Recent reviews by Mr. Eight-Three-One

(A word of warning: DO NOT BUY THE PC PORT. Read further for details!)

TT found massive success with the Lego games, but I'll be honest, I feel they really have milked the formula of using movie licenses very dry. Lego as a toy is one that is meant to let your imagination run free, and using movie licenses is very counterintuitive to that whole concept. Needless to say, I was very excited at the prospect of trying Lego City Undercover. Previously exclusive to a console that was doomed from the word "go", this game has now been ported to many much more accessible platforms in the years since and I felt it was time to finally give the game a try.

Chase McCain is a Lego City police officer who returns to the city in the wake of havoc breaking loose. He had previously helped in arresting the notorious Rex Fury, who recently escaped from prison and is suspected to be behind the problems. In the wake of his return, Chase vows to get the bottom of the case, and soon enough not everything is at it seems.

You should know the TT Games formula by this point, and this game runs on the same engine as the past games. This game features a very open world structure, in which the main hub is the titular city. Throughout the game's story, you'll take on a number of special assignments that work as the levels proper, where you get from point A to B and pick up all the collectibles you may expect.

At first, Chase doesn't have a huge amount of abilities. As the game progresses though, he gains more outfits that give him extra abilities and allow him to overcome obstacles he couldn't before. This provides a great sense of progression, and it's especially satisfying on the main overworld in which there are plenty of hidden secrets to find that are locked behind these abilities. Speaking of, the main hub world is a lot of fun too; the city is absolutely massive and has so much to do in it. The city's design is also a lot of fun in general, as it features homages to plenty of real world locations like San Francisco, Tokyo, and New York City. There are tons of things to find too, like more playable characters, plenty of sidequests, and all sorts of other unlockables that really make this a satisfying game to progress in. Despite how big the city is, the game also provides plenty of tools to help you progress around it a little more quickly, like road vehicles and train stations.

What really helps tie this game together is its great sense of humor. The game revels in its surreal sense of humor, and it will keep you laughing all the way through. Whether you're a kid or adult, you'll love this game's spot-on writing. Surprisingly, the plot itself also gets quite involved for the game's target audience. There's a lot of fun to be had here, no matter your age. There are a lot of great characters with hilarious quirks throughout this game, like the incredibly dimwitted Frank Honey and Chase's overly stern chief. The voice acting is all on point too, which really helps sell the line delivery.

If I had to name any real complaints with the overall gameplay, it would probably be that the combat in this game is very repetitive and drawn out. It's got a little more depth to it than earlier Lego games but it still leaves a lot to be desired, and it takes up way too much of the game time for something so simple. I also think the game hands out the stud multipliers way too early, and they make getting Hero status a complete joke.

That aside, this game sounds great so far! Why did I give it a thumbs down then? Simply put, this PC port is horrible. Had I known going into it that it was this bad, I absolutely would have just bought it on Switch. Where do I even begin? Firstly, the frame rate, at least on my computer, is very unstable -- the game peaked at 58FPS most of the time, which led to extremely annoying microstutter that my eyes are super sensitive to. It was bad enough that I opted to just cap the frame rate to 40FPS instead of dealing with the constant stutter; yes, I'm that sensitive to it. Second, and more importantly, this game is quite prone to crashing; thankfully, I wasn't that affected by it most of the time, but one time I had to redo an entire level which was incredibly frustrating. This is inexcusably poor and considering this port is 5 years old at the time of this writing it's clear it's not getting fixed any time soon.

That's all a real shame, because I did overall love my time with this game. If you absolutely positively have no other options for playing this game, maybe give this one a purchase, but be ready to deal with frustration. I do overall adore the actual game though, and if you ever get some other chance to play it some other way, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

A highly anticipated sequel 16 years in the making, Psychonauts 2 had a lot to live up to. But in my opinion, the long wait was very much to its benefit: we have learned a lot more about mental health since 2005, and that gave a ton of room for much deeper and heavier topics to be covered both in fun and dramatic ways. And as much as I loved the first game, I also knew it had room to improve (looking at you, Meat Circus).

