Higurashi is a flawed masterpiece. It's my first serious trip to the town of Hinamizawa since watching the anime in about 2014. Events of the first chapters rang clearly in my head, but the second half, especially the latter two chapters, I'm not even sure if half that information was stuff I knew or not!

As could be expected from a VN, it offers a much more detailed look at the characters and events of June of 1983. And it is brilliant. Ryukishi07 is one of the best authors of our time, even if he is at times, overly indulgent & questionable. That said, it's an incredible ride.

The horror is excellent, and executed so well. While the club games' do tend to slow the pacing, their setup contrasts the horrific nature of what happens that summer. Despite the dip in pace when you start up the next arc, you are always, met with that loading screen--nothing but the sounds of the Higurashi. The further in you get, the more dread & ominous that menu feels. The concepts themselves are horrifying, if you really put yourself into the muck & suspend your disbelief. The sound of an extra footstep behind you. The tension of being a lone newcomer, as two of your 'friends' stalk you. The idea that someone could follow you, having perfected your walking pattern to seamlessly blend in. There are a lot of outright great creepy ideas that up the tension.

Blending the concept of horror around children is also great. We have a subversion where we are left to deal with two truths. 1. It is scary, being a child. Having less agency over yourself, your friends, and their situations, and the fact that you can just be sheerly overpowered with force or mind by adults puts you at a scary disadvantage. But maybe more crucial is 2. The fact that children themselves are creepy, and scary. You can see this come into play with the first chapters especially--just the idea of a child staring into your soul and knowing you, knowing more than they should, knowing your habits, there is such a strange ominous nature that children can take on. And while Higurashi makes it feel intentional, in real life, sometimes children are just kind of odd in a non-intentional way. I think this work plays with both of these ideas interestingly.

But unfortunately there's also a lot, even for a veteran of suspension of disbelief such as I, that kind of breaks it. And a lot of that happens in those last two chapters.

As addressed in Umineko, Higurashi didn't really offer the most fair mystery. After reading the writer's rooms, I understand some of the logic, but it moreso made sense to me in hindsight rather than how to solve it with what was given. Some things just outright blindside you, and the discussion of the rules and how to beat them, honestly went over my head. It made some sense afterwards, but. At times the absurdity is hilarious and charming, and others, it's kind of like hmm ok. One of the big issues is that being in VN format, it is often hard to visualize the SCALE of events taking place. They would say "oh there's 20 guys here" but then it feels like an actual endless army in the descriptions. And maybe that is just the scale of putting danger to children, vs me reading as an adult, so maybe it does work? But at times it was hard to grasp, for me.

The last two chapters really take away that horror aspect, and replace it with intense, action. And it kind of suffers for it. There are still some wild and horrific elements going on, but it does sort of miss the mark for me. I was still gripped with the final conflict, but the tonal shift was very apparent.

All in all, I'm glad I went back to read this. Finishing just days before the fateful June 19th, 1983, I was able to re-explore and re-introduce myself to these characters. And there, I found much that I'd forgotten.

Something as legendary as Higruashi could be sort of brushed off as the years go by--not that it could ever be forgotten, but as more media has come out, or as you've grown older, it may be just a chuckle of your first horror in the rearview. I'd personally started to think of it as my own 'baby's first horror anime' and moreso thought of it as a meme. And while there are many, and much potential for memeing on it, it's regardless, a great work, that is intense, brutal, and... honestly quite forgiving. The characters are all interesting, with deep motivational things, and the more you learn about it, the more you get through these arcs, information is splendidly revealed.

I loved the playing with VN that I've come to expect. Text colors changing to indicate something. Subverting the reader with a new perspective that adds much more to it. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on.

And mostly I am glad to re-contextualize it with my knowledge of Umineko. There is so much I've discovered within Higurashi to now analyze at a higher level, now that I can see the threads that Ryukishi07 was working with, and how he took many ideas, even minor ones, and spun them from the imperfect thread of the Higurashi into the Gold of Umineko. It is amazing, that this guy produced these two works, and spun some of the best fiction I've ever encountered. In my heart it's a 5* even if I think objectively some of the pacing & fluff detract it a bit. Ryukishi is the GOAT, and I was able to appreciate this much more with my knowledge of these two works.

Considering it’s humble beginnings, I don’t think Nintendo ever expected Super Smash Bros. to be such an important part of its line-up of games on future consoles. The first game was fairly light on what it contained, but it completely nailed the gameplay from the get-go.

It would have been very easy for Nintendo to make a regular fighting game – the N64 certainly had many failed attempts at the genre – yet HAL went for something new instead, something more geared for 4 players. Players no longer had a health bar, but rather a percentage damage (that could go way above 100%). The higher the number, the more you fly when you get hit.

The object of the game is to knock your opponents off the side of the map (or so far into the sky they launch into space). The main mode pits you against each character one at a time, but mixes things up with some team battles, fighting a horde of weaker opponents and fighting giant characters.

