Frogger Beyond - Nitro Rad

[Music] i draw rad the early 2000s were quite the mixed bag for the frogger series on console he was turned into a joke the star of a horrible reboot that ditched the gameplay the series was known for entirely but at the same time frogger would also further explore the traditional tile hopping gameplay on the gameboy advance that's a much greater success than his ps2 misadventures both critically and commercially money talks and the numbers showed that people didn't want a gross 3d platforming frogger they wanted something that more closely resembled that classic 2d gameplay so thankfully the reboot series was abandoned console frogger from now on would continue to explore the tile hopping formula with frogger beyond a brand new next-gen frogger game that would take the frogger we know and love to the next level well it was next gen of the time i guess not so much anymore but uh yeah with how all over the place this series has been so far i'm almost scared to play this one so far froggers range from awesome to average to gruelingly frustrating to mind-numbingly awful and borderline offensive this game could be any one of those so i'm kinda terrified well at least the front cover's giving me a decent impression i do like his new design seems to be a little bit similar to the one on the lost wand cover which does make sense since this released around the same time not really a fan of that smug expression though but the background paints an interesting image of what to expect classic frogger but with levels that are out of this world jesus look at that face well looks like ponkerfrogger's having fun at least let's hope we can have some fun too what i'm hoping from this one is good level design that's challenging maybe even difficult but fair that's what i want a good fair challenge so let's see if frogger beyond is the one to do it i'm gonna be playing the gamecube version there is also an xbox version which probably runs better i don't know i don't own it the ps2 version only came out in japan for some reason though i don't know maybe the ps2 was so soured by the great quest it wanted nothing to do with the series i mean if the ps2 could get a disease it'd probably be from this disc let's hope i don't get my gamecube anything with this one oh that's a cool title screen i like that frogger's in-game design further distances himself from those human-like proportions in favor of being more froglike why does the title screen have a frogger rap i'm not gonna lie it's kind of a banger i mean it's stupid as hell but hey i'm a sucker for that banjo riff that's pretty fun albeit really silly doesn't top the dk rat though that one's still the best oh buck bumble's is pretty good too though i'm getting off topic the game's intro takes us deep into firefly swamp where frogger and lumpy are reminiscing over his previous adventure that was a long journey for you all the way to the temple of the frog and back oh i guess temple the frog is canon with this game yeah it takes place directly after huh i didn't really expect the portable games to share a continuity with the console ones especially since that one was under the frogger's adventures name and this one isn't either way frogger's birthday is tomorrow and now he's finally of age to make the transition to adulthood and in firefly swamp it's tradition for young frogs to meet with the frog elder council and overcome a number of challenges to earn their rite of passage i know i've heard all about it it's pretty fun hearing a younger frogger talk about it like a naive kid who isn't all that enthused about the idea i don't know but hanging out inside with a bunch of old guys sounds pretty boring to me and man his voice is way more fitting this time he actually sounds like a little frog dude instead of whatever the hell this was supposed to be find a princess before i bust and these new designs they're so much better a frogger still dresses similarly that much from his grey quest design is still there but everything else was totally overhauled he's smaller pudgier cuter those teeth are gone thank god i'd say it feels like a 3d interpretation of his gameboy advance sprites even down to the way he smiles and bops his head when he's idling it's really great even lumpy like he made my eyeballs want to crawl out of my head and burrow into the ground before thankfully this design here is significantly better after a quick tutorial frogger then enters the great frog council where he oh no what the hell is that did frogger just enter the great frog vagingy like what the hell was that supposed to be i mean maybe it's supposed to be a belly button or something but either way did nobody really have any issue with this did nobody look at this and say that's wrong like this looks beyond suggestive why not enter the frog's mouth that would have looked normal at least god how did this get by well anyway once frogger enters the council he's then greeted by the frog elders who explained to him that his many prior adventures have left them very impressed frogger is a frog of great potential and now to complete the coming-of-age ritual he must prove himself by completing a journey through seven mystical worlds each one represented by a different frog elder so more or less the plot is just that to complete the ritual you gotta beat seven worlds of frogger well i guess we now know why george costanza never grew up he couldn't beat frogger dude between each world you'll get another cutscene introducing you to the next frog elder and oh my lord are these guys some characters they're really over animated they're always moving everything at once it's