2015
Maybe not the best 'game' of Frictional's fare- it's more guided than something like The Dark Descent- but it's the peak of their horror experiences. Nothing but dread- existential and otherwise- in a hopeless, lightless pit at the bottom of the ocean. Save me, naked man.
2013
DOTA 2 may just be one of the greatest games I couldn't play, still can't play, and probably never will be able to play now. Watching sub 500 mmr games from nearly a decade ago to now is staggering, the bar is up there and it feels utterly alienating even just to touch, but just to peer into the windows, that you might get a glimpse of watching someone else have a go at it is enough.
2008
It’s pretty safe to say at this juncture that Bethesda doesn’t ‘get’ Fallout, or rather- that they don’t care to get it. They bought the rights so they’ll just keep moulding it into the same dungeon delver that the Elder Scrolls series embodies, another crown jewel of shining Bethesdaland: World of broken, hollow toys.
I’m sorry to those No Mutants Allowed forumposters that I dismissed as embittered nerds all those years ago. You were right, and if Fallout 3 is the first volley of nukes that destroyed this series, then the never-ending barrage of missiles that has repeatedly scorched not just this franchise, but all of the IPs we’ve held so dearly for the past 20+ years is our fault, and it started in places just like this game. Still, I do like Fallout 3. Part of it being my first Fallout venture, I suppose.
The green-tinted aesthetic of the Capital Wasteland may have looked bog standard when surrounded by the brown and grey games of the previous next gen, but I can’t help but find it strangely charming now. DC may not have the depth of storytelling that New Vegas so proudly carries, (before it was all retconned out, obviously) but their toybox is a fun place to explore, every nook and cranny has a little something to ogle at, in true Bethesdaland fashion. It does, ultimately, just work. We’re getting increasingly diminishing returns in this day and age, but it does work.
I can’t redeem its stupidly cinematic narrative or its bizarre rewrites of returning factions. Fallout 2’s critique of big government through the Enclave, only for them to become The Empire in 3 being especially egregious, but Fallout 3 has a way with all the little stories littering the wasteland, complete with all the environmental storytelling skeletons and ruined vistas. It fails utterly even at telling its own larger stories, like whatever they thought Big Town was, but there’s a little glimmer of hope where there isn’t now.
The writing in the wall was there (and it spelled out ‘FUCK YOU’) and I never truly saw it until it was too late. Now it's TV shows for redditors and slot machine games for addicts, and I helped make it happen. It’s all over but the crying, and nobody’s crying but me.
I’m sorry to those No Mutants Allowed forumposters that I dismissed as embittered nerds all those years ago. You were right, and if Fallout 3 is the first volley of nukes that destroyed this series, then the never-ending barrage of missiles that has repeatedly scorched not just this franchise, but all of the IPs we’ve held so dearly for the past 20+ years is our fault, and it started in places just like this game. Still, I do like Fallout 3. Part of it being my first Fallout venture, I suppose.
The green-tinted aesthetic of the Capital Wasteland may have looked bog standard when surrounded by the brown and grey games of the previous next gen, but I can’t help but find it strangely charming now. DC may not have the depth of storytelling that New Vegas so proudly carries, (before it was all retconned out, obviously) but their toybox is a fun place to explore, every nook and cranny has a little something to ogle at, in true Bethesdaland fashion. It does, ultimately, just work. We’re getting increasingly diminishing returns in this day and age, but it does work.
I can’t redeem its stupidly cinematic narrative or its bizarre rewrites of returning factions. Fallout 2’s critique of big government through the Enclave, only for them to become The Empire in 3 being especially egregious, but Fallout 3 has a way with all the little stories littering the wasteland, complete with all the environmental storytelling skeletons and ruined vistas. It fails utterly even at telling its own larger stories, like whatever they thought Big Town was, but there’s a little glimmer of hope where there isn’t now.
The writing in the wall was there (and it spelled out ‘FUCK YOU’) and I never truly saw it until it was too late. Now it's TV shows for redditors and slot machine games for addicts, and I helped make it happen. It’s all over but the crying, and nobody’s crying but me.
Clever trick to pull, showcasing Natalya with even bigger tits than the original game in the trailers and championing the ‘perfectly faithful remaster’ angle, only to cut an entire mission and several lines of dialogue for the ever-nebulous ‘modern audience.’ Please die and take your poorly performing, unbalanced technical mess back to the black pit you spawned from.
