The current state of gaming is buying a game on PC just for it to be unoptimized as all Hell, then refunding it and having to buy it on console with an extra $10 "fuck you" fee added on top. I opened this game to the audio just straight up not functioning no matter what I did to fix it. It definitely set the scary tone of the game, that's for sure.

I really badly wanted to like this one. I played Alan Wake 1 when it was originally released and while I didn't remember most of what happened, I did have fond memories of it. There is a lot to like in this game, but also a lot to really despise, personally.

First I want to give this game a lot of credit for telling it's narrative in ways that I truly did not expect. Both of the characters that you play as have their own unique abilities that help progress the story and dig a little deeper into the mystery of what is going on. Saga has the more combat heavy sections where she's constantly asking the questions, while Alan uses environmental puzzles to answer those questions in his own chapters. It was an intriguing way to sift through all of the confusion that was elevated by Alan's literal interpretation of environmental storytelling. The FMV movies are quite goofy at first, but help sell the surreal weirdness of the conflict at hand. It's so unserious and serious at the same time and I give them props for going all in with it. The meta scenes didn't always hit, but when they did, they were quite fun.

I wish that the gameplay and level design would have matched that level of quality though. This game had a lot of awesome ideas on paper that just didn't quite stick the landing and that's where most of my gripes are. The characters when they're in active combat feel so excruciatingly slow, like there's zero urgency. You'll find yourself waltzing down a windy path, just to get bum rushed by 4 Olympian athletes who take 15 bullets each to drop. The dodge is barely effective and the time it takes to reload your guns is way too long. It's hard to enjoy some of the more fantastic scenes in this game when they're bogged down by the horrendous last stand combat sections. I love the aspect of having to blast bad guys with a light source before dealing damage, but it feels like a chore here. There's no way to cancel it out once you've started doing it, and half the time it takes more than 1 bar to eliminate the darkness on a single enemy. I just found it incredibly tedious. It's definitely the worst part of the game. Also, there are a lot of jumpscares that really did nothing but cover the screen for a few seconds.

Alan's chapters were less combat oriented and more trippy, but his segments were also annoying as shit in their own right. I feel like both characters suffer from similar things, where the chapters really establish this effectively spooky tension just in look and atmosphere alone, but then they're eventually ruined by the fact that most of the level design leads to stumbling around in pitch black hallways for way longer than you intend. I get that being extremely confused is the point, but it turns the horror into annoyance rather quickly. Alan's main ability of changing his environment is a fantastic idea, but his changes are often so subtle that it just leads to you rewriting the scene over and over again while he keeps saying "Bro, I think I'm onto something." At that point, you realize you're just trapped in this dude's awful writing and want to end it all.

Saga's detective board was also a good idea in theory, but it also lead to being somewhat groan-inducing as well. The problem with it mainly is that I was putting the pieces of the story together at a much faster rate than she was, and I don't know if that's just because I played one too many Alan segments before hers or what, but there were often times where I couldn't progress the story because Saga wouldn't let me without putting her evidence on the wall first. I would be exploring around and seeing important items that come into play later, only to be roadblocked from getting them because she didn't have her "A-ha!" moment yet. It was a really weird mechanic that didn't seem to take the player's diverging exploration into account, which was a bit of a time waster when you accidentally found things out of order and get invisible walled.

This was just sort of not my cup of tea overall, but it gets a lot of points for the genuine creativity. The narrative is really interesting up until the end, where it kind of just gives off "middle sibling in between a trilogy" vibes. I want to see more ideas like this in games though and I'm interested in seeing where Remedy goes from here. They have something nice cooking up so I hope they lean even further into the madness instead. The fun meta singy songy meme bits were a really creative way to dump exposition after 13 years, but it was not enough to save the rest of the game for me, which bored me to tears.

I like me some Spidey-Men but I still can't seem to get myself interested in their games. I can't help but feel like they're just average at best, knowing that I will immediately forget what happened in them as soon as the credits roll.

Navigation still reigns supreme for these games, but the combat is just so extremely tedious. It's like a never-ending onslaught of goons that vary from man with shield to big boy with unga bunga stick, while Spider-Man break dances in different directions because the game lacks a lock-on feature. The newly added feature of using D-Pad Ability 1-4 doesn't really add anything to me because I found it quite repetitive. It's the same D-Pad Ability Usage that was in Final Fantasy XVI and I hated it in that game too. Most combat scenarios led to me fighting 4 parry enemies at once, just to get domed in the head by a larger enemy off screen. It's flashy and cool, but quickly loses steam as the game progresses and keeps introducing more enemy and attack types. It turns most of the later fights into annoying rave shows of dodge/dodge/parry/dodge/parry/parry/dodge. Eugh. Arguably, the best part of the game for me was when you got to play as other characters because it was finally something different. One in particular is not only cheeked the fuck up, but also gives a fun respite to the monotony. (I'm talking about a specific spoiler character, not MJ. MJ segments are mostly okay for me, although I think her graduation into the Ph.D of Girl Bossery was a bit goofy.)

It's odd for me because Peter obviously has the more urgent, chaotic, and attempt at emotional storytelling while Miles seems to do fuck all until the last act. Yet, I much preferred playing as Miles at almost every turn. His abilities are better suited for fighting huge swathes of enemies, albeit still the same repetitive D-Pad cooldown thing. Aside from the "contemplating revenge" plotline we've seen multiple times before, his missions were generally more fun for me. It is unfortunate that he has zero drip in this game though.

The pacing is break neck fast in this game and it lead to some plot threads feeling rather anti-climactic? There's certain sections that I think were too long, and others that were too short to even have the impact that they were going for. It went by so fast that you didn't even have time to process what happened anyways, and then the game ends. The story is rather short and I wouldn't say that I took it as seriously as I was probably meant to, but I can't help but feel if the pacing was a bit better in those areas, that I would at least feel bad about what happened and how it affects the relationships between the characters.

A pretty noticeable amount of this game is just a PS5 showcase where you're meant to walk around admiring scenery while someone gives you a science lesson and jerk yourself off with the controller's motion controls so you're pogging at raising your hands on a rollercoaster. The other 50% of the game is running around and doing collectible quests. I found those obnoxious in the last game and didn't do them here either. It's unfortunate that your upgrades are tied to doing that side content because I don't find any of it engaging. You could put a gun to my head and tell me to platinum this game, and I'd still probably tell you no. I really feel that they could have fleshed out the main story a lot more and done away with a good chunk of the collectibles that just bloat the playtime.

