If anything, the game isn't committing to its weird ideas enough? For all the complaining about things like how much anxiety stuff like the consumable checkpoint system i.e. vestige seeds cause (Which would actually be fucking awesome, for the love of god please bring back some tension when exploring levels in these sorts of games), the illusion falls away when temporary checkpoint spots are so frequent, and the one place you can always teleport back to is also the place that infinitely sells seeds for not very much. It used to be higher, but people complained enough that they halved the price. Thus, there's no real consequence to just placing a checkpoint down whenever you see one.

Complaints about how you need to use the lamp to pop the umbral parasites to knock The Hushed Saint off his horse in his boss fight are also pretty funny to me, because that's exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see; Have the umbral lamp be used in a way that adds a bit of a puzzle element on top of the standard Soulslike roll-and-slash-'em-up without replacing it. Sadly, the game doesn't really do this to the same extent after; The few times it tries to after just come off as token with how little of an advantage you get from using it, or unneeded with how easy the boss is. Alternatively, where are the other umbral parasites that add some sort of buff to normal enemies besides just invincibility + regeneration? One that adds poison? One that increases their damage? No? Just on a couple of bosses? Ok then.

The dual-world system in general is also weirdly underexplored. There are a few moments where you find a pretty lengthy path in the Umbral, you dive in there, and actually find yourself with the timer ticking down, or have to use the lamp in a way that allows you to avoid fully immersing yourself into the umbral, but most of the time, it's just another part of the main path that you have to go into; Certainly not helping that the whole "avoid having to go into the umbral" puzzles I mentioned are often undercut by it just giving you an escape point right after you cross it. This is where I think the movement restrictions (i.e. only being able to walk) while holding up the umbral lamp greatly hold the opportunities presented by this gameplay back. You could present far more scenarios to strategically use the lamp to partially immerse themselves if they could fall or sprint while holding up the lamp. There are a few more neat uses, like the one time where they use it to hide a level (Revelation Depths), and a few times where you have to fight a boss in it, but said bosses are literally just normal enemies with a health bar, and a pretty crappy NPC fight. At least the last one added some incentive to backtrack to various levels to find the required items to reach him, but where's stuff like having to go into the umbral to use a shortcut, thus raising the stakes for a bit? Or using the umbral to find an alternate entrance to the level? Or a level set entirely within the Umbral, with you having to scavenge around for checkpoint spots that aren't part of it to catch your breath and rest there?

Other than that, my complaints aren't anything you haven't heard of already if you've been paying any attention to the discourse around this game; Excessive use of ganks, mediocre enemy variety with a fair few reskins (Looking at you, Harrower Dervla! Don't think I didn't catch you splitting your moveset in half to create Crimson Rectors and Proselytes.), balancing, overreliance on tracking, skating on your attacks, overtuned enemy stats, nonexistent variety in movesets within weapon classes, bosses too easy, yada yada. Still though, I'm opting to give this a step above an above average rating. The art direction, the physicality of the world, and a lot of the enemy designs certainly help to get the game on my good side. But the overall experience was pretty electrifying, warts and all, if just for how willing it is to try to make exploring levels tense again. It's willing to throw you into stressful situations. And most importantly for me, it remembered that Soulslikes aren't just action games. It managed to ignite a sense of adventure in me in a way that other Soulslikes haven't.

And just to really be a shitter, there's something appealingly ironic about the way Dark Souls and Demon Souls got attention and praise for flouting what was "conventional wisdom" in games at the time, and now, a portion (Not entirety by any means! Don't misunderstand me) of flack towards this game was for the way it flouted conventional wisdom as established within Soulslikes. At the very least, this game bothered to strike out on a pretty interesting vision of some kind. If there ends up being a Lords of the Fallen 3, or a DLC of some kind, I'll definitely be on that rickety, experimental train ride.

Alternatively, this could all just be copium on my end, and I'll have an SMT V arc the way my man Fortayee did.

In spite of being old and “clunky” to many, with not being able to see movement ranges or having to keep a sheet of notes with weapon stats handy, I really like the first Fire Emblem. It’s very charming and is relatively fair for an NES RPG. This game almost single-handedly invented the SRPG genre, and also my favorite series of all time. The plot is nice and simple, though I do prefer both of the remakes of this game. Still, I actually would find myself returning to it since most of the maps are fun. Biggest drawback is how insane of a spike in difficulty Medeus, the final boss, is. I had to pull out a bunch of flunkies from the bench of my party to be able to survive.

This past week I made a trip to hang out with some friends an hour down the road, and something we do almost every time I come over is plug in the modded Wii and fuck around with whatever iso catches our eye. This two day event was no different: Monday night I banged out the last third of Resident Evil 4, and the next morning; huddled around the TV looking for something to pass the time with, I tried Pikmin on a whim. My memory card was full from last night’s adventure so I could only get a taste of the adventure at the risk of losing a massive amount of work, but even from the 3 day sample we tried, I could tell it was something special. Everything about it was attractive to me, from the Nintendo-spun RTS mechanics to the peculiar world they inhabited. I knew when I got home from that trip that I had to sit down and really sink my teeth into the game.

Funny enough, Pikmin has actually been a bit of a white whale for me personally. As a kid playing Luigi’s Mansion for the first time, unearthing the Pikmin trailer felt like peering into something beyond our world. It always looked like something I’d be into, but fate was not kind to my interests, and I never got my hands on a copy. Though maybe in retrospect I should have actually asked for the game once or twice… Regardless, I finally sat down to play it as an adult, and predictably it was absolutely wonderful. What I didn’t expect was that I’d go on to play through the game 3 times to completion within the week. Looking into it online it seems like the length of the game, and by extension the 30 day time limit, seem to be the biggest point of contention amongst most players. This is peculiar to me, as in my experience I found it to be the glue that prevented the game’s systems from completely collapsing in on themselves. That’s not a sleight against the mechanics though, and I do want to shine a light on the actual game part because I feel like it gets overlooked when looking at the game from the outside.

Every layer is razor sharp, and the few massive pieces of design interlock so well to allow for interesting strategy puzzles, that removing or adding just a single piece would likely send the whole thing crashing down. Across a single day there are only a few major things to keep track of: The Pikmin population, part locations, level layouts, and enemy spawns. It’s all disgustingly simple on paper, but contending with everything at once is where the magic really happens. Efficiency is the name of the game here, and because tasks have to be performed in real time by the Pikmin (with slight time saves coming from the number of Pikmin on a task and the status of their bud), a strong grasp of level navigation is all but essential to prevent massive time and population losses. Some weeks I’d play simple and juggle basic tasks to nab a part or two a day, whereas other times I’d find myself playing more towards chipping away at level hazards one day, and then cleaning up with 3 or 4 parts in a single stretch the next. It’s a testament to the complexity and density of the admittedly small levels that even after multiple reasonably efficient runs, I still couldn’t even begin to chart out anything resembling an optimal path to get parts as quickly as possible.

