i kinda figured most whining about this game online was a bit overblown, and some of the stuff people complain about is fair but i had a really solid time here! i think too many people were expecting an arkham game but multiplayer and that just isn't really what this game was ever supposed to be.

i played only as nightwing the whole game for context.

the combat isn't the greatest thing in the world but i found it pretty satisfying overall and unlocking new momentum abilities and testing them out was always a good time! the worst bit of the gameplay to me was the little detective sequences. none of the puzzles were satisfying enough to really stand out as great. if they were removed from the game i think nothing would be lost but i don't think they drag the experience down too much either there isn't many of them. on the flip side, the highlight of the combat was when you did a big mission and there were big stealth sequences. it was incredibly fun and satisfying to work with a friend and pick off enemies 1 by 1 without being detected. it always felt super good and was the highlight of combat for sure. the missions themselves were generally a good time too, the villain case files and main story all have a genuine amount of care put into them that makes them fun to run through. some satisfying boss fights throughout and great character interactions. that's a highlight throughout for sure, all 4 characters are pretty well done and i was consistently really enjoying whenever they'd talk or joke around with each other. the main story isn't the most engaging thing in the world but it didn't stand out as bad either. part of this is because i played in a public discord with my friend and there were a lot of point joining talking over moments or just trying to get a laugh out of making fun of it which obviously i signed up for but it's gonna take you out of the story a bit. it's absolutely carried by the characters and their interactions though like i mentioned it was always a highlight. i was genuinely excited to go do one of the story missions on the map when they popped up.

the game overall looks solid too, although there are some pretty glaring performance problems in the hub world of gotham. it's smooth any other time but because the hub is entirely disconnected for each player when you're exploring it in co-op it can chug. this didn't bother me too much, the hub is massive and i understand why it happened and i prefer it over the alternative of not exploring the hub freely with a friend. i'm also not the biggest fps snob in the world though so i can live with it but i can see it being something a lot harder to look past for someone else.

speaking of the hub though it's pretty fun to explore! crimes are everywhere so you always have something to do, and there's a lot of time trials either with your movement abilities or your batcycle that feel pretty fun to run through! there's not too many organic side missions and i would have liked to see a bit more of those but otherwise i was pretty content exploring gotham.

i'll be honest, i didn't fucking care about the UI. i understand why people get upset about but i just have no fucking investment in it lmfao. if the game is fun i can look past it i don't fucking care. i could use it and i never felt confused or overwhelmed. you can for sure get a lot deeper into the modchips and various suits and weapons but i just crafted the newest best thing and put on the highest level shit and it did not hinder my experience in any way. again, i understand why this stuff bothers people, but i just can't really be bothered to care about that shit at this point LOL.

all in all i had a solid time! i find it hard to quantify when a game is "worth" a launch price. I could have bought this on launch and played through it and felt pretty satisfied but i can for sure see this being a sale game for most people, if you're on the fence and have any vague interest i'd recommend it on sale for sure. assuming you have a friend that is, i vaguely mentioned i played with a friend but i will say having a friend greatly improves the experience. i think i'd still have an okay time alone but i'm a freak! idk if most people would. either way, i'm glad i played this game! i had a solid time and see myself going back to do some side content/grind achievements.

This game honestly really surprised me. It has some of the coolest world and level designs in any mario game. Yet it's on the fucking Gameboy. The world's are only like 3 levels each but each one of those levels fit the theme of the world so well. I particularly liked the balls level in the toy mario zone. The enemies are also very unique and don't show up in like any other mario game. The thing is this is a Gameboy game and it can only do so much. There's only 2 power ups not counted the mushroom and star. It has like 3 songs and 6 total zones. This game has lots of potential but is ultimately held back by the fact its a Gameboy game.

i saw the trailer for this and was like "okay, i'm gonna be into this" but man, this is such an insanely unique and fun game with so much flair and style and i absolutely fucking adored it.

visually this game is fucking beautiful, i don't think a game has ever absolutely fucking nailed the cel shaded style as perfectly as this game has. everything was just a huge fucking treat. there's small moments where it's a little visually cluttered and overwhelming but if anything it just gets me even more pumped up. everything has such a fun style to, the effects when you dash, parry, hit enemies is so exciting. the world itself moves along with the music too and it makes it feel so exciting. the cutscenes are animated so well too, was always a joy to see the style change for those.

