They pretty much improved the animation aspect of flipnote studio by giving a bigger canvas, more colors, and 3D depth support, but what's even the point when the whole online community aspect got cancelled internationally and the game was exclusive to club nintendo members for a sizeable portion of its life. I think Nintendo got scared from the great swapnote spotpass scandals and just decided miiverse was enough to moderate as is. You might be able to share flipnotes through streetpass but that had never happened to me in my entire time of bringing my 3DS to high school so that sure goes to show how effective that was. It's a good animation tool for sure, but I just can't think of it as anything other than a complete disappointment with immeasurable amounts of wasted potential.

Didn't have this logged due to the fact that it's not technically a game per se but fuck it we ballin

I remember back in like 2009 I was a plucky kid on a camping trip with some other fellow plucky kids and one of them had a DSi. It was with that kid that I learned about the many features of the DSi, like the goofy sound and photo apps, the ability to use a rainbow pen in pictochat, and most importantly, the ability to make crude animations of stickmen getting brutally mutilated through a mysterious orange app called flipnote studio. After that camping trip, I knew that I had to start saving up for a DSi.

Flipnote Studio is a flipbook animation program. It's featureset is light enough to the point where anyone can figure out how to use it, yet still offers enough features for talented artists and animators to make their work shine. The game used to offer an online service where users could upload and share their own animations as well as view and download other users animations, and that combined with the apps free price tag essentially meant everyone with a DSi at the time had access to this entire online subculture of music videos, fan re-edits, stick fights, and more.

It was basically my first exposure to social media back in the day. I (thankfully) wasn't allowed to go on the greater parts of the internet or youtube back then outside of like randomly researching old video games, so through flipnote studio I was able to keep up with all sorts of internet inside jokes and memes, even if most of them were exclusive to the flipnote studio subculture. It was pretty much a mixture of youtube and newgrounds except mostly populated by kids and nintendo fans, shit was crazy.

I was certainly a stick figure guy, watching stuff like gizmos many goofy stick figure cartoons, or getting immersed in BosS' kingdom-hearts-ass shonen anime-core serial dramas, which I always adored the aesthetic of despite not really understanding their influences back in the day. And of course, let's not forget the legendary stick fight animation by 100%, that shit was copied and pasted NONSTOP with all sorts of fan edits and song changes throughout all the years I used hatena. Another noteworthy creator I followed was fred, whose smooth criminal music video is still saved on my DSi to this day. It was also cool to see the flipnote microcelebrities pay tribute back to the community with their own flair, especially since gizmo's harder better faster stronger boo video might as well be the poster animation for hatena as a whole. Boy, did hatena love to play that song everywhere. There are a lot of other flipnotes that shaped the platform, far more than I could detail.

The flipnote hatena service would eventually shut down in 2013, and with the 3DS version to succeed it getting stuck in developmental hell to the point where online support internationally was cancelled, it ostensibly marked an end of an era. A time period that you really had to be there for in order to have truly appreciated it. Or so you thought!!! Not only does the excellent flipnote archive that I've been using to grab old examples still exist making virtually every previous noteworthy flipnote and creator still accessible in the present day, but also there exists the sudomemo service, which restores online flipnote functionality on the original app with just a simple DNS change in your DS online settings. Sure, the community is a bit smaller now than what it once was, but there are still people making stuff, the flipnote dreams are still alive. The fact I was able to watch several undertale animations on the same old DSi I had as a kid just feels like a time paradox, but it is indeed real and possible.

It's crazy that I can write so much about a simple animation program, but I think this little app is so well loved for a reason. I feel like everyone has their own personal experiences with Flipnote Studio/Hatena, so I wanted to share my own. The one thing that I won't share, though, were the flipnotes that kid me made and uploaded to the service. Nobody needs to see those and they will remain between me and God for as long as I draw breath. Then again, maybe I should make something new and post it to sudomemo some day, just for old times's sake.

