Something really interesting about video games seems to be just how unoriginal they can be as a medium of storytelling. While recently, it seems like every game is trying to be like a movie with their realistic graphics and long cutscenes, but there was one game that decided to take that approach to game design in a much different way. Gungrave is pretty much just an anime movie where all the action scenes are playable. It's got some amazing visuals both in game and the cutscenes, the gameplay is cinematic enough that even if its a little basic, its always a blast to look at, and even just the general look of the ui and the music is incredible. But sadly, while Gungrave as a game is pretty good, It's a pretty shitty movie that leaves the player wanting something more from it, and that's not even due to the length.

The phrase "style OVER substance" gets thrown around a lot in terms of media discourse and a somewhat common response to that is "style IS substance". While I mostly agree with the idea that style can be substance, I don't think it always can just be some kind of magical tape that fixes any sort of crack. While I never took my eyes off the cutscenes due to how cool they were, I can't tell you a single thing about the story of this game. I had no time to get attached to the world or characters. Everything in this game just moved way too fast. Typically, I love short games, but I wish their story would actually fit their shorter scale like what you would see in a Resident Evil game. Every boss fight held no emotional value or intensity. Every character death had no impact on me. Graves goals did not motivate me to show interest. The worst part about that is probably that I would've cared if the game just put a little effort into developing things.

Enough shit talking because I genuinely really love this game. In fact, the only reason I have these complaints is because of how much I loved this game. Everything about this game is just what I love. Like I mentioned, the style is really what carries this game. Everything from the ui, the graphics, the music, and the character designs is all just perfect. The character designs coming from the trigun character designer really help push the whole idea of this game feeling like a playable anime movie. Hearing the screeching saxophones as Grave jumped around the beautiful cell shaded urban city was such a treat.

Playing games with unique gameplay is always fun. While it's quick to draw comparisons to Max Payne, there's enough that makes this game stand out. The auto-aim mechanics along with the nice animations really help give it that cinematic feel. For the most part, the set pieces were really good. My biggest issue with the actual gameplay would probably be the bosses, and even then none of them were ever bad but instead missed the potential to flesh them out both in terms of gameplay and story. Due to the story feeling so rushed, it can cause the gameplay to feel disconnected, and for the boss battles to carry no weight.

Gungrave really is one of those ThorHighHeels 7/10 masterpiece games you can only find on the ps2 that you always hear people talk about. It really is a unique game that has elements seen in other games, but executes it all with its own charm to give it a special identity. I was really hoping that this would become a new favorite of mine after playing the first level, and it definitely has, just not as much as I was expecting. I will definitely be returning to this game in the future and checking out its sequels!

Really good example of a pre Tony Hawk extreme sports game. Back before the genre had any sort of expectations. No trick based scoring, no grinding, no punk soundtrack, and gameplay more reminiscent of Cruisn over anything else. I love it though! The game feels really good to control and punching someone in the face after they try to pass me is so much fun. I was also a really big fan of the Metroidvania style of gameplay which was a complete shock for a game like this. Early on in the game it will be extremely hard to come close to first and some of the gates on the track and other obstacles will be impossible to get through or just really hard unless you pay money to get a better vehicle. It's a really fun way of progression and it kept me way interested in playing the game when I wasn't cracking the top 5 in every race. I feel like an issue with modern racing games comes from how easy it is to get 1st, but when games make it impossible to win every race, it adds more of an incentive to get better and work towards that goal. There is an amazing sense of reward in this game that isn't seen enough in other games. I really loved this game, and considering the hilariously bad name change after they lost the ESPN license, it was still a fun time. Looking forward to playing the sequels.

Back when the idea of basketball games was still original. They didn't even have a proper plan for how they were gonna utilize the NBA license considering they just named it after the teams in the current playoff instead of the year it was released. Anyways, I can't really tell if the game is good or not cuz I'm really fucking bad at it, but it seems to control well. It's a little jank, but I guess that just comes with basketball being a fast-paced game and the Genesis probably just couldn't really match that intensity, but it never felt that bad. I mostly had a good time with this game.

