Asura's wrath can be described as a very shallow experience when it comes down to it. But despite that this game has so much charm and style to it that it more than makes up for any big issues that come from the style of game it is. Probably like 60-70% of this game are qte cutscenes that will present you with some of the sickest shit you've ever seen in your life. Meanwhile that 30-40% is a mixture of a 3D fighter and a on rails shooter. Don't ask me how it all works cause it just kinda does. The story and characters have all the subtlety of an atom bomb but I think the over the top nature of it all works and it sucks that the true ending of the game is locked behind dlc that can be hard to experience nowadays cause I think those last 4 episodes have easily the best story and character moments in the whole game. This game is in desperate need of a definitive edition so the dlc can be preserved in a better way cause I emulated this game and getting the dlc to work that was a process in a half but seeing how we've seen hide nor hair of this game since it's release i have my doubts. Regardless the game itself was very sick experience that I'm glad i got to experience.

Scorn is an uneven balance of Riven-like alien techno-puzzling and atmospheric existential horror akin to SOMA. The art is a perfect amalgamation of Giger & Beksiński, fleshy organic architecture amassed across the surface of a dying world. The first two-thirds present particularly engaging core puzzles, as you slowly unpick the purpose of the machines you are revving up, often leading to some sort of sacrifice of an innocent(?) being (ranging from tiny weird guys to enormous weird guys) in this abject world. The wordless communication of the narrative through exploration, the environment & your ritualistic puzzling is refreshing (in a time where many games won't. shut. up).

The alien life wandering the flesh-corridors are alluring at first, with some interesting behaviours ambivalent to, & decentering, the player. But their placement and the very awkward feeling combat generates annoyance rather than tension, a very clumsy implementation of what was probably envisioned as a ‘living’ world but grew smaller in scope as they struggled to bring this to release. This is most evident in the very dull final chapter where a (puzzle) boss and most puzzles are solved with blunt-force explosives. Despite my final impressions, Ebb has a really strong foundation here and I look forward to seeing how they grow.

Historically, shoot em up games that focus on dodging and shooting as the central mechanic have not really appealed to me. To be fair, I probably haven't given them enough tries, but this game makes me want to because it is a lot of fun all the way through. Not to mention the land battling that contains a lot of the game's complexity and strategy.

The flying sections which are the most similar to traditional shoot em ups were actually some of my favorites in the game. I'll get into the controls later but they actually feel pretty comfortable during these sections. It feels like they were designed for the flying and not the land battles. Gliding around the stage while aiming at demons is a great rub-your-tummy-pat-your-head kind of challenge that I enjoyed refining as the game went along. The levels and visuals are really beautiful during this sections whether it be gliding over a human town at war, exploring an outer space stronghold, passing through Viridi's nature depots, or whatever wacked up idea the devs had. I appreciate how the levels typically open with these sections due to Palutenna's limited power of flight. It gets me excited to play each level and creates a solid structure for the experience. One criticism of the sky sections I do have is that the enemy variety does fall off towards the end to where it feels like I am shooting the same cacophony of demons, forces of nature, and aurum troops over and over again.

The land battles are where the bulk of this game takes place and is also where most of the challenge comes from. This is where the wacky controls start to really be a factor. They take some time to get used to honestly cause a little bit of pain and numbness if you play for too long. I appreciate that they are very unique and very functional once you get the hang of them though. The land sections are where the game gets a lot of it's personality. Each level and location carves out a unique environment, identity, and personal storyline that the characters discuss and get you interested in. There are often a handful of enemies that get introduced that build to this feeling as well. Then, obviously there are bosses to each chapter that are mostly exclusive to the ground sections. Most of them are interesting and build to the identity that these chapters build for themselves even more. There is decent gameplay variety and strengths and weaknesses to most of them as well. My one main complaint would be that most of the bosses are actually much easier than the levels themselves. However, this is partly due to my biggest pet peeve of the game though, the death descending difficulty slider.

