Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue!

To infinity and beyond ✨️

Movie tie-ins have an infamous reputation for sucking really bad, so this kinda surprised me. This is a genuinely competent 3D platformer. The movement is pretty standard—you've got a double jump, spin attack, a surprisingly functional mantle system, and a primary laser blaster attack. You can go first person with the blaster, and you can actually see the reflection of Buzz's face in the visor, which is SO COOL. The level design is shockingly good for some reason (except for Alleys and Gullies). The levels are huge and open, and have a crazy amount of verticality. There's even some impressively well-designed shortcuts that you can unlock to make returning to hard-to-reach areas much easier. Each level is filled with Pizza Planet tokens that require fun and interesting challenges to acquire. You can even keep playing after you collect them (looking at you Mario 64). There's some super fun power-ups to unlock, some even allowing you to go back and play old levels to get previously inaccessible collectibles. It's a blast. The bosses suck though, but what else is new?

A classic, what can I say.

Oh my days. One of my all-time favorites! I used to play this game all the time when I was a kid. I used Playstation 1 to play this. Now, I found a way to get back to this gem after all these years!

N64 game only

Okay, but like... Why so good? Peak music and level design! Camera is a bit shit though.