A sequel to the first Entropy: Zero. This is a significant improvement all around! It's still using Half-Life 2 as a framework, so there's some stuff inherent to that, which I just don't care for. But all things considered, this is a fairly decent mod, with some rougher bits here and there. As someone who dislikes Half-Life 2, I will acknowledge that I do think this is more fun than Half-Life 2 itself. Stuff like being able to shoot while zooming in, or the Xen Relay Grenades, can be fun to utilize.

(beat as Lilac; not super inclined to go back and play as the other two characters)

This is a decent 2D action-platformer, pretty heavily influenced by games like Sonic and Rocket Knight Adventures, among others. I was encouraged to give this game a try by various people, so I went ahead and gave it a shot. (I should note that I'm not a huge Sonic fan, personally, though I think some of the 2D Sonics are okay)

With that in mind, I had an okay time playing through this. Lilac has a neat moveset, with various melee attacks and means of movement to traverse obstacles (particularly her rocket attack, which is literally what Sparkster uses - the fact the recharge time for it is so slow is a drag, though). I did feel like the level design felt a bit meandering, however - I kinda wish the levels felt more focused and trimmed-down. These stages can last an incredibly long time (15-20 minutes each, generally), which feels very long to me. I also feel like the game's difficulty curve is a bit weird - the game is generally very easy, but then at a couple specific points, it suddenly becomes absurdly difficult, with little effort made to ramp things up ahead of time. At any rate, the lives system is basically pointless, so you can figure out how to proceed if you just keep trying over and over. Whether that's a good thing or not will depend on what you look for from a 2D action-platformer; I can say that I have no interest in going back to try and 1CC this game, personally.

There's also a story, which is... interesting? I get a very 2000s-era fanfic vibe from it. I was never in the Sonic fandom myself, but having been involved with various other fandoms in the 2000s, and being pretty geeky and passionate about other series' lore - I can see this game's writing and presentation really clicking with a specific kind of person. I am not that person, however.

(also, that one scene in Lilac's story (you know the one) is hilarious in a way that really does not feel intentional, lmao)

So, all in all, I appreciate Freedom Planet for what it is, even if it's pretty clearly not targeted at me. I think it's cool that something as fan-driven as this is able to exist. It could very well be worth checking out, but I think your enjoyment may hinge on how much you really enjoy Sonic.

Fun game. Very, very easy compared to the NES trilogy, but still worthwhile to play through. I do find it kind of unusual that the prototype version contains a (relatively) full story, while the final game strips nearly all of the story text out, while mangling what's left. It's really a shame, considering how story-driven Ninja Gaiden as a series has been from the beginning. I can say that the cutscenes here can be surprisingly bloody, compared to what was shown on the NES - though the cutscenes themselves end up being kinda bland in comparison to how tightly-paced and constructed the NES trilogy's cutscenes can be. Those are a spectacle to witness.

I do have to say that I would probably like this more if the game were both more difficult, as well as has a more brisk pace going for it. I couldn't help but notice while playing, that there were a lot of enemies that took more than one hit to kill. Considering in the NES trilogy, enemies rarely if ever took more than one hit to kill - that makes those games move at a very fast pace, while the Master System game requires you to move a little slower and more methodically in order to dispatch everyone in your path. Yet, this doesn't quite nail the deliberate precision of a series such as Shinobi, either. This isn't enough to ruin the game by any means, but I do wish the difficulty/design balance could have been managed a bit better.

Ninja Gaiden for Game Gear is a rather odd experience. It really doesn't feel much like a Ninja Gaiden game at all - at times I got more of a Strider vibe than anything, thanks to the fact you can attack while moving. The cramped screen dimensions means the level designs (particularly the intricacies of the platforming challenges) are kind of simplistic, which also contributes to the feeling of this game being just a bit off. It's also really weird to use your special weapons by pressing down+attack, instead of up+attack like it is in every other Ninja Gaiden platformer.

This game has the weirdest difficult curve, I swear. The first stage is a joke - especially the boss, who you can beat without taking any damage your first try, using an easily exploitable tricks that takes no effort to work out. The second stage is a bit more of a struggle - especially the second boss, who deals a ton of damage and can kill you in a couple hits. (by the way, this game's hit detection is really annoying - you have practically no i-frames, and can potentially die from one attack in a couple seconds if you get caught in an inopportune place). Then the third stage goes back to being really easy (albeit with an interesting vertical stage gimmick, feeling like an inversion of the bonus stages from Shadow Dancer on Genesis), with a third boss that is almost as easy as the first stage's? The fourth stage is a boss gauntlet, which is kind of annoying. Then the fifth and final stage can be pretty irritating to play through, followed by two easy final boss phases, and a third phase that's a bit more annoying. Oh, and you have no continues at all in this game, though there are a few extra lives to be found.

It's a weird one. This isn't a bad game, per se, and I don't dislike it, but I think it's pretty solidly the weakest Ninja Gaiden game I've played yet. As far as Ninja Gaiden games on Sega platforms are concerned, I think the Master System game delivers a stronger experience.

