Y'ALL READY TO GET FUNKY?!

A friend kept INSISTING that I played this game, over and over and over again. I was always like "Yeah, later", but it was never my priority; even knowing that everyone praised this game and everyone bitched and moaned when it didn't win at the game awards against some random game that nobody played.

Well, I played it recently and......Boy, do I ever regret not playing this game any sooner. I didn't play that many games in 2023...But this is it to me, this IS the best game of 2023.

I love almost everything about this weird ass game.

- The concept
- The character designs
- The sprite work
- The animations
- How expressive this game is
- Its sense of humor
- The difficulty
- The level design
- The gameplay loop
- The bosses
- The fast paced platforming
- THE MUSIC
- THE COMBO SYSTEM
- THE NOISE
- THE P RANKS
- PIZZA TIME
- KEEP THE COMBO, DON'T DROP THE COMBO
- GUSTAVO AAAAAAAAAAAAH
- AND BRIIIIIICK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
- LAP 2, OH GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!

I don't know! I just don't know how I can describe this game and make it justice! It is just batshit insane the entire time and I LOVE IT!!!

And if you go for the P ranks like I did, it's gonna take you forever to beat this game 100% and it's going to be one of the most stressful experiences you will have playing a videogame. But I didn't care, because BLASTING through every single level at mach 3 while being an unstopabble force, that will not surrender to ANYONE until his precious pizzeria is safe.....It feels fucking amazing and super satisfactory!

Especially getting to that second lap. Simply managing to do the whole level from beginning to end and back without dropping the combo...And then running all the way to the beginning of the level WITHOUT DROPPING THE COMBO A SECOND TIME?! It just feels too powerful...

The only things I dislike about this game are some levels that I am not a fan of (About 2 at most, in the whole game), I fucking hate Vigilante...Such an annoying boss. And I also DESPISED P RANKING THE FINAL BOSS.

P ranking Pizza Face was so fucking stressful and frustrating to me, that after so many retries I was legitimately feeling the same primal rage that Peppino was feeling in-game. In that moment, he became me and I became him. We both became one singular entity of pure cosmic furiousness and anxiety...It was cathartic in a way.......

Outside of that, I absolutely adore this fucking game, and I can't wait to replay the whole thing and get all the P Ranks for a lap 2 in like two months from now.

4 AND A HALF PIZZA SLICES OUTTA 5. MOLTO BENE!!!!

Pikmin 2 builds upon the foundation of its predecessor, offering a larger, more strategic experience. You'll command hordes of colorful Pikmin to retrieve treasures, battle strange creatures, and solve environmental puzzles across a sprawling alien landscape. The removal of the original's strict time limit gives players more freedom to explore and experiment, and the addition of new Pikmin types adds tactical depth. However, the focus on underground cave exploration can occasionally feel repetitive and slow down the game's pace.

The secret behind Pikmin’s success was not that it somehow outclassed classic real-time strategy franchises, but rather that it was never competing with them to begin with. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, he came up with the idea for Pikmin one day when he observed a group of ants carrying leaves together into their nest. Miyamoto then imagined a game focused on cooperation rather than competition; he asked, “Why can’t everyone just move together in the same direction, carrying things as a team?” Nintendo EAD’s design philosophy went along with this line of reasoning, melding design mechanics from different genres to create an entirely new yet familiar experience. As a result, instead of competing against other players in Pikmin akin to classic RTS games, Pikmin forces players to explore and compete with the very environment itself by introducing puzzle-exploration and survival mechanics. It made sense in the end; after all, real-time strategy is concerned with minimizing time spent to get a competitive edge over opponents, and what better way to translate this than to force players to master their understanding over the terrain itself, managing and optimizing the one resource which governs them all?

