cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12495394

TL;DR This game is still really funny with crude humor that mostly holds up and gameplay that doesn't disappoint. Its showing some age but not enough to get in the way of the fun. If you're a fan of movies from around the year 2001, this is a must play.

Introduction

An alchoholic squirrel platformer, an absurd scenario adventure, an excessive amount of swear words, a surprising amount of poop, more movie references than you can shake a stick at, and World War 2 are all shoved into a single N64 cartridge. What could go wrong?

This is a departure for Rare into a game targeted at adult audiences after producing family friedly platformers for years. Don't let the cute and cartoonish exterior of this game fool you, you're in for a ride from the moment the game boots up.

The Necessary Background

I think my enjoyment and perspective is relevant to my thoughts about this game so let me explain my biases here. As in previous reviews, this is not an attempt to talk about the game as it was 23 years ago. I'm placing this game in a modern context, especially since I never owned an N64 and wasn't apart of that era. This game is almost as old as I am, so keep that in mind.

The other disclaimer here is that I am not big on movies and tv or pop culture from this era. I'll explain more later about references, but a lot of them flew over my head. It isn't a large problem but again keep this in mind. With that out of the way...

Does the Game Play Itself?

No it doesn't. The gameplay here is fairly minimal coming off of the backs of the two Banjo-Kazooie games. No need to memorize complicated control layouts to progress. The controls here remain nearly the same throughout and lead to a pretty enjoyable, but simple, platforming experience. Most levels are fairly linear but aren't straightforward and require knowing your environment and exploring.

That isn't saying the gameplay doesn't evolve. Most of the moves you have access to come from a pad you stand on to activate. These usually change your interactions with the environment in some way. They give you a slingshot or missile launcher or maybe a bottle of booze for a scarecrow. It takes a lot of the thinking out of the game and lets you sit back and enjoy the adventure.

Previous games from the people at Rare had this feeling of a toolkit platformer where more tools were given to you but the tools you had stayed with you throughout the game. This led to complex controls and more often just meant that moves went underutilized or were shoehorned into levels. I appreciated the restraint shown here and to make use of the tools within each level only when needed.

A Squirrel and the Princess

In regards to the story, there isn't much here beyond a vague scenario given to the player. The characters and levels do a great job of telling a narrative but the core idea of the game is that many different scenarios are stiched together. It leads to a lot of varience in the atmosphere of the game.

Further backing that up is the soundtrack which, as usual, is something Rare did an amazing job with. When you enter an area made of entirely poop in the game, the main thing selling you on the disgust of it is the farts and burps in the music. And yes, I did just say that they are IN the music. I'll let you decide how to feel about that.

Conker's Great Stand Up Routine

This is the part of the discussion that makes or breaks this game for me. Is this game funny? And if so, in what way is it funny?

To answer the first question, it will be pretty subjective to you. I'll characterize the comedy by saying that it is crude and unsophisticated humor for the most part. Most of it holds up well considering comedy from the era and theres only a few things I'd say might cross the line with modern audiences. I thought most of the game was humorous, even if it didn't leave me on the floor crying from laughing.

The absurd scenarios and chracters are refreshing compared to a lot of games that play it more safely nowadays. That said, the references for movies will play into how much you enjoy your time here. For myself, I'd say that I understood a small portion of the references though even reading about them didn't make me think I'd view them the same way today.

For instance, there are short scenes where a movie scene is recreated and similar or exact lines are repeated as a reference. I found these amusing, but not funny per se. It ages similar to parody of anything else though. To give an analogy, it'd be like looking back on an SNL skit making fun of US president George Bush. You'd crack a smile, maybe laugh once or twice, but not like you would have while he was president. That being said, if Terminator, The Matrix, and Starwars are still fresh in your head you'll find this very amusing.

Wrapping Up the Red Squirrel

There isn't too much else to say about this game. Its humorous in a simple way, it looks great and sounds great, and the gameplay is varied and interesting. The game is on the shorter side so its easy to recommend this one. For those who worry about the humor side of it, play the first hour of this one and you'll know quickly if it clicks with you or not.

As a final wrap up, let me thank everyone who has been recommending me this game because I had a good time playing it. Let me know what your experience with this game was if you played it!

Feel free to check out my previous posts for write ups on other Rare games!

Banjo Kazooie Review

Banjo Tooie Review

TL;DR This game is still really funny with crude humor that mostly holds up and gameplay that doesn't disappoint. Its showing some age but not enough to get in the way of the fun. If you're a fan of movies from around the year 2001, this is a must play.

Introduction

An alchoholic squirrel platformer, an absurd scenario adventure, an excessive amount of swear words, a surprising amount of poop, more movie references than you can shake a stick at, and World War 2 are all shoved into a single N64 cartridge. What could go wrong?

