Deluge is a little RPG maker game, that's short, cheap, and like loads of these games, punches WAY above its weight class. The art is on point, the atmosphere (especially in the main section of the game) is this strange mix of cozy and filled with dread, which is kinda exactly my thing, and the plotting and moment to moment writing are wonderful, full of meaningful moments and interesting reversals! I definitely recommend playing this, even if you're not into horror games, since it leans mostly on atmosphere for that. Just prepare for some combat that's tougher than you might think. Use your healing items lol.

But yeah definitely grab this and play it, you've got no excuse

OH ALSO THE MUSIC IS SUUUUUPER GOOD!!!!

System Shock 1 is loaded with ideas that almost feel lost to time, things that never made it into System Shock 2 or any of the other imsims that came later. Maybe that's because it's barely an imsim, feeling more like sci-fi survival horror-lite mixed with progression reminiscent of an enormous zelda dungeon.

I won't really spend much time talking about what's good about the original game. You know what's good about it, it's what got carried over into System Shock 2 and Bioshock and Prey. The good parts defined the imsim genre, and they're still that good.

The bad? Well for one, it's a much harsher game than it's successors. Ammo is more scarce, encounters rarely dip beneath a level of challenge where you could die in a few hits, and stealth isn't really an option. The hacking segments are interesting as an alternate mode of gameplay, where ammo doesn't matter but enemies come at you much faster, but are just as difficult if not tougher than the rest of the game. Also, I just found myself being ready for the game to end around 5 hours before it did, which is also around the time things got unreasonably hard.

The remake is pretty good. For the most part I like the visuals, though I wish they'd strayed a bit further from the original game's art and played up a bit of the horror, or helped the floors of the ship stand out from each other a bit. Besides that, it's wonderful to have a version of the game with controls I can easily wrap my head around.

I know most of this was negative, and maybe that's because the last few hours' difficulty left a bad taste in my mouth, but I really did like this game, and I bet it would be much more fun with a lower difficulty selected (you can't change the difficulty mid-campaign though). It's a cool look into the past, and it's good that the game is accessible like this again, but I also feel like it's pretty outclassed by its younger brothers.

Admittedly, I haven’t played many visual novels. I played Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors a year or two back, some of the Ace Attorney games, like half of Steins;Gate, and, like, the social sim parts of personas 3-5 kinda count I guess? Regardless, it’s just not really a genre I’m intimately familiar with. With that caveat out of the way, Toumayhem is probably the best visual novel I’ve ever played.

I mean like, the characters? Each one is WILDLY loveable. The art? Gorgeous and expressive! The plot? Windy and twisty and mysterious, with intrigue at every turn. But really the biggest strength here is the writing I think. Each character’s got such a unique voice to them, but they all fit together in the larger story so perfectly, so seamlessly, and you can really feel the writer’s voice show through every line as well. The most surprising part to me was that honestly, this game is hilarious! It’s serious and never breaks tone, but sometimes a line comes out of left field and BAM you’re scream laughing on the couch.

I’m a little biased, to be fair, since I’m friends with Crescendo, the main person behind the game, but I really think Toumayhem is something wonderful and special that will probably resonate with you if you like any other visual novel-shaped games. You should definitely play it!

Also the OST is BANGIN AND BUMPIN

I don't really think there's much to say about this game that hasn't been said, so I'll keep this short. I wasn't a huge fan of the hit detection or like, overall feel of the game? Too often I felt like I was in the wrong place, or attacking the wrong way, and it just kinda felt mushy to me. Also, some of the late game dungeons throw back to zelda 1 in terms of opaqueness and lack of direction. ANyways pretty much the rest of the game is wonderful, and I get why so many people love this game, even if I don't really. That world, and all the ways you get to explore it at your own pace, would certainly be magical if I was a kid, and had all the time in the world.

WHEW so this is what Armored Core can BE!!!!!! For Answer (for Answer?) feels like AC4 got polished up and reworked to feel smoother and more digestible without losing even an ounce of that Armored Core clunk and grizzle. I can’t even really describe what feels so much better. Maybe it’s the new lock on system, which you can set to auto rotate the screen and keep what you’re looking at in focus? That could be a big part of it, but I think there’s more going on here. For Answer is as short and sweet as the last game, but with more reason to replay (multiple endings!) and somehow makes a mech game feel buttery smooth without losing the weight of your big man-tank. It’s just wonderful, and I think it’s given me the energy I need to revisit the older titles with fresh eyes

Armored Core is weird to play, even by FromSoft standards. They’re mission based shooters based around mobility, but that’s almost a red herring, because really they’re mech customization simulators with very intentionally clunky movement and shooting. You know, because you’re driving a big super tank with legs. I’m not sure if it’s the most enjoyable feeling game out there, but there’s no argument that it’s wildly successful at being what it wants to be.

