When the game permits itself to show the player a fun, bombastic setpiece sequence, its latent charm and creativity finally takes centre stage. Really cool moments that make the fullest use of the environments and hardware to reinvent the way you have to tackle obstacles.
The overwhelming majority of the game, however, is hamstrung by the worst controls imaginable and sprawling sadistically vague world design. This cast and world is so great! But Brave Fencer Musashi throws itself into cryosleep for hours at a time between the moments that absolutely slap. I don't want to say this game peaks in the first thirty or so minutes, but you can kinda safely only play the prologue and come out more positively than if you otherwise finished it.

Very well designed in ways that aren't obvious. "Randomly generated endless runner" is one of the most incandescent red flags in existence, but the game itself generally leans far enough into its strengths.

Each level is a handful of prefab obstacles strewn in a line as conducted by the seed of your save file. It attempts to keep a sense of theming by isolating new mechanics to individual acts in the world map, lending a very clear and deliberate sense of progression and escalation of difficulty, but it just can't help but be dragged down by the completely random nature of its design - destroying the flow, potentially placing the easiest obstacles in the pack after some of the hardest. The game at its best is constantly reinventing itself with a plethora of absolutely ingenious design decisions and obstacles that make the always-moving endless-runner aspect feel less like a mobile game necessity and more a very cognizantly respected direction for the levels to follow.

My personal patience for trial and error has waned over the years. Any game that has me being able to die- respawn-die-respawn with the haste of, say, Hotline Miami, absolutely never leaves me feeling satisfied to have eventually overcome the trial. It's like growing callused after punching the brick wall of the level. I slowly chip away at the challenge, bit-by-bit progressing through trial and error, but the callus forms and I unfeelingly break through the goal. The reward of hard work, but an endpoint I'd assuredly have gotten to anyway by grinding away for the time anyway. I've never quite been able to put my finger on why this type of thing doesn't feel satisfying to me any more, but "callus" feels about right. Expect to die a lot in SMBF, and not often for reasons that were telegraphed to you very well. This is a game of running headfirst and blindly into obstacles you can't predict, the satisfaction comes (I guess) from memorisation. That Boshy shit.

Oh well, the game's good. The production values are kind of insane and if you have the patience, go for it.

Every now and then I play a fairly old game that retroactively makes decades-worth of titles that came later within the same classification a little less impressive - that they're just not being very ambitious by comparison.

Napple Tale does and accomplishes SO MUCH despite being built on top of a relatively clunky foundation of iffy platforming. Radiant and imaginative and emotionally charged and I just adored it. Thank you Yoko Kanno for the new favourite soundtrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzOwy2nu70o

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.

A beautiful miasma. Lies and death. There's no joy to be found here, only a deeply uncomfortable test of character. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
One thing I find so fascinating about Pathologic is how it manages to be a true "Role-Playing" game despite lacking the stats, perks and numbers commonly associated with such. It's not just that the writing is staggeringly good, it's that Pathologic understands that playing a video game is like acting out a script - that you're an actor on a theatre play. You're given a prefabricated role to play on the stage, but what differs is your portrayal of the character.
Does Artemy believe in the steppe tales? Does he want to take his place among the Kin, or is he more reluctant and skeptical? Does he still care about his old friends, even seeing what they've become? There are a great deal of dialogue options in the game that shape your understanding of your character's worldview and desires, through the ethically fraught choices and even the mundane ones.

Way to turn the holy grace of catching and raising your precious and beloved Pocket Monsters into what is essentially just a clicker game. I'm sure you get really sentimental over the fiftieth shiny Zigzagoon. Skinner box incarnate, sweeping through the neighbourhood and grinding the block's population of iconic creatures into Exp with the heart of a feller buncher combine harvester uprooting swathes of lush green forest. Pokemon Go to the gallows and give me your oil money fortune. I'll stop exaggerating and say this shit sucks even though I played it for like 10 hours.

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.

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.

Summer dress-core. A game so pristine and charming and joyful it feels like you're skipping thru a golden idyllic sunflower field. I could go into the way this game re-uses environments far too often, doesn't signpost goals at all, and has combat that is on a whole comedically easy, but that matters far less to me than how happy it made me overall. Rhapsody goes out of its way to disarm you with its completely deranged humour and corniness only for it to deliver a gutpunch right when you're not prepared.

Sharing a gameplay and narrative structure that is almost identical to their earlier title The Void, Cargo instead applies a surrealist and sickly veneer of hard primary colours peering through confetti and bric-à-brac. The vague metaphorical currencies and the omni-present omni-lying deities of The Void return with a Crash Bandicoot makeover and spend their time going into a warp frenzy about the Idiot Gamers and their lust for being filled with so much instant gratification that they burst. What you're left with is essentially the Slav Wattam.

Ice Pick Lodge are more qualified than practically any other studio to make a scathing satirical critique on the triple-A sausage machine, as well as the gormless piggies sanctimoniously gobbling the samey meat links churned endlessly out for carnal joy - but they don't have to be so mean about it. Cargo feels adolescent, lashing out at the industry that failed them and the audience that ignored them, an almost embarrassing "Nobody Understands Me" phase laid bare in a .exe. It's hard to hate a game that is this eccentric and I will give IPL every free pass I've got, it's a miracle they're even still standing. Cargo is just kind of all bark and no bite, dull to play and not even for the reasons it tries to be.

First time playing this in ten years and every song, level and enemy is still vividly clear in my memory. It's almost sobering to come to the realisation that it's not a particularly good game as far as beat-em-ups go, but I cherish it all the same. Wonderfully charming and creative and with a momentum that only ever ends when you get stunlocked to death from an enemy's offscreen divekick or something. There are better games in this genre, but few at all with pixel art and score this lovingly made.