Thank god for the audio settings because this game is a completely better experience when speech volume is set at 0. There is no reason for so many people to be constantly talking all the damn time in these games!!! Please shut up!! Basically every single traversal moment is plagued with a phone call or some random asshole talking in a podcast. Almost EVERY fight, Peter never stops talking or is having a literal phone conversation with MJ during the whole thing. If you die, the whole thing resets and you have to listen to the dialogue again. Please for the love of God LMAO. There's not a single second of peace. Turning it off meant that I could finally fucking concentrate and actually be able to listen to the soundtrack for once.

Overall I do think this game is fine and I get the appeal it has on it's audience, but this is just very samey to me. It's not ass enough to warrant a lower score, but it's also not impressive enough to warrant a higher one either. It has the same complaints that I had in the previous games and doesn't really change anything enough for me to feel any differently about it. I would say that I have a better tolerance of cringe than most people, but I don't find myself gripped by the narrative and the gameplay didn't balance that out. It's just simply a game that I played.

I apologize to Pikmin 4 in retrospect because as much as I loved that game, I gave it a lot of hell for adding in features that made the game way too easy. I'm about to shamefully admit that the only Mario game I've played before this one is Mario Galaxy and as a new player to this series, I was sweating, shitting my pants, and throwing up in just about every level. The only thing preventing me from crushing Prince Florian with a boot was the fact that he always gives you 5 1-Ups upon Game Over. The Bounce Badge saved my life way too many times to count. My friend basically carried me through some of the Special Worlds.

I'm not sure really what it is with the Mario series. I just never got into it as a kid and the 2D entries never seemed to entice me enough to try later in life. I have to say that I probably wouldn't have bothered with this one either if I hadn't committed to playing all 6 of the GOTY nominees this year. It's not that I didn't know what to do per se. You hop on the enemies and use the Koopa shells to kill others. Don't fall off the ledge. Dome your head into bricks for gold schmeckles, etc, etc. A ton of stuff that is so obvious in my mind, but yet I kept tremendously fumbling in execution. I'm happy to say though that while this was a WILD game to basically begin the series with, it was still a pleasantly fun experience that will haunt me when I try to sleep at night from now on.

I mean, I don't really have anything to compare it to but I stand pretty firm in believing that it's just a creatively done and well made game overall. Anything that really annoyed me was more likely caused by skill issue-itis, so I don't have many criticisms to air out. It was fun to enter a level and never truly know what exactly you were walking into until you slapped the Wonder Flower and transported yourself into a new torture chamber. While some mechanics were re-used here and there, there was a much larger variety than I was expecting. To top it off, the levels had fantastic music, doubled by the fact that the Elephant form has it's own soundtrack as well.

I think the only thing that I truly did not like was the online multiplayer functionality. Your friends are wildly de-synced from you and aren't tangible, which means that they'll be witnessing your ghost basically skate across the map in the middle of the air. What you see isn't the same as what they see and therefore they're reacting to something that you're not. The ability to revive your friends with a standee is a good feature on paper, but it doesn't take the auto-scroller levels into consideration by any means. Some levels are just so FAST that if your friend is even slightly ahead of you, you're basically screwed. If they finish the level before you and you die, you're doomed to burn in Hell. I just didn't see a point in that. It's just weird that local co-op works normally, but because I am an adult who lives miles away from my friends, we're subjected to this awful disjointed experience instead.

The other thing is the lack of boss variety as well. For a game that has such wacky level design at every turn, it's pretty disappointing that there aren't any cool boss fights that even slightly differ from each other. There are some levels that just hand you the Royal Seed upon completion with no real sense of conflict as well. I know I'm bad at the game, but it still would have been nice to have a greater sense of challenge aside from the Special Worlds. They took the time to create all these new monsters we've never seen before but that never bled into the bosses. You'd think that with all the badges the game hands you, they'd have some sort of purpose in the big battles, but you really only get some of them and then never need to use them again. Literally when did you ever use the Dolphin badge.. like ever..?

Anyways, this game was fun and I played the whole thing with my friend using an Ouija board. You don't really see level design like this, so I'm hoping that this one doing so well will encourage other companies to take note. Have I been Mario-pilled? I think I've been Mario-pilled.

Oh and uh... the talking flowers? Ok.. a few of them made me laugh... .. . ... .

Edit: Used to be a 4.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.

Pretty bare bones and also pretty boring. It's not really the MMO that they claim it to be. Like sure, there's players who are running around the map alongside you that you can talk to, but there's no activities or questlines that you can do with them. The social interactions only go as far as an /all chat that rarely gets used aside from pointing out where special trees are that require multiple people to chop down. You can group up with players for a more private chat, but there's a limit of like 4? I think, and even then, there's just nothing to do with them aside from maybe fishing next to each other in the same pond.

I suppose the main draw for the typical person who would pog at a game like this would be the house building and NPC relationship building, but neither of those are enjoyable in this game to be honest. Once you get past the initial tutorial, you find out pretty quickly that not only do you have to craft ingredients into more ingredients, you also have to wait for those ingredients to be made. Something like 2 or so minutes in real time per plank of wood or stone? Which gets even more time consuming with other ingredients. Some items require a plethora of that shit to make too, so the game basically runs on mobile game time mechanics to achieve any progress. It makes the game extremely grindy for living room furniture. No thank you. Since this is a free game, it honestly wouldn't surprise me if they introduce monetized boosters for that crap down the line, if they haven't already.

I also found it weird that each server runs on it's own timer as well, where all the NPCs go to bed with their own sleep schedules like it's Animal Crossing or something. So often times you need to finish a questline with someone and you can't because it's 12:00 AM and they don't wake up until it's noon. The NPCs themselves aren't really that interesting either to begin with anyways. You can date almost all of them for some reason so it's kind of like literally every player is just dating all 12 of your partners too.

Yeah, it's just kind of a really lackluster amalgamation of other farm games with really tedious mechanics blocking you from achieving any real progress within a reasonable amount of time. Once I got to the actual aspect of building my own house and crafting the furniture, I fell asleep pretty quickly. Calling this an MMO is a bit of a stretch. Sure, all MMO's have a grindy aspect to them, but they also have a major social draw to them as well that balances that out. I'm sure since it's another live-service game it'll have things added to it later but I'm not particularly interested in finding out.

I didn't think I'd wrap this one up before the end of the year, but this game was a lot shorter than I anticipated. I have such vague memories of watching my older sister playing this game on the PS2 back then, Quina's theme was basically etched into my brain because she spent so much time catching frogs from what I remember. By the time I got to my first Qu's Marsh in my playthrough, it was like I was hit with the enlightenment stick and then raptured right then and there. I remember trying so hard to beat this game myself back then too, but I was too stupid to figure out the first plant boss and thought that the game was fucking impossible, so I gave up. My child self has officially been avenged, but that was in like.. the first hour of the game. How was the rest?

