Emijx
Every now and again I get the urge to play one of these funky elephant games, and I've got to fight tooth and nail to play their old versions on Newgrounds or AG, or Kongregate. And it's nice, but it's got hoops. I have no idea if anyone else does this as much as I've done since I was a kid.
Having all of these games easily accessible on Steam, for $15 which seems like absolutely pennies to have a decent slice of my childhood playable on a whim, especially with Elephant Quest being sometimes unplayable with the AG connection being mucky nowadays, I'd pay more than that just to get to play these games once let alone for years on.
I'm not sure where I'm going, I might make games, I might just sit at home and encourage other people to do what they want by throwing money at them. But this gives me hope that no matter what happens, if I do it or others, we're gonna get some special stuff. Even if all that stuff isn't directly a game starring a blue elephant.
Although if we got another Elephant game, I don't think I'd complain.
Having all of these games easily accessible on Steam, for $15 which seems like absolutely pennies to have a decent slice of my childhood playable on a whim, especially with Elephant Quest being sometimes unplayable with the AG connection being mucky nowadays, I'd pay more than that just to get to play these games once let alone for years on.
I'm not sure where I'm going, I might make games, I might just sit at home and encourage other people to do what they want by throwing money at them. But this gives me hope that no matter what happens, if I do it or others, we're gonna get some special stuff. Even if all that stuff isn't directly a game starring a blue elephant.
Although if we got another Elephant game, I don't think I'd complain.
2010
Super Meat Boy was the original "The Dark Souls of (Insert Genre Here)" and I stand by that. Is it actually that hard? No, it's not. But it's a fucking Heritage Site of those old "Get Gud" game design philosophies. But unlike Dark Souls, or the more recent games in the IP, Super Meat Boy takes it's gameplay and puts a heavy focus on it. It's smooth. So at the very least give it a try.
There's noting like sitting down and playing one of the greatest games of all time, which just so happens to be a remake of TWO of the best games of all time. It's pretty, it's fluid, it's fun, it's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2. And it's the fuel of a pure unbridled drug addiction.
2023
In whatever year this Early Access game comes out in, it'll be a serious fucking GOTY contender. An open world sandbox where you can sit back and do whatever you damn well please in whatever means necessary in order to complete whatever you want? Sign me the fuck up.
Some cases are short, some are long, some aren't even about murder. It's about having a damn fun time and that's all that matters in the end. That and getting an apartment and then subsequently retiring.
Everyone having something to do is great, only issue is I wish there was a more distinct day/night cycle and that the randomly generated cases had a lot more variety in them. Graffiti is mostly the same, clues are usually the same when you get them, and if that person has a roommate they honestly probably did it and therefore will never return to that apartment and be lost amongst the city never to be found. I want to see this game become a fully fledged masterpiece and I'll be patient until a person tells me it's finished.
Some cases are short, some are long, some aren't even about murder. It's about having a damn fun time and that's all that matters in the end. That and getting an apartment and then subsequently retiring.
Everyone having something to do is great, only issue is I wish there was a more distinct day/night cycle and that the randomly generated cases had a lot more variety in them. Graffiti is mostly the same, clues are usually the same when you get them, and if that person has a roommate they honestly probably did it and therefore will never return to that apartment and be lost amongst the city never to be found. I want to see this game become a fully fledged masterpiece and I'll be patient until a person tells me it's finished.
This review contains spoilers
When you think of Castlevania as a game series, you probably think of hot vampires, whips, folklore, and maybe ever so slight levels of homoerotic tension. When I think of Castlevania, I think of high schoolers, long fur trench coats, soul stealing, guns, and some of the funniest writing decisions ever in a game that takes itself so seriously. We simply aren't the same.
I adore Aria of Sorrow, it's such a fun time. There's no greater pleasure in the Castlevania series than playing as a high schooler who's actually the soon to be reincarnation of Dracula running around with a Positron Rifle summoning cats to gnaw the ankles of my enemies. It's truly incredible.