Perhaps Nintendo’s greatest challenge was figuring out how to translate a genre considered by many to be niche and technical to an intuitive yet layered game, and even more so, translating classic actions from a mouse and keyboard allowing for such complexity to a suite of simplified controls using a gamepad. Coming from the other side as someone who played Starcraft as a kid and didn’t get into Pikmin until recently however, I’m surprised at how well EAD’s tackled this endeavor. Classic RTS games focus upon base-building and resource gathering through the micromanagement of units. Pikmin’s take upon this is to introduce a dichotomy between the player character Captain Olimar, who is incapable of doing anything by himself but can issue commands to the units only he can create by plucking out of the soil, and the Pikmin, who are essentially brainless but represent the units that must do everything. The player as Olimar must be present to figure out exactly how to best traverse and exploit the environment around him (replacing the base-building with management/prioritization puzzles) while the Pikmin provide bodies to construct, move, and attack the world around them. However, the Pikmin’s AI is fairly limited and as a result, Pikmin will sit around helplessly once they finish their actions and often get distracted by nearby objects while moving around, which is where the micromanagement kicks in. Therefore, the player has to decide how to best build up their supply of Pikmin to allocate tasks to surmount bottlenecks while exploring and opening the world, all while working against the limited thirty-day timer throughout the game’s five areas.

A part of me expected to really struggle with the gamepad while playing Pikmin, but the available actions on offer allow for a surprising degree of control despite the simplification. For instance, consider Olimar’s whistle; as a substitution for dragging and clicking to select units on PC, the whistle on the GameCube lets Olimar quickly rally groups of clustered units. Holding down B for longer allows the player to increase the size of the whistle’s AOE, which allows the player to better control and target how many Pikmin to rally in any cluster (hence, the analog of clicking and dragging to select boxes of units on mouse and keyboard). The Swarm command is another interesting translation. The obvious use is to allow Olimar to quickly move nearby Pikmin by directing them with the C-stick versus needing to aim and throw them by positioning and rotating Olimar himself. However, because it can be used to shift the position of Pikmin with respect to Olimar, it can also be used to swap the Pikmin on-deck for throwing (since Olimar will always throw the Pikmin closest to him) without needing to dismiss and re-rally separated Pikmin colors, and most importantly, it allows you to directly control the group of Pikmin following Olimar while moving Olimar himself. This second application allows the player to kite the Pikmin around telegraphed enemy attacks, and properly funnel them so the Pikmin aren’t getting as easily stuck behind walls or falling off ledges/bridges into hazards. That said, noticeable control limitations do exist. Olimar cannot pivot to move the reticle without changing his position with respect to the Pikmin around him, which can make aiming in place annoying if the Pikmin types you need to throw aren’t close enough to be moved next to Olimar with Swarm. Additionally, there is no way for Olimar to simultaneously and directly control multiple separated groups of Pikmin, which does make allocating tasks a bit slower. However, given that the tasks themselves usually don’t necessitate more than one Pikmin type at a time, this limitation is understandable, especially since the sequels would tackle this challenge with more expansive controls and multiple playable characters on the field.

Pikmin’s base model as a result is a fantastic translation of an abstract design philosophy, but I can’t help but wonder if the original could have been pushed further. Don’t misunderstand me: I absolutely take pride in mastering a game by learning all about its inner workings and pushing its mechanics to the limits simply by following a few intuitive genre principles. As such, I wish that the game was a bit harder in order to really force me to squeeze every bit of time from the game’s solid premise. For example, combat is often optional in Pikmin given how many full-grown Bulborbs are found sleeping, but given that most enemies don’t respawn within the next day after killing them and I can bring their carcasses back to base to more than replenish my Pikmin supply, combat is almost always in my favor, especially since certain enemies will spawn more mobs if they aren’t defeated. If circumstances existed where it would be unfavorable to engage (such as losing a significant number of Pikmin every time, or having so little time left that engaging would waste time), then I feel that this would add an additional layer of decision-making of deciding when to sneak past sleeping Bulborbs rather than just wiping out as many foes as I could as soon as possible. In a similar sense, I felt that certain design elements such as the Candypop Buds for switching Pikmin colors were a bit underutilized; outside of one environmental puzzle, I never had to use the Candypop Buds, mainly because I had so many remaining Pikmin and time to never justify their usage. I’ll concede here that Pikmin’s one-day Challenge Mode does at least provide a score attack sandbox where I’m forced to take my Pikmin stock and remaining time into higher consideration, but it’s missing the connectivity of the main story mode where my earlier actions would greatly affect how I planned later days in a run, particularly in making judgement calls on which days to spend at each site and which days I dedicate towards building up my Pikmin numbers versus hauling in ship parts. Regardless, I found myself completing the main game with all parts in just twenty days on my first run with minimal resets, and I’d love to try a harder difficulty mode with a stricter time limit and tougher Pikmin margins to really force me to better conserve my working force and dedicate more time to restocking my supply.

