An insanely weak ending to a six (seven) game saga, Yakuza 6 ignores damn near everything from the games that came before it and has one of the most anti-climactic endings I've seen. Add some of the worst side content in the series, boring substories (28 of the 51 either introduce you to or are the stories for minigames), and the worst combat in the series, and you have quite the worst mainline entry in the series. At least the story is good for a Yakuza game and it's by far the prettiest one in the series

the suburban pastiche of earthbound (and mother) was comforting thanks to its familiarity. it's a game where you can point at the screen and say "look, that's like my life!" pulling money from an ATM, stopping by the mall to grab a burger, or wandering around the natural history museum, these aesthetic choices work precisely because of how the expected unreality of the game world becomes subverted into a representation of reality. it's novel in its presentation, and enhanced by the quirky charm of the townspeople along with the tangents into both goofy myth and unsettling sci-fi horror.

which makes your first moments walking into a similar world after a between-chapters skip of multiple years in mother 3 such a slap in the face. our protagonist lucas, one of the few remaining denizens attempting to reject a new capitalist order, now glumly walks through these same suburban streets. former stalwart geezers contributing to the town's safety have been all but locked away in a dilapitated nursing home, while lucas's peers scarcely older than he work for wages in the nearby clay mines. the cheerful dialogue from the townspeople now solely consists of those chiding lucas for not getting with the times in between questioning why virtually every other defector's house has gone up in flames. it's the same carefree music of adolescence, the same bright thin-line artstyle, the same casual strolls around town, but tainted by your knowledge of the utopia of the society that came before and the decadence of the modernization that has come in its wake. it is, in essence, a loss of innocence. the unfair and early death of lucas's mother at the start of the game shattered it, and post timeskip you get a close glimpse of its proverbial corpse.

it is indeed somewhat funny the lengths that itoi went to establish the despair of modern civilization; endearingly awkward as his writing is, occasionally it gets into simply awkward territory the more it moralizes. yes, there is a token native american stereotype, and yes, his tipi gets blown to smithereens by artificial lightning post-timeskip. the magypsies as well, in attempt to enforce their alien nature given their status as immortal standardbearers of the world as it stands, are othered via their gender representation... which ends up being rather distasteful "okama" cariactures. my reason for pointing these out is not to discredit the rest of the work, but more to note that itoi bit off more than he could chew with some of the themes. he really wanted to demonstrate how fucked modernization is, man! so in the process some of the imagery gets a little hamfisted or straight-up ???... but that first time you walk into the modernized tazmily it hit me so hard.

likewise when you finally arrive at new pork city late in the game, the ghoulish tackiness of it all is so evident. the bizarre international mishmashes and cardboard cutout buildings, like toy props in a set of figurines (or buildings without polygons in the rear like a video game with fixed perspective) they illustrate gestures towards culture generation with vapid facsimile in place of rich tradition. it's a childlike conception of urban life: video games in walking distance and 24/7 screenings of heroes from another world. the idyllic norman rockwell landscape of earthbound has been grafted onto the communal tazmily like metal plates welded to biological creatures. all of it enforced by heiling stormtroopers in sneering pig masks... ok again, the imagery is really hamfisted. let itoi cook!

somehow even with this ideological shift in the people of tazmily, itoi still goes out of his way to illustrate the cruelty that lurks under the otherwise flawless exterior of their transactionless lifestyle. duster's bum leg, a physical reminder of his abuse at the hands of wess, is openly acknowledged, and yet the weight is silently borne by duster himself. his plain looks and questionable hygiene belie his thief tool mastery and serious upright bass chops, regardless of the verbal degredatation his father puts him through. likewise flint, stoic in his initial voiceless protagonist role, suffers a truly heartbreaking outburst of rage late in his campaign, indicating the dam about to burst on the societal shift to come. even lucas and claus play-act fighting with the local dragos at the very beginning of the game; the language of violence is still engrained in the minds of those living outside of capitalism.