Definitely not as cracked as I was hoping "dating party game by hudson soft" to be, but still pretty interesting nonetheless! It basically takes the concepts of stat/affinity/time management used in dating sims and puts it in a (comparatively) short competitive environment. You and 3 other lucky bachelors have 14 days to court the girl of your liking, and the first person to successfully confess their love and be accepted by any girl wins the game. Each day is split into 3 distinct times of day, and you basically choose where you want to go for each time of the day. There are items that can be used to cause shenanigans between other players and ruin their dates. Players have to manage a general looks and stamina stat by spending time staying home to bathe/rest instead of chasing girls. It's a bit of a handful to learn at first but once a few turns settle in things make a solid amount of sense.

My only problems are really from the games pacing and the cast of girls. The girls are pretty swagless all things considered, and the game kinda just railroads you down a particular girl (usually the first that you happen to bump into) to stay competing with the other players, personal feelings be damned. In my party of 3 there wasn't any particular character that got any real reaction out of us, which is kinda problem when the girls themselves are supposed to be the emotional motivators yanno? Each girl also isn't the most balanced, as I completely threw the game by going after a girl that barely talked and didn't follow any specific schedule. The game also definitely drags on a bit, a day takes about 10-20 minutes which makes a full 14 day run take several hours. My group got pretty exhausted by the end of the first week... Due to the dating simulatory nature of it, everyone's gotta do a lot of reading, which isn't necessarily something that everyone is gonna have the same attention span for unfortunately. Unless this game randomizes every girls personalities for every playthrough, I feel like this game would also absolutely favor those that play it more frequently as the girls generally have the same schedules which allows you to predict where to go, giving first timers a huge disadvantage. Lastly, there's the stereotypical ugly girl that functions as an FOE to be avoided at all costs, and while the game SAYS she targets whoever is in first place, I was in dead last the whole game and was stuck with her for THREE different days.

Overall it was okay. Definitely not as peak as I was expecting it to be, but still an interesting curiosity. I didn't even know this game got a full fan translation recently which actually allowed me to play this with my non-japanese-literate friends which was rad. That being said, if you want a more simple and fun party game based on the premise of being the biggest chick magnet, Koi Wa Balance on the satellaview is the way to go (and also miraculously fan-translated to english!)

Ah, yes. After almost 24 years on this earth, I have finally played a "Tou hou" video game. It's honestly hard to overstate the impact that this series has on the internet culture as a whole, and ZUN's choice of essentially putting his characters and IP into the true public domain has done wonders for the world. Honestly given my interest in older games and general weebshit, it's an honest to god wonder how it's taken me so long to actually play a game in this series.

It's a solid if not slightly frustrating time. I've heard this game be described as a breakout clone but it really doesn't play much like that all things considered. The main crux of the game comes from manipulating this yin-yang ball to either defeat enemies or overturn background tiles by either kicking or shooting it. The ball also has the potential to kill you if you touch it though, so make sure to time your inputs properly! The game is definitely simple to learn but hard to really master and get good at, which is something that I have a feeling will carry on to other games in the series. There are also a ton of secret techniques that can be done with certain key inputs when certain criteria are met, which honestly makes the game feel like it has a lot more depth than it initially lets on. That being said though I suck at the game so getting the ball to actually hit bosses was an absolute trial in frustration, ESPECIALLY with the makai final boss. Fighting that shit is like trying to play soccer while the entire US armed forces are on your ass. The fact that the game grades you upon completion and has the best endings locked behind 1CCs def gives me the impression that it's one of those games that is meant to be learned and mastered. I don't have that kind of time though, so bad endings and youtube it is!

Overall it def feels like an experimental one-man project, and I do mean that in a good way. The fact that this was all made by one dude as a doujin game is hella cool in its own right tbh. The mechanical complexity of something cool is here, even if the execution is a bit of a struggle to actually learn and overcome through. I'd imagine that ZUN would go on to hone his craft more with the sequels.

