while the mega drive version is considered to be the full sequel, this is more of a spinoff game, which I think is weird since this actually plays much more similarly to that original game, while the mega drive version is much more of its own thing, it's funny like that, how the two different teams went about making sequels to the same game but I do have to say that in this instance, the sequel, despite being the more disliked game generally, is the better game here for me at least, I found this one, which is much more beloved from what I read, to just be a lot less fun and I don't love it like I did that sequel game, it's about on par with the original, though I couldn't tell you which I prefer.

the main thing here that does drag it down is, much like the original, how it controls, where RK2 changed the charge bar to do it automatically and in turn made the jet attack much more fun and useful, here it's back to having to hold down the button and this just never feels good to me, it's tiring to do it so much and while you don't have to do it as much here vs the original, it's still annoying after a while to keep having to hold it down so much, in return you do get the sword beam attack back which is super useful and fun to use, but it means the rocket, which is the games main gimmick, just isn't as fun to use and in general it feels very nerfed here. I found myself dying with it a lot more, it felt much harder to control and more often i'd find sparkster losing control especially during his falls and it'd end up getting me killed or damaged, it all ads up and it really felt like much more often here it'd land me in bad situations because of how hard it was to be able to control, even things like going diagonal feel so much harder to do here vs the original, it's the hardest game of the lot and not in a way that feels fair, though you do have a rocket dash attack now that you do with the trigger buttons, this is fun but much like the rocket dash I always felt like it was hard to control, it kept dashing me into damage rather than killing the enemies, maybe that's just a skill issue though, but it did make it feel not very useful to me. not that its all bad, some things like the return of the shmup stages (though this too is much harder here because of just how much damage you take and it made it almost impossible for me to get through without cheating) and some of the gimmick things like the ostrich are great, not as much variety of the original and it still lacks the sense of adventure that even the sequel lacked, but it Is a lot more variety than RK2 had, it even has the robot fight again, though again it's very hard and not fun to control here. bosses are a mixed bag though, some like the rival are great and this might even be his best fight in the whole series, but others like the the robot with the spinning hands or the robot caterpillar are kind of iffy and sometimes even bad, mostly because of the controls and the difficulty.

difficulty here is, sadly, very high and it's not helped by the really unfair way the game handles its difficulty settings, you have multiple tiers but the easier you get the less the game will be playable, on easy it cuts half the stages and on normal you won't get a true final boss, this is just annoying and even with save states I didn't want to bother with hard mode, so I was content just finishing on normal modes with cheats and that was enough for me, I think i'd have been a lot more fair on this if I could have played on easy mode, but I didn't want to miss what is some of the games best levels, so that just sucks, at least its not a super long game, it's maybe 40 mins if you're good and an hour if you aren't, which is a good length. the levels are pretty okay and decently varied though, a really cool music level that reminded me a lot of rayman, a desert level just like the mega drive version, the space stages and some others, they're not as memorable as the ones from the previous 2 but the standouts do stand out as being pretty good, though i did prefer the more open levels of the mega drive versions. there's also no real story again, there's a new villain group here but that's really it, its your average platformer story.

music is killer though, just like before, that stage 1 theme from mega drive sparkster is back and it's maybe even better here (especially when it comes back remixed later in the game), the desert theme is great and music land theme is one of the series best level themes, the credits theme is also really good, it's a super good OST and it's tied with the mega drive version for the best OST in the series, i honestly don't know which i'd prefer. the music is done by 5 composers, a stacked list honestly, much like the mega drive versions it has akira Yamaoka of silent hill and shadows of the damned and snatcher, you have Minako Matsuhira of tiny toons, a TMNT game and a Gameboy gradius port, there's Masahiro Ikariko of snatcher, metal gear 2, silent scope, silent hill the arcade and sunset riders. Michiru Yamane who's worked on countless castlevania projects from the ps2 and ds games to more modern mobile efforts, plus skullgirls, nightcry, sword of etheria and elebits. lastly is Kazuhiko Uehara who's worked on *tons* of projects, like the mentioned many times snatcher, metal gear 2, parodeus and deadly arts. it's a solid composer list. the main ports available are similar to the last few games, the original which is pretty pricy on the secondhand market and the new collection which is much cheaper and can still be gotten physically thanks to LRG, this is the way i would reccomend because its rewind options make it much more managable, i don't think i'd have finished the game without. the game was developed internally at konami much like the rest and would be the last game in the series made there, with the next one being outsourced by a studio they'd worked with in the past, though this games director would go on to make some pretty cool stuff, Hideo Ueda would also be involved with games like axelay, hybrid heaven, gungage and castlevania chronicles!

