Pathetic excuse for a "deep narrative" this game dares to spit on the face of the millions of people who have violently resisted colonial oppression, prejudice, and labor exploitation. I really think whoever wrote this pile of shit needs to go read some books instead of sitting in their posh apartment spitting on the poors and whining about how if we use violence we are just as bad as the bad guys.

At least the gameplay is passable and the world design is good. I just can't get over the writing, narrative, and worldbuilding.

What a legendary clusterfuck of a game. Broken controls, textures that look unfinished, cursed music. Feels like the video game equivalent of "weirdly familiar" liminal images and I kind of love playing it as a result. There's a lot of genuinely great ideas here like all of the characters racing on foot with multiple branching paths (like how 2D sonic levels are designed). It was way too rushed to be executed well but I'd say what we got was a happy accident.


Good luck getting anyone to play multiplayer though lol

Once the credits started to roll I found I was pulling face like someone had just farted.

The writing in this is mostly quite good, the music and presentation is wonderful but the plot - I'm just not sure.

Without spoiling it, Backbone moves on from being "just a detective story" into some strange stuff and ends quite suddenly.
Not as sudden as being hit by a bus but that sort of sudden you feel when you trip on a curb and you know what's coming but time slows a second.

It was free as part of bundle on itch supporting Ukraine, so it has that in its favour.
There's a demo on steam which is the prologue and I'd say that it's worth playing to see and feel this game's world and presentation but it doesn't reveal what the game is or at least becomes so it doesn't do a good job there.

Maybe I need more time to sit and think about the game, the themes are interesting and as I said before writing, sound, graphics all of that is good but I feel like Backbone ends up being less than the some of its parts - at least that's how I feel while writing this.

This game was better when it was a tech demo you saw cool clips of on Twitter.

Pedro has a lot of cool ideas and mechanics, sometimes these feel as good as they should such as flinging a frying pan into the air to get ricochet kills off but too often does it feel floaty, unresponsive and inaccurate.

At first I forgave the "floatiness" as the game is wanting you to fly through the stages, killing everyone in spectacular fashion and all whilst dodging weaving between enemy fire.
However, as I played more throughout the day it just never felt good, it never felt right, I questioned why the game felt like the protagonist was moving in slow motion when there is a designated slow motion command.

Then it started to get worse; a transitional stage where you ride a bike that felt like a vintage coin-op (and I don't mean that as a compliment) continuing then later into levels that tried to turn the game into a platformer.
This is where the game just felt horrible and at parts I caught myself audibly laughing and saying "this is rubbish".

I imagine there are people who will read this review and find the feel of 'My Friend Pedro' perfect, giving them the desire to replay levels to get high scores and cool clips.
That's just not me.

Aesthetically the levels themselves are also very uninspiring and with a couple of major exceptions almost look the same.
Seeing the name of the final chapter of stages ahead of time I was expecting something wild but even then it was just disappointment.

This front end of this game shows you everything you want, but maybe 20 minutes later you'll have seen it's best.
It's weird for what is a 4-5 hour game to out stay it's welcome but for me this silly banana prick could've got out of my face ages ago.

If there's one thing that can be said about the average Backloggd user, it's that they likely have Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles in their top five games. I can't say that's too surprising, because I too think it's the perfect platformer, and expands brilliantly on every mechanic and design concept of the previous three games. It's so good, in fact, that the entire series earned an extended rest until 2016's Sonic Mania. Yup, it's hard to believe but there were no Sonic games between 1994 and 2016! It's a little something called "going out on top."

Of course, Sonic 3 & Knuckles is two games in one, or rather two halves made whole again. Thanks to the power of Lock-On Technology™, it's literally one game's contents stacked on top of another with a few additional bug fixes, layout changes, and music swaps thrown in for good measure. Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles both have value on their own, but it's hard not to argue that Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the definitive way to play.

Levels are utterly massive, with single acts taking just as long to complete as full zones in previous Sonic games, and yet they never feel like they overstay their welcome. Tails and Knuckles come with their own unique movesets that open additional pathways inaccessible to Sonic, and similar to Sonic 2, special stage portals are scattered throughout levels rather than being an end-of-stage reward for keeping your rings. What you end up with is a game that takes multiple runs to see completely, and each subsequent jog through S3&K's 13 zones feels better than the last. I touched on the importance of exploration in Sonic games without losing sight of the game's pacing, how finding new paths and hidden areas should continue to push you forward, and I think Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the absolute zenith of this design philosophy in the Sonic series. There's always something new to find, but the game just flows in a way that discovery never comes at the expense of progress.

