Really, this is just another mediocre PS2 era licensed toy/movie/TV show licensed game. It's nothing special, but as someone who grew up with Bionicle, this game was my shit when I was a kid. Even if I never got further than the Gali level back then. No one likes a water level (MOST of the time), after all.
There's something about this game's atmosphere too that does resonate with me. The somewhat offputting background music and ambience combined with the sound effects not sounding anywhere near as loud as they should just kinda clicks for me. It's nothing more than the game just being underdeveloped (because it absolutely is) but it just clicks for me. I like this game.
I'm gonna get this out of the way now. This game is genuinely horrible and deserves the reputation it has. This is not an "underrated gem", and it never will be. The controls, camera, framerate, even the graphics make it near unplayable. Accolade even thad the balls to implement a PVP multiplayer mode. I subjected it to one of my IRl friends (I won lol), it was somehow worse than even the base game itself.
And that's where the truth ends and my bullshitting begins. I don't completely hate this game? The soundtrack is terrible, and I love it. Bubsy's constant chattering is endlessly obnoxious and hostile to the player's ears, and I love it. I even love the game over cutscenes.
No, I am not Ulillillia.
This is one of those "so bad it's good" kinda games. Environments are needlessly huge and empty, and with not enough enemy encounters to take up said empty space, gunplay is incredibly repetitive and dull, etc. The AI is also pretty stupid, but honestly? For this game, it SHOULD be stupid. They are just there to add to your ever growing body count.
Your arsenel of spells and the way they interact with the impressive (by 2006 standards) physics engine is truly something to behold, but that's not what I like most about the game. It's actually just the whole idea of a witch wielding a giant fucking gun. And it transforms into other guns. And she's gunning down an entire zombified military. And Alicia is fucking hot (sorry Bayonetta you can go fuck off).
It's crazy to me that this of all games won Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Award for best the best video game of 2003, because this game kinda ranges from really bad to aggressively mediocre. This was another childhood game for me though, and I can't really help but not hate it even today despite it's many glaring flaws. For one, there are only like 6 music tracks at most in the entire game, and they are all very short loops. You're only going to hear the same 4 songs 90% of the time because guess what? ALL of the music is tied to the four costumes you get throughout the game. They even carry over into cutscenes. The graphics are also really bad, even by PS2/GC standards. You know what this game's worst offense is though? Unlike any other collectathon, you are hard required to 100% the game. You need to pick up every single collectible. The PS2 version is also widely known to freeze during loading screens, crash your PS2, and wipe your entire memory card. Needless to say, this was incredibly frustrating when I was a kid and I had to use an emulator when I played it again as an adult.
Here's what this game really gets right though. Bikini Bottom's layout actually feels correct and like it could have fit with the show's canon (as of 2002, of course). They even got the show's original voice actors on board (excluding the narrator), INCLUDING Clancy Brown as Mr. Krabs. If you don't know why this is a big deal, Clancy is infamous for being difficult to get on board for anything outside of the main TV show. Also, I kinda love the unintentionally eerie atmosphere this game has.
Much like other 90s point and click adventure games, Harvester gets VERY fucking cryptic. I can't even blame anyone for using a guide. But what this game has that other point and clicks don't have, is combat. Though it's an extremely rare occurrence, this is absolutely not a good thing, especially because you can very easily softlock yourself in the endgame if you get too fucked up during earlier encounters. And frankly, there just aren't enough healing items throughout the game to compensate. You can also apparently softlock yourself very early on if you're not careful with giving a certain NPC a certain item at the wrong time, though thankfully I didn't run into this softlock.
Aside from those issues though, it is really worth experiencing, even with a guide on your other monitor. Why? The atmosphere is REALLY fucking weird thanks to the voice acting, dialogue, and music. This combined with the incredibly low budget live action FMV cutscenes and character sprites really creates this lingering feeling in the back of your head that something super off about the town you're thrown into. The gore is also pretty gruesome in spite of it's low budget, and in general there's just some crazy fucked up shit that happens throughout the story. Bad game, but 100% worth experiencing at least once. I also strongly recommend savescumming.
I actually don't think Nosferatu is a bad game per se, it does some really cool stuff for it's time, but I can also see why someone might not like it. This game is brutally fucking challenging, sometimes unfairly so. I hate to make the comparison, but if you're into Dark Souls, you might jam with this one just for the challenge even if, DISCLAIMER, it is not AT ALL a soulslike.
