This combines so many things I’ve loved ever since I was a kid. I used to have a dream game I wanted to make when I was a child about playing as little gummy bears and exploring a big house, but I never knew that this was just what Chibi-Robo is (well, minus the gummy bears, anyway).

You can tell this was made by some of the people who worked on moon, other than the obvious of Tao being in this game as well, the game has a similar theme of spreading love to others, great writing, and memorable hilarious characters. This game is such a joy, beginning to end.

There’s a tendency to label video games as the most “immersive” medium due to their ability to be able to put the player in direct control, an active participant in the world they ask you to occupy. This “immersive factor” hinges on how well the game can pull you inside of itself, and how well it manages to keep you close, so as to not break the illusion otherwise it’ll risk breaking itself. I think the issue with this line of thinking is that it doesn’t take into account just how fluid the medium really can be, that in these endless discussions of how the mechanics take advantage of the medium we tend to miss when other aspects of a game can do the same. Ace Combat 04 is unique in that regard, where the strength of its narrative isn’t derived from how well it’s able to keep you close but from how far it can distance itself from you, trying to find the perfect balance.

There are no heroic speeches that tug on your heartstrings, no third-dimensional complex characters you can chew on. It’s the opposite, all of the characters remain enigmatic. You don’t get to know these people, you’re not allowed to, and that’s precisely why it works. Shattered Skies strips them down to less than the bare minimum, it’s all still pages narrated by a man reminiscing on a time long forgotten; people who history erased from its own books. All that remains from that era are melancholic memories as you hear the emotions layered around each word spewed by the narrator.

It’s precisely because of this aspect that the actual gameplay part of Ace Combat 04 feels like such a letdown. As the hours go on each mission feels less and less like it’s complementing the narrative and more like it stands separate, as the lines between each mission blur in my head and it all becomes a big giant mashup of all the score attacks the game throws at you. The repetitive “get X amount of points in a given time” approach to mission design can only stay fun for so long, and it just feels like I’m going through the motions until the next cutscene.

It just feels disappointing coming from the previous entry, Electrosphere, a game that just barely managed to balance its massive scope. Shattered Skies is simpler, it’s shorter, and by all accounts it should be more varied, yet I’m struggling to remember what Mission 10 of Ace Combat 04 even was. Despite that, it’s been months since I finished this little game and every once in a while I’ll remember it and start thinking deeply about it, the only reason I’m writing this is because it’s made a place in my head. I feel like the narrator with all my memories going hazy, and the only thing that remains is an inkling, as I remember what I once felt.

𝘼𝙉𝘿 𝙎𝙊 𝙄 𝙒𝙍𝙄𝙏𝙀 𝙏𝙊 𝙔𝙊𝙐...

I downloaded Borderlands 2 back in June of 2019 after it became one of that month's free PSN games, as I always heard that it was fun to play with friends. After noticing that it was in my backlog years later, I asked my friend if he wanted to go back and beat Borderlands 2 with me, but because 2K Games apparently hates it when two people want to play the same game on different consoles by making it a nightmare to set everything up, I decided to beat the game on my own. This process took well over a year, and that is entirely due to just how unfun Borderlands 2 was for me to play.

Before I go ahead with why I hated this game so much, I just want to address the whole sentiment that this game is more fun with multiple players, because you can apply that to pretty much every game ever made. Playing with friends is fun by default, regardless of what game it is, so me playing the game alone doesn't excuse how bad Borderlands 2 is. Anyway, I hated pretty much everything about this game that other people seemed to love, and one of these would be the gameplay loop itself. Wandering around empty areas and shooting endless amounts of bullet sponge enemies that take forever to kill made this game feel like a chore the whole way through, and the enemies themselves aren't placed with any sort of purpose or intricacy whatsoever. One of the main selling points of the Borderlands series is how no two weapons are the same, and while it is interesting to have your loadout constantly change throughout each playthrough, the dependence on RNG made almost every weapon that I earned feel obsolete when compared to what I had already found.

If the game was just unfun to play, then I would've just dismissed Borderlands 2 as a boring looter shooter, but what makes this game a complete disaster for me is its writing. No character in this game ever shuts up, and the game's sense of humor reeks of 2012 internet culture with how loud and obnoxious it is. When I wasn't bored by the gameplay, I was annoyed by the dialogue, and I couldn't stand hearing these characters constantly run their mouths before I had even reached the halfway mark. Not only that, but this constant barrage of annoying nonsense is used to tell a boring story that somehow expects you to care for its one-dimensional characters, which was flat out impossible for me to do because of how aggravating they all were. It doesn't help that this game is coated in an ugly artstyle that looks like a bad mishmash of Mad Max and a comic book that was written and illustrated by a 13 year old. I will admit that the music wasn't that bad, although that isn't to say that it wasn't generic. For me, Borderlands 2 was zero fun to play, and I don't think I ever want to play another game from this series ever again.

