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gonna get intimate with one game every month in 2023, this will be my list
gonna get intimate with one game every month in 2023, this will be my list
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Love was blooming in paradise. One day fights broke out. Couples stopped talking. Something was wrong. The culprit shows himself: Infernal Trickster is here to ruin everything. It's up to Hamtaro and Bijou to stop him.
Ham-Ham Heartbreak is an adventure game. You walk around, talk to people, solve diegetic puzzles.
Probably the most interesting part of this game is how literally it takes the concept of player verbs. The 'A' button opens up your Ham-Chat window. The game filters out all possible words into a select few that could, make sense to use here. You select it, a cute animation plays, whatever you were interacting with reacts to you. This is how you solve puzzles, its great. You start the game with very few unlocked verbs. As you play Hamtaro will see someone do one and copy it like a baby. Sometimes characters will just teach you one. They made talking to characters into a mechanic. Sort of.
Most of the cutscene will be exactly how you'd expect them. You open conversations by Ham-Chat, but after you will just read through text as the characters speak to eachother. This flows fairly well, and is probably a lot less awkward than selecting each response yourself. You can think of it more as different ways to greet someone.
Ham-Chat is also used for actions, for example reaching a higher place by having our two protagonists stack up, or knocking something down by stomping. It's a very cute system.
The cutesy aesthetic is plastered on everything with a thick coat of paint. They really don't make them like they used to. It's probably just my nostalgia speaking, but this game feels like the Alpha of those cute fansites children used to make in the early aughts. A wonderful time capsule of my youth. If that era interest you, this game is worth visiting just to see all of that in motion.
Ham-Ham Heartbreak is an adventure game. You walk around, talk to people, solve diegetic puzzles.
Probably the most interesting part of this game is how literally it takes the concept of player verbs. The 'A' button opens up your Ham-Chat window. The game filters out all possible words into a select few that could, make sense to use here. You select it, a cute animation plays, whatever you were interacting with reacts to you. This is how you solve puzzles, its great. You start the game with very few unlocked verbs. As you play Hamtaro will see someone do one and copy it like a baby. Sometimes characters will just teach you one. They made talking to characters into a mechanic. Sort of.
Most of the cutscene will be exactly how you'd expect them. You open conversations by Ham-Chat, but after you will just read through text as the characters speak to eachother. This flows fairly well, and is probably a lot less awkward than selecting each response yourself. You can think of it more as different ways to greet someone.
Ham-Chat is also used for actions, for example reaching a higher place by having our two protagonists stack up, or knocking something down by stomping. It's a very cute system.
The cutesy aesthetic is plastered on everything with a thick coat of paint. They really don't make them like they used to. It's probably just my nostalgia speaking, but this game feels like the Alpha of those cute fansites children used to make in the early aughts. A wonderful time capsule of my youth. If that era interest you, this game is worth visiting just to see all of that in motion.
OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast is probably canon.
The light turns green. The engine you've been reving starts putting power down the pavement. A few seconds pass and everything gets squished on the screen as speed really kicks in. You have a passenger. 'I wanna go far away' she says. Boy, me too.
The game is quite a package. Starting up you can choose between two games: Coast 2 Coast and Outrun 2 are both on the disk. You could log in to Outrun Online to play multiplayer via the internet and share unlocks with the PSP version. Some music tracks can only be unlocked in specific versions, so if you are playing the PlayStation 2 version a few music tracks will be unavailable to you. Just a little something to remind you that everything dies one day.
I'll explain the titular OutRun for those who have somehow never seen this concept, you get in a Ferrari, you drive on a highway. At the end of the stage the road diverts: you can choose between two stages. The map builds out like a binary tree from these choices. A timer ticks down. Reach a new stage and get some extra time. It's a classic for a reason, just prime video games.
Other than the classic OutRun mode, two other modes are also present. In Heartbreak your companion gives you mini challenges for each stage, ranking you on how well you do on them. Get a high overall ranking and you will unlock a new girlfriend. Race mode turns the map into a linear line of stages to drive through, throwing in a reversed mode and playing around with their order. Both of these are fun additions, I could easily imagine being satisfied if these were the only modes I played in the game.
The game's arcadey physics are heavily exaggerated. Ferraris are sliding around like Initial D cars here. Do a powerslide at 250 and barely lose speed. Engine response acts as if you had the biggest turbos on them, step on the gas and the power only really kicks in a second later. You are wrestling with the car just enough to use steering sparingly. The physics feel like what an eight year old thinks driving fast must feel like. It's so goddamn good.
To be frank, I was never really a Ferrari guy, but this game changed this. I love these cars. These versions are as real as they gonna get for me. The cars are grouped by difficulty, and it doesn't seem to have any differences in them within a category. The difference between categories is also negligible in feeling. I'm not entirely convinced that easier cars feel easier purely because the game tells me so.
