This is a really cute, but ultimately unsatisfying action platformer. The game is brimming with charm and personality in its art style, music, characters, and environment design. But when it comes down to the actual gameplay and mechanics, it never got to a point where it clicks and makes sense. You just sluggishly move around, mindlessly mash the attack button, and hoping you don't die. I would rather see the story presented as a mini-series TV show, at least with that I wouldn't have to actually play it to enjoy the silly humor.

This is probably one of the most exhilarating 40 minutes I have spent in recent times. It's one of those arcade games that would pull a decent crowd if you're doing really well. It's basically a mix of Outrun and vehicular combat, as in hitting other vehicles in high speed. The sense of speed is great, as you would expect from a good Outrun clone, and having to quickly dispatch enemy vehicles before the time runs out is a fun variation to the typical checkpoint based gameplay, even if the mechanics are a bit too simple in most encounters. For the most part it's pretty easy, especially once you realize the boost is best used for closing short gaps, but the game does have a huge difficulty spike in the very last level. The game runs and looks great, although I feel like the soundtrack and car sound effects could have been better. Definitely check this out if you have the chance.

Continuing my recent foray to the deeper layers of the PSP library, here's a third person mech shooter that I have been curious about for a long time now. I first found out about this game when I saw a listing for it at a local game store about 13 years ago, and I distinctly remember that the store owner said that he never even seen this game before, and he didn't know how it got into his list of available games. This lack of knowledge would be a trend, as nobody I know seems to have an idea of this game existing. I'm here to say that this is a pretty fun shooter that successfully uses the console's limitations in order to make a fun experience in its own right.

The listing here is utterly incomplete (and I don't know how to add/change it) so I feel the need to explain this a bit. This is made by a Korean studio and it is only released in Japanese. The game is set in an alternate history 20th century setting where humans built advanced mechs to fight in wars against each other. From the quick translation I have seen (thanks to Google Lens), there's seems to be an ongoing resource depletion and you're a part of a resistance fighting against the tyrannical elite government. I wish I could explain more about the story but I can't use Google Lens all the time so it will have to do for now.

The core gameplay is a suitably simplified third person shooter, where you can only move your aim in the horizontal axis with the left and right trigger buttons. While this basically neutered the level design's verticality, it results in perhaps one of the more natural-feeling shooters on the PSP, as there's very rarely a discomforting moment in controlling your mech. Moving around feels snappy, and you can execute a forward boost to close the gap and such. You can restore health by picking up medkits scattered in the field, and there's also secondary weapons and ammunition to pick up. There's a decent variety of secondary weapons, but as you progress through the campaign, you'll realize that there's only one of them that is worth using (the huge revolvers), especially after you upgrade your primary weapons to a high-enough level. There's also smaller details like satisfying animations and sound effects that makes the gunplay a bit stronger.

There's basically 3 types of enemies: ranged small arms, close quarters melee, and ranged heavy arms. These enemy types adds just enough depth into the combat system. For example, taking hits from the ranged heavy arms enemies will stagger you, which allows the hard hitting melee enemies to get closer. Unlike the small arms enemies, you can strafe around to dodge their shots, which forces you to keep moving.

The difficulty progression is quite solid. In the later stages, the enemy placements and variety will get harder to deal with, as you are forced to find which enemies to focus on first, in order to minimize the potential damage that can be dealt towards you in a short time. There's also less medkits to find in the later stages.

The story campaign mostly involves going through linear levels and killing every enemy you see. Sometimes you have to place bombs in certain areas but that's really it. Mission variety is absolutely not a strong part of this game, but at least the game isn't long at all (maybe 5-6 hours ish).

While the game is quite lacking in expanding it's core vision, the moment-to-moment gameplay is more than solid enough to make it a worthwhile experience. It's one of those lesser known games that deserves a lot more attention and love, but unless some miracle happens and the game gets remastered to modern consoles, that's quite unlikely. Hey, at least another random person made a review of it.

I was excited to finally check this game out, and I'm sad to say that I am quite disappointed by it. It's a Tony Hawk clone with Jet Set Radio-esque visuals and music, and this sounds like a slam dunk idea for me, but in practice, it's a sluggish, laggy, and lifeless game.