It was alright. More games need a game over goblin that smirks at your failures and flips you off whenever you complete a level. It's a pretty no-frills shmup with a few random absurdist enemies that caught me off guard a few times and gameplay that's all about manipulatin the surrounding options for both offensive and defensive purposes. It do have that Gradius problem where dying once basically fucks your entire run over, but the short overall run time of only 5 levels actually makes restarting not that painful. Overall a decent enough easier shmup.

its more ranma baby

This time around it's more of a 1 on 1 fighting game rather than the spartan X vibes of the first game or the digital comic vibes of the second game (that i have not played yet due to time but likely will eventually). The fighting is jank as to be kinda expected with masayas ranma games, but it works decently well enough I guess. It's not nearly as unbalanced as the first ranma PCE game that's for sure. The cutscenes also have a fair bit more work put into their production, likely due to usin the trusty super CD card. Not really too much else to say tbh. If ya like ranma and have mild jank tolerance then give it a go.

(also shoutouts to the dev team for adding sonic-CD-esque hidden content behind secret passwords, there's tons of weird stuff ranging from a photograph of some random dudes face and a gag animation where kunou breaks your TV to what i assume to be the art director of the game offering a mini gallery of robot ranma girls they drew. Always like it when games have those kinds of things in em. I made a thread showcasing the hidden content since I didn't find much else about it online )

hell yea, i finally got around to playing this

it's a short and sweet lil robo-battlin part-swappin action game. It certainly has those monster collecting genre vibes as it stars a cast of plucky elementary schoolers with their cool robots that they duel for sport; there are tournaments to compete in and a shady underground gang to mess things up. Definitely standard stuff, but comfy nonetheless. The game also runs really damn smoothly on the ol' N64. It ain't the smooth consistent 60 FPS of something like F-zero X or whatever, but it's usually in the 30 and above zone which is honestly an accomplishment on that hardware.

The actual mech combat is pretty cool too! It's like a 3D arena fighter where you got 4 different methods of attack as well as a jump and airdash. The game likes to constantly hammer into you that the ideal playstyle is to use all 4 attacks in conjunction with one another to box in your opponents movement and take them out that way, but I found there's definitely enough variety in parts and customization to suit all sorts of playstyles. The game also has a knockdown mechanic where mechs go into a downed state after taking a large enough hit depending on the mech, and when they get up they have a period of invincibility to back away from. It pretty much exists as a way to prevent infinites as the combo potential this game has is really busted. It do make battles have a more stop-and-go pace because of it, but what can ya do i guess. You can also obviously duel a friend in multiplayer with each player making a custom mech, and I'd imagine theres a solid amount of depth to be had against another human, though also I feel like there would definitely be a "best" combination if you were to develop an actual meta.

It's just an honest fun game from that experimental 5th generation of systems. I'm honestly surprised that it never got an official localization given how strapped for games the N64 library was and its popularity in the west. Especially given how it was at the peak of pokemania, I feel like this game could have been a huge cult classic of the N64 library had they brought it overseas. What is it with mech collecting/customizing games that always makes them remain obscure? Every time I play something like this, gotcha force, LBX, etc, I always think to myself "how didn't this catch on?" There is a fan translation which I used and the translation quality was okay. Sometimes the text would corrupt and be unreadable though so it's certainly not the BEST way to play the game, but it's better than nothing for all you english-only gamers out there. Definitely a fun time and I'd recommend checking it out if you can do so.

wtf was this shit lmfao

it's basically spartan X if it was kusoge. the hitboxes here are all sorts of fucked; Ranma has got the god foot in this shit. The air kick has a continuous hitbox that lasts as long as you hold the button down so jump kick to win the game baybee!!! there's also like a shinobi-esque timed double jump you can do that powers up your downwards jump kick just in case the regular jump kick wasn't already broken enough for ya. The balance of the game goes from infuriatingly impossible to trivially easy depending on whether or not you learn how to work the hitboxes in your favor, as bosses hit like trucks but also can go down in an instant if you jumpkick em the right way. It's just dumb, pure unadulterated kusoge. The last level is actually a pretty satisfying challenge despite the final boss being some classic BS. Would probably be a fun as hell game to speedrun given how busted it is. shoutouts to licensed shovelware bro they didn't give a FUCK

man...

