going into this game it definitely felt like a game for car people and racing game fans, neither of which im really much of. i've never really touched the major racers like need for speed or burnout or whatever just because they kinda missed me. this game might be the game that converts me though, this shit is awesome. i remember seeing this game a couple years ago and following the page on twitter for it because it looked so cool but it left my mind for a very long time until i heard someone mention it and i realized there was a whole demo out on steam.

jumping into this game and seeing how stylistic it was in its loading screens and ui was something that jumped out at me and stuck with me for the entire game. the game taking place in 90s japan with all the aesthetics of the technology of the time already gives it a really good vibe that pulled me in. then, that first moment after you buy your car and take it for a spin on the way to tatsumi PA and the music fades in as you instinctively floor it, going fast as fuck on a nighttime highway honestly feeling a little terrified by how fast you're going but also in a trance is such a magical moment that immediately sold me on this game. this game just captures such a good vibe that i haven't felt since playing bomb rush cyberfunk last year. also i just need to mention this game's ost goes crazy and really helps elevate things in the vibes department, i cannot get emotion engine by dazegxd out of my head ever since hearing it for the first time in this game.

as far as the gameplay goes, as i mentioned before the feeling of driving fast as fuck in this game is equally a liberating but also very scary feeling and i love it. even when im not in a race and just speeding to whatever destination you feel a real rush weaving through cars and tractor trailers. speaking of races, thats the main thing you're here for in this game. you're placing wagers on races to eventually pay off a few million yen in debt that's tossed on you at the start of the game, meanwhile making a name for yourself in the local racing scene going up against people of increasing rep in the community. the races themselves are a lot of fun and offer some variety, but the ai is either very good or slow as hell and i haven't really found much of an in between in this game. later on it will come down to whether or not you have upgraded your car accordingly in order to match the speed of the better racers in this game, and trying to upgrade your car can sometimes be an uphill battle when you have debt payments to make and not much pocket money to work with which can suck. also, one complaint i've seen others talk about that i agree with is trying to maneuver your way around this map. with time you will get used to traveling to some areas and understand your way around, but for the most part you will have to rely on a gps system that is a little annoying to use at times because of how easy it is to miss a turn and how little guidance the game gives you except a very thin blue line that's supposed to be guiding you to your destination and can be really difficult to read.

i think what's here in this demo is really promising. while it can feel a bit same-y at times and maybe even a little bare bones in its racing gameplay and world, doing the same races, only having one area available to travel around that becomes familiar pretty quickly, not many goals to work towards, and npc dialogue that's pretty limited and has lines that get repeated frequently, i think there's a lot of potential to make a full map and game here that will feel super variable and keep you coming back. there are plenty of areas you can't travel to yet that the game tells you are under construction which is already really promising in itself because of how much potential there is for this game to be pretty expansive, and there are also parts of your car that can't be upgraded yet in this demo meaning they really have plans to go all out in customization, even though they honestly already have gone all out with it in this demo alone to a point that felt a little intimidating to someone who knows nothing about cars except how to drive them.

i'm gonna shut up now i talked way too in depth about a demo for a game. i just haven't been able to get this game out of my head ever since i started playing it a couple days ago and even though i paid off my in game debt i wanna keep playing it and deck out my car and beat the game's "rep boss." this game fucks hard go play it it's a free demo that you can probably squeeze hours and hours out of

Before last year when I played through Konami's Contra collection release I had barely played the series. For the most part they aren't games I'd play again (except for the amazing Contra: Hard Corps.) but they are fun well made titles that do hold up well. Having gone through the collection however I found out that for some reason it was missing the third NES game in the series Contra Force. Having now played it I understand why though, I suspect Konami themselves hope people forget it.

It was originally developed as a totally different game called Arc Hound with no ties to Contra but was cancelled in Japan and never released. I was going to say that I don't know the reason for the cancellation but based on how bad the game is I imagine it's self evident but considering what existing content of the game was rebranded as a Contra title and released in the US anyway? who knows the truth of the matter behind it. By the time it actually came out was after Contra III on the SNES which only really helps to emphasize the low quality here as everything about this is worse than the original Contra released 4 years prior.

Firstly the games performance is awful. The game has constant slowdown even when there isn't much going on. I have played more intensive NES games so know the hardware is more capable than this but even without the slow down the actual game just feels slow and cumbersome moving and firing around, it's like playing in slow motion through treacle. The technical limitations don't stop there though with constant sprite flickering and even the auto scrolling at times just doesn't work leaving your playable character stuck on the very front of the screen. This is just an ugly title to play and feels unfinished which considering the information on it's development history I have managed to find? That may well have been the case.

