This is like THE trash heap movie adaption of the 7th console generation.

Runs like shit.
Godawful soul draining gameplay.
About 2 Hours long.
Doesn't expand on the characters or the plot of the source material.

This is an embarrassing cash grab. I'm sure there is at least one person who gave a fuck about this project but I honestly couldn't tell.

This was my first Ace Combat game.
Not gonna be my last.

I wanted to get into the franchise because I heard it was Metal Gear in the sky. While I think this is certainly true, I don't think it would have been enough to hook me. Funnily enough I stayed for the gameplay.

The controls in this game are pitch perfect. There aren't many games which utilised the PS2 controller and it's progressive buttons to the fullest. This game certainly does. The Dogfights play razorsharp, the steering is just right and the weapons feel satisfying as hell.

The missions are well paced and offer much variety. They also have a fantastic way of escalating the difficulty in my opinion.

The Soundtrack is fucking amazin. Holy shit, I can't believe I never heard any of these tracks.

I could keep gushing but I'm just gonna get back to playing the game.

Even if you have no interest in planes or dogfighting whatsoever, give it a go. You won't regret it.

Hey.

You wanna play a videogame.
Like, a fucking videogame.
Play this one.
No fat.
No brain dead story, which tries way to hard.
No microtransactions.
Just mechanics.

Almost perfect as far as I'm concerned.

Truly a little gem for it's era.

This game has got a lot going on for 1997 lemme tell ya.
First let's talk about the elephant in the room. This game rarely (hehe) hits it's targeted 30 FPS. I can understand that this is a dealbreaker for some people but I gotta tell ya, you are missing out on a classic if you don't play the game because of something like that.

Contrary to the framerate the controls in this game are smooth as fuck. I'm talkin' cracked shmoovement in this game. Especially the karts. The mechanics do take some getting used to and some stuff you'll have to figure out on your own. (Or you know just google it.) But once you got the hang of it you'll be slippin' and slidin' across these tracks. Hella satisfying.

When this game came out the only real comparison was Mario Kart 64 and I think DKR brought enough to the table to perfectly exist alongside the king of kart racers. Especially the focus on singleplayer is very much appreciated here. Boss fights, additional trials in the established tracks and the overworld all work great and are a delight to play through.

Now I know that some people out there say that DKR is trash because Crash Team Racing exists. I find it very important to note that DKR came out in 1997 while CTR came out in 1999. 2 years were a big deal in terms of technological advances back in the 90s. While I prefer CTR over DKR I gotta be honest here.
The most positive way I could possibly put it is: CTR improved on the formula which DKR put in place 2 years prior.
A more negative way of putting it would be: CTR fucking ripped this game off super hard, dude.

The soundtrack is a banger. Even if you haven't played this game you have heard tracks from the OST. I guarantee it.

I can safely recommend this one. Especially if you can look past technologial limitations and see the passion and creativity stifled by but also inspired by such limitations.

Imagine The Legend of Zelda right.

Only with amazing, trailblazing writing, which respects your intelligence. Godlike presentation in general, especially for 1999 and voice acting which holds up better than most voice work today.

Paired with tedious godawful gameplay, which is so incompetent at times that it's almost like a joke.

Can't recommend a playthrough but do watch the cutscenes on youtube. It's honestly astounding for 1999. Amy Hennig is fucking cracked man.

Perfectly paced.
Banger soundtrack.
Visuals still look fresh, thanks to an amazing artstyle.
Blew my expectations completley out of the water.
Gonna be replaying this one hundreds of times.

This is the worst kind of game for me personally.

It gets so much stuff right, there's honestly cool shit and good ideas in here. Sadly this is the kind of game which is worth less than the sum of it's parts.

Let's get the most obvious and glaring stuff out of the way first.
Shadow of the Colossus is a game which came out in 2005 and is generally regarded as a classic. Laser focused design, no compromise whatsoever.