I wanted to like this game a lot, due to both me being a reasonable enough fan of arcade dogfighting games as well as how much I admire factor 5s insane technical prowess, but shit man the balance is too off for me to really say I enjoyed myself here.

It really didn't feel like the vehicles were designed around the levels or vice versa, as each of the five main vehicles felt like they were more designed for air-to-ground combat rather than air-to-air, with maybe the exception of the V-wing? Each vehicles primary method of attack is the laser blaster cannon doohickeys, and the laser beams they shoot are slow and only shoot straight, and every vehicle except the speeder has an extremely limited supply of either static rockets or bombs as a secondary weapon. As someone used to games like Ace Combat, I was yearning for some homing missiles to actually pressure airborne enemies instead of being essentially locked to a guns-only run. Hitting moving targets was pretty much an absolute crapshoot in my run, which was kinda a problem given that's the core aspect of the gameplay. The speeder doesn't even get a secondary weapon, as it's stuck with the iconic AT-AT tripping harpoon. You actually can find upgrades for the vehicles to improve attack/defense parameters as well as getting actual homing missiles, but the game doesn't really tell you that the upgrades exist in the first place and they are quite well-hidden so it's easy to completely overlook things that make the game significantly more digestible.

On the topic of the levels themselves, things were quite inconsistent. Sometimes, a level would be quite straightforward and after a few tries of grasping the objective and routing things properly I could clear it, and sometimes the levels are marathon gauntlets from hell that took hours to get through. None of the levels have checkpoints, so it makes those longer levels all the more punishing if you die like 10 minutes into a run because that's 10 minutes you aren't mfin getting back, loser. Specific shoutouts to the level where you need to protect a whole ass city juggling different time-sensitive objectives in the mfin speeder where killing AT-ATs takes 7 centuries from needing to loop around the legs so many times. Or the many, many escort missions, particularly the one where you need to protect this random mfin ship as it slowly bumbles around four prisons collecting passengers for 10 minutes while you get pelted by TIE interceptors and SAM turrets the whole time. And let's not forget the penultimate second-to-last level where you need to destroy every single enemy unit on the map while the game just throws as much shit as it can at you, to the point where you spawn in right in front of an active homing missile cannon because fuck you I guess. Call it a skill issue or whatever but I just found this game absolutely aggravating to play through.

And that sucks! because this game does a lot of really cool things too! I really like the visuals, the fact that they were able to use the expansion pak to run the game at 480i without adding much slowdown is really impressive! There's a hefty amount of voice acting and the audio is really good due to factor 5s incredibly impressive audio compression on N64! The draw distance is really far and there's still a ton of detail in the worlds and lighting! There are tons of fun little cheat codes like the famous hidden naboo starfighter and the goofy flying car that replaces the V-wing! It has that feeling of being made by a small team that cared about what they were doing and had a decent amount of fun doing so, which pains me all the more to be filtered by it so much...

In all honesty if they put checkpoints in the longer levels and balanced the capabilities of the vehicles to more closely match what the missions demand for, this would be a banger for sure. Maybe there are mods for the PC version that do just that, I have no idea. I partly played this to hype myself up to play the sequels on gamecube, but after struggling through this game I'm def a bit weary to give those an earnest go... Maybe they will fix the problems this game had?

