Review #382: Sonic Heroes

 No hero can save this game.

 Sonic doesn't have the exact perfect record after he hit 3D. While most people would agree that 3D Sonic is pretty terrible, a few vocal minority still like them, while a few would concede that Adventure 1 and 2 were decent. Sonic Heroes was the next game after Adventure 2, and it's all kinds of terrible.

 Sonic Heroes ditches Adventure's format, instead focusing on four different 3-man teams. Rose, Big and Cream have a silly adventure about searching for different characters. Their adventure consist of short stages and few enemies. Sonic, Tails and Knuckles represent the medium difficulty setting, with more enemies and longer versions of the same stages, trying to foil Eggman. Shadow, Rouge and Omega represent hard difficulty, with the longest stages and hardest challenges, while Rouge looks for treasure and Shadow and Omega search for Eggman. Lastly, there's Team Chaotix, with mission based gameplay. They all suck.

 While the stories might differ, each team has only slightly different stages. The game is your typical platformer: Go from one end of the stage to the other, jumping through platforms and defeating enemies on your way. As with any Sonic game, you can collect rings in order to be able to tank extra hits, as long as you are holding at least one ring you'll be fine from enemy attacks, but getting hit makes you drop every ring you've collected... still, there's plenty of time to pick some of them up before they disappear. Teams also play slightly different, for example, Sonic and Shadow can tap Square to dash through ring-trails, while Team Chatoix's Espio throws shurikens instead. Knuckles and Omega attack in pretty much the same ways, but Big the Cat and Vector can belly pound form the air, etc. There's a heavy focus in formations, Speed, Power and Flight, and you'll have to switch formations in order to clear different objectives and progress through the stages.

 Speaking of Stages, Team Chaotix has some rather annoying mission-based stages, like destroying every enemy or gathering X amount of something. This can either be a chore or easy, and if you miss something... you've got to loop back to the start of the stage and traverse it all the way to the end again in hope of finding what you missed. Team Sonic and Team Dark have boring, annoyingly long stages that go on forever and overstay their welcome as soon as they hit the 8 minute mark. The annoyance is exacerbated thanks to shoddy level design and terrible controls.

 Let's start with the controls: Every character moves too damn fast, and in a very slippery and floaty fashion. It's impossible not to die because stuff was out of your control, because your character slipped out of the platform. Knuckles and Omega, the Power characters from Team Dark and Team Sonic, dash around when you use your normal attacks, you will fall down over and over again because of how slippery it is. Hitting enemies also lacks feedback, you it feels as if you are hitting air. It was so bad that I avoided using Shadow/Sonic/Espio/Rose's homing attacks since I was scared I would fall off the platform, and Omega and Knuckles were so finicky that I was reduced to using jumping attack almost exclusively. Basically: Running around is slippery and floating, jumping is floaty and imprecise and ground-combat will get you killed. Just moving around can get you killed in Sonic Heroes, and it won't feel like it's your fault at all. The camera is wonky as well, sometimes deciding to zoom in on your character for no apparent reason, and using the analog stick to move it around is as imprecise as moving around.

 As for the levels themselves.. it runs through the entire gamut of problems. Some stages have bad designs, like the Casino level, featuring the worst pinball physics I've ever seen, and then pits are introduced and... let's just say that if you are playing as Team Sonic or Team Dark, you will sink a lot of lives here. Then there are problems related to the shoddy game design itself, a few times, as Sonic and Shadow, you will be required to tap Square to automatically follow a trail of rings... more times than I can count, Shadow and Sonic fell off the trail to their deaths for no apparent reason. There're a few 'autorun' segments in which you are supposed to not press a thing, I think? I think because sometimes getting through these was a gamble, if I pressed something I died and if I didn't I died too, either because, somehow, my character fell off the path or because at the end they decided to jump in... another direction? I can't count the times I didn't know if the game expected me to press anything or expected me not to, thus I don't even know how I got through them. And don't even let me get started on the fact that characters don't produce shadows, making platforming in 3-D even more of a hassle.

 If you hate someone with a passion, you can maybe coerce them into playing the silly 2-player versus mode with you. There's a needless amount of multiplayer modes, if you are so inclined, from races to battles. Gathering all Chaos Emeralds and finishing all four story modes(Are you feeling masochistic?) unlocks a final chapter... but it's not worth it. The game is an uncontrollable mess, it's not worth it.

