I’ll start by saying, I want to love this game. As an 8-bit title there is so much to be impressed by, from the brilliant presentation, to the music, to the improved gameplay, and even the story!

Metal Gear 2 definitely begins to ramp things up, as there is plenty more dialogue here than last time, as well as a more complex plot with interesting characters and tragic twists. As an early Kojima title, it’s so interesting to see this attempt at a deeper story already. It’s still easy to follow, but there’s plenty of great beats, exciting moments and slower more character driven conversations… it’s great, and so impressive for the hardware it’s on.

Gameplay overall has been improved too, you now have a radar which makes it much easier to navigate your immediate surroundings and know what to expect up ahead. Enemies are much smarter now, they will react to sounds, can actually turn their heads, and will chase you relentlessly until you get out of sight. You can crawl to stay below enemy eyesight, and there’s plenty of hiding spots you can potentially slip into.

There’s even a few set pieces that help the game standout and shake up the regular gameplay, such as tailing a guard through a dense forest or infiltrating a camp full of orphaned children.

This is in part due to the much improved presentation, this game looks great especially considering it’s an 8 bit game. The colours are way more distinctive and the locations are far easier to tell apart.

Combat is also better here, and the boss fights are mostly a step up, assuming you know how to damage them.

That’s it, the reason I can’t recommend this game, knowing what to do is once again just guesswork unless you fancy checking every single door available every time you get a new card. I won’t repeat myself but again, you need a guide to win, and that’s truly a shame - 4.5/10

Right, a series that goes dormant for 20 years returns with an extremely high effort 3rd person shooter directed by the Smash Bros director, This game fires on all cylinders for the 11-12 hours it lasts.

The graphics are incredible, 3D effects enhance this further, and the soundtrack is brilliant.

Uprising’s story is simple, but filled with memorable characters and witty dialogue. The villains are so hammy, it makes them extremely memorable, and the voice acting is great.

The gameplay is split into two halves. The first is an on rail shooters where Pit flies through the air on a set path. These are exhilarating and chaotic, you move at some breathtaking speeds and you have to stay alert to continue dodging incoming fire.

The other half is on the ground where you can explore areas, find treasure, and mostly, destroy waves of enemies. The combat is mega kinetic and the amount of weapons available is staggering. You can fuse weapons you find with others to improve their properties, or simply head to the shop.

The games has a built in difficulty slider where you choose the intensity of the level you’re about to play. The higher the number the better rewards you’re likely to find, with a death simply lowering the intensity. The game is pretty stingy with healing so staying at a high intensity can be quite a challenge, especially when dealing with this games biggest challenge… but bear with me.

Boss fights are always a great time, an absolute highlight of this game. The banter between Pit and the bosses only adds to the appeal, and there’s a strong amount of variety in how you have to approach these guys.

There is so much here to love in Uprising, but to get to any of that, you have to deal with the control scheme, Uprising has you move, turn, aim and dodge.. using the touch screen. It’s absolutely manageable but never feels perfect. Dodging is the worst part, it’s unreliable and leads to a lot of unfair damage being taken when you just can’t get away from the enemy your trying to dodge as Pit decides to just stay locked on to it.

I can’t recommend this game enough in terms of its content, but you have to willing to adapt to a very uncomfortable control scheme and there is no workaround. Still a really solid game that I hope one day gets a port, or better get a sequel - 8/10

The first half of a 2 part DLC bundle, EotF goes into some lore surrounding an ancient civilisation wanting to play god, and how their efforts would lead to their demise. We saw bits about them in the base game, but getting more detail is always welcomed.

The gameplay is essentially one large dungeon, there’s a tower that you must reach the top of, and there are hordes of enemies standing in your path. The main draw are the new boss fights, they are absolutely incredible and plenty challenging.

The final boss is actually a throwback to a super boss from FF5 so that’s pretty cool, and it’s an awesome fight here, a visual spectacle as well as a true test of reflexes and planning.

The game showers you in new equipment which is absurdly powerful, it’s great… for the like 2 hours this lasts.

This is a really short DLC, you arrive at the tower, climb it, fight the boss and that’s literally it. Yeah it’s fun to do, but it doesn’t really do anything that different from the base game, and I think could easily be confused as an overproduced side quest.

