I keep screaming, but the Casalis won't answer...

On a more serious note, this still holds up splendidly and is one of my go-to mapsets for a quick run. The Casali brothers have left an indelible mark on Doom modding history in multiple ways. The most important is the sharp increase in difficulty compared to most other mapsets of the time, and the creation of a community focused on challenge and smart enemy usage. Plutonia’s approach to combat is relatively unique amongst its contemporaries. It primarily uses short maps and sharp combat encounters, with an emphasis on “gotcha” traps. The focus on traps does falter somewhat. There’s the arbitrary first-time punishment and how the traps become trivial with the mere knowledge of their existence. This format still inspired more puzzle-like combat encounters in future mapsets where the goal is to figure out the ideal strategy. Further, one can’t deny the Casalis’ remarkable intuition for enemy usage. Chaingunners with their constant firing, creating massive areas of denial; Revenants with their speed and homing missiles, forcing players out a lot more; Archviles with their enemy resurrection, resurrecting enemies. A lot of these now basic enemy use cases first had to be demonstrated in Plutonia, and the community took note.

Another mark is how the Casalis abandoned the experimental realism that characterized most 90s mapsets, and instead opted for a singular jungle prison aesthetic throughout. Funnily enough, despite Plutonia ripping off a lot of Doom 1/2 maps for level layouts and being draped in enough BROWN to make Quake proud, the “Plutonia” aesthetic still looks much better than most of its contemporaries and is actively emulated to this day.

It still has flaws for sure. Later maps lose a lot of their bite and become tedious to UV-Max. The starts to certain maps are questionably bullshit (even if I find them somewhat cute.) And it arguably needs some curation and reordering, since the difficulty curve oscillates like Quake’s quality (before crashing, like Quake’s quality.) However, what Plutonia manages to accomplish with its gameplay design and its legacy in Doom mapping cannot be overstated.

Also being like the one 90s mapset that’s still fun to play has gotta count for something…

Verbs in my speech when I flow
I rap like a devil, that searches for the dough or the drugs
So eager to drive in the Benz, I keep the low pro making ends with my friends
Free skills, oh shit I'm a brother with mad styles
Don't even try to step boy my lyrics are mad foul
Crazy hardcore with a touch of jazz, microphone chemistry to bust your ass

based.

In all seriousness this game refines all the rough edges of the original game to a sleek razors edge. A prime example of "The Perfect Sequel." Comparing this game to its remake, Kiwami 2, only further shows the amazing pacing the first 2 games had that was ruined with the excessive amounts of bloat in their lesser remakes. I don't care what anyone says this game has aged amazingly and anyone who says its unplayable is wrong. Of course its not without its issues like missable substories but its still easily one of the best entries. Ryuji Goda still remains the best foil to Kiryu the series ever had

Bring back Sayama, Nagoshi, you fucker. I miss my wife

ROLLING EYES FALL
The original Yakuza is a neat little game with themes about family and not running away from your destiny. It's an often disregarded game by the fanbase, due to many "aged" aspects such as the combat and English dub. Many fans recommended I start with Yakuza 0, but I defied expectations and went with the original, as suggested by my bestie Josh_The_Fourth. That, alongside the recent undub mod that released, gave me the drive to give this series a shot, and I don't regret it one bit.
Yakuza has a pretty cool story that makes the game feel like an interactive crime drama. It's not necessarily a deep plot, but it doesn't need to be. The story still supplies plenty of plot twists along the way, and has a great message about family, one of the best examples being Date's character arc. Being paced rather well, I was constantly on my toes wanting to see what happened next, even a few scenes towards the end really pulled my heartstrings. It also helps that the voice acting I picked is really good, I don't know a lick of Japanese but every emotion is conveyed in such a great way. I especially have to give props to Kiryu's voice actor, who is a character you'd think is the generic tough guy protagonist, but he really has a soft side, and his deliveries are fantastic. Once again, while not entirely deep, I love Yakuza's plot and characters.
The combat is always the biggest complaint against Yakuza 1, and I won't defend it entirely to be honest. There's alot of clunk, the lock on sucks, and at times it can be repetitive. However... damnit this combat is just so goofy and kinetic! I love just wiping the floor with petty yakuzas who are just out for my wallet, especially when seeing the pretty hard hitting heat attacks. Enemies with guns are honestly the worst, and in my opinion the lowest point for enemy variety in this game. The bosses aren't necessarily fantastic, but the Majima fights and the final boss are actually kinda great!
Man, this game's atmosphere and presentation though. Kamurocho is a very small hub world overall, but the amount of detail and, dare I say SOUL, is amazing. The fixed cameras of the city help accentuate the scale and detail the city contains, becoming one of the most visually striking games I've seen from the PS2. The cutscenes are well directed with good quality models and animations to accompany the important moments you'll be viewing. Lastly, the soundtrack for this game I adore. It's a rather small ost overall, but damn when music IS playing it absolutely goes hard, especially the battle themes. The emphasis on hard rock and electronica(?) just evokes such a cool feeling that sends me straight back to the 2000's (in a good way.)
Yakuza is definitely a flawed experience, but I had a blast playing this. I've known about the series for nearly 2 years now, but I just never bothered playing them. And now here we are, and I am in love. Can I recommend the original Yakuza? That is a hard question. If you play exclusively modern games, I probably can't, but if you can step out of that comfort zone maybe you'll have something to like! Luckily Yakuza isn't a terribly long game (I finished it with 12 hours of play time), nor is it very difficult with a few exceptions.
Overall, I give this game a nine out of TEN YEARS IN THE JOINT MADE YOU A F-