In general, I really prefer not to choose my difficulty, just set the game at a good difficulty level and let me enjoy it with hopefully a solid level of challenge that is uniform for all players. If you want me to choose a difficulty at the very beginning, fine I'll pick one and we ball, but this game makes you pick one every level with collectibles locked behind certain difficulty intensities that you don't even know before hand. Not only that, but if you die and don't want to restart the level the game LOWERS the difficulty. Whatever happened to gritting it out and trying to power through a tough challenge. This basically means if you lose to a boss the next time you face it, it's going to be a little bit easier, so it leaves me wondering did I win because I played better or because the game made me lower the difficulty. Overall, I just really don't like how ever present the difficulty slider is. On the positive side on design choices, I found the Sakurai menus and staples to be charming and functional. I also enjoyed fusing my weapons and experimenting with all the different different cutomization options even though sometimes I did fuck things up.

The story is actually pretty fun as well. The voice acting within the levels goes a long way in building up individual storylines as well as a broader narrative that comes together at a few different climax points. I like a lot of the main characters, despite sometimes being a bit cringe. Pitt and Palutenna's discussions are great background to kill demons to and characters like Magnus, Viridi, Hades, and a lot of the bosses add so much to the experience. Lastly, I want comment on how creative the game is. They took a game series with not much to work with and challenged themselves to get crazy with it. There are so many cool ideas. The chapter where you play as a little girl, a dog, magnus en route to killing Pit exemplifies the success of their experimentation.

Overall, Uprising is a really creative, beautiful, and unique experience. Although, the controls can quite literally be painful at times (I actually paced myself by taking a lot of breaks) and the intensity slider kinda pisses me off. That does not soil what is a tremendous game that experiments with a variety of different ideas and even gameplay styles.

I didn't have a great time with Remake, so I was very surprised when I realized how much I was actually enjoying this Yuffie focused DLC. It fixes pretty much every single issue I had with the main game! Pacing is improved, the story feels more focused, and Yuffie's moveset is just so much fun. Even movement outside of combat felt greatly improved, and destroying chests with throwable shurikens was satisfying all the way through.

I didn't mind the removal of controllable party members, mostly because I didn't really enjoy playing as them anyway. Yuffie having a broad range of melee and ranged options from the start felt great, and only having one companion made the battles much easier to read, as the abundance of particle effects became a thing of the past.

Even though the DLC isn't overly long, it still managed to make me fall in love with Yuffie and her companion Sonon. Don't get me wrong, Cloud is a great character, but after 20 hours of him grunting, shrugging and acting disinterested I was happy to play as the more cheerful Yuffie. I even got pretty emotional towards the end, something the main game didn't really accomplish outside of one or two scenes. The soundtrack is incredible too and felt much more varied in terms of genre than the OST of the main game did, excellently complementing Yuffie's personality.

There are also a couple of side quests, but none of them managed to really grab my attention. Other players might have a better time with the RTS Fort Condor minigame, but I found myself quickly overwhelmed and the tutorial wasn't that great. Even tho I won matches, I wasn't sure what I did right, so eventually I just stopped bothering with it.

My only other point of criticism concerns the graphics. Don't get me wrong, the DLC looks great, but texture and model quality seemed to be slightly lower than in the main game. Considering that this piece of content was never released for the PS4 version of the game, I kept looking for areas or setpieces that graphically set Episode Intermission apart from the main game, and I just couldn't find anything that'd be impossible on the older generation. Even though I only played Remake on the PS5, this release strategy felt scummy to me.

A middle-of-the-road 2.5/5 rating simultaneously feels overly unfair and overly generous. In spite of its expensive, lavish, and confident sense of style and presentation, FF7R is a thoroughly confused game, a mixed bag that fluctuates wildly in quality at completely sporadic intervals throughout. It's fun, and then it's frustrating; it's entertaining, and then it's energy-sapping; it's compelling, and then it's a complete and total clusterfuck. Sometimes Remake actually feels like FF7 come to life on the big screen, and then sometimes it occurs to you that you're just playing an incoherent fanfiction of a beloved classic. Confusion and imbalance are at the core of Remake's very identity in spite of its confident and professional facade, much like its unreliable-narrator protagonist and his personal struggles that FF7R only gets to briefly touch on before coming to an anticlimactic 'end'.