This game is pretty much the unfortunate result of not only delayed game localizations but localizing games with licenced content in general. This is the second american DDR game at a time when japan already had 6 main mixes, a best of mix, 2 club discs, and 3 dancing stage side-games. Instead of doing another US DDR1 best-hits style setlist, konamix opts instead to go solely for konami original music, not a single dancemania license is in sight here. On one hand it works out because there's already a large wealth of songs from the previous JPN games to pick from to make the setlist a very satiable 52 songs wide, but at the same time it feels like it's missing something thanks to no licenses.

The game also uses the engine and assets from DDR 4thmix which I definitely understand given that this was likely the slapdashiest of rush jobs to make another US DDR game and 5hmixes buttery smooth 60fps PS1 engine was only like 7 months prior to this games release, but it is certainly jarring to go back to the lower framerate. That being said though, there are 5thmix songs in this so they must have spent time backporting new songs to an older engine in some capacity.

It's a strange mix for sure and definitely a byproduct of circumstance, but it's still fun enough to go through. Would definitely have been solid enough to get a DDR fix for an american gamer that can't play the JPN mixes.

It was alright. There was a lot of handholding and WAY TOO MUCH PADDING to make it anywhere near the top of the zelda series, but it's certainly not the worst in the series. The focus on characters was super cool and they put a pretty substantial amount of effort into the cutscenes which was refreshing. I do think that forcing pretty much everything to be done in threes is kinda dumb tho ngl. Three main areas you have to visit 3 distinct times and bosses you have to fight 3 times, it def gets old quick.

Realistically the biggest problem the game had was with its pacing. The best zelda games imo have a good balance of overworld exploration with linear dungeoneering puzzle solving, as those two parts serve as breaks from one another. This game basically focuses on turning everything into linear dungeoneering puzzle solving and menial chores, and it makes it pretty exhausting to play through. The sky tries to serve the purpose of the overworld but really all it serves is a sidequest hub for skyloft stuff.

The motion controls weren't that bad tbh, though my wii remotes and motionpluses are a bit worse for wear so sometimes things didn't work but I don't even think that it was the games fault most of the time.

That being said, this game marks the end of my year-long zelda marathon. I wasn't able to get through the whole series like I had hoped, but honestly going from LttP to skyward sword including all the spinoffs (sans four swords) is a feat in its own methinks. It's been fun to actually experience this series firsthand, even though there's not much I feel like I can really say that hasn't already been said.

I've been a big fan of Harmonix pretty much since their inception, and now that they are stuck in the fortnite gulag I decided it was time to check out some of the things that they made that went right under my radar, with Fuser being one of those titles.

Harmonix games have always loved breaking music down to its individual stems, from frequency/amplitudes lane shifting to rock bands multiple instrument play. Fuser basically takes harmonix's fascination with stems to make an incredibly simple to use and fun mixing program. This is the REAL way to do "DJ hero". You get four tracks and can put any stem from up to 24 songs you select into them. They basically figured out a way to make a music sandbox game, which is insanely rad.

That being said, because of the open-ended freeform nature of the game, turning it into an actual game is insanely boring. The singleplayer campaign essentially forces you to check menial things off of a checklist within a given time, which kind of sucks the entire creative aspect of the game right out as you are forced to bend the mix to the games will and not necessarily your own. It also drags on far longer than I want, with the most generic cookie-cutter lookin mfers as NPCS. When I first showed my friends this game they thought it was fortnite, and ngl if that happens you know you've homogeonized your artstyle too far.

Despite the slog of a singleplayer, I've had way too much fun in freestyle mode to dislike this game. On PC, there's an entire treasure trove of custom music to install, and with mods this game becomes a 10/5 shitposting factory. I've spent so many nights DJing in VC with my friends as we all watch the mix flip-flop from the most rancid sounding trash to the freshest beats in the modern day and back again. The freestyle mode really is where the fun in the game lies, because there it's on YOU to determine how good you are mixing instead of the game. We've also made a decent song meta of what songs are universally OP in mashups, with jamiroqual's Canned Heat and the Black Eyed Peas' Let's Get It Started working no matter what whereas something like Bob-omb Battlefields' clown horns always bob-omb the entire vibe that the mix was going for. The doofy trumpets in Psy's new face are always fun to drop in when people least expect it, as is the iconic trash synth in Cbat (which surprisingly works more often than not).