The red-headed stepchild of the Elder Scrolls series, where demons come out of his door to Oblivion (This is awful, please don’t actually leave this in). He is both beloved and maligned, criticised yet adored. He ruined gaming forever with just one dlc pack, but- um, the memes are funny?
Skyrim is accessible to a fault, a game that you can just pick up and play. Its greatest moments come in the quiet moments of exploration. Morrowind stands in stark contrast as an alien and inhospitable place, getting engrossed in an entirely other world is captivating, drinking in its bizarre culture and esoteric lore. Todd Howard saw Lord of the Rings and thought “sick, we’ll do that.” That is Oblivion.
We can talk about the gameplay, we both know about that. The level scaling, turning every encounter into something unkillable, the annoyingly precise stat allocation required on your character, “ah the clunkiness, can’t stand the clunkiness.” Mechanics probably won’t be what sucks you in, so what would be the draw?
The freedom! That’s what Bethesdaslop lovers crave. It’s the freedom to do anything you want and damn the consequences. Oblivion’s waltz out of the tutorial gate and seeing the beautiful countryside in the distance, the shimmering lake beckoning you to take a dive, the bone white ruins of Vilverin usher you into its mystery. Seeing that mountain, wondering if you could climb it (not yet). Its immediate offer of ‘go anywhere, do anything’ further cemented the future design doctrine of all Bethesda games. But are you really free? I mean, really? It’s not much of a roleplaying game, all things considered. It hardly lends itself to such a task. Oh, we’re not doing very well here, are we?
Okay, well. The writing is talked up a lot, but it really isn’t that good. Better than Skyrim, sure, but that’s hardly a feat. The Dark Brotherhood questline is held up as the golden standard- but even that doesn’t quite stand up to scrutiny- and the main quest is often outright ignored, so that can’t be a good sign. What the fuck is it then?
Why is Oblivion still adored by so many? Why is it one of my favourite games of all time? A damned near obsession of mine, some would say. For most, the answer is simple. Your first Bethesda game tends to be your favourite, such was the case for me. How would I put it? It’s kind of anecdotal, really, but let me try to explain:
Wandering into the basement of a random house, seeing corpses and blood strewn around everywhere, turning around and seeing the homeowner corner you in the darkness, only for him to greet you with, “Good day, how fares you this fine eve?” All while Jeremy Soule is playing his little heart out on the strings. Duh-duh-duh-duhhh-duh-duuuhhh~. There’s a reason Oblivion stands infamous for its lovely potato-faced denizens and awkward, stilted dialogue, but it’s the juxtaposition of their eeriness with such a worldly, standard high-fantasy environment, as the looming threat of actual hell comes to swallow you all. There’s a strange feeling of discomfort the game wraps around you, its stares disarming, the flicker of sheer madness lurking underneath their ungainly smiles. Unnerving, yet alluring all the same.
It’s drenched in this unshakeable charm despite everything visually going against it, something both deeply alien and all too familiar. A world that appears so real at first, then crumbles at the slightest touch of the player character, sometimes without needing your exact input either. And it’s in this place- between the uncanny valley and the scent of mother- that you’ll find Oblivion so strangely homely. My heart is still there, as it has been for over a decade. Wandering the Jerall Mountains, taking in the scenery, skittering just out of sight, eating your sweetrolls, gestating, taking form, lurking. Always lurking.
Constructing demented murder scenes and imagining the horrified responses of those that would discover it covered a great deal of my 300-something hours on the Playstation 3. A gleeful, slightly worrying past-time of tiny crows that now very big crows is actively writing long-winded, melodramatic fanfiction about to this day. Weird how things turn out, eh?
It’s almost impossible to describe. Oblivion is paradoxical in nature, a crawling mass of contradictions. Like a riddle, or a bad joke. But for all of its many faults and eccentricities- it all melts away every time the sun sets on the Colovian Highlands and I hear the Peace of Akatosh for what must be the billionth time. Those rolling green hills and towering trees, that whistle in the wind and the funny, impish creatures spattered around takes me all the way back to my first time touching the game all those many, many years ago. And it’s in these great hills where I shall make my grave.
Skyrim is accessible to a fault, a game that you can just pick up and play. Its greatest moments come in the quiet moments of exploration. Morrowind stands in stark contrast as an alien and inhospitable place, getting engrossed in an entirely other world is captivating, drinking in its bizarre culture and esoteric lore. Todd Howard saw Lord of the Rings and thought “sick, we’ll do that.” That is Oblivion.
