excellent game to play while something else is running in the background. it's grindy at times, but this is a journey of life across a billion years. what better excuse is there for a grind?

I would think less of E.V.O. if I didn't enjoy the concept of it so much. hopping around and chomping at stuff doesn't actually feel that great, which is accentuated on the boss fights. I was mostly looking forward to seeing how each evolution would change my primordial pal's stats/abilities and more importantly how he looked. can't think of many other games that let me have a horse-bodied, hippo-jawed, antler-having brachiosaurus.

it's about 3 stages deep into P&R when I was second guessing how much I really wanted to keep playing it. I decided I'm too tough of a Gamer to consider giving it up. built differently. perhaps incorrectly.

either way, seeing P&R through to the end was pretty damn cathartic. successfully diving to safety 25% of the time, then into a hazard/wall or entirely off the stage the other 75%. forgetting to deflect while trying to shoot everything before everything kills me. accidentally picking up the wrong power-up and having my weapon reset to level 1 near the end of the stage. manically tapping the d-pad to perfectly position myself to attack before realizing the boss had already started making its move.

after coming down from the high of finishing it, I think I'd actually say it's almost equal parts fun and frustrating. love the presentation. it's cute. I'm a sucker for yokai stuff. that difficulty left me mollywhopped though. good game.

Goemon is a bite-sized game bursting at the seams with charm. Like gushers candy. Who doesn't like gushers? Great music, great visuals, and the gameplay?

It's a blend of solid 2D platforming along with sections that I want to liken to the River City games, even though you could probably just call them beat 'em up levels. The River City comparison mostly comes from the quirkiness and the so-bad-they're-kind-of-funny quips. The rest lies in the gameplay loop while you're in towns: beat goons, collect money, and visit shops (food/upgrades/new skills). There are also a bunch of minigames you can hang out with when you're tired of being assaulted by everything.

Strange hitboxes are a problem in a few places and there are maybe two sections of the game where you have to hit something at the right spot the correct number of times. That said, I blasted through this in one good sitting that clocked in at just over 3 hours. Minimal suffering given the amount of enjoyment I got out of that short time.

Also, shoutout to Goemon for non-traditional weapons. His smoking pipe upgrades into a yo-yo for some reason, but yo-yos own. Your gold can also be used as a projectile. Sick stuff.

i never knew how much i needed a High Speed Driving RPG until now. fully customizable vehicles both in stats and visuals by using parts that you buy from shops or loot from beaten racers. a world map you traverse by cruising the night streets. encounters with other racers happen as you're driving around the world map, but they're initiated by speeding drivers flashing their headlights at you. you can also flash your headlights at absolutely anyone, racer or not, and start a race. such a【COOL】and thematically appropriate alternative to the usual rpg encounters.

racing lagoon is a masterclass in presentation. the music, the backdrops, the cutscenes full to the brim with style, and the protagonist's cheesy & poetic monologues all come together to create an atmosphere that pulls you into this world of street racing. and man, this story. nothing groundbreaking, but i would never have expected something like it from a game about a bunch of street racers.

seriously fantastic game all around.

thoroughly enjoyed every moment spent boosting around bomb rush while searching for graffiti spots, unlockable characters, and hidden collectables. i'd frequently find myself looking for new ways to improve my score before snapping out of my funk-induced trance and realizing i needed to make some progress.

bomb rush does almost everything right. the combat isn't one of those things. it's not difficult to engage with and it's not even an annoyance. it just feels like it was added as an afterthought. there are very few instances where it's necessary to fight anything. however, it's there, and what exists isn't terribly interesting in any situation where it's required.

if we end up getting another game in this world, it would be great to see some more variety in the tricks you can pull off. as the system is now, you're mostly expected to make use of the environment (rails, billboards, etc) to increase your score multipliers. the tricks themselves don't do too much to boost your score.

absolutely shameless in its egregious credit-eating designed existence. i fortunately wasn't throwing quarters at this game though, so i managed to have a good time.

it's metal slug with extra stage/enemy hazards, double the speed, and bosses that just really don't want to die. there's some optical assault happening here because these stages get cluttered very quickly. background effects are firing off, bullets are flying, gold/medals are dropping, and lots of enemies in the background just existing as an asset.

that aside, it was a game that i couldn't put down. it helps that it's so short. straight up arcade goodness with all the frustrations of being an arcade game.

i loved the art direction with the per-rendered backgrounds. navigating them? not so much. may just be my ageing eyes, but there were some perspective & color blending issues here and there that boggled my mind.