Plot wise, this picks up where Rhombus of Ruin left off, which in turn picked up where the first game left off. Be mindful, if you play this game, you *will* have the stories of those two games spoiled, as the game provides a quick rundown of what happened across those two up to and including major plot twists, so be careful of that going in. As this game is still very new I will not describe the story in any detail beyond what the advertising says: Raz, now a Psychonaut in training, has fulfilled his dream of joining the team, but things are afoul as the leader has not been himself and a mole has been discovered to be hiding among them.

This time, the hub world is the headquarters and its immediate vicinity. You will be doing much of the same stuff that you did in the first game: exploring the minds of those who have a storied past and a troubled mental state to set things right. These consist of very fantastical settings that are molded into platforming challenges. Raz keeps many of the abilities he learned from the prior game here, with the game reintroducing returning ones piece by piece to ensure new players don't get overwhelmed. However, some of them are discarded in favor of new ones. Many of them were very useful and you can carry up to four instead of just three this time which mitigates the swapping a lot. Some continue to be pretty situational, but overall they add a lot to the game. Furthermore, Raz's control has been improved a lot, with his double jump especially no longer feeling awkward.

The star of the show here are the mental worlds, and boy did they step up their game from last time. They are absolutely massive, detailed, and so much fun to platform in. Just like the previous game, the sheer variety between them is also unmatched. There is even a point where you have to go back into someone's mind after being changed (and I will elaborate no further), and amazingly enough it still feels like a fresh new level while still making sure it feels like the same person. And unlike the previous game, there were no levels that felt like duds like the Waterloo World or (of course) the Meat Circus. Every single level was fun to play, which is just incredible to me.

Of course, the levels are half what they are made up of. The other important thing is how they represent mental conditions, and again, they absolutely stepped up their game. The way they show, not tell, how mental conditions affect a person is incredible. It is really hard to talk about this without spoiling them but I didn't expect them to tackle some of the topics that they did, and they did it with such care and respect. The first game, as good as it was, was a bit reckless in some of the topics they handled, which this game happily avoids while still being funny at the appropriate moments. And none of it ever comes across as lecturing or performative either, it truly feels like an important part of the story.

So many other problems from the first game were happily polished over here too. Remember how annoying the figments were to collect? Not an issue here: they're now much less common, don't fly in super bizarre and irregular patterns anymore, and most importantly, they glow very brightly and are always easy to spot. You also don't have to wait until the very end of the game to upgrade your health, as you can now do it as you go with another item. You also can upgrade your abilities as you rank up, which makes ranking up feel really rewarding and like something you actually want to do rather than something that just kinda happens and occasionally gives you something new.

I have very little to complain about with this game, and honestly it would come off as nitpicking in most cases. Again, swapping psychic powers could be annoying, and I wasn't on board with every story beat, but those are small in the grand scheme. This is absolutely the sequel we have been waiting for. The story captivated me from start to finish, the levels were absolutely beautiful, the bosses were fun, the voice acting is incredible (they even got all returning characters to reprise their roles!), it has all the attention to detail the first game has, and everything in between is right on point. I do strongly recommend playing the first game before this, in which case if you have, don't pass up on this one. It's a masterpiece.

I don't even think a review of this game is necessary. Unless you have been living under a rock, you should know what Undertale is by now. But in case I absolutely have to spell it out for you, feel free to keep reading.

This very surreal and bizarre game breaks every single convention of a usual turn based RPG and flips it right on its head. In this game, you assume the role of a child protagonist who finds themselves in a series of ruins crawling with crazy monsters. Determined to get back home, you set out on a dangerous journey. This journey is filled with unpredictable sights and bizarre locales, and you never know what you'll run into next. You will soon discover when it comes to this game's brand of humor and insanity, absolutely nothing is off limits. It's equal parts hilarious as it is deep and foreboding, and saying any more would ruin it.

If you were to just look at some random screenshot of the game with no further context, you would be forgiven for assuming this is just a Mother 1 knockoff or yet another turn based RPG. Appearances can be deceiving: there is absolutely nothing conventional about the way this game works. For starters, despite the game having random encounters, they're not the random encounters you may be accustomed to. In fact, they are pre-determined encounters that are guaranteed to happen on a specific screen, and once that encounter happens, it won't happen again. Further, the actual battle system is quite unusual. There are two ways you can play this game: the old fashioned way where you kill everyone you run across, or talking your way out of a battle and sparing the enemy. These two play styles affect how the game ends, so choose wisely! When enemies attack you, there is also an element of skill to put up with: think kind of like a bullet dodging game, where you are in a little box and must avoid the enemy's abnormal ammunition for a set period of time.

