The central narrative problem with the first Alan Wake was the overly simple metaphor that dominated its focus; it's the light versus the darkness, and the light is the power of art, and the darkness is some sort of nebulous bad vibes or something. To be honest, I don't really care all that much. This metaphor continues to be the central focus of Alan Wake II but is made more nuanced by the introduction of our second protagonist, Saga Anderson. Saga, being a detective, rather than an artist, faces different demons and insecurities than Alan, and has her own ways of dealing with them. Art is certainly powerful, but that doesn't mean it's the only or even best ways of dealing with our internal struggles - at the very least it depends on the person, and presenting it in such a metaphysical binary as light vs dark runs the risk of making a rather masturbatory work of art.

Just because it's careful not to oversell the importance of art, doesn't mean Alan Wake II doesn't love art; this is a Remedy game after all. Hilariously crass and deadpan commercials, a twenty minute short film,
a level set in an interactive theater, another set set in a cheesy theme park, even the talk show and a set piece I dare not spoil here,, this game is stuffed with impressive recreations of various ways humans express themselves and communicate with each other. Add to that Remedy's ever improving presentation skills, (the best in the business, no less) with flourishes such as live action superimposed over gameplay and the arresting imagery of the stock videos accompanying the monologues read from the plot altering manuscript pages, and of course, Ilkka Villi's ability to portray the most baffled man in history purely through facial expressions, and you have a rich visual vocabulary that makes for a fantastic horror experience.

Further benefiting from Remedy's pitch perfect presentation are the environments. Bright Falls is a cozy enclave from what feels like insurmountable wilderness, Watery is an improvised but tight knit rural community, but it is Nightmare New York that stands out as an all timer of a video game setting. Drowning in smog and rain, awash in neon, and flooded with garbage, it is devoid of people and yet it feels eerily alive. Exploring the lush details in these environments is paired with the fundamentally solid bones of Resident Evil 2 Remake’s gameplay, which combines straight forward adventure game style puzzles with fairly standard third person shooting combat. It's managing resources and inventory space that provides the tension vital for making horror game work, and the combat encounters do a good job of having the player stockpiling necessities and blowing through powerful items such as flares and flash grenades to make it through. Additionally, the ambiguity of which shadow presences in Alan’s levels were hostile and which were just standing there, menacingly, made even just navigating those areas perpetually unsettling, and I never felt safe in the dark woods around Bright Falls. Unsurprisingly though, for a Remedy game, the enemy variety is rather thin, but the teleporting enemies make me wish it was thinner still. At least there's a truly inspired new monster design in the halfway point of Saga’s campaign, which leaves a tantalizing glimpse into what could be if enemy variety is given a greater focus in future Remedy titles.

Playing through the game, between the previously described components and the gripping roller coaster thrills of the plot, there was one thing I was worried would prevent the game reaching masterpiece status; an unsatisfying ending, such as those that plagued Alan Wake and Control. Initially, my fears bore fruit, with an ending that forced a cliffhanger and a seeming sequel tease, and with the game industry undergoing a calamitous contraction in the wake of pandemic over-speculation and rising interest rates, good luck getting that made. However, the NG+ ending, entitled the final cut, adds a resolution to the cliffhanger as well as additional details that recontextualize the game and entire Remedyverse into seemingly being the machinations of an almost cosmic horror-like entity, providing ample fodder for fascinating theory crafting. I am a bit conflicted about the somewhat sleep ask of having the player replay the entire game (full disclosure; I haven't yet played the Final Cut and I instead watched this playlist for the sake of this review) but it is narratively and thematically justified, commentating on the twisted nature of Alan's predicament and the extreme lengths required to make art feel ‘real.’ There are some unrelated narrative quibbles that I have as well. The Sheriff Breaker stuff is baffling, as a normal person who did not play Quantum Break, and the strangeness surrounding the game’s depiction of Sam Lake and the real and fictional Alex Casey is too weird for such a hurried cop out of an explanation. Still, I am ultimately satisfied with the ending and that is all I wanted. Should this be the end of Alan Wake, aside from the DLC, I am quite grateful we got such a bold and confident game from a franchise that had once seemed destined to die in obscurity.

Also, how is the game that produced this video still not profitable? What is wrong with ya’ll?

Me and my sister used to play this, not knowing that it was a PETA game. It was fun, at least at the time.

I think this is worth a playthrough for it's sheer bizarreness alone. Yes, it's bad, but it's one of those funny kind of bad games. The controls suck, but the minigames are really short. The graphics are your typical PETA shit. Uhhhh... the ending was funny? IDK. It's not a very long game; it took about 5 minutes to play. As someone who's played some of the earliest Newgrounds shit though, I wasn't phased in the slightest. Sorry, PETA! Try harder next time.

