woodoo
474 reviews liked by woodoo
The last time I had played Battle for Bikini Bottom (the original at least) was in 2019. According to my PS2 memory card, I had played this in 2010 prior to 2019. Back then, I never did 100% the game but I did beat it. 2019 though was the first time I 100%ed the game and I remember being so happy I finally did so since this was a game I liked a lot as a kid. I remember thinking it was great back then, but I wanted to see how I'd feel nowadays. While I don't think it's quite as good nowadays, it's still a really fun time overall.
I'd say the thing this game does best is replicating season 1-3 of SpongeBob. It doesn't always hit but when it does, this game is super funny and is basically just like those early seasons. There's a ton of callbacks to the show and references you'd only get if you've seen specific episodes. For a kid growing up on SpongeBob, this is basically like playing through a couple episodes of the show. Every voice actor from the show is here too, besides Mr. Krabs and Mermaid Man, and they don't half ass it. They bring their A game in every scene. However, going back to those two outliers, it's unfortunate they couldn't appear here. Mr. Krabs isn't too terrible, and the voice actor at least sounds like he's trying to replicate the character. Mermaid Man though is totally off and sounds pretty bad, I think. Even with those two being different tho, it's still super authentic to the show and a lot of fun seeing each scene be reminiscent of the show. The game also really replicates the world of SpongeBob well. The overworld of Bikini Bottom is done super well. You have all the main characters homes represented here. You have the Krusty Krab, the Chum Bucket. All the staple locations. The areas themselves also represent the show well. Rock Bottom, the Mermalair, Kelp Forest..even SpongeBob's Dream from that one season 1 episode appears. The characters, their dialogue and the world itself just perfectly represents the early seasons.
Getting into the gameplay itself, it's a collectathon and is basically mimicking a game like Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie. While I don't think it's as good as either of those, for reasons I'll explain shortly, that type of game still works well in the SpongeBob universe. Instead of Stars or Jiggies, your main collectable in this game are golden spatulas. Thematically super fitting to the show, though I gotta say I never found them as satisfying to get as the aforementioned stars or jiggies. There's no jingle that plays, only a crowd cheering for the player (and SpongeBob's laugh if you're playing as him). It's just sort of a bummer since it never gave me a rush whenever I collected them like Mario 64 or Banjo did. Anyways, you collect these golden spatulas in each level alongside collecting any other assortment of collectables along the way. You have shiny objects which you get from tikis or the robots. These are used to spend on shiny object gates or to get golden spatulas from Mr. Krabs. Socks are a collectable that you can trade in to also get golden spatulas from Patrick. These are mostly easy to get but can be annoying in their placement depending on the stage. Some, mostly the first couple stage ones, require backtracking with abilities you get later on. This like barely happens at all though so if you're a Banjo Tooie hater, you might like this game. In fact, this game is maybe too linear for my liking. It's obviously no Tooie, but it's not even a Mario 64 or Kazooie in terms of its exploration. Very rarely will you travel off the beaten path to do a little side challenge but that's about it. I prefer the more open games I mentioned before for that reason, as it feels like you're being guided along a straight path most of the time. Still, what's here is mostly fun. The levels in general, besides being faithful to the show, are either pretty fun or harmless. The only two I didn't care for much were Mermalair and Kelp Forest. Both had songs that kinda got on my nerves and Kelp Forest is too dark a lot of the time and also has the worst slide in the game. My two favorite levels though, were Flying Dutchman's Graveyard and SpongeBob's Dream. I found neither annoying and they were both endgame levels so they were pretty fleshed out.
You can also play as both Patrick and Sandy, if you find a bus station in each level. They each have different abilities but basically, Patrick is strong and can throw heavy things while Sandy has a lasso she can glide with and can also swing from these lasso Texas things. Both characters change the gameplay up enough for it feel different and fun. Their move sets are simpler than SpongeBob's. His move set consists of a double jump, a bubble wand attack, a bubble butt stomp, a bubble helmet that shoots upwards, the bubble bowl which is a bowling ball you can throw to hit things and the cruise bubble which is this missile attack you can use to hit enemies or buttons from a far. Those last two abilities are ones you unlock as progress and I generally like the move set SpongeBob has. Only thing I wish he had was a movement ability. There's no long jump or talon trot here so he doesn't feel quite as fun to play as because of the lack of something like that.
