This game has a lot of potential, but I feel like the initial concept works against it. It’s a bit more mean-spirited, where you kind of hope something horrible happens to everyone and it actually needs to in order to progress. It’s a concept that unfortunately rips away all of the scariness and hilarity that most people would probably be looking for. Aside from a well-timed spawn, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Unlike the other game that this one will be compared to until the end of time, there’s no chance of organic comedy coming from your friends who are avoiding danger rather than looking for it. The point here is to hope that something kills everyone and that the camera man isn’t dicking around somewhere else while it’s happening.

I played the game for about 2 hours and feel like I’ve already experienced everything it has to offer. The upgrades it sells you are mostly cosmetic and the amount of views you get per video seem completely arbitrary. You’ll have some rounds of gameplay where everyone dies in the first 5 seconds, leaving you with 60% of film left and others where barely anything happens at all. The environments don’t really give you that much to play with and there’s no reason to wander off because there’s only one camera. Every day ends with an awkward movie experience where everyone sits around looking at the unedited footage and maybe sometimes you’ll hear a light chuckle under someone’s breath. It’s nice that they offered it for free, but I probably won’t go back to this one until it gets some major updates.

Whip! Whip! is a really fun take on the arcade clear em up genre that Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros is apart of. The game looks cute, music is alright, story is silly and lighthearted, and the gameplay itself is really addicting. Chaining attacks together to maximize your score feels really good.

While I'm not too huge on the lack of continues, the game is pretty fast to get you back into it. There's 100 Levels and a post game challenge where you need to complete every level in one go.

If you're into games like Bubble Bobble, Snow Bros, and others like it I'd grab Whip! Whip! while you still can. Alpha Unit went defunct sometime ago and in lieu of that, the Switch version of the game was delisted. The game is somehow still up on Steam, so buy it while you're still able to.

so this was a showcase for the wiimote and assorted control options in the way CING's DS games were for the touchscreen and other features. it was nice but i probably would've enjoyed it a bit more if i wasn't having frequent control problems trying to play in Dolphin with mouse+keyboard on top of multiple freezes near the end.

was surprised by how slow paced and generally easy going this was for the most part. the original game was similar but it was only a mere fraction of the length. it mostly works out okay but i found myself enjoying myself more with the lowkey exploration around the lake versus some of the stuff when things fully unravel near the end.

good, not great but a sizable improvement over the original Another Code/Trace Memory either way. curious to see if the remakes end up shifting my feelings on either one.

feels truly bittersweet to have finished all of CING's material of this kind. i guess i could always work backwards and try Glass Rose but reception for that seems rough to say the least.

I think Sam & Max are the most gay-coded characters ever created and I honestly could not tell you why. Maybe its the suit and the height difference.

Anyway, it boggles my mind just how effortlessly and hilariously witty this game is. I feel like a lot the time attempts at comedy through fourth wall breaks and quippy witicisms come off as really forced and groan-worthy, but Sam & Max are able to pull it off so well. Their dynamic, wordy banter, disregard for the law and morality, and gleefully cynical outlook on the world is just delightful and makes the humor really work. It's paired with absolutely sublime art direction and animation to boot. Sometimes the puzzles are fairly obtuse, but I think that's the price you have to pay with some of these older adventure games.

Reco is a bit too busted for Original and Maniac. There's waaay too many bullet cancels for a character with such huge range. I got my Maniac 1cc the first day I even tried the game. One of the easier Cave 1CCs (not counting Novice modes) for sure. Very frantic, I'll give it that, specially on God Mode, which I couldn't even get past Stage 2 even with all my bombs. I'll try and grab the Maniac 1cc for Palm in the near future.

The stages are beautiful and the music is amazing. Stage 2, 3 and 5 all have such beautiful presentation. The scoring is intuitive although the advanced stuff is, like in the original Mushihimesama, completely out of the realm of possibility if you aren't dwelling deep in the game (or reading a guide which is more likely).

Kinda weird how this is my first Mushi 1cc for now. I tried it on a whim and after getting to Stage 4 on my first credit it just made me go and get it since it seemed so on reach. It really is waaaaay too easy to just hold the fire button and stream all the patterns in the game, compared to the first Mushi and Futari 1.5; which again, God seems to solve.

