#Crash Bandicoot review

[mrdrhenwardhykle]

Here's the table of contents for the first volume for reference

[shinigami-striker]

A Bandicoot Bash | Thursday, 06.21.2023

Here's a video game review of what Game Informer has to say about Crash Team Rumble:

"Crash Team Rumble could be viewed as the natural progression of difficulty in the Crash Bandicoot franchise. It takes an entirely different type of preparation and offers a different reward, though. Crash Team Rumble's take on multiplayer platforming madness is unique, with enough depth to keep you on your toes after hours of gameplay. Those searching for a fresh take on the long-running series should give it a try." - 8/10 (reviewed the PS5 version)

[randomboo256]

Crash Bandicoot (1996) Review

Playstation as a brand has always been rather strange to me. Despite being so iconic and played by so many, the company as a whole doesn't seem to have much of a coherent identity. Most Nintendo games, by contrast, feels very interconnected into one larger brand. That's because Nintendo games all strike the same target audience, that being difficulty-light family friendly games with cartoonish graphics with generally downplayed storytelling in favor of a gameplay-first mentality. That's not to mention the frequent crossovers between them.

Playstation, meanwhile, prides itself on all of it's exclusives just like Nintendo does, and yet all of their exclusives feel so distant from one another. They publish games of various genres with wildly different tones and core focuses. While there are many people who are fans of Playstation as a whole, Playstation generally feels like it goes for a scattershot approach to gaining a market. Rather than hone in on one audience, they'd rather become a jack of all trades. While that decision was certainly successful, it kinda leaves Playstation without anything in particular to latch onto to represent their core brand. Look no further than Playstation All Stars for proof of that what I mean.

I think that's the main reason then that Playstation doesn't really have a definite mascot of any kind. While some might argue Kratos or Sony Cat or Astro Bot or fucking Knack, none of them really feel like mascots to me, and that's largely because Playstation hasn't really been pushing them as mascots. Playstation doesn't want a single smiling face to represent their brand like Nintendo does because a single smiling face simply does not represent the bulk of the games they publish. And I guess that's fine.

However...

There was one time they tried to use a single smiling face to represent them.

Released in 1996, one year after the North American release date of the original Playstation, Crash Bandicoot smashed onto store shelves. This surprised me somewhat. I didn’t grow up in that era, so I assumed that Crash Bandicoot was a launch title for the Playstation. The game was developed by a (at the time) small studio named Naughty Dog under the supervision of not Sony, but Universal Interactive. Y'know Universal? The movie studio Universal? Yeah, they had a games division apparently. Despite that, the game was published by Sony so Universal acted more as an obnoxious middle man. However, Universal owned the rights despite Naughty Dog creating the characters and Sony publishing and marketing them. However, that's a story for another time. What’s the game itself like?

Crash Bandicoot is a linear level by level platformer where you play as the titular Crash Bandicoot. The plot goes that after a mad scientist named Dr. Neo Cortex evolved Crash from a normal bandicoot, he was planning to use a mind control device on him called the Cortex Vortex so he could use Crash as the general of his army of other mutated animals in his quest to rule the world or something. The machine failed and Crash escaped. However, Crash’s girlfriend, who was also evolved by Cortex, is still in Cortex’s castle and we need to save her before Cortex uses his machine on her. That’s about it when it comes to the plot. It may sound like a lot the way I described it, but ultimately it’s a pretty simple damsel in distress plot. That damsel in question having a.. rather questionable character design, I’ll say that much. Apparently while developing the game the marketing director told the developers that Tawna was a sexist character design, but the developers refused to listen to her because Tawna was meant to appeal to the “same kind of guys we had been 5-10 years earlier”.

kids game btw

...

I have no comment. Let’s just move on to the gameplay.

The gameplay is a 3D platformer, one of the first of its kind. Immediately out the gate, you realize that the game has no analog controls. Back when Crash was released, the original Dualshock wasn’t. So we’re playing with the D-Pad only. That may sound bad, but the game was designed around the D-Pad, so it actually makes the jumps more reliable than if you remapped the controls to the stick. Immediately after you realize the controls, you also realize the camera. It’s fixed. I personally have issues with depth perception in 3D games, so fixed cameras are normally a bad sign for me. That said, I actually had no issues with the camera in this game outside of a small handful of moments.

As for how the game actually PLAYS like? Well, it’s a platformer. You have two buttons: jump and spin. The jumping feels really nice. It’s floaty, yet precise. I always felt pretty confident even when making scary jumps. It gives you a lot of midair control and it hangs in the air long enough to comfortably undo a jump if needed. That may make the game sound easy, but this game is anything but. This game is HARD. It has plenty of good challenges in its level design and only rarely does it feel unfair, at least when it comes to the platforming. As for the combat, it’s another story. Our other button, spin, is a simple attack where Crash will spin in place to damage enemies. It’s not very good. The attack is inconsistent in whether it’ll hit the enemies and it’s just generally not very effective. I mean, for the most part it works perfectly fine but there are certainly occasions where you’re like “Oh come on, that attack should’ve landed.” However, even if you die you don’t have to worry too much. The game has well spaced out checkpoints- not too little to make you have to repeat tons of progress but not too many as to ruin the challenge. The game does have a life system though. For a game this challenging, worrying about lives is dumb. Fortunately, they do seem to give you plenty though. I wouldn’t know however, because FULL DISCLOSURE: I had an infinite lives code on. Call me a pussy all you want, but I don’t like life systems. They stress me out too much, and I am not someone who needs MORE stress in her life.