 Sonic Heroes is awful. It's almost unplayable at times with how difficult to move around safely it is. If you like Sonic... I'm so sorry that you have to endure this. Nothing about this game works well, there's almost nothing good I can say about this game, except maybe that it looks pretty and that the concept of 3-man teams was pretty interesting. It's a shame nothing works well. I don't remember the last time a game made me so angry.
 2.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Sonic Heroes

 How come people enjoy Sonic games?

 I thought American Wasteland was gonna be bad, it wasn't. I thought Vexx was gonna be terrible, it wasn't. I thought the Hobbit wouldn't be able to live up to my nostalgia, it did. But man oh man, Sonic Heroes is awful. I would play this game back when I was younger, and I remember liking it a whole lot. The whole three-character team aspect of the game made me like it more than Adventure 1 even.

 But there's no denying that the game controls like butt. Precise movement is impossible, moving around feels very awkward, and I've fallen to my death due to shoddy movement/hit detection/physics wonkiness more time than I can count! I can't fathom anybody liking this game, it doesn't feel good. Jumping is floaty, running is floaty and slippery and hitting enemies feels like hitting air! In what world is this a good game!?

 Needless to say, I'm not impressed. I'm the opposite of overjoyed. I hate this game.

Review #381: Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

 The last, final great Tony Hawk game?

 I made a mistake. I thought that the biggest culprit of the lack of creativity and interesting level design was due to shifting to an open world structure. American Wasteland proved me wrong, being the first game in the franchise to go for an open world, it nailed it out of the park, and while it's not my favorite game in the series, it's yet another damn good installment.

 Upon selecting story mode, you'll notice that Create-a-Character has seen some cuts, namely, your story mode character must be a male, and you can't tweak his face. It's sure to disappoint a few, and there're very few reasons as to why your character is locked as a male. The open world feels very nice, and the different areas, like East L. A. or Santa Monica are separated by cleverly disguised transition-loading-skate zones. Thanks to this, each Skate Park was allowed to retain a theme and personality to itself, and while you can notice the shift to realism, since objectives are not as over the top as they were in Underground 2 and levels feel more urban and realistic than before, there's still the classic Tony Hawk charm, with all the color that would be sorely missed in future installments as well as silly set pieces culminating into a crazy Skate park made up from parts gathered from all over the game, the eponymous American Wasteland.

 There were a few missteps taken in the switch to the new formula, for instance, some story objectives that must be completed in order to progress require you to pony up cash, which can only be made by fulfilling a few random, infinitely respawning trick missions. You will have to stop by and do a few of these at least once in your playthrough, more if you are into customizing your appearance by buying clothes or what have you. It's an annoyance, and there's no good reason as to why have these dumb obstacles. Speaking of clothes, some missions will change your clothes or appearance, and the only way to put on your old clothes is by returning to the store in which you bought it, there should've been a more convenient way to change your clothes in-game. They also changed how stats are enhanced, now you have to accept challenges in sets of five, and you have to wait an in-game day in order for the challenge list to renew itself with new challenges. While you can skip time by sleeping, it's such a silly mechanic that won't keep the player from overleveling, but it will make it annoying. It was done so well in Underground 2!

 From what I understand, Underground 1 had a car. Underground 2 had multiple different special vehicle-characters. American Wasteland went with less, but deeper: Now you can ride a BMX. The BMX controls entirely different from the Skateboard, and it's entirely optional, the only missions that require it can be skipped. I did dabble in riding the bike, but only to make quick money from the bike random trick missions. Still, I think it was a good idea, it plays better than most vehicle-characters from Underground 2.

 American Wasteland also features every 2-Player Mode the series has had since like forever, and also has Classic Mode, like Underground 2. It works a tiny bit different though, as Classic is now made up of an entirely different set of levels from Story mode, although they are simple updated versions of older stages. Since there're less levels, you start with higher stats, which made it more fun to go through than Underground 2's. As is to be expected, create a Park and create a Trick also return.

