BlueTigerSide
1996
Not very good, but it does do something that my precocious teenage self desperately always wished more things did with wrestling adaptations all those years ago: just go completely into a nonsensical realm where the Undertaker has green slimey energy attacks and Vader gets ram horns as he charges you like he's a Battletoad.
Wrestling is an absurd theatre; real human beings pretend to be superhuman and above mortality doing stuff that, if anything (and often unlike regular theatre), just accelerates that mortality by ludicrous amounts. As such, the idea of simulating wrestling has always struck me as a fruitless endeavor; wrestling is already pretending to simulate some higher reality. Why not make more games where that higher reality is fully realized and not lethal to the people pretending? Why make it into a yearly Sports Game™️ franchise?
BIG respect to the fact the game had to make up fatalities for each wrestler in this. My favorite is the one where Ultimate Warrior just uses lightning to obliterate his opponent into pieces. They'll be talkin' about THAT match for a while, Vince!
Wrestling is an absurd theatre; real human beings pretend to be superhuman and above mortality doing stuff that, if anything (and often unlike regular theatre), just accelerates that mortality by ludicrous amounts. As such, the idea of simulating wrestling has always struck me as a fruitless endeavor; wrestling is already pretending to simulate some higher reality. Why not make more games where that higher reality is fully realized and not lethal to the people pretending? Why make it into a yearly Sports Game™️ franchise?
BIG respect to the fact the game had to make up fatalities for each wrestler in this. My favorite is the one where Ultimate Warrior just uses lightning to obliterate his opponent into pieces. They'll be talkin' about THAT match for a while, Vince!
2003
Sex gifs
2006
A game where the themes are darkness and the deep sea, to contrast the themes of hunger and heaven in the first game. Also contrasting the first game is that it now also simulates the fear of people trying to drag you into arguments you have nothing to do with.
The Japanese cover for this game is so extremely uncomfortable. It rules.
The Japanese cover for this game is so extremely uncomfortable. It rules.
1997
Tekken 3 is a sort of mood-focused masterpiece for Tekken in the same way that Third Strike is a mood-focused masterpiece for Street Fighter; where 3S is a game where the atmosphere causes the gameplay to get a distinct tint of bittersweet nostalgia and a light fear + hope for the future, Tekken 3 is a game where every single part of it oozes the feeling of grungey, rough and halfway to being sleazy 90's edge - with just enough sophistication to not get lost in the sauce.
Heihachi's theme in this is an absolute fucking ALLTIMER. They never gave the old man a theme better than the one he got here.
Heihachi's theme in this is an absolute fucking ALLTIMER. They never gave the old man a theme better than the one he got here.
I had to play the Sins of the Father-jeep scene with people in the room with me.
1992
If you've got the guts, you can be a hero. If you stay strong in what you believe in, you can resist the world trying to change you. If you have two moron friends, they'll continually drag you down and fuck everything up for you. All of this is true, and SMT1 knows it.
Extremely annoying to play, but I can't help but think about this classic banger fondly. Switching out the horny evil Loki threat in the original novels that inspired the franchise for a post-apocalyptic setting is, in hindsight, a serendipitous call.
Extremely annoying to play, but I can't help but think about this classic banger fondly. Switching out the horny evil Loki threat in the original novels that inspired the franchise for a post-apocalyptic setting is, in hindsight, a serendipitous call.
Can't really say I relate to this game's moral, since I'm consistently talented at everything I do and it rules, but I guess it's appreciated.
2008
The point of Far Cry 2 is that you always need a main man to pick you up and a dude who you know you can party with. It's also about how awesome it is to shoot guns and drive cars in the jungle.
Fascinating story - very Fatal Frame in a lot of ways (including the negative ones). Some extremely unsettling ghost designs littered in the game - unfortunately the game is pretty easy, reducing a lot of the fear.
Also has an all-timer protagonist run - she runs in the most waifish way possible, it's hilarious. Big ups to Fatal Frame for consistently making it's ladies never upgrade their running speed to anything more than ''victorian trot''.
Also has an all-timer protagonist run - she runs in the most waifish way possible, it's hilarious. Big ups to Fatal Frame for consistently making it's ladies never upgrade their running speed to anything more than ''victorian trot''.
Maybe the least interesting SMT, atmospherically, plot-wise and style-wise. A hilarious protagonist, interesting (if derivative) alien designs and pretty solid gameplay saves it from being a complete disaster.
If Devil Survivor had been as big as Persona, we'd be seeing slews of ''This sci-fi story reminds me of Devil Survivor 2...'' takes, which is a funny idea.
If Devil Survivor had been as big as Persona, we'd be seeing slews of ''This sci-fi story reminds me of Devil Survivor 2...'' takes, which is a funny idea.
