Huge shout-out to @paq250_, with whom I played the entire campaign, and that made this whole experience 10 times more fun than it otherwise would have been, it was amazing to experience the sheer insanity and absurdity on display here alongside someone else, and let’s be real, probably the way this game was intended to be played. And despite how much I’m about to tear into it, I can say one thing for certain; it sure is a tolerable and, at best, fun co-op experience with some pretty tense moments and cool sections, especially when the two of us were separated and had to frantically find a way to save each other’s asses, which sometimes ended poorly since I can’t aim for shit.

There are some genuine smart decisions here and there: the down time feels like proper moments of respite, and it’s always exciting to see what’s new in the store and talk about what weapons each should carry and what strategies to follow after losing. So it is simply thinking on your feet, scrambling for any way to get out of a tough situation, and saving each other constantly, especially if there’s an enemy that has one-shot potential involved. There’s no master-class in design here, but still, even if shooting Lickers down while your buddy tries to access an out-of-reach area or getting the attention of a boss or strong enemy while the other tries to set up mines and explosives aren’t the most creative shit out there, they are nonetheless fun, and tense moments that work when being alongside someone to share them. Resident Evil 5 works as a co-op third person shooter game, that I can say for certain….

Doesn’t change the fact that this shit is ASS

I know this may sound rich coming from the guy who hasn’t beat any RE game till this one, but I’ve played and know enough about other RE games to confidently say that it astounds me how much RE5 misses the mark considering the potential it had and how it sacrifices the wonderful cheesiness of previous games for half-ass seriousness which doesn’t work at all. The concept of ‘’RE4 but Co-Op’’ is fucking amazing, and I understand that Capcom made this at it is, but in the process, they seemed to have forgotten everything that made that game, or any RE for that matter, interesting in the first place aside from the core shooting.

You only get 9 inventory spaces each, and even the size of times doesn’t factor in at all anymore, that just makes this inventory system less interesting out of the bat, and that’s on top of being a pretty cumbersome and limited system in a game that at times offers you too much loot and throws you into extremely hectic situations that don’t really let you stop and manage your items properly.

Puzzles are a huge letdown, and the fact they are even here boggles the mind. If they wanted to make a pure action game, sure, go for it, but then throwing in some puzzles that aren’t fun or interesting in the slightest just because it isn’t exactly fun. Hell, nw that I think about it, I don’t even know why you have to sell the treasures you get instead of getting the money automatically, since you can’t combine any items aside of healing herbs! The closest this game comes to creating an actual involved headscratcher is the classic ‘’you need x number of items to open this door’’, if only they didn’t have the most annoying hazards and the most questionable area designs, they may have even been pretty fun!

RE5 just seems eternally confused, not only by its existence as the next RE game, but also as a sequel to RE4 and even as a game on its own: Did you like the hooded man with a chainsaw from RE4? Well, he’s back, bois! Did you like the Gigante and the sea monster? Well, they are also back... in boring turret section form! How about unskippable, weird as hell cutscenes that feel like there should be a quick time event of sorts… except it isn’t? How about a story and tone that are... questionable, to say the least…

I swear, I haven’t felt so bewildered at a game as watching one of the fucking main characters talk about how horrible imperialism is and how the terrible practices of an American company have doomed an entire African company… only to massacre an entire population of tribesmen and steal every treasure you come across in the following chapter. Hell, you keep fighting them even in the chapter after that! Isn’t that neat and not at all questionable and horrifying?

Every time the game tried to make a statement of some sort regarding the horrors of neo-imperialism, I couldn’t get that out of my mind; the first two chapters and maybe the last two aren’t that bad in that regard, but 3 & 4 are heinous and kill every chance this game had at being a serious critique of sorts, more than the motorbike scene and the showcase of every single military-movie cliché possible, I mean.

And hey, even if chapters 5 & 6 aren’t horrible story-wise, they sure are gameplay-wise. It’s in these areas that the game is completely mind-numbing: before, you had some interesting vertical design or interesting areas and mazes, but now we have metal corridors and cover emphasis in cover mechanics and it’s… not good, to be honest. There are no opportunities to be stealthy in Licker encounters, most battles feel more frustrating than engaging, and it all starts feeling like a race to the finish line that lasts too long.

Even the bosses are pretty middling overall; the only ones I can call enjoyable are the first and last one, anything in between is a passable set piece at best and a boring bulled sponge at worst… scratch that, at worst is the fuCKING 5-2 BOSS OF MY FUCKING GOD. We spent more than half an hour wondering what we were doing wrong, ‘cause that piece of crap wouldn’t die except, no, we weren’t doing anything wrong, is just that bad of a fight that it takes an eternity to beat even if you set it aflame constantly, and it even reuses the fucking model of the first boss! HOW DID THIS SHIT GO PAST TESTING??????

I can get mad all day, but honestly, RE5 isn’t terrible most of the time, just incredibly basic and full of mistakes that bog down the overall experience, and it’s sad that I have to say this; this was one of the games I vividly remember watching my father play all those years back. Should I have him play that game at such a young age? Probably not! But still, RE5 was the first RE game I ever came into contact with, and it’s sad to finally arrive at it and encounter a product that can be so inferior to what came before while trying to replicate exactly that, and how it manages to be the most predictable and by the number of things ever while also being spectacularly terrible at times… and honestly? That may be the thing that gives it charm.

I can’t stress how much me and Paq laughed at the motorbike cutscene, how we lost our minds at the punch and kick animations, how much we laughed after finding out a way to one shot that shitty 5-2 boss, and how worth the whole journey was to see Chris punching that damn rock and Western yeeting us to a fucking volcano. The game is not cheesy, it’s a joke, one that’s still funny nonetheless, and despite it all, it somehow had fun to offer, both intentionally and unintentionally.