"Can you fry eggs ontop of Mount Everest?"
idk, probably after some of the shit I pulled off in this game.

The vibes are immaculate and the at first simple cooking mechanic, has enough twists to keep it both engaging and super annoying (fun way... but also holy shit the prison area).

Great way to spent ~2hrs. I can't think of a better non-spoiler way to describe the game than the current "most helpful" Steam review:

"Cooking Mama for chain smokers"

If that peaks your interest, highly recommend!

I already made a review on Devil may cry 3 before, but it was a shit review so i deleted it and i wrote a new one.

The first devil may cry has plenty of issues but i enjoyed my time with it overall, and a good sequel could fix its issues!
Right after i beat dmc 1, i immediately jumped onto the next entry which is the one and only DEE EM CEE TWO! Dmc 2 somehow manages to be worse than the first game in literally almost every aspect.
Well after dmc 2 it was time to jump onto dmc 3.
Dmc 3 manages to improve from the previous games in pretty much every single way while also fixing many problems.

I wasn't expecting the story in this game to be so fricking awesome, mainly because the first 2 games had quite lame stories. Dante and Vergil's beef is the most intriguing part about the story, Dante is a more goofy and energetic person that cracks many jokes and Vergil is a way more serious person. Lady is a really great character that was introduced in this game, and Arkham was aight i guess, Jester is much better. The story of the game is also filled with so many memorable lines and cutscenes, a lot of the things that Dante and Vergil say are stuck in my head just like the many kewl ass cutscenes in the game.

Dmc 3 adds tons of improvements to the combat system. This time you can choose different styles that you can equip which will change Dante's moveset. The style that i used the most is swordmaster which gives Dante's melee weapons more attacks allowing you to pull off much cooler combos against enemies.

Royal guard is used for blocking enemies attacks, and blocking an enemy attack fills up a meter for a powerful attack. I only used this style for a little bit since it is very hard to learn.

Gunslinger is similar to swordmaster but instead of expanding the moveset of the melee weapons, it expands the moveset of Dante's guns.

Trickster style is used for evading enemy attacks and i think that's it? Idk i never used this style.

Quicksilver and doppelganger are 2 styles that you unlock later in the game.

Quicksilver basically slows down everything on your screen except for Dante allowing you to deal a lot of free damage to enemies, but to make it less overpowered they made it cost devil trigger energy.

Doppelganger spawns a clone of Dante that can perform attacks, and similar to quicksilver it will consume devil trigger energy.

Another thing that makes dmc 3's combat so great are obviously Dante's weapons which unlike in the previous 2 games, all of the weapons are actually unique.
Rebellion, agni & rudra and cerberus are the weapons that i found myself using the most mainly because all 3 of them are fast weapons that aren't very difficult to use.
Beowulf is a fairly slow weapon that can be a bit difficult to use, but i often equipped it right before boss fights because it can deal some really good damage.
Nevan is a very tricky weapon to use... I'll learn how to use it one day

Vergil is also a playable character which is pretty radical! Do you guys know that one meme where the boss fight is overpowered as fuck when you fight him, but when you unlock the boss as a playable character he becomes trash? Well Vergil is basically the opposite of that meme, Vergil is overpowered when you fight him, and Vergil is overpowered when you play as him.
You have access to 3 weapons which are the Yamato, Beowulf and force edge, and instead of guns Vergil only has summoned swords.

Dmc 3 has a larger variety of bosses and unlike in the 2nd game (god i hope i haven't been mentioning dmc 2 too much) they are actually good this time. Well 99% of them at least.
The worst boss of the game is easily Arkham, this boss fight had so much potential, but for some reason they made you fight this giant ass blob that spits out eels i think? But thankfully this is the only boss in the game that i would consider bad. The bosses that i enjoyed fighting the most are: agni & rudra, cerberus, jester and obviously all of the fantastic Vergil boss fights.

The music is pretty damn great!
My favorite tracks are: taste the blood, Vergil battle 1, Vergil battle 2, divine hate and devils never cry.

Personally i don't have many gripes with this game other than the terrible 18th mission with the stupid ass obligatory boss rush, and a few enemies being annoying as hell to fight.

Dmc 3 is a game that i will never get tired of no matter what, every single replay that i do is just as enjoyable as the last one thanks to its amazing combat system, and the cutscenes are way too entertaining for me to skip them on replays. Oh yeah this is kinda random but pls capcom REMAKE THE FIRST 2 DMC GAMES.
Dmc 3 gets a 10/10

This game is good as hell when you don't got a bitch in your ear telling you it's bad. Bro you blow up the White House! Like this shit is cool as hell!

Yeah the PS3 port is pretty bad, but...so was everything released on PS3 in 2008. So what the game is short, there wasn't really much more needed to be told story wise. It is a weird gateway between the more deliberate cover based first-person shooters with iron sights that we would get post-modern warfare and the classic Medal of Honor style of gameplay.

