Everything that isn't the Sonic Day-Stages ruin this game...
346745
I wanted to like this game. I really did. But everything about the game that isn't the Sonic day levels ruin it. Of course, you've probably heard by now how bad the Werehog levels are. Yes, they are THAT bad. In fact, they are so bad, they pretty much warrant most of this entire score. What's so bad about them though, isn't how lame, corny and repetitive the melee combat is. It's how HORRIBLE Werehog Sonic moves. He's not just slow compared to Sonic, he's just slow, period. He can't even really jump. And the levels are based around fighting hundreds of monsters, and the worst part, doing miss-it-or-die acrobatic stunts with Werehog Sonic. They are SO frustrating! Near controller breaking frustrating! Like, he's supposed to cling onto a ledge or pole, but half the time, it doesn't work! Not having any kind of depth perception whatsoever in the game doesn't help, either. Oh, and he can die from a six foot or more drop, as I learned. The clock tower climb in the Spagonia night level was pure torture. But then again, all of the Werehog levels are. Oh, and the night levels are roughly 15 to 20 minutes long! More than twice as long as the Sonic day levels! Seriously, who thought it'd be fun to make you play as this slow-moving Werehog having to do numerous death stunts when most of the time, he either never clings on to what he's supposed to, or you'll only get a split second to do so. The overworld stuff isn't really fun, either. Just busy work, honestly. The plot is so-so for a Sonic game and I like the idea of an Earth-like world to explore, with similar to real life countries. But overall, outside of the Sonic levels, the game is just tedious, frustating, and a chore to play. Even some of the Sonic levels (like godawful Holoska) are a pain in the you-know-what. All in all, this game is frustating, feels like a chore to play every time, and is almost never fun when you're not speeding through a Sonic day level. Ironically, the Sonic levels were created as an after-thought considering the name of the game. So, avoid this game, unless you can endure the torture of the Werehog and errand-running crap to get to the good stuff of the Sonic day-level speedy goodness.
4545730
Trespasser is not a good shooting dinosaur game. It's frustrating and you're wandering around going nowhere with a stick. If you get a stick as a weapon, you know this game is going to be really bad. Second of all, where the heck are all the dinosaurs? I see a dino on the cover, dontcha think there should be some in the game? What else is bad? Well, I don't even want to talk about the graphics. They look like something you could find on an old Super Nintendo game. The camera angles are just plain awful. Most of the time, you're stuck in a wall with your puny stick. Next, the controls stink. You have to press another button while holding another button to walk. You can't walk straight because of the bad camera angles, you end up walking off a cliff. Whoopee. I'm having a lot of fun holding a stick and walking off cliffs. The only thing that stops this horrible game from getting the dreaded 1 is the music CD inside. You can listen to 7 music tracks on your CD player, watch 5 music videos on your computer, and ignore the other crap on the CD. Now, most of the tracks on the CD really do stink. But, the Powerman 5000 video, Propellerheads' Take California, and the Propellerheads video Bang On! keep the track from being just as bad as the game. So, whoever made this game should thank the music CD because it kept it away from being really really really bad. Oh, wait it already is. 2 stars.
379875
I will never buy a game with invasive, crippling DRM ever again.&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Mass-Effect/dp/B00140P9BA/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Mass Effect</a>&nbsp;had so many problems that I've sworn off giving my money to companies that treat the consumer as 'guilty until proven innocent.' I will also never lease another game, which is effectively what EA is forcing users to do with their limited installs plan.

I should mention that I don't own this game, I played it at a friends house. I will not buy a copy because: 1. The game play is pretty boring, 2. the concept has been dumbed-down to the level where this is a game for 12 year olds, and 3. the draconian DRM.

Now, on to the review. I'm always loved Maxis games, and own all of the sim city games, going back to the original for Nintendo. I also own the Sims, the Sims II, and enjoyed them quite a bit. So I was really looking forward to this game, and have tracked its progress for nearly two years.
I was excited about the concept, and watching as my genetic children grew to take over the universe...

Sadly, most of what was most exciting about that original concept has been stripped from the game. Now, as other have mentioned, adding more legs doesn't increase speed more than a better +5 foot. Many of the genetic options are self-excluding, because why would you pick an inferior body part even if it looked cool, knowing it would make your creatures ultimately inferior?