It was very close to perfect in my eyes, from start to finish. The plot is so fittingly Shakespearean, so fluidly tragic and comedic ala Midsummer's Night Dream. Just a group of hooligans befriending each other on the way to killing a God in such JRPG fashion. It's a trope, but it's a trope that I love and this game served that up on a silver platter. There was a very effective emotional punch to the game's themes about individuality and personal existence that resonated with me. It was filled with so much empathy and heartfelt bond that actually grows as the plot moves forward. Some of the characters do stupid as shit things, but it's effectively told through the bittersweet enveloping of the narrative. The twists are gut wrenching to the characters and they're acting in ways rational to them. There's a lot of darkness and death, but also a lot of moments of light peeking in that I really appreciated. I was also a theatre kid after all, it's in the roots of my personality that make me omega cringe.

I like the character's a lot for the most part. There are clearly some that are more integral than others, but those characters help balance out the dreary with some comic whimsy. I couldn't help but exhale air out of my nose every time Quina randomly appeared on screen and I applaud them for being a Blue Mage that is actually useful. I could do with some more fleshing out of specific characters though. Amarant is the last party member you get fairly deep into the game and his motivations for following the party are pretty flimsy. He doesn't have the charm or helpfulness in combat that Quina has for me to be like, "That's a character that's doing stuff", so most of the time I was like, "Why's this guy still here?" instead. Garnet needed to give a little more, she's like almost a perfect character to me (story-wise) but then the game gives her plot MUTENESS and literally shuts her up and deletes her dialogue for a whole disc of story. That and there being another character that is the same class as her, but objectively way better in combat for plot reasons, she ended up getting sidelined near the end for me. Those are really the only character gripes I had, but I will say that Square finally crafted a love story that didn't make my eyes roll out of my head.

There's some fantastic scenes in this game that are hampered down a bit by the game having old disease, and I'm looking forward to seeing those scenes revitalized in the supposed remake of this game that's being made. I really think the character's and emotional beats of the story could thrive with a little more oomph injected into the writing and it's exciting to think about it. (If they don't fuck it up, of course.) I should note that I don't think this game needs a remake, but since one has already been heavily rumored, I guess this review is what I hope they would add/change in it. I'm not the biggest fan of FF7 Remake or FF16's more action-oriented combat, so I pray they don't just copy paste those systems into this one. Anyways..

So yeah, the story slaps cheeks red, but for the gameplay? I would say it's more positive than bad, but I do have complaints that I'm noticing have been spewed out before on here, so let me just add my own vomit to that pile really quick. Yeah, the combat is really slow. It's super duper slow. There's a reason why so many people complain about it. It's not even really the battle animations or the 360 no scope camera zoom ins at the start of each battle that bother me, it's moreso the fact that when I cast spell buffs onto my party, they're already completely expired by the time it's my White Mage's turn again so it kind of felt to me like giving your party buffs was a useless waste of a turn for the majority of the time. At first I actually thought that you couldn't cast buffs on multiple people at a time and it turned out that wasn't the case, it was literally just the first buff expiring before I even got a chance to cast it again because the battle timer doesn't pause during the crazy ass battle animations from each enemy, summon, and character on screen. I know that there's a speed up function that came with this port but I didn't like using it because it made the battles overwhelming. It's harder to focus on what is happening and it would just make the buffs expire even faster, so there was no point unless I was grinding.

Also, Trance is kind of.... uh... ass? I like the idea of it, sure, but it's just a watered down Limit Break that you can't control. There's no way to stop the gauge from filling and there's no way to prevent it from happening, so most of the time when Trance happened it would be in a normal battle where Steiner cleaves a poor goblin in half but then doesn't budge an inch during a life or death fight against a boss who wants to eat our innards. Or, someone Trances on the same turn that the enemy dies so it gets completely wasted entirely. It came in clutch for some instances for sure and I like that it's a brief steroid for all of the characters, but the uncontrollable nature of it definitely ruins it as a mechanic.

I do really enjoy the ability mechanic in this game because it reminded me of Bravely Default's ability mechanic in a way. The difference here is that the abilities are leveled up through the use of each character's weapons, so when they kill a certain amount of enemies with said weapon, they'll be able to use that ability permanently without it. I like it a lot, but I also think it could be better to be honest. The plot is constantly ripping the characters away from each other and separating them all the time, so there's some segments where you're forced to use a set of 2 or 4 for hours, and I don't mind that in a story sense at all, but it left some of the characters in the dust when it came to their abilities. By the time you get some of them back, they're under leveled and missing abilities that you'd have to grind to get because the stores would have updated weapons with stronger attributes but different abilities attached to them. Maybe it's more my fault for not grinding them out at every chance I had, but it's not like the game outright warns you that you won't be using character X once your toe touches this specific pixel of the place you're in. Overall though, I find these complaints to be really minor and the story makes me forget about them for the most part in the first place.

This concludes my review of Square's Final Fantasy IX released in 2000 for the Sony Playstation 1! Now I am going to review Square-Enix's Final Fantasy IX released in 2016 as a port for PC:

THIS PORT IS ABSOLUTE DONKEY PISS!!
I wish so bad that I could have played the original, but I have no way of obtaining it so I have to play with this beat up, chewed on, curb stomped, crumpled, doo doo ass version instead. This port looks so.. bad, man. What the fuck happened? Apparently it's a port of a port made for MOBILE? and you can tell. The backgrounds look like the crusty, ambiguous paste I can find on the pavement of a Floridian parking lot. It's so bad that there's literally a whole modding team that had to overhaul the graphics on this game just to make them slightly better. They did the absolute best they could do, but it's still so hard to see what is an interactable object on screen when it's blended in so harshly with the pre-rendered backgrounds that look as bad as that. I find it so ironically comical that Square would give Garnet a high-definition ass on her character model, but won't change the overworld model of Madain Sari even slightly so you can tell it's an enterable place and not a crusty dog shit you can't interact with.

I honestly really don't care that much for graphix, but it's so grating to play this game on a monitor that's bigger than a 4:3 box, because you can literally see the character's blip in and out of cutscenes off to the side where you're not supposed to and it's really annoying. The special effects don't leave that ratio either, so when you get flashbanged by a boss, there's just a white square covering the middle of the screen while you can still see the outskirts of it. It's just awful.

To top it off, my game crashed in the transition between the final dialogue and the ending CGI cutscene right after I finally beat the final boss, so I had to watch the ending on Youtube instead. The game doesn't acknowledge that I beat it because of this and if you think I'm getting my ass pounded by the final boss for 3 hours straight again, you are fucking wrong, bucko.