I just can't get over how cool this game is and how well it executes on its premise. One of the best openings to a game I've played since Prey 2006. It sucks you right into the war and gets you ready to kill Nazis and save New York. I didn't really find it all that difficult, as you can run and gun your way through the entire game. Especially with the Human shield mechanic, its almost like a first person Dead to Rights...minus the dog and the slow mo.

I now have two big regrets when it comes to gaming. The first is that I have gone through life having never owned a PlayStation 2, and the second is that I didn’t support and play Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush before the studio was unfairly axed by Microsoft in 2024. The year prior was a crazy year in terms of the amount of quality game releases, and it was quite frankly, a tad overwhelming keeping up with them all. Despite all of the praise being given to Hi-Fi Rush, there were just so many other games that were coming out, or games that I wanted to get to, that I just threw it on the backlog thinking that I’d get to it eventually. Unfortunately, 2023 was also a year with a heartbreakingly large amount of game studio closures, and this is something that is continuing in 2024, with Tango Gameworks themselves being a recent victim at the time of writing this review, despite all of the success that Hi-Fi Rush had achieved the year prior. Coincidentally, the game also had gone on sale as part of a Humble Bundle around the same time the studio was shut down, and fellow Backloggd user duhnuhnuh had an extra key for the game that they were offering (huge shoutouts to him by the way, I’m extremely grateful). Given the timing of everything and an opportunity to play the game in a way that doesn’t directly support Microsoft, I leapt at the chance to give this game its due diligence, and I was absolutely floored at how much the game truly lived up to all of the praise people had given it.

Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm-based action game that takes place in a city in the far future. It stars Chai, a sarcastic and oblivious slacker dude with a disabled arm who really wants to become a rockstar. He volunteers for a cybernetic limb replacement program being run by Vandelay Technologies on their very own campus. Shortly before the process begins, CEO of Vandelay Technologies: Kale Vandelay, a callous CEO stereotype, observes Chai’s records. Unimpressed, he harshly dubs him a loser before he carelessly tosses Chai’s music player away, causing it to fall into the testing site onto Chai’s chest. During the limb replacement process, the music player becomes embedded within Chai, giving him electromagnetic powers while also causing his environment to sync up with the music itself. However, this causes him to be labeled as a defect by Vandelay Technologies, whose security forces attempt to bring him in. As he flees, he meets up and makes a deal with Peppermint, a robotics prodigy with a grudge against the corporation, who helps him escape in exchange for helping her investigate them. Together, the two team up to uncover the shady secrets behind the scenes of Vandely Technologies so that they can expose them to the world and stop their plans from unfolding.

The gameplay is that of a character action game like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, but with rhythm game elements that supplement the combat and platforming. Before I played the game, I heard a lot of people comparing it to Devil May Cry, but I wrote those comparisons off as an over-exaggeration, since I feel like a lot of people will compare any action game with combat they really like to Devil May Cry. I was delightfully surprised to learn that no, the game really is essentially Devil May Cry, but with rhythm game elements. You can perform a variety of combos that are dependent on the timing of your button presses, you’ve got a stiff yet highly vertical jump, you’ve got short platforming segments to serve as variety in-between the combat, you’ve got a ton of different upgrades and additional combos you can purchase with the game’s currency, and you’re graded on your performance after every battle and level with a letter ranking system.

Everything in the game is tied to the beat of the song that’s currently playing, and I do mean everything. The attacks and movements of your enemies, platforming hazards, sound effects, and even animations in the background are all tied to the music, and the game tests you on your ability to not only perform well while in battle, but doing so while also staying on beat with the music. I did find it a bit difficult to get used to timing my attacks to the beat at first, but I got better and better at it as time went on. I can’t tell you how satisfying it feels when you’re able to successfully perform attacks in sync with the rhythm. Just like in Devil May Cry 5, the music will add additional layers of instrumentation the higher your letter score, and the game will also play the sound of an audience chanting Chai’s name as well. The better you do, the more ecstatic the game feels, and performing really well during a fight can feel genuinely euphoric.

The rhythm game elements don’t stop at syncing your attacks to the beat, however. There are a number of quicktime events where you need to press the correct buttons at the correct timing, such as during certain special attacks Chai can perform. Additionally, when close to death, more powerful enemies and certain bosses can force you into a one-on-one segment where you’ll need to successfully parry or dodge their attacks, which are telegraphed to a series of specific beats that you need to replicate with your button presses, and successfully doing so allows you to finish them off with one final strike. As someone who is a big fan of character action games, it’s extremely surprising how fresh and satisfying adding rhythm elements to this genre’s gameplay makes the game as a whole feel. This melding of the genres works fantastically. There is a great sense of cohesion between the two, and for the most part, elements of one genre don’t overshadow the other.

