I've played this enough now I think I can leave my thoughts on it.

I like this game. Base game is super good, fun with friends, and I play at least twice a month for a couple of hours. It's a good, quick, easy to learn co-op game and it can be extremely silly at times.

However, modding this game is where I think I have the most fun. I've been in a lobby with about 16 people and that was one of my favorite times playing this game. The chaos that brought was amazing. And there are so many dang mods for this game now.

So to summarize, it's a great game to play with friends, base game can be fun, modded is even better, and I hate monsters and I yell at every one of them.

Just don't try playing it alone. It's not fun to do so.

Talked about this one on my podcast The Safe Room.

I don't mind the apparatus of this, but I do think it is poorly used here? Basically the trick of the mystery is just getting to the last run of clips, where Hannah explains the plot in entirety to you. You can do a lot of work to construct the mystery that the game ends up just doing for you. Could stand for more ambiguity.

I thought about Delores Claiborne (the novel specifically) a lot playing this, which does veer into horror briefly, but is ultimately mundane. Her Story is about women and police in only the most superficial ways. It can't really muster a systemic awareness or make that emotive. Claiborne has a scene were Delores goes to the bank to take out her daughter's college savings... only to find her husband has withdrawn them all. Her Story's direction is ultimately abstract and fairy-tale-like and it could far more biting mundanities.

This game kicks so much ass.

The idea that everything is timed to the beat of the music in an action game like this is just so cool. Everything just feels good to pull off, and once I got the hang of it, I was pulling off 200+ combo chains like it was nothing.

I love every character you team up with. They are so memorable and just plain fun to interact with. Having them also be used for special moves was a good call. It feels incredibly satisfying to hit the call in button at the right time to nail a special with your partners.

Mild spoiler:
I will say, story at the end, kind of a bummer. It's not bad, just feels like it doesn't fit the theme of a bunch of people rising up against a corporation. But that doesn't take away from the rest of the game too much.

I will be going back to this and playing it more in the future.

Five years ago a little hidden indie gem you probably never heard of called Slay the Spire came out, masterfully combining roguelike mechanics and deck building, creating the first true videogame drug, however, unlike real crack cocaine, there is a finite amount of Slay the Spire, and eventually, the game ends. I've been dealing with withdrawals ever since, for five years I've searched far and wide for anything that could remotely recreate that feeling, that rush, but to no avail, it all felt like a cheap copy of the real thing, nothing came even close, that is until now.

Balatro is a roguelike deck builder based on Poker, that sentence alone should tell you everything you need to know about why this is so stimulating, for our own health and safety this game should be illegal, but it's here, it cannot be stopped now, so we might as well enjoy it, and damn am I enjoying it, but I'd be lying if I said that I'm not terrified to see what games this thing ends up inspiring, Pandora's box is now open and I am letting every demon in, I want roguelike Blackjack, roguelike Koi-Koi, fuck it, give me roguelike Mahjong, this game is so addicting I'm experiencing a pre-emptive detoxification, I already want more and I'm not even done with it, send help.

For every generation of systems that Nintendo had up to this point (and by that, I mean only three of them), each one has had at least one Castlevania title, and while some of them definitely haven’t held up the best over the years, most of them kick all of the ass. The NES had Castlevania I and III, the SNES had Super Castlevania IV, the Game Boy had Belmont’s Revenge, and even other platforms like the Turbografx-16 had Rondo of Blood, so yeah, there was plenty of good Castlevania to go around. But… what about with Sega? At this point, they had received zero love from the series whatsoever, which is understandable, given Nintendo’s iron grip on developers back in the day, but come on, Sega needs some of that dracula love at some point! Well, thankfully, they would eventually get some of that love, with the only Castlevania game to ever be released on a Sega system, Castlevania: Bloodlines.

It had taken me a bit of a while to get to this game initially back in the day, probably because I had no clue that it even existed. I was well aware of the NES and SNES Castlevania games at the time, but I wasn’t aware of this particular title until I implemented a little element into my life called “research”. So, I found the game, I played it, and I loved it, which I can easily say is still the case all these years later. Not surprising, but this is yet another fantastic entry in the Castlevania series, one that doesn’t quite reach the peak of Nirvanha like Super Castlevania IV or Rondo of Blood, but one that manages to stand all on its own and deliver quite a great time.

The story is what you have come to expect from Castlevania… for the most part, where a vampire by the name of Elizabeth Bartley seeks to revive her uncle, Dracula, back from the dead, and she does so by starting World War I (no, I’m not kidding) and spreading chaos all over Europe, so it is up to two brave souls to take it upon themselves to save Europe from her deadly forces, and to stop Dracula’s revival, which is mostly what you expect from Castlevania, but the added details and new villain is a nice touch. The graphics are pretty good, being very vibrant and colorful with plenty of great animations throughout all of the stages, the music is, naturally, incredible, with it not reaching the same heights as IV and other games, but at the same time, it has a very unique style that no other game in the series had at the point, and it fits wonderfully with the game, the control is mostly what you would expect, not being as free and fun to get a handle on like in IV, but still offering plenty to work with, and the gameplay is standard for a Castlevania game, but with its own set of gimmicks and ideas to make it more exciting.

The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of either John Morris or Eric Lecarde, go through many different stand-out locations seen all throughout Europe, defeat the many wicked monsters that you will find with whatever weapon best suits the situation, gather plenty of gems, health items, and sub-weapons to help you out along the way to ensure success, and take on plenty of bosses, some being typical for the setting and series, with others being of a… unique variety. Any Castlevania player should be able to jump into this game pretty easily, as nothing has changed too drastically from previous games. Nevertheless, it still remains pretty fun to go through, not only while messing around with the new features the game gives you, but also with quirks it also carries.