Gripes aside, I’m glad that my friends finally convinced me to try out Pikmin, not just to better appreciate RTS games as a whole but to also gain an appreciation of how different genre mechanics can work in tandem to intuitively convey concepts without spelling everything out to the player. It’s classic Nintendo at their core, and while I had my reservations coming in as a fan of older RTS franchises, they’ve managed to convince me once again that the best hook is not simply offering something that’s visibly better, but rather offering something that’s visibly different. I still think that there’s improvement to be had, but given how much I’ve enjoyed the first game, I can’t wait to see what they have to offer from iterating upon their memorable beginnings.

Every journey has a beginning. Whether it be a monumental journey that tells of some great hero setting out to accomplish some goal or to defeat a big bad guy, or rather it be something as simple as how one decided to go to the post office that day, there is always a beginning to every story, and that definitely rings true when it comes to video games. Some of us may have played thousands of games at this point in our lives, while others are merely starting to get into the hobby, but one thing that remains consistent between all of us is that we all had a first video game, the one that would introduce us to this vast, creative and limitless medium, one that either fully enraptured us to the point of seeking out what else you could find, or leaving a simple, yet enjoyable enough impression to where you wouldn’t mind trying anything else out in the future. So, I figured, for the 600th review that I am making on this website (I might be slightly insane), I figured it was about time that I covered the very first video game I ever played in my life, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.

I don’t remember the exact, precise details of how I ended up with this as the first game I would ever play, but I do have a bit of a brief summary based on what I do remember, which will do a good enough job at painting a picture. Back in 2003-2004, when I was around 3-4 years old as well, I was a dumbass little kid, not knowing what a video game even was, and most likely doing the things that most toddlers were doing back then, such as running around, yelling, eating weird stuff off the floor, and receiving plenty of injuries. One day, my Mom and Dad came home one day with a little present for me, which just so happened to be a gray Game Boy Advance SP, one that I still own even to this day, and one that I share a lot of fond memories with throughout my life. With this, I also managed to get two games, those being Pokemon Blue and Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi’s Island, and with all of these things in hand, I had… absolutely zero clue as to what I was supposed to do with it. After messing around with the things for a bit, most likely opening and closing them, chewing on the sides of them, and so on, I then found out I can shove that weird gray rectangle thing into the big gray brick, while also finding a power switch on the system, leading to it turning on, and from that moment on, I was never the same.

So yeah, obviously, I have a lot of nostalgia towards this game, and while those early experiences were with the GBA port of the game rather than the original, it was still pretty accurate to that of the original game, to the point where I fondly remember several memories of me playing it as a kid, including one instance where I got so angry when I lost to the second phase of the Baby Bowser fight. It was my first instance of rage… you love to see it. But anyways, you all obviously didn’t come here to listen to me babble on about the past. You all came here to hear my opinion of this game, and if you couldn’t tell already at this point, I do still hold a soft place for it in my heart, and I love it tremendously. I can’t say it is perfect by any means,as it does have problems I will get into, but it was still fantastic all the way through, not only as one of the first proper Yoshi games ever made that wasn’t a puzzle game or whatever else, but also as the game that would drag me into the world of video games as a whole.

