About the only iconic part of this game is the OST, the perfect level of Vaporwave and Mallwave goodness. Additionally, one of those Renderware games that impresses technologically for 2003, but is severely lacking in sufficient gameplay. Imagine having to research 4 different kinds of staff before you even come close to unlocking garbage cans as place-able mall objects. This game also comes with absolutely NO TUTORIAL so unless you figure it out on your own like I did good luck to you.

The progression in this sandbox is baffling. The scenarios on occasion come with some things unlocked but they're so difficult its tough to be able to enjoy the experience.

Played this as a kid and figured I'd give it a replay to try and complete it this time around. What a mistake.

Do not recommend if you are an adult with adult responsibilities. The villagers need constant babysitting due to having the intelligence of rocks. My closest of 4 attempts made all died out because they did not continually grow food for themselves, they just gave up.

A prime example of mid 2000's Walmart shovelware

I made it to about halfway through part 2 and I just can't keep going for now. This game's first part was a fun time, I enjoyed the shooting mechanics and bullet time. The enemy placement was fair and balanced. The level design was great, the opening Roscoe Street Station was fantastic. And then part 2 happened.

I have gone on record with several games saying that if it causes me to beat my head against the wall replaying the same hallway over and over I would hate it. That is the case for this game. Max can't shoot the side of a barn while enemies have laser-focused accuracy. The levels in part 2 become cramped hallways that give you no room to avoid shots. Grenades from Nowhere only add to my frustrations while giving me nowhere to dodge or evade them.

Its alright I guess. Weakest of the Freddi Fish entries, which themselves are the weakest franchise in Humongeous Entertainment. You can tell the series was still in its infancy in the Point and Click space, as the layout of things was way sporadic. Half of the locations and items aren't needed, yet still exist as things to get/do. At least with future games they learned how to code specific scenarios where unneeded things are omitted from the story entirely.

I always played the same demo on every other HE game I owned so half of the game I had committed to muscle memory at this point. Still a decent check off the list however.

Such a short microgame that I can't justify something higher than 3 stars. Extremely basic, controls are just adjusting angle and coordinates and then taking the occasional picture.

The lore is what made this game so popular, that and the fact that the biggest youtuber ever fell in love with the game and decided, "Hey, you could make a movie out of this..."

I love Dave Syzmanski's games and this fits his niche of just short form horror games that would be fun at a Halloween Party

Another solid entry for Games to Make Me Cry, Stray is an experience. Simplistic gameplay that can be completed quickly, but this makes sense given the fact you are a cat. Well worth playing and going through, especially for cat lovers. All of the areas you explore on your journey feel alive, and have a mix of Portal, Nier Automata, and Cyberpunk feel to them. Completing the game's few side quests/challenges are rewarding in their own right and work to flesh out the universe that much more, in a game that clearly prides itself on the artistic aspects of what make games good. Well worth a play in my opinion.

Meow (=^‥^=)

A really solid boomer shooter, made by a SOLO DEV. Holy hell. This was a solid time, full of good mix of action and suspensefull setpieces.

A very quick play for just a single episode and an interlude level, it left me wanting more from it. Which is the point honestly. For sure play this one if you enjoy games like DUSK or Blood. I enjoyed the gunplay with all the different kinds of weapons available. The best part was throwing TNT is the best method of ammo conservation which is just hilarious to me, and so satisfying.

I will continue to update this as more episodes come out, but whats on offer as of right now is solid enough to pick up and play right now. Highly recommend!

After 10 years, I finally managed to fly the seagull right and get the Triforce chart I needed to finish this playthrough properly. For context, I played this back in 2014 and that was all that stood in my way between completing and not; I sadly had to return it to a friend before finishing.

Now that I have, and did a full playthrough again, I still felt satisfied. Wind Waker is a solid Zelda game, full of magic and things to do. What I will say however, is it is far from a perfect game. I only have two major complaints that brought down my rating. I will factor in the HD version on the Wii U addresses my complaints, but I didn't have a Wii U to play so I had to settle for the original release.

1. I found the L Targeting system to be cumbersome at times, more specifically when targeting multiple enemies on screen. It would happen sometimes where I would be looking directly at my target, press L, and within a frame a new enemy would cut into view and take over the L Target. Maybe I'm just spoiled from how Kingdom Hearts handles its targeting via Lock On and allowing you to cycle through. I strictly remember this being the case in Ocarina of Time as well.
2. I know this portion of the game was reworked in the HD version, but the OG hunt for the shards of the Triforce became a slog very quickly. Specifically because of farming the rupees needed to pay off Tingle to decipher the maps. It drug out the game but the most boring aspect of it, that being sailing on the Great Sea. I will admit the overworld theme is great, but on its 10th or so loop while treasure hunting it gets old fast.