the character designs are all great and fun! peppermint, korsica, macaron, and CNMN are all stand outs. it makes sense because they're the most prominent characters but they're very great designs. CNMN's little gimmick where he draws faces on himself to indicate his emotions was consistently funny and a great bit. chai is a good design too, just a bit more generic. i really started to like a lot of these characters by the end! i was a bit worried about the writing initially, and it can be pretty corny and cheesy but it works with the style of game this is, it's all very saturday morning cartoon. the voice acting is phenomenal here too, which makes up for any potentially lame lines, the whole cast is great! i hope roger craig smith can do more cocky villain types his voice fits it very well. it picks up near the end as well, characters get much more interesting and fun to talk to/watch interact. the only writing complaint i have is, and it's only a few lines so it didn't bother me much, but i feel like they made chai a little too dumb here and there. i know that's like the cartoon protagonist thing but there were a couple lines where instead of just being naive or oblivious he's straight up dumb and it feels out of nowhere and weird. otherwise i liked everyone a lot, peppermint and korsica standing out the most to me.

the soundtrack is also obviously a standout, it's hard to even pick a standout because they're all amazing but 1,000,000 by Nine Inch Nails and Whirring by The Joy Formidable really got me into the combat and were the most engaging for their respective stages to me. i mentioned it in the visuals section but i love how the world reacts to the songs and i'll mention how genius the combat is related to when i talk about the gameplay but everything about the music is great here and works super well. it's impressive how few songs are in the soundtrack and how no songs feel overplayed and it feels unique the whole way through.

gameplay and level design is great here too! not that rhythm action games are the most popular genre in the world, but the way this game does it is genius and needs to be the standard for any other future rhythm action games. the way you always hit on beat regardless of timing is so smart. giving you rewards and bonus while also enhancing the soundtrack for hitting on beat is the perfect incentive while never making you feel lame/weak if you do miss it. it's super satisfying to hit combos on beat and feels insanely rewarding, but if you're not super great (like me) at rhythm games or you just make a few mistakes the game does a great job at making you feel badass regardless and it just feels so genius. the combos feel satisfying and there's a decent amount, i could see wanting more but i never felt tired of them throughout the whole game. i really like how your allies support you in combat, and the small upgrades you can buy for them. the combo beat finish attacks are animated so well and feel super satisfying. the special attacks are cool too, i didn't experiment with them too much and i wish your meter didn't fully reset after every battle because i had this mindset of holding off if there weren't many enemies but kept forgetting it would be useless to hold onto it (aside from very minimal bonus points) and ended up just not using a super. the one i stuck with was a really cool guitar hero esque mini game and i loved it so i never wanted to swap off! the only complaint i have gameplay wise is, while i like the enemies that require you calling in an ally to help the macaron ones in particular take 2 macaron attacks and he's the slowest to recharge and i found them just a bit annoying. the bike enemy annoyed me too but that felt more like me being bad compared to the macaron shields just being tedious. it wasn't too bad though, there was usually other enemies to distract you i just wish it took 1 use of macaron like the other enemies. i loved exploring each level too, and the automated sections like zip lining was very fun and thrilling! loved whenever those sections showed up. no level felt weak, but track 9, 10, and 11 were so fucking great i was having a blast. the big standout though was the bosses for sure. they were all so grand and exciting and a wonderful time. it was the most low scale but the korsica fight was very unique and fun and one of my favorites. i really liked the visual flair of mimosa's fight and utilizing each ally to take down the final two bosses was really cool and satisfying. i could go on and on about all the other little things i loved and specific moments that stood out but i'd be here forever, just know it's all amazing.

i knew this game would rock but i didn't expect a potential top 5 game of the year this soon and out of nowhere. i played this on game pass, but $30 for a game this wonderfully refreshing and unique and amazing on launch is so great. play this either through gamepass or buying it on steam. regardless you won't regret it. what a delight!

i want to preface this review by saying, i used the tag anywhere mod. i know there's a separate entry on the site for that mod but i wanna talk about it here sorry! i'll mention the mod throughout the review i'm sure but i wanted the main mention to be here because i wanna talk about the game as it was intended to be played, not with a mod that greatly fixes the biggest problem with it.

