Hey, what if SMT5 was like, finished?

So after (very legally trust me broski) playing through Vengeance I can safely come to the conclusion it's one of my favorite SMT games. The game uses that weird demo they accidentally released for 60 euro as a great jumping off point. What's good about SMT5 is still great. Platforming around the place looking for secrets, new demons, and new essences still feels as good as it did, combat is still fun, especially with some pretty good magatsuhi skills on par with the critical spam one (in very specific scenarios but hey) but this time Altus remembered the story driven game should have, get this, an actual story. So you get two tag along party members in the form of Tao, AKA 'that one woman from the first game' and Yoko, a new lady with her own plans, constantly questioning Bethel and the order of the world. It's a great dynamic of cynicism vs idealism that leads to a lot of great moments that reminded me of why I loved 4 so much. Alongside the great variety of new demons to mess around with with their quests, it's all great. Especially the Qadistu, who were just a really cool villain group. None of the new content misses, and all of it leads into a banger experience. As well as all the DLC demons I didn't buy the first time being available now (Mother Harlot and Mephisto my beloveds)

But the game also retains a lot of it's flaws from SMT5 vanilla. Remember that bullied girl? Yeah she still isn't anything more than a small blip. Atsuro's sister? The fact I named her 'Atsuro's sister' should probably illustrate she's not much else but a motivator for a few other characters. Bethel Egypt? Mandatory this time, still don't amount to anything besides one small area.

So it's SMT5 but better, pretty much. Possible contender for my favorite game this year. And if this is the quality we can expect from new SMT titles (although just having this at launch would be nice) I'm looking forward to it.

Definitely not as cracked as Specter Knight's campaign, but still a fun time and decent end to the Shovel Knight Treasure Trove (unless you count shovel knight showdown as the real end but honestly im kinda shovel'd out after playing all these extra campaigns so i won't be playing that mode much atm). King Knight's unorthodox combat style of dashing into things for a bonus jump that puts him in a drill-like spinning bounce state definitely takes some time to get used to while also feeling pretty limited in shmovement especially after the craziness that was the Specter Knight campaign, but the levels are still really tightly designed around your capabilities and tests it in tons of interesting ways. Speaking about the levels, they are much greater in number and bite-sized to play through which is a solid change of pace from the other campaigns. This would likely be the most optimal shovel knight game to play on the go for owners of the switch/3DS/vita versions tbh. There's also a card minigame that I played a little bit of but didn't really invest fully into due to it being optional and kinda unrelated from the main core shovel knight gameplay, but I'm sure card game players can enjoy it still. The story is a prequel set before the main game a la Specter Knight, but much less serious in tone as King Knight is kind of a narcissistic asshole that only cares about himself being the king of everything, and knowing that he's gonna get his shit kicked in by Shovel Knight in the main campaign is very gratifying.

Overall I'm really surprised at how the three expansions turn Shovel Knight from a charming NES tribute to a whole series that I've found myself becoming surprisingly invested in. It really do be like if a Mega Man game fleshed out each robot master with their own unique playable backstory campaign, and while I do wish each of the other members of the Order of No Quarter had their own stories to go through there'd definitely be no end to the developer work given that it took them 6 years just to make the 3 campaigns they did. I'm def excited to see what else Yacht Club makes in the future, because they have a very fine eye for the attention to detail with their games.

Are you ready gamer? Are you ready for the sheer unadulterated terror that is the animalized men wriggling eerily?

Well, if you weren't then you didn't read the manual. We love instruction manuals, we can't get enough of being instructed and looking at funny pictures of the enemies with names like "Rolpher", who rolls at you! Demorobruzer, the dinosaur riding on the tank reminds me of something I'd draw while bored at school, which disappoints me that I wasn't allowed in the timeline where I grew up with this instead of Karate Kid. The absurd word choices in the manual would've been like Shakespeare to toddler me, and would most assuredly had taught me to always type EVIL in all caps. What's most astounding about the localization for both this and the arcade game though, is that they decided to call the mysterious undead warrior of Argus "Rygar", which for all intents and purposes is essentially the same name as "Ligar", the main antagonist. What's the correlation between these two characters other than being the main driving forces of the plot? Nothing else besides that, perhaps the massive lion headed snake thing with dragon hands is the dad and it's Ligar Jr.? It's a mystery to all.