RE5 may be generic, but there ain’t anything quite like it… And maybe that’s for the best, but hey, the guy punches a rock! Funniest shit I ever se-

This review coming to you from inside the fucking wall of Blue Mountain Zone, which I clipped through several days ago. Please send help! There's something in here with me!!

If there's two things I love in this world, it's kart racers and complaining about Sonic the Hedgehog. You might view that as a problem, but I don't have a friend group that tells me things like "George, you're loved, you don't need to play Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers." Nope, it's just me and my brain, so with the help of my instructor, Jim Beam, I finally buckled down and spent an hour getting my class Robotnik operating license in Ring Racers' infamously long tutorial.

While the experience of jumping into Ring Racers has been streamlined after the game's first major patch, I would still encourage anyone who wants to pick it up to go through each lesson in the tutorial. Ring Racers is the most technical kart racer I've played in my life, and that might strike you as being a bit funny considering it's essentially Sonic Kart, but keep in mind this was made by Sonic fans, and those people are psychopaths. You'll want to know the ins and outs of your vehicle and what it's capable of before hitting up the Grand Prix, and though I've seen a number of people complain about it, I see the wisdom of blocking off the online mode until you clear the first cup. I can't imagine what it would look like if players skipped the tutorial and jumped headfirst into multiplayer, but I'm gonna guess it'd be a disaster for everyone involved.

I'm confident in that considering half of the single player experience could also be characterized as "a disaster." Managing ring consumption, learning where sneakers spawn to break shortcut barriers, understanding how to maximize your 3rd-tier drift burst, anticipating when you should "hold" your cart rather than drift, figuring out where and when to use your spindash... it's a lot to manage even without all the stage hazards and player-laid traps that are out to straight up kill you. Pico Park is my god damn storming of Normandy, I've seen people lose limbs on the straightaway, and good men stretched to the width of an atom after colliding directly with a Drop Target that bounced them back into the path of a Gardentop careening around the corner at maximum velocity.

Even the pre-race is a nightmare. You don't just line up all nice and neat like in Super Mario Kart, patiently waiting for the green light. You can roam freely so long as you don't cross the starting line, which means you can also bump into other players and force them over the line to penalize them. I said Pico Park was a nightmare, but I didn't even survive the first three seconds of Carnival Night Zone, because everyone kept bumping me into hazards in the pre-race, and when I was sucked into the magnetized tunnel that serves as the track's opening straight, I was flung directly into several hazards that caused my kart to explode. I died and I barely made a single input.

For the last week you could find me hunched over my laptop, drenched with sweat because it's 80 degrees here at night and my computer is overheating, gripping my controller and hissing "fuck you, FUCK YOU," and you might assume I'm not having a good time... but I am. Despite how chaotic and complex and downright vicious this game can be, I'm into it.

Maybe I'm just in the market for the kind of depth and sadism Ring Racers offers, or maybe I've played so many kart racers that the problem I'm having is that they don't have enough esoteric bullshit in them. Mastering Ring Racers' mechanics is satisfying, but understanding how they play off one another achieves an even greater high... I've graduated to a stronger drug. Naturally, courses are constructed around these systems in a way that's both mindful of low- and high-level play, and the loop of replaying tracks and developing better strategies to maximize your ring consumption and attain better clear times feels good, with few exceptions (Balloon Park and Blue Mountain can eat me.)

I really like the visual design of the game, too. The stylized menus, expressive character art, and detailed tracks all lend a high level of production to the game that's genuinely impressive for a fan game born out of a fan game born out of a fan game using the Doom engine. It can be difficult to parse the action sometimes, especially in levels with more unconventional color pallets, but I think the game has a look to it that really makes it stand out while feeling like an authentic progression from Sonic Robo Blast 2's aesthetic. I will add that this is one case where IGDB fucked up by allowing a cleaner thumbnail, though. I prefer the original, which looked like a magazine scan of a grainy off-screen photo taken at a CES. Much more fitting, if you ask me.

Of course, like everyone else, I still have issues with Ring Racers that I think really sour the experience. The pandemonium of the aforementioned pre-race wears out very quickly, with stage outs and starting line penalties becoming more annoying than humorous, especially given how long it can take to recover. There's also a lives system which feels wholly unnecessary when you consider that the capsule minigames that appear every two races could otherwise be used as checkpoints if you don't place high enough in a circuit to advance. The trick system is also interesting in concept but utilized so rarely that I often forgot it was a thing until I needed to exploit it, and I typically found myself fumbling it as a result.

I've said before that Sonic fan games are in something of a golden age, with hobbyist-led projects being of a caliber that genuinely blows me away. Credit where it's due, Sega appears quite comfortable with letting fans create games like this without interference, something I think has helped give the scene space to mature and which has helped to keep Sonic so relevant. Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers' kinetic gameplay and strong art direction impressed me the moment I saw it, and I think there's a lot of potential in introducing a higher level of technicality to a kart racer, but it does need some adjusting in places and falls a bit short of its promise.

Addendum: Apparently the game also controlled worse pre-patch so I may be benefitting by having waited just a bit to really dive into it. Seems worth mentioning.

I think the impulse to describe Crabs Treasure as merely a Soulslike is understandable given the somewhat divisive nature of the Souls style difficulty curve - but in truth Crabs Treasure is just as much a PS2 era 3D platformer as it is a challenging action RPG. This fusion is so unexpectedly seamless that its actually kind of difficult to distinguish at first, but when youre unlocking an ability that lets you break purple cubes that have been blocking passages in the past 3 zones and now youre backtracking through levels to collect pink upgrade crystals the experience is unmistakable.

And unlike most contemporary Soulslike titles that determine iteration on the genre means stapling more systems onto the side of the combat experience, Crabs Treasures combination of genres genuinely synthesizes novel gameplay experiences unseen or unrealized even by the Souls games themselves. You ever wanted a boss that truly roams an entire level and acts as a stage hazard in addition to a thrilling Souls fight? Well guess what nerd, the silly crab game is the one that pulled it off - and it might have even pulled it off because its a silly crab game thats slightly less beholden to the confines of realism.

