• Another one to file in “absolutely not gonna 100%+ this.” It is just too boring. I love a collectathon as much as anybody, but Spyro has absolutely no payoff at all for anything you are collecting.
• The level design is hit or miss. Some areas of some levels are amazing to look at and play through. Other places are expanses of vast emptiness, or baby’s first platforming, or paths that lead nowhere and dead end. By and large, I never really found myself looking forward to the next level. Some time in the middle of the Magic Crafters world, I was ready to just hurry through the rest of the game and be done with it.
• Like almost everything else on the PSX, this was my first time through this game. It doesn’t hold up very well in Current Year.
• Credit where due: there are actual reasons why a lot of the people who worked on this game are famous now. The music and voice acting is great. The controls feel awesome; even using the d-pad instead of analog sticks is very fluid.
• By and large, that is probably the point of the game. The controls feel so good, and Spyro has so much personality, that when you’re a little kid, you can spend hours running around and flying around in these worlds and not really get bored with it.
• Insomniac probably knew what they had on their hands wrt the controls; the final boss is basically a small scale racing game, it’s not an action sequence at all.

hi frens,

I made mention of this on Mastodon itself the other day but doing a post here too cause I really am wondering- is Mastodon still alive at all? can somebody get on there and tell me who to follow? as in, stuff that’s of similar interest to things posted on this site? Especially anything to do with old vidya.

or is it more of a situation where you get out what you put in? gotta talk into the void for a while before you run across anyone?

one thing I will say; I found a Mastodon client that I like a LOT: Ice Cubes - it’s so good it makes me want to use Mastodon more. Give it a try!

Anyway, stay safe out there compadres. Thanks for reading my blog.

• Even though this is a 2009 game, it is by far the newest one I’ve done for this series. I debated as to whether it should even be included, it’s so new
• However, Bayonetta plays like a very old-school game. This is meant as a compliment!
• While it is extremely self-indulgent about its’ own story and cutscenes, do not be fooled. Bayonetta is PURE gameplay. There’s not a single cutscene you can’t skip, and the story makes no sense anyway, so you don’t really miss a thing by cutting straight to the game.
• Combat is simple, and extremely deep at the same time. The system is easy to pick-up-and-play, yet it keeps rewarding you for understanding it better and better
• Enemy variety is not very high; you can tell this was conceived as a small project where they were very selective about putting in huge effort to things they HAD to get right.
• Pictured above is my first play-through, on Normal mode, and there is obviously…. A lot of room for improvement. This game does a great job encouraging you to do that, and I actually do want to immediately pick it back up and try to get platinum trophies on all these levels.
• ….With the exception of a couple levels that are very, very annoying (looking at you, Route 666).
• The weapon variety and the way it does loadouts is not TOO deep, but it is enough to still be fun. Players are rewarded for trying out different things with the weapon sets, and using them to come up with new combos.
• It’s only March, but this is already my favorite of the 6 games I’ve finished so far this year.