Another Souls knock-off, only this time it's by a developer whose familiarity never went beyond "Top 10 Dark Souls Fails" videos.

Every combat encounter feels like it was designed around the most ha ha tee hee funny troll moments from those games. The second area, found just past Not Firelink, is a vertically oriented nightmare of cobbled together planks and rickety platforms, a veritable Blight Town filled with dudes hiding behind crates and corners waiting for you to pass by so that they can rush you and kick you off into an abyss. This was funny in Dark Souls because it happened once deep into the game by a big dumb skeleton, but it becomes annoying when it's happening ten times before you're able to make it to the third boss.

Mop things up there and you're off to... Another Blight Town! Only this time it does the Blight Town thing of having enemies constantly throw shit at you while you're stuck dealing with mobs. Where do you think you go after two whole Blight Towns? If you guessed "a poison swamp" then congratulations, you just won my copy of Lords of the Fallen because I don't want it anymore!

I'm not sure what possessed developer Hexworks, a studio which unsurprisingly has no credits before this, to frontload all of the Souls series' worst level tropes. I was already on the cusp of dropping the game after slogging my way to the first corrupted beacon, but what really sealed it was going from the swamp to a gorge that was still riddled with choke points, gank mobs, dudes throwing crap, enemies hiding behind objects, and now mimics. Hey you know what would be funny? Placing a mimic just down the street from another mimic so the player dies twice in a row the exact same way. What do you mean only .2% of players have gotten all the trophies, how can that be??

The big gimmick here that sets Lords of the Fallen apart from Souls and its many imitators - of which I've yet to play a single good one - is its light world/dark world mechanic. You'll often need to assume "umbral" form to reveal hidden pathways and solves puzzles, so often in fact that I'd say 80% of the early game is spent not interacting with the "real world" at all. While in your umbral state, shitty little level 1 zombies constantly spawn in and rush you, which impedes your ability to explore and makes every encounter with a deliberately placed enemy or trap agonizing because you're simultaneously having to deal with that while mowing through trash mobs like weeds.

You're also on a timer, and if you spend too long in umbral form, a very high-level enemy with be summoned to kill you immediately. Basically, you need to surface for air before the timer runs out by rushing towards totems that return you to the real world, which as far as I can tell is the only tangible benefit the real world has, because 9 times out of 10 I'd turn right around and realize some fuckin bog or a pit was behind me and I'd need to go back into umbral form anyway.

Hell, even the little touches are all wrong. Vigor (see: souls) don't automatically flow into the player character. Instead, they drop like EXP or health pick-ups in Kingdom Hearts, but they also do so on a slight delay with a small draw radius, meaning it's not at all uncommon to move on only to find that you've left a bunch of vigor sitting there. The lock-on never seems to target the enemy I want it to, and I can't figure out how it's prioritizing its lock at all, because it seems to not be based on camera position or distance. Even something as minor as a prompt to hit X to speak with an NPC feels bad because it straight up lies to you, instead requiring you to double tap X. Worth noting that this is the only thing in the entire game that requires you to double tap anything. I'm not opening up a program, I just want to upgrade my ax with the blacksmith who also happens to be a slaver but look, I don't have time to unpack that right now because I got to talk to you about how bonfires work. Aaaaaaah!

There are doors all over the place and they're all locked, which in a better game might inspire some curiosity on the part of the player. But because levels are long as shit and typically only have one dedicated "bonfire," on top of all the aforementioned problems with annoying enemies and needing to be in umbral form, I never want to go back and figure out what's in there. You can spawn smaller "checkpoints" using a consumable on beds of umbral flowers, but doing so will remove all previous checkpoints in an area, which makes navigating backwards a pain in the ass.

I think before you set out to create anything you ought to concern yourself with what you want the work to accomplish, and I guess I just don't understand what the point is of making something that is intentionally designed to be tedious, inconvenient, and cheap other than to be mean-spirited at the audience's expense. Perhaps this is why even the subreddit, ostensibly a place where fans would congregate, is rife with posts going "yeah I don't think I'm gonna finish this!" The few positive opinions I've heard are only just, saying the game is "fine" or that it "looks pretty." I disagree on that last point, I think it looks like and plays like sludge.

