Video Game Review #174: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

PlayStation 3

Nostalgia Factor:

I know, I know. I’m super late to the party, you don't have to tell me. Skyrim came out in 2011 and I am just now playing it here in 2019. Eight years late is better than never, right?

My history with the Elder Scrolls series is a short one. I played Oblivion for the PS3 for only a couple of days back in 2009 or 2010. At the time, I wasn’t familiar with open world games like this. I wandered around aimlessly, unsure of where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. I often found myself overburdened with items and unable to move, which irritated the crap out of me. I wanted to collect everything! I quickly came to the conclusion that the game was as dull as dirt and that all of the good reviews were wrong. I traded Oblivion in to the used game store for a few bucks in store credit. Probably a poor decision on my end, as I now want to try it again and see if I would like it now that I know how these kind of games work. Oh well. It’ll happen someday.

Story:

Skyrim throws you right into the action at the beginning of the game, which for story purposes is a wise decision on the game makers’ behalf. The game begins with you and several other prisoners bound up on the back of a wagon. You are being taken to your execution. The other prisoners are being executed because they were attempting to lead a rebellion against the Imperial rulers of Skyrim. You are being executed because you were discovered on Skyrim’s border, attempting to sneak your way in. The bad guys assume that you are with the rebellion. Where your character came from and what his or her back story is, the game never explains. You are a blank slate.

Eventually your wagon reaches the execution site. I was having major Army of Darkness flashbacks at this point. You’re an innocent bystander caught up with a band of rebels, being lead to your execution. One of the prisoners runs and is shot in the back with an arrow. I expected my character (a badass female warrior) to plead for her life, only to have Henry the Red pop up and tell her “I don’t think they’ll listen, lass.”

Before you can be beheaded, a dragon appears in the sky and attacks the city. This is a big deal, as dragons haven’t been seen in Skyrim for thousands of years. All hell breaks loose, and you end up running away and escaping. This is where the game truly begins. You’re given a vague directive to head to a nearby city, where there are people that can help you find work and get back on your feet again. You can follow instructions, or you can head off and do some exploring. It is up to you.

There are two main storylines that you will get caught up in. One is the civil war, which continues to ravage Skyrim. Because I’m a rebel, it seemed only natural that I ended up joining the rebellion. I am curious how things would have gone if I’d picked the other side. The other main storyline involves the dragons, and why they have returned. Your goal is to find the head honcho of the dragons and take him out of the picture. I expected a giant, complicated narrative, but Skyrim’s main plot is actually pretty simple and straightforward. What IS complicated is the lore and the history of the world of Skyrim. You’ll find books scattered about as you play that tell the story of Skyrim and its people. Some NPCs give you quests that have unique storylines of their own. Other NPCs will tell you stories and fill you in on important past events.

The game doesn't end when the main quest ends. Far from it. There are dozens and dozens of towns and villages, each filled to the brim with unique characters, quests, and missions. It is a seemingly endless game. I don't even have any of the DLC, just the base game. I can only imagine how much lore is packed into the game's DLC.

Gameplay:

It is going to take me forever to break down completely how this game works, so I’ll just give you the basics. Skyrim takes place from either a behind-the-back or a first person perspective; you can pick between the two. I’d suggest first person, as the third person view is completely useless. The analog stick moves your character, the D-pad brings up a quick select menu on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Your character can jump, open chests, flip levers, loot corpses, ride horses, climb ladders, interact with objects, and talk to people. You can buy and sell things at stores, change equipment, sleep at inns, take on quests from strangers. This is an RPG, so you level up as you play. You spend experience points picking certain attributes you want to excel in. 

As far as combat goes, you have several different methods of attacking. You can attack long distance by firing arrows from a bow, you can engage enemies up close in weapon-to-weapon combat, or you can cast magic against them. I found myself using a good balance of all three. My character became very proficient in two-handed attacks, probably because all of the most powerful weapons in the game were two-handed. I like how when you finish off enemies, the game occasionally zooms in and shows you brutally killing them in slow motion. Right off the bat, I was carving people up left and right, feeling like a total badass. I will admit, this is one of the hooks that got me saying "Skyrim is awesome!!!" when I first started playing it.

Basic game progression consists of talking to characters and taking on missions. Pausing the game allows you to view all your open missions. You can toggle between quests you want to take on, and quests you want to put off until later. Having a quest selected makes its location visible on your map. Skyrim is a massive place, so luckily the game allows for fast traveling. The only catch is that you have to physically discover a location first before you are allowed to fast travel to it. But that's expected.

As I mentioned earlier, the game has two major storylines - the Skyrim civil war and the battle against Alduin, the leader of your dragon foes. The game is filled to the brim with characters who will give you side quests as well. Some are short and to the point, like deliver this letter for me. Others are longer and more intricate in story. You can also join up with groups like the Companions, the Thieves Guild, and the Dark Brotherhood, all of whom have unique missions you must complete in order to gain admission to them. Then there are more difficult and more story driven missions once you become a full-fledged member. You can learn magic at the College of Winterhold. You can hunt bounties. You can take on jobs like cutting and selling wood. You can wander and explore with no end goal in mind. There is no right or wrong way to play Skyrim. Well, I mean, you don't want to go around committing crimes or getting caught killing people, as you'll be attacked and a price will be put on your head. If you are caught, you have to either pay a fine, go to jail (which is a pain in the ass), or escape.

You also most definitely do NOT want to contract vampirism. I ignored it because I thought it would just go away, and I became a full fledged vampire. People would attack me on sight, and I couldn't accomplish any of my missions. I thought I had broken the game and would have to start over. Luckily, I was able to go online and find a way to cure vampirism. It was a pain in the ass, difficult as fuck journey. The first part was the hardest. I had to calm my bloodrage by feasting on a sleeping human, which was nearly impossible to do since any time I would enter an area inhabited by humans, everyone would attack me on sight. It took me hours before I accomplished this, and that was only the first part of the mission. The rest was a major pain in the arse as well. I digress.

What is impressive about Skyrim is that there is always something to do. If you get bored when playing this game, you're not doing it right. I put over 111 hours into Skyrim, which for me is absolutely unheard of. If I put 50 or 60 hours into a game, I consider it a really long game. Well, those games have nothing on Skyrim. I started this in the middle of January and I am just now finishing it right at the end of March. I did take a one week break when I had my PlayStation Now trial going on, plus I sunk some time into the Resident Evil 2 remake. But I've been playing Skyrim pretty regularly the whole time. That's almost two full months of playing. And I don't even have the DLC!

Graphics:

Skyrim came out for the PS3 in 2011, and it shows. I have been playing a lot of PS4 games lately, most notably the gorgeous Horizon Zero Dawn. Going from that game to an outdated looking Skyrim was definitely an eye opener for me. Not that Skyrim is ugly. I am sure it looked great for its time. I am also sure that the 5,627 different next-gen HD ports of Skyrim look amazing. But I am talking about the PS3 version here.

