racketboy.com

I'd say some hot takes in his best too, like that shitty Animal Well game that the gaming media keeps fellating.

Uh…Animal Well is a fine game. It’s not my GOTY, but I still liked it a lot.

MrPopo wrote: ↑Thu Dec 19, 2024 4:30 pm There's some seriously hot takes in your 10 worst.

Perhaps, but I'm desperately trying to find good arguments as to why other folks apparently enjoy them! Have you written reviews on them?


As for Animal Well: I like how it distilled the experience of solving it together to its essence. But I can see why some view it as a rehash of Fez.

G.I. Joe Wrath of Cobra
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Rita's Revenge

Two, mediocre beat 'em ups that are not worth anyone's time. Of the two, G.I. Joe plays better than Rita's Revenge, but that's not saying much.

MMPR just got an update that is said to improve the gameplay a lot, but I don't feel motivated to try playing it again.

Save me OpenBOR, it's so hard to find good beat 'em ups these days.

Mario & Luigi Brothership

A thoroughly enjoyable and polished game. The combat is superb, and the game really has a lot of love for Luigi.

Animal Well is a pretentious mess of a game where nothing about its world makes any sense. The game has absolutely no cohesion. Also, its deepest puzzles can't be solved without resorting to help from the internet. The developer even ADMITTED that he didn't intend for many of the game's puzzles to ever be solved.

One of the worst games of 2024 and one of the worst metroidvanias ever made.

AJ's games beaten 2024:

1. Yakuza 3 Remastered PS4
2. Gley Lancer Mega Drive
3. Flink Mega Drive
4. Zero Wing Mega Drive
5. Super Bomberman 3 SNES
6. Streets of Rage Master System
7. Goof Troop SNES
8. Pokémon Card GB2: Great Rocket-Dan Sanjō! GBC
9. Pop'n Twinbee: Rainbow Bell Adventures SNES
10. Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shougun Magginesu SNES
11. Super Mario Maker Wii U
12. Donkey Kong Land 2 Game Boy
13. The Fish Files GBC
14. Kirby Super Star Ultra DS
15. Yakuza 4 Remastered PS4
16. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel Vita
17. Psychonauts 2 PS4
18. Spyro the Dragon PS1
19. LittleBigPlanet PS3
20. Faxanadu NES
21. Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia DS
22. Donkey Kong Country Returns Wii
23. Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars Master System
24. Batman Returns Master System
25. Master of Darkness Master System
26. Sonic Chaos Master System
27. Cloud Master Master System
28. Disney’s Aladdin Master System
29. Astro Bot PS5
30. Darkwing Duck NES
31. DuckTales 2 NES *NEW*
32. Tiny Toon Adventures NES *NEW*
33. Adventure Island Part II NES *NEW*
34. Yakuza 5 PS4 *NEW*
35. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride DS *NEW*
36. Kabuki Quantum Fighter NES *NEW*
37. New Ghostbusters 2 NES *NEW*
38. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance Switch *NEW*
39. Demon’s Crest SNES *NEW*
40. Control PS5 *NEW*
41. Zero Time Dilemma Vita *NEW*


DuckTales 2



Whilst I was in the mood for Capcom Disney games after beating Darkwing Duck, I carried the momentum forward and played through DuckTales 2 as well. It’s been some time since I played the original game, but from what I remember, this is essentially more of the same, except maybe a little less memorable. You can choose to tackle any of the stages in any order, and your objective is to find treasures and earn money as you explore. The treasure is more useful in this game as you can use it to buy items between stages including extra health, extra lives and a safe that stops you losing money if you die. The game is fun and well worth a play, but it’s lacking the kind of standout music and moments that the original did with The Amazon and The Moon stages. Well worth a play though.

32. Tiny Toon Adventures



After 2 Capcom Disney games, I went for something different next with a licensed game by Konami. Tiny Toon Adventures is a 2d platformer where you jump through levels as Buster Bunny on a quest to save Babs Bunny from Montana Max. You can find items in levels to change into one of 3 other characters with different powers – Dizzy Devil who can use his spin attack to break blocks and beat enemies but can’t jump as high, Furrball the cat who can jump high, runs fast and can climb up vertical walls, and Plucky Duck who can slow his descent when jumping by flapping his wings, and swim better than usual. These characters are pretty much universally better than Buster making him feel a bit redundant. The game starts off pretty fun, but taking hits is very easy and the game’s difficulty quickly ramps us to be surprisingly frustrating. It feels like it should be easy, but the games high momentum and small field of view make running into stuff a little too easy, especially in vertically scrolling sections. Tiny Toons isn’t a bad time, but it requires a little too much memorisation and patience to be a game I’d recommend wholeheartedly.