It's as if every time Hexworks was presented with a design choice to make, they carefully weighed their options and intentionally went with the most obviously detrimental and wrong one, like the video game version of those AMA threads where someone posts "tried Meth, but I won't do it again," only to post a few days later "couldn't stop thinking about meth, so I did some more." Playing this started turning me into the fuckin' Video Game Nerd, but the loudest and most full-throated "what were they thinking?" should be saved for myself. I was warned. I was told repeatedly that Lords of the Fallen was very bad, but I didn't listen. When you're so deep into collecting games that you're buying multiple copies of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), what's $20 for Lords of the Fallen, really? A badge that says I'm bad with my money, apparently.

Congratulations to Lies of P for no longer being the worst Dark Souls rip-off of 2023.

Addendum:

"VERSION 1.5 - 'Master of Fate': This update represents the culmination of 30+ post-launch updates resulting in significantly improved performance, stability & optimization, alongside rigorous difficulty balancing, and also includes our 'Advanced Game Modifier System', allowing ALL players to fully customize and adjust difficulty of future play-throughs. The Master of Fate Update concludes now concludes the Free Content Roadmap for Lords of the Fallen, adding the following content and quality-of-life enhancements, vastly improving the experience for all players: - Significant performance, optimization and stability improvements - Rigorous difficulty balancing including mob density reduction & nerfed ranged attacks "

WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WAS WORSE

For the longest time, I assumed Mystic Quest was 'Actually Pretty Good' and people just hated on it because the prospect of a low-difficulty, linear RPG made them feel inadequate or attacked.

But nah, Mystic Quest is stale bread.

There's barely any world to interact with, no sense of exploration or adventure, combat never becomes anything more than spamming attacks and heals, and what little plot is here is a sequence of self-perpetuating fetch quests. There's an attempt to branch out by introducing environmental quirks and swappable items reminiscent of 2D Zelda, but they go mostly underutilized. The party structure was neat at first - your second member is a progress-sensitive partner who's far stronger than you and acts as a keystone for the protagonist to mature into, - but these characters remain one-dimensional and don't have visibly strong designs to carry them, either.

The ONE saving grace - as many have already stated, - is the music. Sasai and Kawakami call upon their past experience in OVA composition and SEGA arcade music (respectively) for a score that's both aggressive and mournful. The hard contrasts between rocking battle themes and waverly overworld tunes create an incredible identity.

But in the end, good music can't save a sauceless RPG.

If you open and exit this review 20 times, you'll unlock my review for Blue Spheres.

There was a long stretch where Sonic Mega Collection was my go-to way to play through the classic Genesis series, and I have a lot of fond memories of me loafing around my dorm room with my GameCube hooked up to my tiny CRT, just running through Sonic 3 & Knuckles for the millionth time. Loading it up again today for the first time in nearly 20 years, it's not surprising to me that every save slot for that game is filled up, played to 100% completion, with every combination of characters possible. I had a lot of time on my hands.

I still make enough time to go back and play these once or twice a year, and seeing as I've made the absolutely insane commitment to play every Sonic the Hedgehog game (that I am physically able to before the Sonic rot becomes terminal and fully cannibalizes my brain), I figured I should throw Mega Collection and the other compilations onto the pile and see how they stack up against each other.

Well, I've been busy breaking down each compilation with highly corrosive materials, mixing them in beakers and testing them with specially designed strips to indicate their purity, and the results are in: Sonic Mega Collection is (probably) the best one (maybe.) To date, I've tested Gems Collection, Sonic Jam, Origins Plus, and I've dabbled with the PlayStation 2 release of Mega Collection Plus, and all of them are in their own ways more compromised than vanilla Mega Collection. And yeah, I probably could've figured that out without a visit from the cops and the fine folks at the Department of Environmental Quality. Sure, just playing these games would've been "safer" and wouldn't have resulted in an "ecological disaster" or the production of "radiological material..." Whatever.

Mega Collection is a pretty straight-forward package, a real "has all his fingers and toes" release that gives you exactly what you want. The Genesis trilogy of games runs perfectly fine, I didn't encounter any more bugs than I would during a normal playthrough of these games on Genesis hardware, and while there is some audio cues here and there which don't sound quite right, it's nothing as egregious as Sonic Jam. Probably the biggest downside to actually playing these versions of Sonic 1-3 is using the GameCube controller, but if you're the sort of person who, in the year 2024, decides to play through the original Sonic games on GameCube hardware specifically, then an aftermarket controller with a proper d-pad won't set you back much and you're probably crazy enough to already have one.