We can talk about the gameplay, we both know about that. The level scaling, turning every encounter into something unkillable, the annoyingly precise stat allocation required on your character, “ah the clunkiness, can’t stand the clunkiness.” Mechanics probably won’t be what sucks you in, so what would be the draw?
The freedom! That’s what Bethesdaslop lovers crave. It’s the freedom to do anything you want and damn the consequences. Oblivion’s waltz out of the tutorial gate and seeing the beautiful countryside in the distance, the shimmering lake beckoning you to take a dive, the bone white ruins of Vilverin usher you into its mystery. Seeing that mountain, wondering if you could climb it (not yet). Its immediate offer of ‘go anywhere, do anything’ further cemented the future design doctrine of all Bethesda games. But are you really free? I mean, really? It’s not much of a roleplaying game, all things considered. It hardly lends itself to such a task. Oh, we’re not doing very well here, are we?
Okay, well. The writing is talked up a lot, but it really isn’t that good. Better than Skyrim, sure, but that’s hardly a feat. The Dark Brotherhood questline is held up as the golden standard- but even that doesn’t quite stand up to scrutiny- and the main quest is often outright ignored, so that can’t be a good sign. What the fuck is it then?
Why is Oblivion still adored by so many? Why is it one of my favourite games of all time? A damned near obsession of mine, some would say. For most, the answer is simple. Your first Bethesda game tends to be your favourite, such was the case for me. How would I put it? It’s kind of anecdotal, really, but let me try to explain:
Wandering into the basement of a random house, seeing corpses and blood strewn around everywhere, turning around and seeing the homeowner corner you in the darkness, only for him to greet you with, “Good day, how fares you this fine eve?” All while Jeremy Soule is playing his little heart out on the strings. Duh-duh-duh-duhhh-duh-duuuhhh~. There’s a reason Oblivion stands infamous for its lovely potato-faced denizens and awkward, stilted dialogue, but it’s the juxtaposition of their eeriness with such a worldly, standard high-fantasy environment, as the looming threat of actual hell comes to swallow you all. There’s a strange feeling of discomfort the game wraps around you, its stares disarming, the flicker of sheer madness lurking underneath their ungainly smiles. Unnerving, yet alluring all the same.
It’s drenched in this unshakeable charm despite everything visually going against it, something both deeply alien and all too familiar. A world that appears so real at first, then crumbles at the slightest touch of the player character, sometimes without needing your exact input either. And it’s in this place- between the uncanny valley and the scent of mother- that you’ll find Oblivion so strangely homely. My heart is still there, as it has been for over a decade. Wandering the Jerall Mountains, taking in the scenery, skittering just out of sight, eating your sweetrolls, gestating, taking form, lurking. Always lurking.
Constructing demented murder scenes and imagining the horrified responses of those that would discover it covered a great deal of my 300-something hours on the Playstation 3. A gleeful, slightly worrying past-time of tiny crows that now very big crows is actively writing long-winded, melodramatic fanfiction about to this day. Weird how things turn out, eh?
It’s almost impossible to describe. Oblivion is paradoxical in nature, a crawling mass of contradictions. Like a riddle, or a bad joke. But for all of its many faults and eccentricities- it all melts away every time the sun sets on the Colovian Highlands and I hear the Peace of Akatosh for what must be the billionth time. Those rolling green hills and towering trees, that whistle in the wind and the funny, impish creatures spattered around takes me all the way back to my first time touching the game all those many, many years ago. And it’s in these great hills where I shall make my grave.
The original DLC started out as blatant theft and sunk the already shaky reputation of Creative Assembly. Doubling up the units after six months is...nice? But most of these additions are scraping the bottom of the barrel (Tzeentch-marked Centigors?) or cut content that should have been in the game to begin with (Gate-masters). But none of this changes the fact that all three campaigns have horrible concepts and worse executions- and nothing has been done to fix them, mostly because there's just no time. CA have to move onto Thrones of Decay to prove themselves, or Sega's going to have to brandish the whip again- and a part of me hopes they garrote those crazy bastards in Horsham, so that they might join the great pack in the sky...
Ostankya marks the fracturing of Kislev's identity into a complete mess. She should have been part of a DLC later down the line as the rest of the lords get their armies bolstered and their mechanics fleshed out. The ungol/gospodar divide has been removed, because I guess an ethnic conflict in fantasy Russia draws too many parallels to current geopolitical conflicts for GW? That leaves us with ICE and BEARS, reducing Kislev to something utterly lame. BUT WAIT, now Ostankya brings...chaos beasts! To the bulwark against... chaos? That, and the ONE TRUE HAG OF KISLEV doesn't start in a Kislev forest and her mechanics are bullshit. But hey, at least we have the lore of Hags! Or whatever.
