jtduckman
Absolute banger of a video game. Aesthetically this game has so much mfin style in it, it's just so COOL. From the sleek and iconic character icons and portraits, the dark color palette, that sick bass lick that plays every time you clear a mission, this game is designed to be as cool as possible and it excels with flying colors. The sound design is also fantastic, all the deep sound effects are used in such a way that there's always a good sense of tension when sneaking around, plus the game encourages keeping a close ear to the sounds since collectables have that satisfying clunky noise when you are near one. The gameplay is also excellent; this game takes the idea of a hub world and kinda flips it on its head as a place to be scouted out in order to plan a heist. Each of the missions to go to in the hubs are all different parts of one greater heist that the whole area of the game builds up to, and as I went through the missions I really got that sense of familiarity with my surroundings that the cumulative heist sections actually served to test. It's genius, honestly. The plot is also great with a serious tone, good writing, and great character interactions. The Cooper gang actually feels like a close, functional team in a lot of ways most other platformer character trios don't. My only kinda gripes I could have with the game are that it does feel a bit too long and they kinda re-use area themes a bit. The tiger and bison dudes got 2 chapters each when 1 could have been enough. The boss fights and really combat as a whole was kinda eh, which made playing as murray kinda not as fun as sly or bentley since his missions were more combat-oriented. Despite those small qualms, this game is really mfin good and if you like platformers or the general vibes of being a thief and planning a heist there's some good shit here.
2023
Forever in search of the sauce...
When the first trailer of this game dropped, it had my attention hook, line, and sinker. Ever since sega themselves dropped the Jet Set Radio IP like a 10-ton weight, many have tried to create a game to match the style and vibe of the series with middling results. I knew that I had to give this game a go, and when it finally dropped, I knew that it was time to see what they were cooking all this time. Now that I've given it a play, I have very complicated feelings.
The game NAILED the look of the Jet Set Radio games, with the perfect level of low-poly cel-shading that the series is famous for. The music is also fantastic, as not only are there the expected bangers created by everyone's favorite family guy funny moment, but most of the OST as a whole has that bumpin funky vibe to it. Mechanically things are solid as well, with controls feeling a lot more tight, grounded, and responsive. The JSR series is probably as infamous for filtering players with its floaty controls and awkward character physics as it is famous for its art style, so this really feels like the controls were made so that kind of thing wouldn't happen. The game looks and sounds great, and is fun to play.
But deep down as I was playing through the game, something felt off, and I still even after putting the controller down don't really know how to put it to words. The game just wasn't giving me that same visceral "kick" that playing the JSR games do, likely due to various small things that just kept stacking atop one another. The plot didn't grab me whatsoever, and there were far too many cutscenes for my liking. The writing was kinda eh, the characters lacked the charisma that the GG's and Professor K had, and things were taken far too seriously for me to really vibe with it. The game also left me feeling rather directionless a lot of the time, as in the JSR games finding where you need to tag is only a press of the start button away, but in this game being able to see where tag points are on the map requires an upgrade, so I spent a lot of time just kinda aimlessly skating around. The tag points also aren't really as clearly defined as the big arrowed markers that define them in the JSR games. The trick/score system is kind of braindead in that manualling is piss easy by holding down a trigger and getting high multipliers just requires grinding on rails and doing wallrides. If this game took more inspiration from the tony hawk games in terms of its trick system that would have activated every neuron in my monkey brain and I would have went crazy, but instead we get this kinda boring way to rack easy points. There's also like some of the most boneless combat I have ever seen in this game, as attacks feel extremely weightless and your auto-regenerating health pool is so big that it makes encounters feel more like a waste of time than anything meaningful. JSR just had you paint people on the back a few times and cops served more as obstacles rather than full-blown fighting encounters.
It's probably not the fairest to keep comparing this game to JSR, but it's really hard not to when everything about this game just feels like it's trying its absolute hardest to be JSR, and the things that it does differently like the focus on story just really wasn't clicking with me. There are these segments where you have to platform through these Mario Sunshine Psychonauts ass floating levels of stuff, and those parts were probably the highlight of the game for me just because the game was trying to do something unique. I think a portion of this weird nothingness I felt when playing this game just came from me wanting this game to be JSR, and the game itself wanting to be JSR, but it just isn't. Maybe I set my expectations way too high (another reason why zero expectations are the best expectations), maybe part of my enjoyment of games like this comes from the context in their creation whereas the original JSR games are actual products of their time vs this game being made as an homage to said time but isn't an actual product of its time itself, thus giving me uncanny valley type beats, i have no idea. I even went back to play a fair bit of both JSR games during my play of this to see if the appeal of these games had lost their luster to me over time, but nope I was still having a blast playing those and not so much over here.
It's extremely frustrating seeing something that by all of my understandings and definitions should be hitting the same as the series that it takes so much inspiration from just not doing so. It's as if the appeal of JSR comes from this secret sauce that Sega put into it that I haven't been able to see anyone else effectively recreate. I may not know what's actually in the damn sauce, but I'm gonna keep searching for it especially given how Sega ain't ever using it any more and I'm sure by now even they have thrown out the recipe. All of this isn't to say this game is bad. Despite all I have said there are still solid vibes and I think this is a much more accesible way to experience the style of JSR than playing the old games in a modern sense. It's absolutely clear to me that Team Reptile cares a lot for this particular aesthetic, and I on principle cannot hate anything that keeps the Y2K vibes going in our present day. By all means, please give the game a go if it looks interesting to ya. I just wish I was as ecstatic about this game as all the other JSR fans/people on this site. Either way, this will probably still be better than whatever the fuck sega actually could have in store for the JSR series. God help us.
When the first trailer of this game dropped, it had my attention hook, line, and sinker. Ever since sega themselves dropped the Jet Set Radio IP like a 10-ton weight, many have tried to create a game to match the style and vibe of the series with middling results. I knew that I had to give this game a go, and when it finally dropped, I knew that it was time to see what they were cooking all this time. Now that I've given it a play, I have very complicated feelings.
The game NAILED the look of the Jet Set Radio games, with the perfect level of low-poly cel-shading that the series is famous for. The music is also fantastic, as not only are there the expected bangers created by everyone's favorite family guy funny moment, but most of the OST as a whole has that bumpin funky vibe to it. Mechanically things are solid as well, with controls feeling a lot more tight, grounded, and responsive. The JSR series is probably as infamous for filtering players with its floaty controls and awkward character physics as it is famous for its art style, so this really feels like the controls were made so that kind of thing wouldn't happen. The game looks and sounds great, and is fun to play.
