A solid compilation of three solid games. Not much in terms of extra content here, and I can't speak much on presentation here since I bought the collection digitally (which just dumps every game as an individual download on the XMB), but it does exactly what it needs to; it lets you play all three mainline Jak games in one place with better graphics. It's exactly what it says on the tin, really.

The games play and run great, with just a few very minor immersion-breaking bugs (such as a cutscene glitch in Jak II, but none of them are game-breaking at all), and look exceptional, with a clean and sharp high-definition presentation for each game that looks great on a big HD TV - much better than the PS2 originals, I'm sure.

It's a very no frills package - you really are just getting the games and nothing else here - but it does everything it needs to. It's a great set of ports of some solid games. They're all worth playing (although maybe Jak II and 3 are a bit of an acquired taste), and this is arguably the best way to do so. Especially since it only goes for $10 digitally these days. That's a bargain.

As of yesterday morning, this game has now shut down and is no longer playable.

This game was really special to me, so to say that I'm sad to see it go would be a strong contender for understatement of the century. In an age where multiplayer games are dominated by practically indistinguishable gritty war shooters and dime-a-dozen annual sports games, this chaotic, over-the-top take on 3v3 dodgeball was a refreshing standout.

I remember how I was convinced to give the game a go; my mom was watching EA Play that year and saw this game get featured (since it was still an EA Originals game at the time), recommending it to me because she thought I'd like it. Her observation was more than a little bit astute - in case the post-mortem essay you're reading right now wasn't a dead giveaway. I ended up giving the free trial a shot and I was instantly hooked. The gameplay was challenging, competitive and a ton of fun. It was the first time in ages that a multiplayer game resonated with me in such a way. I kept playing whenever I could for quite a while, and while I did end up taking a few breaks, I always ended up coming back around to it sooner or later thanks to the abundance of fresh new content that was getting added on a regular basis.

This game was something special. A truly unique game, and one that I will always look back on very fondly. From helping my team claim victory, to getting stomped by the enemy team thanks to their ability to actually - perish the thought - catch the ball, to laughing a bit harder than I'd like to admit at the announcement of the Among Us collab, this game brought great times all around to me and many others.

It wasn't meant to last, unfortunately. According to the developers, the game's death knell was its inability to retain a consistent playerbase. I always thought this game was underrated as hell, so knowing that said underratedness ended up doing it in feels like a bad kick to the gut. So here we stand; Knockout City is no more. This game I spent so much time on and loved enough to write this many words about is just... gone. Of course, there is a private server version on PC, which is cool since there is technically a playable version still, but it's not exactly ideal for someone like me who can barely play PC games at all. I'm very glad it exists, but as far as someone like me is concerned, there is no such thing as Knockout City anymore.

I've been through this kind of thing before - Dragalia Lost was a pretty recent one that I still miss a lot, and Sonic Runners' shutdown will always remain a very sad day of my gaming career (although Revival thankfully has taken up the original's mantle and also rules), but very few shutdowns like this have hit quite as hard as this one. This silly little dodgeball game was genuinely one of my favorites from recent years, and I will miss it very, very much.

I'm going to miss the refreshingly colorful, Saturday-morning cartoon esque vibes of the game and its visuals. I'm gonna miss the competitive, easy-to-learn-yet-hard-to-master gameplay. I'm gonna miss the feeling of logging in that day to see some new content or events. I am really going to miss Knockout City. Wether I was slinging dodgeballs around the court, teaming up with my allies to crush the competition, or getting smoked so hard that one of the guys from the enemy team sent me "LMFAO, get rekt, GG EZ" on PSN, I had an absolute blast with this game from the time I first picked up that dodgeball all the way until I threw my final one.

According to my Exophase statistics, I played Knockout City for 136.6 hours. It was my go-to multiplayer game for a long time. It ranked #2 for playtime on my 2021 PlayStation Wrap-Up just behind Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, and was my most played game of the year in my 2022 PS Wrap-Up. And every single one of those 136 hours was filled with fun, competition, and smiles. I'm very sad to see it go, yet I'm very grateful that I got the chance to experience this.

If you told me in 2021 that my longest Backloggd review would end up being for the silly little dodgeball game, I would have laughed my ass off. Because it's just that; a silly little dodgeball game. But it was my favorite silly little dodgeball game. So much so that I'm here writing more words about, as my sister called it once, "Volleyball Town", than some people have wrote for their favorite games of all time. Guess having a game you absolutely love vanish into the sunset will do that to you.

Goodbye, Knockout City. Gone far, far too soon, but gave me lasting, happy memories all the same. It may not have managed to find its place in the overall gaming community, but it sure meant a lot to one guy in particular.

Probably my favorite of the LEGO games I've played so far... all three of them. I'm not entirely sure why I like this one more - maybe I just like the DC Comics characters and settings more than the Star Wars ones or something. All of these games play the same so your favorite one would probably be dictated by your preference in whatever media property they decided to license out for a particular game.

This game is weirdly hyper-focused on Green Lantern, though. Nearly half the game is set on the Lantern planets, which are also apparently special enough to each get their own dedicated hub world. It's not, like, bad or anything, I just find it kind of odd, considering this is technically still sort of a Batman game.

Also, Adam West is a collectible in every stage and hub world. Make of that what you will.

Believe it or not, this is the only Mega Man game I have ever completed. I really need to play more of this series eventually.

But yeah, this game is quite good. Visuals are fairly detailed for PSP standards, controls feel pretty good, weapons are varied and the levels and bosses are well-designed, fun, and provide a fair challenge. Basically everything you'd look for in a game like this is here.

Also, you can find a secret item that lets Mega Man do a Hadoken, and that's pretty darn cool.

Brawlhalla is another "Smash-like" platform fighter, and one I really wanted to enjoy, but I just couldn't get into it.

The combat lacks the punchiness that makes Smash so fun. Fights are relatively slow-paced, and the physics are rather floaty. Hits feel hollow and lack any sort of impact, feeling like you're just punching air. It just doesn't feel particularly good to play. Shame, because I'm always down with the idea of a Smash-inspired fighter, but this just didn't hit the spot, unfortunately. At least it was free.

It gets an extra half-star for including Rayman, though.

Knack is like the video game equivalent of a bag of potato chips. It has practically no substance, and it's far from the best thing of its kind that you can partake in, but in spite of that, it's still pretty enjoyable regardless of what it obviously lacks.

You don't play Knack to experience deep, innovative gameplay or a sweeping, dramatic narrative. You play Knack to make your little relic guy become a big relic guy that can throw tanks at airplanes.

The crystal collection system that relies on farming preset locations for completely random items (complete with duplicates) sucks some serious ass though.

I'm still in awe at the fact that this... exists. What we have here is a feature-complete, nearly unscathed port of this PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 game to the Nintendo 3DS. The 3DS! Everything is here, from characters, to stages, to modes and even pre-rendered and in-engine cutscenes in Arcade Mode. Obviously, you're not getting any of the Ultra additions here (because it didn't exist yet), but this is the complete Super Street Fighter IV experience on a platform with a fraction of the power, with some extra additions to boot like a StreetPass mini game.

Sure, there are graphical cutbacks (although it still looks fantastic for the hardware, mind you), and it only runs at 30 FPS, but that's all the cuts amount to. Maybe the load times are a smidge longer, but that's really all it amounts to. Not the best version, of course, but a damn good one, and it has the distinct advantage of being portable. A very impressive effort, especially as one of the very first games ever released for 3DS.