I'll give it credit, for being the first bmx game and actually feeling as close as possible to being a simulator for the time, but i think that's probably where my positives end. None of the mechanics of the game feel like they complement each other at all. Map is too small and compact to build momentum which is absolutely necessary for some of these levels which also leads to my issues with the map design. None of these maps are good except for maybe the desert. The dirt track has too many obstacles and due to the issues with the maps being so compact and hard to build momentum, the quarry map feels impossible. Back to the issue with obstacles and why they're an issue (mostly with the dirt track), whenever you crash, the game will spawn you back in on top of the obstacle. Basically, if you get stuck on an obstacle you just have to wiggle around and pray you can escape, but by that point, you already have no chance of winning due to how stupidly hard the ai is. Even when I thought I was actually doing pretty decent and not crashing, I still landed in dead last. It almost feels like the ai never slows down on corners and have the track mastered. I'm sure I could master the game eventually and beat them, but when I'm getting dead last on every single track, maybe it's a game design issue, and not a me issue.

I would love to give this a half star, because this might actually be the worst game I have ever played, but I will give it credit. Like I said, I appreciate how they managed to get the general feel of BMX right instead of opting to just make a dirt bike or motorcycle game like what was common at the time. There is also the desert map which was fine and mostly just held back by the terrible controls, awful ai and other smaller issues, but it was at least the closest I came to having fun with this game.

who wrote this description ??

"On the NES, Double Dragon II is a much more innovative and unique sequel than in the arcade, but it marks also the time Double Dragon started its schizophrenic shifting between wildly different tones and gameplay styles. In a way it’s one of the best games to bear the Double Dragon name, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that Technōs had already started to loose a cohesive vision of what it meant to be Double Dragon, both in tone and in gameplay."

why do people see an IGDB description box and paste in their 8 hour video essay script like calm down

So earlier in the year I made this jam game Tetherlure (you should play it you should play it) for 1-Bit Jam. The conceit is that you control 2 characters chained to each other, and progress by throwing your non-controlled character with your controlled character's ability. The idea was this kinda step between slapstick and sappy bonding, it was a fun excuse to draw a cute couple getting Broadside School Fed Up The Bone Bulge while talking about cringe shit sitting in their brains.

And then a few weeks ago I found this game, which has a very similar mechanic! This little Enix nugget, based on a music-themed manga and anime, does the same 'throw your partner' shtick. But instead of controlling a princess and her knight chained to each other, you play a wandering bard/hero, Hamel, and the random town bumpkin he drags along for the ride, Flute.

Unlike Tetherlure, Hameln no Violin Hiki isn't an equal opportunity slapsticker: You only directly control Hamel, and Flute acts as the load-bearer. You throw her to break objects and hit enemies, step on her head for extra jump height, and stuff her into animal costumes for additional movement tech. She's not happy about any of it, I don't know how she doesn't have debilitating bone fractures by now. There's a bit of it that seems cruel at first, but it gets kinda lampshaded - the story kinda makes out Hamel as a fraud whose helpless without lugging other people around, and the bit I heard about the source material seems to suggest the same? idk

The gameplay is thankfully consistently great, I was taken aback by how clever the level design is. You assimilate a huge library of costumes as you go, and with exception to some event-specific ones, there's still excuses to use your old ones as you get the better, overpowered ones. Hell, most puzzles are open-ended enough to give you like, 3-5 ways to potentially solve them. It's very liberating. Hell just collecting the costumes is half the appeal, I'm always waiting to see what fucked up abomination Flute's gonna cry her way into next.

Honestly the weirdest thing about this game is that it ends a full world before it feels like it's supposed to, you fight this angelic character that you'd assume is like, the second-hand man of the real final boss, but you beat them, they talk about you needing to become stronger to fight your dad, and then it cuts to the characters walking in the sunset while the credits roll????????? I can only assume it was handled this way so players would have to watch the anime to see how things resolve, but, c'mon who fucking does that??? I assumed I got a bad ending somehow but nope.

The music is also really hit-and-miss, kinda fucked up for a game themed mostly around music. The translation's rough, there's a currency system that basically goes unused because of how powerups are doled out, the second boss is obscenely bad and almost made me drop the game, but, whatever. Still definitely worth a play, it's not often a licensed game makes me want to check out the source material.