But deep down as I was playing through the game, something felt off, and I still even after putting the controller down don't really know how to put it to words. The game just wasn't giving me that same visceral "kick" that playing the JSR games do, likely due to various small things that just kept stacking atop one another. The plot didn't grab me whatsoever, and there were far too many cutscenes for my liking. The writing was kinda eh, the characters lacked the charisma that the GG's and Professor K had, and things were taken far too seriously for me to really vibe with it. The game also left me feeling rather directionless a lot of the time, as in the JSR games finding where you need to tag is only a press of the start button away, but in this game being able to see where tag points are on the map requires an upgrade, so I spent a lot of time just kinda aimlessly skating around. The tag points also aren't really as clearly defined as the big arrowed markers that define them in the JSR games. The trick/score system is kind of braindead in that manualling is piss easy by holding down a trigger and getting high multipliers just requires grinding on rails and doing wallrides. If this game took more inspiration from the tony hawk games in terms of its trick system that would have activated every neuron in my monkey brain and I would have went crazy, but instead we get this kinda boring way to rack easy points. There's also like some of the most boneless combat I have ever seen in this game, as attacks feel extremely weightless and your auto-regenerating health pool is so big that it makes encounters feel more like a waste of time than anything meaningful. JSR just had you paint people on the back a few times and cops served more as obstacles rather than full-blown fighting encounters.
It's probably not the fairest to keep comparing this game to JSR, but it's really hard not to when everything about this game just feels like it's trying its absolute hardest to be JSR, and the things that it does differently like the focus on story just really wasn't clicking with me. There are these segments where you have to platform through these Mario Sunshine Psychonauts ass floating levels of stuff, and those parts were probably the highlight of the game for me just because the game was trying to do something unique. I think a portion of this weird nothingness I felt when playing this game just came from me wanting this game to be JSR, and the game itself wanting to be JSR, but it just isn't. Maybe I set my expectations way too high (another reason why zero expectations are the best expectations), maybe part of my enjoyment of games like this comes from the context in their creation whereas the original JSR games are actual products of their time vs this game being made as an homage to said time but isn't an actual product of its time itself, thus giving me uncanny valley type beats, i have no idea. I even went back to play a fair bit of both JSR games during my play of this to see if the appeal of these games had lost their luster to me over time, but nope I was still having a blast playing those and not so much over here.
It's extremely frustrating seeing something that by all of my understandings and definitions should be hitting the same as the series that it takes so much inspiration from just not doing so. It's as if the appeal of JSR comes from this secret sauce that Sega put into it that I haven't been able to see anyone else effectively recreate. I may not know what's actually in the damn sauce, but I'm gonna keep searching for it especially given how Sega ain't ever using it any more and I'm sure by now even they have thrown out the recipe. All of this isn't to say this game is bad. Despite all I have said there are still solid vibes and I think this is a much more accesible way to experience the style of JSR than playing the old games in a modern sense. It's absolutely clear to me that Team Reptile cares a lot for this particular aesthetic, and I on principle cannot hate anything that keeps the Y2K vibes going in our present day. By all means, please give the game a go if it looks interesting to ya. I just wish I was as ecstatic about this game as all the other JSR fans/people on this site. Either way, this will probably still be better than whatever the fuck sega actually could have in store for the JSR series. God help us.
They made wii play minigames out of Twilight Princess. This game just confuses me. Why use Twilight Princess to make a demo pack-in game for the Wii Zapper? Why does the Wii Zapper even need a pack-in game? The wii zapper is just a piece of plastic, this game is 100% playable without it. No particular features of the zapper are utilized in this outside of the pointer controls, but Wii Play already kinda existed to be a demonstration of the pointer controls.
The actual gameplay itself is just a bunch of rail-shootery light gun gamey missions that you do in a quick succession. The game really favors accuracy over speed as getting hit combos is the easiest way to get points by far, and missing one shot drops a combo. If you play cautiously and refine your run, getting platinum rankings on each of the stages is a cakewalk.
When I looked up the development of this game, thinking it was just a quick job to make a quick little pack in title for the wii zapper, I was even more confused with the development history of this game than I was with the actual game itself. Apparently this could have been a sequel to twilight princess, or some weird terminator-styled side story where they gave link a gun. Despite the empty-calorie feeling this game has in its own playtime, it's like an hour long to go through everything and the minigames still have a solid level of polish put into them so it doesn't feel like no care was put into it. Worth a shot off of curiosity alone, I'd say.
The actual gameplay itself is just a bunch of rail-shootery light gun gamey missions that you do in a quick succession. The game really favors accuracy over speed as getting hit combos is the easiest way to get points by far, and missing one shot drops a combo. If you play cautiously and refine your run, getting platinum rankings on each of the stages is a cakewalk.
When I looked up the development of this game, thinking it was just a quick job to make a quick little pack in title for the wii zapper, I was even more confused with the development history of this game than I was with the actual game itself. Apparently this could have been a sequel to twilight princess, or some weird terminator-styled side story where they gave link a gun. Despite the empty-calorie feeling this game has in its own playtime, it's like an hour long to go through everything and the minigames still have a solid level of polish put into them so it doesn't feel like no care was put into it. Worth a shot off of curiosity alone, I'd say.
It's neat!
Def goes a bit too far in the "hey remember ocarina of time guys" vibes but I feel like that was more due to overcorrection from the backlash that wind waker got for being too colorful. It's definitely a product of its time, given that gaming as a whole was shifting to darker, edgier, more mature vibes. Which is kind of weird, since it's both the swansong of the Gamecube, a system that in its time had a reputation of being a "baby toy", as well as the introduction of the Wii, a console that retrospectively is known for being the casual system. It's def a weird tonal direction, but honestly I think that alone makes it all the more unique.
From a gameplay perspective, this is the dungeon game. The overworld isn't as vast or explorable here, and the optional side content offerings are quite sparse. The focus here is on a lot of dungeons, and they are quite good. The items are unique, albeit a few being a bit underutilized in the grand scheme of things (spinner my beloved), and the dungeon themes are cool. Personally my favorite part of zelda is the explorative aspect though, so sometimes things felt like they dragged on a bit as I was hit with back-to-back dungeoneering.
I have played a lot of Gamecube games in my time, and I can safely say this is one of, if not THE best looking game I have ever seen on the system. Sometimes it goes a bit overboard on the bloom, sure, but the fact that they have lighting and texturework this good on a gamecube game is insanely impressive and the game is a real visual treat.
