hotpoppah
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Lethal Company
2023
The game is carried by proximity chat, and would be so boring without it. However that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's honestly really cool how much fun you can get out of such a concept when the formula of the game is so simple but so cleverly built around it.
In my experience most co-op horror games are straight up bad from a gameplay perspective. Not only is lethal company fun, it's also very balanced and things are random enough to where you will never predict what happen. You'll get scared, you'll be silly, you'll pull off that amazing once in a lifetime escape, you'll never feel cheated. Most importantly, you will always have a laugh no matter the outcome which is why I respect it so much as someone who fell out of multiplayer games a while ago. Even if you're no good with horror, I do say give it a whirl, I'm sure you'll get something out of it.
All that said this is definitely a game best experienced in short bursts, despite all the great mods out there, you'll probably ruin your fun if you play it too much or take it too seriously. I've played about 10 hours at the time of writing this and I look forward to revisiting it every now and then, but I definitely don't want to play it religiously.
oh yeah and the visual effects are really cool i like them alot alot :)) sound design also does wonders for the atmosphere
In my experience most co-op horror games are straight up bad from a gameplay perspective. Not only is lethal company fun, it's also very balanced and things are random enough to where you will never predict what happen. You'll get scared, you'll be silly, you'll pull off that amazing once in a lifetime escape, you'll never feel cheated. Most importantly, you will always have a laugh no matter the outcome which is why I respect it so much as someone who fell out of multiplayer games a while ago. Even if you're no good with horror, I do say give it a whirl, I'm sure you'll get something out of it.
All that said this is definitely a game best experienced in short bursts, despite all the great mods out there, you'll probably ruin your fun if you play it too much or take it too seriously. I've played about 10 hours at the time of writing this and I look forward to revisiting it every now and then, but I definitely don't want to play it religiously.
oh yeah and the visual effects are really cool i like them alot alot :)) sound design also does wonders for the atmosphere
[Average Reading Time: 8 Minutes]
My opinions on this game and my preference in how I like my eggs share one similarity: they're both scrambled.
When it comes to the plot, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg doesn't offer much of note. Billy and his friends get whisked away to a realm called Morning Land, where the chicken inhabitants are being attacked by a group of evil crows. It's your basic "Go beat up the evil dark lord bad guy" storyline that's all too common in games like this. I'm not complaining about it, though. I think the plot is fine for what it is, and they do try to add some lore here and there to keep the world interesting. I have my complaints about this game, and let me tell you the plot isn't what I take issue with here.
Let's talk about how the game works. Throughout your adventure, you're constantly running into eggs. When you start pushing them around, you gain access to a whole wealth of traversal and combat abilities. You can do a ground pound with the egg and have it launch you in the air to gain some extra height. You can shoot it at enemies and have it roll back to you. You can also use it to dash. What's weird about the dash, though, is that Billy doesn't have the dash move when he isn't pushing an egg around. Why he suddenly loses the will to pick up the pace when he isn't shoving around an egg is beyond me, but we have other pressing matters to discuss.
Throughout my playthrough of this game, one constant thought ran through my head as I engaged with the mechanics: "Wow, this game would be great if the mechanics worked more reliably!"
The ideas they present with the gameplay are neat, but in execution prove to be rather frustrating. Take the ground pound that lets you jump higher I mentioned earlier. You're going to primarily be using this to reach higher platforms. In any other game, this would be as simple as using the move and then getting on the platform. However, things are not so simple in Billy Hatcher! When you use this move, the egg and, by extension, Billy begin to spin. Now, this has no effect on the controls, but it does have an effect on what happens when you land. If you're barely making it onto a platform and Billy is over the edge when you land, he's going to drop and the egg will just be hanging out on the platform you wanted to get on, mocking you as you try to find another egg to try this again. If there's no other eggs around then you need to wait for the egg to despawn and go back to its spawn point so you can try again.
Now, you may think at first that this is just a quirky weird thing that doesn't happen too often. Oh, you ignorant fool! This happens on almost every platform in the entire game. I started forming a habit of doing two ground pound jumps before even attempting to move myself to a platform because I managed to have less arduous results when I did it. I am thankful to say that this has never caused a death during my playthrough, but it is frustrating to deal with.
What did cause deaths during my playthrough was a special object in some stages. Sometimes in stages there will be railways that you need to put your egg on, and while it's rolling away you need to maneuver yourself to a location where you can catch it before it rolls off a ledge. When you first see one of these, it immediately works as advertised. However, in later stages it, for some reason or another, becomes the most finicky thing that you will ever interact with in this game.
Allow me to describe to you how these things almost made me quit the game. So, the first mission of every world requires you to find a gold egg and hatch it. For one world, you need to move this egg across one of these rails and catch it on the other end. The problems I had here weren't with catching the egg. The problems I had were that the egg just refused to get on the rail. If I moved too quickly towards the rail, it wouldn't connect with it and the egg and I would plummet down a pit. If I moved too slowly, the egg would just fall right through the rail, which also causes death since it's an important egg. I also can't use the move that launches the egg out to get it on there because then it makes the egg move too fast, making it impossible for me to catch it, resulting in death. I had to carefully manage my speed when approaching this rail, aiming my movements at just the right angle to get the egg on there. Whoever was in charge of playtesting levels that use these things must've had some level of spite towards the developers of this game because there's no way they didn't notice this! Either that or they reported it and it was, for one reason or another, never fixed by the devs, but we'll never know the true story.
I would probably be less mad about it if death was meaningless, but you have to remember that this is 6th Gen gaming, and we're still doing the lives thing in most platformers, as it was the style at the time. Personally, I think lives counters add nothing to games outside of making things more stressful for the player, and I rarely find their inclusion in games to be something worth celebrating. When developers add a lives system to their games, they either make lives super rare, making playing stages stressful and infuriating when getting a game over, or they shower you in them, raising the question of why they even bothered with including them in the first place. There's also other things to account for, such as what happens when you get a game over in terms of progress lost, when factoring how valuable lives are, but at the end of the day I think every game that has a lives mechanic would go up 2 points if they hadn't even bothered with a lives counter in the first place.
How does this relate to Billy Hatcher, you ask? Well, lives are rare in this game, for one. I didn't find a single extra life during my playthrough. I dunno if I needed to hatch a specific egg to find one but I didn't find any during my adventure. Next, we need to talk about what happens when you get a game over. A normal game would splash a "Game Over" screen with an option to continue or to quit, with continuing taking you back to the start of the stage you were attempting. Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, like other SEGA games during this time period, take you straight back to the title screen, requiring you to go through menus and loading times before you're allowed your next attempt. I think I game over'd around 5 times during that stage I mentioned earlier, so needless to say I was not a happy camper by the time I beat it.
As you go on your journey you'll get "Emblems of Courage", which act as your main collectable for this journey. For most of the game, they don't really matter. You only need to beat the first two missions of each world to advance to the next one. This is consistent for the first five worlds of the game. Once you get to the 6th world, they have you complete a third stage. At the end of that stage, though, you are greeted with a text box telling you that you need to go back to older worlds and collect more emblems before you can beat the game, and then you're kicked out of the level! You could spend over 7 minutes going through the stage, full of deaths and frustrating egg-related platforming all for the game to say "bro look at your wallet ☠️☠️ get back with some more green my man." and throw you out! Thankfully, there's an NPC near that spot where that happens that you need to just have 25 of the things before you can beat the game, but the way the game phrases things when you get to that room makes you think you need to get all of the emblems in the previous worlds, which would've scared me away easily.
At the very least, the other missions that you would need to do to get the remaining emblems at that point are absurdly easy. They went out of their way to make the first two missions of the worlds in the back half of this game worryingly difficult, but the missions outside the first two of each world are a breeze in comparison. There are some that'll end in just a few minutes without any need for a second attempt. It's crazy! Funnily enough it was during the time I was rounding up the extra emblems that I was having the most fun with the game. There weren't many rails to worry about, there was less egg platforming that could lead to ledge issues, it was like I was playing a normal game! All I could think during all this was "Why did they hide all the easy stuff and make me suffer like they have for the past few hours?"
Each world has a boss to fight, as well. For the most part, though, they're really easy. There are some where I wish the camera would lock onto them since they move all over the place and others where it took me a try or two to figure out what they wanted from me, but for the most part they're pretty comfortable to fight. You're not going to have any worries there with this game, for the most part.
Overall, I can't say I hate Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, but I can't say I like it either. A neat gimmick and an attractive world are marred by unreliable gimmicks, the trappings of the lives system, and the fact that the game waits as long as it does to tell you to go get more collectables. If this is a game that makes you curious, then I can say it's worth at least giving a shot, but I won't blame you if you want to drop it after a few worlds.
Also, ain't no way I'm going to try to 100% this game. There's no way you get something cool for finding all the emblems. Unless it makes my Wii spit out a $100 bill I ain't doing it, and I recommend you do the same. Just focus on getting enough collectables and move on. Save yourself some headache.
My opinions on this game and my preference in how I like my eggs share one similarity: they're both scrambled.
When it comes to the plot, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg doesn't offer much of note. Billy and his friends get whisked away to a realm called Morning Land, where the chicken inhabitants are being attacked by a group of evil crows. It's your basic "Go beat up the evil dark lord bad guy" storyline that's all too common in games like this. I'm not complaining about it, though. I think the plot is fine for what it is, and they do try to add some lore here and there to keep the world interesting. I have my complaints about this game, and let me tell you the plot isn't what I take issue with here.
Let's talk about how the game works. Throughout your adventure, you're constantly running into eggs. When you start pushing them around, you gain access to a whole wealth of traversal and combat abilities. You can do a ground pound with the egg and have it launch you in the air to gain some extra height. You can shoot it at enemies and have it roll back to you. You can also use it to dash. What's weird about the dash, though, is that Billy doesn't have the dash move when he isn't pushing an egg around. Why he suddenly loses the will to pick up the pace when he isn't shoving around an egg is beyond me, but we have other pressing matters to discuss.
