When I was a child, our Playstation had mostly just driving games, so I really developed a taste for that particular genre and even equate the whole platform on the great car games it had. I never played Choro Q back then, but there were almost no issues for me to dive right into this game. It felt right like going back home.

Now, despite it's cutesy and bright style, this game has some serious learning curve. The cars are really light and rather tall, so they spin out really easily on almost every curve. The cpu hardly does any mistakes, but takes the corners really slow so overcoming the difficulty in this game is mostly just about choosing the right tires and making those turns faster than your opponents. You can even use the slippery mechanics to your advantage and drift around the difficult curves, dominating everyone else. Once you get the hang of it, you feel like a god.

Little disappointingly, the difficulty drops after the second grand prix. At that point, you have most likely already mastered the driving mechanics and going into the third and last gp, the other cars are not that consistent with their placements. If you drive couple first races well enough, you can even come last in the final race since nobody can reach your point total any longer.

Still, this is a super solid game and I would highly recommend this if you like driving/racing games and want to have a little twist to the style.

The startup screen UI.

The file select screen.

The sparse MIDI acoustic guitar OST for the opening area.

The "SUCCESS" message.

Right down to the fonts.

Right off the bat, Soccer Story makes it clear that this isn't merely an homage to Golf Story, it's a flat-out copy in a shocking number of ways. This homework-copying is far more brazen than any of the games which have ripped off Overcooked; when something like Moving Out or Catastronauts reused Overcooked's format, they at least had enjoyable gameplay to back it up. But no amount of plagiarism can hide how dull and slow Soccer Story is.

Movement is sluggish, aiming mechanics are bare-bones, bland fetch quests and "find/hit 10 things" checklists are overly plentiful. Above all else, it completely lacks the charm and fantastic writing of Golf Story. There's no sense in aping another game's style and penchant for silly gameplay diversions if you can't make it enjoyable.

Derivative, but can't live up to what it's so determined to copy. Booooooo.

Unfortunately Soccer Story is a total misfire. I'm not sure whether it was capitalizing on the World Cup hype or attempting to beat Sports Story to the punch that made Panic Barn want to push this game out before it in this underdeveloped state, but here we are.

I really wanted to have a good time with Soccer Story. I love Golf Story to pieces and don't really care about the obvious influences if it means another fun sports RPG, but the devs just wrote down all the ingredients without knowing the recipe.

In concept it's great: open-world soccer RPG that you interact with using a magic ball, playing in matches to take down the hilariously villainous Soccer Inc. who banned soccer across the land. Kicking the ball around in the overworld is actually not so bad, and wanting to see where they would take that was part of what kept me going to the third area. The stylized graphics are nice, and they make the otherwise unexciting pixel art really pop.

But man does this game give you nothing exciting, no motivation to care about anything. I think the dialogue was the epitome of this.

The characters all speak using monotonous, abrupt speech that just feels like placeholder text. I cannot read the emotion on any character. When your player loses a match, the owner guy says "You lost the match.". And your player replies "Okay!". I feel nothing. If you've ever listened to a casting audition, the speech reads like the crew feeding the lines to the actor. No emotion, just words for function.

Besides that, the endless amount of bugginess in small (text cues not appearing properly) to big (softlocks) ways, the 2 pieces of music which are by no means bad but get a bit old after the 100th time hearing them, the far, far too easy matches that feel like a chore, the boring collectibles that reward you with boring rewards, the endless fetch quests to move the plot forwards, ALL OF THIS just sours the experience to a point where I can't help but get sucked out of the game and start wondering if this is really my time being well spent. It's not.

Shmup of the year contender right here. If someone put the Cave logo on it, I would've easily been fooled into thinking this was a new official DoDonPachi.

-You like CAVE? Buy it. This has Crimzon Clover levels of DDP DNA.
-You like shmups? Please check it out. It's easily one of the best shmups in recent memory.
-You want to get into bullet hells but don't know where to start? This is an excelent starting point It has a very good tutorial explaining the basics on how to play and approach the genre and it has more easy-to-get-into modes than just the arcade (if you want to see for yourself, there's a demo!)

