Unlike most games I try to play completely blind, I ended up caving and researching BTS information about development before I even finished the first level. The reason I wait until after is so that I can play the game and form an opinion on it divorced from knowledge about a troubled development cycle that would cause me to feel sympathetic and grant it a higher review score. About halfway through the first level, I dropped my controller and did as much research as I could about what the hell happened here, I was THAT baffled (you can read a bit about it here: https://thewumpagem.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/the-enter-the-dragonfly-investigation-part-ii-interview-with-joel-goodsell/)

I'll start by saying things I like. I really like the idea behind the cycling breath power-ups. Joel Goodsell said in the above-linked interview "The original games did a great job with forcing the player to change up charge vs. breath attacks with clear enemy visuals, and I wanted to continue deepening this aspect of the Spyro franchise." I never really considered that enough to put it into words enough to praise this aspect, but with this philosophy, I think this was a really smart way to try and deepen Spyro's gameplay.

I also think the game LOOKS pretty good! Some models like Hunter and Ripto look pretty awful, but for the most part, Equinox did a really great job approximating the designs of just about everyone to give them a higher poly count without actually having any of the assets on-hand. Environments look really nice as well.

Check-6 did their best trying to approximate the controls of the Insomniac trilogy, which I appreciate. Many things feel close enough, like the gliding, jumping, sprinting, and I even like how climbing is actually faster here than it is in the Insomniac games. I think it's an improvement. But mainly, Spyro feels extremely sluggish if you're not constantly sprinting (funny, because I said the same exact thing about Wrath of Cortex, which this game shares many similarities with). Unlike Wrath of Cortex, though, this game feels unfinished in the sense that it's extremely unoptimized, full of bugs, AND has barely any content that distinguishes itself from predecessors.

This game TRIES to run at 60 FPS but usually falls more into the 30-45 range. I'm not usually a stickler for framerate, I think a game should run at whatever is most consistent, but they apparently had to scale the game back A LOT to try and reach a more acceptable frame rate, and it STILL doesn't maintain a solid 60. I'd rather them have just capped at 30 if the game was going to be this inconsistent.

Most of the content in this game is just really disappointing and lackluster. It's not just that this game can't distinguish itself from YoTD with its content, it just barely HAS content period! My jaw genuinely dropped when I saw there was only 7000 Gems, 90 Dragonflies, and 9 levels excluding the final boss arena (which you can clip through the floor and access immediately in the first hub area, if ya Gnasty). On one hand, that's not even half as much content as YoTD had. On the other hand, it's less game for me to play, so I'm grateful. On my third hand I just grew out of my torso, they also increased the amount of Gems per stage to like 700-800 per, which is REALLY excessive because these levels are gigantic. They're so big that they literally have entire sections of level in multiple levels that are just long, winding hallways. I didn't realize what the point of these were until it suddenly clicked that these exist to waste your time so the game can finish loading the next area without a loading screen.

The camera being on the right thumbstick now feels WRONG. L2 and R2 are used simultaneously for a defense move I really haven't been using at all because of how unnecessary it is. The buttons individually don't seem to do anything. The camera centering button I talked about in YoTD that made camera controlling a lot smoother and faster has been completely removed, and replaced with an inventory button. This is stupid because you can only have 5 things in your inventory at once, and most of the time, you're just going to be dropping things off at the Crystal Dragon statue or the NPC whose item you're supposed to deliver as soon as you get it, so why do I need to be checking my inventory often enough to need a button dedicated for it?

The rest of this review is just going to be spent listing all the glitches and Jank I experienced in a single playthrough. Sonic 06 somehow has a reputation for being a buggy unplayable mess, but I've already experienced more glitches before even finishing the game than I did completing 06 with every character:

-I headbutted a wall while falling and ended up being able to walk on nothing multiple times. There was also time I just headbutted a wall while running and ended up sliding across the whole screen unable to move stuck in the headbutt impact animation.
-Remember when I mentioned that the hallways in levels exist as loading zones? I wouldn't have realized this if I didn't run too quickly through one of these hallways and got to the next area only to find that none of it had loaded in and I just fell through the floor.
-Multiple sound effects are poorly mixed. There's one where Hunter's talking about UFOs where it sounds like he's trailing off midway through the voiceline, and then the next textbox is back to full volume.
-If you switch the game between natively supported 16:9 and 4:3 mid-game, the HUD elements will stay where they are until you exit and reload a level. If you start on 4:3 and change to 16:9, the HUD elements will stay centered as if you're still playing on a 4:3 TV until you enter a new area. If you, for whatever reason, switch to 16:9 on a 4:3 TV by accident and load a new area, your HUD will be rendered completely off screen.
-Switching to widescreen also messed with some layering and stretched out textures in the skybox in Crop Circle Country. The two moons layered on top of each other and became ovals.
-You can just clip through the power-up-gated fences you need to use to progress through the game without the correct power-up. You can just charge into the gates and you can go through to the next area.
-The honeybee enemies in Honey Marsh just keep infinitely spawning out of the honeycombs you need to destroy for a dragonfly and they wouldn't fly. So they just kept getting dropped into honey and dying instantly.
-In the last third of the game, pausing or opening the Atlas at any point for me caused the left earphone audio to stop working and be replaced by a beeping sound effect that persists through the whole level until you leave the area.
-The Riptoc wizard enemies in Thieves Den layer too many sound effects while they're alive, so the sounds will keep playing for a while after they die. Also, using the guard to deflect their magic attacks is extremely inconsistent and makes no sense. To send the magic back towards them, I had to turn AWAY from them.
-I randomly clipped through a drawbridge in Jurassic Jungle. I guess various platforms and bridges like these have actual physics to them? So they'll wobble when you land on them. Really obnoxious to put in a platformer with strict jumps like this, but I landed on it in a weird way that caused me to just fall through and die.
-Probably the funniest glitch I experienced. In Dragonfly Dojo, there's a bit where you (apparently) have to freeze the baby dragons to platform on them to grab the kites. Not only did the baby dragon ice blocks not work as platforms when I hopped up on them, I accidentally clipped into a Riptoc at the same time that I froze him and we both ended up frozen. I couldn't move at all and I couldn't pause. I actually softlocked the game by attacking an enemy too close. A similar bug happened randomly after collecting a dragonfly in Jurassic Jungle, where I just lost the ability to move with the analog stick or d-pad, couldn't charge, jump, or flame. I could pause this time, though, but I have no clue what caused this.
-When you do get the kites, they shrink and start flickering in the baby dragons' hands.

it has come to my attention that Astarion is basically a tumblr sexyman who women think is very hot but i'd like to clarify: i am NOT like the other girls. Astarion should NOT be dominant, dangerous, or powerfully sexy. Astarion, to me, isn't a character whose appeal is having a really cut physique and an overwhelmingly domineering presence - he SHOULD be reading Garfield comics in the dentist's waiting room because he forgot to charge his phone the night before, he should be doing sketch comedy that never takes off, he should be saving memes of Spongebob being 'cunty' onto his phone, he should be begging to eat pussy politely, and he should be singing along to broadway musicals in the shower.

Out of all of the classic video game franchises that have existed since the 80s and 90s, there are many that casual video game fans could easily point out and recognize, such as, of course, with Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Mega Man, and several others. But, in terms of Bomberman, who has been around longer then all of those other series, I feel like it doesn’t really get talked about as much anymore, or many people don’t really remember it that fondly. Being the main mascot character for Hudson Soft before they eventually shut down, Bomberman had A LOT of games, and from the NES all the way up the the seventh generation of game consoles, there would always be a definitive Bomberman title for that system. Hell, maybe there would even be SEVERAL titles for that system, that’s how much Hudson Soft pushed the series. It must’ve worked for them, considering how often they made these games, but not too much to the point where the company ended up going defunct, and now we only get Bomberman games every so often thanks to Konami. So, with all that said, in order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this franchise, I wanted to start taking a look at the series, starting with the original title simply known as Bomberman.

