Rate the last game you finished!

LAA9000 · Dec 6, 2020

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Switch)
I don't give review scores/10

I hadn't played a Warriors game prior to this, but I enjoyed the demo so much I made the full game the first game I ever pre-ordered. I was mostly excited for the extra plot this would add to Breath of the Wild and possibly its sequel, and considered the gameplay something to enjoy on the side. By the end of the game, that had flipped, but I still don't feel like I wasted my money.

The story was... unexpected, to say the least. Ever since the first few trailers I had my fears that there would be a good ending where Calamity Ganon is sealed away successfully, and this is exactly that. It hurts a bit more when you realise this game was marketed like a prequel, thus many bought it under the assumption that it was. In that regard, it feels like false advertising. For my opinions on some specific parts:

The game actively retcons BotW even outside of Calamity Ganon's defeat. BotW shows Zelda and the Champions not liking Link at first before he grows on them, but in AoC there's no such dynamic. Creating a Champion (the BotW artbook) states that Link had the Master Sword at age 12 or 13, and The Champions' Ballad shows Link meeting the Champions after getting the Master Sword, but in AoC he gets it at age 17 after recruiting the Champions. There's probably a couple more I missed.
Most of the story is told through cutscenes before and after main story maps, so I have to mention the voice acting. A lot of the line delivery, particularly from Zelda and Astor, feels forced to the point that I struggle to take their lines seriously. I believe a Zelda game can work with voice acting; it just has to be good voice acting.
Several important lore details - such as Terrako creating a new timeline upon traveling back in time, or Harbinger Ganon being present Terrako corrupted with Malice from the future - are only explained in easy-to-miss loading screen tips for some reason. I only learned the latter from looking the game up on TV Tropes.
How did Zelda forget who Terrako was in the first place?
Terrako's time travel ability is never properly explained. The closest explanation is the Sheikah text on the portal in the intro cutscene, which reads 'Gate of Time Open'. The Gate of Time is the time travel method used in Skyward Sword, which could give us clues.
Impa has little plot relevance. She has ties with Purah, which is how she gives Link the Sheikah Slate, but that's it as far as I remember. She's obviously there due to fan demand for a young Impa.
Speaking of the Sheikah Slate, I don't get how everyone on the battlefield can use it when there's only one. Maybe I didn't listen closely enough.
Astor is pathetic. He has no personality, his origins and motives other than 'keeping fate' are never explained, he doesn't feel like a threat to the heroes, he doesn't contribute anything interesting to the story and his death at the end is laughably anticlimactic. He could be removed from the game and it wouldn't be any different.
Zelda and King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule are the only characters who go through any significant growth, when something like Revali gradually opening up to others would've been nice. Still like what they did with those two.

Looking back, the general gameplay loop is a bit repetitive. I didn't find killing minions very satisfying, and if it wasn't required for the mission or if I didn't need the extra Special charge or experience, I would run past them. Enemy and boss fights follow the same strategy of trying to perfect dodge their attacks, using specific Sheikah runes when they're weak to them and spamming special attacks against bosses. Admittedly the Sheikah Slate adds a lot to the combat that I wouldn't find in other Warriors games.

The main story maps are great to me, being big and long, but not too long that they became unenjoyable, and accurate to Breath of the Wild. However, most of the time the goal of these maps is to just go to specific points so you can defeat the enemies there, and this becomes repetitive. The side maps introduce some interesting ideas (like having you simultaneously capture enemy points and defend your own point) alongside some worse ones (escort missions yaaaaaaaay!!!).

Speaking of side maps, there are a lot of sidequests here, namely side missions, character upgrade unlocks and service unlocks. I tried to do as many as I could in between every story mission, and that might have dampened my enjoyment of the game overall since there are a ton. It took me over 33 hours to beat the game, and I had only completed 66% of the map at that point, with new quests being added even in the postgame. Not complaining, though; I like games with lots of content to last me a long time.

The main highlight of this game for me was, as you probably expected, the character roster. There are 18 playable characters in this game, and they range from the necessities (Link, Impa, Zelda, the four Champions) to the oddballs (Hestu, the Great Fairies, Monk Maz Koshia) to the story bosses (Master Kohga, Calamity Ganon) to the ones that destroy the timeline probably just so they could be playable (the four New Champions). Every character is unique here with no clones, many of them have very solid and imaginative movesets, and all of them except maybe two are very fun to play as - which makes it a shame that maintaining all of them at sufficient levels is so hard that you eventually have to settle on just a few. If there was a big postgame mode like Adventure Mode, that'd be more incentive for players to pick them all up.

My only actual complaints with the character roster are some glaring omissions - namely Purah, Robbie, Sooga, Astor and Harbinger Ganon. We know what Koei Tecmo are like, though; they're obviously saving these for DLC. We already know from datamined voice lines that all of these except Harbinger Ganon are likely coming. If I had to guess, Sooga and Astor (and possibly Harbinger Ganon) will be included in a free update like Ganon and Cia were in Hyrule Warriors, while Purah and Robbie will lead off paid DLC. In that case, they'll have to get very creative with their DLC choices; the only ones I can reasonably think of are Beedle, Kass and... Magda the mad flower lady. I'm hoping they don't disappoint, even if I likely won't buy any paid DLC.

Oh, and Master Kohga is perfect. His animations, his moveset, his writing, his voice acting, all come together to form the pinnacle of comic relief in the Zelda series. I will happily worship our new god.

Overall, while in retrospect I'm more critical of it, I certainly enjoyed playing the game for the 30+ hours I have so far. Will possibly aim for 100% completion, but likely won't buy any DLC. A solid recommendation if you enjoy plain dumb fun when playing games, as long as you've already played Breath of the Wild.

Deleted member · Jan 2, 2021

Mario Kart Wii

Well, this certainly is different from Double Dash, a game I have had for eleven years now. I like the fact I can use the GameCube controller for this since I am so used to that. I even liked how when I played all the cups in the 50cc Grand Prix, it seemed a bit more challenging than in Double Dash as can be evidenced by me getting blasted with Red Shells and Spiny Shells every now and then. Still, I got first place in all the cups with 55 points for the Star Cup, 57 for the Mushroom Cup, and 60 points for all others (though I did get a ****ty C ranking for one of those cups). I just wanted to unlock those extra cups, so I need not touch Grand Prix again.

Getting a 1-star rank for each cup on each difficulty I can assume is pretty tough to manage. If 50cc gave me a bit of trouble, I would hate to see how much rage I will induce doing those other engine classes. Guess I am going to have to unlock my girl

via the extremely time-consuming way.

Still, this game will be a lot of fun. Final Rating - 4 outta 5

Mario Party 9

This is my very first time playing a Mario Party installment for Wii. I am so used to Mario Parties 4-7 by now, so using the Wii Remote for the mini-games will take a little getting used to. Anyways, the new mechanics are interesting and make play times shorter. If y'all ever played Mario Party games with 50 turns, that would be potentially four hours long, and that is tedious to me. I also enjoyed the Boss Battles here. I even won that one against Wiggler with the other three CPUs set to a very hard skill level, even though I let them win most of the other mini-games as I attempt to collect them all. So far, the boards impress me. As of now, nothing bad to say about this except for me needing time to familiarize myself with controls. Final Rating - 4 outta 5

Megadoomer · Jan 2, 2021

Doom Eternal (Switch)

My stance on this is pretty much the same as it was with Doom Eternal on Steam. The graphics aren't as good, but I encountered no issues with performance (though I was playing on the lowest difficulty in Extra Lives mode since I had beaten the game before and I wanted to get the skin for beating Extra Lives mode with 10+ lives), and the game didn't slow down at any point (unlike Doom (2016), where there were one or two spots of heavy slow-down on the Switch version).

Gyro aiming was a plus, and the controls were easier to keep track of on a controller than on a mouse and keyboard. Shame that the game's digital-only, though - I would have loved a physical version.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch (Switch)

I played this game on the PC years ago, but the controls in the Switch version weren't as finicky as I was worried they'd be. The game is very short, but it's a lot of fun to play through, and it's got a really entertaining and memorable premise. Some of the achievements seem quite difficult to get, but it's not like the Switch version gives you anything for getting them beyond personal satisfaction, so I didn't consider it a huge issue. It's a lot like Untitled Goose Game in many ways - maybe it's better to wait for a sale so you can get more for your money, but I had fun with it.

wizfoot · Jan 13, 2021

Final Fantasy 7: Remake
10/10

Every image has a bit of OST attached to it if you want to listen.

This is a one-time gig. When it's done, we're done.
(Sector 7 Undercity)

Wow. What can I say about this game that hasn't been said already? It's a faithful reimagining and combination of the original FF7, Advent Children, and Crisis Core. It's a beautiful game and one that I can gladly consider perfect in every way. I have nothing bad to say about this game outside of 1 or 2 very minor complaints like a little messed-up lip syncing and a few out-of-place lines of dialogue.

I finished it in a bit over 30 hours, with my party at level 34. My final three party members were Cloud, Barret (which I only just got the name pun for; he's named after Barrett Firearms Manufacturing), and Tifa. Sephiroth was a ballbuster and a fantastic final boss. His final reveal about halfway through the game in Hojo's laboratory was a fantastic in a way that can only be done in a game that had been teasing him for the first 20 or so hours. But that's for a bit later.

A whole lotta normal people with families and friends work for Shinra. People just trying to support their loved ones as best they can. I know it's not exactly a revelation, but... it's easy to forget.
(Tifa's Theme)

This game's characterization is one of the best I've ever seen in a video game - and trust me, I've played a lot of video games with great characterization. The Ace Attorney franchise, Danganronpa (1; I've bought 2 but haven't played it yet), God of War, The Last of Us (Part 1), and even one or two of the Call of Duty games. All of them pale in comparison to FF7R.

It takes a really good deviation from the original, and I feel like a huge part of that is because of the voice acting which wasn't present in FF7 and was (in my opinion) a little lackluster in Crisis Core. Every voice actor feels like they fit the character - Cody Christian is the perfect voice for Cloud Strife and I hope he's kept in the future. Max Mittelman's portrayal of Red XIII was also superb. If I had to give the prize of "best voice actor" to one person, though, it'd definitely be Tyler Hoechlin as Sephiroth. He sold the haunting tone of Sephiroth from AC in a way that was not only on par with his portrayal in the movie but also way better it in some ways.

This is the only game that has made me cry twice in a manner of minutes and the first game to make me cry in a little over 4 years. I'd like to make it clear that I never finished the original FF7 nor Crisis Core, only played them a little bit, but I have watched Advent Children.
Biggs's "death" and then Jessie's actual death during the platefall in Sector 7 crushed me, especially because Jessie is my favorite character. I know it's implied that she survived in the epilogue, those are her gloves and scarf on the nightstand, and I really hope she did.

Nobody felt out of character at all. Barret caring about Marlene more than anything, Cloud worrying over Aerith and Tifa, Tifa being a cocky and scrappy fighter but still reluctant and even regretful at times, Aerith's subversion of expectations by swearing and just being rude at times which is completely in line with her portrayal in the original game, it all works. Everyone felt like their characters, and that's pretty high bar to reach.

Seven seconds until the end. Time enough for you, perhaps. But what will you do with it?
(One-Winged Angel: Rebirth)

Speaking of characterization, I can say that with 100% certainty this is the best portrayal of Sephiroth to date with no exaggeration. He's a combination of every Sephiroth - he's got the personality and motive from FF7, the design and one wing from AC, and even the motifs from Crisis Core. The only thing he's missing is Bizzaro • and Safer • Sephiroth, but I expect them to appear in the sequel.

His fight in the end is a beautiful homage to both FF7 and Advent Children, but especially the latter. The final fight with the One-Winged Angel is what I always imagined fighting him/playing as him in Smash and what I imagined in videos of his fight in FF7. He counters moves when you attack him when his guard is up, he utilizes magic, he's fought on a fractured world, there's cinematic events that perfectly encapsulate what a final boss feels like. You can throw Sephiroth in the air and slash him into another platform, but then he'll do the same thing to you! He'll force you onto a new platform and hold you down with magic before sprouting his wing, but then Tifa/Barret/Aerith will save the day! It's a fantastic battle.

Speaking of battles, the gameplay in general feels like what I imagined playing FF7. Real-time combat is the best form of combat they could've chosen for this game, but it still keeps turn-based elements like AP and slowing down time to choose actions. Each battle with harder enemies feels had-fought and finding out their weaknesses with or without assess materia gives me a jolt of dopamine whenever I use a weakness and it staggers them. Speaking of the stagger system, it's a welcome addition. It paces battles and makes sure they're not too hard but not too easy.

We need to make the most of the time we have- to live our lives the way we wanna live. Every minute... every moment, matters.
(Aerith's Theme)

The story itself is similar to FF7 at first; it is a "remake," after all. What it does differently in the very beginning, though, is show Cloud going from the destroyed reactor to the train unlike the original game. It also shows him having a flashback (without the grainy filter at first) in an extremely realistic depiction of PTSD. Burning buildings are turned into wooden houses, broken chainlink fences are turned into picket fences, and you're following an all-too familiar figure; Sephiroth (or SEPHIROTH if you want to be technically correct in spelling his name). This isn't in the original game and is a very welcome addition.