Praey for the Gods is a game that came out in 2021 and is born of conflicted priorities and also apeing Shadow of the Colossus.
I really hate to do this but if anyone would claim that the comparison is not invited I'd probably advise that person to visit a doctor of some kind.

This game, for better and for worse, mimics everything Shadow of the Colossus did. And I mean everything.
Open world, boss encounter focused gameplay, a deity which help you on your quest, the protags motivation, the climbing and sword stab mechanics to damage bosses and basically everything else.

Honestly there's nothing wrong with this in my opinion. The problem is that the developers took everything from Shadow whole cloth without contemplating if this is healthy for their game or not. This becomes painfully obvious once the mechanics of the other big inspiration for this game kick in. Zelda: Breath of the fucking wild. This game also has survival mechanics. Upgradeable gear, hunger management, temperature management, another meter which I didn't understand or care about (I beat this game lol), breakable weapons, stamina and health upgrades after collecting a certain number of something, crafting and of course a glider or a sailcloth in this instance.

These 2 sets of gameplay mechanics are at constant odds with each other, with the exception of the sailcloth. They basically don't even intertwine at all. The survival and crafting mechanics are only really relevant during the traversal to the next boss location. Once arrived the game switches into shadow mode and the kinda puzzle like boss fight begins, ignoring everything which came before. For example you do not need any form of weapon to beat these bosses. Every boss conveniently has boss kill switches etched into it's body. These switches work exactly like the stab mechanics in shadow by the way.

This is turning into a bit of a ramble but it's just so glaringly obvious that the game tried to do waaaay to much than was good for it. There are really well designed pretty looking normal enemies scattered throughout the open world. But killing these enemies is straight up useless. Killing these guys doesn't help you in any way shape or form. The ones I killed didn't even drop anything. No joke, after realising this I ran past every single enemy without any form of consequence whatsoever. Fighting them isn't fun either, they have too much health and drain your resources, mainly health, so why bother.

All of these problems are summed up before even starting the game. On the difficulty select screen you are able to just straight up disable most of the survival aspects of the game. I have never seen so little confidence in their own ideas and vision which this team of developers has displayed here. So scared to put their foot down and say: "This is not just a Shadow game, it's also a survival game.". No no you can disable it all and have your inferior little Shadow of the Colossus clone.

That's sad, almost depressing honestly. Especially if you consider that some of the bosses in this game are fucking awesome. The 4th boss is straight up better than some bosses in Shadow. The visuals are great, I really liked some of the animations and the sound design is commendable for an indie title. Really great art direction here too. I would say I love everything about the visuals but that's not quite true I'll get to that in a bit.

There is some jank throughout but considering the budget and experience of the team I'd say they did great here. Amazing work put in all the wrong places.

Okay last thing and this is a bit of a personal point. They setup this world right, a post apocalyptic frozen wasteland. Humanity is done basically. All hope is lost, yaddah yaddah yaddah. So for their main character model they go with a absolutley pristine looking person, which by all accounts could've just washed ashore from a cosplay convention. She's wearing makeup, doesn't have a single wound or scar, she has rosy cheeks, her clothes look fashionable and the model doesn't change throughout in anyway shape or form. Not even blue lips when she's about to freeze to death. The model honestly looks fresh out of the new SFM porn collection on pornhub. You set up this desolate world with almost no hope left and the model looks like it was made by Mattel. Why skimp out there? Just thinking about the Wander's model and how it changes to look sickly, almost undead like as the game goes on makes this look embarassing. Again Shadow came out in 2005. As of the time of writing that was 17 years ago.

This game could've been amazing and I honestly think the team working on it learned alot from this. I'm interested to see their next project.
Can't recommend playing this one though.

I was that guy you know.

The first and last defense of Rayman 3 as the best entry in the franchise. I find myself overcome by existential dread, the likes of which could turn a man insane. Having played the original Rayman trilogy back to back now, I can't hide from the truth anymore.

Rayman 2 is the best entry and it makes me sick to my stomach admitting this to myself. I played Rayman 3 for roughly 300 hours as a kid. I love this game. But it's a flawed gem. I got some mean things to say about this game. Mean in a way only someone that truly loves it could be.

