It's more classic Mega Man alright, but with a twist. The Double Gear System; Speed and Power. Both are really nice additions to the series but I'd say the level design tends to use them as much as possible. Speed is most effective for levels and platforming and Power for bosses to deal more damage per second. Don't try to force your way to the end without this Gear System, it can range from being the easiest Mega Man ever to the hardest one, if you don't use it.

Boss Weapons are really useful tools not just to hit bosses weaknesses but throghout the levels. The enemies are mostly in spots that are hard to reach with the normal buster. Being able to instantly change weapons with a button is also great, that feature is carried from Mega Man 9 and 10 so playing with Boss Weapons on levels is as fun as it should've been on the NES titles.

It's a decent game overall. I also do like the amount of effort that went into the presentation in this one, looks really good. But ultimately I didn't feel anything by the end, specially knowing Capcom hasn't released anything Classic Mega Man related since this game hit the shelves in 2018. I could consider it a wasted effort on Capcom's part for not following the momentum Mega Man 11 gathered for the classic fans like myself, perphaps. It came and went like the wind.

I believe the classic formula hasn't evolved since the NES era, for the bad. It doesn't hit that charm past games had even with a modern coat of paint unless you truly want to be a tribute for the classic like Inti Creates did for Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10. But it's just that, a throwback to simpler times.

Mega Man needs to evolve, in general. And have a modern standard beyond what the classics offered.

God this game rules. Though for a re-release of such an old game (god this game rules) I'd expect a little more effort. The illustrations (god this game rules) that can be used as borders are really cute (god this game rules) but that's not worth the $15 price tag. The only other features it offers is save states and rewind, which are staples of any off-the-shelf emulator. There's also an online leader board, but the score has never really been the point of Gimmick to me (god this game rules). I love this game (god this game rules), but it's hard to justify its price when, for example, the M2 ports of classic SEGA games (god those games rule) are regularly about $2, or Hamster's Arcade Archives (god those games rule) top out at $8. Putting up a straight ROM onto a store front and asking for $15 with next-to-no justification for that price is a hard sell when comparing to anyone doing anything similar, but it is Gimmick (god this game rules) and Gimmick rules (god this game rules). God this game rules.

Guilty Gear Strive is a fighting game made by ArcSystem Works launched June 11th 2021. It is the most successful entry in the 25-year-old franchise and for a good reason. This game will certainly be a main stay in the FGC for years to come


Presentation
As I mentioned before in the Street Fighter 6 review, Guilty Gear Strive is a game that knows what it wants to be. I am not familiar with the franchise, so my opinions and thoughts would be just about this particular title, but I can say for sure that this game has style. Beautiful cell shaded graphics alongside an amazing original soundtrack and sound design. It has artistic merit all along the way. Not only that but the character design is top tier, and when compared with games like Tekken, KoF and MK it is clear that this game is far superior in that regard.


Features
There are four ways to fight people in this game: ranked mode, for fun, local and at player lobbies. The most interesting of these four is ranked mode's implementation. The ranked mode revolves around "floors" instead of an Elo. You start ranked against a CPU opponent that measures your power level and puts you on a floor. There are 11 floors in the game, 1 to 10 and then the celestial floor. The higher the floor number, the higher the skill of its players. Floor placement is way more fluid and dynamic than elo: you can go up or down in a matter of hours, so consistent play is way more important. One bad day and all your work can go to nothing. While a bit cruel, this system can give the sensation of a true "ascension" and journey, with highs and lows, so, because of that, I consider it a more interesting way of showing progression in the game.
Training, arcade and tutorials are very well made as well. You can even create and save your own combos, watch old matches and try to fight against an almost invincible final arcade boss. My only complaint is with the story mode: There is nothing to play, only a literal 4 hour movie. Since story mode is not a very important or strong part of most fighting games i can let it pass, but it is still a little disappointing.


Gameplay
Guilty Gear Strive has the gattling system:

- Punch (P) cancels into Punch or Command Normal

- Kick (K) cancels into Dust (D) or Command Normal

- Close Slash (S) cancels into Slash, Heavy Slash (HS), Dust or Command Normal

- Slash cancels into Heavy Slash



Besides that, there are the Roman Cancels and Bursts. Roman cancel is when you press 3 action buttons, besides Dust, and your character sends a shockwave that slows down the enemy for a few frames depending on the situation (which is indicated by the color of the Roman cancel: Blue, Yellow, Red and Purple), giving you tools to scape, trap or even extend combos. The burst is either a "get off me" tool to stop combos from enemies, or a more aggressive tool to gain meter faster when used at the right instant. All those mechanics are integrated in a fast-paced combat that gives room for smart play, quick thinking and originality. It is immensely satisfying to perform those mechanics and use them to your advantage, while maintaining your own fighting style.