The characters look fine. Many of the cities and outdoor locations look really nice. As I said, it is not an ugly game, it is just not a particularly impressive-looking one. It could have something to do with the lack of color. The world of Skyrim seems to be stuck in this perpetual loop of snowy, foggy, ugly and depressing weather. All you see are muted greens, browns, grays, and whites. As big as the map is, the trees, walking paths, rivers, rolling hills, and mountains all start to look exactly the same after a while. Villages and their stone buildings seem charming at first, until you realize that there are dozens of them that are almost 100% identical. Same goes for a lot of towers and caves you explore. I can't complain about this too much, as the world of the game is so freaking huge. I am sure there is only so much that they can do as far as making each of the hundreds (thousands?) of locations in this game look different. But still, it is something you can't help but notice.

Sound:

While Skyrim's graphics may show signs of aging, its music and sound effects most definitely do not. I have recently played both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, and I must say that Bethesda has knocked it out of the park with the voice acting once again. One of the first characters you meet in Skyrim is voiced by Michael Hogan, who played Saul Tigh in Battlestar Galactica. He is one of my favorite actors of all time. He also lent his voice to one of the first characters you meet in Fallout: New Vegas. I wonder if Bethesda did that intentionally as fan service to get the nerds to play their games. Anyway, it was absolutely great to hear his voice here, too. This only set the tone for the consistently excellent voice acting the whole rest of the way through the game.

Unobtrusive atmospheric music plays as you walk around cities, castles, and caves. When you are in cities, the sound of wind, running water, and the bustle of people make your environment feel believable. In taverns, people play instruments and the sound of conversation fills the air. Caves are gloomy and just sound... dank. I don't know how else to explain it. When you are outside exploring, the music gets a little more noticeable. Some of the orchestral scores that plays as you wander the map are freaking epic. There were times when I was exploring that I just had to stop, set down the controller, and soak in the game's music while look at the scenery. Those were the times I couldn't help but think to myself: man, I really freakin' like Skyrim.

Overall:

At the risk of sounding like a broken record: man, I really freakin' like Skyrim. I'll admit, at first I was a bit intimidated by the scope of the game. For years, I have heard people saying how time consuming Skyrim is. I think that is why I put off playing it for so long.

Once I started playing it, however, there was no looking back. The world of the game, the lore, the voice acting, the music, the story, the combat that made me feel like a total badass - Skyrim had it all. It says a lot that I pumped 111 hours into the game. Never would I do that for a game that sucked, or even a game that I thought was just okay.

It is hard for me to judge Skyrim, as although I had a very good time playing the game and I recognize the grand impact it's had on gaming in general, I still feel it has its flaws. Load times can be excessively long, especially when you are embarking on fetch quests that require a lot of fast travel. Each time you fast travel, it is like a 30 to 60 second wait, guaranteed. Some quests have you fast traveling four, five, even six different times back and forth to different locations. It gets tiresome looking at loading screens after a while.

Everything looks dull and colorless when you're walking around outside. There are a ton of recycled locations. The difficulty level spikes at certain times, seemingly at random. It's annoying when you accidentally do something to alert the city guard and have them start attacking you and trying to arrest you. Turning into a vampire was a MAJOR pain in the ass. Certain quests for organizations like the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild are very repetitive and grind-y feeling. Your companions are constantly getting in your way, blocking you in corners or stopping you from going through doors or up stairs. Especially that damn dog! I didn't find myself making much of an emotional connection with any of the characters, either. Even my own in-game spouse I didn't find very interesting!

The game is filled with glitches, too. The first time I played this game, it wouldn't save my progress. I played several hours before I realized that nothing was saving. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best, but when I came back the next day, I had to start over from the beginning again. Skyrim often froze at random times, mostly on loading screens or when I was fast traveling.

So no, this is not a flawless game, by any means. That is why it will not get a perfect score from me. But just so you know, it came close. The game is big, it's fun, and there is lots to do and lots to see. Skyrim has a great storyline taking place in an incredibly fleshed out fantasy world. I can't say Skyrim is for everyone, as I know that the slower pace of this game may put some people off. But those of you who like modern day RPGs and open world exploration games should definitely check this out. Ah, who am I kidding? You've already played it. I'm the last hardcore gamer in the world to play Skyrim!

Final Score:

A

If you liked this review, please check out some of my other game reviews:

Fallout 3

Fallout: New Vegas

Horizon Zero Dawn

Batman: Arkham Knight

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Video Game Review #173: The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book

Sega Genesis

Nostalgia Factor:

Nostalgia won't play a factor in this review. I never had this game as a kid, and I didn't even play it until just now at the ripe old age of 36. I don't have any nostalgic memories of the movie to share either. I know I saw it one time, but that was a lifetime ago.

Once again, a shout-out to my cousin Ryan for loaning me his Genesis collection to play and review, because this is one of those Genesis games. Just eight more to go, then you can have your box back!

Story:

I don't remember the movie AT ALL, but I assume this game works like all 16-bit movie to game adaptations: it loosely follows the plot of the movie but takes several liberties along the way.

At the beginning of the game, short comic book style still-shots recap the story of Mowgli, a boy raised in the jungle by wolves. The game begins as he heads out on a journey to defeat Shere Khan and find human beings like himself.

In between stages, the game fills you in with a sentence or two of minor plot details as Mowgli moves forward on his quest. Don't expect any big twists or shocking moments. The story for this game is as basic as it can possibly get. It only serves the function of bridging one stage to the next. In fact, you could remove the story segments altogether and it likely wouldn't have impacted my enjoyment of the game one tiny bit.

Gameplay:

When I first turned on The Jungle Book, it immediately reminded me a lot of the Lion King. The graphics, the sound, the presentation, the controls, everything. It didn't take me too long to realize that although they have a lot in common, they are both very different games.

First off: the puzzles. The Lion King had a lot of crazy, difficult puzzles to solve. Remember that frustrating level where the monkeys had to fling you around the stage in a very specific order? I sure do. The Jungle Book has none of that. The layout of each stage is pretty much the same. You have a beginning point, and you have an end point. A lot of times you can race right through the stage directly to the exit in just a couple of minutes. The catch? You can't actually exit the stage until you've collected ten gems. Each stage has a large number of gems in it (16 or so if I remember correctly). You have to fully explore each stage, collect at least ten gems, and then make it to the end of the stage, which is usually indicated by the presence of a classic Jungle Book character like Bagheera or Baloo.

The game is also much easier than the Lion King. I probably could have beaten The Jungle Book on my first play-through, without the aid of any kind of online help, if the game didn't freeze on me at the end of stage eight. Rather than play the whole entire game again, I just said "f that" and looked up level skip codes on the internet to return to where I left off.

Basic game controls are very easy to get a hang of. Controlling Mowgli, you move left and right. You can jump, climb up on ledges, and swing from vines. You attack your enemies by throwing bananas at them or just jumping on their heads. As you play, you collect projectile upgrades, like the double banana launcher, boomerangs, and rocks. These upgrades do more damage than your standard banana launcher. You also collect extra lives, hearts for extra health, and fruit pieces for points.

