It's very difficult to break down exactly why a game is compelling through just text. Video Games as a medium are essentially every other medium at the same time. This is a big problem. Because where we might have some success in mediums like music in delineating the fundamental elements that can be used to create any music: Providing a great framework for understanding the thought process behind a work; Such a thing doesn't really happen in games. I guess Video Games tend to lean in most on the visual art side of things, but generally speaking it's even more severe with visual concepts. Visual things are best expressed through just, other visuals. Writing down what something looks like discretely simply isn't worth doing because it's divorced from the actual feeling of it. You'd think it's adding context, but the context required would be seeing the game, and sometimes playing it. Video Games are simply just too involved for mere words to accomplish such a feat, especially arcadey titles for a reason I'll get into later. This is why it can be hard to talk about a game like Sin & Punishment.

Sin & Punishment is one of 3 games Hideyuki Suganami explicitly directed. Treasure's games didn't really have directors-- As such so any one's contribution was seen as equal to others. One of the other games he directed was Alien Soldier, which was mostly his entire project. I think stating this in advance is important to know because this colors the kind of perception you get from what S&P actually is. Suganami and the rest of Treasure were mostly focused on games that let you do what you want; But had very clear constraints and a high pressure environment that forced players to go about it with gusto. I think the opening line for Suganami's column on Grobda in the August 1993 edition of Beep! Mega Drive magazine kinda best sums out their thought process on games: "This is only for those of you who know. Gameplay is all about tactics. The person in charge is the player, and the game is where they test their decision-making abilities for attack and defense."

Like I said earlier, visual concepts are best explained visually. It's kind of a nothing assertion; But what happens with games? You'd need an entire system, a very wordy explanation for us to be operating on even a baseline level for my writing to make sense. Well, it's not all for naught. There's more to games than just gameplay, but I'm musing over this to get to my point of how value is distilled from video games. Treasure comes at it from the angle of player decision making first and foremost, and the interplay between the game's design and the tactics they naturally come to. Sin & Punishment as a game is generally focused on 3D Shooting.

It's more complicated than you initially suspect. In a 1995 interview, Masato Maegawa, president of Treasure went on record stating some of their core design considerations. The one important here is the fact that, the way he saw it, a game's concept shouldn't inherently start with it "being 3D." Unless it's 3Dness is conducive to the scope and key premise of the game, there's no reason it should be 3D. In Sin & Punishment, the main problem that arises is the relation of the reticle and your character's position at the bottom of the screen. Such a thing is possible within 2D constraints, but the added dimension is clearly a main idea here. As bullets fire off in the distance, they aren't 'hitscan.' These bullets physically travel, and objects and enemies often intersect their vectors. Some people think this game's controls are awkward. That's not really true, but I think I understand what they mean. The disjointed aspect of aiming in this way is actually one of the game's main challenges. You aim at a particularly nasty enemy that's far in back, or the boss. But things get in the way, or your attention is drawn elsewhere for a split second which clouds your judgement. There's various subtleties in aiming at a specific inclination, not particularly aiming at anything, to create a wall; Or using the weaker alternative fire, which tracks onto a particular enemy, as a moving anchor for dividing space with constant fire. Even this isn't giving you the full picture though. It's really genius because of how many unique enemy patterns the game throws at you. An insanely dense hour of gameplay that's very introspective about its own 3D nature.

bravery network online is one of the best games i've ever played. i loved every second i spent playing this game. its art is gorgeous, i could listen to its soundtrack all day, it has what is quite possibly my favorite setting i've ever seen in a game before.

thinking about this game fills me with melancholy because it is an online early access game that has not received a major update or any news for over a year as of six days ago. i've thought long and hard about what that means for how i feel about this game. i loved this game for what it is, but more than that i loved its potential. with the radio silence i didn't know what to expect. then i went back and replayed some of the story. the scene with odette specifically. very few games have pulled at me the way that scene does. it paints a vivid, scary, hopeful picture of this world and it inspires me. it makes me cry and smile and fills me with a need to create something. the best art in the world to me is anything that gives me that feeling.

i don't know if this game has a future. if it does i'll be thrilled. if not then i'm still so grateful for what this game already gave me.