33. Adventure Island Part II



Sticking with NES platformers, next up on the agenda was the second Adventure Island game. I was a bit nervous about working through this one as the first game in the series is brutal. Thankfully, I found this entry to be much more forgiving, if not exactly easy. Each world features a ton of levels but the order you progress through them is controlled by a mini game at the end of each level where you grab one of a selection of eggs – different eggs will lead to different levels meaning multiple playthroughs may contain different levels. Beating the boss will clear the world and move to the next one, but losing to the boss causes him to move to another unbeaten level meaning you need to keep playing more stages to find your way to the boss again. This game also introduces dinosaurs, who function as an extra hit before dying as well as offering additional abilities. The blue dinosaur has a tail whip projectile which flies straight forward and destroys rocks as well as not slipping on ice, the red one has a similar fireball projectile and can walk on lava, the purple plesiosaur can swim quickly underwater but has no unique attacks, and the pterodactyl can fly and drop rocks. Level design is perhaps a bit basic, and if you play a lot of stages in each world they can get a bit samey, but I actually really enjoyed working through this one and think it’s worth a playthrough.

34. Yakuza 5



This was my 3rd Yakuza game of the year, and I still had a great time playing through it, but I think of the 3 I played this year, this was my least favourite. Yakuza 5 is definitely the biggest Yakuza game of the series up to that point – there are 5 playable characters in this one split over 4 chapters, followed by a final chapter where they all gather together. Chapter 1 has you playing as Kiryu who is working as a taxi driver in Fukuoka. One thing I liked about this was Kiryu was still almost fully powered from previous games, so they didn’t reset you like they often do. Chapter 2 has you playing as Saejima from Yakuza 4 at prison in Sapporo, whilst chapter 5 has you playing as both Yakuza 4’s Akiyama setting up a new office in Osaka, as well as Kiryu’s adopted daughter Haruka at an idol talent agency in the same city. Finally, chapter 4 has you playing a new character, ex-baseball player Shinada, in Nagoya. The variety of locales is fun, but the character swapping is mixed. Haruka is an interesting if divisive gameplay switch as her sections function as a rhythm game, but Shinada plays like the other characters but just…. Bad. The story is where I think the game is weakest – Yakuza is full of silly, soap-opera style twists, but the story here was very close to flanderising the characters a bit too much, and some of the decisions the protagonists make feel out of character for the well-established cast. There’s also a few characters who are deeply unlikeable which the game tries to make you like and ultimately fails, and there’s a few legacy characters who feel like they didn’t know what to do with, especially the leader of the clan, Dojima. That said, you can feel that this is the game that came directly before Yakuza 0 was released and revitalised the series, especially in the west. The various minigames and side modes feel like they’re well fleshed out here and the combat systems feel way more refined than they did in Yakuza 3 on the same system. I’m just glad 0 worked as a story reset, because the series needed to strip itself back to basics I think.

35. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride



This was a game I started playing as part of this year’s summer games challenge. Dragon Quest V is often regarded as one of the series best, so I was keen to give it a go. The first thing I noticed here was the presentation on DS, which is honestly phenomenal. The music quality is excellent by system standards and the game features beautiful sprite work for characters over honestly reasonably impressive 3D environments which have some lovely texture work and look great for the system. They also have a camera which can be rotated which feels super impressive. Battles, whilst still very basic as is the way of the Dragon Quest franchise, also look great with high quality sprites that animate. You can also talk to your whole party at any time in the game about things that are happening, and the amount of dialogue and the level of depth as to which actions trigger new dialogue are really impressive. Storywise, the game takes place over 3 times periods – with your protagonist as a child, as a young adult, and as an adult man with children of his own. The game portrays this child period in an interesting way – your own dad is the hero at this point, and you are just part of his party. He chooses where you go and does all the damage in combat. As a young adult you spend much of your time alone and so your party is made up of recruitable monsters. This is a fun mechanic, but whilst I’ve heard it described as ‘Pokemon before Pokemon’ it’s much more limited and can be pretty much forgotten in the final third of the game when you end up with a full party of human characters again. I really loved my time with Dragon Quest V, and whilst I don’t think it's the best RPG from the SNES era, I think there’s a lot to love. The DS version is unfortunately quite pricy these days, but it’s well worth a play through