I was pretty surprised when I reached the top, and like I said the final boss was great, but after it all, I just felt like this was an obligatory inclusion to make the DLC bigger overall. I’m guessing part 2 will be much more content filled to justify the price tag, but as is, this is fun, but completely skipable - 5/10

Tomb Raider stars Lara Croft as she is hired to recover an artefact from Peru, which leads her on a path to discovering a lost city after being double crossed. There is barely any story for the Most part, with most cutscenes only happening after a block of levels. The end takes quite a turn as the true antagonist is revealed, it’s pretty nutty, but as deep as a rain puddle.

As a game, TR sets the foundation that would no doubt be a Huge inspiration to the whole industry, leading to titles like Uncharted (and by extension a lot of the AAA industry). The difference is that TR is far less automated for better, and for worse.

It’s a platformer with a focus on puzzle solving and Exploration, Lara can make long jumps, cling onto ledges and even perform a few acrobatics to deal with tricky obstacles. It has tank controls though, and while I was able to adjust to them, sometimes the lack of precision is a nightmare. It’s very easy to just walk straight off a ledge due to an awkward camera angle suddenly changing which messed with your controls. Lara also can’t seem to decide whether to cling onto ledges when going down, as often my roll over the edge would result in her catapulting herself forward to an instant death.

Gunplay Isn’t very good, despite the auto lock on it’s hard to really avoid enemies due to how stiff you are. There’s a decent selection of weapons to choose from, but you have to find them first.

The levels start off incredibly, with densely packed sections that were an honest joy to explore. The hidden areas were a great incentive to check every nook and cranny of each stage. But the last 3rd of the game really started to Drag, levels get way too long, confusing and frustrating with the amount of beginners traps that kill you instantly. I’m glad you can save anywhere.

It drops off pretty hard towards the end, but overall pretty fun - 6.5/10

Sonic R is an incredibly fun joyride for the couple of hours it takes to complete its single player content despite what an unbalanced mess it mostly is. There’s not much content here, the control is janky at best and there’s only 5 tracks. But somehow, it manages to pull things together just enough to work.

But it’s undeniable, Sonic R’s roster of races is extremely unbalneced. Sonic, Tails and Knuckles available from the start all great means of movement, Sonic can double jump, Tails can hover and Knuckles can Glide.. whereas Amy can’t even jump in a racer with plenty of ledges. Some characters just have no perks atall, and if you unlock Metal Sonic or Mecha Knuckles, you’re gonna win. Unless you’re Super Sonic, then all will fall to you.

But with now this game is designed it’s actually pretty fun to use these characters, the races take a lot of inspiration from classic Sonic design, rewarding you with shortcuts by keeping to higher paths and maintaining a high ring count. Despite the number of stages being lacking, I think the thought that went into these levels makes them pretty top tier.

Unlocking more characters is also a fun process that encourages you to explore different routes in levels. Every stage has 5 gold medals to collect and if you can do it all in one go and win the race, you can race a challenge character and unlock them for play if you win. Each level also has Chaos Emeralds to find and if you collect them all while winning the races, you’ll unlock Super Sonic. Take him to the final track Radiant Emerald after unlocking everything and you get to play the most challenging race in the game with the main theme “Super Sonic Racing” blasting the whole time.

Yes the soundtrack is incredibly cheesy… but I love it anyway. It gives R this unique vibe that sets it apart from the rest. The graphics are also very charming, and technically impressive for the Sega Saturn.

So yes dspeite the small amount of content, unbalanced roster and controls that take a while to adjust too, Sonic R still managed to be quite a bit of fun. How has this not been attempted again, such a great idea just left to be average for life.

Sonic 4 is a sequel that takes away much more than it adds. This was a game advertised as something worth the 16 year gap between this and Sonic 3 where in reality, it was a mobile game that was given a bigger budget and labelled as “Sonic 4” just to push units.

Sonic 4 isn’t really much like a classic sonic game outside of being a 2D side scroller. Sonic is the only playable character and his controls don’t feel much like the Genesis games at all. Rolling doesn’t pick up speed at all, it’s better to just run as this will allow you to get along just fine. There is a Spindash and it’s great for instant speed, as well as for Spindash jumping which is really fun in this game. Sonic also has the homing attack here. Not really sure why and for the most part all it’s used for attacking basic chains of enemies.

Overall though Sonic 4 isn’t a game that was built for the old control scheme. For this game I think the control is mostly fine, especially as they like to take control away anyway with the amount of dash pads plastered everywhere.