Apart from these two complaints I enjoyed the game. The dungeons were well laid out, even the final bit in Ganon's Tower was a fun challenge. The art style was different for its time but stands out and aged well I would say. The characters are varied and fun to interact with, I particularly liked the design for the Moblin and his goober face.

Again, I enjoyed the game overall and am glad I can finally put it to rest as a fully completed game after 10 years of putting off learning how to control the damn seagulls.

This game is a Metroidvania first, a porn game second. What I mean by that is the foundation of an amazing game is there and in spades. The boobs and butts are secondary to the main course, which is an immersive and engaging puzzle platformer. Everything from the art style, to the collectibles, to the story and writing are incredible. The flipping mechanic--the core aspect of this game--is used to maximum effect. Whether its for puzzle manipulation or completing the many quests you'll find scattered around, its worth it.
The music and sound design is also top notch and deserves praise, not even the hentai either. The music for each area was perfectly matching its tone and design.
I felt the combat for this game was also well executed, with the exception of the ranged attack. I never used it, only charging up to use one of the many items or abilities. Once you find your set combat items its more saving up slots for the many traversal options that are bound to the charge attack. A similar thing goes for the in-game charms mechanic; I seldom changed them throughout the playthrough because they worked for my playstyle. A fun moment speaking of, was wondering "I think there should be an item to allow fast travel to waypoints from anywhere," and then immediately finding said item at the next merchant. They really did think of everything.

I'm proud to have 100%'d this game, it was worth going back through each area finding secrets I either missed or lacked traversal options to get to. The rewards (in the form of Gacha figurines that play animations) were worth collecting, just as much as the post-quest scenes that play out. [Borat voice] Very nice! Even death was worth it, earning you a fun scene for either of the two genders. By the ending areas I was intentionally dying just to see these scenes.

All in all, super worth getting along with Scarlet Maiden if you don't mind having degeneracy in your Steam account like I do. Stylistic and a very fun platforming adventure. 10/10

This review is dedicated to Going Merry and Artax, two of the best horses who's lives were cut short by random bullshit enemy spawns

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that genuinely should be a live-action Western movie instead. For as good as the story and writing is (I won't deny this, but I will avoid discussion to keep this spoiler free), the game itself that this runs on only hinders it at every turn. After 50 hours of this I can honestly say this game broke me on several levels, none of which were from any impactful story moments or groundbreaking gameplay. This game broke me through sheer frustration at how stiff the scripting was to how terrible its gunplay felt, this game broke me through the absolute slog its last 2 main story chapters were, this game broke me through finally starting to get some enjoyment out of the experience only for that to be completely rug pulled from me and ripped to shreds multiple times.

GRAPHICS (4K, Ultra settings)
I wanted to get this point out of the way first; while I appreciate visual design and fluid animation in games, there comes a point where it becomes completely unneeded and distracting. Red Dead Redemption 2 blasted through that wall for me, to where I felt like the aesthetics were just a coat of paint over the sheer clunkiness of under its hood. Having to cook each piece of meat or tonic at a fire or cleaning your gun for 5 seconds and watching the same animation over, and over, and over got so old I avoided hunting/maintanence alltogether. Walking through the towns and cities was nice, but I could care less about seeing each set of foot/wagon prints, nor do I care about individual blades of grass. Whatever poor artist that was chained to their desk to crunch on this I feel for, but only because they were made to work on something nobody gives a fuck about seeing. The water in this game looked terrible to me, someone who has a 7900XT gpu and set the water on Ultra. It looks like gel more than water, the entire body should not move when you do. Pokemon Legends Arceus has better looking water to me because at least motion of water is localized to the object displacing it rather than the whole segment of stream moving like a piece of fabric. I additionally had other weird graphical issues with finer objects like flowers and hair causing extreme tearing, but that I will let slide as that could be due to FSR, the shaders, or something else unintended.

RIGIDITY OF SCRIPTING
One main thought/thing I noticed early on with this game was how rigid some of the missions and ai scripting was. Was I overly sensitive to this after having just come off of Deus Ex, the ultimate genre-defining Immersive Sim? Perhaps. Would it have still been an issue otherwise? Absolutely. Even in one of the first few missions I felt this, where you had to hide behind a rock for cover. But wait, oh no you arent at the right spot to hop the fence so we won't let you at all, you have to walk 5 feet to the left and THEN we will let you. All the while in this sequence you were somehow detected so now the stealth is broken and your gang is yelling at you because you didn't walk the EXACT way Rockstar wants you to. This then happens later on when riding with your gang; I rode up a rocky pass for a better vantage point on a camp but OOPS you fail the mission because you were more than 10 feet away and not directly riding into the ambush WE setup for you because we built setpieces like legos. I had this issue throughout the game, I was able to work past it at times, other moments it would rear its ugly head and rubber band me back into position. "Oh wait a moment, I know you are taking cold damage which we JUST told you about as soon as you dismounted, but because you left your horse you can't go back on it to change. Your punishment is to stand A Framed on top of your horse while we Divine Intervention style snap you back on the ground on the side of the horse." I understand the careful design of missions, but in the same token there has to be some form of give and take or freedom associated with it. In some missions they give you that freedom and punish you for it, but in a lot of them they would rather just fail the mission outright and send you back to a checkpoint. At one point in the story you are in a shootout with a massive gator coming at your boat. I could not figure out the magic script for this encounter to where I would survive it, unloading all my guns did nothing, Dead Eye unloading of my guns did nothing either. I had no choice to skip that checkpoint, as I had nothing to go off of for what else to try. There are other moments like these that will be touched on in the other section as well, trust me.

