578 reviews liked by tangysphere


I love Half-Life 1, but up until this week I had never actually seen it through to the end. Am I a Hypocrite? Yes, but not because of that. I think Half Life 1 has a lot of peaks and valleys in terms of levels, but in all honesty I'd rather an excellent game which is occassionally bad than an overall ok or mediocre game; which incidentally gives away my opinion on its sequel.

The paradox of action games, is that they all live or die by their answer to one single question : "what happens when you're NOT shooting/stabbing/bludgeoning/rollerskating etc?". No great action game that I can think of can be ALL action ALL the time because it gets mind numbing. That doesn't mean that you need to load up your stylish action game with ancillary mechanics or a hybrid model until the store page can describe you as "action-adventure" but it means you need to think of something. RE4 to me is one of the most brilliant action games of all time precisely because it understood this : down time is important, in between harrowing, skin-of-your-teeth encounters with cultists and oddly accented spanish peasants there are quiet moments of both relieving and building back up the tension, scavenging for supplies, talking to the pirate merchant, a few odd puzzles.

Doom, the OG FPS (yeah yeah I know about Wolfenstein 3D but Doom was the real smash hit) knew this as well, for all its reputation would suggest, its not just an unending onslaught of cacodemons; there is hunting for secrets, an old id favourite and key hunting. Half Life kind of marks the evolutionary split in shooter design in this respect, both in the attempt at a new sort of immersive storytelling through following a single character without cutting away or through text dumps, and an emphasis on a more grounded take on similar material (i.e earth is invaded by fearsome creatures).

It owes a lot to its predecessors; one can hardly forget that its built on a heavily modified quake engine, but it goes for a decidedly different feel. It also answers the question mentioned at the beginning less with key card hunting or secrets, but with platforming sections and set pieces, as well as the odd puzzle and general ammo and health scavenging. There is an argument to be made, among those who would see the upcoming shift during 6th and 7th gen towards "realistic" shooters heralded by the likes of Halo and Medal of Honor as the death of the traditional subgenre now known as the "boomer shooter" until its eventual renaissance in the mid 2010s, that Half Life marks the turning point in that.

Spoilers for HL1 from here on out I guess, but c'mon, who hasnt played half life yet

Its kind of the missing link between those two currents, its both an attempt at realism, which starts with an unskippable non-combat section akin to most sci-fi B-Movies of old where 1 hour of scientists talking preceded any kind of monster/alien showing up, but you can bunny-hop through most of it. As much as silent protagonists seem to be out of fashion nowadays, it fit perfectly with the immersive narrative of Half-Life 1, where Gordon becomes an avatar of the player, both getting into the character of a scientist going to work at NOT area 51 but also how they react to the unfolding drama. Seeing the soldiers gunning down the scientists from my uninterrupted first person view was a lot more impactful that any amount of similar dramatic turning points in other games where they would have cut to a dramatic shot in a different aspect ration of Gordon looking shocked so you know to be shocked as well. Its half life 2 where this starts to become more incongruous, with a more fully characterised Gordon who apparently has seen the error of his ways and no longer shoots scientists in the head because its funny.

I suppose I should confess that the reason Half-Life 1's middle ground is appealing to me precisely because Im not much of a fan of its predecessors or successors. With both Doom and Quake I can appreciate their place in history but again, whenever the action stops in those I kind of lose interest.

Half Life 1 is definitely frontloaded in quality, which IMO is kind of common in games. I don't hate On a Rail like most people, and even Residue Processing I think is fine. Blast Pit is, well I respect the idea more than the execution, frankly. Whilst I consider Half Life to be a timeless classic, if there is one aspect that has aged horribly its the physics, ironic considering its follow-up being almost defined by its adoption of real time physics, for all of its faults, the havok engine is such an improvement upon the non-physics of pre-HL2 3D games (okay I know HL2 didn't invent physics engines). My kingdom for the stupid seesaw puzzles of half life 2 when the alternative is this system wherein pushing crates in place feels like trying to move a magnet across an ice rink by repelling it across the ground with an oppositely charged magnet. It also seems weird how much of an emphasis HL1 puts on precision platforming ( a certain infamous section in Surface Tension springs to mind ) when you're essentially piloting a Fridge on Rollerskates, which is great for combat as you bunnyhop around shooting at monsters in the face, but even the function to slowdown by holding shift still feels kinda programmed for a different game. Deus Ex has the same issue with its non-physics, and its also the one thing I don't like about it (well, that and its shit tutorial).