This is a departure for Rare into a game targeted at adult audiences after producing family friedly platformers for years. Don't let the cute and cartoonish exterior of this game fool you, you're in for a ride from the moment the game boots up.

The Necessary Background

I think my enjoyment and perspective is relevant to my thoughts about this game so let me explain my biases here. As in previous reviews, this is not an attempt to talk about the game as it was 23 years ago. I'm placing this game in a modern context, especially since I never owned an N64 and wasn't apart of that era. This game is almost as old as I am, so keep that in mind.

The other disclaimer here is that I am not big on movies and tv or pop culture from this era. I'll explain more later about references, but a lot of them flew over my head. It isn't a large problem but again keep this in mind. With that out of the way...

Does the Game Play Itself?

No it doesn't. The gameplay here is fairly minimal coming off of the backs of the two Banjo-Kazooie games. No need to memorize complicated control layouts to progress. The controls here remain nearly the same throughout and lead to a pretty enjoyable, but simple, platforming experience. Most levels are fairly linear but aren't straightforward and require knowing your environment and exploring.

That isn't saying the gameplay doesn't evolve. Most of the moves you have access to come from a pad you stand on to activate. These usually change your interactions with the environment in some way. They give you a slingshot or missile launcher or maybe a bottle of booze for a scarecrow. It takes a lot of the thinking out of the game and lets you sit back and enjoy the adventure.

Previous games from the people at Rare had this feeling of a toolkit platformer where more tools were given to you but the tools you had stayed with you throughout the game. This led to complex controls and more often just meant that moves went underutilized or were shoehorned into levels. I appreciated the restraint shown here and to make use of the tools within each level only when needed.

A Squirrel and the Princess

In regards to the story, there isn't much here beyond a vague scenario given to the player. The characters and levels do a great job of telling a narrative but the core idea of the game is that many different scenarios are stiched together. It leads to a lot of varience in the atmosphere of the game.

Further backing that up is the soundtrack which, as usual, is something Rare did an amazing job with. When you enter an area made of entirely poop in the game, the main thing selling you on the disgust of it is the farts and burps in the music. And yes, I did just say that they are IN the music. I'll let you decide how to feel about that.

Conker's Great Stand Up Routine

This is the part of the discussion that makes or breaks this game for me. Is this game funny? And if so, in what way is it funny?

To answer the first question, it will be pretty subjective to you. I'll characterize the comedy by saying that it is crude and unsophisticated humor for the most part. Most of it holds up well considering comedy from the era and theres only a few things I'd say might cross the line with modern audiences. I thought most of the game was humorous, even if it didn't leave me on the floor crying from laughing.

The absurd scenarios and chracters are refreshing compared to a lot of games that play it more safely nowadays. That said, the references for movies will play into how much you enjoy your time here. For myself, I'd say that I understood a small portion of the references though even reading about them didn't make me think I'd view them the same way today.

For instance, there are short scenes where a movie scene is recreated and similar or exact lines are repeated as a reference. I found these amusing, but not funny per se. It ages similar to parody of anything else though. To give an analogy, it'd be like looking back on an SNL skit making fun of US president George Bush. You'd crack a smile, maybe laugh once or twice, but not like you would have while he was president. That being said, if Terminator, The Matrix, and Starwars are still fresh in your head you'll find this very amusing.

Wrapping Up the Red Squirrel

There isn't too much else to say about this game. Its humorous in a simple way, it looks great and sounds great, and the gameplay is varied and interesting. The game is on the shorter side so its easy to recommend this one. For those who worry about the humor side of it, play the first hour of this one and you'll know quickly if it clicks with you or not.

As a final wrap up, let me thank everyone who has been recommending me this game because I had a good time playing it. Let me know what your experience with this game was if you played it!

Feel free to check out my previous posts for write ups on other Rare games!

Banjo Kazooie Review

Banjo Tooie Review

See my Banjo-Kazooie review here

DISCLAIMER: I'll start this review with the same disclaimer I gave last time. I enjoy retro games, but this is not a review from the reference of the release date. Meaning that I will mostly be looking at this game as it stands today since I don't have the context from release (I never owned an N64). That said, I'm not going to bash it for being old constantly or make points about graphics and such.

Intro

I'll start by saying that this is obviously another legendary game that is a followup to the original which I enjoyed a lot. It says a lot that these titles are still pretty enjoyable after turning 23 years old. However, I want to use this review not to be harsh to this game but to highlight the obvious and hidden progress games have had since its release.

What is this?

This is a puzzle platformer collect-a-thon game with pretty good characters, expansive level design, graphics that still hold up, and some of the best music you'll ever hear. Tooie is mostly an expansion and extension of the ideas found in Banjo-Kazooie. The same characters appear and what exists in the first game is mostly left untouched here. Instead, new mechanics and moves are added to keep the game feeling fresh and I really enjoyed some and hated others (we'll get there).