Bonus Thoughts:

- The humor here is kind of tone deaf. Balancing serious with funny is for sure challenging but Aggro Crab makes their gambles with just emphatically bad jokes half the time.

- Swomps not in the game

- Slightly less serious Soulslike means slightly less serious about making sure things like input buffers are tight and unobtrusive, and therefore an occasionally more frustrating game to take seriously.

Tomodachi life is one of those games that often gets overlooked and neglected by Nintendo which is a shame because the game is pretty fun for a while, but that's all it really is... fun for a little while. Tomadachi life has little to no replay value once you've played it for a couple hours, the game is very shallow when you take a good look at it. The start of the game is fun when your making your friends, family, and favourite celebrities but it's once you get into the actual meat of tomodachi life that you start to realise there's not an awful lot to do. I will say I was surprised just how well the text to speech holds up, like it still says most words fairly well. Overall, Tomodachi life is just silly, wacky fun if your looking for something to play but just don't be expecting to be playing for too long.

Dawg there's no way 😭😭 where did yall get your license Make A Wish??😭 weakest Constitution dissenter.

We have Sonic Drift at home! Not really, not really. It does have Smash Melee's UI and SFX 🫢 a lot of elements were brought back in some form in Smash. I think Sakurai really likes Air Ride. Just a hunch. Air Ride's claim to fame is its famous portrayal of the west vs east mentality, what I mean by this is the contrast between box arts. Kirby you are not you when you are hungry, LUCKILY he's actually able to suck and get new abilities mid race. Sakurai has great priorities. There's not a humongous number of them, but truth is Kirby's on a diet. Indeed, that is why he's getting into baby's first sport. Yeah boi enjoy ur baby warp star, the "fuck it we ball drunk & driving" phase is very far away, but that doesnt mean it'll never happen. How many crimes has the pink puffball done? HOLY GUACAMOLEEE pulls out comically long video scrolling through war crimes.

The easiest stray compliment Air Ride can get is its presentation. The races design, progression and scenery all make a fine cake. You'll need more than one try to tame the beast. It appears however that I be pregnant cuz my ass is expectin. As I am beholden to this earthly shell and realize my time on Earth is slipping away, it has come to my attention that the lack of mechanics and the minimalist control scheme truly put the "L" in "Kirby Air Ride". It just gets old fast, unfortunately. it has to rely on the challenges checkboard and that's a telltale sign you will be stuffed to the brim! Hey now, for "Air" riding, the invisible walls trapping us in course jail have the tendency to make aerial control a gamble. The issue can be mitigated if you consume thoses races like crack, but as it stands for a new player, you pick a god and pray you don't facetime a wall of translucid concrete expeditiously.

Of the three gamemodes, the 2nd is a weird one. Top Ride has a niche fanbase, but nothing to quite put the capital R in it. It's meant to be chaotic as heck, clearly capitalising on multiplayer. You don't see shit tho 😂 get me a beer son! it's like watching an underground chickens race. Which can be pretty funny, sometimes I'm just wonderin why the invincibility candy is just a regular candy, gives me a lot to ponder about. I can't imagine myself trying to complete the checklist for that one. I'd be driven cuckoo so fast. Are a few music tracks and being able to ride a Toyota worth the grind. The "Air Grind" if you will. Ah! This is a sub mode in Nightmare in Dream Land ahah. Atleast we know what Korby Air Ride would be like as a mobile game my brethrens

Ok and for last, we have City Trial. Notice how it's not called Cities Trials because there is a singular city and only one struggle. It is like a Mario Party where no skill is required and only luck is involved, the apocalyptic events got me tweaking they are very uncanny Mario tier, Dyna Blade can just decide your life license is forfeit and no council can overthrow the decision. There are gift wrapped stats boosters across the one map, some might say performance enhancing doping not being frowned upon in the Kirby universe is quite the bold statement, yet I can only say "but of course.". It's about the journey not the destination and they were so right! The concept of gathering upgrades for a minigame showdown is very cool, too bad all the minigames are unbalanced and not my cup of tea to put it mildly. This racing business may not be Kirby's strongest suit, we goin back to fighting games and low effort 3DS apps with this one 💤

And here we are, the end of the Kiryu saga!

This game seems really back to basics in comparison to the last few games. It's just Kiryu this time, with one fighting style, and half the major characters either go into hiding or get arrested after the events of the last game. It's easy to think that this game has less going on gameplay wise compared to what came before it, and that's because it has less going on gameplay wise compared to what came before it. But to be honest, I was fine with that. Yeah, multiple protagonists was cool and led to a lot of interesting ideas being explored, but it was hard to deny 4 and 5 feeling convoluted and bloated at times. This game in comparison, I could tell you the plot without checking a wiki beforehand, which is great! So does Yakuza 6 come in close compared to Yakuza 0, one of the most beloved games of the last decade?

Not even close.

To be honest, I wasn't vibing with Yakuza 6 for a lot of the game. A lot of it takes place in a new Hiroshima setting out in the country, and the new area just doesn't have much to do in it. There's a clan making RTS minigame that's kind of fun if super easy, and a spear fishing minigame that's super easy to miss. The vibes are pretty comparable to Yakuza's 3 Okinawa setting at first, with it's cast of enjoyable bro lower Yakuza characters, who don't feel as impactful as the Y4 or Y5 characters, but that's probably due to not having to play as any of them. But the story is enjoyable and fresh, but then the next issue with this game comes, which is that I really didn't vibe with the combat that much.