On this last and most recent playthrough, I finally decided to finish the game. I'd left a previous playthrough on surface tension but I made my way through the rest of the game including the infamous Xen. I wish I could sit here and join the seeming re-evaluation of Xen being "good, actually" but I think the haters are kind of right this time. Xen isn't awful, in particular though people are referring to the whole of the last part of the game set in the Xen portal world, I think the level called Xen is pretty alright. Gonarch's lair is godawful, however, a buggy, ill-conceived set piece boss fight of the worst kind. Interloper is okay, if a bit haphazard in its design, just sending an insane amount of enemies at you but also having the slow healing chambers at every step feels rushed as hell compared to the measured encounter design of the rest of the game, probably victim of the famously short development time of Xen. Nihilanth sucks, and I will take no argument against this point, its really bad.

The thing with Xen is, it almost works. Its weirdness and shitter level design arguably helps in making it feel more alien, less designed for a human to navigate it, but in practice it never really committs to this aspect enough, with the constant ammo drops around (left by previous scientists I know, still doesn't make it feel not cheap) and the health showers which heal you as well because reasons. And well, a lot of the times its not all that alien, the confusion arising less from the geiger inspired hive being made for other creatures, and moreso that the level design has communicated or implied a path forward through its structure, only to intend a different one. That bit with the holes opening intermittently in the ground springs to mind.
Aesthetically the design is great, with a combination of industrial and biologic flavour to the architecture.

The main issue though for Xen is that it feels like a climax for a different game. Through the unfolding drama of Half Life's Black Mesa incident involving government coverups, desperate escapes, scientists playing god etc. Xen doesn't really feel like a conclusion to all of that. Indeed, the game's ending, whilst a genius sequel-hook, doesn't answer much of anything. Intentionally-so, but Valve has pulled this bullshit so many times its hard to believe they'll ever provide any kind of narratively satisfying conclusion to a half life game ever (ironically, the shittest half life game Blue Shift is the only one which does this, with Barney getting to go home, although undermined by the knowledge that almost inmediately earth got invaded by an all powerful genocidal space empire). I haven't played Black Mesa, because a fan Half Life remake sounds dumb, but I have heard they make Xen last like twice as long, which seems like it would be torturous. For all my complaints I will say, Xen is mercifully short.

At the end of the day, Half Life's later half being not as good isn't really a problem for me, I'd rather have its peaks and valleys as opposed to overall ok games that I'll forget as soon as I play it. In a way, I'd argue Xen's questionable quality has helped HL1 more than hindered it, the flaws make the good aspects shine by contrast.

For many years I actually thought that Sonic the Hedgehog on the Master System was the same as the Mega Drive version only with 8-bit visuals. Not only is it a completely different game but it actually came out almost 6 months after the Mega Drive original.

There are some similarities, the opening stage is a version of Green Hill Zone (Complete with a nifty version of the level music) as are two others leaving 50% completely original locations. The general gameplay and structure of the game is also the same with several levels per each of the 6 zones followed by a fight with Robotnik and freeing the animals he captured as was the original game's premise.

The rest of the zones contained are different for both better and worse:

Zone 1 - Green hill - I like this zone, it's an easy going classic, there are reasons it or variations of it are normally starting zones
Zone 2 - Bridge - this is weirdly for a sonic game an auto scrolling zone. It kind of works though as this is a much slower paced platformer like it's Mega Drive counter part
Zone 3 - Jungle Zone - I have issues with this one listed below
Zone 4 - Labyrinth Zone - Another similar level from it's big brother, I like the underwater Sonic levels though I know I'm a minority there
Zone 5 - Scrap Brain Zone - So much better than it's big brothers version again, easier and less frustrating
Zone 6 - Sky Base Zone - I liked this level, had a great atmosphere

Of all the zones the only one I wasn't keen on was the Jungle zone. there is a section that's a bit tricky where you climb up a waterfall jumping on ledges and rocks. once the screen goes past a platform though it locks meaning if you try to jump back to it you instantly die even if it's a millimetre which is just kind of stupid. Other minor gameplay annoyances including how the rings work as the amount only matters for gaining extra lives. If sonic takes a hit he loses them all with one visible ring dropping you can't collect so essentially you only have the one hit to take regardless. The boss levels you don't have any rings at all though I kind of liked that as you had to learn the pattern and play skilfully. The bosses themselves aren't brutally hard though, especially to a seasoned Sonic player. Interestingly when you collect a bubble shield from a TV though it does transfer between levels so you can head into a boss with one as a possibility, I liked that.