The choice to adapt the famous Midgar Arc into an entire 30-40 hour game is one I can almost understand from a certain perspective. FF7's Midgar has everything going for it: it's visually striking, immediately memorable, and drenched in a weirdly evocative mixture of dystopia and realism. Midgar is a tale of societal upheaval and cyberpunk revolution told through a uniquely fantastical lens, and almost every single iconic moment from the original game can be found in Midgar. The trains, the Mako reactors, Aerith's church, Cloud's motorcycle, Wall Market & Don Corneo, the destruction of Sector 7 and Sephiroth's slaughter of Shinra HQ, just one action-packed and iconic setpiece after another in the span of like 6-7 hours. Midgar is such a compelling and well-realized location, and yet it felt like there was so much we never got to see. So I can almost understand the merit behind focusing the entirety of FF7R within the rotting pizza that is Midgar: it's an endlessly interesting and unique location with so much lore, drama, and comedy built into it that maybe, just maybe, an entire game centered around this teal junkyard metropolis might be able to sustain itself for 30 hours.

What this amounts to in execution, however, is padding. A lot of padding. Almost everything I liked and appreciated in FF7R was lifted almost verbatim from the original game. Nothing new is really done with AVALANCHE, or Shinra, or the Turks, Mako, SOLDIER, the Cetra, or anything at all, really. For the most part, you're merely playing through the Greatest Hits of FF7 bloated with often unnecessary jam sessions comprised of overlong exposition and artificial gameplay lengtheners. The collapsed tunnel in FF7 is now an entire explorable area with a dreadful robot-hand minigame. The train-graveyard sequence is now an hour long and full of confusing, plothole-y ghost shit. Every time Cloud and co. have to shimmy through a tight space, you're forced to watch a cutscene of them slowly, painfully moving their way through something that should have taken a second to clear. Every side quest is this game is either a collect-a-thon fetch quest or a kill-a-thon fight sequence that adds minimal substance to the world around you. FF7R is defined by its padding, and all of this extra fluff culminates in the truly godawful Shinra Infiltration arc which, apart from a fun motorcycle chase at the very end and the goofy staircase sequence, is a dull, frustrating chore full of stupid, boring bullshit. The party splits up and you have to swap between party members because why not, the game needs to be longer. You have to slowly lumber across some monkey bars because why not, the game needs to be longer. You have to slowly walk through a boring museum room with unskippable dialogue and then slowly crawl through a boring fucking vent shaft because why not, the game--

And when FF7R's plot isn't being let down by its padding, it's being let down by a lack of subtlety and a misunderstanding about what worked in the quieter moments of FF7. The first bombing mission in FF7 was defined by a strangely dark climax; AVALANCHE's destruction of the first Mako Reactor cause millions of dollars in property damage and likely claims dozens of lives in the process, and yet the party decides to move on to the next bombing mission regardless. It's an interesting note to open the game on. It's a morally gray and ambiguous situation that casts a complex light on AVALANCHE's justified but violent actions, so of course FF7R ruins this moral ambiguity by revealing the overwhelming destruction was an intentional sabotage plot orchestrated by Shinra because evil. There are moments like this scattered throughout the entirety of FF7R. Sector 7's destruction is reduced from an atrocious war crime into an inconvenient tragedy, courtesy of an overlong evacuation sequence that ensures most of the civilians' survival. Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie were three unlucky, nameless victims of capitalism, callously slaughtered by an imperialistic world for daring to rebel against it, so naturally in FF7R these characters are given an ultimately unnecessary amount of added characterization and depth in spite of the inevitability of their fate, added characterization that ultimately (and paradoxically) adds very little to their overall character beyond trying to make you feel more :( when they die.

And then there's fucking Sephiroth. Sephiroth, the intimidating and mysterious monster that felt more like myth than man. He was a violent, ominous force of nature soaked in mystery and blood, a grim-reaper ghost that barely ever appeared in the first part of FF7, only manifesting into the plot when it was absolutely necessary. So of course Sephiroth appears every 20 fucking minutes to smirk and be pretentious and say cryptic hogwash like "muahaha there will be consequences", a bunch of hollow gobbledygook that amounts to nothing because your final fight with him ends in a stalemate, because of course it has to, his story can't end just yet, which means all of the buildup surrounding him ends on a flat-noted cliffhanger. Sephiroth made the most of his minimal appearances in Disc 1 of FF7, whereas the game can barely justify any of his fifty thousand scenes in FF7R.