So how about the timer? Well, it's maybe not a direct threat in the way the developers intended. On a first playthrough you have more than enough time to collect all 30 ship parts and get the best ending (on my first playthrough with minimal resets I managed to beat the final boss on day 27, and collect the final part on day 28) and you’ll likely continue to shave off time with every subsequent run, so on paper it may seem like it the timer may as well not be there at all, right? I’m not convinced.

The reason I find the time limit to be such a captivating piece of the puzzle is not because it’s a particularly challenging thing to work around on its own, but for how it shifts your perspective on every mechanic and every choice you make over the course of a run. If you took this exact campaign and all it’s challenges, but lifted the 30 day timer, the way you’d approach each level would completely flip on its head. Multitasking would be unnecessary as you could execute a plan as slowly and carefully as possible, you would have all the time in the world to plant the maximum amount of Pikmin for any one scenario, and the punishment for mistakes shifts from added tension and short-term changes of plans, to simply robbing you of more of your time. In layman's terms, removing the timer would probably miss the point.

It’s been said that people tend to optimize the fun out of something if given the opportunity. In the case of Pikmin, this has completely different insinuations depending on the existence of a timer, and that’s what makes it such a fascinating inclusion to me. No matter how well you understand the game, no matter how sharp your execution is, it doesn’t matter. The timer is always looming overhead like an albatross subtly weighing on your psyche and steering your every move. Some may view it as something that just restricts player freedom, but with how loose the balance of the game and the timer admittedly are, it somehow perfectly balances itself as an element of the game that always subconsciously keeps the player in check. Few titles before or since have promoted optimisation in the face of a looming failure state so well, and this coming from a Nintendo game of all things could very well steer younger audiences to explore more games of this niche, and I just sorta love that prospect honestly.

This type of psychological tension is something I wish would be explored in more inherently childish games like this, and not just reserved for “mature” games. I sorta understand why this hasn’t been a common design principle - especially for a modern children’s game - but I love that the Big N was willing to put something like this together with their own flourish and have it come out so perfectly realized despite being such a bizarre mismatch of aesthetical and mechanical sensibilities. It would be easy to call it just a tech demo given its compact size (and it’s literal roots in GameCube tech demos) but that would be a mistake. The original Pikmin still stands as one of Nintendo’s boldest games to date, and I think it deserves to be viewed in the same glamorous light as every other masterpiece released on the purple lunchbox at the time. We need to do our best to cherish this game now, because I think the time of its potential influence and popularity has already begun to fade.

I don’t exactly remember when I bought this game, or when I finished it for the first time but what I do remember is that always, from the moment I saw it advertised on steam I knew that these graphics and this sound was something that I vibed with on every possible level. Now, to this day, this little visual novel, the only one that I’ve ever played, has burnt its vibes into my soul.

I look back fondly on the way in which I, as a teenager living secluded in a rural area, would fantasize about the city. I held the idea and imagery of a city in an important part of my mind, a romanticized and neon colored idealization of what an exciting city life could hold. Every time I’d sit in the back seat of my parent’s car, driving past the towers of checkered lights which sprawl out over the island city of Montreal while I gazed off at the ever present and sky sweeping skylights I would feel my heart drift off somewhere else all together, a nostalgic and hopeful place.

VA-11 HALL-A spoke to that fantasy in a powerful way, due almost entirely to the gorgeous pixel art which perfectly captures that iconic and soulful city skyline imagery that my heart yearns for so much. Not just the skyscrapers and neon signs, though, but also Jill’s lived-in feeling apartment with her clothing displayed about and collectibles placed about the room.
The titular bar, where the majority of dialogue and gameplay takes place is itself a charming and imaginable setting. What could be more representative of an exciting city fantasy than an interesting, colorful downstairs bar where they serve interesting, colorful beverages to an interesting, colorful collection of clientele?

Speaking of the clientele, VA-11 HALL-A is home to a plethora of memorable characters, presumably as any well liked visual novel does (I wouldn’t know, as this is the only one I’ve ever played). The primary focus of the game is, after all, serving drinks to the characters who show up at the bar. If you’re anything like me, you need only see a glimpse of any character’s sprite art to immediately be interested in them (save for a couple less interesting designs). That said, I’ll tell you straight away that by far my favorite character in the game is that of the protagonist Jill Stingray. Jill serves as a vehicle for every single interaction you see in the game, given that you see the game through her eyes and she does a fantastic job at doing so, she’s cool, funny, attractive and cozy. Her aforementioned apartment truly feels like home quite quickly, and the way you interact with her smartphone starting from the lock screen when you wish to read world building on the in game news apps both do wonders for making her an immersive player avatar as well. It’s really important that the player like Jill and feel comfortable with her as the game is ultimately her story of living in Glitch City, even if most of the time is spent speaking to patrons of the bar, Jill’s arc and experience is where the story literally ends and begins. Importantly, however, you never decide what Jill has to say or what actions she takes in a direct sense. She is her own character.

If you haven’t played the game, you may wonder how a visual novel that does in fact have multiple endings manages to be an interesting experience without allowing the player to influence the events in any way? Well, that’s where VA-11 HALL-A’s primary (only?) game mechanic comes into play. Ultimately, every influenceable aspect of the game revolves around how much alcohol you make a character consume and to some degree, whether or not you serve them drinks that are to their liking. This mechanic is a bit hit or miss. It is interesting, but ultimately you are rarely making a choice consciously or with much intent. If you want a specific ending or the correct drinks to serve when given vague requests you will probably end up looking at a guide anyways. I suppose that type of progression is not uncommon amongst visual novels (looking at guides to understand the possible story routes) but ultimately it doesn’t feel so much like decision based story progression in the way selecting dialogue or directly controlling a player character does. Oh, also there’s a drink mixing mini game. It’s inconsequential but I’m glad it’s there, and it's part of the vibe.

The writing of the game is something I’m not particularly interested in speaking critically of without replaying it. It’s a lot of reading, and the setting of Glitch City has a lot of love and thought put into it. It’s charming but also can feel weird and serious often enough. What I can say is that regardless of whether or not these characters are or are not well written, they are memorable and if you were to see fanart of them you would probably retweet it. The story itself has plenty of memorable moments, especially ones that are important to Jill’s personal story. The ending of the game is very charming and leaves you feeling rather satisfied.

While I can speak highly of the game as a whole, and one’s enjoyment of the content within will be subjective, what ultimately makes it worth playing is without a doubt the presentation. If it had not been for the graphics, sound and overall aesthetic of this game it would not have a chance at being as important to me as it is. It was because of that vibe that this game is able to be a part of treasured memories. Filling my teenage bedroom with a purple glow and bassy synth soundtracks while my new off brand LED backlit keyboard cycled through colors late at night, supercharging my longing for the city and hoping I could one day “get out of this town”

I did eventually move to the city, and one of the first things I did was order a 3 disc CD soundtrack of this games’ OST. The OST for this game really is something amazing, and getting my hands on that thick jewel case and gazing upon the cover itself was an experience that nearly brought me to tears. It’s a daytime scene of the Glitch City skyline. Something about that art, when the majority of the game’s visuals take place at night just made it hit. It felt like a perfect purchase for finally fulfilling the city-life dreams that the game had inspired.
I went out at night listening the that soundtrack many times after moving, and sitting by the river, looking out at the reflections of tall, lit up buildings against the water and the orange hued sky while vibing to music from a piece of media which has ultimately become a part of my soul has been one of the most fulfilling art experiences of my life and I am thankful for the game’s existence because of that.