This game did a lot right, but it's unfortunately all undone by the game's main gimmick. Power Shots are awful. They regularly stop the flow of the game, they work as overly-easy counters to skillfully set-up shots, and their cutscenes are unskippable. I get that 2000s Nintendo had to always throw some new mechanics into whatever sequels they were making, but this one was a bad choice.

However, if you turn those Power Shots off (for the modes that allow you to do so), you'll find a really enjoyable Tennis game which is better than its predecessor in every way.

L2AGO #4

A pretty simple to pick up and addicting cartoon tennis game that's a lot of fun to mess around with on a weekend with friends; it's just a good time charging up shots and then destroying people with volleys, making them run back and forth across the court. I will say that I personally had a bit of trouble with overheads at times due to how much I liked volleying, but it at least kept me honest so I wasn't hogging the front 24/7. That said, when going through the Cups, there was a pretty noticeable difficulty spike between my last two opponents; I went from only dropping a game to Boo in semi-finals to spending over an hour fighting Shy Guy in grand finals because the guy somehow just didn't let shots fly past him. Those long drawn out matches also accentuate what others have mentioned as one of the main flaws via its gimmick; those matches more or less turned into waiting games of seeing who would drop their Power Shot first, and if one person fucked up their Power Shot, then the other could afford to immediately use their own to seize the point. I think Power Shots also break up the pace of the game a bit too much in that they allow players to snag shots that they really don't deserve while having lengthy animations (and they often don't matter much anyways, since good players by this time are in a position where they can immediately hit back the weaker cover Power Shot and punish them again for being out of position). Still a fun game, though I'm sure I will shudder in fear whenever I see a Shy Guy opposite to me on the big court.

This game is a disgrace and has literally no point in existing. Not only is it an affront to the Mario Sports Mix, but also an affront to the Mario Sports series as a whole. Why? Because it's just a poor man's recreation of various sports titles, such as Mario Tennis, Mario Sluggers, Mario Strikers, and Mario Golf. None of the minigames from the original Sports Mix are present, it's just significantly worse versions of pre-existing games, some of which already have 3DS entries, with a shitty horse racing minigame to top it off. The games have non of the depth their full game counterparts have either. The most lazy, bland, and unfun thing imaginable.

A weird, weird game. I have always called it the Final Fantasy VIII of Ace Attorney. It's ambitious yet profoundly strange and tends to miss the mark a bit in regards to what it originally set out to do. Some of this is a result of Capcom forcing Takumi to put Phoenix in the game, some of it is not. It's a game that should have started its own arc but instead became a sequel in a long-running narrative. I think it's a bit overhated and I did enjoy it (aside from 4-3), especially the last case, but I do understand the criticism.

