At first glance, The Messenger creates two very strong first impressions on the player. The first of these comes right in the initial cutscene. From the sounds, the theme, and the character design, it’s impossible not to be reminded of “Ninja Gaiden” for NES.
And the second first impression is that this is practically a tribute to Ninja Gaiden. And a damn good tribute to Ninja Gaiden.

What makes The Messenger a truly addictive game to play? The Controls, my friend, what good controls. The gameplay is phenomenal, the game takes all the characteristics that made Ninja Gaiden so good and reimagines them with modern features. Absolutely everything, from a simple jump to a sequence of attacks, happens smoothly, in a way that makes it simple and very enjoyable.
The most unique ability in the game is the one you have from the beginning: the Messenger can jump, attack, and jump again.
That's basically it. Instead of a traditional double jump, if you attack something during a jump, you can jump again, whether it's an enemy or part of the scenery. There's no limit; as long as you hit something before hitting the ground, you can jump as many times as you want. Obviously, many of the collectibles and secrets in the game are hidden in areas that require precise use of this ability.

But I think a narration about the story would be a good way to start the analysis. The game begins with the village where the protagonist lives being attacked by the “Demon King” and his army (out of nowhere), and just when everything seemed lost, the “Hero of the East” appears to save the day. He defeats the Demon King and his army (very easily), who flee, and then he goes and hands a scroll to the protagonist and tells him he must take that scroll to the top of the tallest mountain in the world. For what purpose? Well, he makes sure not to explain and disappears out of nowhere, and the protagonist suddenly becomes a messenger, and the prologue ends here without much ado or explanation.

So the beginning of the game starts out as a simple platformer, killing bugs, picking up little items, until the Messenger gets stuck on a wall that’s too high to reach by jumping, and you’re forced to enter a Transdimensional Gate that takes him to a “shop”. In the shop is where you encounter the best character in the game, the “Shopkeeper”. The Shopkeeper introduces the protagonist to the place (which looks more like a bazaar than a shop) and after a little banter between the Messenger and the Shopkeeper, he gives him the “Climbing Claws” that work just like the wall-hanging claws in Ninja Gaiden.
The protagonist (who has various names within the game’s fandom, like “Messenger” or “NINJA,” but I didn’t like any of those names so I’ll call him “Bill”) continues his journey with the help of the claws, and the game becomes quite linear from here on. You go to a new area, have occasional conversations with the Shopkeeper, defeat the area boss, and move on to the next, occasionally receiving a new item to keep the gameplay from getting boring, much like the formula of Ninja Gaiden. Here, the levels are quite long, but they’re also interesting and intense at the same time. The game becomes considerably more difficult as you progress, but it never reaches the level of frustration that the Ninja Gaiden series games became known for.
The stages, at first, are linear, very much in the style of Ninja Gaiden. Go right, kill enemies, and at the end, a boss awaits you. But the timing at which these things occur is simply excellent.

And also, there’s a punishment for when you die, and it’s not a simple loss like in Dark Souls, where you just lose all your progress when you die. Here, when you die, a little demon (whose name I don’t remember) appears and saves your life, but he doesn’t do it for free. He takes you back to the last checkpoint and then starts to follow you, stealing all the money you collect until you gather enough to “pay off the debt” or until he gets bored and leaves.
But back to the story. It reaches a point where Bill reaches the “Snowy Summit,” an area that gives off a vibe of “the end is near,” and when I played, I swore I was at the end of the game. There’s even a dialogue in the game with the merchant where he makes a meta-commentary saying you think you’re near the end because you probably didn’t watch the trailer. I remember being baffled when I read that dialogue for the first time…

When Bill reaches the mountaintop, he encounters the shopkeeper and his companions. They say that you are ready for the final test and summon a time tower into which Bill enters, heading to the “final” area of the game.
Inside the tower, Bill goes through a series of challenges (which are damn difficult, by the way) until he reaches the main hall of the tower, where he has to fight against a megazord. When I got to this part, I thought, “Cool, I’ve reached the end of the game,” and after dying about 8 times to this boss, I won. But after that, the game takes a direction that I honestly didn’t expect.
After a good amount of gameplay, like around 4/5 hours, something happens (anti-spoiler censorship) and the visuals, the music, and EVERYTHING in the game make a leap in quality to the 16-bit era. It’s a huge difference, it’s almost like the game has turned into a sequel of the same game but from the next generation. Suddenly, everything becomes clearer and sharper. Before, the game didn’t have a very appealing visual (at least in my opinion), but after this change, the game becomes REALLY beautiful.

