Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (Part 3)

Crash Bandicoot 1 – 2: Cortex Strikes Back – 3: Warped!

4: It’s About Time (Part 1) – (Part 2) – (Part 3)

Back where it all started... But it's not exactly gonna
go the same way.

Assorted Annoyances

This is the kind of game where, if you are not focusing
on getting Gems, you will have a hard time, but it will
be doable. My mistake was trying to go for the All Crates
Gems every time I entered a level.. and suffering a lot
because of it. In my defense, I thought it wouldn't be
that bad, after playing the previous games!

You know what, let’s get the annoyances out before the finale. So, this game is… Well, I have already brought up the difficulty. I think I haven’t made it clear yet. Dying 20 times per level? That was at the beginning. The closer to the end I got, the bigger that number got. It wasn’t rare to die upwards of 50 times in a level’s first go-through, as I discovered, one painful mistake after the other, all the ways in which Crash/Coco/Tawna/Dingodile/Cortex could die. It is, by no means, the only tough platformer I’ve played all year, but it is among the hardest I’ve ever played – and, honestly, I think it might be the hardest I’ve pushed through, all the way to the end credits.

I remember hating the "Run on walls" parts. If your momentum
is stopped, you fall and die. And these parts love to put crates
in your way, so you have to break them. Oh! And combine
that to the gravity shenanigans in later worlds, too! Ugh.

I know I said that the original three Crash games had cruel platforming moments; I found that out as I was discovering them through the N. Sane Trilogy (though, as has been mentioned, the remasters aren’t entirely identical to their originals, which I haven’t really played). In comparison to Crash 4, Crash 1 through Warped! feel like a goddamn walk in the park. And I think a part of that might be caused by Crash 4’s own excesses. The levels are too long, several levels have too many crates, every instance with a Quantum Mask throws something new at you…

A lot fo bonus stages are all about using your abilities at
very specific moments and slapping steel ! crates in
what order, and when, for a chance to destroy every crate.
I miss the simplicity of the average Crash 1-through-3
Bonus Stage.

Speaking of crates, Bonus levels make a return. They keep the system from the remasters: If you die in them, you don’t lose a life, and the Bonus level transporter counts as a free Checkpoint. But! In the remasters, they were generally easy. Well, no more. Bonus levels in It’s About Time decided, “you know what? The player doesn’t lose lives playing these, so fuck it, we’re gonna be insanely hard!” In an utterly brutal game, these manage to be even worse. They often require use of the Quantum Masks, and are designed like puzzle platformers. You must figure out the right path, often backtracking both ways, to break every crate, and in what order, as there is sometimes only one correct “answer” to catch everything. And! Let me remind you that these bonus levels are mandatory, because their crates still count within their level’s total! Can’t figure it out? Tough shit!

Making things phase in and out, including barriers that can
get in your way, while you are also running on walls and
carefully timing your jumps. It's... a little much.

After a while, Crash 4 starts to feel more like a puzzle platformer than just a platformer. In fact, I know I have seen or played games with the exact mechanics brought forth by the Quantum Masks – but usually they aren't all in the same product. Making things appear and disappear to progress? Seen it. Messing with time? Seen it. Gravity shenanigans? Seen it! Hell, even ‘Akano’s ability involves some degree of knowing when to turn the special spin on or off. At the end, you must often adapt to using the masks interchangeably within the same level… or, in the very final stretches, one after the other in quick succession. Crash 4 is basically 4 puzzle platformers in one Bandicoot-shaped trench coat.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (Part 2)

Crash Bandicoot 1 – 2: Cortex Strikes Back – 3: Warped!

4: It’s About Time (Part 1) – (Part 2) – (Part 3)

A new ally? And more coming? Things are about to get interesting.

Super-Spinning, Magic Potions, and Funny Costumes

At the end of Salty Wharf, the group finds the second Quantum Mask, as confirmed by Lani-Loli. The new guy is named ‘Akano and he represents dark matter. Though he doesn’t say much, he packs quite a punch.

This is not flying, this is spinning with style!