Between each set of three levels, and also in some of the levels themselves, are the game's bosses. The bosses in the actual levels aren't that great imo but are fun references to the show at least. The main game's bosses you must defeat to proceed tho are actually pretty fun. They're more fleshed out and have cutscenes between phases. You also switch between characters between phases too, which again, changes up the gameplay somewhat. The final boss was definitely the best, it's a fun nod to SpongeBob's love for Karate and also to the anchor arm episode. But I also gotta give props to robot Patrick's fight. The atmosphere of the industrial park combined with the eerie music, always freaked me out a bit as a kid. Still does even now lol.
Speaking of the music, while I don't think it's that amazing overall, there are still some tracks I quite like. Jellyfish Fields is an upbeat classic, Industrial Park again is quite eerie but really good and the best track in the game is probably Flying Dutchman's Graveyard. That one just perfectly fits the level and also rocks on top of it. Like I said, there are some tracks I straight up don't like whether it's cuz the level annoyed me as a kid or I just don't like them in general, however the OST is still solid overall.
I will say, I never noticed how unpolished this game could be at times. Whether it's me clipping through a tiki that doesn't have hit detection, or the slide portions being really janky depending on how I jump, it's not as polished as thought it was back then. Still, this is super helpful to the speedrun community as the game has some well-known glitches and exploits that are actually super cool to see someone perform. I remember getting into these speedrun videos shortly before Rehydrated came out and being amazed I'm just now finding out about all them. Speaking of rehydrated, I'll just say one thing. Play this version, don't play Rehydrated for the love of god. It's so bad, the fucking warp boxes don't even animate.
One more thing I wanna mention before I end the review off, is the golden spatula warp feature. If you go into the menu, to the golden spatulas you've collected or have to collect still, you can take the taxi from the menu and warp to that location. Holy shit, this may be the best feature in this game. It's super convenient and frankly should be in more 3D Platformers lol.
This is a game I played as a kid and while I think it's not quite as good as once thought, and is not as good as Mario 64 (and definitely not as good as Banjo), it's still a fun time. It's not too long either so it's a game you can easily replay. Maybe I'd think lower of this game if I wasn't a SpongeBob fan or grew up with this, as it's just kind of an average 3D platformer, but it's still one of the best licensed games I've played because it represents the world of SpongeBob so well. Glad it holds up even to this day.
I'd say the thing this game does best is replicating season 1-3 of SpongeBob. It doesn't always hit but when it does, this game is super funny and is basically just like those early seasons. There's a ton of callbacks to the show and references you'd only get if you've seen specific episodes. For a kid growing up on SpongeBob, this is basically like playing through a couple episodes of the show. Every voice actor from the show is here too, besides Mr. Krabs and Mermaid Man, and they don't half ass it. They bring their A game in every scene. However, going back to those two outliers, it's unfortunate they couldn't appear here. Mr. Krabs isn't too terrible, and the voice actor at least sounds like he's trying to replicate the character. Mermaid Man though is totally off and sounds pretty bad, I think. Even with those two being different tho, it's still super authentic to the show and a lot of fun seeing each scene be reminiscent of the show. The game also really replicates the world of SpongeBob well. The overworld of Bikini Bottom is done super well. You have all the main characters homes represented here. You have the Krusty Krab, the Chum Bucket. All the staple locations. The areas themselves also represent the show well. Rock Bottom, the Mermalair, Kelp Forest..even SpongeBob's Dream from that one season 1 episode appears. The characters, their dialogue and the world itself just perfectly represents the early seasons.