And honestly, I'm not even gonna get into the new multiverse aspects of the plot and Zack Fair presumably being alive again (thus ruining literally everything about him) and the fucking Whispers or whatever and how their presence completely invalidates the intended stakes of the story, because this review is long enough and any further discussion about Tetsuya Nomura's additions to the narrative of FF7 would just descend into incoherent rambling. I'll just leave it at this: Nomura's flair for convoluted mythos and anime bullshit was charming in Kingdom Hearts, but it has already overstayed its welcome in Remake, and I can only imagine how much worse and thinly-worn it's going to get in Rebirth.

The plot of FF7R is, unfortunately, a wash more often than not. So much of what Remake adds to the world of FF7 is either needless or convoluted. It poorly rearranges the plot of a beloved RPG and laboriously, artificially stretches it out to the point where almost every new addition just feels like 'content', poorly-contextualized filler meant to hit a quota and nothing else... at least until the final hours of the game when it throws up its hands and says 'fuck it', deciding to bank on a bland fusion of Dissidia and Kingdom Hearts in its last moments instead. It is genuinely hard to say how much of the enjoyable stuff in FF7R's story is enjoyable on its own merits, or enjoyable because someone thought of it already years ago. I'm not inherently opposed to an Evangelion Rebuild-style subversion of FF7's plot, but the execution leaves so much to be desired. FF7R falls flat in ways that FF7 never did; FF7's story was overflowing with creative ideas, whereas FF7R struggles to bring anything new to a table that's been around since before I (and statistically, a fair chunk of you) were even born.

Sometimes, though, FF7R catches you off-guard. Sometimes FF7R is really fun. The action-RPG hybrid gameplay is fluid, fast, and full of catharsis; it's clear that Nomura et al. have come a long way since Kingdom Hearts 1, and the combat in FF7R continues to feel fresh and inviting even as the game's runtime drags into the double digits. The music is fucking fantastic throughout. The character models look utterly fantastic, the perfect blend between triple-A realism and gothic anime aesthetics. Certain locales, like the Mako reactors, Loveless Avenue, Wall Market or even the dreadfully-paced Shinra HQ and Train Graveyards, actually look and feel like beloved landmarks in FF7 come to life, liberated from the restraints of outdated and limited graphics. And as much of a meandering, incomplete mess the plot winds up being, the distinctive and memorable characters that inhabit Midgar are still a lot of fun to talk to and observe. Barret, Tifa, and Aerith are still some of the most fun and fleshed-out RPG party members pop culture's ever gotten, and that hasn't changed one iota.

In fact, this is actually probably the best interpretation of Cloud we've gotten since the OG game: Nomura had gradually morphed him into a generic, angsty edgelord in the 2000's and practically all of Cloud's personality and relevance had been scrubbed off in the 2010s, so it's nice to see Cloud finally resembling his old self again: a cocky, complex, socially-awkward loner that's just as silly as he is sad and sympathetic. FF7R does a great job at reminding you of the Cloud that everyone fell in love with, the grumpy but genuinely traumatized child at heart that just wanted to be a hero but didn't quite make the cut, deciding to roleplay as someone else entirely as a coping mechanism instead of properly confronting his mental hangups. He's both a badass antihero and a wet cat of a person, and I'm glad that FF7R embraces both of these equally-valid sides of Cloud. At least the protagonist is strong even when the plot around him keeps tumbling down.

It's genuinely very hard to properly express my feelings on FF7R. I was legitimately enjoying myself for most of the game's runtime, even if I was constantly making notes in the back of my head, even if I was constantly being reminded of the game's shortcomings. For about 15 hours, I was able to stomach most of its evident flaws courtesy of the fun characters and the flashy combat and the joyous feeling of playing FF7 all over again, but the final eight or so hours of FF7R were such a fucking drag that it dissipated and shattered the already-flimsy smoke and mirrors the game had been dangling over my eyes. At times, FF7R is desperately unfun, weighed down by cynical Triple-A Game Design decisions and pointless, boring filler designed solely to artificially pad out the runtime... and at other times, FF7R is a desperately auteurist product, more of an overeager Tetsuya Nomura fanfiction than a genuinely inspired re-imagining of Final Fantasy 7. Too much of his usual theatrics and eccentric design choices seep through the seams of the plot, fundamentally altering the feel of the narrative to the point where it starts to feel more like a weirdly futuristic version of Kingdom Hearts than a grand adventure about ecoterrorism and corruption.