At least 5 years after this game first came into my life, I stand by my girlfriend’s 3rd story balcony window. Peering over the buildings, I see the towering Montreal Olympic Stadium far in the distance and I’m filled with the same feelings that VA11 HALL-A indulged all those years ago. The opening synths of “Welcome to VA-11 HALL-A” play in my head, and I sit down to write this review, letting out a feeling that this art brought out from me all that time ago.

There is no concrete way I can write this review. There is the part of me that wants to incessantly go into detail about all of the high points about the narrative, what I think about the romantic writing for each of the three routes, the improvement of the artstyle by Takeuchi since Tsukihime and the absolutely spectacular soundtrack.

There is also another part of me that desperately wants to hold back to keep from spoiling the experience for others.

That is how important this game is to me.

Throughout my many years in playing video games, there has never been a story that made me break down into tears. I've played emotional games like Celeste, I've experienced heartbreaking moments like in Stranger of Paradise's final hours, hell I've gone through the Mojave Wasteland more times than I can count experiencing all of the emotions that journey brings... and yet I did not cry.

It's not that I think I'm a tough guy, I'm very much not, but no game had ever connected with me completely in such a way to get that emotional response out of me. To some extent it was upsetting because I felt like there was something wrong with my emotions, whether because I'm depressed or what I can't truly say.

So, in truth I had always been looking for the game that would eventually cause the tears to well up, and for the strings of my heart to be pulled. To know that the game had fully and completely resonated with me.

Then I got to the end of the Unlimited Blade Works route of Fate/Stay Night.

And I cried.

I don't know how to speak to the sheer volume of importance this game has to popular culture, Japanese Popular Culture in particular, but I can say that this is one of the most important games I've experienced in my life personally.

It has a lot to say about guilt, the self, the building of love between others, and so much more that I don't want to ruin for you all by spilling it here.

Maybe someday I'll be able to write something truly concrete about this game, but maybe I don't need to.

Maybe all you need to know is that this game got me to feel in a way no other game has before, and maybe it can do that for you too.

As the dominance of arcades fades further into the past along with other relics of our memory, a growing collection of armchair critics have begun to question limited lives and their place in gaming, often unfairly maligning them as nothing but an outdated relic from a time where arcade operators just wanted to squeeze extra money out impressionable children. Similarly, many modern games have leaned away from actively scoring the player during the duration of the game, also to the delight of some. Obviously these don’t belong in every game (you’d be hard pressed to conjure a compelling argument as to why the scoring of Super Mario Bros. is one of the better elements to that title), but what detractors of these don’t recognize is the extra layers that immediately get added when you build a game around these two systems.

Scoring on its own may be an explicitly intrinsic reward in an old arcade game, but what happens when you’re granted extra lives for getting high scores? Suddenly the thought of working towards mastery over basic mechanics becomes a bit more alluring, especially in titles where an extra life can be the determining factor between continuing to play the game and being forced to spend more of your parent’s money. Depending on the game, you may also realize there's been a shocking amount of consideration for how scoring itself is handled - it's not just about bragging rights anymore, you’ve essentially unlocked a whole new slew of mechanics and gameplay challenges to play with in a title you may have disregarded before. These old games weren’t just a ploy to steal your money, they were designed by real people trying to make their game a more exciting and complete package than whatever other games were sharing space in the arcade.

These hidden gems of design ideas can still be found all over arcade titles waiting for a curious player to discover, and one genre that feels absolutely rich for this type of exploration is the shoot-em-up. These games tend to be so challenging for most players that the only reasonable way towards an elusive one credit clear is to earn extends through creative uses of the game’s scoring systems, because there's no way the layman would be able to get by without eventually crumbling under pressure and making mistakes. While you may not be able to read every single bullet pattern that gets thrown your way even after many hours of play, if you engage with the scoring system you’ll likely have a bit more room for error and have a far greater chance of reaching the end. While these games seem insurmountable at a glance, these truly are titles that anyone can learn and get into with enough determination and perseverance. That said, I think there’s extra room for these games to blossom and evolve even more than they already have since their inception.

Standard shmups are often complex but somewhat linear pieces of artistry. Interesting offensive mechanics may throw wrinkles into the equation and force players to consider each scenario with every possible solution, but due to the relative rigidity of bullet patterns and enemy layouts, you could reasonably find an optimal path through and solve the game with enough time, dedication, and study. There's obviously a certain beauty in that - ascending to match the piece on its level and finally seeing through the canvas between the splashes of painted bullets that get in your way of success - it's one of the more literal ways you can use games as a vessel for artistic expression and there's absolutely value in that. The only problem is that at a certain point, the core loop of the game shifts from a problem solving affair to an execution check. Obviously this type of gameplay has its own appeal, and my simplified summary doesn't account for tertiary methods of play such as score attack and pacifist runs (or any number of ways you feel like tweaking the gameplay flow to your liking), nor the arduous journey of climbing the mountain of success in the genre to even reach a point of true mastery. It's just that, with their traditional implementation, I don't find them to be the best vehicles for pure player freedom and expression in the medium of games.

On that note, I think it's unfortunate, albeit understandable to a certain degree, that Battle Garegga a title that's slipped under the radar for most. Its initial facade of an industrial war-grounded aesthetic is relatively unassuming paired next to the otherworldly architecture of galactic ambitions in more popular shooters, and at a glance it's hard to parse its mechanics any further than "it sure is a shmup". The irony here is that, once you peel back any preconceived notions on the game and really dig into its cavernous depths, this is by far one of the most enchanting takes on the genre you can find.

If traditional shmups are more about knowing what the game is about to say than what your actual response is, then Battle Garegga is all about constant back and forth exchanges where making a poor decision may blow up in your face with no easy way to bounce back. It's an active conversation, constantly flowing between leading roles of command and brief moments of reprise to consider your next plan of attack. Few games of any genre have truly captured this feeling for me, let alone shmups, but what's really surprising is that it doesn't do anything extremely complex on the surface to demand this type of engagement. There are many different selectable ships that fuzzy up the decision making during runs, but bullet patterns can be easier to read than what you may expect from your average Cave affair, your secondary attack options are multifaceted but still pretty easy to understand, and bombs mostly work how you'd expect for a shmup. Altogether, this makes the game rather easy to enjoy on a baseline level, but those elements alone are not what set it far above the pack for me. Rather, the defining element to Battle Garegga is it's infamous ranking system, essentially this game's version of dynamic difficulty scaling.

