Game #863: Bravely Default

 Final Fantasy's forgotten brother.

 For all intents and purposes, Bravely Default is pretty much Final Fantasy. The names of the spells and items, the job system, the four crystals... everything is here sans the FF title.

 It's really fun. The Bravely Default system offers some interesting opportunities, by using Default you 'lose' a turn, although it's more like picking 'Defend' since your defenses raise, but you get a Bravely Point(BP), up to a threshold of 4. You can then use BPs to get extra turns, up to three extra turns since each turn costs 1 BP. You don't need to stockpile BPs, you can simply use your future turns, which means you'll be left with negative BP and must rest up to three turns. This makes grinding fast, and boss battles quite fun. Oh, and battle animations can be sped up, pretty nifty!

 The game looks beautiful. At first it's a bit quaint, with what seems to be hand drawn backgrounds, but they are actually made up of both 2-D art as well as a few 3-D assets. This is one of the very few games that actually look better with the 3-D on, everything pops and looks quite pretty. That said, it has a very grey and brown color palette, not unlike Final Fantasy IX or Vagrant's Story, and I'm not much of a fan... but turning on 3-D seems to liven things up a notch, making 3-D even a better sell.

 Back when the game first released, during the PS3 and X360 generation, microtransactions were pretty much in every game, so of course you can pay to win. By pressing Start during battle you can act at any time, yes, even during a boss' turn. The catch is that you need SP, one per action, and you get SP by leaving the game in sleep mode, 8 hours a pop, or.... by paying with real money, which is ridiculous.

 The job system is your standard Final Fantasy fare, every character can pick any job, each job has a separate level, and you can equip a sub-ability from another job. Say that you want a White Mage that can defend himself? Put Black Magic as the character's alternate ability. Each job must be leveled up separately. Going back to Final Fantasy, all the classics are here, and if they aren't you can probably find an analogue. Every characters' outfits change with each job, which is pretty cute.

 The job system is very robust. Besides the secondary job ability, you also get a passive-ability system, initially you only have 1 slot, but the more crystals you save, the more slots you gain. This made it so I would find myself gaining new abilities and thinking "Hey! This could synergize really well with this other ability from this other job!", so it makes you want to use various jobs to min-max your perfect class.

 Levels up don't matter, not really. Leveling up only increases your HP and your mana, your stats depend on your job level and your equipment. This kinda sucks because if you want to try out a new job it means starting out with a really weak version of your character.

 There are Tales-styled 'party chat' optional events every now and then, and they are pretty neat, it's fun seeing the characters interact between each other. Edea is adorable, Tiz and Agnes are cute and Ringabel... is a generic anime 'pervert' cliché who I didn't really like. I think it's possible to pull off the pervert stereotype right, but in this case they failed.

 There's a 'rebuild Norende' mini-game of sorts you can access at any time, you send villagers to rebuild and strengthen shops, which can then allow you purchase bonus goodies. Problem is... you need to go online every day to get new villagers, otherwise the time requirements get ridiculous, there are at least 3 99-hour events, and the only way to get it done faster is by using more than one villager. For my playthrough the servers were still online so I managed to get a tiny workforce, but a few years down the line this mini-game will be pretty much useless unless you take long, long breaks from the game.

 The game did get a bit boring midway through chapter 4. The encounter rate is pretty high, although admittedly you can lower it on the options menu, as well as the difficulty setting. But even then, it got tough because the escape rate isn't very high, and enemies swarm you. By the lava dungeon it was impossible to keep my mana, I had to use mana to heal and to deal optimal damage, even though my Tiz and Edea Swordmaster combo was dealing a ton of physical damage. Random encounters just got too taxing. And while you don't need to grind since what really matters is your party composition, that's a bit of a lie, because you have to grind each job level to get your abilities and make them useful, and if you want to try out a class it might mean investing XP and time into a class you don't like or won't give your character the abilities that'd match the way you want to build him. Keeping your equipment and your spells updated, as well as mana potions if you need them is very expensive, so you have to grind for cash. What you get is a very slow paced game, that also turns into a rather large time investment. Maybe I should've switched the difficulty setting down to easy....

 It says a lot that guides recommend turning off encounters in order to conserve MP and HP. I shouldn't have to tamper with something as basic as the random encounters for the game to become fair.

 A bit of a spoiler, but needs to be said... after you hit chapter 5 you get to do everything again. A sort of world reboot happens, and now you can do everything in any order, with things having changed slightly, alongside the fact that your party remembers what happened. It's padding, and the worst kind. And after you defeat everyone again?.... you have to do it all over again, once again, with a few minor changes. And then... you guessed it, all over again. TO be fair, on every repeated cycle you only need to defeat 5 specific bosses, the others being optional, but fighting bosses again helps makes sense of what's going on. The fifth and sixth cycles get a bit more interesting because these bosses come at you in groups, but by then it was too little, too late, I was already uninvested.

 You have to awaken the same four crystals like five times, right? Well, every time you need to engage in the dullest minigame of mashing X. But you can't just mash X while you look at something else, because characters will chime in, and you have to press A to advance the dialogue. Jesus christ.

 The penultimate boss is incredibly cheap. It can deal humongous amounts of damage with little effort, so if you didn't level up the right jobs... boy, are you in for a surprise. And not a fun surprise. As of this point in time, I haven't defeated this boss yet, but I'm not gonna give up yet. I've seen 95% of the game already, so I felt comfortable writing this.

 I really wanted to like Bravely Default, I really did. I love turn based RPGs, so this was right up my alley, but I can't say I did. I don't like forced grinding in my games, and while you can tamper with the difficulty it doesn't change the fact that some of the end-game bosses are downright cheap, even on the easiest difficulty setting. And having to replay so much of the game? Dude, that just ain't right. Square can do better, and should've done better. And this game was so promising that I'm gonna dive into the sequel shortly.

 5.5

Game #862: Jump Force Deluxe Edition

 Well, they can jump pretty high.... 

 Jump Force Deluxe Edition is the latest, although not bestest, anime arena-fighter from Namco. Originally released for PS4 and XOne, this version takes a hit in the graphics department, as expected, but includes the first season of DLC in the cart.

 As I said before, it's yet another 3-on-3 arena fighter like One Piece Burning Blood, One Punch Man or J-Stars Victory before it. While there are three fighters per team, they share a life gauge and the energy gauge, so there's not much point to swapping characters around. You have your basic weak attack strings and a strong attack string, super moves, grabbing and the whole gamut.You can use a stamina gauge to chase down an enemy or evade an attack when getting hit. There's an Awakening Gauge, Awakening being a temporary super mode that usually changes how your hero looks, plus passive buffs. Each character comes equipped with three super moves, and an ultimate that can only be used with the Awakening Gauge, and Ichigo no longer kills himself with his Ultimate move.

 This is one of those games, like Xenoverse, that have a boring HUB town instead of quick and simple menus. If you want to fight another player or fight the CPU at your leisure you have to go to the right counter. I wish this trend would die, it's not immersive, it's just a waste of time, like developers working with the Wii, making abilities and functions that would've been perfect for button presses require waggling the Wiimote around.

 The artstyle really is something else. It bothered me back when the game was first announced on PS4/XOne, and it's still creepy. Characters keep their original artstyles, like, say, huge eyes, spikey hair and/or sharp chins, but they are rendered with realistic cloth and skin textures, making for some incredibly weird looking characters. They also keep their proportions, which means that characters like Hitsugaya and Deku, who should look about the same, look completely different. Heck, Deku, a young teen, is BIGGER than friggin' Kenshin Himura, a young adult. It looks awful. A cellshaded filter, alongside simple and colorful textures would've looked much, much better. 

 Cutscenes run very poorly, the first cutscene in the game struggles to reach the double digits, and the character models have some weird glitches, but as far as the game plays? It's very smooth for the most part, and while the framerate can tank when it gets hectic, it quickly reverts to 26-28fps, so I'd say it's pretty stable and plays pretty well. The game was made with the PS4/XOne in mind, so downscaling the graphics will obviously end up making everything look blurry and jaggy, but it's not too bad. Honestly, I think the game survived the downport quite well.