Maybe it's proof that FF7 was lightning in a bottle, a perfect patchwork surgery of influences, ideas, and passions that could only have been made once. Every single attempt to reinterpret or continue the story of FF7 has faltered to some degree, whether it be the edgy anime shlock of Advent Children, or the way that Crisis Core unintentionally spits on the anti-imperialist themes of its source, or whatever the actual fuck was even going on in Dirge of Cerberus... and Remake, unfortunately, is no different. When FF7R is at its best, it's merely emulating the highlights of FF7 with better graphics and (arguably) better combat. When it's at its worst, however, you see it for what it really is: a nostalgia-bait piece of Final Fantasy 7-shaped content, a legacy act carefully designed to remind you of a better game made before George Bush was even President.

But hey, at least you can't get frog-stunlocked like you could in the original game! That alone gives Remake a 3/5 in spirit.

My Backloggd goat cooked up one of the greatest rom hacks of our generation. People will be talking about the custom Lakitu sprite for a very long time. The intense difficulty of the hack only proves to show the expertise, intelligence, and skill of its creator. Pretty inconcievable that this game only has three backloggd plays. Its a hidden gem, no a hidden gold mine, to be sure. There is so much meaning hidden under the surface of this game as well. Just look at its title. Gravity Machine. It aims to upack the very force that pushes against us at all times of the day, and not just in a physical way but a spiritual and emotional way. I think we all see ourselves in Mario as he sifts through the labyrinth of the Gravity Machine. He falls, he trips, he bonks, all on his way to what he believes to be his greatest triumph, 4 stars in the machine. It is then that he realizes that he has achieved nothing at all. He must steel himself for the true final test. He must defeat gravity once and for all, a feeling that is innate in all of us whether it be in our personal, professional, or spiritual lives. As we journey alongside Mario we learn not only about him but ourselves which makes the gravity machine such a beautiful and enchanting experience.

I kinda dig this game. It controls super well. The music is fantastic. Bosses are spot on and, without using heals, hit the difficulty sweet spot for me. The mix of platforming and combat is at a good balance. The platforming sections are fun to complete and evolve as you collect more power-ups, and there is a decent amount of enemy variety to make the combat fun in the moment to moment. Also, I kinda like that the combat is fairly simple. The options they give you complement the movement well and are pushed to their limits by the bosses of the game. There are a few sections that feel enemy-spammy which is one of my gripes. I like the way this game structured its gameplay loop as well. You can always count on going from mingling in Scuttletown to exploring and getting a feel for the new area to hitting the palace and fighting boss of the region. I enjoy it. There are some sections that require some backtracking, but most of the time they made it make some sort of sense and it at least expanded upon the world. Its also got a fun story that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Sure, it doesn't have the best visuals ever, but it did enough with its music, world, and gameplay to keep me interested all the way through 100%ing it.

TOEM is a really fun and charming game centered around photography. It's based around these really neat monochrome set pieces that you interact with in the third person as the player and the first person with the camera. This makes for a really unique world and cool gameplay elements with perspective.

The UI is pretty and fitting while also being very functional. The missions are a lot of fun to figure out and usually quite cute. I really liked how they included the sparkly portrait close-ups you get to take after helping some of the NPCs, very rewarding lol. I especially loved the 100 followers close-up. All the different locations having their own identity and central mechanics added a lot to the experience as well. Cataloging all the different animals was a fun side story that the game never pushes you to do outside of an achievement. I like that about it. I just kinda wanted to do it, and that feeling pervaded the experience. There were so many times when I took photos, selfies, or tripod shots that I thought were just cool for the sake of taking them. Sometimes they helped me out in a later quest but sometimes they were just fun photos to take. 100% was fun and not all that frustrating, but I guess that's a bit hard for me to say because I did look up hints on some of the quests and achievements I could not figure out. The character designs are cute. The main character is just a little guy out there in the world. The story is pretty much the journey itself which is great for a game like this, and the end of the journey was a satisfying moment that provides a beautiful opportunity for your final photo.

Overall, a super soulful game that allowed me to live out my dreams of being a photographer. I don't have much bad to say about it. They even got an expansion world that went hard.