The next dimension we visit is Tranquility Falls, which looks like a fantasy land. Spyro could live here! The enemy wanting a rematch with our heroes is N. Brio, whose chemical concoctions can do so much they might as well be magic. This world is our first use of ‘Akano. This mask’s ability is a powered-up spin, not unlike an ability gained in Warped!. Unlike the regular spin, it is triggered by pressing the X button (like all mask abilities), and will make the Bandicoot spin and as long as you haven’t pressed X again to cancel it. While spinning through this method, Crash and Coco’s jumps become very floaty, giving them extra reach, and they will instantly destroy any breakable crates they touch. This can be a double-edged sword since the heroes still get hurt if they spin into TNT and Nitro crates.

Ah yes, Legally Distinct Big Green Angry Smasher Guy.

At the end of this world, we square off against N. Brio, and this fight begins similarly to the one in Crash 1 and its N. Sane Trilogy version. In the second round, Brio drinks his own potion and becomes a hulking brute that attacks directly. To damage this form, we need ‘Akano, as the boosted spins are the only thing that can knock Hulkbrio off-stage and hurt him.

Gotta tough out the sonar-style chase sequence.

After N. Brio is defeated, we unlock the N. Verted Mode. It opens a new version of every level beaten so far; and for every subsequent level, an N. Verted version is unlocked after beating the original. A few things change in this new challenge; for starters, Wumpa fruits are replaced by… Grape-like Berries! Gasp! The second is that the stage is horizontally flipped; Bonus stages and 2D sections are crossed right to left, and all 3D areas are mirrored.

Oh, they still haven't learned to swim. They just don't
need to in the Sn@xx Dimension N. Verted.

Each N. Verted world has its own design twist that makes it trickier to navigate – as if they weren’t so goddamn hard already! As an example, on N. Sanity Island, the level will be made of silhouettes, and the place will go dark unless you periodically use the spin, lighting up the area like the ping of a submarine sonar. In Salty Wharf, the world starts in black and white, aside from crates and enemies; several actions will bring back the color, which will stick even if you die. The screwy design changes for the next world, and again in the next, and so on. One world ends up underwater, with all the screwy physics this implies!

Oh, and the Gems return, making for a possible total of 12 for every level; six normal, six N. Verted. Same requirements, too; the only difference is that the hidden Gem is moved to a different spot. Still, good luck getting them all – this takes the game's Gems total from 228 to 456! But hey, at least you can get some cool skins out of them.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (Part 1)

Crash Bandicoot 1 – 2: Cortex Strikes Back – 3: Warped!

4: It’s About Time (Part 1) – (Part 2) – (Part 3)

After its first three installments, the Crash Bandicoot franchise seemingly hit a lull. Plenty of games came out, with some following the Mario Spinoff formula: Make ‘em race! Make ‘em go around a board and play mini-games! Platformers still happened amidst all these new concepts, with varying levels of quality. However, fans felt like there was no true return to form until the N. Sane Trilogy came out. This renewed vigor eventually led to the making of a new, proper, “official” sequel to the OG trilogy.

We're starting on known ground.
Don't worry, that's gonna change real soon.

And yes, I played and talked about the N. Sane Trilogy these past three weeks exclusively so I could have the necessary background to talk about this one. Fans had to wait 22 years after Crash Bandicoot: Warped! for it to come out. But Crash 4 finally did, with a release for PS4 and Xbox One on October 2nd, 2020, then to Switch, PS5 and XSXS on March 12th, 2021, then two weeks later on PC. You’ve already seen this game’s title at the top of this article, and it’s very tongue-in-cheek, considering the long time between this entry and the one that precedes it in the strange chronology of the Crash series. For the needs of this story, it acts like no new games happened between the franchise's third and fourth installments; you can bet they will make a joke or two about that. Well then! It’s about time we cover the conclusion of this epic! (…Unless a Crash 5 comes out eventually.) For the record, I am playing this one on Switch.

