Effervescent and intoxicating. No Straight Roads has some of the most lovingly-crafted visuals I've ever seen, clearly inspired by the likes of Psychonauts era Double Fine, while still making it their own. Wonderful character animations that make fantastic use of 2D animation principles, even with large and boisterous 3D models. Hard not to be a little touched by the Malay influences they managed to squeeze in, like the dikir barat rap battle set to the backdrop of a wayang kulit puppet show.

Where the game really drops the ball for me is the combat - a somewhat basic hack-and-slash action title that teaches the player to dodge attacks in tune with the beat, only to forget about and even contradict that tip for the overwhelming majority of the game, is uniquely frustrating.
No Straight Roads is thoroughly convinced that it is a rhythm game, and even uses the harsh scoring system of titles like IIDX and Pop'n' that judges your performance post-battle and awards upgrade points accordingly. The problem is that attacks are barely choreographed, you receive hits from offscreen and by enemies that all look functionally identical yet have disparate attack patterns. You're very likely to scrape a few C ranks on your first playthrough, through little fault of your own.

Despite my frustrations with the gameplay, I enjoyed the title immensely. No Straight Roads feels like a labour of love, there isn't a lick of cynicism or irony to be found, and instead devotes itself to sharing its passion for its influences in the most bombastic way it could.

Aye, makes sense why I'd never heard of this series before. I love the cast and the artstyle that informs their incredible designs but.... that's about it. Basic point and click adventure game with shallow puzzles and obtuse solutions. I'm normally so weak to games with an element of charm that overrides any complaint I'd have about the core gameplay, but not this time. It's just too dull and frustrating.
Mackenzie is a character I'll stock up rent free in my head until the end of my days, but she can leave the game she's from behind.

I've still yet to be convinced by VR. If I wanted to slap physics objects around rudimentary rooms, I'd just play Garry's Mod - which doesn't even require you to wear a radioactive death box on your head that melts the brain and churns the stomach.
Boneworks, however, acts as a showcase for the future potential of VR, a fully immersive museum designed around its myriad gimmicks. Your character is fully rigged with an IK collision solver, lending you a sense of physicality as you climb ladders, run into walls, smash open crates with hammers. It's technically very impressive, but I never found it any fun, in fact it just made me feel violently sick. How the hell do I articulate why something clearly very innovative and forward-thinking just isn't working for me?

The closest comparison I can think of for Boneworks is when you switch to the first person camera while driving a car in a game. Yeah, it's more immersive, but,,, why the fuck would I ever do that. The less is more approach; omniscient camera, invisible player character, and floating disembodies hands is a nicety that eliminates the laborious "realistic, immersive" elements and allows me to focus on the game. If you focus too hard on the game part of Boneworks, it's just some toys strewn around barren environments. We've been talking about the "potential of vr" for fucking years, do something good already.

Nice!!! Humble and polite time-routine puzzle game that hits like if Majora's Mask was a vitamin gummy. Finicky platforming in an artstyle that spits in the face of depth perception and some genuinely frustrating UX made much of the game needlessly grating, but it's a nice wee thing overall. I'll never forget the absolute cold drip of Duck With Sunglasses & Fez. Love that they took the hideous 4xBRZ filter idiots use for SNES emulators and ran with it to create something cool and unique lookin overall.

Without a shadow of a doubt the best game Crytek has made. An extremely well designed inversion of the Battle Royale formula that mixes PvP and PvE elements with some smart AI and excellent attention to detail in the sound design. The gunplay feels weighty and the enemies are sp00ky. My score is representative of the Solo experience as a chronic antisocial - boring as fuck in spite of things. Get a friend and play this and you'll have a good time. Otherwise you're being lulled into braindeath by rolling brown environments before getting one-tapped by a brain surgeon's shotgun.

Impossible to even fool yourself into thinking this is good, it's a game built off a proprietary addon gimmick that makes it a little hilarious to emulate in Current Year with an Xbox One controller. I like the premise and character designs (Mei Fa's sports qipao is so cool and I'm gonna steal the look), but it's a pale imitation of Jet Set, just compare that soundtrack with this title's inane ten second loops. This one's for the Fingerskaters out there and you get the One+Half Stars you deserve.

(Played on an emulator with a rewind feature, so I could quickly go back and re-do a battle that I lost. Genuinely don't think I'd enjoy this as much as I did without such a great time-saving feature)

Instantly one of my all-time favourite JRPGs. Absolutely incredible spritework that brings the expressive characters and gorgeous environments to life. The soundtrack is a pandora's box of unforgettable melodies. The combat system evolves as you progress and eventually becomes one of the most captivating styles of combat I've ever seen in a JRPG, with its genius obfuscation of an ATB/stamina system. The story is a goofy hodge-podge of every trope imaginable, but the characters are so fun it all strings together perfectly.

