Connor Nichols's Reviews
As a 3D platformer, Yooka-Replaylee is a very tight and fun time, and while not nearly as excellent to the highest degree Impossible Lair was, this still makes for a great redemption arc and well worth a play if you like 3D platformers.
Add in some truly ugly upscaled backgrounds, an absolutely forgettable story, and pretty grindy gameplay loops to get anywhere with unlockables, and while you have a decent port job here, this is still one of Falcom’s weakest games at the end of the day.
I was a little worried at first, running into the same sort of controller clunkiness that bogged down the original Voxelgram, but seeing all the toggles and what you can tweak to make the button controls a lot more comfortable to deal with, really did have me enjoying this one far more than the original.
Still, the inexcusable emulation errors also cause the game to be significantly more difficulty here than it should be, which takes what could have been a solid port of an otherwise fun action game, into an infuriating mess where you’re fighting against invisible obstacles for no logical reason at all.
From excellent retro recreations to fun newer stages, there’s tons of tricky brainstorming puzzles to solve in this game, easily being the best set of Boulder Dash levels on Switch to date. It’s just a shame the performance is a little wonky still.
It doesn’t hold a candle to Granada, but Final Zone is still a fun little romp that I’m happy got reissued, especially with far better sound emulation than Granada ended up with. It might not be the computer original, but that doesn’t mean this Genesis version is worth skipping!
Still, those boss battles were fun, and I can only hope the developer takes the ideas of those levels and makes a more engaging action/arcade style game in the future.
It’s just a shame the overall package doesn’t have as much of the M2 charm as some of their other collections did, and is ever so slightly buggy in a way their other sets are not.
Irem Collection Vol 3 was a pretty fun set of shooting games, even if none of them succeed in having the addicting hook that some of Irem’s better known shooters could have on you.
Not even forgoing rewind makes the game all that tough once you know the patterns and which of the three weapons are good for your situation, and for a ten minute game on the first loop, Griffin is so paper thin I remain baffled.
So while the Welcome Tour is a strange grab bag of various features for the device, it feels more like an experience doomed to be a relic rather than a memorable launch experience that truly brings in the wow factor, and when the extra meat here feels like a waste of time, it really begs the question why you’d want to pick this up for $10.
Super Technos World is a mixed bag of Technos obscurities, mostly propped up by the quality of The Combatribes, Shadow Force and Super Dodge Ball. The other games will depend on your mileage with their various quirks and associated jank, along with the fact two are them are fully in Japanese.
Still, if you do manage to pull through and enjoy the whole trilogy, or just want to skip the gameplay in favor of the story due to the Fast Mode difficulty setting, then I think you’ll find a pretty good finale to a fun trilogy of strategy RPGs.
Bubble Ghost Remake’s newer levels just don’t compare to the simplistic fun those levels offered. It greatly expands upon the original concept, but maybe a bit too much.
Sure, you have local co-op, but there’s little else to take away from the overall experience and nothing really memorable about it besides the Cho Aniki-esque humor and the overpowered muscular forms you can take up to obliterate bosses.
While Beyond may be pretty simple and a game you can jump into and know what to do right away, that doesn’t mean it can’t be some serious fun, and I found it to be a great and chill way to break some bricks while passing the time. Choice Provisions really did the concept great justice here!
From stages that offer some of the best horizontal shooting action on the entire console without hesitation, to a fun romp of stages that still offer a lot of enjoyment even at the lowest lows, this game is an easy recommend for fans of SNES action games. Really if it was just the horizontal shooting levels, I’d even say it’s a game so good I could recommend to everyone.
Just don’t expect this to be the GBA’s surprise Ninja Gaiden II or Shinobi III tier masterpiece, and compared to other Konami action games, this one is pretty simple in comparison.
Thankfully, the games do the talking here, and I find some of these games are absolutely worth everyone’s time. If you happen to click with one of the GBA simulators and want more of that action? Well, there’s only around several more games mandating you win a hundred duels each to go through, so you’ll be kept well busy for a long, long time.
Ultimately, X-Out Resurfaced is a shooter that’s definitely more fun for fans of the original game compared to a newcomer such as myself. A lot of QOL tweaks help make the game enjoyable to play and less tedious than the Amiga original, but make no mistake, Resurfaced is still a very vicious experience.