The plot was also just your typical zelda goings-ons, nothing too crazy there. I did like the characters, though. Zant is a cool villain, Midna is pretty cool (though her fans scare me), the whole beginning village posse of kids are likable, there's mfin jesus in karariko village, the gorons are homies as always, that kinda vibes. The only eh characters are these like weird knight side characters that are played up to be a big deal but only do like one singular thing in the whole story and then are never mentioned or show up ever again so that was certainly something.
Despite the derivative nature of the game overall being a bit of an OoT rehash, the dungeon-focused design not being particularly my fancy, and the plot being there, something about this game still felt inherently satisfying. Perhaps it's because I liked OoT a decent amount so being an imitator of that isn't inherently a bad thing, and perhaps it's just because the vibes this game has are just that solid. If you like zelda dungeons, this do be a must-play. One of those games that's def greater than the sum of its parts.
Def goes a bit too far in the "hey remember ocarina of time guys" vibes but I feel like that was more due to overcorrection from the backlash that wind waker got for being too colorful. It's definitely a product of its time, given that gaming as a whole was shifting to darker, edgier, more mature vibes. Which is kind of weird, since it's both the swansong of the Gamecube, a system that in its time had a reputation of being a "baby toy", as well as the introduction of the Wii, a console that retrospectively is known for being the casual system. It's def a weird tonal direction, but honestly I think that alone makes it all the more unique.
From a gameplay perspective, this is the dungeon game. The overworld isn't as vast or explorable here, and the optional side content offerings are quite sparse. The focus here is on a lot of dungeons, and they are quite good. The items are unique, albeit a few being a bit underutilized in the grand scheme of things (spinner my beloved), and the dungeon themes are cool. Personally my favorite part of zelda is the explorative aspect though, so sometimes things felt like they dragged on a bit as I was hit with back-to-back dungeoneering.
I have played a lot of Gamecube games in my time, and I can safely say this is one of, if not THE best looking game I have ever seen on the system. Sometimes it goes a bit overboard on the bloom, sure, but the fact that they have lighting and texturework this good on a gamecube game is insanely impressive and the game is a real visual treat.
The plot was also just your typical zelda goings-ons, nothing too crazy there. I did like the characters, though. Zant is a cool villain, Midna is pretty cool (though her fans scare me), the whole beginning village posse of kids are likable, there's mfin jesus in karariko village, the gorons are homies as always, that kinda vibes. The only eh characters are these like weird knight side characters that are played up to be a big deal but only do like one singular thing in the whole story and then are never mentioned or show up ever again so that was certainly something.
Despite the derivative nature of the game overall being a bit of an OoT rehash, the dungeon-focused design not being particularly my fancy, and the plot being there, something about this game still felt inherently satisfying. Perhaps it's because I liked OoT a decent amount so being an imitator of that isn't inherently a bad thing, and perhaps it's just because the vibes this game has are just that solid. If you like zelda dungeons, this do be a must-play. One of those games that's def greater than the sum of its parts.
Was scrolling through the various Atomiswave-to-Dreamcast ports and stumbled upon this game with friends. This is one of those video games that just doesn't feel real, like something you'd see being played in the background of the simpsons or some shit. It's an arcade football game where the teams are composed of a regular football team, zombies, aliens, punk goth girls, prison convicts, trained hitmen, WWE wrestlers, and furries. Everyone animates and moves like a bowling alley strike animation, it's great. There's also meter management that is used for super moves or for boosts to get your players running faster. I don't give a singular flying shit about football so I really don't know how it stacks up to other arcade football titles like NFL blitz, but the amount of dumb absurdity on display is more than enough to set my monkey brain aflame. A true legend of bakage and honestly if I ever find this game in person at an actual arcade I would probably pop off harder than if I found something with more prestige. If watching a suited hitman tackle a skeleton literally named "boner" before breaking out in an awkward mocapped touchdown dance doesn't sell you on this game, I don't think anything ever will.
It's daytona but with more stuff to do but with a different feel, for better or for worse. A few new tracks added in, a different assortment of race cars with different stats to pick from, and an entirely new soundtrack. I was gaslit by the internet into believing that the original saturn port of Daytona wasn't that good, but upon playing it back-to-back with this version they are honestly both worth giving a go.
While the original port has a much lower framerate and chunkier visuals, it was (i think) developed by AM2 in-house and is actually a totally viable way to get a daytona fix so long as you can see past the chonk. Rather than expanding upon that framework, CCE was made by AM3 and uses their Saturn Sega Rally engine. It do mean that the game has a greater draw distance, sharper visuals, and a really consistent framerate, though at the cost of gameplay authenticity. Daytona purists will not like how this game feels, but on its own it felt perfectly solid to play. Daytona games usually feel like hot ass if you use a pad instead of a wheel or play on automatic but honestly this game controls decent with both and you can even use the differently tuned cars to match your driving demands. It's all solid stuff honestly.
The soundtrack is another thing that Daytona purists will not enjoy, as our boy Takenobu Mitsuyoshi was not put in the composer's seat for this. HOWEVER, the people they DO have on board for the new tracks are no slouches. Jun Senoue, Richard Jacques, Kenichi Tokoi, and Tomonori Sawada all have extremely strong music portfolios within Sega and their contributions here are great. Yea, Daytona without the iconic vocal tracks def hits different, but I wouldn't discredit the entire new OST because of that. The Japanese version of this game includes all the original songs as well as a medley so if you REALLY need the original OST, get that version.
This game also has like a bunch of different versions, with the aforementioned JPN version also having a supposedly more stable framerate and wider draw distance from the US version? There's also the extremely expensive netlink edition that has online play available, though I wasn't able to try the online features. There are ways to get your saturn online these days and I do have the ol DreamPi still configured, but as of now I can't justify buying a netlink adapter when I have zero people to play with. Maybe some day... (ayo any netlink gamers reading this HMU!!!) There's also local multiplayer but I'm by myself so I have no idea how that looks or runs either. Still cool when the original saturn port didn't have any form of multiplayer!
It's a good racing game, just not a very faithful daytona game, and I think that's prob where all the mixed reception comes from. Def something worth trying out if you are into 32-bit racers.
While the original port has a much lower framerate and chunkier visuals, it was (i think) developed by AM2 in-house and is actually a totally viable way to get a daytona fix so long as you can see past the chonk. Rather than expanding upon that framework, CCE was made by AM3 and uses their Saturn Sega Rally engine. It do mean that the game has a greater draw distance, sharper visuals, and a really consistent framerate, though at the cost of gameplay authenticity. Daytona purists will not like how this game feels, but on its own it felt perfectly solid to play. Daytona games usually feel like hot ass if you use a pad instead of a wheel or play on automatic but honestly this game controls decent with both and you can even use the differently tuned cars to match your driving demands. It's all solid stuff honestly.
