Category Archives: 5 Star Games

The Great Escape Review

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It was about time that I finally played the video game for this one. I can safely say that is wasn’t one of the more impressive games though. It is a good example of a stealth game that feels like a stealth game in all the worst ways. You can’t let enemies make contact with you or you get crushed and there are no checkpoints within the level. That is absolutely crazy! This game desperately needed some powerful quality of life updates to even begin to turn things around.

The game roughly follow the adventure of the movie but starts out a bit sooner. We actually get to play through the adventures of the different soldiers before they all landed in the base so that was different. There are 18 levels in the game and around 15 of them are pure stealth missions, with two driving ones and one shooter mission. I can tell you now that those 3 levels were the best ones in the game. I will give the game credit for having a full story and everything though.

The gameplay is fully in 3D and the main objective in most of the levels are to go through areas undetected and grab different objects. The levels will keep updating the objectives as you go through them and then by the end you will have cleared the level. If you are spotted, there is a slight chance you can hide long enough for the enemy to forget about you but it’s really unlikely. The game is not forgiving in the slightest and if you are spotted then you are most likely dead.

With the exception of a few levels where you have a gun, you have no way of actually defeating the enemy soldiers. Meanwhile if you stop for too long then they can just arrest you which is an instant death. They can also shoot you from long range. There are a lot of ways to die here basically and you have to factor in that some of the stealth missions are timed so you have to move quickly. Should I mention again that there are no checkpoints in these missions?

Now what about saving? Well, fortunately you can save 4 times per level. So you want to be really careful where you save. Even if you load an older save, you don’t replenish saves so that gets real tricky. In a way it’s like access points but the limited amount of saves is rough. By the way, 4 saves is if you play easy mode. If you go to normal mode then that drops to 3 which is even crazier. I can say without a doubt that this is one of the tougher games that I’ve played in a minute. It was really intense.

The problem is that it’s just not in a fun way. You have to replay large portions of the game over and over again. The compass doesn’t make a whole lot of sense so it’s hard to tell where the nearest soldier is. Then you also have to factor in that the controls are rather clunky. It’s really hard to aim with the gun and the auto aim isn’t reliable. If you get too close then you will try to punch an opponent instead of shooting them.

The enemies also seem to regenerate mid battle. Now I can’t prove this…but it seems to be the case. I would be taking down so many of them and more would appear. This may just be to show how you’re not supposed to beat the villains with force but it was still annoying. Just let me get in a car and drive around for more levels then. Those were a lot of fun.

The graphics are decent though. Sometimes it could be a little hard to see but that is more due to my TV than the game itself. The game looks good when it needs to. The soundtrack is surprisingly decent though. There are more tunes than I would have expected and they can be rather catchy. It helps to make up for the fact that there aren’t many stages in the game so they have to keep on reusing them. If anything that’s just a bit funny though. I always appreciated the rare daylight levels since the night ones were brutal though.

There’s not a ton of replay value here but if you beat the game then you get to play it again on great escape mode which adds a timer to each of the levels. Very fun right? Well, in the end if this game was more fun than it would have been higher. My main issue is just that it’s not super enjoyable. There are too many annoying segments of the game with the whole stealth approach. If they could just tone that down a bit then I think we would be in good shape but as it stands that wasn’t in the cards.

If this was more of a proper shooter then it would have been good or of course if there were more save points and such. I also think there should always be a way to fight a bit even in a stealth game. I imagine that a lot of people may disagree with that though. As a silver lining, I did feel a sense of accomplishment when I completed the game because this one was seriously no walk in the park. I felt like I had to earn it every step of the way.

Overall, This is a game that I wouldn’t recommend too highly. You can find better titles to play on the IOS App Store tbh. That being said, if you like stealth games then I suppose it is worth checking this one out. It’s not like it’s terrible or anything, it just isn’t my genre. Titles like Carmen Sandiego and Stolen handled this a lot better. For a stealth game like this where you are expected to die a lot, you need consistent save states. That’s really the crucial aspect here if you want the game to succeed. If you get away from that then it is game over.

Overall 5/10

Battletoads Review

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It’s time for another Battletoads title. This time it’s the original although it’s so similar to others that I’ve played where they may as well be the same game. Right up to the detail that the one crazy level in the game involves a chase. It took me a ton of tries to get through this and that is with the rewind. Without it, this would feel like an impossible challenge if you ask me.