There’s only one element of combat that I have some small issues with. As the game progresses, you will meet additional characters who become allies that you can call upon during combat to aid you in battle. They’ll perform a special attack that has a cooldown once it’s executed. Your allies become a pretty key part of combat, as these special attacks are needed in order to make certain enemies or bosses vulnerable. The issue is how inconsistently your allies’ attacks function. You can’t manually target enemies, so when you call on your allies to use their attack, they can sometimes use it on the wrong enemy, or they’ll miss entirely. If this happens, then you’ve just wasted that summon and you now have to wait for the cooldown to finish before you can summon your ally to attack again. This was especially annoying with Macaron, who needs to use his ability twice in order to break the shields of certain enemies, and whose cooldown takes twice as long compared to your other allies. If he misses or targets the wrong enemy, then you’re basically a sitting duck until his ability recharges, which can be very frustrating. You can purchase some upgrades to make the cooldown slightly better, but they do cost a lot of currency, currency I’d rather spend on other things that can enhance the gameplay experience for myself, like additional combos I can perform, or items that increase my health or special attack gauge.

The game’s tone is very playful, upbeat, and fun, complimented by a gorgeously colorful artstyle that’s inspired by a combination of western and eastern comic books/manga. It tells a story that is a not at all discreet criticism regarding how the leaders of corporations frequently interfere with, mismanage, and ruin the lives of those who work under them. It also goes into demonstrating how much this hurts when the job is something that people have aspired to do for much of their lives, and are very passionate about. The story is extremely straightforward, but you can tell it’s one that comes from very real experiences that I’m sure the folks that have worked on the game have gone through, and considering what ended up happening with Tango Gameworks, it’s a story that resonates now more than ever.

The characters are decent, they serve the story well enough. I will say I’m not the biggest fan of Chai, but he did eventually grow on me. He’s a huge dork who’s very self-serving, unmotivated, and oblivious to those around him. He does get better as he starts to take the situation at hand more and more seriously and comes to care more about the people he meets and works with to take down Vandaley, though his ego remains pretty big still by the end of the game. He’s not at all a bad character or protagonist, he’s just a little too white bread for my tastes. The other characters don’t get much of a focus during the game’s main story, but talking to them in-between missions at the hideout allows you to learn more about them and how they feel about the unfolding events of the narrative. I think I might’ve developed a stronger attachment to them if they had a larger presence in the main plot, but this is still a fine and fun cast of characters.

While I personally would’ve preferred the tone be a bit less playful and to have had a little more edge to it, like the old school Guitar Hero games or Brutal Legend, I feel that would’ve made the game somewhat of a harder sell, not just to general audiences but to get approval to make the game in the first place. The exaggerated, Saturday morning cartoon-esque personalities of the game’s characters (the villains in particular), really manage to offset how personal, and in a way, sad the message that’s being communicated under the surface is. The villain Zanzo in particular is an excellent demonstration of this. His manically over-the-top demeanor and constant Jojo posing, to a certain degree, masks the very real, outrageous, and constant demands the person in charge of a team may have, and how their ego can get in the way of seeing the project to completion, making the efforts of the overworked people underneath them all for naught. The game’s current tone isn’t at all a bad one either. I can see some folks not jiving with the comedy, and I can also see certain people writing it off as “reddit humor”, but even if the game didn’t necessarily make me laugh out loud, I still found it to be endearing.

I’ve really enjoyed the rhythm games I’ve played, but I don’t play too many of them because the vast majority of them don’t appeal to my taste in music, so I’m really glad this game exists. I played the game with its original soundtrack instead of the licensed music (in case I decide to one day stop being a coward and start making YouTube videos), and I gotta say, it was pretty fantastic. I’m more of a metalhead than a rock guy, but this game’s music is still really good. The soundtrack has a lotta groovy riffs and decent solos that are never tiresome or boring to listen to.

Hi-Fi Rush was truly a surprise for me. I went into this without much in terms of expectations, but its fluid and immensely satisfying combat and complete banger of a soundtrack kept me hooked the entire time. I’m heavily debating doing a quick second playthrough of the game even though I’ve finished it because I was just that hooked and enamored by its gameplay. If the game had a different tone and a heavier soundtrack, I genuinely think it would’ve ended up being my dream video game, but even as it currently stands, it’s a brand new favorite of mine. The irony of a game condemning the actions of corporate dickheads becoming a massive success while the studio that made it gets shut down a year after it launches is honestly extremely tragic. It’s not like my $30 was the $30 that would’ve kept Tango Gameworks from shutting down, but I still feel really bad after finally playing this game that I didn’t purchase it and support Tango while they still existed. If you haven’t played Hi-Fi Rush, I implore you to, and I also implore you to learn from my mistake and actually support those games that don’t get AAA marketing, yet gain an outstanding reputation via word of mouth. Don’t just put them on your wishlist forever and wait. I can’t stress enough how much we need more games like Hi-Fi Rush, and if we don’t make our voices heard with our wallets, we hurt the chances of these games being made in the future.

