Could never find a good middle ground with this game, unfortunately. Game didn't feel or reward free-form, sandboxy gameplay enough to make me want to approach it that way and the more structured, medal stuff didn't feel skill based or fun enough for me to willingly bang my head against it. Felt like I was always constantly unsure what to do with this game. I appreciate the concept, the art style and the different types of levels though. The devs clearly had some fun working on this game and it shows. Maybe I'll try it again some day.

Strong game. Wasn't a fan of the original but the sequel improves on the game dramatically, where the metroidvania and digging elements marry together to create this pretty relaxing, wanderous experience where delving into the mines and poking its crevices was...nice. And in addition to that, the game also packs itself with neat upgrades and equipment, including!, a really good grappling hook. Dorothy's loadout is pretty powerful and fun to use, they did a good job of just making moving around and punching dirt to be as good as it could be. The challenge rooms littered throughout also helps you make the most out of them, especially the end game hell dungeon. Also, shoutout to the OST for this game and having probably the best town theme I've ever heard.

Overall, it's ROCK solid. Some easy slouch day entertainment with an even amount of challenge to keep you arching your back every now and again.

An incredibly perculiar AAA game. Really appreciated my time with it. The real highlights of this game are the movement mechanics and the setting.

The basis of the gameplay in Death Stranding is movement. For the majority of the first part of the game, the game centres purely around walking and how to tackle the terrain. I applaud the idea of a large game trying to add a challenge and a full feature set towards something as simple as how you walk across a distance, it's kinda like an opposite Mario in that you have all this focus on movement mechanics but instead of making them feel smooth and tight it's all about making it feel challenging and slow. For someone who went into the game expecting a lot of tedium with the gameplay, I was surprised at how zen and rewarding they made it. Like, I'm not going to lie to you and say I didn't fully utilise a full zipline network by the end of the game because I didn't want to walk anywhere anymore but for the moments where the game makes you tackle the idea of traversal OUTSIDE of ziplines...it's actually really neat. Part of me kinda wishes ziplines weren't in the game, despite their great convenience for grinding the game out. Maybe I'd say the same for vehicles. Imagine a game that was maybe a bit more focused on smaller, more interesting environments where you could only tackle them on foot. Hmmmm....

The other thing I really wanna point out is the world of Death Stranding. It's by far the most unique and interesting part of the game and I have to give Kojima credit for making a very unique apocalypse, since it would have been so easy to just go for something a bit more generic and drab. Instead he decided to give us baby technology, upside down rainbows, rain that makes time go faster and lore on how drugs are used by people who are addicted to likes. Thanks Kojima.

The thing that ultimately brings the entire thing down though is the story. Everything with Amelie sucks. There was something kinda interesting in the idea of a grim reaper with a heart but it doesn't explore it enough and honestly I can't remember enough to tell you even what Amelie's whole thing was. I just remember being pretty unenfused about her and her whole story...which sucks because she's pretty much the main focus of the entire game and the payoff with her just isn't great. Actually, that Princess Beach scene was amazing. Nevermind, she was worth it after all. Also Higgs sucks. Troy Baker needs to stay away from cool rival characters because whenever he plays one they suck.

Saying that I didn't mind the other characters. The stuff with Cliff and Die Hardman was kinda cool, just a shame they don't get more stuff. BB is precious. I guess I have a problem overall with the writing of the characters. The more I think about it, the more there really isn't a stand out winner for me. They're just kinda around.

But oh man honestly, genuinely, the one thing that kepts the characters completely back for me was the use of real actors. Why? What did doing any of this add? I don't know if it's just me but I found them to be INCREDIBLY distracting. Like, why not just use a character design...y'know? Like, why not just have a unique face for the character that matches them and let the character design be as expressive as they wanted without having to worry about fitting a real person onto it. Why is Amelie based on Lindsey Wagner out of the six million dollar man? How is that not just a terrible thing for your character who is also the main point of the game and a death god? God it annoys me.

Overall though, I'd say Death Stranding is a pretty good game based on how unique of a project it is. Shortcomings with the main plot and characters aside, I enjoyed my time with it and I hope Kojima continues sticking to making games like this, now that he's freed from the chains of Metal Gear. Maybe get another dude in to help write next time though.

P.T. is a lot of things. It's a lil' game that used repetition and creepy imagery in a really well done way. It had cryptic puzzles that lead the final solution to be more of a community effort than anything intended for a single player to do. To me, it ended up being the most interesting game I'd played that year despite it also being a teaser for an entirely seperate game, where beating the game was more than just an escape from it's corridors but also the announcement of a BRAND NEW Silent Hill game!

