4148 reviews liked by raccoons4444


Ist mal nett für ne schnelle Runde, aber ständig auf Bohrer warten zu müssen und dabei 300 Polizisten abzuknallen ist auf Dauer langweilig

Some say that the best things are those that take its time in the oven before fully baking, and let me tell ya…

Tour de Pizza fucking COOKED.


It's almost heartwarming to see this realized: I still remember those first Pizza Tower demos on Twitter and Youtube and the Noise always being in the forefront, either as a boss of major part or them or an outright playable character. As we all know, in the final game he’s World 3’s final boss, not even the main antagonist of the game, tho that didn’t stop this psychotic gremlin from being charming as hell… but nah, I really wanted the fucker to be playable, and more than a year later, he’s here, to the dismay of all Italians.

I would have still felt satisfied if Noise felt less interesting or exciting to play as than Peppino, ‘cause I mean, it’s goddam Peppinno, but no, they just HAD to go all out and make a banger move set. I still don’t really know which of the two is my favorite, but that’s just a testIment of how fucking fun Noise is and how it accomplished what it’s going for: to make you feel that you aren’t playing as an overstressed cook, but as a goddam ANIMAL.

If Pepinno was the ‘’fight or flight’’ concept personified, then Noise is just the FIGHT, he cheats the game’s puzzles how many times necessary, he super jumps whenever he wants, he doesn’t need of Gustavo and Brick to save him, he’s got himself! Literally! Like there’s another one of him just becauseWHAT THE HELL IS THIS CHARACTER. And I mean, they gave him the sausage gatling, so at this point I’m pretty confident saying the game is finally whole, this is it chief, happiness has been found.

It taps once again into that sheer adrenaline burst that the first playthrough perfect, but in a completely unhinged way. Once you learn how everything about this mad lad works, everything clicks, the levels break open and the amount of tricks you’ll be performing are second nature: skate wall jumps, tornado spins into dives into jumps into more tornado spins, pizza crushers that demolish everything without much of a sweat and using it is super easy, and that’s not even mentioning how ALL extra mechanics, like the ghost transformation or the rocket, are completely changed to fit this rat brain’s way of acting, and it’s exciting to learn and glorious to master. They somehow found a way to make WAR harder yet more fun. HOW.

One would think that, since it isn’t a boss anymore, part of Noise’s completely unhinched persona would be lost in translation to playability, yet that couldn’t be further from the truth. Some levels even change lay-outs to fit him better and be more fun, but at this point I think it was the Noise himself that changed the before entering to make his life easier. His animations, how all title cards just have different drawings of his face on top of the characters, his ‘’no thoughts’’ face each time he fights a boss and how he can DEMOLISH them with the bombs (whoever thought of that should get a raise, they are so fun to use), some new songs that I'm 99% sure are just the sounds that play inside of Noise's head, it’s INSANE, as it should and then some.

It's Pizza Tower, it obviously was gonna be insane and good, but this is next level from what I was expecting, and I’m so happy it’s here. Noise Mouse is real bois, just that justifies completely another playthrough of this game, having bomb combos and level variations is the cherry on top…

Still, huge missed opportunity to not have Noisette or any other bosses playable in the Gustavo and Brick sections, like yeah, more Noise is fun, but I just think that- Oh dear, no I didn’t mean to- OH GOD THERE ARE 100 NOISES SURROUNDING MY HOME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

The odd one out of the original trio of childhood games I had on my N64, which still functions today thankfully. Mario 64 needs no introduction, Wave Race 64 wowed me with it's realistic water effects and attracted me with it's ocean scenery, and Top Gear Rally was kinda just over there chilling and not bothering anyone. Absolutely a dad pick if I had ever seen one.