i wanna start out with what i liked/at least didn't entirely hate here because there's a lot! first of all, god i love DK and everything about the franchise. it's such a fun aesthetic and i just adore these characters with my whole heart. there's so much charm oozing out of everything in this game, i prefer the general look and feel over rares other collectathons easily. the atmosphere here is fucking phenomenal and i wasn't expecting it to be that great. it's for sure the cause of some performance bumps but it's just so damn good for an n64 game. it's especially great in the boss fights.
i also generally liked the controls here! every kong felt unique but still fun to control, and i was never really dreading having to use any kong. i will say, banjo feels better and that mainly comes down to how slippery everyone feels. this game way more than the banjo games tries to get you to do tight platforming and it's incredibly difficult because of how slippery each kong feels. they all had moves and attacks that made a lot of sense to be specific to them and made them feel special, although i will say every air attack was god awful. coming from banjo i tried to use them so often and the hit detection on them is so terrible. in general though i found them fun to control and liked using the various moves/abilities of each kong.
the OST obviously is great here, it's filled with classic donkey kong tracks and theyr'e all amazing. grant kirkhope and david wise are some of my all time favorite video game composers the things they've done in their respective donkey kong/rare games are nothing short of amazing.
the worlds are all great here too, i don't think any of them hit the heights of peak banjo world design, but none of them are bad by any means. the hub world is probably the weakest, and while i still liked it i found it to be too big and open for its own good. it's really the only place i felt the kongs felt slow, because the rest of the worlds are tightly packed enough. every world had a fun theme, and were filled with mostly cool/interesting things to do in them. i almost never found myself confused/lost on a missing collectable everything is conveyed well and the worlds aren't so overwhelming (cough cough banjo-tooie) that i felt annoyed looking around for some missing bananas. i do wish you teamed up as the kongs a bit more, the final level does it really well! with the kong swapping mechanic being the way that it is though it's probably for the best you don't.
one of the biggest surprises from this game for me, was how solid these bosses were! i mentioned it before, but the atmosphere of these bosses was so wonderful. the bosses genuinely felt massive and intimidating and the atmosphere of the bosses rooms were major factor in that. every boss felt so grand and intense, tinys boss in particular genuinely felt creepy! the design was so cool and the environment you fought him in was so good. the 5th and especially 6th bosses are reused, which is a bummer but i think they change it up enough to feel interesting. at least the 5th one, refighting the fire dragon as chunky and going huge to punch the shit out of him was super badass. refighting the armadillo as DK was a bit less fun but still not terrible. they all had some solid challenge to them, and almost every concept was interesting. lankys boat boss is another standout. the k rool fight at the end especially felt really cool! the k rool boss having you cycle through all 5 kongs for each phase felt super cool and rewarding, and i loved the boxing theme for it.
i also just wanted to mention, even though it's really small, i liked the QoL stuff this game had. it's weird how banjo felt like it digressed in this regard but being able to restart mini games from the pause menu, or press "exit level" at any point in the level and keep your progress was really nice and felt very modern.