Anyways, I like this game a lot and I really hope the remake isn't a lie because I'd play the hell out of it. It's not my favorite Final Fantasy ever, (I still think mine is 10) but it's definitely up there. My complaints are super minor and I don't want to change my score on it just because I played the port instead of the OG, but holy shit, just play the OG version if you can. Square did this one so dirty and it's a bit of a shame.

I do occasionally stream my mental breakdowns, so this seemed like a quick, silly grab off of the Steam sale. The humor is very obviously engrained in Twitch/Youtube references so sure, it got a chuckle or two out of me, but if you're not even partially inside that universe, either as a creator or watcher, I'm not particularly sure if this game would offer too much to you honestly. Maybe I'm just not a fan of deck-builders, but I didn't really get much out of this other than the surface level concept. It's funny in it's introduction to see that mental health is effected by mean comments, but it never really discusses it in anyway deeper than poking fun at an internet culture you may or may not actively be apart of.

It's a rouge-like deck building visual novel where you combat chat toxicity by providing content "points" at the cost of your health. That's probably the simplest way to describe the main battle mechanics. Basically, in order to make money, you want to keep the card games going as long as possible but at the cost of taking more and more damage as each round passes. If you run out of health, you lose a heart and after losing three hearts, the game just ends. I think this is a pretty clever concept, but it's never really explained properly and this is just what I gathered after playing it for a short time. The difficulty ramps up almost immediately because of this and as your character springs to outrageous levels of popularity in such an unrealistically short time, the cards you randomly get seem to do almost nothing. In turn, this makes you have to spend money to recover more health, constantly keeping you with extremely little resources. I get that's the point, but your character has other responsibilities and a life of his own going on in the plot that actively throws a wrench in the card mechanics as well. You get to choose what kind of categories to stream in, in hopes of attracting a larger audience, but there never really was a difference shown for what each category did. No matter what you chose, there were a crap ton of viewers and what audience you were streaming to just seemed to be completely random.

Since it is a visual novel, there is a plot and recurring characters. There may even be multiple endings, I don't know, I got destroyed by Gen Z commenters and died during my short bout with the game. While you make choices in regards to keeping yourself healthy and when to stream, you have almost zero control over what your character does in the plot. He operates on his own path that makes me roll my eyes, because he's a toddler in an adult's body and just chooses to fall down a path of his destruction on his own accord, which also makes the game artificially harder because he has to work harder to make more money. I kind of wish there was more you could do to change that. While the world of content creation has it's caveats of naysayers and pissheads, it's kind of important to recognize that it's a hobby way before it's a job and that not making money or fame from it isn't the literal end all, be all. It can be extremely rewarding in different ways. If that weren't the case, then no one would be doing it at all. But, the main character is very money driven without an inner monologue of his thoughts and he never comes across as if he's even having fun in the first place. He barely speaks and there's never a real self-reflection of his thoughts that take place, unless it's at the very end. They had an opportunity to delve into something a little deeper here and I think they just didn't take it in favor of keeping in this card mechanic.

I also think this may hurt the replayability as well too. I didn't beat it so maybe one day I'll come back to it. Even with the short time I had with it, the combat kind of grew stale. The "enemies" don't really do anything other than call you a poophead in several different variations. Your cards remain relatively the same for a long time. Different audiences you stream to seem to enjoy certain cards over others, but you don't really have a choice in that. I didn't get nearly enough cards to combat some of the audiences that I was randomly put up against. There's also a money making mini-game that requires you to mash the mouse button as fast as possible during what feels like an eternity, which hurts my wrist so I hate it.

I did have fun with it for a few hours, but that's really it. I already saw most of the zingers so I'm not sure if it would offer up anymore fun for me. It seems when you get a game over, you permanently obtain a new card to your deck but that's about the only leeway you get. I'd probably beat it one day and then never again, which is unfortunate because it seems like they want you to replay it a lot. Unfortunately, it's just a half-baked narrative with half-baked gameplay.

Oh well! On to the next content to consume, my little poggers. Be sure to like and- gunshots

To have a game cater to my wishes of punching a hole straight through some guy's head just for looking at me funny is really all that I needed currently. But, for this game to offer up a metric ton of bananas side content with it was giving way more beyond any and all expectations, not to mention the genuinely thrilling plot to boot as well.

There's something so inherently batshit about how serious the main plotline is in comparison to how extremely unserious the other 85% of the game is. Everything is so masterfully exaggerated, from doing the most simple tasks, to the wildly different mini-games, to breaking someone's head open over Kiryu's kneecap. It's got a punch that will leave a lasting impression, mixed with such an emotionally delicate storyline that finally smashes together in the climax. This game is rad as fuck and holds absolutely nothing back.

Having known really nothing about this series going in, it's interesting to see the origin story of characters you've only ever seen in passing through various youtube clips and meme gifs. Oh, how joyous it is to finally understand the context of said moments and realizing that, nope, this game is just as batshit insane as it looks on the outside. Somehow they've made it work, while the bulk of your hourly playtime is coming from the business and substory segments of the game, it's sparsely broken up by the very serious crime soap opera that would often lead to some doom and gloom without the karaoke and disco mini-games to bleach your eyeballs afterwards. It never really felt like anything was overstaying its welcome, (save for the end, but I'll get there), and the pacing was completely self-driven. If you want to shotgun this plot rather quickly, by all means, but the benefits you get from some of the substories are more than worth it. Especially with the business ventures. Sure, there’s a person who is terrified and starving in a storage unit waiting for you to get back to them, but god damn it, someone has to take their hostesses on dates.

I feel like once you do a mini-game you don't.. really have to do it again, but they're interesting time wasters for sure. You can pretty much do anything from bowling, to poker, or pocket circuit racing or even watch a wide range of girls try their best to look cutesy sexy and totally not like they're trapped in a bathroom at gunpoint. I do however find it really funny that most of these activities lead to smaller plot threads that neither of the characters really have any business learning or caring about. Oh, you want to do some little mini-car racing for a bit? Well, the owner of the establishment is a lonely guy who doesn't understand his worth and could use a self-confidence boost. Oh, you want to eat some sushi because your health is a bit low? Well, the owner is a dickhead to his nice employee that should be treated way better for the amount of effort she puts towards running the restaurant when he's not around. It's so funny, every time. The phone mini-game would be less ass without the RNG substory elements added to it, however I do wish that there were more karaoke and disco songs though.