The story changes about halfway through; when you get back to Seventh Heaven after talking with Tifa, AVALANCHE is attacked by mysterious phantoms. These are later revealed by Aerith to be "Whispers," the arbiters of fate. Something the gang was doing pissed them off, but eventually they go away. Interestingly, they're at the same time deuteragonists and antagonists and don't have a moral compass. In the end of the game before Sephiroth's fight, you fight the incarnations of the Past, Present, and Future. As Red says: "Is it our destiny to defy destiny? It's an interesting question."

The game's main premise, from my perspective, is about defying destiny. It was Aerith's destiny to die in FF7, but she doesn't in FF7R. Whispers, the arbiters of fate and the protectors of destiny, are an enemy. You only beat Sephiroth after defying destiny again; meaning that, possibly, it was Sephiroth's destiny to win, but you defied that.

A good man who serves a great evil is not without sin. He must recognize and accept his complicity. He must open his eyes to the truth - that his corporate masters are profiting from the planet's pain.
(Avalanche's Theme)

The last thing I want to talk about is how great this game's music is. I've been a musician for nearly a decade (I've played piano for 8 years, trombone for 5, and a little bit of guitar for a bit under 3 years) and I study music as a hobby. There isn't a single piece in this game I can call bad. All of the OST I've linked here is topical to the picture, but there's a huge portion which isn't topical to this post that I want to share.

Whether it's the melody in J-E-N-O-V-A that chimes in with hints of One-Winged Angel that play during the Dreamweaver's third phase or the faint addition of Let The Battles Begin! in Rufus "My Weapon is Literally Capitalism" Shinra's theme before the fight even starts, this game's music consistently hit it out of the park. Everything fit, from the themes in Wall Market changing on where you are in relation to each of the Trio or how during Phase 3 of Sephiroth's fight the remix is almost completely dropped and the theme goes straight to how it was in FF7.

Survival can be a matter of luck or skill, and you can't rely on luck.
(Hollow)

In short, Final Fantasy 7: Remake is the only game that I have ever played I can truly call "perfect". Everything was amazing in this game, and I can't think of a single negative thing to say about it. It's the only game I have ever rated a 10/10, and likely will be the only one for a long, long time. Or at least until FF7R:2 comes out. Who knows?

Doc Monocle · Jan 13, 2021

Yoshi's Island
8/10

I think it was quite fun. I finished it twice, the first time being about fifteen years ago.

I rate the game high for its well thought out, yet fairly simple gameplay. The Yoshi character is distinctive and plays differently from many platform heroes, what with his tongue, ground slam, egg throwing, and unusual defeat condition.

The soundtrack was particularly enjoyable, with the boss music both putting you on edge, and pleasing your ears. In general, the music conjures these word to mind: 'Casual' and 'Have fun!'

The colors catch your attention, and your are not distracted by the obsolete graphics.

However, it loses two stars on the following fronts: The boss castles added a degree of tedium to boss accessibility, and in general, there was little incentive to deviate from the main path when you found it, which could be tedious looking for with certain stages in what is a linear game. Sometimes you do not want navigation puzzles.

The other drawback relates to personal views about the main villain, Kamek, but this is negligible for myself, so overall, this is just a good game.

Invader ZlM · Jan 24, 2021

Super Mario RPG
9.2/10

Megadoomer · Jan 28, 2021

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Video Game: Complete Edition (Switch)

It's a solid beat-em-up that's aged pretty well, considering that it came out roughly a decade ago. It's based on the comics and movie of the same name, and it takes place in a video game-inspired version of Toronto, where Scott Pilgrim has started dating Ramona Flowers and is targeted by her League of Evil Exes, who have vowed to destroy Ramona's love life. The game itself is heavily inspired by River City Ransom - walk to the right, beat up random goons, and buy food in shops to permanently boost your stats.

The game can be fairly tough at first, but as you level up, you get more moves, and once you can afford to either pay off Scott's late fees at the movie rental store (roughly $500) or afford the items at Wallace's secret shop, you can easily boost your character's stats to the point where enemies aren't a huge threat. There are seven playable characters, though one of them requires you to beat the game with the four that were in the base roster (Scott, Ramona, Kim Pine, and Steven Stills), and one of them requires you to link an Ubisoft account to the game. (unless that requirement has been patched out - I know there has been a patch, but I don't know what it contains)

It's a short beat-em-up, but it's got good replay value, and even if you're not familiar with the source material, give it a shot. (some things might not make a ton of sense, but it's still fun)

Shantae: Risky's Revenge (Wii U)

This is the first Shantae game that I've actually beaten - I wanted to play them in order, but the Game Boy Colour game seemed too tough given how little health you have and how small the screen is. I enjoyed it - it's not as much of a Metroidvania as I thought it would be (though that might be due to the game originally being a DSi title, and shorter as a result - it's only four or five hours long), but I had fun with it, and I could use a game that's on the short side from time to time.

While I wasn't sure how some of the characters knew each other, I was able to get the gist of it as I played. The game's main mechanic is its transformations, and while one of them (Mermaid) isn't all that useful beyond a handful of points (there are only two collectibles that require it, though you need it to access the final area), the other two get plenty of use.

The plot's pretty straight-forward - Risky (a pirate, and the series' main villain) has stolen a magic lamp, and Shantae needs to collect three magic seals to prevent her from using it for evil. The game isn't groundbreaking, but it's charming. I'd suggest getting it on sale, though, since it seems considerably shorter than the other Shantae games.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (Switch)

There were some aspects of this game that I liked compared to the original, but all in all, I prefer No More Heroes 1.

For the positives: the minigames are a huge improvement over the originals' (now they're in the style of 8-bit arcade games), they've gotten a wider variety of boss designs (especially the rank 25, 10, and 1 bosses), and being able to switch your weapon at any time is definitely an improvement over having to change it between missions. Also, you can turn into a tiger and maul your enemies as they run away screaming, which is always a plus.

However, the bosses aren't as memorable as the original. It probably doesn't help that they use normal sounding names rather than codenames, so instead of Death Metal, Destroyman, and Speed Buster, you have Matt Helms, Nathan Copeland, and Alice Twilight. (the original game had some normal names sprinkled in there as well, like Holly Summers, but nowhere near as often) The game seemed rushed at points, with multiple boss fights being skipped over and several bosses having no levels or very minimalistic levels leading up to them.

The game is more streamlined than the original, removing the empty open world in favour of a menu, but some of the menu options could have used more content. Take Dr. Naomi's shop - in the original game, you could buy new weapons and upgrade from her fairly regularly, but in this game, she only sells two swords. One of them is available at the start of the game, while the other is available after the third or fourth boss. She doesn't sell any parts or weapon upgrades, so once you buy both swords, there's literally no reason to go back to her at any point in the game.

Another issue that I have is the collectibles. Rather than masks or concept art, you collect various anime merchandise and replicas of boss weapons that can be found scattered throughout Travis's apartment. Visually, it's an improvement over having an increasingly large number of masks stuck to the wall, but it starts to feel cluttered after a while, and unlike the concept art, none of it serves any practical purpose. A concept art gallery or a model viewer would have been nice.

The core gameplay (both in the mini-games and the ranking battles) is still pretty solid, but it seems a bit rushed compared to the original, like they were nearing a deadline or ran out of money and needed to cut corners.

KingBooGengar57 · Jan 28, 2021

Final Fantasy III (the real one):
Pros:
Interchangeable jobs, unlike the original
Really, really good music
Better visual effects than the original
The Invincible airship is awesome
More towns than the original
More enemy varieties and bosses
Pretty cool bosses
Relatively cheap stuff.
Longer than the original
The introduction of summon magic!
The introduction of Moogles.
Cons:
Very difficult
Getting the Onion set is extremely tedious because you have to fight 128 battles in order for a dragon to appear which then either does or does not drop an Onion part.
Some annoying dungeons, like the Cave of Shadows
Some bosses are extremely hard like Xande who can drain 2000+ health with his Meteor attack.
The final dungeon requires you to beat four bosses and the final boss on one single life, should you die, you’ll have to go back through the Crystal Tower
The job system isn’t as good as FF5’s.

Rizen · Feb 6, 2021

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

First off this is a From software game, the soulsborne guys, and if you know anything about them you'll expect high quality and high challenge levels. Sekiro doesn't disappoint. The game is gorgeous with big environments, fluid animations and realistic cinematics. It takes place in feudal Japan with the story following a ninja-like shinobi in his search for his young master. The shinobi is mortally wounded and gains the power of resurrection and a prosthetic arm he can equip with a grappling hook and various weapons. You'll grapple from rooftops and trees, fight groups of soldiers and powerful bosses and collect scores of hidden loot in your quest. If you die you can reserect once but your powers will be blocked after that until you preform a deathblow. The combat revolves around sword fighting and well timed deflections. Both you and enemies have a health and posture bar. Deathblows can be preformed when either is depleted. Posture is weakened both by landing attacks and deflecting them. Some enemies can be beaten simply by deflections. You have skill trees but can't create different builds or swap primary weapons like in Dark Souls; more on that later.

The good:
This game is top quality. The levels are well thought out and challenging to traverse. It is a large game which rewards checking out every nook and cranny for hidden items. Fully voice acted. Incredibly fun to swing around. Multiple story paths and endings.

The Bad:
Sadly Sekiro has several things bringing it down from a perfect score. The targeting AI could be better programmed; when an enemy is killed you'll target the next enemy on screen as opposed to the closest. This often leads to you targeting an enemy across the field and turning your back to the guy attacking you. Sometimes, usually if an enemy jumps, the targeting will brake and you'll go into free camera.
The game is intended to be extremely difficult but boss fights often end up overly long. Several bosses have 3 or 4 health/posture bars which you must slowly chip away at making fights last 5-15 minutes. There are no temporary checkpoints (something all Fromsoft games could benefit from) so if you die you must watch a loading screen, return to where the boss is, load the cutscene, skip the cutscene, and fight every single phase of the boss every time. This ends up making boss fights a chore rather than a fun challenge. Unlike Darksouls 3, you cannot summon other players to help you and several bosses are intentional "skill checks" and extremely hard. If you can't "git gud" you can't play the game. This will turn a lot of casual players away.
You're stuck fighting with a sword for everything. There are powerful prosthetic tools to help but they have limited ammo. If you don't like an aggressive parry build you're out of luck. No changing builds in this game.

The verdict:
If you're a hardcore player who enjoys the combat and grinding bosses Sekiro gets a 10/10. But everyone else will find the game a lot more tedious than it needs to be. A few simple fixes like temporary checkpoints between boss phases and the addition of a co-op or easy difficulty mode would have gone a long way to making the game accessible to all players. Too bad. 8/10.

silenthunder · Mar 14, 2021

Team Fortress. Yes I beat it. It was great 10/10.

TheThingamajigRayman · Mar 17, 2021

Rayman 3 HD
8/10
Probably my second favorite game in the Rayman series so far. But you see, I have one major problem with it, and it's this quote right here:

"See you in Rayman 4!" -Murfy

Just kidding, haha....kinda. Anyway, lets move on to the positives of the game. The music is great, and I think 3 probably has the best OST of the entire series. Unlike its predecessors, Rayman 3 has a heavy focus on combat, with platforming mixed in. For many, this is why they don't like it. But I think it's pretty cool, its unique and fun to me. The bosses are really good as well, the best in the series by far, especially the final boss (Reflux). The power-ups are nice as well, ranging from Lockjaw to the Shock Rocket. On to the negatives now, the camera isn't the best. And there are no checkpoints at all, which means if you die at all in a level you have to restart the entire level, which is especially pretty annoying during bosses. And oh yeah, the story exists. The story's just alright.

Pros
-Banger soundtrack
-Gameplay
-Bosses
-Humor's alright
Cons
-Camera
-No checkpoints AT ALL

Rayman 3's a pretty good game. But what do I rate it?

/10
8 Globoxes outta ten.

wizfoot · Mar 18, 2021

Final Fantasy VI: 8/10

A very solid JRPG. Still doesn't hold the title of my favorite, but a pretty close third place behind Pokémon Heart Gold and Final Fantasy VII. The worldbuilding is very interesting, especially the World of Ruin, and the magic system is pretty fun. I can't really complain about any of the major characters except for Kefka. Kefka is, as a whole, just uninteresting until he becomes the God of Magic but by then his potential's already been pretty wasted away. He's like the Joker with magic, and I'm not a big fan of the more insane Jokers. Heath Ledger > Joaquin Phoenix, sorry. Likewise, Sephiroth > Kefka.

