Spark the Electric Jester 3 Reviews

Someone cooked here.

The story and how it ends is straight buttcheeks but other than that I've only played an hour and three minutes and I can already recommend.

I was expecting a sonic fangame and got a masterpiece instead.

If you like the Sonic adventure games or even Sonic Unleashed high-speed platforming (Which I'll argue is more in line with this game) then you'll have a blast with this game. As an adventure fan myself, I love Spark the Electric 3's fast paced, some combat (Which reminds me of Sonic Heroes), and rail grinding gameplay. This is a throwback to that era of fast-paced platforming, and I love it.

This game rocks, it takes Sonic and DMC and puts it in a samwich, you'd think it would taste like hot sauce and milk but it's more like pb&j. Buy it.

i really really enjoyed this game, i would rank it a 10/10 if not the fact that there's only one jester power in this one. PLEASE play this game it needs more attention

Excellent platformer with a real sense of speed and flow, exciting settings, a variety of gameplay types and and unexpectedly deep combat system coming into play during its boss fights. I particularly liked the more mindbending sections but must mention there that the moving checkerboard textures some of those levels used triggered my friend's epilepsy.

If you are a sonic adventure fan 100% check this game out its about 3-4 hours (I mostly played offline but my playtime was about 4 hours) of really solid adventure style levels with really right and polished movement with lots of extra challenges and bonus levels if you want more. Its even better than a lot of 3d sonic a number of ways. That said this game has 1 major flaw that brings this down from a 9/10 to and 8/10 for me and that is the combat. Bosses in sonic work because youre using the same tools you use for movement to damage them ie the spindash and homing attack. Here the combat feels entirely separate from the movement because you cant even use your homing attack to damage the enemies youre supposed to fight. This means that every so often the game just turns in to a mediocre hack n slash where every enemy is really easy but also takes way too many hits to kill and it entirely kills the pace. Sometimes the game will literally place a large wall in front of you while you're zooming around to force you to button mash for a minute or 2. Its better than the werehog at least but it still ruins the flow of gameplay and feels entirely detached from the fun of running around. This culminates in the final level where the game arbitrarily takes all the upgrades you've acquired from you meaning you cant use the alternate forms and you cant heal but instead it gives you a random new power to heal that kind of sucks and makes you play a 3 round boss rush. Afterwards you have 1 last boss where you can't heal at all. Its frustrating and not fun at all. The last level in general is not fun as it is about 25 minutes long and introduces a 9 lives system where you have to restart from the beginning if you lose all of them. Thankfully they let you restart from the boss once You make it that far. The level itself is not much harder than the previous levels but now everytime you fall off the level, something which had 0 consequences for the entire game, now removes a life from you. The level is really fun and good but this system feels arbitrary and like a forced difficulty spike when the level itself is not that hard. My only other criticism is that the story is a bit too ambitious for a 3d platformer and doesn't really work. The cutscenes can get pretty long and by the end of the game I pretty much stopped caring and just skipped most of them although the final cutscenes are fairly entertaining despite not totally getting what was going on. With the criticisms out of the way, this is a super fun game with fantastic level design and ill definitely be returning to this one. Mario Kishimoto played this game which means that hopefully sonic will be taking some notes from this one for future entries. Check this one out for sure.

