Crash Bandicoot returns, fresh off the massive success of the N. Sane trilogy remaster with a brand new, from the ground up built platformer with more ambition and more challenge than ever before. The results are mostly pretty great.

The sixty five teams that have credits before you get the to the main menu every time you boot up the game have smartly come to the realization that only those intimately familiar with the Crash franchise are those who are going to tangle with a brand new entry in the modern age - Crash Bandicoot 4 is an intense challenge from the get go, with bonus levels that you must solve like rubiks cubes, hidden gems in places even the best sleuth will struggle to track down, and platforming challenges that demand more precision than ever before to allow you to progress. Going for a 100% completion run would drive anyone but the most faithful to madness, with each level having not only its own set of collectibles, but also a counterpart inverse world that pushes you to play each level in essentially a wireframe format that reverses each level like mirror mode in Mario Kart. If that isn't enough, each level has a death counter to track your failures, with a collectible offered for coming in under 3 deaths for each level, and a series of brutally precise time trial medals offered for each of the levels as well. If that isn't enough, there are tapes scattered across the main game that unlock even more bonus levels, and alternate side character perspectives on several levels that allow you reimagine the already explored areas using new move sets - the new characters offer weapons like a vacuum pack or a grappling hook, or even a frustratingly limited laser weapon to plow through these levels with.

There is an absolute Scrooge McDuck bank vault level of game here to machete chop though. It's wonderful for those who wish to push themselves to the absolute edge.

For the rest of us, we'll appreciate the added checkpoints to each of the tastefully designed boss battles, the circle that is placed underneath the player character indicating where Crash is going to land whenever he takes to the air. We'll also appreciate the consistently fresh level design that uses different masks to augment the gameplay; one slows down time, one turns Crash into a spinning top, etc....and the way the game starts layering these masks into sequences on top of each other to force us out of our comfort zone and learn how they work intimately to succeed.

I don't think every single new idea Crash 4 brings to the table works completely; adding the masks in, which each have their own distinct button sets, adds too many buttons to the already demanding basic moveset. In levels where they demand you constantly switch through masks in sequence, you're pressing the Y button to activate one mask, a trigger for the next, and then a different button for the next one; it shifts the complexity of the controls in a direction that becomes overly confusing when mixed with the inventive level design. And the new characters add very little to the game; whenever you play as them you just wish that you were playing with the moveset and flexibility of Crash proper, which makes an entire chunk of the game a chore.

Crash Bandicoot 4 is a genuinely great follow up that should have revitalized its franchise for a bright future. Four years later, its ideas are mostly still fresh and well executed; the people who built this game should absolutely be allowed to build a follow up or a successor that refines on the excellent ideas laid out here. Good times all around.

An adventure awaits. A world in ruin requires your deft hand to bring it salvation.....or perhaps.....nothing. The choice is yours as you venture forth from your cell with nothing but a broken weapon and hope in your back pocket.

This is Dark Souls.

What is there to say about the most discussed game of the 2000s. Reaching much farther than its predecessor Demon Souls due to its multi platform release, Dark Souls IS the game of the 2010s. And it is also the game of the 2020s - see Elden Ring and the plethora of Dark Souls inspired games that have arisen in the years since.

Dark Souls is a perfect experience. It rewards exploration, patience, and strategy as you discover the next boss, and the next build you're going to put together to keep you in the game. It is dripping with inspiration from games such as Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and even From Soft's own King's Field as it springs forward from the darkness. Unlike the many games that proudly declare their influences as the thing to be proud of, Dark Souls shows us that you can be influenced without imitating. It's incredible.

I am not totally convinced that there will be another game crystallized as clearly and with as wide a reach as Dark Souls until there is one, and its been 13 years since players first lost their souls to the torment of the Taurus Demon.

My only real regret is that it took me 13 years to try and understand it, rather than argue with it for what it is. And I'm supremely glad that I did.