P.T. is also the most influential horror game of the past decade that remain entirely unplayable.

A Suda51 banger. You play as an otaku who becomes an assassin and murders dudes so he can bang a hot babe. Don't be fooled by the premise and fourth wall breaking gags, the game may seem shallow and purposely zany, and whilst it does definitly lean into it's dumb elements, the game is more than that.

The hyperviolence , the way the characters potray the assassination gig/ killing and the game making you do menial jobs so you can afford to keep living out your otaku murder fantasy, plus the way Suda51 likes to play with the narrative and player expectations give No More Heroes a punk edge that makes it special.

In general, the game is awesome. The motion controls are implemented in a fun way, boss fights are GREAT and the world of No More Heroes is enjoyable thanks to its cast of slightly off dudes.

They sure took a lot of TIME to make this! It was taking so long, I thought it was SCIENCE-FICTION! Vanillaware more like ABANDONWARE! Ohohohohoho I like this game, I'm glad it came out.

Vanillaware, getting bored of making great action titles, decided to take a page out of their oldest book, or grimoire specifically, and made a RTS visual novel hybrid game. I guess I should talk about the RTS stuff first since it's the easiest to talk about and also probably the most uninteresting of the two. You basically have these sections where you control the mechs that are being piloted by the main characters of the story. It's all played out on a really cool looking, minimal computer grid and you do your usual tactical battly stuff. The main goal is to defend the terminal that the kaiju are trying to attack and it's pretty decent. There's some really cool moments in it, like the one where the idol sings or the final mission, but overall it's nothing special. As much as I like the minimal aesthetic, I could have maybe used a few more details to highlight specific things because sometimes little details can get lost in the grid, such as enemy attacks that are off screen. Also they made these little animations for when your hovering over abilities to show what they do and they look really cool! But they don't include them in the actual game when you do the move and I think they missed an oppertunity to maybe add them to the actual fights to add some impact to your attacks? Like they don't even need to play all the time, just like maybe when you get a kill with the move? Or a lot of damage? Just something to make the battles feel a bit more spicy. Overall, Destruction mode is cool but alright. Play it on the highest difficulty if you want anything close to challenging.

Anyways, the real show stopper is the Rememberance section of the game which is pure 100% visual nov-ahem, I mean, adventure game? Whatever, basically you control a character and you talk to people and you discover things and there's a lot of text and sometimes there's "puzzles" and sometimes there's branching choices. This is where all the story content of the game is doled out over 13 (!!) different playable characters, who all have their own story unravelling through this universe and a lot of the time said story threads will roll into other character's as well, all in the middle of this greater overarching plot about saving the world from invading kaiju! This is definitely the most ambitious and well done part of the game and even if doesn't pull it off perfectly, it should be praised for taking on such a colossal task and doing it well.

My favourite part of this section, and the entire game, is the amount of twists. The game has a really amazing knack at constantly keeping the players engaged in the story and the universe by just dropping plot bombs on the regular and forcing the player to constantly think about the narrative that's being presented to them and how everything pieces together. Like I enjoyed the many hours I spent just sitting/scrolling through menus after finishing a character's story segment, thinking of how it affected what I thought I knew about them or the world, thinking of how "Well if that thing is that, then that means that this isn't this!" etc. etc. I would say that the puzzles in this game are terrible (god fuck that coin stuff it's so bad) but in actuality the puzzles are incredibly strong in this game because the story IS the world's biggest puzzle! Jonathan Blow is a tiny brainlet when compared to 13 Sentinels! Anyways, what I'm saying is the twists and constant recontextualisation of the plot is really well done and it's definitely one of the most entertaining experiences I've had since La Mulana 2.

I really enjoyed the characters as well, my absolute favs being the old boys: Miura and Hijiyama. I really enjoyed their initial character parts of being these dudes who were used to old military japan and general lifestyle of the 40s being teleported into the excess and electronica of the 80s. There's something really tough about a soldier of the 40s, willing to die for their country, travelling to the future and finding out that their coutnry in fact lost the war and surrendered. What does that mean for Japan? Is old Japan gone now? What is his life purpose now? Should he even be living right now? Will the guilt ever go away? Well, they kinda get over it fast but for those moments it was cool! Also individually they have some good stuff, Muira with his fucking "oh my god WHAT" 2188 story sections that appear in the early game and Hijiyama with his bond and connection to Okino through the game's events.