Very much feels like Nintendo's unofficial secret answer to Sega Rally Championship, with a ton of care obviously put into the weighty movement of the cars, realistic suspension systems, and actual damage modeling. Using the control stick to steer of course means the handling becomes about as touchy as me on a bad Saturday morning with no caffeine. This is where the customization before each race becomes crucial to making or breaking how the driving feels on the course under certain weather conditions. I feel this is where most people give up on this game, but with such a small set of options to experiment with it shouldn't take much time to find your favorite setup. I definitely don't recommend the default steering/handling 1 for beginners, it's quite a tight endeavor~

What Wave Race 64 did with water and sea for me, was what Top Gear Rally tried to do for me with land and dirt. The depiction of the jungle track under rainy conditions looked simply remarkable to me in 1997, the N64's infamous ability to utilize fog to hide draw distance was done masterfully here and coming back to it as an adult reminded me of that along with realizing the little things like the headlights blaring from the front of the cars. It was something I hadn't seen quite yet even on Playstation or Saturn, and this game along with Wave Race really showed off how powerful the N64 was. It's a small wonder what would happen if the console were not held back by the storage capacity of it's cartridge format, but alas...I just wish I could've used the paint tool option, because I never had a memory pack growing up. ;-;

The crown jewel of the package however is Barry Leitch's soundtrack. I'm not sure if some prohibition era gangsters held his family hostage to force him into making one of the most beautiful menu themes I ever heard or what, but it's a drop dead gorgeous piece that I remember listening to for ages as a kid. Meanwhile PAL/JP got this insane energetic piece that has the exact opposite energy. The actual course themes are nothing to sneeze at either, the music for the Jungle course is crazy good with a side of crazy bread, and really gets your adrenaline pumping for racing in the rain. It really brings me back to realizing how good we had it for music during this era for all kinds of genres. These days if you boot up a mainstream rally game on Steam nine times out of ten it would blare some forgettable licensed garbage at you, which I would turn off near instantly and start playing my own stuff on Spotify.....or perhaps start playing music from Sega Rally, Top Gear Rally, etc...

sighs

I miss game composers man...

While I can see the appeal of the movement tech, Pseudoregalia hosts an extremely confusing and empty world with very little to do in it other than move around. I got lost about 2 hours in and the movement wasn't enough to keep me going.

A genuinely fantastic game with two major issues.

The issues: (1) No mid-late game map & (2) Unclear ability gates

The fantastic: Pretty much everything else
The movement is pretty boring at the start and finding movement upgrades is really unintuitive and difficult, but once you have a lot of abilities unlocked the movement is absolutely transcendent. I haven't had this much fun in a 3d platformer since Mario Odyssey. The music is great, the enemy designs are interesting (but I wish they were a bit better themed per zone and consistent narrative design). The world design is very fun and had a lot of "I'm not supposed to be here" type of moments where I felt like I was moving around a pre-existing world that was not created for my character to be in. Not in a bad game design sense, more in the cool and inventive ways I was able to use the movement to get around the existing world. I love the low frame rate animations and the low poly/texture aesthetic. It looks and plays so well. This game does so much right.

Going into specifics on my criticisms:
(1) No mid-late game map.
This is a self proclaimed metroidvania and therefore the player should be rewarded for memorizing the map and how it interconnects. Having no map is an interesting choice as the world feels expansive and undiscovered and the mental mapping of the terrain is a fun way of going about it. Unfortunately while the zones themselves are visually unique, the way each room connects to the next in each zone is not distinct enough to be mentally mappable. The doors that connect each room are mostly identical and fog covers anything past the door itself. This leads to constantly being turned around and not knowing which mystery fog door connects to which mystery box room and stringing them all together to get anywhere new feels exponentially incomprehensible. Castle Sansa and Sansa Keep especially are a nightmare to navigate given the amount of identical doors and small rooms. Mid to late game navigation turned into 15 minute excursions of wandering around hoping to find that one place I had been hours before with very little success. An unlockable and detail limited map for each zone would be a great collectible item that would go a long way I feel.