Stages are large, expansive, and encourage exploration. After exploring each stage and collecting ten gems, you proceed to the end of the stage. At this point, the stage either ends completely or you have to fight a boss character. The boss characters in this game are fun and challenging. Each of them has a unique strategy you must employ in order to defeat it. I looked forward to seeing what the game was going to throw at me with each one. The Louie battle was probably my favorite. Although I died many, many times while facing off against him, once I figured out his pattern I felt it was well worth all the trouble and I took him down with absolute glee.

At just ten stages long, the game shouldn't take you long to beat if you are a 2D platforming veteran like myself. The game does have its challenging moments, and it wouldn't shock me if I found out that there were people out there who consider this a difficult game. I am not one of them. This game is DEFINITELY nowhere near as challenging as the Lion King. Nowhere. And I think it is better for that. It is more accessible to players. It doesn't frustrate you. It's challenge level is just enough to encourage you to keep going on, rather than scaring you off. Quite frankly, I had a really good time with this game.

Graphics:

Considering this game came out in 1993, it looks absolutely fantastic. Big sprites, detailed characters, colorful backgrounds, terrific animations. Everyone is recognizable from their movie counterpart. The stages are all varied and unique. Many of them even sport cool weather effects like rain and lightning. I couldn't be more impressed with the game's visuals. This is 16-bit 2D platforming at its finest.

I know that retro is in lately. Not that people should stop with the 8-bit style games, but I'd love to see more indie titles done in the style of classic Sega Genesis games. It is a charming look, and one that I feel has a timeless appeal.

Sound:

The Jungle Book's music and sound effects fit the game's aesthetic like a glove. Right off the bat, you hear a 16-bit rendition of Bare Necessities at the game's title screen. What can I say? It does its part masterfully. It really puts you in the mood to play some goddamn Jungle Book.

The whole game is full of really good music that sets up each stage perfectly. The Jungle Book's soundtrack isn't as iconic as the Lion King, so I won't go so far as to say that this game's music is better than the Lion King. But the makers of the game do a fantastic job with the hand they were given.

The sound effects are a perfect fit as well. I could go on and on about the game's presentation. It is very impressive. Graphics, music, sound effects, overall atmosphere, just the game's whole look and feel - this is a really well made game.

Overall:

I didn't expect much from The Jungle Book. I thought it would be a nice, fun game that I would play and review and forget about in three days time. Instead, I ended up enjoying it so much that I played the whole thing from beginning to end twice in one day. That is almost unheard of for me.

It's a shame I wasn't familiar with this game as a kid. I would have adored it. Knowing how I am such a sucker for nostalgia, I would probably be shouting to the hills about how The Jungle Book was the best and most underrated game in the entire Sega Genesis library.

I still think that might be the case. You always hear about how Aladdin was such a great game for the Genesis. Some people say it is one of the best 2D platformers ever made. I played it and I thought it was just okay. I gave it a B-. I thought The Jungle Book was much better. Better than Aladdin, better than The Lion King, better than any Disney based game that I played in the 16-bit era.

If you are a fan of the genre, you definitely need to check out The Jungle Book. It is not a perfect game. It's short, it can be beaten in one sitting, and there isn't a whole lot of replay value to it once you've played it and beaten it. But it's damn good fun while it lasts. I am very happy I got to play and review this game. You know that saying "where have you been all my life?" I feel that way about The Jungle Book.

Final Score:

A

If you liked my review of The Jungle Book, please check out some of my other reviews:

Aladdin

The Lion King

Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

Beethoven: The Ultimate Canine Caper

Video Game Review #172: Wii Sports

Wii Sports

Wii

Nostalgia Factor:

Believe it or not, there was a time when Wii Sports ruled the world. Everyone had a friend who had this game. Then when you went over and played it with them, it made you want to go out and get a Wii too. Almost everyone I knew had a Wii, and as a result - they all had Wii Sports, which came bundled with the system. Even I was so impressed that I went out and bought a Wii so I could play this.

As all fads eventually do, both the Wii and Wii Sports lost steam. The game faded away into obscurity as motion controlled games became a novelty and people packed away their Wiis and moved on to the next generation in console gaming.

I still have a lot of fun memories of playing this game with friends, but will it hold up in single player in the present day? Let's find out.

Story:

Nothing! No story. None! You heard me.

Gameplay:

What made this game so groundbreaking when it first came out was its clever use of motion controls. It got people up off of the couch and got them swinging their arms around and waving that Wii remote like a magic wand. The purpose of the game is to mimic arm motions that are made when playing real sports. You swing your arm in a bowling motion when you play bowling. You swing the remote like a bat when you are playing baseball. Swing it like a golf club when golfing. You get the idea. This is especially fun during party atmospheres, as it is funny to watch people like grandma and grandpa swinging the remote back and forth in the air.

I mention multiplayer because the game is best played when you have friends over. You can play the game single player, but without that added element of competition, the game just isn't as exciting to play. The cool thing about this game is that anyone can pick it up and play it and have fun, not just hardcore gamers. I think that is why it appealed to so many people back when it first came out.

There are five game modes to choose from in Wii Sports: bowling, baseball, boxing, golf, and tennis.

Tennis seems like it would be the most fun well-suited to the motion controls, but I always have a terrible time playing tennis. The ball doesn't go where I want it to go. I never seem to hit the ball with the amount of force that I am trying to put into it. I routinely lose to the computer during single player mode, even when matched up against easier opponents. There are practice modes you can play, but I am terrible at those, too. That game where you have to bounce the tennis ball back and forth against the brick wall? I tried and tried, but I just can't do it. No way around it: I suck at it. I feel like I should be taking this personally, as I generally am pretty good at video games. It hurts my ego that I would suck so bad at tennis, and that after all these years I still haven't gotten the hang of it. Oh well, there are several other game modes, right?

Yep. Next, we shall talk about what is probably the game's most popular sport: its bowling mode. Controls are pretty self explanatory here. You hold down the button on the back of the remote and swing your arm like you are bowling. You want to let go of the button at the same instant you would let go of the ball in real life. Bowling is a blast to play when you are with friends. In single player, it gets old fast. I quickly turned to challenge mode to look for alternative, fun ways to bowl in this game. On the whole, bowling is definitely Wii Sports' top mini-game.

Baseball and golf are two others. As far as golfing goes, there are plenty of other games out there that handle golfing better, like Hot Shots Golf or even Super Mario Golf on the GameCube. But hey, if you have friends over it can be a fun game to check out. The motion controls do make golf mode worth at least trying. Same can be said for baseball. In theory, it would be fun swinging the Wii remote around like a baseball bat and hitting home runs out of the virtual ballpark. It is easier said than done, however. Most baseball games are low scoring affairs where you'll foul the ball off so many times you almost just want to concede the out. Challenge mode has you trying to angle your hits so you are hitting the ball into certain specific areas of the ballpark. Good luck with that. And I still haven't figured out pitching. Most of the time I just shake my controller like a mad man and it seems to confuse the crap out of the computer AI. I find that when playing with friends, baseball is one of the the least fun out of all the game modes.