Getting into the gameplay itself, it's a collectathon and is basically mimicking a game like Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie. While I don't think it's as good as either of those, for reasons I'll explain shortly, that type of game still works well in the SpongeBob universe. Instead of Stars or Jiggies, your main collectable in this game are golden spatulas. Thematically super fitting to the show, though I gotta say I never found them as satisfying to get as the aforementioned stars or jiggies. There's no jingle that plays, only a crowd cheering for the player (and SpongeBob's laugh if you're playing as him). It's just sort of a bummer since it never gave me a rush whenever I collected them like Mario 64 or Banjo did. Anyways, you collect these golden spatulas in each level alongside collecting any other assortment of collectables along the way. You have shiny objects which you get from tikis or the robots. These are used to spend on shiny object gates or to get golden spatulas from Mr. Krabs. Socks are a collectable that you can trade in to also get golden spatulas from Patrick. These are mostly easy to get but can be annoying in their placement depending on the stage. Some, mostly the first couple stage ones, require backtracking with abilities you get later on. This like barely happens at all though so if you're a Banjo Tooie hater, you might like this game. In fact, this game is maybe too linear for my liking. It's obviously no Tooie, but it's not even a Mario 64 or Kazooie in terms of its exploration. Very rarely will you travel off the beaten path to do a little side challenge but that's about it. I prefer the more open games I mentioned before for that reason, as it feels like you're being guided along a straight path most of the time. Still, what's here is mostly fun. The levels in general, besides being faithful to the show, are either pretty fun or harmless. The only two I didn't care for much were Mermalair and Kelp Forest. Both had songs that kinda got on my nerves and Kelp Forest is too dark a lot of the time and also has the worst slide in the game. My two favorite levels though, were Flying Dutchman's Graveyard and SpongeBob's Dream. I found neither annoying and they were both endgame levels so they were pretty fleshed out.
You can also play as both Patrick and Sandy, if you find a bus station in each level. They each have different abilities but basically, Patrick is strong and can throw heavy things while Sandy has a lasso she can glide with and can also swing from these lasso Texas things. Both characters change the gameplay up enough for it feel different and fun. Their move sets are simpler than SpongeBob's. His move set consists of a double jump, a bubble wand attack, a bubble butt stomp, a bubble helmet that shoots upwards, the bubble bowl which is a bowling ball you can throw to hit things and the cruise bubble which is this missile attack you can use to hit enemies or buttons from a far. Those last two abilities are ones you unlock as progress and I generally like the move set SpongeBob has. Only thing I wish he had was a movement ability. There's no long jump or talon trot here so he doesn't feel quite as fun to play as because of the lack of something like that.
Between each set of three levels, and also in some of the levels themselves, are the game's bosses. The bosses in the actual levels aren't that great imo but are fun references to the show at least. The main game's bosses you must defeat to proceed tho are actually pretty fun. They're more fleshed out and have cutscenes between phases. You also switch between characters between phases too, which again, changes up the gameplay somewhat. The final boss was definitely the best, it's a fun nod to SpongeBob's love for Karate and also to the anchor arm episode. But I also gotta give props to robot Patrick's fight. The atmosphere of the industrial park combined with the eerie music, always freaked me out a bit as a kid. Still does even now lol.
Speaking of the music, while I don't think it's that amazing overall, there are still some tracks I quite like. Jellyfish Fields is an upbeat classic, Industrial Park again is quite eerie but really good and the best track in the game is probably Flying Dutchman's Graveyard. That one just perfectly fits the level and also rocks on top of it. Like I said, there are some tracks I straight up don't like whether it's cuz the level annoyed me as a kid or I just don't like them in general, however the OST is still solid overall.
I will say, I never noticed how unpolished this game could be at times. Whether it's me clipping through a tiki that doesn't have hit detection, or the slide portions being really janky depending on how I jump, it's not as polished as thought it was back then. Still, this is super helpful to the speedrun community as the game has some well-known glitches and exploits that are actually super cool to see someone perform. I remember getting into these speedrun videos shortly before Rehydrated came out and being amazed I'm just now finding out about all them. Speaking of rehydrated, I'll just say one thing. Play this version, don't play Rehydrated for the love of god. It's so bad, the fucking warp boxes don't even animate.