The basic plot is that the Battletoads have to fight off an evil villainess. She wants to destroy them all and so they make their way to her homebase. Along the way they will have to fight various mechs and other creatures that stand in their way. Not an easy task by any means but they aren’t called the “Battle” Toads for nothing. They know how to throw a mean punch and are quite resilient.

The gameplay is essentially a 2D brawler as you punch your way through a number of obstacles. The gameplay can vary though as you will also have a level where you are in a car running away from the enemies as well as a level where you have to race to the bottom. I can give the game credit here, a good amount of development went into it. That was no easy stretch. That said, I absolutely preferred the traditional levels to the other ones.

It was nice being able to punch the various enemies around and the racing levels took away from that. The platforming was also not half bad. The difficulty in these levels was solid without being completely over the top. Meanwhile the soundtrack wasn’t bad either. It was solid even if it wasn’t the most memorable thing that I’ve ever heard. The tunes suited the game well and the graphics were also better than you may have expected. Unfortunately the game boy did mean that the colors were all green so the whole thing gets more washed out than it should have been otherwise.

The music did more of the carrying here. Like I mentioned, the difficulty wasn’t always good though. The race is really impractical with how tight the turns are. Being even a fraction of a second off is too much and that’s particularly unfortunate. There should have also been checkpoints here. Now a lot of older games do have these issues as well but they were particularly pronounced in Battletoads. You really just can’t catch a break in this one. There are other tough levels too but I dare say that this single level is what kept it from being a 6.

I would still like to see a 3D Battletoads someday though. I feel like there is a whole lot of potential thee and it would really be fitting for how combat heavy they can be. It would be a way to keep in the punching and combos for a modern audience. This would also scale the difficulty back a little bit which would be a good idea. Ideally we will also get more of a plot in a newer game. The older ones get some slack for being on a much older console but that’s not really something you can say for a new title.

The game isn’t particularly long with only around 12 levels in it but the difficulty does mean that this will take some time. I’d estimate it may take you around 2-3 hours to complete this one. So that’s not terribly short for its time. There isn’t any true replay value as beating the game causes it to loop. I suppose you could try to beat the game quicker each time but that’s stretching things a bit. There are plenty of games without much replay value and it’s not necessarily a bad thing although I do think it will immediately put you at a disadvantage.

Overall, This is not a game I would really be tempted to replay. It’s not bad, there was clear effort here and the game lives up to its reputation of being crazy difficult. I would just say in the end that it was not enough to make this game one that really jumps out at you. The difficulty manifests in really annoying ways as opposed to making you want to keep playing the game over and over. That’s what keeps it from being one of the heavy hitters here. If you have the Switch Online then you should check it out but otherwise I would say to pass on this one.

Overall 5/10

Sonic Rumble Review

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I was waiting a long time for this game but it just kept on getting delay after delay. The game even released an official launch date more than once and it would still get pushed back. So that wasn’t ideal and by the time it came out, I’m afraid the game wasn’t worth the wait. It doesn’t even make it to the level where I can say it is a fairly solid mobile game. One of the big problems holding this one back is that the game is fairly slow for a Sonic game.

The main gameplay style here is basically what I would call the “Fall Guys” gameplay. It is unashamedly a complete clone of that game. Just reskin the characters to be Sonic characters and that’s about it. The problem is that the game doesn’t seem to have as much polish as Fall Guys. It looks and plays okay, but just feels very limited. The games range from trying to get a lot of coins to getting to the end of a level like in Fall Guys. The level designs aren’t nearly as inspired though and definitely end up falling flat.

I also suspect that in the first few games they have you playing against bots because it’s like nobody else was fighting back at all. Even when I would play bad and intentionally slow down, I’d still come in first. The whole thing feels a bit suspect to get you feeling good and trick you into spending money. The game drew a lot of controversy for how expensive everything is within the game and so that does make you think a little about it. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of dollars that you will be spending here.

Now you know that I’m a freemium player either way so it’s not like I’m going to be spending anything here. It is rough though for all the impressionable kids who might be tempted to do so. Microtransactions are rarely a good thing, particularly when they get right in your face like this. The game has full on pop ups that just jump out at you. I’d expect that from a random mobile game, not something officially using Sonic The Hedgehog. So that was a full on miss.

Back to the gameplay, it is fun to be able to use the iconic homing attack to fight off other players. I think with different games this could have ended up being addicting but with the time limit ones that are present, I just don’t see much reason to keep on playing. It’s clear that the devs are planning to add a bunch of characters and such so I give them credit there but it’s not going to be enough to get me to stick around.