Genuinely the only issue is if you're looking to 100% it, there's a lot of grinding to get to that perfect soul completion, but goddamn that aside is it one of the best games on the GBA and one of the best Castlevanias outside of SOTN and the glorious pachinko machines....
I adore Aria of Sorrow, it's such a fun time. There's no greater pleasure in the Castlevania series than playing as a high schooler who's actually the soon to be reincarnation of Dracula running around with a Positron Rifle summoning cats to gnaw the ankles of my enemies. It's truly incredible.
Genuinely the only issue is if you're looking to 100% it, there's a lot of grinding to get to that perfect soul completion, but goddamn that aside is it one of the best games on the GBA and one of the best Castlevanias outside of SOTN and the glorious pachinko machines....
Let's just be honest, drawing games tend to be pretty one note. Physics games doubly so. Combining the two just leads to make it more interesting but not by much. And so we have Crayon Physics Deluxe, a game that is exactly what you expect it to be on the tin and nothing more.
Repetitive soundtrack, goals that are either way too easy or absolutely not, and graphics that do the job.
Genuinely the thing that saves it is that this game is peak "I'm sick and want to play a video game" fuel. Nothing much tops it.
Repetitive soundtrack, goals that are either way too easy or absolutely not, and graphics that do the job.
Genuinely the thing that saves it is that this game is peak "I'm sick and want to play a video game" fuel. Nothing much tops it.
2010
FO:NV is like...the one Fallout that most fans point to as "The Best One." and it's extremely clear why. All of the things they changed or added, the flexibility of quests, the DLC stories are all some of the best in the series, it's not made by Bethesda so it's SLIGHTLY more stable, the characters are fucking fantastic, the Companions even more so a majority of the time, the main story is varied in how you end it, it looks really nice even nowadays, and it's super enjoyable in a ton of different ways depending on how you build your character.
FO:NV had a fucking massive advantage when it comes to game development because it wasn't developed by Bethesda, it was developed by a group of people who were heavily familiar with the franchise before 3 vs just by 3. They had a plan, they had ideas, they had a whole suite ready to go and they just outright nailed it. So goddamn well. If you're an open world game lover, and you haven't picked up F:NV? I mean Why Not? Go for it. Be a post apoc cowboy and go to goddamn town already.
FO:NV had a fucking massive advantage when it comes to game development because it wasn't developed by Bethesda, it was developed by a group of people who were heavily familiar with the franchise before 3 vs just by 3. They had a plan, they had ideas, they had a whole suite ready to go and they just outright nailed it. So goddamn well. If you're an open world game lover, and you haven't picked up F:NV? I mean Why Not? Go for it. Be a post apoc cowboy and go to goddamn town already.
2008
Fallout 3 gets a really bad rap for being a worse New Vegas, and honestly it kinda deserves it? Lots of bugs, the side quests all end up being either go get a thing or go kill a thing, the colors of the wasteland aren't really that interesting, and the climax of the game is a glorified escort mission as cool as it ends up being.
THAT BEING SAID, it's still my favorite Fallout game. Yeah the level cap is stupid, but you get a perk every single level, making your character absurdly powerful by the time you hit 30. The weapons you can find in the overworld are really fun to fuck around with by that point too, and most importantly if you choose to break the game over your knee by giving yourself god mode, infinite ammo, and choose to hunt down the MIRV Launcher, you've given yourself a one way ticket to the most goddamn fun I've had in the capital wasteland in centuries. You just have to prepare to fight tooth and nail with the game to keep it from constantly crashing...
THAT BEING SAID, it's still my favorite Fallout game. Yeah the level cap is stupid, but you get a perk every single level, making your character absurdly powerful by the time you hit 30. The weapons you can find in the overworld are really fun to fuck around with by that point too, and most importantly if you choose to break the game over your knee by giving yourself god mode, infinite ammo, and choose to hunt down the MIRV Launcher, you've given yourself a one way ticket to the most goddamn fun I've had in the capital wasteland in centuries. You just have to prepare to fight tooth and nail with the game to keep it from constantly crashing...