This game came out at a pretty awkward time in Japan. Not too long before the release of Smash 4 this game got announced and released a little after the 3ds version first launched in Japan. Despite Smash being all the craze both on my mind and in general, I also started watching One Piece not too long ago as well so this game caught my interest. Time passes and during that time they even did a crossover promotion with Smash in the form of amiibo costumes for some of the roster, but this game's localization never came. Naturally, I was pretty disappointed even though the US never got the 2 Gigant Battle games on the DS. I did casually try this game out a couple of years ago, but I didn't extensively play or finish it until now.

Gameplay-wise, it is similar to Smash Bros and even copies its score-based and coin collection modes. However, it looks pretty much identical to the Gigant Battle games and Jump Ultimate Stars which also take a lot of influence from Smash. This time though they went with the more chibi-looking art style of the older Grand Battle games that were released on the PlayStation 2 and GameCube. Each of the characters have a different feel to them and a moveset that showcase their powers and abilities. The game also adds a sizable cast of assist characters that allows for some popular, iconic characters that didn't make the cut into the roster to have a chance to shine. Speaking of the roster, there are a handful of unique roster choices such as Shiki, Zephyr, Kin'emon & Momonosuke, Trebol, and Diamante. All of whom with Kin'emon being the exception, I am certain will never be playable characters in a One Piece game again. Some of those oddball choices like Trebol may not have been the best choices especially when fan favorites like Eneru or Lucci could have been picked instead, but I see them as something that makes the game stand out a little and worth visiting. My biggest flaws though are that the story mode gets repetitive rather quickly and I did not appreciate that there are branching pathes that require you to play through some of the chapters twice if you want to unlock everyone. Overall, the core gameplay is very fun, and the uniqueness of almost every character makes them all worth trying at least once. If you're a One Piece fan and either have a modded 3ds or Citra then I highly suggest playing this.

It's now 7am and I just got the final Guild Card achievement, 1 hour after defeating the post game final boss, having stayed up 25 hours doing nothing but playing this game.

I was going to write a tl;drish review for it like I did for EO1HD and 2HD, but I honestly think I can't fully express what this game means to me, no matter what I say. This will forever be my favorite game of all time. No other game can make me stay up till the ass crack of the morning after working a full 9-5 the day prior, except EO3.

The same excitement exploring all 6 strata, the same joy that comes from kicking back and listening to some of Yuzo Koshiro's best compositions, the same overwhelming-yet-fulfilling sensation from trying all sorts of stupid party comps thanks to the subclass system, each and every time I play it.

Come hell or high water, Armoroad will always be there for me.

I'm madly in love with this game. The acting bounces from powerful to complete cheese like a radio drama, the aesthetic choices set such a unique and consistent tone, the characters are unlikable blowhards who grow a fair amount, and the CG cutscenes are out of this world.

The missing half a star is almost entirely due to the odd mechanical decisions i.e. slow combat, unspoken secrets being required to beat the game, the difficult to parse save mechanics. These quirks will chase a lot of players away, and I can't even blame them, but if you can look past them, the mystery, literary obsession, and well-written dialog within this RPG are beautifully suffocating for the perfectly short run time.

I don't mean to come off like a hater, but for The Greatest Action Game of All Time there sure is a lot of shit that sucks in here lmao. I know you're already fuming so keep in mind, I didn't play on Master Ninja and my opinion is not valid. Okay? Cool.

So what do I mean? The occasionally finicky platforming, the tedious (but graciously easy) water level, and especially the part where the game goes DMC2 mode and makes you fight tanks and a helicopter with ranged weapons. C'mon man, how can you directly invite that kind of comparison and not think "what are we doing here?" If the idea was "we can do it better," well sure, you did, but not by much.

Frankly most of the bosses weren't great; the first fight with Murai sets you up to expect a bunch of sick duels and then most of the fights are just giant stationary creatures with three attacks and a nasty grab. I mean you fight four of those worms, man. Is that really making the most of the killer combat system? I understand that higher difficulties mix things up with adds, etc. but to me that kinda illustrates how weak the boss designs were in the first place...

As negative as that came off, when the game is cooking, it is absolutely sick and overall, I had a very good time with it. But given its monstrous reputation I was really surprised how just much of the mid-game felt like a slog.

