Review

Oh my Christ. This was not how I remembered it. We've hit our first landmine in my nostalgia journey. Kingdom Hearts was a completely known quantity that I knew was safe. Sly Cooper coulda been scary but, no. It was in fact just great. I have no idea what kind of cocaine I was taking as a child that this shit was just totally handleable. Genuinely no clue. I really did not remember struggling. I know with certainty that I finished the game, because I recognized all the levels once I got to them. But this was a PS2. It ain't like I was hurting for other games to play. The PS2 had a millionty billion games. If I had struggled as mightily as I did this time, I absolutely would have just played something else.

Something that I will first say in the game's favor. The general feeling of playing a Tony Hawk game is fun. I like how normal places are transformed into little fun houses as you start seeing the ramps, the spots you can grind, etc. It can be fun. It is no longer fun the very minute they ask anything of you. I understand that to a degree it's just skill. But there are absolutely instances of them being unreasonable. There are times where I physically could not move my fingers in the way they requested and had to go do some other mission to move things along. Had they stomped their foot and said you must do this manual 360 no scope back-snapper 9000, I would have had to admit defeat and quit. It was dire. There were wars fought. I mean after the second session, my hand and wrist ached for fully like 24 hours.

I enjoyed the story playing as the Mizzidy. As I mentioned when starting the playthrough, I think what we saw was some very early part of her timeline. Seemingly one of the earliest instances, given how young she was. My guess is it was either pre-Tropico before meeting Presidente Smackdown or potentially just after that. We could see that the Sainz did not exist yet, but her experiences with Tony, Bam, and Stacy taught her that she could more easily best her foes with a crew than alone. Eric was a great devil needing to be cast out of heaven and into the lake of fire. And we saw the Mizzidy do that in record time without cheating, as was right with the world.

Overall, a wretched experience. I mentioned at one point that I would have rather been asked to beat the Lingering Will from KH2 three times in a row than continue doing the last mission. If I had had the game installed, I very well may have done so. At least in that instance I could see I was constantly getting better and learning. Could not stand the times in Underground where they demand perfection or death.

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