Yuan Bo possesses so many titles, even Settra is raising his fleshy eyebrows at him. Ambassador, Executioner, Spymaster. He's got so much going on that he embodies everything and nothing at once. His model is WoW-tier and his faction mechanic lets you buy out all of Cathay in a handful of turns. Couldn't really pay me to play Cathay though, so I'm not exactly sure about this one.
And just like that, the Changeling trolls us all by snubbing not just the Blue Scribes as an LL, but Aekold Helbrass as well (let's face it, he probably nicked Egrimm's spot too). All for a campaign that you cannot lose. That's not hyperbole. You'd have to go out of your way to face any kind of dire consequences when you're invisible on the campaign map and no one can touch your settlements. It's just not fun, and I've already gone straight back to Kairos and Vilitch. At least the Chaos Lord and Exalted Hero are cool.
Anyway, ignore shills. The DLC has gone from awful to stunningly mediocre but still broken. Certainly not the cream.api of the crop, and I would still not waste your money on it. If CA don't get their act together for Thrones of...Delay...(hold your laughter, please) it's over. And if it is, the cataclysmic conclusion to the Total Warhammer trilogy couldn't have come sooner enough.
Ostankya marks the fracturing of Kislev's identity into a complete mess. She should have been part of a DLC later down the line as the rest of the lords get their armies bolstered and their mechanics fleshed out. The ungol/gospodar divide has been removed, because I guess an ethnic conflict in fantasy Russia draws too many parallels to current geopolitical conflicts for GW? That leaves us with ICE and BEARS, reducing Kislev to something utterly lame. BUT WAIT, now Ostankya brings...chaos beasts! To the bulwark against... chaos? That, and the ONE TRUE HAG OF KISLEV doesn't start in a Kislev forest and her mechanics are bullshit. But hey, at least we have the lore of Hags! Or whatever.
Yuan Bo possesses so many titles, even Settra is raising his fleshy eyebrows at him. Ambassador, Executioner, Spymaster. He's got so much going on that he embodies everything and nothing at once. His model is WoW-tier and his faction mechanic lets you buy out all of Cathay in a handful of turns. Couldn't really pay me to play Cathay though, so I'm not exactly sure about this one.
And just like that, the Changeling trolls us all by snubbing not just the Blue Scribes as an LL, but Aekold Helbrass as well (let's face it, he probably nicked Egrimm's spot too). All for a campaign that you cannot lose. That's not hyperbole. You'd have to go out of your way to face any kind of dire consequences when you're invisible on the campaign map and no one can touch your settlements. It's just not fun, and I've already gone straight back to Kairos and Vilitch. At least the Chaos Lord and Exalted Hero are cool.
Anyway, ignore shills. The DLC has gone from awful to stunningly mediocre but still broken. Certainly not the cream.api of the crop, and I would still not waste your money on it. If CA don't get their act together for Thrones of...Delay...(hold your laughter, please) it's over. And if it is, the cataclysmic conclusion to the Total Warhammer trilogy couldn't have come sooner enough.
2000
The original TimeSplitters is entirely skippable. You're not really missing anything- aside from a few maps I still see when I close my eyes. The docks, the mansion, the castle, the graveyard, the seaside village.
It's Free Radical working out all the kinks to their little Goldeneye 64 successor. A senseless and wild shooter that has you staggering through a myriad of missions through time. The great big bloody leap from this to its sequel is really kind of shocking and that's probably the one big reason you'd want to play it. Just to see how far they've come in such short time.
It's Free Radical working out all the kinks to their little Goldeneye 64 successor. A senseless and wild shooter that has you staggering through a myriad of missions through time. The great big bloody leap from this to its sequel is really kind of shocking and that's probably the one big reason you'd want to play it. Just to see how far they've come in such short time.
Was Spyro running out of steam by the year of the dragon? Maybe. Do I care? Please interpret the image of Spyro wearing sunglasses as my official answer. I thank you.
2007
Always thought Crysis kind of peaked right at the start and should have kept pushing with its military sandbox/almost simulation super-soldier route. Playing Predator in the jungle and using people's bodies to destroy shanty houses never quite gets old.