Once you're done reading the manual, you'll have your handy dandy map to the main overworld, and the locations of the Indora War Gods who await to give you one of their sacred treasures to help you defeat your apparent dad. It's here that I realized that the manual actually can't make up it's mind on whether the fighting gods themselves are called "Indora"s, or if they're a collective of buff bearded men belonging to someone named "Indora", but in-game at least one of them calls themselves "Indora", and talk like they're just named Indora. My personal headcanon is that it's just one huge dude going between rooms quickly to talk to you, because you're the first person besides an animalized man who wriggles eerily to finally drop by the main overworld. Either way, if it isn't already apparent, this is an early search action/indy jones-like, and it's a very ambitious title.

So ambitious that the game suffers from many funny glitches, and flickering sprites are commonplace due to the game giving no shits sometimes about how many enemies it spawns during the side-scrolling sections. This is actually a boon however, because as a tip for you and anyone else interested in trying this, it pays to kill everything you come into contact with in Rygar. That's right, Tecmo was making Musou games way before their Koei half had even the inkling of the idea to turn a Romance of the Three Kingdoms fighting game into a beat'em up war simulator. Failing to kill enemies in this game only makes the game harder, as you deny yourself the ability to improve your "tone" and "last", which is your attack and durability respectively, as well as nabbing potential mind point drops, which is what you use to cast one of your three magic spells. One of them being a super useful health recovery that requires a full meter of seven whole mind. With infinite continues and forgiving checkpoints, this only gets easier as you play it unless you max out. Another tip I have is for the Pully you get from the first Indora. The manual says to aim for Rygar Jr.'s torso for trying to get on the zipline, and for best success try and wriggle (like an animalized man wriggling eerily) around in a circle until you hear "clink". It's alright, the game's held together with duct tape, and sometimes even the doors will require jiggling the handle to get through. I love it for it though.

Rygar's most interesting trait to me though, is that a lot of the soundtrack was changed for the western release. This funny four-note song that feels like the composer shitposting or forgetting to write the rest of it was actually changed from this pretty rad sounding piece. What was the reason? No one knows. Maybe Michiharu Hasuya thought we wouldn't get it, much how they figured we couldn't possibly get this and Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde at the same time. It certainly wasn't malevolent or anything, because we still at least got this groovy cave theme that keeps me from actively denouncing the NES version, ignoring my irony-fueled love of the four-note Castle of Dorago shitpost, and my craving to think of headcanon as to why Dorago is trying to drive Rygar Jr. crazy with his mad piano skills.

As of this post, I've beaten this three times in the last week and it's only gotten better for me on each subsequent replay just like many other search-actions of it's time like Simon's Quest. Rygar/Warrior of Argus Extreme Great Charge has not only been a consistent cushy fun romp, but also full of surprises thanks to it's mysterious programming. When I find myself casually strolling along and enjoying the scenery of Primeval Mountain only for six dragons to suddenly show up and attempt to drop eggs on my head with the frame rate dropping massively as the music struggles to breathe, that's just the peak of the goddamn medium right there. That's a fucking game. A really interesting and memorable game that I would've adored much like Metroid growing up.

Beastorized gentlemen squirming weirdly.

It's funny to me that a game as steeped in the language and aesthetics of film as Max Payne is ultimately at its least put together during the actual cutscenes. The game has a few modes of presentation, and between real-time gameplay, slo-mo gameplay, comic sequences, and in-engine cutscenes, only the last of those lacks an enduring consideration.

