters? Here's nintendo's crazy take that completely flips the genre on its head. Less about kills and more about playing the maps effectively. There was such variety in maps and weapons, you could look down to your gamepad to send a nuke strike in a satisfying and immersive way. The amount of ways you could approach a situation being so vast just by the nature of your own ink changing the landscape of the battlefield, even without physically changing the shape of the map or anything. But then splatoon 2 came along and it was more of the same but with smaller maps that turned the focus more on face to face close range skirmishes. Then on the same console Splatoon 3 hit and really didn't fix or change much of anything. So many maps not featuring much verticality or well defined ideas to play around...Point being, close range claustrophobic combat in Splatoon kinda sucks. It was never the root of the design philosophy of the original game. It was part of it but it wasn't the ENTIRETY of it. And three games with almost no significant shake-up in formula or style kind of puts a damper on it being a "Fresh" break from the tired online shooter genre.
Foamstars feels like it's onto something. Your foam literally changing the shape of the landscape brings back the verticality and ergo the seemingly endless ways to approach situations. And even better, this game has no mode where the team with the most ground covered with ink wins, it's all focused on direct combat. The kind of combat sploon 2 forced because its dev cycle was too rushed to have bigger maps despite it not being designed around it. Being designed around combat centric modes from the beginning does a lot of favors to Foamstars feeling cohesive. At bare minimum, it's got very similar quality to something like the push a tower mode in ranked splatoon. I just find your movesets for combat are a bit more elegant here, leaning just a tad more into normal shooter territory while at the same time going all in on insane cartoon angle. I think this stands on its own very well as far as gameplay goes.
Still, I can't HONESTLY say I see myself playing this game a year from now. I don't know why games now refuse to offer any way to grind for costumes. Like bruh even if I have to play for 30 hours to get a single skin that's SOMETHING don't straight up charge 45$ for an outfit and give literally nothing for actually playing the game. You gotta have some kind of hook to get people wanting to come back and for that matter, spend money. And as an achievement dork, 12 achievements and no platinum is p'lame. Almost have all of 'em in a single sitting. It's also got a frustratingly mundane presentation, feeling like it kind of wastes its great art style and music. Feels like Square Enix just didn't have full confidence going into this game's release. But I can't honestly blame them too hard considering making anything remotely similar to a Nintendo style game is an uphill battle. Would have liked to see them try to come out swinging with a less heavily monetized system, that definitely would have helped their chances. I'll definitely be at least loosely following the game but I won't be shocked to find Squeenix was ready to pretend they never made this game before it even came out. Hecc you can't even see a hint of this game on the official Square Enix store.
Sad thing is despite liking this game and wanting to love it, it's kinda hard to feel any hope for it moving forward. And while I think it's a bit lame that this game was written off by most months before it even came out, that heavy monetization and lack of customization otherwise was absolutely the wrong way to launch this game despite it coming out day 1 on PSPlus. It's a fun game but that's ultimately not enough. It's exhausting how common it is now for a game to come out and have the conversation immediately be nothing but dead game? Even for games that actually manage to drum up initial hype. Like idk man we've all been playing Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, GTAV, Skyrim, CSGO, League of legends, and minecraft for over a decade bare minimum. I'm ready to move ooooon bro 2010 was 14 years ago can we play foamstars or nickelodeon all stars brawl or crash team rumble or something. Forgive me for projecting a bit I'm just a bit exhausted at all the DOA games that end up as wasted potential. The whole games as a service space is just getting depressing. I really wish a game growing a small group of fans was enough, but it's either a cultural phenomenon we can milk for an indefinite amount of time or it's a flop that will be used as an excuse for why games that don't take ten years to make just don't get made anymore. A game of this scope just doesn't stand a chance against the expectations of the industry, doesn't even matter if it's good or not and that's honestly kind of a bummer. I'm probably looking too deep into this but I think it's rad to see Square Enix try and branch out and consistently put out so much stuff every year. I kind of suspect once they stop due to constant failure hurting their wallets and reputation, we'll suddenly start seeing youtube videos about how Squeenix during this era was one of the few devs consistently putting out cool experimental stuff that wasn't appreciated during its time. I'd certainly take stuff like this over what's happened to so many other major players in the industry. With ten year outputs looking like: The Last of us 1, The Last of us 1, The Last of us 2, The Last of us 1, The last of us 2 online (cancelled), The Last of us 2
Also good heavens why do so many online games love to waste as much time between matches as possible there's gotta be a faster way to do this.