Throughout my playthrough of this game, one constant thought ran through my head as I engaged with the mechanics: "Wow, this game would be great if the mechanics worked more reliably!"
The ideas they present with the gameplay are neat, but in execution prove to be rather frustrating. Take the ground pound that lets you jump higher I mentioned earlier. You're going to primarily be using this to reach higher platforms. In any other game, this would be as simple as using the move and then getting on the platform. However, things are not so simple in Billy Hatcher! When you use this move, the egg and, by extension, Billy begin to spin. Now, this has no effect on the controls, but it does have an effect on what happens when you land. If you're barely making it onto a platform and Billy is over the edge when you land, he's going to drop and the egg will just be hanging out on the platform you wanted to get on, mocking you as you try to find another egg to try this again. If there's no other eggs around then you need to wait for the egg to despawn and go back to its spawn point so you can try again.
Now, you may think at first that this is just a quirky weird thing that doesn't happen too often. Oh, you ignorant fool! This happens on almost every platform in the entire game. I started forming a habit of doing two ground pound jumps before even attempting to move myself to a platform because I managed to have less arduous results when I did it. I am thankful to say that this has never caused a death during my playthrough, but it is frustrating to deal with.
What did cause deaths during my playthrough was a special object in some stages. Sometimes in stages there will be railways that you need to put your egg on, and while it's rolling away you need to maneuver yourself to a location where you can catch it before it rolls off a ledge. When you first see one of these, it immediately works as advertised. However, in later stages it, for some reason or another, becomes the most finicky thing that you will ever interact with in this game.
Allow me to describe to you how these things almost made me quit the game. So, the first mission of every world requires you to find a gold egg and hatch it. For one world, you need to move this egg across one of these rails and catch it on the other end. The problems I had here weren't with catching the egg. The problems I had were that the egg just refused to get on the rail. If I moved too quickly towards the rail, it wouldn't connect with it and the egg and I would plummet down a pit. If I moved too slowly, the egg would just fall right through the rail, which also causes death since it's an important egg. I also can't use the move that launches the egg out to get it on there because then it makes the egg move too fast, making it impossible for me to catch it, resulting in death. I had to carefully manage my speed when approaching this rail, aiming my movements at just the right angle to get the egg on there. Whoever was in charge of playtesting levels that use these things must've had some level of spite towards the developers of this game because there's no way they didn't notice this! Either that or they reported it and it was, for one reason or another, never fixed by the devs, but we'll never know the true story.
I would probably be less mad about it if death was meaningless, but you have to remember that this is 6th Gen gaming, and we're still doing the lives thing in most platformers, as it was the style at the time. Personally, I think lives counters add nothing to games outside of making things more stressful for the player, and I rarely find their inclusion in games to be something worth celebrating. When developers add a lives system to their games, they either make lives super rare, making playing stages stressful and infuriating when getting a game over, or they shower you in them, raising the question of why they even bothered with including them in the first place. There's also other things to account for, such as what happens when you get a game over in terms of progress lost, when factoring how valuable lives are, but at the end of the day I think every game that has a lives mechanic would go up 2 points if they hadn't even bothered with a lives counter in the first place.
How does this relate to Billy Hatcher, you ask? Well, lives are rare in this game, for one. I didn't find a single extra life during my playthrough. I dunno if I needed to hatch a specific egg to find one but I didn't find any during my adventure. Next, we need to talk about what happens when you get a game over. A normal game would splash a "Game Over" screen with an option to continue or to quit, with continuing taking you back to the start of the stage you were attempting. Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, like other SEGA games during this time period, take you straight back to the title screen, requiring you to go through menus and loading times before you're allowed your next attempt. I think I game over'd around 5 times during that stage I mentioned earlier, so needless to say I was not a happy camper by the time I beat it.
As you go on your journey you'll get "Emblems of Courage", which act as your main collectable for this journey. For most of the game, they don't really matter. You only need to beat the first two missions of each world to advance to the next one. This is consistent for the first five worlds of the game. Once you get to the 6th world, they have you complete a third stage. At the end of that stage, though, you are greeted with a text box telling you that you need to go back to older worlds and collect more emblems before you can beat the game, and then you're kicked out of the level! You could spend over 7 minutes going through the stage, full of deaths and frustrating egg-related platforming all for the game to say "bro look at your wallet ☠️☠️ get back with some more green my man." and throw you out! Thankfully, there's an NPC near that spot where that happens that you need to just have 25 of the things before you can beat the game, but the way the game phrases things when you get to that room makes you think you need to get all of the emblems in the previous worlds, which would've scared me away easily.
At the very least, the other missions that you would need to do to get the remaining emblems at that point are absurdly easy. They went out of their way to make the first two missions of the worlds in the back half of this game worryingly difficult, but the missions outside the first two of each world are a breeze in comparison. There are some that'll end in just a few minutes without any need for a second attempt. It's crazy! Funnily enough it was during the time I was rounding up the extra emblems that I was having the most fun with the game. There weren't many rails to worry about, there was less egg platforming that could lead to ledge issues, it was like I was playing a normal game! All I could think during all this was "Why did they hide all the easy stuff and make me suffer like they have for the past few hours?"
Each world has a boss to fight, as well. For the most part, though, they're really easy. There are some where I wish the camera would lock onto them since they move all over the place and others where it took me a try or two to figure out what they wanted from me, but for the most part they're pretty comfortable to fight. You're not going to have any worries there with this game, for the most part.
Overall, I can't say I hate Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, but I can't say I like it either. A neat gimmick and an attractive world are marred by unreliable gimmicks, the trappings of the lives system, and the fact that the game waits as long as it does to tell you to go get more collectables. If this is a game that makes you curious, then I can say it's worth at least giving a shot, but I won't blame you if you want to drop it after a few worlds.
Also, ain't no way I'm going to try to 100% this game. There's no way you get something cool for finding all the emblems. Unless it makes my Wii spit out a $100 bill I ain't doing it, and I recommend you do the same. Just focus on getting enough collectables and move on. Save yourself some headache.
The Dog Island
2007
Edit: Maybe I'm full of shit. I want to play more of this now..
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I liked dressing up my dog and the tonal clash of the happy Wii dog graphics and the heavy illness-focused slice of life story. Actually even sniffing around for new items was kinda fun. But the way the two fit together makes them both mutually feel heavier, and there's not really any substance to the sniffing out of items. I was kind of impressed they would put this story in a kids' game: by all means kids' games Should be about these things! But the gameplay otherwise was kind of infantilely simple.
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I liked dressing up my dog and the tonal clash of the happy Wii dog graphics and the heavy illness-focused slice of life story. Actually even sniffing around for new items was kinda fun. But the way the two fit together makes them both mutually feel heavier, and there's not really any substance to the sniffing out of items. I was kind of impressed they would put this story in a kids' game: by all means kids' games Should be about these things! But the gameplay otherwise was kind of infantilely simple.
Resident Evil 4
2023
Perfect, but the original already was.
I imagine that my reaction to hearing about a Resident Evil 4 remake was pretty similar to most: confusion. What about Resident Evil 4 needed to be remade, really? The game was about a decade ahead of its time when it dropped in 2005, and virtually every third-person shooter made since then has had some of Leon Kennedy’s sharp-jawed, Bingo-quipping DNA inside of it somewhere. Moreover, the idea of trying to do Resident Evil 4 but again — or God forbid, better — is still kind of laughable. You’re going to remake one of the greatest and most influential games ever made on a lark to see if you can do it too? Good luck.
But, lo and behold, they did it. Resident Evil 4 Remake is a fucking phenomenal game. The combat is heavy and satisfying, it’s a delight to look at, the characters are all enjoyable, and I put thirty hours into it over the course of about a week and a half without really even noticing. I finished one playthrough, finished Separate Ways, and then immediately started another run on a harder difficulty. When I'm done with that run, I'm going to play it again, and again. It’s perfect.
How much does it deserve to be celebrated, though, when what it’s based off of was that good to begin with?
I’ve heard people talk about “remake culture” quite a bit in recent years in relation to video games, and I don’t think it’s an entirely wrong observation that the same games seem to be releasing a lot lately. Naughty Dog is perhaps the easiest studio to point and laugh at over this — The Last of Us is a series that’s about to have a higher number of remakes of its original games than the actual amount of original games — but it is something of a trend in the industry right now. Granted, we’ve been getting high-profile remakes and remasters of games for about fifteen fucking years now, so it’s hardly new, but people seem to be, for whatever reason, noticing it more lately. Common criticisms drifting up now are that remakes are lazy, and overly safe, and cash-grabby. I agree insofar as the fact that I’d vastly prefer if more games could look forward, rather than back. There are a lot of very talented creators out there with a lot of fresh concepts that ought to be allowed to flourish, and it’s stifling the maturity of the medium to insist that we just keep playing the hits every night with a different band.
Despite this, it remains evident that not all remakes are created equal. I found the Dead Space remake to be a complete bastardization of the original, with slippery, weightless gunplay and animations, and little actually improved aside from bringing back Gunnar Wright and some more technically impressive lighting effects. By contrast, I was surprised at how much Resident Evil 4 Remake impressed me, introducing much more committal combat into the original’s stage design and vastly expanding a lot of the systems that went woefully underused back in 2005. Both games have exceptional scores in both popular games coverage and right here on Backloggd, so either I missed something major in Dead Space, or people are just so predisposed to celebrating something good and old being new again that they just hand it a high score without really thinking about it. I’m sure it’s reductive, but I’m willing to bet it’s the latter. If you don’t trust me to say it, I’m certain that these high-profile, mega-budget companies making the fucking things would take my position; why would they be cranking these things out with the massive budgets and marketing campaigns that they’ve had if they weren’t confident people were going to drop everything to get a copy on release day? Saying you’re going to take something that people enjoyed and just make it again is an almost surefire way to guarantee a boatload of sales from those so caught in the hype cycle that they won’t even wait to see if it’s been fucked with before they buy it.
