This was actually torture to play through, and that's a total shame. I really love Duke Nukem 3D, and although I had some serious issues with Duke It Out In D.C., it undeniably starts strong, but Nuclear Winter is irredeemable garbage.

To start, the expansion is surprisingly more misogynistic as the base game, making the base game look like a feminist statement by comparison, since your whole goal of the game is to kill feminist elves that have brainwashed Santa into becoming a killing machine; obviously, not a good start.

The issues run deeper than the sexist plot setup, though. When it comes to Nuclear Winter's levels, they're all horrid. The first couple levels are just repackaged levels from the first episode of the Duke 3D base game (but in reverse and with stupid mazes to boot), and all of the original levels are boring at their very best.

In terms of any new weapons/skins for them, there's nothing; for a Christmas themed expansion pack, there's no alterations to Duke or the arsenal to play along with the theme. Even though there isn't anything new in terms of weaponry, there's a few new enemies on offer, which are basically reskins of enemies from the base game. You get new snowmen enemies, one of which is a bit original by it being a (mostly) stationary enemy that lobs snowballs at Duke, but the other snowmen varieties are just reskins of Assault Commanders and Battlelord Sentries; really original.

The snowmen variety issue also applies to the feminist elves, which are just different versions of Pig Cops and Enforcers, but have a smaller hitbox, and are often spawned in droves. We all know what makes for fantastic, fair difficulty in a shooter is waves upon waves of hitscan enemies, right?

Nuclear Winter can blow it out its ass; what a total joke of an expansion. I cannot believe this received the 3D Realms seal of approval and was marked as an official expansion to the game, because this is easily the worst shooter I've played in recent memory. "But the controls are the same from Duke 3D, that has to speak for something!" Yeah, but the foundation was already there; the devs of Nuclear Winter already had a solid foundation, but shit all over it; that's worse than just making a flat out shit game from the get-go.

Anyway, rant over, don't play this bullshit of an expansion.

Man, you know those games that you just kind of lose the drive to play part way through and gradually chip away at over the months? Ninja Gaiden Sigma was kind of that for me. I dedicated early 2022 to getting the great Ninja Gaiden 2 and absolute dogshit NG3 off the backlog, after having played Ninja Gaiden Black in 2020. In addition to having to work a soulcrushing warehouse job, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, the PS3 remaster of the original title, fell to the wayside and I'm only just finishing it now.

"But hey, Ninja Gaiden Sigma is just Ninja Gaiden Black!" I hear you call. "Why even bother giving it a separate review?" Well, Ninja Gaiden Sigma might look like Ninja Gaiden Black to the unasumming eye. It's got the same crunchy, visceral sound design, the same weighty, brutal and satisfying combat, the same mostly crappy bosses, the same tendancy tell you to go and fuck yourself with things like the unreactable grabs and the Ghost Fish. At its core, the average player would think they'd just played a straight one-to-one remaster of Ninja Gaiden Black, with a few extra bells and whistles.

But alas, Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2's Sigma rereleases aren't just the series' variant of Devil May Cry's Special Edition rereleases. Rather, they serve as incredibly strange sidegrades to the titles in question, with additions and subtractions across the board. They also aren't helmed by the original director, alledged creepy sex pervert, and current NFT grifter, Tomonobu Itagaki, who was pretty outspoken on his less than positive feelings about these versions of his directed titles.

Rather, they're both directed by Yosuke Hayashi, who isn't any stranger to the series. He worked on the enemy AI for the 04 release, is listed as a project lead on Black, and would go on to direct Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for the DS, and then serve to absolutely shit the bed when the time came to direct Ninja Gaiden 3. He was also one of three directors on Metroid Other M, but on the plus side, he also went on to direct Nioh, so he's had some good and bad days.

