Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Review

I never played Jet Set Radio and I really think I should've because it felt like in order to full appreciate this game, I need to have an established connection to it. I played Bomb Rush Cyberfunk because I thought it would get me into this kind of game and well, not really. I don't think this game is outright terrible and I was able to get to the end after all but at the same time, I haven't played a game in such a long time that I geniunely wanted to give up playing at multiple points.

Anyways I'll start with what I liked, the game oozes style and is great to look at, the characters look vibrant and can be pretty expressive, the animations can look great both during cutscenes and gameplay. The fact that there is enough plot to get me through the game was nice, since my big issue with Tony Hawk Pro Skater games is the lack of plot and how much of the game's challenges can feel meaningless as a result. I do wish there was more voice acting but what is here is impressive from a presentation standpoint.

The game also has a very forgiving checkpoint system and for the most part isn't too hard to the point where I wanted to drop it. The Pyramid Island section and the DJ Cyber boss fight especially made me want to quit but I held on since the game never overly punished me upon dying. The music at times can be pretty good but it can also get infuriating to listen to after a certain point since the game to me can get very one note and the lack of different tracks especially that you have to find in the overworld only adds to that. Either there should've been more tracks composed without finding or just make generic ambient techno music.

Might as well get to the parts I am lukewarm on and wasn't big on. Like I said before, the game can get very one note, the game feels way too long, there's 5 boroughs when really there should've been 3-4 especially when the game reuses objectives and ideas so excessively

Every BRC chapter plays out like this, you tag some areas with graffiti, then challenge some of your rival gangs to do some platforming challengings or points battles, then fight a boss, fight the cops, get into a crew battle, then do a dream level, some of these will get mixed around but it plays out like I described. BRC loses steam pretty fast which is why there should've been 1 borough cut out since the game can get repetitive and not enough new is thrown to make the moment to moment gameplay interesting. If you enjoy this style of platforming then is probably going to be fine for you but this leads to my next issue:

The moment to moment platforming especially when the game forces you to be precise can make the game utterly infuriating to play. BRC in certain levels requires you to be more precise than a lot of 3D platformers. They are kind if something like OlliOllie World was made in 3D and while this sounds great on paper, in practice it leads to a lot of trial and error, for example there are moments where I jump and either there is a 50-50 chance I make the jump or fall to my death, half the time, I had so many problems just trying and hoping I can align my jumps right so I can land and not fall to my death. The dream levels are especially like this as well as Pyramid Island. Which requires a lot of precision platforming. A solution to this and this might be scoffed at is to have the grind magnetism be more forgiving and requires the player to be less precise and have it be less of a game of moving the left analog stick left and right and be a guessing game if you are going to make the grind or not. If your health didn't rengen after you fail a jump as well as the forgiving the checkpoint system, I would've dropped the game sooner.

Combat isn't very good either but at the same time, it's mostly easy and the regen health helps make it easier all though the police and combat could've been better like for example, why not grinding have you be harder to hit or build up a shield? Being good at grinding and chaining up points makes fighting the authorties easier or gives you more means to dispatch or avoid them. Felt like a missed opportunity.

Overall, BRC was a game I wanted to enjoy much more than I did, while it isn't terrible by any means, I wanted it to be good enough that I wanted to check out the Jet Set series but instead, I kind of don't even want to touch them now. Playing this game is an uphill battle if you never had an attachment towards Jet Set.

Tomb Raider Underworld Review

This game was a geniune mess, I played Legend years ago and I beat Anniversary recently and I always heard this game in this version of the TR timeline was the worst of the bunch and yeah it lives up to its reputation as being just that. I was always hesistant on even playing this game at all, I wanted a PS3 game to beat and I bought the "LAU" collection a couple of years ago, and this was just lying around for so long. There were many times I wanted to drop the game and move on to something else but due to reasons I will state later, I held on, and preservered and got to the end.