Would love to see this grow into something special but it's looking pretty dire Foambros. If you're at all remotely interested I'd get on ASAP 'cuz Squeenix themselves are probably looking to bury it with their 9th FF7 release.
2 of the most fun, innovative, timeless 3D mario experiences. Featuring creative level design and movement that's fun for beginners and experts alike. Excellent pacing and ambition many modern games fail to match with even ten times the budget. Truly some of the greatest games of all time. And while I may still prefer playing them on their OG consoles, it was a nice excuse to relive them on switch.
Super Mario Galaxy is also in this collection. If that's your thing.
Super Mario Galaxy is also in this collection. If that's your thing.
2024
This game is very interesting to talk about. Right now I think it's a really good proof of concept that COULD be taken to fun places. That said, it's a testament to how universally solid the concept behind Pokemon is, that even the epitome of "Early access survival base building crafting" --is capturing the imagination of people the way Pokemon did so long ago. I'm not trying to say this is EVERYTHING Pokemon should be and Gamefreak is lazy for not doing it...But I captured a boss Pal and just went around riding its back, blasting anything in my path with its powerful boss moves for a while. And yeah it does at times feel like everything one would want from a truly next gen Pokemon experience.
The base building and crafting side...Thankfully can be somewhat automated by delegating your Pals to do it for you. But even given that, it's still a lot. Definitely found myself wanting to just go out and have a Pokemon adventure but I'm stuck building up my base as a prerequisite to unlocking better gear. I'm usually making fun of the stupid amount of derivative "Craft and mine and survive and build" games, even ones that are overwhelmingly well received. Which includes the devs previous major game "Craftopia" that I didn't really even give a second thought. Yet here I am building crafting tables and punching trees for no reason other than it's an iteration of Pokemon that's kinda exciting. I can't say I actively hate this side of the game...This kind of thing is popular for a reason. But it's very junk food mindless gameplay designed to trap you in a vaguely satisfying loop.
For now I think 3 stars is fair. As I play more into this early version of the game I may have more to say, may raise or lower the score by half a star or so...But 10 hours in I've got a good idea of what the game's offering currently. Moving forward I hope the devs ride the momentum and make this game into something special and fun to follow. I'm having fun but if a year passes and the game's fundamentally in the exact same state it was on release I don't think this will have much staying power. If they add more substantial content, I'm hoping that will allow them to streamline the base building side of things, as currently it feels like a crutch to prevent you from seeing the entire game too quickly. Maybe have the ability to command your base Pals to do specific tasks without physically being there?
Either way, I'm getting my money's worth just on this week 1 version alone. But that doesn't mean it feels like a full game. I really want to come back someday and say it's had a lot of meaningful work put into it that turns it into a genuine modern classic. But only time will tell, for all I know what you see now is what we're gonna get. The previously mentioned "Craftopia" being in early access still doesn't exactly give much confidence, but also that game didn't sell 10 million in a week. Also this game desperately needs a soundtrack. Of all the things to rip from BotW, the dead silence during the open world exploration is not one of them. Music goes a LONG way towards making something feel less soulless, may sound odd to some but I think that should be high on their priority list. (Especially considering they sell the soundtrack on steam...What little is there is nice but also WHAT soundtrack)
Also online can be pretty rough but I'd expect nothing more, it's crazy there's even online support on day 1 let alone open servers on the PC version. And they seem to have fixed some of the most major problems of it straight up not working in the recent patch.