Forever and always: Fuck You, Microsoft.

I was going to give this another shot, but I actually got so pissed off at this that I just gave up and quit. It is genuinely way worse than I remember it being.

Fallout 4 is slow, sluggish, and boring. Every action feels weird and delayed. The UI is among the worst I've ever experienced in a video game. Menus within menus, inconsistent buttons to get out of said menus, and I swear sometimes the game straight up drops button inputs.

For aiming to feel anything close to decent with a keyboard & mouse, you have to edit the ini files to disable mouse acceleration and make it so that vertical sensitivity isn't always half of horizontal sensitivity. The fact that this is even a thing in a 2015 game, well after PC gaming became more prominent, is fucking baffling to me. Options in general in this are impressively limited. You can't even change brightness settings or FOV in-game.

Exploring the world sucks because it's ugly and uninteresting. Everything is an ugly shade of brown, gray, or green and it all looks smeared together like someone took a shit in their hand and wiped it on a canvas. Enemies blend in with the environment too easily and love to hide behind corners, making most encounters a game of hide and fucking seek.

Skills and general RPG mechanics are gone. All you really have are perks, which leave much to be desired. You're pretty much required to get stuff related to guns and combat because so much of the game is a generic shootbang. Quests all just involve killing things. Most locations are just dungeons with things to kill and a treasure chest at the end. The honest truth is that this is basically a looter shooter in disguise as a Fallout game. What's bizarre about this is that the combat isn't even good. Like sure, the gunplay is technically better than the previous Fallout games, but I can't stand how this game feels. Something about the flow and feel of combat in this compared to 3/New Vegas really rubs me the wrong way.

I'll admit I do kind of like the crafting mechanics and the base building stuff. It's clunky, but you do get a good amount of freedom with it. Ultimately, it comes off as kind of pointless though.

I recall my first playthrough of this, I did almost drop it due to similar feelings. I don't know what happened, but I think I somehow managed to push myself to finish it and eventually got used to things. I don't think I have the ability to do that anymore. Used to think this game was merely mediocre, but now I think it just sucks.

I have severe schizophrenia and also I review Super Princzss Peach game boy afvance. Her name Peach and she must free the blowjob brothers! At this point in time, who knows what Nintendo was cooking? I'd say having her gimmick be getting emotional is not dodging the bullet, but we must respect wahmen even if they cry during an Avatar movie, so I'm not sure if there's any tree I can bark to. I don't know why they gave her a cool parasol with thoughts and then did the same with Mario's hat but she pioneer'd that shit! Also Mario doesn't count it was a ghost and also

A chairman is not a humanoid chair. Unlike that, Peach is a true firewoman she just fire and shit. Wanna do the 4 elements again? Because we have fire, water and air aaaand she can eepy but not on the ground. I can't in good conscience approve of labelling it the earth element. That healing ability, or "Emotion: Calm", is probably why I've yet to see what the game over screen looks like. Make no mistake though, it is over. As soon as they told me to get all the collectibles to get to the credits. Why they do this 🤣🤣🤬

It's a platformer and you can hover if you just wanna reach the finish line. But, huh, don't do dat!! I swear our game is interesting. There are crying goombas (they learned about the Smash community) and angry koopas (they learned about the Smash community). You're not asked to go the extra mile and do complex puzzles, what interactions there are between your emotions and the environment can be solved by their target audience. Which is apparently girls, but I cannot confirm at the present. Come on Miyamoto today's girls play Elden Ring, re-evaluate your judgment mf 😂

Le story is garbajio, it makes Showtime read like a masterpiece. Is that what Luigi was reading in bed before hitting the snooze frame 1 in that one gif? Did he learn there was a v-bucks shop where you could buy a proper moveset? I think the takeaway from this is that the levels have quite the meat on them but sometimes, I'm just vegan and that's ok. Or the other takeaway could be that Toadsworth is fake asf and has never given me a call because he drove the kingdom into severe bankruptcy. Oh, to be a princess again... ( I do miss that mf he seldom appears these days)

The type of shovelware well-meaning grandmas used to buy their grandkids for the Wii on Christmases and birthdays back in the late 2000s, now on the 9th generation of consoles! Look, developer IguanaBee was forced to make this under some brutal time and financial constraints. They're a talented studio which can be seen in titles such as their incredibly charming MonsterBag. Oddly enough, despite the ultimate results this might actually be further proof of said talent. In roughly a year, without guidance or proper monetary support from the publisher to staff a full team on the project, and after a bit of post-release patching to update stuff such as the map so that it now shows your position on it, they churned out an entirely playable open-world action adventure. Doesn't make it a fun experience, but it's impossible to not be at least minorly impressed with what they were able to accomplish (however minuscule) with so many hurdles in their way.

