Messages

1

General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: April 25, 2026, 01:39:03 pm »

I actually don't remember that segment of a mission from that stage—particularly the electrified grind rails. It did take me far longer to complete this game than it normally does since I took an extended break from it, though, so either I'm just not remembering that aspect of the mission or I was able to clear that particular mission without issue. I do remember falling off from the pier area of that stage into the water a lot during one of the earlier visits there, and I was thinking about it specifically when mentioning my struggles to regain health as antagonists were pursuing me.

I hadn't looked up anything about whether Jet Set Radio actually performs well on Dreamcast hardware or not. I suppose I particularly was hoping to play the game with the original controller, as I think those sorts of details are important to playing older games especially as they were developed for and intended to play. If the performance is that poor, though, then maybe it was more worthwhile to play the PC port than just waiting to buy the game outright for Dreamcast someday day to play. But maybe one day I'll still do that.

     It's one of the levels in the middle of the story where you're forced to play as either Combo or Cube. Jet Set Radio -- or Jet Grind Radio as the original US release calls it -- runs pretty well aside on the DreamCast, aside from that one level. It's aesthetically pleasing (it's an in-universe depiction of Times Square) and one of the more ambitious-designed levels because it's more about traversing the environment vertically than horizontally. It's more with what you were saying about the game being confusing to navigate, which felt most apparent with that particular level for me. It sucked exploring that level cause I had left the harder graffiti for last, and just reaching those spots without exactly knowing how to get there, AND having to deal with the helicopter & shock enemies was pretty bad. I had played the game before like 6 years ago, which is why I was surprised to struggle at that level when I had probably cleared it in one go the 1st time lol.

     If you can get the DC copy at a fair price, it's more than worth it. I think just playing the PC copy with an Xbox or PS controller is just as fair too (that's what I did the first time playing through the game).

2

General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: April 22, 2026, 11:37:01 pm »

To a degree, certain aspects of the game are needlessly challenging, though it's not to the point of frustration. And, I will acknowledge that a certain level of difficulty is required beyond the depleting time limit to complete stages. Nevertheless, it's common to navigate throughout a stage without much direction, and there are times when the map system becomes useless as where players may need to go is a different segment of the map and can't be accessed unless already physically there. Meanwhile, antagonistic forces have the utmost intent to leave you incapacitated without any health, utilizing fists, guns, or even explosives while you're instead left with the only option to evade them. On that note, health can quickly deplete, and desperately searching for restorative spray paint cans while an enemy encounter occurs adds another layer of stress as time ticks down. Between these two elements, first-time players or even players who simply become lost will struggle.

Although I enjoyed playing it again this year, this was probably my biggest gripe with the game. The city mission with all the rooftops and elevation was exceptionally more brutal than I remembered. Not just with figuring out where to go, but how to get to the graffiti while dodging the helicopter and electric dudes that shock the poles you have to grind on to progress. Cool-looking level, but I really did not enjoy it. It also runs poorly on OG Dreamcast hardware.

At the end of stages, players are scored based on a ranking system, and I can only imagine that trying to reach the highest rank for them all is a trial of patience amidst the aforementioned problems present. To help players accrue more points, optional tag locations can be found and used to bolster one's score, but using them obviously comes at the cost of depleting their stock of spray cans.

The best way to accumulate more score is to pick a character with a high "Graffiti" stat (like Gum lol). I think you also get more score if you complete graffiti in one interaction -- without getting hit, running out of paint cans, or messing up the QTE -- cause the score multiplies. So it's better to do the large graffiti first with a full inventory of paint cans for max score, and you won't have to worry about it when the more difficult enemies appear later in the level.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: April 17, 2026, 11:40:11 am »

20. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | 2002 | PlayStation 2 | 4/11:



     Well, whether GTA 6 arrives this year or next year -- or the year after that -- we still have the original Vice City to look back on. I could never finish Grand Theft Auto: Vice City before due to complications: the first time, I forgot to save my progress after playing for 5 hours straight on the PS2; the second time, my game soft-locked every time I tried to move after saving because the game spawned me on top of the save point. Man, I love the old GTA games.