This game is the first to showcase the new Dragon Engine, and it is GORGEOUS. The movement is lifelike, the characters animate really well outside of combat, and the lighting is really well done. Especially since it's no more loading screens, just walk into a building (or kick a guy into it and get berated by minimum wage staff)

But I don't know if it's just me, but combat in this game felt really floaty in comparison to 4, 5 and 0. Nothing really had the same brutal impact of landing a combo or well timed heat attack in those games did. Not to mention enemies simply despawning now instead of meekly walking away after you inflict 18 fatal looking moves on them. As well as the weird glitches like enemies staying suspended in midair if you beat them which happened to me multiple times. From what I've seen of Gaiden and Judgment, they seemed to have fixed this, so I'm optimistic. But as it stands, it's probably my least favorite combat after 1k and 3.

But overall, I was vibing with this game thinking it was gonna be on the lower end of my Yakuza ranking. Yeah, I was having fun and the story is interesting, but nothing was really jumping out at me.

Then the ending hit me like every heat action I've inflicted on a random thug colliding on me at once. Because HOLY SHIT, the finale chapter is amazing! Everything comes back for a series of climactic fights, all the main characters get a moment to shine, and it's tapped off with a series of post credits cutscenes that got me dangerously close to crying. No joke, this game would have been sitting at a high 6-low 7 if not for how well executed the ending was.

And so, I move on to Gaiden, and the Kiryu saga ends. And then I get to replay LIKE A DRAGON BABY I LOVE ICHIBAN KASUGA WHAT THE FUCK IS A SHAREHOLDER?!?!?!?!?!

The original Mortal Kombat, nowadays, could be seen as a mere appetizer for arcade-goers, showing off simple, yet still fun fights, coupled with plenty of bloody fatalities to leave fans satisfied when they were able to pull them off. Mortal Kombat II, in comparison, feels like the true, main course, providing all of the same bloody and violent fun and charm that the original game had, while expanding upon it by refining the gameplay, adding new, fun characters to play as, new gruesome fatalities, new moves to pull off, new stages to play in, and even different types of fatalities, making for a much more enjoyable and violently satisfying experience for fans of MK and fighting game fanatics alike. And naturally, just like the original game, it went onto become a major success, with it selling like crazy for every platform, spawning many imitators, being enjoyed by millions across the world, and is now considered both one of, if not the best entry in the series, as well as one of the best games of all time. So, with that kind of success in mind, trying to follow up that title in any way whatsoever was gonna be quite the daunting task. I mean, with a game that was heralded as a seemingly flawless masterpiece back in the day, how could they top themselves? Well, I dunno, but they sure did try to, and thus, two years after the previous entry, the world was given the third chapter in this blood-soaked saga that would be simply known as Mortal Kombat 3.

Just like with the last two games, this entry in the series was one that I had no experience with prior to me playing it before this review. I had heard mixed things about it before, with people saying that it was either a step-down from the previous games in the series, or just straight up terrible in general. But hey, at the end of the day, only I can decide whether or not I think a game is good or not, and I decided to stick with the original version of the game so that I can properly see what it did for the series before getting tweaked, as well as so that I can nitpick the fuck out of it. So, based on what I did play through…. I think this may just be the most mechanically sound game in the original trilogy, and a really good entry in the series as a whole. I don’t think it is better than Mortal Kombat II, for reasons I will get into later, but for what we got here, this was definitely the most fun and “unique” game in the series so far, and I am glad that I finally played it.

The story is somewhat of a change of pace from what you expect from this series and fighting games in general, where after his defeat in the previous game, Shao Kahn decides to try a different approach to taking over Earthrealm, with this approach being to have his Shadow Priests revive his late wife Sindel, who would allow Shao Kahn to cross into Earthrealm (somehow), and start to murder every living person while merging the realm with Outworld. Thankfully though, through all of the chaos, several warriors managed to survive the onslaught, including both old and new faces, so it is up to them, with the external help of Raiden, to take on Shao Kahn and save Earthrealm from his wrath, which is mostly a typical plot you would see from any other game, but hey, it is different from the typical “there’s a tournament and bad shit is going down in it” plot we have also seen a million times before.

The graphics are pretty good, still using the style of the previous MK games, and containing plenty of great animations and locations to fight in, but as for the designs of the characters… that’s more of a mixed bag (what the hell did they do to Sub-Zero?!), the music is great, having plenty of appropriate tracks for each of the locations, and a good chunk of them are great to listen to throughout, and the gameplay/control is what is to be expected from an early MK game, but they managed to refine and add onto the gameplay to make it into, in my opinion, the best-playing game in the series so far…………. even if the other changes made to the game kinda suck some of the fun out.

The game is your typical 2D fighting game, where you take control of one 15 different characters, consisting of both new and old faces that are fun enough to try out (even if the roster has problems that we will get into), take on plenty of different opponents in various locations throughout the different realms, throw out many different punches, kicks, special moves, and combos to get the upper hand against any opponent that you are facing, while making sure to block and dodge at any appropriate time, perform a fatality, babality, or whatever finishing move you wish to end off your opponent in a glorious, stupid, or gloriously stupid fashion, and take on several boss opponents that will make you want to rip your hair out as you try to conquer the bullshit AI………. you know, the classic MK experience. Everything you know and love is accounted for here, with plenty of new additions that do change up the way that you play, while making the gameplay smooth and tight enough to where, again, it feels the best to play out of any of the games in the series so far.

In terms of the main gameplay, there were quite a bit of changes made to spice up the fights that you will be partaking in, such as with the inclusion of a run button, which… does exactly what you think it does. This is a neat little addition I guess, but I dunno, I don’t find myself using it all too much, as the game feels fast enough to where it seems slightly unnecessary. The same cannot be said, however, for the game’s dial-a-combos, which are new combos that you can initiate that the opponent cannot break out of, allowing you to deal MASSIVE amounts of damage! I don’t find myself using these too often, cause the concept of chaining combos together turns my brain into this, but whenever I can pull them off, BOY does it ever feel so sweet to actually be good at video games.