Anyway, I’m getting off-track. The point to make here is that I think there’s a single element that really makes Resident Evil 4 Remake stand out from among its more cynical contemporaries.
It was very clearly made by people who love the original.
“Yeah, yeah, the multi-million dollar game was made with goddamned love”, I know. But there are so many small changes here that I seriously doubt you’d be able to make or notice without having a deep appreciation and understanding for what the original was doing. EA never had a clue what made Dead Space great. Yasuhiro Anpo and company down at Capcom, however, get it.
Early on, during the village fight, there’s this tall tower standing down by the church entrance. There’s not much in there — just a herb and a ladder leading up — but this was an immensely safe spot to hide in the original. You could climb all the way up to the top, hang out for a few seconds, hop back down before the ganados started throwing molotovs at you, and then repeat. You could wait out the entire fight just by doing a simple loop of climbing up, dropping down, and then climbing back up again, and they couldn’t do a thing to stop you. Naturally, knowing about this safe spot, I went up the ladder and prepared to dig in. It was at this point that the floor gave out under Leon’s feet and dropped him right into the middle of the crowd congregating at the bottom.
To come up with a trap like this requires a few things on the part of the developers:
a) to know about the safe spot in the original game,
b) to expect the player to also know about the safe spot in the original game,
c) to bait the player into attempting to use the safe spot in the remake (by making the fight significantly more demanding)
It doesn’t sound like much, but take a second to consider the amount of understanding you need to have about Resident Evil 4 to be aware that the safe spot actually existed in the first place. It’s a decently-known exploit — enough so that the original developers accounted for it when they put out the game — but it’s nothing that a casual player would be aware of. It’s a remarkably small change in the grand scheme of things, but there’s a constant stream of these equally small changes throughout that add up to truly distinguish this from its predecessor. It’s just enough to keep old players disoriented while still being able to recognize what’s here. It’s a bit less of a remake and more of a remix. It feels like a very high-budget fangame, and I mean that in a good way.
With the release of Separate Ways adding back in a little more story context and some previously-excluded areas that I missed — the sewers, my beloved, are back — Resident Evil 4 Remake feels like a complete experience. I imagine that you’ll have a worse time without the DLC, and that kind of sucks when that shit came free with the original as long as you didn’t buy it on Gamecube. I managed to cop the base game and Separate Ways on sale for about fifty bucks, and they added Mercenaries mode to this in a patch at some point in the past couple months; this is definitely a game that is significantly better now than it was when it came out, which I think is kind of regrettable. It’s barely been out for eight months and I’m having a way better time for less money than people who picked it up on day one. This is a broader condemnation of the industry, I suppose. I like it when games come out feature-complete, and I'd argue this didn't. But hell, what does, anymore?
I do have my quibbles with the game. Unarmed enemies are the most dangerous fuckers alive because of that unblockable lunge they do that covers about two miles of distance and has to be ducked under at a precise time if they don’t flinch from being shot, which happens a lot on the harder difficulties. Knife parries are exceptionally overpowered and essentially give you a “get-out-of-bad-positioning free” card for a significant portion of the game. A lot of the music has been changed from its original synth-y sound to more of a Hans Zimmer-esque orchestral score, and that’s a major disappointment; the sequence where Mike comes down in his chopper is easily the worst offender of the lot, sounding like something pulled directly off of the Dark Knight Rises soundtrack. The reticle sway when Leon aims is a little extreme and definitely should have been tuned down a little. There’s something intangible that I feel was lost in getting rid of the tank controls and the stationary aiming; Resident Evil 4 definitely controls a bit more like everything else now, rather than controlling like what inspired everything else.
Even with those complaints, this is still a phenomenal title. I think the developers of this remake understood way more about what fans of the original wanted than anyone was expecting them to, and they’ve created something that stands alongside one of the greatest games ever made. By no means does it replace nor exceed the original, but it’s on the same level, and that alone is a borderline unthinkable achievement.
And they didn’t “make the mine thrower good” in this. It was always good, you cowards.
I imagine that my reaction to hearing about a Resident Evil 4 remake was pretty similar to most: confusion. What about Resident Evil 4 needed to be remade, really? The game was about a decade ahead of its time when it dropped in 2005, and virtually every third-person shooter made since then has had some of Leon Kennedy’s sharp-jawed, Bingo-quipping DNA inside of it somewhere. Moreover, the idea of trying to do Resident Evil 4 but again — or God forbid, better — is still kind of laughable. You’re going to remake one of the greatest and most influential games ever made on a lark to see if you can do it too? Good luck.
But, lo and behold, they did it. Resident Evil 4 Remake is a fucking phenomenal game. The combat is heavy and satisfying, it’s a delight to look at, the characters are all enjoyable, and I put thirty hours into it over the course of about a week and a half without really even noticing. I finished one playthrough, finished Separate Ways, and then immediately started another run on a harder difficulty. When I'm done with that run, I'm going to play it again, and again. It’s perfect.
How much does it deserve to be celebrated, though, when what it’s based off of was that good to begin with?
I’ve heard people talk about “remake culture” quite a bit in recent years in relation to video games, and I don’t think it’s an entirely wrong observation that the same games seem to be releasing a lot lately. Naughty Dog is perhaps the easiest studio to point and laugh at over this — The Last of Us is a series that’s about to have a higher number of remakes of its original games than the actual amount of original games — but it is something of a trend in the industry right now. Granted, we’ve been getting high-profile remakes and remasters of games for about fifteen fucking years now, so it’s hardly new, but people seem to be, for whatever reason, noticing it more lately. Common criticisms drifting up now are that remakes are lazy, and overly safe, and cash-grabby. I agree insofar as the fact that I’d vastly prefer if more games could look forward, rather than back. There are a lot of very talented creators out there with a lot of fresh concepts that ought to be allowed to flourish, and it’s stifling the maturity of the medium to insist that we just keep playing the hits every night with a different band.
Despite this, it remains evident that not all remakes are created equal. I found the Dead Space remake to be a complete bastardization of the original, with slippery, weightless gunplay and animations, and little actually improved aside from bringing back Gunnar Wright and some more technically impressive lighting effects. By contrast, I was surprised at how much Resident Evil 4 Remake impressed me, introducing much more committal combat into the original’s stage design and vastly expanding a lot of the systems that went woefully underused back in 2005. Both games have exceptional scores in both popular games coverage and right here on Backloggd, so either I missed something major in Dead Space, or people are just so predisposed to celebrating something good and old being new again that they just hand it a high score without really thinking about it. I’m sure it’s reductive, but I’m willing to bet it’s the latter. If you don’t trust me to say it, I’m certain that these high-profile, mega-budget companies making the fucking things would take my position; why would they be cranking these things out with the massive budgets and marketing campaigns that they’ve had if they weren’t confident people were going to drop everything to get a copy on release day? Saying you’re going to take something that people enjoyed and just make it again is an almost surefire way to guarantee a boatload of sales from those so caught in the hype cycle that they won’t even wait to see if it’s been fucked with before they buy it.
Anyway, I’m getting off-track. The point to make here is that I think there’s a single element that really makes Resident Evil 4 Remake stand out from among its more cynical contemporaries.
It was very clearly made by people who love the original.
“Yeah, yeah, the multi-million dollar game was made with goddamned love”, I know. But there are so many small changes here that I seriously doubt you’d be able to make or notice without having a deep appreciation and understanding for what the original was doing. EA never had a clue what made Dead Space great. Yasuhiro Anpo and company down at Capcom, however, get it.
Early on, during the village fight, there’s this tall tower standing down by the church entrance. There’s not much in there — just a herb and a ladder leading up — but this was an immensely safe spot to hide in the original. You could climb all the way up to the top, hang out for a few seconds, hop back down before the ganados started throwing molotovs at you, and then repeat. You could wait out the entire fight just by doing a simple loop of climbing up, dropping down, and then climbing back up again, and they couldn’t do a thing to stop you. Naturally, knowing about this safe spot, I went up the ladder and prepared to dig in. It was at this point that the floor gave out under Leon’s feet and dropped him right into the middle of the crowd congregating at the bottom.
To come up with a trap like this requires a few things on the part of the developers:
a) to know about the safe spot in the original game,
b) to expect the player to also know about the safe spot in the original game,
c) to bait the player into attempting to use the safe spot in the remake (by making the fight significantly more demanding)
It doesn’t sound like much, but take a second to consider the amount of understanding you need to have about Resident Evil 4 to be aware that the safe spot actually existed in the first place. It’s a decently-known exploit — enough so that the original developers accounted for it when they put out the game — but it’s nothing that a casual player would be aware of. It’s a remarkably small change in the grand scheme of things, but there’s a constant stream of these equally small changes throughout that add up to truly distinguish this from its predecessor. It’s just enough to keep old players disoriented while still being able to recognize what’s here. It’s a bit less of a remake and more of a remix. It feels like a very high-budget fangame, and I mean that in a good way.
With the release of Separate Ways adding back in a little more story context and some previously-excluded areas that I missed — the sewers, my beloved, are back — Resident Evil 4 Remake feels like a complete experience. I imagine that you’ll have a worse time without the DLC, and that kind of sucks when that shit came free with the original as long as you didn’t buy it on Gamecube. I managed to cop the base game and Separate Ways on sale for about fifty bucks, and they added Mercenaries mode to this in a patch at some point in the past couple months; this is definitely a game that is significantly better now than it was when it came out, which I think is kind of regrettable. It’s barely been out for eight months and I’m having a way better time for less money than people who picked it up on day one. This is a broader condemnation of the industry, I suppose. I like it when games come out feature-complete, and I'd argue this didn't. But hell, what does, anymore?