It's absolutely something worth giving a try (if you know where to get it, the game has been delisted for a while), because there's really an endless amount of ways to mess around in this game, and everyone will mess around in a completely different way depending on their music tastes. Making stupid mashups has never been so streamlined and easy! Just don't touch the actual campaign with a 300 foot pole, download a complete save file or something if you want all the unlocks.

This is pretty much going to be a review of the .hack G.U. series as a whole, seeing as I've given each game in this compilation its own review on their own game page, and yeah despite the ratings on each of those games being higher than this I can wholeheartedly say that G.U. is significantly less than the sum of its parts. I wasn't the biggest fan of .hack R1, but after playing through this saga I really didn't realize how good I had it.

My biggest qualms with the .hack R1 series was mostly its hands-off approach to its plot, as the games were mostly one part to a greater whole so things didn't have to be very story-heavy as the greater plot can be experienced through the supplementary content like the .hack Sign anime or the manga/light novels/probably some drama cds in there somewhere too. I rated IMOQ quite low for that given I had only been playing one part in a greater whole at that point, and doing things that way felt really underwhelming. Doing things that way at the very least meant that the focus of R1 was on the overall setting and worldbuilding, as the different tales all told in various ways through the different media forms all take place in the same concrete fictional MMO, essentially making the mysteries behind said world the real meat of the series. After watching .hack sign, I was able to see this bigger picture more clearly and retroactively look back on R1 much more fondly than I did when I had only just played the games. This all serves as important context as for what G.U. tries to differentiate and evolve from, and most importantly, how it sucks!

G.U. forsakes having the world be the focus to instead focus on the characters. Both the game series and the tie-in anime (which I learned from my past mistakes and decided to watch simultaneously with playing) focus around the same particular group of characters, namely the main protagonist, Haseo, and Ovan, the man most closely connected to the grander mysteries of the plot. Pretty much everything that happens in any form of G.U. media centers around one of these two characters, and their relationships with other players in The World. On the good side of things, the more condensed narrative focus makes the games much more story-driven, and the unification of all forms of .hack media onto one plot makes things more focused. On the bad side of things, they made a teensy tiny oopsie and forgot to write any of the characters well! Which is certainly a problem when they are your brand new main focus!!!

I'm not gonna sugarcoat things, I thought that the characters were written horribly and had a difficult time caring about any of them. Haseo is an edgy gamer man that erratically changes from brooding edgelord to anti-heroic dogooder back to brooding edgelord, all while the plot tries its hardest to constantly remind me "haseo grew as a person throughout all the trials and tribulations he went through" when I can clearly see from the characters actions that he didn't grow shit. I am convinced that the writers have very interesting things to say about women, because every female character in this game fails the goddamn bechdel test. Characters like Atoli or Youko are for some reason head-over-heels infactuated with haseo despite him being like the literal most unlikeable mfer in history. This guy basically spends his time being self-centered and focused on solely his own goals, yet for some reason everyone is attracted to him??? Then there's Ovan, who spends 90% of his screentime just being mysterious for the sake of being mysterious, only for his overall motives to be quite underwhelming once the game finally pulls the curtains for his greater plans. Pretty much every other party member feels dully one-note and tropey. The writing for the whole games plot is just messy and boring, focusing solely on characters that feel more like NPCs than the actual meta-NPCs in the fake MMO.