We have two main mechanics. Slam the handbrake while turning and step on the gas again to do a Powerslide. They let you take tight turns at high speeds, but coming out of the turn you'll have to stabilize. At best you won't accelerate, at worst you will crash. It takes a while to learn when to use them, but the game usually is nice enough to warn you with big red arrows on the side of the road indicating harder turns. Now stay behind a car to Slipstream. Less air resistance means you accelerate quicker, this even allows you surpass the maximum your engine can do. Stay too focused on sticking to someones behind and you will miss the road. Both of these mechanics focus on bringing more out of your car than the manufacturer intended. They seduce you towards the edge. It's a delicious balancing act.
In the original OutRun (1986, as seen in Yakuza 0 (2015)) the cars simply had two gears: LOW/HIGH like a tractor. This served its purpose very well, you kept the car in low to let the torque get you moving, slammed it into high to start scraping the bottom of 300 kilometers an hour. All you really needed. In Coast 2 Coast however, the cars feature more realistic gears, ranging from 5 to 6. The vast majority of your time will be spent in max gear, very rarely shifting down to the one before it. It's fine I guess, not the biggest issue. I do feel like the low/high system was a lot cleaner. That was video games. This is something that sounds cool in a marketing blurb.
Please don't play this in automatic. Do yourself a favor.
I feel like I'm being too negative. Am I nitpicking? A normal person would not notice any of the things I'm talking about. Trust me on this though: go "far away" enough and your sanity too will shred off. The scenery relentlessly passes by. Every second you look at this game as an outsider is nonsense. Drive it and it all makes sense suddenly. This is Sega at their finest.
The light turns green. The engine you've been reving starts putting power down the pavement. A few seconds pass and everything gets squished on the screen as speed really kicks in. You have a passenger. 'I wanna go far away' she says. Boy, me too.
The game is quite a package. Starting up you can choose between two games: Coast 2 Coast and Outrun 2 are both on the disk. You could log in to Outrun Online to play multiplayer via the internet and share unlocks with the PSP version. Some music tracks can only be unlocked in specific versions, so if you are playing the PlayStation 2 version a few music tracks will be unavailable to you. Just a little something to remind you that everything dies one day.
I'll explain the titular OutRun for those who have somehow never seen this concept, you get in a Ferrari, you drive on a highway. At the end of the stage the road diverts: you can choose between two stages. The map builds out like a binary tree from these choices. A timer ticks down. Reach a new stage and get some extra time. It's a classic for a reason, just prime video games.
Other than the classic OutRun mode, two other modes are also present. In Heartbreak your companion gives you mini challenges for each stage, ranking you on how well you do on them. Get a high overall ranking and you will unlock a new girlfriend. Race mode turns the map into a linear line of stages to drive through, throwing in a reversed mode and playing around with their order. Both of these are fun additions, I could easily imagine being satisfied if these were the only modes I played in the game.
The game's arcadey physics are heavily exaggerated. Ferraris are sliding around like Initial D cars here. Do a powerslide at 250 and barely lose speed. Engine response acts as if you had the biggest turbos on them, step on the gas and the power only really kicks in a second later. You are wrestling with the car just enough to use steering sparingly. The physics feel like what an eight year old thinks driving fast must feel like. It's so goddamn good.
To be frank, I was never really a Ferrari guy, but this game changed this. I love these cars. These versions are as real as they gonna get for me. The cars are grouped by difficulty, and it doesn't seem to have any differences in them within a category. The difference between categories is also negligible in feeling. I'm not entirely convinced that easier cars feel easier purely because the game tells me so.
We have two main mechanics. Slam the handbrake while turning and step on the gas again to do a Powerslide. They let you take tight turns at high speeds, but coming out of the turn you'll have to stabilize. At best you won't accelerate, at worst you will crash. It takes a while to learn when to use them, but the game usually is nice enough to warn you with big red arrows on the side of the road indicating harder turns. Now stay behind a car to Slipstream. Less air resistance means you accelerate quicker, this even allows you surpass the maximum your engine can do. Stay too focused on sticking to someones behind and you will miss the road. Both of these mechanics focus on bringing more out of your car than the manufacturer intended. They seduce you towards the edge. It's a delicious balancing act.
In the original OutRun (1986, as seen in Yakuza 0 (2015)) the cars simply had two gears: LOW/HIGH like a tractor. This served its purpose very well, you kept the car in low to let the torque get you moving, slammed it into high to start scraping the bottom of 300 kilometers an hour. All you really needed. In Coast 2 Coast however, the cars feature more realistic gears, ranging from 5 to 6. The vast majority of your time will be spent in max gear, very rarely shifting down to the one before it. It's fine I guess, not the biggest issue. I do feel like the low/high system was a lot cleaner. That was video games. This is something that sounds cool in a marketing blurb.
Please don't play this in automatic. Do yourself a favor.
I feel like I'm being too negative. Am I nitpicking? A normal person would not notice any of the things I'm talking about. Trust me on this though: go "far away" enough and your sanity too will shred off. The scenery relentlessly passes by. Every second you look at this game as an outsider is nonsense. Drive it and it all makes sense suddenly. This is Sega at their finest.
24 killers is kindling for your coldest days.
