compliment-sandwich time. this is one of the most creative & fun games i've ever played. they really took the usual 2d mario formula and said let's go CRAZY with it. every level is so unique, and every power-up is adorable.

but it is frankly inexcusable in the year 2023 for this game to not have accessibility options. specifically, needing to hold down the y button to run fucking blowsss. it took me like 5 months to finish this game cause i had to play in 10 minute bursts. after spending the last several hours playing the final special world mission (which rocks btw) my wrist is practically throbbinggg. needing to hold down a button for an entire level to do something as important as running is so outdated!!!

yet, despite this game actively PHYSICALLY hurting me to play, i 100%'d it. and i NEVER 100% games. that should be a testament to just how much i enjoyed this game. i'm already thinking about how i want to replay it again a few months from now, as toadette this time (literally closed my eyes while unlocking her standees cause i wanna be surprised hehe).

truly, so so fun. big recommend. i'm gonna go put my hand in ice or something now lol <3

When I played Resident Evil Village for the first time a few years ago I was absolutely enthralled by the insanely fun experience it took me on. It was only on this fourth replay since then that I started to realize some of the flaws in the game. Make no mistake, I still enjoy the game immensely (the 9/10 ain’t for nothing) but this replay and review were by very nature in favor of being more critical of it, and the more I think about it the more critical I get.

To start off with let me just say, the presentation and setting of this game is still excellent and probably my favorite thing about it. One thing admirable thing that Resident Evil has done several times throughout it’s lifespan is reinvent it’s setting and tone, and while it hasn’t always been successful (glares at 5 and 6), 8 continues this theme naturally and spectacularly. The moment when you first enter the Village at sunrise in this game is nothing short of breathtaking, the scope of the incredible looking environment before you and the thought that you’re going to have to comb through all of it to beat the game blend together to make what I believe to be one of the most interesting settings in the series’ history. All of the environments on this game are incredibly atmospheric, from an ancient but well-kept castle, to a lonely and eerie house in the mountains with a waterfall backdrop, to a menacing underground factory, all of it works as really effective environmental storytelling that shows you exactly what has happened in this village and what kind of creatures live here. Speaking of creatures, another thing I really liked about Village was how it adapted the common horror tropes found in other Resident Evil games to fit the setting perfectly. Instead of hoards zombies there are herds of Lycans, instead of evil scientists or corporations as the villains there are gothic horror monsters, and instead of a virus that makes people lose their minds there is the power of ancient evil that the villagers fear. All of this adds up to making what would otherwise seem like a really disconnected game in the series feel like it fits in just perfectly in terms of vibe and atmosphere.

Resident Evil Village is no slouch in terms of gameplay either, adapting the series main formula while also trying some new things that pay off excellently. The gameplay of Village divides itself into two distinct halves, the pure horror half and the action half and while some have taken issue with this system I’ve found no real problem with it, The first half of the game is excellent and clearly more enjoyable in terms of what I play a Resident Evil game for, being the horror. Having the main character enter a completely foreign setting and being powerless to do anything against the lycans and horrific monsters is a perfect way to breed horror in the game and is done excellently in the first few sections of the game. As you progress through the game though you get more weapons in your arsenal and start feeling less powerless and that’s when the action half of the game kicks in. While I enjoyed this half less I still think it’s alright, being able to take on anything and taking on the areas where you were oppressed by monsters in the early game just feels really good and satisfying, and although it comes at the cost of the horror, I still think it adds a lot in and of itself. There’s also a treasure system in this game that’s really fun to utilize to it’s fullest capacity. Throughout the village you’ll find locked up areas that you can return to later with the right item to discover what they have inside, this can range from new weapons or weapon parts to valuable treasures that you can sell to the merchant for tons of money, it’s really satisfying to find how to get these treasures and gives the player great reason to scour and explore the whole village. All of this as well as just the basic RE formula of managing inventory, solving puzzles, and knowing when to conserve ammo and when to fight all adds up to one of the best RE games to date in terms of gameplay.