Praise the sun.

A horrible accident has left a man permanently disfigured and enslaved to the whims of an apathetic corporation. For most of us, this would leave us grappling with a crisis of a scale most of us are not prepared for. For Chai, this is just Tuesday.

Enter Tango Gameworks' surprise January 2023 release, Hi-Fi Rush.

Billed as a rhythm-action game hybrid, Hi-Fi Rush is equal parts Space Channel 5, Ratchet and Clank, and Devil May Cry; its a product of its influences and perhaps the best mainstream application of the "PS2, dude," mentality that people of a certain age sink into whenever anything remotely resembles the days long gone. Unfortunately, unlike these singular titles that loom large in the brains of console owners before 2006, Hi-Fi Rush never quite lives up to the potential it promises by.....resembling these classic titles.

Instead, we get a "King of everything, master of none," title that oozes personality, but doesn't have the game underneath to make it sing.

Hi-Fi Rush starts big with bombastic set pieces set to licensed music that set a particular expectation for the experience; your character is fused with an iPod-like MP3 player that forces everything he does to move to the beat of whatever music is playing from said device. Combos, dodges, parries; all of this must be carried out according to the tempo of the music at hand. It's novel, and kicking off with a pair of Black Keys and Nine Inch Nails tunes to set early stages and boss battles to makes for an absolutely thrilling first impression.

The thrills dry up early however, with much of the early, middle, and late game lacking the thrill of hearing recognizable music, instead leaning on a wonderful, but unmemorable score by a collection of excellent composers who unfortunately never craft a beat quite as memorable as the licensed early sequences; it makes timing your increasingly elaborate combos, special moves, and ally driven assist actions easy to time to a pumping, consistent beat, but it lacks the impact of say, fighting a boss battle to Nine Inch Nails' The Perfect Drug.

Beyond that, much of the game's standard levels feel under-designed. They most boil down to small stretches of simple platforming that carries you to the next wave of enemies. Your movement abilities feel excellent to manipulate, but many of the games construction zones and designed areas offer little benefit to taking advantage of them; there are glaringly obvious secret areas sprinkled throughout, but no means to access them until you've completed the game once, which does little to motivate me personally. You also just move really slowly through each level due to being tied to the beat of whatever music is playing, which negates the fun of having such responsive platforming controls!

Hi-Fi Rush has great fundamentals, but ultimately comes out of the oven with a gooey center that destabilizes the soufflé just enough to ruin my appetite. It leaves me hopeful for whatever Tango Gameworks does next; with a little more time in the oven, its clear that they can accomplish something great, and innovative. I don't necessarily mean a sequel either; just something creatively ambitious, colorful, and friendly. Here's to whatever's next!

Former Yakuza member Kazama Kiryu, the only man truly born to be a human hammer, has finally been released from prison to find that the Yakuza of the current day is in absolute chaos. The cause of this chaos? A sum of 10 billion yen that has recently gone missing; in the process of attempting to resume his life where he left off, Kazuma Kiryu finds himself stuck in the middle of the race to find this missing money, and perhaps rediscover his purpose in a society that has left him behind.

A remake of the 2005 Playstation 2 game, Yakuza Kiwami is a richly detailed, finely tuned action brawler that leans on role playing game archetypes to allow you to reconstruct the person of Kazama Kiryu. Set in the fictional Japanese district of Kamurocho, Kiryu must not only help solve the the mystery of the missing 10 billion yen, but also find his way through a myriad of side quests that task him with everything from building RC cars to rescuing people from shady characters with large muscles. To play Yakuza Kiwami correctly, one must not just concern Kiryu with the needs of his former Yakuza peers, but the members of the community - these vast number of side quests, which sometimes lean a bit into the silly side of the spectrum, set apart the Yakuza franchise from its peers. You are dropped into a world full of people that Kiryu, simply due to his good nature, wants to help. Through these side quests, a few city blocks feels like an entire world.