And then there is boxing. This is another one I can't get the hang of. It doesn't seem like my character reliably swings his punches as I am swinging the Wii remote in real life. I end up just furiously shaking both the remote and the nunchuk in my hand whenever I play this, and hope for the best. Playing against a person can be fun, I guess. Against the computer, it is very dull and boring. Boxing is BY FAR my least favorite of all the sports in the game.

Graphics:

If you are looking for graphics that are going to blow you out of the water with their realism, you've come to the wrong place. This is a very simplistic game. The characters and the game environments are very bright and cartoony. Characters have big heads, with digit-less limbs that aren't quite attached to their bodies. Everything looks fine and cutesy until you start noticing the characters' blank and lifeless faces that never change their expressions.

Those blank faces perfectly summarize the whole feel of the game for me. While they aren't anything to get excited about, the graphics do their job. The tennis court looks like a tennis court. As does the bowling alley. As do the golf courses. So on and so forth. But when you start looking closer, you notice how bland everything is. There are no little personal touches. No Nintendo Easter Eggs or fun little background characters thrown in as a shout out to past Nintendo titles. Nothing. Most Nintendo titles are just oozing with fun and charm. The world of Wii Sports feels oddly empty and sterile. I don't know if this bothers anyone else, but it sure does me.

Sound:

The game's music and sound effects perfectly match its visual style. I like the cheesy announcer guy. The game's music is nothing to remember, but it does its job. It is catchy and I found myself humming along to it quite often.

All in all I can't complain about this game's audio. It's good, but nothing too remarkable.

Overall:

I will always look fondly upon Wii Sports because of all the great memories I have of playing this game with friends in the late 2000s. Unfortunately, the fad died pretty quickly. No one plays this anymore. Now that all I have is single player, I find that the game is still fun. It is not as fun as it was when it was brand new, but it is still a decent time.

Some of the sports I don't think are worth too much of your time and effort. Boxing sucks, and I only played it just to say I gave it a shot. Golfing is not my favorite either, but it can be fun from time to time. Tennis is all right. Baseball is all right. Bowling still stands out as the best sport on the disc. I liked playing all of the challenge modes and trying to beat my old scores from whenever it was I last played this game in the past. You unlock medals with high scores as well. Wii Sports does have a decent amount of replay value to it, even when you are playing in single player.

In my opinion, Wii Sports still holds up as a decently fun game. It isn't exciting now as it was when it first came out. It has definitely lost most of its novelty over the years. But it is still something you can pick up and jump into, even after not playing for years, and return to without losing a beat. It is welcoming to new game players as well, which speaks volumes about the game's design. It is not easy to make something that everyone from all walks of life can play and like. You can play this with your friends, your family, your coworkers, anyone. Singe player and all of the challenge modes are fun to play alone, as well.

Wii Sports was a great game in the late 2000s. It is just a good game now. It holds up as fun for what it is. The bowling is cool. The other games are occasionally fun, but on the whole they are nothing outstanding. Trying to put nostalgia aside, I think my final grade sums up my thoughts about that.

Final Score:

B-

If you liked my review of Wii Sports, check out some of my other game reviews:

Sonic Colors

Super Paper Mario

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Wave Race 64

Sonic R

Video Game Review #171: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

PlayStation 3

Nostalgia Factor:

I first heard of the original Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo back in the mid-90’s. Back then, I had absolutely zero interest in the game. I had Tetris as a kid and I would play it from time to time, but other than that, puzzle games really weren’t my thing.

Now that I am older and wiser, I do enjoy a good puzzle game from time to time. Dr. Mario and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine are two personal favorites of mine. When I saw the upgraded version of Puzzle Fighter II on the Playstation Now, I decided to give it a go. With just one day left on my free seven day trial, I didn’t want to dive into anything that would take me too long to complete. Just something I could play for a little bit, check off my list as “played”, and then move on.

And that’s exactly what I got with this game.

Story:

It’s a puzzle game. There isn’t much story to be found here. You pick a character and face off against all of the other characters until you’ve beaten them all. That’s it. To give the game credit, it does make an attempt to keep things interesting in the later stages of the game. There are a few humorous dialogue boxes that pop up when you are battling the game’s bosses. I still wouldn’t say the game has a real storyline, but at least they try to keep things fun and interesting.

Gameplay:

I mentioned earlier that I really enjoyed Dr. Mario and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. If you are familiar with either of those games, you’ll quickly figure out how to play Puzzle Fighter. It isn’t identical to those other games, but it plays out similarly enough.

Rather than just simply lining up same-colored gems to make them evaporate, there is an added step here. Gems can only be destroyed by “crash gems” of the same color. So if you’ve got a big stack of red gems you want to obliterate, you have to wait to get a red crash gem and then drop it onto these red gems.

If you put a yellow crash gem onto a stack of red gems, nothing will happen. So this adds an extra layer of strategy to the game. You have to build structures that are layered in color and crash gems, so that when you destroy part of the structure with a crash gem, the rest of it collapses and comes into contact with same colored crash gems below it. And then that part collapses and falls into more crash gems. You want to create big falling gem combinations. The bigger the combination and the more gems you can destroy in one turn, the better.

Big combos cause useless un-removable blocks to fall onto your opponents screen. They could be building up some big combination, but if you beat them to the punch, their screen will get buried in useless gems that do nothing but block their moves and get in their way. Unlike other puzzle games, these blocks can’t be removed by the player. They all come attached with a timer that counts down from five. If you can survive for five turns, the blocks vanish and go away.

If you want to get good at this game, you have to learn how to consistently create combos and drop these gems onto your opponent. You also have to learn to cope when these gems are dropped on you, because it is going to happen. A lot.

Outside of the main game, Puzzle Fighter II offers a few other game variations to keep things fresh. Nothing too crazy though. One is the traditional “line up the colors” mode like you see in Mean Bean Machine, where you don’t need a crash gem to initiate big combos. There are a few other game modes that I can’t remember anymore. I played through several of them before I got bored with the game and decided to turn it off.

Graphics:

The game has a very distinctive bright and cartoony feel to it. I like how all the classic Street Fighter characters are smushed down so that they look like kids. Their animations are very humorous and charming as well. A lot of the lights and effects look pretty cool when you are smashing gems. It is a neat looking game, but at the same time it IS a puzzle game. There isn’t a whole lot to get excited about here. It looks good, but that’s really all I can say about it.

Sound:

I am sure the game’s music and sound effects are fine, but I can’t remember them. I should have written this review immediately while the game was still fresh in my head, rather than waiting a week or two to do it!

I don’t remember the music being bad, but I can’t remember it being good either. One thing I will remember is my wife yelling from the other room as I played: “can you turn that down? It sounds really annoying.” I think there are a lot of yips, yaps, and high pitched anime-style groans from the characters. They are supposed to be fighting in the middle of the screen as you puzzle it out, after all. I can see why that would be annoying, and I am sure the gems make blip noises when you move them or flip them on your screen too.

Again, I don’t remember a whole lot about the game’s sound, but if it was irritating enough to annoy my wife, who never says anything while I am playing video games, then it must not be that great.