I do have my quibbles with the game. Unarmed enemies are the most dangerous fuckers alive because of that unblockable lunge they do that covers about two miles of distance and has to be ducked under at a precise time if they don’t flinch from being shot, which happens a lot on the harder difficulties. Knife parries are exceptionally overpowered and essentially give you a “get-out-of-bad-positioning free” card for a significant portion of the game. A lot of the music has been changed from its original synth-y sound to more of a Hans Zimmer-esque orchestral score, and that’s a major disappointment; the sequence where Mike comes down in his chopper is easily the worst offender of the lot, sounding like something pulled directly off of the Dark Knight Rises soundtrack. The reticle sway when Leon aims is a little extreme and definitely should have been tuned down a little. There’s something intangible that I feel was lost in getting rid of the tank controls and the stationary aiming; Resident Evil 4 definitely controls a bit more like everything else now, rather than controlling like what inspired everything else.
Even with those complaints, this is still a phenomenal title. I think the developers of this remake understood way more about what fans of the original wanted than anyone was expecting them to, and they’ve created something that stands alongside one of the greatest games ever made. By no means does it replace nor exceed the original, but it’s on the same level, and that alone is a borderline unthinkable achievement.
And they didn’t “make the mine thrower good” in this. It was always good, you cowards.
this is going to sound hyper specific but i have a ton of nostalgia for letting the dog intentionally eat garbage outside, then going into the status menu and reading what exactly the garbage was, because it told you for some reason. great game
Sticky Business
2023
played 6.5 hours straight the first day i got it can i get a uh.. booyaaaaa (that's my hyper demon sticker, very popular)
it's super fun making different designs and now i've been playing for 13 hours... second day in... and i will never stop but i got a little cranky having to make boring designs for the quests. i know it's a game and not my own actual store but like can't everyone just want this?
and this?
or this?
and this?
or this?
and this (i actually have that sticker in real life.........)
or this, and THIS...
anyways, main point of game is this
ya dig?
˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖
it's super fun making different designs and now i've been playing for 13 hours... second day in... and i will never stop but i got a little cranky having to make boring designs for the quests. i know it's a game and not my own actual store but like can't everyone just want this?
and this?
or this?
and this?
or this?
and this (i actually have that sticker in real life.........)
or this, and THIS...
anyways, main point of game is this
ya dig?
˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖
Yakuza 0
2015
Yakuza 0 is generally considered the modern day gateway into the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise for numerous reasons. Not only is it a prequel that doesn’t require any prior series knowledge to understand what’s going on, it’s constantly regarded as one of the best games in the series by a majority of the fanbase. While I had emulated the original Yakuza prior to my first playthrough of Yakuza 0, I didn’t really have a desire to play the rest of the franchise until after I finished Zero, so for all intents and purposes, it was my gateway too. After playing it back in 2022, I spent a good chunk of 2023 playing through every single game in the series currently available on Steam, including the spin offs. Needless to say, I’ve become a huge fan of the franchise. After playing almost every game in the series, I wanted to return to Yakuza 0 and re-evaluate it with my knowledge of the titles that come before and after it. I was really pleased to find that I still consider it the best of the Kazuma Kiryu-centric games.
Coming from Yakuza 5, which had five playable protagonists, Yakuza 0 scales down to just two: series star Kazuma Kiryu and his long-time rival/eventual close ally Goro Majima. I think that dialing back on the amount of playable characters was absolutely the right call. It allowed for both Kiryu and Majima to have plenty of room to breathe in each other’s own lengthy campaigns.
The story is undeniably one of, if not the best in the franchise. It’s more straightforward compared to the complex conspiracies of Yakuza 4 and Yakuza 5, and I think that it’s better off for it. Its focus is on telling an emotional narrative that enriches the background of both Kiryu and Majima while giving some sorely needed additional context to the original Yakuza game, and it absolutely knocked it out of the park. This is in part due to this game’s mostly original cast of characters. These characters and events do an absolutely tremendous job explaining how Kiryu and Majima become the characters that we know today. The clash of each character’s extreme and over the top personality is what makes Yakuza 0 such a thrilling and emotional joyride.
The three lieutenants of the Dojima family are some of the best and most memorable antagonists in the series, with Daisaku Kuze in particular standing out with his venomous tenacity. Other characters such as Makoto Makimura and Tetsu Tachibana serve as the core of the story’s emotion and mystery, as getting to the bottom of their true aspirations and learning about Makoto’s tragic backstory is a huge appeal of the narrative. Then there’s Akira Nishkiyama, Kiryu’s sworn brother. He was the primary antagonist of the original Yakuza, but one of the biggest problems with that game’s narrative was that it barely featured him. We had no real context to their relationship and how close they were, so the character was completely forgettable as a result. This game fleshes out their relationship immensely, with some of the most heartbreaking and hypest moments of the entire series featuring the two brothers.
To make up for the lack of multiple characters to play as and to keep combat feeling fresh and varied, the game uses the Style System that was introduced in the original version of Like a Dragon: Ishin to offer multiple ways for both characters to approach combat. I really like how the Style System was implemented in Zero. Each of Kiryu and Majima’s Styles concentrate on a particular element that makes up the complete moveset that they would go on to use in the games that take place after Zero. It’s a brilliant idea, even if it does come with some flaws.
Kiryu’s Styles are Brawler, Rush, and Beast. Brawler feels like a slower and less snappy version of his moveset from the prior games. It feels like he hasn’t quite figured out his approach to fighting yet, but he’s on track to getting there. It’s a solid all-rounder Style that’s good for just about any occasion. Rush is a boxing-inspired Style that places emphasis on speed. It’s mainly used for taking out a single, troublesome enemy, as well as during boss fights. Beast is Kiryu’s crowd control Style. It places emphasis on his raw strength. He becomes extremely slow in this Style, almost immobile. In exchange, his attacks become a lot stronger and way more effective at clearing out a group of enemies… so long as he has a large object in his hands. By itself, Beast is not a very effective Style. Kiryu’s attacks are just too slow unless you’ve got a large object that you can use to help you armor through attacks while swatting away groups of enemies at a time. Otherwise, enemies are generally able to get easy potshots in on him and keep him from getting started simply because his attacks just have way too much wind up. More often than not, this Style is a hindrance, and you can do some smaller scale levels of crowd control with the Brawler Style, so I tended to mainly swap between that and Rush when I played.
Majima’s Styles are Thug, Slugger, and Breaker. Thug is Majima’s equivalent to Kiryu’s Brawler Style, only Majima has had more experience as a yakuza than Kiryu at this point, so this Style feels faster and more precise compared to Brawler. Slugger has Majima wield a baseball bat. He can swing the bat in very wide arcs which makes this Style great for crowd control. He also has access to a really easy and brutal Heat action with this move. Breaker is a bit confusing. It also seems to be a crowd control focused Style, only it’s a lot less effective than Slugger. Similar to Kiryu’s Beast Style, it takes too long to perform the crowd clearing attacks that Breaker has. It’s not as unwieldy as Beast, but Slugger just provides easier and more effective crowd control, so I saw little reason to use Breaker.
There is a fourth Style that Kiryu and Majima have which are both referred to as Legend. Both Legend Styles have Kiryu and Majima play the way that they do in previous games. I can’t really give my opinion on these Styles because they’re locked behind two obnoxiously long and grindy mini games that I’ve never bothered to complete. I wish that weren’t the case and that these Styles were either unlocked by reaching the climax of each character’s narrative or by simply beating the game. I think that it would’ve been extremely satisfying unlocking them after the biggest emotional moments of the story to use during each character’s finale segment as opposed to completing two overly long mini games.
The game has 16 total chapters, and it’s structured so that every two chapters, you swap between Kiryu and Majima. This does unfortunately lead to some pacing issues early in the game, as in addition to both characters’ narratives being slow at the start, you have to sit through a tutorial for every single combat style. All six styles come with their own little mini-story completely separate from the main plot. They make the opening hours of the game a bit of a drag. Once the narrative begins to pick up however, it really picks up, and the game becomes immensely hard to put down once you make it past those early hours. There’s also all of the various substories and side activities that you can do, which can add some spice to those slow early hours. The substories might not be as effective if you haven’t played the other games in the series, because a lot of them feature younger versions of characters that you’ll go on to meet later in the franchise, like Shinji, Daigo, and Ryuji, so the significance of them isn’t apparent. It’s not a big deal though, as it just makes it all the more rewarding when you do encounter them in the future and remember the funny substory they were featured in here. There’s still plenty of substories that are just there for pure fun, in fact, I think that Yakuza 0 has the best substories in the series. There are so many memorable and satisfying ones that are worth going out of your way to complete.
Yakuza 0 is such a good time. Returning to it after playing the other games has been an absolute joy. It was really fun comparing and contrasting it to the games that come before and after it. It perfectly captures every single aspect that makes the series appealing. The fun and satisfying combat, the exciting and heartstring tugging story, and the enticing side content are all mostly at their peak here. It’s a game that’s truly earned its reputation, and I feel like I’m never, ever going to get tired of revisiting it in the future.
Coming from Yakuza 5, which had five playable protagonists, Yakuza 0 scales down to just two: series star Kazuma Kiryu and his long-time rival/eventual close ally Goro Majima. I think that dialing back on the amount of playable characters was absolutely the right call. It allowed for both Kiryu and Majima to have plenty of room to breathe in each other’s own lengthy campaigns.
The story is undeniably one of, if not the best in the franchise. It’s more straightforward compared to the complex conspiracies of Yakuza 4 and Yakuza 5, and I think that it’s better off for it. Its focus is on telling an emotional narrative that enriches the background of both Kiryu and Majima while giving some sorely needed additional context to the original Yakuza game, and it absolutely knocked it out of the park. This is in part due to this game’s mostly original cast of characters. These characters and events do an absolutely tremendous job explaining how Kiryu and Majima become the characters that we know today. The clash of each character’s extreme and over the top personality is what makes Yakuza 0 such a thrilling and emotional joyride.
The three lieutenants of the Dojima family are some of the best and most memorable antagonists in the series, with Daisaku Kuze in particular standing out with his venomous tenacity. Other characters such as Makoto Makimura and Tetsu Tachibana serve as the core of the story’s emotion and mystery, as getting to the bottom of their true aspirations and learning about Makoto’s tragic backstory is a huge appeal of the narrative. Then there’s Akira Nishkiyama, Kiryu’s sworn brother. He was the primary antagonist of the original Yakuza, but one of the biggest problems with that game’s narrative was that it barely featured him. We had no real context to their relationship and how close they were, so the character was completely forgettable as a result. This game fleshes out their relationship immensely, with some of the most heartbreaking and hypest moments of the entire series featuring the two brothers.