Anyways introductions out of the way, what why am I so negative on it? Simpily put, this game is a case study of how automated platforming can go horribly wrong. The first problem and this can apply to Anniversary to varying degrees is that Lara doesn't feel very smooth and precise to control. There are times where Lara jumps and she will either not go the way I want her too, refuse to do the action, or do a completely different move from the one I want her to do.

For example, if I say, have Lara balance on a beam, she will either jump across or do a weird front flip that causes her to miss the ledge and fall to her death.

Speaking of Lara falling to her death, that is something that will be happening a lot while playing TR Underworld. It has unpolish written all over it. Everytime she jumps on to a ledge, clambor on to one or just anything that involves moment to moment climbing, there is always a 50-50 chance of Lara messing up the jump even though I pressed the right inputs and she falls to her death or her doing something I don't want her to do.

To name two examples, when I try to make Lara wall jump, I have to mash x for dear life in order to for Lara to consistently jump from side to side because the timing for it is almost non existent then there is the parts where Lara is on a pole which she will either climb on top of one, shimmy to the side and hopefully she will actually jump to the position you want her to. The movement in general feels very stiled since like mostly anything involving climbing or platforming, there is always a 50-50 chance, the player will succeed or just die and restart.

Then there is the camera, which at it's best, does an okay job at giving you an angle on where to go next but at it's worst it starts spazzing out and it gives the player an awkward angle on where the player can or cannot jump to. Then there is the fact that it can get way too close to Lara while she is climbing and it gives an even worse angle on the action.

This now leads to my next issue, what can Lara can or cannot interact with? I had a hard time what hand holds and ledges Lara can climb or she will ignore, having Lara climb up surfaces that are waist high is a herculan effort considering sometimes she will climb and sometimes she won't. Am I supposed to climb anything colored in white? I think but all of that can start blending in with scenery and as a result, I have no geniune clue which areas Lara is able to interact with.

I looked up a walkthrough for much of the since all of these issues combined made for an extremely cumbersome game to play. This game came out the same year as Prince of Persia 2008 and that game is much more polished and enjoyable to play than TR Underworld is.

Now on to the good, after all that complaining why did I beat the game at all? Simpily put the game checkpoints well and load times after dying is super fast, I wish all games loaded as fast as TR Underworld did. This might be the one of the redeeming parts of the game.

Another good part is that the under water "Helheim" level is damn good. It's an underwater level meaning there is barely any climbing, and as a result, the level design gets to shine and I can tell where I am supposed to go without needing a guide. I can appreciate the exploration and backtracking Indiana Jones style power fantasy of exploring the unknown mythological tombs the game wanted. Knowing what I can and cannot interact with was easier to tell compared to the previous levels since it's just collecting keys and switch pulling, two things in game level design I like.

Combat is okay, I like using Thor's Hammer and it felt better to use here than it did in the Avengers game. I see people complain about it but it's decent, not good but combat was not the sole focus so as far as, combat inbetween climbing and exploration is concerned, it gets the job done. It's not supposed to be combat master class. Shotgun rounds can take out most enemies before getting Thor's Hammer.

Overall, TR Underworld is about as mediocre as mediocre games can get. It clearly needed more polish and more time to cook in oven before releasing. If I didn't own the game for so long and it didn't checkpoint and load as fast it did, I would've dropped and not see it to completion at all. If you want a case study of how to mess up automated platforming in a big budget AAA game, this is it

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace Game Review

I got this game becuase it was the Premium game Classics game for the month of January and well, while the game isn't good, it is an interesting game.

I will admit, the first couple of levels of the game weren't too bad, the combat while far from good was somewhat serviceable, there was enough health pickups, and it was often easier just to reflect blaster bolts than it was to attack up close, the controls and camera aren't the greatest, serviceable at best, awkward at worst, it suffered from the same issues that a lot of fully 3D camera control games suffered from at the time where the movment with the tank controls as well as the collision detection not being the smoothest, and the camera at times can give you a good layout of the action, there was no moment where I was ever like, "man this is so much better than being able to rotate the camera".