How do you talk about a game that you can never go back to? The mind is perhaps clouded by nostalgia, yet I remember adoring it- for all the frustrations the even then egregious monetization method wrought.
We see it a lot with Games as a Service and it's only going to get worse. A thousand digital graves, a million dead pixels. Still, I set a flower here. I thought you were fun.
We see it a lot with Games as a Service and it's only going to get worse. A thousand digital graves, a million dead pixels. Still, I set a flower here. I thought you were fun.
You can dick around in cyber-Prague forever and it's really cool but once you leave it the game just ends.
This review contains spoilers
Oh, poor Lorne Lanning. His big plans for an ambitious quintology- each starring a new, unique protagonist- all with their own gameplay and quirks, all coming together at the end of the line to take down the massive and sinister consumerist machine was very promising stuff. It’s just too bad- as Oddysee began to make a name for itself, that he couldn’t escape Abe, nor could he quite sway people to stay onboard for his experimental, genre-shifting, console-hopping franchise. Now he’s stuck remaking and reshooting the best of Abe- and yet somehow making it all the more worse. It’s really one of gaming’s bigger ongoing tragedies.
Right then, Stranger’s Wrath? It’s alright.
The move to the sixth gen console generation was a bit of an awkward one. The scenes of Oddysee and Exoddus still remain gorgeous to this day- despite their age. This exotic, alien and even uniquely ‘brutalist tribalist’ look, while the factories are all too hauntingly familiar, grimy and industrial (an aesthetic that New ‘n Tasty would later hideously vomit bloom all over.). Munch and Stranger’s outings- still having a distinct visual flair, mind you- was just difficult to translate that same pre-rendered beauty into the third dimension. I don’t think it’s helped that both games seem to be made a bit on the cheap out of necessity.
Stranger’s crossbow is a fun mechanic that continues building upon itself as the game progresses, but the other aspects of gameplay never quite meet the same level of potential. The bounties aren’t always very engaging, and going to capture them all alive especially didn’t strike me as particularly intuitive, being more of an exercise in ‘oh god, am I doing this right?’ It really starts grinding you down, even before the last legs of the game become a total slog, and not the kind you throw a bone.
It surprised me that Stranger’s Wrath doesn’t go for the tried and true old western frontier vs. the coming of industrialization. The poignant tale of the cowboys dying out as the great civilization machine is born, it kind of writes itself. Maybe it was just that, too simple. Or such a dour ending was too risky when Oddworld Inhabitants didn’t have as much room to get risky. Instead it continues on with its nativism angle, a tribe pushed to the edge as the protagonist comes to terms with his spiritual roots and storms the beaches of Normandy! That… does end up happening, doesn’t it? It all ends a bit silly, even for Oddworld.
Stranger’s twist 75% into the game is definitely something. ‘A tad bullshit’ as I would put it lightly, only because I know you aren’t fitting another pair of legs into those boots, Stranger, sorry. Call me a bit overly pedantic, but it’s difficult to appreciate a twist that has little in the way of logistical possibility. It works quite nicely mechanically, though. What with money disappearing as something you pursued doggedly as a bounty hunter- going so far as to beat up innocent people over during the course of the game. Now you live the environmentalist’s dream, you’re a saviour of nature and your ‘ammo’ eats people to multiply, lovely!
Stranger’s transformation from anti-hero to protector is nice, cute even, I suppose I just lament what Stranger pre-Steefing-out would have brought to the table as contrast to Abe, rather than feeling like the two characters have been brought to a very similar point. That, and Stranger looks like a crappy WoW character in that armour of his.
It’s not the last of Oddworld, but it’s so far the last time it struck a more authentic note. Looking back on it now, Stranger’s Wrath really does feel like the sun setting on a wild frontier of video games that has all but disappeared into the great beyond. Now Lanning is pushing 60, the talent is drying up- and this industry is collapsing under the weight of hideous investment companies while gaming loses its identity to being little more than interactive movies and RPG-lite stat-checking (WITH CRAFTING!).
All his characters talk in circles and speak plainly about their immediate objectives, it’s all become very tired. “I have to save my people!” Abe shouts to himself. “Yes,” replies another Mudokon, “you have to save your people.” Abe gulps in fear. “But, butbutbut how will I save my people…?” He ponders. “You’ll have to…save your people...” The other Mudoken replies sagely. Then dies, or something. I don’t like Soulstorm, is what I’m saying.
Right then, Stranger’s Wrath? It’s alright.