     Everything about Vice City is still true today: vibrant vistas, an amazing licensed soundtrack, and a step above its prior entry: Grand Theft Auto III. While GTA III is the innovator, and San Andreas is the one to truly push the PS2 to its limit, Vice City is still just as important with what Rockstar North improved on within a shorter development window. You have more weapons to work with, properties that can be purchased, and an overall different feel and vibe compared to prior entries. Though you can tell this is an early-2000s game, Vice City still holds up visually because of the new location. I love the grit of GTA III, but the loose recreation of 80s Miami combined with subtle art direction choices like bringing back the "trails" effect, is pure nostalgic bliss.

     Tommy Vercetti -- while not the most memorable protagonist in the series -- was and still is the perfect candidate for the series' 1st voiced playable character. His background isn't given much dialogue; the only detail I can remember is him mentioning being in 'Nam, but the story doesn't really elaborate further. Vercetti is however, definitely a character you can feel is a part of Vice City's world, like many of the characters you come across throughout the game. They're expressive and goofy, but don't come across as annoying like Liberty City Stories and its characters felt to me.

     Missions are surprisingly varied compared to GTA III. There is the occasional aggravating mission that takes numerous trips to the Ammu-Nation to beat, but you get a little taste of everything the game has to offer. This is thanks to the varied cast of characters you get missions from. You may do one mission that tasks you with assassinating a lady for her briefcase just to help with counterfeiting money, while the very next mission requires you to keep a certain speed limit while some drunk, bumbling idiots try to disarm a bomb in the back of your car. There's enough side content outside of missions to help with earning money, but it's not so much that it becomes overwhelming or too ambitious like San Andreas can be at times. Despite showing some cracks that it's still an early open-world title, Vice City is overall a pretty well-rounded experience.



Grade: A-

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: April 17, 2026, 11:33:00 am »

19. Rave Racer | 1995 | "Arcade Archives 2" Re-release | Switch 2 | 4/4:



     Rave Racer -- not to be confused with Ridge Racer or Rage Racer -- is a pretty fun arcade game. Drifting around corners is never a dull moment in this game. I can't always get it right, but when I do get a good run going, I'm in a flow state. This port to modern consoles -- while expensive -- gives you multiple versions to play. Do you want to play the Japanese or English version? Standard manual driving or the DX version using the right thumbstick as the stick shift? You get all of them!

     Of course, there's some annoyances I have with the arcade mode. Getting past opponents is tough, especially on the more advanced courses. There's tight passageways where you can bump into an opposing driver and lose a heavy chunk of momentum, as you can't help but do so just to make a sharp turn. Even if you bump them from the side, the game will sometimes decide that you lost speed while your opponent is not affected in any way. I also wish there was a way to turn down the announcer voices. I don't like hearing "Come on! Drive a smart race! There's a lot of racing ahead!" after I just made a perfectly normal drift turn.

     Even though it's nigh impossible to play the game as it was originally intended now, you can still have much of the authentic Rave Racer experience today in the comfort of your own bed or couch. Grade: B

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General / Re: April 2026 - Recently added to collection/recently purchased

« on: April 01, 2026, 06:07:06 pm »

April 1st didn't fool me!:

DS
- Pokemon Soul Silver

Switch
- Earthion

Xbox One
- Prototype Biohazard Bundle
- Yakuza 0 (with Game Case Holder)
- Yakuza 4 Remastered

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 29, 2026, 03:36:51 pm »

18. BALL x PIT | 2025 | PC | 3/28:



     I played the demo for this during the Steam Next Fest last summer, and I was pretty excited to start playing it now. It's a roguelike where you shoot balls at encroaching opponents to eliminate them, similar to Arkanoid. It helps if you can get the balls to the back wall so they start bouncing between there and the opponent's back. You don't have to do that though, and it may not even be feasible depending on what build you're running. You have 20ish characters to pick from, with each one having their own unique ability. There's one character that bounces the projectiles you fire back with a shield, one that lobs projectiles, even one that turns BALL x PIT into a turn-based game. You can even choose a character that just plays the game for you and makes their own decisions on what upgrades to get.

