Imagine an arcade game...got it? Now imagine a 3D arcade game...getting closer. This time imagine a 3D arcade brawler focused on combos and player expression. Ths is God Hand, pure unfiltered 3D arcade-ish action-packed fun from an era that has left us not so long ago: the 2000's, the mid 2000's to be exact. Yeah, the era were killer7 and Resident Evil 4 were also published by none other than Capcom.

God Hand is focused on one thing and one thing only: Fun. Pure, raw fun without limits. The game's lack of proper introduction makes it's message clear: "Go figure it out yourself, you can do it". At first you'll think something is missing but no, they let you run in the wild the moment you start playing. No tutorials, no training room just straight into action. This is one of God Hand's many unique traits, it talks to you face to face, knows why you are here and wastes no time in anything less but getting to the good parts in an instant.

You can't talk about God Hand without mentioning how awesome, yet simple and intuitive is the combat system. Everything is customizable from the get-go, all in the name of the player's choice. From example, you can go for an only-combo oriented build which could decimate an enemy in a matter of seconds or specialize your tecniques on crowd control when you need to, combine both! There are no "combos" that requires precise inputs to pull off, instead every attack has it's purpose: either breaking guard, juggle or launch your enemy. It's stupid simple and I don't know why no one has ever think of it before, The juice is in context, like solving an everyday problem: "What would be best for this situation?", "What would happen if I combine this, and this...?" Note that is one way to play it. The main gameplay loop is to experiment with every combination, being able to craft your own set of combos and strategies to kick ass. Or perfect what you already have.

The mid 2000's was an era of change. Just imagine, the HD consoles were the new hot thing and everyone was starting to move away from the PS2, Xbox and Gamecube generation. There was a sort of uncertainty for the new age because you know, change can be scary and this new generation promised a lot. Why I am suddenly talking about all this in a God Hand review exactly? I feel the mid 2000's was an unique era of comfort way after the Y2K scandal in the new millenium, at least on the video game space. God Hand took birth in that time, in a time while the PS2 was still selling like pancakes, but still everyone knew what was ahead. HD games were yet to completely took and the 6h gen was still giving some fight with unique titles, maybe not as groundbreaking as the beginning of the generation but they were one thing: "Unique". Outlandish, without necessarily having a grandious scope. They were weird experiments that weren't afraid to have the weirdest of ideas. Basically God Hand is overall very unique and there is nothing like it, or at least that I know. The era it was made took a huge role on green-lighting projects like these that nowdays only indies and AA productions. killer7 was released a year prior God Hand just to give a quick example. Want more proof? Look at the description of the game.

God Hand is a difficult game. No, is challenging but also very difficult. As I said before, it gives you all the tools to take out the enemies in with customizable combos. It doesn't suggarcoat your experience unless you want to. In Resident Evil 4 there was a system working underneath at all that change the behiavor of the enemies dynamically to give further challenge to the player. This was done depending of how good you were at it. Same principles apply to God Hand, as long as you don't get hit too many times a bar at the bottom left will indicate whenever you level up or not. I'm going to be honest, at first I thought this "Level Up" bar indicated actually leveling up, attacks get stronger, you get faster, etc. Cave Story uses a similar system were if you get hit you start to lose power, thus making the weapons much less effective. I was so lost in that system that I even did some bosses on "Die", which is the final level of perfection were enemies smack half of your lifebar with a single slap. Don't be afraid to die if you need to and lower that bar. Take my word; this game is not hard once it clicks but is very challenging and demands a lot out of you. That is half of God Hand magic, it is very easy to get into but hard to master.

But I won't say is absolutely perfect, as it has some problems. I already listed one of them which is that it never proprerly explains what does that bar bellow serves for exactly. God Hand doesn't demand perfection, not at all. It demands control. Sometimes the camera acts wonky when there are more than 2 enemies on screen at the same time close to each other, however this doesn't happen too frequently. In larger levels such as the desert enemies can gank up on you attacking from all directions, specially enemies with swords. Tank controls for me are a deal breaker when fighting a large groups of enemies, again. However, 1v1 fights are perfect with tank controls. These were growing pains that I learned to accustomed as the game went on, but on certain occations when mixed all together they were just annoying in a otherwise sound experience.