Look, the obvious needs to be said. Yes it's an RPGMaker game, yeah it's a MLP Fangame, and yeah a majority of the plot is (believe it or not) about the lesbian romance between Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. The gameplay is super simple and shallow, the game is incredibly short (Probably like 3-4 hours MAX, and that's with doing everything in the game. It's more like 2 if you're just blitzing to the end).
But the art is alright, the writing is good, the music is at times super good, and it doesn't last long enough to be awful. If you like the fan side of MLP, it's not the worst thing that has come out of it in a while. If you feel like playing it, it sure is a game and it'll pass the time good enough.
But the art is alright, the writing is good, the music is at times super good, and it doesn't last long enough to be awful. If you like the fan side of MLP, it's not the worst thing that has come out of it in a while. If you feel like playing it, it sure is a game and it'll pass the time good enough.
The wonderful undersea world of SB:BFBBR is great. But holy heck is it outdated in certain spots. The wonderful remaster of this makes it so much more beautiful, and so much more vibrant and personable and magnificent. The only problem with it is in certain spots it feels like it's a 2004-esque game.
They're very minor things, like animations being messed up, weird physics engine mishaps, some robots are still aggressively even more rough than the rest. The stuff such as that makes it very clear that it's a REMASTER of a game from the Gamecube era, not it's own separate thing.
However, even with that, the game is still incredibly solid as a collectathon while not feeling super super bloated. Spatulas come in often enough to keep giving the player incentive to keep playing. The boss fights are super great. The levels (for the most part) are fun to play through and the writing is really really good too.
But MAN is it a remake of a gamecube game.
They're very minor things, like animations being messed up, weird physics engine mishaps, some robots are still aggressively even more rough than the rest. The stuff such as that makes it very clear that it's a REMASTER of a game from the Gamecube era, not it's own separate thing.
However, even with that, the game is still incredibly solid as a collectathon while not feeling super super bloated. Spatulas come in often enough to keep giving the player incentive to keep playing. The boss fights are super great. The levels (for the most part) are fun to play through and the writing is really really good too.
But MAN is it a remake of a gamecube game.
Sonic Adventure DX is a weird thing. It was the first real attempt at creating a sonic story that was serious and it pulls that off about as well as the original Resident Evil pulls off it's Voice Acting in a serious and realistic way.
The Sonic part of it is almost absolutely the worst part of the game due to being way too clunky and awful to control at high speeds while trying to do sorta annoying platforming, the Tails' part is just screaming at you "WOW LOOK AT HOW BAD SONIC'S LEVEL DESIGN IS, BUT I SWEAR WE CAN DO BETTER!", Knuckles has some features that are debatably better than the search stages in Adventure 2, Amy's story is only redeemable because it's better than Sonic's by virtue of being the shortest story in the game, Big is a wonderful case of "Not bad, but god is it not alright", and Gamma is a very mixed bag of "Wow, I can see why the mech stages are a thing in SA2" and "We got rid of actual Tails stages in SA2 for more of THIS?!?"
As a whole, it's entirely understandable why it's been largely abandoned by the greater sonic community in favor of SA2. There isn't a Super Mario Galaxy 1 vs 2 kind of comparison. SA2 knew what it was doing, knew what it was ditching, and all in all is a much more complete and whole experience. But we really shouldn't give so much shit to SA1 either. There's a lot of decent stuff here. Not amazing, but decent. And it's a necessary thing to have in order to have SA2.
If you play a ton of SA2, you should go back and play SA1 through to the entire end. If nothing else, it'll give you a wonderful examination as to just how much better SA2 is. At least for the simple virtue of making Sonic's stages tremendously better.
The Sonic part of it is almost absolutely the worst part of the game due to being way too clunky and awful to control at high speeds while trying to do sorta annoying platforming, the Tails' part is just screaming at you "WOW LOOK AT HOW BAD SONIC'S LEVEL DESIGN IS, BUT I SWEAR WE CAN DO BETTER!", Knuckles has some features that are debatably better than the search stages in Adventure 2, Amy's story is only redeemable because it's better than Sonic's by virtue of being the shortest story in the game, Big is a wonderful case of "Not bad, but god is it not alright", and Gamma is a very mixed bag of "Wow, I can see why the mech stages are a thing in SA2" and "We got rid of actual Tails stages in SA2 for more of THIS?!?"