The party you gather is fun and Terra's backstory is pretty interesting. It reminds me of Aerith's in some ways, in all honesty. The character design is pretty good all around and the music is pretty good, especially Dancing Mad (the final boss theme).

francisbaud · Mar 25, 2021

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey: 8/10

That was a long time ago, more recently I've been playing games that cannot be "finished" (aka MOBA and MMORPGs). Anyway, a pretty good RPG in my opinion, with an interesting story line (two worlds: the technologically advanced cities and the magical realms). Winners of many E3 awards, released by Funcom in 2006. 85% positive reviews on Steam.

Doc Monocle · Apr 13, 2021

I recently finished the main portion of Banjo-Tooie (I have not yet found the mega-glowbo... The accursed creature!). I am not sure how to rate it. It improved upon several aspects that were problematic in Banjo-Kazooi, such as the loss of progress after defeat, and it has more to its gameplay. However, it suffers in many ways-- the game is sometimes crass, like its predecessor; I clenched my teeth whenever a first-person segment showed up; it has you going to and fro, to and fro between levels to accomplish simple tasks, and that becomes tedious in the worlds, which are enlarged from the size of those in Banjo-Kazooie; and part of the thematic issues present in Banjo-Kazooie were worsened here.

Overall, where I would rate Banjo-Kazooie perhaps 5-6/10 stars, I would rate Banjo-Tooie perhaps 6-7/10 stars.

BallZ · Apr 14, 2021

Bravely Defualt II: 8/10

I loved the first two games and this one as well. I've always preferred turn based JRPGs growing up, and I'm glad Square is producing an outlet of development for them. That being said, this game was fun, loved the characters, the story managed to be creative with the four elemental crystals concept, the job system was addictive, and I liked how long it was(took be about 70 hours). My only gripes were the world map being more of a linear Earthbound style which meant no airship or boat to sail around the world in, and I felt the final boss was way too easy as well as the post game super boss.

Im looking forward to part III, hopefully it comes out on Switch.

Yashichi · Apr 19, 2021

Peeb Adventures! (PC)
It's grappling game with a the nice I love the designs of characters, really funny but watch out! Some spooky themes, but no screamers. Love Orbo.

LAA9000 · May 9, 2021

Sonic the Hedgehog (PC, via Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics)

One giant mixed bag of a game. I have to give it credit for being the first of its series, and for being quite different from other platformers at the time. The levels, for instance, contain many branching paths that are both easy to stumble upon and to miss on your first playthrough. I love these: it makes these levels feel much more refreshing and open, and less repetitive and 'hold right to win' than typical 2D Mario levels - not to mention the simple satisfaction of discovering more to a level and seeing what it has to offer.

This is where I have to admit I may have played the game wrong. Remember that the classic Sonic games were never about simply going fast - they were about using skill and memorisation of level layouts to build momentum and then go fast. How do you memorise these levels? By playing them repeatedly. How did I manage my time playing the game? By creating savestates at the beginning of each act I progressed onto so I could avoid starting at the very beginning every time I got a game over. In this sense, I may have robbed myself of the intended experience of the game.

However, I believe I would not have enjoyed the intended experience over my way of playing, because I found the levels to not be great in this game. Green Hill Zone is an excellent starting world that teaches all the necessary mechanics of the game as well as its design philosophies. After that, the game takes a complete nosedive with Marble Zone, a world based entirely around waiting for platforms and obstacles to move where you want them to. This kills all momentum the player had and brings the game to a halt; it is the main reason why I saved after every act and it even made me consider skipping this game outright and moving onto the sequel. I kept playing despite this, and every level from here ranged from mediocre (Spring Yard, Scrap Brain) to also terrible (Labyrinth) to quite good (Star Light). I didn't bother with the Chaos Emeralds either: the bonus stages made little sense and the only reward for obtaining them is some extra details in the ending cutscene.

That neglects to mention that I may not want to play the same levels repeatedly for the 'full experience'. Future Sonic games knew this and added built-in save features.

In conclusion, this game definitely feels like the first in its series, and one where the designers could not seem to agree on where they wanted to take it. I played it mostly so I can say I have played it, which is the main reason I would recommend it to others.

Edit: Replaced an 'and' with an '&' to reflect the official title.

Megadoomer · May 9, 2021

Ratchet and Clank (2002) (played it through the PS3 collection)

It's a solid start to the series. My only issues were that the game's lock-on was a bit wonky at times, the final boss is a pretty big leap upwards in terms of difficulty, and Ratchet wasn't as likeable as I was expecting. (I figured he'd be more of a Luke Skywalker type, but he was very self-centered, getting mad at Clank for telling him to do the right thing and only wanting to stop the villain when it effected him personally)

Otherwise, it's a pretty good 3D platformer with some third person shooter elements. While not up there with Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, or Psychonauts (to name some platformers from around that era), that's an extremely high bar to cross. While there are collectibles in the game in the form of Gold Bolts, they're entirely optional. (they aren't needed to unlock levels, and while there's apparently a room where you can use Gold Bolts to upgrade your weapons, I never found it)

I'm looking forward to trying out later games in the series and seeing how they expand on this foundation; I've only played a bit of the sequel, and I'm already liking the changes that I've seen.

LAA9000 · May 15, 2021

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (PC, via Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics)

Such an improvement from the first game. It truly feels like they kept and improved upon everything that worked in the first game while removing what didn't - as any sequel should. Levels still have vibrant, memorable themes and many branching paths, but accommodate Sonic's potential for high speed much better (almost too much in Chemical Plant Zone's case) and have very few forced waiting or underwater segments. The Spin Dash is a very convenient way to get a burst of speed if there's no spring nearby, and it helped me in many places. The Special Stages are overhauled to be at least intuitive to control, though they are still not great: from the second one onwards, they have lots of blind turns with spikes around them, and even if Sonic moves out of the way, Tails might run into them. As a result, I ended up with 2 Chaos Emeralds by the end, which is a shame because collecting all of them has worth now in that it unlocks Super Sonic.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Tails. He's a bit useless in this game, outside of bosses where he can hit them as well, and collect rings that Sonic has just dropped. I forgot to mention in my Sonic 1 review that the bosses were all too easy, and that also applies here - even the final boss, where despite dying to it multiple times, it still felt easy when I beat it.

In conclusion, Sonic 2 is much, much better than Sonic 1, but I won't say too much about it yet since I've heard Sonic 3 & Knuckles is even better. To get to that game, though, I'm going to have to play Sonic CD first, which I'm a bit scared about since I've heard it shares a lot more in common with 1 than 2. Will I still enjoy it? Find out next time on JustNo., formerly known as LAA9000 with no Premium status to allow for a name change, Reviews Various Sonic Games!

Edit: Replaced an 'and' with an '&' to reflect the official title, and added a comma for correct grammar.

Janx_uwu · May 15, 2021

Mega Man 2 (played on Switch LC): 7/10
December 2020 was when I started my Mega Man series marathon-a Mega Marathon if you will. I started with X1 on the Switch version of the X Legacy Collection since I started X1 on the SNES classic and loved i, and played up until X6 which I could not finish out of sheer frustration. Up until X5 I thought they were all great, X5 was just ok IMO. I started X7 after not being able to beat 6, but I'm pretty sure it's even worse.
Anyways, it got to a point recently where I just needed a break from the X series and wanted to experience the roots of the series. I did play MM1 first but haven't revisited it yet, so no thoughts yet. But MM2 I have played a few times now.
First of all-the weapons are much improved from X1. Quick Boomerang was by far my favorite-it took care of bosses well, had a great rate of fire and very useful angle of attack. I don't like the Metal Blade a ton compared to it, though it's still a good weapon that I found myself using quite a few times. Leaf Shield I could never get the hang of, despite me spamming the move every time I play as Mega Man in Smash. Crash bomber was very situational, but it's satisfying to blow up walls with it. Never liked any of the time-halting moves in Mega Man games, so Time Stopper was quite useless to me (not to mention, I always do Quick Man's stage first, so it doesn't even have any usefulness in that department). Bubble Lead wasn't great throughout the game, but it was really fun to beat the final boss with. Atomic Fire was a nice precursor to the series staple of a charged buster shot, in the same vein of the Homing Attack shield from Sonic 3D Blast to the actual Homing Attack. Air Shooter was really fun but I hardly got much use out of it.
I know It sounds like I'm harping on the weapons, but really, I did like them. Unlike the X series, the classic games do a great job of making you WANT to use the weapons rather than your standard buster.
The level design was also much improved this time but still has some of that NES era BS, like instakill lasers coming out from walls the second you drop into a new section of the level, meaning you must know Quick Man's stage by heart to not die. The birds that drop eggs in Air Man's stage just really tick me off when they come out of nowhere and cause me to take knockback and fall off of a platform. Never liked reappearing platform puzzles in any game, and while the improved controls of 2 make it easier, I still beat Air Man before Heat Man anyways just to get the jet tool and zoom over those darn blocks.
Speaking of which, the tools in this game were really fun! I didn't use the wall climber at all on my first playthrough, but the hover platform and jet plaform were all really fun and great improvements over the blue-platform thingy in MM1-not to mention. However I disagree with their unlock method. You have to defeat a certain robot master for each one, but this means that you HAVE to beat Air Man first before getting tool 1, and Heat Man first before getting tool 2. I'd much prefer if this was done in the style of the Nightmare Police in the X series, where they appear after a certain amount of any stages. This would mean I wouldn't have to do as much prep to beat Heat Man and get the hover tool.
All of the bosses are much improved from 1. In that game I felt like, no matter what I did, I needed the weakness to beat the boss given how tough they were to beat. In 2 I never felt that with any bosses, though it is still near impossible to avoid their attacks, which I couldn't say about almost any X boss (though that may just be because I'm better at those games). Especially Quick Man, he's really annoying. Across the board I didn't have too many problems with them, but they still need improvements.
The music all around is really good and much more memorable than 1's tracks. Really pump you up to beat the level, even if some of the level design is garbage.
Onto the Wily stages. I just adore the first level where it really feels like you're busting into his place uninvited, ready to take him down, all while the most badass track in the game plays in the background. The other stages had some of the most fun platforming challenges in the game. And as can be said with every MM game I've played so far, the stages make great use of the weapons you've collected along the way. Dr. Wily makes for a great second-to last boss, and the alien is both hillaroius and a pretty fun final encounter. Not just hillarious because of the twist at the end, but because his weakness is Bubble Lead-which was the last weapon I thought of using. He's probably one of the more well-balanced bosses in the game.
My biggest criticism with 2 was that it was a bit too generous with its health pickups from enemies. 95% of my deaths came from bosses or pitfalls, because my health was never in danger of a standard enemy or most of the sub-bosses. 1 wasn't as good as this game, but the enemy encounters were certainly more engaging thanks to health being much more rationed out.
Those are basically my thoughts on 2, as someone who played the X games before the classic ones. Overall, I liked it and I recommend it to any fan of platformers, and I'll definitely play it again here soon. I apologize if I sounded overly critical, but 2 is seriously a very competent 2D platformer with an awesome final act, fun weapons, and a bustin' soundtrack.

LAA9000 · May 18, 2021

Sonic CD (PC)

I might not have played this one enough to give a proper review. This game sets itself apart from the first two by giving each act a second objective independent from getting to the end - travelling to the past and destroying Eggman's robot transporter to create a good future. Each act has four versions: past, present, bad future and good future. Sonic can run into time gates to gain a sort of power up where if he maintains a high speed for long enough, he gets sent forward or back in time. The past versions of every act has a robot transporter that, if destroyed, replaces the bad future version of that act with its good future equivalent, and destroying every one is required for 100% completion (which I didn't get).

To accommodate this new gameplay concept, levels are much more expansive and labyrinth-like than before, and backtracking may be required. As someone who praised the first two games on their openness, I probably enjoyed this game's levels even more than those games' levels, and easily coped with any backtracking.

However, notice that you're not actually required to visit the future? That's my biggest criticism of the game: not only is visiting the future not required to complete the game, it's discouraged since doing so makes it harder to get to the past where you're supposed to be. Future time gates only became a nuisance whenever I ran into one, since then I had to reach a place where I could burn it - or worse, I'd be running at warp speed ready to go to the past, then I'd run into a future time gate at the last second, and before I could slow down I'd go to the future. Were the future versions of each act only added as a technical showcase of the CD medium?

On the bright side, special stages are better than ever. As far as I'm aware, most people seem to hate these, but I liked them more than the previous two games' special stages because for the first time, I felt fully in control. Granted, I've heard they were really slow in the original version and sped up in the HD remake, which I was playing. I also only obtained 1 Time Stone, and I don't even know what they do in this game.

The aforementioned HD remake is great: it runs in widescreen, cuts down load times and smooths out some animation among other things. I will criticise its inability to remap controls - I usually play on a keyboard using WASD to move, but for this I was forced to use the arrow keys. Still, it's a giant shame that the Sonic 1 and 2 remakes never left mobile, or that the 3 & Knuckles remake pitch never got accepted by SEGA.

In conclusion, this game is different enough from its predecessors to feel unique and refreshing, but not enough for people who didn't like those games to enjoy this. It's definitely better than Sonic 1, but not as great as Sonic 2. So yes, I did still enjoy it despite its similarities to Sonic 1.

