Wow, 2003 Capcom sure was a crock of shit wasn't it? This game, Mega Man X7, Dino Crisis 3, etc. It's absolutely amazing the company didn't go under after such an awful display, but I guess that's thanks to Viewtiful Joe.

DMC2 isn't a video game, it isn't an experience for you to get yourself immersed in, or to be thrilled by.

DMC2 is a void that swallows up all enjoyment and entertainment value and puts you in a place where you cannot escape, where you cannot experience anything of value or providence.

I may not have understood how exactly combos worked in DMC1, but you know, at least the gameplay was inherently satisfying. I still felt like I had to avoid attacks, utilize the unique abilities for my Devil Trigger, etc. That game had a crunch to its sound effects too, and music that got you in the mood to kill the hordes of enemies ahead.

DMC2 has none of this. DMC2 plays the game for you. Hold down the X button and watch as you participate in the waiting game. This is how 95% of encounters in this game can be handled. Why bother with swordplay when shooting the enemy can stagger and juggle them in the air indefinitely. This even applies to boss fights.

I just knew, the moment I popped into this game for the second time since I own it on my PC that I was going to feel absolutely drained. By the second half of the game I had begun to abandon the guns to try and give any form of life to this fucking game, but it didn't work. There is no way to make this game any less soulless than it is.

I think for me, the premiere moment of the game's shittiness came to me during this one part where you ride in a train. There are enemies in the train and you are expected to beat them while the train moves to its destination. I managed to beat them very swiftly, but still had to wait a solid 30 seconds for the the train to reach the other side. And in that moment, that's when it came to me:

DMC2 wastes your time.

A profoundly misunderstood classic that manages to impresses when stacked up against other games of the time, and effortlessly clears most modern attempts at being a satisfying action game. Even beyond the innovation on display (nobody was doing it like Capcom back in the late 90's/early 2000's) I'm consistently swept off my feet at how enjoyable this game is, even after around 8 personal playthroughs and 21(!) years of further innovation and inspiration in the medium. Dante may be a tad heftier than your modern action protag, but it has the side-effect of forcing you to constantly stay glued to encounters in a way I haven't really seen before. You must consider every step you take and every action you make, it's electrifying. I don't have any ill will towards Itsuno for reinventing the series like he did --who wouldn't after being tasked with scraping together the scattered remains of the last title and still having it come out like crap-- but there's still something here that later entries still have yet to recapture for me. It may not have the glitz and glamor of it's many sequels, but what you get instead is one of the most well considered, tightly paced, and highly rewarding gaming experiences out there.

Probably the only other serious review I'll write here. This review won’t contain spoilers for the story, project moon’s setting, or the Abnormalities. That being said I truly do think Lobotomy Corp is a game that’s best experienced knowing basically nothing when going in. Much of this game centers around experimentation and repetition, and I'd hate to compromise that even a little bit. That being said, LoboCorp is a harsh game. It will get easier as you begin to make more and more permanent milestones, but soft resets and day 1 reset will happen. It has that XCOM quality where it feels like every decision you make early on is the wrong one, but amped up to 11. There’s something to be said about negative experiences in games, and if that isn’t for you I can’t blame you in the slightest. What I can say though is unlike games like Spec-Ops The Line, the point isn’t to be preachy but to empower you by the end.

I mention all this now because unlike some of my other favorite games this is not a game I can so easily recommend. And I want to get all of this out of the way now because LoboCorp is a game I think is at least worth trying. It and Outer Wilds sorta encompass everything that makes games as an art form special. It’s one of the most unique experiences I've had with a game that I can forgive a lot of its unapproachability and technical hiccups. Sometimes you can tell this game was put together with duct tape and the dev’s hopes and dreams, and I may have cursed myself and the game every now and then. But the experience as a whole is something I only have fond memories of.

As stated previously, a lot of what LoboCorp comes down to is experimentation. As only an SCP management game can do, the first facility you run will be full of eldritch monstrosities that are thoroughly incompatible with each other. Every day will feel like diffusing a bomb that gets more and more complex as more Abnormalities get added to the facility. Maybe handling individual containment cells is simple, but managing many at once can get incredibly stressful. Very few finished playthroughs go through the game in a single run. However each successive run and facility will become easier and easier to manage. Not only will your repository of information expand, but so too will your ability to respond to threats as they come. No other game captures that same disparity between your position at the start and your position towards the end as well, in my opinion.

You start to develop strategies for putting down Abnormalities as they breach containment. You have specific work protocols for high threat levels. You start to realize that maybe intentionally allowing a few to escape for a few minutes actually makes your workflow easier. If a couple clerks or agents die then it’s no big deal. Sometimes that’s even the intent. Now you’re no longer responding, now you’re exploiting. Instead of being held at the whim of a monster that can tear the facility down on its own, you’re stringing it along with a carrot and stick to doing as it pleases until it’s no longer helpful. Instead of preserving the lives of your employees, you overwork or sometimes sacrifice them because it is convenient.

As you continue along the game you begin to form relationships with your colleagues. Some wish for your success, some wish for steady progress, and some have more insidious motives. You get in touch with the company gossip, and you learn the secrets that lie just out of sight. A narrative begins to form of humble days, past mistakes, a disease of the mind.