You play as an interdimensional being known as Home, who is forcefully shoved into the body of a dead soldier by an all-powerful entity. You awaken to your newfound existence on the beach of an old abandoned military outpost. It only gets worse from here: this procedure wrecked you, you cannot go back to your shenanigans until you are healed. Thankfully your new friend knows exactly how to fix this. You see this island is not abandoned at all, it's just that most of it's residents are stuck in a bunker. Bring them out one by one, help them with their grievances, and then you can go home.
The whole game takes place on this small island. Each day you wake up in the same bed, and can go about your business for as long as your limited energy allows you. Repetition is the name of the game here, and it's used masterfully the maximize the game's already high hangoutability.
Your eyeballs will rejoice from the steaming mixed-media-esque graphics. Featuring prendered 3d sprites, drawn sprites and photographs for ground textures. Vivid colors and whimsical designs. This game is garish in exactly the way you want. It's the funky expensive fruit tea that many readers of a review like this probably enjoy.
The protagonist starts fairly weak. Helping people gets you the opportunity to take photos of characters, this allows you to take their form later on. These forms usually carry an ability with them: the tough looking guy can lift heavy things for example. And maybe a big rock was all that was standing between you and a new place to check out. Screens usually connect to at least two other screens, so moving around is fairly easy.
A decent chunk of the game will be spent looking for money. On each screen a random challenge related to your unlocked abilities will spawn. Depending on how well you do you will get a set amount of cash for it. Your wallet will be fairly stacked if you just collect these as you go about your business. I did find myself slacking in this regard, so I ended up having to spend quite a few in game days just running around the island scrounging for cash.
The main gameplay loop consist of talking to characters. They usually want something from you. Sometimes you have to explore the map, use one of your powers to solve a challenge, sometimes you need money to buy the thing they need. Or any combination of these. You do the thing, you take a picture of the guy, you get some new powers. Or something unlocks. Maybe someone will sing you an acoustic song about there is a little more to life than what's in your head. You know how these things go. Most puzzles except a few are fairly simple: it's easy to just sit down with this game and see a few new things before heading to bed. I'd even say it's the ideal way to play 24 killers.
It's been a while since I played moon (1997, rereleased with an official English translation in 2021). I was in a different place back then. It feels very far away. This game takes heavy inspiration from it, but I did not want to mention this in the main body of this review. I believe it stands on it's own, you don't need to be a love-de-lic guy to enjoy this. But the similarities touched a warm melancholy in me. A feeling that I fear I don't get to experience as much anymore.
Pay these guys a visit. I promise you with an honest heart, it will end too soon.
You play as an interdimensional being known as Home, who is forcefully shoved into the body of a dead soldier by an all-powerful entity. You awaken to your newfound existence on the beach of an old abandoned military outpost. It only gets worse from here: this procedure wrecked you, you cannot go back to your shenanigans until you are healed. Thankfully your new friend knows exactly how to fix this. You see this island is not abandoned at all, it's just that most of it's residents are stuck in a bunker. Bring them out one by one, help them with their grievances, and then you can go home.
The whole game takes place on this small island. Each day you wake up in the same bed, and can go about your business for as long as your limited energy allows you. Repetition is the name of the game here, and it's used masterfully the maximize the game's already high hangoutability.
Your eyeballs will rejoice from the steaming mixed-media-esque graphics. Featuring prendered 3d sprites, drawn sprites and photographs for ground textures. Vivid colors and whimsical designs. This game is garish in exactly the way you want. It's the funky expensive fruit tea that many readers of a review like this probably enjoy.
The protagonist starts fairly weak. Helping people gets you the opportunity to take photos of characters, this allows you to take their form later on. These forms usually carry an ability with them: the tough looking guy can lift heavy things for example. And maybe a big rock was all that was standing between you and a new place to check out. Screens usually connect to at least two other screens, so moving around is fairly easy.
A decent chunk of the game will be spent looking for money. On each screen a random challenge related to your unlocked abilities will spawn. Depending on how well you do you will get a set amount of cash for it. Your wallet will be fairly stacked if you just collect these as you go about your business. I did find myself slacking in this regard, so I ended up having to spend quite a few in game days just running around the island scrounging for cash.
The main gameplay loop consist of talking to characters. They usually want something from you. Sometimes you have to explore the map, use one of your powers to solve a challenge, sometimes you need money to buy the thing they need. Or any combination of these. You do the thing, you take a picture of the guy, you get some new powers. Or something unlocks. Maybe someone will sing you an acoustic song about there is a little more to life than what's in your head. You know how these things go. Most puzzles except a few are fairly simple: it's easy to just sit down with this game and see a few new things before heading to bed. I'd even say it's the ideal way to play 24 killers.
It's been a while since I played moon (1997, rereleased with an official English translation in 2021). I was in a different place back then. It feels very far away. This game takes heavy inspiration from it, but I did not want to mention this in the main body of this review. I believe it stands on it's own, you don't need to be a love-de-lic guy to enjoy this. But the similarities touched a warm melancholy in me. A feeling that I fear I don't get to experience as much anymore.
Pay these guys a visit. I promise you with an honest heart, it will end too soon.