P.S. I've played mostly on Steam Deck, fiddled with some settings and am getting a mostly solid 30fps. It froze up on me once but no progress was lost and otherwise it's been solid.
P.P.S. Careful with engaging with the controversies surrounding this game. As in, make sure you're not spreading misinformation. Even in good fun and memes people be spreading fake quotes, debunked drama, and just assuming things they heard other people say are true.
The base building and crafting side...Thankfully can be somewhat automated by delegating your Pals to do it for you. But even given that, it's still a lot. Definitely found myself wanting to just go out and have a Pokemon adventure but I'm stuck building up my base as a prerequisite to unlocking better gear. I'm usually making fun of the stupid amount of derivative "Craft and mine and survive and build" games, even ones that are overwhelmingly well received. Which includes the devs previous major game "Craftopia" that I didn't really even give a second thought. Yet here I am building crafting tables and punching trees for no reason other than it's an iteration of Pokemon that's kinda exciting. I can't say I actively hate this side of the game...This kind of thing is popular for a reason. But it's very junk food mindless gameplay designed to trap you in a vaguely satisfying loop.
For now I think 3 stars is fair. As I play more into this early version of the game I may have more to say, may raise or lower the score by half a star or so...But 10 hours in I've got a good idea of what the game's offering currently. Moving forward I hope the devs ride the momentum and make this game into something special and fun to follow. I'm having fun but if a year passes and the game's fundamentally in the exact same state it was on release I don't think this will have much staying power. If they add more substantial content, I'm hoping that will allow them to streamline the base building side of things, as currently it feels like a crutch to prevent you from seeing the entire game too quickly. Maybe have the ability to command your base Pals to do specific tasks without physically being there?
Either way, I'm getting my money's worth just on this week 1 version alone. But that doesn't mean it feels like a full game. I really want to come back someday and say it's had a lot of meaningful work put into it that turns it into a genuine modern classic. But only time will tell, for all I know what you see now is what we're gonna get. The previously mentioned "Craftopia" being in early access still doesn't exactly give much confidence, but also that game didn't sell 10 million in a week. Also this game desperately needs a soundtrack. Of all the things to rip from BotW, the dead silence during the open world exploration is not one of them. Music goes a LONG way towards making something feel less soulless, may sound odd to some but I think that should be high on their priority list. (Especially considering they sell the soundtrack on steam...What little is there is nice but also WHAT soundtrack)
Also online can be pretty rough but I'd expect nothing more, it's crazy there's even online support on day 1 let alone open servers on the PC version. And they seem to have fixed some of the most major problems of it straight up not working in the recent patch.
P.S. I've played mostly on Steam Deck, fiddled with some settings and am getting a mostly solid 30fps. It froze up on me once but no progress was lost and otherwise it's been solid.
P.P.S. Careful with engaging with the controversies surrounding this game. As in, make sure you're not spreading misinformation. Even in good fun and memes people be spreading fake quotes, debunked drama, and just assuming things they heard other people say are true.
1992
Kojima is the video game equivalent to those 70's/80's movie "classics" your middle aged father shows you that turn out to be the most unbearable pieces of cinema you've ever seen. Kojima's storytelling and writing consistently receiving universal acclaim is a testament to how low standards for video games are.
Literal hours are spent not developing any character. The story is barely coherent, more focused on hammering in information about the premise you've already been told about in great detail 5 times over. Connective tissue and leads between scenes are so loose the game literally stops to recap how every event in the last hour and a half is connected because they seemingly knew how weak and unmemorable each scene was. Very little actually happens for major chunks...And when things DO start picking up, they actually slow down. Instead of building emotional connections and stakes naturally throughout the course of the story -- it waits until there's time sensitive urgency to ruin with droning, unengaging, one sided info dumps telling you why you should care about what's happening.