The game play is tiresome and monotonous. I got bored at the begining, and then the space stage is nearly unplayable. It is so boring, I find myself wishing it were more like Stelcon3D, a game that is almost 20 years old! Seriously, if they wanted to add RTS elements to the game, they should have made it more challenging and less user intensive to manage every little thing...

I honestly hope that EA reads all the backlash here as well as other places and adjusts their draconian, anti-consumer behavior. If not, I hope that enough people REFUSE TO BUY THIS GAME and others with game breaking DRM that companies are forced to respond by changing their policies.
4066606
Sadly this set (with the exception of the better remastered third disc) is a sonic disaster. The bass is blown out and distorted, the high end hurts the ears, etc. It's not uniformly terrible throughout, but you're gonna be disappointed by the songs you know and love. Maybe this box set was remastered to sound okay on iPods and tinny computer speakers, but on a decent home stereo it's a mess.

I did a little research online and it seems the guy who remastered these discs, Peter Mew, has made a career out of ruining a lot of fine music. (The 2013 remaster of the Stranglers' "Old Testament" box set also sounds like a cheap cassette from the 80s thanks to Mr. Mew.) This may be part of EMI's marketing plan - if you really like the music, you'll keep buying the remasters until someone gets it right. But until they do, save yourself some money and don't buy this or anything else Peter Mew has remastered.
626200
As an owner of all three Mass effect games I have been following this series for quite sometime. The storyline leading up this final chapter was wonderful and character development was great. But at the end of this game they complete ruin the series. The developers of this game have shown only loyalty to making quick dollar displayed by their day one DLC release to INSULTING the player to purchase more content after this terrible ending.

 The of plagiarism in these endings from the movie "Contact" like encounter with the child AI only adds to my believe they intend to charge for a DLC ending. This can be backed up by the evidence that the developer charged for day one DLC even though it is present on the disc! The cycle of syntheics attacking also bears strong resemblence to the Battlestar galactica series. Since they do not explain this cycle at all in the game it is clear that they plagiarized this portion as well.  Also the very last part of the old man telling a story can be equated to the ending of Sopranos in viewer satisfaction.

I am not looking for a happy ending or one in which the character survives, I am looking for something that makes sense not something plagiarized from every other sci-fi series

Do not buy this game or support EA as they have completely ruined it
855109
I really loved Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations so I had high hopes for this Sonic game!  Also exciting was the inspiration behind Lost World--an old canceled SEGA Saturn game called Sonic X-treme!  Lost World is a fun game but only when it works--which isn't often.  Sonic has new moves that let him run on walls and over obstacles but it's very finicky and never works as well as you'd like it to.  This game implements motion controls that are completely broken--trying to shoot Sonic out of a cannon is a nightmare.  The power ups from Sonic Colors are back but unlike before these never seem to help out. Due in part to bad level design and bad controls.  Sonic can still home in on enemies when he jumps but strangely now it can send you way off course and to your death.  I've learned to run past every enemy in this game to survive.  There are also many dumb side scrolling levels that feel very out of place in this Sonic game.  The new boss characters are lame too as are most of the boss fights.  Unlike the two previous games in the series most of this game's dialog is very cringe worthy.  Like I said earlier this game is fun but only when it works.  It's really too bad.  The last Sonic games were so good, I can only think that Lost World needed more time in develpoment.
3324747
I bought this game years ago and it was one of the worst games I have ever played.  I am only writing this review now because Amazon sent me an e-mail recommending it.

This game is just terrible, an insult to the legacy of Yoshi's Island.  It is best summarized by probably its biggest issue: this game uses both screens of the DS for gameplay, but the space BETWEEN the screens is also used, meaning that there is a blind spot in the VERY CENTER of the gameplay.  It is nothing but frustration when you keep getting hit by enemies that come out of nowhere from that blind spot, and especially when you play the levels with moving platforms you find yourself being force to play with your character in that blind spot.

Any platformer that thinks it's okay for your character to be invisible knows nothing about good platforming.

I also remember disliking the bosses, but it's been so long that I can't quite remember why.
2256129
This game is not scary or fun to play at all. your character walks painfully slowly, she does EVERYTHING painfully slowly. You don't even really make her walk, you just press forward and she takes little penguin steps across the room. And there's no skipping the little animation every time you move, so if you accidentally press right one too many times you have to watch her slowly look across the room. I'm sure this game was terrifying and beautiful in the nineties but there's really no reason to play it now.
2425107
I'm a pretty big fan of Mario Party. I own every game in the series, and this is easily the worst one. It's such a shame. The 3DS is easily one of my favorite consoles of all time, so I had pretty high hopes for this installment, but their attempt to reinvent the series in the last couple of iterations is saddening.

