spageddystyle
2018
Great sprite work, tight snappy controls, far beyond my grasps in regards to platformers.
Despite it's best attempts to remind me to be calm, it got to be too much for me, still absolutely respect the level of polish and care went into how the game actually feels to play and look!
Despite it's best attempts to remind me to be calm, it got to be too much for me, still absolutely respect the level of polish and care went into how the game actually feels to play and look!
2011
Terraria is similar to Minecraft in the fact that you can place blocks in the world to create various shapes and structures.
Veering away from it's Minecraft inspirations, it has an unfathomable trove of weapons as you progress ranging from absolute gag weapons that only shoot like little worthless sparks, to world ending super nova summoning magic weapons and swords that are psychically controlled by your character annihilating anything in their way!
Progression in this game is much more straight forward than Minecraft, and has characters you can talk with and do trades for simple currency, while not as unconventional as Minecraft's villager system, it is much easier to comprehend.
The world size is at once a boon and a downfall as unlike Minecraft it will not go on forever, and has very boring world generation. You won't see random peaks and valleys and rivers and canals like you would in Minecraft but it always means you know where you're at in relation to the world.
Another aspect that this game goes for that Minecraft does not is sheer volume of enemies, bosses, events where Holiday themed Jack-O-Lanterns throw energy swords at you and Santa decorated tanks with gatling guns come to destroy you.
It has a very satisfying escalation as you progress from simple swords/spells to taking on the legions of an old world alien army harolds the return of a Lovecraftian nightmare God. Hoards of enemies keep up with you as you get stronger in the game, that sense it is very satisfying.
A major drawback to this game is it is far more enjoyable with friends than it is on it's own. While the game does do it's best to advise you where to go with hints and sometimes even force spawning in bosses for progressions sake, it still can end up feeling like "God what am I doing" you know? That feeling you get when you've scratched your head too long and resign yourself to looking up a walkthrough and sucking some of the game's magic from itself.
This is a game that lives and dies by the fact it is primarily a multiplayer focused adventure. Single player is an adequate experience, it is possible but the mania of the game shines so bright with multiple friends goofing around with all the wild weapons you have accumulated through the game (Literally hundreds of weapons cannot stress that enough)
I'd say another drawback is it has a very inconsistent artstyle, it is very obvious some sprites have not been edited/touched up since it's first inception back in early 2010. There are far more pleasant sprites clashed together with almost beta base sprite work can give you whiplash.
Not just art presentation wise, the game wildly varies in regards to actual animation quality, some enemies don't have much animation at all, making it hard to understand what hectic attack they may use next.
Those criticisms are worth pointing out, but for me, I still had a great blast over the years coming back to this and having that feeling of progression and beating the world as it beats back on you.
A solid recommendation for game night with your friends, a bit less so on your own.
Veering away from it's Minecraft inspirations, it has an unfathomable trove of weapons as you progress ranging from absolute gag weapons that only shoot like little worthless sparks, to world ending super nova summoning magic weapons and swords that are psychically controlled by your character annihilating anything in their way!
Progression in this game is much more straight forward than Minecraft, and has characters you can talk with and do trades for simple currency, while not as unconventional as Minecraft's villager system, it is much easier to comprehend.
The world size is at once a boon and a downfall as unlike Minecraft it will not go on forever, and has very boring world generation. You won't see random peaks and valleys and rivers and canals like you would in Minecraft but it always means you know where you're at in relation to the world.
Another aspect that this game goes for that Minecraft does not is sheer volume of enemies, bosses, events where Holiday themed Jack-O-Lanterns throw energy swords at you and Santa decorated tanks with gatling guns come to destroy you.
It has a very satisfying escalation as you progress from simple swords/spells to taking on the legions of an old world alien army harolds the return of a Lovecraftian nightmare God. Hoards of enemies keep up with you as you get stronger in the game, that sense it is very satisfying.
A major drawback to this game is it is far more enjoyable with friends than it is on it's own. While the game does do it's best to advise you where to go with hints and sometimes even force spawning in bosses for progressions sake, it still can end up feeling like "God what am I doing" you know? That feeling you get when you've scratched your head too long and resign yourself to looking up a walkthrough and sucking some of the game's magic from itself.