No two enemy encounters will ever be the same, so if you don't normally like RPGs for how repetitive they can be, fret not. Beyond that, the "nicer" play style also makes the battles more of a puzzle to solve rather than a constant grind, which further bills this as a game unlike any other you will ever play. The sheer variety in this game is second to none, with a huge array of surreal areas, unforgettable characters, and a legendary soundtrack that people are still listening to on repeat many years later.

The writing is what especially ties this game together and it's worth an essay all on its own. It's hard to say what storytelling genre I might pin this to, but maybe dramedy is the best way to describe it, perhaps with more overall time spent on the comedy half but the drama still being just as effective when it shows up. This game is not afraid to be humorous in every way it can muster up, which can range from big ways like ridiculously comical characters to small ways like using silly fonts for different characters and having character sprites defy their seemingly established boundaries. There are so many ways this game is charming and at no point does it ever feel like it's trying too hard.

And for the record, everyone walks away with a favorite character from this game. Everyone. If you didn't, you didn't play this game. I say that to say the characters are such a memorable part of it, heroes and villains alike, and the world it builds is just so unforgettable thanks in no small part to how well everything is written. And like I said, it isn't always just goofy and silly, there are points where the story slows down and has some more heartfelt moments.

You have no excuse for skipping this game. It's dirt cheap, can run on a toaster, isn't that big of a time commitment, and thoroughly unforgettable. If you ever needed proof you don't need a billion dollar budget or graphics so fancy they'll melt your eyes away to make a game deserving of a perfect 10/10, this game will forever be your go to.

They say timing is everything, and Mega Man 11 couldn't have been timed better. It came after a long drought of games in the series, several cases of what felt like Capcom backstabbing fans with cancelations, all culminating with Inafune leaving the company in disgust and teasing fans with the soon-to-be PR train wreck known as Mighty No. 9. In that context, plus the fact that the previous two entries were 8-bit throwbacks, it's understandable why people were hyped when this was announced. Everything pointed to it being a true return to form, and bringing the classic series up to speed with modern technology. Does it live up to that hype though?

This game finally breaks the trend of Wily totally not being the villain at the start and leaves him as the unquestionable perpetrator from the beginning. Furthermore, it actually touches on the series backstory a bit: it begins with a flashback to Wily and Light's younger years as colleagues and reveals the straw that breaks the camel's back that caused Wily to swear off their partnership. Further, the piece of this backstory serves as the stepping stone for the most major change in gameplay, which I'll get to in a minute. The game is also fully voice acted too, and thankfully it's quite competently done in contrast to previous English voice acting in this series.

Mega Man 11 does the same formula you know at this point: eight robot master stages, each gives you a new weapon that another is weak to, and then the Wily castle. The biggest thing you will notice right away though is the brand new visual overhaul. After two 8-bit throwbacks, it's refreshing to see a modernization again. The game also brings back the charged Mega Buster and sliding, two things notably absent from 9 and 10, so that is also welcome.

Regarding the major change I mentioned earlier, that comes in the form of the Double Gear system. In addition the usual utilities you begin with, this ability lets you either slow down time or make your weapons more powerful for a limited time frame. If you let either run too long though, it will overheat and you will need to let it fully recharge before using it again. The two abilities share the same meter. Personally, I found the slow down mechanic to be a real life saver, but the power mechanic I thought was a bit redundant. The slow down mechanic already lets you tear through enemies with much less effort with just the Mega Buster, so I didn't see much need to use the power gear. It does give the robot master weapons a secondary more powerful ability though, for what that is worth.

The game also has a few other nice quality of life improvements, but one of the best ones in my opinion was that Rush Coil and Rush Jet are now called with specific buttons instead of having to switch to them, which was super convenient. As with the last several games, you also have a shop system that allows you to buy extra lives and energy tanks between levels, as well as purchase upgrades such as automatically charging your buster or reducing damage knock back. Best of all, you get the opportunity to try every weapon you get right after you receive it without having to worry about draining energy, which I can't believe none of the other games thought to do this before.

