Bucky O'Hare [NES]

This game is hard. When people talk about "Nintendo hard," they're talking about this game. Some of it comes from cheapness (most bosses have at least one way to kill you instantly. What the fuck?), some of it comes from bugginess (clipping issues mostly), and some of it comes from genuine challenge. This makes it kind of hard to review, since everything else is good. It looks good, it sounds good, and it controls well (when you're not running into the aforementioned clipping issues and such). You can switch characters as you rescue them (the crew of the titular Bucky's ship have been kidnapped and scattered) and they all have different weapons and abilities, such as clinging on walls and jet packs. With all that, is it a good game? ...Well, obviously, no. When you're constantly hitting brick walls that will make you create all new curse words because you've used up all the others, all enjoyment gets drained. Fuck this game. Even if I can't stop going back to it.

Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six [NES]

Lord, this shit is awful. It looks and sounds awful, and coming out in '92, this is pretty inexcusable. Everybody else who put out games at this time knew how to push the system to its limit in terms of graphics and sound (seven years of developing games on a system can do that). Of course, it was crapped out by LJN, the geniuses behind the NES X-Men, so what can you expect.

And it controls horribly as well. It's freaking Spider-Man. If you're going to include his ability to climb walls, you better make him able to climb anywhere, yet here one can only climb on the outside of buildings. What? And who decided that Peter's main attack should be a jump-kick? A hard to aim jump-kick at that. You can attack with punches too, but they're slow and hard to pull off, so why bother? So is swinging around on webs, which is also hard to aim, so, again, why bother? Fuck this game.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon [GBA]

I'm telling you right now that I hate this game. I urge most of you to stop right there, as whenever I mention that I find the post-SotN Castlevania's to be crap-tacular I am almost always met with "YOU ARE A SIMPLE-MINDED FOOL." So if you're one of those people, just stop right now. Go take a walk instead, maybe. Or you might even go get some sweet and sour chicken; I always find that enjoyable. The rest of you, go ahead and keep reading if you want.

Of course, this is all acting like I actually have more than four to six readers. Those four to six of you, please ignore my ego stroking. Please? ; 3; Anyway.

To start off, this game doesn't even star a Belmont (in fact, the Belmonts are never even mentioned), which you wouldn't even know unless you actually pay attention to the story (and, really, who's going to?) as he has the same Belmont shuffle. In other words, by all accounts he is a cripple. That is, until you get an item that lets you run around...by double tapping on the D-pad. So to get around anywhere at anything resembling a reasonable speed, you'll be doing this for the whole game. This is not how you make a good game.

Next is length. This game is long. Long, long, long, long, long. And it has been praised for it. Chrono Trigger was 20 hours of fantastic, and now people bitch if the play time doesn't reach a minimum of 50 hours. But that's another rant. The problem is the length doesn't come from an abundance of content, it comes from artificial padding. While it does have multiple gameplay modes, you only get this after beating the game once, then another after beating it in one style, then another. This is further hurt by the experience not being good the first time. The gameplay modes "shake things up" by either making you focus on physical combat, magical combat, or using just sub-weapons. If I didn't like it the first time, then forcing me to play in a way that I don't want to isn't going to make me like it any more. This is not how you make a good game.

And more artificial extension comes in backtracking. Backtracking, backtracking, and more backtracking. Sometimes it's legitimately to get to a new area, but most of the time it's just to get more widgets. No "As long as I'm here, I'll get all the stuff here." or "As long as I'm here again, I'll get all the stuff that I can get now." No, you have to go back to areas to specifically to get some arbitrary powerup. This is not how you make a good game.

And speaking of all those widgets, most of them are hidden behind breakable walls. You will find most of these by luck, if at all. The problem is is that there are almost no visual clues as to where they lie. There is just a minuscule discrepancy in said walls, and I can't imagine ever being able to see it on the original GBA's dark as fuck screen. To find all of them you'll probably be swinging around at the walls or going up against them with an area of effect spell active trying to find the damn things, and that's not how you make a good game.

But none of those are my biggest gripes. My biggest gripe is, in fact, grinding. By adding in RPG elements in the form of stats and experience and completely fucking up in the process, you now have to kill enemies in the same area over and over again for hours before you can go on to the next area or every single normal enemy turns into a mini-boss. But the grinding is not just for levels. No, the enemies are also your main source of items, equipment, and the necessary items for your magic, cards. The only other place you're going to get stuff is candlesticks for hearts and subweapons, of course. The problem is that, like the breakable walls, there's absolutely no indication of which monsters hold what. And not only that, the probability of whether or not a monster will actually drop one of their items is wholly dependent on your stats, so even if you do figure out which monster drops what, you might not even get said item even if you grind said enemy for hours. Even then, when you do get magic cards, the game doesn't even tell you what they do until you activate them and stumble upon how they work. This can take forever to find out, and when you finally do, it's most likely worthless and you could have been using magic that was actually useful instead of wasting your time figuring out the others. All this is not how you make a good game.

Last complaint. In action-adventure games, the whole point is to find items that both help you in combat and to get around, otherwise you're just wasting your time. However. There is a boss in here that you have to defeat to get an item that you only use once to clean up some water. That's right, you fight a boss just to get a key. This is not how you make a good game.

All in all, Castlevania: CotM hits all the trappings of both bad RPGs and bad action-adventure games, so it fails double. Fuck this game.

Phantom Crash [XBOX]

If one thinks Mech games, usually one tends to think of systems other than the Xbox. But there is a less than unknown game called Phantom Crash which should satisfy gamers who love action and love mechs. The game takes place in neo-Tokyo where mech pilots build their own mechs and take them into three abandoned areas of the city to do battle. You can choose the type of your mech, what weapons it has, what kind of movement it has, etc. It's not as in-depth as Armored Core, but what Armored Core has in depth in customization, Phantom Crash makes up for it in frantic action. Battling takes place in one of three huge maps and goes on forever, or until you leave the area and return home. All three maps are large, and different contenders come in so you never run out of stuff to kill. Rank up, buy better mech parts, have fun, repeat. The story is atrocious though. Ignore that, and you've got yourself a great game.

Meteos [DS]

Who doesn't like Tetris? If you're one of the millions of people who could play Tetris for hours on end, Meteos will become like crack for you. The player chooses a "planet" and has different colored/shaped blocks fall from the sky. It's up to the player to arrange them in lines of three or more using the DS's stylus to then launch them into the sky at other planets. Insane combos can and will happen this way. There's nothing quite as satisfying as launching a screen-filling Meteos attack at your opponent and then watch them crumble. Great puzzle game for the DS, and is in desperate need of a sequel with Wi-Fi play.

Solomon's Club [GB]

A sequel to Solomon's Key. Use a wand to create and destroy blocks to get a key to each room while dispatching or avoiding enemies and collecting bells to rescue faeries. I've never played Solomon's Key, but I have played Fire 'n Ice (Solomon's Key 2), and this is a lot easier than that. Because of this, it's a lot more fun...but, to me at least, not much of a challenge. It's on okay time waster though. Nice and fun and simple.

Jet Set Radio Future [XBOX]

This is the sleeper hit of the original Xbox. A large, free-roaming city split up into several gigantic parts, multiple characters to unlock, a gigantic and eclectic soundtrack and some of the most addicting gameplay ever seen on a console, JSRF is a gem and should be enjoyed by every Xbox owner. Create your own graffiti sprays, tag the most insane futuristic version of Japan imaginable, and do it all to one of the best soundtracks on any videogame. There needs to be a sequel. Now.