Sometimes it feels like moving forward with feet held firmly in place. Not to the point of feeling bad about all the employees that die under your watch, but wondering if this was sustainable to begin with. What’s even the point of going through these days until things don’t work out to your favor anymore. But as the weeks pass, something clicks. Not just with you, but with your colleagues. You’re not sure what it is, but you both learn something to keep moving without looking back. The end becomes just a bit clearer each time, and with it a sense of certainty that you’ll make it.

And that’s about all I'm willing to talk about when it comes to the experience as a whole. LoboCorp is a game whose story can only really be told as a game anyways. The plot and story itself accompanies that feeling of accomplishment you get through the gameplay almost perfectly. I get that going artsy fartsy with the review comes off as especially corny, but it felt like the most sincere way I could get across how much I love the experience. By the end when the credits rolled, I didn’t really think about all the frustration and stress that came with certain sections of the game. I just felt happy that I got to play it and something I hope people at least give a fair chance.

TWEWY is a game I've always heard about, but never played because I didn't have it and I had other RPGs to play. A friend was talking to me about it, and loaned me her copy, so obviously I had to play it, you can't just be loaned a game and not play it, right? Anyway, it took me about a year to even boot the game because I had other RPGs to play.

I knew very little about this game other than it's generally well liked, and I can see why. This is probably one of the most cohesive games in terms of artistic direction, music, mechanics, and story.

I won’t do a plot review in this review, but it’s good enough. It makes room for all the main cast to shine, which works real well because the characters are all really engaging and well written. The story is not subtle whatsoever, but it isn't trying to be. It is trying to portray a very clear message: go out and meet people and get to know them, go make friends, because they make your life better, and you make their life better. The main character, Neku, I feel is reflective of a certain type of teenager -- a teenager I once was, and frankly the story left me wondering how I might have turned out if I had played this game when I was 14. He’s definitely a bit of a loner-trope RPG protagonist, but the writers use this to establish why he’s receiving ESP powers and being forced to work with people, something he’d never do alone.

My favorite characters are definitely Shiki and Beat. I mean, everyone who's played this game loves Beat, and it isn't hard to see why. He’s a chill-as-fuck tough guy who’s just a little dumb and is just so goddamn funny. I love the bits in week three where people will make fun of him and he’ll just be like “Yeah!”, and the classic “Bwaahahaaaa!?” sound clip that plays when he’s shocked. His backstory is a real heartbreaker, too. Shiki’s story in particular resonated with me, Shiki’s envious of her best friend because she is what Shiki is not, or at least what Shiki doesn’t believe she is. I dealt with similar feelings in high school, and that’s why I really think more teenagers should play this game. This game touches on a lot of complex feelings most of us could probably draw parallels to at that age.

The combat is super cool, but I hold the stylus like a fucked-up T-rex so I was ready to be done when the final boss came around. I liked the Reaper fights in particular, where they would switch between light and dark on you and your partner’s screen, so you could spend some time fighting as Neku then some time fighting as your partner. The different partner styles is also cool, but some are a bit easier than others. In terms of ease of getting Fusions from easiest to hardest, I would rank them: Joshua > Shiki > Beat. I pretty much always let them go on auto, but occasionally I would button mash right or left to help out in a particularly tough battle. I’m not good enough at this game to focus on both screens, so I like that this game gives me the option to not focus on it.

In addition to that, this game has a lot of accessibility options. You can play any of the difficulties you want once you unlock them, you can change how long it takes for your partner to go auto again, you don’t even have to win at this game’s minigame, tin-pin slammer, and I know this because I SUCK ASS at tin-pin slammer. Like, Dyson V11 Torque Drive right on the booty cheeks kinda suck ass at tin-pin slammer. I didn’t win a single match. But the game never stopped me for being bad at it’s otherwise optional minigame. I mean, it made fun of me for being bad at it, but I expect that. Maybe next time I play through this game I’ll “git gud”.

There’s some mechanics I barely messed with, like the fashion mechanics. Fashion is your armor in this game, and I messed with that, though I find on Normal you could probably pass on armor beyond that one objective where you have to wear all Mus Rattus gear. You can also totally drip out your characters. The different fashion brands also influence the power your pins have in battle, so you have to keep up with the fashion trends. You can also influence the trends by completing a bunch of battles in the area. But again, I didn’t really mess with this much.

The soundtrack has a lot of earworms. It’s real funky, and in a similar vein to JSR and JSRF tracks, and I feel that’s a product of both games focusing so much on self-expression thematically and being from a time when skaters were the peak aesthetic. In particular, I find myself listening to Calling and Game Over a lot. But I don’t think there’s a song I dislike on the soundtrack. This game’s aesthetic is so sick. I love the punk style to this game, I want to dress like every character in this game, even Shiki, but I think I might be arrested for public indecency if I wore that short of a skirt, so I’ll have to workshop it. I like the part of the Shiki’s week where Neku, a character designed by Tetsuya Nomura, wishes he had more zippers. Did he know all the way back then we’d be clowning on him for his overzealous use of zippers and belts?

Overall, this game is great. It’s definitely worth your time if you’re looking for a game that’s not really like anything else out there in terms of combat and mechanics, or something with a really neat story with very well written characters. Also, Shiki’s save menu portrait is how I look a bacon egg and cheese hashbrown bowl from Waffle House at 3AM.