So, what's NG Sigma got for itself to call its own? Well, there's the dual katanas that would later go on to be in NG2! They're super fun to use there, and super fun to use here, so that's neat. You can cycle through and use potions on the fly, which is super handy because anything to do away with additional menuing in a game like these is nice. Also means that you're way less likely to die from getting grabbed because of the game preventing you from pausing when you're getting caught by a nigh-unreactable, untechable grab. If you're playing the Vita version, or the Master Collection release, you also get additional accessories to play around with, mostly allowing you to increase attack in return for lowered defence or vice versa. Nice for the players who might need to take a few extra hits, even better for the pros who can effortlessly tear their foes to pieces with nary a scratch, increased damage be damned.

But then there's the attempts to readjust the foundation that Ninja Gaiden was built upon, with changes to the level design. Various puzzle rooms are tweaked if not outright replaced with simple fights, which might seem like a weird thing to complain about in a game where the combat is the defining feature, but it's coming at the expense of the original vision of Team Ninja, and Itagaki. There's also a lot more shops and save points littered around the game, but I don't mind that too much. I think that the original kept its save points where they were for a reason, but I'm also the kind of guy who saves any time a save point is around. Nice for people like me to have as an option.

But ya know what really brings Sigma down? Rachel. Originally an NPC and fanservice jobber in Black, she now gets 3 tacked on stages that you have to play through whenever you're going through the campaign. I'm usually all for extra playable characters in action games, provided they all feel unique and fun, and Rachel really isn't. She's only got one weapon, her big ass hammer that Ryu also gets, and lacks the ability to wall run, Izuna Drop, or be fun. Her stages also fall into just being retreads of stages Ryu already ran through, which is only a bigger issue. She's the kind of content where you can tell it was thrown into a rerelease to say they had more content, except she isn't relegated into her own small side campaign or being unlocked upon completion to be used in a repeated playthrough, like Vergil in DMC3 or Jeanne in Bayonetta. Just crammed into the main playthrough with zero rhyme or reason, and that's a shame.

I also really wish Sigma addressed the single most annoying issue I personally have with NGB that could've easily been remedied here; which is the lack of both level select and New Game Plus. Every playthrough, on every difficulty, you've gotta start back at mission 1 with base Ryu, needing to collect all 50 Gold Scarabs and Life of the Gods, and level up all your weapons from square one. It's one thing if you're looking to climb the difficulty levels to experience how NG changes even its most basic combat encounters up, but it's another beast if you're choosing to brave the weather of Ninja Gaiden's kind of awful ranking system and chase all the Master Ninja rankings, as you've basically got to save scum through the entire game if you miss a single MN rank. Even if you're just wanting to replay a specific chapter in your own time, it's no dice.

It's a shame, and something that would've really helped in Sigma's favour. There's definitely a certain mistique to being able to tackle the higher difficulties on a fresh save file, to be sure, and I think it should always be an option in an action game. Let those players who want to push both the game's mechanics and their own skills to the fullest, give them the ability to flex. But in action games, a NG+ feature has been standard since Devil May Cry 1, and stage selects since Devil May Cry 2. Just skipping over them, especially when 2, Sigma 2 and 3 gradually went on to include these features, feels like a really strange oversight in a game with a mission by mission structure. As great as any action game having a mission mode with a ton of unique and specialised encounters is, and Sigma especially has them by the truckload, it isn't quite the same as being able to pick Mission 19 in DMC5 and just going to smack up Vergil.

I probably came off super harsh towards NG Sigma throughout this review, and I want to stress that it isn't a bad game at all. Far from it, it's just a worse way of playing Ninja Gaiden Black, and the main crux of the issue really is Rachel's few levels serving as really annoying pacebreakers that put me off from giving it quite as strong a recommendation as I would NGB. A lot of the other changes I can take or leave and aren't going to be noticed by a new first timer, and there's a few issues that are more just holdovers from the original release and are disappointingly left unaccounted for.