In a way though, it's appropriate, because the game is defined by the humorously subversive and oxymoronic pastiche of film in its other states. Most impactful to the player on the top, reactive layer is the felt difference between both modes of gunplay, as any encounter where Max is outnumbered or flanked, success in real-time gunplay approaches unlikely, frustratingly so. Enemies have reaction times that can often equal or surpass yours, and, in the most potent moments of cruelty, can be positioned perfectly to warp you instantly towards that familiar red flash of the death animation. In contrast, bullet-time is a real-time editing technique, allowing you to orchestrate and execute choreography befitting of an action hero. Of course, when I say "editing technique," the implication that it's not the first time through is fully intended. But that ritual of failure, revision, and unlikely triumph in spite of Max's fragility is woefully appropriate given, y'know, the rest.

I don't want to sound dismissive, but it's kind of hard to settle the seemingly contradicting statements that Max Payne is not a particularly interesting story beat-by-beat but it IS a largely successful game, even (especially?) wrt its thematic and narrative angles. Like, Max's story is ultimately one you've heard before: man loses family, man conducts automatic and inhuman revenge, and I guess along the way there are a few conspiracies and twists to really drive home this sense of entrapment which defines the series at large. I could discuss the Norse symbols or the blossoming conspiracies behind the tapestries, but it all inevitably feels like it charts towards its simple vanishing point: the man himself.

It's Max's metaphors, dry delivery, and darkened sense of humor which define most people's memories of Max Payne as a narrative-driven game. For the standards of 2001, James McCaffrey's (rip) performance is textured and iconic, and for the standards of now, it's a reminder that a player character in this linear-structure of action game can be verbose and nuanced in an age where they all feel like they're trying to entertain you with perfunctory charm points. It stands to reason that, despite the gauzy plot, Max Payne pulls through as a character within the story quite well, damn near in spite of it, while helped along ever-so-slightly by those small gestures of self-awareness employed by Sam Lake.

When it comes to games, I'm normally used to the opposite thing? You know, where a game's story has interesting things going on but is light on worthy style in the scripted words. But seeing Lake's portrayal of his own character gesture through those comics with his legendary sneer serves as a reminder that the whole style/substance dichotomy can crumble the instant something this sharp and focused within a style wanders in. Like, what more do you really need than Max's monologs between the 00's game architecture getting bullet-decal graffiti and emergency red paintjobs? That's fuckin video games, hombre. 🥸👍

Honestly pretty shocked at how high this one's rated.

Finished this one with the missus, and I am thoroughly disappointed here. A silly kiwi coop game? Sounds fantastic! Just kidding, you're doing simple puzzles that I could find on my phone, bordering on doing virtual chores.

The one thing this game excels in is variety and switching up the formula, however the 4 sets of base mini-games, that you'll be playing till start to finish, is either in camp boring or annoying land, so this variety isn't too helpful.

The side content outside of these extremely boring or tedious main missions is...... also boring! It is little arcade puzzles/qte's where you rack up a score before the timer runs out. Nothing wrong with that, but again it's just boring mini-games with the depth I'd expect out of a phone game.

Simplicity isn't necessarily a bad thing, I think if I had a kid I'd play this with them, but as I do not, this game is a major snoozer. It doesn't help that the music is generic and the graphics are noticeably ugly, there's just nothing for me to latch onto here other than I think kiwis are cute.

Quite the miss, this is a very neat concept and I'll always want more coop games. However, I want the coop games to stimulate my brain a lil more and keep me awake.

could be an easy 8/10 video game, unfortunately tails and knuckles exist (as well as their dark story counterparts).

i honestly cannot understand what asinine thought process came up with the idea to have 2/3rds of a sonic game being occupied not by platforming stages but instead stages about searching a boring ass empty box for 3 mystical jewels only the radar only tells you where one of them are at a time so you constantly have to backtrack to the same areas over and over and over, and stages where the game turns into a brain off easy mode set of mech sections where you hold onto the fire button and lock onto enemies while a loud shriek plays in your ear.