Next, I suppose we need to talk about the boxes. Every level is filled with tons of breakable boxes that contain Wumpa Fruit (essentially coins). Sounds standard, however in this series they have secrets hidden behind breaking every box in every level, alongside the process of collecting every single optional gem. For the first game, I didn’t do that. Sorry, but that does not sound fun in the slightest. In the first game, you have to break every box without dying in every level, not to mention finding hidden keys and colored gems to access additional levels and secret paths in normal levels to find more boxes. It sounds like a headache, and it’s all just for a joke ending. I will give them this though: If I was a kid, I would love the extra replayability this would bring. However as a slightly larger kid, I don’t need that replayability. Honestly, I’d be happy just replaying the game while ignoring the gems, because I had plenty of fun just doing that. There is one big problem I haven’t mentioned yet though: the save system. In this game, the only way to save is by clearing these Tawna bonus rounds. That’s already annoying, but the game also seems to have some baffling system as for how that actually works? Like sometimes they won’t let you into these rounds? I don’t know. I avoided using this system by just using a save state to reload my game. Other than reloading my save file, I generally avoided using save states.

That’s about all I have to say about Crash Bandicoot. It’s a fairly simple game, but a fun and challenging one. I highly recommend it, at least the PS1 version. I’ll elaborate on that some other time, but for now I'd say the game is well worth playing. It's nothing mind blowing, but it's an enjoyable platformer all around.

Since Crash was one of the first 3D platformers, Sony decided to line up behind it as their primary mascot for this era and they ended up releasing 2 sequels, a kart racer, and a bizarre party game. Maybe I'll talk about them some other time. However, due to Universal's involvement, the partnership wasn't destined to last. What happened with that was complicated, but long story short Naughty Dog and Universal parted ways, Sony lost the publishing rights, and a bunch of complex merger stuff led to a company called Vivendi Games holding the rights, who then merged with Activision, and now the newly renamed Activision Blizzard made it their personal goal to sexually harass every woman on earth until Microsoft said "I want a bite of that" and is now attempting to buy them. There's currently some legal shit going on about whether the acquisition will actually go through due to some lameo "MoNopOly LaWs" or whatevs. It's kinda bizarre to think that were potentially looking at a future where Playstation's original mascot may now be owned by their current biggest competitor. Oh well. I'll always view Crash Bandicoot as a Playstation character, even if that's far from true nowadays.

Not sure how to end this review. That's all folks?

That's all for now at least.

[bonythesquirrel]

Happy 20th Anniversary Crash Twinsanity

[horrorgameanalysis]

You Should Play: Ratchet & Clank (2002)

The following article contains spoilers for Ratchet & Clank (2002).The original Ratchet & Clank is perhaps the game I feel the most nostalgia for. Or at least, it is the one that I feel the most nostalgia for the most consistently. It is not the first game I’ve ever played (see my articles on Crash Bandicoot or Jak & Daxter), but it was one of the first games I was able to play totally on my own.…

[mytastessuck]

Josh Mancell: Warp Room Music

For those of you haven't played Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, you haven't lived. I'm sorry but your doctor is lying to you. And if this tune doesn't give you a nostalgic feeling of "Seriously? I managed to miss one box in this area? Where was it, up Dr. Cortex's ass?!", then you clearly have never heard of the phrase "100% Completion".

Song Score: World 1-2/10

[esportopedia]

Mobile Crash Bandicoot will never see spring again

Mobile Crash Bandicoot will never see spring again

One of the most popular types of mobile games is the so-called endless run. It is this style that he obeys. Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!where you easily lose track of time. But the company King, behind the development of this thing, reported not very good news. 16.02.2023 Sat they will shut down the servers and the game will no longer be playable. A source: SpockMobile The Witcher: Monster…

[puffyducks]

Puffy's Really Comprehensive and Cool Review of PK Out of the Shadows for the PS2 (not emulated guys I didn't emulate it I bought a really legal copy for my PlayStation 2 console that I own)

Ok guys I just did a really epic playthrough of the Paperinik video game (that was streamed on Discord thank you to everyone who watched me scream and struggle for like 6 hours) and I'm here to give a review for the other PK fans or perhaps even people who really like playing old niche PS2 games for some reason (get a better hobby)

First of all this game gets a 10/10 rating from me because this game has Paperinik in it and there are no other games with Paperinik in them.

Paperinik's English name is "the Duck Avenger" but I guess there was too much PK logo branding in this game for them to bother to change it so they kept his name as just PK and tried to explain it by saying it stood for "really cool duck" or something in Latin. Which I'm pretty sure was just a fucking lie.