God, Infogrames really did push the envelope, even when it came to their games based on licenced properties. Maurice Noble's classic Looney Tunes background style lends itself INCREDIBLY well to the low-poly necessities of the Playstation 1. These environments do not miss a beat, nor do the character animations - the jagged messes of the models are animated so excellently that they are as bouncy as they are expressive. Full of life in ways few, more capable, games manage to achieve.
Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf is almost overwhelmingly inventive, from its visuals to its level design, and invites you to be just as creative in solving them. I'm stunned to see how well this holds up, this game is a uniquely effective powerhouse of joyful cartoonish energy.
Slap that OST on NOW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZISHX6AfNcw

After finishing Seiken no Densetsu 3 on the SNES, I was excited to examine what the next entry in the Mana series would entail. Up to this point, I was blessed by a series that seemed to strive to make drastic improvements and changes with each entry. SnD3 expanded on the combat of its predecessor as well as explored how the characters you choose for your party can affect the trajectory of the story, as well as battle dynamics.

Legend of Mana did not let me down, it's wild, something I've sincerely never seen a JRPG pull off before. Rather than having a world map that the player progresses through in whatever line the story dictates, you are instead free to sculpt the world for yourself. Cities, dungeons, fields, landmarks - their locations are all up to the player, and you're tasked with making your own adventure through them. It's insanely cool.

Problems do arise. It leaves nearly everything to your imagination. No quest is given more importance than the next, it seems almost random which ones turn out to be inconsequential side-events, and which are absolutely critical. If you do not enjoy visiting, revisiting, and re-revisiting old areas under different variables (time of the week/characters in the party/different quests completed) you're going to be HARD PRESSED to know what the hell you're supposed to do. Poor signposting all around that really comes to a head at the two-thirds point of the game, where even the guides I found online left me totally lost. A progress roadblock that I found so frustrating I very nearly dropped the game entirely.

Thankfully, I managed to pull through. Much of the game once I finally found my momentum was wonderful, a truly imaginative world that thankfully begs to be explored. The spritework, environments........ It scratches the same itch for me as Final Fantasy 9, in how there are astoundingly few human characters in the overall cast. That level of overt fantasy where much of the cast you can speak to and invite into your party are completely alien to one another - Flying lamp makers with venus fly traps for tails, bartenders made out of puzzle blocks, scholars with snake-like features bursting out of their bandages, a straight up giant teapot. This is the stuff that died the moment gaming entered 3D, and I'd like to make it known I think that's a FUCKING SHAME.

The combat is a revised version of the one introduced to SnD3, veering more towards some very standard JRPG action that I am honestly bored to death of. Once you polish slow and clunky combat enough you start to realise you're removing a level of careful deliberateness to the way you think about your inputs. It's buttery smooth, very easy, completely cheeseable. I like how you can customise what action every button does, but why would you ever not use the counterattacks - they're so gamebreaking they make every encounter a joke.

This game is intensely charming, and clearly made with a lot of love. It shows in almost every corner of its design, but not necessarily where it counts. Some more overt signposting would have made this an out and out classic for me.

Kinda okay Arcade Shooter where you Shoot the Arcade. Banks off of its own absurd premise a little too much, because it's just not all too engaging as a shmup aside from the striking bosses (the classic dancing girl .gif!!!). I'm all for goofball shmups, but you gotta be like Parodius and have the creative sugar rush act in synchronicity with gameplay that constantly attempts to reinvent the wheel. You're crushing your Parma Violets into a fine dust and not even snorting them.

Hard to fault Cruisin Mix as an overall package, it's so full of extras, options, goodies and artbooks. You're not getting fantastic games, but you're getting a lot of cool stuff to sift through. Gunbare Game Tengoku 2 being absent from this collection is the glaring omission that drags the whole thing down, that's the best game in the series.

Not entirely sure I follow the sentiment of "Yume Nikki, but not incomplete". The last thing I want to think when exploring surreal and intimately personal and vulnerable dreamscapes is ~As A Gamer, I Wish This Were A More Well-Rounded Package~.
2kki is commendable in that its areas are vast and bountiful, but with such little sense of thematic throughline - a clear byproduct if its lengthy development time causing too many disparate ideas to be thrown into the mix. I don't want to rag on a humble free indie project, but I can't pretend this feels like anything but imitation with more bells and whistles. If you like the structure of Yume Nikki, go off, but the vibes aint here.