As a whole, it's entirely understandable why it's been largely abandoned by the greater sonic community in favor of SA2. There isn't a Super Mario Galaxy 1 vs 2 kind of comparison. SA2 knew what it was doing, knew what it was ditching, and all in all is a much more complete and whole experience. But we really shouldn't give so much shit to SA1 either. There's a lot of decent stuff here. Not amazing, but decent. And it's a necessary thing to have in order to have SA2.
If you play a ton of SA2, you should go back and play SA1 through to the entire end. If nothing else, it'll give you a wonderful examination as to just how much better SA2 is. At least for the simple virtue of making Sonic's stages tremendously better.
2023
This review contains spoilers
There's something so fun about seeing games that you adore come back in something fresh and full of life again. It's weird that I've spent the last 15+ years thinking that RE4 2004 is fast and fluid. Now that I've put a lot of time into this amazing remake, I don't think I can put as much time into the original anymore.
No knife parries, menus take eternities to open, Ashley's voice is suddenly grating now that I've enjoyed her Remake VA, it's genuinely scary how little of an urge I have to play the original now that it's out. Only reasons I have to recommend the original first then playing this one is to find all the little nods that this version does to people who know the first game at least on a baseline. And that doesn't even cover the sneaky little things that Capcom did too, like making the Striker charm increase your movement speed. I see what you did you little shits and I love you for it.
Only reason this isn't 5 stars is because Salazar isn't the bat shit crazy manic psychopath that I've known and loved him to be. After years of getting used to him being pure insanity it's weird seeing the new one be so put together until the very end, where he finally snaps but it's far too late to truly appreciate it...
No knife parries, menus take eternities to open, Ashley's voice is suddenly grating now that I've enjoyed her Remake VA, it's genuinely scary how little of an urge I have to play the original now that it's out. Only reasons I have to recommend the original first then playing this one is to find all the little nods that this version does to people who know the first game at least on a baseline. And that doesn't even cover the sneaky little things that Capcom did too, like making the Striker charm increase your movement speed. I see what you did you little shits and I love you for it.
Only reason this isn't 5 stars is because Salazar isn't the bat shit crazy manic psychopath that I've known and loved him to be. After years of getting used to him being pure insanity it's weird seeing the new one be so put together until the very end, where he finally snaps but it's far too late to truly appreciate it...
You know what, Sonic Adventure 2 can absolutely go by the motto "Does it's job". Is it better than the first game? Yeah. Is it funner than the first game? At points, yeah. Is it considered more interesting than the first game? Sure. Do I like it more than the first game? At points, absolutely not.
The Action stages are much better so now that Sonic and Shadow's stages are playable, their sections might just be the best. The Hunt stages are just as good as the last game, albeit held way back by the radar only focusing on one target at a time in order, forcing a lot more blindly scowering through the level multiple times to find individual fragments/keys. The Mech stages might be the worst because a ton of the time you're slowly trodding through the entire level while a high pitched sound is screaming in your ears as you try and not die by various different enemies.
Overall, it's better than most of SA1, but it's really not too hard to beat SA1 in quality of stage design, objectives, the implementation of Big the Cat, and plot. But yeah they sure did it with this one.
The Action stages are much better so now that Sonic and Shadow's stages are playable, their sections might just be the best. The Hunt stages are just as good as the last game, albeit held way back by the radar only focusing on one target at a time in order, forcing a lot more blindly scowering through the level multiple times to find individual fragments/keys. The Mech stages might be the worst because a ton of the time you're slowly trodding through the entire level while a high pitched sound is screaming in your ears as you try and not die by various different enemies.
Overall, it's better than most of SA1, but it's really not too hard to beat SA1 in quality of stage design, objectives, the implementation of Big the Cat, and plot. But yeah they sure did it with this one.