The soundtrack is another thing that Daytona purists will not enjoy, as our boy Takenobu Mitsuyoshi was not put in the composer's seat for this. HOWEVER, the people they DO have on board for the new tracks are no slouches. Jun Senoue, Richard Jacques, Kenichi Tokoi, and Tomonori Sawada all have extremely strong music portfolios within Sega and their contributions here are great. Yea, Daytona without the iconic vocal tracks def hits different, but I wouldn't discredit the entire new OST because of that. The Japanese version of this game includes all the original songs as well as a medley so if you REALLY need the original OST, get that version.
This game also has like a bunch of different versions, with the aforementioned JPN version also having a supposedly more stable framerate and wider draw distance from the US version? There's also the extremely expensive netlink edition that has online play available, though I wasn't able to try the online features. There are ways to get your saturn online these days and I do have the ol DreamPi still configured, but as of now I can't justify buying a netlink adapter when I have zero people to play with. Maybe some day... (ayo any netlink gamers reading this HMU!!!) There's also local multiplayer but I'm by myself so I have no idea how that looks or runs either. Still cool when the original saturn port didn't have any form of multiplayer!
It's a good racing game, just not a very faithful daytona game, and I think that's prob where all the mixed reception comes from. Def something worth trying out if you are into 32-bit racers.
2023
Well. Guess this dropped, huh? F-zero fans eating.... okay? decently? It's something?
(forewarning: im quite the f-zero fan that has pretty much done everything there is to do in the series. I've played all the games, seen the entirety of the shitty kids anime that gets kinda good near the end, etc etc etc)
The concept of taking F-zero and putting it into a battle royale isn't bad at all. The games have already had quite a death-race battle-royale style vibe to them since the beginning, seeing as there are tons of racers on a track and murder is a viable option to success, so bringing it online with dozens of other real humans sounds like a no-brainer, and the "grand new idea" that the series apparently needed to get a new game, supposedly.
Though when I heard the rumors that F-zero 99 was reportedly going to be a thing, and given nintendo's current track record with how they handled battle royale games, I definitely was thinking of the monkey's paw.
And well well well lookee what we got.
It's kinda obvious to see why certain series fans can be frustrated by this release, given both how predictable and sterile it is and how this is the culmination of a 20-something year old wait for something, anything new outside of various smash appearances, some blue falcon cameos, and a jank Nintendo Land minigame.
Putting those frustrations aside for a minute, what we ended up getting is honestly pretty alright. Of what I can tell all the content from the SNES game is here, presented in full HD widescreen goodness. The controls are a bit different this time around, as this marks the first time a mode-7 style F-zero game can be played with an analogue control stick, and as such the cornering feels noticeably different from the snappy stop-and-go twitch controls of the original SNES game. Add the boost-from-health mechanic and spin attack taken from the later games, and the game honestly feels more like the GBA F-zeros than a straight port of the SNES one.
The battle royale style of gameplay is great in concept but the execution is a bit hmm. Of the many rounds I played, I found that sitting in the upper-middle of the pack to collect the weird meter-building dots and using the super boost to snipe the last lap at the very end pretty much guaranteed a spot in the top 10 every time. With all the shit flying around everywhere, using boost never really seems very worth it, as even in first place the game throws enough bogus AI obstacles and dead players trying to bump into you where there's never really a moment where the whole track is clear to safely use boost. Once I figured out that sort of game plan, it really wasn't that hard to consistently get Ws.
One cool thing about the game is the grand prix system where things become more endurance-based as players are graded upon their performances in multiple races in a row. It's really cool to see the numbers whittle down over time as your opponents either get ranked out or just end up exploding throughout the races, and it provides a good sense of tension to clutch out wins in those events. Only problem is most events like that are not only time limited but also have some dumb mobile game-ass in-game currency that needs to be spent in order to actually participate. Considering the fact that both Tetris and Pac-man 99 had a bunch of microtransactions/DLC that needs to be bought I can imagine they will try to do the same here, and that's never really my kind of vibe.
I don't think this game was low-effort, as the various control differences, visual improvements, and gamemodes lead me to believe that this is made from the ground up rather than having the sort of romhacky feel that the mario and pac man battle royale games did. If they made this game look more visually distinct (whether that be actually having done 3D or even just going for a more modernized pixel look a-la the GBA games), brought in new tracks and a variety of racers from the series to use instead of only the four original machines (hell, the SATELLAVIEW GAMES even gave new characters to race as for pete's sake!) then I feel like the reception to this would have been a little more warm. With how they basically needed to make this game from scratch in the first place, it probably wouldn't have had to have been that much more effort to make it look and feel fresh. It's Nintendo's strange insistence that this game HAD to be a "throwback" title, limited to only the same content that was originally there with little to no additions, that holds this game back. And for some reason, Nintendo seems to treat most of their back catalogue the same way.
All in all, it's fine. I didn't really hate it as much as I thought I was going to, but things get stale pretty quickly. Considering the fact that with the previous Battle Royale games that Nintendo has put out I play them at launch day, win a few rounds, and then call it a day, I am more than sure that's what's also going to happen with this. And seeing as Pac-man 99 is going to get shut down soon, I wouldn't be surprised if this shares the same fate in about a year or so down the line. If you are a fan of battle royale games or racers, you might as well give it a shot. It is free, after all.
The long-running gag of F-zero fans being starved of new games ended today, and on a rather flat note. We have our new game, guys. See you in another 19 years, I guess.
(forewarning: im quite the f-zero fan that has pretty much done everything there is to do in the series. I've played all the games, seen the entirety of the shitty kids anime that gets kinda good near the end, etc etc etc)
The concept of taking F-zero and putting it into a battle royale isn't bad at all. The games have already had quite a death-race battle-royale style vibe to them since the beginning, seeing as there are tons of racers on a track and murder is a viable option to success, so bringing it online with dozens of other real humans sounds like a no-brainer, and the "grand new idea" that the series apparently needed to get a new game, supposedly.
Though when I heard the rumors that F-zero 99 was reportedly going to be a thing, and given nintendo's current track record with how they handled battle royale games, I definitely was thinking of the monkey's paw.
And well well well lookee what we got.
It's kinda obvious to see why certain series fans can be frustrated by this release, given both how predictable and sterile it is and how this is the culmination of a 20-something year old wait for something, anything new outside of various smash appearances, some blue falcon cameos, and a jank Nintendo Land minigame.