After reading the story description in the bio and giving the teams in my league silly names I figured I was gonna have tons of fun with this game. Once I started playing the game, I realized this game was actually terrible. It's fun, and I imagine I would've loved to play with if I had a friend join me, but playing I could not make it through a league of this game alone. The fact that this game only uses 2 face buttons on a controller with 4 face buttons and two bumpers should actually be illegal. I honestly feel like this game would've actually been good if there was actually a decent control scheme. Even worst (and the reason I mentioned that this would probably be better with a friend) comes from the fact that the ai doesn't have to deal with this terrible control scheme which just makes the game miserable. As I said, the game at least brought me some entertainment; throwing my entire body into my opponent and dunking on them brought me a good laugh. I just really wish they didn't map everything to 2 buttons.

I'll give it credit, for being the first bmx game and actually feeling as close as possible to being a simulator for the time, but i think that's probably where my positives end. None of the mechanics of the game feel like they complement each other at all. Map is too small and compact to build momentum which is absolutely necessary for some of these levels which also leads to my issues with the map design. None of these maps are good except for maybe the desert. The dirt track has too many obstacles and due to the issues with the maps being so compact and hard to build momentum, the quarry map feels impossible. Back to the issue with obstacles and why they're an issue (mostly with the dirt track), whenever you crash, the game will spawn you back in on top of the obstacle. Basically, if you get stuck on an obstacle you just have to wiggle around and pray you can escape, but by that point, you already have no chance of winning due to how stupidly hard the ai is. Even when I thought I was actually doing pretty decent and not crashing, I still landed in dead last. It almost feels like the ai never slows down on corners and have the track mastered. I'm sure I could master the game eventually and beat them, but when I'm getting dead last on every single track, maybe it's a game design issue, and not a me issue.

I would love to give this a half star, because this might actually be the worst game I have ever played, but I will give it credit. Like I said, I appreciate how they managed to get the general feel of BMX right instead of opting to just make a dirt bike or motorcycle game like what was common at the time. There is also the desert map which was fine and mostly just held back by the terrible controls, awful ai and other smaller issues, but it was at least the closest I came to having fun with this game.

Such a wonderful game about societys fascination with violence. The cyberspace setting serves the purpose of housing a deathmatch where everyone is represented by a smiley face. While they roam endlessly through the bland and uneventful maze, the smiley faces always keep a smile on their faces. It doesn't matter to them how boring things get as long as they can live out their realistic murder fantasies. While the game doesn't seem like it's condemning violence in media, It instead seems like it's acknowledging it as it's only human nature for us to get excited over something that we cannot do. In cyberspace, anything is possible and even if primitive, the process of technology becoming more and more advanced will always excite some people no matter how primitive it is. In a way, Faceball can almost be compared to modern day VR technology. Just take a look at Mark Zuckerberg and his all of his rich dick suckers buying into the "metaverse". The metaverse is this massive leap in technology, but since it's still in its primitive stages, it's somewhat humorous to watch and laugh at these rich millionaires getting excited and happy over the idea of something as basic as legs. However, getting excited over something so simple isn't so far away from Faceball and the excitement of simulated violence in cyberspace.

A slow and miserable experience representative of what it's a simulator of. While the concept of people going into the woods and killing harmless animals is disgusting to me, I can at least commend the existence of this game as it allows people to engage in that activity without harming any animals. However, I won't deny the fact that this game is so miserable to play that it could maybe just encourage people to hunt in real life and see if it's as bad as the game. Or maybe it might inspire people to assume hunting in real life is as bad as the game. I guess we will never know, but one thing we for sure know is that this game fucking SUCKS!

Some of the best pieces of media have come from adaptions. Whether its with movies like Fight Club turning a forgettable book into a classic movie, or maybe its Madhouse taking One Punch Man from an ugly webcomic to one of the most beloved anime series ever made. One thing (at least as far as I'm aware of) that has never been adapted into a piece of media has been a pizza. While Pinneapple on Pizza is mostly just a goofy meme game, I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of adapting the concepts and themes of pineapple pizza and visualizing it in the form of a video game. I'm definitely all for that kind of weird shit even if the final product is just an unfunny meme game.