really ridiculous looking but i kind of like it in a weird way i wanted to give you a glimpse of what is possible in the world that you are about to encounter this guy here is a morpheus parody oh god what a time capsule that is that remember the early 2000s when everything just had to be a matrix parody all right here we go the gameplay is pretty close to temple of the frog you've got the tile hopping you can eat butterflies to get one-ups the super hop skips a tile and the shoulder buttons will rotate frogger in place so you can line up those jumps frogger also has a new high jump move where you can jump up super high in place this is just for collecting coins that are hovering above a tile that's really it i guess you can use it to get over enemies but most of them move way too slow for it to really work most of time there's never really any situations where you'd use it over the super hops so it doesn't really add that much if you ask me i think it would have been cooler if this move was used for like jumping up and grabbing switches or something or maybe to get up to platforms above you i don't know something more than just getting coins there's definitely a lot more they could have done with this and they just kind of didn't and that's really it yeah save for that one new move it's all exactly the same as temple the frog and it still works just as great in 3d the tile hopping isn't as tight as on gameboy advance i'd say i think 2d games in the style just kind of inherently work a little bit snappier but it still feels really great the only thing is that you can't use a control stick which i think is fine but the gamecube doesn't exactly have the best d-pad even if i do prefer d-pads for this type of game it's not hard to get used to but i still think they should have had the option for both at least tapping away at it does still feel really good it still has that one-to-one feedback one tap being one hop i do like the hopping sounds from previous games more though i felt they stood out a lot more and really helped give another layer of feedback for the movement now it's a lot more subtle instead of hearing the croaking you now hear the sounds of frogger's feet plopping down on each tile it still does the trick but not quite as effectively frogger beyond continues in the footsteps of the gba games by ditching collectible frogs in favor of simply getting to the end the focus has fully shifted from exploration to focused and challenging action through a linear level new to the game are these power ups i know the first game had power ups as well but this time they work a lot differently between levels you can use the coins you've collected to purchase these from the shop in the hub world oh you have to hear this song every time you're here huh okay you're not gonna lie it's starting to get a little bit on my nerves there's three of these power-ups total there's a speed-up one there's a super tongue attack to let you lick up enemies and finally there's a shield that turns frogger invincible for a short amount of time i didn't really use these that much because i just don't really like skipping parts of the game i'd rather complete it all fair and square but they are really good for getting by chunks that do give you an extra hard time personally though i only ever really use them just to skip chunks i've already got by because i just want to get to where i died so at least for me they were really good for getting back to where i was much faster these environments are actually pretty dynamic there's a lot of moving camera angles a lot of slants and slopes a little more verticality hopping around a bend feels really satisfying it all helps make the world feel a little bit more organic rather than just a series of video gamey tiles right some of these levels look really lush and colorful a lot of it looks really good a lot of practical set pieces to remind you that it's this whole other world and you know not just a video game level of the water level for example it's littered with coral and boats and these mysterious ancient statues with a pulsating glow one of my favorite set pieces here is this really cool take on that classic truck scenario this time with these high-tech flying cars that soar over this futuristic city letting you take it all in as you hop from vehicle to vehicle it's so freaking cool at this point i was feeling like that log hopping was getting a little bit samey so frogger beyond thankfully finds many ways to spruce it up with a lot of visual flavor not to say the graphics are really good overall though there are a lot of good things about them like a frogger's new look and the environments and the interesting settings but certain aspects of the visual design really clash with the rest of it the one that sticks out the most to me is the enemy design some of them look fine but a lot of times i don't even know what i'm looking at or how to interpret it these lobsters they look like a strange red mask that hardly even resembles what it's supposed to be the enemies in the high tech level are really freaking strange i get they're supposed to be computer bugs you know like computer parts that act like little bugs it's a really cute idea but the models and animations they're crude at best and the top down angle just doesn't really do them justice unlike the side on 2d sprites on gameboy advance which looked a lot better one problem i did have with the enemies is that sometimes it doesn't seem like they adhere to the grid terribly well it'll look like you understand their path and you'll know what space to land on to be safe yet their model will brush an extra tile further