Where the game did shine in the early levels however was the level design, I have a massive soft spot for mid to late 90s 3D level design approach of, little hand holding and you just find a way around a level yourself. It just felt super rewarding to figure out all the pathways you are supposed to go by yourself, and figuring out which switch does what and moving blocks to access new areas in order to progress through the level just gives that feeling of, "oh my god I did it" that only gaming can provide. I also have a massive soft spot for dedicated interact buttons before the days of Resident Evil 4 making them contextual. I did wish the game taught you that using Force Push to activate switches earlier in the game since it happens randomly in the 4th level.

However all of this goes downhill when I got to Tatoonie where the directions were far too vague and I had no idea what the actual means of getting T-14 Hyperdrive even was, it seemed like it was entering into the realm of a role playing game where it can play out in multiple ways but I am not a big fan of that kind of design and prefer the more linear and direct approach. It also just felt like the devs of the game were just padding out the runtime of the game so it wouldn't be as long as the film it's based on.

I eventually level skipped to Courasant and I disliked how the game made you play it as a third person shooter and you had no geniune means of evading attacks while having a lose auto aim and no geniune means of aiming, and fighting droidekas without lightsabers were a pain in the ass. I started to get bored and level skipped to the final level and it was back to the linear progression I liked but it's more obtuse here and once again, the devs were just padding out the levels. Like for example, in the movie Obi Wan jumped to where Maul and Qui Gon were when they were fighting but in the game Obi Wan has to do awkward platforming and puzzles instead. It just derails the pace of the Obi Wan, Qui Gon and Darth Maul fight.

Padme has to do a bunch of weird and convoluted key card puzzles to progress and also, who would put a key card near the top of the pillar? Even the level design has less consistency in logic later on. Why are there even droids on the balcony?

By the time I finished that last level, I was just glad the game was over.

This leads to me the most interesting aspect about this game, it feels like an amalgamation of multiple SW games in one before they came out despite being a third person version of Dark Forces 2.

It has the role playing of KOTOR, it has the lightsaber combat of Jedi Knight and Revenge of the Sith game, it has the character swapping and puzzle solving where you play as blaster and lightsaber characters like the Lego games, and it has the linear action adventure platformer third person shooter adventure that Bounty Hunter would have. Everything this game does is done better in other SW games all though TPM game came out before many of them so in a sense, it paved the way for them which despite the latter not being good it's interesting to view it from that lens.

It goes to show that it had interesting ideas in spite of being rushed out of the door to meet the movie's release date.

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate Review

I'm not that big of an AC fan but after playing Mirage and kind of warming up to Ubisoft open world games these past few months, I decided to buy and play Syndicate. I played Unity almost a decade ago and strongly disliked the game but Syndicate was enjoyable time. I don't think this game is great, I don't think any of these games are but they are decently enjoyable games as long as you don't go in expecting too much. In general, AC Syndicate is what everyone praises Unity for and if this was the game that came out in 2014 instead of Unity, I would've probably never have gotten into my anti AC phase for the longest time, still not a big fan of the series as a whole, but as far as being a "stealth game" that the series supposedly was before the RPG games, Syndicate does a competent job.

I'll start off with what I dislike. The story was not particularly good, at it's best, you just turn your brain off and not question it too much, at it's worst, it's just badly told. The cutscenes are well produced, acted, and directed enough that it's not off putting in the moment but then there are things like, why does Jaccob do all the work while Evie is mostly there in the background, Jaccob does mostly everything, he does most of the main assassinations, and gets all the missions while Evie gets a few by comparison and this starts to stand out when they are both playable characters and are supposed to be on equal standing. You learn about the backstory of sibling's parents towards the end of the game when it has a mission with little at stake and one late game "betrayal" with Jaccob's story involving children was enough to make me zone out for good. The last sequence in general lacks any build up to the final mission and it just kind of well happens. I also dislike AC's overarching modern day plot in general since in the Animus, the heroes will be defeating the villains and that is contrasted with, "well that didn't mean much in the end" since the Assassins in the modern day are on the losing side.