The issues don't stop there though with Arc Hound's original set up meaning this isn't actually a contra so the enemies and especially the bosses you fight are just so...bland. The first boss for example is just a slightly larger commando that jumps and fires a couple of bullets. There are no aliens, large machinery or anything interesting at any point to engage with. The closest thing is a jet plane but even that somehow when you fight it is somehow kind of boring with no interesting bullet patterns or abilities.

You can choose between four characters to play as with slightly different load outs because the only, and I mean only, interesting thing this game does is to implement another Konami property's weapon upgrade system from Gradius. Instead of new weapons dropped from enemies or locations there are generic suitcases that act as power ups. Each one you collect pushes along a bar of choices that you can then manually select. The issue is most of the weapons are crap, slow demolition, grenades with no range, guns that feel the same and missing classic contra weapons to boot. You can change characters by pressing the start button to go to the menu. From the menu you can even select another character to do an AI attack for you on screen which was kind of neat though I initially thought it would be a permanent companion as going into the laggy menu is also a chore to no ones surprise. Speaking of which to continue feeling like this is an incomplete prototype when going into the menu from a jump and coming back out your character jumps again in mid air meaning in some levels you can by pass huge sections by jumping almost infinitely. It's just broken.

And there you have it, Contra Force. Worth playing for an hour or so only if you are interested in it's historical placement as the odd game in the series Konami doesn't want to acknowledge by repurposing an (I assume) incomplete cancelled project with the Contra branding. It runs terribly, has pretty mediocre bosses and gameplay over it's 5 stage run time and generally isn't a fun title. The Contra Collection I played was missing a lot of titles on it but honestly? this one I understand why at least.

Pints for being possibly the worst game I've played but with the coolest cover art though.

+ Gradius Power up system is an interesting implementation....

- .....though I don't think it really fits the game.
- Technical issues everywhere, slowdown, sprite flickers and broken auto scrolling.
- Levels, bosses and weapons are just unfun.
- It's bad.

I am a charlatan, an utter buffoon. A fool in clown’s clothing, already messing up the order of my reviews. Outdoor Retreat is actually the first expansion to The Sims 4 and the laugh track that plays over my life is pointing at me in a never ending cacophony of agony. Is it that I went a little too hard on the fizzy juice or just that this is a pack that isn’t used very often?

That’s not to say that this pack is bad by any means. It’s just that the majority of its content is separated from what would be normal gameplay. It introduced vacations to The Sims 4 and a lot of what it has to offer is located in Granite Falls. This place is by far the best vacation spot in the game so far. The other two are dumpsters in comparison. I haven’t dabbled that much in the woods yet, but it’s a camping site where you can partake in bothering the wildlife and accidentally setting your Sims on fire with a fire pit. In fact, the first time I went here my Sim immediately died upon leaving so I actually believe the place is cursed by this version of Boo Boo Bear.

You could be chillin’ and minding your own business under the stars and suddenly a guy in a grizzly bear costume starts doing push-ups off to the side of your campfire, right in front of your children. The game and your Sim recognizes this person as a real bear, but he’s clearly a dude in a costume and his name is Clyde Johnson or some other randomly generated name. He’s talking to you, but he’s totally a real bear. He’s stealing from the plate of hot dogs you just made as we speak. No one knows his secrets, but he has an agenda. Either Granite Falls is the location of the Sims furry convention or this is just a mystery left in the shadows never to be fully uncovered.

There is also a hermit that you can befriend if you follow the correct paths. I haven’t met them yet and I don’t know if they’re as weird as Clyde, but what I do know is that they’re going to be the next target in my 100 Baby Challenge. They let you fish for rare fish and collect rare bugs like Snow White without the 7 dwarves. I’m going to their house literally right now and bringing the bear with me.

I’m also a bug guy, if I were a Pokémon Gym Leader, I’d let a bunch of kids kill me in the first 1 hour of the game if it meant I could be a Bug Type Leader. This expansion adds the Insect collection that works pretty similar to the collectibles in The Sims 3. Like, they kinda just spawn wherever and then your Sim comes and yoinks them. Ooo yes, enjoy your little glass hut you will now live in forever my pretty little beetle guy. They even got one for the weebs too, look everyone can be happy! I can’t attest for how hard this collection is because I still haven’t finished it, but I doubt it’s anything significant. I’ll just live in the woods for 8 Sim Weeks until I find them all. My children haven’t seen me in years but I will have this awesome collection to add to my basement.