As for the actual act of playing the game, even that is a bit of a downgrade from IMOQ. The same keyword system is in place, but gone are the overworlds, as now everything is a dungeon consisting of the most boring repeated hallways to slowly run through. Combat is now much more action-y, but the large amount of hitstun on enemies makes it incredibly easy to perform infinites on certain enemies and once you figure that out things become braindead as every encounter ends with the same result of you pushing the X button and sometimes even the R1 button the exact same way with no deviance or variation. Another thing to note is just how absolutely streamlined and linear everything is; dungeons are hallways, and while there's nothing like the virus core grinding in IMOQ here, at least the item farming gave a reason to integrate actual player freedom and exploration with the keyword system to find their own dungeons to grind through. Here, the game constantly tells you exactly where to go to do exactly what you need with no time for any form of deviation. Characters will just email you saying random shit like "hey haseo, we gotta do the big chicken hunt quest! see ya there!" and then you have to do that quest with that particular party member to progress, only then once that's done a different character will be like "im underlevelled, lets go to Σ flattened ballsacks remorse to level up a bit!" and then you have to go there and so on and so forth. The lack of player freedom plus the hallway-ass dungeons and braindead combat just make this series incredibly boring to play through. Hours feel four times as long when playing G.U., and while there IS a few side-quests to do, what's honestly the point when they are no different than the main stuff the game is trying to railroad you down anyways??? Apparently one of the cyberconnect2 USA developers mentioned how Last Recode actually nerfs the balance in order to weaken enemies and give more EXP in combat compared to the original in order to make the pacing of the game smoother and less grindy, which on one hand definitely doesn't solve the underlying problems, but on the other I can't imagine having to also level grind on top of all that sensory deprivation.

Overall, yeah. Individually each game isn't the worst in the series, but as a whole it's really not something I could recommend to anyone. If you really want to play .hack, just try playing IMOQ or watching sign. If either of those filter you then don't bother continuing. I've sunk over 50 hours between all 3 games and the tie-in anime and I definitely would have had a better time playing any other JRPG methinks. I wouldn't say G.U. has zero redeeming qualities, but the good parts are so few and far between that it's not worth the time and sanity investment. I still think that .hack as a concept is cool, and R1 actually is a very unique and cool vibe, I'm just relieved that I am now free of the G.U.-lag.

Being a 3-hour epilogue, this game doesn't really have the time to drag on like the previous G.U. games, so that definitely works in its favor. There's only like 5 dungeons here, you get a broken-ass new weapon that trivializes pretty much every enemy encounter, and it's basically all done to just get the whole gang back together for new interactions and one last adventure. Given that this is a bonus campaign included in the remasters of the first 3 games, I can't really hate it. It definitely would have gone way harder if I cared more about the characters, but sometimes that's just how things be.

also this game makes haseo x ovan gay marriage canon, that ALONE makes it the best volume in G.U.

When I saw this game brought up in "best racing games of all time" or hell even "best games of all time" lists, I thought it was exaggerated hyperbole. I thought that this game was likely a good racing game that people overhyped due to the fact that racing games aren't necessarily a genre that people really immerse themselves in. But now that I've played it, I can wholeheartedly say that no, it is not a bit, this shit owns.

So unlike Burnout 2, where your car was fueled by adrenaline, in this game your car is fueled by the blood of your rivals. Sure, you could (and still should!) get boost by driving dangerously, but the real way to earn speed is by ramming your enemies into anything that could turn them from functional race car to smoldering scrap heap. For every takedown, not only does it reward you with a full bar of boost meter, but each takedown multiplies your maximum amount of boost. Slamming into an opponent, watching them smash into a trillion pieces, then zooming away from the crime scene at a billion miles per hour with the boost that it earned just fills me with the most shit-eating-grin ass energy. Even if you are on the receiving end of a takedown, you can still control your midair wrecked car to try and take people out with you, and doing so respawns you with all the benefits of a regular takedown. Everything is engineered to turn races into hyperaggressive deathmatches between a few insane racers in a city trying as hard as they possibly can to kill each other. Absolute banger, a must-play whether you like racing games or not.

Oh, and the soundtrack is entirely made up of the highest-tier 2000s pop punk/alt rock complete with doofy radio station with the most goobery-ass host covering everything that goes on in the game. BASED.