There were some bugs and glitches here and there all though on PS5, it is prone to crashing so be warned if you want to play the game using backwards compatablity. Luckily, the game autosaves frequently and also during missions which is really helpful.

The parkour still isn't as accurate and precise as you would want it to be. There are times where the player character will climb up walls and then when anything involves moving diagonally and just moments where you are in a pinch and you just want them to climb something, either they will climb up or they won't, since climbing is a contextual action like many in the game, either they will do what the button you press tells them to do or they will do something else entirely. For example, I want to press circle to ride the carriage but instead when attacked by enemies, they will be grabbed instead. Sometimes, I press parkour down, and the player character will not do it and the magnetized wall grabbing means that they will move to places I never wanted them to. It's a system to this day, I'm not big on despite having slightly more control in Syndicate and Unity.

Finally the dual skill tree system is pointless, you could have Jaccob and Evie share the same skills and it would lead to the same thing. They both play too similarly to even justify having two different skill trees plus the skills exclusive to each character are usless, big culprit here being Evie's invisiblity cloak since it takes too long to activate and stealth requires you to be moving away from sight lines not staying in place.

I might sound like I have been complaining a lot but I do like this game. One thing I like about is that while the AI is dumb as bricks when it comes to moment to moment stealthing, the AI at the very least has a stupidity about them that is consistently exploitable. For example, their sightlines, as well as the detection system is forgiving enough to the point where consistent stealth is possible and if you are seen and since most of the missions don't have a instant fail state when detected, you can break line of sight and then go back to sneaking again, it's not "immersive" per say but I come to accept that stealth games have their dumb quirks about them. The AI isn't Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Blacklist but not a lot of games can be measured up to them. It's easy to take multiple enemies out from the same corner and you can kill multiple enemies on a high vantage point with throwing knives in ACS. 

The stealth is actually reinforced somewhat here since combat feels awful and enemies are super spongey even with a mostly maxed out skill tree but this is good since this is an AC where stealth feels mandatory outside of immediate fail states when seen.

I criticized the parkour before, but I like it a bit more here with parkour up and down, it gives me slightly more control over my moments, and I like that there is even descend options at all. Making going down building somewhat quicker, and the animations do look very nice which is good since a lot of the game is climbing up buildings. The grapple hook while automated did do a good job at making climbing feel a bit faster, it did make crossing the gaps between buildings a lot easier to do all though I did wish the moving down zipline speed was faster since one moment, player character is descending quickly and another moment they are moving slowly.

The Black Box Assassinations which got introduced in Unity is something I appreciate much more here since the AI is more consistent, I love how big densely populated these missions are and how it feels like you are solving one big epic puzzle to get to the kill. It feels rewarding when I get to them and these missions give me enough hand holding but not too much compared to say playing the modern Hitman games on normal do. It's surprising when a game like this allows me to figure things out for myself. 

Another thing I like is how dynamic the open world the open world can be. For example, the Templars, gangs and the policeman are you enemies but you can also have them fight each other and this shines during the enemy outpost missions, where you can lure enemies out of the outpost with your how fast you can move and either have them fight policemen or just run back to the objective and complete it after getting alerted, it isn't game over if you get spotted even with the combat in this game not being as good as it is. You could use stealth to kill everyone or get spotted and lure everyone out or use tools. It's rather impressive. 

Overall, for being a game in a series that I feel out of favor for a decade ago, I can say I got enjoyment out of Syndicate, which I even I am surprised that I enjoyed. It's not an amazing game, but for a game I got a reduced price, it was a good time. 

Jack the Ripper:

This was a super dull DLC, I should've played this as soon after I finished the Syndicate base game but I doubt it would've made it better. I'm not even sure if the AC franchise ever did have a good DLC in its run and this did little to change my mind.