Holy shit, it’s also 4/20 I just realized. Light up that herb baby, we got the Herbalism skill. This works attached to the Gardening skill and helps you identify plants in the wilderness. There are herbs now that are either healthy or toxic, and the only way to find out is to either eat them caveman style or train for your Herbalism PhD. Although, the toxic ones only make your Sim sick and can’t actually murder them. I don’t think it’s that super useful, aside from being able to make herbal remedies on the stove that instantly fill your piss meter or something. No longer do I have to shower when I can just drink a potion that retracts the sweat back into my glands, so I guess I would say it’s not completely useless. There is this weird glitch right now though where if you own a grill outside, your neighbors will just autonomously cook herbal remedies on it and then leave them on the ground. Every now and then I look in my backyard and there’s just piles of jars of this crap just sitting out there. I think in honor of this review I am now going to start drinking whatever horrible concoction they leave instead of just selling them. Godspeed to my Sim.

Aside from that it also adds some really nice features that you can take with you, like a tent. I can just buy a tent and sleep anywhere I want now and not a single other person can say anything to me about it. I got shit to do and my Sim is tired but I’m not leaving and coming back; whip out that bad boy and have a snooze right in the middle of the restaurant. Combining this with the reward trait you get for clearing this pack’s one Aspiration is also pretty wise, as it allows your Sim to enjoy camping no matter what and never complain about it ever again!! You could be homeless and they’d still have a ball.

So while this pack is weird and mostly segregated, it’s still pretty good for the little things it adds. The items you can make and take with you can benefit other aspects of gameplay, at least if you’re me torturing your poor Sim to go through the Olympics of Simming. All in all, it’s just a funny little camping pack you can use whenever you get bored of looking at the four walls you force your Sim to live in. I think I am going to befriend the Bear now, I have some experimenting I want to do with him.

Miles Morales is an iteration rather than an innovation on Marvel’s Spiderman. It adds slight refinements and upgrades to gameplay elements which made the original such a blast in 2018, with the venom abilities being the real standout addition. The venom abilities look and feel fantastic, not to mention being incredibly useful to turn the tide in combat and stealth encounters. I also love the personality which oozes in the animation design, making Miles feel distinct and full of flair. There are quality of life improvements elsewhere with improved side quests, though some quests types can get repetitious, and the game prioritising quality over quantity more with its collectibles. However, all these minor additions do not stop Miles Morales feeling a bit too familiar. Moreover, the story did not grip me like I was hoping it would because of the weak antagonists and largely unengaging narrative. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed my time with Miles Morales; it just feels like Insomniac has all the pieces there to make a truly special experience but are held back my some poor design decisions which plague many open world games and various narrative shortcomings.

2020 Ranked
Ranked Open World Recommendations

dude oh my god how did i forget all about this game. back in like middle school when i think i was the most into attack on titan i had been i would be on this game probably every day after school. i remember i would have my friend over and we would take turns playing and listen to like attack on titan opening 1 10 hours long mix in the background. i remember going into public lobbies where people would like hack the game or some shit and they would be playing on unreleased maps and have characters with guns way way before s3 of aot had even come out. this is just one of those games where i look back on it so fondly because of how fun it was to play and because of how into aot i was at the time, also the fact it was very mechanically rewarding to play and took a lot of time to learn. i remember first playing the game after watching people on youtube play it and when i tried myself i couldn't get titan kills for myself and basically just acted as titan bait for other people. then i think about the natural progression of getting better at this game and learning to zip by titans and charge up a slice and seeing the game tell me i got a sick ass kill, it felt so good to do.

this game also just makes me think about being a stupid kid and the time period of when i played it. what's crazy about this game is that i feel like so many other people ive talked to who were also into attack on titan when they were in middle school were also super into this game, it's like such a universal experience ive had talking to other aot fans who have been there since the anime first came out. it's just so crazy to me that a fan game could be as well made and insanely popular as this one and also the fact that nobody, not even myself, cares at all about any officially made aot games, probably because they just don't hold a candle to this one. say what you will about aot in the modern day now that the anime has finished and the story is over now, but this game was during a golden age that was undeniably such a good time to be an aot fan and i personally cant help but think back on this era affectionately.

"It's not death. It's a homecoming."