Overall:

I truly wanted to like this game, but there was just something “off” about my whole experience as I played it. It is a very shallow game, and there is not a whole lot of content to it. I raced through the single player mode while only dying and having to continue once. I played a few of the extra modes, and the same thing happened. I raced right through 'em.

Before I knew it, not even an hour had passed and I had seen everything there was to see from this game. True, I could have turned the difficulty up. But that wasn’t going to make the game any more enjoyable for me. Maybe if I’d actually paid money for the game, I’d be looking to extend its life a little bit. But on the last day of a free trial? Meh. I was done with it. It's weird, I didn't hate the game, but at the same time the whole thing left me feeling very empty and dissatisfied.

I guess part of the problem is that I didn’t have a human player to play against. That is one of the reasons I liked Dr Mario and Mean Bean Machine so much. I had friends that I could square off against,  friends who were REALLY GOOD at those games. We could play for hours on end and it would never get tiring. The matches were intense, the arguments it caused were real. It was a fun time! I didn’t have that with Puzzle Fighter. Not that it is necessarily the game’s fault that I didn’t have anyone to play with, but it did affect my overall enjoyment of the game.

This game was... fine. Whether it is this game's fault or not, I simply didn't like it the way I did Dr Mario and Mean Bean Machine. It is a well made game, but it seems to be missing that extra wow factor that made those other games so special to me. I just don't ever see myself coming back to it again, which is my justification for giving it such a low score.

Final Score:

D+

If you liked this review, please check out some of my other game reviews:

Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine

Bubble Witch 2 Saga

Candy Crush Saga

Candy Crush Soda Saga

Sonic Mania Plus

Video Game Review #170: Alex Kidd in Miracle World

Alex Kidd in Miracle World

Sega Master System

Nostalgia Factor:

Growing up in the late 80's, nearly every household had a Nintendo Entertainment System. As kids, we realized that there was another system out there called a "Sega", but no one actually knew anybody that owned one. Except me. I knew a kid that had one.

His name was Patrick. He lived just a block and a half away from my grandparents' house, so when I was being watched by them for the day, I would often go visit Patrick. He'd want to go outside and play and ride bikes, and I'd just be like "no! Let's play Sega!" I remember it being so weird to see and play the Master System. All I knew were the NES and the Atari. It was like this strange, mystical artifact to me.

I don't remember what game it was we actually played (he only had one game). I thought that Alex Kidd in Miracle World was the game, but after playing it just now in 2019, it wasn't bringing back any memories. It must have been something else. But until now, I had never played a Sega Master System game to completion from beginning to end. I had only played those snippets of games with my friend Patrick back about... wow, 30 years ago. Jesus, I am old.

I found this title on the PlayStation Now. As soon as I saw it, I knew I needed to play it. It was so cool to finally be able to play a Master System game after all these years.

Story:

Oh boy. I'll admit that I didn't pay any attention to the game's storyline whatsoever. I don't think it would have made a difference if I did. It seemed pretty.... imaginative. Like a first-grader had to make up a fairytale on the spot, and that is what they decided to use as the game's story. What I got from my experience: You're the chosen one. You have to stop the bad guys from taking over. Add a bunch of zany and nonsensical characters and locations to the mix, and you've got this game.

Gameplay:

I have a love/hate relationship with this game's controls. When I first started playing the game, I didn't think I was going to be able to finish it. I legitimately considered giving up. Your character is small, he has very floaty jumps, and his momentum makes him very hard to control. It doesn't help that one hit kills you. I was dying CONSTANTLY. What should have been a simple, fun and easy game to control was a nightmare. The momentum was always causing me to bump into enemies. I'd be like: "All I have to do is jump over that character? Sounds easy enough!" Then momentum would carry me directly into him as I tried to go over him, and I'd die. Back to the last checkpoint, I'd go! Over and over and over again. Very frustrating.

I could barely make it through the first level. It took me a ridiculous number of tries. If I could barely beat the first stage, how was I going to beat the rest of the game? To top it off, I beat the second level okay, but couldn't get past its boss. You have to beat it in two out of three games of rock/paper/scissors. Sounds easy enough, but then I lost four straight matches against him and lost all my lives and had to start all the way back at the beginning of the game. Really? Not only was the game super hard, but random luck could take all your lives away? I wasn't having it. I turned the game off in a fit of rage.

I wasn't planning to come back to Alex Kidd, but my PlayStation Now subscription was just about to run out, and I didn't feel like starting a new game. I decided to give Alex Kidd another chance. And you know what? The game redeemed itself. Admittedly, I had to start stacking the deck in my favor. I used the PS4's save states to save my progress before any challenging areas, so I could practice them over and over without fear of dying. I memorized the rock/paper/scissors patterns. I got good at the game. It took me a while, but I ended up beating the whole game that night.

Using save states made the game very easy. But it also made me like the game a lot more than I would have if those save states didn't exist. It would have been very frustrating and hard. So I don't know how I would have felt about this game if I had to play it on the Master System. On the PS4 I ended up liking it.

All this blabbering on and on, and I haven't even described the basics of the game yet. This is a 2D side-scroller. You control Alex Kidd. The goal of the game is to progress through linear levels. You walk left and right, you jump, and you punch. One hit kills you, so this game is very challenging. Aside from punching your enemies, you mainly use your punch move to destroy blocks. Most blocks hide hidden prizes, like money. Save up enough money, and you can buy useful items from a vendor in between stages. I don't know what a lot of the items do. I just had to play around with them to find out. My favorite item is the one that gave me a shooting attack. That made the game a lot less stressful for me when I could shoot rather than have to get in close to punch enemies and risk running into them. Alex Kidd can also swim, similar to Mario during his underwater stages. In fact, the underwater segments seemed directly inspired by Nintendo's plumber.

The game mixes things up every once in a while and gives you vehicles to ride. A bike, a boat, and a flying thing. I am very grateful for the PS4's save states, because I was terrible at these levels. I was always hitting stuff and either dying or falling to the ground and having to traverse the whole stage on foot.

As linear as the game is, there are some maze-like levels towards the end of the game where you have to solve puzzles and do things in a certain order. Combine that with the game's item menu, and the fact that you could spend money between stages buying things. Considering this game came out in 1986 or 87, I'd say it was way ahead of its time.

Graphics:

This is not the greatest looking game of all time, but it has its charms. It holds up well to a lot of the classic NES games that I have played. I think it shows that the Sega Master System was more than capable of standing toe-to-toe visually with the NES. It's a shame that the system wasn't more popular.

Again, when you look at the game's age, that makes it look more impressive. This is over 30 years old! Bright colors, clearly defined characters, unique stage design. It's hard to believe this came out when I was four years old.

Sound:

I don't remember the game's music and sound effects standing out too much. I couldn't even hum a tune from the game's soundtrack. It is out of my mind already. Does Alex make a noise when he jumps? I'm sure he does. I don't remember it, though. What noise does he makes when he collects money? I don't remember,

On the plus side, the game's sound must not have been particularly bad, or I would have at least remembered that. I'm just going to say that it was serviceable.

