"We're happy where we are, firmly planted in Nintendo's arse."

[Dark Jaguar]

SFA wasn't that good because Rare pretty much just stopped working on it when they were sold to MS. They tied everything up and gave it to Nintendo and left. The game isn't blatently terrible, but it's certainly incomplete. The so called "puzzles" are insults to intelligence. There's HUGE GLOWING BUTTONS over every single "hot spot" so you can't possibly miss it and have to think for yourself. They scream "THIS IS WHERE YOU NEED TO BE!". Then, when you go there and go through your item menu, it AUTOMATICALLY picks the right one, saying "YOU ARE TOO STUPID TO SOLVE THIS ALONE! LET ME HELP!". Really, I never once got stuck. Closest was when I managed to miss a red switch for a few minutes. Honestly, had they forced you to figure out where to use items yourself, like a normal Zelda game, it would have been much more fun I think. However, it's still incomplete. There are whole dungeons missing, and that whole part with General Scales was MAJORLY anticlimactic. I wanted a boss battle to finally test all the skills I had learned with the staff!

It also doesn't help that if you make the mistake of saving after that part, you can't ever go back, which is VERY un-Zelda-like.

I don't tend to get mad at my games. Never really saw the point. I'm there to have fun, so the second I see myself getting frustrated I go do something else. That said it doesn't take but 5 minutes before I'm running back with some amazing strat that's promised to fail :D.

I'll tell you this lazy. SFA was the first Rare game I was really dissappointed with, but the reasons are clear. Honestly, maybe they wanted time to finish it, but knew there was no way Nintendo would deal with a couple more delays when they finally "got rid" of them, so they just said "let's just put everything we have together, fill in the empty spots quickly, and bug test the thing". Grabbed however, was the second, and that was upsetting. That game was NO Battletoads. That game, while it looked good I'll admit, wasn't fun. Playing it, just in the stores, I wasn't really drawn in. Normally, if I play a good game in the stores, a really good game, like what Rare normally makes, I'll sit there for a LONG time until someone with a mop asks me to move my feet. This didn't happen with this game. I played it, trying to get into it. Didn't happen. I ended up FORCING myself through many levels before realizing that this wasn't just a dry spot of the game, that was the entire game. I stopped then, and am not interested in giving it another look. That was the full version in the store, not a demo. I may have been like a 3rd of the way through, I think, so I'm pretty sure I know what to expect. I was expecting Battletoads and I got... well honestly this IS the worst brawler I've played. I know they are supposed to be simple by nature, but they are also supposed to be... fun. Notta here. Being the first game Rare made for MS, I hear that it was the one project MS had a rush on which they couldn't delay. That doesn't really help things when the very core of the game isn't enjoyable, but you know, it doesn't make the game better either...

From what little I've played of BK on GBA, however, I was able to turn my doubts around. Even though it's 2D, it's amazing how, as OB1 says, it manages to perfectly capture the gameplay. It's a VERY fun little game that I may eventually buy. Personally, I've had enough of those sorts of platform games for some time though, so it'll be a while before I get it because of that. However, it does show Rare still has the talent.

That's why I've still got very high expectations of PDZ. Yes, a lot of talent left, sadly enough, but a lot is STILL there, including a lot of people behind the gem that is Perfect Dark. Besides that, maybe MS will come along and buy the two spin off companies and then put them back into Rare :D. Heh... I can see that conversation... "Didn't you say you were never coming back?" "Oh yeah? Shut up."