Alright, now that I’ve given its makers a somewhat obligatory “it’s okay bud, we know it’s not really your fault” pat on the back, it’s time to mercilessly crap all over this abomination! We are looking at a genuinely abhorrent product here. Sure, Rise of Kong is a disaster from technical perspective with bugs that cause you to inexplicably get stuck on invisible snares forcing autosave reloads, graphics that look like they're from a PS2 offering (and not one of the pretty ones), environments that sometimes awkwardly melt into shape as you approach them in a manner akin to a hallucinogenic induced trip, and audio quality so bad it needs to be heard to be believed, but its worst aspects are easily those opening chapters where things are unreasonably challenging.

If there's any ish I can’t stand it’s when a bad game doesn’t have the decency to just let you steamroll through it with little trouble. The early hours are brutally plagued by the titular ape’s pathetically limited range and wimpy attacks that barely chip away at the health bars of his enemies. Shouldn’t this have been some kind of power fantasy? Why am I getting wrecked by what appear to be little green dodo birds? At no point do you feel like a beast powerful enough to have slugged it out in movies with the King of the Monsters. Even the way basic trees and other objects in the scenery tower over him give the impression that you’re controlling a regular-sized gorilla rather than one humongous enough to climb the Empire State Building.

Eventually you do begin to attain the true might you would expect from a kaiju with the first name of “King,” but it never seems to be the result of your investments into any of the skill trees. I can’t prove it, yet I have this unshakable suspicion that the devs artificially lower the difficulty in later chapters to give players the ​illusion of getting stronger rather than legitimately allowing them to become so, because it’s not remotely believable that those meager initial stat boosts I was unlocking would have had such a profound ability to leave foes that were previously causing me problems all of the sudden crumbling at my feet.

Oh well, at least when that happens it becomes pretty smooth sailing to the credits. You’ll still struggle to reach them though. Your motivation will be low. The entire runtime of Skull Island is a mind-numbingly dull loop of running around massive maze-like environments of identical assets to find unmarked, sparsely located “ascension event” arena fights and pick up the occasional collectible on your way to the area’s boss. There are plenty of threats along the way, but engaging with them is totally pointless. Not just because the combat sucks either. Defeating foes outside of the required sections grants you no additional EXP points, meaning they’re literally a complete waste of time. You’re better off simply sprinting past everything and focusing exclusively on whatever boring platforming segment is between you and the next mandatory encounter.

As much as I believe the small Chilean indie developers mostly deserve a pass for this given the circumstances, it is simultaneously not hard to wonder why they continued to try to create a package so grand in scope rather than reducing its scale to something more reasonable. Perhaps they shouldn't escape blame entirely. Their ambition paired with the lackluster resources from GameMill seriously cost them here. There were quite a few shockingly dreadful releases in 2023 and Skull Island: Rise of Kong blows the few I personally played out of the water, proving far fouler than the likes of Gollum or even TWD: Destinies. Is it the worst game of that year? That's highly likely. It's easily the top contender in my eyes.

1/10

avoided this because I figured it'd be a kind of lame film school dude's fetishisms of 50s Japanese Samurai cinema.

And I guess it kind of is, in a way. but no more shallow than any other character action video game that apes from cinema is, except this game's concept of camera placement and framing is actually pretty fucking stellar. it's genuinely more cinematic than games like God of War or Ghost of Tsushima think they are. trek to yomi might be one of the most beautiful games I've ever played.

at times it's sort of choked by its visual aesthetic, a lot of the game feels very dry. but it's basically if Journey went Kurosawa mode for 5 hours. if you've played any modern side-scrolling action game, you might not be impressed. if you've seen Sanjuro you might not be impressed. but honestly I think those two things go together really well, sort of like buttered toast or chocolate milk. just a very basic but tasty combo (and I mean pretty much every side-scrolling action game I've played thinks it's fucking Vaporware Jesus so this is kind of refreshing to some degree).

It's really hard not to compare Smushi Come Home to A Short Hike, given how similar the progression and fly mechanics are. I think those influences are well applied, at least in the gameplay side, with how easily the game flows and how satisfying it is albeit simple. But what made A Short Hike memorable were its characters, that either mirrored real life problems or were simply fun to interact with, accompanied by the game's inspirational message that was delivered subtly throughout its course and culminating in the ending. All of this adding to its emotional impact, and in a way, at least for me, justifying the childish vibe. That's all pretty much missing here, with characters having really generic dialogues, and the game's message essentially being "family sticks together" delivered in the most trivial way possible. So you're left with a cute game, but with no substance whatsoever. Even if it's harsh, it's hard to not consider this a little immature. Specially considering how overall childlike it is, but the gameplay not being fit for a child to play (I think? Unless child gamers are much better now than I once was as a child.)