the first three chapters are dedicated primarily to this plot, with the old rpg elements streamlined and the party limited. admittedly I'm not a big fan of the parts of earthbound where you're limited to a one or two person party; I just don't think you can come up with strategies that interesting when there's only a couple of moves to work with each turn. likewise, mother 3 provides different perspectives across each chapter with small parties carefully paced around the relative strength of the bosses they'll face. each character at this point can use special attacks and debuffs for free, removing the resource-management usually inherent in jrpgs. this isn't entirely bad, as it allows the player to experiment with various special abilities, but it would've gotten rather tedious after the six or seven hours it lasted. the point at which I got tired of this setup was in the lucas/boney fight against the jealous bass, which virtually necessitates using explosive items in order to outpace the devastating jam sessions they lay on you.

thankfully after this mother 3 wants to remind you that it's a real-ass jrpg, and thus the party is assembled... lucas, black mage kumatora, duster with his thief tools, and boney the dog. out of these mechanically boney is unfortunately undercooked; his only special move is "sniff" which senses the enemy's weaknesses, and his stats are gimped by being unable to use most equipment. thus most of the interesting fighting relies on the other three characters. I love how the mother series crystallizes the heroism of their heroes through making them healing mages, and lucas is no exception. while he has excellent attack, he's also equipped with a bevy of abilities such as setting up shields, buffing stats, and giving full revives to anyone or everyone in the party. kumatora handles all of the debuffs and attack magic, while duster is able to also apply free debuffs in exchange for a middling activation rate.

in turn the bosses get significantly more powerful, especially in the lengthy chapter 7. this whole section serves as a truncated redo of the same kind of "find the macguffin in each area" structure from earthbound, and with each needle pulled at the end of each area comes a more fiendlishly difficult boss. high base defense, extremely strong full-party attacks, switching between physical and PSI attacks, and even being able to destroy your shields at will all make character death frequent, and without smart planning and exploitation of the series's distinctive health counter system, it will be difficult to overcome some of the late-game fights. to my surprise other than the infamous barrier trio fight I didn't find that most of the fights revolved around simple weakness matching either; there's legitimately challenging turn-based slugfests balanced just right not to require grinding as long as you don't mind taking detours for items here and there.

complimenting the basics here are rhythm game elements which require the player to click the attack button in time with the backing beat to create a combo of up to 16 attacks in a row for a notable damage increase. while conceptually simple, the expansively eclectic soundtrack makes following the rhythm often require a significant amount of concentration. beats are dropped occasionally or sections will have tempos that vary, forcing the player to keep track of when they start attacking to ensure they don't get interrupted and lose valuable damage. following the beat itself rarely varies outside of simply tapping the backbeat however, which is a bit disappointing outside of a couple outliers like the 15/8 timpani-led Strong One. other songs occasionally try off-beat rhythms or more complex bass patterns, but unfortunately all of this is held back by the game's inconsistent timing windows. I played this on 3ds through rom injection which is generally considered to be extremely close to hardware-accurate, and yet I consistently noticed that the windows on certain songs required me to be a touch late. anything with eighth notes is a total crapshoot unfortunately, and thus I can see why they limited the songs that contained these pretty significantly. surprisingly enough the final chapter of the game features few difficult songs, making most of the encounters relatively easy to finish with only regular attacks, and I was hoping to hear the really bizarre tunes come out during the final mobs and bosses. however it's obvious the system was meant to be more of a bonus damage system, and thankfully the whole game can be managed without it if you're crafty enough with your PSI and thieves tool use.

without a doubt when compared to its meandering predecessor mother 3 focuses its satire on actually tearing apart the origins of the americana it draws from. at the same time it's a perfectly enjoyable jrpg with a neat rhythm mechanic and the same counter mechanism from earthbound to make timing your actions carefully utterly important; a rarity for turn-based games. as the game comes to a close those who played earthbound will receive an unsettling reminder of the artifacts from those games and the influence they played upon the creation of the world our heroes exist in, and the ending is cataclysmic and only partially resolved. for a game infused with so much levity, it's remarkably grim at the same time. I can only assume this juxtaposition of tones is what itoi was trying to summon all along.

Rest in Peace, Kazuki Takahashi

Was planning to save logging this until a little later, maybe after the first year anniversary but I figured it was as good as ever to write up some thoughts about Master Duel and, in particular, how it led me to rediscovering my love of the card game.

Prior to me downloading it, I had only ever played the card game via Dark Duel Stories, Forbidden Memories, a few casual battles i played as a kid, one GBA game I downloaded a rom of and a bit of Duel Links which is a different, speedier format from the norm.

