Rakim's first solo album starts off awesomely, with his flow, voice, rhymes and nice beats all mixing together for some great tunes. Particularly 'The 18th Letter (Always and Forever)' which I can never get enough of and would cite as one of my favourite songs of all time! Up until 'Guess Who's Back' at track eight, most of the songs are all quality also, but then the remaining five tracks are all nice but lack something extra in the beats. They take a few listens to grow on you. And then you have the two remixes of two of the better songs on the album that fail to add much to the better originals. Overall, the album feels a lil' inconsistent and uneven but if you love Rakim you should get something out of all the songs and a lot out of a few. And there are no features! Such a rarity.
Beats: ★★★☆
Rapping/Bars: ★★★★★
Hooks: ★★★☆
Best Tracks: The 18th Letter (Always and Forever), It's Been a Long Time, Remember That, The Saga Begins & Guess Who's Back.
Stays true to the movie, Back to the Future Part III, in the four levels it offers. The first is one where you play as Doc riding a horse trying to reach Clara before she runs out of land. The obstacles you need to jump, shoot and evade come up too quickly and I can't think of any way to complete this unless you memorised the order of evade/jump/shoot etc for the whole level, or you have superhuman reactions. Then thanks to the level select cheat you might control Marty. The aim here is to shoot at that arcade shooting gallery type of thing that he did in the film. This one isn't as hard but because the directions are so sensitive it's still a slog to complete. Moving on is Marty throwing flying plates at baddies. And the last level, which is probably the most fun, is again with Marty on the top of a train dodging baddies and street poles among other things to reach the end and go back to the future. Overall, there is variety, but if you were gamer of the century this would take probably 20 minutes to complete and you'd be done with the game, and for others, they would probably spend twenty minutes on the first level and toss the cartridge in the bin.
Gameplay 1.5/5
Graphics 3/5
Sound 3/5
Difficulty .5/5
Originality 2.5/5
The first song is hard, Panties Off is decent and it maintains that level. The final song sounds like T-Rock recorded it over the phone or something... It's not reaching any new ground but I can't dislike anything T-Rock does.
Best Tracks: Hot Boy Shit, I Ain't Ya Friend
This is a rare occasion where there isn't one true standout song on a Ro album. None of these make my best of Ro playlist. The quality for me is weaker than his previous project. As I said in the review for 'Rohammad Ali', I'd like him to change it up more. His sound has been similar for more than a minute. He'd benefit from having more quality control as well and not have these 17-18 track albums that his last three have been.
Best Tracks: No Car Note, I'm an Asshole, For the Ghetto, Servin' Ya
This seemed to be going for Mortal Kombat type of live animation with the characters, when fighting though, it just doesn't work, having some of the worst fighting mechanics I've experienced in a beat 'em up. There are some good ideas here, where three different characters are placed at different parts in the game to work together to open/fix stuff, but the end result is a stiff boring game.