this is game 10/71 out of my backlog, and boy, what a game to get to double digits with

i'll be talking about each chapter seperately, except for one and two which i'll group together because they feel as similar

so, knee deep in the dead and the shores of hell, are both amazing, this is DOOM, i get it, the music is great, it's a classic, shit, i didn't even care that this game is so old i can't look up and down, running is fast, your shotgun is strong, and these demons are meant to be gibbed, doomguy's expressions and just general gameplay really do make you feel like a powerhouse, not saying that the game is braindead though, the level design is actually very intricate and requires at least enough thought to the point where you are thinking but not to the point where you're stressing out, so, really it's just amazing

inferno, the third chapter, is garbage. the first level is not too bad, but everything after it is, it's mazes on top of mazes, with extremely confusing and disorientating layouts, i didn't have to look a walkthrough for any of the rest of the game, but i HAD to three times here, it really does not respect the player's time at all, the difficulty itself isn't too bad, i just don't like running around a map that's empty because i already killed everything

now for thy flesh consumed, it's ok, it's not AS good as episodes 1 and 2, but it's nowhere NEAR as bad as episode 3, it has pretty serviceable level design, feels nice to play on, though the ending was a bit anti-climatic, i know there WAS a boss fight but i was kinda hoping to kill satan or something, oh well.

overall, doom is at it's best when you're blasting through levels at lightning speed while obliterating every demon with your arsenal of weapons, all of which i felt were useful, except for the gatling gun and pistol, both of which just, never seemed to do enough damage somehow

oh, also, hitscan enemies are annoying, that's all

this is game 14/71 of my backlog

i'm sorely disappointed with this entry in the FNAF series, i actually never played much FNAF despite... watching and knowing almost everything about it, but, i tried playing this one and, it's just not possible, i can't do it dude

granted, i had so much trouble because this game is insanely audio focused, as are so many other FNAF games, but like, you pretty much can't beat this game without audio, or specifically, without stereo audio, shit man, i went out of my way to search around for some headphones, only for the right side to die out on me, making it useless, but honestly even when it was working, it was so hard to tell apart which side the sound was coming from, this game is pretty hard to approach because of that, some visual indication of the sound would've gone a long way

i ended up just going for the mediocre ending, and well, i guess you can say i "beat" it :/

sucks, but from what i can see, this one is pretty lacking in terms of gameplay? i guess scott expected the other aspects to make up for it, but all of the animatronics are basically the same, the difficulty comes from the sheer quantity of them later on, but i imagine that AS LONG AS YOU CAN HEAR THEM it shouldn't be too bad.

it was okay.

this is game 9/71 on my backlog

i am not a car fan, i don't like driving, or driving games, but holy shit, this game is just goddamn mean

from a technical standpoint, for it's age, it looks good, and drives realistically, though i don't know why having a tire burst makes my car always drift to the right no matter which tire bursts

the rallies are fun enough, shit, i could even go mindless and i could easily complete them, and get between 6th-4th, which was good enough fun for me, but HOLY SHIT the races are just... horrible! why is the AI like this? actually, why is anything like this? everyone has the same car, seemingly the same settings and everything, and you have a "joker" turn which is a slower turn that you HAVE to take at least once

THAT SUCKS. By having everyone have the same car, it means that, one mistake, one misuse of the joker turn, one slightly bad turn and IT'S OVER, you're not getting past them again, unless they make a mistake, WHICH THEY DON'T.

so yeah, it's just infuriating, but, i suppose it's not that bad, i played with a controller, did most of the races, but it's not like this game has an ending or anything so i just... didn't care about the more expensive ones, i'll consider this complete, sorry, this game isn't fun for me and i'm unable to grasp the weirder concepts like the engineers and team management, it was okay though, maybe i should stick to arcade racing games, those are just more fun.

whoa... what an amazing game. i've been clearing out my backlog, and, despite playing over 40 games by now, this one... is by far the best one i've played, or at the very least, the most fun.