It speaks volumes to a competitive game’s design when you don’t find yourself being frustrated with mechanics, cheap tactics, or dishonest characters. Every win feels earned and every loss feels like you could’ve done something better. Getting tilted in SF6 usually boils down to something along the lines of “I should’ve punished that!” Or “I keep dropping that combo!” Never once in all my sweaty ranked lobbies or bouts in the battle hub have I been dissatisfied with the game itself.

Street Fighter 6 is remarkably balanced. I haven’t seen such a tightly nit group of fighters in a tournament fighter in my lifetime. I main Lily, a consensus bottom 2-4 and I stand by everything I said in the paragraph above. It’s truly that even

This may be my favorite group of mechanics in a 2D fighter. SF6 is a metamorphosis of systems from the past three Street Fighters. Such a mismatch sounds like it could be disastrous or at the very least distracting or overwhelming. The drive system is genius and balanced well. The return of multiple supers is welcome and adds a new layer of depth. Drive impact can be abusable at low level, but it’s effectiveness becomes limited at intermediate levels. Drive rush is certainly powerful. Lots of players are complaining about it only costing one bar, but all I think it needs is punish counter state added throughout it’s entirety.

I didn’t expect Street Fighter 6 to be this good. After the disaster that was Street Fighter V (until it got really good towards season 3 onward), I was skeptical of SF6. I didn’t even pick the game up on launch day. I have to say that I’m so glad that I tried this game out. Easily my game of the year and could be the greatest fighting game ever made.

9/10

I’m surprised by MK1. Gameplay wise, this is easily the greatest game NRS has made and it could be the greatest game in the Mortal Kombat franchise. Single player content is lacking and the story mode is laughable to say the least. If you’re a casual or the type of player to not play against live opponents, I could see this release being a massive disappointment. As someone who relishes in competition, this is exactly what I wanted. MK1 strikes an intriguing balance between the balls to the wall rushdown 50/50 spam of MKX and the methodical footsy focus of MK11.NRS has fixed the main issues with MK11. Gone are the ridiculous amounts of options on wake-up, gone is the devastating lack of combo variety. The frame data for each character in MK1 makes for a much improved rushdown mixup game.

Online still needs some work. Compared to Street Fighter 6, released earlier this year, it’s pathetic. There’s no reason for a high-budget fighting game released in 2023 to not have Wi-Fi filtering, cross play, and lobbies.

Overall, I’m having a lot of fun grinding Kombat league and finding insane setups in the lab.

I'm a huge fan of Resident Evil '96. I've played it beginning to end at least 6 times at this point, and I don't plan on leaving it behind anytime soon. That being said, I actually never properly sat down to fully complete a run through of it's 2002 remake. If you're familiar with me, you know I have…. choice words about the implications of a remake and how they influence the games industry, but REmake 1 in particular always looked like the one to break the mold of issues MOST remakes have. And I'm glad to say that after playing it, it pretty much did everything I wanted out of the experience and more.
I need to start things off by saying how fucking BEAUTIFUL this game looks. This is a game that looked a generation ahead when it first came out and visually speaking it's still one of the best games out there. The backgrounds are all pre-rendered images, meaning that the game can run higher quality character models over them compared to fully 3D games at the time and it is drop dead gorgeous. The best looking classic RE by a mile, not to discredit the fantastic backgrounds of RE2 or 3 though.
Every single area has been greatly expanded, tons of new puzzles, items, etc. The first mansion visit is still the meatiest and nonlinear part of the game, just like the original, but I do think that the succeeding areas are still given a good upgrade. Pretty underwhelming segments from the original like the shark arena, or the caves for example are a significant improvement here. Also worth mentioning that the new puzzles are probably some of the trickiest in the classic entries, and some are extremely tense too!
The biggest new addition adds to the increased tensity of this remake, that being the crimson heads, transforming one of the weakest enemy types from the original game, the zombie, into a ticking time bomb that is ready to strike once more after you've "killed" it. Would you rather let it rise once more, or waste your precious kerosene to permanently be rid of one…? REmake is a genuinely scary game, the amount of new jumpscares and door opening enemies makes truly any room feel unsafe, you can't always have a breather area anymore. I felt tense my entire playthrough, even shaking a bit in some areas like the caves.
But what is without a doubt the most genius aspect of this game to me, is how it works as a REMAKE. Unlike plenty of other remakes across the years, this one does not fall into any of the common traps that they usually do. It's a full realization of the original artistic vision, it preserves all the prior content while adding ONTO what was there originally to such a natural degree it's hard to believe it wasn't there to begin with. All of the changed puzzles, item placements, and scares also makes this an astounding HORROR game remake, because even veterans of the original game have no idea what to expect, it's like actually so crazy how well this remake really works.
Alongside the 1996 original, REmake has easily placed itself among one of my favorite games of all time. Please play this game, and if you can, play the original too! Because all it does is elevate an already fantastic survival horror experience. It's among Capcom's finest and easily one of the best games I've ever played.