Putting those frustrations aside for a minute, what we ended up getting is honestly pretty alright. Of what I can tell all the content from the SNES game is here, presented in full HD widescreen goodness. The controls are a bit different this time around, as this marks the first time a mode-7 style F-zero game can be played with an analogue control stick, and as such the cornering feels noticeably different from the snappy stop-and-go twitch controls of the original SNES game. Add the boost-from-health mechanic and spin attack taken from the later games, and the game honestly feels more like the GBA F-zeros than a straight port of the SNES one.
The battle royale style of gameplay is great in concept but the execution is a bit hmm. Of the many rounds I played, I found that sitting in the upper-middle of the pack to collect the weird meter-building dots and using the super boost to snipe the last lap at the very end pretty much guaranteed a spot in the top 10 every time. With all the shit flying around everywhere, using boost never really seems very worth it, as even in first place the game throws enough bogus AI obstacles and dead players trying to bump into you where there's never really a moment where the whole track is clear to safely use boost. Once I figured out that sort of game plan, it really wasn't that hard to consistently get Ws.
One cool thing about the game is the grand prix system where things become more endurance-based as players are graded upon their performances in multiple races in a row. It's really cool to see the numbers whittle down over time as your opponents either get ranked out or just end up exploding throughout the races, and it provides a good sense of tension to clutch out wins in those events. Only problem is most events like that are not only time limited but also have some dumb mobile game-ass in-game currency that needs to be spent in order to actually participate. Considering the fact that both Tetris and Pac-man 99 had a bunch of microtransactions/DLC that needs to be bought I can imagine they will try to do the same here, and that's never really my kind of vibe.
I don't think this game was low-effort, as the various control differences, visual improvements, and gamemodes lead me to believe that this is made from the ground up rather than having the sort of romhacky feel that the mario and pac man battle royale games did. If they made this game look more visually distinct (whether that be actually having done 3D or even just going for a more modernized pixel look a-la the GBA games), brought in new tracks and a variety of racers from the series to use instead of only the four original machines (hell, the SATELLAVIEW GAMES even gave new characters to race as for pete's sake!) then I feel like the reception to this would have been a little more warm. With how they basically needed to make this game from scratch in the first place, it probably wouldn't have had to have been that much more effort to make it look and feel fresh. It's Nintendo's strange insistence that this game HAD to be a "throwback" title, limited to only the same content that was originally there with little to no additions, that holds this game back. And for some reason, Nintendo seems to treat most of their back catalogue the same way.
All in all, it's fine. I didn't really hate it as much as I thought I was going to, but things get stale pretty quickly. Considering the fact that with the previous Battle Royale games that Nintendo has put out I play them at launch day, win a few rounds, and then call it a day, I am more than sure that's what's also going to happen with this. And seeing as Pac-man 99 is going to get shut down soon, I wouldn't be surprised if this shares the same fate in about a year or so down the line. If you are a fan of battle royale games or racers, you might as well give it a shot. It is free, after all.
The long-running gag of F-zero fans being starved of new games ended today, and on a rather flat note. We have our new game, guys. See you in another 19 years, I guess.
2012
Hot diggity damn, Sakurai really doesn't miss. This game from beginning to end fires on pretty much all cylinders with zero breaks or stops. It looks visually stunning (especially in 3D), has a phenomenal soundtrack with an all-star cast of composers, has great writing with equally good delivery, depth in its combat with the different weapon types and flick tech, hell even a really damn solid multiplayer mode with both local and online play. This game has mfin EVERYTHING, and each thing is crafted with such a huge amount of polish that it's an absolute blast to play.
My only real gripes would be in the ground segments of the game, in that I felt like they were too long and rely a bit too much on flicking the circle pad constantly in a lot of ways that feels imprecise, and the game kinda demands precision so the flicking kinda becomes a hindrance to the games control. I dropped the game halfway through back when it first came out because of how long the ground sections just dragged on and on. The flying sections are easily the best part of the game though, as they pretty much are sin and punishment levels with their spectacle and control.
I know this is a pretty highly demanded game to be brought to the switch or had a sequel made, and I can certainly understand the hype. However considering both the games development history and overall balance, I don't think that would be very likely. Apparently this game was developed by a one-and-done ragtag team that was made specifically to make only this game before disbanding, so I don't think they can get back together for a port or a sequel... I do hope they at least preserved the source code... The game is also designed around extremely quick precise camera and aiming controls that is done through swiping the touch screen like a trackball, and the overall game speed and balance is quick and snappy to compensate for that advanced precision you get. It's something that I don't think could translate to like any other type of control scheme outside of an actual IRL trackball, so that's kinda another thing going against it getting the ol HD switch treatment unless they essentially rebalance the entire game to accommodate a less precise and slower control scheme. That's not even considering things like how the game uses the bottom screen to run its radio drama-esque dialogue portraits in an unobtrusive way. Like it or not, this game is made for the 3DS, and on this system it will stay. Honestly, I'm fine with that. This game feels so complete that I honestly don't know what they could do should a sequel come along. It's not exactly flawless, but it's pretty damn close. An ABSOLUTE must-play on the 3DS library, especially if you like your games flashy and bombastic.
My only real gripes would be in the ground segments of the game, in that I felt like they were too long and rely a bit too much on flicking the circle pad constantly in a lot of ways that feels imprecise, and the game kinda demands precision so the flicking kinda becomes a hindrance to the games control. I dropped the game halfway through back when it first came out because of how long the ground sections just dragged on and on. The flying sections are easily the best part of the game though, as they pretty much are sin and punishment levels with their spectacle and control.
I know this is a pretty highly demanded game to be brought to the switch or had a sequel made, and I can certainly understand the hype. However considering both the games development history and overall balance, I don't think that would be very likely. Apparently this game was developed by a one-and-done ragtag team that was made specifically to make only this game before disbanding, so I don't think they can get back together for a port or a sequel... I do hope they at least preserved the source code... The game is also designed around extremely quick precise camera and aiming controls that is done through swiping the touch screen like a trackball, and the overall game speed and balance is quick and snappy to compensate for that advanced precision you get. It's something that I don't think could translate to like any other type of control scheme outside of an actual IRL trackball, so that's kinda another thing going against it getting the ol HD switch treatment unless they essentially rebalance the entire game to accommodate a less precise and slower control scheme. That's not even considering things like how the game uses the bottom screen to run its radio drama-esque dialogue portraits in an unobtrusive way. Like it or not, this game is made for the 3DS, and on this system it will stay. Honestly, I'm fine with that. This game feels so complete that I honestly don't know what they could do should a sequel come along. It's not exactly flawless, but it's pretty damn close. An ABSOLUTE must-play on the 3DS library, especially if you like your games flashy and bombastic.