The skateboarding controls feel quite floaty and inaccurate, and thus not very satisfying. There's some neat mechanics that makes it a bit more interesting, but they don't feel good to play. I do think the level designs are pretty decent.

While the game does try to mimic the Jet Set Radio colorful art style, the texture quality, resolution and LOD draw distance are quite bad, resulting in a blurry mess that might be one of the worst looking games on the PSP. It's hard to see what you're doing sometimes, which is an absolute no-no for a fast paced game like this. The game also doesn't run that great on original hardware, even when I overclock the CPU.

The soundtrack seems to be content with being merely noise in the background. There's nothing that makes me want to stop for a second and hear them out, it's so bland.

There's not much to enjoy here. I suggest you to just go play the Jet Set Radio games instead, you'll have a much better time with them, even if they can be pretty janky.

Here's a weird game for ya. Ape Escape's very own white haired ape villain, Specter, has a new plan for world domination... he'll create an addicting card game that will drive humans crazy and it'll somehow allow for an easy ape takeover. I don't think the end result is nowhere near that, but it is quite interesting at least.

This is a deck building card game where you battle other apes, but the twist here is that each card is a minigame (think of something from Mario Party). The cards are based on rock-paper-scissors, and the winning card gets to activate its minigame. If you're the minigame activator, you'll get positive effects if you win the minigame (like reducing the enemies' HP), and if your enemy is the activator, you can only cancel their cards' effects if you win. There's a combo mechanic too if you can manage to initiate draws against your enemy, which will stack the effects from all the cards you activated. You can see your enemies' tendencies and build your deck to specifically target it (like bringing a scissors-leaning deck against a paper-leaning enemy). You can get new cards from shops or battles. It also seems like many of the RNG-leaning minigames have lower costs to activate, which adds an extra risk-reward layer to the deck building. All of this sounds pretty good on paper, right?

In practice, the card battles can get too slow paced or end too fast, since the cards being drawn are random and you can only draw cards by activating the cards you have in hand in order to get rid of them. The minigames can get really repetitive too, especially early on, since you don't have too many cards on your deck and new cards come by slowly. Top it all off with a very basic and uninspired campaign, and you'll get a disappointingly flaccid and sluggish game.

It's a shame, truly. I enjoyed a lot of the minigames, and the presentation is quite charming, with its colorful graphics and Jungle music. There's not much else I can say though.

Been playing the game on Grounded recently for the first time. I got the platinum trophy back in 2020 before I knew this site existed, and haven't played much of it since. Might as well log it here.

I think this is easily Naughty Dog's best and most interesting game, it's so ambitious and yet it achieves almost everything it wants to do. It's not my favorite, it's very hard to beat Uncharted 4's masterful act of closing Nate's story for me, but it's real close.

I don't think any other AAA game has told such an epic, risky and heartwrenching story, and the cinematic presentation here is still at the top of the class. TLOU Part II pushes the potential of storytelling in games forward, as the game utilizes every trick in the book, from the least to most interactive, in order to make you feel everything the game wants you to feel, and it is an absolutely wild rollercoaster of emotions.

The game is very well paced, as it successfully juggles between gameplay and story moments with various levels of intensity. It understands how to keep you engaged while still letting you completely process what's happening, and living in the moment. Considering the scale and structure of the story, it's quite a feat.

The survival action gameplay from its predecessor has been expanded upon, in pretty much all aspects. The gunplay and resource management are as fun as ever. There's new moves like the dodging mechanic and being able to prone. The level design is some of the best in any game, as it is much more expansive and natural than the first game. The human enemy AI is smart, and they also feature some added depth, like calling out each other names and using whistles to communicate with each other, both of which serve as examples of how far this game will go to try to get into your head and psyche. The game's systems works very well in the regular difficulties, but on Grounded, the game's intense approach to realism is unmatched.

TLOU Part II is arguably best in class in almost everything it does, and that's the most impressive thing to me. There's pretty much no other game that does so much, and also gets away with so much.

Capcom continues their high momentum Resident Evil streak with a remake of perhaps the most beloved game in the series. They seem to have taken RE3 Remake's relatively mixed reception into heart, because RE4 somehow manages to obliterate pretty much all of the targets they're aiming for.