It’s pretty rare that I play a mobile game for long anyway so it’s not like that’s a bad sign in itself. I still look forward to playing whatever it is that the next Sonic game decides to do. It sounds like it’s a card based game so that’ll definitely be interesting. A potential winner at the very least. I can also say that the technical elements of this game aren’t bad. I enjoyed the graphics which are really sharp and definitely stand out. The soundtrack is far less intense, maybe later on they can grab more licensed music which would be a lot of fun to see.

There is technically almost unlimited replay value here. There is an energy meter so you can’t play for too long in one day but aside from that there will always be things to do. That is basically true for any multiplayer game after all. As long as you continue to find the game fun, that is really the important thing here.

The way the career score works, it also pays off to be a long time player. You basically get a boost in your score which makes it easier to win matches. It’s not necessarily a huge difference but I do think it’s a bit fishy that this helps you out on the leaderboards without resetting for every season. Most games that do career scores like this make sure to reset the level/boost every season like Madden and Fortnite. Not doing that just seems like it’s going to make things more and more lopsided as the game continues to age. Not a really smart way to go about it unless you can buy something to increase your score. In which case that will look like another case of greed here.

Overall, Sonic Rumble is a little too basic for its own good. It is basically content to be a clone of Fall Guys without actually trying to surpass it or really doing anything very different. It feels like the Sonic characters are basically wasted here as the game could have been done with almost any IP. So this one wasn’t for me but of course if you are a huge fan of Fall Guys, then it goes without saying that you should check this one out. After all the games have some slight Sonic mechanics which are not in Fall Guys so you may get a kick out of that.

Overall 5/10

Mr. Driller 2 Review

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I’m not really familiar with the Mr. Driller series so it was pretty interesting to be getting into this one. It’s a very short game but does have voice acting which is pretty cool. Basically an alien race has shown up and is causing trouble with their weird blocks. The hero has apparently had to give them a talking to once before. He will have to do so again before the entire planet is crushed by all of these blocks. Fortunately the aliens are not directly malicious, they are just ultra careless. So finding them is the only challenge.

The hero is nice enough. I like how he did not hesitate when deciding to go over there to talk to the aliens. He talks about saving the world in a very nonchalant manner so from the very start you know that he is the real deal. The game reminds me a little of DK Bonanza in that you are going through a bunch of layers and can see what level you are on as you play through the game. There are 3 main levels here and in each of them you have to keep going as far as you can. One level goes down to 2500 feet, then the others are 5,000 and 10,000.

The graphics for the game are pretty solid. It feels like a modern take on Dig Dug and the various blocks all look solid. Think of the intensity from Tetris and that’s what you’ve got here. You are always at the edge of your seat and the game never holds anything back. Additionally the soundtrack isn’t bad so the technical elements are good. A mild game design choice that didn’t work was how it is very easy to start the game on the second level rather than the first. I accidentally beat America first because that’s where your cursor starts. Level one is all the way at the end of the map for some reason.

Odd choice there but it’s not a big deal. The game is definitely hard because you have to continually dig deeper underground while dodging the falling blocks. In a way you have to be calculating a whole lot of things at once. You want to grab the air bottles which restore 20 points to your life bar which is constantly draining. Breaking through any wood blocks automatically takes away 20 points and the air is constantly surrounded by those. So you have to cause a bunch of matches below those in order to get the blocks to fall just right. It’s a really involved process.

I died a bunch of times and the rough part here is with how long the levels are. So if you die, that’s a lot of replaying that you have to do. Perhaps that is why there are only 3 levels but in that case the game would have been better off increasing the level count and just making each individual one smaller. That is always better game design to me because then there isn’t too much disappointment in defeat and you can continue to hone your skills until you are finally a match to go all the way. That’s the best way to improve if you ask me.

What keeps the game from going any further is ultimately that length so hopefully it’s something that can improve with a sequel. There’s a lot to like here, like having the actual story mode and the fun gameplay. It’s just that I would have absolutely not been thrilled if I had spent any money on the game. That would have really felt like a waste. Since I played it for free, that’s a different story but I still couldn’t give the game a higher score. It’s worth about an hour’s worth of content and you’ll have fun for that hour but that’s it.