They’re Back

N. Tropy is a surprisingly much darker villain in this game
than just about any other enemy Crash has ever faced.

Following their defeat in Crash 3, Neo Cortex, N. Tropy, Uka Uka, N. Gin, and for some reason, N. Brio as well, are stuck in a place out of time. They’ve been stuck there for what feels like decades. (I mean… at least two of ‘em). Cortex keeps self-pitying over his repeated failures, while Uka Uka attempts to open a portal to get them out of this place and back to the world they desperately want to take control of. In a stroke of luck, the evil mask finally makes a tear through the fabric of reality that will allow them to return, but the task is so exhausting that it falls unconscious. The scientists opt to escape while leaving the commanding, nasty mask behind. In its place, Nefarious Tropy, the time master, takes leadership of the group. He’s already seeing far beyond full control of the world…

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy: Warped!

Crash Bandicoot 1 – 2: Cortex Strikes Back – Warped!

4: It’s About Time (Part 1) – (Part 2) – (Part 3)

Finishing the trilogy today!

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped!

This guy scares the biggest enemy we've had so far. That
usually means nothing good.

The game begins after the good ending of Crash 2 – the one you get by collecting all the Gems and beating Cortex again. The diminutive scientist’s space station explodes and crashes onto the planet, striking an old temple. Out of it comes an evil spirit known as Uka Uka; if you’ve played the rest of the N. Sane Trilogy, you may recognize this mask as the guy who threateningly says “Game Over” when you lose all your lives. Cortex has been working for Uka Uka this entire time, first by making the animals into smart but docile soldiers, and second by making Crash gather magical crystals. The evil mask was the one trying to enslave the entire planet all along. In an attempt to do it right this time, the mask summons a new, blue-skinned scientist with a clock theme…

Sounds important, I should listen to what Aku Aku is sayi-
Oh, the Bandicoots adopted Polar? Awwwwwwww!

And so we begin in the medieval era, with frogs that turn
into people if they kiss Crash, and lab assistants behaving
as if they were at the renaissance fair.

The wind turns on Wumpa Islands. Aku Aku immediately knows what’s up. The guardian mask of the islands (now voiced by Greg Eagles, whom you might know as Grim from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy) tells the Bandicoots about the villainous Uka Uka. He teleports the two to the Time Twister. This floating base owned by Cortex’s new scientist ally will allow the villains to hunt down the Crystals across past eras, since we’ve already found them all in the modern day. It’s up to Crash and Coco to get the Crystals (and the Gems) first, beating out their enemies. Oh, that’s it? We’re doing a Time Heist? Let’s go! I can't wait to see the endgame of that!

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - 2: Cortex Strikes Back

Crash Bandicoot 1 – 2: Cortex Strikes Back – Warped!

4: It’s About Time (Part 1) – (Part 2) – (Part 3)

Welcome back to this year’s anniversary reviews! Today, we’re moving to the next game in the collection!

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

Uh oh. He's got a lightbulb moment, and that means
nothing good.

This story begins immediately after Crash 1. Neo Cortex was tossed from his zeppelin and is falling to the islands below. He survives the crash (pun intended) and finds that he has landed in an underground cave where he finds a crystal glowing a faint purple. He gets a new idea…

Turtle armadillo, doesn't matter; you're in my way!

Cut to a year later. Crash Bandicoot and his brainy sister Coco are chilling on their island when Coco’s laptop runs out of juice. Just the usual problem for her, really. And even though she’s playable here, no way she’s going to get a new battery herself! Nah, bro’s gotta do it. Crash thus embarks on this quest. But midway through the first level, he steps on a teleporter and gets abducted. He appears on a space station owned by Cortex and his new assistant, Dr. N. Gin. He is greeted by a giant hologram of Cortex’s face.

"You better not pull out your yo-yo while I am expositing,
Crash! Are you... Hey! I said put that away!"

I see it over there! Yeah. That's the point.
They aren't hard to find. At all!