 The character creator is surprisingly fun. You get a lot of hairs, tattoos/scars and clothes from the characters in the game, as well as a few original clothes only your created character can wear, so you can create some pretty cool characters. A few cloth pieces are not compatible with others, like most pieces from Saint Seiya, but it's not too bad. You can equip most super moves from most characters in the cast, although a few abilities can't, for instance, anything that requires a Stand(Jotaro, Dio), a Sharingan(Like Kakashi, Sasuke or Madara's Susanoo) or summoning a tailed beast because you don't actually have a tailed beast inside you. It gives you a lot of variety when selecting your super moves.

 There are a few wasted slots in the roster, for instance the three original villains. On the plus side, they were designed by Akira Toriyama... but that doesn't mean they are good designs, I mean, this is the guy that was scolded by his Editor twice because his Androids weren't threatening. I think they should've stuck to Jump's properties exclusively when picking the true villains for the story, because these guys are lame and I would've much preferred more characters from more series. Not that the story is particularly good, I really didn't like the theme about Manga heroes and villains duking it out in the real world. Having the characters deal with their own worlds colliding would've been much more interesting I think, and it wouldn't get in the way of you getting to create an avatar.

 I'm a bit conflicted on the character roster. On one hand, we get a lot of really cool characters from some of the series I like the most in Jump. But, and it's a huge but, this game covers about half as many series as J-Victory Stars did. As far as a Celebration of all things Jump go... the other game did it better. This game is pretty lacking as far as 'weirdos' go, and, mind you, I prefer having THIS roster made up of mostly cool character, but I can't help but feel like the game's scope got reduced and this isn't as much a tribute to Jump as it is a giant appeal to fans of the popular series.... like me. And the DLC is only adding to the series already featured in the game. Why don't you give me Kinnikuman(And maybe Kinnikuman GREAT or Phoenix, although that might be asking for too much), Allen from D.Gray-Man, Gintoki from Gintama, Toriko from, well, Toriko, someone from Katekyoushi Hitman Reborn... y'know, the classics, the oldies and the ones that were popular a few years ago.

 To be honest, the story mode feels bloated. There are a ton of story missions, plus the DLC missions that came bundled in for free, plus tons of Free missions. The problem is... the gameplay is very basic, so there's not much in the way of creativity when it comes to fighting. There are too many battles to take part in, and every single battle feels the same. Except that sometimes, maybe, enemies are so overleveled they can take huge chunks out of your life bar with a few moves. But even in the harder missions, baiting the CPU into making mistakes is fairly easy and you can pretty much apply the same strategy in every single fight.

 They went a bit too far with attention to detail. Dio can't fight in Daytime stages and Sanji can't deal damage to female fighters... and this is to the game's detriment, making Sanji useless against a few characters is incredibly stupid, not the kind of details that make for a fun game.

 A few battles got stuck on the post-battle loading screens at 84%. Luckily the game is very generous with auto-saving, so quitting the game and then reloading lets you continue right after the fight. Doesn't excuse the fact that the game gets stuck during loading, but at least you don't lose any progress.

 Eh... Jump Force is alright. It's functional, and you get a lot of popular characters from a a decent amount of popular series. But, the art-style is really off-putting, and I really hate how they didn't go for uniform proportions with the characters, which in the end makes everything look really ugly. The fighting itself is nothing to write home about, but for an anime fighter it's serviceable, you have your flashy attacks and your simple combos. Still, the story is very uninteresting, which is a front I'm sure they could've done better in, and while I usually prefer a game having lots of stuff to do, in this case it's just fat with no substance.

 4.5

Game #861: Streets of Rage 4

  Ah! I missed invisible walls.

 The beat'em up genre is one of the most repetitive there are, and yet, I've always enjoyed them. I've always been more of a Final Fight guy, having only ever finished Streets of Rage 1 and not quite so long ago, but that wouldn't stop me from giving Streets of Rage 4 a fair shake.

 The graphics are very interesting. Usually I hate this non-pixelated sprites that look vectorized... but in this game they look REALLY good. The artstyle is good, the animation is good and the spritework is very appealing. That said, the proportions with background characters are all over the place, it's incredibly offputting when your characters look tiny in comparison to the characters that work as background decor.

 Can't say I particularly liked Axel's beard, it really doesn't fit him. Blaze looks great, but Adam is the returning guy that looks best, he had a very basic design in 1 before he disappeared from the series forever, but this new reimagining is pure class. The two new playable characters, Cherry and Lloyd are boring. You can unlock the classic SOR 1, 2 and 3 versions of most characters(Roo and Ash are missing, the latter is surprising since the game is quite woke(in a very non-annoying way, so I'd say it's well done)), but they retain their original sprites, so they look out of place in the game. It's not a bad extra, but I can't stand playing as these pixelated entities on this newer, crisper backgrounds and fighting crisper enemies. Characters retain their abilities from their origins, albeit tweaked to work with the new mechanics, which is pretty neat.

 The gameplay is interesting to say the least. As far as offense goes, it's a winner. They added juggling to the game, you can continue combos if you hit an enemy before he touches the ground, which opens up a lot of possibilities. Landing hits feels really good too. Special Moves are a bit weird, you get three of them: X, Move anywhere+X and jump + X, and instead of costing you health, like most beat'em ups, or having a cooldown before costing health like SoR 3, it instead consumes recoverable health. This is marked in green over your health bar, and it means that you can recover this health by landing hits, but if you get hit you take the damage and the green health is gone for good. I didn't really like this system, particularly because what SoR 3 was so much better. There are also Super Super Moves that use Stars, items that can be fought throughout the stage.

 On the other hand, the game offers you no defensive options. You can't block, you can't dodge and most characters can't run or dash. Pretty much exactly like the original Final Fight, but in Final Fight most enemies weren't as mobile or had as much super armor as they get in this game. A lot of times I'd get hit mid combo while I tried to jump cancel or something, and trying to walk away from incoming damage is almost impossible because everyone is just SO slow. And don't get me wrong, the game isn't impossibly difficulty, but you almost have to play in a very cheesy way for it to be fair. Enemies have a lot of super armor? Abuse diagonals and throw them. Or don't commit to a full combo and walk away if you didn't trigger an enemy's hitstun because he had super armor. The higher the difficulty the more boring it gets. There is a way to avoid damage, but it's risky: Press X and use a super move. Super moves have invincibility frames, so you'll avoid damage...at the cost of turning some of your health into green health. I can't say I like that, it feels like I'm getting punished because I don't have the right tools to avoid incoming damage. And don't get discouraged after the first couple of bosses, those are the worst as far as super armor goes, the next bosses are much fairer.

 The game is hardly impossible, and if it gets too hard you can just take a blow to your score and use an Assist to get extra lives and/or Star moves. Story Mode is fairly lenient too, infinite continues and you start every level with 2 lives, at least in the Normal difficulty setting.

 The game is just the perfect length, having 12 different stages. You get split-screen co-op, a player vs player fighting mini-game as well as an unlockable Boss Rush and Arcade difficulty setting that limits your continues to 1.

 At first I finished the game on Normal, while using Assists to help me clear the game, with Axel. Then I played it again, but on easy, with Blaze and, then, I played it again but with Adam back on Normal to see how much improvement I made. And the game did get progressively more fun each time I played it and got used to how it worked. I think it also helps that Adam can actually dash forward, one of the only two SoR4-type characters that have faster means of mobility other than walking.

 In the end, I think Streets of Rage 4 is really good but not without flaws or things I think could've been done better. Regardless, it's the perfect game to scratch that never ending Beat'em up itch I'm a victim to.

8.0

Game #860: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2

  So that makes it... Tony Hawk 3?

