i played this a lot as a kid (talking funny mascot on da playstation was [is] my speciality) but goin back now was like a fuckin huge shock. this game kinda sucks!

I am fighting a fuckin WAR here with this camera. even on manual mode this shit is makin me wanna hurl. and the levels aren’t really fun either, they range anywhere from boring (the same haunted house for the 9th time) to needlessly frustrating (ANY space level. was the oxygen bar not enough?)

on top of that, this has gotta be like the most fuckin cut and paste fuckin milquetoast 3D platformer ever. get a main collectible, a bunch of little ones and a hidden one. no nuance, nothin flashy or memorable. this is like bare minimum video gameage, it’s like we’re not even trying.

i wont deny i still find a lot of the one liners funny, especially now that i understand most of these (dated!!) references guarantee that remake they’re planning is gonna axe a good handful of them.

despite all that it is still, and shall forever be, tail time. i’m sure gex 3 is the good one, right? (CLUELESS)

good port, thanks for the free plat 🏆 .
abused the shit out of the rewind feature. maybe i don’t feel like getting annoyed by a parts of a game (MURRAY!!!! 👁️👁️) i’ve played a bajillion times, so what?
what else is there to say? it’s one of the ps2’s best 3D platformers and i don’t think anyone would argue that

bro had a gas chamber?

Insane how drastically different my Harry turned out this time. I wanted to see how far in the other direction I could push the character in comparison to my first run, and so I ended up with an ultraliberal, alcoholic, violent, god fearing, misogynistic, drug addict who punched one child and tried to shoot another. I really didn't expect this level of flexibility with a protagonist that has a pre established backstory and history, it somehow works so well (even if I found the story to be much more satisfying if you sober up and go on a journey of self discovery.) Anyway, I love this game, flawless, no notes.

As the first game in the series, it introduces a great core that later entries built upon. The gameplay is snappy, the artstyle is timeless, but the locations are a bit uninspired and bland. The levels themselves feature fun gameplay but are still nothing to write home about. The collecthathon and time trial aspects are fun, but they have been done better. The powerup idea is great, but 90% of the powerups are completely useless, and I ended up only using a couple. Overall, it is a solid platformer that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

The whole time I was playing The Artful Escape only one thought was going through my mind. "Do I like this?" I don't hate it, I don't love it but Do I like it?

The issue is for everything I do enjoy there is a counter negative. Whilst the space faring teenager running from the shadow of his famous folksinger uncle is an interesting premise for the story, I never really warmed to the protagonist overly and the ending feels a bit lackluster.

Where the visuals are gorgeous (mostly due to stellar art design) and the music is excellent, the gameplay however is one note. You move right holding square so your character plays his guitar. This is quite a gorgeous view as the background lights up as you move through it due to the visual design and the music is mostly great. On the negative though the wailing guitar gets repetitive and the levels have nothing else for them except the very occasional double jump ledge grab interrupting the guitar playing, both pointless and sabotages it's main gimmick strangely. When not just being a guitar solo walking simulator there are some almost rhythm game boss battles and while I like the idea they are all exactly the same and add nothing past the first one due to the dull usage of buttons to implement it. They become tedious extremely quickly.

Honestly it feels like it should have been an animated short rather than a video game. One made by a guitarist who loves psychedelic 70's album covers. It's constantly one step forward and one step back, yes it's gorgeous at times, it can be occasionally witty, charming and full of imagination but as a game it's simply boring to play.

I don't hate it, I don't love it but..... I don't think I really like it.

+ Some great art design.
+ Some of the music is excellent.
+ Story Idea is interesting.

- Boring to actively play.
- Boss battles are all the same.
- Main character wasn't to my taste.
- Ending lacked the spark I expected.

Now that I’ve had a day to sit on my thoughts of the game I will make an actual non-shitpost review.

This game is a mess. I wasn’t kidding when I said this is the MGS4 of the series. An extremely ambitious, earnest, heartfelt celebration of the series that has extremely high highs but also constantly falls on its face with extremely stupid writing.

The pacing is some of the worst we’ve seen from RGG. For a game that can easily be 100+ hours long it is both too long but also too short in areas. It constantly pulls you away from the main story to do very involved mini game/sub system tutorials but then has no time in the final hours to wrap up most of the story. At least 4 of the main characters this game is about don’t show up in the final cutscene. You just have to be told about what they are doing from a mouth piece so we can wrap shit up. Kiryu is just kinda left in this weird limbo as they don’t explain what the fuck got them to this point with an achievement titles “man who reclaimed his name”. It genuinely feels like there is either an entire chapter or at least a huge segment of one missing from the end. One of the main villains just stops showing up for 10+ hours only to be seen again in a cut away and is completely unrecognizable for at least another few hours. They then try to do the coin locker scene again with them and it feels completely unearned because they haven’t done anything. The two main villains you do fight are extremely forgettable and underwhelming. One is given what you’d imagine to be a super important connection to Ichiban but it never comes up. The two share a single cutscene at the start of the game and that’s it. Why was it even a plot point to begin with then???? So many plot threads just go no where or are left extremely unsatisfying as they hand wave them away so it can’t be viewed as “a plot hole”. I seriously think how they structure their stories needs to change because I don’t think the Yakuza writing formula they’ve had for 2 decades translates to a 100 hour JRPG. Imo the best way to enjoy the main story of these games is when you can just progress the plot freely and not be bogged down by side content or busy work. I usually save that stuff for premium adventure so the story isn’t so “start and stop”. But you can’t do that in these games because of the rpg leveling and just how the story constantly blocks you to do other shit I am currently not interested in. No RGG I don’t give a fuck about your Pokémon clone and it’s 30 minute+ forced tutorial I just want to get on with chapter 4 please.

Most of the cast has nothing to do in this game which would be fine if they didn’t force them to have boring ass drink links you need to do to make them objectively better in gameplay.

The gameplay needs massive changes going forward because Jesus Christ was I sick of the multiple grinds it imposes. The long battles they do in this game are terrible. In previous entries you’d have a long gauntlet where you’d have to fight to a location and they do this here but they constantly make you take the most out of the way route and block off better ones with excuses like “there are dudes over there!” Only to send you down an alley with 7 fights. If 9 does the same formula 8 repeated from 7 I might just drop the series. I do not want to go back to scrounging for money and being locked out of jobs till chapter 5 again. I do not want to have to do massive material grinds for good gear. I do not want to have 80% of the moves you get to be fucking useless because they aren’t an AOE and don’t deal elemental damage.

Highlights of this game is everything they do with Kiryu outside of the final chapter. Life links are overall goated outside of some implications of how no one reacting to Kiryu being alive despite you are only able to see them after Kiryu is broadcasted on national news to be alive.

There is honestly too much to talk about with this game So I’m just gonna end it by saying this: I’ll look back on the good in this game as some of the best but I never want to replay this game ever again. Also this game only makes Gaiden look even dumber and further cements it at as a $50 scam. Yokoyama fucking lied Hanawa is not important and he fucking knew that.

Mark my words that this game while currently being hailed as the best game in the series, that its perfect and other things like that will be looked back on a lot more negatively once the honeymoon phase is over, once hypebeasts move onto the next thing, once people won't freakout if you have anything negative to say about it. It won't be a hot take or "being contrarian" to think that the game is mid, super front loaded and falls apart in the end. It's fine if you do think its perfect and its your favorite game or whatever but the amount of people who lose their shit when you have anything negative to say about this game or gaiden is seriously annoying.

This game also made me get into a car accident so fuck it lol