Cortex says that, although they have been enemies before, he and the Bandicoot need to team up against an even greater threat coming from space – soon the planets will align, and the resulting energy might destroy the Earth. Cortex has found the Master Crystal that can put a stop to this; however, it needs several more “slave” Crystals to have enough power to prevent the catastrophe. the diminutive scientist claims he will need the physically capable mammal to collect 25 Crystals scattered around the world. Cortex will provide the means of teleportation, and occasional commentary on our progress.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - Crash Bandicoot 1

Crash Bandicoot 1 – 2: Cortex Strikes Back – Warped!

4: It’s About Time (Part 1) – (Part 2) – (Part 3)

Yeeaaahhhh... I was not a fan. In fact, after playing today's
games, I might like Crash Purple even less.

I don’t know if anyone else reading this knows what the first game ever reviewed on this blog was, way back on July 19th, 2013. Well, it was actually a duet of games for the Game Boy Advance: Crash Purple: Ripto's Revenge, and Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy. This not-very-ambitious crossover had Crash and Spyro square against each other due to the machinations of their respective villains. The games, developed by Vicarious Visions were… shall we say… not that great. At best, they were tolerable 2D platformers that put much bigger focus on playing mini-games, of all things. Anybody that’s accustomed to Crash’s usual extra-tough 2.5D platforming or Spyro’s 3D platforming likely didn’t get their money’s worth.

Run! Ruuuuuuun!

I bring this up because I haven’t touched either franchise since. That review was 13 years ago. And even on Steam, when I got my hands on the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and the Spyro Reignited Trilogy, it took me forever to even think of playing them. Well! I’m crossing one of these two off the bucket list for this year’s anniversary review. Maybe the other one next year? Who knows.

I also have Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time among the games I want to cover this year, and I have a little rule for myself: If I want to cover a game that isn’t the first in a series, but I own any that came before in that series, then I will want to cover those previous ones too if it matters. Might as well get this show on the road. I can call it a… Crash course across the franchise.

Also developed by Vicarious Visions, and published by Activision, the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy was released first to PlayStation 4 on June 30th, 2017, and to Steam a year later. It is comprised of remastered/remade versions of the franchise’s first three games, all of which were PlayStation games originally developed by Naughty Dog:

• Crash Bandicoot, released on September 9th, 1996;
• Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, on November 6th, 1997;
• And Crash Bandicoot: Warped, on November 3rd, 1998. This would be the last proper entry for these platformers for about 22 years.

One game per year? Crash is a regular! …Well, not to this blog he isn’t! But I’m looking forward to correcting that. We’re starting this collection of games NOW!

Donkey Kong Country Returns

If there’s a Nintendo platforming franchise I’ve seldom discussed, it’s Donkey Kong Country. I’ve only ever played the very first game, on the SNES, and even wrote a quick “Gaming Memories” article about it some time ago. The two sequels? I’ve never played them, though I know they are available among the Nintendo Classics, and so are all the Donkey Kong Land games for Game Boy consoles. DK 64? Also never played, but I heard a lot about it (as well as all the ways that fans improved its system on emulators). Anything else? Well, I could talk about the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, but the plumber has no business stealing the spotlight today.

This series returned on the Wii. Developed by Retro Studios (instead of Rare, obviously) and released on November 21st, 2010 in North America, this entry sees a return to playing with both DK and his buddy Diddy Kong as a new villain rises on their island. Notably, this game had a port for Nintendo 3DS released in 2013, and an HD rerelease for the Switch in January 2025; today, I am covering the Wii game.

Tiki Threat

Oh, that's a big one. Good. It'll just be more satisfying to
break it into pieces at the end.

A normal day on Kong Island is interrupted by the eruption of its volcano. Out of the bubbling lava come large rocks that break, revealing tiki monsters that instantly cool down in the open air. Along with them, a gigantic tiki monster appears from the depths of the volcano. The deity instantly requests a tribute to appease him. The tikis get to work, hypnotizing the island fauna to do their bidding. They direct the animals to steal… what else? Donkey Kong’s banana hoard, of course!

Disney Illusion Island

One of my mistakes in 2025 was that I bought too many games. The only solution is to keep clearing the backlog, by going through the quicker ones first. Gotta start somewhere!