This change in graphics doesn’t make a difference in the gameplay, which remains basically the same, just with more pixels and smoother. But if you’ve read, heard, or seen anything about The Messenger, you probably already know what happens a little later. It’s something that would spoil the experience for someone playing this game for the first time, even though it’s something that’s in every release of the game, being touted as one of its quality points. It goes from being a linear game divided by stages to a… MetroidVania, yes, the game changes genres. It’s a very ambitious idea.

It’s not uncommon nowadays for games to do this of being games of a certain generation and then leap forward to another generation of games. One game I played that does this is “Evoland,” which also has this idea of starting in one generation and jumping from generation to generation, going from a Game Boy game to a PS1 game. But Evoland, in my view, is a game somewhat lacking in charisma. Well, the game delivers what it promises, to be a game that evolves as you play, but only that. This game is somewhat soulless, it lacks personality, it doesn’t have its own comedy, or even coherence as to why this happens within the story. I think The Messenger does this much better; the time leap is much less in your face compared to Evoland, and the time leap even makes sense within the game’s story.

I spent a good part of the time while playing The Messenger anticipating and dreading a bit this genre change. Because I had a hunch that, after this change, I would be forced to return to the stages I had already passed in search of items that were previously unreachable. And… well, that’s exactly what happens. Speaking of the game as a Metroidvania, it’s a good game of the genre; you don’t need to revisit previous areas unless you want to complete 100%. Because this more tedious part, which most people are not willing to do, corresponds to the entire Metroidvania part of The Messenger.
Basically, you gain fast travel to some of the previous areas. Upon arriving there, you open your map (which happens to be the scroll you received at the beginning of the game) and see which areas are unexplored. Most of them consist of a room with a challenge that will reward you with some collectibles or a “musical note.” These notes are your objective to progress in this part of the game. You must sweep through the maps from end to end in search of six of them to be able to see the end of the story.

There are only six fast travel points in the entire game, which is fewer than the game’s areas. And to make matters worse, instead of giving you access to all the fast travel points right away, only three start open, and you must search for the others. And to make matters even worse, the map is huge as hell, and you have to traverse it almost entirely on foot.
Basically, the game removes a significant good part of a Metroidvania, “the exploration,” and puts everything bad about the genre, “the hunt for collectibles.” This is a considerable problem, as all those areas have already been explored previously, and there are only about two or three completely new areas in this part of the game.

A twist that brings some novelty to this second half of the game is the existence of time portals. These portals allow Bill to switch between the 8-bit and 16-bit worlds. A structure from the past may be destroyed in the future, and this directly affects the path you can take in the game. It’s something interesting, although not unique, and it has a really cool effect when you pass through one of these portals. But it’s a pity that it takes so long for this gameplay mechanic to appear.

Another somewhat strange decision, the game only gives you a few subjective hints of where the musical notes are, almost like a riddle. It’s possible to pay to have the location of where they are shown on the map, but this is very expensive, and there’s a charge for each note. A single hint costs the same price as increasing your life, and it takes quite a while to gather that much money. Making the player choose between an upgrade and something that should already be shown on the map is a rather odd decision by the game’s developer.

To wrap up the analysis, I wanted to talk about the characters, because damn, this game has some characters. The shopkeeper is undoubtedly my favorite character in the game; he seems like a grumpy old man who treats you as if you were a mental acrobat who has never played a game before. Not to mention the stories he can tell you, which are the parts where I laugh the most in the game. The interactions you can have with the merchant are hilariously stupid; I don’t understand people who say that the dialogues in this game are boring. This game has dialogue worthy of a sitcom, and a good one at that. I don’t want to spoil because it’s worth taking a look at them. Not to mention the reflective dialogues you can have with him; they’re really deep and make you think.

Despite not being perfect and having some noticeable flaws, The Messenger is one of the games I had the most fun playing this year. This game has its own charisma that I don’t see in current games; it’s a game that knows its mistakes and jokes and laughs about them. This was a very ambitious game, and it’s normal for it to have some flaws because of that, but even that doesn’t take away the amount of love that was put into this game. I even platinumed the game because I liked it so much.