To me, dynamic difficulty is put into games for two primary reasons: putting higher skilled players in check to prevent them from feeling bored by a challenge they're far beyond the level of, and to push lower skilled players past their comfort zone and give them a taste of what's just beyond their grasp. You could make an argument that it's unfair to punish skillful play like this, but generally speaking I don't think this is done out of malice. It's fair to say most developers designing their game around scaling difficulty simply want to push players a little bit more each time they play and make sure they never hit a slump where they desync with the natural difficulty curve of the game. In its best iterations, dynamic difficulty has worked so well at keeping players in the zone that they didn't even notice it was pulling the strings at all.

Battle Garegga, conversely, feels outright antagonistic towards the player at basically every turn. Nearly every action in the game is enough to push the in-game rank just a little bit higher, and the only way to drop the rank is by dying. Don’t get your hopes up that this is like Resident Evil 4 or GOD HAND either, where you could easily tank the difficulty through repeated failure to make an upcoming section easier if you felt like it, because its limited life system will quickly net you a game over if you try to quickly drop your rank with rapid, thoughtless deaths. It sounds so simple, but applying this design idea to a shoot-em-up of all things has such massive ramifications on the game and seeps into every single facet of play. There's no doubt in my mind that many people have and will continue to drop Battle Garegga simply due to the Ranking system, and if they’re just starting out I don’t think I’d blame them. Improving at shmups already feels like an impossible task for most, so considering that the game was severely punishing them for standard play, as well as requiring more money for each credit at the game’s release, I can see why players quickly roll over to a different game after getting frustrated and confused at this one. In modern day with the benefit of hindsight however, I think brushing this aside would be a huge mistake.

As you can probably guess, Battle Garegga ignited a spark from me I haven’t felt in a long time. But what is it about this exhausting cocktail of cruelty and creativity that does it for me? Well all of it, frankly.

Rank is the big elephant in the room regarding the game as I’ve mentioned before, and it really is the backbone of the whole experience. Nearly everything you do increases the Rank, but what does this actually mean? In the long term, it means every decision made can have unforeseen consequences later in a run, varying from faster and denser bullet patterns to end-game bosses having their HP doubled, but simultaneously this means your short term stretches of gameplay are orders of magnitude more stressful. Take stage 1 for example, many shmups suffer from the first stage being a minute-long warmup before you get to the real game, and can lead to resets becoming all the more exhausting when the biggest slump of gameplay (comparatively anyway) happens right at the start. In Battle Garegga, there’s SO much shit to worry about and so many variables to consider that every fresh run feels like you’re already starting at nearly 100% mental capacity. I mentioned rigid routing earlier, but here it's not so cut and dry. Depending on your ship choice your upgrade route might swing wildly, and every item you pick up is preceded by a massive question that lingers for your entire playthrough: “how might this fuck me up later in the run?”

Looking at it on paper, it genuinely might not be a massive boon on your rank to pick up one extra shot upgrade or not, but even beyond the ramifications of prepping at the start for a stretch of the game you won’t reach for another 4 stages, there’s a blanket of anxiety that gets cast over a run from this that completely shifts the energy of the entire experience. For a mainstream comparison, I felt a similar ever-present pressure while playing through Resident Evil for the first time this year. Similar to controlling the Rank in Battle Garegga, every bullet fired and Ink Ribbon spent left me wondering much harder how my final stretch through the mansion would be, but it can’t be understated just how much of this is retained when compressing this feeling into a 30 minute game compared to spreading it across a 4+ hour one with multiple save points to catch your breath.

Not only does this change how you view items you’ve already collected and decisions you’ve already made, this has a really cool side effect on the physical space that items themselves take up before you even think about picking them up. While item drop locations are entirely deterministic, the shifting Rank means you can rarely be quite sure of when and where specific items might drop, and also inadvertently turns surprise random drops into an extended piece of the enemy roster. Some items are good at different points in the run, and also change in external value depending on how you want to deck out your ship, so every drop requires a quick and intelligent evaluation of whether it's something you should deal with or not. Options are probably the easiest example of this, being one of the most valuable upgrades you can earn for your ship, but adding more rank in one pickup than any other item in the game, so while you could pick up a few extra Options early to dramatically increase your DPS, you have to quickly decide whether or not this extra firepower is worth it in spite of the rather large immediate rank increase.

Medals are the one piece of this pie that feels a bit too rigid on paper, essentially being an item you should disregard entirely if you drop a combo and reset their value, but tied in with the rest of the items and the uncertainty of where they’ll appear, they end up wrapping around to becoming one of my favorite things to keep up with in a run. While the decision has basically already been made for you that you always want to pick them up to keep up a chain and quickly work up towards an extend, they have a nasty habit of dropping in the most repugnant places possible, as keeping track of every mechanic at once, on top of keeping a mental note of what enemies exactly will drop the item you want, is just too fucking much for the average player to juggle. Enemy formations are already beautiful and layered in their construction and consideration for a distinct challenge, so tie that in with an item that essential feels random in its placement -on top of fighting enemies that can effectively change the spread of their attacks from run to run based primarily on your rank - and you end up with fresh and unique obstacles to overcome, often when you’re not ready for it. Depending on the speed of your ship a bad item spawn can be absolutely catastrophic, so having to stay on your toes and be ready to squeeze through even the tightest of bullets to keep up your chain gives me a rush like no other. Shmups are generally defined by absurd hand crafted patterns to push through, so having a persistent piece of challenge that feels as dynamic and unpredictable as this is an absolute breath of fresh air for me.

The final layer that really makes this system so fascinating is its relation to deaths and your failure state. Death is the only action capable of dropping the rank, and hoarding your lives for long stretches of time is a surefire way to end up with an experience far too hard to keep up with by the time you hit the halfway point of a run where your Rank REALLY starts to bite you in the ass. Naturally this has led to strategies revolving around deliberate suicides before challenging sections or getting an extend, but giving you extra room to bounce back from genuine mistakes is a nice motivator to try and push sloppy runs further than you may have tried before. Even in the worst of my runs, I constantly find myself saying stuff like “well, let’s see how the rest of the stage goes”, “at least my rank is a little bit lower now”, or “shit, I better play well in the next stage to get that extra extend.” Again, it's this dynamism that really sets this game apart from not just other shmups, but most games in general for me.


Now, if you’re familiar with the development of Battle Garegga there’s a chance you already know this, but here's the part where I have to rip off the bandaid and admit something. In an interview translated by blackoak on the Shmuptacular forum in 2011,
lead designer and programmer Shinobu Yagawa admitted of the Ranking system that “...It sounds bad, but it was one of my methods for increasing income for arcade operators.” While this may just seem like a damning condemnation of Yagawa and the rest of the team, like they just made the game as a 百円硬貨 muncher and it just organically evolved into the mechanical mess it is today, that would be ignoring the fact that everything surrounding Ranking is exceptionally well considered.

