This game takes me back to a time when LucasArts were producing the best games out there! Not to mention, some of the weirdest and most popular like in regards to the Sam & Max universe here!

The story follows Sam & Max who are Freelance Police and their job is to track down an attraction. A bigfoot that was frozen in ice has been taken from the circus and the pair need to track them down and solve the mystery surrounding them and also the tiny country music star who seems to also be trying to track him down for a potentially nefarious purpose!

As usual, the absurdist humour hits right on and there's even fun little mini-games you can play with Max too. It's well worth checking out and a lot of fun! I can't wait to try out some more of these classics on stream and showcase how fun they are to the world!

Gameplay/Stream

I had avoided the hype and it was a good thing I was because this game was not all that! You play as a guy who, after losing a member of his family and another becoming mute after the experience he starts to take the law into his own hands, despite his own criminal past it seems that the police has a real struggle trying to track him down and arrest him. Despite looking very suspicious and (according to Ubisoft) iconic. Even more unbelievable than Agent 47, a muscular bald-guy just walking by and not being suspected by anyone. He actually chances his outfit whilst Aiden here keeps wearing suspicious clothing.

Using your magical hacking skills (let's be honest, it works more like magic than not) you can steal money from random passer-bys (with no meaningful consequences to those actions. Regardless if you steal from someone who is poor or someone who is rich and works with your enemies) , hack traffic lights for your advantage when escaping the police, entering secret cameras and getting a look in all kinds of people's dirty little secrets (yet not reporting them with said evidence or even using that info) and even getting involved in some vigilante behaviour, though that bit was always a bit annoying as you had to wait for the person to commit the crime first and not attempt to prevent it. It was fun to investigate murders though, making me think of Batman Arkham City where some of the killers were leaving clues you need to track down. That said, there were many moments I felt he had a real chance to end things, but didn't.

I don't know of it was on purpose, but the main character also refuses to see his current living child, who is still traumatised from the entire experience! Maybe they were attempting a deeper narrative as he is focusing on those who are dead and withdrawing from the family member who is still alive as pointed out by his sister who is currently taking care of him. There is a discussion here about the path of revenge and as a quote one said:
"Before going on the path for revenge, dig two graves." often because despite how glamourised it is, you can wreck yourself and fall down into all kinds of dark places and do anything to get your revenge that you are not the same person afterwards. However, the game paints his sister as just an annoying family member that "Doesn't get it" and is suggesting to just forget what happened to him so I could be reading FAR too much into it!

The game courted a lot of controversy with hidden settings on the PC version, in a folder that was literally marked something like "E3 demonstration effects" or something similar where they tried to convince us that the graphics of it were going to be next-gen and pushing your system to it's limits for all the beautiful look, but what we got was something dumbed down to "make equal to the console version" which just spurs on this hatred between console and PC gamers and is a terrible excuse for not wanting to work harder on either versions.

Another event Ubisoft weren't prepared for was, as they decided you must have a Uplay account to play their games from now on, on the first day of sales their servers crashed demonstrating that their anti-piracy measure here actually stopped you from playing your legitimately bought game. Even if you want to play it offline.

It's pretty funny that the villains here are rich groups and organisations who deliberately exploit their public and that's exactly what Ubisoft have been doing! Guess it's true that you should write what you know about and if you're a company that has abused your workers sexually, then you know all about causing abuse to make your workers feel terrible!

I did have fun with it for what I played, however certain things didn't work too well as due to the horrible pop-in I had trouble using the ability to make sewers burst as they'd appear too late for me to have used them when in a chase. Often only appearing when I'm just about to run over it myself! Unlike the trailer which makes it totally possible to do. As a typical Ubisoft game it can be fun, but I'm not interested in supporting this company and there was too much false advertising around this game for me to give it a positive view.

I had fallen in love with this game immediately. Especially as similar games have not existed on the PC before, but now many new and fun versions have popped up and I'd like to think this helped start that!

I agree with what one reviewer said about how these kinds of games are a power fantasy for adults since your only worries during the day is to farm a little, throw food into a mass-sale bin that pays off your taxes easily and settle down and meet up with people in the town. The kind of life we're advertised is possible in the real world, but more than not isn't the reality...but that's going to lead off topic.

That said, Jojo Mart. You can choose to become a sell-out to corporation and make your living for this company. It's interesting to have this choice and personally went against them due to how your character did work for them in a dead-end job and now with this farm you have freedom! Not to mention, I'm totally on the side of "Fuck Corporations" as they are overly bloated on their own money and like to step on everyone.