The zones themselves look incredible, with much more richly detailed sprites than anything seen in the series prior. Mid-act set pieces help change the flow and appearance of levels, like Robotnik's bombing run on Angel Island casting the rest of the level in flames, or an attack from the Death Egg heating up the previously cooled off interior of Lava Reef. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is well known for its cutscenes, which tell a story quite effectively without relying on dialog to give context to character actions or plot twists. Even small details in the backgrounds of levels help flesh out the narrative, like statues of Sonic in the upper portion of Hydrocity serving as an early hint of Sonic's prophesized arrival on the island. This focus on story never gets in the way of the game itself and actually does a remarkably good job at making the adventure feel big. I praised Sonic 1's gradual transition from natural to industrial locations for how it makes you feel like you're working your way from the outskirts of South Island towards the heart of Robotnik's headquarters, but Sonic 3 & Knuckles takes that concept and runs with it. Each Zone features an interstitial cutscene that connects the previous level to the next, making you feel like you're actually chasing Robotnik across the island rather than popping up in unrelated locations because video games. Indeed, the entire premise of the story is built off the back of Sonic 2, with Sonic and Tails following the decommissioned Death Egg in their biplane as it crashes on Angel Island. All of this adds so much character, I don't think you can really go back and do a retro style Sonic game anymore and chunk out these narrative elements. It's one of those things that was done so well it effectively becomes part of the series DNA, an expectation rather than a one-off.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles also features my favorite boss battles in the series. Each encounter offers something unique, and are a fair deal more threatening than those in Sonic 2 while still being intuitive enough so as to not be roadblocks. I also really enjoy the mid-bosses and think it was a smart idea to add these as a way to break up each act. In terms of pacing, these serve as climaxes to the first act as well as pallet cleansers, giving Sonic a reason to stop and plant his feet for a second before transitioning into the next act. This is far more effective than simply having him run through a goal post and fading to black, and actually quite necessary given that doing so after a 4 minute level would just kind of feel awkward.

The blue sphere special stages are perhaps the best in the classic series. I've previously commented on how Sonic special stages are just technical showpieces that Sonic Team couldn't be bothered with actually making fun, but I think blue spheres actually manages to be a good time while still looking impressive. If you smack another cart on top of Sonic & Knuckles you can access a new mode where blue sphere levels are randomly generated. I don't recall the exact number of possible permutations, but there's enough content there that you could go grey before completing them all. And yet, there was a period of my life where I would run through a few of them each day just to see how many I could knock out. I love blue spheres. I'm a danger to myself an others.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles is such an incredible game. Thanks to fans, there's also Sonic 3 Complete and Angel Island Revisted which add various tweaks and improvements to the base game, and I think both are definitely worth checking out. It's fun to play around with Complete's restoration of the original intended level order, and AIR provides so many granular options for tweaking the Sonic 3 experience that you can more or less build your perfect version of the game. Plus it has wide screen sport and the music is crystal clear. The Michael Jackson-like voice samples found in many tracks have all their compression removed, it is almost startling how clear they sound. However, I don't want to get too into the weeds on either of these games. Suffice it to say, I think they're worth checking out.

I could talk about this game forever. At the same time, it's also one that I find difficult to discuss in a focused or nuanced way, because every time I start to describe one element I like it ends up reminding me of another I enjoy just as much, and then my thoughts just become scattered until I'm gushing incoherently about how much I love this game. I just think it's that good. I mean, I like Sandopolis for chrissake. Even people who give this a 5 out of 5 would tell you they don't like Sandopolis. That could've been the whole review and it'd give you just as good an idea of how great I think Sonic 3 & Knuckles is without wasting your whole morning on this essay.

Also, it's pronounced high-draw-city. It's not a city! It clearly looks like an aqueduct that's carrying water to Marble Garden, which is the ruins of an ancient city. It's also a water level that focuses on being fast, Hydrocity is a play on the word "velocity!" Yes I know Yuji Naka said it's actually Hydro City, but he made Balan Wonderworld, are you seriously going to tell me that's who you trust!? I will punch you in the nose if you say "Hydro City" to me, I promise you this.

Austin Powers Pinball features two tables. International Man of Mystery and The Spy Who Shagged Me. I remember watching an interview for Austin Powers 2 in a little Sky Interactive window about a hundred times. I would have been about 12 or 13 and very insecure about puberty. Hearing that Austin had lost his "Mojo" had me looking up the word in the dictionary, which told me it meant something like "sexual prowess". I didn't really understand and assumed the film was about Austin Powers being castrated against his will. I still have not seen Austin Powers 2.