I'm really happy that Uno was there, I love him and he's my best friend even tho he was FUCKING USELESS like this whole game. Sorry he just kinda grabs Donald, turns him into a superhero, then throws him into an Evronian base with 0 explanation and is like "go kill" and like who am I to say no to the giant floating orb?? Like he gave me a gun which is really nice but I'm out here getting fucking jumped by the Evronian empire and Uno isn't even there to cheer me on or NOTHING. He only occasionally shows up to explain when you get a weapon upgrade like FUCKING DO SOMETHING UNO THEY'RE BEATING MY ASSSSS

The little collectibles are just tiny floating Uno heads so that also gets a 10/10 from me I really enjoyed running around and collecting my army of Uno PNGs. The SECOND collectible however- Ok so there are like these scientists that are tied up by the Evronians and you're supposed to save them right? Well for whatever reason (they don't really explain why this is happening) every time you get close to a scientist it starts a big menacing countdown in the corner and you're supposed to save them before the timer goes down or else THEY JUST FUCKING DIE?? I THINK?? LIKE I SAID THEY DON'T EXPLAIN IT SO I CAN'T REALLY TELL WHAT'S HAPPENING, BUT IF THE TIMER GOES DOWN AND YOU REACH THEM TOO LATE THERE'S JUST LIKE A PILE LEFT BEHIND FROM WHERE THEY USED TO BE, I THINK THEY GET FUCKING VAPORIZED OR SOMETHING? AND LIKE I WAS REALLY BAD AT SAVING THEM BECAUSE I GET REALLY STRESSED WHEN THE TIMER STARTS. I HAVE SO MUCH BLOOD ON MY HANDS. anyways.

I like totally didn't get stuck on the same section for 10 minutes because I kept comedically sliding PK directly into a big pool of evil pink goo. Like evil Evron goo I guess, don't remember THAT from the comics. If you so much as touch it with your little pinkie toe he dies instantly, it's very troubling. Like I said um that didn't happen to me though because I'm really good at video games. Idk if you knew I'm level 102 on Wizard101 which is like pretty high. Like it's not max level I'm pretty sure max level is like 180 right now but it's still cool I'm still cool and also really good at video games.

Oh yeah also something that was really amusing to me is the way that PK is just fucking Stanced Up the entire game. Like he's always kinda menacingly crouching and shuffling around everywhere he goes like a little superhero cockroach. Love him.

Can't believe I haven't mentioned this sooner but for the English dub of this game (which is what I was using because I am, in fact, an English speaker) they made the huge brained decision to get Rob Paulsen to do Donald's "superhero" voice. Rob Paulsen of course from Yakko Warner fame... and Steelbeak 1991. Donald sounds goofy as shit the whole game it lowkey kills me. I guess they assumed people wouldn't wanna sit through his regular scratchy voice for however many hours of gameplay but trust me, I would WAY prefer regular Donald over the weird 90s protagonist Crash Bandicoot wannabe thing he has going on. Uno sounds great tho, zero complaints.

At one point PK walks out of the level and he's like "haha who knew this superhero stuff would be so easy!" and I took that as a deep and personal insult. That was not easy Donald I was fighting for my fucking life in there. You have like 13 bullet wounds and I dropped you into Evron goop like 6 different times. Stop making me look bad.

I got stuck standing around like a fucking idiot for 10 minutes because I got an upgrade for the X-transformer and Uno was like "you see that hole? Go over and press □ to send the X-transformer through it!" and I was like oh ok. Except there was no hole I couldn't find the hole. I was only able to progress past this part because I pulled up a youtube video of someone else playing the game, and the guy in the video ALSO proceeded to get stuck in the same spot before realizing you have to backtrack to find the hole like 15 feet away from where Uno gave you the instructions. I can't tell if it's bad game design or if I'm just stupid.

I'm ngl I got to the end and heard Zondag start talking and he lowkey sounds hot as fuck. I mean WOAH that's crazy who said that??? (he's also British for some reason)

Wrapping up my final thoughts with some simple questions:

Does this game have Paperinik in it?

Yes.

Is it a good game?

No.

What's the best part about the game?

Uno is in it.

What's the worst part about the game?

Everything else.

Would you have been able to beat this as a child?

Absolutely not.

Why did they think it would be a good idea to get Rob Paulsen to do the voice of PK for the majority of the game?

Hell if I know???

Would you recommend this game to other people?

Probably not.

It took me a total of 6-ish hours to beat the game (it can be beaten in like 2 hours I'm just slow) but in that amount of time you could read PKNA chapter #34 "Nothing Personal" like 6 times which I think would be a way better experience.

Anyways like I said 10/10, would maybe think about playing again. On like a really depressing rainy day where I have literally nothing else to do.

[blazehedgehog]

My discord got me thinking about how Naughty Dog tried to do a Jak 4 and they were so obsessed with cinematic realism that they went "nope, this is too creepy" and backed off because they literally refused to do it any other way

Thinking of when Double Fine was still doing the Devs Play video series, and they had someone from Naughty Dog on there, and even though I don't think he worked at the company anymore, he still was so very clearly "cinematic realism" poisoned. Even when talking about Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot games, he was going on about how they were always trying to apply Hollywood techniques and make the games more cinematic.

And thinking about how much of the game industry is bleeding itself dry trying to replicate things we already have in real life. Across two generations of hardware, Naughty Dog has released two new games and eight ports or remakes. Some of which are double dips. When you think about Insomniac's woes over struggling to break even with Spider-man, one gets the impression from all these ports and remakes that Naughty Dog isn't doing much better.

Do you know how much money Lethal Company made? It has 260,000 reviews on Steam, and you can probably charitably double, triple, or even quadruple that number to get within the ballpark of what it actually sold. We'll reign it in a little and estimate it sold 600,000 units. That's $6,000,000 of what is very likely pure profit. People have retired on less. This kid isn't even 25 years old.