Spark the Electric Jester 3 is a videogame. A very good videogame. Let's get this out of the way first, it was obviously inspired by Sonic. There's no hiding that. That is far from a bad thing. What could possibly be bad about having more of a thing i like but different? More specifically, it seems to be inspired by the Sonic Adventure games. You've got the tight controls, you've got the homing attack, you've got the loops and slopes, you've got the exciting level design, you've got a mild fever. It's all there. Honestly though, i think Spark 3 surpasses not just Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, but a lot of other 3D Sonic games as well. The reason? There are many. First of all, it feels a lot more... interactive. I have played a couple 3D Sonic games in my time like a hundred times over, and when you do that you start to notice how automatic they can get. Between the parts where you get to jump, drift, quickstep, maybe grind a rail or two, there's quite a few moments where you're just holding down the boost button or just holding forward through a loop or waiting for the set-piece animation to finish. Which is fine, it looks cool and it does give you that neat feeling of speed, but it also cuts down on the actual gameplay time, which is a problem because 3D Sonic games are usually pretty short on actual Sonic gameplay content. I won't beat around the bush, i respect the alternate playstyles in certain 3D Sonic games but i would not miss them if they were replaced with more actual Sonic levels. I can get through Sonic Adventure 2 but i have to basically force myself to think "yeah, this is fine, i totally want to be spending 12 minutes inside this bullshit pyramid looking for keys" when i know that from the very bottom of my heart, i just want to hop on a completed save and play through all the Sonic and Shadow stages back-to-back instead. Even then though, there are only like.. 6 Sonic stages and 4 Shadow stages. That's not a whole lot and they don't really last. Just a couple minutes at a time. This makes the time spent on the other gameplay styles feel much longer. So i'm happy to report that Spark 3 does not have that problem, for it has 33 STAGES. Yes. But wait, you also get the levels from Spark 2 after beating the game! So with those included, you get 47. Forty-fucking-seven levels of pure 3d high-speed platforming action, and they're all good. Spark 3's levels are open. Really fucking open. There are plenty of multiple pathways, opportunities for cool skips, and it all flows so nicely because the movement is so good. You can double jump and dash for one, that alone is very fun and satisfying to use. Running and jumping across a huge gap and getting a little extra height and distance to make it through is so good. You can perform a Jester Dash, basically a homing attack, on weak enemies and it actually maintains your momentum. You can hold L2 and Circle to charge the Jester Dash, which does make you stop momentarily but then gives you a boost of speed afterwards, and it can also be done in mid-air. There are certain sections where you are required to perform a Charged Jester Dash mid-jump and it is quite thrilling, especially when you barely make it by jumping and air dashing afterwards. Wallrunning is also a thing and it works pretty well, you get a bit more height everytime you jump from wall to wall, which is useful for crossing tight gaps. All of that is combined with incredibly tight controls and great momentum physics. The turning becomes just tight enough at high speeds and jumping off slopes feels great, you go soaring through the air. And it's done in a way that doesn't completely break the level design. You've got plenty of space to run around in, platforming doesn't become a total pain in the ass because the air control is really good, and aaaaa you go so fucking fast running down slopes and let me just talk about that too Running on slopes, loops, corkscrews, walls, it just *mwah* it just feels good. Because you get to actually control it. There is no automation during turns and loops and all that kinda stuff. The camera is directly behind Spark and you actually have to steer yourself during these. And it's fun! It works! It feels fast as fuck! The level design is really fucking good overrall. Like i said, it's very open, it can get wide, you can in fact explore the background scenery in some levels, but you never actually get lost. It's very clear where you need to go next. This was all mostly made by one guy, and so the fact that the levels can get pretty lenghty and rich in detail is very impressive. I think the spot for my favourite level in the game has to go to Nighttime Phenomena. The theme of an illusion-filled museum(?) is very cool and the crazy TV panel wall effects you see in the tunnels just blew my mind. You can even see the individual LCD pixels if you get the camera close enough! Oh yeah, did i also mention that this game has rail grinding? I fucking love rail grinding. It's done especially well here. You don't have to balance yourself on the rail, which is good cuz that mechanic sucks, but you can crouch down on downward inclines to gain speed. Plus with the Rail Boost upgrade you can use up energy to give yourself a err.. boost on uhhh... rails. Rail switching is also responsive and fast, landing on rails is easy because of the good controls, it's a prominent level mechanic and not just thrown in there like certain other 3d platformers, what's not to love? The music too, it's really fucking good as well. Favourite spot going to Nighttime Phenomena once again, with Airstrip Madness being a close second, but really, they're all great. Plus, one of the bosses has a badass vocal theme, that's all i need to say. Oh, right, this game has combat. It's pretty good too. Occasionally you're gonna have to stop along the way to wail on a couple enemies with your danger finger. You've got light attacks, heavy attacks, combos in the ground and in the air, and a projectile attack thrown in for good measure. Now, i'm not... good at action game combat, so i obviously played it on the easiest combat difficulty. So good combat in a game to me isn't about all the complicated skill ceiling non-sense. For me, it's all about the feedback. If cutting a dude in half with a sword feels like shit, like there's absolutely zero reaction from the enemy, then i'm gonna feel like shit for wasting my time with it. Thankfully, in Spark 3 that's not the case. The hitsounds are punchy, the animations and effects are awesome, dudes actually react to being physically assaulted, it's great stuff. You can really get in there and button mash and throw motherfuckers up in the air, perform a devastating downward kick, shoot a bunch of boolets, cool stuff like that. Plus, there are multiple playable characters that you can swap between at any time, and they have their own moves and combos! Not just in combat either, some of them can even help out during platforming. Like, Fark is really good cuz you get to do two air dashes, and believe me, that really helps. There's also a story but... eh, play the game and see it for yourself. I don't feel like explaining everything. So... go on. Go buy Spark the Electric Jester 3. It's really good.