Recent reviews by Raikoh

If you liked Sonic Generations, you get more of it with fun level design and neat challenges to tackle in away that finally puts the Boost formula to its apex. If you like Shadow, you can't go wrong with this. And while they could've done more to enhance the original game, each side of the package helps demonstrate the pinnacles of their respective development eras.

Probably the best series release in a long while.

A blast of nostalgia for oldbies, a rush of what made the series great for newcomers. If you want to enjoy some classic skating fun, this game is right up your alley. Now if only Activision didn't cancel 3+4.

First off, even with the Denuvo stuff in mind, that's only the tip of the iceberg. The Sonic 3 & Knuckles "infamous music" problem? Replaced with low quality stuff that's supposed to be remastered versions of the 1993 prototype music, but the actual prototype beats the pants off of these horrible versions. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for, well..

They used Hedgehog Engine 2 for the menu. For the in-game user interface. For the music and audio. They not only overly complicated the entire package just to have pretty menus and the islands on the main interface, they outright screwed with perfectly fine remasters that Taxman, Stealth and the Headcannon team had previously done, making things inherently worse than fan solutions. This also means the performance and system requirements are through the roof when they shouldn't be.

It also doesn't help that for all the effort the Headcannon team put into remastering 3&K eight years after their initial proposal to do so, it's a buggy, seemingly rushed-to-deadline outcome that simply isn't working the way it should be, even in casual play. The big selling point and Sega clearly pushed it before it was ready. Numerous issues across all the games, numerous weird choices and countless sound issues all over them, an unnecessary hijacking of the games involved by Sega's incessant need to overcomplicate everything for no good reason, and it just keeps going.

That is to say, if you can run Origins, you can run the ports just fine, and when they aren't bugging out they are still the good old Sonic games on Retro Engine, but this needs some serious patching and should not have been shipped in the state it released in.

Oh, and the digital deluxe thing with the island camera control just lets you zoom in and out. That's just straight up manipulative and exploitative.

Next to no noticeable input lag thanks to being native ports rather than emulation, comfort features for those intimidated by infamy of the Zero games being hard as heck, higher quality videos and voice work for the ZX games, and all of the DS collection's bonuses like the E-Reader cards for Zero 3 to boot.

If you want some of the toughest and most refined games the later years of Mega Man had to offer, Zero 1 may be a tough thing to work through, but the rest shine as some of the best in the series, and this collection is easily their best iteration.

There's spots in the rough, bugs, glitches and inevitable issues with the porting process - that's to be expected with these things after all. But 6 campaigns, 4 multiplayers and 2 firefight modes are still all here and represented well, with the developers patching away bugs and even adding new features and content where they can on the side. Make no mistake, Halo never left, it's just been on a long trip.

Do you love Duke Nukem 3D and similar style games on the Build engine from the 90's? Then this is basically diving back into the old drug habits for you. Fancy for an expanded source port of the old engine, crazy thanks to some rather bombastic fights throughout the game that keep introducing new enemy types, and an arsenal that may not be varied practically but more than gets the job done in the messiest ways possible.

While still an Early Access title, and with a number of rough edges, it's still a solid blast of action. Hopefully an SDK for mapping beyond the limited and early Scene Creator will allow people to just go absolutely crazy with this, because custom weapons are already proliferating and letting you mix up your play more. If you want a little bit of Max Payne, a dash of F.E.A.R. and all John Woo, keep an eye on this one, even if you're waiting for more content and/or a price drop.

Do you want a stealth-action game that's probably one of the best in its core gameplay design? Metal Gear Solid V covers that, sure. But while this is a good reason to want to play it, you'll also have to keep in mind the fact that the game is going to probably need a large time investment. And not for the stealth; carrying mechanics and elements over from the Playstation Portable title, Peace Walker, you're also going to have to grind up money, resources, and countless hundreds of men and women you capture liberate throughout your wanderings and missions, sometimes just to get a better incremental gun upgrade and sometimes just to progress the story. It gets a little Ubisoft at times, to say the least.

And for those seeking a crazy Hideo Kojima plot, they'll be disappointed for this is some of the tamest Kojima's been at. Sure, the story still has a few big moments, particularly for fans of the series, but the "MISSING LINK OF THE METAL GEAR SAGA" tagline is pretty much false. The game's story comes off as contrived and unnecessary at all to the whole series, lumping in Ground Zeroes by association.

Does this make the game terrible? No, not really. I'd still recommend it to people on the raw gameplay alone, because I certainly got my money's worth. And the open-form stealth is just excellent, since you have a large variety of ways to handle missions however you please and from whatever angle you usually wish to approach (barring some more linear story missions that actually have story). It's just that if you get MGSV, you probably need to know about the warts, too.

If it's for cheap like a Daily Deal, then you save yourself the buyer's remorse I get for having bought this $60 at launch. But then I wouldn't recommend that unless you have a few bucks to spare and a sense of morbid curiousity for bile. That is to say, Duke Nukem Forever is not a broken game. It's not an incomplete game. Infact, nothing is overall glitchy or messy, and it's competent.

But does that make it good? No.

Forever tries to cash in on nostalgia to Duke Nukem 3D, but it reaches a point that Duke himself almost feels like a parody of his younger self, and that nostalgia is hollow at best with art design, ripped or altered quotes, and wholesale references. The Duke's lines seem like they were written by Comedy Central writers on a boring weekend, and a few very specific moments are just plain.. Unnecessary or even downright vexing as to how anyone thought it was a good idea.

When the game you're referencing is better than the your own game, however, that becomes a significant issue. And in all regards, Forever falls down the cesspit that is a modern shooter without much ingenuity. Regenerating health (coined as 'Ego', but extremely inconsistent on how much damage you can actually sustain), bland gunplay with no real kick or impact beyond the shotgun blast, dumb-as-bricks enemy AI that either stands perfectly still or rushes you, turret and vehicle sections thrown in for 'variety' that drags players down when they last way too long, rudimentary puzzles to pad out the game time, boss fights that arbitarily can only be hurt by explosions with magical infinite ammo reserves somehow implemented to keep you going...

For all of the callbacks, mythology gags, and attempts to appeal to the Duke 3D fans, the game plays nothing like it beyond being of the same genre. There's no depth, beyond finding boosts to your Ego meter by winning minigames or doing things like photocopying your rear end (and some objects you interact with give Ego, including easy-to-miss ones, but others that might reasonably do so.. don't). You can only carry four weapons at a time plus handheld explosives, and only two if you toggle that patched-in option off. Things like the Beer power-up are completely useless and outright detrimental. And it just keeps dragging on and on...

There is a multiplayer function to the title, make no mistake. It's fast-paced, much more so than the actual campaign mode of the game, and there's even a basic unlock and customization system. .. if unlocking aesthetics around a penthouse is your idea of a worthy set of unlocks, or being able to change Duke's shirt color, try on different glasses and put on hats is your idea of fun customization. At times the multiplayer's a bit too hectic, though, making it rather hard to keep up with and a likely cycle of 'die, respawn, die' with larger player counts. I don't have much to say, since this is basically Call of Duty meets Quake without any real polish.

If this were just another crummy modern first-person-shooter, no one would've given it the time of day. But because it's Duke Nukem and been in the making for twelve years, it's not even a case of expectations being too high; I went in with middling to low expectations even at launch, and this game was so medicore, so boring, so unexciting that despite getting to the last portions of the game, I just don't feel like I'll ever properly finish this game. And considering I loved Duke Nukem 3D, as well as having had this game since day one, it breaks my heart to say that.