2004
Gran Turismo 4. This is it. I don't think I can overstate how big this game is, both in terms of its content and its legacy within the racing game genre. This game basically takes everything from the previous GT games and cranks it up to inhuman levels. The GT series to this point has always been in the upper echelon of console racing games, but with this game, they basically created a golden standard for the genre. Like, when the developers for the first Forza game were talking about competing with the PS2, they weren't talking about the GT series as a whole. They, like many others, were trying to dethrone this game specifically. That's how big this game is. It's an absolutely monumental racing game that can absolutely last you a lifetime with how much content it has. With all that being said though, it still ain't my favorite racing game, or hell, even GT game.
Firstly, the good. They basically took GT3 and gave it a simulation mode that puts it more in-line with the insane sim mode in GT2. There's the same "do events, earn new cars that give you access to new events" loop that made GT2 so engaging, and there's things like used car dealerships to get rid of the credit-grind slog that was GT3's campaign. There are over 700 cars to collect across all sorts of events. Circuit tracks, city tracks, one-make manufacturer events, specific car type events, rally events, endurance events, you name it and it's here with an insane amount of polish. The driving in this game is the best that the series has been up to this point, with it having that nice realistic feel to it. I am no real life race car driver so I can't actually comment on how ACTUALLY real it is, but it certainly has a good feel to it. The UI and soundtrack are as fantastic as always (though I still found the licensed race music kinda eh but I think that's just how things are gonna be), and visually this is one of the best looking games on the PS2 with an insane amount of visual polish, and even support for progressive scan and a mode that uses some interlaced shenanigans to get a high-res mode of 576x960!!! Considering the power of the PS2 the fact that they can get something like that working at all is incredible, much less running as good as it does with the visuals that it has. In terms of technical mastery, gameplay polish, and stylish UI, this is the GT PS2 magnum opus.
But unfortunately, there are still quite a bit of qualms that I have had with this game in my entire playthrough. While I do have a decent enough PS2 wheel that I can use with this game, I really don't prefer to play with a racing wheel over a pad and I don't have a good place to even set up the wheel anyways so I was kinda screwed on the control front. The game uses the pressure-sensitive buttons on the PS2 controller and it's not able to ever be turned off, and I find the dualshock 2's pressure sensitivity to be a bit too mushy to be used as precisely as needed for a type of racing game like this. I played the first half of the game using a very cobbled-together wheel setup that shook when literally any FFB happened, before eventually giving up to use a controller with the steering bound to the left stick and accelerator bound to the right. Neither control scheme was really elegant for me. If this game supported the neGcon (which it very well could have), then this would all be a non-issue and it would absolutely elevate this game to an 11/10 status, but some things are just not meant to be. The high-resolution mode is also more of a gimmick than anything, as my upscaler didn't really like how it tried to display the image, my cables are too crummy to get the best out of it, and the menus and UI all run at 480i anyways so I honestly stuck to the default resolution the whole game as well. Lastly, my final issue with the game comes from its pacing. While the core racing structure of GT2 is back in this game, it doesn't feel nearly as well-paced when it comes to what agency the game gives through prize cars. A lot of events end up giving you a prize car that can't really be used anywhere else, leading to a lot of "dead end" moments, where I just kinda had to sell the car for credits to get the cars that I did need, or just ignored them altogether. Since earning certain things is locked to overall completion percentage, I found the best thing to do was just to do the rally events as they offered the highest payouts alongside cars that I could actually use in a multitude of events. Playing that way just meant I spent most of my time doing a bunch of really slippery rally events, when I'm honestly more of a fan of the street/circuit racing... And then the GT world championship at the very end is both such a huge difficulty spike and time sink, being 3-4 hours long for a single attempt with insane competition that I really got kinda sour by the end of the playthrough. Getting the REALLY good cars to breeze through the GT world championships involves winning the endurance races, and those can take up to 24 hours of real time to complete, and considering the fact I barely had time to attempt the 3-4 hour GT world championship, I REALLY didn't have time to get the best cars to smoke the competition. You could say that problem is def a skill issue from relying too much on better cars and parts over driver skill to win (and it certainly is, I suck at GT), but I think it's lame that the game lets you get away with that strat for everything BUT the one event I really didn't wanna get stuck in.
So yea. sorry for the long review, this is a game with a lot of things in it and as such I had a lot to say. It's honestly a masterpiece of the racing genre with so much care, attention to detail, and CONTENT put into it. I didn't even mention things like the B-spec mode where you can train an AI to race events for you, or the photo mode that allows you to render extremely high res (for the time) photos of your cars to a USB drive. It's one of those games that I'd absolutely consider for a "desert island" pick, for sure. But I still think that GT2s campaign pacing and flow was more engaging than this. Regardless, if you are even SLIGHTLY a fan of cars, racing games, the PS2, or just driving in general, you HAVE to give this game a go.
Firstly, the good. They basically took GT3 and gave it a simulation mode that puts it more in-line with the insane sim mode in GT2. There's the same "do events, earn new cars that give you access to new events" loop that made GT2 so engaging, and there's things like used car dealerships to get rid of the credit-grind slog that was GT3's campaign. There are over 700 cars to collect across all sorts of events. Circuit tracks, city tracks, one-make manufacturer events, specific car type events, rally events, endurance events, you name it and it's here with an insane amount of polish. The driving in this game is the best that the series has been up to this point, with it having that nice realistic feel to it. I am no real life race car driver so I can't actually comment on how ACTUALLY real it is, but it certainly has a good feel to it. The UI and soundtrack are as fantastic as always (though I still found the licensed race music kinda eh but I think that's just how things are gonna be), and visually this is one of the best looking games on the PS2 with an insane amount of visual polish, and even support for progressive scan and a mode that uses some interlaced shenanigans to get a high-res mode of 576x960!!! Considering the power of the PS2 the fact that they can get something like that working at all is incredible, much less running as good as it does with the visuals that it has. In terms of technical mastery, gameplay polish, and stylish UI, this is the GT PS2 magnum opus.