One more thing I wanna mention before I end the review off, is the golden spatula warp feature. If you go into the menu, to the golden spatulas you've collected or have to collect still, you can take the taxi from the menu and warp to that location. Holy shit, this may be the best feature in this game. It's super convenient and frankly should be in more 3D Platformers lol.
This is a game I played as a kid and while I think it's not quite as good as once thought, and is not as good as Mario 64 (and definitely not as good as Banjo), it's still a fun time. It's not too long either so it's a game you can easily replay. Maybe I'd think lower of this game if I wasn't a SpongeBob fan or grew up with this, as it's just kind of an average 3D platformer, but it's still one of the best licensed games I've played because it represents the world of SpongeBob so well. Glad it holds up even to this day.
Secret of Mana
1993
I've played a bunch of SNES games and this was always that one title that I never got around to. I'd always hear great things about Secret of Mana, and how it's one of the greatest games on the system. Being a fan of Square for a large portion of my life, playing this one was a no-brainer. I am shocked at the quality of this game, to say the least. I know I shouldn't be judging media off public reception so heavily, but man, this was disappointing.
This is the worst translation I have experienced in any video game. After finishing earlier today I have more questions than answers about the story. Conversations feel extremely robotic and not enough context is given about the world and the mysteries surrounding it. The story isn't anything crazy either but I feel like I would have at least cared for it a little bit if it was told properly.
The gameplay is atrocious. Almost everything about it is horrible and is what makes this game so bad. The game sports a charge system where you will have to wait a few seconds to do full damage, which you need to do if you want to do significant damage. This isn't an issue, but the rest makes it one. I genuinely cannot tell what the hell is wrong with the hit detection in this game. The hit boxes are horrible, and there is what I believe to be a chance of missing your attack, but, there is no indicator telling you that it missed. When enemies are toppled and you attack them, sometimes the attack will register a few seconds after you hit them, so it feels really weird. The AI is also dog shit at following you. My party members were constantly getting stuck on pieces of the environment and I had to constantly backtrack to get them to follow me properly. The games FPS constantly lowers too. The game can't seem to hold a proper framerate when there's any enemies on screen. Everything about the gameplay just feels gross to play. It's a simple game in nature, but everything just feels like it's working against you. All the boss fights are also really abusable because you can just spam the Sprite's magic in quick succession.
I'm shocked this game was also released in the state it's in. This game is really buggy. The biggest bug that I have encountered was party members getting stuck in walls. You can't progress on screen if your characters are not always in the vicinity of each other, so, it just left me soft locked in most cases. It even happened to me in the final dungeon once which really pissed me off. Other than that, it's usually just visual bugs.
The best thing about this game is the soundtrack, which quickly became one of my favorites on the system. It's so good that it made me think I was enjoying the game a few times.
This is one of those games where props have to be given for molding the genre, but, it really does not hold up in the slightest.
This is the worst translation I have experienced in any video game. After finishing earlier today I have more questions than answers about the story. Conversations feel extremely robotic and not enough context is given about the world and the mysteries surrounding it. The story isn't anything crazy either but I feel like I would have at least cared for it a little bit if it was told properly.
The gameplay is atrocious. Almost everything about it is horrible and is what makes this game so bad. The game sports a charge system where you will have to wait a few seconds to do full damage, which you need to do if you want to do significant damage. This isn't an issue, but the rest makes it one. I genuinely cannot tell what the hell is wrong with the hit detection in this game. The hit boxes are horrible, and there is what I believe to be a chance of missing your attack, but, there is no indicator telling you that it missed. When enemies are toppled and you attack them, sometimes the attack will register a few seconds after you hit them, so it feels really weird. The AI is also dog shit at following you. My party members were constantly getting stuck on pieces of the environment and I had to constantly backtrack to get them to follow me properly. The games FPS constantly lowers too. The game can't seem to hold a proper framerate when there's any enemies on screen. Everything about the gameplay just feels gross to play. It's a simple game in nature, but everything just feels like it's working against you. All the boss fights are also really abusable because you can just spam the Sprite's magic in quick succession.