Anyway, I was getting unintentionally dark with my games lately, so I wanted to detox by playing this, and I think it did that job just fine. Even if it's not perfect it is relaxing and decently fun, so maybe if you're into the wholesome-core games you can't go wrong with this one.

(I did call the game immature, but I admit to playing it because of the huge capybaras in the game's backloggd background. So take that as you will.)

So many years have passed since so many years had past. Police Truck was already nearly twenty years old when this game came out, Activision had started its transformation into merger homunculus so long ago that the ex-Atari founders hadn't been with the company in over a decade. Were big budget games better when one person could make them, or when the whole dev team could easily fit in a single room? Was music better before everyone sold out, or was it always about the money in the first place? The presence of athletes' likeness, real brands of equipment and video magazines, and licensed tracks skaters were listening to; is it authentic, or is it shameless product placement?

I used to think things like, "people my age grew up with stuff like crunk-core and bro-step, there's no way any of us would end up growing into that boomer mindset where we're scared of the kids' new music". I used to think there was something kind of scary about sound synthesis having effectively allowed us to have potentially already explored so much of timbral possibility that nothing would truly sound new or shocking again. The even scarier thing is that nothing has really changed in half a century. Is it worthwhile to question how authentic your own curry recipe is when there are people afraid of garlic and pepper?

This game sucks. Castlevania I and III are great classic Nintendo games, but for Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, the game designers obviously were not thinking straight. At first, it seems like a pretty decent game. A little different from the first in the series but, that's okay. Zelda II was different from the first, Mario 2 was different, but they were all good.

The first thing that's strikingly different is the fact that ya have to go through towns, talk to people, and buy stuff. I never really minded that, it makes it a little more like an adventure story, and it's kinda like Zelda, so that's okay. But the first problem comes in when it changes from day to night.

Why does this need to happen so often? Like, every five minutes? Why does it take so long? Nobody feels like sitting through this every time. How would you like it if you were playin' a game and then every five minutes I came over and paused it, then counted ten tedious seconds and then let you continue play the game? Now, I mean, why did they think that that would be a good idea and interrupt the gameplay? Did they think it would be more realistic? I mean, in real life, I don't have to stop in my tracks when the sun sets and a fuckin' box doesn't pop up in the air. I mean, this is one of the most annoying features in any game ever. What's the point? Yeah, the, I mean, the monsters are stronger at night and the stores are closed, but why's that necessary and why does the game have to stop? It's fuckin' retarded.

And why do ya have to die when you fall in the water? That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. This guy (Simon Belmont) can go all over fightin' hordes of evil monsters, but he can't even fuckin' swim? Sometimes I don't feel like goin' down the stairs just to get down to ground level. I mean, there's no reason I should have to do that when I can just take a shortcut and jump down. But oops! I shouldn't do that, there might be water down there.

Another thing that's really annoying about this game is the fact that ya have to buy weapons and items. I mean, still, that's not uncommon, you know like I said: that's the same thing ya have to do in many great games like Zelda, but, lemme explain.

Here ya have to collect hearts, which count as money; I mean, that's kinda odd, because usually hearts count as life or energy, y'know, so that's kinda strange. But, y'know that's not the point. The point is that the items you need to buy are too fuckin' expensive, and the hearts don't add up enough. It takes too long to get enough of them to buy something, and it gets boring wandering around killing the same monsters over and over again just so you can buy a Flame Whip or somethin'.

Speakin' of Flame Whip, that's pretty weird itself, isn't it? I mean, they were really being creative with that one, the flame whip.

Anyway, about the hearts. It takes too long to buy stuff. And, to add onto the problem, when you die, you lose all your hearts and ya have to start all over again. I mean, doing this doesn't add to any of the game's difficulty or challenge, it just makes us have to do more of the same monotonous stuff over again, and it's not fun, it's boring.

Oh look, I finally got enough hearts to go and buy a plant that I need to cross the swamp. Now let me get to the store. Oh shit, it's fuckin' night time. Now the stores are all closed and I have to wait for it to turn day again. Oh well, I might as well kill some zombies in the meantime and stock up on some more hearts. Oh shit, now I gotta start all over again.

One of the worst things in the game are the Pitfalls, which are areas where there's, like, stones or blocks that look like you could walk on them, but instead ya just fall through. It's impossible to tell where these spots are the first time walkin' through, so you just have to keep throwin' Holy Water all over to see where they are. It's retarded. Why should I have to do that? Again, it doesn't add up to any of the fun, y'know, challenge of the game. It's just unfair and it's annoying.