But unfortunately, there are still quite a bit of qualms that I have had with this game in my entire playthrough. While I do have a decent enough PS2 wheel that I can use with this game, I really don't prefer to play with a racing wheel over a pad and I don't have a good place to even set up the wheel anyways so I was kinda screwed on the control front. The game uses the pressure-sensitive buttons on the PS2 controller and it's not able to ever be turned off, and I find the dualshock 2's pressure sensitivity to be a bit too mushy to be used as precisely as needed for a type of racing game like this. I played the first half of the game using a very cobbled-together wheel setup that shook when literally any FFB happened, before eventually giving up to use a controller with the steering bound to the left stick and accelerator bound to the right. Neither control scheme was really elegant for me. If this game supported the neGcon (which it very well could have), then this would all be a non-issue and it would absolutely elevate this game to an 11/10 status, but some things are just not meant to be. The high-resolution mode is also more of a gimmick than anything, as my upscaler didn't really like how it tried to display the image, my cables are too crummy to get the best out of it, and the menus and UI all run at 480i anyways so I honestly stuck to the default resolution the whole game as well. Lastly, my final issue with the game comes from its pacing. While the core racing structure of GT2 is back in this game, it doesn't feel nearly as well-paced when it comes to what agency the game gives through prize cars. A lot of events end up giving you a prize car that can't really be used anywhere else, leading to a lot of "dead end" moments, where I just kinda had to sell the car for credits to get the cars that I did need, or just ignored them altogether. Since earning certain things is locked to overall completion percentage, I found the best thing to do was just to do the rally events as they offered the highest payouts alongside cars that I could actually use in a multitude of events. Playing that way just meant I spent most of my time doing a bunch of really slippery rally events, when I'm honestly more of a fan of the street/circuit racing... And then the GT world championship at the very end is both such a huge difficulty spike and time sink, being 3-4 hours long for a single attempt with insane competition that I really got kinda sour by the end of the playthrough. Getting the REALLY good cars to breeze through the GT world championships involves winning the endurance races, and those can take up to 24 hours of real time to complete, and considering the fact I barely had time to attempt the 3-4 hour GT world championship, I REALLY didn't have time to get the best cars to smoke the competition. You could say that problem is def a skill issue from relying too much on better cars and parts over driver skill to win (and it certainly is, I suck at GT), but I think it's lame that the game lets you get away with that strat for everything BUT the one event I really didn't wanna get stuck in.
So yea. sorry for the long review, this is a game with a lot of things in it and as such I had a lot to say. It's honestly a masterpiece of the racing genre with so much care, attention to detail, and CONTENT put into it. I didn't even mention things like the B-spec mode where you can train an AI to race events for you, or the photo mode that allows you to render extremely high res (for the time) photos of your cars to a USB drive. It's one of those games that I'd absolutely consider for a "desert island" pick, for sure. But I still think that GT2s campaign pacing and flow was more engaging than this. Regardless, if you are even SLIGHTLY a fan of cars, racing games, the PS2, or just driving in general, you HAVE to give this game a go.
2005
I think this is the console version of pac-man arrangement that they ported to namco museum virtual arcade on the 360? There are too many damn games called "pac-man arrangement", it's a mess. I do recall it being an overall solid maze game, doesn't do anything crazy memorable like adventures in time does but also isn't lazy like quest for the golden maze. There's like a linear world of levels that each have their own gimmicks and there's even some boss fights thrown in there. I do remember the elevator levels being kinda annoying tho. If you like maze-based pac man games, you are prob gonna have a solid time here, the whole game is like an hour long and maze games are pretty hard to mess up so like yeah
2013
please nintendo i beg you on my hands and knees to make a new wave race game so i don't have to play garbage like this in a sad vain attempt to feed the long-empty husk that is my desire to play water racing games. Everything is kusoge and low-budget as fuck (in a shovelwarey sense, not an awesome one), theres money grinding to pad the game out, and the whole thing just feels soulless. At least the 3D effect is decent and the soundtrack is pretty good, so it's not all terrible. "The wave race at home" doesn't even do this justice. It's like the wave race game that the wave race at home has in its own bootleggy home.
it's bland!
The "flagship" version of superchargers on console had its racing stuff kinda relegated to an optional side mode which I was a bit mixed on due to the kinda ho-hum racing mechanics so I was a bit skeptical about a full game being JUST the racing mode. But honestly they added just enough meat to the bones here to be decent enough. Each vehicle has their own unique abilities and ways to go fast (cars can drift and jump for some reason, boats can do tricks to chain boosts and go underwater, and planes have a afterburner boost to go fast on straights but can't turn to save their lives) so the racing itself is decent. It's no mario kart, CTR, or sonic all-stars gameplay but it's certainly a step up from the flagship versions racing. The progression system is the exact same as sonic and all stars racing transformed, with various events that earn stars on higher difficulties with certain star thresholds needed to progress. Despite playing the game on the hardest difficulty the entire time I found every event painfully easy, and I think it's due to the imbalance of the actual character stats. To keep the skylander scam machine rolling and the confusing "supercharger" mechanic from the main game intact, only the new characters get racing stats that can be upgraded, and combining a character with their matching vehicle gives them such a large stat upgrade that it makes any other character/vehicle combination absolutely obsolete. Once I found which character had the highest top speed for each vehicle type (splat for sea, fiesta for land, and astroblast for air), I stuck with them the whole game and breezed through everything. There are certain events that can only be unlocked if you have a vehicle of a certain element for some reason though so it's not like you can get away with only buying 3 characters to do everything (though like the past 2 3DS games all characters are saved onto the game once scanned once so honestly plopping an unlocked save will get you everything for free). The cutscenes are even decent, being animated in-engine with a real ratchet and clank style look to them. They are also sparse enough to not be annoying like the main games characters constantly blabbering their dumb catchphrases every 3 seconds.
As a big fan of racing games I was certainly interested to see what this game was all about and frankly it was exactly as "meh kids-leaning semi-inspired kart racer" as I was expecting it to be. Not bad, and has the same amount of focus as the other 3DS games in the series. Honestly I think the 3DS games in this series have had a higher average quality than their console counterparts which probably isn't saying much but it's saying something. Honestly potentially worth a shot if you are tired of mario kart and S&ASRT on the 3DS and want a solid enough kart racer without going full shovelware.