Overall:

I ended up enjoying Alex Kidd. Again, it is hard for me to say if I would have liked this game without being able to save it. I died A LOT. It would have taken me days, maybe even weeks to be able to beat this game if I wasn't able to save and reload when I died. It would have been a hair pulling experience, I'll tell you that much.

Can I recommend this to people who've never played it before? It is really hard to say. If you are like me and are curious about the Sega Master System and have never had the chance to play one of its games, I'd check it out just for the novelty of it. You may even end up liking it as I did. But can I say that this game is up there with Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog as one of the greatest 2D platformers of all time? Absolutely not.

This is a decent game, but a frustrating one at the same time. I played it and satisfied my curiosity. It was worth checking out for nostalgia's sake, but I don't think I'll ever come back to it again. 

Final Score:

B-

If you liked this review, please check out some of my other game reviews:

Super Mario Bros.

Ghosts 'n Goblins

Dynamite Headdy

The Lion King

Ninja Gaiden

Video Game Review #169: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

PlayStation 4

Nostalgia Factor:

Nothing for me to get nostalgic about here. I saw this game available on the PS Now and the name seemed vaguely familiar. I looked it up online and saw that it had gotten good reviews, AND it was pretty short. That's all I needed to see. It was a good game that I had never played before, plus it was short enough that I would have plenty of time to be able to try other games with my one week PS Now trial. Sounded great to me! So I played it.

And regretted it.

Story:

Things start out simple enough. The game takes place in a small town located in the British countryside. Some kind of cataclysmic event has taken place, and you are the only survivor. It is up to you to walk around and check things out and see if you can determine what exactly happened to all the missing people.

I hope this isn't too much of a spoiler, but don't get your hopes up. As the game progresses, you witness many flashbacks and snippets of past conversations that took place before the rapture. Some of it helps you understand how things started (there's an alien/celestial being that appears, and scientific experiments are done on it), but most of these conversations are just useless babbling. But still, you get an idea of how things started, which is cool. Unfortunately, the game goes nowhere with this information.

One thing that made the game particularly hard to follow from my perspective, is that the flashback conversations that you'd watch would not show what the characters looked like. You would just see vaguely humanoid blobs of light and you'd hear their voices. I am terrible at recognizing voices, so without a visual guide of what the characters looked like, it made it very tough for me to know who was who and how to follow what was going on. I would hear one characters voice in a flashback, and then an hour later I would hear it in another conversation. I'd be like: "am I supposed to remember who the fuck that is???" It's a mess.

The ending... dear god don't get me started. Useless. It leaves the player out in the cold, to the point where I completely failed to see what the point was of playing this game. There is no resolution. There are no clear answers. It is completely, 100% WTF. I've never felt more left out in the cold by a video game's ending than this one.

It's a shame, because I thought the premise of the story had great potential. We'll get to the gameplay in a moment, but before we go any further, I need to let you know that this is very much a story based game. Gameplay takes a back seat to the story here. Taking this into consideration, I couldn't possibly have been more disappointed with the direction this game ended up taking. They could have had me riveted if they'd done something better with the story. Instead they ended up failing miserably.

Gameplay:

I thought the game's storyline was rotten, and I think its gameplay is even worse. All you do in this game is walk, open doors, and examine things. That's it. Now, I am up for a good story based exploration game. That isn't the issue. The issue is that none of the elements necessary to make a good game in this genre work well together in Rapture.

I'll start out with a common complaint: your character's speed. Dear god, you control the slowest-walking asshole on the face of the planet. A perfect walking speed for a game like this would be, say, Skyrim's. I never have a problem with my character's speed in that game. Here, though, your character walks at an absolute snail's pace.

Despite being a pretty short game, the size of its world is actually pretty big. This makes your slow pace even that much more noticeable. It takes forever to get from point to point. Making your character walk so slowly seems to be the game makers' way of artificially lengthening how long it takes to complete the game. Or maybe it is meant to draw your attention away from how non-interactive this game's environment is. Most of the objects around you, you can only look at. There isn't much item interaction in the game. It gets boring, being forced to walk around at such a slow pace and not being able to interact with anything!

More complaining. The game lacks any kind of focus whatsoever. At first, the concept seems simple. Follow the flashing ball of light around the village and watch flashback sequences from before the rapture. Cool. But following the ball of light is easier said than done. It likes to race out ahead of you and disappear from sight. With your slow speed, it seems hopeless to catch up to it sometimes. Other times, it disappears completely, leaving you with absolutely no idea of where you are supposed to go next. Other times it just stops and doesn't move at all. Usually this indicates that you have to enter a building, but I didn't catch onto this fact until far too much time in the game had passed.

There are no action sequences in the game. No fighting, no shooting, no Quick Time Events. Literally all you do is walk and open doors. Occasionally you have to twist your controller in order to unlock certain in-game conversations that you watch. You can find and listen to audio recordings sometimes too. When, oh when is the audio diary cliche going to die in video games? I have mentioned this in past reviews: I am terrible at playing and listening to these things at the same time.

That sums up my time with the game. I wandered around aimlessly, listening to conversations that I would then zone out during because I was too busy trying to find out where the hell I was supposed to go next. And when I was listening, what I was hearing was either irrelevant or made no contextual sense to the game's storyline whatsoever. Meh to the eh.

Graphics:

I have to give credit where credit is due: the game looks phenomenal. Outdoors, indoors, it doesn't matter. Outside you have big green fields, rolling hills, streets, a whole village that looks and feels amazingly real. You spend a lot of time looking through peoples' houses and places of business. Not only do the environments look sharp, they are filled with all kinds of small personal details. The inside of an old person's house looks much different than a young family with kids. The church looks like a real church. The tavern with its polished wood counter and frosted glass windows looks warm and inviting. Small personal touches like notes, fliers, newspapers, and photographs are everywhere. The level of detail put into making the world of this game look real and believable is staggering.

There are really cool "dream" sequences too, where the lights go out and you have to walk through walkways lined with candles. The starry sky looks gorgeous and vast above you. Ghostly apparitions swirl about. Definitely play this in the dark with headphones on. It is a very immersive experience.

My one complaint, and I have already mentioned it: the characters! I really wish that instead of just blobs of light with voices, that you'd get to see what the people looked like. I still don't know if I would have liked the game any better, but being able to match a name and a voice with a face perhaps would have made things a bit easier for me to follow.

Sound:

Voice acting is good. I did occasionally have a hard time trying to remember whose voice was whose. The only character I consistently recognized was the guy who sounds like Ramsay Bolton from Game of Thrones. I was actually shocked to see that it wasn't him when I watched the game's credits. I wish the voices were a little more distinctively different, but overall, I didn't have too many complaints with the voice acting.

The game's music and atmospheric sound effects are top of the line. The wind blows, faint music plays, you can hear someone's radio transmitting in their yard a few houses over. There is an eerie feeling in the air. You follow the sound of the radio to investigate. Other times when you are lost, you can try to listen for the telltale shimmer sound made by the ball of light you are supposed to follow. The sound plays a huge part in creating this game's atmosphere. Graphics alone can't make a world believable. The audio effects definitely pull their weight here. Again, play this in the dark with headphones on. For better or worse, you will lose yourself in the world of this game.

