I mostly played this because the OST for the japanese version slaps really hard and I wanted to know what sim racing was all about since I'm mostly an arcade racer sort of guy. All in all, I'd say this was pretty eye-opening to play. More realism and less arcade wackiness means that taking corners involves properly balancing your car and not just ripping through drifts like an insane person. While I personally still believe that arcade racers are more entertaining due to their focus on fun over realism, I definitely still think that both genres have their place in the gamer world with their own unique personal appeals. I enjoyed what I played, and would definitely recommend it to anyone with a PS1 lying around that likes cars.

Hm. This game is certainly a game, all right. It definitely doesn't feel like it knows what it particularly wants to be. It's like they were originally going to make a more exploratory resident evil-esque survival horror game, but then at some point decided to not do that and instead make a linear room-based action/puzzle game...? The main mansion the game takes place in is designed in an interconnected way much like in resident evil, but you can only go through the doors the game wants you to go through, so it's extremely linear, which is strange because 3 of the 5 chapters are macguffin hunts that you would THINK would allow you to collect in any order you want, but in actuality it just funnels you through its predetermined path. The combat is very slow, as if it is designed to be a last resort that can only attack one character at a time, yet the game is full of enemy clear rooms where the game dumps tons of enemies on you with little to no support. Most of the levels feel more like puzzles while you figure out how to cheese whatever random arbitrary objective the game wants you to do, and somehow succeed. The game also sets your health for EVERY ROOM, which makes conserving health absolutely pointless. All of this culminates in a game that is really disjointed and I can't really reccomend. It has the signature Rare charm to it, for sure (especially in the sound department), but unless you are a really big fan of the company I would say to avoid this one.

Ayo this game goes kinda hard tho. Creature collecting real time arena fightin action. The voice acting is so horrible it loops around and becomes amazing. The gameplay can get a bit repetitive and the movesets for each gotcha borg aren't very vast but making your own team of little dudes and fighting other teams of little dudes is awesome. If I had this as a kid it would be my favorite thing ever, and the thought of doing multiplayer battles with other people using their own save files sounds like the coolest thing ever. As always, don't pay the rediculous prices this goes for aftermarket. Give this game a shot though, I need more trading partners.

This game certainly has a legendary status for not only being a catalyst of console FPS games but also for its phenomenal multiplayer where its just plain fun to blast away at your friends and scream at em for screenpeeking and picking oddjob. I had owned this game for years and not even touched the singleplayer mode, so I finally got around to doing the actual campaign and its aight. The controls take some time to get used to for sure but once i got over the learning curve it was very smooth sailing. I think my main gripe with the game is just that I don't know how the game wanted me to play the whole time. Since the game was initially designed to be a gallery shooter before the devs switched to an FPS, the levels are designed with a lot of "choke points" where there are a lot of enemies and one way to proceed. Naturally, especially considering this game is a james bond game, the correct move would be to cautiously take out all the enemies before proceeding to the next area. Unfortunately the game continues to spawn enemies infinitely if you decide to stay in one spot too long, so sometimes a better play would be to throw caution to the wind and just run through everyone blasting them like its doom. Due to the fact that it's hard to tell how the game wants you to play for each level plus the fact that each level is rather open and nonlinear, allowing the player to get lost frequently, it all blends together to create a rather unbalanced gameplay experience. The soundtrack is good, and graphically the environments are very nice looking on the N64, with far draw distances for the system and not too much slowdown. Once again, the multiplayer is some of the most fun you can have on the N64. All in all, great with friends, eh by yourself.

Okay beatemup that has a bit of a strange control. Combos feel "sticky" if that makes any sense, as stunlock is huge and you can't really move while doing long attack combos. There's also some fun cheese like how the running jump slash is the strongest attack and how AI enemies can fall off pits to their death easily. It's also the perfect length, ending right before real boredom sets in and gives just the right amount of lives and continues to make things tense near the end. The real question is: Why the heck does sega love to put this in like literally EVERY mega drive compilation?

goofy game. Definitely rough around a lot of edges in terms of difficulty, level design, and making each playable character equally usable, but all the roughness is made up from in charm and presentation. The game looks great, has a good OST, and doesn't take itself too seriously. The levels can be really long and mazelike which can be annoying, especially given some of their difficulty. I think the flaws can be mitigated significantly if you have another player to play with, as this game is entirely co-op, but I had to go through it solo. For my first goemon game, it definitely had me wanting to play more in the series, so mission accomplished.

Yeah this game is a divisive one for sure, and let me set for the record here that I think this games okay, it just wasn't my cup of tea. To put things bluntly, this game is HARD. Extremely hard. If you do not enjoy harsh challenges in your video games, please stay as far away from this game as humanly possible. That being said, while the game is hard it's not exactly punishing, and with enough "gitting gud" you will eventually persevere. This game is designed entirely for the "git gud" type of crowd. The type of people that enjoy spending hundreds of hours learning the various intricacies of a deep and complex combat system and all the various different scenerios the game throws at you. The type of people that love to challenge themselves and master a game until they can complete it flawlessly. If you are that type of player, God Hand will give you enough content to last you years, or hell maybe even decades. The skill ceiling is incredibly high, the game adapts its difficulty to fit your skill level so you will always be struggling, and the combat is focused and responsive enough to allow the player to match the struggle if they are so skilled enough to do so. The main problem with this game is that I'm not that type of player, at least not for this kind of game. God Hand, to me personally, was just an endless struggle that frustrated me and had me wanting to just put it down several times. I didn't want to get good enough at the game to reach the highest difficulty levels or do some insane perfect run because I wasn't really having fun to begin with. While the challenge was fair, the controls worked surprisingly well despite all the many complaints about the tank controls that I've read, and the cutscenes and characters were definitely entertaining, the game just wasn't fun for me. When I finished this game I breathed a sigh of relief, as the game is done, I'm glad I gave it a playthrough, and I don't think I'll ever go back.

a skill issue, I guess

This is indeed that certified good stuff. Wacky fun rhythm game shenanigans with good ass early 2000s japanese colorful game vibes all around. Only real problem is a huge difficulty spike near the end but as someone who is good at rhythm games and prefers them to be spicy hot I didn't mind, even beat the thing on hard. If you aren't as good at rhythm games then maybe stick to the default difficulty and work ur way up. This game has big "it's a miracle this even left japan to begin with" vibes and i live for that kinda stuff. Deffo a hard rec, bitchin ass game.

Yeah idk about this one chief. I like the concept of gex and while some people find the character annoying (and i can kinda see where they are coming from with that), I personally think the lil gecko is really charming. However, what isn't charming is playing this game. It is structured like mario 64 where you collect a main mcguffin in order to progress to more and more levels, which is pretty solid design to start, and the level designs are solid enough. The real problem just comes in the camera. This game just does NOT have a cooperative camera at all, as it constantly moves around and gets stuck on level geometry and just overall doesn't show what it really should be showing. Couple that with the reasonably low framerate on playstation and you get a game that kinda gave me a headache while I was playing it. This is also the only platformer I have played where I genuinely had a hard time telling depth in the screen, so take what you will with that as well. The level themes are also all rather uninspired and generic, with both no reasonable landmarks in the levels plus the short draw distance which make the levels surprisingly easy to get lost in. All in all, the game has a solid foundation and charming characters, but the actual gameplay can be downright painful.