I did enjoy the combat for the most part, but to say it's perfect would be a bit of a lie. It's pretty simplistic by nature, but has huge room for growth. When you upgrade your characters, you really do feel more powerful with every heat action or special ability unlocked. I love the various styles you can pick from and how each one may affect different bosses in different ways, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't tend to lean towards some over others. The Brawler style for Kiryu has the fast paced wombo combo dream for me that the Beast style lacks, without losing the strength behind the punch that Rush often would. I knew that if a bicycle was in range, that shit would be done in 30 seconds flat. That being said, I think I much preferred playing as Majima, as his three styles were bonkers BUSTED. Making him a lot easier to play and also a ton of fun as well. The combos that the Slugger style offers are just satisfying to pull off, with devastating results. The Breaker style would go absolutely nutty if you pulled a string of attacks off correctly. I don't think I game over'd once as Majima, it was only ever as Kiryu. Kiryu is supposed to be the main character of the whole series and I played him like straight ass the whole time. Sorry, man. This doesn't even mention the final styles of each character as well, a very worthwhile reward for putting up with the long as shit business segments that ate up most of my playtime. It was such a treat to run away from Mr. Shakedown with full pants for 90% of the game, to finally get the pleasure of breaking his spine in half once the characters were fully upgraded. The combat can get repetitive at times, especially near the end, but it never truly stopped being fun. However, the bosses always felt like a special occasion. Except the one, or two technically, optional bosses. Not sure what the lore on that was about yet but you can add this game to the list of RPGs with some of the most dogass optional bosses you've ever seen.

I'm so glad they added the ability to avoid battles by using money, but it doesn't quite work all the time if you're a little late on the draw, which is when the combat would drive me bananas. Near the end of the game, the regular enemies beef up to annoying amounts of health and attack you in droves. It makes trying to waste time and partake in business activities a nightmare sometimes. Boy, do I love getting sandwiched between a triangle of 3 dudes that are just punching me endlessly with perfect succession. Or how the later game bosses really love to somehow skate behind you and kick you into a stun that takes what seems like an eternity to break out of. This was pretty constant in the end-game, but for the most part it’s not really an issue. It’s very fun to punch into enemies and then break their bones with heat actions nonetheless.

I think most of my gripes actually come from a money balancing issue I ran into while playing. Majima seems to obtain money at a much more exponentially insane rate in comparison to Kiryu. His business mini-game is also much more interactive and while it takes longer to get through a cabaret session, the profits for defeating a Star are always humongous. The only real issue I had with it was the atrocious fashion you had to put some of those poor women through for the best results, but it’s the 80’s I guess. Anyways, he gets money insanely quickly which in turn upgrades him at a much faster rate. Kiryu on the other hand has to invest into his business, which means saving a lot of his money to advance the real estate rather than himself. Not to mention, Majima doesn’t have to invest in Mr. Moneybags nearly as much as Kiryu does, which I found odd. I ended up getting through the Cabaret plot line rather quickly, while the real estate seemed like it took ages. There was a good chunk of gameplay near the end where I’d have to go find things to do while I waited for my profits to come in, which kind of sucked and it left Kiryu behind in terms of his upgrades. Which is realistically why I probably preferred one character’s playstyle a lot more than the other.

The substories in this game are goofy as hell and I like them for the most part, but I do think we could have done with a bit less of them to be honest. Some of the best involve bowling for a turkey and some of the worst includes Kiryu buying pornography for.. a child. But, for the most part, they all end in exactly the same way with the exact same lessons to be learned for the random Joe and Smough you came across. Someone needs help with something, it turns out there’s a big miscommunication, shenanigans ensue, some dudes try to kick your ass, then rinse and repeat. Either have less substories in my opinion or, at the very least, shake up the formula on a lot of them so that the next one doesn’t feel exactly the same as the last one. They’re pretty funny at first, but later on I had to speedrun the dialogue on them to not feel like I was going absolutely insane.

All in all though, the narrative is masterfully told and definitely the best part of the game. You knew when the Japanese voice acting started, you were in for some popcorn munching shit. It starts off the rails almost immediately for both characters and never really stops. You have Kiryu thrown into what seems like a battle royale where everyone and their mom is coming for his ass no matter what he does, fighting for his damn life every second of the day. Then every so often, you switch to Majima’s much more kind-hearted, but desperate segments that contrast so well with what I can only assume his character is like in the other games. (An insane madlad.) The buildup of tension is heart pounding and it never falters. The OST fuckin’ rips. It’s just absolutely jaw dropping from the beginning and ends on such a refreshingly tender note. I’m sure there was a lot of contextual air that I was missing having played the prequel before everything else, but I am pilled enough to finally try out all the other games that came before this one.

Baka Mitai (I’ve Been a Fool) for leaving this unplayed in my Steam library for so long.

Edit: Used to be a 4.5 star rating, but I stopped doing halfsies.

Surprisingly looks like it was ahead of it's time the day it came out while I was still in diapers, but of course, playing it for the first time for real as an adult, it's not really doing anything to wow me the way Yoshi's do when they pop 3 bubbles in a row.

But by god, sometimes when you're having a shitty week, you just want to cleanse your doom palette with some Yoshi's just trying to get by. The game is sweet, and it's short as Hell. There's no gloom here. There never was. Let the Yoshi's do that funny pose they make when you complete a level. Let them live their lives to the fullest, god damn it.

I didn't have a co-op partner to play this with at the time I played it because Steam Remote Play is god awful, so I was kind of worried it would be omega unfun.

In actuality, it's still playable in single-player and pretty functional. You do have to use 1,010% of your brain capacity Scarlett Johansson style to control both birds dual-wielding both sides of your keyboard to pull it off, but it is manageable nonetheless. It's virtually impossible to get anything higher than a bronze medal per level, but boy did I feel ginormous brain after pulling off some of those typewriter levels all by myself. It is still pretty fun!

But jokes aside, you definitely should be playing this with a friend as it's meant to. I didn't finish the game, only some levels, so I plan on re-reviewing this later when I finally get to have the full experience. There are about 4 levels that get repeated, just with slight difficult variations and obstacles added in. Some level types are much harder than others. So, I see this game having Mario Party potential of lethal vitriol between partners.

I don't know man. I still need like 100 more tickers to get the ultimate fluffy, parrot colored Kiwi with the fanciest hat and backpack so I have to get that at some point. Me Kiwi, You Kiwi.

Me Caveman.

I will Unga and if Sun God willing, maybe some Bunga too. It don’t take much for caveman to have oog oog time, maybe throw rock, hang dong. No brain required. Game give big field for caveman to swing stick but after seeing two or three moons and bludgeon creatures, caveman ended up honk-shoo honk-shoo on hard rock bed.