I’ve already mentioned the enemy formations, but the general stage design here is just absolutely perfect. Each stage usually has a central gimmick, setpiece, or persistent element to consider that gives every stretch of the game a distinct identity and creatively blows up your rank for the next stage and eventually fuck you over by the end of it all. My favorite of these being a massive 1-2-3 punch right around the middle of the game: A mini-boss in stage 3 that you have to tear apart piece by piece and keep alive for as long as possible to earn an extend while keeping track of the fighter planes that act as safe spots for the boss and new enemies for you to deal with, the dozens of medals that come from bombing huts in stage 4 that skyrocket your rank and deplete you of your resources right before the impending boss rush, and flying platforms in stage 5 that always drop six items of varying use, but the likes of which being tied to your item drop order mean the actual layout and set of drops is going to different every time you fight them. As an addendum to my old point on items as dynamic obstacles, this stage and set of enemies is maybe the best example of this. They’re by far the easiest enemies to fight in a vacuum, but the core of each platform being an obstacle course of items to weave through to either avoid extraneous Rank increases or to keep up your chain when a Medal spawns is one of the most breathtaking pieces of design I’ve ever seen in an arcade game.

There's no doubt in my mind Yagawa did not envision the modern version of how Battle Garegga would be played, but you don’t just accidentally design and map a game out as thoughtfully as this. Somehow there isn’t a single stage in the lineup that feels out of place, and all of them contribute to the structure in ways I just can't get enough of. I especially enjoy how even the game’s pacing keeps you on your toes, going from a dense set of 4 levels where you prep for the hardest sections of the game, a massive endurance test of a boss rush right in the middle that takes place over whats by far the longest stage of the game, and two final stages that, while pretty standard as far as structure go, act as your final test of the game’s mechanics quite well. Initially I wasn’t sure how to feel about the last third of the game shifting the focus away from Rank control and setpieces, but being the section that shows most clearly the ramifications of your choices throughout the game, as well as being the one stretch that's anything like this, I think it ends up slotting into the full stage lineup quite well. Somehow, despite being as crammed full of overlapping ideas and off the wall mechanics that always have a new wrinkle to uncover, everything fits into place and adds to the game meaninfully (even dying to drop your Rank clearly had some thought put into it, with the number of lives you have when dying determining how much your Rank will drop, meaning its always better to suicide before getting an extend and not after. Brilliant.)

Maybe this persistent stress and indecision felt during play is why Battle Garegga isn’t for everyone, but I just can’t get enough of it. Even though I’m far below the level where I can truly capitalize on every millisecond of play to maximize my score, I constantly find myself pulling back to appreciate this impossibly complex web of interwoven mechanics, and ogle at the ways players have broken the game in half and bent it to their will. The fact that the game is over 25 years old and players are still pushing the limits of what's possible in it is awe inspiring. This perfect combination of its unsolvability and difficulty of wrangling with it’s mechanics, combined with its loose enough structure to allow for players to truly stretch their legs and express themselves, is a perfect microcosm of why I fell in love with video games to begin with.

What I’ve come to learn over the years of getting into games from before my time is that first impressions might fool you, and may inevitably push you away from something you’ll truly fall in love with. We always hear about “don’t judge a book by its cover” but even beyond that, I think shaking away preconceptions of art (whether it land anywhere on the scale of a singular piece or an entire genre) can lead to finding new ways to appreciate even something as overtly laced with cynicism and cruelty as they come. Taking off the rose tinted glasses, it's extremely clear that the era of arcades from the 80s and 90s didn’t always have a clean experience for the player in mind. It’s why games were tough as nails in their original pay-to-play format, and it's why a massive stretch of early console games felt like they carried over some old bad habits from their predecessors. Income was always a driving factor to their design, and pretending that wasn’t the case would be extremely disingenuous of me. Looking beyond that, however, is the key to finding what made these games stick with people back then, and continue to pull them in now. If we all cast aside our rigid understanding and discussion of certain game design concepts, I think we’d all collectively find more games to fall in love with and appreciate. Maybe we’d find more games that have an exciting platter of stuff to dig into that was truly there all along, just hiding under our noses waiting to be discovered. Maybe we’d find more games like Battle Garegga.

It's kinda baffling to me how this game can actually exist. I don't mean this in a sort of "my cup runneth with art degrees and snob" way that dismisses anyone that likes the game as consumers of the video game equivalent of fast food. There are reasons to like this game for sure. I moreso mean that there's so much that goes on in Tales of Arise where the developers thought, "yes this will make a statement" when all they really did was take a totally centrist approach to things that don't deserve more than a cursory glance and a second of consideration.

Slavery and oppression are the first things that come to mind here. As is typical with many jrpgs, the latter portion of the game spirals into a convoluted pile of jargon and plot devices, but fundamentally preaches safe and inoffensive platitudes and whatboutisms. That last part is a lie, though. I wish I could say that Arise takes the decisively bland but resolute answer to racism and oppression that many other stories do. In fact Arise did have some slightly interesting introspection into what it means to be a slave on a more philosophical level. It all goes wrong when it begins advocating for forgiving our oppressors; when it starts preaching that they are deserving of my sympathy.

The themes of Arise from this point on goes from shallow but acceptable to infuriatingly indecisive and laughable. To repeat myself again, i'm sure the writers of Arise believed they were making a point worth consideration here. In practice it leaves me wondering where the proof-readers during the QA sessions and war-room meetings.

Beyond fumbling the ball on slavery, there's also the issue of the mishandling of other themes like vengeance and co-existence, neither of which are as egregious. I think there is a statement to be made on how Arise attempts to handle isolation and loneliness. There are some dark implications on how this affected a certain character in the party and how developing the support network they needed led to more regret as they walk towards their inevitable demise. Once again, I lied. What I just said wasn't at all something you're shown, and something you're hardly even told through the story. This does not require reading between the lines, but filling between them with orange crayon and claiming it was there from the beginning. I bring this up because it is a bit insulting just how much characterization is conveyed through the characters' over-sensitivity or insufferable demeanor. There isn't re-contextualization, just a bunch of gotcha moments that portray awkward and vapid character interactions as foreshadowing.

I spent more time on the writing than this game probably deserved, and it's kind of laughable i'd give this much of a damn about a game I didn't enjoy. Pondering about and writing about this game might have been a waste of time, "it's just another mcdonald's ass jrpg" would have been a better review truthfully. I did try to enjoy this game though. Quite a few friends adore this game and I tried giving it multiple chances because of it.

One of those chances lies with the gameplay. Yet again though, Arise totally fumbles here. On the surface, Arise's mechanical depth is quite sound. It creates an inter-connectivity between the party and really sells the idea that everyone is contributing to make the team stronger. It does this through its boost mechanic, which is in your best interest to use to extend combos. These can also be used to one shot enemies before they've even reached half their healthbar. Using this mechanic ritually determines how often you can break an enemy's stance, opening them up to more combos. Once again, this is a lie. The issue with Tales of Arise combat lies in a completely static and awful enemy lineup.