     Upgrading your character works by picking up gems dropped by eliminated opponents. You can then choose from either passives or special balls with signature abilities like Burn, Charm, or Lightning. Eventually, an opponent will drop a power-up that will let you fuse certain balls or passives together. This is where the magic of the game happens. You can have -- for example -- a Laser ball shooting horizontally and another one vertically fuse to make one ball that shoots in both directions simultaneously. You can then fuse that one with the Ghost ball so that it passes directly through opponents now, while firing lasers every time it touches someone new. It's easier to make a powerful build in this game versus a lot of other roguelikes just from playing casually. By experimenting and believing in what you think would work, you could make something amazing.



     There's also the home base: from which you farm resources like wheat and stone to construct buildings that will either grant you stat boosts or unlock a new character. After every match, you harvest by picking a direction to fire all your unlocked characters towards and seeing them ping-pong and bounce in various directions like the balls you fire in the main game. It's a fun gameplay loop of placing structures and harvesting crops, then attempting to beat the next level with slightly better stats and more information to work with. This game does run out of steam towards the end as it stops introducing new ideas to you, but the first 80% of BALL x PIT is very engaging to play. It's well worth the base $15 asking price for a one-week gaming addiction. Grade: A-

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 29, 2026, 03:27:20 pm »

17. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories | 2006 | PlayStation 2 | 3/27:



     It's felt like forever since I last played a GTA game, especially one from the PS2-era. The 'Stories' games were seen as an afterthought by a younger me because I had no idea what they were supposed to be. I thought they were extra challenges or bonus missions to their original games; I never knew Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories were full-blown GTA games! Since I'm more familiar with GTA III, I wanted to trudge through Liberty City Stories first and save the other one for later in the year.

     LCS is pretty much a 'GTA III Deluxe', with more extracurricular content than the original and some gameplay features borrowed from the later PS2 titles -- such as motorcycles, drive-by shootings, and a less restrictive player-controlled camera. In terms of presentation however, Liberty City Stories is somehow weaker than its father game. I've run across multiple weird glitches: like having one of my allies in one mission shoot at me for no explained reason and having to use the RPG to blow up an enemy stuck in a wall -- the kind of glitches I would never come across in GTA III. Maybe it's just my nostalgia or I'm just unlucky, I don't know. This game also runs very poorly on original hardware, like it was made for the PSP in mind and was ported over to the PS2 last minute. It's like whatever framework they borrowed from the original GTA III to build on with the PSP version, to then port later to the PlayStation 2 has made it more unstable.

     I can see it with the way the NPCs act on the streets: constantly getting stuck on cars or running into walls whenever they get spooked. Even during the credits when you are watching pedestrians drive around Liberty City, they are crashing into walls and other civilians. There's a level of polish from even GTA III that's not completely shown here. It has the same pop-in problems and there are still loading screens in-between islands (but now the music cuts out while you're loading for some reason). In half of the mission cutscenes, there's no lips moving and lots of static cinematography. Some missions feel too brief for what they are. There's a major character from Vice City that returns just to get gunned down for some papers; no dialogue from him or a special cutscene, you only get his likeness.

     The story is not that interesting either. Many of the original GTA III cast end up returning through a majority of the game's missions. Toni Cipriani, the main character you play as, is one of them. Unfortunately for me, I didn't care for most of these people. They've all had a complete personality change and come off as bizarre caricatures that follow the series' trademark humor more so than their original appearance. Maria in this game devolves into a hardcore drug addict and is never mentioned after leaving the first island. Sal came off as shady in GTA III but here, he's a large megalomaniac. The cutscene dialogue can be funny, but most of the time I'm wondering why I'm doing missions for these people that have no respect for you. It makes doing missions feel kind of pointless. Claude is a more involved, developed character in the GTA headcanon than Toni -- and Claude doesn't speak at all! I read from a positive review on Reddit that doing missions is supposed to feel pointless, and that the main theme of the story is the pointlessness of crime and the consequences of chasing it. I can definitely see it, but it doesn't make playing through Liberty City Stories more compelling to me.