I've always been critical of Kojima games but I went into this one thinking his style may lend itself well to a point and click adventure game, only to find even this genre's gameplay is too much for him. Tedious and repetitive, performing the same 2 actions of look and investigate ad nauseam until you get enough dry flavor text for the game to let you move on. Beyond that there's shooting mechanics that get a grand total of maybe 2 minutes playtime in the entire game. Any moment that uses said shooting has to over-telegraph the encounter, killing any tension they may have built up. Which is a shame because if this game does anything well it's having some good vibes and atmosphere in a few scenes.
Under a different director I think there's a lot of potential here for a tense point and click adventure, with an engaging mystery-focused plot. But, we're stuck with Kojima, who's idea of being cinematic is 30 minute exposition dumps combined with almost NO animation whatsoever for almost the entire game. In fact one of the only things in the entire game that's animated is a female dancer in a bikini, so that shows where the priorities lie here.
I already don't agree with Kojima's approach of ignoring the gameplay in favor of "cinematic" storytelling. I think it's a complete waste and insult of the medium to basically say for a video game to have a good movie-quality story you have to just make a movie and not a video game. BUT if the story was actually good, there'd be something to get out of it and enjoy. I'm a firm believer in judging something for what it set out to do rather than what you want it to be. So even if I
prefer a different approach, I try to meet a game halfway and keep an open mind to its direction. With that said, as a movie this game is horribly written and derivative at absolute best even for its time, and that's really all there is to say about it.
Literal hours are spent not developing any character. The story is barely coherent, more focused on hammering in information about the premise you've already been told about in great detail 5 times over. Connective tissue and leads between scenes are so loose the game literally stops to recap how every event in the last hour and a half is connected because they seemingly knew how weak and unmemorable each scene was. Very little actually happens for major chunks...And when things DO start picking up, they actually slow down. Instead of building emotional connections and stakes naturally throughout the course of the story -- it waits until there's time sensitive urgency to ruin with droning, unengaging, one sided info dumps telling you why you should care about what's happening.
I've always been critical of Kojima games but I went into this one thinking his style may lend itself well to a point and click adventure game, only to find even this genre's gameplay is too much for him. Tedious and repetitive, performing the same 2 actions of look and investigate ad nauseam until you get enough dry flavor text for the game to let you move on. Beyond that there's shooting mechanics that get a grand total of maybe 2 minutes playtime in the entire game. Any moment that uses said shooting has to over-telegraph the encounter, killing any tension they may have built up. Which is a shame because if this game does anything well it's having some good vibes and atmosphere in a few scenes.
Under a different director I think there's a lot of potential here for a tense point and click adventure, with an engaging mystery-focused plot. But, we're stuck with Kojima, who's idea of being cinematic is 30 minute exposition dumps combined with almost NO animation whatsoever for almost the entire game. In fact one of the only things in the entire game that's animated is a female dancer in a bikini, so that shows where the priorities lie here.
I already don't agree with Kojima's approach of ignoring the gameplay in favor of "cinematic" storytelling. I think it's a complete waste and insult of the medium to basically say for a video game to have a good movie-quality story you have to just make a movie and not a video game. BUT if the story was actually good, there'd be something to get out of it and enjoy. I'm a firm believer in judging something for what it set out to do rather than what you want it to be. So even if I
prefer a different approach, I try to meet a game halfway and keep an open mind to its direction. With that said, as a movie this game is horribly written and derivative at absolute best even for its time, and that's really all there is to say about it.
2005
Nothing worth praising at all, but I can't say it was the worst thing I've ever played. I can see someone being frustrated by its obscenely short length if they spent more than $3 on it but otherwise it's pretty harmless. Plus I've got somewhat of a soft spot for the liminal space low budget platformer feel.
I actually liked how your projectile attack upgrades do more and more damage with every enemy killed, but you lose progress on that meter if you take damage. Pretty satisfying to get it to max and shred enemies that used to be damage sponges in 1-2 shots. But it also keeps some amount of tension as you don't want to take damage and lose the buff.