I didn't really like the AC Syndicate story so I don't have much to comment on here since I don't really care for Jaccob and Evie and the former is gone for 95% of the DLC so if you were attached to him, you will be disappointed in his lack of screen time.

The biggest issue with the game is just how easy is it to use the "Fear" bombs and takedowns as a dominant strategy, only time it isn't is when holding square doesn't activate the fear takedown animation when using fear bombs on alerted enemies or screwing up the left stick QTE prompts as Jack the Ripper.

If any of these things happen, game plays out like this:

You sneak around activate a fear takedown and scare everyone nearby or get caught activate fear bomb then do the fear takedown animation to scare everyone away. This whole system becomes easy to break after a point, on top of this the bomb don't cost that much at vendors meaning you can spam them even more.

Final boss was pretty laughable since all you need to is run away and so some stealth takedowns and you are done.

Overall, this DLC just isn't worth it and isn't well made since new mechanics are established but are incredibly half baked beyond belief. Everything about it is so unremarkable, it makes me glad it checkpoints mostly well and is pretty short.

MediEvil(1998) Review

I played MediEvil Resurrection not too long ago and I always heard the original PS1 game was better and after playing the latter for the first time this year, I kind of agree but at the same time I disagree.

Anyways, with that out of the way what did I think of this game? It's a mess it really could've been a good game but it's held back by an awful camera and controls that aren't up to the task to what the game expects out of you.

I'll start with the good, the music, voice acting, and level design all oozes charm and has that whole cartoonish horror feeling, I'm not overly familar with Tim Burton but I can see the connections. Sir Dan and the characters around him are fun and endearing and the former has a lot of personality for someone who can't technically speak, his muffled voices and garbles gives him a lot of character an does a good job at selling the underdog motif that the game is going for. The story and premise still stands out today in that the game is esstentially a parody of the "chosen one" trope and how Fortesque for an action game protagonist especially is more of a incompetent goofball who has to prove himself rather than someone who is already capable at the start.

The level design oozes charm. The enviroments look distinct and are solid to navigate for the most part which is especially impressive considering the game has the PS1 short draw distance problems. I also like how the game combines two of my favorite types of level progression in games, you got the 90s FPS keycard hunts with the runes and you got the survival horror inventory puzzles. Combining both does give this game a unique feeling that even games from the late 90s didn't have and that era was already full of level design powerhouses. The game also takes inspiration from linear platformers in that there is an overworld screen where you can choose which level you want to go to and new levels get unlocked the further you get into the game. The game does have a unique style when it comes to level design that games today don't even have.

However what lets the game down is the platforming and controls. They are fine at first since the obstacles the player faces in the first half is pretty manageable. Nothing too outreageous just kill enemies, avoid traps, platforming and solve puzzles, the first three especially in the first half feels reasonable since nothing is too demanding from the limited movement controls the player is given which is walk and run and having tank controls in a fully 3D space with no camera control.

Then I get to the Pools of the Ancient Dead level and if you want everything bad about MediEvil's second half in one package, this level is it. You got enemies attack you from all sides, insta kill pits, awkward platforming with how floaty and imprecise the jump is, and tight and narrow walkways and if you try to move fast it could have you lose a lot of your continues and this level was annoying as shit even with save states. I would just accidentally fall to my death constantly since you have to move slowly, it means the level itself goes at a painfully slow rate. The lack of camera control makes level navigation disorienting at it's worse and at times a bit of a guessing game. The entire second half of MediEvil has varying degrees of this.

Another issue is the combat and like with the levels, the first half of it is fine. Fortesque is a tank and is pretty much meant to be taking hits, there is no dodge button and blocking feels limited to the point where I never used it. The combat is esstentially spam powerful attacks and take hits from enemies while running around and eventually kill them. The 2nd half of the games is where enemies get really spongey and it starts to get infuriating since Dan isn't given much in the way of combat options and he becomes more fragile later in the game.