Putting my point into the pavement:
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I just don't get why No More Heroes really needed to keep going (besides for ATM-related reasons). I love hanging out with Travis Touchdown (hell TSA to me was a good NMH sequel and that game is literally just about hanging out at times), but I didn't just love the first No More Heroes because of how wild the world was, it was because of how the game started off wild and ended on a raw note. There were moments where I saw a way for this game to keep the spark going but Travis Strikes Again really felt like it did so much of that heavy lifting for this title but even with that game I felt some skepticism about where the series could go.

More of what you love (Gameplay):
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The gameplay here is simple yet addicting with the same sort of frantic pacing of the first game that I felt where I'm just running around and trying to clear up as many enemies as I can, it's satisfying just to see Travis suplex and drop kick a bunch of dudes and really this is enough to just say "this game is pretty alright" to most people who are here because it's a new No More Heroes game. I can't really say anything too flattering about the other aspects outside of the fighting here honestly (even as someone who has written cheesy as hell reviews for games like "The Silver Case" and "25th Ward: The Silver Case").

Idk (Presentation):
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I'm gonna be crazy here and mention something that I don't ever want to do in most of my other reviews but wow this game somehow looks worse than the first game when just looking at the basic presentation of when you're playing the game. On a positive note, I find it interesting how a bit of Killer7 is here (that TSA had as well) with the enemy designs, mixed-media animation/format, and even going back to the combat I'd say it even has more weird one-off guys that shake up what you're doing, and I hope this is something Grasshopper Manufacturer brings to their other games.

Robin Atkin Downes is so good at just putting a lot of passion into his acting as Travis here and I'd say the voice acting in general in this series is still great.

One-Sided (Story):
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Travis Touchdown is a 39-year-old man in this game when in the first game he was 29 and entering the “Garden of Maddness” where at the end of that journey, it was laid out that violence would be consistent in his life if he stayed in that “paradise”. Part of the story in this game feels like it really was going to dive more into Travis being older and how things are changing because (spoiler for being alive) time changes people which to me is something TSA actually played into at times.

While I believe this game isn’t a complete failure, I just don’t see anything new here that wasn’t already in the first game or TSA, it’s more twists on the foundation that was made but if the narrative is just going to talk at me the whole time and not let me feel it out, then what is the point. The story here has some nice moments but the fact it couldn’t do anything productive with Bad Man, Shinobu, Bad Girl, etc. besides having cameos that were on par with what you’d get in a Marvel movie just shows how messed up the priorities were here.
I’m a mega fan of Grasshopper Manufacturer but I just find it hard to sit around and think this is anything but middling and too self-indulgent. I’ve read an interview somewhere where Goichi Suda mentioned how if a character from The Silver Case named Sumio Kodai was alive he would be 40-50 and he wanted to continue his story because that passage in time is incredibly interesting ESPECIALLY for that character. The fact that Travis Touchdown barely gets any sort of moment of realization, reflection, or anything new here is enough to go back to my core statement, why did we need another No More Heroes especially after Travis Strikes Again? This game had to answer that question, and it was ignored.

No More (Conclusion)
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I’ve met so many great people who love the series and the characters, I absolutely get the appeal of seeing more of them but at the end of the day I’d rather see how a fan interprets a character than to have to see said character idle around in a story just so the word “new” can be slapped on to ship out copies. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Grasshopper Manufacturer, but I want to see them challenge themselves, to push their style and structure and get more people to understand why fans like me adore their games rather than idling and taking the easiest route to appeal to them until they leave.