Edit: Good news: I finally learned what collecting all the Time Stones does! ...It gives you the good ending. I can view that by going into the PC version's files, thank you very much.

Additionally, it seems the Sonic Origins versions of Sonic 1, 2 and CD may be based on the mobile versions, or at least equivalents of them. However, I haven't yet seen footage of any enhancements to 3 and & Knuckles; the trailer only showed the original versions where the other games had their HD versions shown, and while I've seen people claim they've seen screenshots of HD 3 and & Knuckles, I haven't seen these screenshots myself.

Also added an 'and' for correct grammar.

Rizen · May 19, 2021

Immortals: Fenyx Rising

IFR is an open world game that follows an unlikely hero in her quest to revive the depowered Greek gods and defeat the evil titan Typhon, who has taken over the world. You can play as either a male or female avatar, a story teller named Fenyx, but for the sake of this I'll refer to her as she. Fenyx will have to climb, glide and ride various mounts over a large area, completing puzzles, mini dungeons called vaults of tartaros, and finding materials to power her up in every imaginable way.

The Good
IFR gives open world fans what they want from a game. The world is large and rich with collectables and things to do. There's tons of gear, upgrades, abilities, godly powers and visual customizations to find. You have a lot of freedom traversing the world too as you can, swim, dive, climb walls, run and glide. You can even tame horses, deer and unicorns and ride them. Eventually you'll become very powerful but I can see the game being quite challenging if you don't power yourself up.
The story is fully voice acted and framed in the humorous way of Prometheus telling Zeus the story of Fenyx that will serve as his redemption. This leads to a lot of clever back and forth dialog. If you aren't familiar with Greek mythology you'll still have fun with the game but if you are, you'll get more out of it.
IFR at first seemed like a discount Breath of the Wild but over time proved to have it's own identity and original puzzle sets. Some of the puzzles made me scratch my head a bit but there are also built in ways to cheese many of them. IFR really holds its own in the pantheon of open world games.

The Bad
Although the game lacks any major flaws, there are several minor ones that can really grate your nerves. I played the Switch version. IFR always shows a little cutscene for upgrading Fenyx. These are great at first but unskippable and over the roughly 50 hours I played, got annoying. Similarly when you get enough materials to upgrade something a large message will appear on screen telling you to do so. These also get annoying.
Your gliding ability is imprecise for accurate landings by not being able to stop momentum and having a wide turn area. This makes some of the harder platforming puzzles more tedious than they need to be. If you miss or overshoot a platform it's best to simply fall into the void and retry rather than try to correct yourself.
It's worth mentioning that my game crashed 4 times: once it got stuck on a loading screen, once it froze and twice I got an error message all forcing the game to close. These are things that can be patched so don't worry too much about them but really shouldn't happen in a triple A game. Also sometimes my jumps and guiding of arrows were unresponsive.
IFR looks fine but it's not an impressive looking game in the age of PS5s. I'm not saying everything needs to be ultra realistic as the game is stylized but the environments and characters could have better shading and detail. Games like FFVII Remake and Horizon Zero Dawn look significantly better.
IFR suffers from what I call Skyrim syndrome where, although there is great variety to the puzzles, there are such a large amount of them that they are frequently repeated. I'm not interested in completing it 100% because that would mean repeating the same sliding block, arrow guiding, enemy defeating etc puzzles over and over in different locations.

The Verdict
Although IFR could use a bit more polish it was still a very enjoyable and long experience. I bought the DLC for it. It's far better to have too much to do than too little. If you like open world games this is a good one. Hopefully patches will fix most of its issues.
8.5/10

YoshiandToad · May 25, 2021

In the lead up to Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, I've been replaying Alex's old titles.

Alex Kidd in Enchanted Castle (via Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Collection on Steam)
I'd heard this game was an absolute stinker, so took a deep breath and dived in.

The story for the game focuses around Alex travelling to a whole new world, Planet Paperrock, after defeating Janken the Great in Miracle World. His father, King Sander/Thunder/Thor(the games keep changing his name) has mysteriously gone missing on this planet, which just so happens to be the place Janken was from. Alex, concerned for his fathers safety travels from his homeplanet Aries to save him.

Alex Kidd, whilst still having his basic 'shellcore' punch attack, also adds a brand new jump kick into the equation to take down airborne enemies. This in theory is great, but the issue is that Alex doesn't actually throw his kick out until he reaches the apex of his jump. This means the jump kick is context sensitive to how long you hold the jump button down meaning newcomers will almost definitely just jump straight into an enemy they were hoping to land a devastating kick on.

Once you adapt to this gameplay oddity though the game becomes a lot smoother and timing your attacks to land a strike on the opponent in the air feels very satisfying, although doing so is always a bit of a gamble as Alex in this game...has 1 hit point.
It's a series staple that started in Miracle World, meaning that whilst his attacks can smash rocks and cars into smithereens, anything so much as a meerkat popping a curious head up and mildly grazing Alex will make him ascend to the heavens.

The real problem people have with this title I feel is the Janken or Rock Paper Scissors battles, which unfortunately are Alex Kidd's most memorable gameplay feature. Whilst in Miracle World it was limited just to boss encounters, here you need to compete with shop keepers to keep the item you're simply trying to buy.
In fact you still have to give up your hard earned cash too even if you win, so this is just an additional arbitary step to picking up items. Worst of all, losing these can lead to you losing a life, as the loser is crushed by a weight whenever they lose(or stripped naked in the original Japanese version).
Playing this without quick save as a feature must have been incredibly frustrating.

However since Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Collection DOES have quick save and the hand gesture the shop keeper always remains the same you can very easily save scum your way to never losing a single match which makes this system bareable if not still pretty tedious. There's supposedly a logical order to the answers, but I couldn't decode it myself.

The power ups that you buy in these shops for are pretty solid overall and being able to pick whatever you want at the item select screen rather than forced to use what you're given then and there does add for a layer of strategy. Definitely pick up a few of the invincibility cloaks as you'll need them by the last stage, and I highly recommend grabbing power bracelets and the magic cane to help levitate you over particularly irritating traps.

In the last third of the game everything just clicked for me, and aside from the Peticopter section in which you have to furiously mash your keyboard to not plummet and die, I began to really enjoy the core gameplay. Timing my kicks to strike airborne opponents felt good, making a tricky jump with Alex's erratic leaps felt enthralling, and using my items in cunning ways to bypass some of the more sinister traps gave me a small feeling of smugness.

The ending is a massive let down, which I won't spoil, but needless to say it's probably the most anticlimatic and irritating piece of video game story telling I've seen in a while.

Alex Kidd in Enchanted Castle has some real potential as some of the level design is fun to traverse, the items are wonderful additions and once you understand how your jump kick(and indeed jump physics in general) there's some fun to be had here.

It is unfortunately bogged down by too many annoyances such as the Janken Battles in shops that on the original console must have made the game basically unplayable. This is my major annoyance, but you'd be surprised how frequently you have to engage in these games of chance to progress. Being able to save scum solves some of the headache, but it artificially lengthens the games length and not in a fun way.

Graphically, Enchanted Castle is nothing to write home about even at the time, and I actually think Alex looks worse here than he did in his Master System game titles.

Overall: 6.5/10.
Not a patch on Miracle World IMO, but far from the worst title in the Alex Kidd series.

Megadoomer · May 25, 2021

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (Switch version)

The game did well with taking the gameplay of the original games and modernizing it - for the most part, the games play similarly to what I've seen of the original Naughty Dog trilogy, though with some much-needed adjustments (such as a yellow circle beneath the player character to indicate where they are when they're in the air, or removing the lives system and making it so rewards are hidden behind completing the level with less than a certain number of deaths - both of these can be turned off if you want a more "classic" experience, but given how frustrating some of the older titles were, even in the N. Sane Trilogy versions, I really appreciated these being added).

Even with these changes, this isn't an easy game - there were some cases where I died fifty or eighty times trying to complete one level. Thankfully, though, the game is pretty generous with its checkpoints; if you die a lot in one area, then more checkpoint crates are added to make the process a little easier.

Gameplay's about what you expect - run forward (or sometimes backwards, during the chase sequences, or to the right for the occasional 2D platforming bit) from one end of the level to the other in order to reach the goal. The game adds three new playable characters, though they're only for specific levels. They're all right (it's nice to have some ranged attack options), though a little under-used. (they're only playable in a handful of levels)

I would not recommend aiming for 100% completion, though - it just seems like it would be a frustrating experience. (it requires, among other things, deathless runs, breaking all of the crates in a level, and finding 80% of the fruit, and all of that is without getting into the N. Verted stages where the visuals are messed up, or the time trials)

All in all, it's a tough game, but it's fun as long as you aren't trying to collect everything, and it's more accessible than the original PlayStation 1 titles.

ShrimpScampi · Jun 14, 2021

Q.U.B.E. 2 (Switch version)

I played the original Q.U.B.E. (Quick Understanding of Block Extrusion) a while back on Steam, but to be honest I don't remember much of it. I got this when it was on sale, and I decently enjoyed it. It's a physics-based puzzle game (the obvious comparison here is Portal), but instead of portals, you can place different types of cubes onto designated squares -- some launch whatever touches them into the air, some make small pillars that stick out from the wall or floor, and some generate gravity-affected green boxes.

The puzzles are neat -- it takes a bit for them to ramp up beyond introducing the mechanics, but once they do ramp up, there are some fun solutions. Mistakes can cost you a lot of time, though. Sometimes a puzzle has a lot of steps to it, and if you don't manage your resources properly or make a mistake partway through, you'll need to start the whole sequence again.

The story was interesting for sure, and got kinda wild (practically NieR Automata-ish) near the end. It doesn't have cutscenes, but the voice acting on the radio communications that happen as you explore the area was quite good. Especially Act III onwards, I found myself hoping for a new snippet of dialogue to drop some more story with each puzzle I beat. Because of the intriguing story and the fact that the puzzles in each chapter are broken up into individual rooms, I "one more room"-ed myself into finishing the game in a couple sittings.

The environments are also a lot nicer-looking than the previous games. In the later chapters, they branch out beyond the "many many white cubes" aesthetic of the first game. Plus, even when the environment is using that many-cube aesthetic, it looks much nicer. For a comparison between 1 and 2:

Overall, I still find Portal & Portal 2 to be the more engaging first person puzzle games, but Q.U.B.E. 2's tone and environments are different enough that it doesn't feel like it's trying to copy Portal. It's a solid game if you're looking for more first-person puzzle experiences.

Megadoomer · Jun 14, 2021

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne: HD Remaster: Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series (Switch version)

I'm generally not one for difficult games - I've avoided titles that are infamously hard, like Dark Souls or Ghosts 'n' Goblins (though I picked up GNG Resurrection due to the easier difficulties), and I hadn't played a Ninja Gaiden game until Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge on the Wii U last year, which I picked up because I heard it was easier than the other games. However, I like Persona (or at least Persona 4 and 5), and I wanted to see where the series came from. (also, the addition of a Merciful difficulty that you can switch to at any time, and the inclusion of Dante, helped)

It was nowhere near as difficult as I was expecting, though I was playing on Normal difficulty (with the exception of a few boss battles that dragged on, and two bonus bosses who you need to beat to unlock Dante - the only time I lowered the difficulty was for those two boss fights, since one of them took everything that I had, was near death, and then healed itself back to full health/MP). That's a plus - Matador is infamous for his difficulty, but once I found out how to get certain skills (Fog Breath to lower accuracy evasion by a lot, accuracy/evasion buffs for my team, and a full-team healing spell), the skills that I needed for Matador remained useful for most if not all of the game.

I was expecting the RPG equivalent to Ghosts 'n' Goblins, where a single slip-up meant instant death, but that wasn't the case. However, the cast (aside from the main protagonist, who has an interesting design even if he's something of a blank slate, and some demons like Hell Biker, whose English voice is an absurd Macho Man Randy Savage impersonation who wants to beat you up over a candle) isn't especially memorable. In a week or two, I'm not sure if I'll remember their designs, let alone their names - I can't help but compare it to Persona, where even some of the minor characters/NPCs have fleshed out personalities and interesting designs. Also, it can sometimes be unclear where you're supposed to go, or what you're supposed to do - I was lost in a dungeon, going around in circles, before looking up a guide and finding out that I needed to talk to one specific NPC in a cage in order to progress, when I had talked to similar NPCs on lower floors and learned nothing useful.

All in all, it's okay. It doesn't reach the highs of games like Final Fantasy 6 or 7, Persona 4 or 5, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, or Dragon Quest XI, but it doesn't sink into absurd/frustrating levels of difficulty as much as Earthbound Beginnings, at least based on my experiences. (maybe Earthbound Beginnings gets easier when you get another party member, like Earthbound did, but I haven't reached that point) People feel like the game's overpriced for a PS2 remaster, but I felt like I got my money's worth out of it. (40-42 hours, and it never really felt like it dragged)

LAA9000 · Jun 19, 2021

Next on JustNo., formerly known as LAA9000 with no Premium status to allow for a name change, Reviews Various Sonic Games should be Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Unfortunately, I finished that game as Sonic + Tails just before going on holiday for a week and being away from my computer. Trying to write my review of that game on a phone was so unpleasant that I held off doing it for weeks, then decided to do a second playthrough as Knuckles. In the meantime, have instead...