36. Kabuki Quantum Fighter



Another NES game playthrough, Kabuki Quantum Fighter is a bizarre action platformer published by HAL where you play as a soldier who enters a computer system to disable it and save the world. Upon being digitally loaded into the system, you take the form of a Kabuki theatre performer for some reason, and spend 5 worlds platforming through levels punching enemies and whipping them with your Kabuki hair. You can switch to alternate projectile attacks which are gradually unlocked after each successive level using select, but these are limited by how many power chips you have access to, with each attack using a different number. You can also grab floating ledges and lights above you and swing off of them to get to higher ground. The level design is a bit wonky here – there are multiple paths at times but the more difficult paths often don’t offer any more benefit to taking them than the easier ones, and sometimes are objectively worse. The level difficulty and length can also be very inconsistent, and bosses are proportionately quite difficult compared to the stages, especially if you run low on power chips. I don’t think Kabuki is a must own or must play game, but for the extremely cheap price it goes for on the system, it’s well worth a go for a decent action game with a really unique premise.

37. New Ghostbusters 2



On the topic of NES games from HAL, New Ghostbusters 2 is a top down ghostbusting action game made by HAL Labs for the NES. For some reason, this one never came out in North America, but it did get a PAL release. You play through several levels as 2 of the 4 ghostbusters (plus Louis!) – your main character under your control has the particle beam to capture wandering ghosts in place, and the second character follows you around and deploys ghost traps to capture the stunned ghosts when you press the other button. The game points you around the level towards where ghosts are appearing, and they appear and move in patterns and attack in different ways. The game is fast paced – ghosts are super easy and quick to capture, but equally taking a hit results in death so you still need to take care. Later levels introduce hazards, such as minecarts on rails in the subway system which can crash into you, and pink goo in the sewers which slows your movement. Bosses require you to hold your particle beam on them for an extended period before they become vulnerable to being trapped. The game isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s fast paced and fun, and was a fun game to work through as the first game I played for Halloween in October. There’s a Game Boy version of the game that has entirely unique levels too, if you’re interested.

38. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance



This was the second game I played for Halloween this year. I’m gradually working through the metroidvania entries in the series, having played Order of Ecclesia, Circle of the Moon and Symphony of the Night. Harmony of Dissonance seems to be one of the less loved Metroid-like entries in the series, but I think that’s a bit harsh because I had a pretty great time working through it. The game introduces a system where you can equip elemental tomes which confer special spells when paired with subweapons – my preferred subweapon being the spellbook, as it had some great offensive and defensive abilities with most of the available tomes. Although the plot is a bit underwhelming, the gameplay is smooth and well balanced (both a notable improvement on it’s predecessor Circle of the Moon) and the bosses are fun to fight. It perhaps suffers more from being a little generic that any issues of quality, but Harmony of Dissonance deserves to be thought of as more than ‘just another GBA castlevania’ I think.

39. Demon’s Crest



My third Halloween game of the year was Demon’s Crest, the third entry in the Gargoyle’s Quest franchise. The first thing that stands out about the game is the presentation, which looks and sounds amazing. From the opening fight in the colosseum, the game wows graphically and features impressive gothic instrumentation considering the system limitations. This time the game mixes things up by giving you access to additional forms besides your default fire gargoyle. First up is the earth gargoyle who can’y fly but can dash through and break solid walls. Later you get access to forms that can swim and fly as well. The game requires you to master these forms as the difficult is firmly set at ‘mean’ and only gets harder as it goes on. The final boss was incredibly brutal, and yet still the secret true boss manages to make the final boss feel like a pushover. For me, the game was great but sometimes toed just a little too far over the line from challenging to punishing, and the last few bosses left me on a bit of a sour note when I look back on my time with the game. That said, it’s still a good game and worthy of your time.

40. Control



My 4th Halloween game of the year, and probably the one furthest out of my comfort zone. I’m not into third person shooters, realistic graphics or horror and yet despite this being a horror-toned third person shooter with realistic graphics, Control has been a game I’ve been curious to try for a while now. The strong colour usage, fun looking supernatural abilities, and the idea of exploring spaces that don’y obey physical space are all things that captured my eye. Having played through it, I’m glad I did, even though I still wouldn’t say it’s quite my thing. Early on I found the game a bit tense – the opening hour or so leans more heavily into the supernatural horror aspects, but as I progressed and gained the ability to force push objects at enemies, dodge dash, fly and more, it just became more of a fun action romp. I platinumed the main game, although I haven’t started either of the DLCs. The story of the game is tied in to Remedy Entertainment’s wider lore throughout their games I think, and as an outsider sometimes I felt a bit lost – but I guess that fits the tone of the game too. The point of it is you’re exploring an area full of things that are unexplained, and so the game often leaves things unexplained too. One final thing I noticed in this game is that it’s the first time I remember feeling a strong preference for 60hz vs 30hz – normally I can barely tell the difference, but I think due to this games higher fidelity, I immediately felt the game felt blurrier and stiffer at 30 this time. Anyway, I played through on 60hz which was a shame because the lighting at 30 looked great, and I had a good time. It’s nice to push your boundaries on what type of games you prefer sometimes.