It only made sense for the follow up game to the masterful Trials and Tribulations to be one that wanted to act almost as a soft reboot for things as opposed to trying to build off a plot that had already established such a powerful sense of finality to it, and Apollo Justice fills this role pretty well. This is a game that feels like the embodiment of all the best and worst elements of the Ace Attorney series up to this point in time, both extremes cranked up to ridiculous degrees to make for quite a bizarre experience. All the standard hallmarks of the series are present, with the wacky (and often annoying) witnesses being even more ridiculous, the conspiracies running even deeper, the cases being even more silly and convoluted, the list goes on. It's such a shame then that this approach ends up making the middle portion of the game as bland and sometimes outright bad as it does, because with a bit of work to the core approach to make those bits of filler more engaging, this would perhaps be peak Ace Attorney.

The tone that Apollo Justice goes for is a bizarre one that simultaneously feels far darker and more outlandish and silly, and I'm not sure I like how its utilised for a good portion of the game. A lot of the themes presented dive deeper into the broken legal system that pervades the series, but it often feels difficult to truly be invested in what's being discussed when everyone feels like a ridiculous cartoon character turned up to the highest degree. While these games have never been a stranger to utter absurdity, it just goes a bit far in this one where I feel as if basically none of the characters act like actual people to any degree and are defined exclusively by their character gimmicks. Basically feels as if you took the infamous circus case from Justice For All, and then made basically every character follow the same approach to ultimately culminate in an experience that either should've fully committed to its ridiculousness or toned these elements down considerably. On the other hand though, the more ridiculous elements of the game have their own benefit when applied to some of the more convoluted and insane twists this game can bring out in the high points of the game. The downright ridiculous power moves that go on during these end up being cool enough for some of the finer plot details being underwhelming to feel entirely forgivable, which in itself is a pretty cool feat (even though obviously I'd have liked some of that to have been fleshed out as well).

I also wish that a bit more time was spent actually focusing on the titular character of the game instead of devolving into "Phoenix Wright 4" during most of the important moments, as while yeah, it made me appreciate him as a character even more than I had before, it further has the character of Apollo himself feel rather flat, which is a problem when you consider that you are still playing from his perspective for the majority of your time here. There are so many weird little character choices here that affect the game as a whole in some pretty negative ways that I just can't fully overlook even beyond Apollo himself as well. Klavier Gavin makes for a pretty bland prosecutor from moment to moment thanks to the way he just feels a bit too "fair" throughout, and while this could be seen as further representation of the game's legal system being so broken that both sides of the case essentially need to work together to get anything done, it's just off nonetheless. It feels harder to get invested in the cases themselves when you don't have as strong and opposing force to go up against, and half the answers basically feel handed to you by another character, once again weakening Apollo's own sense of resolve and motivation and making the player often feel as if they weren't the ones to have contributed as strongly to the events as they should have.

Despite my complaints, half of this game still feels like some of the best stuff that the series has had to offer and it's just a real shame that the other half stops it from truly being amongst the greats in the series. Too many tonal issues and smaller bits and pieces end up piling up by the end of the game and a certain sense of charm gets lost in the process as well, but at the same time, it's still a solid game that 'd probably think higher of if it wasn't competing with such awesome experiences you can find elsewhere in the Ace Attorney franchise. Give it a play nonetheless though if you enjoyed the other games, it's certainly got some interesting ideas bouncing around especially once everything all connects in the final act.

First time playing through since my cousin showed me the noclip cheat on the N64 port and made me think my console was gonna go on fire. Beat the DOS version with no mouse (inspired by reading about Carmack's no-mouse preference in Masters of Doom last year) and the Quakespasm source port with all the mod-cons. It's a pretty short game!

The spongey enemies and awkward my-first-3D layouts give this a clunkier feel than Doom, but it's still satisfying to strafejump around at top speed and pump anything and everything full of nails and grenades. The array of weapons feels a lot less distinct than Doom, but the rocket and grenade launchers are still some of the most iconic members of any FPS arsenal.

Reznor's sounds and soundtrack are operating on the level of the John Williams Star Wars scores here, imbuing something inherently ridiculous with far more gravitas and atmosphere than it probably deserves. The ranger's HUP never gets old, but his lava screams get pretty annoying when you're trying to take shortcuts!

Surprisingly easy outside of a few slogs against the meatier enemies (shambler whats up) - might come back for another playthrough on Nightmare.