As I traversed the upside down castle with whip in hand fighting knights with my cool back dash I thought to myself Castlevania Symphony of the Night is a great game! I was however playing Afterimage, a Metroidvania made by Aurogon Shanghai. It's one of those games that I simply can't remember where I heard about it but It's been on my radar a while for it's gorgeous visual style...and I'll frankly play any Metroidvania you throw at me.

From a Metoidvania point of view it's kind of weak in a lot of ways though. The game is absolutely massive with about 20 locations to explore over the course of the adventure. Some of these locations are almost the size of other games of the genres entire maps and it took me over 30 hours to initially finish it off. The level design is expansive with various secrets to find with more skills and abilities unlocked as you would expect but backtracking is a nightmare and fast travelling uses a consumable item which just seemingly discourages it early on. The mid game I found it difficult to know exactly where to go and there is a weird difficulty spike due to the multiple directions which took a while to smooth out. The story equally feels it lacks cohesion. It's very dialogue, character and plot heavy but at the same time wants to be mysterious and lore intense like Dark Souls / Hollow Knight yet instead just leaves a lot of questions like it was never really finished. Playing the extra mode unlocked after several endings as a side story does answer some of it, as does the true ending but there are still many aspects of the plot that feel very incomplete or unsatisfying.

So why a 7/10 if you are luke warm on the level design and story Fallen? I hear you ask in confusion. It's simply because despite that, I had a lot of fun with it. The locations are varied and the artwork is really stunning throughout, the soundtrack is beautiful and sometimes haunting. The protagonist Renee's animations are smooth and combat for the most part is fun with a variety of weapons, accessories and magic to choose from.

Yes the game could have done with tightening up a little bit where I think they got a little overzealous but overall it's a fun little game.

+ Beautiful art design.
+ I liked the soft haunting melodies of the OST.
+ Combat is fast and fluid with some good options.
+ I just like exploring in Metroidvanias...

- Level's are a little too large.
- Story could be tightened up more, it wants both a lot of dialogue yet mysterious lore and doesn't quite work for either.

Unpacking is an interesting idea. It's essentially fairly freeform puzzle game of 8 levels unpacking boxes of someone moving into different houses. It follows an unnamed woman's life through her first room as a girl, through college house sharing and relationships to a middle aged adult.

The game makes use of environmental story telling to push what is happening along, moving in with their first partner, the lack of space or compatibility etc. Without meeting or hearing about this woman you can piece together the events of her life and interests. It's a really neat idea and I liked seeing the small changes to belongings from location to location or items she has taken with her through most of her life. It does wear out it's welcome after a little bit though as I don't feel it gets quite clever enough with it's items to progress that story as it could. There are only so many piles of the same books and socks I can unbox and put on shelves or in draws without feeling like the idea ran stale. There are also some sections where the simple music just stopped leaving an odd silence as I decided where to put the yoga mat under the bed again in the next bedroom.

Still I really appreciate what a neat idea and unique game this is. I would have preferred more interactive items, close up's of photos to show things our nameless protagonist had done, new hobbies or even problems in her life to flesh it out more. What I really took from this though is if someone unpacked my things for me if I moved house what sort of person would they think I am? So much of what we own, decide to keep and how we keep them at home speaks so much about us as people. For that alone I am grateful to this short and cute little game.

+ Interesting use of environmental story telling.
+ Unique game idea.
+ Nice pixel art style.

- Runs out of steam a bit in the last couple of levels.

Will forever be known to me as a game i played ONLY during every single one of my Jewish Studies lectures. Im not even Jewish so i cant begin to tell you how i ended up in that class but this was the only thing i looked forward doing at 10:55 - 11:30am tuesdays and thursdays every week. Today was my last day of class so it was either I beat the game today or i take another class about the Jewish religion. There was no better option.