The story is very simple, yet very charming at the same time, where one night, while a stork is delivering two baby brothers by the name of Mario and Luigi to their parents, he is attacked by an evil sorcerer named Kamek, who kidnaps Baby Luigi and causes Baby Mario to fall down into the depths of the island below. Down on said island, a green Yoshi is taking a nice, leisurely stroll, until he then finds Baby Mario falling right on his back, while also dropping the map that the stork was using to deliver the kids. After gathering with several other Yoshis on the island, they then deduce (somehow) what happened to Baby Luigi, so they all then set out, with Baby Mario alongside them, to go and rescue Baby Luigi from Kamek’s evil clutches, while he and his lackeys plot to take Baby Mario as well to succeed in their ultimate goal. It is somewhat of an odd story, considering how it de-ages the Mario bros. and shifts the focus onto the Yoshis, but it is one that you can easily get behind and want to see through, as you don’t wanna see Baby Luigi get hurt by Kamek……… he can hurt Baby Mario instead, considering how much you have to put up with him in this game.

The graphics are still absolutely amazing even to this day, being one of the best looking games from the SNES library, let alone the best looking platformer on the system, having a very unique art style and plenty of vibrant colors, wonderful character, enemy, and boss designs, as well as plenty of vibrant environments that you will travel through for your whole journey, the music is fantastic, having incredibly up-beat and iconic tunes like this one that will play throughout the game, mixed in with some more “menacing” tunes like this one, most of them being a joy to listen to even after all this time, and the gameplay/control is mostly stuff that we have seen before from the Mario franchise, but not only does it remain really fun to play, but there are several different gimmicks that are present in the game that you wouldn’t typically find in other games.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of one of many different colored Yoshis at a time, go through plenty different levels across many different standout locations amongst Yoshi’s Island, take out plenty of enemies either by jumping on them, swallowing them whole, or throwing others’ dead remains at them to drive the point home, protect Baby Mario at all times to not only prevent Kamek’s cronies from taking him, but also to make sure you won’t be listening to this sound for too long, gather plenty of different eggs to help you defend yourself, solve puzzles, and take down foes, while also gathering plenty of collectibles along the way, and take on some goofy, yet at-times threatening bosses, which range from being big, intimidating foes that can definitely give you a run for your money to……. this guy, who you defeat by just simply holding right…….. fucking flawless. Much of it is your standard platforming affair, even for those who are very familiar with Mario and his past adventures, but rest assured, despite the fact that it carries the name “Super Mario World” in its title, Yoshi’s Island manages to have plenty of unique elements that distinguish itself from Mario quite a bit, both in terms of its presentation and gameplay.

A lot of elements in this game have been done to death over and over again in many other games, such as going from left to right to the end of the level, defeating enemies, getting coins, and so on, but one of the ways that makes this feel much different than that of a typical Mario game is how you are playing as Yoshi the entire time. Naturally, he does not go about his business the same way Mario does, being able to swallow enemies and throw them around as eggs, and as such, this changes up how the game expects you to approach many situations, and it is great because of it. There are many instances in this game that can’t be cleared through just by running and jumping, but instead, you may need to figure out a different way to defeat an enemy or solve a puzzle using your flutter jump or your eggs, and while some of it can get tedious at times, most of it is incredibly solid, still feeling natural and just as fun even after all of these years.

Not to mention, there are plenty of things that this game has that expands upon elements seen in previous Mario games, all to its benefit. There are many different bonus games that can be accessed throughout the game, each granting you the chance of getting a GARGANTUAN amount of lives to use for the future, right alongside several items as well, which you can use at any time while in a level. Most of these items aren’t really all that useful, just being a means of helping you get to 100%, and the bonus games themselves aren’t anything too useful after beating them once or twice, but they can still be pretty helpful whenever you get the chance to participate in any of them, and in some instances, they can definitely get you out of a bind that you are in. Aside from that though, there are also the powerups in this game, which, rather than being the traditional ones we see all the time in typical Mario games, are instead a bunch of different transformations that Yoshi can take on for a brief period of time. You can become a helicopter, a submarine, a robot mole, and there’s even a powerup that allows you to play as Baby Mario by himself, running around and going up walls, because who gives a fuck about logic! Granted, not all of these powerups are fun to use, with some like that robot mole I mentioned earlier having some pretty awkward handling at times, but they are a nice change of pace whenever they pop up, and it is always really neat seeing just what kinds of things that they are willing to transform Yoshi into next.