Meanwhile, for Spider-man 2, Insomniac had to sell 7,000,000 units just to start turning a profit. Spider-man 2 put them nearly FIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS ($500,000,000) in the hole. For a game, by their own admission, people may not even be able to tell is any better visually than Spider-man 1. They talk about smaller side games like Miles Morales as a cheap way to reuse assets and buffer the astronomical financial drain these games are. They've got to make up ground somewhere.

There's rumors Naughty Dog's next game might be a remake of Uncharted 1. The well's going to run dry eventually. Then what happens to Naughty Dog when they're writing a one-billion dollar check for the next evolution in cinematic realism that is impossible for anyone to be able to cash? When does this all break down? Soon, right?

It sure feels like it's going to be soon. This is such a boring waste of money.

[jwbash]

Fluffy dragon and his Skateboard

First Revenge this year, Crash Bandicoot body shapes are fun to review and sketch.

Attack Link

[fat-oc-battle]

mirabelle "mimi" crassi (she, splatoon) character & art by @bombcollar

Mimi is what's known as a "mimic" octoling, a soldier whose genetics were tampered with in order to give her a greater degree over her chromatophores. This was done in service of allowing her to disguise herself easily and work as a spy called a "surface agent," even passing as other species of sapient sea life. However, tensions have eased in recent years, so these days she works as a diplomat, using her knowledge of her former enemy's culture to facilitate communication. Although more than capable of diplomacy, Mimi is not a warm or friendly person, often gruffly encouraging at best. She has spent much of her adult life dealing with disrespect from both her fellow soldiers (who consider her surface agent position easy and soft) and from those she was trying to blend in with. She is extremely loyal to her people and worries about what will become of them in the future. In her free time she runs an extremely scathing food review blog.

VS.

summer squirrel (he/she/they, crash bandicoot) character by @pastelcringeboy, art by @probablydinosaurs

Summer is a squirrel mutated by Neo Cortex, intended to be a scavenger. Unfortunately, their timid nature made them fairly useless to Cortex's plans, but they were defended by the racoon that was put through the experiment alongside them, Roary (my other OC). Summer quickly met Pinstripe Potoroo and it was love at first sight. After a long series of events, Summer is now the leading showgirl and Pinstripe's casino that she helped him set up. The two are an inseparable power couple, running the casino alongside Roary, who acts as a body guard, and Tawna who, to her mild frustration, works as the casino's bartender.

[randomtangle]

NextFest Demos General Review

I'm gonna write what I think of the demos I played this NextFest. Each title is a link to the Steam Page, be sure to grab yourself a demo if NextFest isn't over (June 10-17, 2024). If not, some of them might still have public demos, and some of them might be out by the time you read this!

NextFest has ended but demos still remain! Check them out or wishlist them if they’re in pre-release.

500 Caliber Contractz

Mario 64 but you have a high-caliber sniper rifle. It's honestly more often a movement tool than a weapon, and the movement tech in this game is quite interesting. I haven't gotten it quite down yet. I’ll write more about it later.

Aero GPX

Reminds me of Kirby Air Ride.

Airborne Empire

This game is seriously addictive. I meant to give it 30 minutes (around the minimum time I’ve been giving there games), and it took 3 hours. The whole conceit of the game is that you are building an airborne city. All sorts of things matter, such as the tilt (you can’t just pile it all onto one side), the lift (you need to add fans, which need to be manned by citizens, to allow for enough lift to build more stuff), and propulsion (buildings will slow you down, so you can build propellers and stuff to help you move faster), as well as food and water and coal) to keep everything running) and various building resources which you gather by deploying workers to deposits on the land using a hangar. Light is also important to stop accidents at night… there’s all the little systems you need to manage. I really love it. Usually in city builders I get really stressed about strategic placement and how me not leaving space next to that big useless rock turns out to be a mistake when I advance in the tech tree and learn the rock is actually the most useful and I trapped it under an underpass. Airborne Empires can have the “I didn’t know how big this building is so I didn’t leave enough space here” problem (I really wish I could preview buildings before I had the resources to build them), but it’s mostly fine. The tilt and lighting systems lead to making a spread-out base. You recruit more citizens by hiring them from settlements below, but you’ll have to feed them all, and at least where I am in the game, you can only gather food and water, not generate it.it’s visually very cute, all the people are birds, and the talking sounds are birdcalls. It’s pretty chill most of the time, even the occasional pirate attack isn’t that bad, especially if you get defense towers, since you can repair pretty quickly. I could play the game for days on end, honestly. I love it.

Akimbot

A very fun 3D platformer, reminds me of Ratchet & Clank, Crash Bandicoot, Skylanders, etc. The whole game looks really nice and stylized. I played with the Acid Sprayer and found it to be very fun. The voice acting and dialogue were a smidge lacking at times (Exe feels compelled to go "Tch" every time Shipset talks, and Shipset cannot shut up, but it didn't annoy me.) Overall I'm excited to see how the full game turns out!

Aloft

I didn’t find Aloft interesting. It’s not that I don’t like survival games, per se, it’s that my patience with survival games is really low. (300 hours of DST has changed me.) They need to be really interesting for me to stick, because if not, I sink untold hours into them getting progressively more and more annoyed. Aloft is probably someone’s cup of tea, but it ain’t mine. Sorry.