The Messenger is an incredibly fun game, with a surprisingly long duration for an indie game, capable of entertaining even those who aren’t fans of the genre. This is a game that constantly tries to “parody” the Ninja Gaiden series, and the game never tries to hide that, but it also creates new things while respecting the legacy of its inspiration. Contrary to what people may think, this game wasn’t exclusively made for older players; there are so many bad jokes that they’ll actually make you laugh because of how nonsensical they are. Definitely worth the price if you know what to look for. Don’t expect a production of decades with loads of money involved. But know that it was made with honesty.

You know, lately, I've been really getting into older style games, or just Retro. Games with the style: turn on, play, beat, and that's it! Nothing deep in them, those games you turn on on a random afternoon and play casually, like the NES and SNES games. And well... Looking for games in this style nowadays, I found a ton of PS2 games, and also many indie games, but among the indies, the ones that caught my attention without a doubt were from the JoyMaster studio.

What caught my eye the most about their games is that they are direct parodies of old franchises, most of which don't even exist anymore, like the game Oniken which is heavily inspired by old games like Ninja Gaiden, and with visuals very similar to Berserk (at least I think so). And also the game Odallus which is more reminiscent of the older Castlevania series, you know with all that exploration aspect, and somewhat poor controls...
But without a doubt, the game that grabbed my attention the most was the last game they released, Blazing Chrome, which was meant to be a game similar to Contra, and that got me incredibly hyped because I love Contra, and games in this style like Gunstar Heroes, and Alien Soldier.
And well, Blazing Chrome is basically a 2D runner shoot that reminds me of various classic games like Contra, especially Contra Hard Corps, and also has many similarities with Alien Soldier, Metal Slug, Alien Storm, and for some reason, I felt a bit of a Forgotten Worlds vibe in this game. In summary: This is a totally retro game from the 80s and 90s. As usual for this company's games, the cutscenes are beautiful, looking like an old anime, but in pixel art. The story is simple, there was an apocalypse, and you go fight the bad guys. The stories in games don't always need to be complex because you can tell that the focus was on the gameplay.

As you can notice while playing, the gameplay is super frenetic, anyone who has played a game in this style knows well how it works, you just hold down the shoot button, and try not to die in the hell of bullets that are the levels of this game.
The animations are absurdly beautiful and fluid, all of them unnecessarily detailed, I love the explosion effects, particle effects, or even the simple animation of your gun’s shells falling and bouncing on the ground. The graphics aren't far from a Mega Drive and SNES, or even a Game Boy Advance, but it gives the impression that they tried to faithfully emulate playing in an arcade.
The music is also very good with a real 16-bit era game vibe, unfortunately, I couldn't hear the music very well while playing because besides the game having SHOOTING AND EXPLOSIONS NONSTOP, my friend and I were screaming, joking, and laughing nonstop while we played. So I think that's actually a positive point!

This game really brought back that vibe of playing with your buddy on the couch like in the old days, it was super fun discovering new weapons together, the power-ups, and both feeling like champions after beating the boss.
One thing I can't say for sure is if playing in co-op affected the difficulty a lot because I found the game relatively easy. We beat the game on normal level which gives you 5 lives and infinite continues, so if you get stuck on a boss, you can basically fail as many times as you want, since the game is very generous with checkpoints, and the game over always takes you to the last one which is usually before the boss. Then you just keep repeating the fight until you figure out a good strategy, and memorize the attack pattern.
I really wanted to play on hardcore, but you only unlock it by beating the campaign mode on normal difficulty first, which in the end is not that easy, there were indeed some frustrating moments, but thanks to the thousands of checkpoints we managed to beat it without difficulties, it reminded me of console Metal Slug where you die, die, die, but beat the game fine at the end of the day. Easier difficulty is not always a negative point, as it makes the game more accessible to all kinds of players, but theoretically, that's what the easy mode is for. The normal mode ends up not being that hard, and the hard mode ends up being too hard.
But you can get good at the game and defeat the bosses without dying. They all telegraph their attacks well, giving you the opportunity to predict their moves, and this also applies to level design. No trap makes you lose life for nothing, for example, in stage 4, there are some falling platforms, but at the beginning of the stage, there are platforms that fall in a safe place, so you unconsciously get used to it without even needing a tutorial.