It's absolutely shovelware but I can't pretend I hated it. It's got a few areas that have classic Roblox obby vibes and that's kinda neat.
I actually liked how your projectile attack upgrades do more and more damage with every enemy killed, but you lose progress on that meter if you take damage. Pretty satisfying to get it to max and shred enemies that used to be damage sponges in 1-2 shots. But it also keeps some amount of tension as you don't want to take damage and lose the buff.
It's absolutely shovelware but I can't pretend I hated it. It's got a few areas that have classic Roblox obby vibes and that's kinda neat.
1998
The level design straight up sucks. Like shockingly bad. It's got a serviceable start that feels like it COULD go somewhere...But as soon as the Psycho Mantis fight ends, the rest is 100% padding with some of the laziest level design physically possible. Almost immediately after that fight, another boss starts. Except you don't have the sniper rifle required to fight it. To get this weapon you backtrack pretty much to the start of the game on the complete opposite side of the map, then run all the way back to do the fight. Half a movies worth of cutscenes (And standing in an empty room for over a full real time minute) later, the next gameplay segment starts near the room where you picked up the sniper rifle...You are then supposed to run all the way back to the boss room they already made you backtrack to fight.
It's nothing but repetitive, empty game design that has you backtrack through already mediocre level chunks. The next part of the game has you climb 50 flights of stairs, then climb down only to see the last few stairs are broken, so you climb all the way back up, do a boss, and climb back down. Then they have you re-fight the sniper boss again. 2 hours of actual gameplay in the entire game and they had to resort to reusing bosses. The last hour of the game is spent climbing the metal gear, with key in hand to deactivate it. Except oh no, snake dropped the key, climb back down to pick it back up, climb back up to use it...Find out you need to backtrack to an earlier icy section to get another key...You get there and realize you have to stand in the ice for like a full minute to get the key. Then climb up the metal gear to use it...Then backtrack to a section even farther behind the ice room, with TWO elevators you have to wait in on the way, stand in the room for a minute, then go all the way back to the metal gear, climb it AGAIN, final boss time. (Climbing up or down the Metal gear takes nearly a full minute every time) This is the game's finale. For as much talk of this game being a masterpiece that was ahead of its time... I WAS expecting the horrible 80% cutscene to 20% gameplay ratio because I know MGS is just like that. But I wasn't ready for 80% cutscene-5% gameplay, and 15% of the most blatant and obnoxious padding the industry has ever seen.
I already didn't think the first chunk of the game was that great, featuring mediocre, easily ignorable stealth, and slowly crawling through vents. But then the last 2/3rds of the game hits and its as though they realized they spent all their time and money on (terrible) cutscenes and have nothing to tie them together. This barely even qualifies as a video game. Besides the padding I went over, there's only a few small, square rooms with a couple easily avoidable enemies roaming them. This game is tiny, giving you a game-space to exist in was a complete afterthought. It's astonishing they managed to make such a short game with such a tiny world take 2 discs, likely just because of how bloated the story is. Though I will say they crammed a lot of cool visual details in here at least. Watch an hour of cutscenes, walk to the other side of an empty base, watch an hour of cutscenes, fight a boss, 20 minutes of cutscenes, fight a boss, 20 minutes of cutscenes, fight a boss, 40 minutes of cutscenes. The game structure is maddening, the only thing of substance you ever do is fight some random boss fight, most of which really aren't great either. Your kit is clearly intended to be somewhat unwieldy and awkward, you're meant to be sneaking around not gunning people down. Why then is a majority of what little gameplay there is--forced action set pieces or boss fights? Nothing about this game even feels like a stealth game, moments where you need to sneak around enemies are few and far between and even fewer are moments where doing so is even a challenge.