Unlocking additional games - including Flicky and Ristar - however, is a total hassle. You have to boot up specific games a certain number of times before additional games will unlock, and I have no idea who thought that was a good idea, but they should be frozen and preserved until future generations develop the level of technology necessary for truly understanding their brain. Practically, if you wanted to unlock everything fast you could just keep backing in and out, but a more sensible way to do this would be unlocking new games for completing old ones. Or just have them all unlocked from the start. Really no reason not to.

Full manuals are also included for each game but navigating them is a chore and the scan quality is just low enough that they become difficult to read on a CRT. The included gallery of Archie Sonic comic covers is also hard to look at, but I did have a decent time flicking through these and remembering all the good and bad that was Archie Sonic. Did you know there's an issue where an evil Sonic (who wears a leather jacket so you know he's bad) transports himself to Sonic's world and enacts a master plan to make Sonic have too many girlfriends by kissing all the pretty ladies he can find, and then in the next couple stories Sonic's whole problem is he doesn't know how to manage a polycule? Well now you do. I put that knowledge in your head.

There's definitely better ways to play these games. I'd easily recommend Sonic 3: AIR or Sonic 3: Complete, for example, but if you're wanting something official and physical, Mega Collection is a decent package that does right by the included games. Plus, you can look at comic covers and remember they interrupted the main story to do a two-part Guardians of the Galaxy parody and that Knuckles was green for some reason.

Over-hyping something has proven, time and time again, to be an incredibly risky practice. Taking a product that is either coming out very soon, or having already come out, and praising it all the way to the high heavens along with everyone else would set up false expectations for those who have never experienced said product before, and when they eventually get to this product, they will find that it really was not as good as everyone else had claimed it to be. What many don’t consider though is that this exact same mentality can also be applied to the opposite side of this attitude. You could have something that people will say is GARBAGE, literal bottom of the barrel scum, something that nobody on the face of the Earth should ever even consider giving a proper chance, which has the exact same effect as does over-hyping something, to where whenever people take a shot in the dark for this over-hated product, they may end up liking it at the end of the day. This pretty much summarizes what happened with me and Sonic Labyrinth.

Before playing this game, I had heard horror stories about it, with many considering it to be one of the worst Sonic games of all time, even if it isn’t as discussed as frequently as some of the others, and even though I never played it until this point, I had always wondered about it. I mean, could it REALLY be THAT bad, as bad as Sonic ‘06, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, or Sonic and the Secret Rings? Well, I was never really gonna figure that out for myself until I sat down and gave it a shot, so I did just that, and based on what I have played…….. it’s fine? It definitely does not reach the same quality as many of the best titles in the series, or even as some of the other Master System/Game Gear Sonic titles, but on its own, it was a perfectly fine game that managed to be reasonable and short enough to where I couldn’t possibly get that angry at it.

The story is… pretty fucking stupid, where in one of Dr. Robotnik’s most “cunning” and “brilliant” plans to take out Sonic yet, he tricks him into wearing a special pair of shoes that completely eliminates his speed, while also trapping him inside of a Super Labyrinth, so it is up to Sonic to traverse through this labyrinth, get the Chaos Emeralds, and stop Dr. Robotnik once again, which is about as dumb as you could expect from this kind of game, but I will give Robotnik props for actually being smart for once with his plans……… and then never again. The graphics are ok, pretty much looking like every other Game Gear Sonic title, which doesn’t look all that bad, but it is definitely doesn’t compare to other games from around that era, the music is also ok, once again also sounding like every other Sonic Game Gear title ever made, not having any real noteworthy songs to listen to at all, and the gameplay/control is, for lack of a better term, pretty mid, giving you a style of gameplay that you wouldn’t want to play over any other Sonic game, but at the same time, it isn’t that annoying or bad to where you would wanna keel over and die by the end of it.

The game is an isometric maze game, where you take control of Sonic the Slowpoke, go through a set of four different zones, each with their own set of levels to take on, defeat many enemies while zooming around to get the upper hand and to increase your time limit, gather plenty of rings and keys to protect yourself and help you proceed through the level, and take on several bosses that can either be extremely easy to take down, or be a huge pain in the ass due to not the bosses themselves, but the arena that you are placed in. When you really get into it, you will realize quickly how simple this game is in its execution, and while I wouldn’t necessarily say that it is necessarily all that fun, it definitely was not as bad as I was thinking it was gonna be, as I never had any point throughout the game where I was actively angry.