Now talking a bit about the negative points, it was the vehicle stages, or the special stages, these stages are TOO FAST. The background of these stages moves smoothly, kind of too smoothly. It's hard to explain, but my friend and I got our vision a bit messed up with these stages, our eyes started to water, and it was hard to look at the screen properly, because seeing an image rolling super fast on the screen can cause some discomfort. A simple fix could be just slowing down the background image a bit, because that would still give the effect that you're running fast. Another stage that has this but is also graphically impressive is the jetpack stage, where it takes place in a circumflex tunnel that isn't 3D, everything is 2D sprites expanding to give the illusion of 3D. It's a genius, beautiful effect, and I've never seen anything like it in any other 2D game in my life, BUT, this effect also strains the eyes a bit, at least here the background is a bit darker so it doesn't affect as much, but still, we were relieved when this stage ended. To fix this problem, the background here could also move slower which would avoid tiring and the 3D effect would still look great, at least I think so, I'm talking as if the programmers were dumb while I can't even tie my shoes.
But aside from that, the game is basically perfect, the ONLY problem I had with it was the vehicle stages which were very tiring, I just really wanted better difficulty options, the normal level is too easy, and the hardcore mode is too hardcore. Having 3 lives in a stage, and 3 continues complicates things a bit. The game isn't very long, and I believe it is possible to beat it like this, but all I wanted was fewer checkpoints on the normal level because it made the game ridiculously easy. But seriously, the game is really VERY GOOD, it's amazing to see a linear indie game that isn't a metroidvania (since that genre seems to be a hit with indies), fast, and ridiculously beautiful. I recommend this game to anyone who has ever played a runner shoot in their life.

On the internet, there are always various short films, A.R.G.s, and horror games where the main reason they are good is precisely the mystery around them, the lack of explanation about what is happening. However, this same mystery and lack of explanation is also what can "kill" this type of content. Some A.R.G.s, for example, end up losing their charm and becoming oversaturated very quickly when many explanations start to emerge around them. It's always much better and scarier when you don't know what's going on; after all, fear always comes from the unknown, right? (sorry) Expanding a mysterious horror story can be a mistake because explaining it might reveal that nothing significant was actually happening. But what if you do it in the right way? Well, that's where Amanda the Adventurer comes in.

Amanda the Adventurer had its first version released between 2021 and 2022. One day, you go to clean your attic and suddenly find some lost tapes of a 'bizarre' cartoon. This cartoon is like a strange version of Dora the Explorer. You could interact with these tapes, and as you interacted, you could also discover hidden things in them. As far as I remember, this demo only had one possible ending where Amanda turns into a demogorgon and comes to kill you. The idea was really cool because at no point did it explain the story or what was actually happening, and when it ended, it was like: 'What? I didn't understand anything.'

Then recently, the complete game was released, and despite explaining the story, it leaves you with more questions than answers in the end, and that's why this game is so good! Even with explanations, the game manages to maintain all the mystery until the end. This complete game was a great expansion of the original version, expanding that bizarre and mysterious little game in the best possible way. You have to solve puzzles to unlock new tapes, and if you solve these puzzles in specific ways, you change the ending. There are also tapes that explain the story, but at the same time, they explain nothing. The game captures a lot of attention and is very interesting. I genuinely felt a real sense of fear playing this damn game, and it had been a long time since that happened.

Without a doubt, one of the most classic RPG Maker games. The story of Amayado Bus Stop is very well-crafted; it's almost like a little horror tale in the form of a game.

You control the protagonist named Chitose, a little girl who is bullied at school. One day, when she's on her way home, she ends up meeting Kobato. Kobato is a very reserved and mysterious girl, unlike Chitose, who is cheerful, sweet, innocent, and quite optimistic despite everything she suffers at school.

During the game, themes like bullying and some Japanese legends were addressed, and the game also had all those elements present in almost all classic RPG Maker games.

I find it a bit difficult to believe that someone reading this review doesn't know this game, but in case you don't know it yet or have never played it, you can easily find it to download with translations and everything.

It's a very cool story that brings me great nostalgia from my pre-teen years, where I was simply in love with this type of game.

The first Alan Wake is a good game carried by an excellent story, which makes you forget, most of the time, that the gameplay isn't as good as it could be, even for its time.