i played the WORST version of the game, the PC version, riddled with bugs, crashes, and other technical problems such as lacking resolution support, but fuck it, this game... it's good to the point that i didn't MIND having to retry missions thrice just because the game crashed, for one, missions are usually short and sweet, and well, they're really fun too.

one thing i'll say, in terms of presentation, this game sorta blows, it was made in the "piss and shit" era of games and it shows, but i still think it looks serviceable, some of the cars are pretty cool, and the comedy is actually funny, it has a lot of running gags and otherwise the game creates funny moments by itself, like when you shoot a car trying to steal it, but the owner drives himself off a bridge, this game is fucking amazing dude i laughed my ass off a lot of the playtime.

the whole structure of taking down gangs and getting territory, while you don't feel too much the impact of it, is definitely cool on a subconscious level, and damn these cutscenes go HARD, all the executions are downright amazing, specially the drug-psychic green guy leader i forgot the name of.

if it wasn't for the bugs in the PC version, i might've given this a 4.5/5 stars, if i had to complain about anything, is that the tension never builds up, even the last mission is more or less just another tuesday, which, does fit with the rest of the game, but still you'd expect a bit more for the last send off, no?

goated game tho

this is game 11/71 form my backlog.

THIS SUCKS!

i mean, it doesn't but, holy shit there's so many things that make me not want to enjoy this game, but it's hard to ignore the positives

i'll start with the good: Artstyle is adorable newgrounds/early internet stuff, i'll be honest, i'm too young to remember that era, but i did somewhat grow up with it due to the games i played, surprised i never came across this one when i was younger, but still, it's nice seeing all the parodies and references, along with the original stuff that matt likely made simply because he thought they were cool.
the battle system is actually really nice, and basically every move is animated, the bursts specially are insanely cool to watch even if they are rudimentary, you get to choose party order mid fight, and you can also change equipment mid fight, the second one i didn't find much use for, but i'm certain someone has. exploration is highly incentivized, which i wish i realized earlier because i missed out on "dispel" which is a move that removes the buffs from your enemy, until much later than i should, oh well, my bad, remember to do the sidequests, they give you items that are extremely useful for the later game. This game is also very stable, i can't say i saw a single bug in my entire playthrough, not that i was looking for them though.

time for the bad: every single boss, all of them, all of them are horrible, plus the dificulty spike too, the difficulty curve in this game should be called a difficulty 90 degree wall, because that's what it felt to reach the desert, the plains and water areas were fine, if not the battles a bit too long, even the ice area wasn't too bad, though i had to use a poison strat to beat the wooly otherwise there was no way i would be able to advance, the bosses in this game are just stupid, they always are about as strong as you, which you'd think would make for a fair fight, but usually it doesn't, so there you go leave the fight to spend a few hours looking for equipment specifically for that fight, to then take about 1 hour of just genuine jrpg battling, that's another thing, the battles in this game go for way too goddamn long, even using optimal strats for damage, it feels like i'm barely scratching them at all, it's just very frustrating.

one other thing that makes the boss fights even worse is that this game has some kind of fetish for one-shot moves, sometimes you'll be doing perfectly fine, fully buffed, heals ready, then boom, natallie just got one shot by some random attack and now you need to spend 7 turns rebuffing (would be 3 but the enemies will keep unbuffing you), this is definitely at it's worst at the final boss, where there's always at least 2 enemies that can kill you, making death immunity a must.

overall, i can't say i didn't have fun, despite the fights being weirdly long, and them not feeling like a fair fight at all, the game always brought me at least some joy in playing it, so i can't be too harsh on the thing, and the jokes were hilarious too, so, it's a game that mostly gets carried by it's charm, but damn, that charm is effective as hell.