While it does look, sound, and play very similarly to past Castlevania titles, you can tell right from the moment you turn on the game that Bloodlines has its own style and set of flavors that make it stand out from other games. Since this game is on the Genesis, Konami took full advantage of having less restrictions when it came to the content they showed off in the game. When you hit the title screen, you are greeted by a pool of blood, accompanied by the rib cage of a long-gone creature, finishing it off with the logo of the game dripping blood to add to what is already there. As you go along in the game, some enemies will have much more detailed death animations, spilling guts and blood all around them, their body parts exploding and revealing organs and bone. Hell, even when you play as Eric, whenever you die, the spear that you are holding ends up flying through the air and landing straight on you, stabbing you through your side.

They clearly did not hold back on the gore and blood factor for this game, which, while not as extreme as something like Mortal Kombat or Splatterhouse, was still pretty intense for a game like this, and it makes the game all the better for it. What also adds onto this extra layer of flavor are with the very creative bosses that can be seen throughout the game, such as with a boss made out of gears, Mothra from the Godzilla movies (it may as well be), an extremely sinister hellhound, and one of Dracula’s final forms, which is a creepy-ass demon creature that has a mouth on his crotch (if we don’t ask questions, we will remain happy). Not only are they pretty fun to fight, but their appearance and ways of attacking make them all the more memorable.

As for the gameplay, it also stays relatively similar to the other games in the series, but with several new additions seen throughout. From the start, you get the option of playing as either John or Eric, each one of them having differences that help them stand out from each other, with John playing closer to that of one of the Belmonts, wielding a whip that he can swing in multiple directions and use to swing across gaps, and as for Eric, he wields a spear instead, which doesn’t have as much versatility as the whip, but does have a longer range, and it allows him to perform a super jump whenever the situation calls for it. Both of them are pretty fun to play as, being similar enough to each other, while having key elements that make you wanna try them out. Not to mention, with these unique traits, one character can access parts of a level that another one cannot, which encourages multiple playthroughs to see what else the game has in store for you, which I am all on board for.

In addition to this, there is also the sub-weapons, which work almost identically to how they worked in the other games, but this time with a big difference. If you upgrade your weapon to its strongest form, it will also allow you to use more powerful versions of the sub-weapons, such as with the axe, you can now throw multiples of them rather then just one, and with the Holy Water, you can now unleash a wave of holy fire rather then just one spot on the ground. Honestly, I myself never really found a need to use these new sub-weapon upgrades, as the game is perfectly manageable without them as is, but even then, having the option to acquire and use these is, again, much appreciated, and I imagine it would definitely help out newcomers when they try out the game for themselves.

Now, despite all of the good things that this game has going for it, there are quite a few things that hold it back from being too good. First of all, unlike all of the other Castlevania games before this, which had unlimited continues, this game felt the need to give you only a couple of them, and can I just ask, WHY?! Yeah, this may not matter for those playing the game through re-releases and modern hardware, but just in terms of the game itself, it is still Castlevania, which means it can kick your ass whenever it wants to, and as such, you need every continue you can get. Secondly, while most of the game is fun to play through, there are some parts that are just annoying to get through.

In the last stage of the game, there is this one section where parts of the screen are distorted from each other, making it so that, visually, your body will disconnect, making it pretty difficult to judge where you are and what you should do in order to ensure your safety. Oh, and not to mention, you also have Medusa heads constantly flying by, which also adds onto the annoyance. Sure, it isn’t too hard, but again, it is just more annoying to deal with then anything, especially since you are then greeted by an anti-gravity section immediately after it, and that is about as fun as it sounds. And just to top it all off, as if the devs knew exactly how to get on my nerves, there is a boss rush that you gotta deal with, which I don’t let get to me too much, because it is almost the end of the game, but still.

Overall, despite the limited continues, as well as several sections of the game being way more annoying to deal with then they need to be, for being the series’ only venture onto Sega platforms, Castlevania: Bloodlines manages to deliver a familiar, yet fresh new experience that any Castlevania fan would be able to sink their teeth into and enjoy all the while. I would definitely recommend it for those who were fans of the previous games, or if you are fans of the series in general, because there is plenty here for you to love and enjoy all the same. But anyway, now that we are done with playing that game, what Castlevania game is next up on the list?.......... ooh, bastardization! My favorite!

Game #501

I really wanted to like this one, I really did, but it's at best a very basic Sonic game.

I do appreciate some of the levels and the music can be quite good, but I found myself very annoyed at level gimmicks. Gimmicks can be fun, but there are so many of them. And they waste your time. Wait for this, wait here, don't move, spin slowly in a circle. Older Sonic games have the same types of gimmicks but they flow so much better than they do here.

Boss fights also suffer from this problem. My classic Sonic brain tells me I can exploit bosses if I am fast enough to do so, but here, nope. Wait, hit boss, wait, hit boss. It's slow. I did not come to Sonic games to be slow. Mania had a couple bosses like this, but this game, every boss is like this. And it sucks. At least Mania didn't waste as much of my time with waiting.

Trip is pretty neat as a new character. Love their design, maybe they'll come back in another game who knows.

It's not a bad game, trust me. It's not a great game either. It's right down the middle where Sonic games usually sit.