Game give too many menus about tree with skill and item craft with backpack limit. Too restrictive for caveman. Let caveman have unlimited inventory so caveman don’t lose eyes to the sacred roll when woman caveman ask for new hut. Now caveman has to walk to cold cave and dodge 74th jaguar kitty to pick “rare” weed and skin “rare” wolf with the same brain melt music playing in caveman cranium. Tree with skill only offer caveman simple bonus resource and no damage ups. Make hard for caveman to grubbagrong the other cavemen who come in drove with massive damage stick. Somehow bad caveman see me caveman from too far away and now the country of bad caveman on me caveman ass. Only funny when random mammoth spawn nearby and mammoth kill most of other tribe unprompted. Caveman find tribe infiltration boring, but game kept making caveman do tribe infiltration.

Me caveman found badger, named him Ciabatta. Ciabatta good badger who kill most other cavemen, only cool thing that make caveman unhinge mouth and point at during game. Ciabatta not fair well with bad bosses though, bosses and mini-bosses crush Ciabatta in one swing. Then caveman die. Caveman no like when perish because game say checkpoint, but not load checkpoint upon rainbow bridge traversal. Ciabatta and all other caveman friends stay dead but bad cavemen already killed get revived by Moon Goddess. It feel like Yak ass when happen. Two big bosses in game unimpress caveman. Would rather take nap in Sun than play cat and mouse pot shot with ice man and arrow lady and their mitosis spawning cavemen family. Final fight is butt cheese from oldest mammoth, only amount to playing peek-a-boo with baby while she hide behind door caveman not allowed to smash down for some reason.

Caveman also have to mention that universe would randomly stop moving around him, bringing him back to something called PS5 screen. PS5 screen appear whenever cutscene happen or caveman fast travel, making caveman have to redo thing again. PS5 screen appear many times, now worship him every Sunday sun rise. Cavemen and animals sometimes stuck in crevice then learn to fly due to Physics God drinking too much fermented stew. Caveman know that when boss at 0 HP then boss should be taken away by One Who Kills, yet some bosses still live with empty health bar and take 30 more rock to face before succumbing to weak knees. Caveman clenched butthole too hard wondering if game broken while trying to survive and not redo 30 minute fight with gabagoog.

Caveman think made mistake buying funny caveman game and expecting caveman time. Game not work well and make caveman fun time too much of chore like wife ask. If other Far Cry games like this, caveman would rather have brain matter splattered on rock instead.

You know what? I don't hate it, but it is kinda stinky. If we really are of the belief that games are an art form, then games should be attempting to tackle tough subject matter when it's in an appropriate setting. Passive medium is just unable to create the same level of uncomfiness that the more active role a player takes in a video game ever could, in my personal opinion. However, the execution needs to be done well. I think this game falters a good portion of it's ideas, but there were bits that I found to be quite interesting buried underneath it all.

Had the game focused more on the 2nd half where the environmental storytelling in the apartment was front in center, I think it would have faired a lot better. They could have easily still made an entire Silent Hill mental unrest and anguish fun time run around scary monster game with the huge overflowing baggage of shit built into that part of the game without the bullying arc. I can't really talk about the latter half section without the use of a spoiler tag, but it was fairly unsettling way to convey neglect and the negative feelings surrounding it without hitting you in the face with a car. Had it been fleshed out a lot more and not rushed to oblivion, it would have been more effective. Part of it may have been uneasiness by seeing an environment like this in real life, maybe it hit a little close to home for me. But, it really seemed like they played around a lot more in this segment and it came across a lot better in my eyes. It is however, the shortest segment, which kind of sucks.

As others have pointed out, the bullying aspect of the game is quite too literal, too surface level, too on the nose. These are important themes to talk about, but it's done in such a ham-fisted way that it comes across as goofy at times, with some unstellar voice acting to add onto it. It has nothing really to do with how cringe the teenagers are in this game, because teenagers are indeed cringe. And if you say that you weren't cringe as a teenager, you're just lying, man. Just because kids today call each other Ohio as an insult, doesn't mean we weren't gallivanting around in our own emo tumblr phases worshiping Let's Play Youtubers who are still working and streaming this game as we speak. Social media and how it can affect someone with a need for validation is a very real issue that definitely still affects adults, but it's an issue that has been fumbled so many times in other media already, in the same traps that this game falls into. It's personally more than just receiving mean comments in a Xitter reply and could have been much more explored as to why It affects Anita specifically. Instead, they just used the most generic insults ever and skirt over the issue almost entirely to get to the better stuff, where you're meant to just jam Anita's isolated feelings into her trauma together like putting a hot dog into a sandwich bun. I have played cute indie games that were able to convey these messages about isolation and communication in a much better, more subtle way. It's obvious to see what they were going for and the ending is okay for what it is, but it's basically just a smiley face platitude. The game just can't get more than a box cake version of the "You Tried" cake from me.

It plays mostly fine, but chugs in some areas where the walls around you are morphing into scary game goop, which is unfortunate as I'm sure it would look neat had it worked properly. The monster is fairly cool, but the monster is also the bane of my existence. The last chase scene might as well have had Benny Hill music playing over it for the same effect, since it's so hard to navigate and the whole segment has to be redone if you die. It loses the scariness of it quite quickly and becomes a nuisance instead. While I was sighing in frustration, Anita was having a full on asthma attack the entire time until I muted the dialogue and lived in peace and tranquility for the rest of the section.

I feel like if this was a game I paid for, I would be a lot harsher for sure, but it is free and extremely short so it's not like it super wasted my time. Now please like this review, it would make me very sad if you did not do so.

There is just nothing quite like Dead Rising 1. I have a review of this game from the last time I played it, but I don't think I really gave it the justice that it deserved back then. I was too busy trying to be a funny lil comedian, rather than being critical, and having finished it again recently, there is just so much that was left on the floor. I love this game a lot and I won't waver my 5 stars, but bear in mind that while you can be really passionate about something, that doesn't mean you should just ignore the criticisms it may have. It's not a perfect game by any means, and there are things in it that make me uncomfortable. But, I still enjoy the heck out of it all the same and it's a piece of media that I've been wanting to see brought back from the dead (hehe) for a long, long time.