There are Special Zones accessed through non boss stages when finishing with more than fifty rings as the only other use for them. This gives you the chance to get extra lives or continues by bouncing on springs to the end of the level in a time limit. There are no chaos emeralds here though, for a bit of a change they are actually hidden in the main levels requiring good jump control, using invincibility boxes to reach in spikes etc.

The game handles really well, the jumps and animations feel like a Sonic game should. The visuals and art design are the level of coloured and varied as I would expect, though the tiny enemy models are hilariously cute. The backgrounds are pretty static but Sonic's character model and animations are really well done. Interestingly this is actually the first game made by Ancient, the company formed by legendary composer Yuzo Koshiro. It was initially created to make this game specifically and it's Game Gear counter part before going on to later fame making Streets of rage and Beyond Oasis.

Overall I had a good time with this and the thing is I didn't expect to. It looks really nice for an 8-bit game, has a banger OST and plays well with some neat little ideas. Not everything works but overall it's a good little game.

+ Nice visuals and music.
+ Zones are fun and varied.
+ No ring bosses and emeralds on stages are different.

- Jungle Zone instant death isn't very well designed.
- Losing rings all at once is kind of lame.

Of the Mario Kart games I had played prior to this whole marathon I'm doing, Mario Kart Wii was the one I played the absolute least. I think the main reason for that is I got my wii in the latter half of 2010 and got this game for Christmas that year. However, next Christmas I got a 3DS and Mario Kart 7 and just never really went back to this one because the only time I was Mario Karting was on the school bus. Eventually 8 came out and that gave me even less of a reason to come back to this one. So it's been around 12 years since I last touched this game. As such, I gave this a 6 and thought it was just an average Mario Kart purely because I barely played it. Coming back to it in 2024 though, not only is it really great, it's my favorite Mario Kart I've played thus far in this marathon. I always thought I liked DS more overall since I had fonder memories with it but Wii is just more fun overall due to a couple things it did incredibly well.

The biggest and best thing Wii excelled at I think, is its new track selection. I honest to god don't think there's a single track I dislike. Maybe there's a couple tracks I think are just decent like Luigi Circuit or Mario Circuit but the track list is absolutely chock full of bangers. Mushroom Gorge, Toad's Factory, Coconut Mall, DK Summit, Wario's Gold Mine, Koopa Cape, Maple Treeway and this game's Rainbow Road. Those are just some of my absolute favorites but the rest are really good too. I know 7 and 8's original tracks already, and I've played through most of Double Dash's through other games in the series and also have seen the tracks that have not appeared in other games. With that said, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, Mario Kart Wii has the best selection of original courses out of every game in the series. The ratio of amazing/good courses is just too high for me not to claim that to be true. Either way, certainly a big reason this game is still a ton of fun to this day.

Something else this game did well was it's retro track selection. It may not be as good as 8's or even 7's for that matter, but it's leagues better than DS's I think. A big reason for that is half of the courses aren't from SNES or Super Circuit. And the ones that were, are a lot better this time around. Same with the Double Dash picks, Peach Beach is meh but Waluigi Stadium and DK mountain are awesome picks. The N64 picks are pretty solid too. Only one I think this game did dirty was DS. Peach Gardens and Delfino Square, while not my favorites from DS, were both pretty good. However, the other two courses are Yoshi Falls and Desert Hills which were some of my least favorites from DS. They could've picked some fan favorites like Waluigi Pinball or Airship Fortress but no, they picked some of the lamest courses. Hey, 7 actually had those two courses in its retro selection so I'll definitely be looking forward to them when I get to that game. Anyways, the retro selection could've been better but it's a big improvement from DS's selection.