That's not to say that the main quest that runs through the veins of Kiwami is not substantial or engaging , however. The twists and turns of its plot and its wealth of intriguing characters makes solving the mystery of the 10 billion yen a most interesting one. The way the narrative design layers characters and Kamurocho concepts on top of each other creates a wonderful synergy of ideas and a sense of place as you punch your way to the next quest marker. The story itself, one of brotherhood and betrayal, is perhaps a little dense and hard to penetrate as it steers itself to its conclusion, but it is excellent; I didn't personally enjoy it as much as the masterful storytelling of Yakuza 0, but it is an excellent companion to that game's greatness in its own right.

The game's combat is essentially exactly what you'd expect after playing the much more recently designed Yakuza 0; its brawler melee combat, spread across 4 distinct styles. Each style emphasizes stringing combos together to activate heat moves; the better you get at activating these moves, the more dynamic and visceral your combat becomes. You build out your moveset through gaining experience through completing main and side story events, as well as through random combat encounters in the neighborhood at large. Your success and engagement in the game's combat depends on how you choose to build out Kiryu's abilities. Do you put your points into developing your body? Do you focus on developing special moves through fighting your bud Majima? It is truly up to you.

Beyond the melee combat, the world is full of wonderful activities to invest in - arcade games, pocket racing, various night clubs and casino experiences. Truly enough to make the game world feel alive like a downtown section of your average major metropolitan area. Its tasteful, but because of its PS2 roots, it doesn't quite feel as fleshed out as it does in later games.

Yakuza Kiwami is an excellent game. A worthy remake of an already excellent Playstation 2 era epic. It is both as engaging as it is densely layered - some late game twists and turns ended up checking me out of the story pretty hard. But it serves as an excellent foundation for the saga of
Kazuma Kiryu moving forward from here - it isn't perfect by any means, but it is a remarkable place to start.....

That is.....if you don't start with Yakuza 0. Which is absolutely what you should do.

This review is ONLY pertaining to the Original Xbox Co-op mode that is playable over Xbox Live or via System with up to 4 players.

Imagine, if you will Doom 3 distilled down to its barest elements. Its guns. Its atmosphere. And its all over in two hours from start to end.

That's the Original Xbox Co-op mode of Doom 3. No meaningful dialogue. No sense of exploration or meaningful progression. It answer the question: what if someone decided to make a Quake episode with the Id Tech 4 engine. And the answer pretty much rocks.

Played in two player mode over system link, this game is a rip roarin time; ammo is plentiful, enemies spawn all around you. Deaths simply send you back to the beginning of the current area with a pistol start, forcing you to climb back to where you left your partner to fend off the demons.

It feels like someone took Doom 3 and gave it a shot of adrenaline. Unsurprisingly, this works incredibly well. If it was any longer it would have been a slog. If it was any harder it would feel like a chore.

I really dug this particular flavor of Doom 3.

The fate of Kamurocho is at stake once again. No one is who they say they are. The only pillar of truth resides in Kazuma Kiryu, who must once again punch his way through the streets to seek safety for the ones he loves.

Welcome to Yakuza Kiwami 2.

A direct follow up to Kiwami, Kiwami 2 revisits the setting of Kamurocho as a war of succession is taking place amongst the major players of the realm - the Tojo clan stands weak after the events of Kiwami. Their only chance of survival resides in a dicey alliance with their rivals - The Omi Alliance. Lead by Kiryu and company, the proposed alliance leads to a schism; old loyalties are fractured. New enemies rise up to shake out the status quo; only Kiryu and his partner in crime, Osaka Detective Kaoru Sayama can resolve the thirst for vengeance that runs through the streets of Kamurocho.