The move to the sixth gen console generation was a bit of an awkward one. The scenes of Oddysee and Exoddus still remain gorgeous to this day- despite their age. This exotic, alien and even uniquely ‘brutalist tribalist’ look, while the factories are all too hauntingly familiar, grimy and industrial (an aesthetic that New ‘n Tasty would later hideously vomit bloom all over.). Munch and Stranger’s outings- still having a distinct visual flair, mind you- was just difficult to translate that same pre-rendered beauty into the third dimension. I don’t think it’s helped that both games seem to be made a bit on the cheap out of necessity.
Stranger’s crossbow is a fun mechanic that continues building upon itself as the game progresses, but the other aspects of gameplay never quite meet the same level of potential. The bounties aren’t always very engaging, and going to capture them all alive especially didn’t strike me as particularly intuitive, being more of an exercise in ‘oh god, am I doing this right?’ It really starts grinding you down, even before the last legs of the game become a total slog, and not the kind you throw a bone.
It surprised me that Stranger’s Wrath doesn’t go for the tried and true old western frontier vs. the coming of industrialization. The poignant tale of the cowboys dying out as the great civilization machine is born, it kind of writes itself. Maybe it was just that, too simple. Or such a dour ending was too risky when Oddworld Inhabitants didn’t have as much room to get risky. Instead it continues on with its nativism angle, a tribe pushed to the edge as the protagonist comes to terms with his spiritual roots and storms the beaches of Normandy! That… does end up happening, doesn’t it? It all ends a bit silly, even for Oddworld.
Stranger’s twist 75% into the game is definitely something. ‘A tad bullshit’ as I would put it lightly, only because I know you aren’t fitting another pair of legs into those boots, Stranger, sorry. Call me a bit overly pedantic, but it’s difficult to appreciate a twist that has little in the way of logistical possibility. It works quite nicely mechanically, though. What with money disappearing as something you pursued doggedly as a bounty hunter- going so far as to beat up innocent people over during the course of the game. Now you live the environmentalist’s dream, you’re a saviour of nature and your ‘ammo’ eats people to multiply, lovely!
Stranger’s transformation from anti-hero to protector is nice, cute even, I suppose I just lament what Stranger pre-Steefing-out would have brought to the table as contrast to Abe, rather than feeling like the two characters have been brought to a very similar point. That, and Stranger looks like a crappy WoW character in that armour of his.
It’s not the last of Oddworld, but it’s so far the last time it struck a more authentic note. Looking back on it now, Stranger’s Wrath really does feel like the sun setting on a wild frontier of video games that has all but disappeared into the great beyond. Now Lanning is pushing 60, the talent is drying up- and this industry is collapsing under the weight of hideous investment companies while gaming loses its identity to being little more than interactive movies and RPG-lite stat-checking (WITH CRAFTING!).
All his characters talk in circles and speak plainly about their immediate objectives, it’s all become very tired. “I have to save my people!” Abe shouts to himself. “Yes,” replies another Mudokon, “you have to save your people.” Abe gulps in fear. “But, butbutbut how will I save my people…?” He ponders. “You’ll have to…save your people...” The other Mudoken replies sagely. Then dies, or something. I don’t like Soulstorm, is what I’m saying.
2022
The Saints are politically conscious college kids committing crimes to pay off their student debt and it’s the funniest opening to a video game ever right up until the point you realise they’re not kidding. Somehow, the game keeps going after that.
2012
In a cruel twist of fate you were here and gone too fast, but perhaps that's the way you would have wanted it. VGTG.
1998
I think it speaks volumes of Banjo-Kazooie's stellar soundtrack that Grant Kirkhope is sort of the darling face of classy old Rare now. It's definitely a deserved accolade- no matter how unorthodox it might be that a composer overshadows the rest of the dev team, don't see that too often.
Beyond great music and precise platforming, what really sets the bear-and-bird's outing apart from its contemporaries is that cheeky, irreverent English humour and charm. The kind of game that has you smiling the whole way through, unless you don't realize you have to break in through the windows in Rusty Bucket Bay. Slightly bullshit, but went straight back to smiling when I hear all the lovely sound design again. Jinjoooo.
Beyond great music and precise platforming, what really sets the bear-and-bird's outing apart from its contemporaries is that cheeky, irreverent English humour and charm. The kind of game that has you smiling the whole way through, unless you don't realize you have to break in through the windows in Rusty Bucket Bay. Slightly bullshit, but went straight back to smiling when I hear all the lovely sound design again. Jinjoooo.