Overall, Mr. Driller is a pretty fun game but it could have used more content. Once you have beaten the 3 levels, there isn’t a whole lot to do. You can try to beat them quicker and with a high score but the amount of replay value here is ultimately low. The story had a little charm to it but mainly this is something that is content to be aimed at kids. So ultimately this won’t be changing your life, not nearly as much as you might be hoping that it would. Still, the game is free if you have the Nintendo Switch Online so you should check it out. The gameplay is original and I can’t stop giving it props for the fact that they actually got voice acting in here. That was really cool.

Overall 5/10

StarTropics Review

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StarTropics is one of those games that definitely comes off as real strange and different. It’s certainly not your average title but at the same time this also means that it can often times be a little too ambitious for its own good. There are a whole lot of puzzles here after all and they tend to break up the gameplay. The gameplay itself isn’t bad for the most part but some of the bosses can randomly get annoying. It’s the type of game that you probably would not have had a whole lot of fun with if you had played it without the rewind feature.

The story is at least pretty crazy in a way you wouldn’t see in newer games. You have gods and monsters, robots and aliens. All kinds of different lores smashing together here where a kid has to basically contend with all of them as he travels across the world trying to find his uncle who went missing very suddenly. You’d think a boy and his yoyo would not go far but that would just mean you never played Earthbound. This main character is as tough as they get and even knows how to pilot a submarine.

The game is wacky and fast paced so if the gameplay could keep up then we would be all set. Mainly it uses a top down style like Legend of Zelda although some of the fights become more turn based. It’s a game that desperately needed more quality of life features though. For starters the game isn’t always very clear on where you are supposed to go next. It is extremely easy to get lost and the NPCs don’t tend to offer very clear advice.

It’s not as if the world is huge so you will eventually get unlost but it isn’t always even about the location. Sometimes you have to talk to people more than once in order to get them to open up and really talk to you. It puts you in a paranoid state where you have to keep on talking to people over and over again just in case something is different. I got stuck early on because I didn’t realize you had to talk to the chief twice in a row. Yes, you heard me right “Twice in a row”.

So if you talked to him and left the hut, when you got back he would still start with the first line. You had to click twice and I don’t understand how anyone is expected to reasonably know this. The game has a lot of moments like this where it feels like the rational move just wasn’t thought of. The game design just shouldn’t work like that as nobody normally talks to NPCs twice. At the very least, I can say that I don’t tend to go out of my way to do anything like that.

It’s why the best kind of puzzles are found in games like Professor Layton. You use clues and logical deduction to put the pieces together. It’s a puzzle that has a concrete beginning and ending. You aren’t just told to go find something in the distance. You have a puzzle in front of you to solve and then you solve it as smoothly as possible. It’s why puzzle games stick to their lane and you shouldn’t mix the genre with platforming. That just doesn’t tend to work.

The graphics aren’t all that bad. Yeah they definitely look super old but the game itself is very old. The art direction for it was about what you would expect and there’s nothing wrong with that. The soundtrack is on the forgettable side as well. In short, it’s not the kind of game you would generally pay money to play nowadays. I’m not sure if I would have paid much money to play it back in the day either to be honest but the times were different.

Overall, I want to emphasize that this isn’t a bad game. It’s just not a good one either. It’s the perfect example of a game that would end up falling right in the middle because it just goes through a lot of stretches where it isn’t very fun. It really can feel like work to solve those puzzles but at least the story was good and it could have been worse. The technical details don’t really help it either. So right in the middle makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe some tropical music could have helped the game at least be more memorable in the long run.

Overall 5/10

The Sword of Hope Review

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The Sword of Hope has such an intense name that you automatically assume you are going to be playing one of the best games out there. Unfortunately I am here to assure you that this is not the case. There are some interesting ideas here and even some great quality of life features but it is all tarnished by the game’s overreliance on RNG. Gone are the skill based matches of old. Now you must effectively hope in the roll of the dice at every turn. Not a good decision to be honest.

The game basically starts with the main character needing to use the Sword of Hope to slay the villains and save the day. The only problem is that the sword has been depowered for a very long time. The hero will now need to visit the 4 legendary spell crafters to see if they can fix the sword. Along the way he will fight many powerful enemies and so taking them on will be his true challenge. He has no other party members to help him so this will be a very long journey. Can he really pull it off?