Kiwami 2, built using the RGG Dragon Engine that powers Yakuza 6 and other modern RGG titles, is a rich, strikingly beautiful game that doesn't really know when to say "when," as the waiter grates its cheese. The cheese in this case is melodramatic twists. Kiwami 2 just keeps twisting and twisting and usurping itself into oblivion - its as exhausting as much as its world is rich and its characters lovingly crafted. A full on remake of Yakuza 2, it faithfully recreates the story of its PS2 parent to its own partial demise. There's melodrama, which the franchise is known for, and then there's this kind of wacko plotting.

The story structure of Kiwami 2 is also paired with a refined approach to Kiryu's melee combat - gone are the distinct modes of play from earlier entries in favor of a more limited move set that focuses on charging up your attacks and using the environment to your advantage in the rather large fights it pits you up against. Actions feel heavier in this combat system - almost as if there's minor input delay at times, which makes the game's heavily featured ragdoll physics absolutely hysterical in execution as you and your enemies ragdoll all over the place from the first battle to the very last. Playing this directly after Kiwami can lead to some VERY intense whiplash, but seeing Kiwami 2 as a follow up to Yakuza 6 in terms of its release window makes it feel more cohesive in its place in the franchise. Leveling Kiryu is as intuitive as ever - finishing side quests, fighting random mobs and enemies, and eating meals allows you to build out Kiryu's distinct stats and abilities much like one would have in Zero or Kiwami.

The rest of the meal is just as bountiful as ever - there's a tower defense mini game you can work through, the Hostess club makes its return, and there's enough strange and surreal side missions to shake a stick at. It's a game of plenty; one could easily sink a hundred hours into maximizing every bit of what this game has to offer.

While I still found completing Yakuza Kiwami 2 to be mostly enthralling and engaging as an experience, I do think that it topples over itself as it brings its epic scale story home. Its lack of restraint overwhelms much of the great things it does in terms of character writing and structure, which ultimately makes it less enjoyable than 0 or Kiwami to experience.

Your sister, Tooty, has been kidnapped by the nefarious witch Gruntilda. It's up to you, Banjo, and your trusted, but surprisingly bitter companion Kazooie, to save her from having her beauty stolen. The only thing in your way? Gruntilda's luxurious lair, decorated with portals to multiple realms you must plunder for resources to reach your sister.

Man oh man do I wish that I'd played Banjo-Kazooie when I had a lot more patience for 3D Platformers that expect precision movements. I found that I myself was the biggest obstacle between myself and enjoying this touched up Nintendo 64 classic. It's a wonderfully designed collectathon platformer with 9 levels filled to the brim with a variety of objectives, collectibles, and new abilities to enrich your journey through Gruntilda's lair.

But.

It's also a 90s 3D Platformer. That means you have to wrangle with the camera, deal with a host of imprecise controls that become barriers to progress (I'm looking at you, swimming and flying controls), and some pretty obscure objectives that require you to make pretty large leaps in logic to complete. Especially in the latter half of the game's 9 massive playground-esque levels, I hit multiple walls where I really ended up scraping against every bit of the terrain in order to find some basic progress. You also have limited lives, and losing them sends you all the way back to not just the beginning of the level you're working on, but to the beginning of Gruntilda's lair. Every time something a poor choice or cheap mechanic led to the loss of all of my lives I could feel my blood pressure rising. Man.

Beyond my grievances however, is a colorful, huge game that really encourages you to dig in and explore everything it has to offer. Every level introduces new objects to engage with and a slew of new moves and new ways to convince you engage with older moves as you run, jump, and climb your way through each of the 9 levels. Not all of the level design is intuitive within the game's limited camera control and movement, but its a richly designed experience that's every bit as creative and interesting as its contemporaries; I found myself reflecting on my relationship with the later entries in the Spyro trilogy which are two games that definitely take a similar approach in collecting and objective driven gameplay to Banjo Kazooie. I love those games.

So why don't I love Banjo-Kazooie?

Well. I played them Spyro games when I was all of about 8 years old. My relationship with those games goes back an entire generation at this point. It's aged like a fine wine.