This series is probably going to be one of the hardest game series I will review on this website, even compared to other repetitive game series like Mega Man and Gradius. Given how many installments of this series would come out after this, even per year, it’s going to be hard to talk about them all separately and make them feel unique when, at the end of the day, aside from some key elements, all Bomberman games are pretty much the exact same thing. But, in the case of this game, we have the game that would lay the groundwork for what would be the main gameplay style for every single game after this, so did it manage to knock it out of the park in their first go around? Eh… kinda. It is still Bomberman at its core, and if this was the only version of the game that you owned, you could have fun with it, but I’m pretty sure many fans of the series can agree with me when I say that there are plenty of better options in the series to choose from.

The story is all about Bomberman trying to become a human, and doing so by blowing up everything and everyone that stands in his way (it only makes perfect sense), the graphics are… ok, but they are pretty bland and uninteresting when compared to plenty of other games on the NES, the music is good, and the sound quality is pretty impressive for the NES, but for most of the game, only one song plays for all the stages, and you bet it can get pretty annoying after a while, the control is alright, with Bomberman controlling how he should, but I dunno, something about the way he turns around corners does feel kinda off, and the gameplay is pretty creative for the time, even though it would quickly become the standard Bomberman affair.

The game is an isometric maze game, where you take control of White Bomberman, go through 50 levels of mazes (yes, seriously), blow up whatever you come across, including blocks, enemies, and even yourself (this will happen a lot, trust me), gather plenty of powerups to help you along the way, such as ones that increase the range of your bombs’ explosions, how many bombs you can place at a time, and how fast you move, and locate the exits in each level to go through them after defeating all of the enemies. This is pretty much how the game goes for every single level, and as you would expect, there are plenty more enemies introduced as the game goes on to make it even harder, and all of the level layouts are randomized, even when dying, so you won’t always be taking on the same challenge every time, which is good for replay value. But, all in all, it isn’t enough to where I would really want to take on all 50 levels in one sitting, especially when the passwords of the game are bigger and longer then the Great Wall of China

This game carries the same issue as the original Adventure Island/Wonder Boy, where it is dragged out waaaaaaaaaaaay longer than it needs to, and while this game doesn’t bother me as much as that other one in terms of that, it can get pretty repetitive pretty fast, especially when visually, the levels never change, staying on the same basic green and gray basic layout, which looks nice, but after a while, you wanna look at something new. Not to mention, there aren’t really any new elements introduced throughout these levels to make you wanna play through them, aside from the enemies and I guess the more powerups you can find, which really don’t incentivise me to want to play any further either.

But, undeniably, the biggest problem that this game hold is that, frankly, it is just outdated. There have been so many different Bomberman games released after this that carry the same basic formula as this one, but does it much better, with more powerups introduced, more types of levels, bosses, worlds, more characters, pretty much everything you could expect from these sequels, making going back to the original not exactly the easiest task. Also, this game lacks any kind of multiplayer mode, which is undeniably one of the defining features of Bomberman games, being able to have fun with friends, blowing each other up, and seeing who was the best Bomberman of them all. Without that, this pretty much makes the original Bomberman obsolete, despite the fact that it can still be fun when played in short bursts.

Overall, despite establishing the main gameplay style for the series and still being fun in parts, the original Bomberman is simply just ok, being important for being where the series would properly launch, but there isn’t really any reason to go back to it when compared to any of the other games in the series. I guess I could recommend it for hardcore Bomberman fans, if they wanna see where the series started and compare it to what it would become, but for everyone else, any other game in the series will work out much better for you. But hey, for all the criticisms I give this version of Bomberman, at least it didn’t try to reboot the series in an edgy, serious way……… oh yeah, didn’t expect shots at that game this early, did ya? Trust me, when I get to that one, I’m gonna have so much fun tearing it to shreds.

Game #349

For years ive heard people call this a hidden gem and secretly the best platformer on the NES, when in reality it actually kinda blows! More technically impressive than good: I'm sure a lot of time and effort was spent on making this game control how it does but the end result's a game feel similar to how the slippery ass crouch in og SMB feels (thank you to Backloggd user "Chandler" for this observation, nail on the head there). Found the star attack incredibly annoying and cumbersome to use, especially with how bizarrely aggressive the enemies are. Levels all are nondescript and uninteresting, not particularly geared to the feel of your character. As the title suggest, feels all like one big gimmick!

Music's ok