Speaking of concepts that my brain can’t comprehend, this brings us over to the Kombat Kodes, which are essentially just cheat codes that can be put in before a match for varying effects, such as having an infinite run meter, causing the entire screen to go dark, or even allowing you to unlock hidden characters to play as. While I myself never tried to unlock any of these, they do sound like a neat way of changing up the game, and I appreciate the fact that they are there for those who are big fans of cheat codes. Some other minor, yet appreciated changes made to the formula would be with the inclusion of somewhat-interactable stages, where sometimes whenever you perform an uppercut onto an enemy which can send them smashing through the ceiling, and moving the fight onto another floor of the stage, which is pretty cool, and in single-player mode, you can even select your own difficulty option!............. which doesn’t help out much in some circumstances, but hey, it helps out for a bit anyway.

Naturally, fatalities are back in this game in full force, with babalities and friendships also making a return right alongside them, with them being just as bloody, gory, and ridiculous as ever. However, that ridiculousness gets ramped up all the way to 11 when it comes to the brand new type of fatalities introduced in this game, Animalities, which involves the character who initiates it turning into some kind of animal and proceeding to tear their opponent apart in the way that their respective animal would do so. These are, naturally, pretty fucking stupid, but in a good way, and it is great to see them play out, but… I dunno, I feel like this is kinda jumping the shark when it comes to these finishing moves. Don’t get me wrong, I am well aware of how ridiculous and dumb Mortal Kombat can get, especially when it comes to its finishing moves, but I dunno, giving all the characters the ability to animorph all for the sake of performing one finishing move………. definitely kinda takes you right out of everything going on, which is probably why this is the only game in the entire series (not counting the later updates) that features these.

This also leads wonderfully into the complaints that I had with this game overall, with the first being that, as a whole, the fatalities in this game are kind of a downgrade compared to what we had previously. Don’t get me wrong, there are some pretty enjoyable ones in there, such as one where Cyrax deploys so many bombs onto his opponent that it ends up destroying the entire world, as well as one where Sindel screams at her opponent so hard that the skin and meat gets ripped right off of them, but most of the other ones could either be seen as downgrades of previous fatalities to an extent, or they are just flatout lazy in their execution. This also applies to the babalities, with them pretty much being the exact same as the previous game, with no changes to make them stand out or be more funny, which does kind of suck. Thankfully though, we still have the friendships, with a lot of them still being pretty funny to watch, especially Cyrax’s, which made me burst out laughing the first time I saw it. Seriously, how can you not love that?

The fatalities weren’t the only thing to receive a downgrade though, as the character roster for this entry of the series is also severely lacking as well. Out of all the characters present here, we do get a good number of classics being brought back, but then we have other characters like Reptile, Johnny Cage, Raiden, and Scorpion, who are completely GONE, which is a MAJOR letdown. I can understand why Raiden isn’t there, because the plot does have an explanation for that, but I don’t understand why several of the other characters aren’t in there, especially Scorpion! Seriously, he is the face of your franchise, and yet you leave him out of this game?! That kind of thing should be impossible to do, and yet, here we are.

Now, this wouldn’t be such a big issue if the new characters that replaced them were fantastic additions to the series, but in terms of the new characters that we do get in this game…. eh… it’s a mixed bag. While I am a big fan of new additions like Kabal, Cyrax and Sektor, you then have other characters like Stryker and Nightwolf, who aren’t terrible by any means, but they just don’t feel like they fit with everyone else, and I never really play as any of them whenever I try playing a round in one of these games. Thankfully though, most of these roster issues are fixed in later updates to the game, so it isn’t that big of a deal, and in terms of any other problems in the game, the only one I can really think of is that fighting game syndrome is present here, with some characters being an absolute BITCH to fight against, but then again, this is standard for Mortal Kombat at this point, so I’m not surprised by it.

Overall, despite the lackluster fatalities and disappointing character roster, I am surprised that I ended up liking Mortal Kombat 3 as much as I did, as it really is a great entry to the series, with plenty of new additions that makes the game that much more fun, gameplay that is much more refined and smooth that makes it wonderful to play, and still just as much bloody gore to where any big fans of the previous games will be mostly satisfied with what they get here. I would recommend it for HUGE Mortal Kombat fans, as well as fighting game fanatics in general, but for everyone else, you would just be best with sticking with the later updates to this game, as they do tweak around a lot of things that this game definitely needed, but we’ll get more into that in a later review. For now though, I would like to leave this review off by showing you one of Kabal’s fatalities from this game that is just… something else. You’re welcome.

Game #591

Puyo Puyo tetris is the greatest collab ever. Something so random that it's perfect in every sense of the word. The game has tons of fun arcade game modes that will provide you with 10s of hours of entertainment, not to mention the whole ass campaign with a fine enough story for a puyo puyo tetris game. On top of this the game also feature online multiplayer that is super fun to play. This game is unironically in my top 25 games of all time now and considering I bough this for 5 bucks I'd say this is an absolute win. I'll definitely have to check out the long awaited sequel puyo puyo tetris 2 sometime in the future.

...I AM A ROCKSTAR!
Oh man, this is gonna be a tough review. There's so much I love about this game, so much it might be a new favorite of mine. Okay let's get into it...

Our game opens with the protag, Chai, jamming out to The Black Keys and waiting in line to get into Project Armstrong, an effort by Vandelay Technologies to give robotic prosthetics to those needing of them. One surgery later, and he's got a new arm... and a MP3 player in his chest? AND KILLER ROBOTS AFTER HIM?? Seems something went awry! However, it's not all bad, as said MP3 player has integrated itself into his new robot arm and is giving him strange musical superpowers. Not wanting to get killed by robots, he heads out to look for an exit.

This leads me into the gameplay and oh my god it's so good. I suck at rhythm games and I suck at most hack n' slashes, but put em together and you have a match that could rival peanut butter and chocolate. It's hard to describe, the feeling of landing combos, the shouts of "HEY! HEY! CHAI! HEY!" as you turn robots into scrap metal, it all...rocks!! Although there are a few things that annoy me, mostly enemies with shields. Enemies with shields require you to summon your friends, Peppermint and Macaron to break them for you (oh and Macaron can be especially annoying since his shield take two attacks to break and his attack takes the longest to recharge). Oh, and speaking of characters...