I don't really like putting reviews for games I drop, I feel like I dont want to throw my hat in on a game i didnt finish even if I think my reasons are legit, but I was looking forward to this game since the crowdfunding days and getting really let down by this game was big bummer.
The big thing for me is that this game made me think this was gonna be the indie metroidvania that gave me what I wanted: metroid, not castlevania or hollowknight or dark souls but in 2d. It sure seems like it; it's scifi, you got an armcannon, you kinda look like samus, surely this is the one, right?

Sadly, it's not , especially because it really doesn't want you to do the shooting part of metroid. The game has a heat mechanic where if you shoot too much your weapon will overheat, resulting in really weak shots, and improved melee hits. However, it overheats in like 2-3 seconds of shooting and it takes a lot time for your weapon to reduce heat, often leading to constantly having to swap between ranged and melee. It doesn't feel good, if you want to metroid shoot it up it feels really bad even if you're taking upgrade pieces with the shooting in mind, because you're constantly in overheat and will stay overheated unless you start meleeing, and the melee combat just feels mediocre and limited overall. Special weapons are also attached to their own meter, which i guess is nice rather than ammo but the special recharge is so slow. I feel like no matter what I do im just out of resources at all times even when using equipment with the goal reducing the downtime.

the game also has a lot of Souls mechanics because every game needs them now for some reason and this game did not need them and does not improve the experience. Enemies drop souls which you use to improve stats and upgrade slots, and if you die you drop them and have the pick them up. However, very curiously, not every save point in this game is where you can level up. infact, most of them aren't. In my playtime I only found like 3 of them that let me level up/quicksave. Thinking "i have a lot of souls i should look for a bonfire and level up" becomes an entire endeavor of backtracking through many, many screens to hit a levelup bonfire. It turns out, the souls thing where you hit a bonfire after being alive for a long time and carving through with a ton of souls in your pocket stops being a good feeling when most bonfires wont let you actually dump your souls.
you also do the thing where you lose max health when you die, and picking up your souls does not bring your health back and instead you need to... once again go back to a levelup shrine to repair yourself. It's just tedious.

Ultimately it all comes to head for me when I died on a foggate'd section, went back to it, and found that the foggate was activated, I was locked out of the fight, and I couldn't progress anymore. Maybe if I explored around more and did some other stuff it would've fixed itself, but I wasn't really enjoying myself so I just gave up on it.

It's all disappointing. I think the game's character designs look nice, even if it has that flash movement to it, it gave up on the good parts of metroid by replacing it with melee and souls mechanics because idk hollow knight was popular.

To any indie devs interested in making a metroidvania who is following this: PLEASE stop making souls game in 2d i beg you. i want to play metroid. please rip off metroid i am begging you.

highlight for me was all the nea level designs and abilities usage. always kinda of a bummer to play a game clearly meant for multiple ppl and playing single player tho haha.

not a fan of bringing back the "one hit lose copy ability" from dreamland 2. makes things alot more frustrating.

i decided not to do 100% on this one, mostly bc it seems like its very likely to miss the smaller chests, even with guides so im satisfied leaving it like this.

This was a technical marvel in its time, but the fact that G-MODE released this on modern systems before an actual DOJ release is just legendary.

The game itself is a certified DoDonPocho (Spanish pun where pocho means something close to "withered" in a casual manner). The fact that it manages to be so close to the actual thing is both a big achievement and a curse. It's amazing they even managed to make this a reality for phones of that era, but nowadays what's the point of even playing this when you can play the OG?

The LULZ, of course.

It's a novel and curious way to play DOJ, but most importantly, an inexpensive one, so if you're a Cave fan you might feel like playing this and have a chill time and while you're at it, throw a couple of bucks to the folks at G-MODE for their preservation efforts which are SEVERELY underrated.

There are three Metal Gear Solid 4:

- The MGS4 that wants to push the ideas of Metal Gear forward exploring the concept of war economy and mass produced soldiers as a product of capitalist greed aided by gene manipulation and nanomachines.

- The MGS4 that wants to burn everything to the fucking ground Hideaki Anno style and spit on MGS fans for asking for more games. And it'll make sure that any grave that the franchise has left is getting pissed on.

- The MGS4 that's a caring and touching love letter to everything the series represents. A celebration of everything that's dumb and fun of Metal Gear.

Three games, three different core ideas and themes, and and it doesn't mesh all that well. It's a freaking mess of a game and has both the lowest and highest points of any Metal Gear.

