Crash Twinsanity's development has been talked about a lot. From its switch from a more mature tone to a more comedic one, to the butt-load of things they had to scrap to meet the deadline.

There are people who love this game. There are people who hate this game.
Personally, I've always had an interest in this one. Not just because I'm a fan of Crash, but because some of the cutscenes were really funny.

And I think I'll start right there. The comedic tone that they went for really paid off! There were a lot of times I laughed my ass off! From Cortex's falling into a spiked pit, to Crash's dumb facial expressions, to Crash having a very interesting look when looking Cortex's behind.
Cortex even spanks Crash, nice to see they're getting along.

And that's the main gimmick with this one. Crash and Cortex have to team up to defeat an even greater evil... the Evil Twins.
I feel like that generic name might've been intentional.
You'll playing as Crash and Cortex throughout the adventure, either as just one of them, or both of them. Launching Cortex and smacking his head into boxes, or using him as a sled, and hurting his balls on rails.

There's also a new playable character in Nina Cortex, the daug-- niece of Neo Cortex, and she... just kinda exists, to be honest.
I liked her gameplay style of using a hook on certain objects, but you don't play as her much.

The level desing has also seen a big change. While the game is linear like previously, the stages are bigger, and you can explore around them to get the game's gems, as they are no longer tied to boxes.
Getting these can be fun, because obtaning them is kinda like a puzzle. But I didn't feel like gathering them all, especially in the Slide levels, which are the hardest to obtain all of the gems.

Regardless, this change in level design is a welcome one, and I wouldn't mind future Crash games returning to this style. And it also does not come at the sacrifice of the game's platforming, as it's very well designed and fun to go through!

One thing that I think should be said about this game, and probably is the biggest point of contention of it... is the fact that you can clearly see that this game is unfinished.
Examples include, but not limited to:
- Collision detection being all kinds of wonky.
- Story jumps around a lot, and some plot threads are wrapped up out of nowhere.
- Characters like Evil Crash and Nina just kind of exist, and don't have much of a presence.
- Plenty of sound effects simply not existing in various cutscenes.
- A stunned Coco has a hitbox.

By collecting the gems, you receive a lot of the game's concept art, and it serves to also confirm that there's a lot of cut content.
Now, is this a 100% bad thing?
Not necessarily. I still think the game we got is pretty serviceable, but it definitely needed more time in the oven. I wish certain things got expanded upon, like the two characters I mentioned earlier.

Outside of the comedy and the gameplay, another thing I really liked about this game was the overall presentation! Compared to The Wrath of Cortex, this is night and day. Crash Twinsanity's graphics and art direction still hold up to this day, and I love how the game looks!
Character animations are also pretty good, especially Crash's and Cortex's.
The voice acting is also very good, but it came with a change. Clancy Brown is no longer the voice of Cortex, now Lex Lang is at the helm.
Simply put, I love the voice he brought to Cortex! His line delivery is on point, and it enhanced the comedy that much more.
What I find weird is that Crash never emotes anything in Twinsanity. Like, there are no grunts... at all. Weird, considering Crash is pretty expressive in this game, you'd think he'd "talk" more, but I guess not.
Also, Nina is pretty much a mute until her "Huh?" at the final cutscene. Most likely a consequence of the rushed dev time.

Speaking of voices, you'll be hearing plenty of them in the music, as it was composed by a band called Spiralmouth, an accapella band. Since it's accapella, which only involves voices, the game's soundtrack has its own unique vibe. It's not for everybody, but I really enjoyed it, and I think it enhanced the game's tone nicely.

Overall, Crash Twinsanity, while definitely flawed, was a really fun game to play through, and I can see myself playing this again sometime in the future.

Obviously it's the highest selling Mario Kart, hell, the highest selling Mario game at all, so they must've done something right. Totaling a solid 96 tracks and 50 characters, some even crossing over from different games entirely, there should be a little something for anybody and everybody. I dunno know, though, I just can't get into it as much as I feel like I should.

This is a very clean feeling Mario Kart, almost a little too clean. I guess it's the Double Dash fan in me, but Mario Kart 8 has always felt just a little too smooth for my liking, which sounds like it should be a good thing, but I definitely prefer the more chaotic gameplay of Mario Kart. Although, I can give them credit for this, 200cc does do a pretty good job of fulfilling that wish. Custom items as well to an extent, though that's a bit more on the ridiculous side than hectic. Big difference.

I digress, chaotic or not, MK8D still has some beautiful and vibrant tracks. Electrodrome was, and to this day still is, easily in my top 3 tracks out of the entire series. Mt. Wario is another really fun design and concept, which I'm sure has had its praises sung relentlessly by now. Even the retro selection is pretty damn strong, some remarkable glow-ups given to tracks such as GBA Mario Circuit, GBA Ribbon Road, N64 Rainbow Road, though I do understand the grievances to be had on that last one. Outside of the first page of cups, 8 Deluxe also introduced the Booster Course Pass line of DLCs, which, ah...

Sorry, I hate this concept in its entirety. I understand you have your sweet little mobile game and you need to preserve all of its tracks for when that inevitably shuts down, but I really don't think the way to do it was by adding paid DLC to your Deluxe rendition of your 8 year old game. Yes, I see why they did it, I get it, highest selling game on the Switch, it still just feels stupidly counterintuitive. Not to mention how wildly inconsistent the quality can be. For every GBA Boo Lake, there's a 3DS Toad Circuit. For every Yoshi's Story, there's a GBA Sunset Wilds/Sky Garden sorry i'm a super circuit fan and i will NOT sit idly by and let them curse my beloved tracks.