Sonic Adventure (PC)

Being the first 3D game in the series, it's reasonable to assume this game is rough by today's standards. In some ways, it is: the cutscenes are gloriously atrocious in every aspect, the character themes are quite cheesy, the controls can be too sensitive when going at high speed, the camera is just about every 90s 3D platformer's camera and the DX version introduces many issues such as removed graphical effects and clips through geometry. That doesn't do the game any justice, though.

Rather than try to adapt the 2D games' level design into 3D, the game has 7 Adventure Quests, all of which offer a different style of play:

Sonic can Spin Dash, Homing Attack and later Light Speed Dash through rings, all of which give him a great amount of control once you learn them. He simply has to get to the end of a series of mostly linear levels. Being the main character of this series, his route is the most fleshed-out and my favourite in the game.
Tails can fly and swing his... tails. His levels are like Sonic's, but he has to race Sonic to the end, which I don't really get - they're supposed to co-operate, so why are they being competitive with each other? This is also where you begin to notice how good Sonic has it, because his route is about double the length of many of the others. Despite these criticisms, I very much enjoyed Tails's route.
Knuckles can dig, glide and climb walls, all of which feel amazing in this game. His levels require him to search for 3 pieces of the Master Emerald in 3D Mario-style open areas. I would say this game doesn't do that well, but I can't pinpoint why... though that won't force me to like them.
Amy can swing her hammer, and if she's running it will make her do a high jump. Getting to and maintaining top speed can be annoying when constantly turning around, but the high jump is very satisfying to pull off. She has Sonic-style levels with the added threat of Zero, one of Eggman's robots, following her, but he hardly poses any threat. Her route is forgettable.
Big's entire route revolves around him fishing for his pet frog Froggy. I sincerely hope this route was a joke, yet even if it was, all it'd tell me is that Sonic Team had a terrible sense of humour back in 1998.
E-102 γ can shoot stuff - multiple things at once, in fact, which adds time to his timer that uniquely counts down. Playing as one of Eggman's servants is a neat idea, but his route is also forgettable.
Super Sonic is just the true final boss with some extra exposition. Somehow I got the idea that I needed to beat all of Sonic's levels again, when all I needed was to go up to Knuckles and Eggman. Don't be like me. The final boss is nothing special, but Chaos's backstory is quite interesting. It's worth noting that you don't exactly collect the Chaos Emeralds like you do in the classic games - they're mostly plot devices.
Metal Sonic doesn't count. He's just a model swap of Sonic added in the DX version as a 100% completion reward.

Overall, while this game may not hold up in various areas, it's still fun and I'd recommend the Steam version when it goes on sale for under £1. That version has the benefit of mods, which I didn't use on my playthrough, but there are good improvement mods that, for example, run the game in widescreen or restore aspects of the original Dreamcast version that were lost or replaced in the DX version.

Whether I review 3 & Knuckles or Adventure 2 next is a complete coin toss, so place your bets.

Edit: Added an inline spoiler.

--- · Jun 22, 2021

Been trying to speed through a large part of my backlog of games. Starting with NES, I've been using what is available on the NES Online to speed through a lot of them.

Punch Out!! - Not much to say other than it's one of those games that I'll never be good enough to beat without help. Finger speed is no joke with just how perfect your timing has to be on a a lot of the later bosses. To it's credit it never feels cheap and the patterns/tells are amazingly choreographed. I knew people used this game to test input lag and now I know why. I never realized dodges are based on how long you hold the button down or that attacking using the opposite punch deals more damage (ex. they use their right arm, use your left).

Wario's Woods - Outside of Tetris I think this might be my new favorite puzzler on the NES. It's not so much a game that requires strategy/forethought for chaining as opposed to quick by the moment thinking. I was honestly kind of surprised at how many QoL features it has such as saving your progress and two modestly different Game Modes (bosses!). Honestly the biggest weakness is just how complicated it can get both between the controls and rulesets; there's a LOT going on compared to most puzzle games.

Shadow of the Ninja - Not too much to say other than a standard B Tier NES platformer. Playing through it, it's very much a game I wish did a bit more or had a bit more time in the oven with it's level design and power up system. Boss patterns are fairly straightforward but many enemies feel cheap. I'd assume this is a lot better in the 2 Player mode.

Solomon's Key - Probably the best Pre-Tetris Puzzle game on the NES. I can see why Dana used to be the mascot of an entire VG website (RIP NintendoAge). If this game had a password system or slightly less cryptic hidden secrets it'd a lot more fondly remembered.

Mighty Bomb Jack - I really want to like this game as it's unique and feels great to control, but man is it way too obtuse for it's own good on top of being exceedingly difficult. I can respect a game that plays by it's own rules but I can't help but feel if it had been designed as a more straightforward platfomer it'd be among the top games on the system.

City Connection - Another game that I really want to like (cool music, anime girl protagonist, interesting premise) but it's just plain frustrating. The controls feel stiff and honestly feel like the majority of the battle when playing the game. Trial/error jumping up to get that last bit of road can take forever. On the other hand enemies are beyond random. Even using save states you'll never truly know what's ahead of you.

Dr. Mario - I get why people like it, but I've definitely learned that I don't. It feels too simplistic and slow sometimes IMO. Setting up chains feels arbitrary and it feels like you get a lot of junk pills more often than you should (in my playthrough I once got 5 pure Red pills in a row).

LAA9000 · Jun 24, 2021

Sonic 3 & Knuckles (PC, via Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics)

Even better than 1 and 2. All of the good things about those games (mobility, vast levels, vibrant area themes) were kept and made even better for this game. However, where those games were rife with boring or unfair level elements, this game irons them out until hardly any remain. Where those games' Special stages were frustrating to navigate, this game introduces the Blue Sphere format that, while still difficult as it should be, I can reasonably beat for once. Heck, there's no ring requirement for them anymore; they're just found in the open and you're free to enter them so long as you search for them.

I also appreciated the expanded worldbuilding compared to previous Sonic games. There are plenty of short cutscenes that communicate story events like the characters travelling between levels or Knuckles progressively joining Sonic and Tails after Eggman betrays him. I especially liked these when they led to changes in the levels themselves, such as Angel Island Act 2 and part of Act 1 being in flames or part of Marble Garden Act 2 falling down.

I loved this game so much, in fact, that I began a second playthrough as Knuckles to do the game proper justice. I then proceeded to get stuck at the Carnival Night Act 1 boss and, instead of reading a guide like anyone else, put it down for the time being because I have Adventure 2 to play through and mock GCSEs to revise for. All I'll say about it is that Tails and Knuckles are cool as well, though they can't use the elemental shields, which is a shame because they're all really fun to use.

For once, I can't think of anything major that I notably disliked about the game. It's that good, and I implore you to play it, either through Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics (specifically on Steam, which is the only version to have this game) or when Sonic Origins releases next year. I'm very excited to move on to Mania once I finish Adventure 2, as that game might be even better.

Megadoomer · Jun 25, 2021

Tekken 2 (PS3)

It's a total mystery why I decided to play this one! Jokes aside, I had started it a while back, but I decided to sit down and unlock all of the characters, which is finishing it as far as I'm concerned.

Considering that it's one of the first attempts at a 3D fighter (though predated by Virtua Fighter and, obviously, Tekken 1), it holds up fairly well. The roster is pretty varied in terms of appearance and fighting style, though there are some cases where it overlaps. Matches are quick, which is helped by how much damage the characters do (throws take off roughly a third of a character's health if they land). In something that (to my knowledge) doesn't carry over to the later games, characters have insane jump physics, as though they were on the moon. However, aerial attacks seem very situational, limiting how often you jump around.

Side-stepping doesn't seem to be a thing at this point (aside from some attacks that knock players in different directions), so effectively, this is a 2D fighter with 3D graphics. The movelist isn't as intimidating as in later games, though there are still a lot of moves to learn. (thankfully, you don't need to know how to use them all - most AI players can be beaten by crouching and pressing circle to use a low kick)

However, the controls can be fairly clunky, with some actions seeming to be difficult to input consistently (such as throws, or rolling forward/backward while on the ground). The AI can be frustrating at times (even on Easy mode, they have an annoying tendency to read inputs in the second half of the arcade matches, usually ducking whenever you perform a throw or a high attack), but it seems like it would be a fun game to play against others in local multiplayer. (I don't have the option to play with others at the moment, so I can't comment on that)

All in all, it's a solid entry, though I wish that Tekken 3 (I've heard people say that's the best of the PS1 Tekken games) was available for download. (I think rights issues with Gon the dinosaur kept it from being released on the PS3 - it was on the PlayStation Classic system, so hopefully if a Tekken collection comes out for modern consoles, that game's included) It reminds me a lot of the base game of Street Fighter 2 - solid start, but there's plenty of room for improvement.

LAA9000 · Jun 27, 2021

Sonic Adventure 2 (PC)

A game with higher highs and more frequent lows than Adventure 1. Instead of that game's 7 Adventure Quests, this game has 3 Stories: Hero, Dark and Last. There are 8 playable characters - 3 for Hero, 3 for Dark and 2 exclusive to Last. Each Hero character has a Dark counterpart, and each pair shares a gameplay style:

Sonic and Shadow are based on Sonic's gameplay from Adventure: go fast and get to the end of the level. Just like Sonic in that game, these two have the best gameplay. In my opinion, they're the only characters to have been improved, with cool new abilities like the somersault, enhancements to existing ones like the Light Speed Dash no longer requiring a charge up and great levels designed for them like Final Rush (albeit with a couple of worse ones like Final Chase).
Tails and Eggman are based on Gamma's gameplay from Adventure: shoot stuff and get to the end of the level, now with a normal timer. While it is nice that they have a health bar instead of the 'one ring' system, their mobility seems to have been reduced from Gamma, which makes their levels drag on more and get repetitive quickly. What did they do to you, Tails? I loved you in Adventure 1.
Knuckles and Rouge are based on Knuckles's gameplay from Adventure: find 3 pieces of the Master Emerald (or keys or Chaos Emeralds) in an open space. I still stand by the belief that the Adventure games didn't do treasure hunts very well, especially now that the radar only tracks one treasure at a time (why?). I love their mobility, and there are some neat puzzles like the safes in Security Hall, but their levels were quite frustrating. It doesn't help that 3D spaces like these often make me feel sick.
I guess Super Sonic and Super Shadow count. They're only used in the Last Story's final boss which, like the last game, isn't anything special. Cannon Core before it, though? That's a good level - it cycles through all 6 previously playable characters as they help each other stop the ARK from falling, and it's very satisfying.

The story is very deep for cartoony mascot platformer standards - more so than Super Mario Galaxy. I enjoyed seeing it unfold especially near the end, even when I accidentally skipped a vital cutscene and couldn't rewatch it until I beat the game. Speaking of cutscenes, they're vastly improved from Adventure 1 - animations are much more fluid, there are no more faces and some scenes (all of them from the GameCube version onwards) run in 60fps. However, they still have some issues, namely cheesy dialogue and the timing of voice clips only being synced to the Japanese voices.

I didn't try the multiplayer, so I can't comment on that.

Of course, I'm leaving the best feature for last... the Chao Garden. Sonic absolutely did not need a virtual pet minigame, but it got one anyway and it is amazing. Raising Chao with small animals and ~~steroids~~ Chaos Drives found in gameplay is very relaxing and the perfect break from some of the game's less-than-stellar levels. I haven't even spent that long in the mode - I only have 2 Chao who are both less than 1 year old, and only have the regular Chao Garden - yet I love it regardless.

There's also a page where you can view the controls. Remember when I said I was leaving the best feature for last? This is a feature as well. This is the true best feature of the game. You will all campaign to bring this feature back in Sonic Zao.

Overall, I can't decide if this game is better or worse than Adventure 1: Sonic/Shadow's levels, the story and the Chao Garden are definite improvements, but Tails/Eggman and Knuckles/Rouge's levels are downgrades that aren't pleasant when the game makes you do them in a set order. Regardless, I still can't believe the Sonic series went from Sonic 1 to this in just 10 years, and in many people's eyes no 3D Sonic game released in the 20 years since has been able to top it.

FINALLY I GET TO MOVE ON TO MANIA NOW

LAA9000 · Jul 3, 2021

Sonic Mania (PC)

Sorry, 3 & Knuckles: you lived a short life as my favourite Sonic game. Mania does everything I want from a Sonic game exceptionally well: solid control and mechanics for all 5 playable characters; levels that are simultaneously expansive and packed with things to do; Special stages that are rewarding to find and difficult enough to be satisfying; worldbuilding that, while not as good as 3 & Knuckles, was still nice to see; tons of replay value with different routes, characters, extras and Encore Mode; stellar sprite art and music even when I'm not too big on those in games; the list goes on. It truly is a love letter to the classic Sonic games and a culmination of those games' achievements.

