this feels like the starfox adventures of danganronpa not just because of the radically different gameplay, but also in terms of just how much wasted potential there is in terms of story and worldbuilding possibilities.

also the weird malegazey shit (also child abuse being a key part of the narrative themes) just makes this incredibly hard to recommend, even among the other danganronpa games. yeah, seeing the friendship develop between komaru and toko is nice, and the warriors of hope are interesting characters esp as an antagonist faction, but if you dropped this at any point (especially after chapter 3), i would not blame you.

kodaka, i am taking custody of the kids, and that includes monaca.

not my favorite of the ps1 spyro trilogy because i'm an unabashed spyro1 enjoyer, but ripto's rage is still a great time. it's kinda like crash2 in the sense of "it does a great job at iterating upon the formula of the first game while having it's own uniqueness, without having the gimmick bloat of the third game".

unfortunately a la ratchet going commando, doesn't get the full five stars due to far too many bullshit orb challenges for my liking. everyone memes about trouble with the trolley, but shit like the alchemist escort and the crystal popcorn challenges are worse. top worst challenge goes to the spark plug thieves btw!

also, i find it really funny that despite the game being called "ripto's rage" (in the US at least), ripto doesn't really do much outside of kick people out of castles and change flags. none of the enemies in the game are even related to him in any way either, he's only got crush and gulp as his minions and that's it. i get he does more in the later games and even has minions in enter the dragonfly of all things, but c'mon, the sorceress only appears in one game and she felt like more of a present threat in her game than ripto does in his debut game.

after watching several balan streams, i tried playing this on ryujinx (look man i refuse to give daddy yuji any bail money). on top of the game just feeling terrible to play, the first boss had so many graphical and camera issues going on (admittedly a ryujinx issue and not a game issue) that i literally could not beat him. i quit and promptly deleted the game off my hard drive just to spare any further headaches.

"Well, that's your fault for trying to illegally emulate a copy of the worst version when you could've bought a legal copy the PC version!" okay then jackass, give me the money for it

the only thing stopping me from giving this half a star out of five is that naoto ohshima's designs still whip ass (you #thankyouyujinaka fuckers owe him a huge apology), and frankly i genuinely do not think this game is as bad as bubsy 3d. balan is one of the most interesting kusoge out there, but at the end of the day it is still kusoge.

i have zero respect for yuji naka.

EDIT: so as it turns out, ryujinx's compatibility lists balan as "playable"; i assume the issues i had were because i didn't install the day-1 patch for it.

my point still stands about this game being awful though. whether i'll go experience the full extent of the bad is another matter entirely.

playing the first ratchet&clank again after sinking so many hours into the other games, this feels like a totally different beast compared to the later games in the series. not even meaning the whole expanded (and weirdly handled) lore and epic cinematic angle the more modern games went for, i mean even compared to Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal, R&C1 feels pretty different just in how it plays.

while the games after R&C1 would be more of "shooter with platformer elements", R&C1 itself feels more "platformer with shooter elements". yeah, obvious difference is that there's no strafe, but the game in general just feels more slower-paced than the later titles. weapons feel more like tools instead of solely a means to blast enemies, and you end up figuring out which weapons are best for which stages/enemies. the health system also makes things more challenging; all enemies take away a single sphere of health, but the amount of spheres you have (8 at max) gives combat a lot more of a risky venture, especially if you're just going to do a wrench-only run. ratchet can't rely on armor, he's only got clank, his weapons, and his natural lombax agility.

doesn't mean R&C1 is "bad" by any stretch, though it is weird to come back to after being so used to the later games. and i'm gonna be real, i don't think mikey kelley ratchet is as mean as people make him out to be; definitely a jerk to clank at times, but the guy nearly got stuck in a deathtrap because clank blindly trusted people, give him a little slack.

that being said, R&C1 isn't without its shortcomings. wasn't a big fan of hoverboarding (especially since the skillpoints related to it were nightmarish), flying segments are pretty dull, and honestly the whole game itself can be really merciless at times with the scarce checkpoints it gives. though the top offender goes to clank's slow-ass gameplay, and it took until the ps3 era for clank's areas to not feel like a complete slog.

still a fun time overall, and the presentation, music, writing, and visuals still stand proud alongside the rest of the series. okay maybe this game has a leg up on the later games' writing. look, i'm still iffy on the whole direction of making ratchet "the super special last of his kind" thing. let the guy just be a lil mechanic who likes guns, that's what i know him best as.

also tesla claw goated

i haven't played a modern mainline pokemon game since X and the last pokemon game i ever beat in full (and sank a lot of hours into) was emerald. gen 6 was the point where i basically fell out of pokemon because i felt like the formula just wasn't being shaken up enough for me to keep interest, even with sun/moon and sword/shield trying their best.

but dang, they took a gamble with scarlet esp with the rushed dev time, and even with a pokemon game destined to print money regardless, there's a whole lot that caught my interest in the release months enough for me to actually WANT a copy.