It's a great game to use to escape reality, focus on your farm, exploring the caves and meeting up with all of the many different interesting people about town and even getting married to the man/woman of your choice!

A lot of time has passed since it's release and though similar games exist, this one has still gotten updates and I'm very eager to return to it, see what's new and just have a whole lot of fun with it again!

My first experience wasn't so good as Fallout 3 had trained me to not look at anything beyond that stupid navigator in the corner and not actually think about what I was doing, but as I dug in I found that the choices in this and how you can have to navigate yourself in this harsh environment, not to mention all the different factions that you can side up with, without them being black and white like Fallout 3.

It brought be back from great memories of Fallout 2 and even had brought back many characters from that game and such like Marcus or the references to the previous games with the vault 13 canteen.

The game is buggy, which is to be expected from the outdated engine Bethesda keep trying to claim isn't falling apart with age and how Obsidian were forced to use it and create a game, based on this engine they knew nothing about, within 18 months (which is an unusually short development cycle) and had their bonuses tied to meta-critic scores, yes they managed to produce this! I'm surprised it works as well as it does and doesn't just fall apart when you try to start it up! I certainly couldn't make anything of this quality in 10x the time!

Caesar's Legion are often viewed as the evil group and whilst they are the most, in my opinion, morally bankrupt of the groups. They are also providing a more stable social system than the much larger NCR who have spread themselves too thin with all of their expansions and attempt to take over everything. They can be viewed as a alternative depending on your morals and if you really hate the idea of the NCR that much.

North Carolina Republic are a group that found their origins in Vault 15 in the first game and had moved to create their own little town. Shady Sands. During the events of Fallout 2, they had become a massive military group who on the surface advertised that they were bringing law to the wastes, but at the same time they allowed slavers to keep slaves outside of their city limits and would create attacks on other successful cities who they wanted to take control of, but can't attack directly as it'd look bad to do so. They have a fairly weak hold here, being so far from home and that's why bandits have been able to rule with little to no issues.

The idea that you even get a choice at the beginning to either side up with Goodsprings who are a small farming community just wanting to survive and the Powder Gangers, being a group of escaped convicts who are after a place to live and they only know of using violence to make their way. There's arguments here on who to support, of course, though I generally side with Goodsprings since they helped you get back on your feet and I'm not certain the Powder Gangers would've been as helpful if they had control of the town, but that's up for debate.

Even today, this game still surpasses Fallout 4 and 76 despite the many years difference, demonstrating that Bethesda don't know how to make good stories anymore and the community at large are getting sick of their antics and refusing to fix fundamental bugs that modders fixed many years ago. It's existence and loved status has been a hindrance to a company who keep attempting to go bigger, but trip over all the smallest hurdles.

Quite simply, what the hell were they thinking? Gatekeeping this mode behind a paywall and inherently making it obvious that this is content that should've been with the game for free, however, they decided to charge for it instead!

I've got to admit, I completely forgot that this even existed! It's so damn small and forgetful that it's very easy to completely miss this or even struggle to remember ever playing it.

...and they charged money for this!

I wasn't certain how to view this. Personally I love the idea of more crazy fantasy being in it, just like the ending of the previous game and how the original one had creatures and such that are clearly fantasy creatures.

I don't want to spoil it, but essentially the explanation is something completely mundane despite the events of both this game is the DLC for and the previous one in regards to these mystical things being real.

1997

Forgot about reviewing this, but here we go.

I remember this game very well from when I played it back on the PS1 so many years ago. Back when it was new! The gunplay was fun, coupled with the different ammo types, usage of torpedoes to shoot down vents and get the enemy, the odd art style and the very strange direct this game often goes in!

The game was created by the Earthworm Jim creator, Doug TenNapel. The same insanity is in this game where you use nukes for keys to doors, your pilot is a four-armed dog and the villains are all strange and each boss battle is different too. This really hit me with the nostalgia vibe as I streamed it, since I originally played it on the PS1, but I do not thing I ever actually finished it.

You get a short briefing and there's even a potential for speed-running as if you do not defeat the boss in time, the location of a city that the aliens are aiming at gets blown up! No real punishment happens because of this, I find beyond a silly comment with something like "Oops, Weymouth has been destroyed. Oh well, it was only Weymouth" or something like that, but I can't actually remember the name of those towns that were being used tbh. There's some fun gore in it where you can shoot off the alien's heads for a kill shot, but if you hit them in the leg they're known to limp around and cry for help allowing you to be as sadistic as you want in this.

Some maps have Earthworm Jim tokens that you can collect, followed with is trademark "Groovy!" every time you manage to pick one up, often in these skiing sections.