There’s only 4 zones, and all of them are almost entirely ripped from Sonic 1 and 2 when it comes to aesthetics. However level design is totally different and there are some gimmicks I like, such as the vine swinging in Splash Hill or the Roller Ball stage in Lost Labyrinth. In fact there isn’t really a stage I hate in Sonic 4 Ep1, while nothing mind blowing, it does work, and it’s okay.

Bosses aren’t much to talk about, fairly basic fights, though I enjoy the pinch modes and the return of the death egg robot as this was his first comeback.

I don’t mind how the game looks, Sonic does look a little like a plastic toy but overall I do like the visuals, the soundtrack though is pretty weak. Could be worse but most is forgettable.

Special stages being back as an end of level affair is abit dissapointing, and it’s a take on the Sonic 1 special stage, expect here you rotate the maze not Sonic. They’re okay, and you can even retry if you’re able to pause the game before failing.

And hey if you collect all the chaos emeralds you unlock Super Sonic for any stage, for the first time since Sonic 3! Absolutely awesome at the time and I’m glad it’s something that has mostly stuck around. He’s a lot of fun here, totally overpowered but a lot of fun.

Sonic 4 Ep1 isn’t a bad game by any means, it’s just really unremarkable considering what it’s following up on

Sonic 3D Blast is a much forgotten part of Sonic’s career, despite being the bridge between the classics and Sonic Adventure. Many elements such as the Spindash having its own button, to the homing attack actually originate here, though the homing attack is a shield power up in this game. Still 3D blast definitely had a hand in making Adventure what it is.

That doesn’t mean this is a great game, no it’s a bit of an oddball. Isometric games always come with certain problems, and a fast paced one is just asking for trouble. However the focus here isn’t really on high speed momentum based platforming, no it’s more about exploring these zones. Sonic still has natural flow to his movements, but he’s definitely pretty loose in handling, and it’s very easy to run into hazards.

This is a problme when the main focus of the game is destroying bad nicks and collecting the animals inside, who will the follow sonic until the end point of the section.. or if Sonic gets hit where they scatter all over the place. Some of these little creatures don’t seem to want help, as they will fly away from Sonic, which often leads to you pixel hunting for them, leading to you taking more damage and losing more birds… it’s not a great time.

Now I do think some of the levels have fun sections, and I really like the aesthetics in the game, especially on the Sega Saturn. But it doesn’t make up for the fundamentally annoying gameplay.

There are also chaos emeralds to collect in special stages, and these are all variations of the halfpipe from Sonic 2, collecting enough rings to pass. No matter what they are fine, and collecting them all will unlock the final boss, which is meh but hey.

3D blast isn’t awful, it’s just boring and pretty annoying.

The first and only attempt at a RPG for Sonic, Chronicles is a pretty average game that occasionally manages to catch my interest, but is ultimately more of a chore to play than fun.

The story is also incredibly basic for an RPG, which is a shame because the premise and setting is interesting. Chronicles reveals that Knuckles isn’t actually the last Echidna, as another tribe was sealed in a place known as a Twilight Cage a long time ago, and they’ve just recently been able to escape under the leadership of IX. Ix is unfortunately very generic, he just wants to conquer the world as he already rules over the other planets in the twilight cage, but clearly wants more. It’s mostly a shame that they don’t do that much with Knuckles, who you would think would extremely bothered by all this but… no not much happens here. There’s plenty of ties to the Sonic lore, such as establishing the origins of the Gizoids, but outside of some interesting landmarks, there’s not much happening here.

The world design is laughably bad, while there’s no random encounters areas are often awkwardly laid out. They are hand drawn backgrounds that don’t move much, and clash hard with Sonic’s rough 3D models. There isn’t much to do here, some places require certain characteristics a character has to explore further, but it doesn’t really amount to much. You also have to do everything with the touch screen, which I mean isn’t the end of the world but it’s such a stupid decision that didn’t need to be a thing.

The battles aren’t much either, once again it’s all touch screen based, but mostly it’s just selecting a command and letting it happen in very basic turn based battles. The only time things get more involved are with the special attacks characters can use “Pow Moves”. I do like how certain characters can pair up with others to perform these, it’s cool to see, but you have to play a touchscreen mini game to perform ANY move and this drags the pace down to a crawl. Some moves will be less effective if you mess up the command, and others will fail to happen at all which is totally baffling with support and healing skills. Granted the game isn’t very hard, but that’s not the point, it should still be fun.

The graphics aren’t great, and the music, yikes it’s one of the only missteps in Sonic’s career. Awful compositions, a poor choice of instruments used, the only good track is the intro theme, from there it’s truly awful.