So yeah, the game does have a lot going for it in the gameplay department, being very fun even all the way to now, but a lot of the reason why this game does hold up also has something to do with its presentation. The game was made with the Super FX chip, one that was able to do a whole lot more then what games like Star Fox could, and when you play the game for yourself, you can really see it working perfectly in harmony. Sprites will frequently change sizes to fit the situations, enemies will jump from the background to the foreground, there are 3D objects that can be interacted with, and the way that some enemies and sprites move around looks much more impressive then any other game from the SNES at that point. Hell, even just by watching the intro sequence, you can see just what kind of stuff this game was capable of, and while it does look a little rough nowadays, I can imagine this kind of thing blowing peoples’ minds back in the day, and it has aged pretty wonderfully overtime. Not to mention, the general art style of the game is perfect in every way, making everything look so vibrant, lively, and adorable, to the point where I want to live on this island and never come back to civilization.

However, with all of that out of the way, I can’t let my nostalgia goggles blind me for too long, because I am well aware that this game is not perfect, despite it being very, VERY close to that point. While most of the game is extremely fun to play, great to look at/listen to, and has plenty of charming elements that makes it a must-play for any Nintendo fan, there has always been one element of the game that I never really liked, and that is going for 100%. For those that aren’t aware, in order to 100% Yoshi’s Island, you have to collect plenty of items in every single level, such as 30 stars to max out your life, all of the red coins, and the five smiley flowers for the chance at a bonus game at the end of the level. That doesn’t sound that bad, but trust me, completing these tasks is MUCH easier said than done, not only because of how hard it can be in plenty of places, but also because of how tedious it is. Getting a lot of these collectibles can be quite a gamble, especially in plenty of areas where you have to have perfect precision when it comes to throwing your eggs, or even in life-or-death situations where you can’t screw up, or else you would have to die or start the level over again.

That’s not even bringing up the fact that, once you do 100% the main levels in a world, you then unlock an extra stage to play for that world, and these stages can be quite the pain in the dino-ass if you aren’t prepared for them. This can be seen even as early as the first world’s extra stage, where for most of the stage, you are riding along the back of Poochy, Yoshi’s dog companion who is also be goodest good boy of them all, while going across a lot of precarious lava and tight jumps, while also having a very small platform to go back to every time you land. All of this and more awaits you when you decide to go for 100%, and while I myself usually tend to 100% the games that I play, I just simply don’t like doing that with Yoshi games. I dunno, maybe it’s because of how it was a series I grew up with, and is near and dear to my heart, but I have always found this games to be a “chill” series, one that I could just play, run straight through a lot of the time, not having to worry about much else, and I don’t think I will ever change my mind on that stance. To be fair though, I am not saying that going for 100% in this game is a bad thing at all, because it is still perfectly doable, and quite the challenge, if you so wish to go for it, but it is just something I don’t think I will ever be likely to do that much whenever I go back to one of these games. Not to mention, the last time I did 100% percent a Yoshi game was with Crafted World, and, ah hah……………… NEVER AGAIN.

Overall, despite me not really getting into the whole idea of 100% this game at many given times, I am eternally grateful that this managed to be the first video game I ever played in my life, as not only is it a wonderful place to start for anybody, but it is also a fantastic game in many ways, having a wonderful art style, fantastic music, addicting and satisfying gameplay, and a sense of identity that the series would carry on its shoulders all the way to this day, which is all for the best in my opinion. I would definitely recommend it for those who have never played any Yoshi game before, as well as those who are just big fans of Yoshi in general, because if you somehow haven’t gotten the chance to play this for yourself, then you are clearly missing out, because it truly is one of the finest platformers from the 16-bit era. happy sigh..... man, it feels great to finally get to this game, after I had been planning it for so long. Although, now that I am done with all my gushing, I don’t have any funny gag to end the review on. Uh… obligatory Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy reference. There ya go, is that good enough? Have I won the Yoshi’s Island internet prize, and will people like me now?