The characters are one part of Hi-Fi Rush that didn't grab me at first. Chai and our deuteragonist, Peppermint, start rather annoying. One an annoying dumbass, the other an annoying smartass. It's not until we meet Macaron and his robot buddy CNMN (pronounced cinnamon) that things get good. Chai and Peppermint go through some development, 808 is adorable, Macaron is a big lovable teddy bear, and CNMN is deadpan in all the right ways while still having a lot of heartwarming moments. The heads of Vandelay are a lot of fun too. Rekka is pro-wrestler turned boss with anger issues, Zanzo is a massive JoJo reference that you beat by draining him of all his budget, Korsica is probably taken the most serious by the game, Mimosa is and egocentric diva with a fantastic boss fight, Roquefort is a no-nonsense grumpy old man with an even BETTER boss fight, and Kale is the big bad, evil as hell, multimillionaire who you really want to punch in the face. All and all, the cast is amazing and fit the games tone to a T. I would get into the story, but most of the actually reveals are character based and spoilery, most of the actual story is just "Corpation plans to use robot limbs to mind control people, go stop em" and to be honest, that's all I need for a game like this.

OH SHIT I ALMOST FORGOT TO TALK ABOUT THE SOUNDTRACK! HOW DID I FORGET!? Uh...the soundtrack is really good! I tend to have a hard time talking about music other than "it's good!" or "it fits the tone!" and Hi-Fi Rush's music does both of those, but something about it just feels GOOD. The original tracks are amazingly made and the licensed tracks fit the mood perfectly. A part near the end set to Whirring by The Joy Formidable almost made me cry while I was playing.

So, that's Hi-Fi Rush, a game that is now one of my most favorites. I could gush about it for a few paragraphs but I feel like I'd either end up spoiling the game or repeating myself. I love this game with every fiber of being and I'm so glad I got to play it. How sadly ironic that Tango Gameworks fell to very villain of this game. Fuck you microsoft.

As a Castlevania fan, I've seen many opinions on the series' games throughout the years. Symphony of the Night is one of my favourites, and a lot of people can vouch for its quality, but there's also people who love games like Super Castlevania IV, Rondo of Blood or Aria of Sorrow.
But Castlevania: Lords of Shadow has always been an interesting one to talk about, because it feels like opinions on this one are really split.

While I have played my fair share of Castlevanias, there are still some titles in the series I have yet to experience, and Lords of Shadow was one of them. Being a complete reboot of this series, taking place in an alternate timeline, I decided to come into it with an open mind.
New setting, new characters, new lore in general! Of course, considering we haven't seen a new Castlevania game since Lords of Shadow 2, I get the feeling that this reboot's existence has put a sour taste in people's mouths, but I personally wanted to not think much about it.

So... how's the game?
Taking place in an alternate timeline, we follow Gabriel Belmont, a member of the Brotherhood of Light who recently lost his wife while demons are taking over Europe. The extensive rise of demons has been the source of the titular Lords of Shadow.
Now it's up to Gabriel to kill these Lords of Shadow to restore light in Europe and also find a way to potentially bring back his dead wife.
From there, he will meet enemies and allies, while he goes through many environments and obtaining new abilities!

At first, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow doesn't feel very remarkable in the gameplay department. While I haven't played any God of War game at the time of writing this review, I could tell that Lords of Shadow's gameplay wasn't too different from that series. Some could even say it's a rip-off.
And additionally, the first major boss you fight, at the end of Chapter 1, feels like it wants to capture the spirit of games like Shadow of the Colossus.

What didn't help matters was that, in terms of aesthetics, the game felt like a generic medieval fantasy game. I did have fun early on constantly saying "Crundle Quest V: The Crystals of Gingledoof" and laughing like an idiot, but that's more of a testament at how uninspired the game felt.

But Chapter 2 came and introduced Light and Shadow Magic. On paper, these aren't complex. While you have Light Magic on, when you strike enemies, you regain health. With Shadow Magic, you deal more damage. Simple enough. But if you perform well enough, enemies start giving you energy to restore magic, and depending on what analogue stick you're pressing, you can either restore one or the other, or even both (just split in half).
I think this made gameplay a whole lot more interesting and much more enjoyable. That, and coupled with the powerups you get throughout the game, and the abilities you can buy with EXP, the game just becomes more fun.
Although, beware of the QTEs. I didn't die to any of them, but they were a bit annoying.

Of course, I wouldn't say its complete smooth sailling from there. Sometimes, the game decides to give Gabriel puzzles for him to solve, and I wasn't the biggest fan of these. Some of them weren't too complicated, but others I simply gave up and looked up online.
I understand why they added them, to offer more diversity to the game, but I feel like the game's platforming challenges were already pretty good at that.

And yeah, while this game is pretty different from other Castlevanias, it does continue their platforming tradition, just in a different way. You can tell that the dev team was inspired by Super Castlevania IV, because this game will make you use your whip to swing from side to side or climb walls.
It's pretty different from how it was implemented in that game, but I really liked how it felt and I liked the challenges that the game provided with that, especially in 9-1. That one combines that with the Double Jump ability that you get earlier and it makes for some of the smoothest platforming in the game.
Thing is, they kinda don't do that much for the rest of the game.
Of course, there's still more platforming afterwards, but they don't combine Double Jumps and Whip Chaining as much, and that left me a bit dissapointed.

The boss fights were alright. They were definitely some better than others, but I generally had a decent time fighting against them. They really do try to be epic in a lot of them, especially the Titans that you end up fighting. These evoke that Shadow of the Colossus energy I was talking about earlier, and they're ok, but it feels like it's easy to fuck up and having to do a good chunk of climbing all over again.