Ryukishi is a hack and a fraud, I can’t believe I spent 60+ hours on this nonsense of a VN just for it to tell me that life is worth living and trust my friends and not some deep methodical pretentious mumbo jumbo. I hate this game.
That being said I love this game. Ryukishi you madman, how did you do it. I started this all the way back in late July and I’ve consistently been hooked on where the story was going to go next. I really love the characters, the uncanny atmosphere, all that jazz. This review is mostly focused on the answer arcs of the series but the question arcs are undeniably just as important to the overall experience.
The contrast of Meakashi to its successors makes for a really damn engaging opener for the answer arcs. The complete brutality of it all while also forming one of the most morally gray characters so far makes for possibly my favorite chapter in the whole series. It can get unbearably brutal at points, but that just means that it is accomplishing its purpose. It’s a story of how the abused becomes the abuser, and the things people will do for love. It’s a story that shows the real horrors aren’t the demons or curses, it’s ourselves. Easily the most tragic chapter of the VN, and I have to admit I got a little emotional towards the end despite what terrible things our MC did along the way.
Tsumihoroboshi comparatively starts an upwards trajectory of hope after the extremely bleak first five chapters, Rena and Keiichi shine their brightest here, making for some of the most hype moments in the entire story, and ultimately the message that this chapter establishes is rather inspiring, it’s about breaking “fate”.
Minagoroshi is….. complicated. I always see the highest praise for this one but honestly I didn’t really get it? It does wrap up a lot of the remaining questions for the audience which is cool and all, but I found this chapter overall to be a bit of a slog for me to go through. Maybe it was burnout? Not sure. The bigger moments still really hit hard but in the end I still can’t put my finger on why I’m not too hot on this chapter. Still good though.
Matsuribayashi is the last main arc of the series, although I still have Rei to go through to properly cap things off. However, this is still a great finale on its own. A liiiiiitle drawn out, sure, but overall pretty earned? We get insight on the core perpetrator, one last section to gather all our clues together for one final showdown, and… a very good showdown at that! The actual ending itself was a tad underwhelming but maybe I’m an entitled ace attorney brat who wants flashier finales or something. Most of what happened I sort of predicted, which isn’t a bad thing, moreso me not imagining the story could organically end any other way, which isn’t a bad thing.
Woah woah woah, okay we’re not done here, because I still have some things to say before signing off. Despite what that star rating will tell you, I must say that Higurashi is NOT a flawless masterpiece!!!! Sorry Ryukishibros but I still got some choice words to say about this man and his stories. The fanservice sucks!!!! Nothing will ever excuse this and I just need to get this out of the way because it is EASILY the most frustrating thing about this VN and it makes me hesitate to call it near perfect. Also yadda yadda yadda the prose can be repetitive and annoying, it’s a dice roll on if you get a raw line or not etc etc etc. I’ve talked to people who consider Higurashi like, high art, and while I can respect their passion, this is far from the best story ever told. It’s just a really really good one that’s impressive, especially considering the context it was released in. Dunno, can’t look at the maid cafe scenes and be like “yooo this is flawless peak that no other writer can achieve!!!” If anything Higurashi is very derivative of works by other writers (the quirky tsukihime inspired visual novel!!!!), it’s a celebration of stories as a whole, while still being unique in it’s own right. Anyway I hope that didn’t come off as hate, because I genuinely love this game so much, it’s one of my favorite long term video game experiences ever, and I love being apart of this community (seriously WTC shitposting is funny af) but I do NOT think it is free from criticism, not even close.

And so my journey into the odd world of Visual Novels begins. Feel free to block me if I become a pretentious VN elitist because of it. There's so much to see, not just from 07th, but from KEY Visual Arts, Type Moon, Leaf, etc. Words cannot describe how excited I am to further dip my toes into the medium.

Do I recommend this? Well….. I suppose? The first chapter is free on steam so there really is nothing to lose trying this. There are poor aspects of the writing you’ll just have to bear with, moments that will make you go “Ryukishi what the fuck is wrong with you,” but I think if you can brute force those aspects, you have a wonderful story that has earned it’s place in the visual novel industry. I don’t care that the OG artwork is corny, I don’t care if the story gets silly, it’s HIGURASHI: WHEN THEY CRY. It's a genuinely passionately created piece of media. I eagerly await to try Ryukishi’s other works in the future, for When They Cry once more.

They tried to 1-up Yakuza 4 in terms of the stuff it offers. More characters, more minigames, more places, just more more more more more. It is impressive how much content they managed to pack into this game, and while that is definitely a strength of this game, it also comes to the games detriment at times IMO. Mostly in due to the fact that the game is longer than the other yakuza games, and the story kinda lags behind because of it. Each character basically has their own unrelated story that ends in a cliffhanger that is resolved in the final chapter, and I don't really think said cliffhanger was worth all the buildup...? idk man, if you've played the series enough to make it this far you already know what you are getting yourself in for, and if you for some reason want to start with this, there's enough content to warrant it still being interesting i guess. The final boss also sucked, and that always leaves bad aftertastes in my gamer mouth. All in all, I can see what this game was going for, and it wasn't BAD per se, but I didn't like it personally.