Game #578

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon stands as a landmark achievement for the Game Boy Advance. With sprawling gothic landscapes, a haunting soundtrack, and the tried-and-true whip-cracking gameplay of the franchise, Circle of the Moon masterfully delivers the Castlevania experience into a handheld package. The unique DSS card system adds strategic depth to combat customization, while secrets and exploration extend the playtime. If you enjoy side-scrolling action and have an itch for vampire hunting, this is a must-play.

I don't like sequels in general, yes, but at least some sequels solve the issues of their first game, which is good obviously

in this case, literally NONE of the issues were adressed(EDIT:enemy projectiles can no longer be destroyed by your attacks, at least with the staff, that's one thing they actually addressed). None. Enemies are still stunlockable, armored enemies are present, dash is... ok, literally everything is almost the same, alright. There are more attacks, yes... This game is a mindless clicker on stunlocked enemies 30% of the time and 70% of the time it's a run & gun from armored enemies (Hades 1 was kinda the same, but at least there were less armored enemies and default attack wasn't AOE on any weapon (that's why "stunlock simulator" happened only on 1-3 enemies at a time in the first game)), it's funny. Builds are also the same, except for now you have like 4 more attack than before and a new mana system. Like that matters, because the dominant strategy is still pretty much "just invest in one attack and spam it for the rest of the run". And yes, it's gonna get goty and indie game of the year and game of the game of something
My only hope is that they will make NG+ system actually good, but we will see
No, it's not bad of me to review a game that has JUST released in early access, because all of the issues stated above will stay the same. Minus points for being a sequel to roguelike only after 4 years, minus points for being a sequel that doesn't make anything better, only add on to. I have my insane reasons to lower the score of games, sorry

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword offers a grand, sweeping adventure that explores the origins of the Master Sword and the enduring bond between Link and Zelda. Its vibrant impressionistic art style and focus on motion-controlled swordplay create a unique experience. However, the game suffers from pacing issues, some overly repetitive areas, and a sometimes intrusive companion character. Despite its flaws, Skyward Sword's epic story, clever dungeon design, and memorable boss battles still make it a compelling journey for Zelda fans.

Um, this sucks. Some of that has to do with age. The controls and camera are both bad and that can be blamed on technical limitations but most of this game is a time-wasting slog and that's a design choice. The hub area is a godawful exercise in padding out the playtime, as is forcing you to essentially 100% the game. Most of the jiggies boil down to annoying, obtuse objectives that are made more frustrating due to the aforementioned bad camera and wonky controls. It all culminates in one of the worst 1-2 punches of a final boss I've ever played. I hope whoever decided to make the penultimate level of this a game show got what they deserved. I don't know what kind of member berry nostalgia cocktail people are drinking when they talk about this because I can't even imagine this being good in 1998, the year of Spyro, Crash 3, and Sonic Adventure.

One of my favorite games that I never want to play again. When I originally played Breath of the Wild, it was a truly special experience. The sense of exploration and discovery was unlike any game I had played prior. That first blind playthrough was something special, which is a double-edged sword. I usually don't replay games so that isn't something that would really affect me but this game sticks in my mind. Breath of the Wild does not hold up on subsequent playthroughs because you can only play a game for the first time once. However, I believe there is more to how I feel beyond that.

I jumped into each DLC as they came out but never finished them. With each DLC that came out, I was having an increasingly less enjoyable time. Maybe if I played them from the beginning of a fresh save file, things may have been different. But then that leads to the first problem of not being able to play the game blind again. The DLC doesn't feel like it should be played from an existing file, but to enhance a new playthrough. But enough about the DLC itself, whenever I jumped back in, the experience felt hollow and the things to do were tedious. These were feelings that I never felt in my initial 100+ hour playthrough of the base game.

