I will preface this by saying the copy from GOG works almost flawlessly, download had an issue where I needed to download the offline installer for it to actually instal. On top of that, when you tab out and go back into the game, full screen no longer works. But I feel that is a DOSbox emulator issue. To parrot some of the other reviews, yes, some of the soundtrack has been removed, but several songs have been moved about and no longer play in zones that you may expect if you are coming from the PS1 verson. This is after all the PC version of the game. Now, on to the meat of this review and the point I actually wanted to make. This game is bright, colourful with a stunning soundtrack and unique platforming enviroments to boot. Chances are most of you already knew that. The main problem for those with nostalgia glasses and newcomers to remember or learn is that this game is punishing. With most users averaging about two and a half hours of gameplay you can see why. The first zone hints at the kind of 'difficulties' you will face later, but the second zone onwards will punish every mistake you make. Most times you will be required to make leaps of faith, make snap descisions and have percise ability to platform. This never lets up and becomes progressively more and more vicious to the point I firmly believe it stops being challenging and moves on to just unfair. To elaborate, I mean the game will often give you little to no warning on hazards ahead, enemies will sometimes spawn offscreen and get in range to attack before you even know they are there. (looking at you, fish from 'Eat at Joes') On top of that, as if the difficulty wasn't enough, the game expects you to break all of the caged characters in the game in order to even access the final boss, all of this on a few lives and few continues with no way of obtaining more and obtaining more lives quite frankly is not worth the risk of some of the challenges. Even the bonus levels are extremely unforgiving.
