Is it too easy to say “for fans of the genre” and move on? Probably.

The pace here might be Final Vendetta’s greatest strength; I think it’s a stage too short (though that might be because at 6 stages, I’m just thinking on how it falls just shy of GoufyGoggs's list) but it puts other titles to shame by being something you can clear in 30 minutes. I imagine it’s a byproduct of having designed the game around the 1CC mentality, so it seems conscious of the fact that you'll be playing through the early stages a lot and that it shouldn’t be something you need to like, plan your day around.

Especially compared to something like Streets of Rage 4, where half-an-hour in you still feel like you’re warming up, this is a huge improvement. Some criticism just falls by the wayside when the game moves this fast; bosses are generally pretty weak, but they do their job as pace-breakers between the rapidly increasing complexity of the standard enemy encounters- really does get into the heart of the action with an appreciated speed.

And speaking of Streets of Rage 4, in looking over interviews with the developers, I haven’t seen any reference to it, but it seems like it was on the mind during development- the big hang-up when I go back to that game is how punitive the scoring system is, where one stray hit can negate your entire combo, and in a game where scoring and survival are so fundamentally linked, makes those innocuous failures seem all the more disastrous. Final Vendetta adopts a pretty similar system, but you’ll only lose your combo if you’re knocked down, making those stray hits far less annoying, and your failures feel more justified; the result of poor positioning or a bad read on your part.

There's a great interaction that capitalizes on this, where you have a dedicated button for attacking enemies on the ground, but those same enemies often have wake-up attacks that can knock you down in turn- so there’s always the temptation to push your luck and go for a bit of extra damage. It all comes together remarkably well, particularly love the mobility options you can use to cover the entire screen, though it did get me thinking more on some of the constraints of the genre.

This applies to beat ‘em ups/belt scrollers more broadly, but Final Vendetta is the most trouble I’ve had with gauging whether or not I was going to be hit by an enemy that was slightly above or below me- StrayCat noted that it could be an issue of layering, and it makes me think that your defensive options are more of a necessity than they might initially appear, giving you enough distance that you’ll unambiguously clear of an enemy attack. The weird lane system of Guardian Heroes also makes a great deal more sense after considering this more, giving you total clarity as to whether or not attacks will connect. The more I get into this genre, the more I become vividly aware of this as an issue: maybe that means we need more deviations like Guardian Heroes or Ninja Warriors, maybe that means that there’s some approach yet to be taken.

(I don’t know, maybe something akin to Natsuki Chronicle’s bullet-trail warnings would help to highlight the range of enemy attacks, though that might veer too much into “red light, green light” combat design.)

Anyway, that’s a lot to place on a single game: intensely scuffed, but the more time I’ve put into it, the more I see the intent and the passion behind it. If we live in a world where something can quietly release that’s this solid, then nature is healing.

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Stray thoughts:

- Pixel art is nice, but disconnected, like you're fighting the spritesheets from 20 different ArtStation accounts. This is also one of many titles that would benefit hugely from taking place dusk or night- I can't totally get behind a game that's set at 1:00 in the afternoon.

- Enemies are also uncommonly versatile; wait around long enough and they'll toss out a surprise ranged attack or gap-closer. It's a good kit, but I wonder if does make them a little homogeneous with each other, like they all roughly require the same level of prioritization. More research required.

Honestly, having finally finished Dead Rising 2, it’s kind of a wash as to which of the games is better- there’s an admirable attempt to shore up some of the balancing issues of the first but it never really lands with the same force of its predecessor.

I guess the major thing is the setting itself- Fortune City feels like a fundamentally less compelling location to learn, its layout is too massive to be inviting to casually explore, and most of your objectives clustered around the eastern side and center of the map. Most crucially, it’s a location that provides less of the escapist thrill that Dead Rising 1 so neatly tapped into by giving you free reign over a shopping mall. In that, there was a great feel to window shopping for your next improvised weapon or collectible- what would you do in a zombie apocalypse?- here it’s way less interesting to run through the blur of the different casinos and exotic stores, big chunks of the map feeling redundant to explore when they offer such similar items and attractions.