I did have one issue where I couldn't complete a level because from upscaling the video to match a more modern monitor size, I could no longer glide into the hole I needed to get into, to activate a switch. I briefly changed the game to older resolution, completed it and then changed back afterwards. It's not a absolute game breaker, but it was a pain in the ass to deal with!

I named the creator because, as I was informed in my stream, the guy turns out to be a scumbag, being opposed to Same-sex marriage and deliberately misgendering a journalist who reviewed Earthworm Jim.

However, he no longer holds the licence from what I understand so feel free to enjoy the game series guilt-free!

Gameplay/Stream

This is not the swearing, substance abusing and violent little squirrel we all know from the N64, however, as achievements in retroarch noted, they had much of the same music in it though. Like The Great Mighty Poo song in 8bit.

This feels like a kid's version of Conker, which is a pretty bad idea imo, but also, it feels like this is a story of the stuff he had to deal with which led to Conker's Bad Fur Day such as how almost everyone he interacts with is an Acorn, including the evil one that kidnaps his girlfriend, a evil black squirrel that ruins your name violent plants that what to eat you and all kinds of villains who want to pick on this poor squirrel who just wanted to enjoy his birthday with his girlfriend. You even have to recollect all of your presents! It's one thing to steal the gifts, but to scatter them all over the place? That's just a different level of petty evil.

The style of gameplay is similar to Zelda in the perspective with some mild platforming which makes things annoying when you don't have a weapon until, after speaking to the Acorns, you go to the windmill to get yourself a slingshot. From this you progress to different worlds but obtaining different keys, having a semi-open world kind of vibe to it, though that's mostly to hide the gifts all over the place.

This game was clearly aimed at little kids and it feels like it, but in the same way of insulting young minds by having a very flimsy story to explain the events and motivate the player. In regards to gameplay, it's still solid so I can't say it's a terrible game in that way, but it is pretty boring and certain mini-games are non-optional and I was stuck for sooo long with one where I had to get a boat part, which you need to make a boat and race against your doppelganger! It took me way too long to finish this game and it shows in the video below, however, it still wasn't my worst experience of Cringetober. It was the last official game I had planned for Cringetober, however, I did add two more that'll be coming out soon which I added to Cringetober retroactively. Fallout 76 and Overwatch 2. Games I dislike for personal reasons.

Gameplay/Stream

(This is from my own flawed memory so please understand if I get this wrong)

This is another one of those games that's incredibly fun and also completely off it's head, like God Hand! It's also a lot of fun too and, much like God Hand, the story itself is not impressive, but the gameplay is what you're here for along with many different things that...err....draw the male gaze if you know what I mean.

It's a 3rd person action game where you fight off zombies with one of the most popular of zombie-killing weapons. The Chainsaw! With her is the head of her bf who had been bitten by a zombie, so through a spell she's able to keep him alive as a disembodied head, hanging off your hips as you jump, spin and do all kinds of stunts to progress through levels and avoid attacks from the zombies.

The majority of zombies are your typical zombies, fighting them off with fun decapitations and slicing them in half, the bosses are far more dangerous to the point that they have powers and can survive decapitations and being split in half! Each boss battle is different too you get to see other members of your family, who are all zombie hunters too dealing with this massive zombie attack.

The game has two separate endings, the true and happy one requiring that you go back and fight off special zombies that have their own backstories and are pretty tough. It's a lot of fun and kept me entertained for many hours and I loved the music that game with it. Many classic tunes that I had to roll my eyes whilst smiling, because of course they have that old "Lolly Pop" song in it! Especially as those are used as power ups in the game.

Again, it's a lot of cheesy fun and well worth playing if you get your chance to have a good time with it. The story might not win any awards, but this is very much a case of the gameplay being the focus and I can't remember any negatives of it really.

This is something of a dream that many people are having with the idea of one day establishing a colony on Mars and in this game you get to do just that! You need to manage your cash flow, however, along with the different resources that you have to acquire to get your first dome built and preferably a few buildings as first you need to use drones as the surface is completely inhospitable for humans.

Soon enough you'll be building all kinds of domes and with the different DLCs, connecting them all up together and even terraforming the planet into a whole new world! Of course, it depends on what you actually have, sadly.

I've spent many hours with this and probably will do so later. Though the colonists do seem to have a bit of a personality so you need to watch out for those who may have traits that make them difficult to entertain or cheer up for whatever reason and provide a wide variety of entertainment! It's pretty in-depth in what you have to do, to attempt to terraform the planet and much of the technology I feel we're not there yet so we're going to have to wait and see what the future holds for us.