movement can be finicky, especially when trying to use some traversal abilities. pretty clunky overall. really does make you feel like you're roaming around in an ancient egg mech. this issue is compounded by a couple of enemy encounters since many of them are pretty damn fast (or have insane range) and require you to be more reactive than your egg will let you be.

the "Elemental" part of "EGG" is just that -- elemental powers you obtain throughout the game that help you solve puzzles and traverse the map. nothing really notable here.

coolest thing about this game for me was the transition into 3D for the boss battles. they weren't great by any means, but they broke up the annoyances of navigating these maps and i also can't hate the attempt at throwing this into a 2d game.

if you're into the zelda-type thing i'd say give this a shot. it basically is that except you're saddled with the pros and cons of being a dude in an ancient egg mech. at the very least, check out the music. lots of great tracks on this OST.

more of the same, but also just more in general. having played these games back-to-back, the improvements on the gameplay in this were felt immediately. comboing mobs was so much more fluid and satisfying. there are actual air combos now, and your actions can be more easily linked by super moves on the ground and in the air. fighting and building up the hit count was an absolute blast. also, assists actually work now. for some reason they were super finicky and unresponsive in the first game, but i had no issues with that here.

unfortunately, the guard break feels kind of janky. there's no way (that i found) to work a guard break into a combo because you've gotta stop what you're doing to hold the heavy button and break the flow of combat. it's great for sending floored enemies up into the air, however. on the player side, guarding seems to be useless for the most part. might just be my unga bunga brain using offense as the best defense.

all the charm from the first game is here, including the hit or miss humor. the map is somewhat expanded on and has a few additional areas with a good number of new characters to interact with. there are now player hideouts spread across the map that let you to respawn in whatever part of the city you died in, allowing you to avoid some backtracking.

great game. had a ton of fun turning my brain off and mashing away.

fun as hell. no experience with postal games but i'm guessing all that aged milk humor is what they were aiming for and they hit every target. takes a lot from other games of its kind but manages to feel like its own thing. got a kick out the cartoony artstyle and there really isn't any part of this game that looks boring.

good selection of weapons that i rotated through pretty frequently. apparently pissing on enemies can stun them but i definitely didn't use that enough to realize.

genuinely surprised i got any enjoyment out of this after the "fuck suburbia kill em all 410,757,864,530 dead suburbanites" intro stage but here i am.

as someone who mostly missed out on the n64 and has no experience with those quake/turok likenesses, Zortch had no nostalgic value for me. it's just a solidly crafted game with a charming visual style. excellent use of lighting and palette all over the place. there's a good variety of weapons here with most of them having some kind of alt-fire shot.

i really enjoyed the map and odd (but great) enemy designs. maps were large and varied, but not so distinct from each other that each new map became a confusing maze. it was all very coherent.

something that really stuck out to me was how quiet this game was outside of combat. the ambient, eerie music/sfx throughout these maps sets the atmosphere for this bizarre world. that said, i do wish there were some more exciting tracks on here to fit the pace of the combat.

this game sent me down a path of playing more of these shooters, but not because it left me wanting for something that it lacked. i somehow didn't realize how fun it could be to tear asunder everything in my sight with a couple of guns. it feels great to play and it's visually very appealing.

my main gripe with this was what usually turned me off from games of this genre: the loop of finding some keys and running to a door. not too much of a problem really, but some of the maps look a samey to me and it makes running around a bit of a drag. despite that, i thought they nailed the 40k industrial cathedral aesthetic.

more navigationally inclined people will likely have no problem with that though, so go nuts and blast those aliens, those mutants, those heretics.

the aspect of AC that might be immediately jarring for players is the control scheme. while controls are customizable within the game, it does take some time getting used to not having that right analog when you're trying to keep up with how fast-paced AC can get. my preference is assigning all attack-related actions to the triggers, AC movement to the d-pad, and camera movement to the face buttons.

the second hurdle here is keeping yourself from going into debt when you finish a mission because it costs $400,000 to fire your weapon for 12 seconds. much like the first game, going for an energy weapon build seems to be what makes the early stages a lot less daunting and allows you to save enough money to pimp your armored core.

there's a really thrilling and somewhat addicting game here if you're someone that can get through those two concerns. the missions are short, so you aren't spending too much time wondering what the hell you're doing or being frustrated by endless obstacles. the arena is challenging (these fights are actually more challenging than the main mission boss fights), but it's where you really start to figure out what kind of builds you enjoy on your AC since you're pretty much forced to make modifications based on your opponent's AC.

also, the soundtrack absolutely goes ham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GCp9QMR5Ik