In many of the bosses, you will hear either the boss character talking, or a partner of yours talking and, while I appreciate some of the tips, these got a bit annoying after a bit and I wish they would just shut up. The Titan boss fight of Chapter 2 was the worst with that shit.

And speaking of talking, let's talk voice acting! I think it is alright, with the characters speaking with a British accent to add that European "edge" (for a lack of a better word), but I was quite surprised that they managed to get Patrick Stewart to voice one of the characters of the game. And it's not even for just like a scene or two, no no, while you're waiting for the game to load the next stage, he will narrate what's currently happening. That's awesome!

I mentioned the plot a bit earlier, but there is something that I do want to discuss, and I'll try my best to explain it without spoiling anything. So, Gabriel Belmont is considered to be a dark hero in the game, being a protagonist filled with anger and edge and all of that stuff. The game is not subtle about it, and constantly says that he is blinded by the love of his dead wife, and gets more and more angry throughout the game...
Thing is, I barely saw that, especially during the 2nd half up until the final boss. Most of the time, it felt like Gabriel was more so indifferent to what was happening, and just focused on his mission. The dude may have commited some sin, but because of how infrequent it was, I don't think Mercury Steam succeded in passing the message that Gabriel Belmont is a rage-filled hero.
Although, I really did enjoy that post-credits scene, it definitely made me speculate a lot! Won't spoil it, don't worry, even if I have known about the big twist for years now.

One thing that I really liked about this game though was its presentation. Now, when it comes to character models, I feel like this game has aged a bit. Not as much as some other games, but characters are generally not very expressive and enemy designs can be a bit generic.
In spite of the generic medievel feel, I loved the amount of environments Gabriel goes through! From forests, to villages, to cemeteries with poisonous rivers. And that's not even counting the stuff you see when you reach the castle! The game has a lot of vistas and sometimes the game will focus on them, since the game has a locked camera.
I find the game having a locked camera pretty weird, but fortunately it didn't cause many problems during my playthrough.
When you're buying new skills or looking at the character entries, you'll see some amazing artwork and fuild as hell animation showcasing these, which was awesome!
The soundtrack is very much atmospheric, really trying to capture grandious moments, but I do think one of the songs I heard was a remix of a Super Castlevania IV song, and if that's the case, kudos! I appreciate the reference.

You know, that's a thing that this game has sometimes, references to old Castlevanias. Keyword being sometimes, because you have stuff like the Holy Water, or the Daggers, and the whip being called the Vampire Killer, but these are very much light references, just to throw old fans a bone.

Overall, while I feel like this formula has room to grow and this game has its flaws, I ended up enjoying my time with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. It may be a different take on the series, and some of its elements are not really original, I had a good enough time that I'm curious on what the Lords of Shadow sub-series has to offer next, whenever I get to the next game (or the DLC stages for this game).

[Average Reading Time: 7 Minutes]

A search action game that deserves to be remembered.

The Adventure Island series of games has always been a smaller curiosity of mine. I've played the NES entries in short bursts, never reaching the end of any of them due to the difficulty. Back when the Wii Shop was still alive, I bought and beat Adventure Island: The Beginning, which did little to impress me. Despite loving the SNES and its library, I never sought out the Adventure Island games that were released on it. After all this time of letting these entries live in my subconscious, I felt that now was the time to finally see first-hand what they were cooking for Nintendo's 16-bit juggernaut.

While the focus of this review will be its sequel, I would like to say a few words regarding Super Adventure Island. Those words are these: I didn't like it. 3 lives, 3 continues, 1 hit deaths and highly awkward platforming make this entry an annoying game to clear, despite its short length. There is another reason I'm telling you this, though. Chances are if you played that game and didn't enjoy it, you may have immediately written off playing the sequel, assuming it would be more of the same with barely any improvements to make it stand out. Oh, I am so happy to say that is not the case.

Much like games such as Knack 2 and Red Steel 2, Super Adventure Island II is a sequel that does away with the bad of the prior entry and introduces a wealth of gameplay that makes you wish the game was called anything else so you wouldn't have looked at it and thought of its lesser earlier entry. Unlike Knack 2 and Red Steel 2, though, Super Adventure Island II moves away from the previous game in such a large way that it's surprising to see that this is even in the same series!

Super Adventure Island II (which I'll be abbreviating to SAI2 from here on out) is a search action game in the same vein as the Metroid series of games. Funnily enough, SAI2 came out 5 months after Super Metroid, but I digress. Now, rather than simply running to the right while collecting fruit and throwing tomahawks, you'll be exploring open stages, collecting weapons and armor, and finding key items that allow you to explore more of the world.

Even the story gets a bit of an upgrade here. The game opens with Master Higgins and his newly wed wife Tina riding across the sea, celebrating their honeymoon. Their leisure-filled journey is brought to a halt when they're knocked off their raft by a storm shaking up the seas. They both wake up on different islands with their memories completely wiped. Master Higgins sets out to regain his memories, and Tina is found by the king of Waku-Waku Island, who falls in love with her and proceeds to marry her. During the wedding, though, Tina is kidnapped. Master Higgins arrives to the castle as this occurs and begins his quest to save Tina as requested by the king, oblivious to the fact that the woman he's saving is his wife.

Considering the simple setups of previous entries in the series (the prior Super game's story was just that a freaky little dude turned Tina to stone for no reason. Very deep.), this is quite a step up. I actually enjoyed watching the story unfold, as you get cutscenes after each boss fight showing Tina and Master Higgins beginning to remember each other. There's some quirkiness to the dialogue that caught me off-guard, as well. For example, you can rest at the castle which will result in Tina appearing to you in a dream to give you some guidance on what you need to do next. At the end of one of these hints, she commented that she was missing her "soaps", which got a good chuckle out of me. While the story here isn't revolutionary, I'm very happy with what's here, and feel it does a satisfying job keeping you interested in the plot.