 It's been a long while since we've had a Tony Hawk game THIS good, but Vicarious Visions did an excellent job with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, bringing the classics into the modern day without ignoring most of the tweaks and upgrades future games would bring into the formula.

 It's no secret that I think Tony Hawk was at its best after they did away with the 2 minute counter, but beggars can't be choosers, so I won't complain about going back to how the classic games worked.

 While we can't get out of the board, it's not a feature I think is absolutely needed for the series. It helped getting around a few obstacles, like stairs, but it wasn't a necessity. What was kept from future games are the Reverts from 3, as well as the Transfers, Lip Tricks, Grind tricks and Manual tricks from Tony Hawk 4 and the wall plants from Underground and, lastly, the double and triple button input from... I don't exactly remember which game. I think this makes for an absolutely massive moveset that lends itself oh so well to creativity when making combos. The game feels a bit faster than previous games, which is neither better or worse, it's just different.

 Create-a-Skater is a bit lame, there are enough faces and hairs to create something decent, but there are no color-wheels for clothes which feels very limiting, specially compared to what came before.

 Cheats are unlocked from the get-go as assists, and beating the games unlocks more mods, like altering the size of your skater or adding filters to the visuals, which is pretty neat since we are living in an era devoid of any fun cheats.

 There's no blood, which sucks since it takes away from the Punk humor of the series, but, on the other hand, there's no fog, which was one of the biggest issues with Tony Hawk 1 and 2. Not only is there no fog, but the environments look AMAZING. The time of the day or the decorations, such as graffiti, may have changed, but the levels are pretty much exactly as they were before.

 Alongside the old old Skaters from the original games, we get a bunch of new blood, some which you may have seen in Tony Hawk 5. It's pretty neat that this new game can give more exposure to the new generation, as the original game did for the original Skaters.

 I saw some people having trouble accessing some secret areas in the game because they couldn't jump high enough so "now it's broken'. They are wrong. Filling your special gauge not only grants you access to super moves, but it also makes you go faster and jump higher. The levels are an excellent recreation of the originals, and the gameplay is top notch.

 The game is divided into level sets, you get Tony Hawk 1 tour and the Tony Hawk 2 tour. There's also Free Skate and off-line split screen modes. Since THPS 1 had less challenges per stage, a bunch of new objectives were added for parity with THPS2. It's still pretty short, I got 100% completion in about 8 hours, but, hey, they were some incredibly fun 8 hours.

 Classic objectives are identical to how they were, even the Score challenges were kept the same, so with the new expanded movesets they are fairly easy to complete, unless you are Darksyde Phil anyways.

 The one big change is how Stats work, instead of buying them, like you did in THPS2, you must find stat points hidden in each level. There are three Skater types(Which affect their starting stats) and each type has their own hidden locations for these stat points. Nothing too crazy or out of your way, for the most part at least.

 I think this is a brilliant game and I adore having more Tony Hawk in my life. While it is a Remake, since these games were so old it pretty much feels like a new game. And it's nothing short of amazing how great I found the game despite the fact that I prefer the latter type of THPS games. Oh, and considering THPS 3 was the last of this type it totally should've been included in here, but I'll take what I can get.

 8.5

Game #859: WWE All-Stars

  Time to get all handsy again.

 WWE All-Stars is a pretty neat experiment. It's not your average wrestling game, instead opting for something that feels more like a fighting game with wrestling elements than a pure wrestling game. It's simplicity betrays just how much fun it can be.

 The game uses a very amusing caricaturesque art-style, Wrestlers have giant upper bodies, giant bicepts and short arms. As for how well each caricature captures a Wrestler likenes... it depends. Some characters, like Cena, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Rey Mysterio are spot-on, while others, like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant feel a bit off. There are more hits than misses, but the ones that miss really stuck out. Still, I like how everyone looks like a He-Man action figure.

 I think the roster is pretty decent, I managed to recognize most of the Wrestlers, but there are no females and you can't even create one.

 The game has a pretty neat Legends VS Superstars theme, half of the characters being old and retired wrestlers, with the other half being then-current superstars. It extends to the "Fantasy Warfare" mode, which is were you unlock characters, which is made up of various Superstar VS Legend fights. Each fight tries to find opposites or mirrors between both groups, and every fight is prefaced with a brilliant voiced intro that presents both fighters, while real-life clips of both wrestlers play in the background. Sometimes they went the extra mile and managed to mix line from both wrestlers to simulate trash talking between both of them! Pretty cool.

 Create a wrestler is pathetic. There aren't many pieces to pick from, and some clip through each other. For example, if your character has hair and you put a hoodie on him, the hair will clip through the hoodie.

 Characters are divided into four types(Acrobatic, Brawler, Big Man and Grappler) and each type has some unique properties. You have Quick and Strong Strikes, as well as Quick and Strong Grabs, R1 counter strikes and L1 counters grab. It's fairly intuitive. Each wrestler has three super moves.

 As much as I liked the artstyle and the gameplay, I feel like strikes lack oomph. There's not enough audiovisual feedback to sell me on each hit, which, for a fighting game, kinda sucks. I think the game needed better and louder sound effects for these strikes.

 The game is installed on the Cache, which is incredibly dumb. This means that if you play something else the game will be deleted and you'll have to sit through the long installation again. Why not have a normal installation? And the worst part about it? Even when cached, the loading times are still on the lengthy side, no wonder you can turn off ring entrances. The game has a bunch of easy trophies, and the game IS fun, but no chance I'm sitting through so many loading screens just for bragging rights.

 Overall, WWE All-Stars is quite fun, and its graphics set it apart from most other games. It's not the deepest fighter around, nor is it the one that simulates the scripted sport the best, but the game is quite entertaining thanks to simple and intuitive gameplay. My biggest point of contention with the game would be the loading times, which turn a honestly entertaining game into a bit of a drag.

 7.5

Game #858: Tomb Raider Underworld

  Lara brings the hammer down.

 The third part in Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider revival is Tomb Raider Underworld. While it's technically not Lara's first step into HD, it's Lara's first Playstation debut in HD.

 The first thing that disappointed me was that there's not Croft Manor extra, for shame! There's a new Melee kick which is alright, you can knock down enemies and then score a few free bullets in or another kick while they get up.

 The game looks absolutely stunning. I don't think I ever crushed on a videogame character before, but this Lara? Damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. Not just her, the environments are just gorgeous and very detailed, this really is a beautiful game. Of course, frame drops do happen, but they are not too bad.

 Before most levels you can pick a costume and a secondary weapon. Secondary weapons have infinite ammo.... was what I thought at first. You can run out of ammo, but the counter is hidden inside a menu when pressing Select. You can also change between every sub weapon in there! Weird.

 The game comes crashing down when it comes to movement, it's just so... clunky. Moving Lara around can be a bit tough, you can even get stuck against objects, in which case you must first stop trying to move so that Lara resets to a neutral position and then, and only then, move away from the object. Platforming around can sometimes be a bit problematic too, with Lara failing to land on top of whatever tiny platform you were aiming to. It's like the game demands a certain amount of precision but the controls just can't match the demand.

 The camera is a bit bad too, while you are given free reign over it, sometimes, particularly inside cramped areas, it can be a bit of a pain in the butt to get a good angle of where to go next.

 If they ironed out the control and tightned the platforming, this game could've amazing. The puzzles are fun, even if a few times I found myself stumped and had to resort to the in-game hint system, figuring everything out was a fun time. And the platforming, whenever you aren't plummeting down to your death because you didn't jump in the exact right angle, it's really good and exciting. Combat has never been the series' forte, but in this game it's quite acceptable.

 It's a shame that for as many fantastic ideas the game has the controls and movement really do get in the way of your enjoyment. It could've easily been an 8, but there's no avoiding the fact that you have to wrestle with how clunky movement is in order to play the game.

5.5

Game #857: Pac-man World

 White men can't jump, but what about yellow men?  