Generic enemies tend to fall under 3 molds: dodgey and agile types like wolves and brutes, charge up and floaty enemies, and rolling sonic the hedgehog losers that hit just one second after you're ready to evade their attack. This enemy lineup, without exaggeration, ruins the combat of Arise. Once again, the game feels vapid and devoid of any sort of interesting combat moments because the situations you're put in are almost entirely the same for about 40 hours. The scaling challenge in this game's action combat comes from enemies that are higher level and will almost always body your AI party members no matter how well you plan in advance.

This issue is exacerbated with bosses. Suddenly, Arise stops being this game where challenge dissipates once you master the flowchart that is every combat encounter (a flowchart that never changes across its 40 hours). Now it turns into a realtime potion spamming dodge-rolling clown fiesta, except now you have a bunch of braindead party members that don't get the memo. Bosses aren't a test of skill but a test of how many consumables you've bought on your way to the boss. Let's not even get into all the havoc that the bloated HP bars and the near impossibility of breaking stance has on potentially skill based gameplay.

The inventory system and crafting system are insipidly pedantic and not worth an iota of genuine thought. The game tries to make these interesting by having every piece of equipment aspected to an element. In practice you're just mindlessly scaling up your equipment to go with what gives the biggest numbers. I'm not sure if I mentioned this yet, but number-crunching and stat-stacking ruins any kind of fun character action gameplay Arise is going for.

Sidequests are total filler but i'm not really sure if I should have expected anything less. What I can say though is that what goes on in sidequests are things you already do in the story on occasion. The story itself is peppered with grocery list tasks and obvious attempts to pad the runtime of the game. If Arise was condensed to only include interesting gameplay or story scenarios you'd be left with a pamphlet. This sort of padding applies to the character interactions themselves as so much of them are filled to the brim with useless conversations that don't add an ounce of insight to their personality or history. Though some of this lot can be fun, it never really shakes off the feeling that they are caricatures.

Once again, I could go on and list every single thing about this game. What I want you to picture however: think of every aspect that goes to making a narrative and a game's experience work. Plotting, theming, resonance, mechanics, bosses, combat scenarios, progression, exploration, the works. Now imagine if every single one of those aspects had the consideration that goes into marking off a box in a mindless day-job that pays pocket change. It's filled with grease but nothing of substance. These are the feelings i've had with Tales of Arise. Calling it a fastfood game is giving it too much credit. At least fast-food's convenience is handy when i'm on a crunch. With Arise, all I felt was that my time was neither respected nor given something useful to consider.

I dropped this game at least three times over the last year, but picked it back up hoping that I could be surprised. As I said, I've had many friends whose opinion I hold in high regard recommend and back this game's corner. Likewise I always had no idea what exactly my problem was with this game until I started writing for it.

What I think I had to realize was that Tales of Arise is emblematic of all my problems with many jrpgs. Between the flowcharty combat, the pointless inventory and character progression, the unrealistic and comedically unsatisfying characterization, nonsense plots that overuse jargon as a substitute for interesting narrative devices, and taking the centrist approach to blatantly awful aspects of humanity.

To go back to the slavery topic, Babylon 5, a story I quite enjoy, has a quote that was all Arise needed to say on the topic. If this quote was the only examination the entire narrative had on oppression, I would still find it preferable to what I got. "I can never forgive your people, for what they did to me. My people can never forgive your people for what they did to us. But I can forgive you." Now, was that so difficult?

So I bought this game years ago and never really properly finished it despite getting to Stage 6 on my first go, mostly out of curiosity and what not.

It basically being a Castlevania game not made by Konami but still headed by Iga and video reviews I saw at the time compelled me to give it a shot and now having played it and other Classicvania titles I can safely say this is the one I think does it best.

I think reusing the multiple switchable character aspect from Castlevania 3 plays a big role in why I enjoy this game over something like Rondo. Every character serves a specific role, and no one character supersedes another in regards to combat or level progression.

Zangetsu has the highest damage output, being able to attack at a faster rate than the others, but he can't jump as high as Miriam who also has a longer range whip that does less damage. Neither can utilize the powerful spells of Alfred, but he also can't take many hits or do much in the way of physical damage, and Gebel while having a powerful attack and a bat transformation, cannot use any subweapons of any kind.

This results in you having to strategize for every scenario coming ahead, do you need to cross a large bottomless pit to proceed through the stage faster? Is there an upgrade that requires a high jump and a slide? Is there an enemy who you cannot bypass without freezing them? All these scenarios alongside the game's unique lives system forces you to pick your route accordingly.

On that live system, what makes it unique is that you don't lose a life if one character dies. You only lose a life if all four characters die, but if a character dies you will not be able to utilize them or their capabilities until you either finish a stage or lose your current life.

What this means is that those certain scenarios can become unsolvable if the required character is dead. However instead of being softlocked, you are simply pushed into a longer, possibly more arduous route than you would be. But said route could also contain different secrets and helpful items to give you an advantage.

That's honestly what makes Bloodstained so great, is that it takes the aspects that worked in the Classicvania lineup and improves upon them, and I'm not a big Classicvania guy.

I've beaten this game 4 times at this point, two times on Veteran and two times on Casual, and I had fun all four times.

Veteran is just challenging enough to make you sweat and think, but also doesn't feel like outright bullshit. Casual is a bit too easy though, I will say. Casual just throws healing items at the player and you have infinite lives so if you want my thoughts, just play on Veteran it isn't that hard.

Anyways yeah this is the best Classicvania and yes, I am saying that to piss somebody off.

P.S. Ritual of the Night though... kinda icky.

I don't really know how to define how important this game was to my development as a person in the late 2000s-early 2010s. A lot of my sense of humor at the time was built around what was shown in this game.

It also might be the reason why I have constant suicidal ideation thinking of it because that's all you do in this game. You kill yourself as part of the joke and get a large impact font punchline usually of the edgy shockjock variety.

Not to say I didn't have fun with it at the time, I did, and every so often it would have twists to its setup to provide a different take on its macabre humor, but it's definitely quite juvenile nonetheless.

As some teens edgy flash project that they made for fun, I can appreciate how different it was from the norm, but the humor has definitely aged if not for the edgy jokes than for the sheer amount of references to the Bush Administration.

A man stares longingly into the mirror, shadows cast along his face, hiding his intentions not only from us, but from himself...

"Mary... Could you really be in this town?

A woman's reply, a message delivered from the past beckons the man to a mysterious and desolate ruin.

"In my restless dreams, I see that town."

He slowly walks through a fog laden path, unusual sounds echoing as he gets ever closer to his destination.

"Silent Hill."

He arrives at a graveyard on the edge of the lakeside town, a forgotten hallow ground.

"You promised to take me there again someday. But you never did."

The letter guiding him is past tense, the voice deceased. And yet that voice says,

"Well, I'm alone there now... in our 'special place'... Waiting for you..."

Where the horror for Silent Hill 1 came mostly from the visceral and graphic visuals, an intensely industrial soundtrack, and the occult themes, Silent Hill 2's comes from a much darker, more personal place.

Silent Hill 2 at the start gives you a very familiar setup. You are a lone man, entering the town looking for someone, child and wife respectively.