From what I have heard, one of the biggest factors as to why many people don’t like this game would be with the control, or more specifically, Sonic’s speed. For the entire game, Sonic only has two default speeds, those being really fucking slow and really fucking fast, with you of course starting out really slow, but whenever you rev up into a ball, you will go flying across the screen, bouncing off of any wall you come across, and you won’t come to a stop unless you do so yourself, or you hit a specific obstacle. As a whole, this is a pretty terrible way to handle Sonic’s speed, giving you very little consistent and satisfying control over yourself, and making it so that you will have the most sluggish, while simultaneously uncontrollable experience with this game……. or at least, that’s what you’d think.

For me, as a whole, Sonic’s speed and control didn’t really bother me all that much. Yeah, it definitely is NOT how Sonic should control in any game ever, and it can be frustrating here or there, but really, the game was built with your set speed in mind, meaning that there aren’t too many instances where you will get fucked over by your lack of or too much speed, aside from one or two pits you could fall into here or there. I would say that the only real trouble I had when it came to controlling Sonic was when I was either entering a door or grabbing an item, where you definitely can’t approach it while blazing at Sonic speeds (normally, anyway), otherwise you will just bounce all over the place, and instead, you have to just slowly walk up and get the things. It can be a little frustrating to do this, especially when there is a really specific door you need to enter, but I never got too angry by this to the point of me wanting to rage.

As for the main gameplay itself though, it is also pretty basic, and when I say that, I mean it is VERY basic. You just run around these many labyrinths, grab these keys, and find the exits. That’s it. You don’t gotta worry about grabbing too many rings, beating any enemies, or that many real platforming challenges, it is just all about collecting these keys. The only other real thing you need to worry about is making sure you don’t run out of time, but really, if you are playing through the game normally, you will easily manage to get enough time to where you will easily be able to get all of the keys and find your way out of there, if you know what you’re doing (more on that later). This gameplay style isn’t changed up or further expanded upon the further you go in the game, meaning that it remains fairly simple to tackle throughout the whole game, making for a relatively easy experience. Hell, you don’t even need to get the Chaos Emeralds through special stages, with the exception of just one, and even then, you don’t even need to do anything in the special stage itself, as you automatically get the Chaos Emerald in there just by going into it.

In a lot of ways, this game kinda feels like an early prototype for what we would eventually get in Sonic 3D Blast, being a game where you have to maneuver around these isometric areas, gather these specific objects, and make it to the end without losing all of them. However, in my opinion, I think this game manages to execute this concept BETTER than Sonic 3D Blast ever could. I will go more into it whenever I eventually review the game, but 3D Blast manages to butcher this concept by having many instances of very precise platforming and bullshit hazards sprinkled all throughout, making for a very frustrating game to run through, whereas with Labyrinth, the hazards are kept to a minimum, with the game more focused on building these mazes for you to navigate rather then having you get through obstacles, which was definitely the right call, making the game much less frustrating than I thought it was going to be.

With all that being said though, just because I am giving this game a free pass does not mean I didn’t think it was flawless, because it certainly has its flaws, ones that managed to irk me more than anything else. First and foremost, since the game is called Sonic LABYRINTH, you will need to navigate through plenty of labyrinths in order to find the keys you need in order to get to the next stage, and that in itself is much easier said then done. While I wouldn’t say these labyrinths are impossible to traverse, you can definitely spend a lot of time trying to figure your way around or finding out where everything is, whether it be the keys or the exit to the level itself. It also doesn’t help that you are on a time limit the entire time, meaning that you could potentially encounter some unwarranted deaths primarily just because you ran out of time trying to figure out where you need to go.

To me though, that is more mildly annoying when compared to the actual REAL problem that I have with this game, with that being the bosses. Half of the bosses in this game are easy as hell, with you just being able to easily spin-dash through them and call it a day, but then you have the other two bosses, who have very annoying patterns and really precise openings that you need to take advantage of in order to beat them, and this is much easier said then done. Not to mention, the level design of the boss arenas that you are put in are definitely meant to inconvenience you, making it so that you aren’t able to get a proper shot at these guys without putting yourself directly into harm’s way, which will more often or not lead to your death, and the very little amount of rings you are given for the boss fights themselves don’t help that much either. So yeah, half the bosses are completely fine, while the other half are complete shit.