Again, there are hardly any major downsides to this game. If I have to criticise anything, it's some of the legacy zone choices. Naturally, zones from past games have to resemble their sources in level design, which makes some choices like Oil Ocean and Metallic Madness seem odd and counter-intuitive to the design of other zones. I would've also liked Amy to be playable, but I'm not one to complain about what games don't have, only what they do. I don't know if the PC version's DRM was removed in Plus, but if it hasn't, I'd like that done.

However, this is nowhere near enough to taint my love for this game. I might make it a yearly tradition to replay Sonic 1, 2, CD, 3 & Knuckles and Mania every June, and the last one might become my new go-to game to replay whenever I'm bored. Like with 3 & Knuckles, I implore you to play this game - I wish I had beaten it and written this review a week ago, because it was free on Epic Games Store last week. I'm going to say it: Sonic Mania might be one of my favourite games of all time, up there with Minecraft, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

--- · Jul 15, 2021

Finished all the NES games on the NES Online service that I already own, time to get to work on the SNES.

S.C.A.T. - Ended up enjoying this more than I would have thought. The biggest issue is remembering the A button is used for locking in your rotating turrets. It's an interesting mechanic but I don't think it gets played around enough with. There aren't very many power ups for you and none for your turrets. The difficulty of most levels feel like it comes down to remembering enemy placement and some annoying level hazards that can come at you without warning off screen. Thankfully you can take multiple hits before going down but you're a big target so there's a bit of give and take. Of the shoot 'em ups currently available this is probably my favorite and is a fun technical showcase for the system.

Rygar - A short but sweet lite-Metroidvania (technically it released before Metroid came out in the west!). Controls well, has good music, and the levels and world are small enough that it's hard to get lost. Bosses tend to be a hit/miss with difficulty depending on how much you've leveled up, the first boss will probably kick your butt but if you're maxed out you can kill the final boss with a magic screen nuke. Better than the actual Captain America game we got. Definitely on par with the other hits of 1987 like Zelda/Metroid/Kid Icarus/Castlevania/Mega Man IMO. I wish I played it sooner.

Twinbee - I want to like this game more than I did but the bell juggling system really is hit/miss, at least in this first game of the series. Enemies feel immediately more aggressive than in Gradius but at the same time are significantly easier by comparison to manage once you power up. The bell system makes it difficult as with how aggressive the enemies are it's hard to stop firing when the power up you want appears let alone have enough safe space to pick it up.

Super Dodge Ball - Possibly the best sports game on NES with the exception of Tecmo Bowl/Super Bowl. Simple and easy to pick up but has a lot of depth and is just made for multiplayer. The biggest issue is just how bad the sprite flickering is and the lag can sometimes be. Nothing that's a game breaker but it does take a match or two to get used to.

Personal Rankings of the games on the service I've played/own:

S: SMB 1/2/3, Zelda 1, Kirby's Adventure, Punch Out!!, River City Ransom, Crystalis, Ninja Gaiden,
A: Adventures of Lolo, Fire 'n Ice, Rygar, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Tecmo Bowl, Super Dodge Ball, Zelda 2, Wario's Woods, SMB Lost Levels,
B: Vice Project DOOM, Solomon's Key, Balloon Fight, Vs. Excitebike, Donkey Kong Jr, Ice Hockey,
C: Blaster Master, Startropics, Excitebike, Twinbee, Gradius, Shadow of the Ninja, Wrecking Crew, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong 3, Mario Bros, Dr. Mario, Mighty Bomb Jack, Clu Clu Land, Journey to Silius
D: Ghosts 'n Goblins, Yoshi, Ice Climber, Pro Wrestling, City Connection, Ninja JaJaMaru-Kun,

A lot of games I don't think I would have beaten without the replay or save state feature. Though I have beaten Ninja Gaiden, Zelda 2, Lost Levels, and Startropics on original hardware so don't chastise me too much. Double Dragon 1/2 are probably the biggest games I haven't felt much like playing through from what little I've played.

wizfoot · Jul 17, 2021

10/10

Obviously, spoilers ahead. Seriously, play the game first if you care about that. I'll give a warning when they start and mark them, but just a heads up.

How do I begin to describe this game? It didn't even feel like a game. It felt like an experience. No other game, including the 2020 remake and maybe excluding the entire Ace Attorney franchise, has led me on an adventure this moving. No other game has led me on an experience, figuring out the deepest machinations of not just these characters which I've come to view as something of an extended family but of myself. It's hard for me to describe how emotional this game made me. Four games have made me cry; Life is Strange, Okami, FF7 Remake, and Final Fantasy VII. Two games have made me cry twice; this game and the remake. No games have made me cry thrice. One game has made me cry four times; this game. Final Fantasy VII. No game has made me cry solely by playing a piece of music; except for this game.

The amount of feeling this game exudes just... blows everything else out of the water. It's hard for me to put into words how important this game has become to me over the past week. I've played it for four days straight, from replaying Disc 1 to the end, and in those four days I've laughed, become angry, cried, been shocked, and be lead to re-evaluate myself and how I interact with others. This game has carved itself into my mind, for better or for worse, and as I'm writing this I'm planning to play Crisis Core, the prequel released for the PSP, and buy the novellas. I also eventually plan to watch the sequel movie, Advent Children.

Major story spoilers begin here!

When Aerith died my breath was genuinely taken away.

I mean, I knew it was coming. It's hard not to have that part of the game spoiled for you. Hell, I even watched the scene more than once to make a few memes. But when I watched it, when I saw it happen while I was playing... ****, it's hard to describe. I mean, it was like having a family member ripped away from you. And when her theme kicked, I actually sobbed like a kid. I sobbed over a scene I knew was happening, twice; both when I first played Disc 1 and when I replayed it with a retranslation patch I used for the rest of the game. I'm actually tearing up right now thinking about it. It's so hard to describe how this felt.

When it's revealed that Cloud was living a lie during the climax of Disc 2, I cried again. It was such a shocking moment. It's, unironically, my favorite twist in gaming; no, in fiction. The fact that Cloud's entire life was a delusion is something that's so ballsy and shocking that it took me a second to fully comprehend it. The song that plays during that moment, Who... Am I?, quickly became my favorite song in the OST. It also reinforced my shipping of Cloud and Tifa, who quickly became my favorite ship of all time. As characters, they're two of my favorites and characters I find great comfort in.

It's hard to talk about this game without talking about its villain. Sephiroth. The Man in the Black Cloak. The One-Winged Angel. My favorite character in fiction. Sephiroth's presence feels like someone breathing down your back. It gives you shivers; especially when Sephiroth bends Cloud's mind and forces him to give him the Black Materia. "Professor, I want a number." The fact that Sephiroth can do that alone makes hi so much more threatening. The fact that he took over Jenova, whose name is literally a portmanteau of "Jehovah" and "Nova," or "New God," and functionally made her into a slave is another indicator of his immense power. He's a subtle manipulator, a terrifying presence, a new God. He's earned the moniker of being the strongest character in the compilation's universe for good reason.

Major story spoilers end here!

Just like Sephiroth, it's hard to talk about this game without talking about its music. Nobuo Uematsu is truly a modern-day Mozart or Kant. From absolute tribal-classical fusion bangers like Cosmo Canyon, or beautifully emotional beats such as Words Drowned Out by Fireworks, or high-octane battle songs such as Birth Of A God, there's not a single song in this game that goes wasted. Every single song in the OST has a place, and it feels wrong when they're taken away, such as in the flashback scene in Disc 3 when you visit Shinra Mansion, but it works so well. There's songs that feel overbearing, bloated, and crushing like Mako Reactor and the steady, orchestral, and divinely glorious One-Winged Angel that encapsulates the awesome terror of Sephiroth's newfound godhood; hell, the song itself is a prayer to him.

So, what am I trying to say? Am I trying to say that FF7 is a perfect game?

...Well, uh... yeah. There are some small issues with fetch quests and less-than-perfect translation, but these can be overlooked and fixed. Final Fantasy VII is a perfected melodrama, a hallmark of the industry, and earned its title as the greatest game of all time.

dezeray112 · Aug 27, 2021

Recently finished Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon for the first time on the Nintendo DS.

Overall rating: 7.5/10.

Megadoomer · Aug 29, 2021

Psychonauts 2 (PC)

I have waited sixteen years for this game, it was one of the only games that I've ever been involved with crowdfunding, and it was well worth the wait.

Psychonauts 2 is, as the name suggests, a sequel to the 2005 cult classic platformer Psychonauts. This game is like a playable Pixar movie, with hilarious dialogue and a story that focuses on empathy and shows a better understanding of mental health. (one nice touch is that Raz asks for permission before entering minds, rather than jumping right in, and it shows that the mission statement of the Psychonauts organization is to help other people overcome their personal demons rather than trying to "fix" people)

The controls are a little clunky at times, at least when playing on mouse and keyboard (that's how I played the original game, so that's how I'm playing the sequel!), but there's nothing like the infamous difficulty spike that is Meat Circus. The platforming is generally fair, and the game no longer has a lives system (dying moves you back to the next checkpoint). The music isn't as memorable as the first game, but it still does a good job at setting the mood - there's one level where you have to sail between islands, and when you're on the boat, the music reminds me a lot of roaming the wilderness in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

Most of the new characters, like Raz's family or the Psychic Six (they're technically not new, since they had small appearances in the first game, but we haven't seen them outside of still images) are great, though for the most part, the interns aren't as interesting as the first game's campers. The levels are great - while I don't think they reach the highs of Lungfishopolis or The Milkman Conspiracy from the first game, they don't reach the lows of Meat Circus or (in my opinion) Gloria's Theater (I found that level a little tedious, with all of the going back and forth and trying to match scripts to locations). If The Milkman Conspiracy was a 10/10 level, the levels in Psychonauts 2 would all be about an 8/10 or 9/10 - not quite as good, but still enjoyable.

The figments are a lot easier to find in this game - out of the hundreds that were in the game, I think I only missed about twenty or thirty by the end of the game, and since they're animated now, they stand out more. (the main exception being in the Brain In A Jar level, where the brightly coloured psychedelic backgrounds cause them to blend in at times)

Psychonauts 2 is exactly what I wanted from a sequel to Psychonauts. It feels like a natural continuation of the story, and it's a joy to complete. By the end of the game, I was at rank 90 out of 102, and aside from a few figments where I had to look up videos (as of now, no guides exist for the location of figments), it was easy enough to get those last twelve ranks.

This game is amazing, and I would easily recommend both it and the original to anyone who's a fan of 3D platformers.

MasterOfKnees · Sep 7, 2021

I've been replaying every 2D Metroid game leading up to Metroid Dread's release next month, both out of excitement as well as to refresh my mind on what the different games do well and what they don't. I didn't plan on writing these reviews, but ended up doing so just to clear my head, and I've decided to dump them here. It's pretty lengthy all in all, so I've collapsed each review to not clog up the thread too much, and also because I do spoil some of the games. I may have gone a little overboard, so I don't expect anyone to read through all of it, but that's okay, I'm just happy to get it out there.

Metroid:

There's little denying that the original Metroid deserves its reputation as one of the best examples of a game that's not aged well, but despite that I actually enjoyed going through it again much more than I thought I would. While it frustrated me on my first playthrough well over a decade ago, with a bit of a shift in my mentality I've come to enjoy just how little direction it provides. Instead of constantly worrying about making significant progress and being annoyed when I spend a lot of time not doing so, I went in with the mindset that it could take a while to get through it, and that's fine, as I wanted to feel like I'm on a proper adventure, and part of that also means getting lost. I basically tackled it as I imagine I might have done had I been alive to play it in 1986.

With that approach I got the sort of experience out of it that you don't get from a lot of games these days. Even many open world games of today don't open up nearly as quickly as this game does, once you get the bombs you can go almost anywhere, which is very early into the game. Granted it obviously helps that I've completed it before, so while it's been a long time since I last did so, I at least knew what I was getting into this time. I also remembered a bit of what to get and where to go, largely because a lot of the upgrades are approximately in the same locations as in Zero Mission, which I’ve played through more times than I can count, so that made it easier to make a mental map and find the blocks that can be passed through or bombed.

I can't deny that some of the smaller things in the game still irked me, like how after you die, or come back to your save after entering your password, you always spawn with only 30 energy, meaning you have to grind to get your health back. I intentionally skipped some Energy Tanks just so I could pick them up and easily get my energy back to full for when I knew I was going to take on Kraid, Ridley or Mother Brain in that sitting. While I don't mind planning ahead like that, it does take some of the satisfaction away from exploring when you sometimes have to save your reward for later. Not being able to crouch and shoot is a huge pain too, I'm not sure why they designed a lot of the enemies the way they did given Samus' options and how ineffective bombs are for combat, it's quite atypical of the Nintendo of this era.