Me gusta imaginar que Ojiro Fumoto fue a Devolver Digital y Netflix con una propuesta de una sola diapositiva que decía «Downwell pero hacia arriba». La junta enloquece.
Es la otra cara de la moneda. Si Downwell es monocromático, Poinpy es colorido; si tu objetivo en Downwell es caer y eliminar enemigos, en Poinpy es recolectar fruta y preparar jugo.
Me sorprendieron gratamente los niveles de puzzles. El nuevo sistema de mejoras no depende tanto de la suerte y permite mayor flexibilidad para tu estilo de juego.
Probablemente lo mejor que puedes jugar en tu smartphone.

I played it like 1-2 years ago. It's a fine puzzle game with a fun idea, but it's overall not of high quality.

The reason I'm reviewing it now is because recently tik tok is spamming me with ads of this game. Except it's not this game. I mean it looks exactly the same but it's called something different.
So, I dig around a little and I find there are a TON of clones of this game concept. Some are extremely similar. I think this "original" one has 30million+ downloads so it makes sense there are so many bootlegs trying to have a slice of that cake.
My "research" led me to a code selling website, where some dude is selling a ready to publish version including the source code and every asset.
It's funny because at the top it clearly says: NOTE: Please Reskin the game before publishing. I guess some people couldn't even bother changing some pngs.

𝗔 𝗬𝗔𝗞𝗨𝗭𝗔 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗔𝗚𝗘!

If you think about it, there really was no better choice than Ichiban Kasuga to replace Kiryu Kazuma, was there? Sure you could point to previous protagonists such as Akiyama or Saejima to take over the lead, and that’s not a bad idea by any means it’s just…the fact that it is someone like Ichiban that makes a lot of sense. The very prospect of filling in the boots of the DRAGON OF DOJIMA himself with a new protagonist is daunting from a development perspective, and downright scary from the player perspective. Which is why I’m so happy that Yakuza: Like a Dragon is as good as it is, that for every hole I can poke into this game’s mechanics or narrative, there’s a moment that makes me fall in love with it all over again.

So much of the praise I see lobbied towards this game’s narrative stems from a view that it’s scathing in its critique of the establishment, where in place of the typical JRPG “fight god” final boss, the god is the arm of the government itself. It’s certainly not a wrong view, but I think it’s misleading. Personally, I don’t find the critiques it delivers super meaningful, I think it buckles under it’s own weight in that regard and struggles in it’s representation of them but that’s really never been the focus for me. I’m not ignorant of the flaws of this game, I think the last two party members are embarrassingly underdeveloped, the turn-based combat also leaves a lot to be desired (although this replay was done with the Like a Brawler mod) and there’s also some of the traditional Yakuza plot devices which I don’t like…but despite all that I rarely find myself thinking of the negatives because the positives far outweigh them.

To me, Yakuza 7 is an innately human story, surprisingly intimate with it’s world in a way few other games in the series are. Like I said, it’s the original Yakuza, repackaged and rewritten for the new age and it’s that guiding philosophy of looking to the past while embracing the future works. It’s Kiryu and Nishiki all over again but not with the somber badass attitude of the original, Y7 is much more interested in exploring how meaningful even a single relationship can be. Even to people who have betrayed you, even to people who have hurt you, if you can find the strength within yourself to forgive them then why not, right? Nobody wants to lose people whom we hold dear, even if they do wrong there’s a strong capacity for good in everybody and Ichiban Kasuga is a man who will take those chances, who will take those odds. The Koi has become one with Dragon, and it will keep moving forward, holding the ones it loves close. It’s a rejection of Kiryu and Nishiki’s solitude, and a celebration of the bonds we hold dear.

𝗞𝗘𝗘𝗣 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗜𝗡𝗚, 𝗜𝗖𝗛𝗜.