Right out of the gate I can tell you that I appreciate how there is no such thing as a game over in this title. When you die, you just get warped back to the starting village where the sage tells you to try again. You keep all of your items, EXP, and gear. So dying is only a setback and you do have quick travel to all of the main locations. Those are two absolutely great features that I can’t rave enough about. I was really impressed here and additionally I like the fact that the upgrades you obtain are permanent and make a good difference in your defense and attack power. Each level up also dramatically increases your stats which makes sense since the game only goes up to level 31.

Now here is where the cracks in the armor start to appear. The way you inflict and endure damage is done through RNG. When an opponent his you, they have a minimum and a maximum range of power that spans multiple levels. So sometimes they will deal you 1 damage, other times they will deal around 40. This makes any kind of strategy completely reliant on RG and will cause you to have to replay the battles way more often than you should. This gets more and more crucial as you get deeper into the game.

Several of the final bosses can basically take you down in a single strike. So with the Switch Online’s rewind feature you are all set here and things aren’t bad but without it I feel like people must have taken ages to complete the game. You would certainly have to power level several levels above the recommended final battle level in order to increase your odds of success. This is such a bad mechanic that it basically slashes the score right away. I cannot in good conscience call this a solid game as a result. It should not be forcing you to have to account for luck in such a constant way.

The other big problem with the game are the countless puzzles. So every area allows you to perform 4 actions, “look” “open” “use” and “hit”. You can perform these actions on every object in the room which is usually around 3-4. Using the right option on the right location will give you an item, activate a boss, or clear a new path. So this means a whole lot of clicking and there are over 200 rooms in the game. Several of them are teleporting paths meaning if you get even one direction wrong then you have to start that puzzle from scratch.

After a point this goes from being immersive and challenging to just being rather drawn out and boring. You’re not having fun when you have to worry about all of these technical gimmicks instead of fighting enemies and getting stronger. I wanted to continue with the story, not be distracted by an endless array of puzzles. If I wanted a puzzle game then I would have played something like Professor Layton instead which is far better on the puzzle aspects. Yeah, this was definitely not the title to check out.

The graphics are okay but they do have to reuse character models a whole lot. Get ready to see the same lady showing up over and over as different people throughout the same game. The soundtrack is a bit catchy though, I like the main battle theme. They actually tried pretty hard on that one which I can appreciate. The game’s soundtrack will stick in your head for a while even after completing it.

Naturally there is no real replay value within the game but just completing it will take you long enough where you won’t mind. I can at least say with confidence that the game gives you a lot of value for your time here. The main campaign is technically beatable very quickly but good luck solving the puzzles in that amount of time. Personally I think this one will end up lasting for a whole lot longer than you might have been expecting. If you do like the idea of just being lost and trying to get out on your own, then this one could be worth a shot. It’s the only way I could possibly recommend it and even then you have much better options.

Overall, The Sword of Hope is a game with a lot of potential but unfortunate mechanics really set it back. This one was definitely a real challenge to complete but unless I am having a lot of fun, the challenge doesn’t move me. If this game got a modern PS5 remake it could end up being a solid title but until that happens, I just don’t see this game ever mounting a comeback. Even with the Switch Online there are far better games and I would recommend you play one of those instead. There’s no real reason why you would need to play this game in particular.

Overall 5/10

Super Thunder Blade Review

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Super Thunder Blade is a game that I expected to be a whole lot better than it actually was. I was actually quite surprised at how wonky the controls were. You had a really hard time dodging the enemy fire and making a move because timing it was near impossible due to all the lag and how slow the frame rate was. The whole game felt so buggy you’d think it came out in the 2020s. I like the concept of the game but I’m afraid that I have to review the actual title and not the concept. A true shame but that’s how it goes.

The game is short with only 4-5 levels in it. It’s a 3D title where you can move from side to side as you dodge enemy fire. The goal is to survive until the end of the level where you then have to take down a boss that appears. Typically the boss will have some obvious weak points to target but I should warn you that this isn’t always the case. So you just have to keep on blasting and you’ll win eventually. Your opponent will of course be shooting a lot of blasts at you during this fight as well so you can think of this like a classic bullet hell game.

I guess part of what hurts the experience here is just how limited the game is. You only have one kind of blaster, which is your default gun. There are no power ups or alternate guns of any kind. Then all of the enemies shoot the same kind of attacks at you. So the character model may change but not the attack itself which feels a bit limited. Or dare I say cheap? This plays more like an NES title than a Genesis one. So you’ve got a short game length and almost nothing to do within it. Just moving from side to side isn’t exactly the most thrilling gameplay after all. You just need a whole lot more than that here and the game doesn’t really end up satisfying you there.