now, unfortunately for the negative. holy shit i know it's been beaten into the ground but it's truly baffling how the kong swapping mechanic functions the way that it does. i played with the swap anywhere mod, but in the back of my mind i was constantly thinking about how fucking terrible and obnoxious it would be to have to deal with using kong barrels. for the record i played a short bit of the game a while ago without the mod, and it was so annoying i quit and it only got worse further in the game! there are so many collectables that genuinely feel like fuck yous in the way they're placed. this game feels so designed around being able to insta swap, i don't know if that was ever a concept thrown around but this game needed to not be released until that idea was thought of and executed on holy shit. it's less of an issue if you're just going for any%, and while i think that's fair to say and i generally don't like using "but 100%!!!" as an argument, but i think in collectathons the idea of 100%ing the game is so inherently built around the idea of doing that. if you do the bare minimum golden bananas required to beat this game you skip out on 50% of the golden bananas that exist. that's a whole lot of the game! compared that to something like crash 4, which i feel has absurd and obnoxious 100% requirements, i can more easily forgive that since you're not missing out on such a large chunk of the game by not doing it. i continued to be baffled at how anyone would put themselves through 100%ing this game without the mod, and how they shipped this game with the swap mechanic being the way it was. there's so many solutions here, let every kong pick up any color of banana. u can keep specific golden bananas locked to the specific kong if you need their abilities to get it but the coins and bananas being locked to them as well is just fucking insane. the obvious best solution is use the tag anywhere mod, which makes the game a 100x better experience. i know i'm beating a dead horse talking about how bad this is, but it's honestly one of the more baffling game design decisions i've experienced and it hurts so much more because underneath that it's a game i very honestly adore.
aside from the kong swapping bullshit, i do have a couple other more minor complaints i wanted to mention. i was originally going to put the bonus games in my positive section, because i did genuinely enjoy them for the most part but they run out of unique bonus rooms by like the second/third world so you're just replaying the same bonus rooms all the time. this wouldn't be so bad if there were just less of them, or if some of the bonus games weren't terrible like the push beavers into a hole one. i kind of include the minecart levels/various races in the bonus level category but they are a different thing. i generally liked these, but some of the later game ones were just bullshit instead of satisfyingly difficult. which is weird because i find this game strikes that balance really well generally but things like the donkey kong arcade game and the 2nd race with that bunny in fungi forest are just kind of bullshit and unfun. i did love the boat race, and the 2 tiny car races though! the slides were also super fun. i'm a sucker for randomly swapping gameplay like that, as long as it isn't egregiously stupid/frustrating and while most weren't, there were a few here that were terrible.
the performance was pretty rough too. i don't wanna say too much definitively since i emulated the game, so i don't know how much better/worse it was. but the entirety of creepy castle lags on the outside like the entire time and i felt like it should be mentioned a little bit.
i also didn't love how there wasn't really any indication for which kongs could get upgrades at the various tents. some are obvious, like when u first get a kong you know they can get their gun/at least 1 potion from cranky but otherwise you have to go in individually with each kong to check. some sign outside saying what upgrades where there or even them mentioning "hey i got nothing left for you, but send in your pal <kong> i got something for them!" would have been nice.
this complaint is extremely small, but i will say my brain doesn't love that when you feed the pigs bananas to access a boss room, you lose the bananas on your count in the level. the total obviously doesn't go down but running around a level with 75 diddy bananas in the top left even though i've collected all 100 kind of frustrated me the few times it happened. that's a very nitpicky thing but something that did bother me enough to want to mention it lol. i fixed this issue by just saving the bosses for absolute last but still bothered me.

donkey kong 64 is a phenomenal game if you're using the tag anywhere mod. i had a fucking amazing time here, i loved it as much if not more than kazooie! that being said, i wanna be a bit more objective and rate this based on how the actual game is and it's an incredibly frustrating and tedious experience. i still think it's fun and worthwhile, just significantly worse. it's insane how much a simple dpad kong swap mechanic makes this a wildly better video game but it really does. if you're interested in the game please play it via the swap anywhere mod it's an incredibly more fun experience. if this game got a banjo XBLA esque remaster where they officially had a swap mechanic similar to the mod i really think this game would be looked on extremely fondly. love u DK, hope you get another shot at 3d someday.

i was so ready to give this game like 2 stars and say "i thought it was a very boring racer but i can see the value here. it shouldn't have been a banjo game but there's some fun to be had." but after the hell that final boss just put me through it reminded me of everything i hated about this game. if you're a creative person that loves building things the car builder is genuinely incredibly innovative and great for the time but i'm not a creative person and didn't wanna spend my time there. everything else about this game is at its very best mediocre. the cars feel terrible, the physics are way too janky and bad, and i really think it's visually disgusting. my brain made me push through because i played every other banjo game and wanted to have beaten them all and i wish i didn't. even when this game wasn't mind boggingly frustrating with the terrible controls/physics it's just not for me. i was hoping for an okay time since everyone was like "it shouldn't be a banjo game but it's fun otherwise" but i really don't think it was. i wasn't having a good time. i have a lot of complaints about this game but honestly i don't care enough to talk about them at this point i just had a miserable time and i hate this game now! sorry!

Oh my god this game is sick.

Easily the best of the original god of war games, and the peak of this type of over-the-top insane spectacle video game in a way that only the finale of a trilogy like this can be.
While the story is still just a means to get the player to get to the big fights, and just very edgy and with an honestly unnecessary number of boobs, the writing still clearly had a decent amount more effort put into it. While not every attempt to make the story be more interesting or mean something more lands, this is still a major improvement over the first two.
They almost perfected the combat of this formula in this one, with exactly the right amount of complexity, the only issue to me is the gauntlets being a bit too good and a bit too fun compared to the other weapons, leading me to mostly use only them for the rest of the game.
The spectacle of this game is just so cool, with most of the best boss fights in the series, and some of the best moments that come together to be one of the best games of the 7th gen and is such a perfect and definitive end to this style of god of war game.