the UK is warming up, and as such i thought i would play a sunny game to match that. outrun 2006 absolutely nails the hedonism and escapism. what it lacks in the variety of mechanics you get to work with present in other arcade racers, it makes up for in style, summertime vibes, and a great batch of memorable tracks and music. keeping things simpler really pays off here, even if it does lead to the game feeling a teeny tiny bit monotonous. the various modes are fun on their own, however can get a bit repetitive if you're playing through the campaign.

impressing your girlfriend through comitting various acts of heinous vehicular ABH never gets old, and i love how every rank you can score on these levels has a different reaction image. very fun to try and see them all. ignoring the special place in hell reserved for the spudnet-brained dingmush that created the abominable shitecunt nightmare hellfucks that are the 'keep above the speed' and the 'photograph the sights' missions for jennifer and holly respectively, there's rarely a dull moment while playing this game. great arcade racer and i will be returning to it soon to try out outrun 2 sp.

janky as hell, with a particularly gruelling and demanding final few levels (this game REALLY doesn't know when it should end), but everything else here is golden. the control scheme does take some getting used to, but it's fun to use once you do. the charm is plentiful, the soundtrack is very good, and there's just a vibe resonating through this game that i really dig yet can't quite put my finger on exactly what makes it so special. lots of quirk and personality, too. plus we have some british voice actors for the PAL release which is very nice.

what can i say? this game's legendary status is more than earned. i cannot imagine playing this for the first time in 1998, it must have been absolutely mind-exploding. playing it for the first time in 2024, sure, there are some rough edges. some of the bosses aren't great and the gameplay leaves a little bit to be desired.

but, when you have a story as good as this, when the voice acting is as great as this, when you have the brilliant ability to balance comedy and drama and sometimes seamlessly combine the two, when the music is this great, when the codec conversations are probably the best out of any MGS game (thanks to yoji shinkawa's incredible character portraits), when you have the brilliant fourth-wall shattering, and when the overall atmosphere and colour palette is one of the most immersive of any game i've ever played in spite of the aged graphics, fucking hell man. i cannot help but adore this game. hideo kojima is a horny little genius.

zone of the enders 1 is an OK game. it has a hefty amount of problems, and doesn't amount to much more than a tech demo, but it's a fun enough tech demo. the combat system is fun enough to use and the story and voice acting have a kind of so-bad-they're-good quality to them. it's the exact kind of game a sequel is essential for, and in this case it would have been a doddle to make it good. give it a good narrative, make the voice acting work, and tighten up the mission design, and you would have something truly special. the high praise for this game left me excited to see what a truly good ZotE game would look like. those hopes did not last long.

there is far too much clunk. there is far too much jank. the experience of playing this game has aged like milk. the difficulty step up is monumental, for a start. certain sections of this game took far too long to complete. one after another, you are hit with missions that are just so poorly designed and repetitive. whoever conceived of the train level, there is a special place in hell for you.

the player has to constantly fight the awful camera system you get to work with. furthermore, you have to work around this hideous lock-on system. it works fine in a handful of battle scenarios (although often leads to these situations being so visually disorientating and chaotic you want to be sick) but something the game constantly likes to do is throw swarms of tiny enemies at you. this wouldn't be too bad on its own, but when there are other actually threatening robots in the mix, it's all over. when you are just trying to lock-on to the robot that is pummelling you, and the lock-on system is targeting individual enemies in these swarms, you feel a frustration i cannot put into words. just awful to play, and feels so bad.

the majority of your subweapons are useless in the majority of battle scenarios, too. this means that your best bet is to hack-and-slash through your opponents, and the game is not well-designed around this and doing it just feels so mindless and mind-numbing. the story starts out interesting, and there's a particularly cool cameo for players of the first ZotE game, which was nice. however it just doesn't lead to anything interesting happening and the cutscene writing feels like a combination of MGS and the more tech jargony stuff in a mecha anime like evangelion. that, and the voice acting is now just flat-out lifeless.

fuck, man. i was rooting for this game at the start. but, by its end, i had grown so sick and tired of it. ZotE 2 totally failed to live up to any expectations i had for it, and is proof that just because a sequel is bigger does not mean it's better. improving on the first game should have been so easy, and how hard they failed in that way just makes me sad.

yes this means i prefer the first ZotE game. i am not immune to abysmal takes, it seems.

i took my copy to a video game store and they cleaned the disc properly and it worked perfectly after that so lol

gitaroo man is so bizarre and weird but, like, in the absolute best way possible. the story is nonsense but so heartwarming and charming and surreal you kinda have to fall in love with it. mechanically it plays unlike any other rhythm game i've seen, while also using an easily understandable and unique system when it comes to playing in time with the music. and what incredible music it is.

so much of this game is about the art style and presentation, though, and it has one of my favourite overall aesthetics of any game. i don't know what it is about this game's look but it just scratches an itch i never knew i had. all the elements work in tandem with each other to form one of the tightest, most cohesive visions i have ever seen a game put out, and it concludes with one of the greatest endings to a rhythm game perhaps ever put to disc. i cannot wait to give master's play a full shot, and to listen to the soundtrack every day until i die.