At last I come to part which I feel is the weakest in Resident Evil Village, the story. On the first few playthroughs of this game I thought the story was passable, nothing groundbreaking or anything, but alright, now I see that I couldn’t have been more wrong there. While I still don’t think the story brings down the amazing gameplay present here, it is absolutely not something I’d call good. While Ethan Winters was not an incredibly likeable character in RE7 he wasn’t unbearable either, he was just a normal guy who got dragged into a messy situation, this is not the case in Village. In Village Ethan Winters is an unbearably annoying character who doesn’t seem relatable in the slightest, he makes increasingly stupid one liners that don’t sound natural from a character like him, asks increasingly stupid questions to other characters (usually along the lines of “What the hell is going on here”) despite things being completely cut and dry, and makes increasingly stupid decisions in every situation he finds himself in. Ethan isn’t the only one who’s dumb here, Chris’ decision to not tell Ethan what was going on when he shot his wife point blank and took his infant daughter at the beginning of the game will never not be confusing and a really stupid inciting incident, and Mother Miranda’s plan to split Rose up into parts and have Ethan go and collect them only to take Rose back instantly after he’d done that rather than just starting her evil ceremony with Rose instantly is a baffling oversight. It’s lazy writing like this that infuriates me that I ever thought this game’s story was decent, still if seen as just a means to end for the incredible gameplay it’s easy enough to ignore and doesn’t take anything away from that.

Resident Evil Village is a really fun game with some serious narrative issues. The incredible atmosphere and really fun gameplay still manage to save the game for me, but the bafflingly awful story annoys me greatly and is gonna make it hard for me to want to replay this game anytime soon.

Dear Billy,
You have made an ASS videogame for reddit browsing SOYCUCKS, and your team of artists is an assembly of FRAUDS. Please make a first person shooter next time.

Yours forever,
Toade

The Foundation sees more of the same from the base game without much new to show for itself, at least in terms of gameplay. as someone who enjoyed the combat already, this didn't sound bad but i guess it turns out that the original had just enough for me to have my fill. it started to wear thin a bit here.

the prevalence of bland cave settings, restrictive new powers, and lack of variety overall sure didn't help things. the more i think about it the more it feels like what i liked about Control was either diminished or flat out missing here.

a pretty big miss for me, unfortunately. hoping for more with AWE but i'm adjusting my expectations.

I now have two big regrets when it comes to gaming. The first is that I have gone through life having never owned a PlayStation 2, and the second is that I didn’t support and play Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush before the studio was unfairly axed by Microsoft in 2024. The year prior was a crazy year in terms of the amount of quality game releases, and it was quite frankly, a tad overwhelming keeping up with them all. Despite all of the praise being given to Hi-Fi Rush, there were just so many other games that were coming out, or games that I wanted to get to, that I just threw it on the backlog thinking that I’d get to it eventually. Unfortunately, 2023 was also a year with a heartbreakingly large amount of game studio closures, and this is something that is continuing in 2024, with Tango Gameworks themselves being a recent victim at the time of writing this review, despite all of the success that Hi-Fi Rush had achieved the year prior. Coincidentally, the game also had gone on sale as part of a Humble Bundle around the same time the studio was shut down, and fellow Backloggd user duhnuhnuh had an extra key for the game that they were offering (huge shoutouts to him by the way, I’m extremely grateful). Given the timing of everything and an opportunity to play the game in a way that doesn’t directly support Microsoft, I leapt at the chance to give this game its due diligence, and I was absolutely floored at how much the game truly lived up to all of the praise people had given it.

Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm-based action game that takes place in a city in the far future. It stars Chai, a sarcastic and oblivious slacker dude with a disabled arm who really wants to become a rockstar. He volunteers for a cybernetic limb replacement program being run by Vandelay Technologies on their very own campus. Shortly before the process begins, CEO of Vandelay Technologies: Kale Vandelay, a callous CEO stereotype, observes Chai’s records. Unimpressed, he harshly dubs him a loser before he carelessly tosses Chai’s music player away, causing it to fall into the testing site onto Chai’s chest. During the limb replacement process, the music player becomes embedded within Chai, giving him electromagnetic powers while also causing his environment to sync up with the music itself. However, this causes him to be labeled as a defect by Vandelay Technologies, whose security forces attempt to bring him in. As he flees, he meets up and makes a deal with Peppermint, a robotics prodigy with a grudge against the corporation, who helps him escape in exchange for helping her investigate them. Together, the two team up to uncover the shady secrets behind the scenes of Vandely Technologies so that they can expose them to the world and stop their plans from unfolding.