(2) Unclear ability gates.
MILD ABILITY AND END GAME GOAL SPOILERS
The platforming in this game is fun execution testing that never felt too hard for me. When I was platforming each challenge with the abilities they were designed for. Certain movement abilities are not clearly visually explained which challenges are designed for them. Specifically the wall cling gem and the fourth wall kick have zero visual indicator that you might need them for a specific section. This leads to platforming challenges feeling not impossible, just incredibly difficult. As an example of this, I was trying to get the Major Key in Sansa Keep but didn't have the wall cling gem yet. Using every other ability except the two abilities I mentioned, I was able to get almost to the end of the challenge, just barely. Using the wall kick I was able to complete sections of that challenge that felt hard, but doable. But the doable kept getting reduced bit by bit as the challenge continued until it was just actually impossible (unless you are a cracked speedrunner lol) with my current toolkit. But it felt like it was just a more narrow timing requirement that I wasn't quite meeting and just needed to get better at. Almost every other ability gate was clearly conveyed so I didn't waste my time on them or I at least knew I was trying to sequence break. The inconsistent way ability gates were presented lead to a platforming difficulty that felt very erratic and sometimes lead me along only to drop me off a difficulty cliff with no other options in sight. The way to fix this I would say would be to make it abundantly clear if the player is missing an ability in the menu screen. Like in Ocarina of Time where each item slots into an empty mold on the key items screen. We don't have to know what it is, but knowing I'm not yet fully equipped, plus making the start of challenges have more visual distinctions (such as a white paint on the walls for the wall cling gem) would have made this much better.
SPOILERS END

Overall this game is so much fun and if these two issues are addressed I would be absolutely over the moon about it. I still recommend it to support the dev, but it feel like a bit of an early access game with my current two criticisms in place. If you love good movement and the incredible retro presentation and are willing to accept a few major rough edges I very highly recommend this game and I'm looking forward to what the dev makes going forward!

Side notes:
The combat is completely adequate with some unique ideas. Dropping your sword from getting hit, throwing your sword, giving up power/range to heal. No major issues, but I would love to see more R&D put into the combat and it could be something really special. Also the lock on never worked in a way that felt helpful for me.
The story felt like a lot was left unused/explored. Felt like there was a great setup to a interesting loose/minimal story and then nothing was done with it. I would love just a tiny bit of additional context/lore and I would be satisfied.

Took me a little under 9 hours to get 90% completion and roll credits.

Pseudoregalia strikes me as a short and satisfying 3D platformer, though I hesitate to call it succinct. Its core strength is its simple yet nuanced toolkit, as its multi-faceted movement options provide great depth. For example, the wall-kick serves an obvious purpose as a wall jump by kicking between two opposite walls, but you can also use the wall kick to alter your trajectory and gain more air-time. This can lead to exploits such as wall-kicking up corners to scale previously unreachable platforms, or wall-kicking just below ledges and immediately reversing your trajectory with another wall-kick to grab the ledge. As a result, the game's many obstacle courses never feel prohibitive and are not so much tied to specific upgrades as they are to the player's ability to execute movement tech, making exploration feel much more open-ended. Unfortunately, Pseudoregalia's exploration is stunted somewhat because it's super easy to get lost without any maps or checklists showing the player where to go/what's left to collect. The room layouts further exacerbate this confusion, because the overworld consists of many long branching tunnels instead of focusing on larger, more open areas that allow for hidden shortcuts. If all of the six main sectors had shortcuts to one another so I could access any section from any main hub (as opposed to wasting time mindlessly backtracking through the same central hubs), I think that my overall playtime would have been shortened by a solid hour or more.

Similarly, combat simply exists in Pseudoregalia, and could have been removed altogether with little consequence. Aside from two isolated bosses (one tutorial boss and one final boss), combat is usually unnecessary since most enemies can be easily avoided by constantly moving about. There's generally no tangible benefit to attacking enemies outside of restoring energy for healing. While there is an unlockable ability that lets you gain height while attacking enemies mid-air, I can't recall any real need to utilize this ability against moving foes outside of the collectible's immediate vicinity. The combat's superfluity becomes even more flagrant thanks to a few forced encounters: these tedious affairs require players to exterminate various spongey enemies to unlock a room's exits. As such, I think combat should be taken out while keeping invulnerable enemies around as a threat, and health restoration could be entirely tied to save crystals instead. I'd also be okay replacing the final boss with a final obstacle gauntlet forcing me to put all my movement tech to the test: while not a terrible fight, it felt a bit out of place relying on fairly restrained bait-and-punish + heal to defeat a final boss when I'd much rather be zipping about. Regardless, Pseudoregalia is a solid Steam debut for rittzler that's well worth the price of entry despite its lack of polish, and it's a game that I could see myself warming up to further with additional runs. I can't wait to see what they've got in mind for Electrokinetic.