Look, I'll keep it real: I don't think it gets better than this. Playing this at an arcade is sublime, playing it at home is sublime. There is not a bad time to be playing House Of The Dead 2. Play it at Grandma's house, who gives a fuck!

I don't want to say that House Of The Dead 2 improves on its predecessor in every meaningful way, as I think both are functionally perfect at what they are setting out to do. It feels being needlessly nitpicky to try and denigrate one versus the other. I will say though that going from a fantastic gothic mansion to a beautifully rendered gothic European city is what gives this series that extra bit of spice. The locales are just incredible looking, the unnamed city clearly being Venice, Italy with a thick layer of grime applied to it. It's a visually very striking game, one of the earliest games I remember seeing and it absolutely struck a chord with me.

The monster designs are still the same level of high detailed grotesqueness that HotD1 showcased. I gotta say though, they outdid themselves with some of these guys. The "Bob" zombies who appear to have an executioner's hood stitched to their necks. The "Patrick" zombies in military fatigues with a pained look on their face. My absolute favorite, the "Ken" variant of the Kaegos, with a sick metal mask and pair of claws. Sega's ability to design the most entertaining group of guys to blow apart limb from limb is some auteur shit. This is an art game just by how cool all these fucking dudes are. The way they challenge the player's aiming is also more dynamic this time around. Randys hop around madly and can move from each side of the screen in an instant, Gregory uses a giant sword that can block your shots, requiring you to carefully hit him during openings. Gregory specifically comes before a boss based around that exact strategy! Cool stuff! There is also a greater variety of enemies who throw stuff at you, often in pairs, so you have to juggle priorities while shooting. For a game that by its very nature doesn't have a lot of depth, enemy design is absolutely trying to test the player as much as it can.

The violence in this bad boy is pretty graphic though. Was this a problem back in the day? This was such an established arcade cabinet to me I never thought about how gruesome it was. I can imagine someone's mom turning pale and fainting at the sight of the legendary Booger Monster as my friends and I christened him.

Bosses are a pretty vast upgrade across the board without question. There are more of them and they are actually challenging this time. I was going to go into depth about them, but I think they are all pretty much perfect. The way their weakspots aren't always visible means you no longer have total pushovers like Chariot was in the first game. Hierophant's chest flaps means you have to actually time your shots and can't just unload on him. Strength has very slim windows you can get a shot in on his head, and he scared the SHIT out of me as a kid because of that. The Magician, my beloved, returns, because honestly when you have a boss with THAT design and THAT banging theme, you really ought to bring him back. I'm glad they did! He rocks! The final boss, the Emperor, is actually a bit underwhelming in comparison to everyone else. He isn't quite as visually stunning, his theme is pretty average in comparison, but his pre-fight speech about hating mankind is pretty fucking awesome. Classic House of the Dead shit. The boss fights being framed with G's Files showing the weakpoints against taped pictures is another great aesthetic choice for a series that lives and dies on its visual flair.

I also think the rescues require more dynamic actions from the player. Remember, I'm using dynamic VERY lightly, as the main actions you take in this game are "shooting" and "not shooting." But a lot of the survivors will be positioned just awkwardly enough you'll have to place your shots carefully, or use trigger discipline that they don't get clipped by your shots. The amount this game requires you to carefully not shoot civilians, you have to imagine this is banned in every police academy in the country.

I should talk about the voice acting, actually. I'm gonna be honest, it might be that I have heard it so much in my life that I can recite it word-for-word, but I think it's mostly just funny bad. I don't think it's ASTONISHINGLY bad like Resident Evil 1. That game didn't sound like it was recorded by physical humans. I can tell actual people voiced James and Gary, very funny people, but people nonetheless. I don't know, it's still entertaining! But you be the judge.

Which is easy to do since you can actually play this pretty easily! It's on the dreamcast, PC, xbox with HOTD3 and wii, and while none of those versions are exactly READILY available, it's still a vast improvement over HotD1 only being playable via a putrid remake that looks like a 2010 shooter. Realistically, there should be a law that this has to be in every arcade or else it's not a legitimate business, but until then, play it anyway you can! It's fun! Play it with friends!