Hidden in this game is a rock song with lyrics about trying to write lyrics to said song.

Listen to it here: https://youtu.be/3wYYdAu6MT8

As for the game itself, it's a very bad wrestling game that uses combo-style button presses to perform basic grapples. It's super awkward and super crappy. Just listen to that song I posted earlier instead, because it's the best thing in the game next to the promos the wrestlers do for their "rants" on the character select screen which can also be viewed here:

https://youtu.be/PO1qYK01Q28?t=80

Please pick Kevin Nash, he's beggin' ya! Just do it in WCW/nWo Revenge instead of this.

My favorite rogue-lite to come out of 2020(sorry Hades), I enjoy the aesthetic of this game and trains are super cool and we should get more games with them as a focal point. The fact there exists people who think it looks bad kinda boggles my mind, because I personally think Slay the Spire looks abominable which is my main takeaway from that game but I guess that's just me.

There's a good amount of events and options so there's a lot of ways to spruce things up in each run, which are also short enough to not feel shitty if one goes south when close to the end. So I think it should be hard to get bored with this, assuming you like a nice deckbuilder game.

My only real complaint is that the factions are pretty unbalanced which is probably expected from this kind of game. Melting legion and umbra are both braindead easy to beat the game with once you know the overpowered combinations, stygian are pretty balanced but actually require a thought process and in later covenant runs good artifacts, awoken is probably about the same as stygian or slightly better at this point after the recent nerfs and hellhorned never fails to feel at least a little weak to me and hard to win with in 20-25 covenant runs.

I still put 110+ hours into it though according to steam, well worth a look.

This is a nice little early title for the PS2 that has two Gradius arcade games. Of course, these being Gradius games both are extremely difficult and are also probably the hardest games in the series along with following the traditional Gradius shmup style of "play well, cause if you die you'll be sent back with your power ups taken away and your ship will suck and be less mobile than a garbage truck" that I'm not super into.

Unfortunately, even if you're a fan of the series I'd say this title isn't SUPER worthwhile by default since there's a better collection for PSP that not only has these titles, but also has the first two games along with the PS1 title Gradius Gaiden. I'd say pick that one up instead.

I was actually kinda baffled to boot up Gradius III on this collection and find out that I had all of the stage select for loop 1 unlocked along with some of loop 2(the save on my first PS2 memory card somehow survived all this time when I originally rented this). It really shows how tenacious we were as kids back then to have the patience to do that, but it was also probably because we didn't have anything else to play.

Playing this game gets you ready for life. Why do I say that? Because it was the first shmup I ever played.

This baby has no stage checkpoints whatsoever. Die at the stage boss after a grueling time? Tough shit, go back and do it all again. At least there's infinite continues.

This is also a very early title for the console, so anytime a decent amount of sprites are on screen it starts chugging. It's really bad on stage 7 in particular where you're getting mosh pitted by flying crabs and construction lobsters constantly. One could say the slowdown helps you get through areas, but what happens when the game suddenly goes back to normal speed? You potentially fuck up due to it probably.

I could be a lot harder on this game due to it's unfairness, but I have a love/hate relationship with it due to nostalgia and the bopping soundtrack. It's a shame, because I feel like if it came out a bit later and fixed the slowdown and maybe designed the stages with a mid-checkpoint in mind it could've been a classic.

Events that happen in this game in the 15 minute span in which I take to beat it due to playing it hundreds of times as a kid because it's so short:

-Stimpy's invention explodes and they need to track down all the parts to start it back up and then turn it back off again to keep something bad from happening I guess.
-Immediately attacked by sentient lawnmowers upon leaving your house.
-Go into Mr. Horse's freezer and save a beaver from aimlessly jumping walruses.
-Leave for the zoo with demonic giraffes trying to eat you.
-Get into the zoo's aviary which is located in the baboon's cage for some reason, then pump yourself up full of helium to navigate it.
-Wander into the city and get water shot at you by multiple insane fire chiefs and have eggs dropped on you by demented birds.
-Get chased by the dog catcher and go downhill and try to jump over potholes that are impossible to react to on non-CRT monitors.
-Escape the dog pound, then try to outlast a tag team of roided up pro wrestlers in a ring located underneath said dog pound.
-Go through an acid trip with logs flying in the background and try to avoid man-sized mosquitos and pissed off bobcats punching in the air.
-Shrink in size and get snorted up by the beaver that's attached to Stimpy's Invention and try to turn it off and end the game.
-Credits, happy happy joy joy.

Yeah, it's 15 minutes long but damn is it a fun 15 minutes. You can also just slap Stimpy any time you want.

Bare Knuckle III is the best game in the series, SoR3 is a shitty bastardization thanks to Sega of America getting cold feet over an anti-nuke/war storyline and presumably being scared of the rental market. This resulted in the story getting completely butchered and difficulty settings getting artificially increased with bloated boss health bars and higher enemy damage.

They also for whatever reason just changed Axel, Blaze and Skate's colors. Because I guess Blaze just wasn't allowed to wear red.

Do yourself a favor and track down a translation and don't bother with the western release.

Alright, I'm probably gonna sound a bit more negative than I mean to, but that's only because the game gets praised enough as is. We already know this game is good. So here it goes:

Hear me out, this game is better with kaizo hacks. Why do I say this? Because the game feels like it doesn't totally make use of it's very forgiving controls and physics, every stage feels basic and because of that it's very easy. Not to say that it automatically becomes bad because of that, but it's telling to me when the only hard stages are ones involving the balloon power up(which sucks) and super-fast spike columns trying to invade you from below(the only time the platforming is actually difficult). Both of those stages are also optional and only found via secret exit! Do enjoy me a good secret exit though.

Also I know it's literally a launch title, but the game really doesn't change up appearances much. What's first? Plains. Next? More plains. Next? Caves! After that? Bridges! Next? Forest! And? More Plains! Bowser Land?! It's just more caves! SMB3 before it had better variety. It just kinda drives me nuts to think of that.

And why does the item box exist? Isn't Yoshi enough of a safety net? On top of the absurdly good cape? Like why dude? This game was made for babies. Seriously, play this with kaizo hacks.

This game would get a solid five stars and be nominated as a potential 2020 goty candidate by me if it weren't for the traditional JRPG combat.

Yes, it's funny and neat the first time. But man it wears out its welcome pretty fast once you actually hit the difficult stuff and get bored to death by an uneventful sewer dungeon that seems to take an entire century to get done with. And it only gets worse when the game expects you to grind in designated grind spots that the game literally prompts you about later in the game. You'll also at some point find out that you instantly lose fights if Ichi gets knocked out, which is downright horrible when there exists ohko attacks and a potential for enemies to just gang up and mass attack him at once. 15-30 minutes fighting a boss? Whoops, Ichi was suddenly knocked out and he seems to be deathly allergic to being revived. Sucks to be you, redo it all again.

Like everything else is fantastic. The story, music, sub-games, dragon kart, dialogue? All marvelous. Listen, I know it's cute and all that Ichiban loves Dragon Quest and he has to fight like he's from those games, but he doesn't need to bog down my own enjoyment of this game with that nonsense. Hopefully they iron it all out for Yakuza 8, because I'd hate to have to slog through the last half of the game for the story again after all the cool animations stop being cool on repeated viewings.

3D brawling in the other games wasn't always perfect, but at least you can say the fights were over reasonably quick normally, where as here everything takes twice or even thrice as long thanks to the JRPG combat. It's tiresome, and bad. I don't like it, I'm sorry.