I remember playing this game for many hours as it was still in early access and I do still have a bit of fun playing it! However, this game now has to contend with the likes of Rimworld and it falls flat there as the characters themselves in your colony are essentially blank slates that do anything and everything. You can't control them individually and in that case it reminds me of some games like Simcity and such where you are more, watching over and trying to nurture this society as opposed to have full control over everyone's action or that they may have personalities of their own.

The people you look after are generally humans, but quite often if your place looks nice you'll periodically gain more people from not just breeding but refugees who arrive and are instantly willing to work, though I like that fact they they're cat people with ear and tails! I'd imagine this would cause issues with the doggos you can adopt and help you transporting goods everywhere and fighting the monsters. They're good boys.

Many buildings have a static and simple upgrade, but others like the housing can split into more luxury places that only slightly increase housing for others, but makes them feel more comfortable, slum like places with lots of extra space, but not too comfortable and an option that's between the two.

I do like the idea of fighting off this corruption and even maybe one day completely filling the map, but that's a lot to ask for and even the fun little extras that you unlock, with added achievement intergration, can't keep my attention much anymore.

It's certainly not a bad game, but there's much better out there. I'll still say, this is worth playing though of you've got a potato for a computer and can't run Rimworld with several hundred mods like I have!

We move on from Totally Spies! to Betty Boop's Double Shift and sadly a friend of mine had to leave as their gran had passed away recently and she was a big fan of Betty Boop, which is totally understandable whilst I was streaming it and so I carried on as much as I could, but this game got very boring fairly quickly!

Though not quite that old, but the most I have seen of Betty Boop has been that great scene from Roger Rabbit that I reference in video title there where she says how she's working there because toons are only popular when they're in colour these days.

Anyway, the gameplay. In case you didn't guess from the title, it's essentially the game "Diner Dash" but with Betty Boop, related characters and art-style from that time period (but in colour) and with the addition of at the end of the shift, she does a dance that's performed in a semi-QTE fashion which certainly didn't help in this.

So you take orders, bring them to the kitchen, take orders to the customers, bring them mints and things if they need it, clean up the plates and have to serve ALL the customers by yourself, just like any other Diner Dash copy/past game out there, but with this one having the difference with Betty Boop in it and a little dancing section with her, which is essentially the animation of a Betty Boop gif. There's not really much I can actually talk about in regards to this game and I can't even recommend it because there's nothing here. Maybe if you're a MASSIVE fan of Betty Boop I guess as I've not seen her in anything else...

Also, am I the only one that thinks her uncle or grandad or whatever is kinda creepy?

Gameplay/Stream

Currently this game is my addiction at the moment as all of it's flashing lights and sounds is keeping me coming back to it, like how it's designed to exploit people like me to swindle cash out of me and then point and laugh at me for doing so. As of yet, it hasn't convinced me to put money down, but damn is it tempting sometimes and I'll get into that.

First, the gameplay:

...or lack-there-of. This is, as the title suggests, one of those idle games that play themselves and most of the time you will be watching bad guys blow up into coins and bosses drop sacks that contain the secondary currency while you sit there, try to get events done, then look at the time and wonder what the fuck happened to your time that this game just stole from you?!?!

The intention is that you click on an enemy, you do damage from somekind of fire blast. You can level this up so you do more damage, however, it doesn't scale well so when you're fighting higher level enemies you can't do anything to them! This is where the heroes come in.

The heroes fight by themselves, usually attacking when their bar fills and often killing an enemy, but this also scaled badly as you will find yourself fighting enemies that are too tough for the current highest level you can afford for your heroes, but here's where the rogue-lite elements play out. You can leave missions and you gain favour. That favour, becomes a passive % bonus to the amount of coins that are dropped. So for example, 10 favour gets you 10% so it's a direct trade off. Pretty nice huh?

...yeah I didn't think you'd fall for that. Currently I struggle to get to area 250 on some places and I have favour in the billions! That should give me characters with levels so eyeball meltingly high that I can bat away anything, but since they often reuse the exact same sprites and the areas cycle over and over then you can find at the beginning of a stage you're batting imps and demons aside like nothing, but later bears and wolves are giving you real grief and are even so strong your attacks to 0 damage! Or atleast, it looks like 0, but their HP is so high that the health bar looks like it doesn't even wince in response to an attack.

Your heroes all get specials and passives that can do things such as boost eveyone's base damage, nuke all the enemies on the field and everything inbetween. They take a while to recharge though so it may help you clear one area, but then you could get knocked back in the following area because it's not recharged.