For what the game lacks in polish, it at least makes up for with its core concept of exploration, which remains enjoyable to this day. I'll always prefer a game that fails at the small things but succeeds with its broader intention rather than vice versa, which is very much the case here. Would I recommend it? Probably not. But I respect it a lot more after replaying it again than I used to.

Score: 6/10

Metroid II: Return of Samus:

Like with the original Metroid, I hadn’t played through Metroid II in a long time prior to replaying it here, and so I tried going into it with the same open-minded mentality as I did when I tackled the original Metroid again. Unfortunately I don’t think that helped alleviate the frustrations I’ve previously had with the game, as its structure is completely different.

Instead of being too open, Metroid II isn’t open enough for my liking. The game is very linear, with you going from one area to another with little to no reason to ever look back. The areas themselves feature a bit of non-linearity, but they aren’t connected with each other in any way, meaning you only get to explore and get lost in short bursts before you move onto the next area. Furthermore, even within the areas there are stretches that are linear, the non-linearity is mostly present when you’re exploring these big wide open rooms that most of the areas have, which are a pain to navigate because of the Gameboy’s small screen and the continued lack of indication of which blocks can be bombed or passed through. My mindset that getting lost only adds to the adventure did little to improve the experience, because that was never the problem, I simply don’t find SR388 to be as fun of a world to navigate as Zebes.

On the positive side, the game does feature a slew of solid gameplay improvements. Saving your game and being able to duck help a lot with alleviating some of my bigger issues with the original game, as do the stations that allow you to recharge your energy and missiles, which eliminates some of the grinding. New upgrades such as the Jump Ball and Space Jump give some much needed mobility, which is a nice improvement over the previous game’s clunky movement. There’s also the Spider Ball which allows you to search every nook and cranny, but I find it a bit tedious to use, when stuck on corners it often can’t decide which direction it wants the player to press to move forward, and it quickly gets old crawling along the roof of the previously mentioned giant rooms scouring for every little secret.

The Metroid hunt is the game’s primary objective, and while it would perhaps have fulfilled its potential more in a less linear game, I do still enjoy it. Having the counter at the bottom of the screen is a nice and very clear indication of your progress in the game, and the various evolutions add a nice spice of tension whenever you face one of them for the first time. The difficulty could have been a bit higher however, I didn’t die even once in my playthrough, and it’s very easy to cheese the Metroids’ AI. I feel like too many of the upgrades are found early on as well, by the time you face the Zeta and Omega Metroids you’ve more or less got everything in the game.

The praise I most often see for Metroid II is how tense it feels, and I do agree with that. The music, or lack thereof, and grayscale colors makes the whole experience feel quite eerie, and while I’d have liked the game to be less linear, delving deeper and deeper into SR388 does contribute well to this particular quality. The small and restrictive screen also adds to this, although I personally think that it’s such a big detriment to other parts of the game that it’s not worth it.

There are a lot of positives and negatives to touch on, but overall I actually didn’t enjoy my replay of Metroid II as much as I enjoyed playing through the original NES game again, which surprised me. It certainly has its merits, but I think it’ll be a while before I play it again, especially since it has two remakes that enhance the experience each in their own way.

Score: 5/10

Super Metroid:

Super Metroid is undoubtedly one of the most analyzed games ever, and for good reason, as it’s practically the reason that the Metroidvania genre exists at all. Even by modern standards Super Metroid’s Zebes is better designed than most worlds you’ll find in other video games, and it’s my own personal favorite world in any game. I love all of its different areas, the tight level design, the memorable landmarks, the music, the secrets, the potential for sequence-breaking, but most importantly of all I adore how you progress through it and how well everything ties together. The game lets you get lost, but also restricts you enough that you don’t feel completely aimless, at least for the first portion of it. At a certain point the game then takes off the training wheels and lets you loose in its now much bigger and more open world, trusting that the player has learned enough about how the game works to be able to find their way around it.

I’ll never forget my first playthrough and how awestruck I was, no game had ever taken me on an adventure quite like it, and that’s entirely owed to how wonderfully paced it is and its courage to trust the player. It’s the primary reason above anything else that it’s not just my favorite game in the series, but one of my favorite games of all-time.

Even looking past its world design, it makes an astounding amount of improvements on its predecessors. Super Metroid alone introduces diagonal aiming, a map, wall jumping, holding multiple beams at once, fun and iconic powerups such as the Speed Booster and Grapple Beam, and is to this day the only game in the series to feature a run that carries its momentum into jumps. I know a lot of people prefer the GBA games’ less floaty physics, and that’s fair, but I personally prefer the freedom and depth of Super Metroid’s movement. It’s not so different from games like Super Mario 64 or Super Smash Bros. Melee, at the very base level the movement feels clunky, but the more you master it the more you realize it provides a lot more freedom than any other games in the series, you just have to put some time into grasping it. It’s part of what makes replaying it a treat every time, you feel encouraged to try new things because so much is possible. A lot of SNES games represent the final vision of what the franchise actually wanted to do back on the NES but couldn’t due to hardware restrictions, yet even among those Super Metroid is probably the biggest improvement I can remember, the leap from the two previous games to this is enormous.

I really appreciate the simplicity of how it tells its narrative as well, you get a bit of story at the start and at the end, it’s short, effective, and adds a bit of scale that the previous two installments didn’t have. At the same time it’s in no way intrusive to the gameplay, there are no interruptions throughout the adventure, and the only time it takes control away from you is to deliver its biggest moment right at the end. It’s absolutely packed with iconic moments and visuals: The encounter with Ridley at Ceres Station, the golden statue, Crocomire’s death, the baby Metroid’s sacrifice, saving the animals, it’s impressive how it delivers the most memorable parts of the series despite being so hands-off with the player.

You’re not gonna get closer to a perfect game than Super Metroid, it’s everything a Metroid game should strive to be and then some. The biggest flaw I can think of is that weapon switching is pretty awkward, beyond that we’re down to very minor nitpicks, such as the Grapple Beam becoming redundant after you get the Space Jump. Nintendo caught lightning in a bottle with this one.

Score: 10/10

Metroid Fusion:

Following up on the game that encompasses everything Metroid is all about, we have the game that’s probably the least Metroid-ish out of the main series. It doesn’t care much for emulating what the NES game or Super Metroid did, instead it’s an entirely linear game with a bigger focus on storytelling and putting the player in unexpected and tense situations.

Even Metroid II was at least non-linear in chunks, but Fusion barely even has moments like that, almost everything gets marked out on your map for you, and the only bits of exploration you get are hidden pathways that lead to optional upgrades, or when you have to find the rooms that unlock the colored doors. There’s very little opportunity for you to get lost, because while your upgrades can often be used elsewhere than the beaten path, there’s usually something stopping you from going off it, even if you forcibly try to. The world feels very segmented because of how the sectors are isolated from each other, there’s only one case of crossing sectors during the entirety of the main game, which also happens to be my favorite part of the game, other than that you only access them through the main hub area. It’s not my preferred style for the series at all, but it does at least help deliver the game’s biggest strength.

I’m sure what most people remember about this game is its many set pieces and the feelings they invoke, and the linearity is sort of necessary to lead the player to them. When you hear the SA-X’s footsteps it’s almost impossible not to get nervous, and Fusion has many moments like those where the unexpected happens and gets you on the edge. It’s also extremely good at laying breadcrumbs for future developments, like when the larvae in Sector 2 become cocoons, and then on your second visit they’ve hatched into wasps, or perhaps most notably the Metroid shells you find on your way out of Sector 1, which eventually lead to the Omega Metroid. This is where the game shines and you could argue that sacrificing the series’ non-linearity is worth it. Where it isn’t is with the many instances of dialog and exposition that constantly interrupts your gameplay, it helps that the story is pretty solid, but I’d rather have the freedom to play the game at my own pace.

The gameplay has seen some sweeping changes from Super Metroid. There’s no run button this time around, there are less upgrades with unique functions, and small things like no longer being able to turn on and off your upgrades at will takes away a bit of control from the player. The jump in this game is also super restrictive, the spin jump forces your momentum forward before allowing you to steer yourself, and wall jumps do the same thing, making you unable to climb a single wall. The simpler controls fit well for the GBA, but I wish the jump wasn’t as clunky as it is. Another thing is that resources are very plentiful because of the recharge stations placed at the entrance of every sector, it eliminates grinding and lets you feel extremely powerful, but it also means there’s little to no risk to using your ammo.

It’s pretty clear that they tried to do something very different with Fusion, even Samus looks completely wrong, yet that’s what fits the game. As much as I’ve pointed out the negatives, it’s only because it’s easier to put into words, its otherworldly aesthetics and many, many memorable moments makes it more than a worthwhile experience. I don’t think I’d like the series to ever do something like it again, but for what it is it’s mostly successful in what it sets out to do.

Score: 8/10

Metroid Zero Mission:

When I’ve played a game so many times that it’s become second nature for me to just smash through it without a thought, it’s actually a bit hard for me to explain what I love about it beyond the surface level, as I’ve stopped thinking about that long ago. Zero Mission was my very first Metroid game when I got it back in ~2005, and it’s without a doubt the video game I’ve completed the most times in my life, it’s even the one game I’ve consistently speedrun (with a personal best of 38:59 IGT). Upon replaying it here I tried to take it a bit steadier, not do too many skips, and take a moment to consider its positives and negatives.

Easily the best thing about Zero Mission is its movement, it may not have the depth of Super Metroid, but it’s so quick and snappy, and it has the best wall jump in the series. I see a lot of people bundle Fusion and Zero Mission’s gameplay together, but even Fusion feels sluggish in comparison, everything from the movement to the projectiles to the activation of bombs is so much faster. The fantastic level design also helps emphasize this, it’s great fun to blitz through the various rooms as they have a natural flow to them, and in combination with the potential of sequence breaking I’d say that Zero Mission’s Zebes is only second to Super Metroid’s Zebes as far as Metroid worlds go. It’s a fantastic reinvention of the original NES game’s world, it does what a remake needs to do and draws out the potential that hardware limitations once stood in the way of.

Unfortunately the great level design is stunted a bit by the game very forcefully holding your hand. Like with Fusion I don’t like being told where to go, but in that game it at least fit with what they were trying to accomplish, whereas Zero Mission feels like it’d have benefitted far more from trying to copy Super Metroid’s fluid hands-off approach. It goes against the primary appeal of the original game, which is a pretty bad mistake for a remake to make. This is mostly a problem during one’s initial playthrough though, the game is much freer once you find out how to sequence break, the fact that you can skip many powerups, bosses, and even kill Ridley before Kraid makes it very fun to replay, I just wish the intended path had a bit more of that freedom.

The added Zero Suit stealth sequence is a pretty nice gameplay shakeup, and the moment that you get back your suit leaves a strong impression, it’s one of the best feeling power spikes I can remember and helps provide a strong finish. It does however feel very isolated from the rest of the game, it’s only if you aim for 100% completion that you’ll discover that the Chozo ruins and Space Pirate ship are actually connected to the rest of Zebes. Mecha Ridley is a bit of an anticlimactic final boss as well, he’s painfully easy, and it feels like they wanted Ridley there with how much he features in the game’s cutscenes, but obviously couldn’t do it at that point. The game is probably a bit too easy in general, especially once you get the Super Missiles, which in this iteration is probably the most powerful weapon in the entire series. This may be a bit of a silly thing to mention for someone who speedruns it, but it’s also a bit too short, even before I started speedrunning it I noticed this, and it’s why I even started doing it in the first place.

Zero Mission’s flaws are relatively minor in the grand scheme however, it’s still one of the strongest entries in the series, and probably what I’d deem the best introduction to Metroid for any newcomers, I can vouch firsthand for that. Also, just because I don’t know where else to put this, I want to mention how much I love the comic book-esque artstyle with its hard shadows and saturated colors, it’s got some of the best looking sprites and backgrounds on the GBA.

Score: 9/10

Metroid: Samus Returns:

We skip 13 years ahead as Samus Returns finally gave us another 2D Metroid title. While you can feel a lot of the technological advancements made since the GBA in the game’s control scheme and mechanics, it’s a bit funny that despite so many years going by, the low resolution and low poly 3D graphics means it already looks worse than the previous three games’ timeless pixel art.

That aside, Samus Returns opts to keep things safe and not try anything too extraordinary after the fiasco that was Other M practically put the series on ice for 7 years. It introduces a few new things, but with it being a remake of Metroid II, MercurySteam were obviously limited in how much of a revolution they could bring to the table. The new additions are a bit of a mixed bag, the Aeion abilities are fine, even if unspectacular in their implementation, but the aiming and melee counter come with some drawbacks. The game’s movement is already pretty stiff, it has the Fusion style jump with the forced momentum, and wall jumping is more restricted than ever, so with the new aiming and melee counter only being usable while standing still on top of that, it makes Samus feel quite immobile. The melee counter is also way too powerful, it gets to a point where I don’t want to deal with a lot of enemies unless I get the counter off. I don’t like how many of the upgrades aren’t useful outside of opening locks either, there aren’t any creative ways to use them as the level design is very rigid, so every player is forced into playing the game the same way.