This is a game that lives and dies by the fact it is primarily a multiplayer focused adventure. Single player is an adequate experience, it is possible but the mania of the game shines so bright with multiple friends goofing around with all the wild weapons you have accumulated through the game (Literally hundreds of weapons cannot stress that enough)
I'd say another drawback is it has a very inconsistent artstyle, it is very obvious some sprites have not been edited/touched up since it's first inception back in early 2010. There are far more pleasant sprites clashed together with almost beta base sprite work can give you whiplash.
Not just art presentation wise, the game wildly varies in regards to actual animation quality, some enemies don't have much animation at all, making it hard to understand what hectic attack they may use next.
Those criticisms are worth pointing out, but for me, I still had a great blast over the years coming back to this and having that feeling of progression and beating the world as it beats back on you.
A solid recommendation for game night with your friends, a bit less so on your own.
2015
For all it's anger, all it's focus in being unpleasant and dark and brooding, it's boring.
It's isometric view and visuals all being in black and three thousand shades of grey make it hard to keep track of your all black clad murder man and there are elements that are actually effective, blowing up grenades/pipe lines make walls and houses crumble, and that one segment where you go into the police station all the phone lines are ringing and nobody's there to pick them up, that's an actually creepy scene, a star for that.
The ending of the game is fantastic because your long haired Cousin It school shooter guy goes to a nuclear plant and demands "HOW DO I OVERLOAD THE REACTORS" in a segment that reminds me of Xavier Renegade Angel. Another star for that.
It has aspirations to be like the first postal game, but it just feels like a bunch of kids from newgrounds got an associates degree in animation and got a bunch of assets from Unity.
It's isometric view and visuals all being in black and three thousand shades of grey make it hard to keep track of your all black clad murder man and there are elements that are actually effective, blowing up grenades/pipe lines make walls and houses crumble, and that one segment where you go into the police station all the phone lines are ringing and nobody's there to pick them up, that's an actually creepy scene, a star for that.
The ending of the game is fantastic because your long haired Cousin It school shooter guy goes to a nuclear plant and demands "HOW DO I OVERLOAD THE REACTORS" in a segment that reminds me of Xavier Renegade Angel. Another star for that.
It has aspirations to be like the first postal game, but it just feels like a bunch of kids from newgrounds got an associates degree in animation and got a bunch of assets from Unity.
You have to appreciate the characters' stories being on par with watching Sons of Anarchy while you have a life threatening fever.
You have to stand in awe of the gameplay being delayed from when you hit a button to when your character actually performs that action.
Be witness to the the worst cutscenes ever animated and presented, not only having sound effects not load in properly multiple times, but the textures not loading on character models for minutes at a time.
Stand in awe of the worst combat mechanics that pile on literal dozens of weapons you will never care about because you can just kick everyone to death in hand to hand combat.
Be amazed as you will fall through the floor multiple times and cause game breaking crashes that may wipe your save file meaning you have to start ALL OVER AGAIN!
Have your mouth hanging in slack jawed wonder as your main character Jake Conway has clothes-on sex with random women and the game keeps track of that as a collectible achievement!
Hold your arms spread wide and embrace the worst shooting controls that may sometimes cause your aim to jerk up randomly to the sky when you're trying to do headshots on guys that run at you in a straight line like lemmings!
Shit your pants in terror as you realize this was also sold in stores on the Xbox 360 and realize that it had to receive an MSRP rating, meaning somebody else HAD to play this, somebody else HAD to see this!
This game is a masterpiece
A love letter to terrible themes, characters, and gameplay!
The perfect storm of a dogshit video game, nothing like this will ever be released in stores again!
Truly the King of Bad Video Games
Despite my rating, I absolutely beg anyone else that hasn't to play it, or look it up since you can't buy it anymore.
An important lesson in game design was shared in that: Game design is fucking hard, dude.
You have to stand in awe of the gameplay being delayed from when you hit a button to when your character actually performs that action.