To make up for the lack of multiple characters to play as and to keep combat feeling fresh and varied, the game uses the Style System that was introduced in the original version of Like a Dragon: Ishin to offer multiple ways for both characters to approach combat. I really like how the Style System was implemented in Zero. Each of Kiryu and Majima’s Styles concentrate on a particular element that makes up the complete moveset that they would go on to use in the games that take place after Zero. It’s a brilliant idea, even if it does come with some flaws.
Kiryu’s Styles are Brawler, Rush, and Beast. Brawler feels like a slower and less snappy version of his moveset from the prior games. It feels like he hasn’t quite figured out his approach to fighting yet, but he’s on track to getting there. It’s a solid all-rounder Style that’s good for just about any occasion. Rush is a boxing-inspired Style that places emphasis on speed. It’s mainly used for taking out a single, troublesome enemy, as well as during boss fights. Beast is Kiryu’s crowd control Style. It places emphasis on his raw strength. He becomes extremely slow in this Style, almost immobile. In exchange, his attacks become a lot stronger and way more effective at clearing out a group of enemies… so long as he has a large object in his hands. By itself, Beast is not a very effective Style. Kiryu’s attacks are just too slow unless you’ve got a large object that you can use to help you armor through attacks while swatting away groups of enemies at a time. Otherwise, enemies are generally able to get easy potshots in on him and keep him from getting started simply because his attacks just have way too much wind up. More often than not, this Style is a hindrance, and you can do some smaller scale levels of crowd control with the Brawler Style, so I tended to mainly swap between that and Rush when I played.
Majima’s Styles are Thug, Slugger, and Breaker. Thug is Majima’s equivalent to Kiryu’s Brawler Style, only Majima has had more experience as a yakuza than Kiryu at this point, so this Style feels faster and more precise compared to Brawler. Slugger has Majima wield a baseball bat. He can swing the bat in very wide arcs which makes this Style great for crowd control. He also has access to a really easy and brutal Heat action with this move. Breaker is a bit confusing. It also seems to be a crowd control focused Style, only it’s a lot less effective than Slugger. Similar to Kiryu’s Beast Style, it takes too long to perform the crowd clearing attacks that Breaker has. It’s not as unwieldy as Beast, but Slugger just provides easier and more effective crowd control, so I saw little reason to use Breaker.
There is a fourth Style that Kiryu and Majima have which are both referred to as Legend. Both Legend Styles have Kiryu and Majima play the way that they do in previous games. I can’t really give my opinion on these Styles because they’re locked behind two obnoxiously long and grindy mini games that I’ve never bothered to complete. I wish that weren’t the case and that these Styles were either unlocked by reaching the climax of each character’s narrative or by simply beating the game. I think that it would’ve been extremely satisfying unlocking them after the biggest emotional moments of the story to use during each character’s finale segment as opposed to completing two overly long mini games.
The game has 16 total chapters, and it’s structured so that every two chapters, you swap between Kiryu and Majima. This does unfortunately lead to some pacing issues early in the game, as in addition to both characters’ narratives being slow at the start, you have to sit through a tutorial for every single combat style. All six styles come with their own little mini-story completely separate from the main plot. They make the opening hours of the game a bit of a drag. Once the narrative begins to pick up however, it really picks up, and the game becomes immensely hard to put down once you make it past those early hours. There’s also all of the various substories and side activities that you can do, which can add some spice to those slow early hours. The substories might not be as effective if you haven’t played the other games in the series, because a lot of them feature younger versions of characters that you’ll go on to meet later in the franchise, like Shinji, Daigo, and Ryuji, so the significance of them isn’t apparent. It’s not a big deal though, as it just makes it all the more rewarding when you do encounter them in the future and remember the funny substory they were featured in here. There’s still plenty of substories that are just there for pure fun, in fact, I think that Yakuza 0 has the best substories in the series. There are so many memorable and satisfying ones that are worth going out of your way to complete.
Yakuza 0 is such a good time. Returning to it after playing the other games has been an absolute joy. It was really fun comparing and contrasting it to the games that come before and after it. It perfectly captures every single aspect that makes the series appealing. The fun and satisfying combat, the exciting and heartstring tugging story, and the enticing side content are all mostly at their peak here. It’s a game that’s truly earned its reputation, and I feel like I’m never, ever going to get tired of revisiting it in the future.
A graphical showcase for sure but after a while just makes me feel like I'm playing Far Cry again. In the way that enemies are pretty easy, content variety is sparse, and it becomes a slug to do anything but the main missions.
Fun enough for co-op though.
Fun enough for co-op though.
Dead Rising
2006
This game sucks
Final Fantasy X
2001
A Hat in Time
2017
Why yes, I know of A Hat in Time, also known as the second-best Hat based 3D platformer released on October of 2017 ever made!
In spite of my repeated claims of love towards the 3D platforming genre, I would lie if I said I played every single one of the so called classics—I’ve yet to touch a single one released on the PSX that isn’t Medievil and play any of the 3D Rayman games—, but beyond that lack of experience with older titles on my end, the main reason I haven’t actually sat down and played more regularly newly released 3D platformers is because… there aren’t many to choose from. It's a game landscape somewhat rejected by most bigger studios, which tend to see the concept of platforming in a 3D space the concept or base for a bigger game in another genre rather that it’s own, and at this point, it has become somewhat of a special occurrence when two major titles of the genre release withing the same yea, hell, we are already lucky if at least one does.
With all that said, it’d be impossible to categorize the genre as as ‘’dead’’, not by a long shot; the indie scene is doing gods-work for that to be a remote possibility, and now-a-days, I kinda associate it with that scene, not that I think of it as a smaller or more niche genre than what it once was, on contraire, it’s a vibrant, more personal and passionate landscape, the ‘’people’s games’’ so to speak, and I think that particular spark that each developer both what makes so many people feel like they are gambling
A Hat in Time released on a very interesting year for the genre, not necessarily the best or worst, but it certainly had variety, with released from big publishers and small teams, of majestic quality and of pretty big disappointments, and it’s in this year which was probably the most full the genre ever had during the past decade, in the month where the band new 3D Mario game released, it’s where despite it all, A Hat in Time shines.
I can’t really tell what the game is going for exactly visually and tonally, but whatever it is, keep it coming ‘cause it works. If I had to compare it to something, I guess the best thing would be the sometimes referred as ‘’double A’’ games of the sixth and seventh generation. Those character models than can look rough and sometimes even clipping into each other but are so cartoony and full of life that is more than worth it, that humor that should tonally clash with the cutesy vibe but instead it works to a tea, the incredibly silly storyline that finds ways to be memorable… It’s not the prettiest nor the the funniest game out there, but it still exceeds at those areas, with some parts and scenarios looking kind of beautiful or selling completely the spooky or silly vibe, and with jokes that in any other context would make you wonder ‘’how did they get away with this?’’ with how deranged and good they can get.
It can sometimes feel all over the place, like pieces of different puzzles that somehow fit, which I’m inclined to believe it was intentional with how the rest of the is. There are four different worlds divided in four chapters, and when playing through ‘’Mafia Town’’—ignore for a moment that is quite possibly the singles best idea for a first world to ever be thought of— I thought I knew what this was going for, a Sungine/64 like game, with big open levels you can explore that change a little bit every time you go to a different mission, or ‘’act’’ as they are known in this game. And I mean, yeah, all worlds are divided into acts you must beat before facing the final boss of each world, and there are some extra challenges you can find that reward you with a Time Piece that are VERY Sunshine inspired with what quite possibly is one of the most relaxing tunes I’ve ever heard, but aside of that… you better be prepared from some chaos!
You got everything you could possibly dream of: two birds (one of whom may or may not be racist towards penguins) competing to get a movie award once again after years of rivalry and you being thrown into the mix to help both and give the victory to one of them, a spirit infested contract based spooky forest that has both one of the most intense moments I’ve lived in any 3D Platformer ever and a fight against a haunted toilet, and a free roam mountain top stage that is the only of its kind in the base game. There ain’t much consistency here, and that can actually work; it made each of this random ass places and these weird mafia mobs, birds, ghosts and goats that inhabit it all the more endearing. Everything that has to do with Snatcher or the Conductor and DJ Groove is gold I swear to god, their whole chapters being centered around them and the movie sets or deals they out Hat Kit through made them even more memorable than they would already have been… AND IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH THEY GOT SICK AS HELL THEMES WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-
The music in this game also doesn’t make any sense, but not because it’s absurd or inconsistent, but because it’s too fire; it’s a constant blessing to the ears, with either bombastic and exhilarating themes or the most calming and fitting sounds to ever be thought while jumping and diving. I already linked two completely different yet amazing songs, and I could fill this review with even more, this is one of my favorite overall OSTs I’ve heard in a while, there’s a reason so many people use all the Chapter 2 songs to put in the background and Your Contract has Expired blew up years back, it’s too good to pass up.
The lands of A Hat in Time are plagued by charisma and charm, the only thing that would make them better would be being able to traverse th- OH WAIT YEAH! Hat Kid’s move set is actually pretty deceiving; it seems pretty in both theory and practice, it’s just a double jump, a dive and an attack button, but it actually that allow for super fluid and creative movement, and that make it even more rewarding to pull it off. Even when you are not tested with a mini challenge to earn an item or pons, it’s always a fun time to bring the movement to tis limits; you are almost invited to skip sections and reach certain parts in a way the game didn’t plan to, either through pure movement prowess or intelligent use of the hats (Fast hat and Fox-mask my beloveds…).
Getting any kind of reward, be it a Time Piece or something like a Badge or cosmetic change, feels fulfilling not only because the process of getting it is fun and unique, but also you most likely gained something else along the way, like reading a fun story as it unfolds… if that story had a bit of an annoying camera.