If this game was judged on its gameplay, it would get middling reviews at best I feel like. The story is make or break, it's the ENTIRE game. 6 hour game and 4 of those hours are cutscenes. And idk man, I get that it presents itself as way more cinematic and ahead of its time than you'd expect out of a PS1...But that almost feels kind of reductive to me. Like "aw how cute the ps1's trying to be cool". The only thing that's actually ahead of its time is the excessive amount of dialogue recorded. And yeah there is a lot of extra dialogue if you call certain characters at certain times. But you can't just record a lot of dialogue and suddenly you're a masterpiece. Kojima wants so hard to be a movie director and that's apparently super cool for a video game especially one this old. But if you treat this game like a movie...it's the most boring movie possible. Flat cinematography, hammy as hecc writing, abysmal pacing, messy and uneventful. I'm down for some ham but this game REALLY thinks it's saying something. Dying characters just run down their Wikipedia article telling you all about their backstory in an attempt to get you to care about them last minute. All character growth or relationship advancements feel rushed and unearned, which is shocking given the runtime of the cinematics and dialogue. I'd say only Otakon feels like a real person who builds any kind of legitimate relationship with Snake. It's just so boring, 4 hours of someone info dumping either about themselves or about worldwide politics.
Bigger picture if a competent director took this story, it could be great. There's a lot of mystery and intrigue set up even early on. But, it's just like the game itself, repetitive and exhausting. Every scene is just people babbling to Snake for a painfully long time with snake just repeating what they said back at them but with a question mark, spurring them on to keep overexplaining it. Like bro the premise is just that the world was careless about disposing nukes and terrorists are exploiting that fact. Spend the game telling a story about that! I haven't played a lot of Kojima games but this feels consistent with what I've noticed so far, in that he mistakes the premise for the story itself. If Kojima wrote the movie "Cars" it would be a 3 hour film about the history of travel and how advancements in that industry can be misused by criminals. I'm on your side bro you don't gotta sell me on "war bad" just DO something with it! The execution comes off so hamfisted and preachy, resorting to live action footage to try and drive the point of how real it all is. Resident Evil is also about corruption and terrorists, but those games (And just about every other game ever) have you live out the consequences of the premise. MGS on the other hand plays out like random characters reading Kojima's high school social studies report. Only for the last page to be some pretentious think-piece about biology.
"Ahead of its time" doesn't equate to good. And I don't even think I agree this even IS ahead of its time. The graphics are beautiful and the voice acting is a lot of fun. Otherwise, games with better storytelling existed before and after this. Games with better gameplay and more coherent game structure had existed for nearly 20 years before this. 1998 saw Half-Life, Grim Fandango, Ocarina of time, Resident Evil 2, Baldur's Gate 1, Sonic Adventure 1, all games that pushed the boundaries of video game storytelling and gameplay, all in completely different and exciting ways. Banjo-Kazooie, Spyro, Mario party, MediEvil, gex enter the h*eckin' gecko also came out in the same year. Metal gear might be the only game of its time that DOESN'T go hard. In that sense it IS ahead of its time. Kojima introduced the idea of a "bad game" to the world.
I'm being a tad facetious at this point of course but I actually have no respect whatsoever for this game. I'm just saying a Kojima directed movie would be unwatchable.
It's nothing but repetitive, empty game design that has you backtrack through already mediocre level chunks. The next part of the game has you climb 50 flights of stairs, then climb down only to see the last few stairs are broken, so you climb all the way back up, do a boss, and climb back down. Then they have you re-fight the sniper boss again. 2 hours of actual gameplay in the entire game and they had to resort to reusing bosses. The last hour of the game is spent climbing the metal gear, with key in hand to deactivate it. Except oh no, snake dropped the key, climb back down to pick it back up, climb back up to use it...Find out you need to backtrack to an earlier icy section to get another key...You get there and realize you have to stand in the ice for like a full minute to get the key. Then climb up the metal gear to use it...Then backtrack to a section even farther behind the ice room, with TWO elevators you have to wait in on the way, stand in the room for a minute, then go all the way back to the metal gear, climb it AGAIN, final boss time. (Climbing up or down the Metal gear takes nearly a full minute every time) This is the game's finale. For as much talk of this game being a masterpiece that was ahead of its time... I WAS expecting the horrible 80% cutscene to 20% gameplay ratio because I know MGS is just like that. But I wasn't ready for 80% cutscene-5% gameplay, and 15% of the most blatant and obnoxious padding the industry has ever seen.
