foon
16 reviews liked by foon
Tyrian 2000
1999
absolutely haunted by this game and have a grudge against it because of so many shmup forum threads where the first post is "wow you forgot tyrian" its like having a forum thread for discussing your favourite colours and the first post is "wow you forgot brown". can't stand it.
the game's okay i guess it's not my kind of thing
the game's okay i guess it's not my kind of thing
Everhood
2021
This review contains spoilers
Full Review with Links and Example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xbk9aUT92MxTH_ryAP7cBFq8q5fp-qA_/view?usp=sharing
Full Text Review:
The best way to describe Everhood is to use its own words. “Many words have been said. Some thoughts have been shared.” These are some of the very last lines in the game, in what is supposed to be an emotional and meaningful sendoff to the player. As you can guess by these insipid, passive lines, the sendoff is anything but.
Everhood is a rare and spectacular beast; it sets out to accomplish many things and manages to fail to accomplish even one. From its characters to its story, art, gameplay, music, to every single aspect of its existence as a game, Everhood fails to create a fun, comprehensible, or even just competent experience. It tries to take rhythm games, Undertale, and old style weird and mash them together without understanding how any of them function alone, let alone combined.
Before I go deeper in, I will admit that yes, I am salty. I am salty not because the game is bad but because it could have been good. Everhood has occasional moments of absolute brilliance. I am talking ‘10/10 would have been the next big indie’ level of brilliance. This fight showcases how good the game could have been. The tracker is a total banger, the chart makes sense, the visuals are entertaining (the horns, the shadow puppets; it is all so perfect). That is what the game had the potential to be throughout. It is not. The amount of potential the developers squandered with terrible ideas and implementation stings all the harder when you see what they were capable of doing.
For the first half of the game, the story is near incomprehensible. You go to a series of disjointed locations and meet the same characters in each and do random actions until you complete the area. Near the end of this section, the game tries to have a meta commentary about meaning and purpose of progression in games, but it feels like an excuse for the cluster disaster of a plot you stumble through. The second half of the game is just an Undertale rip-off. Full stop. This may be somewhat mean, but this clip from Billy Madison is the best way of describing the first half of the game.
The Undertale rip-off could have worked if you liked or even gave half a damn about the characters. But the game fails to give you a reason to care about them. You are introduced to the entire cast at the beginning of the game, and they show up in every area for the first half. They have no purpose, and 1-2 lines each in every area. They barely play a part in story and are generally entirely ignorable. I can describe most of the cast in one to two words. “Depressed, Sneezes”, “Laser Squidward”, “Changes Names”. Those are the entire characters for some of what you might consider “the main cast”. There is so little to the characters that when it becomes to make THE BIG CHOICE, you do not care. Should they live? Should they die? Who cares? The game has given you no reason give a single damn about any of them. It never introduces characters, gives them a time to shine, or ever lets them do anything. You could remove almost every NPC from the game and you probably would not notice.
The combat is like a rhythm game but not. Enemies attack to the music and you must dodge their attack notes. The attack notes come down in the five lanes and you must dodge them. The first problem comes from the fact that the enemies act to the music, which means by the time you are reacting to their attacks, the music has moved on. You do not act to the music nor the beat. One of the fundamental joys of games that involve music, interacting with the music, is not present. There is a disconnect between the player’s action and the music. The game makes you feel like you want to move to the beat and dodge to the music, but it does not let you.
The second problem comes from the existence of five lanes. Notes DO NOT spill across all the lanes, forcing you constantly dodge and weave across all five to survive. No, they flood down 2-3 lanes while leaving the rest bare. Much of the combat devolves into parking in one of the safe lanes and waiting. It trivializes much of the game.
The second half of the game introduces an active element to the combat: You can absorb colored notes. Absorbing two of the same color in a row lets you shoot it back to do damage. On its face, this sounds interesting and fun. It lets the player aggressively go through beatmaps and rewards them with damage. However, the mechanic is hindered by a series of bad decisions. Absorbing different colored attacks cancels the combo. You must absorb two of the same in a row. But there is little rhyme or reason for what color notes are or where they are placed. It leads to hunting down colors or accidentally cancelling your combo, which really sucks. In addition, your attacks get cancelled out if they hit two note attacks or a wall note. Enemy note attacks appear around 1s before they hit you, and your attack has travel time. This leads to the common case of your attack getting cancelled out after you fired it when the lane was completely clear when you fired it. This quickly becomes extraordinarily aggravating.
In the battle sequences, the game tries to give character to the NPCs by having them do silly animations and say things while fighting. The problem is that due to the ‘dodge the beatmap’ design of the game, the player’s focus is solely on the bottom half of the screen. Anything that is not notes, your character, or the lanes is unimportant and thus ignored. I cannot read text while doing this. I will barely even see the text box. I did not even notice half the entertaining little things the cursor did during the fight until I watched the video example I posted above. You tunnel vision to only see the information that is pertinent to the fast-paced gameplay, you cannot focus and enjoy those animations because that will get you killed.