As much as I love how A Hat in Time nails the creativity and fun actor, there’s always a thing or two that puts a sour taste in my mouth. At best they are annoying decisions that really don’t make much sense, like blocking certain acts behind a pong-wall or making the grappling hook a badge instead of a direct upgrade, they both don’t seem like that big of a deals, but the former is incredibly inconsistent (and this time not a good way) and it only serves to take away your pongs at random intervals, which is something I simply do not understand when it’s limited to the first two chapters and when there’s already so many stuff to spend off and losing that money on something because the game said feels unwarranted; and the latter is… it’s just a bit dumb I think? The grappling hook becomes an integral part of your set once you get it, and practically all of the following challenges require you to use it or, at the very least, make traversal much more natural and fun, so from that point on you’ll essentially only have two badge slots since one will always be dedicated to it, and I personally think that incorporating to the roster of Hat Kid’s permanent tools would have made MUCH more sense.
But still, those things don’t necessarily worsen the experience… others very much do tho! You are never in full control of the camera, which is fine since it has clearly been thought out to work better in more open spaces and in those instances is buttery smooth, but then there are moments like Chapter 2’s Act 2, which is a super fun stealth mission focused on gathering clues while exploring a train, that I’s absolutely true, but is in those moments where the camera’s weaknesses shine bright, making it impossible to really know what’s ahead or even where you need to go, since your main hat will always point to your final current objective and nor the place you need to go first (which is another can of worms of its own), and moments like this are scattered through the game and make me wish they did something similar to how it is in Vanessa’s Manor or Chapter 4’s windmill. As it stands, is a looming annoyance that pops out here and there, just how the attacking dive can be a pain in the ass to know at which height you need to be for it to work, or how the checkpoint system can screw you off at a moment’s notice if you fall in the wrong place, or how the can get surprisingly buggy or sometimes say ‘’NO’’ to the strategy you wanted to do with random invisible walls, or how- I think I’m gonna leave it there to be honest…
It's a congregation of decisions and dumb mistakes that pile up and can sometimes make segments feel a lil’ bit like you are doing a to-do-list, which is funny ‘cause in Chapter 3 you do exactly that except it really doesn’t feel like it! It was during Subcon Forest that I begin to get suspicious but in Alpine Skyline I felt it was confirmed; most of these problems were most likely originated in early development, ‘cause A Hat in Time, even with this mistakes on its back, just keeps getting a better. Mafia Town is not a bad introduction and I do like it in some ways, but also presents some problems and structure the other chapters don’t have, like incredibly simplistic boss fights, having to repeat some sections or getting lost through the map to find sometimes, or secrets that aren’t that fun to get; it works but it’s hard not to look at it as the weakest of the bunch, and hell, I’d say the Mafia are funnier in the following chapters and on the ship than in their own town!
It's certainly a humble beginning, a charming onje no doubt, but one that pales in every department with what come next; Battle of the Birds is a super cool set of more linear challenges with and creative sets that gets brought down a bit by some strange decisions (needing to go Chapter 3 before being able to finish breaks the pace completely for me) and the fact that main point of the whole chapter doesn’t really play into much with the final fight except for some model swapping, which doesn’t change the fact that the Conductor/DJ Groove fight is incredible, I just wish it had a little bit more meaning beside DJ Groove getting too cocky or the Conductor being a petty bastard. Subcon Forest is where the true magic happens, the contract system doesn’t really play into much, but it justifies the act system way more, and the area itself hits the spot with its spooky looks as different sections, and has my two favorite fights in the entire game and my favorite level, so yeah, hard not to love it. And then… there’s Alpine Skyline, I’ll say right now that I thing its finale its pretty annoying and doesn’t really play into the potential of the area, but aside from that, this is the highest peak of the game for me, there’s no contest. Maybe I like too much this style of semi open world divided into more linear challenges, but I’m sorry, this area has it all; a killer setting and design, the most fun platforming obstacle courses in the game, a completely free roam experience that feels open even when you are following a set path, and the lighting system to mark you finished treasure hunting in a certain sections it’s a simple yet genius touch I wished other parts of the game had.
A Hat in Time is a testament to improvement, at how a game can get even better as it goes along and end on a higher note than it ended with, but even more than that… is an ode to fun. You can sit down in a ton of places just to admire the scenery, you can do certain emotes that don’t affect the game at all but are just fun to use, you can screw around the main space ship and find random secrets like Hat Kid’s hideout and learn about her thoughts after each completed act. Things that if they weren’t there I wouldn’t have complained, but now I can’t imagine the game without them, and it’s filled to the brim. It’s an experience made out of love that ‘s hidden even in the most obscure corner, a love visible even in he rougher edges, a love that’s shared by so, so many.
A Hat in Time is ‘’the people’s game’’, the workshop is put at the front of the main menu and mods and the community work are baked into the game itself, a celebrated effort that’s only there because the has managed to inspire even 6 years later, and I can sit all day and complain all I want, but that’s always gonna be there, and people finding ways to be in this crazy-ass mafia filled world just a little longer is wonderful to see, and understandable; A Hat in Time is charming, it’s fun, to point of being contagious, you could even say it made me feel the normal amount of empty inside, maybe even less.
It's a game that says ‘’Get lost!’’ to grumpiness, and I for one join it in its chant! I’ll be back real soon to seal more deals and explore the metro, that’s for sure, how could I say no to more of this kind of 3D platforming playfulness?
In spite of my repeated claims of love towards the 3D platforming genre, I would lie if I said I played every single one of the so called classics—I’ve yet to touch a single one released on the PSX that isn’t Medievil and play any of the 3D Rayman games—, but beyond that lack of experience with older titles on my end, the main reason I haven’t actually sat down and played more regularly newly released 3D platformers is because… there aren’t many to choose from. It's a game landscape somewhat rejected by most bigger studios, which tend to see the concept of platforming in a 3D space the concept or base for a bigger game in another genre rather that it’s own, and at this point, it has become somewhat of a special occurrence when two major titles of the genre release withing the same yea, hell, we are already lucky if at least one does.
With all that said, it’d be impossible to categorize the genre as as ‘’dead’’, not by a long shot; the indie scene is doing gods-work for that to be a remote possibility, and now-a-days, I kinda associate it with that scene, not that I think of it as a smaller or more niche genre than what it once was, on contraire, it’s a vibrant, more personal and passionate landscape, the ‘’people’s games’’ so to speak, and I think that particular spark that each developer both what makes so many people feel like they are gambling
A Hat in Time released on a very interesting year for the genre, not necessarily the best or worst, but it certainly had variety, with released from big publishers and small teams, of majestic quality and of pretty big disappointments, and it’s in this year which was probably the most full the genre ever had during the past decade, in the month where the band new 3D Mario game released, it’s where despite it all, A Hat in Time shines.
I can’t really tell what the game is going for exactly visually and tonally, but whatever it is, keep it coming ‘cause it works. If I had to compare it to something, I guess the best thing would be the sometimes referred as ‘’double A’’ games of the sixth and seventh generation. Those character models than can look rough and sometimes even clipping into each other but are so cartoony and full of life that is more than worth it, that humor that should tonally clash with the cutesy vibe but instead it works to a tea, the incredibly silly storyline that finds ways to be memorable… It’s not the prettiest nor the the funniest game out there, but it still exceeds at those areas, with some parts and scenarios looking kind of beautiful or selling completely the spooky or silly vibe, and with jokes that in any other context would make you wonder ‘’how did they get away with this?’’ with how deranged and good they can get.
It can sometimes feel all over the place, like pieces of different puzzles that somehow fit, which I’m inclined to believe it was intentional with how the rest of the is. There are four different worlds divided in four chapters, and when playing through ‘’Mafia Town’’—ignore for a moment that is quite possibly the singles best idea for a first world to ever be thought of— I thought I knew what this was going for, a Sungine/64 like game, with big open levels you can explore that change a little bit every time you go to a different mission, or ‘’act’’ as they are known in this game. And I mean, yeah, all worlds are divided into acts you must beat before facing the final boss of each world, and there are some extra challenges you can find that reward you with a Time Piece that are VERY Sunshine inspired with what quite possibly is one of the most relaxing tunes I’ve ever heard, but aside of that… you better be prepared from some chaos!
You got everything you could possibly dream of: two birds (one of whom may or may not be racist towards penguins) competing to get a movie award once again after years of rivalry and you being thrown into the mix to help both and give the victory to one of them, a spirit infested contract based spooky forest that has both one of the most intense moments I’ve lived in any 3D Platformer ever and a fight against a haunted toilet, and a free roam mountain top stage that is the only of its kind in the base game. There ain’t much consistency here, and that can actually work; it made each of this random ass places and these weird mafia mobs, birds, ghosts and goats that inhabit it all the more endearing. Everything that has to do with Snatcher or the Conductor and DJ Groove is gold I swear to god, their whole chapters being centered around them and the movie sets or deals they out Hat Kit through made them even more memorable than they would already have been… AND IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH THEY GOT SICK AS HELL THEMES WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-
The music in this game also doesn’t make any sense, but not because it’s absurd or inconsistent, but because it’s too fire; it’s a constant blessing to the ears, with either bombastic and exhilarating themes or the most calming and fitting sounds to ever be thought while jumping and diving. I already linked two completely different yet amazing songs, and I could fill this review with even more, this is one of my favorite overall OSTs I’ve heard in a while, there’s a reason so many people use all the Chapter 2 songs to put in the background and Your Contract has Expired blew up years back, it’s too good to pass up.
The lands of A Hat in Time are plagued by charisma and charm, the only thing that would make them better would be being able to traverse th- OH WAIT YEAH! Hat Kid’s move set is actually pretty deceiving; it seems pretty in both theory and practice, it’s just a double jump, a dive and an attack button, but it actually that allow for super fluid and creative movement, and that make it even more rewarding to pull it off. Even when you are not tested with a mini challenge to earn an item or pons, it’s always a fun time to bring the movement to tis limits; you are almost invited to skip sections and reach certain parts in a way the game didn’t plan to, either through pure movement prowess or intelligent use of the hats (Fast hat and Fox-mask my beloveds…).