Before we continue, please note that I'm playing this on Standard difficulty. I won't be comparing this to the OG game too much because my knowledge of the OG is mostly from watching playthroughs (only played it for a couple hours), but I will say that it feels like an improvement on all fronts for me.

Make no mistake, RE4 is a long slaughter fest. It rarely takes a break in its quest to make you drenched in sweat, as you'll keep running into encounters with a lot of enemies that only get harder to deal with as you go on. The game takes pride in its fundamental combat systems, and for good reason. The slightly sluggish movement makes you observes your surroundings more, in order to find the right time and place to move. The parry system is very rewarding, and yet has it limits in terms of how often you can rely on it, especially if you're not careful with your movement. Not to mention the inherently satisfying act of shooting your guns, stunning them with enough shots and using melee if necessary. All of these things constantly interact with not only each other, but the encounters you're in, and they result in slightly different experiences that keeps the game's combat addicting to play.

The progression system relies on an economy of finding cash from fallen enemies or random boxes and such, or selling the hidden treasures you'll find. You'll get to buy new weapons (where a new one unlocks every couple chapters), weapon upgrades, inventory size upgrade, and so on. There's also a lot of depth in the economy system itself, like maximizing the amount of money you get from selling treasures with add-on gems. It's a very effective system that rewards exploration and patience, gives you a lot of freedom in how exactly to get stronger since there's a good variety of weapons, and also adds more replay value. If only they give us extra credit for neatly arranging our items in the attache case...

I think the most impressive aspect of this remake is the pacing. It somehow manages to keep being exciting all the way through, for the most part. While the gameplay fundamentals in all of the game's massive 3 areas (village, castle, island) is the same, they have enough differences in terms of encounter and level design approaches. This is helped by the various set pieces, bosses, and optional activities in each area that helps with the gameplay variety, all of which are done quite well. My personal favorite set piece and boss has to be the minecart ride in the Castle depths (hard to beat a good rollercoaster ride), and the Salazar boss fight (great boss mechanics and level design, and also my favorite music track in the whole game).

The game is relatively story light, but what is there is quite engaging and well written. The VA performances are all great, and there's just enough cheese in the writing and performances that makes it more fun, without ruining the impact of the story. My favorite character has to be Ashley, her new look and VA performance makes her so adorable, in a genuine and natural way. Also worth mentioning are the lore documents, I actually find most of them to be quite interesting, and in terms of world building, it's impressive that they achieved so much with what they have. Shoutout to my two favorite lore notes: the Village Chief's diary and the history of the Salazar generations.

Okay, time for a quick nitpicks section. I wish the soundtrack is more interesting, for the most part it soundslike the most by-the-numbers and basic horror movie soundtrack. I also wish the method of getting new charms is less random, it definitely makes the shooting gallery less fun for me.

Finally, I guess I have to talk a bit about escorting Ashley. Honestly it's far less annoying compared to the OG game, and as long as you're not sabotaging yourself, you can keep her out of harm's way quite easily. I personally almost forgot to talk about it, that's how seamless it felt to the gameplay.

With this remake, Capcom continues to set the bar on how great and meaningful a remake can be. RE4 Remake does not replace the original, but it gives everyone a chance to experience the magic of the OG game, the magic that it had all those years ago, back when the box art had "Only on GameCube" written on it. It not as original, but it certainly can match the OG's impact on games of the future.

P.S. I rated it 5 stars before but I decided to lower it just a bit. After thinking about it more, I do wish that the game tones it down just a bit in terms of encounters, there's so many of them that I did get exhausted quite often, especially from the castle section and onwards. I love to see more puzzles and such, or slower horror focused moments. I also wanted them to do more gameplay sections related to the plagas infecting Leon and Ashley, that aspect felt a bit wasted to me. There's also a slight disconnect with the level design, where I feel like they wanted me to move around a lot and use the environments to my advantage, but I usually just hunker down at somewhere near the beginning of the encounter because the enemies were just coming to me slowly and I have an easy time keeping them at bay for the most part.

As one could have guessed, this is a visual novel that features light dating sim and store management gameplay. To be honest, I was expecting this to be a game that I try for an hour or two to satisfy my curiosity, and then bounce out immediately, but I think I have stumbled upon a great VN here.