Here are my main complaints:

- Nontraditional, linear boards: They did away with the classic coins-and-stars gameplay entirely in favor of gimmicks like races and card-based games.
- Short boards: They vary in length, but there's at least one you can win in three turns.
- Overly luck-based: I know, it's Mario Party -- luck is always an element. But there is WAY too much reliance on luck in this installment, for boards and minigames alike. Even some minigames that seem skill-based are more luck-reliant (I'm citing the minigame Stretch Run here -- the strength of the rubber band changes each time you play). Strategy in boards is either nonexistent or ultimately futile because mostly everything can be foiled by a single dice roll gone wrong.
- Lame incentive: You get points for playing boards, but pretty much all you can buy with them are, like, sound tests for these characters you've heard in six hundred other games. Yippee.

But there are some redeeming qualities:

+ Not all the minigames are bad: Some of them, like Color Me Fast, are excellent.
+ Pretty: The game has the beautiful Nintendo polish you would expect.
+ Download play: I suspect the download play multiplayer would be good if the game wasn't so lame. (You can play with up to 3 other players, and they don't even need to own the game, just their own 3DS to play it on.)

All in all, I'd sit this one out. There are so many great games for the 3DS, and so many great Mario Party games. This is neither.
3781044
This game was fun right until the intro ended, everything else in this game was terrible.
4239384
I have played every Mario Kart game since they started on Super Nintendo. This is where I am ending it.

To be fair, this game does have some good levels and large selection of characters, but that does not count for this game's major flaws.

What Mario Kart 8 did wrong:
1. The minimap is not on the TV where it should be, it is on the gamepad. If you use the gamepad, you need to look down at the map to see where everyone is, by the time you look back up at the TV, you ran into a wall or something. Not to mention, if you are not even using the gamepad, you don't get the minimap at all. This could have been fixed if you play on the gamepad itself, the screen is wide enough to fit the game and the map side by side, but they decided that more people would like to use the horn for your kart instead of actually seeing what you are doing indicated by 2 tiny screens on the right side of the gamepad.
2. The camera is just awful during anti gravity racing. It keeps making me want to play F-Zero where the camera stays behind you the whole way, this one just sucks.
3. This is a disc-based game, they should have put as many shortcuts to certain parts of the game as possible. For example, when you get a really bad start on the 1st or 2nd race, you want to start the grand prix over. On this one, you need to quit, wait for it to load, select your options (loads during every transition and sometimes gets stuck on the character select screen because the disc can't find the character you want to select fast enough), select your options, select your cup, then wait like 30 seconds. In Mario Kart 64, you had shortcuts to everything during gameplay when you pressed start which was sometimes unnecessary because cartridges are instantaneous. Even if you play a download copy of Wii U games, the harddrives still take forever to load.
4. The game's difficulty is not based on skill, they are based on luck. In this game, regardless of how well you play, the game will make sure to destroy you completely at the end just before winning a race. You could be in 1st place, get hit by blue shells, lightning bolts and red shells so 3 or 4 computers can pass you. Mario Kart DS and earlier never had that problem.
5. Finally, there is no snaking, there wasn't any snaking in Mario Kart 7 or Wii either, but this game you need it. 15 players against you exclusively, you need some advantage to make sure you can still win after getting slaughtered at the finish line. I know that Nintendo made power-sliding based on a timer rather than skills in rocking the control pad and strictly being faster with the controller than others, but why compensate for people that can't do that? For the last 6 years or so, Nintendo has been bending over backwards for people who just simply aren't good at the harder games.
***6. Also, reintroducing the coin system was a pain. Get 10 coins to go full speed, that is fine, but you lose coins way too easily and the computers usually take them before you can.
***7. Also, the music is just not fitting for Mario Kart. It is like arcade music sort of. In arcades (that thing that died in the United States and was a room with 100's of cabinets of games and is popular everywhere in Japan), there is a lot of noise all around you that on your particular game except for like DDR or MaiMai or Beatmania, you can't really hear your game's music except for the drums or something. The song composition is just unappealing and doesn't feel like it belongs in this game. Also, I don't understand the freeform jazz or swing music.