Overall, despite the rough controls, dickish bosses, and some mildly annoying levels here or there, Sonic Labyrinth managed to surprise me in how competent it really was, not being great or all that good in any sense of the word, but managing to hold up just well enough to where I wouldn’t even say for a second that this is as bad as many people paint it out to be. I would recommend it for those who are huge Sonic fans, as well as those who don’t mind a little change in their typical gameplay style for one of these games, but for everyone else, there isn’t much here that you would get out of trying it for yourself, despite how I managed to somewhat tolerate it by the end of the day. But hey, at least I can say now that I have beaten the game, and I can move on and never have to touch it ever again…………. which is more then I can say for some of the other titles in this series that I am not looking forward to. Looking at you, Tails Adventure.

Game #601

You really get what you sign up for in this one: an RE4 case management simulator puzzle game. There are 40 puzzles, and most of them I found were pretty easy to figure out, but fulfilling to anyway. This really feels like a game I would have found on Addicting Games many years ago and probably give up on in frustration. Wish it had more fish-based puzzles, though, cause it gave me a chuckle anytime those guys were slapped in there. The use of RE4 knowledge was great, too, as someone who only played RE4 in that series, I'm not sure if it'll be as interesting to people who haven't played that game or not, but if you have, you'll probably find some interest in this. Just a few dollars, so you're not risking much by trying.

The machine gun can eat my ass, what an awkwardly shaped thing to introduce so early.

The forgotten king.

It's always Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Secret of Monkey Island that come up when the conversation turns to the classic Lucasarts point 'n' clicks. And they're great games, worthy of being in the conversation. But Fate of Atlantis? That's where the real heat is.

First off: the tone is pitch perfect. Everything about Fate of Atlantis feels like an Indiana Jones movie, from the dialogue to the locations to the plot and beyond. Jones is cynical, stubborn, a bit sexist. His co-star - Sophia Hapgood - gets under his skin, holds her own, spars with him verbally. You trot the globe with the classic map screen, break out the whip, reference previous adventures. It's glorious, as on point as it could be, the secret fourth movie.

But the real secret, the best part? There are three distinct paths through the game, triggered by an early dialogue choice. Want the classic point 'n' click experience? That's the wits path. Want more action? Fists. The best, however, is team, with Sophia coming along and bringing that pulp adventure vibe to life.

There's more. The locations change on each path, the puzzles and dialogue as well. And those puzzles themselves often have multiple solutions, both within their paths and between playthroughs, some light randomization changing locations of objects and the solutions to reach them. Moreover, hidden in all that is a wealth of optional dialogue, quips and snarks, little tidbits to discover on that second or third playthrough.

Moon logic puzzles are almost entirely absent, benign enough when encountered due to the self-contained nature of the scenarios. There's a labyrinth at one point, which is never a favorite, a door maze as well. Minor issues in the end, and nothing that tarnishes the crown rightfully owed to Lucasart's finest adventure game.

This season had several fun mythics like the wings and Avatar elements. Water was my favorite to use so I'm glad it was available the longer. I honestly don't think I'll use many Battle Pass skins in the long run but I like Medusa quite a lot. Aang, Toph, Korra, and Lady Gaga were definitely my highlights from this season. One underrated aspect of the pass is all the instruments. I like having a nearly full set themed around the gods. Unfortunately no car this time which is alright. XP was harder to get this season so hopefully they buff XP next season. I barely got beyond 200 this time around and I played a lot with my boyfriend, his brother, and their cousin.

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me, and I walk alone.

Jokes aside, Lonesome road is probably my favourite FNV DLC, which seems like an unpopular take in contemporary critical discourse surrounding the game; on the internet anyways.

I do GET what others find objectionable about the DLC, I'm not super on board with the characterisation of Chris Avellone's pseudo-rantsona and the cardinal sins the game committs in regards to roleplaying are at best misguided attempts at narrative subversion and at worst break the entire game's foundations in half.

Its one of those things, where, even though I myself had not heard of this discourse I intuitively felt something wrong when I played the game for the first time. "You, the courier came through here before and indirectly caused the devastation of the divide" - Ulysses said calmly

"No I didnt. My character didnt do that at all. My courier was a common drifter before he stole a mojave express courier's identity just in time to be shot by a claymation chandler bing". I was mostly confused. I do think its a mistake to take everything Ulysses at face value, and if you listen to his soliloquoys scattered about the various holotapes you come to realize hes a disturbed, traumatized individual who's maybe not quite meant to be taken as gospel. He reminds me of Measurehead's backstory from DE if you do the fascism sidequest.

