Random games I played this weekend
Galleon - Xbox
This is the continuation of the movement system of Tomb Raider 1. The characters feet use inverse kinematics and plant themselves on the level geometry with precision. You can leap great heights. There is an incredible combat system. The levels are sprawling multi-hour struggles with lots of platforming and cutscenes where people eat leaves and gain superpowers. Everything in this game is unexpected and it feels like it's from an alternate timeline.
Puggsy - Megadrive
Is this the worst platformer ever made? I don't think so but, for the megadrive? maybe not. This is what happens when demoscene people make an amiga game. It has rudimentary 2D physics objects that bounce off each other and stack. It has a lot of parallax to make up for the lack of...design?
Dillon's Dead Head Breakers - 3DS
Eternally playing through this one level at a time. I have 12 hours into this 30 hour game and have been playing it since...2020? Why so long? I think it's because all the levels are super stressful. Imagine a tower defense games where the towers get attacked, and your literal friends are in the towers, and you have to keep individual tower powered and also attack enemies quickly enough so that in the 2nd to final phase of the game (which is time limited!) because if there's any enemies left at the end they turn into a near impossible to beat boss that attacks the home base. AND THEN when the level is done you better hope you earned enough money to hire enough gunners for the next misson. It's really charming in between levels though!
Sonic and Knuckles Sonic 2 - Megadrive
I have never played Sonic and Knuckles and didn't realize that Knuckles has less speed and less jump height than Sonic, so all the level design flow stops working and normally fun levels become a slog. You can climb walls and glide. The excellent starting screen is also gone and rerplaced with a pre-rendered 3d Knuckles.
Panzer Dragoon - Orta - Xbox
This game is so pretty. But it's really hard. I am a sucker for the game's world design. I could only make it through one level and part of the 2nd level. Thankfully has a save function so I don't have to 1CC the entire game in one go.