As a person who spent 50 hours in this game and did intense 1cc, I think it's awesome. 1cc video and thoughts in description https://youtu.be/SMl-uvgjdgI

Gunvein is a lesson. Even in shmups, arguably the most gameplay driven, distilled form of the videogame there is, you need a bit of flavour. I can safely say Gunvein is a very competent, aggressive shmup. But I can also safely say it's dull and forgettable.

It uses a clever selection of influences as a skeleton for a strong core gameplay loop, decent stage design, and good (if derivative) bosses. The big influences here to me feel like Shinobu Yagawa's games at cave - Ibara, Muchi Muchi Pork and Pink Sweets - with a heavy emphasis on aggressive bombing, score extends and some element of deleberate deaths thanks to a limited life stock. Throw in a scoring system that encourages quick killing absolutely everything you can and it's easy to get into the swing of things the game wants you to.

I would say the gameplay isn't quite there yet though. Difficulty balance is very weak, with the hardest part of the game by far being the stage 3 boss, and stages in general being a bit too easy compared to the bosses. The game's hitboxes are also a bit wonky in that both the ship and bullet's are absolutely tiny - and i do think it should have picked one or the other because you can really just sweep through whole bullet curtains and just scramble dodge without thinking way too much. I get danmaku needs lenient hitboxes but this is a bit too far. Ship balance is also wonky, with the only fun ship - type C - having the good old technical character problem of technically being balanced, but has to really work for it, being more aggressive and effectively multitasking to get the same results Type A and B do with far safer, simpler gameplay - both in scoring and survival.

But it would be easy to overlook the issues if the game had any fucking sauce. Even if I pick some of the most bland shmups out there, lets say; Rolling Gunner, Strikers 1945, Tatsujin - it is absolutely blasted out of the water in terms of thematics, character, story, and just a general feel. Gunvein feels utterly anonymous. The 3 pngs of those characters in the cover there is literally all the character you get. The game doesnt have an ending or any story at all, there's no motivation behind anything, and the aesthetic is this really bland neon-sci fi stuff. It just feels very disconnected from anything. It's just five levels and bosses and the bosses dont even explode with majesty. That aforementioned 3rd boss is positioned as a rival fight (and is also takes a lot from battle garegga's black heart)- a shmup staple where you fight a ship similar to your own, and in a vacuum its a fun fight, but the lack of build up, payoff, pacing and just a reason for it at all makes it feel hollow when this is frankly a really easy trope to turn into something that, for lack of a better term "goes hard."

If the gameplay was absolutely top, top tier it could maybe get away with it. But whilst it's good, all but a few of the cave and raizing games it imitates have better gameplay and every last one of them has better themeing and flavour. Even Deathsmiles 2. In the realm of indie/doujin shmups it fares better but when Rolling Gunner eats your lunch for flavour, aesthetics and thematics, the likes of cambria sword, SF BELUGA, Ikusaaaaaaan, Zeroranger and Blue revolver make Gunvein look particularly souless.

Roguelike arrange is also a huge meme. Its bad and feels pretty desperate to get some more modern gamers on board.

The bright spot of Gunvein is it's tutorial, which legitimately teaches the danmaku concepts of streaming, cut backs and hitboxes very well. It's a shame I can't reccomend this to a new shmuper though, it's so fucking dull.

I wish I could just grab the artists from Drainus and the lead game designer from this and smash them together. Each game has like the opposite half of the games' issues! AAAA.

The most I felt playing this was when I yawned and clicked my jaw

Was gonna start with some sort of intro or joke as always but now that I think about it I just wanna quickly say that I adore this game’s box art. The Castlevania series has always been synonymous with banger artwork but the composition and colors in this one are something else, and it’s probably the most menacing Dracula has ever looked in one of these so far… but that shield and sword that Simon is carrying are complete false advertising, that mf isn’t gonna use anything but the whip on this one!