 I purchased Pac-Man World by accident. Y'see, I had this weird 3-D Pac-man game on PC and I thought that this was that game, it wasn't. Regardles, I found myself with a fairly interesting package.

 You see, with Pac-man World you actually get three different modes: Quest, which is the main mode in which you platform your way through six different worlds. Classic, which is the original Arcade Pac-man game and Mazes, which is a 3-D take on Pac-man. If you go for 100% when playing Quest you'll actually have to go through the Mazes!

 'Maze' doesn't work very well. The basic camera is too zoomed in, and the alternate camera angles aren't very good. Mazes have gimmicks that hurt you that don't work very well when being chased by ghosts. Laser walls that you have to wait for, dead ends because why not... these mazes aren't very good and it isn't a good twist on classic Pac-man.

Thankfully, Quest mode is actually really fun. Pac-man has a very interesting moveset: You can turn your jump into an offensive butt-bounce that also helps you with platforming since it increases the height of your jumps, plus, bouncing on top of an enemy will make you go even higher, which is sometimes necessary to get some hidden goodies. Pac-man also borrows Sonic's spin dash, but the running rev-up can also be used on some special platforms. Lastly, all those pellets Pac-man eats? You can shoot them offensively now!

 I'm surprised at how much fun the game is, Pac-man's moveset feels very well thought out. The game has some mildly challenging segments even on the early levels, but it's a fun challenge. The game is relatively generous with lives, so it's alright.

 The second boss is cheaply hard. During the first part you have to run away. Fairly easy. Then the real fight begins, you have to rev up four platforms and then attack his core. At first, the only obstacles are the lava pits between every platform, and falling means death, as well as the fireballs that shoot up from the pits. Very easy. After you hit it once, the boss adds a black tornado that chases you every few seconds, still very easy. Now, after the second hit, it adds another obstacles, fireballs that shoot from the background towards the platform you are standing on. A bit complicated, but still easy. Now, after the third hit, it becomes ridiculous, everything speeds up and the boss adds a constant barrage of pink lasers, starting from the left of the screen towards the right. I never managed to learn how to properly avoid these beams, and it feels like I brute forced my way through after wasting 20 lives.

 The other bosses are very gimmicky, to the game's detriment. The next boss is inspired by Galaxian, which is interesting since the game turns into a shooter, and then the next boss is a racing mini-game. I'd be more welcome to this bosses if the game had had small sections that used this gameplay, but it's just the bosses. So it's a bit weird having an entire game built around platforming, using a very fun moveset, and then having to contend with bosses that turn into mini-games.

 Overall? I think it's fine. There are a few moments that feel a bit cheap, sometimes, rarely, judging where you are and where a platform is might be can get bit tricky, but on the whole it's a pretty solid first effort to turn the series into a platformer. Y'know, I can find a lot of flaws with the new 'mazes', and the game itself is nothing spectacular, but I gotta hand it to the developers, they managed to make controlling Pac-man feel GOOD, which in turn made playing the game quite fun. The only moment that had me sweating a bit was after I spent most of my lives on the second boss, but the game is fairly generous so by the time I got to the sixth, and last, world I had over 30 to spare. It's fun, it's a fun game.

 7.5

Game #856: Crazy Taxi - Fare Wars

  As crazy as the PSP allowed.

 Y'know what the PSP was missing? Crazy Taxi! With Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars Sega brought the first two games into the tiniest handheld. This is interesting, because this is pretty much the only port of Crazy Taxi 2 outside the Dreamcast original.

 Both games are pretty... humble as far as the graphics go. I wasn't expecting it too look as sharp as the Arcade original, but the visual downgrade does take a bit away from the overall experience. Sometimes, rarely to be honest,  you can even see environment ahead of you pop into existence as you drive forward.

 The game includes a few extra challenges for both games, completing these will nab you a few goodies, such as playing as Crazy Taxi 1's drivers in Crazy Taxi 2's maps.

 The music playlist feels a bit scarce. There might be 10 tracks top divided between both games, and while the music tracks are good, it does get a bit repetitive after a while. CT2 has a song that starts with a lot of silence which isn't a good fit, since you'll be driving with no music for a few seconds. To compensate for this and some of the missing songs(No Offspring!) there's a custom OST feature you can use, which is admittedly a pretty neat addition.

 As much as I enjoy Arcade games in general and Crazy Taxi, these games have an extremely basic gameplay loop: Get a passenger, get them to their destination as fast as possible before the time limit expires. The only difference between both games is that in CT 2 you can jump at will and you can get passenger crowds of up to four people. This means that if you swap games after you get burned out from one of them... boy, do I have bad news for you...

 All four maps are very samey. They have unique locations and what not, but if you told someone that all four maps were identical you could probably get away with it for a while. I think this might have a lot to do with how the visual downgrade makes everything feel more uniform. Kinda like the Metro 2033 collection I played earlier this year, since they remade the first Metro using the engine from the second one it wound up feeling like two parts of the same whole, same deal here.

 Crazy Taxi doesn't have the most long lasting appeal ever, but the game is fun to revisit in bursts, y'know? If you pick it up every now and then for a few sessions then you'll probably have a lot fun every time, however, it's not a game built to be played for hours on end because the premise just can't cut it.

6.5

Game #855: Franklin the Turtle(Advance)

  Good ole activity centers.

 Can't say I was a fan of Franklin the Turtle, but back when I was of school age I loved waking up in the morning to watch the really cool shows(Batman and Superman TAS!), but sometimes I'd wake up even earlier, and as I waited for my shows to start I'd sometimes come across this show. And that's the sole reason I got this game, it's almost like a little piece of my childhood.

 The game reminded me of old PC games that were activity centers, because this is a collection of 19(odd number) mini games. There's a game in which you must paint a picture, a Simon-says mini-game, a memory game, a lot of "collect X" games and the such.

 The minigames are very simple and short, and most have no fail state. I think the games are so boring that even toddlers would have a hard time enjoying it.

 The graphics are a bit ugly, it's as if they digitized animation cells from the show or something, as sprites have a very grainy and stiff look to them.

 It's not good, it's not fun.

1.0

Game #854: Digimon Rumble Arena

 Leeeeeeet's get ready toooooo rrrrrrumbleeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 Pokemon may had had Pokken, but Digimon did it first with their very first Digimon Rumble Arena on PS1.

 It's a very basic 2-D, but with 3-D graphics, one-on-one fighting game. The roster is decent, with a few main characters representing the first three seasons of the show. Since Digimon 03 was pretty much built around three protagonists, they are the only show to get their entire main cast represented! If anything, because it has main characters from the show, the roster is made exclusively out of already popular Digimon, Digimon that are probably way overexposed, while a few weirdos getting a spot in the game could've been neat.

 Gameplay is very rudimentary, with a block and an attack button, as well as two other face buttons to use special moves. Landing attacks and taking hits fills your Digivolution gauge, which you can use to temporarily digivolve into your Mega(Except Wormmon who always gets the short end of the stick) form

 The fighting itself feels very slow paced and kinda dull. While the game plays in 2-D, every level is quite large, usually with multiple floors. In the end, levels are two large for only two combatants, instead of incentivizing players to duke it out, it makes for overly prolonged duels if one of the fighters decides to run around.

 There are stage hazards as well as a few power ups you can pick up, further rewarding players who'd rather run away and waste your time.

 Most of the unlockable characters are Mega level 'mons, including the ability to play as your digivolved Digimon from the get go, although the latter can only be used in VS and no on the Single Player arcade run. This is a bit unfair, because these 'mons build the Digivolve gauge in order to use their super moves, while rookies NEED their digivolution in order to compete on equal grounds... for a short while until they revert back to their base forms.

 Very basic, very simple and a bit boring, but if you like Digimon it's not bad, but the sequel is a bit better since it executes the concept much better, as this sort of game and large stages would benefit from more combatants at the same time.

 5.0

Game #853: Dino Crisis 2

  And people thought Resident Evil changed....