I have sat here for what feels like an eternity trying my best to think of an intro for this thing. I have had a few ideas that I have had swirling around in my tiny little peanut of a brain, but honestly, none of them would be enough to properly convey any of my feelings towards this product properly, or bring up any kind of compelling argument that could be made about it. So, instead, I may as well go ahead and start this off by giving you a list of things you could do instead of checking out this product.

Playing Something Else

Going Outside

Getting a Pet and Taking Care of It

Hang Out With Friends

Find a Romantic Partner and Share Experiences with Each Other

Robbing a Ba-

Yeah, it’s random, but it perfectly fits whatever tone this thing is trying to go for. It’s Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties, people!

This is not a video game. It just isn’t. It may try to convince you in every way that it is one, as it is something you put in a gaming console, and you do indeed control with a video game controller, but despite all of that, it is still not a video game. In fact, I’m not even sure what it is, and I am pretty positive that most of you probably can’t accurately describe what it is either. What we do know is that it was a… thing that was released for the 3DO Interactive, and it is considered to be one of the worst “video games” of all time, and you know what? They are correct. It is an absolute piece of shit, one that has seemingly no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and it is absolutely painful to “play through” for most people. However, despite all that… I can’t say I really hate it all that much. Don’t get me wrong, it is complete garbage, there is no other way to describe it, but given how awfully bizarre and weird it is, as well as how unashamedly cheap and revolting it can be, it is something I just can’t get mad at, as it knows what it is, and it isn’t ashamed of it. I guess I’ll just have to be ashamed of it for both of us.

The story is, on its surface, a basic love story, as you are primarily meant to find a way to get John and Jane, the two most generic protagonists ever, to fall in love, which may seem boring, but don’t worry, as there are plenty of events and circumstances that will arise that will get in the way of all this, while also making you question what the fuck you are even looking at, the graphics are……. well, can I even call them graphics, as for most of the game, it just consists of a bunch of still images that “detail” what is happening at that point, which makes no sense, considering there is a full video at the beginning of the game, so why couldn’t the rest of the game be like that, the music is… something to say the least, with none of the tracks fitting what is happening in the game, and all of them being terrible, the control is just, like, two buttons or so, with one being to select a choice, and the others being to swap between them, and the “gameplay” is pretty much what you would get out of a visual novel, but this isn’t a visual novel, so it doesn’t work at all, and it baffles my mind.

This… thing is something I guess you could pretend is a visual novel, where you have to watch the story as it goes on, and at points in the “game”, you are given the option to choose what happens at that point in the story, and… that is pretty much it. There is no other gameplay, interactivity, or anything of the sort. You just press a button at certain points, and watch it all unfold. So, what exactly does unfold in the story of Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties? Well, only the most uncomfortable and poorly constructed love story imaginable, which involves things like a narrator that constantly interrupts the story to tell you how much of a disgusting piece of shit you are (takes one to know one, buddy), a bunch of unnecessary filters that plague many of the images and make it all a complete eyesore, graphics, effects, and transitions that look like they were made on either Microsoft Paint or a PowerPoint presentation, and a bunch of random elements placed everywhere that I can only assume were meant to confuse the fuck out of you and do nothing else. And not to mention, on top of that, there is also the fact that the entire conflict in the game centers around an act of workplace/sexual harassment, which leaves us with something definitely shouldn’t have existed in the first place, and makes me wanna actually a get a copy of this game and destroy it.

It absolutely boggles my mind that something like this even exists at all. No matter how much I watch it on YouTube (because lord knows I am never going to “play” it again), I just can’t for the life of me imagine what the purpose of this “game” was, or even who it was made for. Was it made for gamers? No, because there is no gameplay to speak of, so nobody is gonna want to try to play it. Was it made for people who wanna get their rocks off? No, because who the hell is gonna get aroused by a bunch of low-quality images slapped together on a slideshow reel? Was it made for absolutely nobody? No, because anybody who does know about it still ends up confusingly fascinated by it, so there must be some reason that it exists, but I can’t find it! And yet, somehow, it ends up getting a rerelease on modern consoles that was distributed just one or two months ago, because as we all know, this is DEFINITELY the best way to spend the $35 dollars that I had just lying around. I was just gonna burn it all and snort the ashes, but nonononono, CLEARLY I need to use it to put this thing onto my Switch and infect it for the rest of its life.