Grade: D-

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 22, 2026, 07:29:51 pm »

16. Jurassic: The Hunted | 2009 | Xbox 360 | 3/22:



     This is one of those games that I felt pretty unsure about going in. I'm not into dinosaurs, why would I buy this? Let's start with the facts: Jurassic: The Hunted is not a good game. It's extremely short, jank, not visually appealing, random ass story, corny B-movie dialogue, and definitely a product of its era. Yet, I had fun playing through this mess -- way more than I expected.

     The dinosaurs of this game are well-recreated and believable. I mean, most of them just dart towards you as a form of attack, but it's thrilling and sometimes scary. You face the dinky dinosaurs mainly, with the much larger ones saved as boss fights. Levels are pretty varied and will most of the time introduce a new weapon for you to play around with. There are turret sections and even closed-off areas where you have to defend and repair barricades that the dinosaurs will try to tear down, similar to Call of Duty Zombies. I never felt bored with this game, which doesn't say much considering the campaign is like 2 hours long but still.

     I would even consider Jurassic: The Hunted to be in the 'C' tier level of games I've played this year... if it wasn't for one glaring issue. This game runs horribly. This is one of the worse optimized games I have ever played.  The first time I booted this game up, I had thought about getting rid of it because I thought my copy of the game was defective. I don't know if it's because I have one of the oldest Xbox 360s that hasn't red-ringed or what! I had to use the Adreneline ability more often to slow down time; not because it looked cool but because I couldn't aim with all the framedrops into the mid-10s. I guess that's just part of the 'Jurassic: The Hunted experience'. Grade: D

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 22, 2026, 06:36:05 pm »

15. Digger T. Rock | 1990 | Rare Replay Collection | Xbox Series X | 3/14:



     I'm not gonna trip, this game is pretty ass. Seemed to be pretty cool too at first glance. The few Snapshot challenges I played in the Rare Replay collection had featured this game. I had the impression that it would be like Dig Dug, but with NES level structures and a wider emphasis on navigation -- which is more or less what it is. Controls feel simple enough to use... until you get further in and see Digger slip off ledges trying to place a ladder, or get stuck trying to climb over a rock, or lose a life because he can't decide whether to throw a rock or use the shovel at an enemy. I then realized what I was in for.

     In Rare fashion, a lot of their earlier catalog LOVES to challenge you; sometimes for the worse reasons. Battletoads is challenging -- maybe downright unfair with its difficulty -- but it never feels cheap. The challenge of Digger T. Rock comes from enemies that will endlessly spawn and falls that you cannot gauge if its a couple of blocks steep or a dozen. The camera is very close to your character, so you can't really tell what's below you. You can use ladders to safely climb down, but they're limited use. It all boils down to trial-and-error. There is a way to get unlimited ladders in like the 3rd level or something, but I never figured out how. Unless you have the patience to constantly get killed over and over just to figure out where you need to go, you're going to need a walkthrough. I didn't want to start pulling hairs, so I gave in and used one.