 Boy, oh boy, Dino Crisis 2 must've been a bit controversial at the time, because this is a complete genre shift. This is an action game that plays like a survival horror game, and it's really good.

 You could think of this as a Mercenaries Mode for Dino Crisis, except made as a full game, kinda like the unfairly, and I'm to blame as well, criticized  Resident Evil Mercenaries but with a bit more depth. You have a fully visible health bar, you get combo points for murdering dinosaurs without getting hit and the such. With the circle button you can quickly use your subweapon, and you can use the triangle button to dodge on any direction, which is a bit wonky because when using tank controls and fixed camera angles it's anyone's guess where your character will jump to. Oh, and characters default to a run, there's no way to walk in this game.

 And yeah, I said characters, Regina is forced to share the limelight with series' newcomer Dylan. Dylan looks like a surfer bro in armor, and I didn't really like him, I kinda hated the fact that Dylan is the new focus. Heck, you could remove Regina from the plot and nothing would change, not so without Dylan. To be honest, Regina was the original heroine and I really liked her, I don't care about the new guy. You'll start the game as Dylan, but the game will switch your playable character back and forth as the story progresses.

 The game did away with 3-D environments, it's back to pre-rendered backgrounds. It was probably done in order to fit more enemies into the screen at the same time, and even then you might come across a few moments of slowdown every now and then.

 Every zone has a seemingly endless amount of constantly respawning enemies, but after you defeat 20-25 dinosaurs they'll stop respawning until you exit the zone. I don't mind being assaulted by an onslaught of enemies, but enemies spawn every time the fixed-camera angle changes, and sometimes they'll respawn right behind you, even if what was behind you was a dead end, which is just ridiculous.

 The game is an Arcade shooter all the way through. Every time you defeat a dinosaur you earn points, when you defeat them in quick succession without taking damage you earn small bonuses and if you can get from one area to another without getting touched(But killing at least 4 dinosaurs or so) you'll get a huge untouched point bonus. Points can be used at any Save Point to purchase small bonuses, like Armor that stops bleeding, new weapons, ammo, increase your maximum ammo stock and even healing items. It's a fun system that constantly rewards you for murdering dinosaurs and trying your best not to get hurt.

 Regina and Dylan share their inventory, somewhat. Healing items, Key items and points are shared between both, but each character has different weapons they can use and purchase. This is also really neat because each character feels different due to their different weapons.

 There are a few very basic puzzles here and there, but nothing too complicated. That said, you might discover, after using the ship for the very first time, that you're missing a key. In which case, you have to go back to the island you where before. So, where is this keycard? You have to inspect a waterfall a couple of times, until a green thing pops up and guides you to the keycard. Obscure much?

 Beating the game unlocks Extra Crisis, which is but a small diversion. It's you and a pre-set loadout against 5 waves of enemies on a very basic and boring black-and-green arena. The novelty here is that you can use any leftover Points to purchase other characters, like a tank or even Rick and Gail from the first game. You can even unlock dinosaurs, which will then allow you to play a very basic 2-player dinosaur fighting minigame.

 This might get me in hot water with Survival Horror enthusiasts... but I loved this game. It's pure, arcade-shooter fun. And I love how tank controls worked in this game, it made it quite interesting.

 8.5

Game #852: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5

 Speaking of horror games...

 I'm sure Robomodo didn't set out to make the worst Tony Hawk game on a home console, and I'm sure that Activision didn't give them a fair amount of time to complete it, but boy, every horror story you've heard about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is true, this game is hot garbage.

 I didn't buy the game right away because I hate digital-physical hybrids, but luckily(???) the game released on PS3 and X360 in a more complete state, kind of, the PS4 and XOne versions would end up getting a few extra levels and characters for free. Still, this version doesn't require a 7GB download, so it's still the winner among losers.

 I don't even know where to start with how Robomodo screwed the pooch. Let's start with the fact that moving around feels stiff and floaty at the same time. It's hard to describe, but it doesn't feel as good as the older games. It's easy to get stuck in corners and have a hard time getting out of them, because your hitbox when starting a run is horribly large. In order to help you move and interact with objectives you can start a run with R2 and break with L2. These two are actually good additions, since sometimes I'd accidentally start a manual when I was trying to talk to an NPC in classic Tony Hawk. That said, it's not perfect and it's kinda slippery, so stopping right where you want to stop is still a bit of a challenge. Sometimes even if you press R2 your character will take a running step but you won't move from where you are.

 The trick repertoire has been gimped so hard. Manual and Grind tricks are completely gone, so no mashing buttons for extra point multipliers, which is lame. Double tap flips are gone, in a way, since now they are your super moves. The Special gauge is very different in this game, after it's full you have to press L1 to enter Special mode. This is dumb because L1 is also used to spin in the air, so you'll accidentally turn Special on until you get used to it. Once you enter special mode all your grabs and flips turn into alternate moves, which is where the double-tap flips from previous games are, but this is a bit annoying because special moves require more air, and now your comboing is gimped. Now then, I don't think this was an awful idea, buuuuuut the way it used to work was much better.

 Robomodo actually tried adding a new mechanic, which, fair enough, they wanted to add something to the franchise, but the Slam was such a bad addition. Pressing triangle while on the air will make your skater quickly slam down into the ground. Most of the time you wish to use it it won't come out right, the rest of the time you'll be trying to grind onto a rail or skate the wall, but instead get forced down into the ground and losing your combo. To be fair, Robomodo listened and added the ability to turn off the slam from the menu, and this is on the PS3's disc by default, but I wanted to play the proper Tony Hawk 5 experience.

 Missions in the game are triggered by interacting with some dull and boring objective markers... or just press Select and pick any mission from the list. The missions are pretty repetitive, most of them are:
A highscore challenge.
'Break X amount of Y', 'Collect C-O-M-B-O letters', 'Collect S-K-A-T-E Letters'.
Grind/Manual/Collect X while having a high combo multiplier.
'Do tricks so that your head doesn't explode'
Collect X amount of Y and take them somewhere.
Run through the rings(VERY annoying because you don't know where the next ring will pop up.)
Use flip tricks to shoot something and break targets(Or just touch the targets).
Clear the pool of stuff.
And a few other variety objectives.
 If they did anything right, they took the AM/Pro/Sick challenge system from the final Tony Hawk games, which was a fantastic way of letting the player challenge themselves as much as they wanted without the rest of the game from them.

 The game has 7 stages and they are pretty mediocre. The second level looks kinda nice, but some of the stage-limits aren't very clearly defined. There's a school level, which is actually part of Tony Hawk 2's school level, but they managed to make it feel lifeless. Rooftops is one of the worst stages in the entire series, it's so bad that they had to give you a double-jump/ollie power up in order to traverse it, which is so dumb. In order to go to another level you have to pause the game, pick 'exit game' and then select 'Play' from the main menu all over again. What the hell? Oh, and the 'retry' option for challenges isn't immediate, which is ridiculous, you have to wait a few seconds after picking the option before the game prompts the window to ask you if you really want to retry the challenge.

 Character customization is a joke. You can't create a new character, instead, you have to customize pre-existing skaters, but it doesn't work very well, because a customized skater can only be made up of customizable parts, so you actually have to pick between 'Pro', how the character looks, and 'Custom', which is the random mish-mash of seemingly random heads and bodies. Do stat upgrades mean anything in the game? On one hand, you starting stats feel already pretty high, as I was doing massive jumps from the get-go, but on the other hand, every stat point I added to my stats felt like it changed nothing.

 The music is actually great, but I'm not sure if many of the tracks actually fit the game. The graphics are a huge disappointment. I think a cellshaded look would've worked great, but everything looks very basic. The game has an awful time loading textures, sometimes even loading a cloth's texture in customize-character can take upwards of ten friggin' seconds. Oh, and the framerate.... it can drop into the single digits for a couple of seconds every now and then. It's rather uncommon, but it happens.