In the dungeons, there's no bosses at the end, which is a big disappointment. Every Nintendo gamester knows that at the end of a level or a dungeon labyrinth, or whatever, there's always supposed to be a big guy who ya fight. But here, they just got lazy and only put a few bosses in the game and left some of the dungeons just empty like this one. So, most of the dungeons you go through (the mansions, to be exact), there's nothing at the end except for a crystal orb that ya can't touch.

In the rest of the Castlevania games, the tradition goes like this. You fight a boss, ya defeat him, then an orb comes down, and ya touch it. There you go, on to the next level. But in Castlevania II, how would you ever figure out that you're supposed to throw an Oak Stake at that orb? I mean, when you first get the Oak Stake you assume it's a weapon. And you throw it... only to find that it does absolutely nothing... and that you waste it by throwing it, so ya have to get it all over again.

There are parts in the game that are definitely not self-explanatory and are too hard to figure out. Take this dead end for example. Would you guess that you're supposed to pass through this wall? How? You have to kneel down by it for like ten seconds. Now still, that's not enough to make it so cryptic and hidden that we can't figure it out, "oh please, give us more for our buck and make it harder so we can wander around the whole game and exhaust every possibility before we find out". Okay. Guess what? You need to have a Red Crystal selected, and be kneeling down, and wait a little while before this magic tornado comes and takes ya to the next part of the game.

Most of the townspeople have things to say which aren't important at all, so why do ya have to read 'em? Here in the dungeons, there's books that you may find which actually give ya clues about things in the game that you may need to know about. But when I find these books half the time, it's by accident, so I may hit the button and cancel it out which means that I don't even get to read it and I don't have a second chance.

Why can't I do that when it changes from day to night? That would actually be helpful. So what the game designers figured is this: it isn't absolutely necessary for me to read about how to find Dracula's castle or what I'm supposed to do with an Oak Stake, but what I do need to read, again and again constantly, is, "The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night". How 'bout "vanquished this horrible GAME"?!

The only sure way to get through this awful game is to enter a code, but even that is way more tedious than it should be. While most of the Castlevania games have symbols ya enter for a code, this one just has a whole bunch of numbers. I mean like, one of those little parts would be enough for a password, but why... four? Like, why so many?

In general, I hate games that have passwords like this, because sometimes they have uppercase and lowercase letters. Like the l's, y'know, look like I's, the 0's look like O's, the 8's look like 5's so, why does there have to be so many digits? Y'know, like why can't it just be numbers or somethin'? Like y'know, just numbers and not letters? I mean, it takes me like five minutes to enter this code when it should only take like five seconds. It's friggin' stupid.

Okay. So, say we enter the code, and we go to Dracula's castle. You'll be pretty disappointed how anticlimactic this game is. It isn't even worth putting in a code, let alone playing the whole game all the way through, which, if ya did, I feel bad for you.

I mean, first of all... there's no enemies in Dracula's castle. You just walk all the way through and the only obstacles are just, like, goin' up and down steps, which won't hurt you and they aren't challenging either. It's just tedious. I mean, what the hell's the point of going through the castle if there's no way to fight? Did the game designers just, like, run out of time or somethin'?

So then you get up to Dracula, and guess what? He doesn't look anything like Dracula. Instead, he looks like a Grim Reaper and he throws sickles. I mean, did the people who made this game even know what Dracula is? He's a fuckin' vampire.

Alright, on top of everything, Dracula's way too easy. Check this out. This is a trick that I discovered myself, and so could you without the help of any strategy guide. When Dracula first appears, he stands there for a while, and he gives you plenty of time to land lots of free hits. Not only does he stand there for a long time, but everything that hits him will stun him and give ya even more time.

Naturally, you'll probably be using the flames, because it's one of the most effective weapons in the game. But using it against Dracula, it makes it simply impossible for him to even do anything. He has no chance. The second you start throwin' that shit at him, you've already won. I mean, why is it that easy? Did they even test this shitty game out before they released it?

What a piece of shit. I mean, I feel horrible that I had to play this game in order to make this video, but I did it to demonstrate its dreadfulness and I forced myself to play it just so that ya don't have to. So you should thank me for telling ya to stay away from this horrible steaming pile of goat shit. I mean... I know it's useless complaining about a game that was made back in the late '80s, or early '90s or whatever, but it just blows my mind how fuckin' horrible it is. I mean, it's consistently annoying.

Why? Why is it so bad? If all these problems were changed then we'd have a great trilogy of classic Castlevania games, but... history is history, and we might as well try to count Castlevania III as... y'know, the second in the series, and leave this awful piece of horse shit alone, as it stands today as one of the biggest fuck-ups of all time.

Thank you for listening, good night.

The ending sucks too.