Everyone in general has some quirk or moments that I really appreciated and nobody was really a bad character. Gouto and his inquistive back and forth with Chihiro over the truth of her and the world was incredibly entertaining. Yakushiji with her "magical girl" cat schtick where she blats dudes. Natsuno's E.T. quest. Shinonome and her reality altering headaches. There was a bunch of cool things to latch onto and I really enjoyed going through each character's different situation and cadence. Even Miwako and Okino, who aren't playable characters, I liked a lot. In general, story stuff is great. It's the main reason to play this game and it does a fantastic job and I totally recommend playing 13 Sentinels for it.

Also, how have I gotten so far into a Vanillaware review and not brought up the visuals??? As expected, the visuals are incredible. The amount of details and effort put into each game's painted backgrounds look amazing, Vanillaware are really untouched in this field and thankfully they've seen no reason to slack off on the style. Also, whoever decided to set the entire game during the golden hour deserves a medal because not only does the golden hour OWN but it also helps make the background look that much more awe inspiring and nostalgic. The presentation wouldn't be as good without the music though. The OST for 13 Sentinels keeps up with the Vanillaware standard and manages to help bring the perfect amount of whimsy or cyber based dread whenever nessisary. Shout out to the idol song they made as well because it rules.

There are some problems with the game though and this is where I'm going to caution and say SPOILERS AHEAD because there's some things I can't talk about without spoiling to describe why this game is mostly top shelf material but just has a few things that bug me. Like how it goes for the "in the end it wasn't real" kinda thing which I don't hate the game for, and I feel like it kinda earns it with making everything else leading up to it so interesting, but that also makes it more disappointing? When you have all these twisting paths and huge bomb shells and constant unsurity and then in the end it can be summed up with "it wasn't real they were in a computer"...i don't know...like I said, I don't hate it but it feels a bit too simple for my tastes. I also feel like they kinda dropped the ball with Shinonome because the most interesting thing about her, to me, was that she was the villain! Kinda! Like she's the reason why the kaiju invasions were happening and her 2188 self seemed to be a little psychotic and I was interested to see where it would end up and it's sad that the game kinda drops it and forgets it in the end. I feel like the game brings it up with a "ahhh sorry about that guys!" "it's okay!" thing (i can't remember specifically) but I do remember being pretty bummed that the game doesn't really end up doing much with Shinonome. In the end she just becomes lovesick headache waifu who doesn't remember how to stop the virus in the sentinels. Was kind of a let down.

Also, I just wanna bring up how bad the romance in this game is. Like, feel free to yell at me that I missed some sort of point with them being destined to be with someone else cus of their previous selves or something but the way people just get together in this game is so...forced? And lame? Which makes me think that maybe I am missing some sort of point but none of the relationships in that game felt real and they sucked. The absolute WORST offender though being Ida and Space Idol Kisiragi at the end credits! I had to use my personal vomitorium to purge that out of my body.

And this isn't really a complaint and more of me trying to reason with myself why it's not a five star game but if you've played a lot of japanese games or know popular culture or played stuff like the Zero Escape games then maybe some of the narrative stuff might not surprise you as much or be as fresh as it would to other people, which I guess is why I'm trying to figure out why it wans't as mindblowing for me as it was for other people I've heard talk about the game. I don't know, this paragraph is my personal blabbering part.

Overall though, I only get nit picky and overly analytical with games that I really enjoyed or wanted to enjoy and 13 Sentinels is definitely the former! Wonderful presentation, going through the story is an amazing, almost puzzle box experience and the large cast and scale of the game really makes it something to be admired. The moments I'll remember from playing this is sitting at the menu and just staring into the screen, in my own mind, thinking of the game.

God bless.

An incredibly charming game. Goddddddddd this game has so much character.

I love how the "anti-rpg" gimmick of the game is actually a positive one, in which instead of leveling up and progressing through killing you do it through gaining and spreading love. I love the different presentation styles the game uses, in perticular the claymation of its monsters and the soft drawing style of the world in general. I loved how the OST for this game is mostly made up of independant musicians from the local tokyo scene of the 90s and you can play their "modern" tunes through an in-game music player any time. I really appreciate the playful and punchy writing and just how much there is to do in the world.