Fun game though if not a little confusing at times which is why it took me so long to beat it, though the game does have hints which i used religiously because between learning about pangrea or whatever my professor was talking about and me not knowing the geography of Japan i couldnt hope to keep up... Then i would have had to take a second Jewish culture class. The zones are pretty open at times and normally i would find this to be boring but the music was very good so i didnt really care much... either that or i was just so bored that anything was entertaining. The tight corridor areas were extremely fucking annoying due to the god awful camera

This game also does that Final Fantasy V shit with the humor where they do an attempt at comedy and nobody laughs but instead of playing this it just plays a laugh track (<-- thats a laugh track in case any of you didnt know) and unfortunately im a sucker for shitty jokes so this appealed to me. I think beating this game was more of an accomplishment to me than completing the course

I mean, why not? When Nobunaga ruled part of Japan, and was asked for his reasoning to go after the rest, he simply went "because it's there". I'm pretty sure he said that, I was alive for it. It was essentially the same mindset I had with finishing the Advance Collection.

Known as "Vampire's Kiss" for our PALs, "Dracula X" could only be assumed to be meant as "Dracula's Hug" rather than some attempt at the 2Xtreme movement of the 90s. You see, because in here Dracula gives you a nice little hug and a peck on the cheek, all before he kicks you down a hole in his dilapidated humble abode. It makes one wonder why Dracula would even bother with floors in general when he's more than capable of flying everywhere, especially if he's already figured out that the best defense against Belmonts is to simply either make them walk up stairs, or dare them to hop with their cement-infused boots across magical levitating platforms. Where these platforms are coming from is a mystery, but I assume it's where all those holes in Dracula's throne room came from, or perhaps that's the origin of all the gaps in the grand hallway where one slip up means Richter falling into an alternate stage that denies him the ability to rescue Maria's now completely useless ass.

"Wow, thanks Richter! Good luck on your quest, I'll make my way out now."

Bitch.

It's really intriguing how a final boss fight can completely overtake discussion, and it's quite telling what the legacy of the Dracula's Smooch version of the climactic finale leaves behind when there exists an entire guide on GameFAQs dedicated to it. A useful one at that. Part of me wishes the Game Gear version of Sonic 2 would have something like that for it's first boss, but I guess there's not much to be helped there beyond "I sure hope the balls don't hit me". To say that the fight with Dracula X is a slog would be shorting it a few hundred didgeridoos, because man I could've made some tasty pancakes in the time it took trying to wait out his ass to get into an advantageous position to hit his godawful hitbox along the pillar system he installed in his throne room prior to him calling in an assist from Devil Kazuya. Kaiser Sigma from X3 would puke at all the times I uselessly cracked my whip across Dracula X's forehead and had it not register, because Konami designed this game from the ground up with anti-blockbuster rental countermeasures instead of waiting for it to come out to us, thus destroying all potential goodwill it could have found as a demake later during the age of emulation, with an audience less upset at being bamboozled out of a more faithful and less mean-spirited retelling of the beloved PC Engine classic. Instead, Switch owners will be annoyed they have to deal with this while Requiem continues chilling as a PS4 exclusive nearly six years later.

Baffling, though not quite as baffling as the censorship where they kept the blood on the title screen, but got rid of Death's Mortal Kombat Deception-style Hara Kiri where he decapitates himself with his own scythe, meanwhile Richter in our version apparently explodes into a pile of flour for Dracula X to make his cookies from.

What cookie would Richter be? Puzzling...

My opinion was ever so slightly improved from forcing myself to replay this for completion-sake, but the most heartwarming thing I get out of Dracula's Kiss personally is seeing the font used at the bottom of the title screen for the copyright, and being reminded of a childhood banger in Konami's Biker Mice From Mars which uses the same thing, so I guess I'll go play that now instead. Ciao.

List of mods I used available on my pastebin post here. I should also note that “Mastered” in my case means getting all the achievements, leaving out a handful of Thieves Den Awards that become active or otherwise easier to nab in NG+.

For an RPG I heavily played well over a month, fresh and pampered from revisiting Persona 3 in its original and remade form prior, as well as the hot button topic it’s become over the years, you'd expect I'd have a lot to say about Persona 5 Royal. Well... I don't, really. All I can think about in my sleep deprived state is how my 200+ hour venture - and that's generously ignoring inflated idle times Steam's counter acclimates - is how woefully underwhelming the package was save for a few bright spots, and how dispassionately apathetic I became after finally finishing and scouring out for the light.

