Freedom Planet, at its best, is a fantastic feeling action platformer, with action that supplements the platforming rather than go against it, and at its worst, it's a videogame that seems designed to try and kill you, more than challenge you.

By large, Freedom Planet is great - every level is a blast, they all look great and are accompanied by an excellent OST, none of them really feel like they take 20 minutes to beat as they all hold a nice pace. I especially liked the way they handled combat with the main character - Sash Lilac - a lot of her attacking moves also double as moves that help you traverse the level, like the cyclone and the dash, which helps keep the game's fast pace as you don't waste a lot of time dealing with the goons. I also found a lot of use for the uppercut and divekick, which destroy anyone in a punch or two. No enemy encounter felt like a chore, and that's a pitfall a lot of platformers tend to fall into, which I have to commend Freedom Planet for not falling into. If I had to pick any stage as my favourite, it'd probably be Jade Creek - absolutely love the vibes on that one.

Dig a little deeper, however, and you'll start to notice some problems. My GOD is it ruthless and cruel. It's very hard to not get hit in this game: your hitbox is pretty big and every projectile is massive, you're going everywhere really fast with no time to react, and a lot of the enemies, late game especially, are Metropolis Zone Sonic 2 levels of annoying (Boy do they love spamming those shock troopers, where the hitbox for their projectiles starts inside of their body and not at their gun so good luck trying to hit them idiot). It's also very hard to find any health petals, so expect to spend most of your game without a leg and two fingers. This is only exacerbated with the boss battles, which punish you REALLY HARD for playing them suboptimally. They're kind of like Mega Man bosses - you have to sink in a few lives before you can understand what's going on, but those had the decency of giving you E-Tanks in case things got really bad, here you simply die in 4 hits and I-frames don't feel like a thing. But that might just be me, I didn't really get stuck on any of the bosses long enough for it to be an issue, though I can't imagine fightin Brevon before he was patched.

I've got nothing to say about the story, some of it feels a little tryhard, you probably already know about the squidward's house scene if you know about this game, I'll just say that it's serviceable and that I dig the voice acting.

This is not my first time going through Freedom Planet, and I do not regret coming back to this - this was overall a brief and enjoyable experience. It also made me look forward to playing through the sequel, which seems to be improved on every front. But nobody looks like a scrimblo anymore, and I'll greatly miss that.

I fell in love with Neon White since it's very first trailer - a first person shooter where the goal is to go fast is exactly my kind of thing, so I already set my expectations pretty high. And yet, having chomped down every piece of content this game offered through every free hour I had in a week, these expectations were more than shattered.

Neon White has an addictingly satisfying gameplay loop of setting the best time you think is possible, and then finding ways to outdo yourself because the medal you got wasn't shiny enough. The goal is simple - kill all demons, get to the goal, do it as fast as you can. Every level is around a minute long, so going through them never feel mentally tiring, and discovering new shortcuts on sequential playthroughs is always such a dopamine hit. And what supports that satisfying gameplay loop are the constant introduction of new meaningful gimmicks - weapon cards - one of which is so damn insane it's better experienced blind. And when you feel like the peak has been reached, the game is over, ending on a really high note and not overstaying it's welcome.

The presentation of Neon White is a reason to get this game in and of itself. The visuals are clean, which looks bloody gorgeous at times within the setting of Heaven, and also plays a vital role in gameplay, as every demon, painted in stark black, are easy to discern from the blinding white (sometimes a different color) of the level at all times and from all angles, and the very natural flow of the level helps you not lose your way when you're zooming through it. And what helps set the mood is the excellent OST by Machinegirl, which is not only blood pumping at times and an absolute joy to listen to at all times, but also helps set the mood of where you are in the story. I could probably write an entire essay on how perfect the track for the very first world is.

And the story in Neon White is surprisingly competent. Starting off as really goofy bouts of "Mr. White melts when a girl looking in his general direction" and talking about forgiving yourself and others by the end, which is really fitting given the setting, I dig that. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it's so much more than I expected, though what I expected was an afterthought. And that extends into the "Free Time" segments, where you get to hang out with the people you're competing against and get to have fun and wacky moments together. Oh, and the way you get them is quite neat - find a gift in a level, it's somewhere really out of the way, find the way to get there. That's like a mini puzzle in each level that can get really mean sometimes.

So yeah, Neon White is probably going to be my game of this year, and I strongly urge everyone to play it if:
You like speed games
You like 3D Platformers
You like bhopping

Nintendo Land is a collection of minigames
Aww, you're so sweet

Game & Wario is a collection of minigames
Hello, police?

Competent in areas that matter and incompetent in ways that are not in any way infuriating, this game turned out to be surprisingly alright. With a decent melee system, a bunch of guns at your disposal, and enemies that explode into a fountain of blood and guts when you kill them, the combat here is leagues better than the contemporaries, all the while avoiding the pitfall that so many shooters fall into of giving your MC, like, three bullets worth of health, and making Ivan Devilsthird a walking tank. It's a shame that this early Xbox 360 title is all but forgotten nowadays.








what do you mean this was released on the Wii U in 2015

If you haven't played this before - stop reading and just go play it, it costs 0 of your local currency, is available on the most widely distributed platform and doesn't need too powerful of a rig to run, it isn't terribly long either, what are you waiting for. And if you aren't yet convinced:

Cry of Fear is one of the best survival horror games I've ever played, and is bar none THE scariest one, and it's thanks to all the great decisions the developers made when working on this.