I've heard this is based on Shadow of the Ninja, but I have not played that game, so I can't make comparisons there. As a Ninja Gaiden fan however, this made for an interesting playthrough. I think this is even easier than the Master System game, hilariously enough - I made it to the final form of the final boss in a single credit, which really does not feel like it should be possible in a game with the Ninja Gaiden branding. But regardless of the lack of difficulty present here, I do think this is fun to play. It's got a good variety of enemy encounters and level hazards, and the music can be pretty great. The grappling hook is a curious feature, though it can be a bit cumbersome to use in a pinch. Overall however, this game is solid enough for playing through in a sitting.

I've got quite a bit of history with Conker's Bad Fur Day, despite not actually playing through it until just recently. For years I was looking forward to Twelve Tales: Conker 64, but then later found out it had been completely retooled as an edgy M-rated comedy game, so... needless to say, the final game didn't quite end up being what initially drew me to it in the first place.

Despite that though, I had a good time playing through this! I think one of the stronger things about Conker's Bad Fur Day is the general tone of the game - it has a fairly low-key vibe, feeling like a lot of the situations in-game are just created by a couple drunk people making shit up as they go, and I dig it. It's not perfect or flawless by any means (some of the jokes are better than others, to say the least... and sometimes I struggled to figure out what the game wanted me to do in a given area), but I had a pretty fun time overall, and this did genuinely make me laugh out loud on more than a few occasions.

I'm not the biggest fan of puzzles in general, so the fact this game is more puzzle-focused than the average 3D platformer, did make me a bit worried about how I'd feel about the gameplay, going into it. But generally, I was able to figure out how to deal with each obstacle or puzzle pretty reasonably. Maybe 1 or 2 difficult areas out of every 10 or so, would require me to look up help online. I do think it's generally designed pretty well - it's just sometimes a little inconsistent. I also appreciate that unlike a lot of Rare's 3D platformers, this is not a collectathon, so I'm glad I didn't have to collect a million random items over the course of my playthrough.

All in all, I'm glad I was able to finally play through Conker's Bad Fur Day. After all these years, I finally have closure.

I really don't know where to start with this game. Gathering my thoughts on NeverDead is a difficult one... I think what it comes down to, when all is said and done, is that NeverDead has some interesting ideas, and it's willing to experiment with bold new things (primarily, a protagonist who cannot die - and said immortality is reflected in the gameplay itself)... but the execution does leave a lot to be desired. The combat is, perhaps serviceable - generally melee combat is going to be far more effective, so your guns feel like an afterthought. But after most types of damage that the protagonist Bryce takes, he literally falls to pieces, like Humpty Dumpty, and then as a severed head, you need to slowly roll around and gather up your limbs and torso to reattach yourself, so you can go back to peak fighting shape again.

It's weird... when you're not falling apart, it can be enjoyably silly, but when you fall apart, it suddenly becomes extremely irritating. It's like the punishment you get from taking damage in say, The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (where getting hurt causes you to lose both attack power/range, and movement speed), but amplified by a thousand. Gosh this is an infuriating game a lot of the time - I'm not surprised most people hate it.

Is it worth trying? Maybe? That'll depend on how much you can tolerate occasional bullshit being tossed your way.

Decent handheld Shinobi game, that attempts to try something entirely new for the series.

Reflecting back on my experience with The G.G. Shinobi... the main thing that comes to mind, is that it feels more like a Mega Man game than anything? At least as far as the game's structure is concerned. You have multiple differently-colored shinobi you can play as, who are essentially this game's equivalent to the Robot Master weapons/color schemes you can get in any given Mega Man game – plus you have a stage select from which you can play the first batch of stages in any order. After that, you have a final stage, within which you have to make use of every single new weapon and skill that you've obtained in order to reach the final boss. It really is uncanny – but it makes for a solid experience, once you understand how it works. I definitely recommend reading the manual for this game!

Interesting indie FPS. Kind of a mash-up of multiple gameplay elements and ideas; the aesthetics and level design are very clearly inspired by classic FPSes like Wolfenstein and Doom, yet there are several modern FPS elements in this game's design, such as aiming down sights, holding down a button to sprint, leaning, etc. Kind of a curious hybrid of ideas, but I think it generally works, in spite of itself. I mostly just wish the stamina/food/etc. meters weren't a thing, here.

Game is very gory, and almost all of the enemies are anime girls. This tends to lead people to feel uncomfortable with the game's level of gore and violence toward them. I wasn't really bothered by it personally, but I guess it's worth being aware of.

It's fine. Main appeal is the presentation, and the spectacle attached to it – a graphical adventure game with lots of voice acting, some CD music, and plenty of colorful, detailed art that straddles the line between cute magical girl fare and badass mecha action. Story had its entertaining moments here and there, but parts of it fell a bit flat. I mostly just wish the story was a little more compelling, and that the characters were more interesting. Also I wish the turn-based combat wasn't just strategy-less RNG mashing – at least you can redo failed fights immediately after losing them, so it's not a huge inconvenience – mostly just a time-waster. All in all, this is an okay game for what it is, but it could have been better.