2002
Beautiful game. I could make a convincing argument that it's either bad in a perfect way or a hidden gem of game design that's been ruefully underestimated and misunderstood, lost to the common rubes of the world who don't understand the appeal of real quality art, depending on how I want this review to reflect my views, and the views I want reflected is this: I hate the british.
A game about getting the fuck out.
A pretty good take on the gameplay of RE1 and RE2; it's cool how despite the game being basically just as full of corridors and solitary rooms like it's older siblings, it still, with the help of the GOD level painted backgrounds and camera angles, evokes the feel of a large, sprawling and most of all, OPEN environment; the early part of the game is easily the best, when it feels like you're truly lost in the middle of a city where everything wants to kill you.
No surprise then that the latter half of the game, with it's use of a big Clock Tower and the required RE secret lab, is nowhere near as good as the city part, what with their way more limited and isolated feeling; I'm sure that's the point, but it's still lame. Some of the more tedious puzzles in that half too.
The star (or uhhhh s.t.a.r lol) of the show is of course Mr. Nemesis, who's primary role as a very persistent random boss is absolutely legendary. The fact that more games don't use the idea of a stalker to the extent RE3 used it is fucking stupid; there's realass palpable tension in every single room because you don't truly know if Nemmy will pop in - even when I'm pretty good at playing this game (robbing a lot of the tension), hearing Nemesis' theme and his droning speech is still a potent way to get some adrenaline flowing.
Jill Valentine created the concept of hot girl summer in this game.
A pretty good take on the gameplay of RE1 and RE2; it's cool how despite the game being basically just as full of corridors and solitary rooms like it's older siblings, it still, with the help of the GOD level painted backgrounds and camera angles, evokes the feel of a large, sprawling and most of all, OPEN environment; the early part of the game is easily the best, when it feels like you're truly lost in the middle of a city where everything wants to kill you.
No surprise then that the latter half of the game, with it's use of a big Clock Tower and the required RE secret lab, is nowhere near as good as the city part, what with their way more limited and isolated feeling; I'm sure that's the point, but it's still lame. Some of the more tedious puzzles in that half too.
The star (or uhhhh s.t.a.r lol) of the show is of course Mr. Nemesis, who's primary role as a very persistent random boss is absolutely legendary. The fact that more games don't use the idea of a stalker to the extent RE3 used it is fucking stupid; there's realass palpable tension in every single room because you don't truly know if Nemmy will pop in - even when I'm pretty good at playing this game (robbing a lot of the tension), hearing Nemesis' theme and his droning speech is still a potent way to get some adrenaline flowing.
Jill Valentine created the concept of hot girl summer in this game.
Making an artstyle so infamously stylish and cool like Kaneko's translate so fucking poorly to 3D - when it very much didn't look as bad in this game's fucking predecessor - should be criminal.
Adds the law-neutral-chaos system (with a massive bias to chaos) which sucks an insane amount of ass and shows how even the most interesting entries that this series can muster almost inevitably runs back to older aspects of the series instead of being bold in any way.
Combat is very much better than the first, but instead of getting bored two hours in I get bored about four hours in. A design as immediately striking as Raidou being relegated to an extremely mid ARPG is the most unfair part of SMT.
The moments that make me remember the 2 games fondly is their pulpy charm and style, the wandering around and talking to people, and the esoteric plots with demons and detective work; not a single thought is spared for their main gameplay that I hacked away at for several playthroughs.
Gouto is a severely underrated bro.
Adds the law-neutral-chaos system (with a massive bias to chaos) which sucks an insane amount of ass and shows how even the most interesting entries that this series can muster almost inevitably runs back to older aspects of the series instead of being bold in any way.
Combat is very much better than the first, but instead of getting bored two hours in I get bored about four hours in. A design as immediately striking as Raidou being relegated to an extremely mid ARPG is the most unfair part of SMT.
The moments that make me remember the 2 games fondly is their pulpy charm and style, the wandering around and talking to people, and the esoteric plots with demons and detective work; not a single thought is spared for their main gameplay that I hacked away at for several playthroughs.
Gouto is a severely underrated bro.
1996
An all-time great VN.
All it takes is a remaster on easy-to-access consoles for this game to become the kind of masterpiece that everyone obnoxious who wants to be cool and interesting keeps talking about relentlessly, like Pathologic or NieR. If you can somehow manage to find a copy of the game or emulate it before then, you'll be able to be smug about it if it eventually does get real big, which is the best reason you could have for playing a game.
Absolutely best of all time shit firing on every single front - music rips, story is a solemn discussion about war presented in the superior cutscene style of the FMV, it has one of the greatest final bosses to grace the medium, and the gameplay is the silky smooth arcade goodness that Ace Combat is alone in using.
Absolutely best of all time shit firing on every single front - music rips, story is a solemn discussion about war presented in the superior cutscene style of the FMV, it has one of the greatest final bosses to grace the medium, and the gameplay is the silky smooth arcade goodness that Ace Combat is alone in using.