When you first play Austin Powers Pinball, you will attempt to figure out which buttons are used to control the flippers. Pressing anything other than the correct ones will warn you that you have "tilted" the board and will lock you out of playing until your ball falls down the hole.

If you register your copy of Austin Powers Pinball with Take 2 Interactive, you will be entered into their free prize draw to win £100. Imagine what you'd spend that on!

Narratively, this is a fascinating artifact. So disjointed and surreal it almost feels like the fever dream of a deeply sick crew member recalling their time working on the movie. Obviously rushed to be released at the same time as said movie and yet they completely forgot to incorporate anything from it into the game. Every single villain in the Spider-Man universe seems to be crammed in here and when the developers were ready to put this onto shelves they realized they completely forgot to include any of the major characters from the movie and just haphazardly threw them in there.

How else can you explain why they're given so little time here? If you knew nothing about the movie you would have no idea why all the climatic moments in this are centered around characters with almost no prior build-up. Without the opening and closing monologues that just flat out explains the entire Raimi series and Spider-Man's philosophy nothing here would make sense. Harry, a MAJOR part of the movie(s), only has two moments in this (both moments that the game INSISTS are majorly important) outside the opening monologue and when all is said and done we don't even know the fate of his character. He's just swatted off the screen by a strangely dummy thicc Venom and that's the last we see of him. No reconciliation with Spider-Man/Peter, not even a whisper of him in the closing monologue. He's just gone. Like where the hell did he go? Why did they put him in this??

The climatic finale taking place in a construction site that was surrounded by hundreds of bystanders in the movie is left completely barren here as Spider-Man and New Goblin battle it out with Venom and a GIANT Sandman (mind you, like Harry, this is only the second time the game has you interact with both Sandman and Eddie/Venom). The only person there to care is Mary Jane being her useless self (and that's okay) while bystanders are literally driving right next to the site giving it no attention whatsoever and it couldn't be any funnier how much the game doesn't give a shit about any of it. The game will dedicate four or five missions to each of its own villains but anything from the movie gets one mission after every 30 missions of the game's own. Almost feels like the developers had some kind of vengeance at Sony and purposefully sidelined the movie in favor of their own (boring yet hilarious) stuff. They're game developers working for a major company so it definitely wouldn't be shocking if they had any hostility towards the heads during the making of this.

Nonetheless, bless these developers. Entire game is a combination of rushed & "who fucking cares" with enough effort put into the existent yet non-existent narrative that it hits that peculiar line in the middle of "so bad it's good" and "they actually meant for this to be like this". You can really melt your mind thinking about how this one came to be. Was never not having a good time listening to these iconic characters they've made unbelievably deranged. Highlights of the game are that dummy thicc Venom and when you go idle while wearing the black suit Peter will eventually start screaming for no reason which is probably the only worthwhile gameplay in this. The slow motion dodge button makes the game stupid easy and if you don't use it some sections are almost impossible. Camera is just about the worst thing you can get in a videogame where a core gameplay element is swinging from building to building and the overall presentation is the stuff of nightmares. Back when this came out I remember thinking that this was (or at least was gonna be) next-level stuff that was going to push next-generation consoles to its edge. Maybe Peter sometimes looks neat in the black suit but overall not a single thing here looks good (even for back then) but for the best because would you ever want to replace something like this classic moment, among many, with anything else?.

Definitely a BAD game but certainly an entertaining one. At the end of the day, this has only made me miss the days of the movie tie-in game. Rarely do we get this kind of "memorable" anymore and it only made me sad that this era is long over with. Probably a 1 star for how awful it plays despite how entertained I was by everything else but I can't give anything with Bruce Campbell as The Narrator anything less than two (but this version of the game should really be zeros stars for the omission of our Father Doctor Michael Morbius).

Would've thought that the exclusive Walmart Edition (PS3) would've given us what we were promised at E3 all those years ago. To my shock, this is not the case. PS3 version is just about the worst thing I've ever played/controlled and seen (I will not be putting any blame on my tv and $20 second-rate controller as I usually do) and while it certainly looks and plays better on PC it's still cheap as all hell and straight-up broken. Not even your hilariously stupid fellow marine allies can turn this into a "so bad it's good" experience. Not something this horrendously boring. Isolation may have been long but at least it was made by people who actually care about the franchise (which showed during that game's entire 100 hr. campaign). This just makes me want to revisit AVP: Requiem which at least does something interesting with the Aliens instead of sidelining them for an entire damn chapter, giving us a bunch of broken AI soldiers (not that the Aliens were any more polished) to shoot at so we can have a(n already) more generic shooter. BAD