The presentation of this game is very good. It's too bad that its storyline and gameplay don't match.

Overall:

Everybody's Gone to Rapture looks and sounds great. Let's get that out of the way. Okay? Good.

It doesn't matter. Its presentation can't save it. It's just not a fun game. It is not even that it is light on action and based on story. I have played games before that are mainly story based. Look at anything Telltale has put out there. The original Walking Dead is one of my favorite games of all time. It had a great story that kept me coming back chapter after chapter. Not the case here.

This game's story simply could not hold my attention. It is confusing, its disjointed, its filled with too many boring and irrelevant chunks of dialogue. I actually fell asleep multiple times playing this game. That should really tell you something.

The game is boring! There is no other way around it. Even though it is a relatively short game, it felt like it took forever to beat. Am I done yet? Am I done yet? Am I almost to the end? These thoughts constantly cycled through my brain as I trudged down the middle of an empty side street at my 2 miles per hour walking speed. I had stopped caring about the story. I didn't care about the characters. The game's gorgeous graphics had lost their hold on me. I just wanted it to be over.

I can't in good conscience recommend this game to anyone else. I am pretty easily entertained, and I tend to like most games I play, even if they have obvious flaws. Not every game has to be great, as long as I am having fun. That's all I ask. And there is no fun to be found here.

This is the worst time I have had with a video game in a long time. The only thing keeping it from getting a complete F is the fact that the game's graphics are so gorgeous, and that its world is so painstakingly detailed. That's the only thing it's got going for it.

Final Score:

D-

If you liked this review, please check out some of my other game reviews:

Alien: Isolation

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Flower

Journey

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Video Game Review #168: God of War: Chains of Olympus

God of War: Chains of Olympus

PlayStation Portable

Nostalgia Factor:

I have been a fan of the God of War series from day one. While I have played all of the numbered additions to the series, I had yet to play any of the "side" games out there. During my seven day PlayStation Now trial, I saw several of the side GoW games available to play. I didn't have time to check them all out, so I decided to settle on Chains of Olympus since I'd heard it was pretty short.

Chains of Olympus was originally released for the PlayStation Portable (which I will refer to from now on as the PSP). Seeing as how I had never owned a PSP, I didn't think I would ever get the chance to play this game (there is a remastered version available for the PS3, but I didn't even know that existed until a few days ago). Playing it on PSNow was the perfect chance for me to finally see if this was any good or not.

Story:

I guess I should start with a disclaimer. I have a really short attention span. And I mean reaaaaally short. For some reason whenever I play God of War games, my attention drifts during the cutscenes. I never know what the hell is going on in these games, and this one is no exception.

It seems like this game followed the basic God of War formula. It started out during a big battle. Kratos goes in and kicks ass. He talks to some other gods and finds out that another god is doing something shifty, so he has to go in and take him out... I think? I am useless, you don't have to tell me. Bad attention span. Kratos once again winds up in the Underworld at some point. He sees flashbacks of the daughter he murdered during his bloodthirsty rampage. Blah blah blah. I don't know what the hell this game was about. One thing that is important to note is that the game is a direct prequel to the original God of War game, taking place before Kratos takes down Ares.

Gameplay:

If you have played any God of War game ever, you will know how to play this one. It controls exactly the same as the other games in the series. There really is nothing innovative that the game adds, either. No twists, no wrinkles. All you do is fight your way through the game's areas, solving meager puzzles along the way.

I have reviewed multiple God of War games before, so I don't think I need to explain the mechanics of the game. If you really want an in-depth explanation of how God of War works, check out some of my old reviews at the bottom of this one.

As far as game length goes, I beat this in about five or six hours. I don't know if it told me how long I'd been playing when I beat the game. But I beat it in only two sittings, which has to be a record for me when it comes to God of War games that I'm playing for the first time.

Graphics:

This game was created for the outdated and obsolete PSP, and it shows. It is not even that the game looks ugly. It just looks so.... bland. It was really difficult for me coming from God of War III (which froze up on me before I could beat it, which is why you haven't seen a review yet) to this game. It's like going from eating at an award winning restaurant one day, to a Burger King the next.

I'd say the visuals for this game are on-par with the original God of War for the PS2. Maybe a little worse. Again, not to say that it looks bad necessarily, just incredibly basic and primitive. In fact, you could say the graphics are a metaphor for the whole game. Not bad or terrible, just extremely basic.

Sound:

While the game's graphics haven't aged very well, the same can't be said for its music and sound effects. Everything sounds just as good for this game as it does for the main console God of War entries. Intense, in-your-face soundtrack when you are battling enemies. Serene and almost peaceful when you are exploring.

All of the voice actors from the main games make their return here. Kratos sounds as good as ever, as do all of the god characters, especially the narrator. Her voice has become iconic to the God of War series. As much as I like to nitpick every aspect of every game I play, I can't complain about the sound in this game. It's good.

Overall:

I kind of knew what I was getting into when I started up this game. I knew it would be short. That's one of the reasons I picked this game, because I knew I could easily finish it during my seven day PS Now trial, and still have plenty of time to try other games. It is a nine year old PSP game, so I knew it would be relatively primitive and basic in comparison to the newer games in the series. None of this was a surprise to me.

Despite the game's shortcomings, I still thought it was pretty fun. At its heart, this game is 100% God of War all the way through. It looks like God of War, it sounds like God of War, it plays like God of War. It almost helped for me to look at this game as some sort of DLC for the first PS2 God of War, rather than its own standalone game.

The battles are fun. Brutally mowing down waves of enemies at a time really makes you feel like a bad ass. The story, I mean, I didn't know what was going on, but I am sure it was fun for people who don't have the attention span of a gerbil.

My time with the game was pretty short. As I said earlier, I beat the whole thing in about five or six hours. But the main point is that I had FUN during those five or six hours. I can't say at any time did I ever think "man this game sucks" or anything like that. Sure, it's old. Sure, it's primitive. Sure, it doesn't do a damn thing that you haven't seen in any other God of War game out there. But it is still fun!

Would I recommend this game to anyone else? If you are a God of War fan and are looking for something quick and fun to play, you can't go wrong here. There is not much replay value to the game, so I don't know how much I'd actually spend on it. But if you are a God of War fan with a PS Now subscription, I see no reason for you to not check this out. Especially if you are a fan of the storyline of the series. Most of the game's plot was lost to me, but from what I could gather, the game does do a nice job of filling in some of the blanks when it comes to Kratos' backstory.

Short, fun, enjoyable, but incredibly primitive and lacking in any originality whatsoever. That would be my one sentence description of Chains of Olympus. If that appeals to you, by all means check this game out. But if you did decide to skip out on Chains of Olympus, you wouldn't be missing a whole lot.

Final Score:

C+

If you liked this review, please check out some of my other game reviews:

God of War

God of War II

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage

Video Game Review #167: Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Episodes I and II

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episodes I and II

PlayStation 3

Nostalgia Factor:

I am a big time bargain shopper. I don't tend to buy brand-new video games. Instead, I wait for them to go down in price, and then I pick them up for just a couple dollars as opposed to 40 or 50 bucks each. I have been patiently waiting since 2010 for Sonic 4 to go down in price. I was so excited for this game back then. I love the classic Sonic games for the Genesis, so when I saw that there was an actual Sonic FOUR that had come out, I wanted to play it immediately. Buuuuuut then I read all the bad reviews.