The other big addition this game added was the trick system. Every Mario Kart after this one also has it too and there's a good reason why they've kept it ever since. It makes ramps that much more fun to drive off of, it's just super satisfying to shake the controller and see your kart do the most sick tricks in the air. Same with the half-pipe ramps which are an amazing addition as well. Honestly, they're usually slower than just driving if they're optional ones but courses like DK Pass or Bowser's Castle where they're pretty much mandatory (unless you have a mushroom) make those levels that much more fun to play and gives the game it's own identity since 8 did away with them (they are actually back in the Booster Courses but I haven't played those).

All this stuff is great and makes me enjoy this game a ton, but I do have a couple issues with this game that makes me like it less than 8 still. One of the biggest issues is the game's balancing. Another thing the game added was bikes which was huge. The developers must've had a huge hard on for them though as they're WAY better than any of the karts. The inside drift bikes especially are just too broken. So basically, there's two types of bikes. Outward drift and inward drift. Outward drift asks like a kart basically while inward drift makes it so as soon as you start to drift you can only drift sharply into the direction. Kinda hard to explain but if you've played the game you know. I remember hating inward drifting when I played this game all the way back in the day. Now though, I find inward drifting bikes to be a really fun and not nearly as annoying to use. However, like I said they're just too broken since you can cut corners insanely fast and also instead of getting a two stage mini turbo, you only get the one stage blue sparks but in turn you can perform a wheelie at any time by shaking the wiimote and that gives you a small speed boost. Because of all this, once I got the Mach Bike or Flame Runner, I just never used a kart or outside drift bike again just cuz there's no need to. 8 definitely fixed this cuz the balancing between the two is much better in that game.

A couple other issues I had was the item frequency and the battle mode being poor. The items can be super obnoxious in this game at times. I really don't know why but it's just super easy to get spammed with blue shells when in first. There were a couple games where I'd be hit by a blue shell like 7 times in one game. And plenty of times where I'd be hit by one and then hit by lightning, this game is just insane when it comes to it's items and sometimes it's just not fun. The battle mode I also remember not being that great back in the day. The courses were solid and all but the issue was you're forced to be on teams and cannot ever have it be a free for all. This is just lame and while it's not as bad as base 8's battle mode, it certainly isn't that far off. Also I was gonna say the bloom can really make the game look ugly or weird at times but honestly I got used to it pretty quickly and don't have much of an issue with it like I once thought. Still think Double Dash looks better than this game especially since some of the character models still aren't that great looking (not nearly as mad as DS tho).

I was also gonna say how it stinks to unlock every character because a couple of them require you to get a star or more on every cup(or just play and absurd amount of races) and the way to get star rank is a little weird in this game but I was actually able to do it in the end. Got one star or higher in 50, 100 and 150cc as well as unlocking every expert ghost time trial so I was able to unlock every character. Didn't feel like doing mirror mode though so I didn't get every kart but I feel pretty satisfied with what I did. Never unlocked a lot of stuff in this game back then when I played so it felt good to finally do so.

Overall, while I had some minor issues, this was easily the best Mario Kart game I've played thus far in this marathon. I'm super happy I redeemed myself with this game because a ton of my friends love it and I can finally see why they do. Really wish I played this more with my buds back in the day haha, ah well. Next up is Mario Kart 7 so look forward to that soon!

Taiji

2022

I am thoroughly baffled at the amateurish puzzle design, map and general lack of polish on this title. It could have been pretty good since the puzzle design is pretty good sometimes but this is sorely missing a TON of polish

I have not 100% finished it but I'm done with 7/9 "worlds" and the "ending". While a fair few puzzles are intriguing and genuine thinkers, the variance between "baby block easy" and "what is even going on" is wild and unhinged. There's whole areas dedicated to childish, incredibly straightforward puzzles that barely take any time (ruins, graveyard and orchard). But then some areas have some true head scratchers (garden and half of mansion) and you're left wondering where the balance is in all this. I also found it incredibly annoying to get around the world. There's no permanent map so many times I just run in random directions with a vague idea of where to go. The placement of the teleport stones is utterly baffling and none, save one, are situated inside the puzzle areas they're supposed to represent with most of them being either just outside the area or in some arcane location that you have to dig yourself out of every time you go there making the fast travel system utterly pointless. The map being the way it is also means that you will end up at the very end of a puzzle sequence without any preamble as to how to solve it which means you will have to go out of your way to find the "teaching" moment that tells you what the puzzle even means.