GUNPLAY
By and around the weakest aspect of this game for me. Gun differences didn't matter at all when only headshots are a 100% kill, 100% of the time. Otherwise its a crapshoot. I directly coorelate my enjoyment of a sequece by the sheer number of enemies you have to face. The more enemies you have to shoot, the worst the guns were and the worse I felt. This was especially apparent at the end, when you are fighting literal armies of men. Each gun is slow, clunky, and difficult. None of them were standout, one size fits all weapons. They were all bad in larger combat fights unless you spent 5 minutes for each wave behind cover. Not only this, but I ran into the most frustrating thing I've ever experienced with a combat system. I had a fight with an enemy at point blank range, I unload an entire repeater into his chest. Not a SINGLE hit registered; only because he was scripted to be killed by Generic Indian Warrior #4 ONLY via a "badass" tomahawk kill animation some intern probably spent a whole year making. The rage I felt in that moment overshadowed all else, and that was on my second attempt at the mission after my game crashed during the ending cinematic forcing me to play the entire mission over.

No spoilers here either, but the final FINAL gun duel with <REDACTED> was the stupidest, most bullshit fight. Completely pointless. I unloaded an entire magnum into their skull, visible hole and all and they just walk it off like its nothing. Garbage.

OTHER THOUGHTS
After 50 hours of this, I really can only say I'm burnt out on Open World games, more specifically Rockstar open world games. Majority of the side content I found were all useless collectibles. Which is fine, but not to the degree of what's on offer in RDR2. It was WAY too much padding out of a game. I don't want to devote 100s of hours of my life filling out compendium after compendium for little to no reward. Thats asinine. Before I get comments asking "oh did you see so and so, their quest is pivitol to character development," my rebuttal to this statement is, if its such a cool key moment why the hell is it not part of the main story and missable? I'm not stopping to smell roses and waste time here, unless such things are marked on my map so I know where to go.
The bounty and honor system in this game was also insanely bad for me. If bandanas are your way of commiting crimes without being noticed, why the hell am I still getting bounties for completing story missions that REQUIRE me to do crimes? Why do you encourage me to loot bodies at cleared out bases, yet punish me with an army of bounty hunters/lawmen after 1 minute of mission completion and a wanted level? I don't get it. I went with a High Honor playthough as a roleplay of a Gunslinger that wants to be reformed. I hated how much your gang hates this choice and actively call you a pansy for being a good person, when its obvious that is what Arthur wants the entire time. Let me play how I want to, don't further ridicule me.
There is a segment in Chapter 5 where you are sent to a new map where all there is is 4-5 missions. Absolute worst of the worst section. Made no sense to the story, added nothing apart from one action a character takes that we already knew they were capable of doing. Never discussed again afterward. Why is this here? Useless filler.
If you are playing this on PC, do yourselves a favor and use a controller. This game is designed for it. I have no utter idea why Rockstar thinks Mouse and Keyboard should be layed out by a masochist but some frustration was alleviated for me by switching to controller.

The real thing, the REAL THING that fully broke me and made me dislike this game as much as I do though, was said in the opening dedication of this review. I bonded with the first horse you get in the first mission of the story. This horse carried me thorough the first 1.5 chapters, until a random mugging event where I was locked into the prompt to surrender. By the time I was able to break out of the scripting and pull my gun out, I was already dead along with my horse. The game saves this and counts your horse as dead. No chance to revive. I respawned in a field with no horse in sight. I wanted to quit right then and there, but I managed to eventually find a new horse and begrudingly continued on.
Artax was a much better horse, I got through a lot of the game with her and everything was enjoyable once more. It then happened again, random enemy mugging. Only this time they had a minigun that shredded me and Artax instantly, with zero chance to react. It was at this moment that I lost all desire to try and enjoy the game, all bets were off. The horse it gave me was it, I used this one to the end of the game. No name. No attachment. I was an empty man and only wanted to see this through to the end.

This game was a slog that I really am glad I got on sale. I did not have a good experience with it.