Would I recommend you snatch a copy of Black and play it on the Xbox Series X? Yeah, if that's a possiblity for you. But Sigma isn't a halfway bad way to experience the OG NG if you're unable or unwilling to buy an Xbox to just make it your Ninja Gaiden machine. Personally, I wish a perfect world existed, where both versions of the titles could exist in perfect harmony, with both vanilla and rereleases of 1, 2 and even 3 all bundled together in a snug little collection, so new players don't have to buy a console they otherwise might have no interest in, or fumble with emulators in hopes of maybe getting them to work. But, either due to missing source code, Team Ninja seeing these as the definitive releases of the games, in spite of fandom disagreement, or just being easier to port, the Sigma releases are all we've got. It is what it is, and what it is, is kind of a bitch.

Whatever your first impression is, that the art is gorgeous, that the subject matter is alarming, or that the story is not as grandiose as other AliceSoft games I highly recommend giving Dohna Dohna an honest chance. It had had many surprisingly thoughtful moments, and I have the sense that the authors cared about what they were writing.

The cyberpunk elements are light, but the theme addresses certain niches within the genre (eg. the commodification of human life) in a stand-out way. What most holds it back is that due to a strained development history, certain plot threads weren't fully developed. But this is a character driven game over a plot driven game, and the character writing is still top notch.

Also, the localization is amazing. I've talked to Shiravune's loc producer, and he has such a deep understanding of this work and made some perfect choices. It's extremely faithful and preserves meaning of subtle details.

The game gets better with each playthrough, you'll notice more and more small things that foreshadow or call back to certain developments, and things take on new meaning. It's pretty meticulous and I constantly notice new character details!

It's one of the most polished eroge ever, in the UI, the gameplay flow, and overall design. On a first playthrough, the difficulty is just right IMO. The music is full of bangers in a variety of EDM genres. It's relaxing (despite being emotionally challenging at times) and a great 'white noise' game.

Those coming for a fun cyberpunk-lite rebel romp with vanilla H will find it, but those coming for something darker will also find it, and a player is free to choose to what degree they engage with that content. NSFW can also be turned off if you want, but...

I'd recommend a playthrough where you don't raise any heroine's feeling level at all until first getting their bad ends in the second half. It changes their Feeling events in such a way that shows its true morally salient character as a game about this type of violence. Some of it is surprisingly gentle and left me speechless. Even though these scenes are difficult to access, I encourage people to read them before making final judgments.

Violent scenes in this game are usually written from the perspective of the victim and focus on their emotional experiences, which is probably the most important thing to keep in mind. Some things, for example, an instance where a character was written as basically dissociating, and an abuser was written in a realistic way, gave me pause. Characters struggle with a lot of authentic PTSD related emotions that I was personally able to recognize, and they are told compassionate and healing things.

FWIW, the moral argument is not that 'its not that bad because there are worse people doing worse things', and certainly not that 'SV is okay.' instead, it presents a cycle of violence and raises questions about the factors which perpetuate it and why someone would be capable of such a thing. The one clear thing it does is condemn abuse, but it leaves the reader to ponder it's events and the meaning of them

They aren't ALL perfect, and it IS ero... but genuine effort was made (that didn't have to be), and I really appreciated it. In fiction, a reader can explore their emotions about these topics in a safe and controlled way to ask themselves tough questions. Stories are one way obfuscated issues like abuse can be brought to light. The medium does not effect the value of that message, and I also think that a whole work can be both serious and enjoyable, and that the two are not mutually exclusive.

The explicit scenes highlight the discrepancy between the abusers selfish, lustful acts of domination and degradation and the victims experience of extreme trauma, the lack of empathy that makes something healthy, safe, loving rather than violent. These scenes are contrasted pretty expressly with the consensual scenes.

The heroines own trauma usually directly calls into question the type of abuse their clan is involved in through Kuma, and he tries to show them compassion while at the same time ruining the lives of others, and its a compelling point of conflict.

Both sides of the game work together perfectly when all of the content is experienced, so don't skip it! It's my favorite work of fiction ever, it genuinely suprised me, and i will never forget it.

If you're interested in what I touched on, I wrote this essay that elaborates on it:
https://fuwanovel.net/2023/08/why-dohna-dohna-matters/