And yet, somehow, after all this time of knowing about and having “played” it myself… I can’t bring myself to hate it. Yes, it is horrible in every conceivable way, and the fact that it was sold for money TWICE is an absolute crime against nature, and yet, when you take a look at the product itself, you can see just how much it really doesn’t give a shit. It will do whatever it wants whenever it feels like during the story, and you kinda just have to go along with it. Wanna have the narrator wear a chicken mask, and also fight some random other person at one point, even going as far as to kill them? Sure, why not? Wanna have a blooper in the middle of an “intense” scene? Be my guest! Wanna put a random PNG of a cartoon raccoon driving a go-kart in a bunch of random places for no reason? But of course! Nothing makes sense in Toontown! All of these things are actually in the "game", and it turns it all into what I can only describe as a fever dream, and at this point, I am ready to just fully embrace whatever this thing is and stop questioning logic. Common sense is for the weak, and I am tired of being weak.

Overall, despite the fact that it has some sort of insane appeal, this is still one of the worst things that has ever been made by human hands, and it has forever poisoned the minds of many, including myself. If you have somehow gone long enough without “playing” or watching it for yourself, do yourself a favor and don’t do it. Yeah, it may be fun for a bit, but it really doesn’t warrant any more attention than anyone, including myself, has already given it. But, before we go and forget this thing ever existed, I just wanna point out one more thing: the title is a FUCKING LIE, because there is a “scene” in the game that has John, who just so happens to be a plumber, wearing a tie. You can’t even get a title for this game that isn’t messing with you.

“Game” #405

This isn't the first game to dupe me into buying it with it's beautiful visuals, and it won't be the last.

The unique visual style of this game had me interested immediately way back when Nintendo showed it off at one of their indie directs, and upon finally booting it up was impressed to be greeted by a fully animated opening. My hopes were high that a game with this much polish visually would deliver a fun and memorable experience.

Unfortunately, the visuals are about all there is to remember about this game. This is a rougelite, meaning you will go through the games levels until you either die or hit a roadblock forcing you to restart, at which point you'll go through the game again and again gradually building up your character and unlocking new things for future playthroughs. After just one playthrough of this games loop though, I was bored out of my mind and ready to move on. And it only took about an hour, two levels total, to reach that point.

Combat is in first person, but judging if you are close enough to hit or get hit is virtually impossible. Sometimes it feels random if your going to take a hit or not. Combat can basically be summed up as "press the attack button as much as possible and hopefully one of the melee swings will connect before you get hit". There is zero depth. Some characters have projecticles that need to be aimed, but an energy system that limits how often you can use a character makes sure you"re never having too much fun. You'll be spamming that attack button with the main character more often than not.

To top it off, enemies are super simple offering very little challenge. All together it makes for one very boring game.

This is a very beautiful looking bad game. Don't be fooled and waste your time on this one.

Well, I think I have gone on long enough without talking about any kind of Capcom game, so I figured it's about time I return to the status quo and do just that! And not only that, but I also figured I should choose a game from the Arcade Stadium, just to make sure that I truly had reached the status quo that I loved so much. So, after looking through the selection, I saw Varth: Operation Thunderstorm, I thought the name sounded really cool, and I decided to stick to that game. I hadn’t played this game before this, but I had seen its logo from time to time, and based on screenshots, I thought it was just yet another typical Capcom scrolling shooter. Assuming I was going to be correct, I then ventured forth and took on the game, and WHADDYA KNOW, it was yet another typical Capcom scrolling shooter! Thankfully though, these types of games generally tend to be good, and yeah, I can say that Varth: Operation Thunderstorm is a good game. It doesn’t do much from your typical scrolling shooter of the early 90s, but it does have some unique elements that make it somewhat different from previous titles like 1942, and it was fun to blast through regardless.