Unfortunately, the game hangs on to other old tropes a little too hard. Namely, there is still a lives system in this game. Why? There are so many better and more fair ways to make the game challenging than this. I wouldn't have minded as much, except one, they still aren't reset to 3 if you finish a level with less than that (effectively meaning you'll need to game over before trying the next level), and two, the levels in this game are way too dang long. They're long enough that many have two checkpoints instead of just one that the past games had. Further, they often tend to have at least one cheap area that requires trial and error to effectively get past, like a jump totally surrounded in spikes.

All that said, when the game is good, it's a lot of fun. The new gear system adds a lot of unexpected depth to the game and the levels are generally designed well. The weapon roster is also quite good and balanced; most weapons feel like an extension on your utilities rather than being meant to replace your Mega Buster, which is exactly as it should be. And again, the modernized look is so refreshing to see again; 7 and 8 were the last taste of that we got, and I felt there was so much more to do with taking the franchise into the modern day, so I am quite glad we did get to see it.

All around, Mega Man 11 is pretty decent. It doesn't knock it out of the park or anything, but you will enjoy it if you're a fan of the series. That said, its current asking price is $30, which isn't worth it for how much content there is. Wait for it to go on sale and then consider if it sounds worth it to you.

The story behind this game is one of the most tragic game development stories you will ever hear. For all intents and purposes, this *should* have been the game that saved Humongous Entertainment. Yes, you heard me right, the same people who made all those point-and-clicks we adored as kids like Putt-Putt and Pajama Sam made this game. By the time this game started development, Humongous was in *very* deep trouble. Interest in their once monster franchises was waning, their staff was cut in half, things were looking financially grim, and in a last ditch effort they decided to try something completely different.

That little project became known as a turn based strategy game called Moonbase Commander. It wasn't aimed at young children though. Led by the mastermind Rhett Mathis who had spearheaded some of the earlier arcade style spinoff games from the company, MBC is a simple to learn, hard to master strategy game that has more to it than meets the eye. The premise is seemingly simple -- you start with one single building as your base, and construct additional buildings that all tie to the building it was launched from. Your goal is to destroy your enemy base, which is done as soon as you destroy their starting building. However, once you've built enough to reach their base, you and they both will likely have built up more than enough defenses to keep that from being an easy task.

You have multiple items at your disposal to aid in the destruction of the enemy base that all have specific situational uses. For instance, a bomb is the most basic weapon you have, which does the most damage but only hits one building. A cluster is great for disabling multiple anti-air units but does little in the way of actual damage. A spike will attack both the building it lands on and all buildings attached to it, or the buildings on each end of the wire if it lands on that. Of course, you have ways of defending yourself too, particularly with anti-air modules and shields.

This is an incredibly quick game to learn, especially compared to the average strategy game. The concept is extremely unique and there are very few similar games to it. This gameplay is complemented by lush visuals and a lot of personality in each faction's design and narration. And because each faction is only cosmetically different, there is no issue with game balancing. The cost of each module or weapon also reflects its usefulness flawlessly, and while stalemates can and will happen given the right conditions, in general it always feels like there is a way forward. And if you aren't satisfied with the maps the game comes with, it also includes a map editor. Furthermore, you can also enjoy the game with up to three other folks, either free for all or in teams, and over a LAN which means given the right software you can rig up some online capabilities.

Really, my biggest complaints are that the game does look and feel a bit dated for the time of its release (this came out in 2002, at a time when 3D games were still all the rage and 2D had yet to make its big comeback), and that the simplicity can mean that you may tire of the game quicker than a lot of other strategy games. That said, this is a criminally overlooked game overall, and it's a massive bummer that Infogrames refused to give this game the proper spotlight it deserved. Unfortunately, its mismanaged marketing put the writing on the wall for Humongous and it was pretty much their one final hurrah, even though they did continue to make games for three more years before shutting down. That's a dang shame, because it deserved to have the exact opposite effect and I can only dream of what may have happened had it succeeded.