I played Banjo-Kazooie as a 27 year old. 27 year old had a pretty bad time. I yelled. Hooted. Hollered. Cheered when it was over. Because of course I did - I don't find as much fun in repetition as someone experiencing it for the first time as a child does. As someone who has that deep connection with it that goes back years. 27 year old me probably rates this a solid 2.5 stars; removing myself and looking at Banjo-Kazooie from the top down and understanding its target audience and its existence over time make its a far more engaging experience.

Banjo-Kazooie is pretty good.

I was 14 years in 2009 when DJ Hero came out. Jobless, I was unable to convince my parents to spring any additional money on plastic instruments - at this point we had 2 guitar hero controllers and a mic and for my house that was most certainly enough. I read about DJ Hero in passing in magazines and online, but having been given a firm "nah," I was forced to watch as it came and went. This was a year of continued Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero World Tour investment.

I can now, having replayed the entire campaign on expert in 2022 after playing through it once with a used DJ Hero turntable in 2014 or so, admit that if I had played DJ Hero in 2009 that I would not have had a metal phase in 9th grade; I would have had a far more diverse, more interesting pop, r&b, and hip hop phase that would have catapulted me out of my father's rock oriented music tastes into the stratosphere.

DJ Hero is the best Western rhythm of the 7th generation console era. This is only true because Guitar Hero, and its peer Rock Band, are firmly grounded in the foundations laid in Guitar Hero 1 and 2, which are distinctly Playstation 2 games. And DJ Hero isn't even the best DJ Hero game, but its a burst of creativity and ingenuity that should have revitalized an overstuffed rhythm game genre on these consoles; it came just a bit too late....and the rest is history.

DJ Hero is a peripheral based rhythm game that comes bundled with a study plastic turntable controller that has 3 buttons on the turntable platter, a crossfader switch, an effects knob, and a big button for activating a mechanic known as euphoria that glows bright red when you've successfully acquired said euphoria.

To play the game, you use the turntable controller to hit buttons in time with the track scrolling down your screen as a crowd cheers and dances in a full motion video played behind you in the background. You must hit the corresponding button and move the turn table deck up and down to simulate record scratching, and use the crossfader switch to move to the left or right as the track dictates, which switches you from one song to the other in the game's mixes. If you rack up a combo of 50 or more, you are rewarded with a rewind that requires you to physically spin the turntable deck backwards and play sections again for double points. On occasion the prompts coming down the track glow bright white - hit the full section of these successfully to gain Euphoria, which doubles your points and automatically crossfades for you. You must combine rewinds, euphoria phases, and pure skill to score as many points as possible.

The learning curve here is steep - holding the turntable isn't nearly as intuitive as holding the plastic guitar, and difficulties up through hard mode don't care which direction you scratch the turn table in when asked to scratch during mixes; Expert difficulty however does, which smacks you clean in the face if you're not prepared for it. It feels as if Expert difficulty is an entirely separate game because of this; it asks an incredible amount of you. Mastering it, or at least becoming half way decent at it as I have, is a pretty satisfying experience. It's a fascinating evolution of the guitar hero experience that is just different enough to feel completely fresh. I love it dearly.

DJ Hero's mixes are diverse, and large in number with plenty of incredible combinations of dance, pop, hip hop, rock, and r&b tracks tossed in to provide something for everyone. Each mix is, to my ears, incredibly interesting and highly engaging - I'm not a music critic. Music sound good, me like. You feel me?

My only real critique of this immaculate rhythm game is that its interface is essentially nonexistent. There's story campaign....just a big list of mixes to play through. It's very minimalist. Play songs. Unlock more songs. Play more songs. Sometimes that's all you need, though in 2022 it feels a little sparse.

Beyond that? DJ Hero dude. What a gosh darn game.

Bottom line: What was once a new lap record feels more like a 4th place finish in 2022.