To be fair, this game is playable, but if you rely on skills you have learned in the first 4 or 5 Mario Kart games to win in this one, you will hate this game. For me, I put this game back in the box and put it with the games that will never be played again. I am not even looking at the Wii U until Smash Brothers comes out.

I am sure that if anyone sees the score I gave, my review will not even be read, I will just get flamed because they don't like my opinion, but that is what a review is, an opinion and why I came up with it.
1417684
Being a fan of the games, I had waited patiently for this for over a year, as the release date was pushed back a whopping 10 months. I would have hoped they could fix any problems in that time, and would have also preferred my review to be about the series and not the discs. Sadly, that cannot be so.

While the first four discs were fine, as was the first 60% of the fifth. Episode 25 started with scenes from episode 24, and then graduated to having an audio track well removed (I would guess minutes off) from the visuals. This problem remained throughout episodes 25 and 26, and basically made them unwatchable.

While a decent series, anything good I could write about it is more than countered by the fact that, at least with these discs, the finale is so screwed up.
2103424
Now hold on just a second! "Star Fox"? You mean that Nintendo franchise that showed off some of the best of what the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 could handle? The series behind those awesome space shooters? No, of course not! This game for the Atari 2600 is completely unrelated to it all. I will say, though, that the title is the reason why I've even heard of this game at all.

The game has you fly around in a ship and shoot things and collect blue crystals that would appear on the ground. The enemies don't even pop up that often, and the blue crystals appear randomly. Although you are equipped with rapidfire, good luck aiming that properly! The ship is a chore to control, and you can't even move side to side while nearby the ground.

The laser sounds get annoying fast and the graphics, while featuring some nice shades of blue and orange, have one shade of gray take up around 70% of the entire screen.
2305514
The moment I heard there was to be a new Spyro game, I went out and specifically purchased a PS2 so I could play it.  From my extensive video game playing experience, the Spyro series are some of the most fun and challenging games to play.
I should have double checked to make sure the fine folks at Insomniac games produced this game (as they did the other 3).  They didn't, and boy does it show.
The mini-games are not challenging, but are annoying and repetitious.  This game is peppered with challenges where you have to beat a timer (like finding all the scarecrows and super flaming them before your timer runs out).  While many of them are doable, there are some that are frustrating to do because the control is so jerky, the camera work is jerky, and the glitches so many, they are impossible to complete.  I am unable to finish my current game because a programming glitch has rendered a non-water world into a water world.  I can't double back because the doorway to the beginning of the level leads to a completely white area (which wasn't white when I started) that the dragon is unable to manouver through.  I could start over, but why re-live the anger and frustration I have experienced thus far?
I plan on avoiding Vivendi Universal games from now on.  They have pretty much destroyed a beloved character and game with their hastily thrown together poor carbon copy of a once great concept.
2534169
This game is not just bad by Sonic standards, which to be honest should not matter in this game since it's a new company and a new spinoff continuity. This game is bad for what I see it as: a licensed movie/show game. This game should be the same as the typical Disney movie or Spongebob game, and even those games are starting to disappear but it fails on that end too. This was made from a company expected to have the experience to make this similar to Jak and Daxter or Ratchet and Clank but it's too basic a game and it doesn't have any organization or polish.

POLISH. Licensed property games are usually just boring. This game is boring AND full of bugs and glitches. Sonic 06 had its good points despite the latter but this one just highlights how they pretty much gave up and decided to release it as is where as the other showed more effort in its rush.

The combat is very barebones. Most kid games have this issue but this game was heavily marketed to older gamers too, so no variety in the combos and moves is just lazy and archaic by today's standards. Also your characters can just "lasso" the robots to their death so quite honestly combat in this game was just not thought of as much as it should.

The "puzzles" are your simple "press this switch", beat this enemy horde", "go the the spot everyone is yelling at you to go."  The platforming does help to distinguish the characters but it still all very clunk and there's no variety. The mach speed sections are garbage. There's runner games on mobile now so there's no reason it's this frustrating, not even hard just maddening or laughable.

And the story is just nonexistent. It's a new universe but no one is reintroduced and it seems like they just expect new kids to know everyone. They also use Metal Sonic and Shadow like jingling of keys. They aren't used properly and Shadow in particular has become the cliche loner bully that is only a boss because he hates how weak you are because of friendship. This is not just immature writing, it's downright lazy, and near-fanfiction levels. The new villain Lyric had potential, said to be darker than Eggman, but his backstory makes little to no sense and the time-travel aspect adds more issues to it as well.