 Robomodo had a very silly sense of humor, which I can respect, but I'm not sure if it fits the punkier tone of Tony Hawk. Inflating heads, pushing balls out of a pool, a 'Giant' power up on the fourth stage.. it's all very silly, and it adds its own flavor into the game, but I don't think it's a good fit for the series.

 Well... it's every bit as bad as they say. I have absolutely nothing positive to say about this one. I'd rather play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 over this one, because even though the gameplay is a bit more limited, at least everything it did, it did right. Still, I don't blame Robomodo, I blame Activision putting them under such a short deadline to milk every last nickel they could out of Tony Hawk.

2.0

Game #851: Dino Crisis

 Survival Horror devolved.

 Well, it's September, and Halloween is better enjoyed with a two-month celebration, so I'll ease into Horroctober with Dino Crisis. I've always said that Resident Evil was more Action than Survival Horror, at least since Resident Evil 2, but this game? Oh boy, this game...

 Ammo is incredibly scarce and most of your guns are incredibly weak, it takes about 10-12 bullets to down a velociraptor, this game's basic zombie, and while Regina can walk while aiming, it's slow and the raptors are barely fazed by your shots. That said, healing items are overly plentiful, so it's kind of like a reversed Resident Evil, which gave you more ammo than health pick ups.

 Not only are raptors way deadlier than REvil's zombies, they also pack more means to hurt you and can chase you down faster. The game takes place in a research facility, an excuse to let you trigger laser walls inside a few corridors in order to gate enemies away from you. It really feels like a real survival horror game, because I quickly learned that guns were worthless and learning to evade enemies was the name of the game.

 To add to the feeling of helplessness, raptors can jump over a few gates as well as smash through some doors, so unlike Resident Evil you aren't completely safe when entering a different room. As a matter of fact, Regina can lose her grip on her gun when attacked, which means you have to retrieve it from the floor, hardcore! To make matters worse, there's the bleeding status effect that may trigger when harmed, when bleeding you'll gradually take damage as you move. You need to use health packs to recover your health, but only Hemostats can fix a bleeding wound

 There's an awful 'Danger' mechanic that isn't explained in game, so I had to resort to my instruction booklet. Sometimes, during cutscenes, a Danger sign will appear below the screen, you must then mash buttons if you don't want to take damage. I thought it was dumb.

 You can save an unlimited amount of times but only when exiting specific rooms, labeled with an S on the map. These rooms are incredibly sparse, which makes it tougher than REvil. The Storage boxes also function differently, you need Plugs, key items, to open them, and they only connect between other boxes of the same color. On the flip side, while your inventory is rather small, key items don't take up these precious slots.

 While this game has tank controls and fixed camera angles, the entire game, meaning characters and environments, are fully 3-D. It's one of the best looking games on the system, easily. There's no slowdown either, and they pulled some sneaky moves to make the T-Rex look really scary with the PS1's weak hardware.

 There are 4 points in the game in which you can select from two different routes, adding some replay value to the game. There are also 3 different endings. Overall, the game took me little more than four hours to complete, and I unlocked a minigame in which you must hunt down a number of dinosaurs under a set amount of time.

 The game is a bit too vague and sometimes figuring out what to do can be tough. I had to consult a FAQ at least twice because I had no idea where to go or what I had missed. There's this one time in which you can't advance any further until you try to interact with a other you can't open yet because you are missing the N disc key. That's dumb, because I had checked the door earlier and I knew that I was missing the key item necessary to open the door, but I was just desperate going in circles not knowing what to do. Oh, and you don't keep memos you read, so any code or password you find? Write it down.

 I'll grant it this, the game is scarier than Resident Evil... at first. Raptors are quick and have various different attacks, you have to contend with the possibility of bleeding to death and you can have your gun knocked out of your hands... but then you'll notice that you'll be swamped with healing supplies. What the game lacks in ammo you get in health packs. Heck, there's a moment in the game in which Regina is parted from her gun by a Dinosaur. I picked it up, but didn't equip it again, because guns were useless. Thus, I spent the next two hours running around, unarmed, avoiding dinos like a pro. And by the end of the game, all three supply boxes were filled to the brim with healing items.

 There are no true bosses in the game. A Tyranosaurs Rex hunts you down every now and then, but most of the time you can just escape the room or 'defeating' it means running around for a set amount of time. After realizing how useless the gun was, I finished the game with healing items to spare and I only killed 3 dinosaurs, the first one was the one that made me realize it was a waste of time, and the other two were in my way, so I used the Lethal Poison Dart, which is an instant kill. I had three of those darts, but missed the third one, so I just reverted to evasive maneuvers. 

 Honestly? I prefer the REvil approach of having more ammo than health pick ups, but I still enjoyed Dino Crisis. Funnily enough, I think the REvil approach would've worked better in this game, since dinosaurs are far deadlier than zombies, so a more guns ablazing approach would fit the game. I don't think it's quite as good as say REvil 2, but it's a fun time if you enjoy the genre.

7.0

Game #850: Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS - MaxiBoost ON

 It's been a long, long, long wait.

 It's been over four years since Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS Full Boost first release, and I know I'm not the only one who was begging for a port of Mobile Suit Gundam Ectreme VS MaxiBoost ON, and somehow, someone up there in Bandai-Namco's offices listened, and it's finally here. We had to sit through the awfully misguided Extreme VS Force, and the weird consolation prize that was Gundam Versus, but right now, it doesn't matter, because MaxiBoost is here and it's everything I wanted and hoped for.

 I've already written at length about why I love this game so much, and at its core it hasn't really changed, so... yeah, it's still amazing. On the other hand, I LOVE finally getting to play the game with English menus, this is everything I've ever wanted since Gundam VS Zeta Gundam on PS2.

 The Burst has system yet again, now it's divided into three kinds: Shooting, Defensive and Physical offense. To be perfectly honest, I don't really care too much about this change, and I don't think it really changes how you approach the game, but it does make it so that now you know how to play your defensive game when the opponent engages its burst.

 At first I was gonna complain that I missed vanilla Extreme's Single Player bosses... but they are still here. If you beat a route without using continues and reaching 600.000 points you can then fight a boss from the original or from Full Boost, which is pretty neat. That said, MaxiBoost's new boss(Singular, since it's the same for all routes) is rather lame in comparison!

 The 1000 cost units got bumped to 1500, which is an interesting change, and I welcome it. The single player Mission Mode is pretty much on par with what came before, but instead of upgrading your Mobile Suits you can equip them with passive abilities to enhance their performance.

 The game has over 183 mobile suits to play as, you simply can't top this. Full Boost introduces the lame clones, such as Lunamaria's Impulse for Shinn's Impulse, and most of these clones are pretty much identical but with lower or higher stats, which is really lame. That said, I welcome the ones that at least look different, like the orange Destiny, Kamille's Gundam MK II(which is black and lacks the Super mode) or even the orange Gaia which lacks the ability to change into the dog form at will, but suits like Lacus' Infinite Justice and Lunamaria's Impulse are just lazy and boring. That said, there are like 20 clone suits at most, and even less of the worthless type, so there are at least 150 unique suits.

 This is a Playstation 3 game and it shows. I didn't give Gundam Versus enough credit last year, because that game looked quite better than this one. That said, the PS3 versions of Extreme VS had some slowdown here and there, but this version runs at a smooth 60 FPS, even split-screen multiplayer maintains a steady 60fps. And while Extreme Versus looks 'better' as far as the quality of the 3-D models, I prefer this pseudo cell-shaded look. It's a more colorful game, and I think it suits it better.

 Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS - MaxiBoost ON is the culmination of the Extreme VS series, and the wait was worth it, painful, but worth it. This might very well be my favorite game on the console.

 10

Game #849: Aggressive Inline

 As Tony Hawk as you can get without being Tony Hawk.

 I purchased Aggressive Inline back in the day because, I think, Gamespot's review convinced me that it was the next big thing. The game was alright, but it was no Tony Hawk, that's for sure. And that's pretty much my opinion right now, the game is decent, but it ain't the Birdman itself.