Before the combo weapons, before the bloated map layouts, before all the horrible engine changes, before all the bullshit, this was peak as it is. I have played the other games in the series, minus 4. I've been putting off Dead Rising 4 for as much as I possibly could, but I have a hilarious friend who gifted it to me for Christmas and now it plagues my Steam Library like a nasty tumour. I would have honestly been more excited had he sent me a gift wrapped pipe bomb instead. I’ve agreed to finally sit down and play it, knowing that it was technically free, but I know that I will not like it. I despise Dead Rising 3 and Off the Record is a broken trash pile of flaming garbage. Dead Rising 2 is fun for what it is, and has come to be a game that I've mastered, but it's just not.. the same, ya know? It always lacked the simplicity of Dead Rising's original design while somehow being much easier in comparison at the same time. It’s the game where the cracks begin to form in what eventually lead to this series spiraling out of control and then mercifully euthanized at the vet when the time came.

I’ve always felt that the original baked-in concept of Dead Rising has been its shining star that speaks for itself. View it in the lens of it being an exploration game, before looking at it as a zombie game and you’ll see what I mean. The layout of Willamette’s mall is so tightly succinct, so perfectly sized with little gems sprinkled throughout in some of the weirdest places. The mall has just about everything you’d need, and then some. While smaller in size, it’s still comically filled to the brim with areas like a full-on supermarket, rollercoaster, totally not Home Depot, and a doomsday prepper’s wet dream of a gun store added into the mix just for funsies. There’s spots of infinite weapons or food to go back to when needed and secret items to find for the most devilishly explorative players. It’s so early 2000’s, arcade, before the Internet ruined everything fun. There was nothing quite like finding an SMG in a tree outside on accident, even today. I still find a random food item in a place I’ve never thoroughly looked over before. They’re so meticulously placed, without it being incredibly obvious. It’s everything that the modern open-world games of today are so desperately trying to capture, with many failing.

Uh oh, but- but- the whole damn place is packed to the brim with zombies like sardines in a tin can!! Those are only obstacles, my dear friend. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and grab that 2x4 piece of wood on the ground right next to you. You want to fill your entire inventory with the super OP shotguns that melt the psychopaths? Get to crowd surfing, bitch. You can use just about anything interactable to kill and slice your way from point A to point B. Not a weird combo weapon, or a hero’s sword specific to Frank, but the very definition of what you would call a Television. Anything, really, that’s allowed at the very least. Handbags, toys, sledgehammers, chainsaws, shelves, pipes, benches, bikes, etc., etc., etc. If the game allows you to pick it up, you can use it as a weapon. A real testament of your ability to explore, and make use of what’s around you. Your weapons break? Well, you’re standing next to a potted plant. Or use your fists even. BOTW Link would get suplexed so hard by Frank West, it’s not even funny. There are super powerful rewards in this game, but they come at a cost, which I love. The gun store is inaccessible until you kill the boss standing in it, so on and so forth. Adam’s Chainsaw’s trivialize the hell out of the game, but you can’t get them until he’s been killed, etc. The strongest weapons in the game are locked behind achievements and a daunting Infinity Mode unlocked after finishing the game once. Which is something that I feel the later game’s combo weapons are completely lacking. If you want to blast through the game with a gun that one shots everything, then you should have to work for it. It’s a greater reward to fuck around with once you’ve beaten the game and survived it’s challenges. There is still to this day, nothing quite like this item system in my opinion. You can compare it to BOTW or Dead Island, maybe, but it’s a silly system that flourishes in the mall setting and adds to the desperate feeling of using whatever you need to survive in the moment. It’s always been goofy as hell, and it’s always known what it is.

I’m sure that there’s people out there that would love to leave the walls of the mall, but in my opinion, it’s not needed. The later games try to explore this by making the maps much larger and expansive, at the cost of the player having fun. Not here. The opening prologue gives you a brief glimpse of the chaos outside through Frank’s unique photo mechanics, and you can clearly see that shit out there is bleak. In the first five minutes of the game, you’re fed everything you need to know through the lens of Frank’s camera, quickly loading up on PP bonuses before the game even begins. Pure interactive kino. It's a quick whirlwind of cramming what your goal is and that’s the point. Frank West is a no nonsense motherfucker. He’s a snippy man and has zero time for drama and hysterics. We got places to be and a story to report, people. It’s part of his charm, with brief moments of humanity sprinkled in. He’s not a complete unempathetic monster, but you’ll soon relate to his need for speed when you’re hauling 7 survivors back to the security room at once. I think he would benefit from a bit of fleshing out, of course. The later games seem to turn him into a completely uncaring asshole for pure comedic purposes and it kind of sucks to see. He’s annoying as shit now and it’s such a shame, honestly. The same Frank West that stayed with Brad and Carlito during their critical moments, is just reduced to a fat joke now. Haha!! So funny. Put this man in a dress, and he’ll be feeling himself ten fold. Put Chuck or Nick in a dress, and they whine to the player about it. Frank will always be superior.

Now let’s get to the contentious shit that people hate. The Survivors. Basically the other half of the game, cohabitating with the game’s plot. I see why people hate them, and you’re valid, but I gotta put my foot down and say that the survivors are a staple of Dead Rising. The survivors are what makes Dead Rising. You don’t have to like it, but without them, this game would be a jar of piss. The time mechanics are what separates this game from any other schlocky zombie kill simulator that its counterparts are already happily doing. Sure, you can go on a day binge of killing the zombies if that’s your underwear fit, but without hunting for survivors and killing the bosses, you’ll be seriously lacking in level ups, which means lacking in skill upgrades and health. I find the survivors in this game to be quite a cool collectible mechanic. They’re living experience rewards that require escorts from where they’re found to the Security room, and it adds an extra layer of charm to the game. While none of them are really.. characters.. per se, you can see that a large swathe of them were designed with some intent. Some are more aggressive than others, some are more cowardly, others are tied behind boss fights, etc. Some are easier to escort than others. They’re a challenge that is meant to be difficult and meant to be trial-and-error. A person expecting to find every single survivor in their first playthrough without a guide, is just asking too much for something that should be explored casually first. There are some survivors that are hidden, and others that may become the bane of your existence, but that does not eliminate their uniqueness nonetheless. The game allows you a NG+ with everything you’ve already achieved for a reason, it is not the end of the world to miss a few survivors on your first playthrough. The time mechanics have a stress factor that some may not like, but I’ve always appreciated how it made for something to do the whole game and challenges you to seek out areas of the mall you probably don’t walk through often. It’s a completely manageable mechanic for those willing to best it, and I feel only gets hampered down due to the game’s poor AI systems more than anything else. Where I think the mechanic falters is near the end game, as once you’ve rescued Simone there is just simply nothing to do for hours in-game. I think Day 2’s morning is the most stressful part of the game, while Day 3 is the weakest, with the least to do.

