When brawling through Wood Oak City’s prison and police station, the level’s end comes in the commissioners office. In anger, the corrupt leader smashes his desk, revealing a hidden briefcase full of cash. Things changed for Streets of Rage. The series began with Axel, Adam, Blaze – all detectives – fighting against the criminally-infested, rotting… Continue reading Streets of Rage 4 (Xbox One)
Sonic’s mainstream origins lie within a snappy marketing campaign. Sega didn’t need a mascot at the time – it needed a weapon in schoolyard fights between kids who owned rival consoles. Peer pressure did the rest to push Sega’s consoles under Christmas trees instead of Nintendo’s. Whether Sonic the Hedgehog was actually good or not… Continue reading Sonic Mania (Switch)
Sonic Forces, like the bevy of other modern Sonic games, traps itself between legacy and newness. The idea is taken to its logical extreme, patterned from Sonic Generations – new, leaner Sonic fights Dr. Eggman alongside the pudgier classic Sonic. It’s a story of resistance, an easy narrative seedling in 2017. The frequency alone of… Continue reading Sonic Forces (PS4)
The tap-tap-tap rhythm of Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire turns its players into the equivalent of a cat playing with a tablet’s virtual aquarium. YouTube provides endless hours of examples. Human paws aren’t as adorable though. As opposed to phony aquariums, Crazy Taxi’s spin-off dishes out phony money. It’s a cycle of tapping and watching dollar bills… Continue reading Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire (iOS)
This remake of Sega’s Wonder Boy III treats the game with more reverence than is likely deserved. In doing so, Wonder Boy turns into an aesthetic spectacle. Dragon’s Trap harnesses the pop-art of the charming, mischievous fantasy lost behind the original Master System’s synthetic neon color palette. With stellar animation, providing the agency of a… Continue reading Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap (Xbox One)
At times, Fire & Ice finds the necessary tenants of classic Sonic. Stage designs whip the hedgehog around with the needed pace (with some wonderful racing stages) and layouts keep up a consistent flow. However, those designs come cobbled together from obvious pieces, lending Fire & Ice an unavoidable repetition. Thankfully, the inexcusable forced item-hunting… Continue reading Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice (3DS)
Power Drift finally finds a Stateside release in this 3D collection, one of Yu Suzuki’s least known works. The surreal kart racer uses an unusual road aesthetic and the pace of Afterburner for an eclectic pole position battle. Alongside Power Drift are nine others (three of which are Fantasy Zone incarnations). Most have been on… Continue reading Sega 3D Classics Collection (3DS)
Despite immediate indifference to a world populated with pitchy-voiced anime characters, Rodea’s Pinocchio story (a robot comes to understand the realities of being human) is surrounded by everything lovely. Elegant, Rodea’s world is freeing despite linear and guided pathways. The sense of freedom provided by the unorthodox motion control set-up gifts the Yuji Naka-born sky… Continue reading Rodea: The Sky Soldier (Wii)
Few will finish Project X-Zone 2. There’s little reason to. At a bloated 45 or 50 some hours, its redundancies grow tiresome. This tri-publisher cross-over shows no pacing discipline. Neither did the first X-Zone – that was 70 hours. These games are enamored with themselves. Even shy of the halfway mark though, there’s enough to… Continue reading Project X-Zone 2 (3DS)
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