That being said, the reason for Lonesome Road being my favourite is the gameplay. Its an amazing gauntlet that puts the player's abilities to the test with the various tunnelers, deathclaws, marked men and the like. Chris Avellone's hatred for the post-postapocalypse shines here, albeit appropriately for a recently nuked area, there are nought but the remnants of those who tried to rebuild the divide but were cut down by radiation. FNV is a bit too easy, but Lonesome Road is a nice mix up in this department. This last playthrough I played using the JSawyer mod and a revolver build, both of which made the game more challenging and I had a blast making it through the titular road.

Its unfortunate how the DLC also implies that the mojave will just get fucked again by tunnelers because again, Chris Avellone hates the post-postapocalypse, but my headcanon is that the indomitable will of the player character overcomes this to make sure the future inhabitants of vegas can put up a fight. I mean, a drugged mailman took care of dozens of them with a few hollow points, it won't be that difficult to mount a defensive line against em

After years of drift towards third-person action, survival horror finally returns to its roots: dunking your entire arm into every single trashcan you can find and showing disobedient vending machines and lockers the righteous fury of your boot heel.

Thank God the indie market is so robust these days, because the increasing homogenization of the modern big budget game and shrinking genre space therein means you wouldn't get proper survival horror otherwise. Crow Country and others like Signalis have been filling that void, but despite clearly playing to the charm of PlayStation era horror with its visuals - especially with its character models, which look as though they've been unearthed from an old Net Yaroze kit - Crow Country is no tired pastiche. It's safe rooms, puzzles, and resource management might harken to a design ethos that was at one point more commonplace, but these elements feel authentic and borne from a place of appreciation and understanding.

Nowhere is this more strongly felt than in the park's layout and the way in which the player navigates it. The amusement park theme allows for neatly defined areas with their own theming and unique attractions, with hidden passages, back rooms, cast tunnels, and a subterranean network serving as the connective tissue between each "land" in a way that feels appropriate for the setting while serving to make the park feel highly interconnected. Crow Country is great at providing a sense of space while conveying where the player should go and what to do next. I never felt lost or completely stumped by a puzzle and was consistently engaged and encouraged to revisit old locations to explore - the part of my brain that starts processing how I want to route my way through a game activated pretty early, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a sign that a survival horror game is living up to the promise of its genre.

The setting is also small. Crow Country is less Disneyland, more Santa's Village, so one way developer SFB Games succeeds in making repeated loops through the park threatening is by gradually introducing more enemies and traps to familiar locations. As the time of day progresses, rain and darkness further obscure the player's vision, and boobytrapped pick-ups begin to litter the map to prey on the sense of trust they've developed with their environment. I sprinted my way through the opening two hours, juked most enemies and picked up any crap I saw laying on the ground. By hour five, I was walking everywhere, stopping frequently, side-eyeing boxes of ammo, and finding that I actually had to conserve what I had due to the increased expectation that I shoot some damn "guests."

I also appreciate Crow Country for telling a complete and coherent story, something I think a lot of horror games have pushed away from. I think the Five Nights series has poisoned the genre and led a lot of other indie horror creators to believe a complex and intentionally vague narrative is the best way to ensure franchise longevity. Keep posing questions, provide no answers. I get it, sometimes it's best to let the audience fill in gaps, you don't want over-explain horror, but in the hands of a weak writer, the "unknown" can just be a euphemism for "nothing."

That's not to say Crow Country fails to raise any questions of its own, rather that in true PSX survival horror fashion, you're given all the clues you need to form the big picture through memos, context, and dialog. How well you do that is entirely dependent on how much you're paying attention, and whether you view Crow Country as being so cliched that its horror can be explained by way of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. I was extremely satisfied by the ending, which leaves just enough unanswered that you'll still have something to think of without feeling like you'll need to consult a YouTube series or read like, seven fucking books and play a dozen more games. An indie horror game with a conclusion that is both cogent and earned, thank christ.

So make the most of your Memorial Day weekend and bring the whole family down to Crow Country. Come ride our newest attraction: The Seven Seas, and discover new types of bacteria. Remember, vets and children under 6 get in free!

