After everything I've gone through with the other parts of Quake 2, I think this one is actually good. Not great, but its better than the rest of this game so far. Rather, I think it just kinda understood how to merge the cadence of Quake 1 that I loved a lot with Quake 2; mostly. Ground Zero still keeps a lot of the frustrating aspects of the base game in tact unfortunately. It even goes further with them in some cases such as basically making every other corner a monster closet of some kind so you hit a trigger and then get your back filled with plasma. Honestly it may just be me growing numb to Quake 2's bs and knowing I was almost done with the original release and its expansions but these frustrations didn't bother me as much as I feel like they should have.

Not really sure how to describe it I think the levels and encounter scaling just generally connected to me better for Ground Zeroes. I did enjoy the new weapons such as the new machine gun variant, the plasma beam, and the tesla traps. I feel like these actually felt decently heavy hitting which is rare for weapons in this game. The final boss was also probably the best Quake boss fight so far. Which isn't saying much given its competition but hey, its something. I had fun with Ground Zero more than the rest of Quake 2 and thats kinda all I have left to say on it. I'm honestly surprised I enjoyed this this much given everything but hey, sometimes things are just like that. Time to play Quake 2 N64 I guess since that is apparently an entirely different game this time.

7/10

Just take everything I said about Quake 2 and amplify it. Thats how I feel about The Reckoning. It just somehow does everything Quake 2 set out to do but worse. Weapons never feel powerful despite you going through and supposedly getting more powerful gear as the game progresses, enemy placement is abysmal (fuck the final fight on the freighter. Three tanks and two grenadiers in a room the size of a one bedroom apartment is a terrible decision). The maps and encounters are repetitive, and hell even the boss fight is exactly the same as the base game’s but in an arena less suited for it. Its like the devs of this expansion pinpointed everything I hated about Quake 2 and cranked it up a notch. I am so hoping I have an easier time stomaching Ground Zeroes.

2/10

I wish this game was better.

Sonic Rush is a game where in theory I think this could have been really cool but none of the gameplay actually supported it unfortunately. The level design for normal zones is mostly fine but have some really odd design quirks throughout that bring the experience down. The biggest example of this is the devs’ fondness for launching you up in the air really high and then making you play a guessing game as to where it was safe to land which got old real quick since they do it in pretty much every level. The kinda annoying level design I could handle since the zones were at least interesting visually. Honestly this whole game is pretty impressive on that front for what they managed to pull off on the ds. Back to gameplay though, what I couldn’t handle much of at all were the boss fights.

This game tried some interesting things on paper with its boss fights that just, kinda didn’t work in practice. To explain the game tried to do away with the standard platformer “three hits to win” formula by giving bosses eight health points. However the fights aren’t really designed around this. Pretty much every boss pattern feels like it was made with three strikes you’re out in mind and then just made it carry on. Oh, and the longer the fight goes on the less time you have to hit the boss’s weakspot so you have to be incredibly quick to react the further into the fight you get. I actually think the idea of a boss adapting to you throughout the boss fight and trying to cut off your avenues of attack is a really cool sounding idea; i also think it could be really well executed in the right hands. I do not think that was the case here. I think this is also exacerbated by how the more times you take a hit the farther your rings go away from you; which causes a lot more problems than you would probably expext.

That being said I think this game has some solid parts to it. I think the music is phenomenal, like I said earlier the visuals for a 3d ds game are pretty impressive, and Blaze being forced into being friends with Cream was a fun little story. Now if only Blaze was playable in a game with good gameplay.

5/10