Like the choice of the engine! Cry of Fear is using GoldSrc, same as the first Half-Life game - convenient for the developers, as their previous project was a Half-Life conversion mod (Afraid of Monsters, also a survival horror game), but also adds to the game, as the quirks of that engine add to the oppressive atmosphere of the game.

And I'm in love with the atmosphere of this game. Some random town in Sweden, where every step is a different graffiti on the wall and you have to make way home through cramped rundown apartment complexes, empty subways and a shitty forest - all pretty familiar places, so it made me genuinely unnerved seeing them get creepypastad. Most notable to me is the entirety of the first apartment building you crawl into to save somebody that sent you an sms begging for help earlier. And that's where shit really hits the fan - the lights are turned off everywhere, the whole complex is completely barren save for random piles of stuff blocking your way, that one door blocked by a shitload of police tape and chains where you know nothing good is happening, and when you reach your destination - a flat, whose front door is totally drenched in blood - you immediately get a message: "Come in :)". And I just, stood there, paralyzed from fear, it's that effective. That apartment complex is also where you get a real taste of GoldSrc, namely the flashlight. It sucks. And that rocks. The flashlight of your phone only illuminates the area you're directly looking at, but it is the only thing saving you from complete darkness. And whenever your flash of light hits an enemy, they're illuminated in that very specific way that only adds to their creepiness.

And boy are the monsters here creepy. Distorted, twitchy, sometimes screaming and sometimes completely silent, and sometimes just bizarre, these goons are everywhere, and I absolutely adore them. One of them is guy strapped to a flying bed that spits blood, another is literally facebook and it hurts to look at, and one is a guy wearing a sack on it's head packing heat that shoots himself if you get too close. But the aspect I like them for the most is how they're all a real threat, and one you have to deal with yourself: they’re all EXTREMELY fast, unlike your run of the mill survival horror monster, meaning the bigger problem here are the enemies, and not the controls.

And you deal with them either in close-range or long-range combat, both being more robust than you'd think. Most of the foes here specialize in close combat, so resorting to a knife can be very dangerous, but oftentimes necessary. Thankfully, Simon is a nimble guy, and can dodge away from oncoming attacks, while still delivering blows if you time things right - pretty cool. As for your long-range options, you have a bunch of weapons at your disposal: pistols, shotgun, a hunting rifle, and even an AR. You'll have to be careful when you use these, though, as ammo leans in the scarce side of things. But a big layer of added depth comes from the dual-wielding system they've got going on. In Cry of Fear, you can dual-wield pretty much anything you can hold in one hand: pistols, mobile phone, police batons, needle shots - you name it, and that has it's major upsides and downsides. The upside is obvious - you can have the necessity of the flashlight in one hand with the raw firepower of the glock in the other, or you can have an answer for opponents both too close and too far by having both a gun and a knife out, or you can become a movie hero and pull out two guns at the same time. The downside is that you cannot ADS or reload at all, because, go figure, your other hand is occupied, and there's nothing worse than running dry while there are a bunch of monsters still trying to gnaw at your ankles - and that ROCKS. Reloading your gun is still a major problem even without a ketamine shot in your other hand, it takes a deliberately painfully long amount of time to do so, and if you decide to go for a tactical reload - you're giving up every bullet you had in your currently loaded mag, Simon isn't a keeper. But don't think you can turn yourself into a walking arsenal, as Simon can't fit much into his pants.

Inventory management in this game is pretty simple, but a perfect fit for a survival game. You get six slots - that's it. One of them is always taken by your phony, so you actually get five spaces to juggle your stuff in, which means you'll always have to give up something to carry an important item, or a weapon you really like. Thankfully, whatever you drop on the ground stays there - forever, so if you change your mind at any time, you can make your way back to that spot and pick that thing back up, or even use the ground as a storage - which is pretty neat.

I haven't touched on the story at all so far, so let's change that. It's alright. The most interesting thing it does, I feel, are the two other major characters present: Sophie and Dr. Purnell. Or rather, SPOILERS I GUESS, the way they're portrayed in Simon's mind vs the way they are in real life. Dr. Purnell here is a mysterious weirdo psychopath that kills people and gets in your way sometimes, but knowing that this whole game essentially takes place in Simon's thoughts - that isn't the real Purnell, that's the image of him Simon perceives. Same with Sophie: she's shown to be interested in Simon and having a normal conversation with him etc etc, which is later juxtaposed with what actually happened in reality: Simon, on his knees crying and sobbing and shitting, in the most pathetic way telling her how much he loves her, while she's trying her hardest to leave. So Purnell is a maniac because Simon sees him that way for what he feels like not helping him at all, and Sophie's that way because he still has strong feelings for her, even though he got hard dumped. And, I don't know, this specific topic, of how you perceive people and how people perceive you compared to what things really are, is something I think a lot about, and that’s at least one topic the game brought up. Outside of that? Oomfie’s gotta hit up a therapist.

There were a lot of cool setpieces I didn’t talk about, like the school and the maintenance area in the subway, so go see them for yourselves, it’s totally worth it. It even has side modes a la Resident Evil, including a co-op mode. This game raw.