Getting any kind of reward, be it a Time Piece or something like a Badge or cosmetic change, feels fulfilling not only because the process of getting it is fun and unique, but also you most likely gained something else along the way, like reading a fun story as it unfolds… if that story had a bit of an annoying camera.
As much as I love how A Hat in Time nails the creativity and fun actor, there’s always a thing or two that puts a sour taste in my mouth. At best they are annoying decisions that really don’t make much sense, like blocking certain acts behind a pong-wall or making the grappling hook a badge instead of a direct upgrade, they both don’t seem like that big of a deals, but the former is incredibly inconsistent (and this time not a good way) and it only serves to take away your pongs at random intervals, which is something I simply do not understand when it’s limited to the first two chapters and when there’s already so many stuff to spend off and losing that money on something because the game said feels unwarranted; and the latter is… it’s just a bit dumb I think? The grappling hook becomes an integral part of your set once you get it, and practically all of the following challenges require you to use it or, at the very least, make traversal much more natural and fun, so from that point on you’ll essentially only have two badge slots since one will always be dedicated to it, and I personally think that incorporating to the roster of Hat Kid’s permanent tools would have made MUCH more sense.
But still, those things don’t necessarily worsen the experience… others very much do tho! You are never in full control of the camera, which is fine since it has clearly been thought out to work better in more open spaces and in those instances is buttery smooth, but then there are moments like Chapter 2’s Act 2, which is a super fun stealth mission focused on gathering clues while exploring a train, that I’s absolutely true, but is in those moments where the camera’s weaknesses shine bright, making it impossible to really know what’s ahead or even where you need to go, since your main hat will always point to your final current objective and nor the place you need to go first (which is another can of worms of its own), and moments like this are scattered through the game and make me wish they did something similar to how it is in Vanessa’s Manor or Chapter 4’s windmill. As it stands, is a looming annoyance that pops out here and there, just how the attacking dive can be a pain in the ass to know at which height you need to be for it to work, or how the checkpoint system can screw you off at a moment’s notice if you fall in the wrong place, or how the can get surprisingly buggy or sometimes say ‘’NO’’ to the strategy you wanted to do with random invisible walls, or how- I think I’m gonna leave it there to be honest…
It's a congregation of decisions and dumb mistakes that pile up and can sometimes make segments feel a lil’ bit like you are doing a to-do-list, which is funny ‘cause in Chapter 3 you do exactly that except it really doesn’t feel like it! It was during Subcon Forest that I begin to get suspicious but in Alpine Skyline I felt it was confirmed; most of these problems were most likely originated in early development, ‘cause A Hat in Time, even with this mistakes on its back, just keeps getting a better. Mafia Town is not a bad introduction and I do like it in some ways, but also presents some problems and structure the other chapters don’t have, like incredibly simplistic boss fights, having to repeat some sections or getting lost through the map to find sometimes, or secrets that aren’t that fun to get; it works but it’s hard not to look at it as the weakest of the bunch, and hell, I’d say the Mafia are funnier in the following chapters and on the ship than in their own town!
It's certainly a humble beginning, a charming onje no doubt, but one that pales in every department with what come next; Battle of the Birds is a super cool set of more linear challenges with and creative sets that gets brought down a bit by some strange decisions (needing to go Chapter 3 before being able to finish breaks the pace completely for me) and the fact that main point of the whole chapter doesn’t really play into much with the final fight except for some model swapping, which doesn’t change the fact that the Conductor/DJ Groove fight is incredible, I just wish it had a little bit more meaning beside DJ Groove getting too cocky or the Conductor being a petty bastard. Subcon Forest is where the true magic happens, the contract system doesn’t really play into much, but it justifies the act system way more, and the area itself hits the spot with its spooky looks as different sections, and has my two favorite fights in the entire game and my favorite level, so yeah, hard not to love it. And then… there’s Alpine Skyline, I’ll say right now that I thing its finale its pretty annoying and doesn’t really play into the potential of the area, but aside from that, this is the highest peak of the game for me, there’s no contest. Maybe I like too much this style of semi open world divided into more linear challenges, but I’m sorry, this area has it all; a killer setting and design, the most fun platforming obstacle courses in the game, a completely free roam experience that feels open even when you are following a set path, and the lighting system to mark you finished treasure hunting in a certain sections it’s a simple yet genius touch I wished other parts of the game had.
A Hat in Time is a testament to improvement, at how a game can get even better as it goes along and end on a higher note than it ended with, but even more than that… is an ode to fun. You can sit down in a ton of places just to admire the scenery, you can do certain emotes that don’t affect the game at all but are just fun to use, you can screw around the main space ship and find random secrets like Hat Kid’s hideout and learn about her thoughts after each completed act. Things that if they weren’t there I wouldn’t have complained, but now I can’t imagine the game without them, and it’s filled to the brim. It’s an experience made out of love that ‘s hidden even in the most obscure corner, a love visible even in he rougher edges, a love that’s shared by so, so many.
A Hat in Time is ‘’the people’s game’’, the workshop is put at the front of the main menu and mods and the community work are baked into the game itself, a celebrated effort that’s only there because the has managed to inspire even 6 years later, and I can sit all day and complain all I want, but that’s always gonna be there, and people finding ways to be in this crazy-ass mafia filled world just a little longer is wonderful to see, and understandable; A Hat in Time is charming, it’s fun, to point of being contagious, you could even say it made me feel the normal amount of empty inside, maybe even less.
It's a game that says ‘’Get lost!’’ to grumpiness, and I for one join it in its chant! I’ll be back real soon to seal more deals and explore the metro, that’s for sure, how could I say no to more of this kind of 3D platforming playfulness?
The textbook definition of a flawed masterpiece.
It's no secret that the original Final Fantasy VII is a legendary game that changed the gaming landscape forever - would a remake ever be able to live up to it? Well, I'd say it depends on what you're looking for. I've only played the original FF7 up until the Shinra Building, so I can't really answer this question more in detail, but I can tell you the remake (and possibly the rest of the trilogy) is an exceptional experience, IF you're willing to accept something different. This might sound weird, so let me explain.
Final Fantasy VII Remake is not an 1:1 remake of the iconic original game. Without spoiling anything, it's trying something new in the already established world of Midgar in the hope of pleasing both fans of the original game and newcomers entirely new to the franchise or Final Fantasy VII in general. I'm not trying to give too much away, but basically, there are those new mysterious entities, and a common complaint is them being too involved in the plot. I wasn't a fan of those either for a long time, but after finishing the game and understanding their purpose, I reflected on their inclusion for a bit and then thought they were integrated fairly well actually. To sum things up, FF7R doesn't replace FF7 at all; they both have the same major plot beats, characters and everything, but are heading into different directions. This way there are new surprises in store for returning players, but it also brought out frustrations in others, since now will never be a "true" remake of the original game - and I can totally understand that sentiment.
The identity of 7R however wasn't the reason why I called it a flawed masterpiece in the opening sentence, instead it's some things that still could have been better. Even though I had a fantastic time with the game as a whole, I feel the need to still address those problems, as I'm not only writing those reviews for myself, but also to help others. With that out of the way, the most apparent flaw is the amount of filler content every now and then. A good example of this is near the end of the game, where the party backtracks to a previous dungeon as part of the story to retrieve an important item for another character. The issue at hand: a monster has stolen this key item! This results in a 30-minute segment of tracking down the monster by backtracking through the exact same segments of this dungeon used previously in the game. At least you get a sweet resolution for that character at the end, so it's not all for naught. But coming back to the dungeon/level design, that's a point I have mixed thoughts on. On one hand, Midgar in the original game was incredibly linear and the world only really opened up later, on the other hand, the remake could have fixed this - but this is where they decided to stay faithful! The Hallway Simulator™ complaints are entirely justified, however it never was that much of a problem for me, since those dungeons look pretty atleast and you get many fun conversations with your party members along the way, so it doesn't feel like the game is trying to waste your time.
Generally the setpieces are more lively than ever before, the little details everywhere and the new third-person camera make for a so much more immersive experience than the top-down view of the original game. My favorite example is the Wall Market chapter in the remake, the lighting and bustling streets really sold me on the festive vibe the devs were going for. The entire segment was a real joy to play through and it is a prime example of extending the overall playtime in a meaningful way. This also applies for the Collapsed Expressway and Train Graveyard in the remake for me, for fans of the original game those areas might be too long (as they were only one to two screens long in the original game), but I loved how the devs expanded on those already established locations, it adds to the sense of scale in the massive dystopian city of Midgar. In general, I believe this "sense of scale" is exceptionally well done throughout the game, there are several occasions where you can just gaze in awe upon the towering buildings of the city from below or some other parts where you can look from a high point into the far distance and see all the detailed infrastructure on the horizon, it's genuinely impressive how they handled it.
You know what else is genuinely impressive? The combat in 7R. It still follows the same rules as the original ATB system, but with more player agency. Instead of just waiting for some bar to fill, you can block and dodge enemy attacks (ironically, blocking is better 90% of the time, as the dodge has no i-frames!) or deal some physical damage by yourself. All of this is accompanied by intuitive switching between characters in the middle of a fight in order to exploit enemy weakness with certain Materia or gain access to different skills and movesets. With the return of the Materia system, every party member can be individually built to one's likings - you may turn someone into an Electric AoE damage dealer or give everyone in the group an Ice Materia for some reason, there's a lot of different combinations! Summons are also back and they look just as cool here as you would expect. Unfortunately they're not available too often, but on the flip side this means their appearances against hard bosses are even more satisfying.