I think my main issue is that there’s a readability issue in the game, in that it’s hard to figure out exactly what’s happening and why at points? Like a missile will hit you out of nowhere and demolish you, or your gun will stop firing for some reason (I think that was some kinda EMP weapon used on me but I still don’t know lmao). It gets a little frustrating, with the worst offender being the lock-on system that just refuses to listen sometimes? Some of the ideas in this game seem to have been brought into Demon’s Souls, and are much improved upon, especially the way the lock-on works and the general feeling of clunkyness, which feels more focused in DeS.

Beyond that though like, I can’t complain? The levels are all striking and gorgeus, massive sci-fi cities and megatowers and blasted wasteland deserts, and it’s all soundtracked with some of Kota Hoshino’s best work: Experimental as always, but wildly dramatic as well. It’s not my favorite pre-souls FromSoft game (not my least favorite either though lol), and it’s maybe my least favorite Miyazaki-helmed game, but it’s a striking and memorable game about war and driving a way too big tank on legs around, and does it really need to be anything more?

I feel like it's hard to separate this game from it's predecessor, even more than other sequels built off the same assets as their predecessors. For example, Majora's Mask is built off Ocarina of Time, but has a wholly different flavor, a different world and tone. Tears of the Kingdom on the other hand feels a lot like Breath of the Wild. It's the same map, the same structure, the same systems, just more built on top. It's weird, honestly, at least for a single player game. I feel like you never see this kinda thing. In a way, it feels like an enormous expansion to Breath of the Wild, in the way an MMO recieves an expansion that leaves it still fundamentally the same place, but with new areas, new mechanics, and a new story. It’s the same world, but further down the timeline.

In the case of Tears of the Kingdom, this feels like it freed the development team up to focus on some areas of BOTW that were lacking, since they had most of the world map and systems in place already. In particular, this game has actual bossfights! Fun ones that really make use of the powers you get, but also let you use the systems of the game to their full effect! These are true, classic-style Zelda bossfights. The dungeons aren’t as knockout great, but they’re more varied than the divine beasts at least, and one or two were pretty great? I don’t super blame them for that though, I think classic dungeons would clash pretty hard with these traversal mechanics.

The game’s also got like, a real plot now! Or at least a compelling storyline! Zelda’s a wildly strong highlight here. As a character she’s not particularly complex, but she’s incredibly active in the direction of the plot, and is really who drives the whole game along, which is pretty impressive considering the plot is mostly told through flashbacks again.

The final big change is the new powers, especially the Ultrahand one. Ultrahand is basically the most novel power you could have for an open world game, the ability to stick things together and move them around. In a way it calls to mind dicking around in garry’s mod when I was a kid, and that’s actually the highest praise I can give. It really is infinitely versatile, especially with all the new machinery they’ve added to really capitalize on this mechanic. The other powers are a bit less noteworthy though, like Ascend, which feels strictly like a utility power (you can go through the ceiling anywhere flat enough and short enough). Fuse is cool, acting as a kind of extension of Ultrahand, but instead of random objects this time you can combine weapons and objects to make better weapons, which adds some cool variety to the combat. Rewind is fun too, but a bit simple, and feels left out to dry here. I wish there were a few more simple powers with it, like Stasis from the last game, so it didn’t feel like such a small piece of things. That being said, all the powers here have thematic weight behind them in the story, so I do get why it’s such a limited selection.

Beyond those three things it really is just Breath of the Wild again. If you didn’t like that game, you won’t like this one. If you burned out on that one, you might still be burnt out here. But if you just needed more BOTW in your life? Here it is

Front Mission is exactly the kind of tactical RPG I like: one without permadeath. Beyond that it's very 80s Gundam, difficult but not overly so if you plan well, and really ends fantastically, in classic 90s Square fashion.

The real meat here is the Mech customization, with a massive amount of parts to combine and try out as much as you want, as long as you're not averse to grinding up a bit of money in the arena (it's not bad at all). I ended up building most of my units similarly as the game went on, just having a couple specialized long range units and close up bruisers and everyone else being normal short range gunners, but you can absolutely get more creative than that with it.

The remake seems good, though I admittedly haven't played the original. The mech designs are all good to great, doofy in that classic way, and the stages actually look pretty good too. Parts of the remaster look a bit "vanilla" maybe, but it definitely feels good. The underlying flavor of the game gets through, is what I guess I'm saying. The uprezzed Amano art looks... fine, but I wish they'd used new scans of the old art instead, though who knows if that was even remotely an option for this team.

Anyways, I'm jazzed about this series now, and I'm gonna play the second campaign now (on my DS this time though, to get the older-style experience). At some point I'm gonna actually have to start playing armored core games to actually get ready for VI, but until then it's Front Mission timeeeeeeeeeeeeee

This is a wonderful little game, very in line with early Love-De-Lic games (particularly Moon RPG Remix Adventure), and with just as much heart as that game too (but less needless frustration). It’s an adventure-style game at heart, but based around a day system where you can only do so much each day, and some things reset each day, while some things only progress day to day. It’s small and handmade-feeling, with wonderful cute, bizarre, and well written characters. I almost feel like this game loves me, and I love it too.