the sonic and shadow levels, while flawed in the way they arent super branching and lack a lot of the momentum focused design of the 2-D titles, relying on dash panels, springs that send you at set speeds, and an attack that halts your momentum the moment you collide with an enemy, are still greatly enjoyable, especially city escape which is maybe the best opening level in any game ever.

the boss fights are actually awful in this game. sonic has never had especially great boss fights, but these are a whole new level of bad. the hit detection on fights like shadow is bizarre to say the least, and fights like the eggman boss near the beginning of the game barely feel like a boss at all.

the chao garden is a great feature thats a lot of fun, the music is some of the best in the franchise, the visuals are alright, the story is... interesting, i guess.

but you can never shake the feeling of just how much better this game couldve been, had they focused on the aspects that are actually good about it.

look i'm SORRY i really am but like i'm having a lot of fun checking in on all the stuff i remembered as a kid, this just so happens to be one of them LMAO

I don't have any fun tales to tell or any vibes to reminisce on like I did in my EYX review, which is unfortunate because that means I actually have to try and figure out what I'm supposed to say about "Sonic.EXE" and his game.

But I don't wanna be too negative about it. I actually have some nice things to say, though it's more so just me being surprised and not actually anything I'd call any good. My memory of this game was purely what it started out as, walk right and watch these characters die in about 15 or so minutes. To my shock and surprise, there have actually been some very major changes made in the 11 years since that original release. You are now given the option to, uh... I dunno, see a little more? You can fulfill certain requirements (walking left instead of right) to find extra stages that provide something of a story that I don't care about, culminating in one last little walk to the right as the blue blur himself. Blur as in he's being covered in static, nothing speed wise, he's still just walking. Aside from that, Knuckles can punch now, Robotnik lost his ability to slide (sad!), and sometimes you need to jump instead of it being purely a walk to the right. The art at the end is different, frankly a little more silly looking than the original, but shit I know there's not much you can do about that.

Was fun to see what's new, but it's still a shitty story written by a shitty person turned into a shitty game. As much as I got to gush over the community aspect of it all before, I still can't deny that much. Still not a 1/10 though lmao

A very lovely Hidden Object game where your hidden objects are cute cats! The game has a very cute artstyle and you can customize all colors of the game if you want! You can change the background, lineart and cat colors to suit your needs! This was perfect because I wanted everything to be dark, since I cannot do lightmode.

The game doesn't take too long to complete though, it only took me 13 minutes to find all cats and do a speedrun level once. It's rather short, and I would have preferred a little bit more game time. There is some extra levels from paid DLCs.

I had some issues with the game running properly through steam when pressing play, so I had to run the game through it's exe file, but that didn't affect anything thankfully, and achievements unlocked fine! Other than that, it was a fantastic hidden cats game and I enjoyed it thoroughly!

I can definitely recommend it for a quick little fun! and it's free, so its definitely worth it!

Did they add a Double Jump to your character with this DLC? No, but Torrent still can.

Full Spoilers Ahead so 💁‍♀️

Shadow of the Erdtree is more Elden Ring, for better and worse. I think the exploration is better because its more condensed area and less repeated stuff. This DLC also has some of the best/cool looking areas in the game for sure. The finger areas, the scary ass woods, the blue fields, the green fields; all that shit is crazy looking and beautiful. There are only 3 of each side dungeon in this so they don't wear out their welcome too much. They also benefit from being more interesting visually because they swapped out the caves and mines for these ice jails and lava blacksmith forges. The catacombs are still here, and they still have plenty of clever tricks. I'm a Catacombs fans, I think they are the perfect amount of Fromsoft pranking on the player and the ones in here continue to be fun.

The legacy dungeons are alright. I only really think 3 of them are cool in the base game (Haligtree, Raya Lucaria, and Farum Azula) and I don't really find them in this DLC that interesting. They are serviceable, they work. The scary mansion in the scary forest in the best one here on a thematic stand point, but still kind of lacking in density.