It’s funny I mentioned my time investment a bit off the heels of a discord within FF7 Rebirth’s activities and planning, cause it should be mentioned (and emphasized) that it’s actually pretty easy to focus and fine-tune your palette into whatever it is you desire. No one except yourself, and perhaps foolish pride, is forcing you to do all of those activities after all, unless they’re particularly easy to nab off the beaten path. That is, of course, neglecting the key component: the focal point where all points are stitched and huddled around, an area P5R constantly falters over. Already saw a flashback sequence? Fret not, you’re gonna be subjugated to it not 10 minutes after. Got a good grasp of the ongoings of the story, be it by themes or event details? Alright, but you’re gonna have to bear the condescending attitude as you watch the character(s) exposit these things anyway. Grew a form of investment over a beat and how it unfolds before and during the main show? Slow your roll there bucko, you haven’t heard about the overly unnecessary and outright damaging undercurrent that ruins it! Sure, it sounds like hyperbole, and as you go along many of these detriments are either quelled or nulled, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re present, nor does it alleviate their weight of bloat and the meekish presentation of what are honestly some pretty simple themes. The fact it took my entire first session of play to get to the initial true Free Time event on the 18th, whereas P3 - both versions, might I add - give me that freedom within just a few short hours and P4 just about half of this, is appalling.

The writing woes extend to the Phantom Thieves themselves, which I suppose isn’t a Hot Take or anything since there’s been a bit of a debate surrounding them over the years. To dispel some common points, I don’t believe the notion that they are “centered” around Joker - on the contrary, not only is this running along the recurring theme of “kinship through displacement”, there’s already a bit of an established line between Ann and Ryuji, Futaba and Sojiro, and, though faint and dubious, Makoto and Haru. As a group, there’s a rather believable sense of friendship and camaraderie developed and finalized throughout the course of the story amidst the hustle and bustle of urban civilization, which is a bit of a surprise since I was pessimistically expecting the opposite. What did come true, unfortunately, is the lack of individualism and the expression that's delivered from it. The handling of Ann and Haru are criticized enough that I don’t think I can add anything to the former’s blobby mold of an archetype and hypocritical implementation of her supposed freedom of self-expression, and the latter’s seed of growth taken away due to the already mentioned bloat plaguing the game; same with Ryuji and how his (great) Social Link about reliance on others and strength through teamwork is routinely undermined by him being treated as a joke within the main cutscenes. Futaba is ostensibly headcanoned as one under the Autism umbrella, and while the intent is competently delivered and well-handled, the amount of #GAMER allusions are poor and clumsily handled, leading to a bumpy state of her psyche. Yusuke, who’s SL arc revolves around the dichotomy of man and their drive of passion within the hobbyist and professional mindset, is often treated as The Quirky Oddball One of the group with superficial understanding as to what art is since they did this like, twice before I guess and believed third time is truly the charm, which is also why they made Morgana have the same arc as Teddie and Aigis but without any of the things that made those two compelling. Of the group, Makoto is the one with the fewest weights holding her down; her arc is straightforward, explored to its fullest in her SL with little downplay within the narrative, and her importance in the group is always front and center. Her straight-edge nature can be too plain at times, granted, as are her connecting points regarding resolve and resolution, but compared to everyone else? It’s way easier to swallow. To reiterate, however, my main issue isn’t with the characters themselves, honestly I only truly despise Morgana and his obnoxious (albeit small in intensity) demeanor - it’s just kind of hard to truly feel connected with the group when the game seems to treat them more so as dolls for amusement than actual people, something even P4 never fully succumbed to during its outing.