Rayman 3 is the first entry in the series without Michel Ancel's oversight. A lot of staff of the original team had moved on to other projects and Ubisoft found themselves with a very different looking team working on the third entry. Quite frankly this game could have never topped Rayman 2. The saddest part is, the devs knew it too and so they didn't even try.

Rayman 3 has very different themes, atmosphere and tone than the previous entries. I love the direction and for the time I thought it was unique. Rayman 3 takes itself much less seriously than the previous entry. There's a lot of humour, 4th wall breaks, videogamey stuff and constant witty dialogue by the characters. The game establishes through it's writing right at the start that it's not here to try to be the big blockbuster magnum opus that Rayman 2 was. The tutorial character Murphy is straight up used as a mouth piece by the developers to convey this message.
"I was told that after ‘Rayman 2’ I’d be cast as a tormented artist who falls for a girl with great, big...eh...eyes. And here I am, still playing a sidekick in some low-budget flick! Yeesh."

And I'll be honest I think it works. It doesn't try to hard, the characters appear to be mostly intact. I mean Rayman barely speaks but quite honestly I think that was a good move. This game makes me laugh everytime I play it. Nostalgia is a factor of course but there's honestly some hilarious stuff in here. Naturally humour is subjective, so it's a hard thing to analyse or critique in my opinion. So let's just stick with the writing is good, but don't expect anything serious or groundbreaking.

In terms of gameplay I gotta say overall I'd call it a sidegrade, tending towards downgrade. Moving Rayman just doesn't feel as good. The jump, oh god the jump. Look how they massacred my boy. Jump control is heavily reduced. Not in movement rather in height and speed. Shorthopping in Rayman 2 is probably the cleanest thing in the entire series but goddamn dude, it really is just not a thing in this one. The powerups are fun in my opinion but quite frankly this game never once pushes it's powerup mechanics to their limit. Just thinking about how The Sanctuary of Stone and Fire in Rayman 2 pushes the plum/carry mechanics in that game to their absolute breaking point, makes Rayman 3's levels look like a joke. It's quite easy all the way through but not easy enough that it bored me or anything. I'm always engaged when playing through the game. Just not you know....challenged. The big improvement Rayman 3 has over 2 is the combat. Rayman 2 combat is kinda awful honestly. 3's combat is serviceable. It's okay. I kinda like it sometimes. It ain't awful. I didn't hate it. You get the point. It's nothing to write home about. Certainly not a highlight but it works well.

A big downfall for me in this game is the presentation and that's because it's almost so sick. It's all here. The soundtrack is good, the graphics are here, the sound effects got some heft to them and the boss fights got that spark. You know what I mean right? That little something that can tip a boss fight over the edge. The song starts and the beat picks up just at the right moment. All the while Rayman appears to be overcoming impossible odds. BUT! Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut. The execution is flawed. The ingredients are here, but it doesn't come together in the end. Audio clips play at the wrong time, the animation is too slow, the animation is too fast, the camera fucks up, the scene is cut too early, the scene is cut too late, the voice over sync completely shits the bed, some audio cues and songs straight up cut out or don't even play. I don't know what is was. They really had something here, but they didn't pull through for some reason. Maybe it was a lack of time, budget or talent but the end result stands. The soundtrack sadly can't compare to Rayman 2, neither can the atmosphere unfortunately.

In terms of levels and their design, it's quite competent. There are just some sections that could have been removed entirely or are just boring and slow. The shoe race for example. Which, of course, had to be repeated 4 times or maybe 5? I dunno my brain turns off during those sections. Some memorable stuff here but unfortunately again it can't compare to the amazing back to back to back to back banger levels of Rayman 2.

Honestly I could go on. But I won't. This game is amazing. I love it. Lot's of variety, fun characters, good writing and decent pace throughout. Never slows down, never falters in quality for too long.

It's definitely worth your time. I don't think it earns 4 stars, but I could never give it any less than that.