It’s ostensibly made up for by the new combo weapon system, where two random items can be combined to make some freakish killing tool, but it ends up being a little flat in practice- instead of picking up a sledgehammer or an ax for their crowd control and damage, you pick up both and combine the two into one weapon that’s good for crowd control and damage, a tunnel vision setting in where you should only grab items designated with the blue “combo” icon and can safely disregard the rest.

Despite all that, its fundamental interactions are a lot stronger this time around. You’re given the same open-ended objectives of killing psychopaths and rescuing groups of survivors, but because there’s nothing so dominant as the chainsaws from DR1 (at least, that I could find) fights demand a bit more thought: of carving out enough time to actually fight them properly, and doing enough prep work in terms of weapons and healing items to successfully outlast the boss. Actually describing the process of the fights-“you have to avoid their telegraphed attacks! and find space to heal!”- is no great thing, but this simple process is something you need to engage with much more honestly, and is a consistent source of tension throughout. Even the survivors, who are so docile and durable as to remove most of the challenge of escorting them entirely, get some extra utility if you opt to use them as extra firepower on some of the tougher encounters. Doesn’t have some of the near-transcendent upsets of the original, but is able to maintain a steady pulse for the duration.

There are some other good additions to the setting as well, with inclusion of cash and the doses of the drug Zombrex serving as meaningful resources to work towards in the longer stretches of downtime, and speak to a game that nicely follows-up the chaos of the original; a national tragedy turned into a routine protocol that’s been co-opted and monetized from every angle- where the first game descended into complete anarchy, here it’s business a semi-usual, hitting up slot machines in the hopes of winning big, and agonizing over a system that makes grotesque profits on a life-saving drug. The story proper is a little dry, and Chuck with his more defined history and motivation, doesn’t fit as neatly into the role of a player avatar as Frank did, but as with the rest of the game it's bolstered by these smart background details.

A big missed opportunity that’s really going to stick with me is with the "Terror is Reality" gameshow that appears briefly in the intro and serves as an excuse for the supplemental online mode- easy to imagine how it could’ve been interwoven with the rest the game, serving as an easy justification to flood the map with a new horde of adrenaline-junkie psychos in the later days, and doubly a waste given how nicely it could’ve played homage the gladiatorial setting of Dead Rising’s spiritual predecessor, Shadow of Rome. And, semi-related, but Chuck’s BMX background feels similarly underused as well, the Fortune City strip not offering a great playspace for tricks, and the big, climatic-feeling setpiece where you chase after a train coming far too early in the story. Would be a much better lead-in to the finale than the repeated fetch quest in overtime mode.

Still floored that the best climax to any of these games is in the Case Zero DLC, where you’re pulled away to help save another father-daughter pair with only minutes to spare before your own race through a quarantine checkpoint. Ties together all its themes and honors the mechanical identity of the series in a way no other Dead Rising game manages to.

Listen, do not let the naysayers steer you away from this fucking raw ass game. Once you get used to analog-controlled combat, the game is a poignant Metroidvania with deeper puzzle-solving. I can best describe this as a 2006 Straight to DVD action movie in game form and it's so amazing to see until the credits roll.

While there is some annoying difficulty spikes towards the later half of the game that makes surviving the extreme backtracking the real challenge, It was all worth it for that finale. That final boss goes down as the best final boss I've ever faced in a video game. I'm not being hyperbolic.

A few months before this game was released, Yasunori Mitsuda made a blog post saying that he would no longer work with composers outside of his studio. He doesn't mention Sea of Stars explicitly, but considering the feelings he discusses in the post combined with Sabotage's use of his name to promote a game that he only contributed twenty minutes of music to, the experience was likely an alienating one for him. One minute you're a hired hand on a retro RPG, the next you're the linchpin for a set of insurmountable nostalgic expectations.

I lead with this because it's an effective symbol for Sea of Stars' haphazard approach to "borrowing" from its influences. It isn't that Mitsuda's music is better than the rest - although some of the tracks in this are plodding Quest 64 pisstakes that I certainly wouldn't want to be associated with - but that the game tries to staple it and any other homage material onto itself as though the magic will still hold without any kind of context. The fact that the reference exists is paramount; the meaning that the reference supported in its original incarnation is unnecessary. This is most egregious in the empty story, twenty-five hours of plot for plot's sake, and though I won't spoil the game/waste my time belaboring how this fails in its many attempts to emulate Chrono Trigger, I will say that everything from start to finish(es) around Garl is spectacularly mishandled. Expecting me to care about someone named Garl is already an insane ask; making him this insipid and one-dimensional to boot puts the nail in the proverbial coffin.