Disney Illusion Island, developed by Dlala Studios, was first released on the Nintendo Switch on July 28th, 2023. It was then released to other platforms (PS5, PC, Xbox) on May 30th, 2025. I found the Switch version in the wild, it looked fun, and there I was, with one more game. I’m incorrigible. But hey, it’s Disney and it’s got a cool art style, so why not. The game’s name is a reference to Mickey Mouse’s Castle of Illusion on SEGA systems and its follow-ups. But this time, we can play as Mickey, Minnie, Donald or Goofy – or up to all four at once!

Heroes Wanted

Our game begins as Mickey makes his way to a picnic destination on an island, indicated by a map sent by Minnie. Or so he thinks. After he’s found the spot, he’s joined by Minnie, who says HE sent her a map to this spot. Donald and Goofy, who were also sent maps, show up. All four are puzzled, so they investigate a twinkling sound coming from a nearby area.

Someone wanted all four of them there, but why?
(Thanks to Gamer's Little Playground for the playthrough,
which I am picking my screenshots from.)

Ah yes! Toku, the benevolent quest giver! Disregard the
eye twitch, totally normal benevolent response to annoyance.

They trace the sound to a red bush, and after crossing it they find a large library with an open bookcase. They are greeted by furred creatures known as the Hokuns and their leader, Toku, who welcomes them to the magical world of Monoth. Toku is the one who sent the maps, as he needs their help. Donald is enraged to find out there won’t be a picnic, but the team stays and listens. Toku explains that the three magical tomes of their bookcase have gone missing, stolen by three thieves inhabiting the three biomes of Monoth, and this could endanger their world. The Hokun doesn’t seem to know that the Mickey cartoons are in-universe fictions, in which the group only pretends to be heroes – but Mickey and his friends agree to try and be real heroes for once.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Dungeon Dice Monsters

Most Yu-Gi-Oh! games are all about the franchise’s card game. Those began appearing early in the manga’s pages, and it only took a few books before the story shifted to focus on tournaments. However, before those, the manga had several tomes in which Yugi’s alter ego played various games, against many opponents. The early days were DARK; Yugi’s first Shadow Game had someone almost stab themselves for a game about picking up bills with a knife. In another, he burned a criminal to death.

As far as game tables go, I think those in the manga (for
Duelist Kingdom and Dungeon Dice Monsters) make more
sense than the giant arenas from the anime.

Then, there was Duel Kingdom. Shortly afterwards, there was Battle City, which ended up with rules much closer to the real card game. However, between the two, a short arc introduced another game of Kazuki Takahashi’s making: Dungeon Dice Monsters (shortened DDM). Created by Duke Devlin (Ryuji Otogi in the original Japanese), an aspiring game maker whose family sets up shop near Yugi’s home, the game features monsters appearing when dice are deployed on a field. I will explain much more in due time.

These odds are looking good!

There was also a whole thing about a disfigured man in a clown mask, an intense desire for revenge, and arson, but that’s because the manga has always been ballsier than the anime.

Dungeon Dice Monsters was eventually adapted into a physical board game. It never quite caught on, probably due to the complexity of the system that demanded a full board to play as well as the associated dice – not quite as simple as just playing with cards! It also got an adaptation on the Game Boy Advance, released in North America on February 11th, 2003 (though it came out two years earlier in Japan), and a rerelease in the Early Days Collection.

What IS Dungeon Dice Monsters Anyway?

Try not to get yourself cornered.

I’ll open by explaining the game, its rules, and its mechanics. As the name indicates, this game trades cards for dice. The board is made of 13X19 squares, with players on opposite sides. Each player has a pool of 15 dice, which will be the ones they roll. Each player has a figurine named the Die Master in front of them; this figurine starts with three hit points.