I gotta be honest I haven't played this game in a long time and honestly I thought it was overrated.

But then I played it again.

This game is considered Michel Ancel's Magnum Opus for a reason. I could name you a hundred different reasons. This game translates the 2D artstyle from the first game brilliantly. It's unreal to play a game like this today in which the visuals were so carefully considered and beautifully executed. I swear "Art Direction" as a concept is dead in Triple-A gaming these days. And this gem from 1999 pulls it of perfectly and still looks fantastic today.

The music is again amazing. Not quite as memorable as the first game but it creates an atmosphere that's much darker and way more serious. And oh my, more serious it is this time around.

The story is a timeless little gem about the opressed rising up to overthrow their opressors. The mise-en-scène in this game is also worth mentioning. There are some breathtaking moments here, with 1999 visuals mind you. Honestly, I always thought the PS2 remakes name "Revolution" fit this game much better. A french game about the opressed rising up to topple their opressors, ye Revolution sounds about right. Of course I can also understand that "The Great Escape" is a cute reference to the 1963 film, which deals with similiar subject matter.

But here comes the king, the big one and my undisputed favorite part of the game. The Gameplay.
The movement is slick, the jumping is damn near perfect and there is just tons of variety jam packed into a 5 hour experience. There is no filler here. Back to back to back to back to back to back awesome levels with new mechanics and secrets to find. Honestly the pacing is a thing of beauty. The unskippable cutscenes are my only gripe here.

The game only slips up once for me, and that is in the level Whale Bay. This level is in my opinion weirdly placed, reintroduces mechanics that were already explained and generally has little to offer. But that's it, it was fine honestly, just unfortunately sandwiched between 2 amazing levels.

Absolute Banger. Give it a go anyway you can. But I gotta recommend the Dreamcast version.

This game is fucked up.

I only ever played Rayman 2 & 3, and I thought "Hey, why not play the whole trilogy." Rayman 1 looks real cute.
Nope, get fucked idiot. You just started playing a game that doesn't care about your feelings.

Let's get the visual and audio stuff out of the way first. The game looks and sounds amazing, especially considering it's 1995 release date. Some of the tracks send you on an out of body experience, if you won't play it listen to the OST, you won't regret it.

Gameplay is slick. You can shmoove in this game and you will have to. Oh you will have to my friend.

This game might be one of the hardest commercial releases I have ever played. This is coming from a person who played and finished a good chunk of the NES and SNES library. There are some MAJOR difficulty spikes in this game. At times I was questioning whether or not I was playing a romhack.
This is all paired with a brutal lifes and continue system.

There is nothing frame perfect in this game but some stuff felt too damn close.

This all being said I loved it all the way through up until the final boss which was underwhelming to say the least.

Definitley worth your time.

I rarely play a game because of it's narrative, the story or the characters. For Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy I made an exception.

I'm a gigantic fan of the GotG comics, the first guardians as much as the current ones. I honestly don't have that much to say about gameplay. It was inoffensive enough to me that it carried me through the game. It's not very varied but keeps introducing new elements at a good rate so the experience doesn't go stale. The spectacle is amped up to 11, set piece after set piece with this one. The Boss fights were my personal highpoints. All of them are fantastically executed.

However the heart and soul of this game are the characters. This game absolutley nails the new guardians, better than the James Gunn movies did. The relationship between these wacky misfits is a complete blast throughout. The first half hour starts kinda slow but after that I had to force myself to put it down. The characters, their arcs, developments and relationships are nicely interweaved with the gameplay.

They could have coasted on the fan service for all I cared and told a milktoast story to sell some copies. However they went above and beyond with the actual plot of the game. I shit you not this game tells a amazingly mature story about grief, loss, letting go and how important the people are around you are to move on. It honestly all came beautifully full circle while firmly remaining a GotG adventure throughout.

I'm biased but they really nailed this one for me personally. Some technical issues but there's so much to love here I'm honestly stunned.

I expected the worst and got the best.