The "flagship" version of superchargers on console had its racing stuff kinda relegated to an optional side mode which I was a bit mixed on due to the kinda ho-hum racing mechanics so I was a bit skeptical about a full game being JUST the racing mode. But honestly they added just enough meat to the bones here to be decent enough. Each vehicle has their own unique abilities and ways to go fast (cars can drift and jump for some reason, boats can do tricks to chain boosts and go underwater, and planes have a afterburner boost to go fast on straights but can't turn to save their lives) so the racing itself is decent. It's no mario kart, CTR, or sonic all-stars gameplay but it's certainly a step up from the flagship versions racing. The progression system is the exact same as sonic and all stars racing transformed, with various events that earn stars on higher difficulties with certain star thresholds needed to progress. Despite playing the game on the hardest difficulty the entire time I found every event painfully easy, and I think it's due to the imbalance of the actual character stats. To keep the skylander scam machine rolling and the confusing "supercharger" mechanic from the main game intact, only the new characters get racing stats that can be upgraded, and combining a character with their matching vehicle gives them such a large stat upgrade that it makes any other character/vehicle combination absolutely obsolete. Once I found which character had the highest top speed for each vehicle type (splat for sea, fiesta for land, and astroblast for air), I stuck with them the whole game and breezed through everything. There are certain events that can only be unlocked if you have a vehicle of a certain element for some reason though so it's not like you can get away with only buying 3 characters to do everything (though like the past 2 3DS games all characters are saved onto the game once scanned once so honestly plopping an unlocked save will get you everything for free). The cutscenes are even decent, being animated in-engine with a real ratchet and clank style look to them. They are also sparse enough to not be annoying like the main games characters constantly blabbering their dumb catchphrases every 3 seconds.
As a big fan of racing games I was certainly interested to see what this game was all about and frankly it was exactly as "meh kids-leaning semi-inspired kart racer" as I was expecting it to be. Not bad, and has the same amount of focus as the other 3DS games in the series. Honestly I think the 3DS games in this series have had a higher average quality than their console counterparts which probably isn't saying much but it's saying something. Honestly potentially worth a shot if you are tired of mario kart and S&ASRT on the 3DS and want a solid enough kart racer without going full shovelware.
yeah this one aint it unfortunately. the map is way too big for its own good and the game is basically oops all backtracking in said gigantic map. Doesn't help that everything is samey and confusing which makes getting lost really easy. The combat isn't that much better than the previous games and it felt like a lot of enemies were damage sponges that mostly loiter around without attacking/giving you opportunities to attack. It was certainly cool to see a fatal frame game with a more internal conflict but it is still pretty much your standard cult shit goin wrong type beats. The final boss was the cherry on top with how it has a dumb semi-predictable instant kill move that can ruin an entire run. On the bright side of things though, this game was really impressive on a visual/graphical standpoint. Not only does it support progressive scan (something that very few PS2 games actually do) but the actual in-game visuals and lighting look fantastic for the PS2, honestly on par with the xbox ports of the first 2 games which is absolutely wild to me. But alas, i still did not really fw this game as much as I would have hoped to, which is a real shame. :(
The golden age of video games began and ended with the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device.
So firstly, I obviously didn't play this on the original hardware given the fact that this was really a patented proof of concept that as far as I'm aware never made it to any sort of production model so I used an online simulator to experience the magnificence that is the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device. You can play it for yourself here
Anyways, what the hell do I actually say here? The core gameplay comes from positioning little planes on the screen and then essentially tuning the CRT beam to move over a plane and then blow it up by moving various dials. There is a bit of a dead-zone on the left and bottommost corners of the screen so it makes some areas impossible to hit (or I just don't know how to move these dials properly), so it's up to you to make sure the game is possible in the first place. Moreover, there's no in-game logic to check on whether or not you are playing correctly, so really the whole game is beholden to the honor system of the player. I guess it works given the fact that it's an "amusement device" and not necessarily a game.
I guess what's more interesting than the game itself is moreso the context behind it as being one of the first instances of using video display technology for recreational entertainment purposes. There has been a reasonable amount of debate on whether or not this counts as a computer video game given the fact that there is no in-game logic and it's moreso just tuning a CRT beam in a fun way. These days there has been a lot of discussion as to what defines a video game and giving examples of acclaimed modern games that challenge the medium, when my homeboy Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. did that shit all the way back in 1947. Truly a revolutionary.
At the end of the day it certainly is more of a historical curiosity than anything, this is like reviewing a museum artifact. You'd definitely have to be a very certain type of person to even know about this thing though, let alone play and review it on a site like this. I've always been a fan of playing old titles to see where things have gone, and you really can't go any farther back than here. It's nice to pay the extremely primitive origins of video games their dues.
So firstly, I obviously didn't play this on the original hardware given the fact that this was really a patented proof of concept that as far as I'm aware never made it to any sort of production model so I used an online simulator to experience the magnificence that is the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device. You can play it for yourself here
Anyways, what the hell do I actually say here? The core gameplay comes from positioning little planes on the screen and then essentially tuning the CRT beam to move over a plane and then blow it up by moving various dials. There is a bit of a dead-zone on the left and bottommost corners of the screen so it makes some areas impossible to hit (or I just don't know how to move these dials properly), so it's up to you to make sure the game is possible in the first place. Moreover, there's no in-game logic to check on whether or not you are playing correctly, so really the whole game is beholden to the honor system of the player. I guess it works given the fact that it's an "amusement device" and not necessarily a game.
I guess what's more interesting than the game itself is moreso the context behind it as being one of the first instances of using video display technology for recreational entertainment purposes. There has been a reasonable amount of debate on whether or not this counts as a computer video game given the fact that there is no in-game logic and it's moreso just tuning a CRT beam in a fun way. These days there has been a lot of discussion as to what defines a video game and giving examples of acclaimed modern games that challenge the medium, when my homeboy Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. did that shit all the way back in 1947. Truly a revolutionary.
At the end of the day it certainly is more of a historical curiosity than anything, this is like reviewing a museum artifact. You'd definitely have to be a very certain type of person to even know about this thing though, let alone play and review it on a site like this. I've always been a fan of playing old titles to see where things have gone, and you really can't go any farther back than here. It's nice to pay the extremely primitive origins of video games their dues.
1999
With how I finished the third game so quickly and was surprised by how not-terrible it was, I pretty much immediately jumped into the 4th game to see what was up. Turns out, it's definitely more of the same. There's a little bit more refinement in the visuals and gameplay speed, but they absolutely bungled up the collision detection this time around, it's SO EASY to get stuck on ledges this game has absolutely no idea what to do if you are close to a wall or an edge. The AI is also absolutely braindead which leads this game to also feel a bit more "through the motions" and easier than the previous installments as well. The final boss is still a dumb stupid difficulty spike though so don't let your guard down too much should you choose to give this game a play. They also kinda bungled up the controls too as now double pressing gas activates turbo which kinda sucks since usually driving precisely and slowly on ledges makes me want to feather the gas to go slowly, which in this game would make turbo go off in the exact places where I absolutely do NOT want it to. So yeah, it does a few things better than the third game, and also does a few things worse. I also had NO clue that Ryan Drummond voices a character in this game so you could imagine my shock getting jumpscared by sonic in a twisted metal game, shoutouts to pizza boy.