 The game follows Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 blueprint, although, to be fair, this game released first. Still, considering the released the same year, it was probably a coincidence. I felt like removing the timer and adding mission giving NPCs was a step in the right direction, so the fact that this game does that is a pretty good thing in my book...

 ... Except that the timer isn't really gone. While there's not a ticking clock breathing down your neck, you do have a JUICE gauge that you need to keep full, by performing tricks or collecting Juice boxes from the environment, lest you want a game over. It's an incredibly dumb mechanic, and sometimes, when searching for stuff or when I got too invested in a certain objective I lost track of it. You can get back into the game for 100000 points, but this mechanic shouldn't be here.

 Only 7 levels, but they are decent. Factory was the only stage I really hated. Each stage has a Key and a Upgrade. The Key opens up a section in another level, while the upgrade adds a major buff to one of your techniques, such as SPIN, FAKE or JUMP. You also upgrade your stats by performing actions associated with them. Want to enhance you grind? Do a lot of grinds and land the combos. In my opinion it takes a little too long to level up your stats, and every character must be leveled up separately. They start off with abysmal stats.

 Basic gameplay is where ultimately the game comes up short when compared to the Hawk. Flips and Tricks are both done with the square button, to pull a flip instead of a grab you need to press to directions on the pad before tapping square. Needless to say, it doesn't work as well as giving each action a separate button. On the flip side, the Circle button is context sensitive, and can be used to vault over walls or swing from poles. It's a really good idea, but it shouldn't have to had cost us dedicated buttons for flips and grabs.

 But the biggest problem are the manuals. C'mon, don't lie to me or yourself, when you play Tony Hawk, you mash Up and Down like there's no tomorrow. You just do. Here, coming out of a Revert(Cess in this game) and mashing Up and Down will just end your combo on a whimper. You must actually time Up - Down or Down- Up as as soon as the Cess animation ends. Do it sooner or later, or press a third direction on the pad, and your manual won't come out. It's not impossible to get the hang of it, by the last levels I was able to link 5 cesses or more on a single combo semi consistently, but it's still not ideal and it kinda ruins the flow of the game.

 Besides that, there's a general sense of lack of polish that permeates through the game. Sometimes you'll try to jump of a ramp or quarter pipe, but your jump won't come out just right and stuff like that.

 All that said, the soundtrack is glorious. It has a few rap songs I didn't really like, but most of it is rock and pop punk, and there's a lot of music I listen to while I work nowadays!

 Aggressive Inline did its best to copy Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and for the most part, the got it quite right. The game itself is good enough, even if lacking a bit in polish, and the goals per level are quite decent, but the things they changed in an effort to be different actually hurt it in the end. They should've gone full rip-off, because at least then we'd have an excellent clone instead of a decent imitator.

 6.5

Game #848: Spongebob Squarepants - Battle for Bikini Bottom

 Sink or swim? I'd rather sink with this game.

 Last year I heard a lot of good things about Spongebob videogames so I decided to take the plunge and bought a whole lot of them, including this one here Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom. And mind you, I was never too big of a fan of Spongebob, as a matter of fact, I outgrew it pretty much after it's first season and hated it afterwards.

 It's REALLY good, like really good. Movement feels slippery and cheap, y'know, like those quick 'n' dirty low budget platformers that tend to plague every console, however, the game plays really well.

 The characters and world of Spongebob translated very well into this simple 3-D models, probably because the art style itself is very simple. It's fun seeing all the different gestures Spongebob and his friends pull off.

 It's hard for me to explain why it's so good, because the puzzles aren't particularly imaginative and the platforming challenges aren't particularly exciting, however, everything works well and the game is just fun to play.

 The game's biggest flaw are the bosses, they take too long to complete because their patterns are lengthy, but they aren't hard at all, they are just boring.

 I liked how Spongebob, Patrick and Sandy have different abilities, so it makes sense why you can only swap to a specific character during levels. I found Sandy to be my favorite character because of here ever useful gliding ability, plus, her basic attack is a Karate chop. Patrick was probably my least liked, his basic attack, a belly bash, had a short range, and lifting/throwing melons wasn't my cup of tea.

 Not every level is a winner. There's a stage with a lot of sneaking required, which isn't too bad, but it has this Museum stage... at first, Barnacle Boy won't talk to you unless you go in as Spongebob, but the platforming challenge inside is impossible... unless you're playing as Sandy. I was stuck for son long attempting impossible jumps until I decided to look online and it turned out I should've been using Sandy all along. Still, to be fair, most Platforming games have at least one or two annoying stages or parts.

 Gold Spatulas are the main collectible, but there are also Shiny Things. Literal shiny things. These are a form of currency that can be used to open up routes to Golden Spatulas, purchase Golden Spatulas from Mr. Krabs and open up the theater, which I don't know what it does(Might look it up!) since it requires an obscene 40000 shiny things. Needless to say, grinding levels for this isn't my idea of fun.

 I hate to say it, but Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom is REALLY good. And this is coming from someone that cares very little, if at all, about the character. Sure, it has that cheap-feeling slippery movement that is pretty much a trademark from low budget, low effort platformers, but it actually plays really well, it's easy to tell that the people that made this game cared.

8.0

Game #847: Naruto: Ninja Council 3

 Hot ninja garbage!

 Way before I got into the Naruto anime, I played Naruto Ninja Council 2 on the GBA, back before it even got translated. I remember this mysterious unlockable character named 'Rock Lee' and I couldn't wait to see how he looked like. I liked the game a lot, so much so that I purchased it after it got localized and even started a FAQ for it, not that a beat'em up needs a FAQ. Naruto Ninja Council 3 was Naruto's first Nintendo DS game, and it's also a sequel to Ninja Council 2, using the same graphics and everything. It also sucks.

 There's no story, just a 7x7 grid made out of 49 missions. And it's dumb stuff like 'break 10 rocks' or 'defeat 10 bats', capture 10 flags before the opponent. It's idiotic and mindless. Maybe it's more fun in multiplayer. You can unlock 13 other missions.

 The controls take a while getting used to, it's so weird having B as the run button and not the jump button, since usually the attack button, Y in this case, is next to the jump button, A, but not so here. I keep running when I mean to jump. The wall jump is very clunky. Using touch buttons for the super moves is uncomfortable and dumb. And they also require touch minigames to work, and sometimes, even blowing into the mic. What the hell??

 In the game's defense... there are a lot of playable characters, 27 in all. And I've always liked these sprites, I thought Ninja Council 2 looked great, and this is no exception.

 Stages are one huge multi-leveled map, which makes gameplay dumb, because you are usually searching for stuff. Sometimes your target actively avoids you, which makes it a chore. You are given a radar on the bottom screen, but it only highlights enemy bosses, and since it's a radar and not a proper map, it's not very helpful. There's a new High Jump, Up+A to help you reach the higher parts of a stage, but platforms usually stop you on your way to the top.

 After clearing each mission you get nuggets of infinite wisdom such as 'hitting an stationary enemy is easier than hitting a moving enemy'. Thank you, captain obvious. Other times you get useless advice, for example, in a mission you have to defeat two giant spiders, and after you beat it, the piece of advice is "Defeat the smaller spiders first". Don't. It's a waste of time and they don't get in your way. What the hell????

 There are a few missions about defeat a certain amount of a certain enemy. This missions seem impossible at first... You are expected to use a screen-clearing super move, like Naruto's Toad Blade or Sasuke's Phoenix Flower, to supposedly defeat about 8 enemies a pop. It's ridiculously dumb, you have to constantly spam this move, even when no enemies are on-screen, in order to clear missions.

