i still love the art style, soundtrack, and characters/performances but this was so much jankier than i remembered lmao. the platforming levels were mostly fine but the other gameplay types ranged from mediocre (the turret sections) to unfathomably bad (the race and other vehicle centric levels) with there being a ton of them, especially near the end.

when thinking about this series at large, i do prefer the hub based format leading off to the individual levels to the larger scale attempted in 2 and 3. with all of that said, i'm not sure if i'd still consider this my favorite in the series after a revisit of 2 and 3. i'll have to see.