God Hand feels like a game that could only be made in that era of comfort. You know, living in the moment. Like, you can spank women, send them flying or even gorilla suplex an actual gorilla with a lucha libre custome in the middle of a demonic castle. Reeks ridiculness of the highest quality, the tone is always humorous, whacky and chaotic. Making a sequel will probably be against for what this game was made for; living in the moment perfectly sealed in a safe bubble.

The first time I played Katamari Damacy was with Reroll in 2018. I had gotten a copy for Christmas after thinking it seemed interesting. I played it a bit throughout my week trip with my ex-girlfriend and thought it was somewhat fun and nothing else. Fast forward to 2022, I was going through my games deciding what to play next. I see Reroll and remembered I didn't actually beat it. Since I knew it was short, I decided to finish it this time. Coming out of it, I thought it was great and a lot better than I initially thought. Fast forward again to the end of 2022, I get the PS2 version. I already really enjoyed Reroll but this replay of the OG version made me truly love Katamari and got me to eventually play We Love Katamari. And yet again, with this most recent playthrough, I still love this game.

The story of Damacy is wacky and lighthearted. The King of Cosmos (this giant flying handsome guy like fella) flies into all the stars in the sky as well as the moon because he was drunk. You the prince, must now roll up objects in levels and create new stars (and the moon) to fix your dad's mistake. That's the entire story but it works because of this games weird and quirky humor.

So you have to roll up objects in levels and make them big enough to satisfy the king before he turns them into stars. Sounds simple enough right? Well besides there being some levels that aren't just that, the way you collect objects in this game is interesting. You start with a ball at a specific size and must gradually make it bigger over time. The thing with that is, you can't roll just anything at the start. You have a size limit depending on how large your ball is and as it gets bigger, so does the size of possible things you can roll up. It can be a bit tricky to gauge what things you can and can't collect at your ball size, and if you run into something you can't it can knock things out of your ball. It's actually not too hard to do that, because along with knocking into large objects, if you get stuck somehow that can make you drop objects as well. It's actually not hard to get stuck in this game, and while it can be somewhat frustrating, you can usually escape. A large part of the reason this game is so fun to play, besides the general gameplay being solid, is how wacky collecting everything is. What you can collect ranges from small stuff like erasers or thumbtacks to literal whole landmasses and clouds in the sky. Besides the King occasionally cracking jokes or reprimanding you in levels, a lot of the character comes the humans. Like halfway into the game, you start getting to levels where you can collect humans. There are all types of them and they all have hilarious or even somewhat-terrifying reactions to being rolled up. But this is the fun of the game, going from level to level and seeing what types of craziness will ensue.

Something I think I prefer in We Love are the level settings. In this game it's a lot more basic and is someone's home, a little town, an area by a lake and then a whole city. It's not bad in the slightest, and I do really like how the levels evolve over the time..I just prefer We Love's more varied level themes now. I will say though, while I do at the very least like every level, the final one where you must make the moon is so peak. It's a city level but you're given 25 minutes to complete it and you eventually get big enough to collect full cities and clouds in the sky and a literal thunder god. It's insane and by far the wackiest level in the game and I love it. I gave a couple very minor things I wish were better in this game but the thing I actually don't like are some of the side levels. Besides the usual ones I described, there are levels where you must create constellations. These range from levels where you have to collect as many of an object as you can to one where you must collect as many paired objects as you can. These are all fine and dandy but then there are some where you have to collect the biggest of an object you can. These two levels are make Ursa Major and Make Taurus. With these, you have to collect the biggest bear and cow in each respective level. Only issue is there are bears and cows all over the level and if you collect just one it ends the level. They want you to memorize the stage so you can make your ball big enough and find the bear/cow. Idk, I never had the patience for these and just don't find them fun so I always just collect the first one I see and skip it basically. Another level I'm not as keen on but still try with is the one where you must make a 10M ball but you can't see your progress so you must guess. I do find it a little fun to see how close I can get but it's pretty difficult for me to gauge where I'm at just by guessing. That's my biggest issue with the game, these three side levels and they're only like a 10th of the game so it's not the biggest deal in the world.

