Matthew Mangan

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Psychonauts is a game that people will sing high praises of, and others will say actually it’s not that good Fact of the matter is, no, objectively speaking, it’s not a masterpiece, but it is definitely good The game has a lot going for it, fast-paced, open world platforming, crazy character designs, and entertaining cutscenes, with some engaging stories A story-based platformer, Psychonauts feels like an actual animated film, which for some reason, virtually nothing else has attempted Rather than a city or medieval landscape or a warzone, Psychonauts creates inventive environments based on each character’s mind, dance parties, board games and a miniature city are all traversed through Psychonauts is a collectathon in finding minds, arrowheads, baggage tags and figments across the environments, these are however, mostly optional, if you’re not interested in collecting A general critique of the game would be that it’s unpolished, with awkward collision detection and slippy controls, but honestly, i’d rather play an unpolished but fun game over a polished but boring one Psychonauts is a game worth checking out, as it should be fairly cheap on Steam, there’s certainly not much like it

Chibi-Robo is one of those games you’ve probably heard about from YouTubers such as Scott the Woz, but have never played, simply because it was a commercial flop, and therefore, is incredibly expensive, up to £150 or so The game simply involves a little robot doing chores, and solving mysteries, exploring the house, helping the people, and the toys, released in 2005 and 2006, Chibi-Robo arrived in the West just prior to the launch of the Wii, the GameCube was old news and the game had little fanfare-as a matter of fact, its reviews were kind of mixed, most agreed that it had a fantastic premise, but that there are several blemishes here and there which add up Let’s list those blemishes Subpar Graphics Poor Framerate The Recharging System and Day and Night Cycle The Exposition Bot Let’s look at the graphics first I see where people are coming from, there are low-poly objects, blurry and pixelated textures, but the characters and environments honestly don’t look bad at all, they really pop in their colour and texture, the reflection effects are surprisingly good too, if you look back at Metroid Prime, Luigi’s Mansion or Super Mario Sunshine, they still look good, but they do have some elements of their time, you can spot some low-detail textures, some low-poly assets and the like, but they shine in their art styles, Chibi-Robo, is the same case Chibi-Robo’s sense of scale and detail is impressive for the GameCube, and frankly, I encountered no pop-in or level of detail to speak of, and as for framerate, I encountered no drops to speak of, even if there were, does it really matter? The game’s isn’t a fast-paced action romp Chibi-Robo’s gameplay and style takes inspiration from a handful of Nintendo titles, day and night cycles like in Majora’s Mask or Animal Crossing, it also shares a focus on interacting with NPCs like Animal Crossing and Zelda games The day and night cycle can be annoying, initially 5 minutes, you can virtually immediately increase it to 15, but there will be moments where you’ve made a new discovery but time is about to run out The charging gets better as you gain more battery, there are sockets everywhere, but certain actions taking a lot of juice can be annoying, as can the option to save every time you recharge, that could have used an autosave feature Telly Vision is the intentionally annoying exposition machine, he’ll definitely be annoying in the early game but gets less so as the game goes on The game does a good job at making you feel excited at progression while still making the early game fun, we get to purchase a Hot Rod and Spaceship, you want to get upstairs, you want to get to the higher shelves, but the plot early on is very slow, there are several moments where it feels like progression requires a random encounter But overall, if you’re interested and willing to pay the high price, go for it, it’s a nice unique game with a lot of neat ideas

This pleasantly surprised me After seeing Infinity War, I was waiting impatiently for the next film, The Incredible Bulk chronicles Thanos (Josh Brolin) moving to New Mexico and working as a stripper, Thanos was the hottest character of all time in IW, but I wasn't expecting him to bear all, anyway, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is now an army sergeant and is trying to chase after his thicc ass The other Avengers are absent from the film for whatever reason, but the climax was amazing, the most realistic CGI I have ever seen, I was on the edge of my seat, the film's $14,000 budget really shows

I initially wasn’t too interested in this game, I thought it was gonna be a dull cave game, but when I played it on the SNES Mini, I was blown away First, the controls are interesting, instead of Y to run, B to jump and A to shoot, it’s B to run, A to jump and X to shoot-and you get used to this! If not, you can configure the controls in the options menu The music is haunting and beautiful, to match the graphics, which are rich in colour, minor details, and even some animated background detail such as flashing The game is fast-paced and fun, though it is still a SNES game, an experienced player will probably breeze through in about 5 hours And some areas are more fun to explore than others They’ll be some frame drops here and there but nothing too bad OK, so we’ve gotten this far without explaining the gameplay, it’s amazing This is a game about upgrades, going back to old areas with those upgrades to unlock new areas The game is basically a collectathon, the minimap shows blue tiles for rooms you haven’t entered, and pink tiles for rooms you have You find more health tanks and ammo, find suit upgrades, bomb, grappling beam, freeze ray Normal gun for blue doors Missile for pink doors Super missile for green doors Power bomb for orange doors And there’s tons of secrets you need to have a sharp eye to notice Oh, and the bosses are great too, incorporating platforming and such to defeat them Everything comes together brilliantly, and it’s a great game to Speedrun It does show its age a tad, but it’s still amazing, if you’re interested in retro games, you must play this

A gaming masterpiece Banjo-Kazooie is a game every gamer should play, it demonstrates the creativity and addictive gameplay that every game should strive for-but at the same time it does show its age It’s a collectathon platformer, 100 notes are in every level, 10 jiggies are earned by solving puzzles and helping the locals with tasks, each level is completely different in style, the premise is fantastic and collecting things is satisfying Graphically, it’s colourful and textures are often sharp, model pop-in is handled with a point of interest system There’s definitely difficulty spikes and you need to collect all 100 notes without dying, which can be tough And the levels are small, the game’s sequel, Banjo-Tooie, definitely expands and improves things, but Kazooie is one of the most iconic games on the N64 and worth checking out