Needless to say, much of my enjoyment in getting back into Yugioh through my college years came solely from the anime rather than the actual card game. I kinda assumed if you missed out on years of TCG history it'd be a pain to catch up so I never bothered until Master Duel. Even downloading this was basically a whim as I saw there was a free bonus for psplus owners on 50 tickets (these end up sucking), I figured I might as well check this out in case I was interested at a later date.

Upon doing the tutorials the game just bombards you with a deluge of gems and it was easy to get suckered in from there. This on top of the mobile version coming out a week or so afterward meant that I'd be spending most of my downtime at work (and admittedly time i was working) on this app.

What kept me hooked was doing the other solo training tutorials and learning the few summoning mechanics i had not yet understood. All this time I thought XYZs and Links were this extra layer of nonsense and yet they end up just being these pretty cool mechanics that are pretty easy to combo/integrate into a deck, it felt super rewarding finally understanding what these meant (pendulums are still weird). The solo decks/campaigns are also a nice touch as they give you a good look at the various legacy archetypes and also fuses some of these stories with other similar archetypes, like a loaner deck with a mix of Gladiator Beasts and Tri-Brigades.

This also being based on the OCG (Yugioh's 'Asian territories' division as opposed to the western TCG formats) makes this an interesting game as you run into cards that are banned or more limited than western tournament play. I'd be lying if I didn't say I love the Maxx "C" mindgames.

The look and music to the game are also extremely appreciated. As the battlefield become more destroyed as a sides' life points drop, both players have a little buddy that cheers them on (thanks sangan), various key monsters upon summon will play a summon cut-in with high-res animated/tweened art of the monster...and the current track playing shifts into a much more upbeat version of the song. Yasunori Nishiki did an excellent job with the dueling music, as each theme puts me in the mood to duel and as the battle progresses the theme gets tenser and tenser.

The game does need a lot to integrate a lot more modes/formats that anybody can try out on a whim. Right now its just ranked modes, solo campaigns and the monthly 'event' formats. While I dont have too much problems with ranked (admittedly im not good enough to stick around platinum or higher for too long), I do wish there was a format/mode better suited for decks i build that I know aren't suited for meta specifically. There's also a lot of bot problems that arise every now and then, which always ruins the mood.

All in all this is the best official simulation of the game currently and even with its F2P/MTX nonsense and meta-power creep shenanigans, ive been putting a lot of time into this as a downtime game. You do get a ton of gems at the start but I do wish getting the optimal 1000 was a bit easier as dailies are kinda lackluster. Not helped by the fact there's a ton of different archetypes I want to check out. Been mostly using plant archetypes and Harpies but I've been wanting to check out Spyrals, Darklords, Toads, Burning Abyss, Marincess, The Weather, way too many archetypes.

I think the moment everything started to click and I began to fall in love with the game was upon building my Rikka deck. A waifu deck certainly, but as this 'secret' card pack was one of the first to appear for my account I thought I'd try it out since it looked more unique at first glance. As it turned out they weren't half bad- but not meta shattering, which fits into my playstyle just fine. What really made me fall in love was running into intimidating boss monsters with effects like 'Cannot be destroyed by battle or card effect' or 'Cannot be targeted', etc. As it turns out Rikka's have a lot of effects that wipe monsters off the board but their effect text specifies Tributing rather than destroying monsters. This one difference means the difference as cards like 'Rikka Flurries' mean once I tribute a monster from my side of the field (easily done with this archeype's playstyle), I can activate Flurries to have my opponent 'tribute' a monster of their own choice. This card isnt OP and can be countered fairly easily, but its those loopholes and combos in card effects that make this game that much more engaging to me.

I'm hoping Konami does a lot more to fix some of its rewarding issues, expand its format options and do a lot more to encourage unique deck building, as I've had a blast returning to the card game through this.

Quite easily the most successful game in the series - for lots of reasons, but most importantly the feel. They finally pinned down a more open, parodic tone and dialed back the cringe, at least a bit. It honestly feels kind of like an apology for THE THIRD.

