I’m a huge Aqua Teen fan and even that can’t really save this game.

I mean, I’ll start with the positives:

1. For an ATHF video game on the PS2, it actually looks pretty good! Character models are nice, environments look like the show.

2. The IDEA is great on paper. A golf game/beat em up is an idea so stupid that it could totally work, in theory.

3. It’s funny. It’s the same Aqua Teen humor, the dialogue is still great. Hearing Shake be such a dick to Meatwad, Turkatron talking about his juicy metal legs when you smack him, it’s good stuff.

4. Good fanservice. Lots of character appearances and references. The Mooninites, the Plutonians, Cybernetic Ghost, etc.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t make up for the game’s big problems.

1. The big one. The gameplay. It’s just too sluggish and repetitive and monotonous and boy just plain not that fun. If they made your characters move and attack faster, I think it could’ve worked. It wouldn’t have been the deepest game out there, but it would work! But man, this game is a SLOOOOOOG. It gets a LITTLE Better when you get some better weapons, but not much.

2. The racing sections. So once every few levels you’ll do a kart racing segment against Skeeter and DP (the frat aliens). And boy, does none of it work. it’s slow, bad controls, pretty easy (except for when the physics mess you up and it takes forever to reorient yourself), and boy do I hate hearing the same three lines over and over again AD. NAUSEUM.

“Who farted?” “Turn on the AC” “Who farted?” “This thing have a CD player?” “who farted?” “Who farted?”

3. These levels are LONG. Early on it’s not a big problem, but later on when the courses get bigger, holy shit. Big levels + incredibly slow traversal speed = please let it end.

It sucks, since there’s real potential here, and the big problems seem SO OBVIOUS! Like someone HAS to have thought “hey, this isn’t very good, maybe we should fix some things up.” Maybe it was low budget, maybe it was a short time frame. But wow, whatever the issue was, it’s a real shame.

I am 30 or 40 years old and I do NOT NEED THIS.

It’s a solid little Wario Ware clone with SpongeBob characters! Really like the different art styles they do the the different games, really helps give it a unique touch. Think my favorite is the PUNK ROCK one.

Not like an AMAZING game, and I didn’t feel the need to keep playing to 100%, but I played and enjoyed most of it.

Fun!

This game is kinda BASED actually??

Let me start off by saying I actually really like the red and black Virtual Boy look. Sure it can be grating when staring at it a long time, but I think it’s a cool look.

This is my second Wario Land game, and honestly, I enjoyed it a lot. More than the first one even! Something fun about having to make your way back to the top floor of the Awazon cave. Perfect middle ground of not too hard and not too easy. I loved that each floor of the cave was a different theme and it wasn’t just “cave level” for each one. Great designs for the bosses.

It was just a fun, pleasant time. Loved it!

Owlboy is a visually stunning, beautifully crafted pixel art showcase with a wonderful soundtrack and a cute cast of fun characters that lure you into a false sense of security until you try to actually play the damn thing and learn that your little mute owl friend has glass bones and paper skin and his main weapon is a peashooter that takes multiple hits to kill even the lowliest cave bat.

Owlboy is beautiful, yes, and I like the idea of an avian character having to carry people around to do their fighting for them, but it wasn't exactly...well, fun. This is a very tedious game. As you play it, you start think "Oh I'm sure the game's gonna get better..." as the stealth missions and various maze-like dungeons beat you down in an ever-increasing volley that wears on your patience. Soon, you'll ask yourself "Am I having fun?" when you know the answer is "No", and that's usually before you realize that this game wants you to treasure hunt for over 2000 finite coins across a playing field that has zero warp or map options available.

But at least the art is really nice. It's a shame about the whole "gameplay" part.

UPDATE - Okay this is the first game I've played on my PS5 that actually hardlocked my system. I had to manually shut down my PS5, have my USB drive repaired, and use a back up save because the Owlboy save file got corrupted in the process. Because I...walked through a doorway wrong? I guess?
Fuck you too, Owlboy.

Greatest hits compilations can be a hard sell since a fan of the series might say "big deal, I've played all these games before" but the beauty of Gold lies in the hardware it was released on. Getting a WarioWare on the 3DS, a system that can emulate both the gyro controls of Twisted and the touch screen of Touched, was a stroke of genius - even if it occurred late in the system's lifespan - and the way it accumulates into an absolutely frantic finale where you're switching between 3 different play styles on the fly was a real "This is why I love video games as a art medium" moment. If you're going to use console gimmicks for your video game, might as well go this hard with them, and if you can, please play this beautiful game on an actual 3DS system. This is where Gold shines. like gold

In a way, WarioWare Gold is an amazing send-off, both for the handheld WarioWare games and the 3DS itself. An absolutely exquisite curtain drop for the system before it succumbs to its fatal injuries via poorly selling remakes, and I'm saying this about a game where Wario gains godlike powers by wearing a communal toilet on his head and tries to murder a small child in front of a stadium full of people while doing so (in makes sense in context, I promise, and also it's unclear if the communal toilet itself has godlike powers or if Wario gave himself godlike powers via the placebo effect).

Oh, and to sweeten the deal, once you collect all the souvenirs, the game slaps you on the back and says "well done, now you get this mildly addicting collectible card game where you play rock-paper-scissors against those random freaks from the minigames". This game rules.

Boy am I glad I bought this game when I did, cause it’s delisted as FRICK now.

I liked it! A simple little beat em up based on a show I adore. Or rather, based on the PILOT. It’s in this weird nebulous void between the pilot and the show, it’s a neat little oddity where things are more refined from the pilot, but NOOOOOT quite there yet.

Honestly, the biggest problem is it’s a touch screen mobile game. It can be really frustrating positioning yourself where you want to be and pulling off the moves you want to do. But it’s functional! It’s fun enough!

The world and characters are just so charming. It’s not as refined as the show, but the environments are still very nice looking for a game like this, and it’s always a joy to talk to this cast.

That’s about it! It’s pretty simple, can be frustrating sometimes, but I had a good time with it!