The games visuals and artstyle is fantastic. It goes for cel-shading I believe and it makes every level so vibrant and colorful. The levels are already cool enough as it is but the little planets you go on in the hub, atmospherically are great as well. It's literally just your means of going to each level or the options in the game but it has a ton of personality that just makes it super memorable. The entire game is like that tbh, even the title screen with the three game files has you rolling up parts of the word Namco to start..each file in the game is literally a couple letters of the publisher! It's just incredibly quirky and charming which I love a lot.

Besides the game's weird and quirky nature, the soundtrack is kind of what sells this game. It's honestly a very impressive and out there OST, with songs from all different music genres. You have swing, techno, salsa, J-pop etc. This game is bound to have a song you'll like. Some of my favorites are Que Sera Sera, Katamari on the Rocks, Lovely Angel and plenty more. There are actually a couple of stage songs I'm not like a huge fan on, namely Wanda Wanda and You Am Smart. They aren't bad, they just pale in comparison to a lot of the other songs I feel. I honestly don't think I like love love any song in this game, but like the collective majority of great and experimental songs just makes me appreciate the soundtrack a ton. That is...besides Lonely Rolling Star which is not only my favorite song between both Katamari games I've played, it's one of my favorite videogame songs ever now and is probably in my top 5 VGM of all time. The levels it's in could be total shit and I wouldn't care because the song is so good, so every level it was in (only 2 apparently which is kinda sadge) was pure bliss. The final level was also pure bliss because on top of being the most fun, it played Katamari on the Rocks which is a banger. Either way, great OST which is even more peak because it has Lonely Rolling Star.

Had a couple of little gripes that might be fixed by We Love when I replay it. Doesn't change the fact this game is peak though. Was thinking about bumping this to a 10, still might in the future, but for now I'll just keep it at a 9. Still a blast to play and just artistically it's amazing (both conceptually and it's music/art style) which I appreciate a TON. Anyways, next review will be Majora's Mask and then I'll probably join everyone in playing Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance so look forward to those reviews in the future!

I have a little bit of a fond memory with this game: Back when I was still a kid in the early 2010s, my brother and I have watched an old video of this fangame, and what was so great about it was the fact that it reused a bunch of music from games that we liked during that time period. Not only this version, but the more updated version with new and original music that are all bangers. My brother recently played it in 2023 and apparently the game sucks to control???

I can't imagine that but considering that he discussed with me how the Sonic Worlds engine is a horrible Sonic Engine with Sonic 3D in 2D, I can see why this game would probably suffer the same issues. Maybe I should come back to it, or not. I don't know.

Alright, I guess I’ll talk about the original.

Castlevania is kinda bullshit. It likes to throw tons of enemies at you in super inconvenient spots, especially in the lead-up to Death (it’s a great boss fight; too bad you’ll only have half your health bar left by the time you get to him). It’s that classic NES “fuck you” design that’s meant to prevent players from beating it in a single rental.

Aside from that, though, Castlevania is still an absolute classic that deserves to be preserved.

Movement feels good. Simon Belmont walks at a brisk pace and his jumps are precise, yet deliberate; when you jump, you better mean it, as there’s no mid-air control. It’s a nice level of challenge that feels punishing, but fair. Ditto for his whip, which is so iconic that I don’t think I even need to describe why it’s so awesome.

The music isn’t quite as good as later installments, but it’s still a banger. “Vampire Killer” hits hard. Go on and listen.

But if there’s one thing that makes Castlevania stand out, especially at the time of its release, it’s the visuals. The sprites are so meticulously designed, from Simon’s Conan the Barbarian inspired look, to each and every one of the monsters he comes across. And the backgrounds just ooze with detail, reveling in the Universal Monster and gothic horror stylings that the series clearly draws from. As much as I don’t like the level leading up to Death, I can’t deny just how amazing the whole area looks. Art direction can really go a long way to make a game memorable, and the Castlevania franchise has understood that for nearly 40 years now.

All in all, despite the difficult bullshit, Castlevania is still an NES classic that’s well worth checking out. Revisiting this game and soaking in the old-school horror atmosphere is always a treat.