and kill you even though it looked like that wasn't going to happen it's almost as if the hitboxes weren't properly adjusted so sometimes they extend slightly beyond the tiles they're supposed to cover it wasn't a constant issue but there certainly were a number of times where i'd find myself yelling come on how'd that hit me one more thing i found really finicky was landing on moving platforms in prior frogger games you had to time the jumps you'd land on the platform when it moved into place because like no duh of course so why wouldn't it be like that so obviously after like what five proper frogger games my instinct is to do the same here but every time i would fall right through the platform i even thought the game was straight up broken for a little bit it just kept on happening well it turns out the rules have changed a bit instead of timing the jump you're now supposed to press the button when the platform's directly in front of you regardless of the timing frogger will always gravitate to the platform you lined up i can see why they made this change because timing jumps was something that always was a little bit finicky and this does solve that but that doesn't mean they had to get rid of doing it the old way why does this not also work why do i fall through platforms like blatantly falling through solid freaking objects just because i tried to do it the way the older games did that just doesn't make any sense well at least the rules are consistent i never had a problem doing this once i knew what it was i was doing wrong but the problem lies in just that i had to figure out i was doing something wrong despite my actions and inputs being perfectly sound legibility is something this game is not very good at another example this snake enemy right here it's a really cool enemy it's kind of like the ghost and swampy's revenge it doesn't stick to the grid and that makes it a little bit more challenging to get away from but this enemy isn't introduced properly it just kind of appears when you get there and vanishes when you get past it there's no animation no entry no exit it's just like yeah the model's there when you're on this space and now it's not when you're on that space and i don't know it kind of confused me these jack-o-lanterns too they spew fire and they rotate left and right so you know you can draw the conclusion that they're going to spew fire in whatever direction they're facing but no it always shoots in the same direction so why are they looking left and right why do you have nothing that telegraphs the path why do you have visual cues that are antithetical to the gameplay okay one more just because this is the absolute worst example of confusing stuff like this in this game it's during this space level so i get through this part and i land on this wharf and then it [Music] i i have no idea what just happened that was so fast like what so what's happening is that it warps you to a mini-game where frogger is wearing a spacesuit and you gotta hop between different lanes to dodge the oncoming obstacles but it starts you right in front of one so unless you know to move right away you're gonna die before you even know what you're looking at i didn't even know i was looking at frogger for a second it just i i was what the checkpoints do the same thing they start you right in front of something that kills you you practically have to already be mashing the d-pad before you spawn or you die immediately okay so i know that was a lot of examples but i don't want to make it seem like this is the whole game it doesn't happen a ton but even still these little confusing moments they would really pull me out they really should have been ironed out when you're dropping a player into a brand new situation you gotta reel them in slowly you gotta use your visual cues to teach them what's happening before it happens you can't just throw them head first into a wall and kill them instantly and expect them to learn how to play the game that way luckily outside of all this the level design is actually pretty solid this is more or less what i wanted for the next frogger game well maybe not so much means of like new mechanics or expanding on the formula but it certainly does offer the amount of challenge i was hoping for this game isn't easy but it's pretty fair at least outside of those infrequent confusing moments i did die a lot but i usually didn't get frustrated because i was having a lot of fun learning how to dodge and get through these patterns some patterns in this game are so freaking good the one with the blades coming out of the walls oh challenging fair fun as hell that's what i want sometimes they'll change up the gameplay a slight bit to add some variety and this started out pretty cool being things like grinding down a vine to get to the next area it's kind of like a loop-de-loop in a sonic game adjust a quick and fun set piece to break up the action a little bit of eye candy before the next challenge but later they start doing things that do not work in the snow level for instance you'll do a little bit of snowboarding frogger on a snowboard isn't that a sight if you ever want to see frogger on a skateboard you could play evolution skateboarding they had him as a guest character along with a bunch of other konami characters that's actually where that skateboarding minigame and metal gear solid 2 substance came from it's this great quest model though so the only reason you're going to play as him is to watch him crash and break his face okay that's actually a pretty good reason uh you'll do that here a lot to wiping out because the snowboarding controls are really stiff and