I played this DLC with my fists character, so I was running Caestus and Heavy Star Fists into this. I was hoping to get the martial arts weapons and then also the beast claws once I learned about them. The martial arts are dope and the Beast Claw weapon is really cool, but I think I still enjoy the Caestus the most. I wish Fromsoft really brought back the Bone Fists from DS2 in this (considering other stuff in this dlc.....).

I find that there is quite a bit of lowkey references to their past work, or maybe Im just seeing stuff I want to see where it isn't. They also might just be stretches, but like, there is enough for me to be like 🤔. The draining water by pushing the circle lever, the storeroom is kind of like the Grand Archives, the place that has Manus in the title, the item that lets you form change into a dragon, and the Putrescent Knight has a vaguely Humanity head (and his arena is basically the Midir boss room). I think I saw more, but I can't remember them all.

Okay, Bosses. I find most of the bosses annoying and too much. Fromsoft is hitting the fucking absolute end of what they can do without huge gameplay shake ups I feel like. I do acknowledge that I am pretty sure my fist build was ass for most of these bosses and that I am washed up, but I do think the bosses are getting too ridiculous. I can kind of just point this out within this own DLC with Rellana. I think she is a good way to make something kind of crazy, but the difference with her is she gives you plenty of time to sip estus and just think in general. She does have a string that can be like 8 attacks long, but she will often pause for a bit to let you get some composure back. I feel like I could understand what her attacks were and what to do the easiest. Romina is a good one too. I really didn't have the patient for any of the other main bosses. Most of them are sooooo fucking cool and just look fucking amazing, but fuck me main I dont want to fight them! Commander Gaius feels like bullshit, maybe they do want it to be a "jousting" type fight, but I had fists so that shit was impossible. The Scadutree Avatar arena is too fucking big and he goes too far away with annoying ranged attacks.

The last boss is actually like way too much I think. If its the final boss they do for this genre for a while, I think that its a good just final stamp, but fuck man. I genuinely cannot see myself ever solo fighting this boss and feels like the boss that most needs summons. This really feels like a Raid boss, which is cool, but how the fuck am I supposed to do this with my build? I know the point in Elden Ring more so than older titles is to swap builds around, but i;m not really gonna do that unless I make a new character. I made a punch character, she's gonna punch.

ALSO THE FUCKING FURNACE GIANTS FUCKING SUCK. THEY TAKE TOO LONG TO KNOCK DOWN. ALL YOU DO IS HEAVY ATTACK THEIR LEGS. UNNNLESSSSS ITS THE FUCKING ONES WHERE YOU CANT ATTACK THEIR LEGS MAKING IT BASICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR MELEE BUILDS TO FIGHT. FUCK THEM.

The fucking group fight where you fight Leda and her allies (and you summon Thollier and Anbach) is probably one of Fromsoft's best though. It's kind of like Abyss Watchers in the way it gets chaotic from people fighting, but I think it works much better in that these are NPC's you have met and interacted with. They have each picked sides and are fighting against each other for their ideals. It is kind of sad how they all kind of vaguely worked together but now have to fight. The music for it is the third song from the OST that I actually went "woah" during.

I hope that if Fromsoft continues to make stuff in this genre that they cut down on the world size like this DLC. I would still prefer if it was small than that, but whatever. I would like if they took the platforming stuff they took from this added it to the more linear design of older games that could be cool.

I think the way this game handles phobias was great, I was on edge in the water, tight spaces, and the DARK!
The story is relatable in terms of what the character is going through with his marriage.

Ending I think was bittersweet, I was content with it.

Game became a slog towards the end though, there is only so much you can do with hiding mechanics take Alien Isolation, the hiding mechanics in that were near perfect! If the enemies in this acted more like that game, I think this would have been a higher ranking.

Graphics were great and I can see myself speedrunning this.