I'm shocked this game was also released in the state it's in. This game is really buggy. The biggest bug that I have encountered was party members getting stuck in walls. You can't progress on screen if your characters are not always in the vicinity of each other, so, it just left me soft locked in most cases. It even happened to me in the final dungeon once which really pissed me off. Other than that, it's usually just visual bugs.
The best thing about this game is the soundtrack, which quickly became one of my favorites on the system. It's so good that it made me think I was enjoying the game a few times.
This is one of those games where props have to be given for molding the genre, but, it really does not hold up in the slightest.
Secret of Mana
1993
I'm Dyluck's girl
The Big Con
2021
I love everything about this game. The art, the music, the story, and oh my goodness the 90’s everything. Though I was not actually born in the 90’s, I was always surrounded by 90’s stuff for whatever reason. My primary source of entertainment as a child was an old CRT (the only TV my parents had) alongside my collection of Hand-me-down VHS tapes from family. The one crappy Canadian TV channel I had access to had no good original shows, and so it would mostly rerun 90’s nickelodeon cartoons. For a period of my life I even lived in a neighbourhood in Toronto that had been largely built up in the 90’s, and remained visually pretty much unchanged since then. All this is to say that I felt an immense attachment to everything in this game and exploring its world was genuinely amazing. Even the story was pretty charming for only being around 3-4 hours long. If I were to have ONE complaint it's that one of the main characters that accompanies you just DISAPPEARS before the end of the game and NEVER GETS A CONCLUSION TO HIS STORY. Otherwise though this game is seriously amazing and incredible and perfect and amazing and incredible and perfect and also amazing and incredible and oh, also perfect and fabulous and the best video game ever.
There's a bit in this when a guy really wants a yakisoba pan and then I found out that a yakisoba pan is noodles in a sandwich and I just don't know why that's a thing but the game is rad.
This review contains spoilers
Moment-to-moment I was enjoying the process of 13 Sentinels - reveling in its aesthetics, peeling back the layers of its scenario, bouncing around between characters' stories and finding answers to questions raised in one character's story in another's. About halfway through, as the reveals piled up and lead to ever more mysteries, I started to get the sneaking suspicion that all of this wouldn't amount to much. By the last couple hours where the game decides that, by the way, this whole thing is a Matrix situation, I was just about ready to tap out.
There's something to the maximist way that 13 Sentinels works. There's a thrill in seeing Vanillaware throw every sci-fi trope into one big pot - mechs, obviously, but also time travel, parallel dimensions, aliens, space colonization, evil AI, and....nanomachines. There's even a late-game meta move that exposes the fact that the video game you're playing is a load-bearing part of the whole story (I called this one at the start of the game btw). At first it's thrilling to see them stack all the parts and see how they all interact with each other, but there's diminishing returns. When you keep revealing twists, each individual one becomes less impactful, and the main road is lost.
This problem extends to the characters too, and I was shocked that for a game with 13 protagonists (actually 15, though two of them aren't playable) there isn't any character development or even much in the way of relationships. Characters are well-worn anime tropes that serve more as delivery devices for twists than anything resembling human beings. This is a game with a long, troubled dev cycle, one of the casualties of which was apparently taking out scenes that show the characters hanging out with each other. You can feel the absence - there are precious few moments of characters connecting with each other in any way other than pairing up into (often random and sometimes dubious) romances, and it makes every storytelling move of the game's last few hours fall flat.
I haven't even talked about the game-y part of it which even this game's hardest stans admit is half-baked at best. It's unfortunate because you can see the mechanical bones of something that could've been really neat - Sentinels fall under 4 broad categories but each one within the category has unique skills, buoyed by pilots that have unique passives that give them bonuses when they're paired with other characters, or not close to any other characters, or on as small a team as possible. On top of all that there's a whole scoring system, and a push your luck thing where your pilots get knocked out from being used too often and you can reset them but lose a bonus for doing so. Cool ideas, but none of it ends up mattering because the game is too easy, and the tactical decisions aren't "felt". You can see why Vanillaware followed this up with Unicorn Overlord, a game that really focuses on tactical density, because they clearly have some skilled strategy game designers who didn't have a chance to make good on their concepts.