Combine all this together and by the time I got to the Pirate Ship level, I wanted the game to just hurry up and end. That level is a massive difficulty spike and apparently there is an overpowered sword you get that makes short work of tougher enemies but I was so sick of collecting Chalices and wanted to get to the end. The Pirate Ship level has some awful platforming, tough enemies and a boss that will heavily drain your health. The Time Device level is when I cheated and just wanted to beat it already. But even with the infinite health cheat on the Duckstation emulator, you can still get game overs from pitfalls so it wasn't a mindless cakewalk then the final boss was mostly a pushover even with cheats. If the game just removed the Pirate Ship and Time Device levels altogether, I would've been more positive on it.

Overall, Medievil is a unique game if you can look past it's rough edges but at the same, the game slowly starts to loose it's charm the more it goes on. I'm glad I played it but I am not sure I would want ever want to play again unless its been 20 years and my memory on the game is really hazey.

Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle Review

I never played the first Daymare game and I mainly played this first because it was a prequel, I normally don't do this but this game looked and sounded intriguing enough for me to want to play it, I might play the first game down the line due to the varying degrees of enjoyment I got from this game. I'm not holding out my breath for that game to be good since it sounds like something I might not enjoy.

Anyways with that out of the way, what did I think of Daymare 1994 Sandcastle? It's an okay-good game, however it is an okay game that I find to be endearing which is fine by me.

I'll start with the good, the weapon feel and damage animations all feel great and have the gratifying feedback you want. Blasting enemies with a shotgun especially while frozen just has that "oomph" to it that I want out of any game that has a high amount of shooting in.

The fact that you only get two weapons throughout the whole game did sound offputting when I looked up more info regarding Sandcastle, but it's fine. I did switch between shotgun and smg enough to the point where neither weapon felt too dominant over the other, I did mainly use the shotgun since the game's combat is primarily at close range and shotguns in video games are more effective at that distance but the smg did at the very least get more use whenever the insta kill attack flying monsters showed up. The smg's ammo ran out faster than the shotgun too, but I was fine with it. At the very least the game never made me wish I wanted to have more weapons which is a quite the achievement.

The frost grip is encouraged and is required to be used by the player, the thing is definately not a pointless gimmick, you will most certainly need to use it throughout the game to effectively get by combat encounters, you need to pretty much freeze enemies in order for you to effective kill them. Regular enemies can be taken out with a shotgun blast while other enemies who are bullet proof need to be frozen in order for you to get the kill.

The final thing I like about combat is that enemies won't die after you blasted them with a shotgun or headshotting them with the smg, their "soul" will transfer to another another corpse of sorts and then they will attack you again, this encourages use of the frost grip even more since you need to forst bullet them in order to avoid them from "resurrecting" think of the Infector from Dead Space except they can be taken out as easily with one shot but you need to deal with multiple enemies. My only gripe with this is that it's hard to tell which enemies will have their "soul" come out of a corpse and which ones don't. There is also the aforementioned instakill flying enemy but his attacks are telegraphed well enough when he is close by with a sound cue to know when to avoid him.

The level design is pretty decent too. Nothing too standout but it gets the job done, the game's levels are ultimately linear but the general direction is pretty easy to figure out without the game needessly being patronizing. There is also some decent use of the "inspect" option in the inventory.

Story is also kind of engaging with Reyes being noticeably more vunerable and interesting than a lot of Resident Evil protagonists. It's not amazing but it is more engaging than something like the aforementioned RE even with it's stifly animated cutscenes. The voice acting isn't as bad as some make out, I found it to be decent enough. Reyes does show character when her sister Helen is involved and she's shown to be introvert with how she is a scientist and how she lives in a closed off apartment. The rest of the story can be pretty hard to follow and somewhat convoluted but Reyes did make me more engaged than I thought I was going to. 

However after all this praise, there is some major issues one being the lack of enemy variety but I didn't mind that so much since the lack of weapons and the lack of enemies sort of balance each other out. Add the frost grip and encounters are generally engaging enough.

Two bigger issues I have is the lack of defense items and a dodge button.