I won't call it bad, it's very clearly not bad. Good, even. I just don't like the feeling it evokes, which is, uh. Not much. Online works surprisingly well, battle mode is easily better than base MK8. Shoutout Reyn and Quent for the fun times and look forward to their reviews as well, assuming they both write one. If not, then at least look forward to Reyn's.

bought and installed within the first minute of availability, which idk i will ever do for a game again, so feel free to take my autism with a grain of salt. but this is an exceedingly, endlessly lovable piece of art, one which reaffirms just about everything ive grown to believe about art in the first place. the source material , once uncomplicatedly loathed, has been slowly chipped away at by years of collective intimacy...sentences heard as groups of syllables, individual frames of animation immortalized, control quirks forced to be grappled with, npc requests and locations forced to be stored away in memory. this is to say nothing of the dedication it took to create an entire fan remaster, which leads directly into arzette via its lead developer. the result is a combination of nostalgic warmth, a grasp of what is compelling and memorable and striking about those games, and a melancholy stare at the parts that could have been better...a melancholy that could only be sated Through creation.

arzette will be described by many people as "the cdi zeldas but good." having enjoyed the remasters of those games, its more the final step in a process of escalation towards "the cdi zeldas, but there is less in the way of the good." the ultra-memorable quirk and expressiveness of the animation and voice acting are more widely acknowledged as boons now, but arzette also runs with the gorgeous background art, the lush and memorable music, and the miniature zelda experience via an interlocking spread of bite sized metroidvania maps. since its no longer on the cdi, individual screens are much meatier, which does make it slightly longer to recheck places (and rechecking places is what youre doing a Lot in all of these games, but especially this one with its more complex item progression), but it also allows for much more deliberate and satisfying level and encounter design. tricks from the cdi games have their most unpleasant edges sanded off, yet still retain their character. its by any measure an improvement on its inspirations, yet it never once feels judgemental or callous...instead it feels freed and joyus, the result of passion and time and effort and improved technology, chipping away at a dream created almost accidentally by people working with a bad console under tight time pressure.

and more then anything, even with some fun and dry meta jokes, i may not play a game more full of shamelessly earnest love this year. its close proximity with its source material allows it to share a bunch of discoveries its made that its so bubblingly excited about...yet its also an individual and distinctive piece of art carrying with it all the best sensibilities of contemporary metamodern media engagement, a plea to look closely at things that are dismissed and create beauty out of them. its most singular advancements are not its polishing up of rough gameplay ideas, but are in its disarmingly heartfelt and kind story and general tone. i know many people are cynical about pastiche, esp in a world where the same ideas are endlessly recycled over and over...but art should be about the free exchange of ideas, putting them out in the world for other people to respond to, feel about, and create on top of. it certainly cant be dismissed out of hand if it produces results like this even occasionally. hot moose man.

Glad to have my spot in history.

Neal's really good at making quick games that aren't really necessary of any more than a few words, yet are still fun to dick around with for a good while. Once you get it, you get it. You'll be throwing shit together for a bit before you come up with an idea and spend the next few hours struggling to craft that single ingredient you need to start the 20 item long web to get there.

i did very much enjoy trying to make all the sailor scouts and soyjaking every time i got one though (sorry chibi moon i really couldnt figure that one out)

This review will be centered around both this remake, and the original release of Mad Father, as both are perfectly accessible on the system I played it on. This playthrough was done through the remake.

I genuinely adore this game. Evident by the rather exorbitant amount of time I have totaled for this quick, 2 hour long RPG Maker horror (or Wolf RPG, really) Mad Father is a game I have been able to thoroughly enjoy for an actual decade at this point. It's the perfect mix of horror and atmosphere that has somehow always managed to enamor me every time, even despite all my yearly replays.

There is such a haunting history built within the Drevis mansion. A reluctantly loving family, doomed by a madman in power. A child who only loves this mad father due to a lack of information, only learning her mistakes after devoting herself to saving him for so long. It's devastating watching this story unfold, the hardest moments only ever amplified by a just as haunting soundtrack. (yeah what's a good wheatie review without everybody's favorite part)

This is a soundtrack I can best describe as pretty. The ambience in each area is perfect, there are some beautiful uses of pianos and violins to be found, and to go just a little further into it, even just the sound design is pretty nicely done. The game will very often cause a subtle shift in the environment, accompanied by an alerting noise in the midst of the usual quietness. Mad Father knows damn near perfectly how to be unsettling. Maybe I'm a bitch.

I've mentioned in earlier reviews of this game that the 2020 remake made a few changes that I wasn't the biggest fan of. Yes, silly mistakes have been remarkably softened by the easy QTE that the game gives you, I still stand by that a fair amount. But I'm also willing to look past that. I think despite everything, the good more than outweighs the bad, and it's still amazing seeing the absolute glow-up this game got after 8 whole years, not to mention the revamped puzzles and new content with Blood Mode.

It could very well be the nostalgia talking. The average person would look at Mad Father and notice that it generally follows the pretty basic formula that most RPG Maker horrors follow, solving puzzles by mixing items and using them at the right areas, with perhaps a bit more added onto it thanks to the use of the chainsaw. I'm willing to admit that. I've always been willing to admit when nostalgia can sort of take a hold on me. Unfortunately, I've also always been willing to admit that I don't care. I love this genre, and I love this game. This is easily one of my favorite horror games ever. Always has been, always will be.