Every character has their own set of moves. The controls are simple (no combos to remember), so your focus in entirely how each of the powers work and the intricacies of how they can be used in multiple situations and alongside other powers.

Each player also has some special stages, such as breaking targets and boarding platforms. You’ll need to use the character’s full move set to complete them, especially if you want a good time.

The campaign ends with a fight against master hand, who does have a health bar, but also a set of moves for you to learn how to avoid. Once you finished, it’s not over, as a new challenger will appear.

While the roster starts with 8 very popular characters from Nintendo’s franchises: Mario, DK, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox and Pikachu, there were four more slots to unlock. When you fulfilled the criteria to unlock, a screen would flash up with “A New Challenger Approaches”. This is sadly something the internet has ruined, as discovering these for yourself is no longer possible – instead, these reveals are left entirely up to trailers. Beat them and you would unlock them to use.

Super Smash Bros. is a wonderful game, but was just the beginning for the franchise, the other games have improved upon it in every way – although the game still has dedicated fans, including those who add new content to the original, with a ton of levels and characters added.

The main story mode of this one – Road to Rio – is absolutely awful. It’s all about grinding stats by playing “training” games as your Mii instead of the main sports. These training events aren’t even original, they’re taken from the 3DS London Olympics game, although I do like the admission that the events in that game aren’t proper events. It makes the mode very tedious.

Luckily, the individual events are much better, with this version being a lot more enjoyable than the Wii U version. It had 14 events and each one has a “plus” version, which is essentially the dream variant.

Golf is a particular highlight. The main mode is a very good gold game, using the 3DS touch pad to hit the ball. The plus version adds lots of fun obstacles and features, such as ? blocks, ramps and boost pads. It’s an extremely fun mode. I would have loved to see this turned into its own game with more courses and it may by my favourite event in any of the Olympic games so far.

The rest are all pretty good, some utilising the touchpad (like Javelin) and some using the buttons. Archery uses the gyro really well. There’s nothing overly annoying such as blowing into the microphone, so it created a nice variety of events. The plus versions are a lot of fun, except for Boxing which just made it much worse. Volleyball has an interesting bingo mechanic, while Long Jump adds a spring which you have to use as a right angle.

While the main story is quite bad, the events more than make up for it, especially golf.

A beautiful game, that has never stopped looking beautiful due to a combination of tremendous animation work and art direction. Also a stellar fighting game that might be one of the most approachable fighting game franchises due to its easy pick-up-and-play mentality while having a high skill ceiling so that a good player can still whoop ass. One of the best fighting games on the Dreamcast since Virtua Fighter 3Tb is a big ol' stinker.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Soul Calibur is a very grounded cast of characters including a Little Freak like Voldo in it. Seriously, he looks like he belongs in Dead Or Alive where freaky weirdos are the norm, but here he is, doing his moon walk right next to Kilik.

i don't want to get too reliant on ignesque "this is the dark souls of rimjobbing your mother"-type comparisons, but i can't think of a more eloquent way to sum up the magic of wrestling empire than "wwf no mercy by way of postal 2".

my wrestler for most of my playthrough was sally, a transgender woman formerly known as "bathroom bill". fresh off landing a contract, she quickly becamed embroiled in a violent irl feud with another wrestler who was 100% A Butch Lesbian. problem was that sally had found herself in some sort of sickly stockholm unrequited love. how could you not when your job is to wrestle a hot chick? in a feat of dramatic (read: psychotic) frustration, she visited her rival in the hospital and beat her to death. sally then retired and spent the rest of her days chilling in the hotel across the street from the arena because there are no cops in this game.

i'm so glad i found this game. imo you haven't lived until you've crucifix dropped someone into a set of metal stairs, breaking multiple crucial bones and ending their career.

The best life simulator ever released bar none. Filled to the brim with soul and character, with the faithfully crafted styles of the early 2000s, and soundtracked by one of the most recognisable musical scores in gaming. Maybe it's most defining feature is it's difficulty, one I'd expect more from a Souls-like, not a virtual doll game. Trying to balance a household with more than a handful of Sims is an exercise in patience and sacrifice (and an interactive parable of life), choosing between your lifelong dreams and being able to pay the bills.

People say "Separate the art from the artist" but oftentimes, the artist and their sick and twisted perversions are so intertwined with their work that it doesn't even matter, and this is the prime example of that, and even if it weren't, the artist is still bad enough as is without his shit hypothetically not being in the game
Besides all that, this game is just horrible; a shoddily coded, barely optimized mess that doesn't even have its main bulk of the game coded in nor any original character models; and it's been 10 fucking years since the game started development!

The single greatest DLC ever produced. Could've been a fully priced game. Filled with content, fun, and above all, one of the most thrilling stories ever written.

Tony and Luis have unbelievable chemistry and every scene with them is filled with joy. The narrative is incredibly captivating. The supporting characters, Bulgarin, Yusuf, Rocco add in to what is one of the shining examples of what gaming can deliver as an artform.

This DLC perfects the magic formula of GTA IV. It is not to be missed.