I already didn't think the first chunk of the game was that great, featuring mediocre, easily ignorable stealth, and slowly crawling through vents. But then the last 2/3rds of the game hits and its as though they realized they spent all their time and money on (terrible) cutscenes and have nothing to tie them together. This barely even qualifies as a video game. Besides the padding I went over, there's only a few small, square rooms with a couple easily avoidable enemies roaming them. This game is tiny, giving you a game-space to exist in was a complete afterthought. It's astonishing they managed to make such a short game with such a tiny world take 2 discs, likely just because of how bloated the story is. Though I will say they crammed a lot of cool visual details in here at least. Watch an hour of cutscenes, walk to the other side of an empty base, watch an hour of cutscenes, fight a boss, 20 minutes of cutscenes, fight a boss, 20 minutes of cutscenes, fight a boss, 40 minutes of cutscenes. The game structure is maddening, the only thing of substance you ever do is fight some random boss fight, most of which really aren't great either. Your kit is clearly intended to be somewhat unwieldy and awkward, you're meant to be sneaking around not gunning people down. Why then is a majority of what little gameplay there is--forced action set pieces or boss fights? Nothing about this game even feels like a stealth game, moments where you need to sneak around enemies are few and far between and even fewer are moments where doing so is even a challenge.
If this game was judged on its gameplay, it would get middling reviews at best I feel like. The story is make or break, it's the ENTIRE game. 6 hour game and 4 of those hours are cutscenes. And idk man, I get that it presents itself as way more cinematic and ahead of its time than you'd expect out of a PS1...But that almost feels kind of reductive to me. Like "aw how cute the ps1's trying to be cool". The only thing that's actually ahead of its time is the excessive amount of dialogue recorded. And yeah there is a lot of extra dialogue if you call certain characters at certain times. But you can't just record a lot of dialogue and suddenly you're a masterpiece. Kojima wants so hard to be a movie director and that's apparently super cool for a video game especially one this old. But if you treat this game like a movie...it's the most boring movie possible. Flat cinematography, hammy as hecc writing, abysmal pacing, messy and uneventful. I'm down for some ham but this game REALLY thinks it's saying something. Dying characters just run down their Wikipedia article telling you all about their backstory in an attempt to get you to care about them last minute. All character growth or relationship advancements feel rushed and unearned, which is shocking given the runtime of the cinematics and dialogue. I'd say only Otakon feels like a real person who builds any kind of legitimate relationship with Snake. It's just so boring, 4 hours of someone info dumping either about themselves or about worldwide politics.
Bigger picture if a competent director took this story, it could be great. There's a lot of mystery and intrigue set up even early on. But, it's just like the game itself, repetitive and exhausting. Every scene is just people babbling to Snake for a painfully long time with snake just repeating what they said back at them but with a question mark, spurring them on to keep overexplaining it. Like bro the premise is just that the world was careless about disposing nukes and terrorists are exploiting that fact. Spend the game telling a story about that! I haven't played a lot of Kojima games but this feels consistent with what I've noticed so far, in that he mistakes the premise for the story itself. If Kojima wrote the movie "Cars" it would be a 3 hour film about the history of travel and how advancements in that industry can be misused by criminals. I'm on your side bro you don't gotta sell me on "war bad" just DO something with it! The execution comes off so hamfisted and preachy, resorting to live action footage to try and drive the point of how real it all is. Resident Evil is also about corruption and terrorists, but those games (And just about every other game ever) have you live out the consequences of the premise. MGS on the other hand plays out like random characters reading Kojima's high school social studies report. Only for the last page to be some pretentious think-piece about biology.