These were all feelings that I felt in Tears of the Kingdom and made me look back on how I actually feel about Breath of the Wild. I have around 50 hours in Tears of the Kingdom and this feeling of hollowness crept in far sooner than its prequel. After the honeymoon phase wore off, I just felt bored with it; copy-pasted activities, Ubisoft towers, and resource gathering. All of these things that I criticize in other games, but I didn't criticize in Breath of the Wild. It made me reflect on Breath of the Wild and wonder how would I feel if I played it for the first time now.

Would I have gushed about it as much as I did when it was new, I don't know. Maybe the hype of getting a new console, that at the time was being scalped to high hell, carried my enjoyment, again I don't know. Another thing that is worth noting, is that this is the first Zelda game I finished. I played many prior but this was the first one to get me to finish, why? Again, I don't know, my feelings are so cloudy on this title. All I know is that Breath of the Wild is one of my favorite games that I never want to play again.

P.S. Weapon durability is fine, you're just too attached to some generic weapon that you'll replace in the next ten seconds.

I guess it's mindless fun on the lower difficulties, but Expert difficulty just really causes the flaws to be glaringly obvious. You have to choose between two equally bad controls schemes, constant screen shake, massive hordes of infinite spawning enemies with bullshit grabs, repeated stun-lock, the gun combinations are poorly balanced and poorly implemented, massive bullet sponge bosses that take literally minutes of just avoiding the same loops while doing chip damage, and just an unbalanced mess in general. Having done no death on Expert is not fun or an interesting challenge, it's just a frustrating slog.

If you had the ability to choose your loadout at any time or per stage (or at the very least not rely on two different RNG drops to get your desired loadout), and a stationary aim button, the game would be much better. Unfortunately like many Genesis games, it suffers from only having 3 buttons. It's also frustrating that the weapons are totally rebalanced on each difficulty, just more padding BS.

Gunstar Heroes is an exhilarating action Run'n'Gun that knows how to make the player feel powerful. Like most games in this vein, normal enemies are incredibly weak in comparison to your abilities, and in this not only can you shoot them down with a unique weapon system, but you can also grapple and toss them like flies. This made for some pretty fun action and a great time for the first half of the game, though as explained later I thought the second half was quite a bitch.

The weapon system is what really binds this game together, and involves 4 different pickups which you can hold up to 2. These are a laser beam that shoots through enemies, one that speeds up your bullet output, one that has an auto aim, and another that's a flamethrower. The cool thing is that if you have both slots filled, those 2 items will combine to form an even better item, thus leading to a couple of neat combinations to try out. As mentioned, there's also a bit of melee here and there, such as an air kick as well as a grapple and throw, and sometimes there are segments that encourage you to use it instead of your guns.

The stages are quite a mixed bag and range from pretty amazing design to extremely questionable, this is pretty much split into the first and second half of the game. The first half allows you to pick any of the four starting stages, and they're the best ones in the game to me. Two of them stand out the most, one being a rail shooter stage with an exciting multi-phase boss fight, and another containing a board game where tiles represent different things you have to do, such as quick mini-bosses. After these 4 stages come ones in a linear format, and they're such an incredible lift in difficulty. There are a lot of long segments in them without any checkpoints, which really soured the mood considering the first four had a healthy balance of them. There is a neat Schmup section near the end, but unfortunately, it becomes quite a chore due to being rather long and having not a single checkpoint at all. The final stage involves a long boss rush where you need to beat everyone in one go, but then gives you a checkpoint for the final fight which is significantly easier than those, this makes for a questionably unbalanced finale that I did not really enjoy.

I do however still recommend this game for those first four stages, they have a lot of variation in them that makes this a solid entry in the Run'n'Gun world. Tackling the rest is probably more enjoyable through the usage of save states since you're going to notice a pretty immediate difference in difficulty and quality. At the moment I purchased it for 99 cents on Steam, so that's more than a fair price for the amount of good content at least.