You can get cute little familiars, but in my experience the only way you can get them is via gems or other paid ways. These are extremely useful as they passively click for you so you don't end up breaking your finger of suffering from RSI!

Equipment! What party can't get equipment! Well, here equipment gives passive buffs to the characters, some giving a passive damage buff to ALL the characters on the field so it's best to bring your best equipped along, but this too is open to monitisation as I'll cover shortly.

Potions are another little boost to improve your party. They last for a limited time with the more powerful ones lasting up to a day or even until that adventure ends!

Feats are something characters gain at a certain level, however, you are limited in your selection and the number of slots you unlock is few and far between. That said, there are advantages such as once it's unlocked, it remains unlocked no matter how many times you reset which can be pretty neat. You only have a few to choose from and others are unlocked in drum roll loot box- I mean, chests!

Yes, chests. As you adveture you'll come across two kinds of basic chests. Silver and Gold. Silver holds some gold for you to use in your current adventure along with the potential of a potion and equipment. However, the equipment has a rarity value and silver only gives you Common to Uncommon for the main starting 12 characters and that's it! You get these in the form of a set of cards. Silver only offering you three.

Gold on the other hand has gives you equipment from uncommon to rare, bounty contracts to gain rewards for what you would've spent time to get, blacksmith contracts for leveling up equipment and you get five cards instead of three. A few other characters are also covered by these gold chests too and the price, in gems is very different. Silver is 50 whilst gold is 500. A massive difference when you seem to only get gems after a boss fight and even then, often under 10. You could also buy the gold ones for $5.99! Bloody rip off, considering.

Then you have heroes who have their own unique chests. These are for all kinds of heroes that have been unlocked in events and such, like most recently the event that's going on I unlocked "The Dark Urge" from BG3, a game I've yet to actually play and doesn't have this microtransaction BS in it.

Numerous champsions have their own exclusive chests so you can't get their equipment even in the normal golden chests that are on market and you have to pay a premium for them which, during the current event, is either a grind of 7,500 flags or $5.99. Same price as a regular gold chest, but you have the change to get equipment for that specific character!

The other bit I find a little bit insideous is that they advertise whenever they or a partner is streaming or posting up YouTube videos and each time, you get a code to unlock an "Electrum" chest which often gives you the majority of things you find in a gold chest, but also a handful of gems to try and get you hooked into that economy.

There's also multiple skins for everyone, because of course. You can't just get skins, you need to buy them or unlock them in special events and then there's these things called "Modron" Parts which I have no idea what they are as I've not progressed beyond the first main campaign as I've been sucked into the events going and trying to accomplish them because my brain wants a full set of items for the collection. Atleast, I've stopped it from buying into it.

It may seem fun with the gameplay images, but trust me, it's not. Especially if you are susceptible to these kinds of monetisation scams I highly recommend you stay the fuck away from this! It's so full of microtransactions all over the place that you could easily end up penniless.

Stay away for your own safety.

Edit: Forgot to mention, they seem to have this nasty habit of referring to their micro-transactions as "DLC" when in reality it isn't. It's micro-transactions. It comes off much like when Bethesda were trying to call their paid mods "Mini DLCs" and I can't stand this disgusting position that these kinds of predatory companies like to stand.

Now yes I did choose this for Cringetober 2022, but that's more to do with how often people would look at this series and judge it negatively where as many people like myself enjoyed this and even uncovered...as a friend would call it...people's "Special Interests" in regards to a lot of the suggestive situations that the girls find themselves in the numerous torture methods and when you look back you wonder how it got past the censors...

Now the game itself...there's not much to really hate here at all.

The story follows the show, with each level being an episode of the TV show, including their first mission where their handler/Mission Briefer was playing the role for them to fulfil their test assignment before getting involved in real missions. I did always love his terrible puns and they make a come back in this game considering some are copied from the episode and the other can be in regards to descriptions of the gadgets themselves, which you get given to you, much like the show, as if some psychic knows exactly which one is going to be useful and which one might make it too easy. Even Q from James Bond didn't have that much foresight!

The gameplay is a mixture of platforming/puzzle platforming along with mini-games scattered in that are unique to each stage, including the final mission of the game where you travel in a submarine and fight a villain in a mech! Deaths are represented with a image from the shows where the girls messed up and success is shown with the three of them jumping together in a victory hug!

Like Disney Princess, this was actually quite enjoyable, but it isn't quite as good as that game was. That game I was expecting crap but got a really solid platformer with unique stages and here we have a solid platformer, but not much else I can add beyond that if you're a fan of the show, you'll like this too!

Stream/Gameplay