Let us use Undertale as an example. There is a ton going on here. Sans’ dialog, the text box dialog, animations, all sorts of non-gameplay information that the player should be paying attention to. But none of it happens during the combat gameplay. The player is not expected to pay attention to both aspects because the player cannot pay attention to both aspects at the same time. You get the full experience because you are given the opportunity to fully process everything Sans says and does without having to focus on dodging his attacks. In games like this, you must separate the gameplay and the story so the player can adequately focus on each without reducing the other. Everhood does not do this, leading to a reduced experience for both.
Musically, the game has over 100 songs, heavily trading quality for quantity. The OST dabbles in all kinds of genres and ideas, leaving it without any kind of unifying theme, idea, or even a leitmotif. In a game where the music should be a key part in characterization and storytelling, there is only ‘meh’. It does not even use its musical ideas to try and enhance scenes and characters. Many scenes and areas have no music at all. There are a few great songs, but they are extremely few and far between. The music is rarely good or used to accent or improve the game.
Most of the tracks are barely developed. It is as if the developers decided that if it took 10 of effort to make 1 good song, then they could make 10 songs with that same amount of effort if they only did 1/10th of each. It leads to many songs and fights being like this. I love the Spanish guitar and was entirely hyped for the fight. But there is no real fight, and there is no real song. They have an opening chord and nothing more. These songs are cardboard cutouts of real music with nothing behind them. It is incredibly disappointing when some of them could have been something if there was more substance to them.
As a side note, the sfx are generally ear grating, and I cannot recommend turning them down enough. They are extremely bad, loud, and get in the way of the tracks during fights. Just listen to the shooting sfx during the cursor fight example.
On the side of difficulty, the game tries to go for the RPG ‘tweak the numbers’ approach in a game about dodging rhythm game charts. The harder a difficulty, the less hp and the more your enemies have. The reverse is true for easier difficulties. This system does not work for games that use rhythm mechanics. If you are struggling with a fight, turning down the difficulty may make it easier to facetank your way through, but you just fail your way to victory. The reason rhythm games’ easier difficulties are easier charts is to enable players with a lower skill level to not only complete levels but feel like doing so is still an accomplishment.
If I turn down the difficulty in Everhood, I will still face the same chart that may have reamed me, but now I have enough hp to just stand still and take every hit without losing. Failing my way to victory does not feel good. It does not feel like I accomplished anything.
An expert may do something like this and feel accomplished: Example (Hard)
But a novice can still do the same song/level/what have you on an easier difficulty and still feel accomplished because it was tailored for their skill level: Example (Easy)
Imagine if all the players were forced to do the hard version, but the game just ignored all your mess ups if you were playing on an easier mode. That is not rewarding.
Art-wise, the game takes a very minimalistic approach. There are few details or sprites. Most of the screen is black. The screen beyond the playable area is also black. This leads to many situations where the player does not know whether they have hit an invisible wall or is moving forward, which gets old real fast. There is nothing wrong with a minimalistic art style, but almost all non-portrait sprites that are there are bad. It is a shame because the artist has talent. Red’s combat sprite is great. The portrait pictures are generally great. But nearly every other sprite and area in the game is either garish or just bad looking. I do not mean ugly. Ugly characters can look good. (See Flan’s portrait. He is ugly. but his portrait looks good.). It is that the spriting is bad. Mild spoilers, but this is how bad they look.
I admit, when I said the game failed to accomplish a single thing it set out to do, I lied. The game accomplished one idea that is obviously a key design tenant: to waste the player’s time. It drags out every section with extended transition screens lasting upwards of 10-15 seconds each. A shoutout goes to the end of the game where they have you wait on a black screen for over 40 seconds while nothing happens.
Everhood could have been something great, but due to bad decisions on every aspect of game design, it fails to pass even the lowest standards for quality. If you have made it to the end of this review/rant, then my final score is my previously used Billy Madison quote, “I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.”
Full Text Review:
The best way to describe Everhood is to use its own words. “Many words have been said. Some thoughts have been shared.” These are some of the very last lines in the game, in what is supposed to be an emotional and meaningful sendoff to the player. As you can guess by these insipid, passive lines, the sendoff is anything but.
Everhood is a rare and spectacular beast; it sets out to accomplish many things and manages to fail to accomplish even one. From its characters to its story, art, gameplay, music, to every single aspect of its existence as a game, Everhood fails to create a fun, comprehensible, or even just competent experience. It tries to take rhythm games, Undertale, and old style weird and mash them together without understanding how any of them function alone, let alone combined.
Before I go deeper in, I will admit that yes, I am salty. I am salty not because the game is bad but because it could have been good. Everhood has occasional moments of absolute brilliance. I am talking ‘10/10 would have been the next big indie’ level of brilliance. This fight showcases how good the game could have been. The tracker is a total banger, the chart makes sense, the visuals are entertaining (the horns, the shadow puppets; it is all so perfect). That is what the game had the potential to be throughout. It is not. The amount of potential the developers squandered with terrible ideas and implementation stings all the harder when you see what they were capable of doing.