Sonic Chronicles is a weird game that will probably remain the only attempt at a Sonic RPG , which is a shame because I’m sure there’s plenty of potential, but this game ain’t it.

Sonic the Fighters is another Sonic Spin off that really needed another attempt, an Arcade fighting game with a ton of enegry, hilariously over-animated characters and a killer soundtrack stuck behind a game with confusing mechanics and lacking content.

STF has a story mode where you take 1 character through a bunch of set challenges in set stages each and every time. There’s very little in variation and it’s a shame that this is all the single player content that’s available.

Combat is overall fun but very inconsistent. Every character has a ton of moves that compliment their established characteristics. I don’t think it’s always simple to pull off advanced techniques, but practice can allow you to mop the floor with opponents… sometimes.

Sometimes you’ll lock an enemy into a chain and deal massive damage, sometimes you’ll either get blocked for no apparent reason or barely deal any damage. The block is also odd, you only get 5 dedicated guards per round. This isn’t a problem per se and it does make you think about when you should be blocking, and when it’s better to try and dodge or just take the hit.

I think what saves fighters from feeling extreme bare is the animation, it’s absolutely brillaint, looney toons styled slapstick and the sound effects are so crunchy you can really feel those hits.

But as I say it’s a fairly simple game. Better with friends for sure but there are better options. Love the soundtrack too, it’s got great great variety. Play this if you’re curious but don’t go out your way for it.

Sonic 4 Episode 2 wraps up the saga by bringing back Metal Sonic and Little Planet from Sonic CD. Dr Eggman has managed to capture little planet inside of his Death Egg Mk 2, and plans to do… something with it. But after they are stopped Sonic and Tails escape.. and the planet is still trapped. To this day an Episode 3 never saw the light of day, and this cliffhanger was never resolved.

Well Sonic 4 Ep 2 definitely brings some improvements to the table. Firstly the presentation, this game looks gorgeous and is a much better artistic direction than Ep1. Music took a hit though which is a shame, some acts really suffer from the instruments used and just all round bad compositions.

Gameplay is better here, Sonic has more natural flow to his movements and rolling actually does naturally increase Sonic’s speed through momentum. Tails is here but you can’t play as him, instead by pressing the tag button, Sonic and Tails can team up to perform a few moves. They can fly in the air, swim underwater and perform a super Spindash to destroy anything in their path. I like this, it’s a great evolution of the classic sonic gameplay that feels totally natural and doesn’t cut the speed in half.

It’s a shame the level design is pretty poor, it starts okay with Slyvania Castle, but White Park is an incredible boring rollercoaster level and Oil Desert is everything I hated about Oil Ocean times 10. After the awful act 1, sky fortress is a decent zone, but again that’s it, 4 zones with 3 acts.

Bosses are passable, I know people hate how you have to wait to hit them, but I don’t think these bosses take that long, and are a decent challenge. I agree they could go a bit faster, but it’s not the worst thing ever.

Special stages are the halfpipe, and it’s a decent version of it, nothing special but they work. You once again get Super Sonic who is great, but he gets cancelled when you use a tag action so his effectiveness is cut in half.

This is another.. okay game, but there’s so much missed potential, like why can’t we play episode 1 levels here. There’s episode Metal where metal sonic can run through one act of each zone from ep1, but it’s over in about 15 minutes.

I don’t think this is a bad game, but again it’s just underwhelming.

Urgh, hands down one of the worst Sonic games I’ve played, Sonic Blast is an ugly mutt of a game that barely warrants discussion.

It’s a 2D sonic game where you play as either Sonic or Knuckles, and platform through a few zones. There’s chaos emeralds to find and bosses to beat, it’s all very fundamental.

The game looks atrocious, it was a bad attempt to use the pre rendered graphics of Sonic 3D Blast on much weaker hardware and the result not only looks ugly, but it impacts the gameplay. There is no natural flow to the characters, the zones are completely unremarkable and generic, and the bosses are fairly inoffensive.

There’s not really.. anything I like about Sonic Blast, I suppose it’s cool that Knuckles is playable on the game gear, but his glide isn’t very helpful, Sonic gets a double jump which is better for this game, but it’s this game.

The special stages are so terrible, barely any view and massive amounts of delayed movements, and getting the emeralds just isn’t worth it.

Also shout out to Blue Marine Zone, it’s my least favourite stage in the franchise. It’s confusing, it lags like crazy, there’s not enough water bubbles and there’s invisible currents that push you around making platforming feel impossible.