In storytelling, the second act of a trilogy often brings high expectations. They are intended to build upon what's been introduced prior, leading to a climax that sets the main plot towards its finale. But with 2020's Final Fantasy VII Remake setting off an unexpected chain of events by Tetsuya Nomura, one that sees a convergence between the familiar and the unknown of a timeline branched from the fated, it brings much ambition and risk for the remainder of the project. (Yes I know Nomura didn't fully direct this one, but his elements introduced in the previous entry do follow-up here.)
Many were going into Final Fantasy VII Rebirth expecting an "Empire Strikes Back", grandiose and beyond evolving its predecessor, and I can surely see many leaving with that impression as well. But what I see here is more of "The Last Jedi", a second act so important that it can leave a massive impact on what's to come, and yet may leave tons of the audience conflicted. Needless to say, this is a headshaking work of art on a scale that we rarely see in the AAA space; a next step through one of the greatest remakes ever presented to us in the history of video games.

To start off with the good and often great: scale and scope. This is what I'd imagine a Xenoblade game would look like on actual current-generation hardware, sharing familiar designs in both its length and its transition to open-world segments, from the relationships you can build with party members, down to collecting materials that randomly spawn within these maps. And while I still personally enjoyed the linear nature of Remake's world, I still found the jump in parallel to the original's second act is incredibly impressive. Sections and locations recalled from that 1997 PS1 game look absolutely stunning in Rebirth, while also being filled with an abundance of content for the player to discover. It all overwhelmed me at first for sure, shortly before deciding to just mainline through the story about halfway through, but I can't help but be in awe at everything this team managed to throw in here within just 4 years of development. And of course, to no surprise after the previous entry, the overall audio-visual production here is simply phenomenal. One such section that really stood out to me was the Junon parade, which presented itself as a news broadcast throughout the whole QTE game, really immersing itself with incredible cinematic flair. (We'll talk more about the mini-games later, though.)
Another thing that I was actually really surprised by was how combat evolved as well. The lack of fluidity that I wanted out of Remake is definitely here now, and with full force, granting much more customization with how your party is controlled in combat. I also appreciate the game's encouragement to play as every single character, whether through forced story sections or use of synergy abilities. I had a much more enjoyable combat experience, this time around.

Now, for what I believe this game isn't too good at: pacing and narrative. Clearly, with the open nature and grand scope of the second act, I expected to mainline Rebirth in a much lengthier time than Remake, and I'm glad the content is there. However, much like how I felt with something like God of War Ragnarök, there's just too much unnecessary fluff here, which can break the pacing even more-so than certain sections of the previous game did. The thing about the original Final Fantasy VII is that I recall way more of the locations than I do of the story beats, so with Rebirth, whether it be same or different plot points, most of it felt more like the typical filler you'd find in anime that's meant to attach you to the characters as they develop. Hell, in a few months time, I'll probably remember more moments from Remake than I do from Rebirth, just because of the pure lack of importance these elements felt prior to the culmination of everything. Certain moments further establish pieces of convoluted lore than the original game ever did sure, but those are few and far between. I want to know more about this side-story with Zack, but we only ever see that progress after every 6-8 hours of the main story. There's just a lot here that could've been gutted, or at the very least been optional. It's such a damn shame too, because these characters are entertainingly-written, specifically the Turks, and there certainly are moments in the story that had me leaning forward in my seat, but the flow of it can often be fluctuating.
And speaking of pacing, part of that should be blamed on the inclusion of mini-games and side content. I can tolerate the open-world markers and tasks that Chadley assigns to you when exploring, as they allow you to unlock more challenges and materia. What really irked me were the mini-games though, some of which felt necessary to throw in during even the most action-packed chapters of the game. Yes, I know the original Final Fantasy VII was filled with mini-games, especially at the Gold Saucer (which, mind you, is executed beautifully in Rebirth), but like... why am I throwing boxes when navigating through a facility? Who thought it was a good idea to have a dolphin racing segment to get an elevator moving? It's just a little too much at times, and it's part of why I think the mainline quest can drag on for as long as it does.
Shoutout to Queen's Blood, though. What a game.

I don't think Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is necessarily downgraded by all my critiques of it, but I personally still found Remake to be a more enjoyable experience than this. But then again, I find myself to be somewhat sensitive to video games that are longer than they need to be, so I'm sure in the minority here. To its credit though, keeping the comparison I previously stated, I enjoyed my 40 hours of time with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth more than I enjoyed by 50+ hours of time with Xenoblade Chronicles, which gives it even more merit to the overall production. In true Tetsuya Nomura fashion though, it's an fun, dark, heartfelt adventure that may leave the audience either crying from character moments, cheering when plot theories begin to reveal their intentions, or confused by the bait of its bizarre director. And as I said, it's just a one-in-a-lifetime event to get to experience a project of this caliber unfolding; a massive retelling of arguably one of the most important stories ever crafted in video games. (God only knows the chaos that Kingdom Hearts IV will bring after this.)

Let us embrace whatever it brings.