Be witness to the the worst cutscenes ever animated and presented, not only having sound effects not load in properly multiple times, but the textures not loading on character models for minutes at a time.
Stand in awe of the worst combat mechanics that pile on literal dozens of weapons you will never care about because you can just kick everyone to death in hand to hand combat.
Be amazed as you will fall through the floor multiple times and cause game breaking crashes that may wipe your save file meaning you have to start ALL OVER AGAIN!
Have your mouth hanging in slack jawed wonder as your main character Jake Conway has clothes-on sex with random women and the game keeps track of that as a collectible achievement!
Hold your arms spread wide and embrace the worst shooting controls that may sometimes cause your aim to jerk up randomly to the sky when you're trying to do headshots on guys that run at you in a straight line like lemmings!
Shit your pants in terror as you realize this was also sold in stores on the Xbox 360 and realize that it had to receive an MSRP rating, meaning somebody else HAD to play this, somebody else HAD to see this!
This game is a masterpiece
A love letter to terrible themes, characters, and gameplay!
The perfect storm of a dogshit video game, nothing like this will ever be released in stores again!
Truly the King of Bad Video Games
Despite my rating, I absolutely beg anyone else that hasn't to play it, or look it up since you can't buy it anymore.
An important lesson in game design was shared in that: Game design is fucking hard, dude.
2018
A solid roguelike that I have not finished as I had advanced to a point where it was too demanding for myself, and having a run end going all the way back to the beginning was deflating on an emotional scale.
Great visuals, great enemy design, addictive combat, great music, and there's a story that progresses more the more runs you go through, a'la Hades.
I think Dead Cells beats out Hades on sheer enemy variety and weapons and tactics available to mix and match as you wish.
Great visuals, great enemy design, addictive combat, great music, and there's a story that progresses more the more runs you go through, a'la Hades.
I think Dead Cells beats out Hades on sheer enemy variety and weapons and tactics available to mix and match as you wish.
A sloppy game with wonderfully phoned in voice performances by various A list actors, and horrific dialogue from Nick Kang, the worst cop in an ocean of bad cops.
Though I do give this game stars due to it's immersion with performing police work, turning on your sirens, chasing a gang car shooting you with uzis, getting them to crash their car, hop out and take the gun fight on the street and shooting back, and trying to arrest the guys that aren't immediately gunned down for bonus points.
You're also able to frisk random passers by for contraband/weapons which in real life is a horrific gross invasion of privacy and agency, but in this game it gives you a little bonus when you frisk a random old lady and pull out an ak-47 from thin air and arrest them, and throw them on the ground like a sack of potatoes.
While the dialogue is ham-fisted with varying degrees of racist accents, the story escalation gives me cozy vibes from old 80s/90s loose cannon cop movies, as well as John Wu because Nick can dual wield weapons which is so much fun and you can upgrade his pistols to the point he is dual wielding .45 caliber desert eagles and just obliterate goons while diving in slow motion, the only thing missing is a flock of doves flowing from you as you do it!
Starting from following random gang bangers ending with stopping an international communist conspiracy to end US banking, there is fun to be had.
Though all that sounds great it's held back because the controls are very stiff and has horrible auto aiming.
Not as bad as something like Drake and the 99 Dragons but still very poor. Driving feels like you're on ice and there's combat thrown in because this game didn't have enough to juggle, boils down to hopelessly mashing until you get the prompt to mash in buttons more to perform a special move.
Sloppy, sloppy PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era gameplay, absolutely the game I'd recommend you rent from Movie Gallery for a weekend back in the day!
Though I do give this game stars due to it's immersion with performing police work, turning on your sirens, chasing a gang car shooting you with uzis, getting them to crash their car, hop out and take the gun fight on the street and shooting back, and trying to arrest the guys that aren't immediately gunned down for bonus points.
You're also able to frisk random passers by for contraband/weapons which in real life is a horrific gross invasion of privacy and agency, but in this game it gives you a little bonus when you frisk a random old lady and pull out an ak-47 from thin air and arrest them, and throw them on the ground like a sack of potatoes.
