Recent reviews by Squishy Bloo | TTV

*note: this is more for people looking wanting more out of the gameplay. if you're looking for a fun nickelodeon game to mess with friends or yourself and don't care about techincal stuff pick this up


what if super smash bros melee didn't have directional influence? Nick all star 2 feels like it sets out to answer the question. This game is aggressively designed around letting you land combos to the point where it affects the design of bossfights and the single player rougelike mode. This might appeal to some, but I believe it comes with more issues than it's worth.

Nick all star 2 has a roster of characters who feel the same as many characters from other games with a Nick coat of paint. A lack of creativity is in almost every moveset where if you removed the aesthetics of the character they'd be indistinguishable. A good goal for any fighting game is to have characters whose movesets are unique to stand out amongst itself and against it's competition. Nick doesn't really have this. Alot of these cartoon characters tend to have a variety of normal attacks that the audience will have seen before in many games. This issue could be excused if the system's mechanics allowed generic characters to shine, but it doesn't.

Hitstun is a term referring to the momentary freeze a player will experience upon being attacked. Usually this is done for flair or pacing, but in platform fighters it will be slightly exaggerated to prevent an instant recovery from attacks that launch the other player. Nick 2 takes this concept and runs a football field with it. You WILL wait for your velocity to reach 0 for nearly every attack whether it pops you up for a juggling opportunity or if its intended to KO. In other platform fighters, this is often something you can influence greatly by tilting the stick in a direction you'd like to push yourself. This prevents your aggressor from getting into a position to land a follow-up attack. You also often can press a button to quickly regain normal control of your character, preventing them from tumbling forever. Nick 2 barely allows for DI and disallows you to regain control until the hitstun has completely ended. This results in a snowballing effect. My successful matches against other players always resulted in going for combos, and my failures often resulted in me trying to do another strategy. If one player lands a combo starter, the other player will be unable to respond (besides a rare combo breaker) and have to eat all the damage they need to take. This means getting poked once can you leave you on Death's door. Combos in fighting games are fun but Nick 2's systems don't seem to be aware of how far they can go. Getting a very strong combo in a fighting game often requires you to burn through resources (Tekken 8 with wall crashing/heat), be very low on health (Street Fighter 6 with critical arts), or require a ton of setup to really work. Nick 2 allows for these nearly game ending combos off of random pokes. If that wasn't already tilting the balance towards offense blocking attacks near a ledge instantly stuns you. There's no ability to get a big jump off a ledge, meaning your options are extremely limited if you manage to get back to the ledge. If you preform a recovery move onto the stage, the endlag is longer than in other platform fighters. These choices are often present in platform fighters to prevent a steamroll from happening once one player is knocked off the main platform. Nick 2 removes all of this to allow combo based strategies to run wild.

This also means attacks are often incredibly fast and easy to chain into themselves. I will not be going into movesets in depth as that's outside of the scope of this review, but it does trivialize bossfights if you're playing as an average speed character. Take Rocko for example, his light up attack has his brain come out as a gag, but it's super fast. You can run under a boss and keep doing that move to take away nearly all their health before their first attack is done. Vlad Plasimus, the final boss, is a complete joke specifically to strategies like this. Campaign's main challenge are these bossfights...You can see the issue. By forcing their characters to have very fast moves, the game trivialized. (Side note: I played through the game as Donatello once I realized this because I wanted to have some fun, and he's probably one of the least combo focused characters. he's also one of the worst competitvely lol)


Some bonus modes of hitting balloons and training dummies. There's a rogue like campaign but as mentioned earlier it's made very easy due to how attacks are handled.

In conclusion: IF You like NICK and have no wanting to get good - no, optimal at this game, pick it up on sale. There's not alot of content but it is a great time. However, if you want to practice and learn the mechanics you will quickly realize that doing anything to get a combo started is the only way to win, since defensive options are kaput and other offensive strategies such as playing with slow big attacks is pointless compared to the ease of combos. It's not a very depthful game as a result. It's like a Mortal Kombat game for platform fighters. If that appeals to you, get it. If not you won't find anything else here.

It's not a very good 3 lane kind of game. The tutorial is unintuitive where you have to read a manual rather than having something integrated in the game nor do the character designs clue you in on what to do to defeat enemies. There's also many times where there'll be three enemies side by side on all three lanes. Normally this shouldn't be an issue but the hitboxes of enemies touching you is so large you'll often change lanes and instantly take damage. With 3 health points being your maximum, there's not alot of room for error and this instance being everywhere makes the game feel unfair.

There's a timing aspect to the game where you want to time your hits against enemies for a better score which is nice I guess. Two power ups are given to the player every run: a screen wipe and a super weapon that gives you perfect hits. You can charge the weapon up by defeating specific enemies. This weapon is about the only player influence you will have over your score besides playing perfectly. The game itself also does indeed look appropriate for the aesthetic qualities of a 90s arcade game.

it's just a really odd choice to tie this to dead island, which is a game known for making modified weapons and then repairing them while doing quests in an open world...to a extremely restrictive auto-runner. You're also not on an island.

I love these little games so much.

Its a pleasant little activity. took 20 minutes to where's waldo these cats

tony hawk 1 and 2 maps with THPS 4 physics and amazing graphics....the best game in the series AND you can take it on the go with the steam deck...a must have for every gamer!!!!

Its a little archaic in a mostly good way. had fun. just beat it! light on the story compared to its sequel, but much heavier on the combat. run, outhnk, survive, repeat! very very fun.

20 minutes into a pvp match I actually found other players! they instantly froze me because they hit me with an attack that I couldn't move around (we were pushing a payload around a very tight bend and the payload was enourmous, blocking movement) and then killed me which sent me flying across the open map into an area no one could quickly rez me and we instantly lost afterward.

this game is really bad.

A simple indie game with 4 levels, 4 tricks, 2 directions to spin and a whole lotta zen.

You play as a skater in an isometric ramp or park and enjoy the physics of skateboarding. You can't push with your leg, only accelerate by crouching on your board at the right times to build momentum into your next jump. You can also do boardslides off of the edges of ramps and do tricks in midair. It's extremely simple and small as a game, but for $1.49 it's a relaxing game rather than something too depthful.

There's also a hard mode for the more dedicated skaters who want the challenge. You have to land the board near perfectly or your trucks get caught on the edge of ramps. That's the only extra sort of mode besides these 4 levels that come with the game. I can't recommend this at full $5.99 price with the extreme lack of content outside of 4 levels (1 skatepark with two bowls, a pool, a halfpipe and a megaramp) such as no challenge or gimmick modes; and no unlockables, but its a must get to all my skating friends at -75% off.

Wait for the discount and then grab it!

When she says "Don't Shoot!" in the intro with this costume, I wouldn't blame leon for blasting her a couple times lmao

looks offputting in this engine and really shows how much graphics have advanced since 1998. love this skin.

An amusing side-effect of this costume is that it makes the game run slightly better for computers that need it. Otherwise it's a cute novelty.