You are, or at least seem to be, a typical everyman. Both Harry and James are very standard American names, with only five letters. Both have a very similar designs, here's Harry's and James'. In fact James looked even more similar in his original design.

Both men had sickly wives who died before the events of the game, both are very awkward in their mannerisms and how they speak, and both are drawn into circumstances they cannot initially fathom.

This is fully intentional.

James Sunderland is specifically designed to make the player think that they will have a similar experience to Silent Hill 1, making the player feel comfortable and safe.

However, as the game progresses, we begin to see how wrong we are.

When we start, James seems like the voice of reason. When he encounters the other lost souls within Silent Hill, he always tries to rationalize their actions, or explain why their way of thinking is wrong. Like when he tries to convince the traumatized and abused Angela Orosco to not commit suicide, or the eeriely creepy murder denying Eddie Dombrowski that he shouldn't kill people just for saying rude things.

Of course, this façade of rationality immediately breaks the moment these characters insinuate that he is no different from them, causing him to get strangely defensive and angry. His tone of voice becoming way more icy, showing a side of James we didn't know was there.

And it's that side of James that makes us realize... this man is hiding something.

His lack of sanity.

This is something you'll start picking up on when you first go through the Woodside Apartments near the start of the game. As you go through, things begin to appear that... don't make realistic sense. Such as the favorite clothes of Mary appearing in front of a spotlight in an empty room. James himself even comments on this, finding it extremely disconcerting.

However, it's once we enter the Otherworld that the clues become more evident. The locales we enter are covered in a gloomy green and blue cloth, different from the harsh orange and red rusty metals from the first game. The cloth stitches together feeling much like that of a solitary confinement cell or a straightjacket.

Now of course in Silent Hill 1 we would simply attribute this to being a part of the dreams of Alessa and her powers distorting the town... but in Silent Hill 2, there is no Alessa.

These dreams belong to James. From the various monsters encountered, to the rain and water drowning out the world, to even an entire character made from his subconscious to try and please him, all of this springs from James' mind.

The most terrifying of all being, of course, Pyramid Head. This thing is terror incarnate. Regardless of the fact that it is slow, and doesn't follow you that frequently through the game compared to contemporaries like Mr. X or Nemesis, it is both thematically and visually much more horrifying.

Every time it appears, things go wrong. It hunts James down like a dog, carrying its gigantic butcher knife or spear. Killing and what appears to be fornicating with the other monsters seen throughout this horrific mental landscape.

There's a point around just halfway through the game, where you get chased by it through a dark narrow hall, and... man I don't want to spoil it but it just... it just fucks me up so bad.

On that same note, you do get a companion character early on and while I initially thought that this would take away some of the isolation that I felt in the first game... man it paid off heavily in the end.

I don't want to go further into what the plot is like, but to summarize, Silent Hill 2's horror is James Sunderland. The darkness that lies within us all, the scary parts of ourselves we hide not just from the world, but from ourselves

This game makes me wonder what my Silent Hill would be like and... man, I'm so glad this shit is fiction.

Why is this game such a downgrade from the first one? I ask this sincerely because playing this game has caused me to have a bit of a breakdown much like when I played Rondo of Blood for the first time.

I enjoyed Curse of the Moon quite a bit, it was a challenging experience but it never felt like it was overbearingly so. I played two playthroughs of that game on the Veteran difficulty because I felt like it was a fair challenge that never felt truly unpleasant and it was incredibly replayable due to how your characters would allow you to utilize their skills to go through different routes discovering new secrets.

The levels were all well crafted and memorable, the bosses difficult but still fun...

Curse of the Moon 2 kind of just throws all of that out of the window for the sake of "difficulty".

Certain challenges in CotM2 simply revolve around trying to compensate for one character's ability, that being Hachi's invincibility move. It constantly drains Weapon Points though so trying to use it all the time is not the brightest idea but the game just loves making long hallways with several obstacles trying to fuck you all at once with the only solution being Hachi's invincibility.

Instead of being interesting, it comes off as the devs taking a massive shit on the enemy placement that was far better in the first game, where enemies weren't just focused on a singular characters abilities but their combined abilities.

Need a challenge right before the boss door? Put a fuck ton of enemies that can't be reasonably avoided to make the player waste Weapon Ammo using Hachi's invincibility. Truly, an excellent idea rather than something fun or interesting.

None of the stages in this game are particularly thrilling, there's no real set piece that quite got my attention unlike in the first game. No train ride, or climbing up a stormy ship. Instead we get fucking Mario level tropes, back to back. We've got Jungle Land, Followed by The Mine, Followed by Ice Land, Followed by Lava Land. Sometimes the game will even flat out reuse a set piece from the first game, like Level 8 just doing the insect horde thing that Level 8 in the first game did, oh but there's a big orb that chases you the whole level.

Then there's the bosses. Some are just not very interesting, the Dragon-Symbiote and the Alien Soldier looking boss in Stage 4 having really routine patterns that are more dull than anything, and then you have shit like the Pharaoh in Stage 6 which can eat a fucking dick even when you know what you're doing. So much fucking shit on the screen it's basically sensory overload, or the final boss of the second episode reminding me of the True Final Boss of Aria of Sorrow during its first phase... god I just got so tired with this game.

It's not enough that you have to beat the game once, or twice, the game expects you to play through these uninteresting, unfun stages three times facing off against miserable excuses for bosses just to see scraps of new content.

The second episode in particular is where I just called it quits on continuing on Veteran Difficulty because it just didn't feel worth the fucking effort. It would be fine enough if it just took away Dominique, that makes the challenge hard enough but they also take away Zangetsu's new moveset halfway through the run and it just... fucking sucks so much. It's like the devs thought "ah, people will like the game if we just make the difficulty to dick levels without it being remotely interesting."

The characters are easily the best part of the game, I like Dominique, she's essentially Eric Lecarde from Bloodlines but with the ability to heal and a subweapon that works as a one use revive item. Robert is a cool ranged fighter, with his javelin subweapon being incredibly useful and Hachi is a corgi in a mech.

However even then I still have issues: Hachi's hover fucking sucks balls.

This may be a completely personal thing, but I'm used to hovers usually being activated by a second button press in games. You jump and then press the button again holding it down to hover.

With Hachi, you have to hold on the first jump and it feels so wrong to me. It's an issue that is especially exacerbated when switching characters mid jump to try and progress to a different route, since I think the timing for the hover is determined on the jump made before the switch so you have to hold the button while switching and it just feels really fucking weird.

In the EX Episode, which you get after beating Chapter 2 you get the characters from the first game back, which is cool, and you get to explore the levels in whatever order you like... but by this point I was clocked out on this game. I just wanted the trainwreck to stop, because I had stopped having fun midway through Episode 1.

Episode EX then does the tired, terrible practice that many games love to do, a trope I absolutely despised and is alone why I lowered my rating by a star: Throwing in a shmup level at the last fucking minute with no regard to the fact that such a skill set has not been taught to the player throughout the course of this entire fucking experience.

