If I'm being completely honest, I found Bayonetta 3 to be pretty disappointing. The game was a lot more open when it came to exploration and the chapters felt a little too long as a result. Many enemies felt very similar and there were plenty of "mini-game" segments that I didn't really care for. Even story-wise I was left confused. Honestly, if I had to take a quiz on Bayonetta 3 after finishing it I don't think I'd pass lol. I didn't care for Viola much and I'm sad Rodin was barely present. I did like the game enough to finish it but I don't see myself replaying it anytime soon.

I think it's so funny how before the Master Sword, the developers made sure to ease the player into 3D gaming as much as possible. Constant hints, hand-holding as much as possible...

And then halfway through they said MAN, FUCK THEM KIDS BRO and little 8 year old Timmy on the N64 has to suffer through actual nightmare fuel with NO direction.

I love it.

It Steals is a delightful goodie bag of horror minigames. You can get through all of it in around three hours, so it’s perfect for a Friday or Saturday night where you just want to sit down and beat something all the way through. It’s also actually quite scary at times, Zeekerss demonstrates much understanding of what goes into making horror games actually horrifying. Proper tension build-up, forcing the player to think on their toes, great sound design, fairly smart enemy AI, the list goes on. Best part is it’s 5 bucks. That’s like two gallons of milk in today’s economy. Go check it out.

A little Froggo on a little adventure!

Froggo's Adventure: Verdant Venture is a 2D action platformer that sports a graphical style inspired by Kirby's Adventure for the NES. You take the role of Froggo, a small cute frog who has something stolen from their well by a witch. You then fight and lick your way through 7 stages and a boss fight to take back what's yours!

The Kirby's Adventure style of graphics works well for this title. Froggo is adorable, and so are the many foes you face. The environments are blocky and colorful, and it's easy to tell apart what's a platform and what isn't, for the most part. There was at one instance where I mistook a tree branch for a platform, but that's really about it.

Much like the NES games this title is reminiscent of, the controls here are fairly simple. You get a jump as well as a button to shoot out your tongue. You can't jump on enemies, so instead you'll be taking them into your mouth and spitting them out at foes, similarly to how Yoshi works in Super Mario World. This works very well, as the controls here are super responsive. Froggo also feels great to control. If I ever had something bad happen to me, it never felt like it was my fault.

Aside from licking up foes, you can also use your tongue to latch onto grapple points that shoot you forward, and if you hit it again while doing this, you can kick yourself off the grapple for a little speed boost. You'll also be using your tongue to hit switches, collect coins and health items, carry around balls to be used for later sections, and clear out passageways that are blocked by consumable objects.

While a normal jump won't damage an enemy, doing so while rolling on a ball will! You won't move as fast or jump as high while rolling on a ball, but you'll be able to better damage foes, and you can also use the ball as a makeshift double-jump, kind of like how you can launch off of Yoshi for an extra jump in Super Mario World. Thankfully, you'll be rolling on acorns and apples instead of living beings in this game, so you won't have to feel guilty about launching one of these into a pit!

Each of the 7 levels in the game focuses on a specific gimmick. One level will focus on the grappling hooks I mentioned before, and another will test your apple-riding skills. The boss encounter will also have a unique way of fighting them. All of the stages are fairly short, but they also contain coins and hidden gems for you to collect, so exploration is highly encouraged. It also helps that you have unlimited lives, so there's no pressure to play like an expert. You are more than encouraged to take your time with this game if you're a less-experienced player!

If you're experienced with games, you'll more than likely have this game 100%'d in under a half hour, but it may be longer for those less experienced with 2D platformers. Even with the short length, I think this is a charming experience that more people should check out! It also helps that you can buy this game for only $1.00 USD on Steam. No, that's not a sale price. That's the actual full cost of the game before any discount! In my opinion, this game is absolutely worth that price for the little adventure you get out of it. I highly recommend checking this one out!

It’s been a while since I’ve played a beat em up that isn’t Final Fight or SOR 2/3, so i’m glad I picked up the Capcom Beat Em Up collection so I can find out about hidden gems like this!

The King Of Dragons sort of reminds me of Golden Axe with the medieval setting, use of weapons, and midgets which run across the screen occasionally and will give you cool shit if you hit them. They are, gameplay-wise, very different however. While one aged like dogshit and is incredibly jank and unfun, the other is actually fun and incredibly beautiful with some excellent pacing. I think you can tell which is which.

That final boss is hype asf too. I can imagine kids back in 1991 pissing themselves after seeing it.

Acordem os cachorros!!!

