Bio
The backlogger formerly known as gyoza

I'm an old man who likes old games, currently journeying through a backlog of games from my childhood/adolescence I'd love to re-experience. I review every game I play, for the lols I guess

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ = Among the GOATs
★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2 = Exceptionally good
★ ★ ★ ★ = Excellent
★ ★ ★ 1/2 = Very good
★ ★ ★ = Good with some reservations
★ ★ 1/2 = Totally lukewarm
★ ★ = Kinda bad
★ 1/2 = Definitely bad
★ = Awful
1/2 = Exceptionally shite
Personal Ratings
1★
5★

Badges


Gamer

Played 250+ games

Pinged

Mentioned by another user

Treasured

Gained 750+ total review likes

Gone Gold

Received 5+ likes on a review while featured on the front page

Organized

Created a list folder with 5+ lists

Best Friends

Become mutual friends with at least 3 others

Listed

Created 10+ public lists

Donor

Liked 50+ reviews / lists

3 Years of Service

Being part of the Backloggd community for 3 years

Famous

Gained 100+ followers

Adored

Gained 300+ total review likes

Well Written

Gained 10+ likes on a single review

Trend Setter

Gained 50+ followers

Loved

Gained 100+ total review likes

N00b

Played 100+ games

Liked

Gained 10+ total review likes

Popular

Gained 15+ followers

Noticed

Gained 3+ followers

Favorite Games

Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4
Streets of Rogue
Streets of Rogue
Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy V
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid
Chrono Trigger
Chrono Trigger

273

Total Games Played

016

Played in 2024

394

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Jazz Jackrabbit
Jazz Jackrabbit

Mar 27

Pirate Doom
Pirate Doom

Mar 25

Say No! More
Say No! More

Mar 23

Star Fox 64
Star Fox 64

Mar 21

Jumping Flash! 2
Jumping Flash! 2

Mar 17

Recently Reviewed See More

I was about 10 when I first heard about Jazz Jackrabbit from my friends - never played it though (perhaps that's for the best, as I was just the right age for Eva Earlong's low-cut dress to have made a furry out of me). But so many of my PC-gaming friends loved this game - the PC library at the time heavily leaned towards slower and more strategic titles, and to my friends Jazz Jackrabbit felt like a statement of intent that showed the PC could pull off mascot platformers just as well as the consoles could. And to that I say... were we playing the same game?!

To be fair, I can kind of understand the fan hype around this game; if you owned a PC and didn't play Sonic all that regularly, Jazz Jackrabbit certainly looks the part. While the limited DOS palette means it doesn't look as good as its console contemporaries, it has an anthropomorphic animal with 'tude (and a gun!) running around themed levels, each with their own unique gimmicks and a nice nonlinear structure with ample secrets to discover. Also, a real head-bopping toe-tapping soundtrack!

Unfortunately, actually sitting down to play the thing quickly reveals that this doesn't have the open-ended flashiness of Sonic CD or the polish of the first half of Sonic 2 - this is 3 and a half hours of Metropolis Zone. The haphazard and cheap enemy/hazard placement is certainly an issue, but it's exacerbated by lots of weird quirks like oversized hitboxes and Jazz immediately jumping after landing if you hold down the jump button for too long. Perhaps the worst part of the game feel is how Jazz hits full speed and momentum after moving in a direction for less than a second, and combined with the obscene screen crunch this forced me to slowly and painfully inch my way through every level by tap-tap-tapping the arrow keys.

There are some good mechanics here (different weapons with subtly different firing arcs add a bit of nuance), and the beginnings of good level design (which I hope the sequel built up on). But the frankly junky game feel means that Jazz Jackrabbit is a 'nostalgia goggles only' play.

I love the concept of this game. As neither the most skilled nor the most patient nor the most competitive gamer, I tend to steer clear of most Doom mods that dial the difficulty way beyond what the base game intended - but a Doom mod with pirate-hat-wearing imps, eyepatch-wearing demons and revenants that shoot homing parrots? Count me in!

Pirate Doom is apparently heavily inspired by the Monkey Island games (note to self: check this series out ASAP!) and its new tilesets and graphical changes bring a unique and slightly lighthearted mood to the table. There are plenty of unique coding tricks and truly strongly-designed maps too! My personal favorite is the circus: a brightly-lit series of setpieces that include having to slowly walk across a tightrope while taking out enemies that spawn on both sides, a giant trampoline sequence that adds an element of chaotic verticality unlike any other map I've played, and a 'freakshow' segment which uses coding tricks to create weird monsters like a two-headed imp.

Unfortunately, Pirate Doom suffers a bit from 'Plok syndrome', where an otherwise-excellent game takes its most obnoxious element and then iterates on it and doubles down on it. Pirate Doom overuses darkness to create difficulty, with certain encounters taking place in nearly pitch-black rooms. It's a baffling design decision at odds with the brighter palette and more colorful tilesets, akin to applying the lighting and cinematography of the Battison movie to the 1960s Batman show. And it only got worse as I went on, with sometimes entire levels being so dark that even with brightness turned up I couldn't see enemies standing right next to me!

Some of these levels were long, sprawling, nearly impossible to navigate, and had me being hit by enemies that I couldn't even see - this might have been effective in a horror-themed wad or 'challenge mod', but Pirate Doom doesn't come across as either. It's just an unfortunate quirk that brought my enjoyment level of the game from 4 stars (after the opening few levels) steadily lower and lower as I played. Which is a shame, because the good maps are really really good!

Favorite maps:
45 - Barnacle Bar
46 - Circus
50 - Lost City
57 - Grog Factory

The problem with the Rat Race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

I remember reading this aphorism frequently growing up, most frequently on boomer chain-email threads, but it seems truer than ever today as corporate culture gets ever more toxic and exploitative. So an indie video game with an anti-corporate message (like this game, or the excellent Going Under) is something I can get behind. I can't deny that the premise of this game - an intern making a huge splash by shouting the previously-forgotten word 'no' at his superiors - is entertaining. The writing is generally sharp and witty, and (without getting into spoiler territory) the narrative is heartwarming and inspiring in moments, though it can also come across as shallow and overly-idealistic.

The game's main flaw is in how its simplistic mechanics stretch an already-streamlined experience very thin. You can switch stances to say 'no' in different tones of voice, charge up the volume and intensity of your 'no', and even do stuff like clap sarcastically to confuse people before saying 'no' to them... but barring one or two exceptions, almost none of those options make any difference to the outcomes of your interactions. All the different ways to say 'no' are entirely cosmetic, and it feels like the optimum way to play the game is to delay saying 'no' as long as possible, giving each character the chance to say all their lines and giving the good writing more of a spotlight.

However, going with this approach, it strikes me how much the entire game just comes across as one long interactive cutscene, in the vein of stuff like Plumbers Don't Wear Ties (brrrrr!) And while Say No! More is far better than that unholy abomination, and I daresay nearly as good as a game of its type can possibly get... the problem with comparing 'interactive cutscene' games is that even if you win, you're still an interactive cutscene.