Beyond These Stars

Coming Soon!

Dice & Fold

A very fun roguelike deckbuilder game that's more about rolling dice than drawing cards. Enemies have slots you must fill to defeat them. Some enemies require exact rolls (say, a 3), and some just have numbers that have to be reduced (say, a 5, and you could put a 2 and a 3 in it to complete the slot). And there's more like doubles slots, slots that only accept odd or even numbers, etc. Your hero has an ability that you can earn by filling in the required slot on your hero card, there's all sorts of items and companions that alter the game in little ways... it's really fun and I'd love to play more of it in the future!

Dimhaven Enigmas

I love the graphics, just to get that out of the way. Pixilated textures are to die for, I’m a huge sucker for PSX or DS/3DS-style textures. It’s an interesting puzzle game, it’s pretty intriguing, but dangit if I’m not bad at puzzles, lmao. It’s tough! It really makes you work for the answer, I like that, but I can’t really write review of a completed demo because of it. Try it out!

Dustborn

It seemed… interesting. The graphics look good, the fight mechanics seem to have a bit of meat, but are sorta unseasoned. (They don’t feel like they flow that easily into each other but that might just be a personal skill issue.) The humor and writing isn’t really my cup of tea, it feels sorta like they’re always talking, and the lines in combat seem to overlap sometimes but I’m sure that’s unintended. Idk if I personally will be buying the full game, I’d rather wait for a review of the full game to see if I wanna buy it, but I don’t hate it.

Gladio Mori

Gladio Mori explores an interesting concept of a physics-based medieval weapon fighting game that oftentimes feels a bit like TABS if you were in complete control of a unit. It's definitely interesting. Right now there's only 3 weapons and no move editor, but I feel like the simple existence of a move editor means that in the future, there's untold levels of complexity to be found in this game. Has multiplayer!

Goblin Cleanup

It’s fun. There’s not much to say about it, as it’s just a simpler Viscera Cleanup Detail, but it’s cute, honestly. There’s some interesting quirks and level progression things, such as being able to light slimes on fire to be semi-infinite, faster mops, and you can do a lot with traps and stuff. Sorta simple as-is, unless I just missed the really cool stuff. (I haven’t played all of the demo yet, only the first two levels.)

I Am Your Beast

This game is amazing. The presentation of cutscenes is phenomenal; I really love the big bold letters and colored background. It's simple but it does its job. The voice acting is great, too. And the gameplay is just amazing. The amount of speed and precision you can move and attack with is on point. I'd suggest everyone

Kaiserpunk

Coming Soon!

KILL KNIGHT

Kill Knight has some wicked graphics. They look like they’re crackling with an unchained energy, power so great it corrodes the world. The gameplay is tough, I can barely survive a few waves, but the combat is promisingly meaty. Sword kills fuel the heavy weapon, and enemy drops can fuel the bfg thing (forgot its name). I’m not used to twin-stick shooters so I don’t know how much is innovative and interesting and how much is in every twin-stick shooter, but I certainly found the game really interesting. Really tough, but really interesting.

MACHI KORO With Everyone

Only the offline tutorial as of now, which is kinda annoying since i can't even try to run an offline hotseat game. But, it teaches Machi Koro pretty well. I like Machi Koro I like this game. It is nothing more or less than being just Machi Koro.

Metal Slug Tactics

Coming Soon!

Once Human

Open-World Survival Horror MMO. I’m only into survival horror, really, and was playing alone (I’m not that into MMOs except with friends). The systems seem okay, the combat is about what you would expect with heavy and light attacks and simple chains… the character creator is pretty good. (And I love myself a good character creator.) Not my cup of tea.

One Btn Bosses

It’s a bullet hell but you only need one button. Your “ship” moves on a ring outside the boss, and you use the button to change directions. The faster you’re moving (you gain more speed the longer you travel in a given direction), the faster you shoot. That’s about it for the systems (that I could see, at least. I haven’t beat it.) it’s fun, I’d recommend it to anyone. After all, you only need to press one button!

SCHiM

A very cute puzzle game where you play as the shadow of this one guy. You jump from shadow to shadow to navigate the levels. The art is beautiful accented neutrals, the music and sound design is really cute and musical, reminiscent of Untitled Goose Game. It’s really cute!

Screw Drivers

It’s Lego Technic as a racing game. To be completely honest, it just didn’t click well with me. The building aspect of it felt like every Lego Technic I’ve ever built, plus actual engineering. You need to connect the engine to the axel to the drive wheels, and set those to steerable… I know that’s simple, but it’s a bit too complicated for me to play that much. I’m a simple woman. Seemed fun to drive the cars, tho.

SWORN

It’s Hades but with Arthurian Legend. I don’t really know what more to say. It controls like Hades (well, I played Hades on the Switch, so maybe keybinds are different than I expect) it’s got similar systems of boons, in-level currency and cumulative secondary currencies, et cetera, et cetera. This isn’t a slight against it, I really like it! I can’t really speak for its writing since I can’t find much and I’m sure not all of it is in as of yet, but what I could find in-game was interesting. I don’t quite understand the world and how the Holy Grail and pagan deities and King Arthur all feed into why these monsters are about, but I’m assuming that’s elaborated on as you go through. I’d be willing to get the full game.