The story is, at this point, not really original, with there being a supercomputer that is overtaken by an evil force, leading to an all-out war amongst the humans, so it is up to two fighter pilots to take this evil force down, which is cool and all, but we have seen this story plenty of times before, so you all know what to expect, the graphics are what you have come to expect from a Capcom arcade title, but it does still look pretty good, with plenty of explosions and flashing colors to draw someone like me in, the music is good, but also incredibly forgettable, as I can’t remember a single track from that entire game, and it is usually drowned out by the sound effects anyway, the control is exactly what you would expect from an arcade shooter, so nothing else needs to be said, and the gameplay is familiar, yet it does expand on it in some small ways that do make it somewhat interesting to play.

The game is an arcade scrolling shooter, where you take control of either the Saber of Scimitar fighter jets, take on a set of 30 different levels, shoot the everloving fuck out of every single enemy, object, or THING that is seen on screen to ensure that you can survive, using either your regular shot or plenty of bombs that can do massive damage, gather plenty of powerups to not only upgrade your arsenal to take down your foes, but also to experiment with them to see which loadout is best for you, and take on plenty of big, bad, and dangerous bosses, that will make sure to test out your reflexes and to see just how many bullets you can dodge. If you are familiar with scrolling shooters, this will all be ingrained in your brain, so you can easily just jump right in and get to blasting. Not only that, but like with other scrolling shooters, there are one or two traits that make it stand out from the crowd.

One addition to the formula that makes things somewhat different are the pods that you can get throughout the game. These can not only help you deal damage to enemies, but also deflect most firepower that comes their way so that you can avoid any oncoming danger, and what’s cool about this is that, from the start, you can either have these pods in a fixed position, to where they will always remain in front of you, or you can have it to where they will rotate around you in a 180 degree motion to block any projectile near you. In addition to this, you can also gain different powerups and weapons to try out for the pods as well, such as a regular missile shot that does about what you expect, or even options like homing missiles, which do less damage, but will definitely hit the targets more often. Aside from that though, there is one other additional change I can get behind: unlike other games, where you have to grab additional bombs from enemies in order to use them once again, here, you automatically have three bombs that regenerate after a certain amount of time, which makes things really helpful, especially when you are in a tight spot.

Sadly though, with these typical gameplay mechanics and new additions also come the typical hindrances and problems as well. While these new additions are neat to see for a game like this, if you aren’t one who cares too much about small changes, and wants something more grand and exciting from their scrolling shooter, then you will be out of luck here, as there isn’t much it has going for it. Aside from that though, there are two other problems holding this game back. For one thing, much like 1942, it is way too long, with those 30 stages taking quite a while to get through, not only because the stages themselves are quite lengthy, but also because of the amount of things that you are required to get through in order to win. And finally, there is an unnecessary boss rush in the game, and you all know how much I love boss rushes! I love them just as much as getting tased in the dick.

Overall, despite it overstaying its welcome and having yet another boss rush I had to slog through, I would still say that, for an early 90s shmup, Varth: Operation Thunderstorm is a good time, and it will most likely satisfy any shmup fan. I would definitely recommend that any shmup fan check it out, as well as for anyone that was a fan of Capcom’s other scrolling shooters like 1942, or even something a little more unique like Forgotten Worlds, because while this game may not blow your mind, it is sure to give you and a friend a good time. Just, you know, don’t play through the entire thing in one sitting like I did. I didn’t think it was possible, but there was only so many explosions and bombs that I could take in one go.

Game #395

Gregory Horror Show is basically the best budget cartoon Resident Evil to ever exist. I say this out of admiration more than anything else: in a year where Capcom Production Studio 3 appeared to have mixed success with the ambitious but ultimately hollow Glass Rose and the infamous Mega Man X7, it was this overlooked horror-mystery title based on a Japanese CGI anime that thoroughly proved that they still had the sauce. Not only was it a solid return to their roots, it logically expanded off of Resident Evil’s base model in ways that are seldom realized even to this day.

The story goes like this: you’re a kid lost in a foggy forest, finally finding shelter at Gregory House, only to realize in a dream with Death that you’ve ended up in videogame purgatory along with a slew of other troubled inhabitants. Death proceeds to strike you a bargain; if you can bring him the twelve lost souls carried by the various inhabitants, he’ll show you the way out. To do so, you must discover every inhabitant’s weak point and expose them, taking their souls when vulnerable while staving off insanity during the endlessly looped day.