This game was in development for years, but in my opinion it was absolutely worth the wait. A Hat in Time tries to mimic the golden age of 3D platformers with fantastic results. It most closely resembles Super Mario Sunshine in terms of structure -- the stages consist of a set of objectives, and said objectives follow a proper storytelling order.

The game isn't particularly long. It consists of five chapters, the first four being about five acts each while the last one is only one act. It's a thoroughly unforgettable experience though -- every single chapter is totally different from the others, all taking place in a different setting, mood, story, and platforming style. Every single world could have been a game unto itself. That, in my opinion, is what sets it apart above all else. The level of variety they pull off is unmatched. And even better, every single world is memorable in its own regard -- you will remember the characters to every single world, you'll remember all the plot points, you'll remember all the little things you did. The first world takes place in your usual sunny village, but the next one has you caught in the middle of a feud between two movie directors, just to name two examples.

The game is complemented with beautiful cartoonish stylized visuals and killer sound design. The music is whimsical and full of charm. The level design is flawless, and the variety extends to include it in the mix too. The overall story is fun to follow and will keep you hooked. The controls are outright fantastic.

There is so much I could gush about with this game, and frankly I can't think of too many faults with it. I found it to be a little on the easy side and the short main story length might turn some people away, but the latter point is remedied by tons of extra things to look for, in addition to more hidden key items in the form of time rifts, so there is plenty of reason to go back and search for more.

All in all, this is an incredible game, and it captures the spirit of old 3D collectathons beautifully while putting its own unique twist on it and including many of the modern conveniences we are used to now. If you like 3D platformers, do not hesitate to give this game a look. It's truly one of a kind.

With the recent revival of 3D platformers going around, New Super Lucky's Tale can be considered one of the quieter examples of such. You may not hear about it quite as often as other examples, but that doesn't mean it's worth overlooking entirely.

The first thing that must be said is that this game is undeniably geared towards kids. For the most part, this game isn't particularly challenging, it has a very cutesy colorful aesthetic, and it can all be beaten in a somewhat small amount of time. So, as a result, this review will be attempting to view it from that perspective; if you're older, I say it's worth a look if you enjoy cute games or if you like 3D platformers as a whole.

Most of the game has you going from level to level fulfilling tasks to collect pages to restore to the Book of Ages and open other worlds. Each level has four tasks to complete -- finishing the level, getting 300 coins, finding a hidden page somewhere, and collecting all the hidden L-U-C-K-Y letters. The levels have a lot of variety between them, with some having you fulfill fetch quests, some being sidescrolling based, some being dungeon runners, among other things. Also interspersed throughout the worlds are special puzzle minigames, which I found to be a fun distraction and very rewarding to solve especially as they increased in difficulty.

If you just go through the game from start to finish, it's very short, and can be finished in only a few hours. However, if you go for 100% completion like I did, the length of the game increases quite a bit. It never feels artificially long though -- the extra things to do add to the game experience and are very rewarding. There is also an entire extra world after the main game to complete as well, which features much harder levels than the main game.

As a game for kids, I think I would have adored it. It feels like a perfect introductory platformer, as the game will nudge you in the right direction yet never feels like it's outright holding your hand, and like I said, it's not a particularly difficult game so that makes it a very great play for the younger crowd. If you're older though, the extra quests add enough difficulty to it that it can satisfy you as well, and the extra world provides a greater challenge for those kinds of players. There's something here for everyone, which is a hard balance to strike and I think it did it very well.

On top of that, the game is just so unbelievably cute. Lucky's character design is just hard not to love, and the wide array of NPCs from the cat antagonists to the enemies and friendly NPCs add to it as well. And like I said, the game is very bright, colorful, and a joy to look at. It's all very reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon and will easily entertain anyone who is into that aesthetic.

NSLT isn't anything you should go out of your way to play, but it's a cute, charming little platformer that enjoyed my time with and I hope it captures the attention of children who may grow up to become nostalgic for it in the years down the road.

This was one of those games that had been sitting in my backlog for some time now, and was something I had heard good things about yet just never got around to. Well, now I have, and I suppose it's time I gave my opinion on it.