The superhero stuff is, frankly, great. 90% of it works just how you want it to, and once again the devs aren't worried in the least about breaking the game, or the balance, or whatever. You can essentially just fly and run up the sides of buildings infinitely within an hour of starting, and that's wonderful. The monstrously dull city from the last game is recast here as a big jungle gym, essentially, which is kind of a funny fate for any open-world game. Storywise, the game takes place in a computer simulation of the previous entry's town, so even in a narrative sense you're encouraged to not give a crap about the buildings, the people, the cars, etc, which is, of course, amusingly reflected in the total shift in gameplay for the series.

There's still gun stuff, which still works well. Less of a focus on side-activities, but that's fine, as this really isn't any kind of GTA-clone anymore, and it's replaced with lots more story content. It's more successful there, as well, presenting itself as a kind of THEY LIVE/THE MATRIX/MASS EFFECT mash-up with an especially funny bunch of riffs on the latter, including being able to arbitrarily "romance" every single one of your "loyalty mission"-giving crew members while running around the irritatingly maze-like hub ship you all live on in the "real" world.

It's not perfect. There's the usual jank and bugs and le epic humor (although if we're gonna do random starfucking, getting Keith David to play an egotistical version of himself (as well as his character from the original SAINTS ROW!) and then later having him run into "Rowdy" Roddy Piper is a hell of a step up from making a confused Burt Reynolds talk about zombies for fifteen total seconds), but it's good to see the series go out on a higher note.

P.S.: In another funny and welcome touch, the six create-a-character voice options from the last game are joined by a seventh here - Nolan North, listed next to "Male 1", "Female 1", etc. as just "Nolan North", lol. And wow, what a difference he makes. Go to YouTube and compare his line reads against the others, especially (shudder) Troy Baker's to get a real useful look at how good he actually is. His delivery of all this goofy shit alone probably bumped this a half-star.

I have not played libble rabble as seems to be the comparison of choice for this game, but I have played qix quite a bit, and like both of these qbb is a space-manipulation game that encourages the player to strategically navigate around objects with a stochastic movement pattern. in qbb's case your goal is to herd bouncing atoms into areas to be quartered off by your blood trail, leaving them to ricochet continuously while corroding your trail in the process for points. the atoms can also combine by colliding, yielding larger atoms that both chew through your trail more quickly as well as yielding extra points when picked up by the player.

surrounding this is a trifecta of resources each vying for your attention as you move from area to area. your blood supply is generally the most pressing of the three; the more you move, the more it dwindles, and losing it all means instant death. this forces some level of movement rationing in order to avoid overspending your supply, and encourages the player to constantly seek out scoring opportunities, as each 5000 points gained replinshes your stock. while grabbing atoms for quick points can pay dividends in the short term, it also raises a counter on top of your blood supply that signifies how much blood you lose with your movement. the only way to decrease this is by sacrificing a life - your third stat - via taking damage from a turret. these are somewhat rare as they only are awarded every 10000 points, making casual play a survival task where the player is constantly trying to eke out another 10000 points to ease their blood loss as they progress.

for those willing to jettison their blood supply more quickly, a bloodshot can be taken that creates trail for you and can hit an atom to increase its velocity and damage. this move is the crux of high-level play, and when used well allows for swift pincer maneuvers around atoms nearby or a quick way to speed up atoms and get points churning. to end the bloodshot's movement pattern, you must catch it, expending more blood in the process. catching the bloodshot is difficult and takes a lot of practice and aiming consideration in order to use effectively. I will comment that firing is a fiddly task to learn given the specific chain of steps that must be followed - press down then aim then release down without releasing your aim direction - and I specifically had trouble until I realized that the aiming direction and down button couldn't be released simultaneously.

these aforementioned turrets appear at your location on a timer inversely proportional to your blood supply, thus both serving as dynamic difficulty for those with ample blood while also keeping the player moving. in theory this works well to prevent stalling tactics, but a side-effect of the bloodshot makes them somewhat moot. the player is subject to a gravity effect that both keeps them falling as well as hampering their vertical movement; however, this effect is nullified when aiming the bloodshot. thus, the player can freely stall by aiming without firing all while strategically moving vertically to place columns of turrets out of range, which lets the atoms cook up points without harm to the player. I felt pressured to resort to this when the bloodshot was too risky, and it slowed down the pace of the game too much for my liking once turrets became moot hazards.

this is exacerbated somewhat by the level design, which draw from a variety of imagery related to the text overlayed on each area. it is my perception that this was an intentional choice given goufygoggs's previous video on bangai-o. I definitely agree that this is a liberating choice especially to amplify the overarching story, but I do feel obligated to note that sometimes the areas damage play with certain odd structures. any area with a tight corridor branching off of the main "room" of the level will tend to get atoms stuck in inside given that their trajectory on a bounce is randomized, which can make them virtually inaccessible outside of wasting blood to grab them outright. it also makes the bloodshot difficult to justify using in certain levels, which seems to have been considered given that the later stages reopen the playing field and avoid the claustrophobia of midgame.