The whole goal of the game is you're supposed to save your mutuals from Nosferatu's castle which, of course, is teeming with supernatural beings such as vampires, werewolves, and... vampires. There's not much variety here. They all hit REALLY fucking hard though and they will follow you everywhere. But here's where things get interesting, for a game from 2003... the locations of your mutuals are all randomized per playthrough, and there is an invisible time limit to save them. They will die one by one throughout the course of your run. If you don't save a certain amount of the game, you've pretty much lost and have to restart the whole game again. Oh, and you need to escort them through the castle back to the entrance (their AI is terrible) but you get sort of "perks" when you save them, like there's one character that will give you healing items, and so on. This isn't a game I would see through to the end (nor have I ever done so), but it's fun just to see how far I get. Good time waster.
Shinji Mikami's most underrated game, if you ask me. Unpolished, and the controls aged rather poorly, but it's got a lot of style, a memorable character and suit design for it's female proagonist, and a banger soundtrack. It does get somewhat unfair, but it is more often than not a fun challenge. My main issue with the game though, is just how repetitive and lacking in enemy variety it is. I think if P.N.03 sold better, we would have gotten a sequel that could potentially have improved on everything.
Honestly, this game isn't really bad. I just wanted to find an excuse to talk about it since there is still to this day little to no conversation surrounding it online.
In 2017 I got a Nintendo 64 for my birthday. Of all the games in the pile it came with, Shadowgate 64 was the first third party game I played (of fucking course I'm gonna play Ocarina of Time first, it's my favorite game of all time).
Just by looking at it, you'd think this would be a dungeon crawler with some combat involved. It is not. This is a glorified point and click adventure game, with NO combat. It's all puzzles and bottomless pits that result in a game over. My console actually didn't come with a memory pak when I got it, so I was trying my best just to get past the tutorial level without drowning in a body of water. It's got a relatively basic story too, not very complex or anything. It does the job.
Progression items, however, are often incredibly difficult to find because the color palette is so dull and runs at such a low resolution, so things tend to blend in. I got stuck for 2 hhours trying to find just one item before I caved in and used a guide. But that's okay, because the atmosphere (do you see a running theme throughout this page yet lol) is phenomenal. Imagine running around a dreary medieval castle where you would expect there to be knights, peasants, and the such roaming about. Except it's almost entirely abandoned, everyone is dead, and all you see are ghosts... aside from maybe two or three living humans. It feels so appropriately cold and lonely, like how I would expect it to feel like walking through a recently abandoned current day city.
Bad controls and vague progression don't stop these games from being absolute legendary classics. IF you're the objectively correct kind of gamer. You do need a lot of patience, but they're honestly all about the atmosphere and NPC interactions so it works out. You could say the English dub is atrocious, and playing a game taking place in Japan with the Japanese audio may be the correct choice, but I think the dub really fits it. Somehow.
Of the two games, I do like Shenmue 1 more for it's atmosphere, music, and just the fact that every single NPC is unique and has their own sets of dialogue. They even have their own daily activities that they engage in on a daily basis. It still feels like a living world decades after release. Shenmue 2 does have an advantage though for just having somewhat better gameplay, but honestly not by much. Being able to skip time for certain events is a HUGE plus.
Both are great experiences, but not particularly great video games.
No, I don't like this game for the memes. I just love the game in general. Yes, the combat system is really slow, basic, and has overly complex minigames for every single attack. It kinda tried to do what Paper Mario did, but fails miserably. It fucking sucks. The vocie acting also fucking sucks. The character portraits during dialogue clash heavily with the game's core art style (which I do think is very good). On the surface, this sounds like a relatively bottom tier RPG.
The story however, while not flawless in it's execution (Alex needs to SHUT THE FUCK UP with his constant internal monologues), kept me thoroughly interested. There is a lot of crazy shit that happens, a lot of which made NO sense to me, and I just had to keep going to see it to the end. And it was all worth pushing through, because by the end, I was feeling feelings I don't think a game has ever had me feeling before. The dialogue was also just bad enough for me to enjoy it most of the time.
On December 3rd, 2024, we got the I.V update that overhauled pretty much the entire game and brought it up from a high 6/10 to a solid 8/10 for me. The combat mechanics are actually unique, it looks stylish (taking some cues from Persona 5 in a way), and significantly faster paced. Needless to say, it no longer holds the game back. I haven't played much of I.V as of writing this, but so far, the overhaueld story elements have been quite enjoyable and noticeable.
Incredibly mediocre shooter. HOWEVER........
"Suck my balls, my hairy fucking big balls, wrap them around your mouth"
And FURTHERMORE...