While the dialogue is ham-fisted with varying degrees of racist accents, the story escalation gives me cozy vibes from old 80s/90s loose cannon cop movies, as well as John Wu because Nick can dual wield weapons which is so much fun and you can upgrade his pistols to the point he is dual wielding .45 caliber desert eagles and just obliterate goons while diving in slow motion, the only thing missing is a flock of doves flowing from you as you do it!
Starting from following random gang bangers ending with stopping an international communist conspiracy to end US banking, there is fun to be had.
Though all that sounds great it's held back because the controls are very stiff and has horrible auto aiming.
Not as bad as something like Drake and the 99 Dragons but still very poor. Driving feels like you're on ice and there's combat thrown in because this game didn't have enough to juggle, boils down to hopelessly mashing until you get the prompt to mash in buttons more to perform a special move.
Sloppy, sloppy PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era gameplay, absolutely the game I'd recommend you rent from Movie Gallery for a weekend back in the day!
Travis Strikes Again is as much a story of Travis Touchdown's adventures outside in isolation from the UAA ranking assassin fights, as it is a story of the main director and head of Grasshopper Manufacture: Suda51
The game shows Travis Touchdown, by far Suda's most popular character, as well as most relatable for us as an audience and him as a creator going through various stages of Suda's development as a game designer, from the starts of him being inspired from kitschy arcade games, to his stage where he developed visual novel stories such as Silver Case being reflected in Coffee and Donuts all the way to Suda's history of development with Shadows of the Damned.
Theme wise it also explores the greater world of Suda led game projects like Silver Case, Moonlight Syndrome, Killer7, hell even Fire Pro Wrestling is mentioned and looked at from Travis' lens.
Gameplay is on the surface simplistic to the max where you can only do one type of light attack and a 3 hit heavy combo attack, but the true gameplay interactions come from the Death Drive abilities which Travis has equipped, you can force push people, shoot out projectiles to stun, then the weird ones that let him shoot out a canister of flammable gas that he can light on fire, mixing and matching those Death Drive chips are incredible fun seeing the best ways to clear the multitudes of enemies the game throws at you!
Dialogue wise this is Suda at possibly his finest, years to reflect on his limited involvement in the actual knitty-gritty of game making, deconstructions of themes and characters from his own games and contemporary games through the times he has been active.
Less Travis Strikes Back, more like Suda Strikes Back! Bewildering, engaging, and confounding and deeply personal as ever!
The game shows Travis Touchdown, by far Suda's most popular character, as well as most relatable for us as an audience and him as a creator going through various stages of Suda's development as a game designer, from the starts of him being inspired from kitschy arcade games, to his stage where he developed visual novel stories such as Silver Case being reflected in Coffee and Donuts all the way to Suda's history of development with Shadows of the Damned.
Theme wise it also explores the greater world of Suda led game projects like Silver Case, Moonlight Syndrome, Killer7, hell even Fire Pro Wrestling is mentioned and looked at from Travis' lens.
Gameplay is on the surface simplistic to the max where you can only do one type of light attack and a 3 hit heavy combo attack, but the true gameplay interactions come from the Death Drive abilities which Travis has equipped, you can force push people, shoot out projectiles to stun, then the weird ones that let him shoot out a canister of flammable gas that he can light on fire, mixing and matching those Death Drive chips are incredible fun seeing the best ways to clear the multitudes of enemies the game throws at you!
Dialogue wise this is Suda at possibly his finest, years to reflect on his limited involvement in the actual knitty-gritty of game making, deconstructions of themes and characters from his own games and contemporary games through the times he has been active.
Less Travis Strikes Back, more like Suda Strikes Back! Bewildering, engaging, and confounding and deeply personal as ever!
2013
Elliot Page and Willem DaFoe and all the other famous actors David Cage haggled to be in his hogshit storydriven slogs should spend every waking day disowning these hackneyed, mean-spirited, confusing garbage fires to game design.
Playing this game is an exercise in patience and mental fatigue tolerance.
A marvel of graphical fidelity, and the least offensive David Cage story, yet still grossly off-putting, ham-fisted, and melodramatic.