 This final PS2 entry took me by surprise. It started off rather off-putting, but it quickly proved itself to be up to the standards of the franchise. It also features the most extensive moveset and toolset available in the franchise, which makes it a fantastic game to pick up and play, if only just to fool around the levels.

 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

 The beginning of the end.

 American Wasteland is... is... I don't even...
 You could say my first impressions are not very good. The character creator feels so limited, unless you unlock more stuff in other towns, this is garbage. Also, you start off without every move, which is rather... annoying. I've been playing Tony Hawk since 3, why do you take the moves away from me? And earning your stats now is cumbersome, to say the least. Underground 2 had nailed it just right, this is change for the sake of change. And it's no bueno.

 This first skatepark was... decent, I guess? Kinda small, there was no place to pull off the spine transfer required to upgrade my stats. Fun. The humor is very Tony Hawkish, which was missing in the two games that would come after this one, so that's good. It's also a very colorful game, another thing those later games lacked.

 Meh, it seems rather mediocre.

Review #380: Vexx

 Halfway fun, halfway vexing.

 If you grew up gaming in the 90s, you ought to be familiar with collectathons. Happy-go-lucky games featuring anthropomorphic animals on their quest to collect dozens of magic mcguffins and the such. Enter Vexx, an attempt to fuse Mario 64 with edginess and hardcoreness and darkness and the such.... and it kinda worked.

 Meet Vexx, apparently the last of his kind, after Yabu enslaved his people, and murdered them and his grandfather, which made this adventure personal. Coming across the Talons, mystical weapons that he can't take off, Vexx ventures into 9 different worlds, in order to collect 81 beating hearts and open up the way to Yabu and avenge his grandfather. The game has a rather conflicting artsyle, since enemies and Vexx himself are rather... cutesy, but the world tries to be dark and bleak, dealing with murder and a female... thing with protruding nipples being kinda there as the narrator... it's like they didn't commit fully to either cuteness or edginess and the end result is a rather unmemorable world and characters.

 Sadly, this seeps into the aesthetics of the levels themselves. Platformers of yore had very memorable level designs, not so is the case with Vexx. Each of the 9 worlds have very few landmarks that stand out or personality, which can be rather disappointing. Every world also has a different amount of hearts hidden inside of it, but there's a short poem as well as guiding arrows helping you discover how to get to them. The game starts off mindnumbingly easy, but the latter stages are just evil, and I'd argue that the last level is very poorly designed as well. Also, a few hearts might be a bit too hard to find. One of the Hearts from level 2 must be obtained in level 1, and nothing hints to that, and later on, you must find the right order to press a few switches around a fountain... with no hints as to what is the order, and pushing the wrong switch results in you losing health! Luckily, you only need 60 hearts out of 81 in order to beat the game, and there's no bonus for 100% to care about.

 That said, if something works well, it's the controls. Vexx moves sorta like Mario or Banjo, he can jump, long jump(By crouching and running) or high jump(By crouching), and it all works rather well! Movement is pretty smooth once you get the hang of it, and it won't be too soon before you'll be using acrobatics in style to even skip certain portions of stages! There's also a needless depth to combat, Vex can perform different combos depending on your timing with the square button, as well as juggle enemies with jump kicks, but it amounts to nothing really, enemies can soak up so many hits that I just started avoiding them altogether. Vexx can also gain access to 2 power ups, the Molten Armor and the Wing Suit, they are in a very few amount of levels, and they only exist in order to gather a few hearts, and if you thought flying with Mario was hard, you ain't seen nothing yet, flying with Vexx is stilted, wonky and unsatisfying.

 There were a a few issues that really hurt the game, like the poor camera that loves getting stuck on objects, it will get in your way at one time or the other. Some levels also feature a few too many loading screens, which can make Hearts like the 'collect 100 shards' objectives a real chore. There's also the archaic Mario 64 mechanic of sending you back into the Hub after every heart you collect, which gets annoying really fast. The last boss... is something else, even after you figure out waits to exploit his AI, it's still hard! Uppercut-to-ground-pound-to-flip-kick his swarm of minions on the first phase, and then you need to figure out that it's better to long jump rather than high jump out of the way.... it's quite the ordeal.