"Ahead of its time" doesn't equate to good. And I don't even think I agree this even IS ahead of its time. The graphics are beautiful and the voice acting is a lot of fun. Otherwise, games with better storytelling existed before and after this. Games with better gameplay and more coherent game structure had existed for nearly 20 years before this. 1998 saw Half-Life, Grim Fandango, Ocarina of time, Resident Evil 2, Baldur's Gate 1, Sonic Adventure 1, all games that pushed the boundaries of video game storytelling and gameplay, all in completely different and exciting ways. Banjo-Kazooie, Spyro, Mario party, MediEvil, gex enter the h*eckin' gecko also came out in the same year. Metal gear might be the only game of its time that DOESN'T go hard. In that sense it IS ahead of its time. Kojima introduced the idea of a "bad game" to the world.
I'm being a tad facetious at this point of course but I actually have no respect whatsoever for this game. I'm just saying a Kojima directed movie would be unwatchable.
2000
Fairly unique/ahead of its time as far as game structure goes. Went in assuming it would be a spyro-esque type collectathon and instead got a list of "untitled goose game" type tasks to figure out how to do. The whole game is just The Grinch going around playing youtuber pranks (committing property crimes). More collectathon than puzzler but the varied missions kept the game interesting, which is great 'cuz even as a big collectathon fan, that side of the game is pretty dull. Imagine if the notes in Banjo-Kazooie needed to be jumped on to collect, and occasionally you have to ground pound them instead...And imagine if instead of 900 notes across 9 levels it was 3,000 across 4. Not great.
But I did like finding enough blueprints to invent stuff like high jump or the grinch copter, letting me jump to the top of people's houses so I could drop beehives into their chimneys. The blueprints being so important is both cool but also a potential pain point as you need to find all of them. Definitely a chance you'll get yourself locked out of doing anything until you find that one blueprint that eludes you.
Generally not great, and there's times where it's not suuuper clear you can interact with some things. But I don't think it overstayed its welcome. I did a 100% run and an any% run. Thought it was cool that you only have to do a certain number of the level's tasks to unlock the next area, so it's relatively open ended for how you tackle each level. The 3,000 collectibles I mentioned before are actually not required at all, they only unlock quick bonus levels/minigames. So ultimately this game leans into its strengths more than its weaknesses. It's got some pretty hot music too.
But I did like finding enough blueprints to invent stuff like high jump or the grinch copter, letting me jump to the top of people's houses so I could drop beehives into their chimneys. The blueprints being so important is both cool but also a potential pain point as you need to find all of them. Definitely a chance you'll get yourself locked out of doing anything until you find that one blueprint that eludes you.
Generally not great, and there's times where it's not suuuper clear you can interact with some things. But I don't think it overstayed its welcome. I did a 100% run and an any% run. Thought it was cool that you only have to do a certain number of the level's tasks to unlock the next area, so it's relatively open ended for how you tackle each level. The 3,000 collectibles I mentioned before are actually not required at all, they only unlock quick bonus levels/minigames. So ultimately this game leans into its strengths more than its weaknesses. It's got some pretty hot music too.
For a brief moment, it felt like bomberman was breathing again. Was so cool to see this OG battle royale franchise get updated to a modern format. As a service I didn't really understand it, the way they monetized it felt weirdly half baked and unconfident. Which I imagine is why they shut it down so fast, wasn't making money. Such a shame, as a modern classic bomberman experience I couldn't really ask for more.
Queue times were generally ok in my experience considering I was playing bomberman in current year, I just loved that it was a thing and that people were playing it.
ALSO the silent hill song they put in this is the hottest song to come out of a video game in at least the last 5 years.
I'll miss this one ;(
Queue times were generally ok in my experience considering I was playing bomberman in current year, I just loved that it was a thing and that people were playing it.
ALSO the silent hill song they put in this is the hottest song to come out of a video game in at least the last 5 years.
I'll miss this one ;(