I have dabbled into other romance VNs in the past, and I think I only ever finished (and enjoyed) 3 of them. I enjoy romcom media, but I'm quite picky. Most of these VNs can be distractingly cheesy or dramatic, features way too many fan service moments, or just plain ugly in art style/presentation. Some Some has none of these features, so it already passes as a playable VN to me at least.

Some Some features characters that are all likeable from the start. Other than the MC, there are 3 girls that you can try to test your luck with, and also the never-drawn store manager that serves as the occasional lighthearted joke machine. The writing overall is quite well done, it feels like a very good romance light novel or manga/comic. As I said before, there are dramatic and emotional moments but the game doesn't go overboard in presenting them, and it seems to master the timing of when to throw in a lighthearted moment. It can feel cheesy but in a very tolerable amount for a romcom like this. Each of the characters have endearing moments of their own, and I was enjoying the story events so much that it had a "one-more-time"-esque effect on me, where I would just keep playing in order to see one more event. I do have to note that this is a Korean VN that is later translated to English, so there's some parts that can sound a bit weird or unnatural, but it's a very forgivable flaw for me.

The dating sim element is mostly about getting closer to the girl you're interested in by engaging in story events or giving her presents weekly, and your relationship is metered by a mysterious in-game phone app that kicks off this romantic journey. Some events are locked until you reached a specific relationship percentage with a girl. Unless you're actively sabotaging yourself, the dating sim element is relatively straightforward, and most people shouldn't have a hard time with it, especially since the game gives out how exactly to progress your relationship with each girl early on. It's not quite a full blown dating sim where you can fail easily or have a ton of different routes. I personally appreciate the light focus on gameplay/choices, I feel like some VNs can stumble into the trap of having too many possible story routes, and thus making the story feel less focused and tightly written.

Most of the story events and presents will require some money, and there's where the store management part comes in. You'll get to buy items to display in the store, and they'll generate extra income for the store weekly. You can also do store promotions that will cost some money, but also boost your customer numbers for the week. Some customers will give you quests related to the store management gameplay, and they will reward you with new presents for each girl or a new store display item. Overall, it's a simple system that effectively synchronizes with the dating sim element to make it more engaging, but it's miles away from being complex enough to distract from it.

The art style and presentation is quite pleasant, and while it does have fan service moments, it's nowhere near as outrageous as many other VNs. I also like the soundtrack overall, there's not a lot of tracks but all of them at the very least works as a decent tune.

Some Some is a romcom VN that is surprisingly focused and mature in its execution, and its very refreshing. I've literally deleted many VNs of this ilk within an hour of playing them because of how... annoying they can be, for reasons I've mentioned before. A telltale sign of me a great VN for me is when I immediately want to replay it just to experience the story all over again, and that is certainly the way I feel with this.

Also, Soohee best girl.

This is probably one of the weirdest puzzle games out there, presentation-wise. Being the lone person standing above a bunch of cubes floating in an endless dark void is certainly ominous, but hey, at least there's an epic orchestral soundtrack to hype you up! This clash of emotions unnerves me a bit, and with that, the game has successfully drawn me in.

For the puzzle gameplay itself, it's quite enjoyable. The goal of the game to "delete" as many cubes as possible, preferably without getting stomped by one of them. You'll fail if you fall of the edge, either because of your own movements or if the walkable space crumbles beneath you, which could happen if you let too many cubes fall of the edge of the walkable space, or if you delete a "forbidden" cube. The difficulty progression is really good, by the end you're basically forced into planning your moves accurately, and also quickly executing it with minimal mistakes. You can always aim for a perfect round but it's not always possible, so the game also pushes you to let a couple cubes loose, which could snowball if you keep letting it happen. I'm not sure if it has much replay value or staying power, but it's at least worth a try.

Surprisingly good but also hasn't aged too well. The level design keeps getting worse as it goes, Andy's House is the peak for me. It's hard to call the boss fights as that, most of them are one-dimensional and not very satisfying to beat. Handling the camera is pretty cumbersome, especially since it's automatically inverted when you use the passive controls. The platforming feels alright, although the controls can get finicky and slippery quite often. The soundtrack is consistently bangin' though. Overall this game is at least worth playing for a couple levels.