Dice sides are called Crests. There are six different  types: Summon, Movement, Attack, Defense, Spell and Trap. Every die has a different selection of these Crests – as an example, a die may have one or two Attack Crests, or maybe none! The only Crest guaranteed to be on every die is the Summon type. Dice have levels ranging from 1 to 4, and the lower the level is, the more Summon Crests it will have.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories

The first Yu-Gi-Oh! dueling simulator was a bit of a mess, but some of that could be excused from the game releasing while the manga’s first tournament arc wasn’t over, the mechanics weren’t set in stone and the card game as we know it now did not exist yet, and being on Game Boy meant much smaller data storage space.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories (not to be confused with the next Yu-Gi-Oh! game, also titled Dark Duel Stories) was released on July 8th, 1999 in Japanese only. We get to play it freely and in English thanks to the Early Days Collection released in February 2025. With more space in the cartridge and a stronger system, surely this new installment improves on the first game, right?

...Hey, that box art is just reusing the
Volume 10 cover art!

The New Tournament

Ahhhh! Color!

Just like Duel Monsters I, this game is a dueling simulator split into stages containing multiple duelists. You must defeat every opponent in a stage 5 times to unlock the next. This makes some sense, since you are drip-fed cards to improve your deck; you only receive one card at each victory against a CPU opponent, dropped from that opponent’s pool of rewards. This justifies having to beat every opponent repeatedly, since you wouldn’t otherwise gather enough cards to stand a chance against better opponents.

The plot? Just a different tournament beyond Duelist Kingdom, again helmed by Pegasus. Who cares, really.

The Stage 1 opponents (Yugi, Joey, Bakura and Tristan) are laughable; I went through those 20 duels without editing my deck once. They’re basically a tutorial. None of them ever use monsters with ATK higher than 500. Enemy decks are once again randomized out of their personal card pools, with some cards having higher chances to appear than others. Opponents cannot fuse their own monsters, nor use Magic or Trap cards.

However, they can still destroy your monsters
if they get lucky with Alignments.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Duel Monsters I

Back with another themed month, and I return to the well of Yu-Gi-Oh! Except, this time, I’ll be focusing on older games. In February 2025, Konami released the Early Days Collection, which contains 14 (technically 16) games from the earliest of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. I already covered one of these, The Sacred Cards, in the first year of Planned All Along, which leaves 13 games to cover (technically 15; you’ll understand why I say that, but not until next year).

This volume had the duel against PaniK,
also known as the Player Killer of
Darkness in the original Japanese,
because the manga was edgy like that.

I figured that I would start with the shortest games (according to How Long To Beat); but the four I’m planning to cover this month, I’ll do in chronological order. I’m opening today with the first game in the entire collection, the original Duel Monsters, released for the Game Boy on December 16th, 1998. Several of these classics had never been officially released in languages other than Japanese before, so it’s a chance to discover them and experience the start of a legacy.

Technically, it isn’t the first Yu-Gi-Oh! game ever released (the actual first was based on a lesser game from the manga’s history, Monster Capsule), but it is the first to feature the card game that would then take over the anime and be the sole focus of every following series. When it came out, the manga itself was at its tenth volume, in the middle of the Dueling Kingdom tournament arc. Barely halfway in, not even in the finals. The duel against Pegasus is still far. The timeframe in which this game was made explains a lot about it. For starters, the characters we meet and duel are only the ones we have seen in the manga pages up to that point.

However, it’s most notable in gameplay, with duels obeying the, um… elastic rules of Duelist Kingdom. I’ll get there soon enough.

The OG Duel Simulator

Choose your fighter Duelist!

Before the game starts, Yami Yugi tells the player to input their duelist name. It’s not important in the Story Mode, but it is a screen name for dueling and trading with other players using a Link Cable (remember, this was the Game Boy era).

Story? What’s that? When the game begins, your first screen shows the mugs of Yugi Muto, Joey Wheeler, Tristan Taylor and Bakura Ryo. We can surmise, based on the background showing a large boat, that we’re on the ship taking our characters to Duelist Kingdom. Each of these four will say the same thing: If you want to proceed, you’ll have to beat them all five times. Why five? Shouldn’t one be enough? Nah, not here.