Don’t play this, it’s awful, one of the worst Sonic has ever seen.

One of the biggest cult Nintendo classics ever, Earthbound is a game I honestly don’t know how to describe. Despite being an RPG.. there’s next to no story here, yes there’s identifiable characters, some of which are pretty memorable, but even within the main cast there’s literally no development or even any interaction between them.. which is so weird for an RPG.

Every town you visit has its own conflict l, and like how trippy some of these parts get, there are memorable moments for sure, but with no narrative driving it forward, I find it hard to care about anything or anyone in this game.

I do like the world design, the contemporary setting is really charming, I love how this game looks and the atmosphere it brings. The final boss is also awesome, so visually striking and alien.

The gameplay is a pretty simple RPG, you explore the overworld which is well designed, and work your way towards linear objectives.

Enemies roam the overworld, so you can choose your battles and even ambush enemies. Battles are simple but there’s a really interesting mechanic where your HP actually rolls down when you get hit. So if your able to use a heal spell before the number hits 0, you can actually save that party member. I really liked that, but otherwise these battles are pretty simple. This is a very simple game that has charm, and it’s good, just not great - 7/10

I miss Sonic Runners, easily the most interesting and ambitious project for a Sonic Mobile game until Dream Team, Runners was a 2D sidecroller that has simple controls but very addictive gameplay. While it has been delisted, there are still.. ways of playing it, and if you choose to do so, I think you’re in for a great time.

Runners has a very basic story, but it served as an excuse to provide different stage challenges for the types of characters.

All the characters available are split into 3 categories, Speed, Flight and Power. Speed characters had a triple jump, Flight could fly up and hover down, and power characters could dash horizontally before a second jump. Simple mechanics but when playing the game it allowed for some crazy action. The speed increased every time you reached the end of a section where you would chase Dr Eggman and try and collect rings. After hitting max speed you would then enter the infinite mode where you just keep going till you die. There were power ups you can activate as well as Wisp power ups to help you really rack up high scores.

Unlocking other characters always sucked, as most were locked behind a premium roulette that required red rings to spin, rare collectibles that they really wanted you to buy. Considering the game is down I’m glad I never did this.

I loved how the game looked, sometimes I did experience lag which is absolutely a run killer, but for what it was Sonic Runners was a hell of a great time. They also did not need to go as hard on the soundtrack as they did but damn the OST is such an underrated gem that keeps finding ways to creep into other games. I’d love if Runners got released again on something else, but it’s unlikely, and that’s sad

By far one of the most niche Sonic games that’s never been released on anything else, Sonic Pocket Adventure is essentially a twist on Sonic 2, with music from Sonic 3. Stages may have different names, but they are in essence, levels from Sonic 2 with some slight design changes.

Sonic controls like he does in the Genesis games, so not complaints there, though he is the only playable character outside of multiplayer.

The only real differences are the bosses and the special stages. Bosses are all original contraptions and I love how Dr Eggmans look transitions from the Classic style to the Adventure Style by the end of the game. There’s an added Super Sonic fight if you’re able to get the all emeralds, but that’s pretty hard when the special stages are really hard versions of the half pipe. You also only get 1 attempt at an emerald per zone and exactly enough attempts to get them all. It’s stupid, and you can’t even use Super Sonic outside of the final boss.

That aside I love how this game looks, and there’s some extra content in puzzle pieces to collect if you fancy it.

This is an absolutely fun and fine Sonic game, it’s just not much in originality.

While a stark contrast to the style and originality of the Sonic Riders series, All Stars Racing is a much more traditional kart racing experience. However despite that, I think this is one of the best in the series, Kart control is super smooth, the tracks are incredibly varied and dynamic and the item balance is solid.

All Stars doesn’t overwhelm players with mechanics, it’s simple to pick up but there’s a high skill ceiling to reach for when playing. I also love how each character has their own “All Star” move as a way of getting back into the race if you fall behind. This can range from Sonic and Shadow going Super, to Big getting a giant Froggy to pull him along.

It’s not just Sonic though, there’s a ton of Sega icons here and it makes the roster nice and diverse.

There’s single player missions to pass the time, and these can lead to unlocking new characters or music for the races. Most music is just taken from other places, and the voice recordings are literally just ripped from other games, but it’s fine, and the game looks great.

This is a fantastic racing game. It may not be very original compared to riders, but I think it’s way more accessible and all round just fun.