The PSP always had a problem with shooters. The lack of a second analog stick will forever haunt it, and no other genre gets their undies wet more than shooters. Usually games just use the face buttons to move the camera and aim, and this is a barely functional solution. Miami Vice is not one of those games.

With an over the shoulder camera, you'll be moving around using tank controls with the analog stick, and you can only shoot your weapon while aiming. You cannot move around while doing so, and you'll only have a laser beam to pinpoint your exact aim. If this sounds familiar to you, then I'm sure you know that this is very similar to OG Resident Evil 4. Yes, somebody actually copied RE4 controls. I can't think of many games that do this. Anyways, it actually turns out pretty good, because this control scheme fits the PSP's button scheme quite well. It's obviously not as deep as RE4, there's no melee attacks or anything like that. It does have a decent cover system. The enemy AI can goof around pretty often, but they're pretty accurate and can mess you up if you're exposed for too long. All of this results in a slower paced, slightly clunky, but ultimately satisfying gunplay. Unfortunately a lot of things hinder the combat, including the one-note level design, nonexistent enemy variety, basic objectives, and limited weapon variety.

Outside of the combat, there's a drug economy system where you can fnd the highest bidder to sell your drugs to, so you can get cash to buy weapons and upgrades and such. There's a reputation system that rewards using weaker weapons, no armor, and certain gameplay feats, but it's quite easy to maintain a high reputation so there's not enough incentive to do it for the long term. You can unlock weapon upgrades by collecting "flashRAMs" and doing a hacking minigame in order to decrypt them. There's also a "balance the rope" minigame when you want to sell your drugs to the most lucrative client. Both minigames are pretty okay. While these systems are all undercooked, it's nice to see the devs at the very least trying some fun ideas.

I'm not familiar with the source material, and the story is just meh. Luckily it's quite light in story. You can play as Crockett or Tubbs, I don't think there's any significant gameplay difference between them.

While the game itself is just pretty alright, Miami Vice offered a glimpse of what could be the ideal combat system for a PSP shooter. It could be a trailblazer, maybe in another reality it did. But here and now, it's at least a neat food for thought.

...and yes, it does bother me that you're selling drugs that is stored in the police depository back to random drug dealers to get cash.

Playing this game is like taking LSD and cocaine at the same time, then getting into a fight with everybody you meet. Every new face is a new opportunity. Every kill makes me hungry for more. Every failure only delays the inevitable. What's the purpose of all of this? Just look at my sweaty palms, my tense shoulders, my uncontrolled grin. Can't you tell? I'm having so much fun!

...that aside, I do have some annoyances with the hit detection, controls, and visuals. Sometimes bullets feels like they should have hit. Enemies can go through the door you're slamming. The lockon system is very hard to use intuitively, which makes playing on a gamepad even harder. The art style can make it hard to tell between enemies that are still stunned and dead ones, and the see-through walls/glass later on are hard to visually differentiate. These are minor nitpicks, but it adds up when you have to keep failing and retrying.

Still, it's not enough to be anything fatal. The pure intensity that I experienced in the last 2-3 hours is second to none.

It's been a year (plus a week) since the game's launch, and lots of things has happened so I figured that I should try reviewing it again. Do note that I'm talking about this game from a singleplayer focused perspective.

I always enjoyed racing games but no racing franchise has stuck with me like GT does. My first GT game is Gran Turismo on PSP, and since then I only skipped GT6 (my PS3 was broken and I saved up for a PS4 instead).

GT games have this unique, anachronistic vibe that other games just don't even try to replicate, and GT7 has pretty much doubled down on that vibe. The main menu UI features a city/town scenery that seems to be structurally made for car enthusiasts to live in, complete with the most relaxing cafe ever made in a video game, which serves as the hub for the singleplayer campaign. In the campaign, you'll meet various characters (many of them based on real life people in the car industry and professional GT scene) that serves as an info source for random automobile history and driving tips, and while there's no voice acting to support them, they're presented in such a non-chalant way that is weirdly wholesome. There's a whole in-game museum that not only notes many important moments in automobile history, but also general world history, and it feels wild to see the game showing what year Windows 95 releases when you're browsing for car history. All of this is supported by a great selection of elegant and relaxing music in the soundtrack. It truly feels like Polyphony Digital (and by extension, the game) truly adores car culture, and I'm sure many other racing games feel the same way, but nothing else presents it like this. Some may call the game pretentious, but I call it endearing.