The graphics aren’t all that good either. You can always tell what is going on which is nice but the colors and backgrounds are nothing particularly inspiring. I won’t say they’re terrible or anything but this game definitely needed a win somewhere and I can tell you that it is not coming from the graphics department. No sir, that’s definitely not going to be the case. The soundtrack is okay I guess. Not a whole lot of tunes to be found here but they do fit in with the gameplay which is the important part.

My only real gameplay tip is to be constantly moving from side to side. Odds are that you won’t be hit but you will be moving too fast to actively be dodging on your own. So you just have to hope that the game doesn’t catch on and often times this will work for a very long time. Likewise when it comes to dodging and going into caverns, try the same approach. The only time you may have to pause this technique is during boss fights where you have to target specific areas.

There is one boss where you can only damage him once his eye is open and the guy blinks like crazy. So you have to be moving while blasting and the whole fight tends to be pretty tedious. It’s just a nonstop game of momentum after all and you have to try and stay ahead of it at all times. If you stop to focus then you will make the fight a lot quicker but you also run a much higher chance of getting hit. So you have to decide to take the safe and guaranteed route that takes forever or the short bursts of glory with high risk. Either way it is not super fun since the gameplay itself can be rather dull.

With a name like Super Thunder Blade you are just counting on something with a whole lot more pop. I think that’s what had me confused the whole time. Shouldn’t I be able to shoot out electricity or maybe pop out some kind of an elemental blade? Now that would have absolutely been fitting and would have made the game more exciting. The first step of game design is to make something memorable that everyone wants to play. Unfortunately this is definitely not it. Super Thunder Blade will not last for very long in your memory as you complete it in under a day and place the game back on the shelf, never to be played again.

Overall, Super Thunder Blade is an okay game but it just feels like they put in the bare minimum level of effort. For a lot of games I can at least talk about how I think they are hanging in there and doing their best but not this time. The controls are just too slippery and half the time when you get shot you don’t feel like that is what should have happened. It’s a game I would have been unable to complete without the Switch Online and I don’t think it would have been close. I also wouldn’t really have much of an incentive to keep on playing either.

Overall 5/10

Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising Review

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Now we have made it to the second big Cobra Kai title! This one switches things to 3D and was definitely a very ambitious title but alas it wasn’t meant to be. The game absolutely folded under the might of its ambitions and so this won’t be remembered too fondly. The game itself is good but you can really see the potential that just got knocked away.

The game starts off by letting you decide if you want to play as Cobra Kai, Miyagi Dojo, or some bird related team. I went with the Cobra Kai of course and basically you have to find 5 allies to go with you to the big tournament. The game lets you choose from a bunch of stage options to recruit fighters and each recruitment opens up more stages. Once you have enough players you can go ahead and enter the tournament to begin the climax of the game. I actually didn’t realize you could jump into the tournament so soon or I may have even gone in earlier since I recruited over 10 fighters.

The combat is about what you would expect. You have your standard moves, super attacks, and chi moves. The special attacks have an interesting gimmicks. Every character has 4. The top one gives you money when it lands, the bottom XP, the right more power, and the left is health. But they each do something which is nice. Naturally I spammed the XP one but sometimes the health part could be crucial. You fight through waves of enemies and then there is a minigame for each of the recruits. Sometimes it is as simple as defeating them but most of the time it involves a more unique task. Each level has 3-4 people to recruit.

Once you’ve recruited them, you can level them up at the Dojo and also rank up their moves. Again it’s pretty ambitious but most of the menus barely work and switching between characters can get a bit tiresome so I ditched the skills early on and just did the level ups. You can also level up the dojo itself which lets you house more people and make them happy. If a recruit isn’t happy then he will leave and you have to try and re recruit him. That mechanic was annoying, why would you let people just leave like that? I hope they at least keep the level ups that you gave them. It would be annoying to have to get that back again.

The tournament is the hardest part of the game by far. You have to win 7 rounds in a row without getting any health back. Each round can force you to KO the opponent 6 times so that’s around 50+ victories. You can get more points by intentionally stalling the match to land a 3 victory strike but it is risky since of course it gives the opponent more time to hit you. This one took me several tries to finally complete and I definitely felt triumphant afterwards. Unfortunately the game glitched shortly afterwards so I wasn’t able to play through the final level.