tank-like i ended up crashing a whole lot hey what is this frogger gear solid did that just happen i'm not gonna lie it's actually kind of cool anyway the snowboarding controls uh you like steer left and right with a d-pad but it's not like you're leaning into a turn like in other snowboarding games no it just changes what direction is forward kind of like you're controlling a resident evil character or something it just doesn't control well i guess it wasn't too hard to get by only took me about 10 minutes of retrying but this segment just isn't very good the biggest defender of this though is the minecart section good freaking lord guys this is just it's just terrible you gotta lean left and right and you gotta jump to avoid obstacles but the timing is so precise and the minecart's momentum is so nonsensically inconsistent it'll just randomly speed up and slow down out of nowhere completely ignoring all physics you also die in one hit which is fine for the tile hopping but for something as inconsistent and difficult as this it's a damn miracle i ever got by it this section took me literal hours i think it took me four hours to beat might have even been five i was stuck on this thing for way too long how am i supposed to gauge when to jump when i'm suddenly going uphill and the game doesn't give me a side on angle i can't see where the obstacle is because the cart's in the way why does it just speed up here for no reason that killed me with this little tiny piece of snow that killed me really oh and i know what you guys are thinking why not use the shield power up well let me tell ya i did i used all of them and i still couldn't beat it but since i hit retry when i got a game over it saved that i used them all and i had no coins to buy anymore and you can't revisit older levels to get more coins that retry button is a beginner's trap if you want to keep your power-ups you have to reset the game don't hit either option no it saves that you've used them all up and they're gone forever you can't get them back until you beat this level so it forces you to beat the level with no power ups after only getting one shot at trying it with them which is exactly what i had to do how come switching tracks never works huh it does sometimes but i don't understand what i'm doing wrong look at these tracks right it's a junction your instinct is to lean into it so when the turn comes up you take it but no that doesn't work look at this it's not working what you have to do is tap the d-pad in that direction not before but when you're parallel to the other track it's like you're switching rails in a sonic game or ratcheting clank game but that makes no sense here why have the junction why lead the player to believe the mechanic is going to function one way when it functions a different way again it does work once you know what to do but that's frogger beyond's biggest problem the rules being consistent and working that doesn't mean much if the rules don't make any sense now do they they're contrary to the visual cues the game teaches you to react one way when you're supposed to react the opposite way this is terrible game design and it's so frustrating because beyond its hiccups beyond the hard to grasp nonsensical rules beyond the worst difficulty spike i've played in a long ass time there's a pretty good game here so let's get back to the positives because there are positives here like the boss fights yes they did a great job with the boss fights they all feel completely unique and they're all really fun to figure out this mech fight was really cool you gotta dodge lasers and heat seeking missiles and then when he ground pounds you gotta make him land here i died a lot in this one it's actually pretty hard but oh boy is it fun to finally pull off there's a really cool callback to this fight too where this time you'll have to instead guide those homing missiles back into them and this octopus boss what a cool idea a dodging the eight legs as you hop around in a giant circle trying to activate these switches i think my favorite was this jack-in-the-box boss you'll hop around the arena dodging everything he throws at you as you try to charge up these statues that'll hit him with a big beam attack it's so satisfying dodging everything and whittling away at each one fighting to get everything lined up that you avoid getting blasted just like the lost one in gameboy advance frogger beyond has some seriously fun boss fights however there is one that like the minecart mission it took me like four to five hours to beat because of how poorly designed it is i think you guys all know the one it made me so mad i wanted to tear my arms off and throw them like boomerangs the fire level boss this thing i don't know what it is a robotic bad again the enemy designs i don't even know what i'm looking at but basically what you gotta do is dodge its fire attacks navigate your way to the stages four corners hit all the four switches and the boss takes damage you then get brought up to the next level rinse a repeat three times and you've won it all works on paper and i do like the idea of hopping from one corner to the next dodging stuff along the way but the attacks are so sudden and so poorly telegraphed they are nearly impossible to dodge the first phase is fine it's really easy actually just a way to teach the ropes of what you can expect from the fight and that's good but the second phase it starts shooting a lot more fire and it didn't take me long to realize how this pattern worked he targets where you are when he starts firing and it trails off from that tile one by one so if you hop really far from where you are right