For the first half of the game, the story is near incomprehensible. You go to a series of disjointed locations and meet the same characters in each and do random actions until you complete the area. Near the end of this section, the game tries to have a meta commentary about meaning and purpose of progression in games, but it feels like an excuse for the cluster disaster of a plot you stumble through. The second half of the game is just an Undertale rip-off. Full stop. This may be somewhat mean, but this clip from Billy Madison is the best way of describing the first half of the game.
The Undertale rip-off could have worked if you liked or even gave half a damn about the characters. But the game fails to give you a reason to care about them. You are introduced to the entire cast at the beginning of the game, and they show up in every area for the first half. They have no purpose, and 1-2 lines each in every area. They barely play a part in story and are generally entirely ignorable. I can describe most of the cast in one to two words. “Depressed, Sneezes”, “Laser Squidward”, “Changes Names”. Those are the entire characters for some of what you might consider “the main cast”. There is so little to the characters that when it becomes to make THE BIG CHOICE, you do not care. Should they live? Should they die? Who cares? The game has given you no reason give a single damn about any of them. It never introduces characters, gives them a time to shine, or ever lets them do anything. You could remove almost every NPC from the game and you probably would not notice.
The combat is like a rhythm game but not. Enemies attack to the music and you must dodge their attack notes. The attack notes come down in the five lanes and you must dodge them. The first problem comes from the fact that the enemies act to the music, which means by the time you are reacting to their attacks, the music has moved on. You do not act to the music nor the beat. One of the fundamental joys of games that involve music, interacting with the music, is not present. There is a disconnect between the player’s action and the music. The game makes you feel like you want to move to the beat and dodge to the music, but it does not let you.
The second problem comes from the existence of five lanes. Notes DO NOT spill across all the lanes, forcing you constantly dodge and weave across all five to survive. No, they flood down 2-3 lanes while leaving the rest bare. Much of the combat devolves into parking in one of the safe lanes and waiting. It trivializes much of the game.
The second half of the game introduces an active element to the combat: You can absorb colored notes. Absorbing two of the same color in a row lets you shoot it back to do damage. On its face, this sounds interesting and fun. It lets the player aggressively go through beatmaps and rewards them with damage. However, the mechanic is hindered by a series of bad decisions. Absorbing different colored attacks cancels the combo. You must absorb two of the same in a row. But there is little rhyme or reason for what color notes are or where they are placed. It leads to hunting down colors or accidentally cancelling your combo, which really sucks. In addition, your attacks get cancelled out if they hit two note attacks or a wall note. Enemy note attacks appear around 1s before they hit you, and your attack has travel time. This leads to the common case of your attack getting cancelled out after you fired it when the lane was completely clear when you fired it. This quickly becomes extraordinarily aggravating.
In the battle sequences, the game tries to give character to the NPCs by having them do silly animations and say things while fighting. The problem is that due to the ‘dodge the beatmap’ design of the game, the player’s focus is solely on the bottom half of the screen. Anything that is not notes, your character, or the lanes is unimportant and thus ignored. I cannot read text while doing this. I will barely even see the text box. I did not even notice half the entertaining little things the cursor did during the fight until I watched the video example I posted above. You tunnel vision to only see the information that is pertinent to the fast-paced gameplay, you cannot focus and enjoy those animations because that will get you killed.
Let us use Undertale as an example. There is a ton going on here. Sans’ dialog, the text box dialog, animations, all sorts of non-gameplay information that the player should be paying attention to. But none of it happens during the combat gameplay. The player is not expected to pay attention to both aspects because the player cannot pay attention to both aspects at the same time. You get the full experience because you are given the opportunity to fully process everything Sans says and does without having to focus on dodging his attacks. In games like this, you must separate the gameplay and the story so the player can adequately focus on each without reducing the other. Everhood does not do this, leading to a reduced experience for both.
Musically, the game has over 100 songs, heavily trading quality for quantity. The OST dabbles in all kinds of genres and ideas, leaving it without any kind of unifying theme, idea, or even a leitmotif. In a game where the music should be a key part in characterization and storytelling, there is only ‘meh’. It does not even use its musical ideas to try and enhance scenes and characters. Many scenes and areas have no music at all. There are a few great songs, but they are extremely few and far between. The music is rarely good or used to accent or improve the game.
Most of the tracks are barely developed. It is as if the developers decided that if it took 10 of effort to make 1 good song, then they could make 10 songs with that same amount of effort if they only did 1/10th of each. It leads to many songs and fights being like this. I love the Spanish guitar and was entirely hyped for the fight. But there is no real fight, and there is no real song. They have an opening chord and nothing more. These songs are cardboard cutouts of real music with nothing behind them. It is incredibly disappointing when some of them could have been something if there was more substance to them.
As a side note, the sfx are generally ear grating, and I cannot recommend turning them down enough. They are extremely bad, loud, and get in the way of the tracks during fights. Just listen to the shooting sfx during the cursor fight example.