I have a few QoL things I would like to mention as well:
-I can live without a keyboard rebind option but a control display on the main menu is conspicuously missing. this wouldn't be an issue except the down arrow key is actually the confirm button, and thus those (like me) attempting to scroll down to the "how to play" section initially will end up starting the game instead
-a option to restart the run or return to main menu on the pause menu would go a long way towards making doomed runs less annoying
-the character square flashes but it is low-grade and can be very hard to make out as the screen gets more complicated. perhaps a different color or brighter flash would be useful
-the constant ridges cause the player to get stuck frequently in the interstitual sections, which is more of an annoyance than anything and also prevented me from paying attention to the text unless I stopped in place. otherwise I think the interstitual sections are a smart way to gate progression and ensure the player is managing their blood supply/drain rate adequately
-evidently the diagonal movement is meant to be the fastest vertical movement option given the gravity mechanic, but it feels jerky and unintuitive when moving from or to the normal purely-vertical velocity. I'm not sure the gravity is necessary at all given that stalling is still present as a mechanic

admittedly I didn't quite paint the entire final room red, but I still felt very satisfied to finally overcome the challenge of slowly learning the game mechanics and determining how to assess each situation quickly. the resource web is tightly interwoven and smartly designed to ensure that you are never truly safe no matter what tactics you choose. in a way, this made it resemble an arcade-tinted survival horror game given the level of resource stress I went under the more I played. worth buying for fans of intentionally-designed and hard-to-master arcade titles.

Nirvana Initiative is just about everything I could expect from a new Uchikoshi game and a follow-up to Somnium Files. As difficult as this is, I will keep this review spoiler-free. The game features a huge new cast of characters with a new serial murder case to investigate. You play as two different protagonists as you explore both new and old locations as you piece together the series of murders.

The story itself is pretty entertaining and you can definitely tell this is an Uchikoshi game, for better or for worse. It's an ambitious story that does unfortunately go on just a little bit too long with some rough pacing at times, but the payoff for your investigation is worthwhile.

There are also some new mechanics and features too. There are some third-person investigation scenes where you can re-enact scenarios in a similar way to the Danganronpa series. The Somniums themselves are also a lot less clunky and more varied, making them more unique and memorable this time around. There's also neat extras, like more incentive to find collectibles with art and costume items for your AI-Ball companion, additional trivia, and even a tamagotchi-like feature. From a technical standpoint too, this game seriously runs and plays REMARKABLY better. Menu animations are quicker and snappier and it runs pretty flawlessly.

I would say that fans of the previous game will certainly enjoy this one, and I hope we get perhaps one more game in this series to make for a trilogy as memorable as Zero Escape.

It’s clear that Ember Lab have the right tools. The simple mechanics and nostalgic visuals - evocative of both Zelda and Disney - really should create something striking and emotionally resonant.

Whilst the result is indeed fun to indulge in, there’s still so much lacking, most notably the writing and story. The titular hero has an outsider presence to the mystery of the spirit village; and each new character she meets, while visually distinct and expressive, has no time to form any emotional connection with anyone - they go as quickly as they come along. This leads to a fine game about clearing areas, fighting baddies and freeing unfamiliar spirits. The little Rot characters are usually cute but can feel cheaply so with their frequently recycled animations.

These aren’t huge flaws and mainly just give the impression that the game won’t be treading new ground, a shame given Ember Lab’s potential as visual storytellers.

However, playing the game sort of feels like playing Rayman 2 or a similar adventure title from the PS2 heyday of simple pleasures. I found myself needlessly roaming around for collectibles simply because Kena’s world felt like a nice place to be. Pretty astonishing stuff for a first game.