I still wanted to play Sonic 4 someday, but I certainly wasn't going to pay top dollar for it. I periodically would check the PlayStation Store for sales, but every single time I looked, Sonic 4: Episodes I and II (why was it split into two parts?) were still full price. I was beginning to think I was never going to get a chance to play this game. Given the poor reviews for it, however, I was not too stressed out about it.

Fast forward to 2019, nine years after the initial release of Sonic 4: Episode I. I still had not had the chance to play Sonic 4 because it was still full-freaking-price on the PlayStation Store. On an unrelated note, I was playing around with my PS4 one random day when I decided to check out PlayStation Now and see what it was all about. My jaw hit the floor when I saw how many free games were available on the service. I am sure there are better games on there, but Sonic 4: Episodes I and II immediately jumped out at me. I made up my mind that I was going to sign up for the free seven day trial of PlayStation Now. Not only to test the service and see if it was worth buying, but to play Sonic 4 once and for all. I'd waited long enough.

Story:

I don't know. It's a Sonic game. You progress through levels and you fight Robotnik at the end of each world. As far as I know, this game doesn't have a storyline other than to fight Robotnik, destroy his work, and free animals from captivity - which is the same as in any old Sonic game. There are no cutscenes to be found here. No dialogue. What you see is what you get as far as storyline. And what I see is a whole lot of nothin'.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Who plays Sonic games for their stories? Not I.

Gameplay:

This is where Sonic 4 received the bulk of its criticism from all of the reviews I'd read online. The game looked and sounded good, but controlled poorly. I heard lots of people complaining about the in-game physics being changed. Apparently, Sonic didn't control very smoothly, wasn't very fast, and would often slow down or stop when you were trying to go faster. This is where I came in with the most apprehension.

It turns out that I didn't have too much to worry about. No, the game didn't control exactly the same as its Genesis predecessors, but that was okay. Not too much had changed, although admittedly things did feel a bit clunkier for me. Instead of getting aggravated by the changes to the controls, I looked at it almost as a throwback to the original Sonic game for the Genesis. The classic Sonic formula that we know and love hadn't been perfected yet. This game tossed aside the tried and true formula in Sonic 2, 3, and Sonic & Knuckles and took a step back. It was doing something old, but something new at the same time.

Each episode consists of four worlds. Each world contains four stages: three standard Sonic 2D side-scrolling stages, and one boss stage. Beat all of the stages, and you complete the episode. There are two episodes.

Before we continue, I should add that I think this is technically two separate games, with Episode I being one game and Episode II being another. They are being sold separately, after all. But I am considering them to be one game. Whenever I encounter a game that is released in chapters or episodes (like Telltale games), I never review the individual episode, but the collection of all of them at the end. One of the big complaints (aside from the game physics) I heard about Sonic 4 was how each of the two episodes was super short in length. Seeing as how I played through each episode back-to-back and I didn't have to wait over a year in between games, it felt like a pretty long and satisfying experience to me. But I can definitely understand the frustration of the original buyers of the game, who only got four worlds per Episode, with each episode costing over 30 bucks apiece. I got to play these for free on the PlayStation Now.

There are differences between Episodes I and II. Episode I feels more like the original Sonic game. There is no Tails. Bonus stages are similar to the original Sonic game, except this time around you control the tilt of the screen and not Sonic himself. The levels all seem to be remixes of Sonic 2 stages, which also gives the game a Sonic 2 feel at the same time. I kind of thought it was cool how it merged the two unique styles of gameplay from Sonic 1 and 2 under one roof.

Episode II feels more like Sonic 3 or Sonic & Knuckles. Tails is by your side. You can do special jump, grab, and fly combination moves. Tails is definitely a bigger help than he ever was in the old Sonic games. He even flies you around on his airplane, too. The stages feel more original than Episode I's. I don't like the bonus stages, however. Episode II utilizes half-pipe ring collecting bonus stages in the mold of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I got one Chaos Emerald, and couldn't get anymore. I suck at that damn game and I hate it.

Boss battles are consistently large and exciting between both episodes. One of my complaints about this game is that some of the bosses are too hard. I came into one particular boss stage with 21 lives left, and ended up burning through them all. Ouch. Otherwise, most of them are pretty fun. I like how so many of them are throwbacks to classic Genesis Sonic bosses. The fan service is strong in this game.

So yes, both games follow similar formulas (4 worlds made of 3 stages and 1 boss stage). They do have very unique differences. Different bonus stages, different sets of Chaos Emeralds to earn. Tails adds a whole new dynamic to the second episode. On a whole, I thought the two episodes complemented each other very well.

Graphics:

This game looks really nice. I don't mind the visual upgrades they made to Sonic's character. I think the stages look wonderful fully rendered in 3D, especially the re-imagined ones from Sonic 2. It was super cool getting the chance to see them remade with "today's" graphics. I put the quotation marks because this game is like nine years old now.

Nothing is bland looking. Everything is interesting to the eye. Sonic 4 excels in creating a rich, visually entertaining atmosphere that should please any old school Sonic fan.

Sound:

I can't say that this game's musical score was one of its high points. Almost every Sonic game has some kind of catchy tune, or really fun and memorable stage themes. I can't say that there was anything that stood out to me in Sonic 4.

I will say with clarity that the game's sound effects are very good. The classic Sonic sound effects like jumping, collecting rings, and getting hit, all return in their full glory.

Overall:

I think that all the negative reviews this game gets are unwarranted. I had a fun time with Sonic 4! Looking at it objectively, I can see why people would complain. They wait all these years for a proper Sonic 4, then they want you to fork over 30 bucks to get a really short game with just four stages and busted gameplay mechanics. Then they make you wait for more than a year before releasing the second episode of the game, which is also very short and 30 dollars in price. Boo!

I admit that I am spoiled getting to play both of these games without having to wait between episodes, AND I got to play it for free. Playing it all at once is definitely the way to go. Again, I can see why people didn't like it. But I had a different experience. I thought this was good! And to think, all the bad reviews have scared me away from this game for so long.

It isn't the greatest Sonic game of all time, but it does stay true to what makes a Sonic game fun in the first place. Good graphics, good sound effects, good controls, awesome level design, big boss battles. This is a better Sonic game than anything that is not Sonic Mania or one of the old Genesis Sonic games. The fact that it is even being mentioned in the same regard as those games should tell you that I thought this was pretty good.

Is it worth shelling out 30 bucks for each episode of this game? Probably not. But if you have the chance to play this for free on the PlayStation Now, you should definitely check it out. It is not as bad as all the reviews say. Don't let them scare you away. I thought this was good.

Overall:

B

If you liked this review, please check out some of my other game reviews:

Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic The Hedgehog 2

Sonic The Hedgehog 3

Sonic Colors

Sonic Mania Plus