Waited til I 100%'d both characters before writing a proper shakedown of my thoughts of this game (+ running on fumes as I'm writing so I'm sorry if all this seems so tangential and a bit repetitive lmao, I really don't use this site for anything but tracking my backlog anymore but I needed to get my thoughts out for this game in particular), and I gotta say...

Holy shit, this is probably one of my favorite platformers of all time.

A consistent and constant mechanical treat that feels like no other platformer on the market. People joke that this game is Wario Land 5, but I'd say that's only partially true. Under the hood, there absolutely is Wario Land DNA in this game, but surprisingly the game has incredibly deep roots to Metroid and Sonic.

This sounds like water and oil mixing together, as someone who likes both series. I play Metroid games as a large puzzle you slowly unravel as time goes on (and for vibes but that's besides the point) and I play Sonic games as a speedy precision platformer. The tempo of the two could not be more different, but what Pizza Tower focuses on is what the two share: mastery over time. All 3 games have fundamental encouragement to learn your environment for better results (faster escapes for Wario Land 4, more efficient routing to reach areas faster in Metroid, better score for Sonic), and Pizza Tower takes this idea and runs far with it.

The level design blends together the three games masterfully. (Mostly.)
I'm so sorry for this next description since it's such a gross oversimplification of the previously mentioned games; while you're mainly focusing on collecting important items to properly advance and eventually pushing you out of the level as fast as possible, all while playing with new ideas constantly (Wario Land 4), the game encourages you to explore around a bit before that point and subtly pushes you towards secrets (Metroid) while having the open space for you to move at blazing speed. Although, you might need the technical skill to compensate going that fast all the time, and to keep your points up for a better rank (Sonic). All parts of those games I really love, yet it feels NOTHING like those games once you really get into it, thanks to Peppino.

Peppino is maybe the most well thought out platformer protagonist for the game he's in, and maybe just ever honestly for his movement?

Obviously on the character side of things, the explanation of being a tired, anxiety-ridden and struggling small pizza shop owner being picked on by what is essentially a massive pizza empire makes him pretty endearing from the get-go. It helps that the Wario inspiration in him also makes him incredibly funny, constantly having some of the best faces in the entire medium. Fits the game's tone like a glove, so much personality.

Except you put Peppino's moveset in any other platformer, he breaks it in half over his knee and piledrives it into the ground. You can say this about a lot of platformer characters - Madeline from Celeste would probably break a lot of games, so would Meat Boy and Ori, etc. - but I've never seen a character be so hard to handle yet so adaptable at the same time. The crux of Peppino's gameplay is momentum. His best and most useful tools like climbing walls, drop diving, superjumping (shinesparking), drifting, etc. are only available to you if you are going and staying at Mach 3. In Mach 3 though? He starts handling like a car. Easy to keep going, hard to come to a complete stop, but once you got it down it becomes second nature. If you master going that fast though, you can really navigate any platforming challenge quickly to the point of what you can do would be speedrunning in any other platformer. Any Mario or Sonic game would be completely annihilated by Peppino.

You can probably see where this is going with the description earlier. Learn the level, go faster, get everything, get better ranks. It's purely intrinsic reward to get better ranks; you don't have to S Rank every level, you can beat the game just fine normally playing through them once or twice! In my opinion at least, the gameplay's magic comes from said mastery. There's something incredibly satisfying on how every room in every level clicks together so magically once you really get the flow of the game down. Really scratches that "incremental improvement" itch in my brain.

I'm realizing as I'm writing that I've forgotten to mention an elephant in the room; the soundtrack. Good lord. I think there are maybe only a handful of songs I don't like on this OST, the rest is all killer. There are so many earworms in this soundtrack, it is insane.

I'm however not gonna say this game is flawless. I can definitely see why some people do not like this game, because it really can be a little much at times sensory-wise. I got a bit overjolted myself if I drank caffeine earlier in the day while I was doing P-Rank attempts, it can be a very stressful and headache inducing experience that really wears you down even if you really love the game.