     As you can probably tell, I'm not big on Rare's earlier catalog. I can recognize however that Cobra Triangle and Snake Rattle 'N' Roll are better looking, playing games than this -- and both had been released before this game! This takes the crown from Gunfright as the worse in the Rare Replay collection thus far. Grade: F+

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 22, 2026, 05:39:53 pm »

14. Donkey Kong Bananza | 2025 | Nintendo Switch 2 | 3/8:



     Well, I finally finished it. My #1 reason for wanting a Switch 2. To start of, the Nintendo EPD team perfected the feel, the weight of Donkey Kong's punches. DK crushes and crumbles his enemies with perfection -- knocking them out and blowing up parts of terrain with their body's splash damage. Punching through terrain is so much fun and it's crazy how natural it feels in this game. You can just level out environments with only Donkey Kong at your disposal and the entire map layer as your oasis. Each layer is this giant sandbox pit for you to make your own. You can surf on rocks that you pulled from the earth and use that same rock to throw at an enemy getting ready to attack. Not all enemies are designed to be hit by your punches or with any terrain: some will require you to use certain abilities or stronger terrain to do damage.

     The boss battles are maybe my single favorite aspect of DK Bananza. They kind of just show up randomly: either at the end of a layer or somewhere in the middle. They all make use of the voxel destruction technology in various ways. One fight will have you rip off chunks of terrain to throw at a flying boss to slow them down. Another boss will require you to look towards the ground to see where they go when they're invisible, so you won't want to mess with the terrain at all. And then you have some bosses that do away with the typical three-phase battle and just require you to run up and punch the crap out of them and anything else in sight.

     If there's ONE thing that holds this game back from being an all-time great for me, it would be the collect-a-thon nature of the game. There's a little of what I would call 'DK64-syndrome' in this game and that there's way too many things to collect. Yes, both Banana and fossil collectibles are not required at all to beat the game, but it doesn't feel as special to collect as the moons did in Super Mario Odyssey. What really made Mario Odyssey shine was the discovery of finding moons. The maps of Odyssey are smaller and more linear, but felt large and rich with everything you could potentially find in some off-beaten path or hidden corner. You are also granted the powers of Cappy, which amplify the joy of discovery even further as you could potentially control anything: Goombas, frogs, a tree?! Most of the bananas you uncover in DK Bananza meanwhile, are either in challenge rooms or just buried in the earth's crust. It could be by design, but DK Bananza is still a collecthon-a-thon game -- with a list of every collectable banana you could get shown in the pause menu. I just wish a little more creativity was put into the placement of collectibles. The animal abilities you get are cool, but hardly required in comparison to Cappy. You'll need to use them a few times in the layer that they're introduced, but are not required much after that. And when you need to find collectibles, it's just easier to use the Elephant to suck all the terrain up then to use any other ability. It took me under two weeks to 100% Mario Odyssey, whereas it took over two months just to beat Bananza (I did get about half of the game's collectibles to be fair). I guess I'll have to replay Odyssey later in the year just to see if it's as good as I remember.

     I still really love this game despite it not exactly being as hyped up as I wanted it to be. This is just Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on steroids and that's a great thing. It's an idea that I could never imagine but seems so obvious with the character of Donkey Kong. There's a surprising amount of storytelling going on with the design of Bananza's world and the signs left behind in each layer. You are slowly drip-fed some details and lore behind some of the game's layers and NPCs like the Fractones. I wasn't sure what to think about a bunch of animate rocks with cute googly-eyeballs sticking on them, but I really liked them by the end of the game. And the last couple of hours this game ends on are something to behold. I won't spoil it, but it's really special.



Grade: A-

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 07, 2026, 06:07:36 pm »

13. Condemned: Criminal Origins | 2005 | Xbox Series X | 3/7:



     Completing back-to-back horror games for the first time in quite a while, this one is poles apart from the last one I played however. We have here the grungy survival horror action-FPS of Condemned, developed by the late & great Monolith. This game really did not age well in the 'looks department', but it kind of works with the overall aesthetic. Character models with any semblance of being called human just look dreadful in this game. The enemies you face however, look real dangerous and thrilling to fight. This, combined with the closed-quarters level design, really make Condemned shine through all the grit and grime of the game's world. There's also the game's combat, which feels visceral and crunchy when you trade blows with the many thugs and gremlins you're forced to face. Condemned does feel a little stiff to play today, especially with this herky-jerky camera movement that may be due to how it ran on the original 360. Still, it only adds to the claustrophobic layout of levels and not knowing what's around the corner.