On the side of difficulty, the game tries to go for the RPG ‘tweak the numbers’ approach in a game about dodging rhythm game charts. The harder a difficulty, the less hp and the more your enemies have. The reverse is true for easier difficulties. This system does not work for games that use rhythm mechanics. If you are struggling with a fight, turning down the difficulty may make it easier to facetank your way through, but you just fail your way to victory. The reason rhythm games’ easier difficulties are easier charts is to enable players with a lower skill level to not only complete levels but feel like doing so is still an accomplishment.
If I turn down the difficulty in Everhood, I will still face the same chart that may have reamed me, but now I have enough hp to just stand still and take every hit without losing. Failing my way to victory does not feel good. It does not feel like I accomplished anything.
An expert may do something like this and feel accomplished: Example (Hard)
But a novice can still do the same song/level/what have you on an easier difficulty and still feel accomplished because it was tailored for their skill level: Example (Easy)
Imagine if all the players were forced to do the hard version, but the game just ignored all your mess ups if you were playing on an easier mode. That is not rewarding.
Art-wise, the game takes a very minimalistic approach. There are few details or sprites. Most of the screen is black. The screen beyond the playable area is also black. This leads to many situations where the player does not know whether they have hit an invisible wall or is moving forward, which gets old real fast. There is nothing wrong with a minimalistic art style, but almost all non-portrait sprites that are there are bad. It is a shame because the artist has talent. Red’s combat sprite is great. The portrait pictures are generally great. But nearly every other sprite and area in the game is either garish or just bad looking. I do not mean ugly. Ugly characters can look good. (See Flan’s portrait. He is ugly. but his portrait looks good.). It is that the spriting is bad. Mild spoilers, but this is how bad they look.
I admit, when I said the game failed to accomplish a single thing it set out to do, I lied. The game accomplished one idea that is obviously a key design tenant: to waste the player’s time. It drags out every section with extended transition screens lasting upwards of 10-15 seconds each. A shoutout goes to the end of the game where they have you wait on a black screen for over 40 seconds while nothing happens.
Everhood could have been something great, but due to bad decisions on every aspect of game design, it fails to pass even the lowest standards for quality. If you have made it to the end of this review/rant, then my final score is my previously used Billy Madison quote, “I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul.”
Beatmania IIDX
1999
The only perfect game. No one will ever design anything with mechanics tighter than this, and it's pointless to even try.
Sadly I haven't really had the opportunity to play IIDX in some years now; I keep meaning to pick it back up, but the costs associated with it and the fact that I already have a bunch of other hard games to play keep me from really committing to it. It will always have a special place in my heart, though.
Sadly I haven't really had the opportunity to play IIDX in some years now; I keep meaning to pick it back up, but the costs associated with it and the fact that I already have a bunch of other hard games to play keep me from really committing to it. It will always have a special place in my heart, though.
Mega Man X6
2001
Mega Man X6 is what you would get if you took the bad parts of X5 as the standard for a new game and then half-assed the whole thing. Which is, in fact, more or less what happened: The game is a sequel to what was supposed to be the series finale, and was rushed out in order to make a christmas release date and milk the series just a tad bit further while the PS2 gained an install base.
Not that it takes someone telling you that the game was rushed to realize it. X6 is a further visual downgrade from X5, and is home to the most garish pixel art I've ever seen in a high-profile franchise. Sprites have bad shading and use visually clashing colors, much like what you'd see in fan modifications back in the day. A lot of the spritework is clearly unfinished and lacks animations, and the character design itself just feels bland and out of place.
That's, of course, what you get from a surface observation. Playing the game is actually much worse, and you get to feel just how little effort was put into developing it. X6 is home to both the worst bosses and worst stages up to this point in the franchise, both areas of the game having been developed without much regard for consistency or balance.
Stage design revolves around cluttering the screen with enemies and/or projectiles, as well as having lots of instant death traps. Plus, almost all stages involve a stupid gimmick that doesn't fit the game and detracts from the experience, such as a randomly assembling the stage from a pool of areas, a cheaply made, artificially difficult miniboss that you have to fight five to six times in a row, or having to hunt for small destructible objects before proceeding. It's all a big joke, and the final stages are the punchline, requiring highly specific loadouts to even get through them.
To further complicate things, nightmare effects take place whenever you exit a stage. For instance, when you leave the fire stage, other stages may have fireballs falling from the sky, and the ice stage makes other stages have ice physics. Of course, of all the things the game spends a good minute explaining, this system isn't one of them, and because a lot of nightmare effects run counter to the stages' "design" (if you can call it that), it makes some infuriating experiences even more frustrating.
It gets worse: there's an optional boss thing going on like the one in X2, but instead of making a plain old door where you go in, kick butt and come out, they make this whole detour of a secret area that's basically a stage within the stage. Except it's no secret at all -- a lot of them are easier to find than the end of the stage itself, so you can end up in this really hard area early in the game entirely by accident. In that regard, it's worth noting that, unlike ANY other Mega Man game, you can get softlocked in X6 stages due to not having a power-up or weapon, being then forced to suicide into picking stage select, which speaks volume about the care given to the level design.