Tactical Breach Wizards

I adore this game. The graphics are really cute, the combat puzzles are really interesting and fun (I like this genre of games, I’m totally blanking on the name tho) and the writing… oh the writing. The writing is so good. The jokes are right up my alley, the story is really interesting, the world is the right amount of absurd that the characters can be deadpan about always having newt bones on their person that you can tell that it’s just as much of a half-joke in-universe as you’d expect. It’s really fun and I’m hoping to play the full game upon release.

Tavern Talk

I loved this game. The sound design is so peaceful and soothing, the writing I really like, there’s a lot of good jokes and just tender moments. I love Fable, the main other character in the game. They’re an anxious ranger who wants to get out into the world and go on adventures, they’re so cute. The other character, Caerlin, is nice too. The art is beautiful, I’m really invested in it now! I need to get the full game!

Tiny Glade

Cute game where you can do a bit of finely-controlled procedural generation of a little landscape, and take photos of it. I played game last NextFest called Dystopika that was like this but with a cyberpunk city. Tiny Glade is cute, simple, and allows you to make little houses and landscapes. It’s cute, I’m sure people will like it, but it just ain’t my genre.

[cptn-m]

One Piece chapter 1130 review

What a place to leave off before a two week break. As expected, we have actually arrived in Elbaph and man, the art is worth the years of build-up. This is also the ninth chapter of volume 111, making it the book's first possible stopping point. It would be a short volume, with a number of reduced page count chapters, but wouldn't this make an impression to go out on? I'd definitely want to get the next book after seeing it. And it would be nice and neat on Oda's end to finish a volume then take the break to plan out the next few.

I'm glad to get a little bit more of the other half of the crew's post-Egghead outfits as we establish they'll be joining the main plot on Elbaph soon. The cutaways to this group also reveal the purpose of splitting the crew the way Oda did - building tension over Vivi's status a little longer by keeping the group that would recognise her message from reading the paper. It's interesting the acknowledgement of how drastically Luffy's appearance changes in Gear Five that there's even a question of whether he usually has a mark on his arm (and it only takes a cursory review of any Egghead chapter to be absolutely sure he does not) but Robin gives us the info we need to fill in the gaps. I feel like Oda could have gone a little further in emphasising the blur on the arm against the clarity of the mark in his illustrations, but the point still gets across.

And I do love the Alabasta callback (and a 3D2Y one) all these years later, making such an iconic moment important to the plot in a way that feels really natural rather than a pure nostalgia shoutout.

It's also fun officially getting inflation as a justification for the extreme bounty inflation you see with the old generations vs the new. That's the kind of thing you usually see pitched as a headcanon to fill in the gaps, but here it is.

Getting back to the main group, we're introduced to the real Elbaph and it impresses on every front. The scale and ideas - the island built up in the tiers of Yggdrasil, the non-lego version of Bigstein Castle, that steep, enormous rope bridge. The worldbuilding detail of the slats being too far apart for human travellers (Luffy proves he's a Crash Bandicoot 1 vet by walking on the railing instead) and the artistic detail in the braided ropes holding it up. Finding out the apparent columns seen in the sky in previous glimpses of the island are waterfalls trailing from the higher branches. This is beautiful. We don't even see the top of the tree, so it's possible there's more above. But there are no waterfalls cascading down into the highest level we can see, so it's unlikely a hypothetical third tier would be as densely (if at all) populated as the ones below. Oh, and there's also the name, I guess. I was never much of a believer in the theory that it was meant to be 'fable' spelled backwards for some story reason - it's just never been Oda's style of wordplay, especially being in English, and I think if it was an intended reading Oda would have provided the romanisation earlier so both Japanese and English readers could figure it out, and if it was that important the correct spelling would probably have been provided to translators and merch producers so we wouldn't have a replica log pose that reads 'Elbuff' - but I did always think the Elbaf spelling was more aesthetically appealing. But canon marches on.

The Elbaph lore and culture is starting to build. The land perhaps stands rudderless - we know that King Harald is dead and neither of his two known official sons has been able to ascend to the throne. Loki for obvious reasons. Hadjurdin for less obvious ones, but he was talking on Dressrosa about wanting to be king of the giants. Is there a third son, official or otherwise, who's taken charge? An usurper? A queen regent? Or are either the warriors or Elder Jarul simply keeping the peace until the issue of succession can be resolved?

Then there's Loki himself. Very, very cool design on this one, and I have no idea whether I want to see it put to use more as an ally or as a villain. The ambitious assassination of his father, false Sun God angle and talk of the end of the world sure give off a villainous vibe (and that Doflamingo tongue has a bad association) but that's only what we've been told. There may be more to the story about Harald, more to the role of Sun God and the idea that it will destroy the world (remember the double meaning of Luffy's Fishman Island prophecy?) and layers to Loki's personality not yet shown. When he gets free (because obviously he has to) I'll be waiting to see if his actions back up or contract what we've been told.

To fixate on one little part of his appearance, what's with the blindfold? And the rendering in the last panel revealing the shape of his eye? I would put down a reasonable bet that the devil fruit he stole gives a power somehow related to or activated via the eyes. On the other hand, the loss of an eye is a very Norse mythology thing to include. The missing rendering gives the feeling of an empty socket, and we are still due an important character with an eyepatch. Or it could just be intended to imply Loki is using Observation Haki or some some other advanced sense to "look" at Luffy through his blindfold. I can never be sure how far to overthink these kinds of small details.