Non existent input, melodrama by the bucket full, horrible Civil Rights allegories, and the literal only good part that people like is the Buddy Cop segment of the game with Connor and Hank, and it starts off almost interesting because Hank won't accept your kiss ass attitude with him, still falls apart at the end where Connor suddenly can become the ultimate Android liberator out of fucking nowhere.
David Cage is an awful man, and an even worse writer.
Non existent input, melodrama by the bucket full, horrible Civil Rights allegories, and the literal only good part that people like is the Buddy Cop segment of the game with Connor and Hank, and it starts off almost interesting because Hank won't accept your kiss ass attitude with him, still falls apart at the end where Connor suddenly can become the ultimate Android liberator out of fucking nowhere.
David Cage is an awful man, and an even worse writer.
2011
Utter contempt. Duke runs for president at the end, spoiled for you cause nothing matters with Duke Nukem Forever.
The worst of game design from a literal decade of game design. It pulls all the worst ideas: pointless physics puzzles, awful shoved in vehicle sections, weapon limits, pathetic wimpy sound effects, dogshit buttrock music, sneering self-absorption, and dull boring color palettes coalesce into one of the most hateful games yet made.
This was sold for money.
It would have been better for gaming as an art form if this was never released.
The worst of game design from a literal decade of game design. It pulls all the worst ideas: pointless physics puzzles, awful shoved in vehicle sections, weapon limits, pathetic wimpy sound effects, dogshit buttrock music, sneering self-absorption, and dull boring color palettes coalesce into one of the most hateful games yet made.
This was sold for money.
It would have been better for gaming as an art form if this was never released.
Rating this purely on the actual base game and what it introduced compared to the first game, it is a wildly inconsistent mash of levels ranging from hectic fun, desperate horror, and just aggravating back-track fueled slogs through the most boring texture work possible.
The influence this game has is from the community work with remixing the monsters, creating new levels, new monsters, and wild source ports that lets you turn Doom into damn near anything.
A seed of what would become one of the greatest game communities of all time.
The influence this game has is from the community work with remixing the monsters, creating new levels, new monsters, and wild source ports that lets you turn Doom into damn near anything.
A seed of what would become one of the greatest game communities of all time.
2016
This game snapped me out of enjoying Pokemon. It is a flat, monotonous grind of beating other monsters that are not at all equipped for anyone with a gaming intellect greater than a 5 year old.
It has pretentions of being different from the other games, but it still boils down to the same rote badge collecting that has been the same structure for a decade plus at the time this game was released.
It honestly made me really think about how I look at pokemon as a whole, and not for the better.
It has pretentions of being different from the other games, but it still boils down to the same rote badge collecting that has been the same structure for a decade plus at the time this game was released.
It honestly made me really think about how I look at pokemon as a whole, and not for the better.
Katamari Damacy is still a phenomenal game, with wonderfully off-beat presentation and one of the best soundtracks in video games, I can't tell what they added to Katamari Damacy for this rerelease.
I think the only drawback to Katamari Damacy to this day is that it is very strict on what qualifies as a passable Katamari ball.
I think the only drawback to Katamari Damacy to this day is that it is very strict on what qualifies as a passable Katamari ball.
2010
Unrelenting violence told so painfully seriously it becomes a parody of the God Of War series.
Gameplay is a bit redundant due to the 2 other weapons that are blades on chains you can switch between, the Hercules Gauntlets are good fun and everything FEELS good great sound impact and Kratos just being the angriest man on earth killing all life.
In summation: The gameplay is fine with not much impactful variation from previous titles and a story that wants you to be in awe of it so hard, but you end up laughing at it from how spiteful Kratos is.
Gameplay is a bit redundant due to the 2 other weapons that are blades on chains you can switch between, the Hercules Gauntlets are good fun and everything FEELS good great sound impact and Kratos just being the angriest man on earth killing all life.
In summation: The gameplay is fine with not much impactful variation from previous titles and a story that wants you to be in awe of it so hard, but you end up laughing at it from how spiteful Kratos is.