To make things even more foul, there's this gimmick now where every stage has named reploids to rescue, and they permanently die if a certain enemy attacks them before you reach them. This enemy often spawns right next to the reploid, and in one instance, right on top of them, meaning the only way to save these NPCs is often to clairvoyantly kamikaze towards them. If you miss them and they get caught? Well, too bad, you have to load from the last save and restart the stage.
This is not just a completionist thing: the abysmal parts system from X5 is back, except now, parts don't come from bosses, but from those lost reploids, and again, because the stage design often demands specific loadouts, you can get screwed pretty bad if you lose the wrong one to the Nightmare Virus.
These parts, whether they improve damage or movement, are often a stopgap for the armors you get completely sucking. Don't even think about playing normal X because some stages are plain impossible as him. You begin the game with a gimped Falcon Armor and later get to choose between the Blade Armor and Shadow Armor. The latter disables air dashing and special weapons (and is ugly as hell), while the former is marginally better than Falcon, but not by much, and it has this accursed downwards dash that's super easy to trigger on the dualshock d-pad and killed me literal dozens of times when above a gap -- Gaze sends his regards.
Ah yes, Gaze. Let's talk about bosses. X6's Bosses are in at least one of three categories: complete pushovers, tedious or utter abominations. Most of the first eight bosses fall into the first category: they have one or two attacks and are beatable with the buster and your eyes closed. The rest of the eight mavericks, as well as the optional bosses, are also not hard, but they make you wait until they are vulnerable to attack, which drags the fight for a good several minutes.
But the absolute king stuff comes at the end of the game, where there are bosses you have to damage race and/or get insanely lucky in order to beat. Nightmare Mother is a bad joke, a blocky sprite that slides around and spams the screen. And Gaze? The guy literally has the power to lag the game as an attack, and you can hardly damage him without damaging yourself in the same amount. Have fun, and hope the Blade Armor doesn't throw you straight into the pit.
I can rant on this game for a while longer. Stuff like Zero being handwaved back into the plot, or again most powerups being restricted to X. The fact is, every second spent with X6 is time spent in misery. It is a thoroughly terrible game.
Franchises need to end at some point, or at least be rebooted. The fact that the X franchise kept running up to when it got to this is just so heartbreaking for someone who grew up playing the original X. The sickest part? There's still two games to go. And they say X7 is worse than this. I worry for my sanity.
Not that it takes someone telling you that the game was rushed to realize it. X6 is a further visual downgrade from X5, and is home to the most garish pixel art I've ever seen in a high-profile franchise. Sprites have bad shading and use visually clashing colors, much like what you'd see in fan modifications back in the day. A lot of the spritework is clearly unfinished and lacks animations, and the character design itself just feels bland and out of place.
That's, of course, what you get from a surface observation. Playing the game is actually much worse, and you get to feel just how little effort was put into developing it. X6 is home to both the worst bosses and worst stages up to this point in the franchise, both areas of the game having been developed without much regard for consistency or balance.
Stage design revolves around cluttering the screen with enemies and/or projectiles, as well as having lots of instant death traps. Plus, almost all stages involve a stupid gimmick that doesn't fit the game and detracts from the experience, such as a randomly assembling the stage from a pool of areas, a cheaply made, artificially difficult miniboss that you have to fight five to six times in a row, or having to hunt for small destructible objects before proceeding. It's all a big joke, and the final stages are the punchline, requiring highly specific loadouts to even get through them.
To further complicate things, nightmare effects take place whenever you exit a stage. For instance, when you leave the fire stage, other stages may have fireballs falling from the sky, and the ice stage makes other stages have ice physics. Of course, of all the things the game spends a good minute explaining, this system isn't one of them, and because a lot of nightmare effects run counter to the stages' "design" (if you can call it that), it makes some infuriating experiences even more frustrating.
It gets worse: there's an optional boss thing going on like the one in X2, but instead of making a plain old door where you go in, kick butt and come out, they make this whole detour of a secret area that's basically a stage within the stage. Except it's no secret at all -- a lot of them are easier to find than the end of the stage itself, so you can end up in this really hard area early in the game entirely by accident. In that regard, it's worth noting that, unlike ANY other Mega Man game, you can get softlocked in X6 stages due to not having a power-up or weapon, being then forced to suicide into picking stage select, which speaks volume about the care given to the level design.
To make things even more foul, there's this gimmick now where every stage has named reploids to rescue, and they permanently die if a certain enemy attacks them before you reach them. This enemy often spawns right next to the reploid, and in one instance, right on top of them, meaning the only way to save these NPCs is often to clairvoyantly kamikaze towards them. If you miss them and they get caught? Well, too bad, you have to load from the last save and restart the stage.
This is not just a completionist thing: the abysmal parts system from X5 is back, except now, parts don't come from bosses, but from those lost reploids, and again, because the stage design often demands specific loadouts, you can get screwed pretty bad if you lose the wrong one to the Nightmare Virus.