This is a great chapter that sets the tone for a great arc, and I can't wait to see what's in store when Oda comes back from his well-earned research break. Full arc Egghead review for real next week.

[randomboo256]

CTR: Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled (2019) Review

[This review is a continuation of my Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy review. Please read that (and by extension my whole Crash Bandicoot review saga) first.]

In 2019, Activision Blizzard released Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled, a from-the-ground-up remake of Crash’s racing title. I have mixed feelings about this remake. On one hand, I think it’s great and it’s an objective improvement over the original. On the other hand, I have big issues with it. Both game design issues and moral issues. Let’s just jump into the comparison. 

Firstly, the obvious: graphics. While I had my issues with the artstyle in N. Sane Trilogy, I don’t have them here. CTR barely has you look at your character so your attention is fully focused on the environments you’re racing through, and I think they look incredible. This game can look stunning across the board. Lots of very pretty levels. Coco Park is probably my favorite in terms of visuals. However, there’s a major issue with the graphics, and that’s the performance. As I've mentioned earlier, this game only runs 30 FPS on all consoles, even the PS4 Pro and the PS5 with no next gen update on the horizon. The resolution is decent at least, on PS5 anyway. On Nintendo Switch, the game is locked to an ugly 720p, even docked. Honestly, this is unacceptable. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe looks just as pretty as this game and it runs a crystal clear 1080p and a buttery smooth 60fps on Switch. The fact Crash can’t even manage 60 on PS5 is pathetic. What makes it worse is that Nitro Fueled never got a PC release. So that means that not only is there no official way to play the game on PC, but there’s also no official way to play the game with a decent frame rate. However, that’s not to say there’s no way to play the game at 60fps. Since this game is on Switch, it can be emulated with Yuzu, and it runs flawlessly. On Yuzu, you can upscale the game to 1440p and beyond and you can also apply a simple 60fps patch. Now you can play the game with some decent visuals. You are held back by the Switch’s inherent visual drawbacks, but it’s worth it for the frame rate. If a fan can get this game running at 60fps, then they have no excuse.

Well graphics aside, how well does the gameplay hold up? The gameplay on the whole is mostly unchanged. There are subtle downgrades though, mainly to jumps. It’s simultaneously harder to land high jumps due to awkward collisions and easier to overshoot jumps due to their new momentum physics. There are other changes too, but they’re more subtle. Of course, none of the tracks were redesigned with the new physics changes in mind, so it simply plays worse, much like the N. Sane Trilogy. However, I don’t think it’s a game ruiner here like it was in Crash 1. These changes are, like I said, subtle. They’re only really noticeable if you compare the games back to back. So while Nitro Fueled does have worse gameplay, it’s barely noticeable so it's not a deal breaker. 

Besides, unlike N. Sane Trilogy, Nitro Fueled is far more than just the same game again with prettier graphics and worse gameplay. The N. Sane Trilogy only had one original thing in the whole game, being a post launch level. Nitro Fueled is jam packed with an insane amount of new content. We have an absolutely massive roster with 56 playable characters, all of which having plenty of unique skins. We also have an insane number of kart parts. Between bodies, tires, paint jobs, and stickers the amount of unique kart combinations is limitless. We have 40 tracks, all of which having their own time trials with different time crate placements and the new ring challenge mode with various ring placements. We also have battle mode, which itself has a good handful of maps with a bunch of different battle modes. They even remade all of the content from Crash Nitro Kart and just included it with this game. Combine that with the remade Adventure mode and a ton of stuff I didn’t mention, and this game is fucking insane with how much content it has. Even if the gameplay changes were bad enough to be really noticeable, the amount of content this game has alone would justify playing it. 

This is a great remake! So how did they fuck it up?

When I was just boasting about all this game’s content like its character count and customization options, I left out one crucial detail: how to unlock that content. The vast majority of this game’s content is locked behind the Pit Stop Shop. The Pit Stop Shop is a Fortnite-style store where a small collection of random items will be available for purchase for that day only. The next day everything will refresh. This store is online only, so if you don’t have an internet connection, you can’t buy anything. That means that most of the content on the disc/cartridge can’t be accessed without an internet connection and presumably once the Pit Stop Shop servers go down, so will most of the game. It gets worse though. How do you buy these items? You buy them with Wumpa Coins. How do you get Wumpa Coins? Well, either by grinding by playing online matches to get pitifully small amounts of coinage or by, you guessed it, spending money on microtransactions. Good ol’ Activision Blizzard. We all saw this coming, right? Let’s not forget that the whole reason this company even exists in the way it does today is because Activision wanted to jump on the live service bandwagon. 

However, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking this game wouldn’t have this bullshit considering that, quite literally, one month before launch the developers told us that this game wouldn’t have microtransactions at all. Then the game came out, and no microtransactions in sight. Everyone praised the game for not doing that in their reviews. Then a month after launch, after the positive reviews had gone out and after a lot of people already bought the game and got deeply invested in it, Activision announced they were adding microtransactions to the game. Not only that, but the in game shop “coincidentally” started upping the prices of everything within the shop. They made unlocking basic cosmetics a hell of a lot grindier all for the sake of pushing people into wasting their money on this crap. How utterly despicable, especially in a game aimed towards children. 

