Recent reviews by C-Rex

Cute and colourful little 2D platformer. The web mechanic works really well and there's a lot of satisfaction being able to swing yourself across levels at high speed. The soundtrack is also really catchy and an absolute joy to listen to, which each area having its own unique dynamic music.

Perfect for winding down after playing something more intense and you feel like pondering your own existence.

Mountain is at best a screensaver, or kept running in the background whilst you work. Apart from that, there's very little here on offer, but it is a cool concept.

Quite possibly the best 3D Sonic game since Generations, the only thing slowing Sonic Frontiers down from being a 10/10 perfect game are the technical issues (pop-in, random drops in frame rate) and occasionally finicky controls.

A disappointing release that fails to capture the magic of the original Megadrive/Genesis games. Give this one a miss, folks.

Creatures Docking Station is the best place to start in the Creatures series, as unlike its predecessors the norns are much better at survival, and generally easier to take care of. Even better is the fact that all of the previously paid creature breeds are now available as a free addon. I'd also recommend grabbing the Creatures 3 DLC as well, as the starting world in Docking Station gets crowded rather quickly.

An essential pack for adding some variety to your Docking Station worlds, containing both new breeds and new items! Sadly Creature Labs never made any new ettin breeds, but there are plenty of unofficial ones to choose from (I highly recommend the Pink Poodle Ettins!).

Edit 06/09/2023: This fix will allow Creatures 2 to run on modern operating systems. However, I still feel that this is something that Critter Consortium should have done, not the community, and I stand by my review: https://lisdude.com/Creatures/Community/

Note: This review is based on the release (Creatures 2 in particular), not necessarily the games themselves (which are great and a superb attempt at trying to create artificial life), and I am currently running Windows 10, so if you have a different OS your experience may be different to mine.

Creatures 1 runs perfectly fine in this release, although some people have encountered problems with the health kit crashing. I have not experienced this issue myself, so I an't really comment on it, but it is kind of ridiculous how it hasn't yet been fixed. The main issues here lie with Creatures 2, which to me, feels like the GOG.com version with a couple of fixes (mainly DXWrapper) thrown on top. The game will regularly crash to the desktop for no apparent reason, and if you wanted to import some creatures you've downloaded from the internet, then you're out of luck, as nine times out of ten the game will decide to crash and you'll lose all your progress.

As a whole I can't really say I can recommend these releases unless you really want to play Creatures 1, which is a great game, but slightly overshadowed with the issues running its sequel. Unfortunately until these issues are rectified it seems an emulator is the only way to get C2 running in a satisfactory state.

I wanted to like this game, I really did. But as many other previous players have noted, Birthdays the Beginning is way in over its head in terms of complexity, and is very poorly optimised. For starters, getting certain species to appear on the cube seems relatively straightforward. But a lot of them require other plants and animals to be already present, and it can be an absolute pain when the species you want refuses to appear in the world, and it often requires a lot of backtracking. At the moment of this review I can't birth a species for the in-game objective because the one that evolves into it never spawned, and refuses to do so even though I'm sure I've reached the requirements. Experimentation is encouraged, but doing so runs the risk of you ruining your world and having to start over again.

Controls-wise, the game should only be played with a controller. End of. Mouse and keyboard support is abyssmal at best, and you can tell this is a straight up port from the PS4. Heck, it doesn't even have a button to close the game on the title screen. The A button is used to open the in-game item menu, which gets really irritating because when you aknowledge one of the message pop ups by pressing the aforementioned button, it will bring up the menu once it has closed, meaning you have to close it before you can do anything else.

Another nitpick with the game is the map. If you wish to use an item on a specific creature, you have to find it manually - there is no way of tracking its location, which for larger creatures such as the dinosaurs, doesn't really matter, but for smaller animals it is infuriating. Once the world gets bigger it becomes even more of a hassle.

On the plus side, I quite like the game's visuals and the sort of modelling clay feel they were going for with the creatures. The environment itself is also very brightly coloured and compliments the animals well, and you can tell a lot of thought and effort went into the game's artwork. Another positive is that nothing beats the feeling of watching something you've worked on flourish with life, and when things do go well, it is actually a very rewarding game, and I love the fanfare sound effect that plays whenever a new species evolves.

Overall, whilst Birthdays the Beginning has an interesting concept, and the potential to be an amazing game, it just feels frustrating at times and poorly optimised. The developers have had well over a year to add content to the game and make it much more enjoyable, but I won't hold my breath. 7/10

EDIT: Since writing this review, I feel I was a little too hard on the game. But just a bit. I did actually manage to finish it, but not after spending a good while messing about with the environment. I should also say that THERE IS a way to exit the game, but you need to navigate back to the title screen and press B on a controller. I'm not sure if there's a way to work it with keyboard, however.

Like Sonic Colours, Sonic Generations is what I perceive to by SEGA's attempt at making a comeback with Sonic. Unlike Colours though, Sonic Generations is a celebration of the Sonic Franchise as a whole, giving the player the chance to experience levels from past Sonic games and play through them with either modern or classic Sonic.

The game's graphics are really beautiful, and really help to bring the levels to life - from the lush fields of Green Hill zone to the fire-scorched buildings of Crisis City, each level has its own unique style to bring to the table. At times it felt like I was playing through a movie rather than a game.

Graphics aside, the gameplay in Sonic Generations revolves around the player completing the levels themselves, along with mini-games based on the level itself. Overall, the mini-games are okay, but they're not really anything special, although they do add a little replayability to the game I guess.

Now, the controls. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the control scheme used in Generations - playing as modern Sonic feels quite stiff, and not at all fluid like in the Adventure games. For instance, if you use the homing attack to clear a gap, there is no way to control sonic whilst he's airborne, which can lead to falls if you don't position yourself properly. Classic Sonic also suffers from a similar problem and feels somewhat strange. Of course, this may just be me, but it's one thing that I find somewhat annoying.

Like almost all Sonic games, the soundtrack is excellent and gives us some remixes of some old and new Sonic tunes. You can also collect additional music by completing challenges, which you can then choose to listen to when you're playing any level.

Level design is generally good - the first two sets of levels are relatively challenging, but still enjoyable. However, the last set really ramp up the difficulty and some, such as Crisis City, require a few playthroughs in order to get an idea of the level layout. Planet Wisp, the final level in the game, does become a little frustrating due to its length and having to use Wisps in order to complete it, but enough perseverance should get you that S rank you're after.

Overall, Sonic Generations may have its flaws, but it is a very well-made game and I highly recommend any Sonic fan picks it up if they don't already own it.