These parts, whether they improve damage or movement, are often a stopgap for the armors you get completely sucking. Don't even think about playing normal X because some stages are plain impossible as him. You begin the game with a gimped Falcon Armor and later get to choose between the Blade Armor and Shadow Armor. The latter disables air dashing and special weapons (and is ugly as hell), while the former is marginally better than Falcon, but not by much, and it has this accursed downwards dash that's super easy to trigger on the dualshock d-pad and killed me literal dozens of times when above a gap -- Gaze sends his regards.
Ah yes, Gaze. Let's talk about bosses. X6's Bosses are in at least one of three categories: complete pushovers, tedious or utter abominations. Most of the first eight bosses fall into the first category: they have one or two attacks and are beatable with the buster and your eyes closed. The rest of the eight mavericks, as well as the optional bosses, are also not hard, but they make you wait until they are vulnerable to attack, which drags the fight for a good several minutes.
But the absolute king stuff comes at the end of the game, where there are bosses you have to damage race and/or get insanely lucky in order to beat. Nightmare Mother is a bad joke, a blocky sprite that slides around and spams the screen. And Gaze? The guy literally has the power to lag the game as an attack, and you can hardly damage him without damaging yourself in the same amount. Have fun, and hope the Blade Armor doesn't throw you straight into the pit.
I can rant on this game for a while longer. Stuff like Zero being handwaved back into the plot, or again most powerups being restricted to X. The fact is, every second spent with X6 is time spent in misery. It is a thoroughly terrible game.
Franchises need to end at some point, or at least be rebooted. The fact that the X franchise kept running up to when it got to this is just so heartbreaking for someone who grew up playing the original X. The sickest part? There's still two games to go. And they say X7 is worse than this. I worry for my sanity.
The most mature way to participate in the itch-adjacent depression indie scene is to treat their work with the same respect you would a single painting at an art gallery. Look it over, imagine the circumstances it comes from, put yourself in the artist's shoes, and then move on.
I wrote a more cynical review of this a while ago, I didn't want to keep it up but it's on pastebin for preservation: https://pastebin.com/9WwSFZDz
I wrote a more cynical review of this a while ago, I didn't want to keep it up but it's on pastebin for preservation: https://pastebin.com/9WwSFZDz
Tetris
1989
My number one most overrated game of all time....is Tetris.
Tetris theme plays for two seconds
Ok, seriously people? You are seriously going to call THIS GAME, one of the greatest games of all time?! Alright alright alright...you're telling me you'd rather play TETRIS....then Metal Gear Solid 3? You would rather play....TETRIS....then Skyrim?! You would rather play....TETRIS....then Team Fortress 2 (do you see where I'm going with this)?!
I see this game on DOZENS of "Best Games Ever" lists and it just doesn't deserve it! And before you go all ape on me I am fully aware of the history behind Tetris and how much it impacted the NES's sales, but that's more of it being influential rather then a good game! When was the last time you actively sought out playing TETRIS?
When was the last time you thought "Hmm...I don't think I wanna play Battlefield 3, I think I wanna play some Tetris." I bet it was you were waiting in line for something and had nothing else to do. I'm The Fiery Joker and I'll conceit that Tetris is a fun and challenging game.....but it does not deserve to stand amongst the greatest games of all time!
Tetris theme plays for two seconds
Ok, seriously people? You are seriously going to call THIS GAME, one of the greatest games of all time?! Alright alright alright...you're telling me you'd rather play TETRIS....then Metal Gear Solid 3? You would rather play....TETRIS....then Skyrim?! You would rather play....TETRIS....then Team Fortress 2 (do you see where I'm going with this)?!
I see this game on DOZENS of "Best Games Ever" lists and it just doesn't deserve it! And before you go all ape on me I am fully aware of the history behind Tetris and how much it impacted the NES's sales, but that's more of it being influential rather then a good game! When was the last time you actively sought out playing TETRIS?
When was the last time you thought "Hmm...I don't think I wanna play Battlefield 3, I think I wanna play some Tetris." I bet it was you were waiting in line for something and had nothing else to do. I'm The Fiery Joker and I'll conceit that Tetris is a fun and challenging game.....but it does not deserve to stand amongst the greatest games of all time!
ZeroRanger
2018
There is one more or less recent trend that I really don’t like that searches for an active kind of explicit “transcendence” through games (not entirely new, but more prominent than before). Not that the sentiment is not there at all, I agree that there is some obvious arcade/synesthetic feeling that can and do elevate games, but precisely because of that feeling being inherent every reivindicacion actually sounds like “games are art” statements but many years later and more twisted. Another endless search to justify playing games as if liking games shouldn’t be more than enough (or questioning if there is a need for a justification at all).
Anyway, it doesn’t repel me that much to negate its intentions totally, contradicting myself, I’m interested in the individual interpretation on videogames that these titles want to propose, they can end up going interesting ways after all. I’ll give it to ZeroRanger that even with its pretensions that inevitably led to some headlines like “more than a shmup” or “an elevation of the genre” (in reality, making the rest look like lesser works), it’s also a humble game that shows all of its references unmasked and it really helped a lot of people to enter into an intimidating genre, at least looked from afar. The game isn’t ashamed to show its robots, aliens and whatnot mixed with the highest number of ways that you can show a third eye open, it trusts in the most gamey transcendence.