What's there to love?

The most standout thing about the game is the music. The music here rivals Mario64 for how iconic and instantly recognizable most of the tracks are. They do a lot of the heavy work with theming without being too intricate or overbearing. The characters also do a good job of fleshing this game out into believable spaces.

In the first game, I felt like the entire game took place in a box. A small box. Here I don't have that problem and a few of the levels feel like the characters really belong there. Platforming is also pretty good which can't be said for a lot of stuff around this era. Every jump or move that I missed felt like my own fault for the most part. The variety of moves also adds a bit of much needed depth to the game which I really enjoyed. This game is easy to love but I don't think that it would convert anyone who didn't enjoy the first game since it is mostly a copy of that. Which leads me right into...

Lets get to the bad

How do I do this without making it sound like a rant? I can't. If you have nostalgia for this game, be patient with me here. Lets talk controls. In no uncertain terms, the controls are awful and unlike the first game, I don't think that playing on an original controller would fix much here.

To give an overview, basic platforming is normal controls and the trigger is a crouch button. The trigger is also how you activate your moves here. This is a limitation of the N64 controller and I respect the use made of it. But the amount of moves mapped to the C-stick is confusing. Normally it acts as camera control but once the crouch button is pressed, the one stick gets assigned to 4 separate moves for each character. And since the trigger is crouch, you must crouch each time to do each move. Thats a lot of trigger pressing and stick moving.

As a subset of controls, the people at Rare decided that Banjo-Kazooie was good but needed first person shooting to be great. Hopping on the trend at the time with this game hurts my brain because it controls horribly. And since the mapping is the same as shooters like GoldenEye, the controls are unusable for modern audiences. Is this fixed in the Xbox Live version? I don't know, but I hope so. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't get used on every single level, but it does.

Entire first person shooter sections in a collect-a-thon were not enjoyable to me, its not what I expect from a sequel here. Worse yet, its used heavily in the bossfight at the end which is just salt in the wound.

What about the genre?

The first game really established an entire genre and I was curious to see how it would get moved forward here. I want to be clear, I find these next few items negatives but I appreciated them because they're the first missteps in this space. So what went wrong with the game style itself?

The largest sin for me is the sin of having a game about collection without self-contained levels. What I mean by that is that game objectives spill beyond the borders of each level and bleed either into the hub world or bleed into each other. A more minor sin of this kind is the kind of sin where you need to unlock something later in the game and come back to complete a level.

Modern games still have these features but they mitigate the problems by telling you that you need to wait or they give giant hints at other levels. In this game however, you might struggle at a puzzle for an hour only to find out that theres a move later that you unlock that makes this part possible.

For a good example: There is a level with a hot and cold side of a mountain. A move is given to the player to walk into hot water on the hot side of the mountain. You can press a switch in that pool to drain it, but it suggests to you that the water is just too hot. You can also turn into a snowball on the other side of the level.

So based on that info, you might search for awhile just to see if you can connect the cold side and hot side together. Or maybe you can throw your snowball self into the water. Or maybe a character can do it for you. None of those things solve your problem. What does solve your problem is pushing an ice cube off of the next level in the sky that then falls into the pool and cools it.

And this is the last thing I'll really mention bad about this game: It makes poor use of its new moves and features and is inconsistent and that's a shame. An example from the same level: there are two characters on the cold side of the mountain that need to be warmed up. One requires you to shoot fire eggs at them. The other requires you use the bird to sit on them like an egg. No indication of that move use is given. Its only ever used for eggs elsewhere. Frustrating.

So thats the gripe here. The feature creep is very real and you have too many moves doing too little in the game and it complicates the controls. They tried to do too much with this game and it hurt what was a very solid and tight experience from the first one.

Summarize Tooie To Me

Don't let the criticisms color the game too much for you if you enjoy this kind of thing or just want to revisit it. For those who have nostalgia for it, you'll overlook the annoyances pretty easily but I'd highly recommend playing on an original controller. I'd consider it almost necessary for this experience, especially for the first person sections. If you don't have nostalgia for this, I'd tell you not to take the game too seriously. Don't 100% it like I did and just sit back and enjoy the good music and fun characters and the puzzles or collectables. If you're never going to play the game though, the soundtrack is also right there for you.

If you made it this far let me know what you think of my review, I'm always eager to hear what other people did or did not enjoy about the game and I'll be active in the comments!

TL;DR This game is awesome and you should consider playing it if you haven't and you like retro games from this era or if you like similar collectathon games.

To preface before my opinion: Yes I did emulate this game on PC, Yes I used a modern Xbox controller for most of my playthrough, and No I do not have many references for games from this time but I will be attempting to be balanced on parts I felt did not age well.