One of the game’s best qualities are the boss battles, Samus Returns no doubt has the most elaborate bosses of the 2D games, and that’s a pretty big positive when you face so many of them. I enjoy how much more difficult it is than the other games as well, throughout replaying all of these games I didn’t die in any of them besides Samus Returns, which killed me several times. The generic enemies are a significant problem I have with the game however, there’s a striking lack of variety among them, and just about every room in the game is packed to the brim with cannon fodder. Combined with the previously mentioned inflexible movement, it gets incredibly tedious tearing through the same old enemies, even when they upgrade to stronger versions.

Although the Metroid battles are done well, the safe approach of Samus Returns as a whole means it’s not an entirely faithful remake of the original Metroid II, which was a very atypical Metroid game. It doesn’t breed the same tension: Instead of silence there’s a lot of upbeat music. The counter beeps whenever you approach a Metroid, taking away from the fear of what’s around the corner. The hordes of enemies present everywhere makes it a very busy experience with no time for buildup or reflection, not to mention it diminishes the Metroids’ impact on SR388’s ecosystem. I understand why they went for a more traditional Metroid adventure given the series’ precarious situation at this time, and there are some good things that come from it, like the added collectibles and puzzles giving you a reason to backtrack, but it’s a shame that the original’s atmosphere was lost in the process, as that was its one very strong point.

Samus Returns is a very solid game and lays the bricks for something potentially great, but there’s a lot for MercurySteam to improve on with Dread. Metroidvanias came a long way since Zero Mission, if you compare Samus Returns to Hollow Knight, which came out earlier that same year, it’s evident that there’s a big gap to bridge if Metroid is to take back the crown of its own genre. I feel like MercurySteam understands puzzle solving and boss battles well, but need to improve on the level design, atmosphere and flexibility if Dread is to outshine its indie peers.

Score: 7/10

--- · Oct 7, 2021

Battle Mania Daiginjou (Genesis)
8.5/10

This might be my new favorite shump. It takes pretty much everything about the first game and makes it better. There are a few more levels than the first game so you get a bit more bang for your buck; which considering how much I paid for an original copy is good. The flow of each level feels a lot better, is more fast pace, but also easier to recognize enemy patterns as pretty much each section of each level has it's own unique enemy that never repeats. Since it's an HP based shump with a simple power up system, it's significantly more forgiving than most making it great for beginners to the genre like myself.

Being a late era Genesis game, you can tell the programmers at Vic Tokai knew what they were doing to get the most they could out of the system; as well as continuing to show jabs at Nintendo themselves. The humor is still great and I'm always noticing more and more subtle details with the graphics such as the Train boss being powered by hamster wheels or characters from other Vic Tokai games making cameos. There's a 3-part boss fight against a Giant Basketball playing Robot that tries to dunk on you! The music also takes full advantage of the Genesis sound chip putting it on par with Sonic IMO for it's OST.

The only real complaints I have mostly comes down to replayability. Outside of learning each level, there isn't much else after that. The time trial mode is always the same section of Level 2 within the same time frame so it's not much of a score attack. To score big on the ranking mode, you have to built up your HP bar by not getting hit or picking up hearts, so it technically means in the first few levels it's impossible to obtain the top ranking. In addition, it's not that difficult if you play well to actually max out the score bar. The only difference between difficulties is how much HP you start with either 5/4/3.

It's a damn shame that SEGA couldn't figure out the rights for this game in time for the Genesis Mini; according to interviews it's something they actively looked into getting. The main characters Mania & Maria also appeared in SEGAGA for the Dreamcast, so SEGA definitely wanted to see the series continue as well or at the very least honor them among other SEGA icons.

Gotta Protectors (3DS)
9/10

Wasn't sure if I'd like this but I'm glad I gave it a try and I quickly became addicted to it for a few weeks. I don't have much experience with tower defense games, but I'd imagine this would rank among the best.

The main draw is balancing your time exploring the map vs. defending your castle/Princess. Enemies will mostly continuously spawn (getting harder and harder the longer the level goes on) in spawn points you'll need to destroy located across each map but the farther you move away from your castle/Princess the lower your level will become and the harder it becomes to recover and level up. Maps are designed well enough that each generally has it's own twist on a previous hazard you saw before without making things too complex.

There are six main playable characters each with their own straights, weaknesses, and playstyle. On top of that, there are both individual character abilities and universal shared abilities. You can deck you character out with powerful equipment that represents a percentage, and the higher the percentage, the more money it costs you level your character up. Balancing that again becomes important.

That said the biggest weakness is that it can become a tad grindy by the end of the game as many important resource pickups are random or stuck to an exclusive end of level bonus mini-game. There's also a lot of obtuse and unexplained hidden mechanics for a select few things including cheat codes: giving away money to peasants for example increases mini-game bonuses.

Definitely pick this game up while you can before the 3DS eShop is still around as the original game is no longer on Xbox Live sadly; the Switch sequel finished localization earlier this year and just lacks a release date. The DLC gives access to a remastered OST with FM Synthesis, extra cutscenes, the ability to change characters mid-level at your castle, and special extra hard levels. Surprisingly the DLC took up more blocks than the actual game itself; not sure how that happened.

The humor and self referential nature of the in-game script is a lot fun. The game doesn't take itself seriously at all but does it's best to honor classic gaming and anime as a whole. The music is also great is headlined by Yuzo Koshiro himself. I ended up liking it so much I picked up the official OST on eBay!

And if the intro cutscene doesn't sell you. One of the main playable characters is an is an old man who rides a wooden toilet dressed up as a horse. Nuff said.

--- · Dec 30, 2021

Fire Emblem Three Houses (Switch)
9/10

I could talk about FE for hours, so at the end of the day I feel it's the best "new" game in the series since the Tellius saga (so I'm not counting Echoes here). It continued to build upon the new standard Echoes set for the series in terms of presentation and doesn't falter like Fates does in it's storytelling (at least not as much). There are definitely parts of the story where you can tell plot is purposely withheld for the other story routes and sometimes character motivations don't always feel organic, but the cast is among the best and easily the most developed of the series. The lore is mostly developed and the world building is miles above Awakening/Fates, but I do feel it suffers in the sense that unlike other FE games, the world is told to you rather than explored.

The biggest issue with the game repetition and balance. If you do everything the game month has to offer, you'll probably be OP for the coming chapters but if you don't do everything you'll be under-powered. The second half of the game also has significantly less content each game month so things start to feel like padding and repetitious.

Metroid Samus Returns (3DS)
9/10

Probably my new favorite 2D Metroid (I have not played Dread). The only real issue I feel is that the difficulty at times can be off putting. Bosses hit just a little too hard I feel and enemies early on are both way too aggressive and require stopping and counter attacking as the most efficient means of dealing with them too much. Given it's more linear than most Metroid games, just like the original game, and the new abilities Samus acquires make me think this could have been the best beginner Metroid if not for the enemies.

The 3rd Birthday (PSP)
7/10

Pretty much definied by it's gameplay gimmick of body jumping. If that's interesting to you, it's probably worth sitting down a bit with. Beyond that, the plot is garbage and very much feels like a game that should have been on a system with a second analogue stick and larger screen. There's a lot of potential I feel here, it's just that it was probably on the wrong system and should have been it's own IP.

wizfoot · Jan 13, 2022

I haven't finished a lot of games recently, but I guess the thing that comes closest is the strategy game Ostalgie: The Berlin Wall and a few campaigns I've recently done. ULTRAKILL also counts, I guess, since I've recently finished a replay of that.

7/10

Cheap, relevant, and surprisingly good.

Ostalgie: The Berlin Wall is a Cold War-era geopolitical strategy game developed and published by KremlinGames, the creators of China: Mao's Legacy, Collapse: A Political Simulator, Euromaidan, and the 2017 remake of Crisis in the Kremlin, among others. As with most of KremlinGames's other works, Ostalgie is based around the mid to late Cold War, the campaign beginning on Janurary 1, 1989. Players can choose between East Germany, Bulgaria, Poland, or Romania in the base game as well as Hungary, Albania, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Cuba, and Afghanistan if DLC is purchased. There have also been hints about playing as the Socialist Republic (SR) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, SR Croatia, and SR Serbia, three constituent republics of Yugoslavia.

Ostalgie is a fine game if you're into modern history and willing to lose a few bucks. It takes a fan of history to really appreciate what it's aiming for; I doubt an art major would appreciate playing as Honecker more than a history major. That being said, there are a few flaws in this game that apply to every player:

Lack of Access -- The early game of Ostalgie is specific and can easily lead to game overs if you don't know what you're doing. From 1989 to 1990 the game mostly revolves around keeping the economy, which is measured in millions of rubles, afloat; in early-mid 1990 the Soviet Union will begin to cease funding to the Eastern Bloc which will result in the player losing around 20 million rubles. This can be counteracted by trading with foreign countries (the usual order is Libya -> India -> Syria -> Taiwan/PRC (both at the same time) -> Iran -> Japan if you can afford it) and not spending too much money.

Difficulty -- Ostalgie is very difficult. Which is good! It should be hard for an eastern bloc leader to retain power at the turn of the millennia 3 years before the USSR's collapse. That being said, for new players it can be a huge hurdle to get over and I usually play with the difficulty settings that earn achievements off so I can better enjoy the game.

If you can make it to 1991 without your rule collapsing then you finish the campaign -- well-tuned campaigns can take a bit under an hour if you play your cards right. There are multiple endings for each country, and using East Germany as an example:

You can reunify Germany under the German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
You can unite Germany into a confederation made up of West and East Germany
You can reunify Germany under the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany; historical)
You can keep Germany divided
You can keep Germany divided and make East Germany into a North Korea knockoff
Many more I'm probably missing

In addition, campaigns can end if your rule ends through election, popular revolution, internal party coups, or if your budget depletes.

Gameplay is done through timed events. You usually have multiple choices in events that can impact your country in a number of ways; for example, in late 1990 to early 1991 as East Germany you can get an event where video game developers make a video game to kill a certain man. You can either forbid the game from being made, permit the game to be made with government influence, or permit the game to be made freely depending on your reform level. This will open your economy a bit and can potentially lead to a rise in "Ostalgia" in the West which will eventually lead to a united neutral or East Germany if you can play your cards right. If you manipulate your country in certain ways you can get specific events such as Kim Il-Sung dying if you liberalize too much as North Korea.

All in all, a good game for a quick foray into the Cold War. It's not perfect by any means with a less-than-stellar translation from Russian to English but overall it's enjoyable with tons of replayability and fun easter eggs that can be found from time to time. Worth it if you're into history, not so much if you're not.

9/10

MANKIND IS DEAD.
BLOOD IS FUEL.
HELL IS FULL.

Or, as I like to call it, "DOOM May Quake". ULTRAKILL is a high-octane mix of Devil May Cry, Quake, and DOOM Eternal with beautiful breakcore music and glorious groupings of guts everywhere. It's one of the best DOOM clones on the market and I suspect it will be for a very long time.

The story is simple: you're a robot. You've killed humanity because they're stupid enough to make you run on blood. Now you're invading Hell because Hell is full of blood. That's it. That's the story. Go kill ****.

This game is gloriously bloody fun with beautiful visuals and hardcore music. It has precise and perfection-demanding mechanics that teach you a simple but effective ideology: if you mess up, you will die. Dash to the right instead of the left? Death. Dash a bit too far? Death. Accidentally blow yourself up? Death. And when you die the game laughs at you. It's enraging, exhilarating, and fun as Hell (get it?).

The bosses are extremely well done. My personal favorite is Gabriel but a fan favorite is Minos Prime, the secret boss that is fought after perfect-ranking the entirety of Act 1. They are extremely hard to beat but once you do you're filled with a feeling of exhilaration and pride that it's hard to find anywhere else. Bosses tend to get harder the further you go, with former bosses showing up as normal enemies later on.

You have four weapons; a revolver, a shotgun, a nailgun, and a railgun, each of which have 2 variants (the Railgun has 3 but nobody uses Screwdriver). Each of these variants are pretty different; for example, the Revolver's first variant adds a powerful charged shot and its second variant adds a coin that you can shoot for more damage. Mastering the coin technique is one of the most beautiful things in the game; if done correctly you can kill the hardest bosses in under a minute.

That being said, the game's not perfect. Glitches, while uncommon, are noticeable and some of the areas are just downright infuriating. That being said, the story is surprisingly rich (God has disappeared and Heaven is in a race to fill the power vacuum) and the character designs are beautiful.

Overall, a great game to get into if you want to get your adrenaline pumping and heart racing. Intentionally kept glitches such as "Slam Storage" make gameplay reminiscent of Half-Life's kept glitches such as Bunnyhopping and Quake's kept glitches such as Rocket Jumping (which you can kind of do!). It's a beautiful love letter to the FPS titans of yesteryear and the action RPGs of just a few short generations ago.

Rate the last game you finished!

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