For a more personal gripe, there's quite a few levels I really do not like at all. This will only make sense if you've played it, but there's probably about 1 level a floor that makes me either really bored or incredibly frustrated. Just to list em off; Ancient Cheese is probably the most stale out of the floor 1 levels, the level itself really does not stick out in my brain and it's gimmick is used better later in the game. Fun Farm I feel is a bit too bland, and really doesn't stick out to me either, outside of the obvious guest star. Crust Cove is a nightmare to P-Rank due to it's length and incredibly unforgiving score requirement. Peppibot Factory I could write a whole essay why I don't like this level, but I'll shorten it down to "it's the most 2D Sonic-like (derogatory) level in the game." DMAS is just genuinely frustrating, the fact one mistake can cost you the entire rank a minute 30 into the level is insane, and honest to god the whole joke of the level gets really old, fast.

Despite that, this game's an all-timer in my book. Not flawless, but wow. What a good game. Keeping an eye on Tour De Pizza, because god damn.

I loved this game as a kid, I think between the GameCube and Xbox 360 releases I probably put in about 200 hours into it, just screwing around in the levels and messing with the Chaos. I never took the time to legitimately 100% it due to how easy it was for me to get frustrated at something not going well and not being smart enough to explore for non-necessary upgrades. After watching a friend play it for the first time as an adult, I decided I'd go back and finally finish what I never could as a kid. I installed some mods to fix up the visuals to be a bit closer to the original release and to make some mechanics (like rail grinding or bouncing from the homing attack) smoother, but I ultimately disabled the former in the end.

Here's a general list of my thoughts toward aspects of the game in positive (+), neutral (=), and negative (-) sections.

+ Music is consistently a banger, I don't think there's a track I feel negative toward and I'd happily listen to any of them.
+ This game oozes that Dreamcast personality that has yet to be matched by any games from any other era/console/developer.
+ When the levels feel good, they feel really fucking good. Doing a Sonic or Shadow level without messing up or getting all the Chaos Emerald shards quickly and getting an A rank is peak satisfaction.
+ Interacting with Chaos and raising them is a neat little mechanic if you mess with it casually. It's nice that you're rewarded for exploring levels with the Chao crates and random animals for raising them.
= The "reward" for getting all 180 Emblems is neat conceptually, but ultimately unrewarding. It's one of the few times seeing Green Hill doesn't feel like nostalgia bait and it's cool that they stick with the classic art style for it, but the stage is all you get. No cool abilities, no fun items, just a simple stage you can finish in under two minutes.
= Having to do the same mission five times for all their Emblems is actually garbage. I get that this game was made on a significant time crunch so they had to change the scope from the first game, but the gimmicks they have you do for missions 2, 4, and 5 are boring. The Lost Chao mission type is neat at least since it requires you to have paid attention in the last two missions to where the ancient ruins are and it's nice they make you use most of your abilities.
= Knuckles/Rouge levels are more fun than I remembered, they really incentivize memorizing locations and going fast which is the core of Sonic games to me. They can be a bit frustrating though - some of the hints are really bad, especially within the later stages. This just lead to me restarting missions and trying the same route over and over until I'd get two easy ones I knew and I could waste time finding the third. This is the one mission type where the Hard mission is actually kinda fun since the Chaos Emeralds are in the same spot every time, you just gotta figure out how to get them.
= Sonic/Shadow levels can be fun on an initial run or when you have a really good run, but going for A ranks is excruciating. Some levels are so short that a single mistake just leads to you having to reset over and over and because they're generally really fast, you'll have to be repeating all the quick movements for things like rail grinding and homing attacks.
= Homing attacks can feel really satisfying if you've got a big chain of enemies to do it on, but the fact it's contextual to the direction of the joystick can lead to some awful moments. Some levels have enemies in positions where you can aim your stick at an enemy and it'll just launch you in that direction instead of at the enemy. On top of that, the fact the height you get bounced up after doing one is random is insane, I downloaded a fix for this immediately. It's honestly so bad and inconsistent that I feel like I'm doing something wrong but I can't tell what.
-Tails/Eggman levels are definitely the worst of the bunch. They aren't very engaging and the tinnitus-inducing sound of the lock-on is awful since you'll be going for high enemy chains constantly. One thing I never noticed as a kid is that if you end up gliding against a wall, you'll be pushed down as fast as possible. This is true for all characters but this little quirk makes hovering feel terrible for these two characters especially.
- Lives are always a shitty mechanic in a game like this, running out of lives just means you're booted back to the menu so it's just a penalty to the player's time in a way that doesn't feel justified. I ended up using a cheat for infinite lives because the mechanic doesn't add anything to the game.
- Rail grinding feels terrible! I tried it with and without the mod to modernize it and I truly think there isn't a way to make it feel good in this game. It's incredibly inconsistent to the point where I think "messing up" was probably the cause of the vast majority of my deaths. So many levels refuse to let you transfer from one rail to the other by holding a direction and tapping the jump button, which just leads to you limply falling to your death and having to restart! Speaking of...
- I get that you need a penalty for the player dying, but the fact you lose all your points for dying in a game where the ranking system is specifically based on points really SUCKS! You can get away with continuing from a checkpoint on some levels but I felt like most of them required a great run from the first checkpoint to stand a chance at getting an A-rank.
- The camera is probably one of the worst things about this game. The mixture of fixed angles and a moveable camera for the player can be used well (see the Silent Hill games) but there are so many instances of this game locking your camera into awful angles in situations where it feels like you should be able to move it. Some levels actually made me a bit nauseous from how the camera places itself when it gets caught behind an object and decides to jitter endlessly.
- Doing all the completion for Chao world is actually insane. If you don't want to engage in the exploit to infinitely use animals and chaos drives, you're gonna be grinding an insane amount. Then you'll have to sit through typically 3-4 minutes of doing nothing but watching your Chao run, no way to speed up the race other than cheering your Chao on with the limited stamina it probably has. If you lose at the end, have fun waiting and watching again! If you win, have fun waiting and watching again as you do the same race a total of three to five times for the first two circuits.