Is there anything more thrilling than crossing a finish line, boost fully engaged, at 1000 miles per hour?

What if I told you that, if you were the fastest to ever do it, that most intense and excited voice in the world would congratulate you with a brazen "IT'S A NEW LAP RECORD!!!"

Who could possibly resist such a temptation?


Star Wars: Episode 1 - Racer, shortened to Star Wars Racer for its modern platform rerelease, is perhaps one of the few good things to come out of the Episode 1 marketing blitz that Lucasfilm dragged well regarded development studio Lucasarts down in the late 90s. Based on the 2nd act finale sequence of The Phantom Menace in which Anakin Skywalker races to gain his and his new friends' freedom from the heat of Tatooine, Racer is a tight, light, and fast as heck arcade racing game that is as fun to play as it is visually ugly.

The gameplay loop is simple: pick a podracer from a limited roster based off of characters designed for the source film, win races set on a limited series of planets to earn credits, spend these credits on better parts for your pod racer, and then keep winning till the credits roll. The main bulk of the game is contained within 3 circuits of 7 races each, with an additional 4 challenge races contained in an "invitational circuit," meant to be completed after you've bested the challenge of the main game. The races and AI opponent AI naturally improve as you progress from the first race to the very last, though upgrades and a mastery of the unique game elements such as engaging your pod's boost and self-repair capabilities often make even the toughest of races trivial, assuming you know when to apply that air break properly.

The game can easily be finished in a few hours with some practice, and later races can often a thrilling example of what allowing for extreme speed can do to a properly tuned racing title. Some of the tracks are a bit long, with some clocking in at nearly 4 minutes with a good lap time behind them. More visually interesting games can get away with it, but Racer's Nintendo 64 limited, hastily thrown together art design makes for an often irritating, bland experience as you race with a vengeance through each course.

As far as licensed games go, its a limited, but interesting experience that has ample room for thrilling competition and skill mastery, but even with 25 tracks it feels shallow and as it ends, it feels like it was never really there. My bird brain dictates that I worship my childhood memories of playing 4 player LAN with my family as a young child, as well as playing through the excellent Dreamcast port in the mid 2000s, but this game is not a feast, but a nice snack.

Also, the modern port's audio is completely busted. Playing it through my well calibrated 5.1 setup produces effects in one speaker and the looped, low quality John Williams music in another. It is QUITE jarring. Toggling a mono mixdown of the two channels solved the issue, but having to get up and mess with receiver settings is a drag.

Another day. Another journey to retrieve your siblings from a series of increasingly complicated mazes.

The core game play is much like a game of operation; you navigate an object through a series of tight spaces. In this case, you move a spinning bird with its wings outstretched like huge rectangles, forming a massive bar. If you touch any of the various obstacles or walls within a given level you lose a life. Lose three lives and you're booted allllll the way back to the start of the level.

The core game is identical to that of Kuri Kuri Kururin, except that there's 40 levels split across five zones. Each of the zones alternates traditional levels with levels where you possess an additional ability - one allows you to submerge yourself in water to dodge obstacles, one allows you to punch enemies, etc... Each of those power ups are then given to you in order to defeat a boss at the end of each of the five zones.

Compared to its predecessors, Squash is a vastly superior experience. Controls are tighter due to full analog control, the gimmicks are used incredibly well in each zone, and level design is generally far more interesting. It falls into the same issues that Kuri Kuri does in that its later levels are too long and too overly complicated to be interesting, but instead of an 8 level slog, its a set of three that are blisteringly difficult at the very end. Crikey.

It's a truly unique and incredibly well executed game full of collectible coins and no hit run bonuses to driven repeated engagement. For those fully inclined, there's active time attack enabled in each level to challenge the bravest to run each maze as fast as possible. I for one, am not that brave.

It is truly the pinnacle of the formula established on the Game Boy Advance; in playing it you understand that these game designers truly reached the limits of their concept.

You should definitely check this one out.