The first thing I think needs to be said about this game is how the spirit of its development almost traces back to the infancy of video games -- think the age of bedroom coders where one to four people did all the work on the game. Such is the case with this one -- one guy did all of the programming, artwork, story, and everything except the voice acting and music, really. Had you told me that going in, I would have been skeptical of how good this could be.

Surprisingly, it all comes together quite well. The game blends several genres together in a manner that makes it hard to argue exactly what genre it belongs to, yet it never feels undecided or unfocused. First and foremost, the game is a 2D sidescroller. It is also a hack-and-slash, as the game is heavily focused on combat and trying to find ways to take out hordes of enemies. On top of that, we also get a levelling and inventory management system akin to an RPG, with a little bit of platforming thrown in for good measure and a pinch of Metroidvania (leaning more on the "vania" side of the equation). This amount of genre mixing can easily go wrong in so many ways, yet it somehow manages to make it come together. The combat is very fun and enjoyable to work your way around, and is engaging enough that it never feels repetitive.

The game makes it work even better by sporting an amazing hand-drawn look. Every element of the game appears to have a painted appearance, including the backgrounds, the character models, and all the enemies. It really does feel like a painted scene that came to life. Again, props to the maker of this game for having such a wide array of talents that he managed to weave together.

As far as the story goes, it's not especially original -- a chosen one is on a quest to save his people, and he visits a bunch of different villages who need help along the way. It's pretty much nothing you haven't heard before, but what carries the game isn't so much its story, but its characters, some of whom you may grow attached to and enjoy getting to know. And since even Dust doesn't know who he is when the game starts, it keeps you hooked in wanting to know the answers to that. At several points the game got unexpectedly dark too. All of the dialogue is voice acted as well, and that's all quite well done.

This isn't a particularly challenging game. Once you get a feel for the combat, it isn't long before you start using the same moves over and over again. That said, the combat is deep enough that you still have to be focused when fighting off enemies, so at least it never becomes outright boring. The biggest thing that breaks the game is the special abilities granted to you by Fidget, as they attack pretty much every enemy on screen. You can pretty much carry yourself through the game spamming her attacks.

The game isn't particularly long either -- it's only five chapters, but with the exception of the third which amounts to doing the same thing four times, they're all pretty good and have varied environments. There are also sidequests you can take on if you want to, but they're not mandatory and simply grant you extra experience points.

Dust is overall an alright game. It definitely shines compared to many other indie games, but still isn't anything I'd call must-play. If the art style appeals to you, and you like action games, then I'd say it's worth a play.

I wasn't sure what to expect of this game going in. From what little I had seen of it, it seemed like a valiant effort to bring back the Banjo-Kazooie style of collectathon platformers. But I also remember that when the game came out, people were absolutely ruthless on this game. Numerous YouTubers I followed made very long-winded videos on what they considered a total failure. As a result I really wasn't sure what to expect here, and had no clue whether I would like it or not.

This 3D collectathon platformer from many Rare veterans is a modern spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie. The game follows a lizard Yooka and his bat partner Laylee on a quest to retrieve the pages (or Pagies) of a stolen book from the evil corporate overlord Capital B, who runs his massive multi-million dollar tower. In this tower are five different books that all house their own worlds where the Pagies landed. As you work your way through the game, you'll acquire new moves to help you progress further, and will use the pagies to unlock and expand the other worlds. It all culminates in a showdown against the Capital B himself.

When I say this is a spirtual successor, I actually mean it copies BK almost beat for beat. I'm not exaggerating, if it was a part of the BK experience, this game has a version of it. This game has its own version of Spiral Mountain, Grunty's Lair, Grunty herself, Klungo, quizzes, Jiggies, notes, Jinjos, Bottles/Jamjars, Mumbo and his transformations, honeycomb extenders, Cheato, everything is all here and accounted for, maybe to a fault. Obviously, the game is a lot more modern than Banjo, as it features all of the graphical advancements we've become accustomed to in the last 20+ years, and the worlds are a lot bigger too, but this game really seems to have an identity issue. If they wanted this to be Banjo-Threeie in all but name, I feel like they should have just gone for it, rather than attempting to sell this as a new thing.