41. Zero Time Dilemma



The final game I played for Halloween this year was Zero Time Dilemma, the third entry in the Zero Escape series that began with Nine Persons, Nine Hours, Nine Doors and was followed up by Virtue’s Last Reward. This entry draws heavily from the previous two, so it definitely isn’t one I’d recommend to start with. Zero Time Dilemma is a visual novel with escape room style puzzles that follows a non-linear and split path narrative that also kind of isn’t either of those things. It’s hard to explain. The premise is that 9 people are trapped in a facility and can only escape by entering a password revealed when 6 of them are dead. A mastermind behind the scene sets up puzzles and challenges to create tension but also try and lure the participants into discovering his true intent – a latent power that will help them avoid dying. The story is very convoluted but well written, and there are enough twists and turns to keep you engaged throughout. The premise here seems designed to lean into the more gorey aspects of the system which I’m less fond of – the previous games had scenarios that were designed to be possible with no deaths (even if they normally didn’t end up that way), but this time the scenario requires 6 people to die. Whilst I think this is the weakest of the three entries for me – the twists of the first 2 games were more compelling, and I liked the characters more – it’s still a fun story with good escape room puzzles and I’d recommend playing through the whole series.

RobertAugustdeMeijer wrote: ↑Fri Dec 20, 2024 2:43 pm

MrPopo wrote: ↑Thu Dec 19, 2024 4:30 pm There's some seriously hot takes in your 10 worst.

Perhaps, but I'm desperately trying to find good arguments as to why other folks apparently enjoy them! Have you written reviews on them?

I've got reviews for Last of Us and Halo 3 in my archive (which I link in all my beaten game posts in this thread), and I loved Goldeneye back in the day. Unless you were referring to the 2010 remake, in which case, carry on.

Avengers: United Battle Force by Douglas Baldan (O Ilusionista)
https://gamejolt.com/games/avengers-uni ... orce/14591

I've been messing around with OpenBOR quite a bit, and I believe this is the best game of the ones I've played so far. Avengers United Battle Force is technically not complete, but you wouldn't know from playing it. This is the ultimate, super hero, arcade game. I never played the original Avengers game that it's clearly based on, but I wonder if it's half as good as this game is. This is the pinnacle of OpenBOR gaming. A lot of OpenBOR games can get frustrating, but this game's difficulty seems perfectly balanced. Enemy AI is aggressive and will try their best to kick your butt, but your characters have strong moves to balance that out. Plus, you have fellow heroes helping you out here and there, which is very cool. There's also some jank in many OpenBOR games, where the gameplay and controls just feel a bit off. Avengers: United Battle Force is smooth like butter. Such a fun game and I can wholeheartedly recommend it to beat 'em up fans. There's another Marvel OpenBOR game called Marvel Infinity War by ZVitor that's pretty cool, but Avengers: United Battle Force just plays better and is better balanced in the difficulty department. ZVitor's games have a tendency to get frustrating. I'm sick of 90% of retro games being overly difficult. It's tiresome



I've been impressed with the Dungeons & Dragons Animated Series game by ZVitor as well, but haven't finished it yet. Might be my next post in this thread. So far, it feels like his best game

AJ's games beaten 2024:

1. Yakuza 3 Remastered PS4
2. Gley Lancer Mega Drive
3. Flink Mega Drive
4. Zero Wing Mega Drive
5. Super Bomberman 3 SNES
6. Streets of Rage Master System
7. Goof Troop SNES
8. Pokémon Card GB2: Great Rocket-Dan Sanjō! GBC
9. Pop'n Twinbee: Rainbow Bell Adventures SNES
10. Ganbare Goemon 2: Kiteretsu Shougun Magginesu SNES
11. Super Mario Maker Wii U
12. Donkey Kong Land 2 Game Boy
13. The Fish Files GBC
14. Kirby Super Star Ultra DS
15. Yakuza 4 Remastered PS4
16. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel Vita
17. Psychonauts 2 PS4
18. Spyro the Dragon PS1
19. LittleBigPlanet PS3
20. Faxanadu NES
21. Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia DS
22. Donkey Kong Country Returns Wii
23. Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars Master System
24. Batman Returns Master System
25. Master of Darkness Master System
26. Sonic Chaos Master System
27. Cloud Master Master System
28. Disney’s Aladdin Master System
29. Astro Bot PS5
30. Darkwing Duck NES
31. DuckTales 2 NES
32. Tiny Toon Adventures NES
33. Adventure Island Part II NES
34. Yakuza 5 PS4
35. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride DS
36. Kabuki Quantum Fighter NES
37. New Ghostbusters 2 NES
38. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance Switch
39. Demon’s Crest SNES
40. Control PS5
41. Zero Time Dilemma Vita
42. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PS5 *NEW*
43. Star Fox Zero Wii U *NEW*
44. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy PS4 *NEW*
45. Star Fox Guard Wii U *NEW*
46. The Violinist of Hameln SFC *NEW*
47. Chibi-Robo!: Park Patrol DS *NEW*


Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart



Ratchet & Clank is a long running franchise which I only have a little experience in, having only played the PS4 remake of the original game. I went into the newest entry of the franchise Rift Apart hoping that it wasn’t going to be overly reliant on prior knowledge of the series and for the most part it was fine. The game is a combination platformer and third person shooter where you run and gun through levels with a variety of fun weapons, do a bit of collectathon platforming and working through some big game setpieces. The setpieces seem to have been a big focus for this entry, as it tries to show off the PS5 – partly through it’s graphics, which look great, almost like playing an actual Pixar movie – and partly through the dimensional rift gimmick where you pass through portals into new areas, which is intended to show off the load times of the SSD. For the touted feature of the game, I think the rift mechanic is a bit underwhelming – it didn’t do a lot I felt was unrealistic to pull off on previous consoles, and most of the time it was used it just moved you to another nearby place on the same map. Luckily, the core gunplay and platforming of the game was still decent regardless, and I had a good time. Ultimately I don’t think this is a must play title or anything, but it’s a decent way to spend some time.

Star Fox Zero



Star Fox Zero is a widely maligned title, largely due to the control scheme which involves you piloting your arwing on the main TV screen, whilst using gyro controls and your gamepad screen to adjust your aim. It’s an odd control method that takes a lot of time to adjust to, and honestly never really feels super intuitive. I have to agree with the general consensus that the game would probably be better with standard controls. On the other hand, I don’t agree with the opinion that this game is bad or unplayable. In fact, I had a pretty good time playing through it, despite the controls. The game is basically another retelling of the Starfox 64 plot, despite the ‘Zero’ moniker. There are 12 core missions, some of which are on branching paths, as well as 8 smaller missions which can be unlocked via secret routes. The core game is pretty quick to play through, but each main mission features 5 medals you can unlock via various requirements - the first mission is always a high score challenge which is generally fairly tough, but other missions can involve finding medals in the stage, taking out specific targets, killing enemies via an unusual method or more. The game doesn’t tell you these, and some can be hard to discover alone, so I’d advise a guide. Mostly, Star Fox Zero feels like a victim of the Wii U’s failure – it’s clear that the game could have used a little more time and budget, but at this point in the system’s life the Wii U was on life support.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy



Continuing the run of sci-fi games, I played through Guardians of the Galaxy. This is an action game with some Telltale style narrative adventure elements. It draws heavily from the characterisation of the 5 main characters from the films whilst also drawing a little more history and lore from the comics to expand the worldbuilding. You play as Star Lord and interact with your other team members and other characters. The plot is entertaining and follows the Guardians as they try to earn money by capturing a monster to sell to Lady Hellbender and accidentally release a malevolent entity which leads to the galaxy being indoctrinated to a cult. At the time I think the game got a lot of flak for not using movie likenesses for the characters, but I think the use of comic book lore and similar is unique enough and the characters depictions here are charming enough that it didn’t really bother me at all. The actual combat gameplay is good, not great – you run around shooting enemies as Star Lord whilst being able to instruct your other team members to attack occasionally. They all have specialities in combat with Drax being good at stunning enemies, Gamora doing high damage to single targets, Rocket providing spread damage to multiple enemies, and Groot being more supportive with trapping and healing abilities. In addition, you progressively gain elemental abilities for your guns which allow you to exploit enemy weaknesses, freeze, stun or burn enemies and pull distant enemies down close. It’s all functional and reasonably fun, but never quite feels amazing. Despite that though, I really enjoyed the characters and stories whilst playing through this one, and I think it’s really quite underrated. Well worth a play.