The richness of a puzzle game comes from its capacity to be exceptionally diverse with a priori simple mechanisms. Baba Is You brilliantly meets this challenge, never betraying its minimalism. Through a few syntactic operators and a more or less strong dose of tile-pushing, the title develops strong concepts, requiring a certain abstraction (stacking of elements, synchronous interactions of properties, surjections of nouns on properties). But these difficulties are eased by the fact that everything is there for a reason, which very rarely leaves you in complete darkness, although the last levels can be particularly difficult, when meta mechanics are introduced. The reward is always worth the price, and it's a game that can be consumed well over short sequences... which get longer very easily.

Baba is masterpiece.
No tengo dudas de que Hempuli es un tipo realmente inteligente, porque el nivel de creatividad e ingenio que se muestra en los niveles de Baba is you es absolutamente admirable.
El juego se presenta de forma muy sencilla y con unas reglas muy fáciles de comprender, pero progresivamente introduce nuevos elementos basados en esas reglas sencillas, y que dan como resultado niveles terriblemente complejos y difíciles. me encanta como en todo momento el jugador sabe que tiene las herramientas necesarias para poder resolver cada puzzle, pero que simplemente no es capaz de unir los elementos de la manera correcta para dar el resultado necesario.
Es un juego muy atrapante y divertido, además que el ofrecer distintas opciones de niveles me parece una gran idea para poder dejar apartados algunos niveles que terminan siendo más complicados de resolver. La dificultad llega a ser realmente elevada en la segunda mitad del juego, y no me quiero ni imaginar lo complicado que debe ser el post-game.
Un problemita que le veo es que algunos niveles introducen palabras sin llegar a dejar del todo claro exactamente como funcionan, por lo que termina requiriendo varios intentos para llegar a agarrarle la mano.
Visualmente es un juego muy bonito, aunque creo que le faltarían acompañar con algunos efectos de sonido para los distintos objetos o situaciones que aparecen.
Igualmente tampoco es como si esto se fuera a interponer significativamente en el disfrute del juego. Baba is you es una gran experiencia para cualquier amante de los juegos de puzzles, y si bien la dificultad puede llegar a ser muy elevada, es un juego que le recomendaría probar a todo el mundo, aunque sea con ayuda de alguna que otra pista, porque la sensación final tras completar cada nivel es sumamente satisfactoria.

Uno de los juegos más interesantes y curiosos que tuve el placer de jugar, 999 es una curiosa mezcla de Saw con misterio, drama y conceptos de pseudociencia que se atrevió a desafiar lo convencional y, a través de una brillante escritura y una ejecución maestra, aprovecha al máximo el medio al que pertenece y las posibilidades que su consola le permitía.
Los personajes son todos muy buenos, con un propósito claro, diversas facetas a conocer, y que cumplen a la perfección sus distintas funciones a lo largo de la historia del juego. Personalmente mis favoritos son Seven, Clover y Snake.
Las secciones de puzzles no son especialmente desafiantes, aunque tampoco en un punto en que sean tan fáciles que se pueden completar sin esfuerzo. Además que se aprovechan muchos de estos puzzles para reforzar conceptos importantes para el desarrollo de la historia.
Por su parte, las secciones de visual novel no ofrecen mucha participación del jugador más allá de elegir algunos diálogos y seleccionar por qué camino ir, pero nuevamente creo que tiene el punto justo como para sentir que lo que hagas tiene una importancia en el juego, y además que los diálogos y situaciones que se desarrollan en estás secciones son, en su mayoría, muy interesantes.
Otro punto a favor del juego es su atmósfera inquietante que se presenta desde el inicio. En general hay un aire misterioso y tétrico a lo largo de todo el juego, un peligro constante que se aproxima cada vez más a los personajes. Está atmósfera no sería posible de lograr si no fuera por la gran banda sonora compuesta por Shinji Hosoe, que potencia enormemente cada momento, ya sea de misterio, tensión o drama.
No creo que el juego sea perfecto ni mucho menos, tiene algún que otro momento que me sacó un poco de la inmersión, algún puzzle que no termina de funcionar (incluyendo uno que es vital para la historia), y también pequeños cambios para las versiones fuera de la Nintendo DS, los cuales son imposibles de replicar a la perfección tras sacarlo de su consola original. Tras meditarlo, creo que sacarle puntos por detalles que me parecen tan pequeños no sería justo, más en un juego tan rompedor como este.
No quiero entrar muy en detalle, pero 999 toma mecánicas básicas o esperables en un videojuego de este tipo, y las utiliza a su favor de maneras únicas y que demuestran una creatividad enorme por parte Kotaro Uchikoshi y su equipo detrás del juego. Subvierte las expectativas y aprovecha cada uno de los elementos que tiene a su alcance para crear una obra realmente impresionante.