The racing itself is at its greatest form yet, as the physics feel even more refined than GT Sport. The average joe's experience is elevated by the Dualsense, as the controller's flagship features are implemented in a way that is not only pleasant to experience, but also functionally useful. This includes feeling the adaptive triggers fight back when your car is pushed too far, or feeling the haptic feedback when your car switch gears. I'm sure you'll be more immersed if you get yourself a decent racing set, but for people like me that doesn't want to buy one of those, it has helped me connect to the vehicles I'm driving to a much deeper level. It's definitely up there in terms of best Dualsense implementation.

The singleplayer experience includes completing "menus" from the cafes by doing certain activities (mostly racing in an event), tackling the series' iconic driving license challenges, mastering each of the tracks in the circuit experience time trials, and a few more. The game's regular races are mostly about chasing the AI from the very back of the pack, and as somebody who is decent but not great at racing games, they're definitely easy to beat, provided you came in prepared with the right car (and right tuning). Fortunately GT7 doesn't disappoint on the series tradition of addicting "one-more-try" driving license and time trials. Also, they have begun to publicly showcase Sony's GT Sophy AI that will hopefully someday replace the game's current braindead AI, and I'll say that Sophy is much more fun to race against.

Since its launch, the game has experienced a few big hiccups. The infamous server blackout that lasted more than a week is the real life example of why the always online requirement sucks. The devs has been accused of trying to push people into the microtransaction system, as many of the game's activities early on rewards you with so little credits in comparison to the prices of the cars and car parts. While it's unlikely that the always online requirement will ever be addressed soon, the game's economy has been improved by a lot, and there's a decent amount of activities to choose from if you want to get a lot credits in the endgame. I personally never felt the need or was annoyed by the microtransactions, and I have bought pretty much 90% of the cars I wanted to have.

The one area that I think the game especially needs to do better at is periodic special events. Last December, there was a anniversary period for the GT series, and it obviously was close to Christmas, so the game had new Christmas themed music for the nearly whole month, in addition to extra credit bonus if you race in certain multiplayer events, and special singleplayer challenges. I wish that the game did more events like this, possibly featuring new special game modes or anything that will pull back casual players who are not playing the game regularly.

As I end this review, I would like to make a confession. Like many people, I can't say that I liked car culture. I live in a crowded city where cars are the main mode of transportation, and it annoys me to no end that I keep getting stuck in traffic even with my nimble scooter, and there's no decent public transport. Not to mention the noise and gas pollution. I usually approach racing games from a purely fun seeking perspective rather than a love for cars, but GT7's flamboyant and honest presentation of its genuine love for the culture has made me actually appreciate cars. The other GT games I played are great, but they never felt this focused in terms of showing what car culture is really about. While I will still support reducing the grasp that car companies have over our lives, I understand that as a human being, there's lots of things to love about cars, and like many other things in life, they can serve to connect individuals and communities. I can't think of a more impressive feat that a racing game could do. Thus, I can safely say that its my favorite racing game of all time, and there's more to look forward to in the future.

This is one of the many stealth games that popped up during Metal Gear Solid's heyday. It's basically a clunkier and far less interesting version of the early Splinter Cell titles with none of the political intrigue.

The movement uses not-so-obvious tank controls, and things especially get cumbersome when you're aiming and shooting, since you can only strafe while aiming. There's also no dedicated jump button, you have to look at things directly in order to interact, including looking at ledges to grab on to them, which is not ideal.

Many parts of the game are quite dark or in night time since you can use shadows to hide, and it can be very hard to see what's around you since your nightvision goggles is only available in first person view with a ridiculously small field of view.

The story is very unenjoyable, it's a by the numbers revenge story. All of the characters are unlikeable and they're often very standoff-ish towards each other. It's a shame, I kinda like the main character's design, I just wish she would stop being so sassy.

I guess the one thing I liked is you can throw shurikens to kill enemies, that's kinda badass. Can't say much more.