2017
Sonic Forces is like the prime example of how perfect Sonic Generations is. Combining Classic and Modern playstyles ended up being really fun in that game, and it feels like they tried copy pasting it into this game and fucked up abysmally.
The Modern Sonic stages are fine enough, the Avatar stages are really...boring, the duo stages are haphazardly combined mechanics of both the modern stages and the avatar stages which make it not work well for either side too much, and the classic sonic stages would be fine if they didn't fuck with his physics and controls to the point of ruining the character.
There's plenty of stuff here and none of it works well enough. Level design, writing, Avatar designs, the level physics, boss fights, pretty much the only thing that really still holds up is the score, which is even still not nearly as good as other sonic games which is a shame. Even if you're getting this for free, that's way too much. It's not worth owning, let alone playing, let alone finishing.
The Modern Sonic stages are fine enough, the Avatar stages are really...boring, the duo stages are haphazardly combined mechanics of both the modern stages and the avatar stages which make it not work well for either side too much, and the classic sonic stages would be fine if they didn't fuck with his physics and controls to the point of ruining the character.
There's plenty of stuff here and none of it works well enough. Level design, writing, Avatar designs, the level physics, boss fights, pretty much the only thing that really still holds up is the score, which is even still not nearly as good as other sonic games which is a shame. Even if you're getting this for free, that's way too much. It's not worth owning, let alone playing, let alone finishing.
TLDR: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game. Is one of the greatest games ever ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ made. That's being held back by a ball and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ chain because the company that made it was Ubisoft. The game runs absolutely fine on it's own without problems, but my god is it a Ubisoft release and my god do they hate people who play their games on things that aren't Ubisoft storefronts by ruining the experience for everyone.
A game that has unmatched visual style, some of the smoothest controls I've ever had the pleasure of using, one of the best soundtracks for a video game ever composed, some of the nicest knowing nods to consumers of the base property, and I could and honestly should go on. Issue is that it's a Ubisoft game. So somethings just don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ make sense.
Uplay is a forced install (although it's Ubisoft Connect now it's the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing I don't care what they call it, it's still unbridled tumoric ass), and a forced launch if you want to play the game even in single player. Achievements? Ubisoft Connect exclusive, no Steam stuff. In fact, Steam Remote Play just doesn't work at the time of writing this. Multiple controllers don't function when this game is being played through it for reasons completely unknown.
Ubisoft surprising nobody when it comes to being professionals at Pulling Ubisofts aside, please for the love of god get this game and beat it either alone or with friends. It's a super SUPER fun time for everyone involved and I heavily recommend it. Especially get it right now because the reason this dropped this year and is a huge deal is because the game got taken off storefronts YEARS ago due to licensing issues (i.e. Ubisoft not renewing the license like BASTARDS-) and let's just be real it's a Ubisoft product, so they might just do the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing again. So get it while it's back or you might not be able to get it again legally ever again.
A game that has unmatched visual style, some of the smoothest controls I've ever had the pleasure of using, one of the best soundtracks for a video game ever composed, some of the nicest knowing nods to consumers of the base property, and I could and honestly should go on. Issue is that it's a Ubisoft game. So somethings just don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ make sense.
Uplay is a forced install (although it's Ubisoft Connect now it's the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing I don't care what they call it, it's still unbridled tumoric ass), and a forced launch if you want to play the game even in single player. Achievements? Ubisoft Connect exclusive, no Steam stuff. In fact, Steam Remote Play just doesn't work at the time of writing this. Multiple controllers don't function when this game is being played through it for reasons completely unknown.
Ubisoft surprising nobody when it comes to being professionals at Pulling Ubisofts aside, please for the love of god get this game and beat it either alone or with friends. It's a super SUPER fun time for everyone involved and I heavily recommend it. Especially get it right now because the reason this dropped this year and is a huge deal is because the game got taken off storefronts YEARS ago due to licensing issues (i.e. Ubisoft not renewing the license like BASTARDS-) and let's just be real it's a Ubisoft product, so they might just do the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing again. So get it while it's back or you might not be able to get it again legally ever again.