I'll start with the good parts. If you've played Mario 64, this game is right up your alley and so is its sequel. This is one of the best 3D platformers from the era and its one that is challenging and has more personality than M64 did for me. Mostly due to the stellar characters and personalities. So much love went into crafting each characters outfit, voice, and animation even though they're so simple.

Next up, the levels. Not every level here is amazing but the same can be said of M64 (which I'll continue to reference as my main comparison game since I'm familiar with it). Each level has 10 jigsaw pieces to collect and some of them are extremely creative uses of the environment. Some are just annoying to get though and will have you overlooking them. Overall the levels are solid if not as memorable as many M64 levels are to me.

The music. Wow the music! Its very good for the era and fits right in with the classics. Even the rest of the sound design is incredible but seriously, go listen to some of the level tracks if you haven't played the game. The theming done in the music alone is very good. The rest of the sounds do a very good job of fitting right in with the art and they characterize a lot of the game. Audio-wise this is amazing for the N64.

Here's where I digress though. My overall view of the game is VERY positive so take these criticisms light. A lot of these things are parts that just didn't age so well. First off, the movement system isn't as good as other 3D platformers. Its passable. But a lot of the platforming requires button presses repeatedly. You can't walk crouched. So a series of leaves that need high jumps to go up them look like this: Stop your character in just the right spot and crouch, hit the jump button, direct the jumps movement, move a tiny bit forward on the next leaf to position, crouch, jump. Wouldn't be so bad if I could trigger it all quickly but its very hard to do that. Not to mention the swimming is really not great and wrestles with the camera constantly. And the air attack is nearly impossible to aim if you aren't flying straight or are too high or low to attack properly.

The rest of the moves are all based on the C stick. Which also controls camera. Its a nightmare with a modern controller. But again, each move takes seconds to activate and need prep time. You have an invincibility move which would be great for avoiding incoming damage. Except it takes too long to trigger so is only used for obstacles. Weird right?

And that's my final gripe that I feel is really valid. Mario 64 has a move set that gets activated mostly organically. Wall jumps and rolls and ledge grabs all work with minimal or no buttons. Meanwhile the run move here requires you stop to crouch and press the stick a specific way. And most other moves have buttons on the floor or pickups. Its confusing why they did it that way and it takes me out a bit fiddling with my controller. It doesn't feel natural and I never got to the point of pressing all of the moves without thinking.

Overall final opinion is that this game is an amazing classic that I feel most people should play if they like 3D platformers. Just be aware that its best played on older controllers and also has a few features that you may miss from modern games. But it'd be hard not to recommend this. This game is great, onto the sequel!

This game has a pretty interesting premise with a story centered around cults and the Cthulhu legend. I don’t know much about either so I was intrigued and since I received this game in a bundle some time ago, I wanted to give it a shot. The game is narratively focused so I’ll talk mostly about theme, art, and story as I go.

I’ll start with the look and feel of the game by saying that I have middling opinions on how this game looks. The textures are good for the most part and convey the atmosphere pretty well. The game falls apart though when it comes to animations. Everybody moves and expresses themselves worse than cardboard. Remember the canned talking animations of Skyrim? It’s that but in a narrative focused game and worse. The characters need to be believable but when someone is talking in a relaxed way while their hands do frantic motions or are frozen in front of them, it breaks a lot of the illusion. However, the rest of the art, atmosphere, and lighting looks pretty good.

When it comes to story, I won’t claim to be a narrative expert. In my playtime, I didn’t get hooked by the story at any point. The characters are trying to do that thing where they provide little detail and are therefore mysterious. That didn’t track well with me and instead they felt dull and shallow. It sucks because some of the dialog is really good but there isn’t enough of it to carry a narrative game. The best bits of story are told to you in cutscene form and this game almost seems like it’s better suited as an FMV game or similar. The biggest benefit to the story though is the multiple choices. I felt my choices were impactful and they don’t let you exhaust dialog for other options. You have one conversation and there is at least an illusion that you could’ve had many more discrete conversations.

The RPG skills are another middling feature as they help a lot of the exploration and conversational aspects of the game out and yet they’re paper thin at the same time. The game has you assigning points and yet I don’t feel that it would’ve played any differently than if I’d just picked skills at the start and nothing afterwards.

Lastly the sound is another 5/10. Sometimes it really sells the horror of a scene. But a lot of the time the same repeated music tracks take me out. And the compression used on the voices is embarrassingly bad. It harms the performances so much that I began tweaking my setup because I thought I had audio issues.

To wrap it up, I wanted to like this game and I still like aspects of it. It’s maybe worth playing if you catch it on sale or get it in a bundle. And since it’s a short experience, some of these gripes aren’t dealbreakers. I just found it to be a disappointing use of the setting and theme and I wish more could’ve been done to immerse me in the game.

If you’ve played it, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!