That said, the game does look really fantastic. The scenery just pops, it's a lot of fun to look at. In addition, the character design is just as fun as it ever was in the BK games, echoing much of the Saturday morning cartoon vibes it gave off. The dialogue is also expectedly witty and features Rare's trademark fourth-wall shattering. The worlds are quite massive and have a lot to do in them (though this does sometimes work against it, more on that in a bit), and I think bumping up the Jiggy/Pagie count to 25 was the right move. Every world also has a boss in it as well, and most of them were pretty decent fights.

The worlds are big, like I said...but here's where the faults start to show through. The worlds are too big. Like, way too big. Being open world is one thing, but there's so much fluff. It feels like it takes ages to get from point A to B. So much of this game feels like a walking simulator at times. It doesn't help either that the quills (this game's version of notes) are not coherently placed -- they often stuff them in corners or just cram them in completely random places, rather than using them as a guide for the player. It's like they wanted to grow the scope from Tooie but didn't know how to do that so they just made the worlds bigger and called it a day. Bigger isn't always better, and unfortunately I think the size of the worlds is what keeps the game from really achieving the scale that it wanted to.

A lot of people complained about other things in the game, but I personally didn't share those qualms. I liked the character building just fine, the music was alright, maybe could have been better but still was fun to listen to (although I do think I expected more out of the likes of David Wise and Grant Kirkhope), and while five levels may not seem like a whole lot, there is enough to do in each of them that they kept me entertained. And even though the first couple of levels aren't as good as they could have been, it starts picking up the slack as the game goes on, with the final two levels especially standing out to me as fun ones.

I did like the game alright, and at the end of the day I'd say I enjoyed it about as much as many other B-grade platformers I've played before...but I think that's a problem in and of itself. This was supposed to be a high-profile release and it's real disappointing it didn't achieve more than that. I don't think this game is a failure at all like many people said -- it doesn't live up to BK, but it's fun in its own right, and Playtonic learned from many of the mistakes they made with this game with the next effort of theirs (The Impossible Lair), so I'm still glad it was made at the end of the day. It's best played for big fans of the Rare aesthetic and 3D platforming fans, so if you fall in either of those camps, give it a look and see what you think.

The rise of the indie scene has given way to a lot of unique titles we may have otherwise never gotten to see, but even Cuphead stands out from the rest. From the beginning, it's obvious this game is paying clear homage to 1930s cartoons. It sports an absolutely beautiful hand-drawn rubber hose animation aesthetic -- just as well, because the game really is hand-drawn. Adding to that aesthetic is the inclusion of a film grain filter and the classic hissing and popping you used to hear on old movies. Honestly, just watching the game is an entertaining experience in and of itself.

Of course, good visual fidelity alone can't sustain a game, and Cuphead delivers on the gameplay front just as well. This run-and-gun game mostly focuses on boss battles with a small handful of platforming stages thrown in for good measure. Be warned: not only is it a throwback to classic cartoons, it's also a throwback to classic games as well, and by that I mean it's extremely hard. You will die. You will die constantly. In fact, your death count being in the triple digits by the end is expected, not the exception. You only get three hits per boss battle by default, and there are no health refills nor are there checkpoints. You simply need to learn by experimentation and trial-and-error.

Thankfully, the game is very cleverly designed around this high difficulty. Every level only lasts a few minutes on a successful run, and the game generally does a good job keeping the fights predictable enough such that learning the patterns is the key to survival, though still with a small element of chance here and there to keep it exciting. You also have a slew of weapons to pick from that all have different utilities and downsides, so if one weapon doesn't work well for the fight, another might suffice. This room for experimentation also means that it always feels like there is a way out of a really hard level. The delicate balance of difficult but never frustrating is incredibly hard to achieve and the game nails it almost perfectly.

Almost being the key word there. There are a few fights I felt weren't done quite as well. The fight against the dragon in the second world I felt had a third phase that was way too hard and had an attack that was too difficult to calculate. The penultimate boss also isn't a very fun one, due to being a large marathon level that directly cuts against the major positive that most levels are short enough to make them easy to learn.

With all that said, Cuphead is a fantastic game. Just know it isn't for the faint of heart -- but if you're itching for a challenge, go for it.