Star Fox Guard



Star Fox Guard was a game that was bundled with Star Fox Zero at launch. You playing a new employee working for Grippy Industries, a mining operation ran by Slippy Toad’s uncle. Each of his mines has a core in the centre powering it, and are being attacked by robots aiming to destroy the core. You remotely access turrets with cameras on and defend the facility from the invading robots. Each facility has 12 cameras which you can view in a small thumbnail on the TV, but by selecting a specific camera on the gamepad you can take control of that camera directly to aim and shoot. You can also drag the cameras around on the map on the gamepad to reposition them as long as they attach to a wall, which is useful as some robots can destroy cameras or temporarily disable them, if you need to defend an area no longer guarded. The robots come in attacker varieties who aim to destroy the core, and disruptor robots who aim to interfere with the cameras. They use tactics such as shields to block front on attacks, fake images that replace the real camera footage and smoke screens to hide other robots. You progressively unlock the ability to change a few cameras into better models, such as homing rockets that can hit behind the shields or a model that slows time when shooting. The main issue with the game is that there are 100 levels to work through and it can get pretty repetitive, but otherwise it’s a fun little distraction.

The Violinist of Hameln



The Violinist of Hameln is a puzzle platformer game based on a manga series. You play as the titular Violinist, a ‘hero’ out to defeat an evil demon lord, except you’re actually a bit of a dick. You wander through levels platforming and attacking with music notes from your violin, but to get past the myriad hazards of the stage you make use of your companion, Flute – a teenage girl who joins you on the quest. Being that you aren’t actually a very nice person, the way you make use of Flute is by throwing her at brick walls to break them down, and forcing her to dress up in a variety of mascot costumes which give her different abilities. For example, the first costume dresses Flute as an ostrich, making her run forward in a line. You can stand on top of the ostrich suit to ride across spikes. Other outfits include a frog outfit which you can stand on to jump to high platforms, a robot outfit that punches holes in walls when you jump on it, and various swimming and flying outfits. You work through 4 worlds featuring roughly 8-10 levels each, gradually unlocking more outfits as you progress. The plot roughly follows the opening of the manga from what I make out, but to be honest I didn’t care too much. The game is fun and certainly feels fairly unique mechanically, but it’s a slow paced game despite only taking 2 hours or so to finish. I liked it well enough, but I think people’s mileage may vary on this one.

Chibi-Robo!: Park Patrol



Chibi-Robo for the Gamecube is one of my all-time favourite games, but other than the very mediocre Ziplash for 3DS, I’ve never played any of the sequels until now. I finally picked up Park Patrol, the second game in the series for DS recently. Neither of the DS entries never got PAL releases so I had to import this one from the US. You play as a new Chibi-Robo who has been deployed to a park, with the objective of making the run down park green and vibrant and full of flowers again. You do this by watering flowers to make them bloom, then dancing with them using a boombox to get the to drop more seeds. Growing 30 flowers in a tile of the park makes the grass grow again. You can make friends with toys in the nearby town and they can help you till earth so more flowers can grow as well as set up features such as fountains and benches or create environmental features such as paths, rivers and hills which change the colours of flowers that grow. The game has an environmental theme – toys can be found thrown out in the rubbish, traffic runs through town and can smoosh you, and the main enemies are smoglings who kill flowers. Early progression is slow – you’ll grow a small number of flowers each day and constantly need to run back to base to recharge your batteries, but later on you’ll be growing dozens of flowers every day. To beat the game you need to grow 999, so it can get quite repetitive. It’s probably a 7 out of 10 game at best, but the game has all the charm of the original game and I enjoyed my time with it. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s well worth a shot.

Raging Justice wrote: ↑Sat Dec 21, 2024 3:19 am Animal Well is a pretentious mess of a game where nothing about its world makes any sense. The game has absolutely no cohesion. Also, its deepest puzzles can't be solved without resorting to help from the internet. The developer even ADMITTED that he didn't intend for many of the game's puzzles to ever be solved.

One of the worst games of 2024 and one of the worst metroidvanias ever made.

You have a point there!
Interestingly enough, I like games that have strange cohesion. It keeps me as a player on my toes and makes me wonder how the game actually works.
And I also like it when the developer has enough respect for the player base that they'll go out of their way to make amazing challenges.