Rallying itself is fine and I do appreciate the use of lesser-used locales like Malaysia, Siberia and Sequoia National Park, but again, the physics and handling are just a bit too floaty for my taste. Interesting game, but I think I’d get frustrated with it if I kept playing, so I’m good.

Interestingly, the career mode kinda has an Enthusia approach - you play randomized events in the hopes of ranking up enough to enter proper championships - but non-rally disciplines have you playing the same tracks very often, and some tracks are outright shit, particularly the buggy events

Having to pay your team a weekly wage and hiring new team members is an interesting idea but is also pretty half-baked and wages are so small that they’re barely worth consideration as you buy new cars and upgrades. Gating new upgrades behind development time is also just annoying tbh

A Ford Focus, Ford Mustang and a dune buggy racing across dirt. Rating: Shrug

2026 - 61
V-Rally 4

Bounced off it pretty hard. It’s interesting at first but I think its multi-discipline format makes it spread itself too thin, and the handling can be annoyingly floaty, especially in non-rally disciplines.

Geoffrey Rush as Barbossa is a particular highlight to me. I love how he feels like a cartoon pirate brought into real life, it’s such a delight

Johnny Depp’s good too but I am not obligated to hand it to him in current year

Captain Jack Sparrow, under the effects of the disease (he’s cursed and is now undead). Rating: Tail Wag

2026 - 60
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

visually one of the best movies I’ve ever seen I think?? But it’s also just flat out fun from start to finish. Not a single minute wasted in its (slightly long) runtime. God I’m so upset it took me this long to watch it

Ethan Hunt holds his wife Julia as he protectively points a gun off-screen. Rating: Thumbs Up

2026 - 59
Mission: Impossible III

A step-up over both previous movies I reckon. I thought the stuff with his wife was really sweet! Kinda flip-flopped on Philip Seymour Hoffman’s weird, almost bored-ass performance but I even came around on that by the end

though I’m probs not mastering this set. I took a few swings at “beat the Obi-Wan bounty hunter mission in 20 seconds” and decided I would like to not be angry at a video game today lmao. I wanna come back to it tho

I had occasional control issues (stop back-flipping oh my god) and the Wii remote implementation is so barebones it’s a wonder why they force use of the Wii Remote + Nunchuk, but otherwise I had a lot of fun coming back to this and I wanna check out some of the other LEGO game sets on RA !!

The second game’s levels fare so much better, making better use of the world and characters being made of LEGO and being much funnier and more creative with level and puzzle design. Levels also don’t end in the span of me making 2-minute noodles

-from its sequel, so these levels stick out like a sore thumb despite a few cool moments here and there. It’s also, bluntly, not funny in the slightest. “What if Star Wars was LEGO” is not enough, something the second game figured out

The main issue is that only the second half of the game - the levels from LEGO Star Wars II - is actually proper good. Most of the first game’s levels, the ones that adapt the prequel trilogy, are too short and rarely have engaging puzzle design, nor do they adopt many if any of the improvements-

Despite being piss easy and giving little consequence for death (unless a dropped blue stud falls out of reach), this is still really engaging, especially when they get silly or go over the top with all the building and force animations

A cropped shot of the game’s cover art, showing Luke Skywalker in his Jedi garb at the start of Return of the Jedi, above Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia. Darth Vader and Darth Maul appear in the background. Rating: Thumbs Up

2026 - 58
LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Wii)

Thought I’d hate it after not playing for years and remembering how simple it is. I was (partially) proven wrong

The middle is pretty bland and the plot and script are rooted in misogyny (they recruit Nyah not for her skills as a thief, but because she used to date the villain, and it only snowballs from there) but the action bits are pretty great and that Limp Bizkit song kinda fucks

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) rides a motorcycle. Rating: Shrug

2026 - 57
Mission: Impossible II

Meh, but if this is supposedly the worst in the series then MI fans are eating good honestly. Also very novel seeing locations I’ve been to IRL as well as late 90’s Ford Falcons being blown up

I decided I will likely not master this one for RA. It’s plenty doable, but beating it only required winning all 15 tracks once, while a mastery would require doing that maybe five or six more times at least and oh my goodness gracious no

It also gets *easier* as it goes. The first track and a later track around the halfway point are the hardest, and then by the end you’re literally just driving a stock car oval. It’s like if Double Dash!! ended with a worse Baby Park

It’s a “kart racer,” but only in a way that you drive karts and that’s it. No powerups, no track hazards, just the occasional boost, coin and announcer who thinks driving 200 unclarified speed units is approaching the sound barrier

Three M&M’s characters racing in karts in a factory. Two of them are wearing hats. Rating: Arms Crossed Angy Rantsona Pose

2026 - 56
M&M’s Kart Racing (Wii)

Kinda not as bad as I expected from its reputation. It is instead something far worse than bad - it’s boring

The most evocative thing I can say about it is that it sometimes eats inputs and causes me to walk off an edge without jumping, and the pointer controls aren’t busted like Chicken Shoot. That’s *it*

A pink gummy bear runs towards a green fucking thing on a bridge in front of a waterfall. Rating: Arms Crossed Angy Rantsona Pose

2026 - 55
Gummy Bears: Magical Medallion

I have next to nothing to say about this. Even for young kids this has gotta be the most boring shit ever

Hella easy RetroAchievements mastery though

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) hangs from a ceiling while operating a computer in a vault. Rating: Thumbs Up

2026 - 54
Mission: Impossible (1996)

kinda like how reserved it is, particularly the famous lowering from the ceiling scene which ended up being really tense with the slow pacing and lack of music. not what I was expecting, a bit convoluted, but ultimately pretty fun!

It’s a baffling game. It’s like they took Pokémon Stadium and stuck a half-assed RPG into it

The animations are largely pretty great, I like that it’s entirely double battle format, and some battles can be really challenging, which is refreshing. But as a console RPG this was a huge letdown :[

And good lord, do not get me started on the music. The most common battle theme is not long enough to be used in nearly every battle and the town and dungeon themes are some boneless Dr Doofenshmirtz bullshit

The level curve is completely fucked by endgame and your only options for grinding are redoing the Pyrite Town dungeons or repeating the same few colosseums - which all but one remain largely out of reach for most of the game due to insanely high level enemies for no fucking reason

The Shadow Pokémon gimmick flat-out fucking stinks too imo. Hyper Mode wastes a turn, Shadow Rush is annoying to use, and the act of purification is mind-numbingly slow. All this is not helped by painfully slow battle animations where a single turn can take over a minute sometimes

Structurally it’s a mess. You start as an established trainer with Lv25 Pokémon and that’s interesting but you go huge stretches without being able to obtain Pokémon (and most of them are utterly useless), while most of the game is hallways filled with trainers

Also I really liked the setting at first but they do NOTHING with it. Big wastelands, shanty towns, kinda a kid friendly Mad Max energy, but aside from mention that wild Pokémon don’t really hang around in this region (which raises so many questions) they don’t do two fifths of fuck all with it

The story in particular is… nothing. It hypes you up as a defector from an evil team and does absolutely nothing with it. Team Cipher are also not threatening in the slightest and the story itself has basically no development or memorable characters. “But Miror. B!!” ew no shut up