I kind of wish I had more to say, really, cause it’s not as if I totally hate P5R or anything. There’s some good bits in here, like the full exploration of escapism as a theme finally being done here thanks to the “Royal” part of the game desperately giving the endgame a sense of closure, some of the non-essential confidants like Hifumi, Mishima, Chihaya and Yoshida being great to explore despite the drawbacks, and the superbosses being a fair bit of fun to go over. But, like, I’m not really sure what more I can add unfortunately. I’d sort of just be repeating common talking points and, compounded by the fact I’m facing burnout from both writing and my aforementioned time allocation, it just feels fruitless to go over? Like I don’t want to be the umpteenth mouthpiece going over how ridiculously easy this game is even excluding Merciless’ baffling(ly hilarious) modifiers pertaining to player favor and the constricted dungeon design making it so that ambushes are a rare, if ever present, occurrence one can face, cause everyone already discussed that. Did you know that, even in the original team, there were some Etrian Odyssey battle planners? Really makes me wonder how the hell it ended up so milquetoast in engagement, dungeon layout, and the us v them nature of gameplay routing when EO1’s first two stratums already had more going on. It’s also why I’m hardpressed to mention my adoration with Third Semester, cause I can’t quite word it in a way that isn’t already brought up by the people, what with Maruki, Akechi, and Kasumi being the ethos, pathos, and logos of Joker’s - and by principle, Yuki and Narukami’s - Wild Card slot and the reflection they face should his life be altered ever so slightly. I dunno man, it’s like… expansion aside, this is the RPG that got a lot of people into the genre now? The Atlus mega-hit? I’m a lot cooler on the problems than others seem to be, and I wouldn’t cynically berate others over this cause that’s stupid and rude, but it does leave me scratching my head and wondering what else I had missed in my long, long journey as an urbanite Fool.

Parry Nightmare is something of a bullet hell game, where instead of solely trying to dodge your main form of attack is parrying approaching enemies. You play as a soul, trapped in a lucid nightmare along with your demonic guardian Honnou, in which you must fight and reflect on major points of trauma and stress in your life.

I have a few points of contention with this game. I will start first by saying that aesthetically and atmospherically, it succeeds hard. Despite being short, it gives off a well polished and kind of eccentric vibe... when I first started playing, I thought it had a feeling like Paper Mario or Warioware though the gameplay didnt reflect that, of course.

The game is hard. It might be one of the most difficult games I have ever played. It is not like other bullet hells, where they slowly ease you into things, with your safety net of bombs or other clearing objects for when you get stuck. You stand in a circular room, enemies coming from all sides, your main point of interaction is hitting A when an enemy gets within a certain range of you to parry. Honnou will then shoot when they are down and you can collect a light fragment from them, 100 being needed to beat the level... though, one light drop from one enemy only seems to be .1 instead of a full figure, which isnt that big of a problem, but you also cant see at first and need to collect 70 of these light drops to have a full range of the room. You can not take many hits, and when youre down to your last health you become sluggish until you gain some more (which pretty much means youre going to die), your clearing bomb isnt on hand but instead its built up when you do well, so if you get hit once or parry early you can lose it and become overwhelmed. Bosses can also only be hit with this attack and take up a large portion of the arena. Even though traditional bullet hells are long, somehow dying in this feels worse. The levels are short, can be beaten in under 5 minutes, but somehow every time I died I felt like it wasnt my fault. Enemies move very, very fast and its incredibly easy to just have a boss sit its ass right down on you when youre sluggish and can barely move. It feels like I make one tiny mistake, parry early, my level goes down (as it does when you miss a parry), then Honnou isnt strong enough to fight off everyone and I get overwhelmed and die and now its dark again and uuuuugh. If there was one safety net (like a mid level checkpoint) I feel like it would be much more manageable, but as it is now it is insanely difficult.

Story-wise, I also had a sour taste in my mouth after finishing. Parry Nightmare takes place in Japan, and a lot of the protagonist girl's problems extend out of stresses common in the region (high workload, lack of personal time, shaky relationship with family), and though these issues are semi-universal, the problem presents itself in how the ending treats these traumas. Throughout the game, the girl makes it clear that she is deeply miserable on a base level to the point where she barely recognizes she has things she enjoys. She has little time to herself, her entire life commandeered and seen through what other people expect of her, down to the makeup brand she uses. Her mother makes her deeply unhappy and scared her as a child, her apartment is messy and fraught witn objects reminding her of stress. It is clear that if she continues living the way she is living, ignoring the messages from her body and mind, that she will get deeply sick, live a completely unsatisfying life, and probably die early. That's what I thought the game was leading up to- a wakeup call, time to make a change. Instead, the ending? "Your soul can overcome anything! Just keep pushing through!" And then it cuts to a cutscene where the girl is doing her work efficiently and talking to her mom on the phone, happily. So, what is it then? Was the moral of the story that everyone has things that stress them out, that the best thing we can ever hope to do is "push through them" instead of confronting why it is exactly that we dislike our parents, yet can't seem to admit it, why it is that we force ourselves to work so hard. Is the best we can ever hope to do is "push through" all of it? Is that healthy? There is a major contradiction in the game's messaging here. Though it seems like you're fighting off these traumas at first, it appears all you're capable of doing is subduing them until the next time they wring their ugly neck out in whatever form they take next. It felt icky, watching this person go back to a job they hate and a mother that has hurt them. I cant stand that ideology of "just deal with it" that has ruined many bodies and minds all at once.