Well, compared to the other games in the series, i'd say this is the worst one, all the Social interaction elements are honestly better than persona 3, but EVERYTHING involving actual dungeon crawling gameplay feels worse 10 fold, i don't even know why it feels that bad, but man if Tartarus felt like a chore sometimes in P3, the dungeons in P4 feel like medieval torture, otherwise, in regards to aesthetics, i think this game sits on both ends of the spectrum, i like the use of yellow and the theming of the early 2000's and CRTs and all of that, but some of it looks really lame when compared to P3 or P5, it is functional though so i can't complain too much.

the social links... they're pretty good, except for yosuke's, his is kinda boring, his character in general is a bit annoying, not as much as teddie but he's up there, and at least teddie has some actual funny non-perv moments in the game, yosuke is just not funny ever.

This game does a great job on making the characters feel like real friends you have, only to them have them do some weird anime trope that makes me go "oh..", only to then fix itself again, it's inconsistent but the good generally outweights the bad.

as for the story... when playing through it you don't really notice because you are wayyy more invested in the characters than in actually solving the mystery, but even then the story is basically just a loop that goes on for 30 hours, you get almost NO clues as to who the suspect is until the end, so it can feel like a drag, but the game gives you enough to distract yourself to not worry about it too much.

It's OK

this is game 8/71 of my backlog
it's 00:18 as i write this

this game disapointed me severely, if i'm being honest. i heard so many people say it was one of the hardest games of all time, i beat this in under a week, and with a play time of 26 hours.

now, to be fair, yes, it was hard, specially the first parts of the game, but from inkwell island 3 beyond, it's surprisingly easy, i saw myself beating all bosses in 10-15 tries, i didn't take even a quarter of the time i took in the first half of the game to beat the second half, i also did all this while only ever using the default shot, and the extra heart charm, i never felt the need for the others so, yeah

i'd like to compliment this game where i can, before i dig into it, i'm gonna be honest, my heart wants to give this game a 2, but the amount of love i feel coming from it, i can't help but give it 3 stars, the artstyle is, of course, amazing. i'm not gonna indulge too much into that because everyone knows about it, some of the bosses, have SOME parts that are really well choreographed, and are just greatly designed in general, this game isn't AS much about quick reflexes as it is multi-tasking, or just switching your attention to other things very fast, that's all i can say of good of it, which is definitely more than what i can say for some other games so, cuphead ain't that bad

now for the bad, music. this is a hot take, i know, but i think the music for this game sucks, it never fits the mood, makes me slightly irritated despite being a chill guy when it comes to raging in games, in fact the only time i "raged" during this game was during king dice, which, in retrospect, isn't that hard, i'm just dumb.

the run and gun stages... they all are horrible, no exceptions, while the bosses in general are pretty alright, the run and gun stages are just messed up, for some reason this game has a fetish for spawning and despawning enemies just off screen, specifically where you can't see them, it's annoying to be doing everything well only to get hit by a fish you couldn't have possibly known was coming.

as for the bosses, IN GENERAL they're all good, but i feel like all of them have at least ONE bullshit move, that i'm always praying they don't use, my winning runs are usually the ones they don't.

and the last thing i have to complain is that... it doesn't feel very polished, which is where this game being indie shows the most, connecting a controller, despite it having native controller support, was hell for me, it just decided to not pick it up, and then pick it up, but inverse my joystick, and then it worked perfectly one day, and then it gave up on that and i couldn't pause through the controller anymore, awesome, anyways, another thing is, despite the movement being pretty simple, and seemingly tight, sometimes it just, DOESN'T WORK, i move left, dash, and MY BOY CUPHEAD DASHES RIGHT?? sometimes i special left, with him LOOKING LEFT, AND HE ATTACKS DIAGONALLY RIGHT, SERIOUSLY HOW DID THIS HAPPEN (IT GOT ME KILLED 3 TIMES)

anyways, it's ok, if this is your favorite game or something, i can see why, but idk, expected more from how much people praised it.

This game has some pretty cool highs and some LOW lows. i just want to preface this by saying that i played mostly the career mode, offline (due to my internet connection being shit), so the experience you might have online could be completely different, and probably will be.