now the ps3 one was much more my thing, this is me of the peak of what XBLA had to offer, not that its one of the best games on the service, far from it, but rather it's a game that feels so totally XBlA that it makes me feel nostalgic for it even though i hadn't played it before, it's just such an of its time game in the best way, the music and the menus and the graphical style, it all just screams XBLA and it's so good. it's a style of game in that era wholley distinct from even the indie games and that indie vibe many of the services games had, it just feels like an XBLA game but not an indie one, it's a vibe that i feel has slowly been lost in recent years, with games that in this era would have felt more like this, now just feel like branded or licenced indie games moreso than anything else.

the controls are much closer to the mega drive sequel rather than sparkster, the bar fills automatically and you have a bunch of different moves you can do, but while that game removed the long ranged attack this one gives you it back, you have the dash, you have the ranged attack, the sword swipe and the spin attack, you even have some new attacks like a downward thrust, a corkscrew that can break walls and even a spin attack while on bars! it feels so much deeper, all you're missing is sparksters dash attack, which i don't think is a huge loss. the levels you use these in are much more on the linier end like snes sparkster and RKA but they're good, the game is much more forgiving and easy than the others which i think is part of why i enjoyed it so much, it's a lot more immediately accessable and i didn't even need to cheat to finish it (though that final boss and evel left me on my last life with no continues) it's also the longest game by far, you have 12 stages, some boss fights in there that range in quality but that are generally good and it's got some replayability with extra costumes (axel gear finally playable this way! and a gold sparkster that unlocks an even harder difficulty when used), but your first run will take you about 2 hours, which is a perfect length i think. the final boss is awful though, that really sucked, he has a big mech and a little flying mech and you have to damage the big mech enough until the little one comes out, and you need to hit him and have him fall on specified points, but this is just not fun, every attack does high damage and on half the map its too hard to even hit him, you also do no damage unless he hits these points and its mostly random where he can fall, it's just a really annoying and slow boss that makes the game end on a low point, its bad enough that it drags that last half an hour stretch into one lasting me well over an hour, not helped by the fact the final level is kind of a difficulty spike in general.

the music is a little iffy here but it's still not all that bad, it's the series worst OST but considering how good the others are that's not a huge knock against it, there's a good song in the labs and the main theme being played in level 1 was really nice, but so much of it is a little more generic, does for sure fit the vibe though, it sounds like stock xbox live music, if that makes sense, the kind of thing you could hear in a lot of era appropriate 2D xbla games, generic but with a vibe, basically, weirdly the composer is not credited, so i can't talk much about that, strange really, just some audio designers credited but i don't know if they did the music. the levels this music is in are also hit and miss but none are outright bad, the shmup stages are here and the best they've ever been and there's some other fun gimmick stages like a snow level where your jetpack is frozen and needs to be rationed while you run between heaters, or an escape from an exploding lab and a weirdo out of place trench warfare stage, there's even some non-linier levels like mega drive sparkster where you have to hunt down and destroy generators or a huge jungle city level where you have a few routes to take, it's a good looking game as well, the explosions look really good and there's a lot of colour to it especially in the early forrest levels, the cel shading thingy they have going on here looks really good. the story here felt uh, oddly dark though? like it's predicated on a false flag attack by the pigs from the first game that are maybe supposed to be nazis enacting a genocide on wolves and there's a whole level set in some WW style trenches and it's all so weirdly grim for much of it and there's some slightly out of place sonic style environmental messaging here too (which you do love to see) but the war stuff is just a weird vibe and it felt super out of place with the series otherwise light tone, but at least there is a real story now, with cutscenes!

sadly this is now the least accessable game in the series to actually obtain, i got it years ago on sale for £2 but now the game is a lot trickier to get, the 360 version is unobtainable via legal means on this console unless you already owned it because the 360 store is down, though it is up there via backwards compatability if somehow you own an xbox one or a series system and the ps3 version is still up and obtainable, just at full price since these games cant be put on sale anymore, still, considering the lack of a physical copy its better than nothing. one funny thing is just who made this game, while the other games were done by internal Konami teams in Japan, this game was done by a western studio, namely, climax, that's right, the silent hill: shattered memories people, and i think this proves the team wasn't a one trick studio, they could make some very solid games when given the chance, though these days the studio mostly focuses on being a support studio working on games like age of empires, horizon VR and returnal. it was also worked on by tomm hulett, it seemed to be a passion project of his since he said in interviews he wanted to bring the series back, so its nice to see he got his wish even if just for one game, you might know him from his work on some of the silent hill games and for later working at bringing some of wayforewards best games to fruition, like mummy demastered, book of memories and spidersaurs. with this I've fully finished the series and i'm happy i gave the games a chance, mega drive sparkster and this ps3 games were the highlight to me, but those other two games even with their issues are a lot of fun and nowadays with the collection they're super easy and affordable to get into, though ps3 rocket knight will only be playable on ps3 now that the 360 store is down, so that does suck and it is a bit of a barrier, but it's there (though there are other ways if yk yk)