So, it was interesting. Parry Nightmare feels good, solid. It's mostly the attitude it takes on the matter of stress that sours my opinion of it in general, as well as the difficulty. If you like short, challenging games then perhaps I would reccomend checking it out, just don't go taking life lessons from it.

Children of the Sun's hyper-stylized visuals and visceral soundscape serve as a great juxtaposition to the surprisingly methodical puzzle-solving; the likes of which do a decent job of encouraging creativity and improvisation from the player. While a couple of the more challenging levels occasionally felt a bit frustrating due to the amount of trial and error they required, they were well worth persevering through as the satisfaction of finally discovering that perfect route was always fulfilling.

Gave myself a day to kinda just sit with the whole experience of my first playthrough. Xenogears is one of those games that kinda just existed within the culture in a way where I always heard people vaguely gesture at its greatness, but never actually got any full details about what exactly made it so great. So for years and years and years and years and years I kinda just kept putting it off, playing many other games before and after it, hearing about its complexities but never really the details as of what those complexities were. Finally experiencing it for myself I completely get it.

An experience that is some parts Neon Genesis Evangelion, some parts Gundam some parts sci-fi novels and films, Xenogears wears all of its inspirations firmly on its sleeve and proudly bears it all as it goes into its own psychological, religious explorations of the self.

The ways in which it talks about running away from your problems rather than dealing with them and how that inevitably comes to bite you in the ass, there's a quite good example with the martial arts tournament you enter that genuinely surprised me when it happened.

The ways it delves into how trauma can inform and explain behaviors, can cause people to drift one way or another instead of facing the real problems within themselves, be lead to more and differing kinds of abuses, or completely shut themselves down due to their inability to truly cope with the things that've happened to them. But it also firmly discusses how important it is to continue to live, to continue to fight and go on despite the struggles we face in life, how we have to take responsibility for ourselves and the things we do despite our traumas, that again our traumas can be an explanation for behaviors and actions you may take, but at the end of the day you have to be responsible for your own actions.

There are a few characters I do wish were able to get more from the story (Rico, Maria, Chu Chu) and the very clear rushing of things does absolutely fuck with what was clearly supposed to be this ambitious and sprawling experience, though I will say in spite of the clear rush job that Disc 2 ends up as, I genuinely still quite loved the way they handle the presentation and style. Some of the quick cuts are really sharp and effective, I dig the kinda play stage type beat they do for some of the cutscenes they didn't have time to fully make enviornments for, I like the way they frame each part from differing characters POV's. There's a lot of cool things that make that second disc really interesting, kinda reflecting episodes 25 and 26 of NGE in ways.

It's such a strange feeling in ways cause like I kinda despised the gameplay at times (ground combat relies a bit too heavily on deathblows and grinding them out where-as I feel like the Gear combat is a bit better balanced in terms of building up to your deathblows and having to strategically manage your fuel levels in interesting ways). But even though I wasn't huge on the combat or some of the dungeon design (fuck Babel Tower) the whole thing just really came together for me. Everything it was doing was absolutely fuckin aces, it honestly reminded me of watching NGE for the first time as a teenager AS WELL AS watching both Shiki-Jitsu and Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 with what exactly it was going for in its messaging and just how much it resonated with me. How much Fei's character arc resonated with me, how dense and packed of an experience it was overall.

I think I can safely say that I'm getting into the series cause I wanna see what else can come from anyone involved who was able to put this together.