The Adventure is quite a curious entry; as the last game of the series before Akumajou Densetsu, it would be easy to assume that this game was actually the true return of the series of its original roots — unless you count Haunted Castle and its Zelda CD-i looking ass… oh god I’m gonna end up playing that one aren’t I—, but actually, The Adventure feels more like an adaptation of that original adventure into a more simplified platformer, with even the losing power-up system akin to that of the Mario series on top of the usual health-bar and far more simplified and bare level design… oh and also if the original game was kind of a slog.

Christopher is a Belmont, and that means it should have the usual walk full of determination and commitment-based jumps… emphasis on should. The Adventure is s l o w, and when I say slow, I mean s l o w, and it not in a way that feels deliberated. I genuinely thought I was playing as the first protagonist in a game to have arthritis: Chirstopher’s movement doesn’t feel rewarding or like it has heaviness of it, instead it just feels like he’s sliding at a snail pace and like he’s being pushed backwards everytime he jumps, and you know, that’s already pretty bad, but I’m not even taken into consideration the slowdowns ON TOP of that!

I kinda associate this series with framerate problems, it’s always a price that the series has paid in service of its striking vistas and its spectacular boss fights and levels, and I’ve always refrained from mentioning it simply because it was never a problem that really got in the way of my enjoyment of past games and I every time it happened I just thought ‘’yeah, makes sense honestly’’. Here in Game Boy Land however, this old friend has decided to he’s gonna appear more than normal! From the moment the game starts it dawned on me that this wasn’t going to be a very pleasant adventure, and it never really got better, ‘cause even in those moments my jump wasn’t incredibly delayed, and enemies weren’t moving in power-point presentation mode, it didn’t matter because the base movement still sucked!

I believe that single HUMONGOUS problem caused a ripple effect in which other hiccups, some which were already present in previous and even future games of the series, were made even worse: ledge-jumping was a particularly annoying challenge in Simon’s Quest and it would return as the basis of many platforming challenges in IV, but at least in those two you felt in control of Simon, so imagine having to do the same on here but with a less responding character and the punishment being either to have to repeat an entire section or instant-death, at that point I’m sure it would be at least 10 times more fun having to clean Dracula’s own coffin for an hour straight.

The Adventure has interesting sections, mainly the eyeball bridge in Stage 2 and the entire first section of Stage 3, and other moments show snippets of a interesting and possibly fun game, but they are constantly interrupted by incredibly uninspired or frustrating challenges, inconveniences that feel like another level of tomfuckery — even for this series—, and the entirety of Stage 4, which I like to call ‘’The Gauntlet’’, and not in a loving way. If anything, this game has made me gain a much greater appreciation for Super Castlevania IV, ‘cause both games share that same problem, the difference of course being that in here they are much worse. And hey, some complain than in IV there aren’t any new secondary weapons or don’t feel as useful, but hey, in The Adventure there aren’t any to begin with and all your whip upgrades are gone if you are hit even once! JOY.

I’m not entirely sure how much this game being on the system it’s on got in the way of what the game wanted to do, and even if I can still commend the effort of translating a series into the handheld verse, I can’t justify its myriad of problems when nothing about the game itself gives a sense of unbridled creativeness or just general competency. Comparing this to even Simon’s Quest, my least preferred of the original NES trilogy, would be a disservice to the latter, because that game, even if in my opinion failed to bring to fruition most of its ideas, it tried, and in the process created a wonderful and original world and had many sections I do enjoy. In The Adventure, aside from two or three scattered parts in is three first levels, the only thing I got out of it is frustration and a profund sense of boredom.

All Castlevania games made me feel the former at times, but they always were much, much more than that. The Adventure has cool ideas, cool music, some cool visuals, and very little else. I’m sure there could be a good game in here, and maybe eventually there would be, but right now… I would prefer to not see the first boss in my entire life again, thank you very much…