 Vexx tried. The devs' heart was in the right place, and they nailed most of the controls just fine. It's a shame that they couldn't fully commit to this 'we are dark and edgy!' direction, and how forgettable the worlds are. Vexx is fun when it's fun, but when it hits its lows... it can get rather vexing.
 6.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Vexx

 It's a me, hardcore edgelord Mario!

 Do you remember Vexx? I do. It was hyped as 'Mario for adult players', and me, as an edgy forum-frequenter mememaster teen bought into it. And when I finally came across it... it was OK. Still, A nagging feeling of 'I need to complete it' got into my head last year, and here we are.

 First of all... I'm not impressed. It feels like Mario 64, if a bit more clunky. I was excited at first, 'I'm gonna complete it!' and then... I was warped back into the Hub, losing all my progress in the level... yeah, that's way too antiquated and boring for me. I think I'll just do the bare minimum.

 Anyways, I'm not impressed, and while I wasn't expecting much, the issue above kinda soured me about Vexx, so I'm kinda not looking forwards to finishing it. But hey, at least Tony Hawk - American Wasteland is coming up next!

Review #379: Transformers - Devastation

 A beautiful oiled machine or nothing but scrap metal?

 Remember Platinum Games? They make some pretty dope games, focusing on action, creativity in combos and style. However, in order to produce their bigger projects, they also have to dabble into more simple, lower budget games. Not unlike Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Legend of Korra, Transformers Devastation follows Platinum's 'Generic Action Game' blueprint to a tee, it's fun, it works... but it leaves something to be desired.

 Basically, Megatron is up to no good, so it's up to Optimus Prime, Gridlock, Bumblebee, Wheeljack and Sideswap to stop him and his cohorts. The first thing that might disappoint players is that Decepticons are unplayble, and while you could argue that they wouldn't fit with the plot, seeing how all five Autobots are pretty much glorified skinswaps, it lays a bit flimsy as an excuse. The game consists of seven chapters that seem to get shorter and shorter as you advance through the game, lasting up to... 4-5 hours at most, but at least stages have optional side missions as well as about 50 challenge missions if you are so inclined.

 If you've ever played an action game by Platinum Games, you'll feel right at home. with both Weak and Strong attacks that can be chained in four-hit combos as well as a dodge button that, if timed correctly, will slow down time, letting you get in some hits on your opponent. There're two gauges below your health bar, one fills slowly over time and lets you use your unique Special Attack, one of the few things that set apart each Autobot, while the other fills as you deal damage, and is used to engage your super attack, which once again, is unique to each character.

 As you low through enemies and explore stages you'll come across loot, not that far unlike Diablo. Each Autobot can equip up to four weapons, most characters can equip most weapons, but there are a very few weapon only usable by some. Regardless, besides the two unique moves mentioned above as well as the stats, every character uses every weapon in the exact same way. Grimlock is a bit more fun than the rest, since his Vehicle mode, a T-Rex, actually gets its own unique moveset, soemthing the Vehicle Modes can't claim. Excess weapons can be used to power up your favorite weapons, as well as putting their unique buffs on them.

 Combat is fast and furious, landing hits in feels very good, and it runs very smoothly. You can also link vehicle attacks after your four hit combos, and these look badass. But, for as fun as melee combat can be, it will eventually grow a bit boring, since there isn't much room for creativity. It doesn't help that the game only has 3 different 'Stages', the Town, which makes up four chapters, and two underground bases. It quickly grows old. And as fun as combat is, it lacks a bit of finesse, there's no hard lock-on, instead, your character will soft lock into the nearest enemy, which can be a bit annoying when you are trying to attack a certain enemy, but the game will lock you on to another enemy, closer to you, but hidden behind the camera or something.

 Transformers - Devastation is a good game, but it's also lacking. It's fun to smash enemies to bits... but it's also repetitive and simplistic to a fault, with little room for creativity on the player's part. The game looks gorgeous... but there're so few environments and enemy types, with most bosses been reused at least once. There're many different weapon types... but the all more or less behave the same, and making all five characters almost indistinct from one another was a missed opportunity, not to mention the lack of playable Decepticons! Whether you're a fan of the franchise or not, there's fun to be had with Transformers, but don't expect another one of Platinum Game's greatest.

 7.0 out of 10