This banger of a game improves upon a lot of things from its predecessor PaRappa the Rapper. As the title of the game suggests, it delivers many jammer(s). There was one bad track though by the name of Taste of Teriyaki, which came to a surprise since I've only heard jammers thus far. It's overall just a very joyous game that every rhythm-game fanatic needs to experience. Also, Lammy is cute af ngl.

I was a bit wary of the traversal mechanics being the prime gameplay feature; how are you supposed to vary the challenges enough when the individual traversal tools are so rigid? thankfully ubisoft montreal took cues from ico and instead tried to create intricate rooms where finding out that subtle path to get where you can not walk or jump on your own is its own reward. granted, sands of time is much less concerned with atmosphere and a sense of place than it is showing off how cool and versatile the prince is, but at the very least these sections feel good to pull off and are smartly laid out. at worst you'll have to contend with the occasionally-jumpy cinematic camera as well as the prince's fiddly slipups (it can be a chore to get him to wall-run horizontally when he would rather do it vertically), but overall for the time period they nailed the feeling of doing death-defying acrobatic feats without it getting stale by the end.

part of this is thanks to the sands of time itself, which serves as a glorified soft-reset. in practice: honestly totally necessary to paper over the game's clunkiness at points and make the overall experience seem more fun. given how often you'll likely miss a given jump either from misunderstanding the environment or screwing up the input, the reset makes things a lot more manageable. as the advertised mechanic of the game... philosophically I guess that sits poorly with me, but also whatever, I guess I just expected more use for the time gimmicks other than freezing enemies and rewinding time when you inevitably plunge to your death.

on its own merits it would be a pretty fun early aughts linear romp with constant setpieces and fun little puzzles, but they had to shoehorn combat in. an absolutely embarassing display on all accounts. did they somehow play ico and not play devil may cry at the same time? I don't need a full-on character action game, but at the very least some basics like "require different strategies for each enemy" and "make the soft lock-on subtle" and "don't map too many things to the same button" should have crossed the devs' minds. the fights are monotonous with enemies that blink into existence in waves in what feels like eons before each battle is finished, and occasionally they'll spawn in on top of you and really mess up your day. you're required to suck the sand out of each enemy as well, which is a rather long animation and will often get you hurt if an enemy decides to interrupt it, which happens an awful lot considering that enemies seem programmed specifically not to bother you while you're occupied. there's no hard lock-on and the soft lock-on seems to change targets literally randomly, occasionally making the prince roll completely away from where you intend to attack someone yards away from your original position. because of this issue, your sand-retrieval move will often be preempted by a freeze move on a different enemy given that the game does not take your left stick position into account at all when throwing out the moves, thus wasting your meter and resetting your sands timer down to zero. which by the way, if you retrieve sand from an enemy or freeze them or kill them in whatever way and then you yourself get killed, the whole sands of time reset gimmick isn't going to help you one bit. the list goes on and on with these weird little details about combat (why do they need to teleport? why does the camera seem to always want to get so close to the prince?), it's just absolutely atrocious in every conceivable way. the only thing good about it is that it affirmed that I do consider drakengard's combat mostly competent and that I don't feel bad giving it a good score when a game like this released to near-unanimous praise.

I think that overall critical reception relies a lot on the balance of the gameplay, and thankfully I'd say there's a good 60/40 ratio of traversal to combat here. the majority of what's here is fun, and even the combat can be mostly tuned out once you begin jumping over enemies' heads ad infinitum (this works flawlessly on both bosses as well). the game juices every possible thing it can from the movement and continues adding new wrinkles up until the late game. there's nothing here that makes it dynamic beyond some simple timers and cycle-based platforming, but when the room and scenario design is as rock-solid as it is here there's little to complain about. just make sure to put on a podcast whenever you get to the combat sections.

also I have not played the original version(s) of this but I found the ps3 hd remaster pretty poor all things considered. I'm trying to be nice and gloss over the many bizarre glitches I ran into (including the prince turning invisible and having his polygons stretch out into space whenever he appeared in a cutscene) assuming that they're results of a shitty port job. everything down to the sound mixing and the game select UI is shoddy to be completely honest. it doesn't help that the in-engine cutscenes are very unflattering and the in-game models look blocky and cheap compared to similar work from contemporaries.