The puzzles are pretty fun in some of the areas (mine, mill and the shrine) which saves it for me. The game is also mercifully short and the whole map is pretty small so even if you're lost, going from one end to the other barely takes a minute which is a saving grace. While I don't feel I wasted my time, I don't think this was particularly good.

Developers have long since exhausted the trope of "child trapped in a scary world," yet despite that, Murasaki Baby remains compelling in a way that none of its competition ever was. Simply put, it quite literally puts the child's fate at the player's fingertips. Your goal is to ferry a young girl across screens of hazards by manipulating hazards using both the Vita's front touchscreen and the back touchscreen to cycle through various backgrounds unlocked by popping colored balloons. I find the Ico comparisons to be on-point, as the player must physically guide the girl by the hand via holding and dragging on the touch-screen, taking care not to stretch her arm too far lest she stumble and fall. While the game isn't mechanically complex or challenging, it nevertheless constantly engages the player by gradually introducing more elements that require the player to micromanage dragging the girl and the balloon out of harm's way and switching/tapping the background to progress. The best example of this occurs during the final stretch of the game; after another character pops a hole in the girl's balloon, the player must juggle dragging the girl around, tapping the green background to repeatedly pump air into the leaking balloon, and switching/tapping additional colored backgrounds to flip the stage with the Vita's gyro controls and powering moving platforms with electricity. Though the path forward remains clear, the game demands a strong degree of attention and precision to quickly recognize and solve the game's many puzzles while building the bond between the girl and the player.

Murasaki Baby has unfortunately been more or less forgotten by the public. A slew of technical issues does hold the game back somewhat, as others have reported that saving sometimes breaks down in the middle of playthroughs and a few more (myself included) have experienced crashes. If I really had to nitpick, the game also could have done a bit more integrating all of the Vita's control functionalities into the gameplay (unlike say, Tearaway), as the face buttons/triggers/cameras are never used and the joysticks are used for exactly one exclusive segment outside of the menu screen. While I do feel as if the game was fairly short (about an hour and a half) and wrapped up just when I was beginning to feel a bit more pressured, I'm still glad that I got to try another overlooked title that showed real promise of how far a game could utilize controls to create an emotional and completely new experience. Until the day Astro's Playroom gets a follow-up, I suppose we'll just have to dream of a world where Sony invested wholeheartedly into its hardware and the Vita was seen as more than just a glorified control gimmick.

Remarkable game that was a perfect fit on the Wii U. The Gamepad was perfect for making custom courses. A lot of what this game lacked, they fixed in the Switch version. It's a shame that the Switch version didn't feel as fun or easy to make levels on and never really felt like it took off.

The joy of hectic co-op missions - where you're just as likely to die to a friendly mortar as an enemy rocket - is only stifled by a progression model that becomes punitive in the late game and the ludicrous frequency of glitches, the latter of which is mostly confined to the downtime between games. You are just as likely to run into an enormous bug in the missions as you are in the menus. With no glitches, though, it's a great game. The developers deserve a ton of praise for nailing the actual experience of playing at any given moment. Guns and explosions sound great, and all the things that could be a real nuisance in a game like this are balanced so well that they're never a concern - guns have just enough recoil to make it worth some attention, ammo and stamina feel plentiful as long as you're being somewhat mindful, you get the idea. When combined with the number of stratagems (providing airstrikes, additional equipment, and turrets from the sky) and equipment options, you can easily drop into a mission with a loadout that ensures you will never ever have to think about ammo, or about watching your back, or about dealing with heavily-armored enemies.

The difficulty, though, ramps up pretty steadily until you're constantly bottoming out on your "plentiful" ammo and stamina, with the cooldowns on those airstrikes becoming excruciatingly long despite the fact that they never actually changed. In terms of the actual effect this has on team strategy and camaraderie, it's up there with the best - it's hard to mind that your pal's airstrike nearly killed you when it saved you from five other things competing for the honor. A teammate finding the time to call in a much-needed resupply as everything is going to shit will make them your real-life hero.