Now, I don't think anything has to be said about the soundtrack. It's a Final Fantasy game, so obviously it's near perfection. Uematsu and the crew put a lot of heart into the new songs and remixes and it shows. There are so many good tracks and it's hard to choose favorites, but one overworld song that particularly stands out to me for being surprisingly captivating is the theme of the Collapsed Expressway. In terms of battle themes, the Ghoul fight is an incredible new composition and if we're talking about remixed songs, [this video contains spoilers!] the iconic One-Winged Angel got an utterly fantastic orchestral rendition in the remake. They really went all out in remaking an already superb soundtrack and certainly didn't miss.
So yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to playing Rebirth eventually, but I'll probably play through the original FF7 first (hopefully in the near future). I love those characters and this world so much and I can't wait to see where their adventure is going next!
It's no secret that the original Final Fantasy VII is a legendary game that changed the gaming landscape forever - would a remake ever be able to live up to it? Well, I'd say it depends on what you're looking for. I've only played the original FF7 up until the Shinra Building, so I can't really answer this question more in detail, but I can tell you the remake (and possibly the rest of the trilogy) is an exceptional experience, IF you're willing to accept something different. This might sound weird, so let me explain.
Final Fantasy VII Remake is not an 1:1 remake of the iconic original game. Without spoiling anything, it's trying something new in the already established world of Midgar in the hope of pleasing both fans of the original game and newcomers entirely new to the franchise or Final Fantasy VII in general. I'm not trying to give too much away, but basically, there are those new mysterious entities, and a common complaint is them being too involved in the plot. I wasn't a fan of those either for a long time, but after finishing the game and understanding their purpose, I reflected on their inclusion for a bit and then thought they were integrated fairly well actually. To sum things up, FF7R doesn't replace FF7 at all; they both have the same major plot beats, characters and everything, but are heading into different directions. This way there are new surprises in store for returning players, but it also brought out frustrations in others, since now will never be a "true" remake of the original game - and I can totally understand that sentiment.
The identity of 7R however wasn't the reason why I called it a flawed masterpiece in the opening sentence, instead it's some things that still could have been better. Even though I had a fantastic time with the game as a whole, I feel the need to still address those problems, as I'm not only writing those reviews for myself, but also to help others. With that out of the way, the most apparent flaw is the amount of filler content every now and then. A good example of this is near the end of the game, where the party backtracks to a previous dungeon as part of the story to retrieve an important item for another character. The issue at hand: a monster has stolen this key item! This results in a 30-minute segment of tracking down the monster by backtracking through the exact same segments of this dungeon used previously in the game. At least you get a sweet resolution for that character at the end, so it's not all for naught. But coming back to the dungeon/level design, that's a point I have mixed thoughts on. On one hand, Midgar in the original game was incredibly linear and the world only really opened up later, on the other hand, the remake could have fixed this - but this is where they decided to stay faithful! The Hallway Simulator™ complaints are entirely justified, however it never was that much of a problem for me, since those dungeons look pretty atleast and you get many fun conversations with your party members along the way, so it doesn't feel like the game is trying to waste your time.
Generally the setpieces are more lively than ever before, the little details everywhere and the new third-person camera make for a so much more immersive experience than the top-down view of the original game. My favorite example is the Wall Market chapter in the remake, the lighting and bustling streets really sold me on the festive vibe the devs were going for. The entire segment was a real joy to play through and it is a prime example of extending the overall playtime in a meaningful way. This also applies for the Collapsed Expressway and Train Graveyard in the remake for me, for fans of the original game those areas might be too long (as they were only one to two screens long in the original game), but I loved how the devs expanded on those already established locations, it adds to the sense of scale in the massive dystopian city of Midgar. In general, I believe this "sense of scale" is exceptionally well done throughout the game, there are several occasions where you can just gaze in awe upon the towering buildings of the city from below or some other parts where you can look from a high point into the far distance and see all the detailed infrastructure on the horizon, it's genuinely impressive how they handled it.
You know what else is genuinely impressive? The combat in 7R. It still follows the same rules as the original ATB system, but with more player agency. Instead of just waiting for some bar to fill, you can block and dodge enemy attacks (ironically, blocking is better 90% of the time, as the dodge has no i-frames!) or deal some physical damage by yourself. All of this is accompanied by intuitive switching between characters in the middle of a fight in order to exploit enemy weakness with certain Materia or gain access to different skills and movesets. With the return of the Materia system, every party member can be individually built to one's likings - you may turn someone into an Electric AoE damage dealer or give everyone in the group an Ice Materia for some reason, there's a lot of different combinations! Summons are also back and they look just as cool here as you would expect. Unfortunately they're not available too often, but on the flip side this means their appearances against hard bosses are even more satisfying.
Now, I don't think anything has to be said about the soundtrack. It's a Final Fantasy game, so obviously it's near perfection. Uematsu and the crew put a lot of heart into the new songs and remixes and it shows. There are so many good tracks and it's hard to choose favorites, but one overworld song that particularly stands out to me for being surprisingly captivating is the theme of the Collapsed Expressway. In terms of battle themes, the Ghoul fight is an incredible new composition and if we're talking about remixed songs, [this video contains spoilers!] the iconic One-Winged Angel got an utterly fantastic orchestral rendition in the remake. They really went all out in remaking an already superb soundtrack and certainly didn't miss.
So yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to playing Rebirth eventually, but I'll probably play through the original FF7 first (hopefully in the near future). I love those characters and this world so much and I can't wait to see where their adventure is going next!
Billy Hatcher is like if Mario 64, Glover, and Super Monkey Ball had a baby.
This is such a chaotic idea for a platformer and I'm shocked we never got more than this game despite Sega treating this like one of their mega franchises back in the day.
Coming from the team behind Sonic nonetheless, comes a platformer which is probably better than a lot of the 3D sonic games.
Billy Hatcher and the giant egg is structed like a 3D Mario game where you're given a couple of worlds with multiple missions where you need to collect a "Star". This time all platforming revolves around spherical oval that we tend to call an egg.
Billy relies entirely on the egg for platforming the same way Glover relies on a ball. When you have an egg, you roll it around kinda like a super monkey ball game, but you do many tricks such as bounce, dash, shoot, pound and throw (amongst other tricks). I'm sure if you spent a lot of time with the controls, movement would be found to be deep as hell.
The gameplay loop is pretty fun. You find an egg and you can roll over fruit or enemies with the egg. The more fruit your squash, the bigger your egg becomes, the more damage your egg does to enemies. If baddies manage to break your egg then you will have to find another one and increase it's size again.
While the game is mostly good platforming fun. There are a lot frustrating moments and the game can be a bit unfair with how punishing it is. Although if you play on an emulator I recommend using an infinite lives cheat so at least you start from a checkpoint rather than starting a level all over again.
I wish Sega someday revisits this franchise, because with some even more refined controls and more intuitive level design, I can see it being a great platformer series.
This is such a chaotic idea for a platformer and I'm shocked we never got more than this game despite Sega treating this like one of their mega franchises back in the day.
Coming from the team behind Sonic nonetheless, comes a platformer which is probably better than a lot of the 3D sonic games.
Billy Hatcher and the giant egg is structed like a 3D Mario game where you're given a couple of worlds with multiple missions where you need to collect a "Star". This time all platforming revolves around spherical oval that we tend to call an egg.
Billy relies entirely on the egg for platforming the same way Glover relies on a ball. When you have an egg, you roll it around kinda like a super monkey ball game, but you do many tricks such as bounce, dash, shoot, pound and throw (amongst other tricks). I'm sure if you spent a lot of time with the controls, movement would be found to be deep as hell.
The gameplay loop is pretty fun. You find an egg and you can roll over fruit or enemies with the egg. The more fruit your squash, the bigger your egg becomes, the more damage your egg does to enemies. If baddies manage to break your egg then you will have to find another one and increase it's size again.
While the game is mostly good platforming fun. There are a lot frustrating moments and the game can be a bit unfair with how punishing it is. Although if you play on an emulator I recommend using an infinite lives cheat so at least you start from a checkpoint rather than starting a level all over again.
I wish Sega someday revisits this franchise, because with some even more refined controls and more intuitive level design, I can see it being a great platformer series.
This review contains spoilers
I've played this episode a million times already, but I kind of wish I never had so I could experience it with a more mature approach than my first dozen times. Not that I'm the most mature now, but certainly more than twelve years ago.
I'm sure I'll be shocked by future statistics as well, but man the stats of this first episode are astounding. It's so easy to accidentally lie to Hershel that I don't know how more than half were honest. I know Duck is annoying, but barely half the people going after him first is insane - though that's the first major timed event, so maybe that's why? How the absolute hell do 46% of people side with Larry instead of Kenny? That guy's a damn maniac. When it comes to giving Irene the gun, I kind of get it. She could have turned it on you, and also you just might not morally agree with what she does, but there was no realistic reason for her to not use it on herself, and poor girl was screwed.
But worst of all how does saving Carley only have 49%? Nah man, she more than proves herself and was the much more interesting character from the get-go. That's just so weird to me.
Hopefully I kick the habit of resetting when I immediately regret clicking a certain option just cause I read the tone wrong especially when it's a character I know dies later anyway!
I'm sure I'll be shocked by future statistics as well, but man the stats of this first episode are astounding. It's so easy to accidentally lie to Hershel that I don't know how more than half were honest. I know Duck is annoying, but barely half the people going after him first is insane - though that's the first major timed event, so maybe that's why? How the absolute hell do 46% of people side with Larry instead of Kenny? That guy's a damn maniac. When it comes to giving Irene the gun, I kind of get it. She could have turned it on you, and also you just might not morally agree with what she does, but there was no realistic reason for her to not use it on herself, and poor girl was screwed.
But worst of all how does saving Carley only have 49%? Nah man, she more than proves herself and was the much more interesting character from the get-go. That's just so weird to me.
Hopefully I kick the habit of resetting when I immediately regret clicking a certain option just cause I read the tone wrong especially when it's a character I know dies later anyway!
I really loved this. There's tons to do at varying levels of difficulty/challenge. It made me laugh out loud and it made me cry. I do have some nitpicks here and there, but I thought it was an improvement on Remake in every way. It really managed to capture the spirit of the original.