This is my second time finishing it, and I didn't remember it being this good. I remember that when I finished it back in 2022, I thought the game wasn't anything special, but on the other hand, it managed to captivate my past self to the point where I even played the DLC, though not completely because I thought it was garbage, but I played it anyway. Now, I'm going to play Alan Wake 2 and see how the story unfolds. Hopefully, it will be as good as they say, or even better.

I don't like GTA V.
Some new games struggle to create an immersive atmosphere because they try to be too many things at once and end up being none of them, as is the case with this game. You spend the entire time jumping from story to story, environment to environment, and when the game ends, you realize you haven't delved deeply into anything. You haven't delved into the gangs, the desert, the heists, the FBI, or the cinema. The story of GTA V is crazy! It doesn't have a fixed setting; it's not the gray world of Liberty City or the colorful and tropical Vice City. It's just a world.
(I think playing more than 100 hours online ruined the game for me.)
The older GTAs were better at creating an atmosphere, in my opinion, because they were limited by their own technology. The graphics were so bad that they compensated in the best way they could, creating their own distinct world instead of a realistic but generic one. I don't know, this game is just a big nothing to me.

A simple walking simulator about exploring the ocean floor. The idea is interesting, with beautiful graphics and a very atmospheric soundtrack that makes the animals in that world seem very alive. Additionally, the game includes some puzzles to vary the gameplay, even though they are very simple. However, the rest of the game is quite boring; there are not many gameplay aspects, and the camera control is simply dysfunctional. It is not really a game; it is more of a "meditation guide" than anything else, as the main attraction of the game is observing marine life and feeling good in the end.

I tried playing this game, but I don't know, the camera angles always give me the worst possible view to see the enemies, the tank controls make everything about three times more difficult for me, when I tried playing using the katana, the simple act of trying to aim at an enemy became one of the most frustrating things I've ever experienced, along with the scarcity of resources that constantly left me without bullets, and the most frustrating factor for me is that the game doesn't have auto-save, only manual save. These issues ruined the experience for me.

The game is not bad, but it's definitely not for everyone either.

While this game is definitely much better than its predecessor, it still presents several problems, and overall, I didn't find it as amazing. I'm not someone who gets scared or fearful very easily, but with this chapter, I didn't feel scared at any moment; in fact, I even got bored at some points.

The monster in this chapter constantly talks to you, either to give tips or to try to 'scare' you, and that ruins all of its tension. Something I liked in the first game was that Huggy Wuggy would play with you, leading you into his trap and watching you during the game, which gave you an absurd discomfort knowing that blue thing was watching you while you played. That was lost in this chapter, as Mommy practically becomes your support tutor during the game, and that takes away all the mystery behind the character. When she appears to be watching you through the window, explaining step by step how to play the minigame, it's impossible to feel any kind of discomfort with that. They tried hard to make her seem scary, but she's actually more irritating than scary for most of the time.

Another thing I found disappointing is that the minigames are too easy; in fact, out of the three minigames, I died only once in the entire game. Not that I think they're bad; I like their ideas, reminiscent of preschool playground activities, but they felt more like tasks I needed to complete to finish the game. I simply didn't like how they were executed.

Another part where I had a bad experience was with the puzzles since the game is FULL of them. For a game of about 8 hours, this isn't bad, but for a game like this that I took an hour and ten minutes to finish, it's a DISASTER. But halfway through the entire game, dealing with the puzzles, and with the unnecessary padding they had in the game, I simply didn't enjoy playing this game. Sure, I got scared while playing despite everything, but I wouldn't play this game again now that I know everything that occurs. Completing this chapter wasn't very gratifying because the end of the chapter is practically a prequel to chapter 3.

Introduction chapter, not much to declare. The tension of the chapter is pretty cool, you really start to feel a bit uneasy walking through that abandoned factory with that blue creature watching you, oh and the chase part was really well done! with those narrow corridors and the flickering lights disorienting you, I really enjoyed it. Something I would find cool would be if our character spoke, since from what I understood he worked there, and I don't know, because he's just an empty shell for the story it would be cool if he kind of remembered something from there or something like that. As "cool" as it may be, I honestly can't understand the success of this, chapter 1 didn't introduce anything that interested me in this story.