So…I’ve been putting off this review for a while, it’s mainly because I’ve been afraid, afraid that I’m gonna fuck this review up somehow. But it’s time I face my fears and finally returned to review this game and finish the 90’s sonic games. When it comes to Sonic Adventure 2, I’ve always preferred the original, however I’ve had a slight soft spot for this game and that’s why it has a similar score to SA1. So let’s get into it and see what I can say about a very loved sonic game.

We have quite a few new characters, mainly shadow and rouge. The story is split into the hero and dark sides though they all culminate with the same end. Basically eggman finds that his grandad left him a secret weapon named shadow, who is a hedgehog just like sonic. So him and eggman decide to find all the chaos emerald to conquer the world, with rouge joining later as she secretly works for the government. Later it all culminates in the ark where we find out shadow was doing all this naughty shit because of a girl he used to know, named Maria, told him to help mankind yet he interpreted it differently. Basically getting it completely confused and almost completely obliterating Maria’s wishes. So him and sonic defeat the finalhazard and that’s the end of that for now. And there was a lot of piss on the moon.

In terms of gameplay, it’s similar-ish to sonic adventure 1 with a few very clear differences. The structure is much more linear and follows a straight path. Instead of getting to choose characters, you’ll simply go from one level where you play as someone like sonic and then move onto another with playing as knuckles or someone. After every level as well you are forced to be into the chao garden which I’ll talk about a little bit later. The level types as well are mainly inspired by sa1 or at least the better level types. The sonic levels and knuckle levels made it over and the gamma levels somehow made it through though a little modified to make it fit with tails and eggman’s levels.

The chao garden also makes a return. We have 3 gardens actually: the neutral garden, the hero garden, and the dark garden with the latter two being unlocked after raising a hero and dark chao. you basically just raise the chao like you did in the last game. Raise the insufferable, puny, disgusting, cute, adorable, funny, little guys.

The music is also absolutely brilliant. Crush 40 return to do their work on the game and this is probably the only part of the game which I believe completely outshines the last. The music is phenomenal in every single way. I did like how sa1’s ost did have neat callbacks to the older sonic games, especially sonic cd, but this soundtrack is just absolutely exceptional. If anyone hates city escape then you clearly are just hating for the sake of it.

Unfortunately, after sonic adventure 2 released, it was soon announced that the Dreamcast would be discontinued and Sega would end up becoming a third party publisher. So sonic adventure 2 ended up being the end of an era, one full of lots and lots of creativity and experimentation. Even though later games would also experiment I felt that it was a lot more grounded through the Sega genesis (mega drive) era to the Dreamcast era. So with that, it ends my talk on some of the main sonic games for now. But who knows, maybe I will talk about 06…nah.

Great story, decent characters, excellent music, chao return, how do you like that Obama?

When you think about bosses in video games, and you think about how video games translate to other mediums, bosses are one of those abstract elements that get confusing in translation. A boss, would presumably be some kind of side villain or obstacle on the journey to the destination in another story, but of course video games supplement you with way more than just one side antagonist or so usually. The dissonance here is that usually an antagonist of any kind is expected to have some kind of prominence, or power, or at the very least personality. They need to serve a purpose, and serve it well, and it's arguable video game bosses don't succeed at this. Rarely do they really activate the sensation you're "fighting" so much as the sensation you're just going through clear-cut scripted motions to get through them. Most bosses are sub-par, basically. Often they're only stressing one element and not the most important factors of being an engaging combatant; even in the best boss-driven games. Furi's success is completely natural then, because it's a neon anime-fight lightshow. You'd be struggling to convey how it blends genre but saying "it's how a kid imagines a swordfight" might just sum it up best. Flashy, snappy, fast-paced and constantly changing perspective, aggressor and methodology of attack. Jumping from swarms of bullets to rapid-fire melee quick-time events works out perfectly thanks to the general aesthetic and flow that makes it all feel natural. Bosses have linear phases, but they still move quite freely around the arena usually, and, using some tension built up during the fight, contextualize all their actual scripted phases perfectly. If anything, Furi should tell you that every game from now on focused around bosses should strive for these kinds of multi-phased monsters, and we should've known it since Seven Force. What Furi might not be able to tell other games, is to match its exceedingly strong degree of variety per-fight that sees you seamlessly jumping between everything cool in the book, which helps further differentiate every (already solid) phase of every (already solid) boss.

If you've ever felt disenchanted by the lackluster and untense sameyness and structure of boss fights in even the greatest of action games, then Furi is waiting for you with open arms.

Tekken 8 slaps, it's just that simple. The story mode was awesome even though it was really short, love majority of the soundtrack as well. I've never been hooked to a fighting game before and out of all the ones I've tried, this is the one I've enjoyed the most. It offers a variety of tools to help you improve which is nice because the learning curve is so crazy but they really nailed it for beginners like me. I almost forgot to mention the customization but it is REALLY good, people out here making their characters look like Drake, Leon S. Kennedy, Luffy etc. LOL

Anyway I have to wrap up the review here since I must hit the lab and practice more. Tekken 8 has been an absolute blast so far, hopefully I'll stick with it!

Totes feel seepy whenever I play this now, lol. Guess I'll come back...once more some day? I really liked what all I played of Dark Souls. I liked this game a lot more on the second playthrough, too! My first time around I rushed through on a strength-dex combo build that was awful to play as, but this time around I went full-dex and used my half-remembered first playthrough to inform my second playthrough. I loved a lot of it! Can't really follow the story again, as I suspected, but damn! What a lovely set of incredible aesthetics. I got up to the end of the DLC after constructing most of the final Boss Souls this time around, and it took nearly a hundred hours. Compare that to my 60 hour playthrough all the way through to the end of the game, and yeah, I think I really took my time and enjoyed it more this time. Dusk of Oolacile my beloved.