     Story was so-so for me. I liked the beginning parts where it felt more like a crime drama, but they lost me with the paranormal crap introduced towards the end. It felt shoe-horned in and not what the game built itself up to be. This was Monolith's 2nd first-person horror game released in 2005, the prior game being F.E.A.R. about a month earlier. These were the studio's first attempts at making a single-player FPS with elements of horror (not counting Blood); and they nailed both. F.E.A.R. is way better though. Grade: C+

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 07, 2026, 05:56:59 pm »

I wasn't familiar with Saya no Uta previously (I'm generally unfamiliar with visual novels), but I did become somewhat curious about it after reading your thoughts. Without really knowing the extent to just how explicit this game is even after some shallow searching, I decided to peruse images results. With that said, while it's not a game for me (probably only) because of its eroge content, it's interesting to know that this exists and as is popular as it is.

The Steam version cuts down on the eroge content, but I don't know how it's done. I've tried looking into it, but everyone has a slightly different description about what's shown and what's removed. I think you still get the context about what's happening, but the eroge dialogue & nudity is cut out. Some people liked the 'censored' version more after reading both, so you couldn't be wrong looking into the Steam version if you're interested. It's still gonna require some willpower to read though, no matter what version you pick.

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 05, 2026, 03:36:26 pm »

Updated: March 29th

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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 05, 2026, 02:46:04 pm »

12. The Song of Saya | 2003 | Director's Cut | PC | 2/28:



     Well, where do I begin? This game is an experience, and I don't say that lightly. This is one of those games that you have to go in blind and be fully immersed by what the game gives you. And this game will not only give, but put you through a lot within its 6 to 8 hour runtime. It's unapologetically grotesque & deranged in its presentation, yet never feels over-bearing. It can feel overly nihilistic at times, yet beautifully written with a lot of thought and effort. For every shocking moment, there's respite (yet somberness looms in the atmosphere). There's not a moment of waste in The Song of Saya.

     The 'visual' in visual novel is clearly presented here. Outlines of buildings covered in guts and entrails parade the streets in a nightmare world where the sky is endless black. The nasty gore of background environments isn't drawn but created from early-2000s CGI, which feels even more unsettling and uncanny to visualize. This is juxtaposed by moments of real life: pictures taken from everyday places, filtered to look like faded, nostalgic slices-of-life, making up environments for the game outside of the nightmare. There's plenty of unique CG art shown as well; way more than a short VN like this should have. You also have the fantastic soundtrack, with wildly shifts in tone & mood: from something as simple & serene as "Sabbath" to the roaring drone of guitars and distant wails of agony in "Schizophrenia". There's a lot to Song of Saya that makes it feel complete, unrelated to the actual story.

     Speaking of which, let's get into what rounds out Song of Saya for me: the story-telling -- specifically the shifting of perspectives. You start as a victim involved in a tragic accident that has completely changed his view on life, and you see all the disturbing details that he sees from his perspective. Later on, you start to see the story unfold from other viewpoints and foreboding horror starts to occur. I'll try my best to explain a scenario from the game without spoiling anything: there's a scene of murder involved, but to show or even explain the person getting murdered is very taboo in the land of video games. So, this game decides to dehumanize them by showing you the perspective of someone that can't see them as human. Elements of the real world are heavily altered in their point of view. You can make out some remnants of the outside world's humanity as the spectator of the story, but the person you are spectating cannot because they are filled with fear. So you witness and hear the sounds of a tragedy taking place from their muffled POV, but you know the exact context of the crime occurring if the veil were to come off. It's an absolutely fucked-up display of horror, but it doesn't come off as cheap or in poor-taste because of the clever writing and mixed-perspective presentation.