Okay, back to that pin about gameplay. The card game as we know it didn’t even exist yet. The cards at the time were the Bandai OCG, a short-lived version that ended in 1999, when the actual Konami card game began and overtook the former in popularity. As a result, early Duel Monsters video games had the bare minimum to base themselves on, gameplay-wise. All they had was the Duelist Kingdom rules (which would later be streamlined for the second tournament arc, Battle City). Also, take into account the hardware limitations: A Game Boy cartridge could only contain a maximum of 4 megabits of data, and the game had to be designed to account for the tiny screen.

Year Plans 2025: What I've Missed

Boy, this has been… a year. Please ignore my twitchy eye. Or the emotional exhaustion. Let’s just… talk about video games today, alright?

For the newcomers: I started setting up Year Plans in 2023, as a way to force myself to check out games selected somewhat at random through my collection. The idea was that if I only ever chose on my own what I wanted to play, there are games I own that I’d never touch! So why not leave it to luck? Of course, as I realized at the end of that year, I can always misjudge and overshoot. After all, I take direct inspiration from HowLongToBeat lengths to make these random picks, and I can never know how long a game will truly take me, versus how long that website says it takes on average. That said, I’m a very thorough player and I often go beyond just finishing a game's main story, so it often takes me longer than those indicated lengths to finish games.

Every year so far, I ended up with plenty of games I was hoping to cover in those 12 months, that I ultimately ran out of time for. 14 in 2023, and 17 in 2024. This year, however, I am proud to announce that I don’t have a lot of leftovers… only 8. I call that a win! But still, I wanted to operate the same way as before, by playing just an hour of each game and report on it for the last article of the year. Hell, there were so few this time around, I juggled with the idea of playing two hours of each instead! But nah. One hour will be enough. I’ll just write more for each.

The estimated duration of the eight games today ranges between 11 and 67 hours (…don’t start), and would have taken me an extra 250 hours to get done. I don’t think I would have had enough time.

Well then! With so few, I guess I won’t split these into categories!

Team Sonic Racing

Out of my way, Amy! I'm gonna steal the third place from
you!

There are many Sonic racing games out there, though for a while they existed under the “Sonic & All-Stars” umbrella that allowed characters from other properties to join the roster. This doesn’t quite work for Team Sonic Racing's concept, where characters play in their classic teams (with a few changes) and have to rely on each other to win each race. Each team has a Speed character (Sonic, Amy, Shadow, etc.), with a race car that has faster speed than average; a Technical character (Tails, Omochao, Rouge, etc.) with better handling and the ability to pick up rings more easily; and a Power character (Knuckles, Big, E-123 Omega, etc.) that is slower, but unaffected by most road hazards.

Five teams, 15 characters total, and the entire game is built around teamwork. The car of your teammate closest to first place leaves a trail behind, and the other two can drive along that trail to gain a speed boost. It feels a little like teamwork rubberbanding. Racers can pick up Wisps as power-ups – many of which feels directly inspired by similar items in Mario Kart.

One hour wasn’t enough to go too far into it, so I haven’t seen yet whether having to rely on your two CPU allies to get ahead leads to issues down the line (you never know how well the AI will play, after all), so… guess I’ll see when I get around to it.

Quick Review: Storm of Spears

Time for the mandatory RPG Maker game of the year! And, uh, I have thoughts.

The first of many major fights.

Developed by Warfare Studios, published by Senpai Industrial Studios (which publishes a lot of RPG Maker games), and released on June 17th, 2016, Storm of Spears is set the fantasy world of Gallagar, led by a tyrannical queen. Rebellion is usually squashed fast. We follow a group of four mercenaries known as the Night Swords, led by Sura. When talks of plans of a true, widespread rebellion comes to them, they are thrown into action, at great cost. Sura’s younger brother is mortally wounded during the liberation of their home town, which leaves her determined to see this to the end, no matter what it takes.

This RPG is simple, with- whoooooah there! Okay, I must address this before everything else.

...These both look uncomfortable.