And ZeroRanger is a competent shmup, it’s very far from being one of my favorites, but I would be lying if I said that I found it uninspired. Then again, wouldn’t I be underestimating the game's own terms by calling it just “a competent shmup” when it will remind you at every second that there is something beyond? Shouldn’t I be considering what the game tries to do if not only out of respect? This is enlightenment, Ikaruga impossibly fast to read paragraphs were just flavor text compared to the insistence of ZeroRanger.
And here is where it loses me. It may be because I’m not exactly an expert on the area, but precisely reminding me each time I fail that “things aren’t going to get any easier, but I know you can make it” is not exactly the message that enlightens me the most. Are we letting introspection aside so fast to be deceived by this kind of motivation? Aside from the messages, funnily enough, this might be one of the less transcendental shmups I’ve played due to its structure. A structure that is very interesting in itself and to keep the attention of newcomers, something that I can admire, but contrary to its major interest. Unlocking more permanent continues as you get more points, letting you start from advanced levels… even the plot twist doesn’t really affect me since it’s relying more on a (very weak in my opinion) “now you should trust yourself” than in taking a new level of self-consciousness. Is the game really trusting in you or does it insist to say that it trusts you while creating its limits and aids just in case you don’t make it out by yourself? Is beating a hard challenge the climax of enlightenment or is enlightenment a never ending contemplative process that should not be deceived by focusing on achieving a goal? Is self satisfaction what we are looking for in introspection or is it something more abstract and perhaps less happy?
It’s exactly based on the traditional formula of having a run always from beginning to end where you slowly connect with the game and adapt to the new body when the arcade transcends and silently elevates itself, a connection so strong not even the continues slightly disruptive nature can break it. Contrary to the supposed compromised decision of the twist, my real recent moment of self-consciousness in a shmup was when I tried my first Touhou a few months ago and a friend told me “at the end, completing 1cc or not is something for you and no one else”. Bad ending for some, I didn’t get the 1cc. Good ending for me, I noticed it never was about that.
Anyway, it doesn’t repel me that much to negate its intentions totally, contradicting myself, I’m interested in the individual interpretation on videogames that these titles want to propose, they can end up going interesting ways after all. I’ll give it to ZeroRanger that even with its pretensions that inevitably led to some headlines like “more than a shmup” or “an elevation of the genre” (in reality, making the rest look like lesser works), it’s also a humble game that shows all of its references unmasked and it really helped a lot of people to enter into an intimidating genre, at least looked from afar. The game isn’t ashamed to show its robots, aliens and whatnot mixed with the highest number of ways that you can show a third eye open, it trusts in the most gamey transcendence.
And ZeroRanger is a competent shmup, it’s very far from being one of my favorites, but I would be lying if I said that I found it uninspired. Then again, wouldn’t I be underestimating the game's own terms by calling it just “a competent shmup” when it will remind you at every second that there is something beyond? Shouldn’t I be considering what the game tries to do if not only out of respect? This is enlightenment, Ikaruga impossibly fast to read paragraphs were just flavor text compared to the insistence of ZeroRanger.
And here is where it loses me. It may be because I’m not exactly an expert on the area, but precisely reminding me each time I fail that “things aren’t going to get any easier, but I know you can make it” is not exactly the message that enlightens me the most. Are we letting introspection aside so fast to be deceived by this kind of motivation? Aside from the messages, funnily enough, this might be one of the less transcendental shmups I’ve played due to its structure. A structure that is very interesting in itself and to keep the attention of newcomers, something that I can admire, but contrary to its major interest. Unlocking more permanent continues as you get more points, letting you start from advanced levels… even the plot twist doesn’t really affect me since it’s relying more on a (very weak in my opinion) “now you should trust yourself” than in taking a new level of self-consciousness. Is the game really trusting in you or does it insist to say that it trusts you while creating its limits and aids just in case you don’t make it out by yourself? Is beating a hard challenge the climax of enlightenment or is enlightenment a never ending contemplative process that should not be deceived by focusing on achieving a goal? Is self satisfaction what we are looking for in introspection or is it something more abstract and perhaps less happy?
It’s exactly based on the traditional formula of having a run always from beginning to end where you slowly connect with the game and adapt to the new body when the arcade transcends and silently elevates itself, a connection so strong not even the continues slightly disruptive nature can break it. Contrary to the supposed compromised decision of the twist, my real recent moment of self-consciousness in a shmup was when I tried my first Touhou a few months ago and a friend told me “at the end, completing 1cc or not is something for you and no one else”. Bad ending for some, I didn’t get the 1cc. Good ending for me, I noticed it never was about that.
Alien Soldier
1995
Alien Soldier is the very definition of Sink Or Swim. It doesn't care who you are or where you came from, you're not going ANYWHERE until you blast this massive, writhing, cybernetic worm thing all the way to Hell. If Shadow of the Colossus can be called a “Boss Rush,” then Alien Soldier is a “Boss Stampede.” A “Boss Bullet Train.” A “Hyper Boss Fighter II Turbo: Fight for the Future.“ Why nobody’s been hollering loudly about Alien Soldier’s greatness for the last two decades is seriously beyond me, though it’s probably because they’re all too busy evangelizing Gunstar Heroes (or — checks notes — Minecraft). Then again, as of my writing this, Alien Soldier already has a higher average rating than Gunstar Heroes on Backloggd.com, though, let’s pretend I’m not preaching to the choir for just a moment.
