i was 19 when this came out and at a period of my life where my parents thought they should deny me allowance. i was a billiards head obsessed with the famous sharks. girls at school called me the hustler, the baltimore bullet, mr color of money. i carried a cue bag around. i got my first job 8 years later and after cashing paycheck #1 the gamestop guy told me pool shark 2 was outdated, tried to upsell me on some 360 game with willie mosconi? i respect the greats, i love the grfaphix, but shark 2's got the "angles"like i got the angles when i'm chalking up. don't believe me? https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/screen/full/5/6/3/304563.jpg

I’m not angry Nintendo, just disappointed.

What can I say? I tuned into the Nintendo direct and I saw the original snes f-zero gameplay. I started to get excited. My heart pounding like a fat clock. Finally, just finally, we were gonna get the next big f-zero game. I could finally enjoy a new big f-zero game. I couldn’t actually bel-

multiple cars appear
Me: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

F-zero 99! Why. You got rid of super Mario bros. 35. And what is your response to not only that, but a possible new f-zero game? This. Who thought that the first thing f-zero fans needed was not only a tease, but a new game in the Tetris 99 style. Oh well surely it can’t be that bad, besides, I did give this game 3.5 stars so surely there has to be some redemption for this game. Let’s just get into the gameplay because I wasn’t planning on reviewing this game but I needed to get my anger out somehow.

The gameplay is…actually alright. Like there are worse battle royale style games and I do kinda like what they tried here. You are pitted against 99 people all on different tracks from the original f-zero. You can speed up however it also means you lose some health at the same time. So if you’re likely to bump into things you’re probably better just waiting for the other way to boost…which leads me onto my next bit of gameplay. The other way to speed is to collect these little yellow things that come off of other cars when they bump into each other. You can then ‘super boost’ which allows you to go onto a second track above and speed about opponents. You can also spin to move others out the way too.

There are also the team mode and grand prix events but those are pretty standard. They can get pretty hectic and the Grand Prix mode is pretty fun. It’s cool how it almost takes on those classic racer tropes where you have to finish in a certain place or above to keep going. Overall, it feels like they did put quite a bit of time into this. You can also unlock new cars. These only come from doing specific things like playing 5 or more games of 99, or getting a number 1, and so on. You can also unlock banners and badgers for your car in a similar fashion but if you ask me…these aren’t nearly as cool.

I think the real problem is that…this is the next f-zero game. Whether you want to accept that fact or not, the bottom line is, this will probably be the only new f-zero game for the foreseeable future, and if you ask me…that kinda sucks. Granted, this game isn’t bad, hell I enjoyed quite a lot of my time with this game. But the problem is that it’s always gonna be looked down upon and never classed as a true f-zero gx successor. In a few years time, this game will probably be shut down and it would make sense. So for when that day comes…this game was simply a weird mark on history that tried to bring back a dormant franchise…and only ended up annoying or angering quite a few people.

Decent battle royale, quirky gameplay mechanics, cool cars, I still hate turning

As a wise man once said, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it…just lightly modify it to your taste. Doom was an extremely popular game that basically invented the first person shooter. So of course a year later there was gonna be a sequel. But would this sequel live up to the original?

Definitely

You play as doomguy yet again on his mission to defeat the same demons you fought in the first game. Your mission is to save earth and destroy hell once and for all. The plot is pretty standard just like its predecessor but it works for what the game is going for. It’s also set in a continuous sequence of linked levels unlike the first game where you have three different chapters. Now onto the gameplay…

The gameplay is similar to the first game. There aren’t many graphical improvements or anything but there are a few added additions. For starters, the levels are much bigger and a lot more ambitious than the previous game. There are some new enemies and with them comes a new weapons. The new enemies can be pretty tough and overall they are really cool additions. The new weapon is the super shotgun and oh man, is it super. You can now shoot two barrels at once and it works excellently against the tougher enemies. You also have a new power up known as the megasphere which improves your health and armour to the maximum of 200%. Overall the game has some neat additions that do make it stand out to the original doom and it works really well.

So…is doom II a good sequel? It sure is. Coming from the original doom it’s quite the improvement. The new levels are very ambitious and the new additions are fun to use. The gunplay is still as fast and fun as it always was with that gripping level of brutality. The music is also as hardcore as ever. Like come on, you can’t have doom without metal music (we don’t talk about the ps1 port even though it works kinda well).

Great sequel, ambitious levels, cool additions, still fun gunplay, music will always be hardcore, fan made levels are kinda ambitious

“We do not know space. We do not see it, we do not hear it, we do not feel it. We are standing in the middle of it, we ourselves are part of it, but we know nothing about it.”
~M.C. Escher

When games are popular, they are always gonna get a sequel. It’s a widely disputed thing in not only gaming, but media as a whole whether or not the sequel is better than its predecessor. A form of sequels which is usually almost tossed aside, are mobile game sequels. Some are seen as cash grabs, others are genuinely seen as improvements on what the original was trying to do. Good examples of mobile sequels are angry birds 2, plants vs zombies 2, and every single sequel in the bloons td series. Sometimes these types of sequels are kinda hit or miss. But surely a game like monument valley deserved a sequel right? Well three years after the original, we finally got it. So without further ado, let’s get into the game shall we?

You play as Ro, a mother with her little daughter who aren’t returning geometry, but are instead creating it. Ro has to teach her daughter how to create the monuments with her but it’s clear she worries about her. So, during the middle of the game, she has to send her away so she can ‘grow up’. And that’s where the story splits and you play as both Ro and her daughter. Talk about a sad split huh? Anyway before we continue the final bits of the story, let’s now get onto the gameplay of the game.

The gameplay of monument valley II is basically the same as the first game. You are tasked with guiding Ro from one side of the monuments to the other. You do this by moving the monuments in certain ways and changing the perspective completely. In some levels, you’ll even control both Ro and her daughter separately which steps up the puzzle solving a little more. It ends up leading to some more well-designed puzzles that feel different and more unique to the first games. The environments also feel a lot more vibrant and also seem a lot bigger in terms of scope. Overall, whilst not being too different to the gameplay of the first game, it feels as thought they definitely took a step in the right direction and cooked up something very pleasing.

Back to the story, you then play as Ro and her daughter separately in a set of levels until they slowly but surely come closer together and finally reunite after so long. It’s revealed that Ro’s own mother abandoned her years ago to ‘grow up’ and it almost hits quite a bit. You know what also hits like a truck? When they reunite. I played this game with my family a few years ago and this bit always kind of hit me. It feels kind of tame now that I replay it but this was still a pretty big thing for me. But that was the story. Overall, it’s a pretty good story but it’s not absolutely brilliant. They don’t really go too far with a plot and I’d kinda wished they’d maybe expanded on it a little.

For a sequel to one of my favourite mobile games it still holds up. This game definitely has a much more ambitious plot to the first game but I feel that if they’d concentrated more on the gameplay side of things or even the story side of things this could’ve been a much better and much bigger game then it’s predecessor. But still, this game holds up very well and I advise people to play it after the first game.

Good sequel, similar gameplay, tiny bit more ambitious story, emotional characters, more shapes