For a game about love I guess it's not too weird to say there is a lot to love in it. There are some negatives to it, one of them being how obtuse some of the puzzle solutions can be and knowing how or when to progress, which can unfortunately lead to some frustrating walking around for hours that can dampen the pacing.

But the one thing that's most unfortunate about it is how this game never came over to the west in 1997. So many of its features and presentation may seem a little bit trite by todays standards, especially within the indie scene, and whilst that didn't effect my feelings towards them whilst playing, I do also have to wonder how mindblowing playing this game might have been back in the 90s. Who knows how influential this game could've been. Ahh well.

Either way, I love this game and I recommend it to anyone who likes playing different, cute games.

slick detective game, got a lot out of this one! really liked the whole open-world mystery that the game presents you, where the scene of the crime is pretty much an entire island. conceptually i think it's pretty rad but also having a good half and half between visual novel/interviewing segments and open world exploring felt really nice.

aesthetic is on point. the game stylistically feels like a heavy homage to past suda51 games as well as some sprinklings of something like danganronpa. little descriptions on the relics and objects you find in the game are wonderfully detailed and willingly obtuse. the relic descriptions really give a nice flavour to daily island life before the purge of civilians and the descriptions of the gods really help give this idea of a chaotic, strange universe filled with obtuse gods. the universe within this game was fantastic.

also the art style and music are worth pointing out. art direction is on point in both the tropical island look and the character designs. really good, disctinct looks to all the suspects in the game. also the music is a highlight, really dreamy soft 80s synthpop that vibes with the island. perticularly enjoyed the touch of having the music be a physical concept on the island and having it played through speakers scattered across the island.

stroy wise the game isn't too shocking or suprising but it gives you a nice little murder mystery to follow and a cool final trial, that i actually got anxiety over before going ahead with it because the game kinda expects you to do your homework before going ahead with it by looking through the evidence and making some sort of narrative. it's pretty cool. one other point i liked was how open the final trial was. I feel like there's always gonna be the same suspect that you have to accuse if you wanna get anywhere but you could totally save certain characters you liked who were implicit by merely ignoring the evidence and letting them go free. or choose who you thought really did the murder in the end. or after the trial just go around and murder people found innocent by the trial if maybe you feel like you didn't get the evidence right or thought they were involved somehow or maybe you just didn't like them.

overall, game is pretty good! enjoyable in pretty much all aspects. it won't blow your mind i feel but if you want to have some slightly abstract murder investigation funsies, this is defintely one worth checking out.

As a follow up to the first game, No More Heroes 2 is pretty dissapointing as it's just less of an interesting game. Story feels totally unnecessary and doesn't do enough interesting things for me.

Travis joins the assassination gig again because he does and he vows to climb to the top to get revenge on the guy who killed BIIIIIIIIISSSSSHHHOOOPPPPPPP!!! and that's kinda what you get at the end. There's some intriguing cut-aways throughout the game with a mysterious figure but they turn out to be Sylvia and it's all revealed to be a sequel bait that doesn't really land for me. The most charitable thing I can do for the story is through a reading of the reason why Travis is in the assassination game again is because there's a No More Heroes 2 and having to go through another assassination gig is what leads to him having second throughts about the treatment of the video-game characters he has no kill and be done with UAA gives the story a kiiiiinda interesting meta angle that may or may not be intended but even then, I still find it hard for me to defend the second game's story as anything meaningful.

Also the cut open world and lack of a buy in for gigs totally kills the two sided nature of the first game where a lot of the time you were doing repetitve chores to be able to afford your fantasy basically. I can see why they did it but the game is totally missing something from the first game because of it. It's a trade of character for ease and enjoyment.

And ultimately that's what makes 2 so different from 1. It's doing the same game as 1 but it lacks a lot of the character or uncommon characteristics.

...That being said, I'd be lying if I said I still didn't enjoy myself. The music is great thanks to Akira Yamaoka. Graphically the game looks amazing upscaled to 1080. Sylvia has MULTIPLE OUTFITS! SHINOBU IS PLAYABLE!! They even spent money on a dang fake full OP to the in-game anime that Travis loves! Also, even though I just complained about the pacing, I can get the appeal of turning No More Heroes into a purely boss rush game with weird boss design and track after the next.

No More Heroes 2 is a bit of a conflicting game for me because overall the game is a downgrade from No More Heroes 1 on most fronts and it's nowhere near being a cult classic for me. On the other hand though, the game still does carry a lot of the original's spirit and you could probably still get a good time out of it.