I hate when games do this shit, I hated it in Kingdom Hearts 2, I hated it in Devil May Cry, and I especially hate it in this game. 7 minutes of one of the most mediocre shmup sections I've ever played in a game, with a ship with a large as fuck hurtbox, slippery as fuck controls that don't feel remotely precise, obstacles that blend in with the background, god it is so anti Me-Core I wanted to tear my hair out.

Please, devs. If you're going to incorporate a shmup level at the last second of your fucking game, do me a fucking favor and MAKE A FUCKING SHMUP INSTEAD AND DON'T PULL SHIT LIKE THIS FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!!!!

THIS IS THE MOST TIRED FUCKING TRITE NONSENSE BULLSHIT THAT YOU CAN DO WITH A VIDEO GAME, SHOVING IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAMEPLAY STYLE THAT THE PLAYER HAS NOT BEEN TRAINED BY THE GAME TO DO, EXPECTING PROFICIENCY OUT OF THE UNPRACTICED. IT'S FUCKING BONEHEADED STUPID BULLSHIT THAT IS NEVER GOOD, AND THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR WHY GAMES NEED TO SHOVE IN CRAP LIKE THIS, JUST MAKE A FUCKING SHMUP INSTEAD, I DIDN'T COME TO A CLASSICVANIA GAME TO PLAY A FUCKING SHMUP!!!

All it winds up doing is making me not want to play shmups because it shows an extremely terrible example of the genre. It's like if I tried to sell you a car in the middle of a movie, but the car has square wheels, a broken windshield, and I took a fat shit on the driver's seat. It's unappealing, stop doing it.

I'll acknowledge this rant here is completely petty, but fuck, shit like this has got to fucking stop. It needs to be realized that forcing in unrelated gameplay styles into your game is not a good practice and never was.

All in all what I've come to realize is that I don't enjoy difficult games, honestly I've been dealing with this thought in the back of my head ever since I got called out for not enjoying Order of Ecclesia because it was "difficult". But then I've also played things like God Hand, DMC3, Ultrakill, games that are difficult and that I've enjoyed quite a lot.

And what I've come to realize is that I need to stop playing games to try and feel adequate as a "Gamer". Forcing myself through things like Celeste, Rondo of Blood, etc, doesn't result in a feeling of satisfaction but one of exhaustion and relief that I don't have to go back. And maybe that's fine, maybe I don't have to try and prove myself as a "Gamer", it's not like such a title has any actual value.

If anything coming to this bizarre realization is probably for the best, it'll be healthier for me to instead enjoy things catered to me and not to someone who isn't me, difficult or not.

Curse of the Moon 2 still sucks ass though just fucking play the first one instead.

Since I'm now on my arc of just enjoying what I'm interested in, it may be strange that I'm reviewing NASCAR Thunder 2004.

I mostly got curious about this game as I am currently in my rewatching old EmpLemon videos mood that I get once a year and his NASCAR videos in particular always interest me. This game was specifically mentioned in one of his videos about the decline of video games as the last good NASCAR title.

And yeah I'd have to agree this is just good old fashioned entertainment. The game allows you to customize your car, cause massive pileups, forge friendships and rivalries on the track and have your engine destroyed six ways from Sunday.

The fact that there are mechanics where debris can fall off from the cars and cause tire damage makes this game so fucking interesting to me, but I've also not played many racers so I can't speak on if this is a unique feature or not, but it's very engaging.

My favorite track is Martinsville, as it easily results in some of the most chaotic racing you can possibly see, massive pileups that take up an entire segment of the track, turning it into a burning hell of steel.

Really isn't much more to say other than that it's making me interested in watching NASCAR at some point. Give it a shot, you'll probably enjoy yourself.

I ain't gonna go too in depth on this.

I'm not super huge into wrestling, though I think it is a solid source of entertainment (and watching a few videos on the subject has piqued my interest) but I wouldn't say this game is perfect at it.

It is initially really confusing for how it works mechanically, and there are a lot of mechanics. After you figure it out it's pretty fun, but it's also incredibly imbalanced.

Basically, just play the Undertaker. You will literally never lose with him because he does so much damage and takes very little.

I tried the Season Mode and... god it's not pleasant. If you're playing as a created character you might as well not even bother, you're fighting a losing battle most of the time. Since you barely get EXP if you lose, your character will quite literally be scraping by and sometimes the game will flat out put you in scenarios where the chances of success are insanely slim on purpose.

Also it just gets tiring fighting the same two characters back to back when there's so many other characters to face.

Not a bad game by any stretch but I think I'd rather play NASCAR... or watch the Hololive girls play 2K22.

Axiom Verge is a title I had been curious about for quite some time, in fact I've owned the game for several years at this point but for some reason never decided to pick it up and play it.

There was something intriguing about the grim artstyle the game was going for, as well as its blatant homage to the Metroid franchise. Then there was the fact that it was developed by a single person, one Thomas Happ, which maximized my interest because games developed by a single person tend to show a lot of their vision and personality through the work.

To summarize Axiom Verge though, I can only say this:

It is aggressively ok.

What I mean by this is that the game never truly gets to be genuinely interesting especially considering its genre.

Your movement options are extremely limited, with not many upgrades that change that.

Level design is very inspired by Metroid, and by Metroid I mean the 1986 NES game, which if you don't remember, had a lot of samey looking locations with copy/paste level design. A lot of areas can feel very familiar, especially the vertical shafts, and this game loves its shafts.

It very much feels more like a derivative of Metroid rather than its own experience at points, and these things kind of kill what could be a stellar game because there are ideas I genuinely enjoy about it.

The glitching mechanics are a unique way of traversing the environment and dealing with enemies. You can glitch through walls to progress into hidden areas, or use your gun to glitch enemies causing different effects depending on the enemy themselves.

You can have an enemy glitch and they'll constantly shoot health at you, or you can have them glitch and fly away. Of course, the variety eventually gets limited as some enemies just do the same thing as others, but the idea is fun in practice.

Then there's the sheer number of weapons you can acquire from a typical blaster to a shotgun like electric shock to a bomb to a flamethrower, the variety is impressive. However, I didn't feel much of a need to experiment because a lot of the guns also feel situational and on top of that... they're not really used for puzzles and the like.

For most of the game I stuck with the Electric Shotgun because it does a fuck ton of damage to pretty much all regular enemies, and until I got the other Electric Gun that tracks enemies down it was my go to weapon.

Not to say all the weapons are bad and I'm sure you can do all sorts of things with them, but for me I will pick what works best.

I also dig how the password system is used to solve puzzles though some puzzles and shit are hidden behind notes you have to collect and its a bit tedious.

I don't think the game should be as disliked as it is but in the same vein, it's just not a very interesting time. This is a game you play once and then never again because why play this over AM2R, Super Metroid, Symphony of the Night, etc.

I will forever remained impressed by Thomas Happ singlehandedly developing everything for this game, but yeah, it's a pump and dump Metroidvania.

Also the story is ok, I don't think there's really much to talk about other than I liked some of the twists.