The gameplay is that of a character action game like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, but with rhythm game elements that supplement the combat and platforming. Before I played the game, I heard a lot of people comparing it to Devil May Cry, but I wrote those comparisons off as an over-exaggeration, since I feel like a lot of people will compare any action game with combat they really like to Devil May Cry. I was delightfully surprised to learn that no, the game really is essentially Devil May Cry, but with rhythm game elements. You can perform a variety of combos that are dependent on the timing of your button presses, you’ve got a stiff yet highly vertical jump, you’ve got short platforming segments to serve as variety in-between the combat, you’ve got a ton of different upgrades and additional combos you can purchase with the game’s currency, and you’re graded on your performance after every battle and level with a letter ranking system.

Everything in the game is tied to the beat of the song that’s currently playing, and I do mean everything. The attacks and movements of your enemies, platforming hazards, sound effects, and even animations in the background are all tied to the music, and the game tests you on your ability to not only perform well while in battle, but doing so while also staying on beat with the music. I did find it a bit difficult to get used to timing my attacks to the beat at first, but I got better and better at it as time went on. I can’t tell you how satisfying it feels when you’re able to successfully perform attacks in sync with the rhythm. Just like in Devil May Cry 5, the music will add additional layers of instrumentation the higher your letter score, and the game will also play the sound of an audience chanting Chai’s name as well. The better you do, the more ecstatic the game feels, and performing really well during a fight can feel genuinely euphoric.

The rhythm game elements don’t stop at syncing your attacks to the beat, however. There are a number of quicktime events where you need to press the correct buttons at the correct timing, such as during certain special attacks Chai can perform. Additionally, when close to death, more powerful enemies and certain bosses can force you into a one-on-one segment where you’ll need to successfully parry or dodge their attacks, which are telegraphed to a series of specific beats that you need to replicate with your button presses, and successfully doing so allows you to finish them off with one final strike. As someone who is a big fan of character action games, it’s extremely surprising how fresh and satisfying adding rhythm elements to this genre’s gameplay makes the game as a whole feel. This melding of the genres works fantastically. There is a great sense of cohesion between the two, and for the most part, elements of one genre don’t overshadow the other.

There’s only one element of combat that I have some small issues with. As the game progresses, you will meet additional characters who become allies that you can call upon during combat to aid you in battle. They’ll perform a special attack that has a cooldown once it’s executed. Your allies become a pretty key part of combat, as these special attacks are needed in order to make certain enemies or bosses vulnerable. The issue is how inconsistently your allies’ attacks function. You can’t manually target enemies, so when you call on your allies to use their attack, they can sometimes use it on the wrong enemy, or they’ll miss entirely. If this happens, then you’ve just wasted that summon and you now have to wait for the cooldown to finish before you can summon your ally to attack again. This was especially annoying with Macaron, who needs to use his ability twice in order to break the shields of certain enemies, and whose cooldown takes twice as long compared to your other allies. If he misses or targets the wrong enemy, then you’re basically a sitting duck until his ability recharges, which can be very frustrating. You can purchase some upgrades to make the cooldown slightly better, but they do cost a lot of currency, currency I’d rather spend on other things that can enhance the gameplay experience for myself, like additional combos I can perform, or items that increase my health or special attack gauge.

The game’s tone is very playful, upbeat, and fun, complimented by a gorgeously colorful artstyle that’s inspired by a combination of western and eastern comic books/manga. It tells a story that is a not at all discreet criticism regarding how the leaders of corporations frequently interfere with, mismanage, and ruin the lives of those who work under them. It also goes into demonstrating how much this hurts when the job is something that people have aspired to do for much of their lives, and are very passionate about. The story is extremely straightforward, but you can tell it’s one that comes from very real experiences that I’m sure the folks that have worked on the game have gone through, and considering what ended up happening with Tango Gameworks, it’s a story that resonates now more than ever.