Comparing this to similar shooters will undoubtedly let some folks down as the smaller (but still important) differences in strategic flavor between games can be a turn-off. For one thing, the game is very quick to throw out the periodic lulls in the action that are common in games like L4D, PD2, and DRG - unlock the first of 6 new difficulty levels and you'll find that lingering slightly too long in a level can put you in a situation where enemies are permanently spawning faster than you can kill them as your team starts hemorrhaging their limited revives. Helldivers is also rather generous in that all of your stratagems are very good as long as you actually tailor them to the situation, but part of the cost is that you have to immobilize yourself and enter between 3 and 9 directional inputs without making a mistake, and then throw a beacon that actually places the thing. This is how you call in the extraction shuttle, this is how you summon more ammo, this is how your friends are telling you to revive them as you dive into a crater with rockets flying past your head. Some people are going to hate this more than their actual job, I think it's fantastic. Part of the fantasy is becoming so good at entering these codes that you barely have to stop moving at all to get the entire team back in action, and finding these small windows to call in support contributes strongly to the impression of constant enemy pressure, but also to the satisfaction of actually pulling it off once the mission's over.

With a full squad, there are 4 different perspectives on a mission that all share the broad strokes but each of which has different details. A teammate's attempt to save one of your comrades from being maimed by a building-sized bug may not notice that they just gave you a haircut with a ricocheted autocannon projectile. A dead teammate who checks their phone for texts likely didn't see that the effort to bring them back involved a creatively used stim, a head-first dive off a cliff, and a respawn beacon tossed over a crowd of enemies as you draw the horde away from them. The team chuckles at the idea of throwing down a minefield behind you to cover your tracks, but only the player who deploys it will notice that they've killed an entire enemy dropship without firing a shot. A teammate operating the terminal at one of the objectives can't tell that your efforts to cover them involve frantically switching guns as you mag-dump at a horde of silhouettes through thick, black smoke. Everyone completed the same mission, but there's still plenty of clever and hilarious details to discuss once you arrive back at the destroyer. Including the other consequences of that minefield.

Back in the 2000's there was a trend of making games dark and edgy. Give us all the bad boys... Give us all the darkness and black clothing and indulgently gory combat... Don't forget the nu metal! We revel in this stuff! Now for the crown jewel... add in extra misogy.... OH WAIT NO STOP STOP DON'T PUT THAT IN THERE!!!

Bug!

1995

Bug, we're less than a week away from the release of your new movie, the biggest movie of your career. Something that could possibly catapult you to become Sega's mascot for their newest console, how are you fe-

The Bug suddenly throws his hand in front of the interviewer's face to stop them as he basks in the cheering of his adoring fans

....."Finally..... The Bug has come back to Miasmi!"

Crowd roars with thunderous cheering

"Well, The Bug is here. The biggest breakout star of the next generation. The Bug has finished his latest movie, his latest movie that will sweep the entire nation and launch the Sega Saturn to peaks not known by bugkind, bugkind that will remember to shout The Bug's name unlike our moronic interviewer here. Hollywood can hardly contain their panties at the thought of The Bug or his lovely singing voice. The Bug however, hears doubt. Doubt from his usual critics who can't handle going only north, south, east, or west of their fat monkey asses. He hears doubt that The Bug can carry such an illustrious task as to lead the charge and take the fight to the Sony Playstation and kick it's sorry grey bandicoot-lovin' ass. They doubt the greatness of the Sega Away Team, and simply call them the "Sega Buffet Team". They doubt the words of Stephen Hillenburg, Steven Gielberg or whatever that jabroni's name is. Interviewer, do you know what their name is?"

It's Ste-

"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THEIR NAME IS!"

Crowd cheers and chants "BUG! BUG! BUG!"

"The Bug says this. The Bug doesn't need validation. The Bug doesn't need approval by crybabies who don't know how to move on a simple four-way grid, and The Bug sure as hell don't need to hear comparisons of him to some jabroni named... "Gex"?! Who in the blue hedgehog hell is that?! He is nothing, The Bug's cellphone rang up. It was nothing, they said they knew him. He's probably eating Chex with a big glass of milk, all while crying about his ex at his mama's house. They're over here shoving chicken mcnuggets straight up their ass while yelling "tail time". Why don't you give The Bug a huge favor, and whip yourself up a nice big glass of "shut up, bitch" juice?! If that tongue-tied D-lister has a problem with The Bug calling it as he sees it, then The Bug can personally give him directions to the Smackdown Roach Hotel. The Bug is gonna take him down Know Your Role Boulevard, The Bug is gonna hang that right at Jabroni Drive. The Bug's gonna take off his size two-and-three quarters boot, he's gonna shine it up real nice, turn that sum-bitch sideways and stick it straight up his chicken-lovin' candy ass!!"