Watched Market Pliers play this game a year and a half ago and thought it looked really neat, and what do ya know? It is neat.

This game wears its Resident Evil influence on its sleeve (non-coincidentally, my second Resident Evil inspired game review in a row), but you don't need to know a thing about Resident Evil to get your mileage out of this - case and point, I don't know pretty much anything about RE and I liked it. Also some Amnesia influence thrown in there.

I recommend going in blind for sure, while the story is nothing special (in fact, it is, quite literally, a nightmare, a fact the game doesn't hide), there are some surprises you won't want spoiled, and a few decent scares. Not much more to say for me. 2 hour game and cheap.

There are some large spiders in this one, though, I guess that's worth noting for some people. They're late game and you'll see their webs first, but still worth noting.

After Mega Man World was only okay, and after reading reviews for Mega Man World 2 that called it the worst of the Game Boy games, I went in pretty skeptical. People generally don’t like this game, but I think people often struggle to articulate why. That’s pretty frustrating to me, because I think this game is far and away better than the first Mega Man World game, and while it’s not an unsung masterpiece, it’s certainly not terrible. I’ll get into this more in the next review as well, but ultimately Mega Man World 2 and 3 are both games that blend together and are almost exactly equal in quality. Both are good, but neither is great.

Read the full review for free here: https://medium.com/@QueenEmilysCourt/mega-man-world-2-mega-man-ii-a-step-in-the-right-direction-74cba166a30b

Cave Story is one of the all time indie classics. It has some of the most charming designs in a video game, with the paper white look of every character from the Mimigas to Quote and Curly being very iconic. The Amiga-like feel with the 50 FPS gameplay really gives it a vibe that's unlike other 21st century video games. Not to mention the music is some of the most elaborate I've heard from a composer wanting to emulate chiptunes https://youtu.be/IdAzVhCof_4

Yet every time I try to play Cave Story I simply have fun in the first few areas, reach the sand area, and just lose all my momentum. I forced myself to get the best ending today and I'm kind of at a loss. Keeping track of the weapon levels is annoying, finishing the sand zone is the longest hour of my life with the collectathon elements, there's a total lack of QOL due to the player being unable to do things like equip multiple items (ie jet + mask) at the same time, the weapon levels forcibly reset near the end, the true ending is some of the most cryptic and unintuitive nonsense in a video game....

I have endless respect for Cave Story. I love the graphics and music, I enjoy some parts like the early game and some bosses, and the Spur weapon and jet can make movement actually pretty fun near the end of the game. But having to keep in the back of my mind how easy it is to screw myself out of a proper ending, as well as constantly swapping weapons and even having to make sure not to level up the Nemesis... it all adds up to making me not actually enjoy playing the game overall.

It's a well made game, and I think there's a lot to like. I'm not a huge metroidvania player and I'm someone who primarily likes quick and kinetic sidescrollers I can speedrun endlessly, so I reckon bigger metroidvania fans have every reason to get more out of the game than I did. It's also not terribly long, being roughly 5 hours with a guide, so it's honestly worth a playthrough once for anyone who wants to see an influential indie work in action. It's super impressive work, but I just find myself enjoying the creator's other games much more.

I'm glad I went through it, and I'm glad I got to meet Balrog and Curly my beloved, but I'd definitely call it one of the better games I'm happy never to touch again personally.

Shoutout to the godlike Aeon Genesis translation btw, much prefer it to the official translation. Balrog's HUZZAH is the superior catchphrase, I'm sorry https://www.deviantart.com/extreme-sonic/art/Cave-Story-HUZZAH-374739229

Hey pretty good stuff actually! They actually made the timings fit for an LCD so I found it much more playable than the first game. The songs aren't as memorable as the studio's PS1 games but I quite like the Big song tbh.

It's too bad this game was a flop and this type of game fell out of style, but when it cost $90 adjusted for inflation I really can't blame people for the lukewarm response. Parappa 1 was considered innovative, but Parappa 2 competed with quite a lot of juggernauts like DDR so the hour long runtime didn't really impress audiences. Which is a shame, since I think it still holds its own rather well next to the titans.

Also the game has Lammy in it, so automatically a 10/10 game in spirit. I was surprised just how much she was featured since I remembered her only having a 5 second cameo in the anime!

Anyway who all eating the Parappa 2 pizza with me? https://i.imgur.com/lukW4xd.png