The characters are decent, they serve the story well enough. I will say I’m not the biggest fan of Chai, but he did eventually grow on me. He’s a huge dork who’s very self-serving, unmotivated, and oblivious to those around him. He does get better as he starts to take the situation at hand more and more seriously and comes to care more about the people he meets and works with to take down Vandaley, though his ego remains pretty big still by the end of the game. He’s not at all a bad character or protagonist, he’s just a little too white bread for my tastes. The other characters don’t get much of a focus during the game’s main story, but talking to them in-between missions at the hideout allows you to learn more about them and how they feel about the unfolding events of the narrative. I think I might’ve developed a stronger attachment to them if they had a larger presence in the main plot, but this is still a fine and fun cast of characters.

While I personally would’ve preferred the tone be a bit less playful and to have had a little more edge to it, like the old school Guitar Hero games or Brutal Legend, I feel that would’ve made the game somewhat of a harder sell, not just to general audiences but to get approval to make the game in the first place. The exaggerated, Saturday morning cartoon-esque personalities of the game’s characters (the villains in particular), really manage to offset how personal, and in a way, sad the message that’s being communicated under the surface is. The villain Zanzo in particular is an excellent demonstration of this. His manically over-the-top demeanor and constant Jojo posing, to a certain degree, masks the very real, outrageous, and constant demands the person in charge of a team may have, and how their ego can get in the way of seeing the project to completion, making the efforts of the overworked people underneath them all for naught. The game’s current tone isn’t at all a bad one either. I can see some folks not jiving with the comedy, and I can also see certain people writing it off as “reddit humor”, but even if the game didn’t necessarily make me laugh out loud, I still found it to be endearing.

I’ve really enjoyed the rhythm games I’ve played, but I don’t play too many of them because the vast majority of them don’t appeal to my taste in music, so I’m really glad this game exists. I played the game with its original soundtrack instead of the licensed music (in case I decide to one day stop being a coward and start making YouTube videos), and I gotta say, it was pretty fantastic. I’m more of a metalhead than a rock guy, but this game’s music is still really good. The soundtrack has a lotta groovy riffs and decent solos that are never tiresome or boring to listen to.

Hi-Fi Rush was truly a surprise for me. I went into this without much in terms of expectations, but its fluid and immensely satisfying combat and complete banger of a soundtrack kept me hooked the entire time. I’m heavily debating doing a quick second playthrough of the game even though I’ve finished it because I was just that hooked and enamored by its gameplay. If the game had a different tone and a heavier soundtrack, I genuinely think it would’ve ended up being my dream video game, but even as it currently stands, it’s a brand new favorite of mine. The irony of a game condemning the actions of corporate dickheads becoming a massive success while the studio that made it gets shut down a year after it launches is honestly extremely tragic. It’s not like my $30 was the $30 that would’ve kept Tango Gameworks from shutting down, but I still feel really bad after finally playing this game that I didn’t purchase it and support Tango while they still existed. If you haven’t played Hi-Fi Rush, I implore you to, and I also implore you to learn from my mistake and actually support those games that don’t get AAA marketing, yet gain an outstanding reputation via word of mouth. Don’t just put them on your wishlist forever and wait. I can’t stress enough how much we need more games like Hi-Fi Rush, and if we don’t make our voices heard with our wallets, we hurt the chances of these games being made in the future.

Forever and always: Fuck You, Microsoft.

I’ve been playing Minecraft for 11 years. I’ve had Pocket Edition, 4 different console versions, and Bedrock edition. I finally have a laptop that probably won’t die when trying to run this game. But trying to get Java is extremely stupid. You have to pay double the price by getting Java with Bedrock for Computers. If you already own Bedrock on console, you still have to pay for the PC version. Also Bedrock doesn’t even run on Apple computers so I would essentially be paying an extra £13 for a version I can’t play. Luckily everything is 50% off for the games’ anniversary so I can actually buy Java for the price it’s supposed to be. Just wanted to say fuck you Microsoft I’m playing Beta now. 10/10 must play