For some reason, the "serious, complex story" and
"boobs out portraits" combo makes me REALLY
uncomfortable. Like those elements are so
diametrically opposite, they shouldn't be mixed.

Compared to NPCs who get just a headshot next to their text, we get full-body art of the four main characters: Sura, Edryan, Valeese and Gyorg. Fine for Gyorg, he’s an older man; Edryan has his six-pack abs uncovered, not very practical for action. Sura and Valeese, the two women of the team, are wearing stuff you’d expect on strippers, not action heroines! I know the chainmail bikini trope has been mocked to Hell and back already – these outfits don’t even count, they're not chainmail! My issue isn’t so much about the outfits themselves, it’s how gratuitous and out-of-place this near-nudity feels, ESPECIALLY with everything else in the game. The main character’s younger brother just died? Let’s have a body shot of her with her breasts practically bursting from her top!

Okay. Bad first impression. How’s the rest of the game? Well, combat itself is about as basic as it gets for an RPG, with everything you have come to expect; physical attacks, special spells to cast, characters with different classes (which means specific types of armor and weapons for each), and a level-up system with new attacks or spells learned periodically. It’s almost cookie-cutter in that way.

I love that the environments have plenty of detail.
And I realize I only say that 'cause I saw many RPG Maker
games that didn't bother putting in the extra effort.

They're two, we're four. I like these odds.

One difference with other RPG Maker games is that the game opens with a difficulty selection screen. Casual, Normal or Hard. I’m playing on Normal difficulty, and the game is way too easy. Very few battles proved troublesome. Most enemies go down in two hits. Even the bosses were laughable, with just two maybe putting on a fight. Most random encounters only have two enemies, so you can often finish them before they even have time to strike. You’re warned at the start of the game that some side-quests may be too hard when you receive them and you may need to come back to them later – but I never ran into that issue! On the contrary, everything was too easy!

Also, I kept thinking spells would work with typing
advantages and weaknesses, but Holy Light never did
anything against ghosts, demons, and monsters.

Another issue I noticed was that all four characters could get equipped with the best gear, which made them strong in battle; however, it meant that I rarely, if ever, needed to use any magic spells. The team wizard’s offensive spells paled compared to the damage he dealt by attacking physically, which turned all fights into spamming the attack button for all characters, knowing it would work better than creating a strategy.

The world’s design is good; lots of detail, lots of creative map-building with variety and set-dressing. You can easily tell when the work was put in based on the look of the maps. It's much nicer than some RPG Maker games I've played where the maps were large, but empty, barren, and boring. In all fairness, all the dungeon areas are a bit lacking in enemies; there are no random encounters with invisible opponents here, only roaming ones. An enemy battle is engaged when you make contact with those.

Setting up a Quests section in RPG Maker isn't
simple, so I appreciate this game doing it.

Beyond the story, there’s plenty to do. The pause menu includes a section tracking your ongoing quests; this includes the main plotline (where you can kepe track of what to do next to progress the plot), but also a decent quantity of side-quests to find across the world map. Two quests are larger; the first involves defeating eight elemental lords imprisoned in spires (those bosses have a lot of fanfare but have mostly turned out easy). The second is all about finding fifteen Frozen Tears, hidden all over the kingdom; finding them all unlocks the fight against the final elemental lord. Four more bosses can be encountered, the Golath Souls.

Sure, the big bosses look cool and impressive. But they
fold like marginally-stronger enemies.

As for the story itself? I was surprised at how much it pulled me in. This plot is well-written, with unexpected twists and turns. There are plenty of little scenes for worldbuilding and stuff to read about. There’s never too much backtracking necessary, aside from a few moments related to story events. The characters are well-rounded and interesting, and we often explore their deeper motivations.

In short: A better game than I would have expected from just the first impression, with those full-body portraits. Great story, but the difficulty could have been kicked up several notches, and some specific elements related to combat, like magic spells, could have been fine-tuned so that they’re worth using. Maybe someday I’ll try the hard mode to see if it makes a significant difference…

Storm of Spears is available on Steam for 1.99$ USD.