On the bright side, at least the online was good, right? Crash Team Racing is a game I’d love to have an online mode so I can play with other people. Adding an online mode to a CTR remake sounds like an incredible idea, and it is! Well, in concept at least. The online in Nitro Fueled was dead on arrival. Not even a few months after launch passed before people stopped playing. Gee, I wonder what happened to this game within a few months of launch that would turn off a lot of players. HMM. Anyway, it would take ages to find a full match, and when you did it wasn’t worth it. The most dedicated players were too advanced and the game had no matchmaking, so casual players will get destroyed and just stop playing. The characters were unbalanced. Every character was assigned an arbitrary class, and some classes were simply better than others. If you were a big Coco fan but you wanted a speed focused character, you were shit out of luck. Large portions of the roster weren’t even worth playing. The online didn’t even have servers! It was all peer to peer, which just made lag and disconnections even more of an issue. It also didn’t help the wait times either. That was all within a few months of launch. Nowadays, the game is completely dead. The only places to find a good race is in private servers with friends. Even worse is that their “live service” gave up not even a year after launch. The game was released in June 2019 and the last update was March 2020. What a joke. 

Keep in mind that these past few paragraphs were based not on my own personal experience. I wasn't there at launch and I based this review off of an offline-only Yuzu version of the game. It's possible that people were exaggerating or maybe some things are fixed now. Feel free to take some of that with a grain of salt, but honestly nothing that I've heard from others then repeated here sounded remotely far fetched to me and a lot of it was backed up by a lot of other people's personal accounts. So while it's possible some of this might not be true, I believe all of it and I would never intentionally lie to people.

In conclusion, Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled was a great remake that was ruined by unbelievable greed. I’d expect nothing less from Activision Blizzard, one of the worst companies making video games today between their anti-consumer practices, their anti-employee practices, and just their general discrimination against marginalized groups. Truly they’re just anti-everyone (except their top dogs). Look, if all you care about is the gameplay and the amount of content that’s technically on display, it’s not an awful game. It is fun and the content is still there, but I just can’t recommend this game on either a product level nor on a moral level to anyone. If you want to experience Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled, the best way to is simply emulate the game with 60fps and all the Pit Stop Shop content unlocked from the get go. That will mean that you won’t be able to play the game online, but no one was using the online anyway from what I've heard. Unless you were planning on joining an online private community for this game or were planning on playing it online with your friends, there’s no reason to play this game via the official means. I’m aware that I’m suggesting piracy, but Activision Blizzard is awful so fuck them. Piracy is fine, at least in their case. It’s always moral to pirate games that were being sold by awful corporations.

Now with all that said, I’m done talking about Crash Bandicoot for now. I could go into more detail into the era of games in-between after Naughty Dog left and before the modern day revival began, but I'm honestly tired of this orange marsupial. But still, 6 essay reviews (8 if you count the multiple parts) over the course of 5 days. That's definitely a new record to me. I haven't posted anything on Tumblr here in a while, so consider this an apology I guess.

Oh who am I kidding? No one reads these things.

Well regardless, that's all folks.

[bonythesquirrel]

Face the wrath of oh noes!!!!!!

[bearmemesreviews]

Skylanders Reviews: Cynder

"While just an egg, Cynder was stolen by the henchmen of an evil dragon named Malefor and raised to do his bidding. For years, she spread fear throughout the land until she was defeated by Spyro the dragon and freed from the grip of Malefor. But dark powers still flow through her, and despite her desire to make amends for her past, most Skylanders try to keep a safe distance… just in case."

Read that bio alright? Yeah, that's basically all my knowledge on this character.

[Image: Cynder is a quadrupedal dragon with many similarities to Spyro, almost being the same shade of purple as him. She has magenta accents instead of mustard yellow ones, specifically for the webbing of her wings and her stomach plating. Her horns, wingtips, claws, and the tip of her tail are made of steel. She wears steel, spiked bands around her front legs/"wrists" and neck as well. The tip of her tail resembles the head of a spear, while her short horns go down the sides of her head - three on each side parallel to one another. She has a short snout, blue eyes, and magenta gecko-like patterns on her forehead.]

The Skylanders Netflix show gives her a few episodes of note, though she only has a slightly bigger role than Crash Bandicoot in the overarching story. Though Malefor, who's her dad I guess(??), is the one to tease Spyro's secret origins which we never got to see because the show ended on THAT as a cliffhanger.

Why did they make her neck so long in the show?

As for the game, she's an Undead Skylander purely because of her connection to evil. It's a bit odd, and I am honestly surprised Toys for Bob didn't pull a Pokémon when they got new elements later. Her dark evil powers seem to only center on electricity, called "Spectral Lightning". She can also call upon a ghost for allyship and burst forward as a shadow.

I feel like I'm missing a lot of history regarding this character, and would not be surprised if there was some hidden history regarding DeviantArt fandom groups and whatever ships you wanted to see her in.

Motto: "Volts and Lightning!" Okay??? 1/5.

3/5 Chompies. The Renamon of Spyro I guess? Tried not to let my lack of knowledge of Spyro canon conflict with the design itself, so I decided she and Spyro can share scores.