drip and swag are all that matter in this world; assimilation is underway

the atmosphere here is so oppressively dense that it almost makes me forget i'm playing one of the worst feeling shooters to ever be released by a professional company. it's like if faceball 2000 somehow ran at an even lower framerate and was intended for people who'd never had nice days in their entire lives

but that fucking vibe is immaculate. the premise is hopelessly bleak without feeling tryhard, the industrial soundtrack is somehow more mechanically clunky than the gameplay itself and the cutscene direction rivals actual fucking cinema despite being from 1994. who the fuck made this??

oh - it's the guys behind gadget: past as future

alright that explains everything

i, for one, am thoroughly appalled that this series would ever have the audacity to feature a player character who isn't a totally morally righteous person. this is a travesty. completely out of touch

and the gameplay? it's such a shameless ripoff of the last acclaimed silent hill project that was released. what the fuck were they thinking?

i'm going to go return to silent hill 2 now - the most subtle and least blunt horror game ever created. at least that game doesn't have sticky notes with "bullying" written on them (granted, this one doesn't either, but that's not what i heard from the people who didn't play it, so it must be true)

soul crushing at points, but one of the best 2d platformers ever made nonetheless. boasts some especially well-thought-out level design and enemy placement that does not get NEARLY the credit it deserves

i feel the respawning enemies (especially the priests) are ridiculously overhyped by people who fail to understand that this is ultimately a game about constantly moving forward. like, you aren't supposed to slash at them mindlessly and hope that they just stop appearing - you gotta jump INTO and slice THROUGH those motherfuckers

oh and just so we're clear: this is about the nes game. not the arcade one. no more funny business, aight, igdb?

three minutes into super dodge ball: "heh, yeah this is pretty cool. damn i didn't know i could do that. oh shit you totally just died. wait you can still control everyone? yooo this is cracked. matches are kinda long tho"

twenty minutes into super dodge ball: "i'm going to fucking kill myself"

Is Super Dodge Ball the WORST game of all time? Discuss:

this would have scared the fucking SHIT out of me when i was 12

fun game - especially when you get the second mode. makes me lose more respect for a certain other popular thing. shame about all the writing being translated absolutely terribly though. i guess it at least gets the point across

BTW: if you didn't get 20k points in one game, you didn't see the ending (or at least not the good one)

if this is the low point for the series then that's an extremely good sign. what the hell is it with japanese b teams and making absolutely cracked third person shooters???

honestly i was more surprised by how fully formed everything here felt despite it being a budget title. sure there's a lot of lag, but that crunchiness just makes the massive kill counts more cathartic

go play zombie zone and come back here. tell me which one feels more budgeted

for years i've longed for a game with puzzle-like traversal that'd offer me the same kind of intense anxiety i'd feel while climbing a boss like malus in shadow of the colossus. if you're like me and you've slept on this - knock it the fuck off

tomb raider provides platforming nervousness in spades with ruthlessly unforgiving - but incredibly smart, well paced and rewarding - stage design. the way it constantly forces you to analyze level geometry, take risks and conserve (extremely limited) save crystals only amps up to greater and more sadistic heights as it goes. and it's goddamn brilliant

PLAY this fucking game. do not write it off based on your missed jumps in the first stage or the drab exterior. this shit WILL hook you in. and just for the record: the controls are perfect. don't even start with that

i fucking hate 7th gen xenophobia so much

it's a huge shame that this got immediately factored out en masse as a "gears of war clone" when the similarities are fundamental and superficial at best. initially it feels like a tongue-in-cheek parody of gears - right down to having some fodder, wannabe COG-like nobodies following you around - the whole identity shifts as soon as filena, syd's main partner, comes into the picture

as a tag team, the two of them do more damage with their arms and legs than their actual weapons. couple that with the ability to toss filena at enemies to stun 'em and you have a game that is very much an action hybrid of a shooter. similar to titles like vanquish and resident evil 6, if you're actively taking cover, you're playing the game wrong (especially considering syd can sprint, roll and melee while reloading.) if you're roadie-running, then you goddamn better be following it up with a haymaker

that's not to say the weapons themselves aren't kickass - in fact, some of them rank up with my favorites among all shooters. the rapid-fire grenade launcher, stun-locking plasma caster and wall-bouncing energy rifle immediately come to mind, but there's nothing that really feels like a peashooter. even the base rifle is a pretty reliable mainstay

also, i'd be remiss not to mention that this game often decides it wants to be a platformer. despite some jank in getting the hang of those mechanics (it can be unclear what you can/can't do at first) that generally works very well. certainly makes the set pieces feel a hell of a lot more organic than any dime a dozen tps with a helicopter turret sequence or whatever other nondistinctive gimmick the 7th gen found itself obsessed with

level design is pretty solid all around. more so than anything in the actual stages, my critiques aim at a few checkpoint placements. in particular, i have a personal message directed at the person who designed a certain lategame enemy gauntlet: what the fuck is wrong with you?

anyway, another thing that surprised me - more so than that gauntlet - was how gripping the narrative actually ended up being. cool backstory aside, syd and filena's chemistry is spot-on and the dub is fuckin' great. shoutout to steve blum especially for voicing syd's (keith ferguson, btw) main rival. i'll spare additional details and just say that the finale gets hype as fuck

if you've got a 7th gen system or a computer that can emulate it reliably enough, play this fucking game - preferably on hard mode - that way you'll be forced to utilize the combo mechanics instead of hiding behind cover constantly

do you like the oldgen mission format, AC vs AC fights and uh... programming? if so, then boy oh boy have i got the game for you:

...it's a shame there aren't more campaign set pieces a la ACV, but if their absence means having order missions that don't suck ass, maybe that's not such a huge price to pay. i'll certainly take 60 solid missions over 9 good ones and 80+ that suck ass

final boss made me remember things