Now about those tricky AI systems, a criticism unable to be ignored. I love this game to death, but this is the part of the game that I think most people remember, no matter how they feel about the game overall. The survivors have what we would call… um.. Stupid Disease? At least, from a first glance that’s how it looks. Sure they walk into walls and can’t climb the simplest structures, or tend to let zombies eat their ass sideways until they die when you look away for a little too long, and that is of course frustrating. But, they were programmed with some thought that I just think wasn’t executed well. They all have a personality and act accordingly to it. Survivors like Aaron Swoop are pants pisser babies who will drop to their knees and crawl when surrounded. On the flipside, Tonya Waters is ride or die for her man and will act as a hero if you give her a weapon. Survivors will completely stop in their tracks if they witness you or their friend getting grabbed in front of them. They’re batshit terrified the whole time, so it makes sense, but that’s where the trouble begins because as soon as one of those dummies stops moving, it’s chaos from there. It is an experience that used to frustrate me to no end, but I am living in Nirvana now. I want to examine these survivors, to their finer details. I want to know why they’re so stupid. I want to peer into the binary code that makes them live. Had they been a bit smarter, or useful, this game would have fared so much better. It’s definitely the survivor AI and lack of auto-save that makes people tilt the most in this game. A speedrunner’s advice for those that may want it: the zombie spawn is affected by radius in correlation with Frank’s location. If you walk far enough away, the zombies on the outside of that radius will not appear, making escorting large areas a lot easier as survivors can stroll for a long time without getting grabbed. If you’re having a hard time, try this out, although I think having a hard time is part of the fun of it being a challenge.

I have yet to mention the story, but that’s kind of because the story is rather mediocre. It’s campy and satirizes a lot of zombie media in a really hammy way. It’s by far not a 5-star fine dining experience, but more like McDonalds brought home from your parents when you least expect it. It’s just a goofy time, not meant to really be taken super seriously nor does it have really that much to say about what it tries to politicize in its twists. There are things that could be made a lot clearer, such as the demise of an important character near the end game, as well as having a rather lackluster open-ended ending that can leave you with more questions than answers. It’s a fun time that swerves and curves while you play it, but the story isn’t why people play these games anyways. It’s the gameplay that makes this game so beloved by the people who cradle it like a baby. Like me.

Aside from all that there are item upgrades I never mentioned, that you of course have to find as they function through the use of holding magazines. There are blenders that exist to mix drinks with temporary stat boosting effects. The camera can be used for other collectibles and small morsels of PP here and there. As well as having an active role in one of the boss sub plots, but here’s where a personal criticism of mine comes from as well. I hate to do this but-but- I’m a.. a gulp- girl gamer, and I have to admit that the added interactivity of being able to take creepy ass photos of women and be rewarded for it with experience, as well as a nosebleed accompanying it, is not really my favorite thing to do in this game lmao. This game is very camp through and through and takes liberties of Isabela’s assets full front and center as they basically eat the cutscene camera, but those are honestly fine. I don’t dislike that aspect, but I can’t help but raise my eyebrow everytime I’m forced to get a good enough Erotica shot of Sophie’s undergarments just to fight Kent every playthrough, it’s just weird and nothing about Frank’s character gives the impression that he’d even agree to do that in the first place. Not to mention, if there’s a survivor like Kay Nelson in frame of the shot, you’ll get Erotica points on her crotch even when she’s not the focal point in the frame. Or getting Horror points for upskirting the older women, haha old lady gross!! farts.

The only one that works for me is Janet Star’s double Erotica shot for each of her gigantic boobs, because it’s so exaggerated and isn’t triggered by the player literally invading her privacy. That one admittedly gets a chuckle out of me, so it can be done in a way that works. But, I can’t help but think that this aspect of the game is kind of why Capcom doesn’t acknowledge that they made it in the first place, on top of the rest of the series being such ass poo poo water. If we ever get a remake of this game, don’t expect this part, or even Jo’s boss fight, to survive it. I’m not exactly sure how they’d go about making those changes, but I wouldn’t mind losing them personally. There is so much more that this game has to offer aside from the random lewdness anyways. L + ratio, girl gamer ruining my video games!!!

Speaking of, I think all of these criticisms and positives would benefit so hard from being remade. I mentioned it a bit in my last review, but just imagine how awesome it would be if everything in the game could truly be picked up. I feel as if there’s something on the shelf, I should be able to either grab it or put it on as an outfit. While the game gives so much to utilize, it also has a disappointing amount of objects that can’t be interacted with. I should be able to knock over objects, destroy book shelves, or even mess around with objects that are so neatly organized. The grocery store is so uncannily stocked to perfection, without any ability to move the objects around. Frank can infinitely take from areas that don’t visibly decrease in size, etc. It would just add so much to the feel, ya know? It would give so much more sauce than there already is. Just let me destroy everything in the area, then fix it when I come back. It would remove the weird barriers that exist in some boss fights like Jo or Steven’s where the display shelves actively get in the way of the two of you fighting. Cletus is by far the most dogshit boss in this game, with Sniper Carlito not far behind. They need to be bonked on the head with a magic fairy wand and changed so badly. Fix the AI on the survivors, give them a little more oomph, inject a little more life into their mini-stories and maybe even give them differing voice lines. Give Frank more modern shooting controls that allow him to walk and aim at the same time, etc. Either add or move around content into the later game that eliminates that boring part, and revamp the story to make the ending have more of an impact. It’s just an unfortunate case of what could be a great, fun time. The only thing that I don’t want them to change is the licensed music, probably the only time in my life I’ll defend the use of it. There is nothing more iconic than Gone Guru or Fly Routine as boss themes. And there is nothing funnier than seeing the sheer visceral panic a new player gets upon discovering the convicts for the first time while the initial “WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL-” blasts in their headphones.

There is just nothing quite like Dead Rising 1. The choices Capcom made to abandon this series is just so baffling and sad to see in hindsight because it could have been so, so much better. It deserved more than to be tossed aside to a studio known for making baseball games. It’s one of the few games that Capcom doesn’t even acknowledge on their 40th anniversary site: https://captown.capcom.com/en either. I could go on all day about why I think this game is awesome despite its flaws, clearly, as I tried really hard here. But, since I’ll be playing the 4th installment soon, I figured I should go back to familiarity for a minute and just live in its bliss before I inevitably tear my own face off. Since Capcom is in their remake era anyways, it could still happen and I’m not going to make any demands of them, but a small part of me can’t help but have a millimeter sized glimmer of hope in the back of my brain for every game conference that Capcom announces they’ll be apart of. Recently, there has been a sign that there could be one cooking over there, but we’ll just have to wait and see. I would even take their own version of a reboot if it means more Dead Rising. This game will always be a game that I come back to and a remake would not replace it, but it sure does deserve so much better.

And yet he complained that his belly was not full.