Tá aí um jogo que envelheceu igual vinho, Sleeping Dogs encanta até hoje com um mundo aberto vivo e LINDO.

É genial o diferencial dos combates corpo a corpo com artes marciais e as fugas com parkour, isso combinando com uma Hong Kong detalhada (sombras e mundo vivo absurdamente incríveis) causam uma imersão absurda na gameplay.

A narrativa é feita de altos e baixos pra mim. Sinto que muita coisa na história não tem tanto destaque e, enquanto o protagonista é super bem desenvolvido e causa uma dualidade no jogador a todo momento (o malandro é um policial disfarçado né, baita traidor) os outros personagens da história parecem não ter tanta atenção assim (o final do jogo por exemplo eu sinto que fica algumas pontas soltas).

A mecânica de tiro é muito boa, e as perseguições com tiroteio são insanas, em contra partida a dirigibilidade é tão arcade que incomoda em alguns momentos (os conteúdos secundários são legais porém muito repetitivos)

Tem briga de galo no jogo.

PRÓS
- Lindo mundo aberto.
- Ótimo protagonista.
- Dublagens e trabalho sonoro do game muito bons.

CONTRAS
- Outros personagens sem muita profundidade.
- Dirigibilidade arcade datada.
- Conteúdo secundário repetitivo.

I'm really conflicted with how I should rate Shadow of the Erdtree. On the one hand I can admire the fact that Hidetaka Miyazaki is so committed to his artistic vision for Elden Ring and especially in this case the DLC for it. But on the other hand I also have to listen to my own enjoyment, especially while playing games. So, if I'm being completely honest, I didn't enjoy most of the boss fights in this DLC as much as I would have liked. This is mainly due to the amount of damage they deal, but not only the bosses hit hard, no, the standard enemies also deal a lot of damage. So much that almost every enemy that you will encounter in the beginning while one or two hit kill you. My problem with this is that I think it is just a really lazy and the easiest way to make a game harder by just increasing damage numbers.

But what Fromsoftware is excellent at is creating beautiful landescapes and my jaw was on the floor a lot of the time while I explored the map. I also liked the verticality in this DLC, there are many areas that I hidden underneath other areas and this makes the Land of Shadow a lot bigger that it initially looks.

The performance on my PS5 sadly wasn't the best, I experienced weird pop-ins from the foliage and FPS drops during my playtrough, it was the worst when I used the raytracing mode. I also didn't like the design from many bosses, example are the Dancing Lion, Commander Gaius or the endboss(I wont say the name for spoiler reasons). Fighting them was really annonying because they never stop attacking and have extremly long attack combos. The main game had a similar problem but had many ways to avoid that problem. You had a lot of freedom in the main game you simply could fight a different boss, upgrade your weapon or level up your character. You can't really do that in the DLC, leveling up your character makes no difference and you also can't upgrade any further because you maxed out everything. Making runes almost worthless also killed the tension for me, yes you can play riskier but a lot of the time I didn't really care when I lost all of my runes but I think this is a problem that the endgame of these games in general have. The only mechanic that they give you to improve your character are the scadutree fragments but some of them are locked behind bosses so farming them is not an option when you are stuck at a particular boss like it was with the runes. The scadutree fragments also lower the replay value of the DLC because you always have to grind these fragments especially on NG+ runs. The fragments are always located at the same places so there is no variety when you farm them. At least the scadutree fragments carry over to NG+ but I still think there should have been a better way to improve your character and balance the boss fights. While I do think exploring is rewarding simply because how amazing the environment looks, the items aren't. 90% of what you’ll find are either smithing stones and damn cookbooks. The boss/enemy variety is also not great, many of enemies that you will encounter are either Dragons that look slightly different than the other, bunch of Hippos or other enemies that you already know from the main game. The second phase from the finale boss was also terrible, he just spams aoe attacks all over the area and is fast as fuck. But it was doable after switching my weapon to bloodfiend's arm with a bleed + stagger combo. The ending from the DLC was pretty anti climatic, you only one or two sentences from a certain character and that's it's. Which mirrored my overall experience with Shadow of the Erdtree.

One question remains, should you buy the DLC ? Well if you are a person that didn't like Elden Ring during Mountaintops of the Giants (which is the endgame of the main game), which I know was for many players (including myself) the weakest part of the game, then you probably won't really like the DLC either because many of the bosses for this DLC are pretty similar in terms of craziness to the endgame bosses of Elden Ring. But for my they overturned them quite a bit. But world the environment is still incredible and I can respect the artistic vision from Miyazaki and it's still a decent DLC but weaker than the main game.

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Games I finished in 2024 ranked