That's how I feel about 13 Sentinels in general - it's the product of a talented (if stretched to their limit) team, and I respect the craft, but it all feels like missed possibility.
There's something to the maximist way that 13 Sentinels works. There's a thrill in seeing Vanillaware throw every sci-fi trope into one big pot - mechs, obviously, but also time travel, parallel dimensions, aliens, space colonization, evil AI, and....nanomachines. There's even a late-game meta move that exposes the fact that the video game you're playing is a load-bearing part of the whole story (I called this one at the start of the game btw). At first it's thrilling to see them stack all the parts and see how they all interact with each other, but there's diminishing returns. When you keep revealing twists, each individual one becomes less impactful, and the main road is lost.
This problem extends to the characters too, and I was shocked that for a game with 13 protagonists (actually 15, though two of them aren't playable) there isn't any character development or even much in the way of relationships. Characters are well-worn anime tropes that serve more as delivery devices for twists than anything resembling human beings. This is a game with a long, troubled dev cycle, one of the casualties of which was apparently taking out scenes that show the characters hanging out with each other. You can feel the absence - there are precious few moments of characters connecting with each other in any way other than pairing up into (often random and sometimes dubious) romances, and it makes every storytelling move of the game's last few hours fall flat.
I haven't even talked about the game-y part of it which even this game's hardest stans admit is half-baked at best. It's unfortunate because you can see the mechanical bones of something that could've been really neat - Sentinels fall under 4 broad categories but each one within the category has unique skills, buoyed by pilots that have unique passives that give them bonuses when they're paired with other characters, or not close to any other characters, or on as small a team as possible. On top of all that there's a whole scoring system, and a push your luck thing where your pilots get knocked out from being used too often and you can reset them but lose a bonus for doing so. Cool ideas, but none of it ends up mattering because the game is too easy, and the tactical decisions aren't "felt". You can see why Vanillaware followed this up with Unicorn Overlord, a game that really focuses on tactical density, because they clearly have some skilled strategy game designers who didn't have a chance to make good on their concepts.
That's how I feel about 13 Sentinels in general - it's the product of a talented (if stretched to their limit) team, and I respect the craft, but it all feels like missed possibility.
The Great Gatsby
TBD
A remarkably playable NES platformer taking the original book and abridging it down to a couple of levels.
Do not play this if you haven't read the book, you won't get anything out of this otherwise.
Do not play this if you haven't read the book, you won't get anything out of this otherwise.
The Great Gatsby
TBD
had to pull out sparknotes for the boss guide
The Great Gatsby
TBD
i liked the part where daisy gets in a car crash
Super Castlevania IV
1991
Yeah, pretty good game honestly.
The whip feels amazing to use in this game, you get plenty of use out of being able to delete projectiles with it, and there's the fun hook things you can use the whip on that never outstay their welcome.
I do think this game would be rated higher if it didn't suddenly go crazy with the difficulty spikes and the million instakill obstacles in the late-game. Death being harder than Dracula was also a really weird design decision.
Overall? A pretty damn good game that still holds up today.
Colorblindness Rating: A
Though some bosses have weird flashing stuff for I-frames and some obstacles kind of blend into the background, this game is fine in the colorblindness department. Hurrah.
The whip feels amazing to use in this game, you get plenty of use out of being able to delete projectiles with it, and there's the fun hook things you can use the whip on that never outstay their welcome.
I do think this game would be rated higher if it didn't suddenly go crazy with the difficulty spikes and the million instakill obstacles in the late-game. Death being harder than Dracula was also a really weird design decision.
Overall? A pretty damn good game that still holds up today.
Colorblindness Rating: A
Though some bosses have weird flashing stuff for I-frames and some obstacles kind of blend into the background, this game is fine in the colorblindness department. Hurrah.
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