Somewhere between Treasure’s previous run-and-gun ventures and Sin and Punishment, Alien Soldier achieves actual, No-Really relentlessness. Barreling through setpiece after setpiece, packed with wild battles so frantic that your real-world cool-headedness becomes an active game mechanic, its manufactured setting takes on an air of genuine ferocity. It’s so videogame-y that, in the heat of the moment, its game-y-ness folds back on itself and becomes believability. The drama that emerges from its extreme white-knuckle “VISUALSHOCK!!” action grinds the nonsense story on the title screen down to powder. Rather than getting kicked back to a level select, you progress until you win or die. And “winning” puts every twitch action reflex bone in your body to the test.
Remember how, right at the start, Gunstar Heroes made you choose whether or not you’d be able to move while shooting for the whole game? Alien Soldier laughs directly into the camera, says “THAT was dumb,” reels back, and hurls the car keys your way at mach five. It’s your responsibility to work out When to do What. Select any four of six possible weapons to cycle between. Press the jump button in mid-air to hover in place. You can walk on the ceiling. Parry bullets to turn them into health blobs. Reach max health, and your invulnerable dash becomes a Fiery Death Charge. Because this is a certifiably Great Videogame, this damages you slightly. Here, the rhythm of Alien Soldier’s dance comes into focus. Swap modes, cycle weapons, fire, dodge, cycle again, hover, parry bullets, dash, and you might just live to fight the next unholy abomination. You can breathe when it’s over.
It’s a dollar on Steam.
Somewhere between Treasure’s previous run-and-gun ventures and Sin and Punishment, Alien Soldier achieves actual, No-Really relentlessness. Barreling through setpiece after setpiece, packed with wild battles so frantic that your real-world cool-headedness becomes an active game mechanic, its manufactured setting takes on an air of genuine ferocity. It’s so videogame-y that, in the heat of the moment, its game-y-ness folds back on itself and becomes believability. The drama that emerges from its extreme white-knuckle “VISUALSHOCK!!” action grinds the nonsense story on the title screen down to powder. Rather than getting kicked back to a level select, you progress until you win or die. And “winning” puts every twitch action reflex bone in your body to the test.
Remember how, right at the start, Gunstar Heroes made you choose whether or not you’d be able to move while shooting for the whole game? Alien Soldier laughs directly into the camera, says “THAT was dumb,” reels back, and hurls the car keys your way at mach five. It’s your responsibility to work out When to do What. Select any four of six possible weapons to cycle between. Press the jump button in mid-air to hover in place. You can walk on the ceiling. Parry bullets to turn them into health blobs. Reach max health, and your invulnerable dash becomes a Fiery Death Charge. Because this is a certifiably Great Videogame, this damages you slightly. Here, the rhythm of Alien Soldier’s dance comes into focus. Swap modes, cycle weapons, fire, dodge, cycle again, hover, parry bullets, dash, and you might just live to fight the next unholy abomination. You can breathe when it’s over.
It’s a dollar on Steam.
Ikaruga
2001
listen dog im nowhere near disciplined to thoroughly master, let alone discuss, a majority of what this genre has to offer yet but if reading "I WILL NOT DIE UNTIL I ACHIEVE SOMETHING. EVEN THOUGH THE IDEAL IS HIGH, I NEVER GIVEN IN." right before being affronted with a nigh unparaphrasable barrage of bullets doesn't awaken a burning resolve within you do you really enjoy videogames?
really puts the Tetris in CBT. if you're familiar with TGM 1 and 2, you might think "oh I have a hold feature now and a 3 next piece preview? how hard could it possibly be?"
Yes.
if you want some perspective on how difficult it is to master this game, this game has a ranking system that grades you based on how well you play overall. the highest grade you can get, Grandmaster rank, has only been achieved by 13 people.
on the "fuck you" difficulty called shirase, the game starts at max gravity, will duplicate your bottom row so your stack is constantly getting taller, changes the colours of your tetris pieces so they're harder to tell what piece they are in your peripheral vision, and makes you play tetris in an extremely small playing field at max gravity.
only play this if you enjoy hating tetris or want a good excuse to get mad at something
Yes.
if you want some perspective on how difficult it is to master this game, this game has a ranking system that grades you based on how well you play overall. the highest grade you can get, Grandmaster rank, has only been achieved by 13 people.
on the "fuck you" difficulty called shirase, the game starts at max gravity, will duplicate your bottom row so your stack is constantly getting taller, changes the colours of your tetris pieces so they're harder to tell what piece they are in your peripheral vision, and makes you play tetris in an extremely small playing field at max gravity.
only play this if you enjoy hating tetris or want a good excuse to get mad at something