The glitches are definitely going to be remembered as the game’s legacy. For one thing the frame rate is crazy bad, the game will lag on you constantly. At times it will be as if you can’t even move. I haven’t played a game dropping that many frames in a long time. Maybe ever, at least for console releases. Naturally the huge glitch sending me back to level 1 is another one to look at. I literally didn’t beat the game as a result of it. Moving through the menus can be glitchy and sometimes enemies don’t die when they should. I even had the game freeze twice and I had to restart.

So unlike Sonic 06 where you are unlikely to really encounter the bugs on a normal playthrough, you will be seeing a whole lot of them here. Just beware of that because it’s definitely bound to be a bumpy ride for you. That said, the gameplay itself is still solid so I’d still end up giving it the thumbs up in the end. Without the glitches it would definitely be an even higher score. They really jam packed this game with loads of content like the upgrade tree and how many levels are in there. Having 3 different teams to play as is also really good. It’s lazy in some aspects like seeing your character in the background while you’re fighting but that’s probably more of a budget issue.

The graphics are not particularly good. The game doesn’t have a ton of details and the character models feel more like something out of PS2. The soundtrack is fun enough though, definitely some fast paced tuned all the way through that get you into the Karate fighting spirit. Of course there is a decent amount of replay value with the trophies…provided that you are able to get them. I see that the Platinum rate is at a literal 0% which is probably a pretty bad sign. There has to be a glitch preventing a Platinum from being possible which is pretty crazy. I definitely won’t be trying for that one.

Overall, Cobra Kai delivers on what you would expect in the action department. It’s a fun game and you will have a good time going through it but unfortunately it did need a lot more polish to really be out there in the market. I do have to dock points for literal game breaking glitches after all. That does put a damper on the overall fun environment that the game is going for. It pains me to do it but that’s how it goes. I’ll still check out the Karate Kid game at some point though. I expect that will have more polish and at this point I’ve been playing through quite a few of these retro styled beat em ups so why not right? Especially when the price is so cheap hehe. $5 is less than even getting a Big Mac at McDonalds nowadays.

Overall 5/10

Super Ninja Boy Review

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Super Ninja Boy is a very unique game because it’s sort of trying to be 3 different games at once. For starters it is a turn based RPG for the big boss fights. Then it becomes a full platformer adventure for some of the minion encounters. For the others it becomes a 2D beat em up. During the hub world you have an overhead style like Final Fantasy. The game has you travelling the world on foot, then in a boat, and then in a giant mecha. It’s tackling everything but unfortunately excels at nothing and that’s probably what doomed the title.

You play as the Super Ninja Boys who are needed to save the world. Villains are emerging from all parts of the planet and some of them aren’t even human. Their father (Or uncle) went missing as well. These two have formal training but are they really ready for an adventure like this? They will really have to travel the entire world so this is no picnic. At the same time, these two boys know that they are the last hope for humanity.

The story’s fairly forgettable but it does have a fun script. I appreciated all of the one liners and burns that came up during the game. There are quite a large number of villains running around as well. Now like I said before I do think the game is too ambitious. If they had just picked one genre they could have succeeded. For example, the reason the overhead part fails is because the encounter rate was set up to be way too high. You have a minion trying to attack you every few seconds. Your odds of fleeing are near 0 unless you are considerably stronger than the enemies. The other problem is that you barely get any EXP from fighting minions so it’s not like you can easily power level.

Eventually you will need some level ups but the grinding sessions are annoying at best when they show up. It’s just not something that you really want to be doing at this point in time. Then for the RPG battles, they have a ton of RNG at every point. None of the attacks have descriptions or show how much damage they do so you really have to wing it here. Trial and error is how you get used to all of the attacks and that feels like sloppy game design to me. There should be a better way of knowing what’s next.

There is no map in the game for the massive hub world so good luck remembering where everything is. If you take the wrong path then you have to play through a whole platforming level before you return. This gets old quick. I can safely say that the game would be really difficult to navigate without the rewind feature. At least that helps to mitigate the worst parts of the game’s design. It doesn’t mean that you are totally safe or anything but at least you can quickly retreat.

These all feel like pretty basic game design choices as well so I don’t know how the game launched like that. It’s a shame because the novelty of actually having multiple games in one is a pretty good one. I would like another game to try this in the present with a big budget studio behind them. If the game pulls that off then it will have really made history. Well, at least you can’t say that the game is short. It’s a true RPG through and through and it took me even longer than all the estimates had guessed.