when you start shooting and make sure not to backtrack into the flames you're pretty much good but the final part of this fight is where i have a bone to pick i swear every time i'd get here i would just die instantly fire would shoot out frogger would die every time and since you die so suddenly there's no way to tell what's even happening i cannot learn the pattern if the attack kills me before i can even see what he's doing for the longest time i could only dodge these by total fluke though later i found out that it doesn't fire at you if you're on one of these moving platforms so i thought that and maybe being patient i could cheese it whatever i'll do anything i'll wait here as long as it takes if it means i can just go back to liking the game again but guess what it didn't work because you have to hit the switches in a certain amount of time or they all reset at a point i had these phases down to a t dude like i could zip right through them practically blindfolded but dear lord if i ever have to do these phases again i'm gonna lose my goddamn mind having to replay the same part over and over and over just to get shot dead in one second at the next part why couldn't there at least be checkpoints at least make me lose all my lives before starting the entire thing over and making me replay these things i've replayed again and again and again just to get one single shot at it eventually i got so frustrated i went to the drawing board i watched back my gameplay recordings in slow motion just to figure out what the hell is going on here and after watching it back i realized what was happening i recognized the pattern he fires four flames around you all at least two tiles away and then he quickly fires at the space you're on so basically what you have to do is wait in a single space you can't be moving at all those flames will hit you you have to be perfectly still and then hop exactly one space away in any direction the moment you see those flames so the second blast doesn't hit you i had to slow down a recording in order to figure that out the boss does not telegraph its attacks at all there's no sound cues no visual cues no markers to tell you where it's going to land around you and then on you it doesn't give you enough time to react there is so much wrong with this this is one of the most frustrating horrible boss fights i've ever played in my life you know i'm willing to bet good money that a lot of people watching this video who grew up at this game never finished it because of this boss fight if they even got past the minecart mission that is like why does the game have these horrible awful difficulty spikes i was having fun i was actually really enjoying the game despite his flaws all those little issues i can learn i can get past them i can forgive if i'm having fun which i was but this this is too much come on why why it's a damn shame very few parts of this game are so ridiculously flawed because i had a great time with the rest of it again this is what i'm looking for in a frogger game good fair challenge but the game isn't consistently fair and that is going to be a big deal breaker for a lot of people at least the final level is really good it combines the themes and challenges from all previous levels yeah including the mine cart but at least it is really short-lived and not nearly as broken as before this was a great final challenge so the game does at least end on a high note it's just pretty damn rocky getting there frogger beyond is easily the most polarizing frogger game yet it might even be one of the most polarizing games i've ever reviewed i can't call this a bad game i really want to call it a good game but there's too much wrong with it to make it easy to recommend if they just removed these two things and made the visuals a little bit better at conveying how the game works this would have easily been the best frogger game yet by a landslide but instead parts of it are the best frogger game yet and other parts are amongst the worst in the entire series if you can tank through those parts there is a really good frogger game in here but whether or not you want to deal with that to get to the good stuff well that's on you personally i'm hoping these next two are the ones to give us a more polished version of what frock or beyond is going for dude we're like almost through all of these there's only a handful of them left just like these two and then like one more but uh yeah i'm really hoping one of these two gives me that next-gen challenging but polished tile hopper i've been looking for because as it stands the lost one and game boy advance still reigns supreme for me i'm really looking forward to seeing how these two guys compare so uh yeah i'll see you guys down the road with even more frogger i'll see you guys then buddy what's popping this is probably simultaneously the worst and best stronger game i've ever played i think this is definitely one of the more interesting episodes though because i don't know it was really neat being conflicted for once about it hey if you want to support the channel i've got a one dollar podcast up on patreon.com it's a great way to support the show and you get to hear brady and me talk for like an hour about nothing

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 303,147

Keywords: nitro rad, review, frogger, beyond, frogger beyond, tile hopping, classic, retro, gamecube, snowboarding, evolution skateboarding, konami, frogger skateboarding, frogger gear solid, bad game design, bosses, fire boss, minecart, frustrating games

Id: zDs0LdQEgDE

Length: 24min 52sec (1492 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020