Do I think this game is that good? No, not really. Do I think it's generally fun? Yeah, I'd say so. I think SA2 is best played by doing a casual playthrough and messing with the side content just a bit. Going for the 100% is an actively miserable and unrewarding experience that genuinely damaged a tendon in my forearm.

sunsets as colorful as sherbet
winds cool as a lake
The music of today are the birds chirping and grass swaying

Go outside and enjoy this moment to be alive and breathing

”But soon, the flames will fade, and only Dark will remain.”

What’s there to say about Dark Souls? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever played. It’s brutal, but rarely unfair. Oppressive, yet oddly encouraging. Terrifying, yet magical. Like the deceptive warmth of the First Flame and the unearthly chill of the Abyss, Dark Souls strikes a near-perfect balance of tension and reprieve.

Every death you experience feels like a proper punishment for screwing up. As soon respawn at the bonfire, the first thing on your mind is basically, “Alright, let’s do this one last time.” That’s what makes Dark Souls so addicting. The cycle of trying your best, dying, learning from your mistakes, and trying your best “one more time”. Because despite the punishment, you can tell that the game wants you to succeed, so it feels like every respawn is just another chance to get it right this time.

The combat is awesome and probably the best in any game I’ve played. It’s slow, but it’s deliberate, intuitive, and masterfully executed. There’s so much depth thanks to the different types of weapons and how they scale with your stats, allowing you to craft your fighting machine, your perfect undead warrior. Every successful encounter feels like a victory, whether it be one enemy or a room full of them.

The bosses. Oh man, the bosses. Not all of them are winners, but when they hit, they hit home fucking runs. The Asylum Demon is the perfect introductory boss. The Taurus Demon builds off of that. The Bell Gargoyles ramp up the challenge. Ornstein and Smough are the ultimate test to prove your worth as the Chosen Undead. Sif may not be difficult, but the whole fight is one hell of an emotional gut punch. The Four Kings are a mad dash to kill them before they kill you. Knight Artorias is a frantic sword duel against the greatest hero in Lordran’s history. Manus is darkness incarnate and holy shit does his fight feel like it. And Black Dragon Kalameet is the perfect optional superboss to prove that you have finally gotten gud.

The story takes the Metroid Prime route of “minimal, yet deep”. You’re basically just wandering across a kingdom killing whoever you’re told to, but the sheer level of detail present in the item descriptions, backgrounds, and NPC dialogue gradually expose the sheer tragedy of Lordran and its fallen leader, Lord Gwyn. I won’t go into details because it’s confusing as fuck, but it’s an appropriately dark and brooding tale that perfectly fits the game’s tone and leads to an inevitably bitter conclusion, regardless of what path you choose.