When the game does step outside of its comfort zone and attempts synthesis or originality, it finds some success. Though I don't love the sickly lighting or the overly busy palettes, this is still an impressive graphical achievement. The first journey across the Sea of Stars gave me a little sensory rush that this medium rarely does anymore. As a mechanical experience, its interesting resource management and strong second act ultimately collapse under its balance issues, shallow growth and equipment progression, and lack of difficulty. The emphasis on combos as a means to round out the tiny movepools falls flat because outside of Mending Light they have no utility beyond breaking an awkward lock. Your best option half of the time is just a supercharged Moonerang anyway, so most combats play out the same way, and boss fights are often too long.

I think this might hit for a young or novice RPG player, but it would also be a shame to start them here when Chrono Trigger et. al. are so much richer and more meaningful. This is mostly just branding-first pay-to-play nostalgia and its rapturous reception will probably look like Kickstarters' remorse after a few years of hindsight.

vomitingly beautiful. rule of rose is a fragmented tale for fragmented girls.

silent hill 3 might be the more important game to me (my name is heather, not jennifer), but this surpasses sh3 in so many ways. the greatest of these is the story. in 8 hours, RoR accomplishes a frankly shocking feat of accessible allegorical and abstract storytelling. i walked out of the game totally clueless as to what it was "doing" and it STILL managed resonate through its surface level alone. the gorgeous imagery and writing and music bombarding your emotions makes you want to comb through the clues and figure out what the fuck happened. then again, maybe my favorite thing is just that it's about childhood. and i mean all of childhood. sure, other games approach the topic, but none quite nail all the ways that it is frustrating, tragic, and confusing, especially as a queer girl. hell, i can't think of another game that handles childhood sexuality at all, much less with this much tact. i'll come out and say it: this is my favorite story from any game.

it would be silly of me to ignore that surface level in my little write-up, though. my thoughts can be roughly summed up as "it's perfect". when the simple act of walking around is steeped in sheer victorian misery, you know you're in for an unforgettable time. there's no "fun" to be had here. such an odd choice for a video game and yet... it works??? like so well?? nearly any praise thrown the way of pathologic's intentional unpleasantness applies here. is rule of rose pathologic for girls? you'll be unsurprised, dear reader, to know that my favorite element is the music. much ink has been splorched over the fraught and taut violins of yutaka minobe and got dammit, i am here for a resplorching. this bitch worked on the shadow the hedgehog soundtrack. she knows a thing or ten about melodrama and it shows. in the same way that i am unable to not feel happy while listening to tatsuro yamashita's ride on time, listening to this ost subjects me to a mindstate that's at best wistful and at worst utterly crushing. never has there been a mightier leitmotif than "a love suicide". i mean, the title alone... do you not get it yet?! RoR is on ANOTHER LEVEL.

if you have any love for survival horror, you owe it to yourself to play rule of rose. this kind of masterpiece shit is the reason we crate-diggers dedicate ourselves to a lifetime of the hunt. "cuz love itself is just as brief as a candle in the wind; it is pure white, just like sin".

(oh, and by the way: if you complain about the combat, yousa bitch.)

edit: i forgot to add that this is probably the scariest thing i've ever played? i real-life screamed during That One Rat Scene. insane.

Imagine an action setpiece from Uncharted extended for 3-5 hours.
The sort of game that's very blatantly a "look at our physics engine" game. Not very good but it is interesting. I think the water physics are genuinely nice, it is funny blasting a barrel then watching water knock an enemy around, but everything else in the game feels undercooked. The cover system particularly sucks. The story just stops too since it was meant to be episodic but flopped and took the studio with it. Unfortunate nothing became of this game's engine, it could've been nice.
Also: HYDROPHOBIA IS BEING PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE OF SWALLOWING LIQUIDS, AQUAPHOBIA IS FEAR OF BODIES OF WATER