     I'm baffled that this came out in 2003. There must've been nothing like it then and it's still captivating to this today. Apparently, Japan agrees because they're still pumping out all kinds of merch for this game: Posters, figures, plushies. There's also vinyl records of the game's OST, with some colored variants aptly named "Meat" and "Rot". Not bad at all for a 23-year old visual novel with no anime or manga adaptation. Anyways, I'm getting off-topic. This game is really not for everyone and even for the people that its for, opinions are polarizing compared to the other classics of this genre. Most of the "Director's Cut" content I used my arm as a censor bar, but I appreciate it for making the game even more disturbing to read. I don't think there's any correct way to experience The Song of Saya. I'm glad there's options to blur the abhorrent scenery in this game for those that can't stomach it, but still want to engage in the story. I did however, experience this game as any Japanese person would back in 2003 and I did not regret it one bit. This is a work of art in the same vein as games like Pathologic and Deadly Premonition are: completely and utterly its own thing; no sugarcoating it or compromise to appeal to the largest audience. It may not be my favorite game of the year when everything's said and done, but it will probably be my most memorable.

Grade: A

15

General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!

« on: March 04, 2026, 09:19:37 pm »

11. Skullmonkeys | 1998 | PlayStation 1 | 2/25:



     Continuing from Ghost in the Shell, we have yet another one-of-a-kind PS1 game completed: Skullmonkeys. Off the bat, art direction gets a 10 out of 10 from me. This is actually a sequel to the point-and-click adventure game The Neverhood, released two years prior. You can absolutely tell the same team worked on this one just by artstyle alone: claymation that's been all hand-crafted and worked into most of the game's assets -- from the backgrounds, to the enemies you face, to the stop-motion cutscenes that play every couple of levels. How cool is that?!

     As for the actual gameplay, it's kind of ehh. In the beginning, you have a nice balance of difficulty and fairness as you get used to the game's mobility and mechanics. However, the game becomes exceptionally brutal once you meet the bug enemies. These levels just start to feel monotonous as you're stuck in the same environment, dying to the same enemies over and over. It doesn't help that each level to start with features different types of enemies and vistas (snow, industrial, above the clouds, etc.), while these 'YNT' levels all have gloomy environments with these bug enemies that punish you with their hit detection and speed -- and there's four of them, IN A ROW!

     There's one thing I've noticed with some of these enemies: the standard ones that walk back and forth have no predictable movement cycle. For example: the non-flying bug enemies will stand in one spot until they scratch their heads, which means they are about to move in the opposite direction they're facing. Sometimes, the head-scratching animation will play halfway or not at all when they decide to move. Sometimes, they move the length of an entire platform or move only halfway before they stop dead in their tracks. So for a platformer that requires minimal room for error, you have to face enemies that give you no way to predict when they're going to move and how they're going to move. This harkens me back to some of the problems I've had with Tomb Raider II: where some of these deaths are in no way your fault because you have no way of predicting them. It's worse in this game however, because at least if you replay Tomb Raider II, you will know what to look out for in terms of traps set up to troll you. I have no idea if my jump in Skullmonkeys will allow me to stomp on an enemy or I end up a couple of pixels short and get blown up because the enemy decides to abruptly stop.

     Forewarning: this game is part platformer, part inventory management sim. There are parts in later levels where it feels like you HAVE to use power-ups to make it past. You have a finite number of power-up items that's earned in levels. When you lose all of your lives, you spawn at the start of the section where you died instead of the start of a level. This is very nice of the game to do something like this, expect for the fact that every power-up you've collected over the course of the game is now lost. You may as well start over from the last password save instead.

     Everything outside of the gameplay is intriguing (in a good way!). You get this bizarre but memorable soundtrack to jam out to, with the kind of humor you would expect from a LucasArts point-and-click adventure sprinkled in. You knock your head into an upper platform and you hear a bonking sound. You jump on top of a skull monkey and their body parts will explode towards the player's camera. You have funny cutscenes of your character, Klaymen, eating beans and getting into shenanigans with the skull monkeys. This game is marvelous to look at, just not as fun to play.



Grade: D+