I suppose most gamers were able to figure out where they had to go right away. I definitely can’t say that was true for me. I really had to put on my thinking hat and exploit the rewind to visit a lot of towns at times before I found the right ones. The NPCs aren’t typically handy and there is also a glitch where sometimes you will enter someone’s house twice and stay in a bit of a loop. More sloppy game design, it just doesn’t stop.

Overall, Super Ninja Boy made quite a lot of mistakes. So why am I not calling it a bad game? Well, for all its faults, the game still does some things right. It does provide a lot of content, the story can be fun, and the actual beat em up/RPG gameplay isn’t bad. It’s just the various mechanics around those which really hold the game back. So while I won’t say that it’s a good game by any means, it does enough to stay in the middle. Just make sure you beat up as many enemies as possible and you will shorten the grinding time needed. Learn which enemies go down quickly and ignore the ones that don’t. No enemy that survives a lot is worth fighting. Trust me on that.

Overall 5/10

Care Bears: Care Quest Review

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The Care Bears is one of those franchises that makes you smirk whenever it is brought up. However when you think about it just a little bit harder you remember that it is a really moving series that brings tears to your eyes. The kind of title that makes you remember how wonderful the series can really be. Well I knew that I had to buy this game and let me tell you something…..it’s okay. It’s not bad and it’s not that good. It’s the kind of game that you play for a little while and then put down for good. It’s a collection of 12 minigames so it’s not particularly long after all.

There is no story and there are no other modes. The minigames are all that you get and I suppose what you can aim for is to get high scores in all of the minigames as many times as you can. They range from being extremely short games to being fairly long. The first and last minigames were definitely the longest ones I’d say since they went on for at least 5 rounds while most had 3. The games all start to get pretty similar so I’m thinking the devs were running out of ideas by the end.

The best minigame is easily a platformer where you have to run to the goal while trying to dodge the rain drops. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart and you have a health bar so you can actually die. Definitely make sure you take it slow as you go through. The scores are all based on how many stars you collect and none of them are time based. So slow and steady is literally your best option throughout. I liked that you could actually run and jump here.

A few of the minigames have you flying in the air as you drop different things on the Carebears. Sometimes you are putting them to sleep, other times you are making them fall in love, etc. There are a few different remakes of the same minigame here. Considering there are only 12 in total, that may make you raise an eyebrow but at least the gameplay is smooth. The one where you are firing off an energy blast to wake up the Bears was pretty fun.

Then you’ve also got a minigame where you have to match the bears together. It’s a very classic kind of matching puzzle that you would have seen often throughout the free game industry. It’s always fun but my main gripe is that it’s too slow. When you make a match you have to wait for the Bears to slowly walk away before your next attempt and those second really add up. It’s the little things that expose this game for not being an ultimate AAA title. A truly hype Care Bears game would definitely be possible with their flight and energy blast abilities but I guess that might not be in the cards for a while.

The final minigame has gits falling down from the skies and the Carebears need the right ones. So you have to grab them and give to the bear but unfortunately we ended with the worst one. It is completely RNG which gifts rain down and they go slowly. So whether you win or lose…you have no influence on the outcome. The worst part is that when you lose you have 3 lives so the whole game takes an eternity either way. A minigame should be fun and fast. Give me 30 quick minigames over 10 long ones for example. Wario Microgames and Mario Party are two of the best series in terms of balancing that.

The graphics are okay but nothing special. They’re nice and colorful so that helps the GBA title hold up better than most. The soundtrack is more on the nonexistent side but again that does make sense since this wasn’t the highest budget kind of title. It’s not like you would want to go all out on a minigame compilation right? So the technical elements aren’t really doing the game any favors but it didn’t really need them. To move up either way the game would have needed a lot more content. A game this short cannot get a positive score no matter what. It’s just too extreme. Still, it is a fun time and so that’s why it manages to hang in there at the middle.

Overall, The Care Bears may be out there to help make sure that everybody has fun but at the end that’s about all that they are doing. This game isn’t trying to rock the boat in any way and I would have liked for it to have really stretched the boundaries of what a GBA game is capable of. If you can find this one for a few bucks then I’d say to pick it up for the novelty factor. That said, this is the only reason you would get it as there are numerous games that are simply better than this one in every conceivable way. The Care Bears are not going to become the next Mario or Sonic. Not now….and possibly not ever.

Overall 5/10