But despite its flaws, I had a lot of fun.

Throughout my teen years, there was a really REALLY awesome arcade near me that took pride in providing the latest and greatest arcade experiences, and did a great job maintaining all their machines. They would not only keep the big classics in premium condition, but also get the newest in high-profile arcade action. Time Crisis, Tekken, Initial D,, you name it! This place had them all! They were usually imports of the Japanese cabinets, since they would arrive much sooner. People from across the East Coast would hoof it to this humble arcade in New Jersey.

One of those machines was motherfukken F-Zero AX! The premium cabinet with the moving seat, and this was about a month or so before the Gamecube counterpart hit store shelves. I was already a big fan of F-Zero X, so witnessing that big beautiful bastard show up at this arcade was a really significant point of my nerd-ass teens.

I will never forget the first time playing the simplest course for the first time, Mute City. The stunningly gorgeous graphics, the intense speed, the roaring sound design, and that INCREDIBLE remix to the familiar song! Hearing that guitar riff the first time, I want to cry just thinking about the dump truck of dopamine my brain experienced that very moment. It's something I've never felt before, and probably never will again. F-Zero AX still stands as the absolute PEAK of arcade racing goodness, everything about it is perfect.

I even remember getting the Gamecube game immediately when it released. They offered exclusive content if you brought your memory card to the arcade machine and insert it while playing! Unfortunately, the cabinet broke down the day after the game came out, so I wasn't able to even try that. Apparently there was a serious problem with the machine, so they sent it back. Never to be seen in that arcade again. Never did I experience the feeling of heaven-on-earth and then immediate heartbreak like that.

The only other time I've seen this machine was at MAGfest. If you ever go to MAGfest and want to find me, I'll likely be skulking around the F-Zero AX machine because that's all I want to play when I'm there.

Esta entrega de Need for Speed intenta ir un poco más allá de lo tradicional, y aunque lo logra por muy poco, falla en muchas otras características. Primero que todo (y no creo poder enfatizar tanto en lo que voy a decir a continuación) la conexión a internet permanente para jugar NUNCA debería ser implementada en este tipo de títulos. Dejen eso para los MMO, los MOBA y apartados multijugador en línea, pero obligar una conexión permanente en un juego cuyo enfoque es el de una campaña para un solo jugador es algo innecesario que solo entorpece la experiencia en lugar de mejorarla. No hay botón de pausa y si por alguna razón tu conexión pasa por un mal momento corres el riesgo de ser desconectado del servidor. Algo que me ocurrió unas tres veces a lo largo de mi recorrido por la historia principal, y sin lugar a dudas algo que pudo haber sido evitado del todo. Dejando a un lado las quejas, Need for Speed es un buen juego, con unas gráficas excelentes y unos efectos sonoros espectaculares (y aunque no escucharemos melodías tan impresionantes como en las entregas anteriores las implementadas funcionan muy bien). La campaña incorpora actuaciones live action para presentar a diferentes personajes que se encuentran acoplados a los diferentes estilos de manejo que nos ofrece el título. Estos segmentos están muy bien logrados, con buenas actuaciones y demás, pero llegando al final nos damos cuenta que pudieron haber realizado un mejor trabajo con la historia (si están recurriendo a este tipo de narrativa) ya que no hay nada que nos aliente a seguir, ni un solo problema, ni una sola línea de guion que llame la atención. El título carece de propósito y solo se centra en entregarnos numerosas pruebas de derrapes, sprints, contrarreloj, circuitos y demás que bien pudieron haber estado ahí sin la necesidad de tanto complique. El manejo y la personalización de los coches es bastante extensa contando inclusive con la opción de modificar un auto específicamente para derrapes o para tener un mejor agarre. Ventura Bay es una ciudad algo pequeña para los estándares de hoy día, pero logra su cometido incluyendo aquí y allá alguno que otro coleccionable y un ambiente nocturno que nunca cambia salvo por algún extraño y espontáneo amanecer. Si te gusta la velocidad el juego es para ti, pero no esperes una gran historia ni nada trascendental, es solo otro juego de carreras con buenas gráficas y unos personajes que, aunque se ganan nuestro cariño, se estancan y no nos muestran su máximo potencial.