 It's bad. The mission structure with no plot is already a poor idea by itself, but the fact that so many missions are boring, like collecting banners, or dumb for the license, such as defeating X amount of animals, is the final nail in its coffin. Level design ranges from abysmal to just plain annoying as a million different things  hit you and your opponent, be it rocks or bats. The character variety is nice, but what's the use if the game sucks? Honestly, this is one of the worst Naruto games I've played next to Powerful Shippuden, and that's just shameful considering how much I liked Ninja Council 2.

 2.5

Game #846: Super Scribblenauts

 Who said you can't play god?

Tons of bite-sized stages. Most can be solved as soon as you type the correct word. You get a playable avatar, Max(Although you can use a few alternate skins), and you can move him around with the stylus or the D-Pad, but most of the stages end as soon as you write the right word to produce the required object.

 It's amazing how many words and adjectives the game recognizes. There's so much you can create it's incredible. You can type words either letter by letter, on the touchscreen, or by writing every letter with the stylus, but it isn't very accurate.

 The are so many fun interactions and things you can do that it's even disappointing that we don't get bigger and larger stages. Things like creating a "Small Good Cthulhu" and give him a Katana to fight a "Evil Giant God". You can create things like jetpacks, excavators or other vehicles and/or accessories and have your very own created characters use them!

 I can't stress enough how many fun things you can create, like a 'Suicidal doctor', or a 'zombie spotted robot'. Most stages can be solved with multiple different solutions, for instance, there are many ways you could jump over a hill. A 'trampoline', a 'jetpack' or maybe a 'plane'. Some stages actually require being beaten 3 times using different words for 100% completion.

 The "Press Start" screen is actually a small playground you can toy around with. There's also a stage creator.

 There are about 120 levels, and some of the final levels are a bit tough.

 All in all, it was pretty fun. I just wish it had bigger, larger and longer stages I could play around with. I think the gameplay has potential for bigger and more ambitious things. That said, what we have here is fantastic, and that's why I wish we could have more of it.

 8.0

Game #845: Trick'N Snowboarder

 Snowboardin' zombies.

 Let's get this out of the way first: You can unlock Resident Evil 2 characters, namely Leon, Claire and a Zombie cop, in Trick 'n Snowboarder. That should've already sold you on the game.

 Tony Hawk this is not, but as soon as I could I mapped X to jump, Square to flips and Circle to grabs, because that's the correct scheme for x-treme sports videogames that involve boards. R1 and L1 are used to spin on the air, for tricks, or to help you turn while snowboarding down. Overall, it felt a bit clunky and stiff, but I got used to it and started having fun.

 The game is pretty arcadey, which is why I wound up enjoying it so much. It's all about scoring points by tricks, and most of the time it's you against the slope, but there is a multiplayer mode. There's also a Story Mode, which has you performing tricks on specific parts of every stage as well as snowboard against 'rivals' and a free mode to snowboard to your heart's content.

 There's a very lame create-a-character mode, and you enhance you stats by going through story mode. You can unlock unique characters seemingly at random by playing the Story Mode. They look pretty neat, the 2-D artwork of these characters is top notch.

 There's a small but serviceable amount of tracks. The story mode can be beaten in under an hour, but considering characters unlock at random... that's for the best.

 The framerate can take a dive, specially in Story Mode whenever you get the 'trick cam'.

 The game is quite fun to play, but not as good as the Tony Hawk games. And maybe that's an unfair comparison, but the game is similar enough to warrant the comparison, 'sides, I'm pretty sure Activision had a Snowboarding Tony Hawk clone. Still, the game can stand on its own two feet, and the Resident Evil 2 characters are a neat curiosity.

 7.0

Game #844: Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Grand Theft Carriage.

 Do you like Assassin's Creed? You're in luck, Assassin's Creed Syndicate is pretty much identical to every other game in the series!

 There are two protagonists, the twins Jacob and Evie Frye, and while I was a bit put off by Jacob's lame one-liners, I really liked how the played off each other. You can play as any character for every non-story part in the game. Both characters share money XP, but have different equipment and 3 exclusive skills each: Woke Ubisoft decided that Jacob, the man, had to have the strength/combat based upgrades, while Evie gets the stealth ones, because she's a woman. To be honest, both characters are practically identical so not to worry.

 The game finally went GTA, you can hijack carriages and drive around, and you can even cause some light destruction around the city. The police will come after you, however.

 The controls are a bit weird, more limiting, probably to help with how inaccurate movement could get sometimes. I always tolerated it because it felt like a byproduct of the freedom you had in climbing pretty much anywhere, well, the new tweaks are unnecessary and to the game's detriment. Holding R2 enters parkour mode, and holding X will move you upwards and O will move you downward, just like Unity, except that now you can't press X to jump any time. This means that if you are on a ledge and you want to go below, to a pool of water for example, pressing X will result in Jacob and Evie staying rooted to their place. The water is below, even if you want to jump down instead of dropping down, so you have to press O. It's counter intuitive to how we've been playing Assassin's Creed, so it produces more issues than the ones it solves.

 Equipment has been limited a bit, now you can customize wrist guards, belts and outfits. It's alright I think, while I miss the larger variety in pieces and clothes from Unity, you also don't have as many pieces that turn obsolete because their stats are atrocious and you should be wearing something with better stat increases.

 1880's London is smaller than the piece of France we got in Unity... but I actually like it this way, Unity was a bit TOO big. As a result, this piece of England feels a bit more dense. Sure, at the end of the day it's just a lot of busywork, collect the flowers, collect the posters, find the chests, yadda yadda, but I like the mini dopamine-rushes. Lockpicking is no longer a mini game, praise the gods.

 I'm not too fond of the Experience system. You only earn XP by doing missions or doing actions that unlock perks. For example, only your first 120 assassinations will give you any XP, afterwards you won't get more XP from simply assassinating enemies. The perk system, however, is kinda neat. Performing a certain task a certain amount of times will give you a small, passive enhancement to an ability related to said action. For example, use sub-weapons mid-combo 75 times to get a damage boost on sub-weapons mid combo.

 I hated how they gated progress in this one. Basically, higher level enemies can take an ungodly amount of punishment, to the point that it seems like their final third of health lasts forever. They can also break your attacks mid combo with an attack that is impossible to dodge unless you guess it's coming and preemptively press circle to dodge. And while you can unlock high level equipment as you explore the city, equipment now has level requirements.

 That said, I am a hard-headed explorer, so I toughed it out and managed to outcheese some harder level missions by using subweapons and stealth, and thus was ready to continue the game at level 8. I hadn't even gotten the dart rope!

 The dart rope works similarly to Batman's grappling hook in Arkham City but worse. It's hard to gauge the correct distance when using it on foot, and a lot of times pressing L1 just had Jacob use the rope behind him, behind where I wanted to go. That said, when it works it's a neat new way to explore the city, it gives you a lot of horizontal freedom when scaling.

 Present day parts are still only cutscenes. I can only ever be so thankful.

 Bugs and glitches, oh boy, boys and glitches. People said Unity was buggy? I played both games unpatched and this one was way worse. Evie was invisible in a few cutscenes that involved Greene, and he himself was duplicated in another cutscenes, not to mention the many bugs and glitches mid missions that forced me to restart a mission. The Hypnotist's mission was particularly bad, I had to restart like 3-4 times because something would go wrong, like the Hypnotist entering an alert state while in the carriage so I couldn't get him out to the fact that the mission doesn't tell you that if you knock him out it's game over. The game crashed twice, Blue screen of death kind of crash. Honestly, this made Unity look like high art.

 There's an entire zone dedicated to World War I. A portal stealthily appears after Chapter 6 at the right edge of the Thames. If I didn't know that this part existed I could've easily missed it, which is really dumb. You don't get a single hint or notice that something appeared over there.

 Syndicate is alright. Honestly, it's just another Assassin's Creed game, you know what you're getting. It's a safe, fun way to spend some time, but it's very forgettable. Unity was simply more ambitious and more interesting, which is disappointing considering how I love this era's wardrobes. At least we finally get a female Assassin tied to a more than decent game. Aveline deserved better.

7.0