Grabs the mic from interviewer

"IF YA SMELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLELELELOW! WHAT THE BUG IS COOKIN."

cue theme music

Issue 13 of the Official UK PS2 Magazine, published November 2001, came with a demo disk containing a handful of levels from the then soon-to-be-released Klonoa 2. Playing this demo tens of times as a wean would be my only exposure to Klonoa 2 for nearly 23 years. Despite Klonoa 1 being a childhood favourite, and a formative cornerstone that had no doubt informed my tastes and passion for videogames; I only managed to get around to Klonoa 2 proper earlier today. I’d have gotten around to it sooner, were it not for the fact that Klonoa 2 was one of a few outlier cases of games that emulated horribly on PCSX2. Fugged to the nines until relatively recent revamps in compatibility were instated. Aptly enough, it was so surreal playing the levels from the demo once again - it all came flooding back like fleeting memories returning to me from a dream fighting to be recalled.

Soberingly, I don’t think I’m anywhere near as red hot on this game as I still am with Klonoa 1. Perhaps K2 had spent too long being gassed up, cooking and stirring in my head as an elusive cryptid. On many fundamental levels I think this is absolutely beautiful work. Demonstrating incredible emotional maturity in its final hours of the narrative representative of a slightly aged Klonoa, through heartfelt writing and vocal performances. A soundtrack brimming with disparate ideas and delivering them w/ confidence, grappling a wide array of influences and energies. For such an early PS2 game, these cutscenes are composited so brilliantly, giving characters illustrative frames to act in, staging the environments in striking ways… we still get things like this wrong!! I particularly love how the camera would move during boss fights, not only tracking the boss’ movements but also working to sell their scale and let them act on the stage! Incredible level design too, making great use of unique stage quirks to impose puzzle-like ordeals - the colour changing enemy was an enlightened addition. Klonoa 2 is the proud owner of an amazing final level, too - a true sum of all of it’s works with stellar level design, and thoughtful use of music and visuals.

I’m less keen on how weak a handful of the stages in the game are, both visually and in terms of level design. I’m even less keen on the repetition the game will impose on you, it’s not enough that they’ll re-use levels at certain points; you’d also need to run a few laps around some levels as you collect keys/activate elevators and such. It’s a bit more draining than it’s necessarily worth, in my humble, made worse due to the fact that levels in this game are wildly long and can be a bit plain. If I had to be brutally honest, I think Klonoa 1 does a better job at conceptualising its levels around its many disparate worlds, wrapping around and winding between the background geometry in a way that makes it all the more satisfying to explore. It would be nice if Klonoa himself had more of an active role in the story than an optimistic errand boy. It stands in stark contrast to the first Klonoa game where he’s incredibly emotionally invested in the proceedings, but I’m sure the plan here was to demonstrate that he’s an older and wiser character this time around, more clear on his Unico-like role in life and letting the world speak for itself. There’s tremendous merit to that and I can’t help but feel more of a relation to a Klonoa who isn’t thrashing out at the world when playtime is over, but I’m a theatre kid at heart I suppose oh god.

Admittedly I played Klonoa 2 in a bit of a goofy way, where I'd finish a level, and then skim a longplay of the same level from the 2022 remaster for comparison. I can only be honest here, but I think both of them have merit! The remaster fucks up the vibes in key locations with awful colour choices, blown out bloom and weird fullbright lighting. The level in sheer darkness, necessitating you to use a limited light resource to be able to see the geometry is ruined in the remaster because it’s already so well lit you don’t even need the light spirits! But I think the additions to the geometry and character models made in the remaster are really well considered, fleshing out the world enough for them to feel closer to realisation without diminishing their overt dream-like quality. My annoying brainwyrms are expertly trained to hate the aesthetic haemorrhaging that occurs from changes and concessions these remasters tend to make, but my ideal Klonoa 2 sits somewhere between the two versions..... (I want to know what the remaster changed the weird Full Metal Jacket cypher into)