the open world isn't visually great, but it's a blast to explore with your bike lizard. not too fussed about the open world not scaling since i just approached it like morrowind in the case of "maybe don't come here unless you're properly prepared". like dang, i actually had a use for pokedolls this time around!

picnics are fun, autobattling is handy, story's fantastic for once, music goes hard, i'm bad at raids but they're fun, there's a whole lot of QOL stuff in terms of EV training and other stuff, but the big grab for me is tera types. teras feel like a drastic step up from the previous games in terms of gimmicks, since it doesn't just feel like "uhhhh pokemon/move but stronger" but actually has some interesting utility potential. you want a huge STAB bonus or a pure type change? maybe both? maybe neither but a different use? it's a fantastic game-changer which makes me angry that it's not going to be brought back for future gens.

obviously the game's not without it's flaws, but i'm sure everyone's brought up how the performance sucks and the stability ain't all that great. i'm just gonna say the "musou" segments for team star kinda suck, but at least the presentation for the bosses makes up for them. honestly the gyms are also pretty lacking, especially when compared to the FANTASTIC gym presentation in sw/sh. but sw/sh also didn't have a rapping gym leader with a dancing ghost dog, so that's one thing s/v has over sw/sh.

all in all, to me, scarlet and violet feel like coming home after a long break from pokemon. again, i haven't played a mainlike pokemon game in nearly a decade, but i sure wasn't expecting to sink as much time as i did, especially considering i never beat pokemon X back then. but man if this isn't a comfy time and i'm genuinely hype for future content for scarlet/violet.

man though can you imagine how even greater this game would be if gamefreak had an extra year of devtime on it

me, a fool: oh man it's been so long since i last played the original CTR and i haven't even touched it since nitro-fueled came out, is this going to hold up as well as it did decades ago?

also me, this time after humiliating oxide in glorious 240p: yeah this still holds up, no blue fire necessary.

hot air speedway still sucks

with the last two xpaks being mid (BFA) and terrible (SL), we were bound for a "good" one eventually. probably a little early to rate this, but so far i'm pleasantly surprised with what dragonflight's delivered so far, especially after the stinker that was shadowlands. getting a lot of vibes i haven't felt since legion and pandaria, let's hope that momentum's kept in later patches!

probably might rate this half a star higher once more content comes out (and i get a computer that's actually capable of dragonriding at a framerate above single digits).

2/12/2023 EDIT: still a bit early to rate higher but now that i've gotten a better computer, yeah dragonriding's a blast and the trading post is a cute addition even if i'm not a huge fan of battlepass-like systems.

overall a very good and solid expansion so far, probably might be on par with legion once more content comes out. only real flaw imo is that the primalists kinda suck as antags. oh boy i always wanted the twilight's hammer again but lamer

7/13/23 EDIT: extra half-star coz yeah i think at this point i can safely say this is probably the best modern wow xpak. not sure how many major patches till we reach the end of this xpak, but there's a lot to enjoy as there is atm, and i honestly cannot see blizzard topping this in the next xpak.

this is the only modern wow expansion. is it "warcraft" at this point? hard to really say at this point in all honesty. but dragonflight is something that wow hasn't been since legion, and that is fun.

2/27/24 EDIT: yeah even with the TWW announcement, i can't see blizz topping this. sucks that we aren't getting a 10.3, but i still stand by this being the best modern wow xpak. genuinely the most fun i've had with WoW since legion. :D

for a non-insomniac ratchet title, i'll give the devs some credit. High Impact Games did a solid job at adapting the "classic R&C" style and vibe to a portable system and having it look and play just as good as the prior PS2 games. shooter controls are a little clunky for the PSP, but it's still somehow leagues better than the ratchet trilogy ports on PSVita (where you use the rear touchpad to strafe instead of the dpad like here).

unfortunately Size Matters is still not as good as the mainline games. i can forgive the short length since this is ratchet's first go on a portable system, but even with that in mind, holy shit this game is kinda relentless in how difficult it is. just in terms of the main combat, you're going to have to spend a lot of time grinding if you want your weapons to have any impact beyond that of a wet paper towel. enemies can also down you in a matter of hits regardless of armor, especially on challenge mode runs. i don't even want to start with the side missions; i'm convinced that whoever designed those hoverboard challenges is never going to see the light of god.

also for as much as i criticize the direction of the future/modern games' story, size matter's story is. kind of really unhinged? and insomniac has apparently said this game is canon to R&C's lore despite not being IG-made? so yeah, a lot of the stuff here has some really weird implications in the grander scheme of things? um?

in spite of all it's flaws, i still can't give size matters a whole lot of flak for what it tried to accomplish. it did a solid job, and honestly dedicating the project to dan johnson (rest in peace) in the credits was really sweet. though considering this game's difficulty and the fact that HIG's website has a leaderboard of people who beat the game in hardcore mode (play through without losing a single life), gods do indeed walk among us and i am not one of them.