I have grown more attached to Shadowheart than I have to most people in my actual life and the fact that she's not real depresses me immensely.

Oh, the game? It's great!

The amount of ambition on display from Larian Studios here is absolutely staggering, to the point that it's actually surprising just how much of it pays off. The characters are all incredibly interesting, well-rounded and fantastically written and voice-acted. The gameplay kept me engaged for the most part, and despite my general dislike of turn-based action it was pretty easy for me to get to grips with it.

The story is great and there's enough side-quests off the beaten path that I feel like BG3 is well worth paying full price for. I went through the game at a fairly brisk pace and clocked up 85 hours in the end. If you were willing to explore different ways of playing the game (including the unique Dark Urge path) then you could easily lose hundreds of hours to it.

Sadly a few issues prevented me from giving BG3 full marks. The game's third act can be very overwhelming at first, and it can be difficult to know what to do and where to go without losing certain content. Some side quests feel unfinished, like Larian ran out of time before they could flesh them out properly. That's not to mention that a lot of the stories of your fellow companions, so beautifully developed in the first two acts, tend to fizzle out. Once you complete their personal quests they stop being the fully fleshed out characters they were and end up just being sorta... there.

There were also a few annoying bugs riddled throughout; characters sometimes being unable to jump, textures not loading properly or being stretchy, enemies taking almost a full minute to decide what they wanted to do in a turn. Nothing game-breaking but they added up.

I don't regret any of the time I spent playing this - in fact, as someone with absolutely no prior experience with anything D&D-related this has actually made me want to get into it more, whether that's through other video games or actually playing it with other people. Of course, for that I actually need to find some friends first...

P.S. I don’t care if the ‘Party Limit Begone’ mod is ‘cheating’, nothing feels better than running around the city with my merry band of ten adventurers. The easier combat is secondary to not having to miss out on any companion-specific dialogue with NPCs.

The very definition of a flaccid game. You COULD play the whole thing, but why would you? After a while, it's all kind of the same thing over and over again. Combat, repetitive as it is, can also feel limp and ineffectual. Making things worse, the aesthetic choices, so firmly rooted in 2008, are straight ass—super murky, very gray and brown and muted green, and plentiful edgy, ragged fonts.

Could probably be remade into something fun these days, with more of a focus on refining the actual structure and pacing of the game. Or you could just make it a "Krull" branded thing, if you wanted to (not sure why you would, but it does have a glaive).

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Replay, first since 2018. Really good but somewhat dull but kinda really good??? I think it’s difficult to remake Gen 1 nowadays (saying that as someone who played the OGs as a kid) because they’re highly simplistic compared to where the franchise has gone since then. These remakes’ greatest strength is they quicken the pacing somewhat via EXP Share+overworld random encounters+streamlining the catching process via GO mechanics. The Pokemon following is really nice too, and on a Switch OLED I think Let’s Go is a pretty game as well (makes S/V look extra embarassing in some ways by comparison).

On the other hand, it’s Gen 1, so it’s a pretty small/linear map, not many Pokemon (in some ways a strength though) and the trainer encounters get somewhat dull. The forced motion controls are also a bit much. Still, nice nostalgia trip. Didn’t mind it!

When I finished Max Payne 1&2 back in 2021, I enjoyed them a lot and consider them among the best third-person shooters I've ever played. I was planning to play Max Payne 3 shortly thereafter, but upon seeing a gameplay video, I was kind of hesitant, but kept it in the back of my mind. Now, I've finished it and despite the game's positives slightly outweighing the negatives, a part of me wishes I had put it off indefinitely.

Max Payne 3 takes a sharp detour and completely replaces the noir style from the previous two games with far more vibrant visuals. There is great attention to detail and good set pieces, but the presentation is very GTA-esque and there was always that underlying feeling I was playing a GTA spin-off, rather than a Max Payne game.

Comic panels with some minor exceptions are done away with, which would typically be alright. You know, they were an essential part of what made the first two games special, but with all of the fancy hardware advancement that happened between the second game and this, Max could get some cool cutscenes to shine in.
They didn't handle it well in my opinion.
The cutscenes happen so often and for some of the smallest things (thought I realize a big chunck of those are masquerading as loading screens) that they become incredibly grating and ruin the pace.

The story is what it is. It largely ignores what happened in Max Payne 2 to work, because otherwise there would be no reason for the story to happen in the first place.
Max's one-liners sometimes hit the spot, but Sam Lake's absence is pretty apparent as a lot of lines end up sounding like cheap vulgar phrases or wannabe witty similes. The sophistication that made them so good is the first place is just not there.

Finally, the gameplay. It has it's moments, but it self-sabotages itself so often that it's just hard to enjoy for extended periods of time.
As already mentioned, the cutscenes ruin the pace and makes it far more difficult to just let the action flow. Not to mention the game likes taking away your weapons and replacing them with a pistol at least once every chapter.
At least the mechanics feels like the previous games. Bullet time is a joy to use.
You can run and gun, at least sometimes. Max isn't as sharp as he used to be in the previous games and moves kind of sluggishly now, so that kind of discourages you from going all guns blazing on your enemies as often as you'd like to.
For those who aren't used to the run and gun style there is also the cover system. Though I found that enemies can surround you and naturally have a far greater chance to hit you, so it's not a definitive way to play.

Overall, it's a decent shooter that still has that Max Payne essence in it (gameplay-wise) but it's also deeply flawed.