Overall if you're buying this for your kid, get them a Lego game instead. Those have way more content and polish for the simple games they are.

If you're a Sonic fan, stay away from this title. If you think it's so bad it's worth trying, ala 06, just watch YouTube videos.
3248300
It seems every time a company decides to make a GBA port of one of their classic games they always manage to screw something up-See Sonic The Hedgehog for the GBA.  Wolfenstein is no exception, unlike previous versions this one does not have a map screen which makes it very easy to get lost and start running around in circles and the sounds sound like they were ripped by recording a door opening with a microphone and putting it into the game.  If you listen to it with headphones you will know what I mean you can hear plenty of what is called the analog hiss during the sound effect.  Also the sounds don't seem to fade away as much as you move away as they do in the SNES version.  Also the biggest problem of all I saved for last, the game will crash without warning Ive played this game five times or so as of right now and I have had it crash on me twice.  Once it even crashed on the developers logo screen.  As a result youll be trying to get thru every level as quick as you can not worrying about whether or not you find everything because the game may crash.  If you have the SNES or PC version stay away from this
1504238
By now, your opinion is probably set on the Rock Band franchise and rhythm games in general.  This game is basically the same, with a few tweaks.  But since I bought and am reviewing the guitar bundle, allow me to say that this may be the worst hardware I've ever played with, and I bought a launch copy of Guitar Hero and dealt with the early RB1 strats.  I have bought two controllers overall, and both have similar problems: frequent disconnects even with fresh batteries.  Not registering notes.  Registering strums when no hand is on the guitar.  Freezes where a single note (usually yellow or blue) will freeze and no other input can be registered until the batteries are pulled.

For that alone, I almost gave this bundle a 1.  But it's not all bad.

The game itself I would give a four.  I'm kind of burned that there's no pro keys in this version, because it was the main reason I played Rock Band 3 and bought DLC.  Still, I understand it wasn't popular, and that's fine.  I like to sing and the new vocal freestyles make singing even more fun.

One of the big drawbacks to Rock Band 4 is the soundtrack (this is what costs the game a star in my rating).  This is probably my least enjoyed soundtrack as far as full band games have gone, and a major step down from 3.  Fortunately, you can export other soundtracks to the game.  Unfortunately, you need to have played them and registered them to your account on the same platform, so as a former Xbox 360 player, many songs are lost to me forever now that I only own a PS4.

One of the things about the soundtracks is at this point, they're only an issue for new players and cross-platform players.  You may have hundreds or even thousands of songs, including rather stellar cuts from the first 3 games, Blitz, Green Day, or Lego Rock Band.  This is only an issue for new adopters or people switching console platforms, but as someone in one of those groups, I think the soundtrack is atrocious and forgettable.  A few good songs stand out, but most of the time the best I can hope for is "huh?  Oh yeah, that song.  That's okay, I guess."

This wouldn't be so bad, but the tour mode (and the Rivals "Rockudrama" expansion) still rely on random songs, primarily.  In quickplay, for parties, etc, you can complete ignore it.  If you want to complete the game or unlock instruments and outfits, however, you may have to play "The Wolf" 80 times.  Or even "I Bet My Life," a song that bores me from a band I kind of enjoy.

Guitar freestyle solos are also quite fun, barring my hardware issues.  There is structure to them, so it's not just "mash buttons" like the Big Rock Endings of prior games.  Both high and low frets are used in a somewhat authentic way.  The big problem I have is that the sound is the same no matter what song you're in.  This sounds really bad in some songs, but your mileage may vary and you can turn them off if you prefer the classic solo style.

Still, if you can't play them, what's the point?  I don't know if my guitar issues are widespread, but getting two with similar problems really leaves me thinking the worst.  I'm torn between giving up altogether and just karaoke-ing it or trying the new rivals Jaguar controller in hopes that, like prior Rock Band games, the hardware revisions make all the difference.  My favourite thing to do is to play guitar or bass while singing, which has been awesome in helping me sing and play real guitar at the same time, but it's so frustrating when you get dropped notes and extra strums and constant disconnects.  I haven't even tried drums because I'm worried I'll run into similar issues.

Harmonix has found some ways to make old gameplay fresh, and if you have reliable hardware you might as well give it a shot.  I'm just not sure about new adopters or transfers.

Game: 4/5
Guitar: 0/5