Oh, and the LEVEL DESIGN. The world of Dark Souls is intricately designed and takes a Metroidvania style approach by having the entire kingdom be interconnected. You gradually unlock shortcuts, keys to new areas, fast travel, and new powers to help you progress. Not to mention, there are tons of great individual areas, with Anor Londo, Sen’s Fortress, the Duke’s Archives, the Painted World of Ariamas, and basically everything in the Artorias of the Abyss DLC being some of my favorites. Hell, I even liked areas that most people hate. I thought all the ex-bosses littering the Demon Ruins were a great reminder of how far I’d come in my journey (also, the sight of an entire canyon full of Taurus Demons just standing there is incredibly funny to me). I also kinda liked the limited visibility of the Tomb of the Giants and how it forced me to manage my resources so I could keep my lantern in hand. I get why other people hate it, but I’m not other people, so I liked it.

However, Dark Souls, like any game, isn’t perfect, and it definitely suffered due to rushed development. The Crystal Cave and three of the Lord bosses feel undercooked. Lost Izalith is a boring as fuck area that I simply cannot defend. And don’t even get me fucking started on the fucking BED OF CHAOS!!!!

Nevertheless, the highs of Dark Souls are so high, so numerous, and so frequent that they completely drown out the lows. It’s just too much fun, and I’ll definitely be having even more fun playing it over and over in the future.

It was interesting finally getting to Konami's premiere shoot'em up series, with the original Gradius, released in arcades.
I played the North American version first, and ended up beating that one. I then tried to play the Japanese version, but I dropped it.
Why, you may ask? Well, let's start with the differences between both versions.

And by differences, I mean, the NA version is much harder than the JP version. I didn't know this when I first played the game, and got really frustrated as a result. I tried to play the JP version to give the game a second chance, but then I realized that I just don't like the game.

Let's start with the positives, I really like the upgrade system this game has. While you're playing through the game, you'll be collecting power-up items. When you collect one, it will highlight the first space on the bar seen on the bottom. Collecting more will highlight further spaces of that bar, until you go back to the beginning. With one of the buttons, you confirm which upgrade you want, and it makes the Vic Viper fun to play... when it has most upgrades.
Without the upgrades, the game only barely feels slightly better than the ship's controls in Scramble.
With the upgrades, you can increase your movement speed, have more projectiles and even obtain a shield!

Problem is, you can potentially increase your speed too much, and you can easily die to the game's walls. Never has a game made me hate walls so much, considering the amount of deaths I had to them.

And yeah, I think that's pretty much the only thing I liked outside of the presentation, which I will say is pretty good for 1985. The soundtrack is catchy, and the graphics, while simplistic, do the job and are a big job from the ones seen in Scramble and TwinBee.

I don't really like the game's level design much. While I appreciate the variety in the enemies and hazards you'll encounter, I just didn't have much fun going through them. They were too simple or too frustrating.
The amount of enemy projectiles the game sends at you in the NA version is fucking insane! I had to use save states so many times, because I was getting tired of the many deaths I was suffering. Even with save states, I still got pretty frustrated.

In the JP version, the number of projectiles is lesser, but I still didn't really like playing through the game, since most of the game's other issues are still there.

I know Gradius is a beloved shoot'em up, but I personally just didn't have much of a great time with it. Maybe one day I'll try the game out via another way, but bottom line, I didn't really like playing Gradius much.

I was going to say "hey another first review" but then fucking Napalm Man from Mega Man 5 stole it?? What??

Well, whatever. I suck at this game BAD. I've played literally every country and I still manage to somehow lose, I don't know why because I've tried a lot of different strats, but I guess I simply don't have what it takes to be a good military general...

Or...

Maybe it's the game that sucks.

Colorblindness Rating: F
Good luck trying to figure out what pieces are yours or what is even happening sometimes. German? Russian? Or Japanese? American? It's IMPOSSIBLE to tell.
Some board game versions of this game change up how the pieces look to better fit their respective armies; not so in this game.
Screw this game.