Arcanum is interesting, both in its thematic content and its place in its father genre. It’s the first game by Troika games, which was started by the creative team of Fallout 1 after they left Interplay and before they did much work on Fallout 2. Now, the team that ended up leading Fallout 2 became Black Isle, who became Obsidian, and the games released under those banners are typically considered masterpieces, and for me they’ve released at least 4 of my favorite games ever made, some of the most meaningful art in the genre that often got there by burning expectations to the ground and just doing whatever they want. Planescape, KOTOR 2, Fallout New Vegas, even (to a lesser extent) Fallout 2 and Icewind Dale all run by this design philosophy. Even the recently released Pentiment has a bit of this fire in its eyes, taking obsessive medieval history recounting and turning it into just an outrageously affecting game. That’s the other thing that so many of the Black Isle team’s games have in common: A dedication to hitting you at the core of your being, tearing you apart with nothing but smart writing and scene setting.

The Troika team’s games (at least the ones I’ve played, Fallout 1, now Arcanum, and maybe The Outer Worlds if you count that) provoke the same broad feelings in me, but their games are less about razing the ground that came before. They wouldn’t make a game like Planescape, which almost completely dumps the RPG side of its design by the wayside, and they wouldn’t make Icewind Dale, a linear set of dungeons with a cool setting and not much exploration. Instead, their games will have dungeons, and thought provoking story, and mechanics that draw lines to what came before but mix them up into something that feels much different. Fallout was an iteration on Wasteland, but is also an incredibly evenly spread game between each element, and Arcanum really feels like another run at that style of design, but in a new setting that gives and even more broad selection of things to do.

Arcanum (the setting) is… well people say steampunk, but I don’t think all that that implies is quite right. It’s more like high fantasy with steam engines and victorian culture, and it really leans more on the high fantasy in practice. Sure the scene setting and overall aesthetics are very victorian, but the things you do, the texture of the world, feel right out of Baldur’s Gate. What’s added is a Fallout-style sense of waste and pollution and mechanical scrappiness, not all over, but just in the right places.

I’m finding it hard to talk about what’s special about this game without getting into telling you too much, so I think I’m gonna stop this here. It plays like a much smoother classic Fallout, and if you find the themes of Fallout compelling, particularly the snarkier way of delivering those themes from the first two games, I think you’ll get a lot out of this. It’s not particularly tough, so you can experiment, it’s not overly guided (could maybe stand to have a little more guidance tbh), so chill out and do what you want, and it’s just outrageously grounded and believable as a world, and the further you let yourself get into that feeling, the more affected you’ll be at the end. It’s absolutely worth playing, and might be my favorite from this particular creative team.

Prodeus is another one of this most recent crop of boomer shooters, those modern games throwing back to those famous 90s shooters like DOOM and Quake. You know, like DUSK, or Ultrakill, or Amid Evil. All of these games either throw back to a specific game (DUSK → Quake, for example) or chart entirely new paths with old mechanics (Ultrakill), but rarely do these games feel like an amalgam of eras like Prodeus does. It’s not groundbreaking, it’s not tied to old tech, instead it’s lifted bits and pieces from all over, while still primarily rooting itself in the land of DOOM and Quake.

However, when ya boot it up, the first game you’ll think of is definitely DOOM. A bit more sci fi, a bit shinier, a bit [modern rendering techniques over sprites], but broadly it feels like, well, Brutal DOOM. That is, DOOM with more GORE and the ability to aim up and down. That’s definitely at the core of the design here. The levels are mazes with key/door puzzles, the enemies are flat sprites, hell the enemies are mostly the same types as in DOOM, but there’s more here. Like, the levels are mazes, but they’re not really labrynthine like DOOM. They’ve got a bit of that ol Quake invisible hand, and a variety in level design (switching from classic maze-em-ups to killboxes to linear Half-Lifey corridors. The weapons are a similar story, like sure you’ve got your classic shotgun and pistol and rocket launcher, but you’ve got some cool alien weapons (one of which recalls Prey 2006), and all of the guns have cool weird alt fires, almost in a Bulletstorm kinda way. Like I said, it’s not groundbreaking, but it’s kinda pulling from everywhere, and it’s satisfying in that way.

I don’t really have much more to say unfortunately. The campaign is fine, full of good levels, but doesn’t really have an arc to it. The visual variety is all backloaded into the last 6 levels of the game, and while the gameplay itself is varied, the pacing of the gameplay is kinda flat. Still, a lot of the merit of this game is its extensive and pretty easy to use level editor, with which people’ve made not just new levels but whole campaigns, which is SUPER dope.

So yeah, it’s a pretty fun but occasionally flat boomer shooter with a robust level editor and influences from all over the genre. Play it if ya like the genre, or if you want good casual shootin fun to kill some time. Me, I probably won’t revisit it