However, there’s a catch. Gregory Horror Show intentionally disempowers the player: there’s no combat to be found, and every guest is capable of running faster than you. They don’t particularly appreciate being spied on, and will immediately take notice if they’re alerted to your presence and skedaddle. As such, the player must rely upon sneakily gathering information by chatting up non-hostile helpers, and spying upon cagey guests by peeping through door keyholes, hiding around furniture/corners, and carefully creeping behind them as they roam around the hotel. This results in a surprisingly intimate experience despite Gregory Horror Show’s brevity: you really get to know the habits and quirks of each guest, carefully marking down your observations in a journal, before finally going in for the kill.

This is where the game really starts to come into its own: after robbing a guest of their soul, they immediately become hostile and if they catch you, will subject you to a “Horror Show” that significantly cuts into your health. It’s no simple task to evade capture once spotted by a hostile, because the player has to duck into other rooms unspotted and take cover in safe rooms or hide in closets/under tables to escape detection. Furthermore, as your cache of purloined souls builds up, more and more guests check into the hotel, further complicating traversal and observation. Thus, while most horror games become safer and easier to manage due to mastery of environments and clearing out enemies along the way, Gregory Horror Show instead organically escalates its difficulty by enforcing tighter timeframes and more meticulous planning to evade angered inhabitants while still gathering information upon new guests, resulting in an increasingly tense and unsettling experience. This is all while the player must also manage their constantly depleting mental health gauge from the simple act of staying awake and scour for items around the mansion in order to trade for necessary health and key items in Gregory’s Horror Shop. All these systems work together to hold the player accountable for plotting out constantly evolving routes throughout the hotel as more rooms/passages and guests are thrown into the mix, alongside the need to keep track of how these guest schedules interact, with their positions constantly shifting over the course of the 24-hour cycle. In particular, it becomes crucial to ensure that the player can safely make it to fortune-telling rooms (only two of which exist in the mansion) to save the game and sporadically return to the player’s guest room to swap/store items, check the player’s journal for recorded guest actions, and take naps to progress time, cure exhaustion, and secure the capture of lost souls. The latter presents a risk-vs-reward exercise in-itself: the player can temporarily keep captured souls on them in any given day to reduce the rate of mental health deterioration, but if the original owner should find them, they’ll lose the lost soul and will have to repeat the process anew.

The result of this intersection between stealth, observation, and horror is perhaps one of the most intricate exercises of sheer patience and planning in any video game I’ve ever played. Granted, Gregory Horror Show is not a masochistic game by any means, but it nevertheless forces players to consider the totality of their actions at any given time while paying dividends if they're willing to do their homework by nailing down the who, where, and when. In this sense, it’s one of the best evolutions of survival-horror, because despite how much it differs from its influences, it understands that time itself is the most important resource to conserve. Failing to perceive exactly how the different elements of the haunted mansion interact can feel quite punishing, not just due to drastic drops in stamina but also likely resulting in significant time losses that can cause the player to miss their striking window of opportunity. The player must then find alternative methods to effectively waste time through costly "Fruits of Time" (that damage your Mental Gauge)/occasionally sleeping and potentially encountering more hostiles until the events of the time loop roll around for another try.

I’ll concede that Gregory Horror Show isn’t an obvious contender for the greatest horror game of all time. There are a couple elements that could be construed as superfluous since they don’t add anything to the stealth-observation premise, such as a Mario Party-esque board game that the player must win for a lost soul, as well as a “boss-battle” amongst many other scripted events during the final night. That said, they’re mere blemishes in the overall scope of things, and are easily forgiven considering the game can be beat in about five to seven hours. Although Gregory Horror Show doesn’t quite rise to REmake's level of resource management mastery, it remains one of the most distinctly charming and succinct takes on the survival-horror genre that accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do in its brief runtime, while daring to innovate upon an already revolutionary and tightly packaged standard. I’ve never seen or heard of its source-material prior to this game, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t one of the most effective ways to spark my curiosity. Perhaps that speaks for itself more than anything: even if you’re not a fan of the franchise, you owe it to yourself to check out what I’d say is outright one of the best titles on the PS2 in an already stacked era of exciting and wildly creative works.