The first thing i thought when i booted this game was "wow, this looks like shit". i thought i had the graphics on low but to my surprise the game was actually maxed out, i changed a few settings but the feeling of the game looking ugly didn't go away until about 3 missions in, i DID get used to it and honestly now i even think the game looks good, it has some really nice and shiny textures specially, but there's something like, oddly artificial about the art direction, most of that i think can be attributed by the weird "3D" filter on screen at all times, it's subtle but it's not good either, i couldn't figure out how to disable it so i just let it on and got used to it.

Starting out, this game really blows. i didn't even notice the career mode at first and just went on a random heist, only to realize that i didn't have the right equipment and that i needed to play OTHER missions to maybe unlock it, unsure if i'd even be able to complete those other missions.

At the start the difficulty also feels like it makes no sense, Normal is pitifully easy, Hard feels normal but then Very hard feels impossible, turns out you just gotta wear armor and it's all good. Sorta wish i figured that out earlier though.

i mostly didn't use the other deployables that weren't health kits, even in stealth missions (i'll get to those in a moment) i didn't find the ECM jammer very useful, although i saw people using it on gameplay, and i ended up just doing it all with a silenced pistol, even though i knew that you'd want a shotgun for better knockback, allowing you to kill silently better, the reason i couldn't get one is i couldn't figure out which one the right one was, and i didn't have enough points to spec into both knockback for my stealth and health for my loud.

moving on to stealth, it sucks, like REALLL bad, there's really not much interaction between you and the world, it feels like an obstacle course where you are restricted to very specific rules so only one main strategy that is optimal becomes realistically viable, with the whole "you can only kill like 4 guards lol" thing, and their pathetic sight. they're quite boring and when not boring they just feel unbalanced, like the one with the garett guy, where i almost completed the mission, was INSIDE the escape elevator, and he saw me from the other side of the map and ended my mission (this happened twice).

overall i can see why some people like this game, specially the speedrunners, but i can't see myself coming back to replay this ever again.

this is game 13/71 from my backlog

surprisingly enjoyable, simple collectathon platformer, and free at that. the whole theme of the game getting prettier the further in you get is really nice, and gives reason to go back to levels you had already done. the movement is also generally tight, with the exception honestly being just the high jump you get early on, vertical movement is nice, but after you get the double jump you only need it for very few occasions, if i had to criticize anything, is that the last graphics mode has too many things obstructing your image, makes it harder to navigate specially if there's a sun in the area you're in, otherwise, this is a cute little game with a cute little plot and a lot of early gaming references, if it got expanded i believe it would be a 4/5 game.

I was gonna play spore before this but decided against it considering this game is a total of 211 MB in size, even with my shit internet i could install it in only a few minutes

It had played this one, but quit somewhere. i didn't remember why i dropped though, seeing my save file i was in the airship zone, which... i'm gonna be real it's not a good zone but i don't think it's dropping-the-game worthy.

anyways, this game has really beautiful presentation, even if it took me a stage or two for my eyes to adjust to the pixel art. However, i think this beautiful pixel art hurts the game in a few areas, particularly, readability. There was way more than just a few occasions where i got hit by something pretty dumb because i simply thought it was part of the (admittedly beautiful) background.

another thing is that... fuck this sonic feels odd. Maybe it's because i was playing on keyboard instead of controller. I haven't touched the classics in a good while but man was the spindash always this... weak? it barely gets you through a loop. i also found the new drop-dash kinda useless except when you really just need to reach another side really quickly and don't have time to spin-dash, it comes up often enough but not really a big deal for sonic's moveset for me.

For another thing... i dislike a lot of the level designs, not all of them and not all the way throughout, but there was plenty of occasions where i'd go into a spring or something, which usually is safe, only to be thrown into a direction that i can't see anything in, and then hit a random badnick that just happened to be where i landed. Aside from that the fact that they included hydrocity zone at all in the game is an atrocity, it's easily the worst zone in the entire game.

anyways maybe i would've enjoyed this one a bit more were for me being better at sonic games, but as it stands i think it's just okay.