The RE remakes have the former and the lack of them in Sandcastle is noticeable. There is no way of defending yourself when you get grabbed, sure you can activate freeze attack after getting hit but can't you say, have Reyes do a counterattack before the enemy bites her and then it depletes the frost grip guage and then you need to replenish it using an canister items? It would give these items more use and add more decision making. Should I use a canister to restore my grip or should I take the hit and use a healing item? Plus it starts to get tiring and frustrating mashing x all the time to break out. This would add more to combat and cut down on the tedium.

The lack of a dodge button can be super frustrating at times. There are enemies who throw projectile attacks at you and the only way to evade them is hope you press the sprint button fast enough before the projectile lands. This can kill you in 2-4 times and add the enemy grabs to that and the combat can get really frustrating at times, so many times I died in this game was because of the lack of defensive options and evading. I did try to save health kits when I can but the game spawned them on occasion so it felt like I had to use them sparingly. The final boss in particular can be infuriating due to this since she can grab you and then you have to repeat to redo a section to get back you were on and her patterns and when she grabs you can be very unpredictable and the lack of being able to move out of the way last minute can add some major frustration despite being health kits spawning every time Helen teleports you. 

Overall, Daymare:1994 Sandcastle is a decent at time good game but expect rough edges with some omissions being questionable, still worth checking out if you want an over the shoulder action horror game that is not a remake like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space. 

We Love Katamari Reroll Review

I played Katamari Damacy Reroll around the time it came out and the more I look back on it, the more I remember it fondly. It's one of the games that I didn't mind you being timed and the last level where you have to roll up so much of the map within the 20 minute timer and then I reached the required roll amount with the main theme playing in the background is one of the most memorable moments in gaming.

I did play Katamari Forever before playing this since I thought We Love Katamari wasn't going to get a modern port at all but it turns out the latter did. Plus the former game was just a "cheap" rare game convention buy.

Introductions out of the way, I found We Love Katamari to be an admirable sequel and it's certainly better than Forever by a large country mile but at the same time, Damacy just felt like those weird wacky one off games that didn't need to be a franchise and while I commend WLK on trying to innovate on the formula, much of it's attempts to innovate doesn't really do much for me.

I do like the gimmick stages and they do seem interesting in concept but so many of them just either consist of you rolling things up until the time limit is up with no mandatory amount you need to roll up leading to a game over or just rolling things until you roll up enough to overtake the bigger object. A lot of these gimmick stages just lack challenge or geniune tension to be engaging for me. It's not as overly difficult as some of Forever's stages but Damacy managed to hit that sweet spot of being having the right amount challenge to the point where the game felt fair but not overly difficult. Once again, the gimmick stages are an admirable attempt at innovation but it further tells me that the original concept of "rolling a certain amount until time runs out" is what makes this kind of gameplay engaging.

In fact, the best and probably the most challenging part of WLK is the Bird and Elephant level where it has Damacy original game mode of rolling up a certain amount before time runs out and much of this map is reused from the final level of the original game just that now you need to 500m rather than 300m. The best parts for me is the non gimmick levels.

This leads to my next issue, the campaign structure, I prefer you increasingly have higher requirements to roll up during the main campaign through a linear stage of missions like say a linear platformer or a 90s fps game rather than you doing the levels out of order. This leads to levels I can skip and inconsistent levels of difficulty. The gimmick stages don't have much in the way of challenge but the traditional stages can be much more challenging by comparison. The Bird and Elephant mission can feel like a massive difficulty spike depending on when the player does it and the game never gets that challenging or stressful again.

Without slowly increasing the roll up requirements and the non linear progression, the difficulty doesn't feel like it is amping up, it's just all over the place.

I might sound like I am being a harsh on WLK and I did enjoy the game and it didn't annoy me as much as Katamari Forever did, the former just further reinforces my belief that Katamari Damacy was a one of a kind game that should've never have became a series. There's only so much you could do with the concept of rolling things up in a ball.