When it comes to the gameplay, there's a lot to cover. Let's start with how Master Higgins feels to control in general. Compared to the prior entry, this is a step-up in every way. You don't have to rely on momentum for big jumps anymore. Master Higgins controls great in the air. You have a run button now. It's amazing how well they fixed the issues with the controls of the last game, and this is just for how he moves and jumps!

Combat in this game is way more involved. You start out with your fists, but as you explore you find weapons and armor to equip, as well as shields to block small projectiles. Most of the weapons you'll find come in the form of swords, allowing you to slice at enemies both on the ground and in the air. There's also a number of other types of weapons to find, such as daggers that can be thrown at distant foes and fireballs that spin around you. Experimenting with weapons is a lot of fun in this game and it allows you to develop your own strategies to take down foes and bosses in your path.

With an armor system, we also get one of the most important changes made for this game: NO MORE ONE-HIT KILLS! Ooooh, boy, it feels so good to have a health bar in an Adventure Island game for once. As you explore, you'll even find upgrades to make your health bar bigger! After playing the previous game and dealing with those annoying one-hit deaths, it feels like such a breath of fresh air to not die instantly because I let a weird flying fox touch me or something. Speaking of dying, the penalty for death isn't too bad here, either. You simply restart at the entrance of the island you're on with everything you collected so far still in your inventory. Man, it almost feels like they're apologizing for years of unfair retro gaming practices in the form of a game that actually respects your time and I'm all here for it!

Speaking of islands, there's a few to sail between and explore. You travel via raft on the overworld to each one, with each large island being its own level. There's also a number of side paths on the overworld that lead to more upgrades and progression items, so exploration is rewarded well here! Another quirk of overworld travel is that there are random encounters, which is weird since there's no exp system at all. They kind of exist to slow you down, but they're over as quickly as they start. They kinda function like overworld encounters in Zelda 2, where you're dropped in the middle of a screen with some enemies around you and you have to reach the left or right end of the screen to get out. Very simple and more of an annoyance than anything else.

Along with a health bar, Master Higgins also gains the ability to wield magic! Once you find a wand, you'll be able to use all sorts of spells to even the playing field when the going gets tough. At the start, you'll just have a spell that returns you to the start of a stage (useful for when you revisit islands for missed items), but as you collect magic upgrades, you'll gain access to even more spells to cast, from healing moves to attacking moves to fast travel! Fast travel in a SNES game! It's hard to believe, but it's real!

Enemies will also drop health and magic refills, so there's not often too much of a worry about keeping either level up. Enemies can also drop coins, which can be spent to teach Master Higgins new moves, such as pushing rocks and doing Zelda 2 style upward and downward stabs, which not only aid with progression but also in combat! Coins are also used to rest at the castle to hear Tina complain about missing her shows while she gives you hints. There's one other use for coins, though...

ENTER THE CASINO! So there's a casino hiding in the world of SAI2, and in it lies the best equipment in the game. However, it's a casino, so they're not gonna give these to you cheap. You're gonna have to play casino games, like slots, to earn enough dosh to get yourself suited up with crazy powerful gear! Now, I'd like to state that this game is very beatable without grinding the casino for gear. I will admit, though, that I spent over 3 hours grinding the casino game "Run for Doe" (think horse race betting except the horses are enemies you fight) to get enough funds for the best equipment and I don't regret it at all, so it's entirely up to you if you're down for that kind of grind!

Honestly, though, I don't think I would've bothered with the casino at all if I didn't like this game. I genuinely loved my time with this game from beginning to end, even with the casino grind. The soundtrack is fun, the gameplay feels great, getting stronger gear and new magic moves is highly satisfying, and the story kept me interested for once. There's not much more I can say other than this: If you enjoy search action games, you owe it to yourself to try Super Adventure Island II!

Now THIS is the epitome of classicvania. A sort of reimagining of the first Castlevania, this game perfects the formula that is known as classicvania.

All issues I had with the last 3 games are addressed here. The controls are PERFECT. Simon controls so well it doesn't feel like you're controlling a brick anymore. You now have directional whipping which is a godsend and made otherwise difficult scenarios more manageable.

The difficulty is just right. If you're somewhat familiar with this games, you should be able to beat this on your first playthough without any struggles, but you will still die and face some challenges. Only bullshit section is the final boss. I felt like that was even harder than Castlevania 1's final boss. But every other level and boss is just well balanced and designed, nothing feels too cheap when you die. This game has some of the coolest and most creative looking levels in the series.

The music and graphics are phenomenal. Some of the best most hype music in the series so far. Especially when you are in the castle and a lot of the tracks are just throwback remixes. So good. The game itself looks great and effects when whipping and killing enemies are so crunchy and satisfying.

Super Castlevania IV is easily my favorite of the classicvania games (of which I've played so far), and of my now top 10 SNES games of all time.

can something be obnoxiously juvenile but also a totally unique lightning-in-a-bottle experience at the same time? because that's B3313 to me. the internet iceberg meme/creepypasta origins of this ended up leading to the creation of something that is kind of unlike anything else in existence (even if it is heavily indebted to stuff like Yume Nikki), but it is also somewhat inherently limited by its origins.

it's sort of like if Mario's castle was reimagined as Constantine's Mansion in Thief: The Dark Project, mixed with Yume Nikki and various internet memes. in your endless hours wandering through the confusing labyrinth of the castle, there are isolated moments that are unique and brilliant. and then there others that are just sort of… there. you’ll spend 15 minutes wandering through a bunch of fairly bland, indistinct rooms and corridors and then you’ll come upon something really haunting and memorable. and then, maybe, you'll be right back in the bland mazes. maybe you'll run into some creepy thing and crash the game. maybe creepy thing will be interesting and well executed, or maybe it'll just be obnoxious boilerplate creepypasta stuff.

these contradictions get more and more noticeable the further into it you are. some of the levels are really interesting/bizarre alternate universe takes that recontextualize the original Mario 64 and seem to offer greater commentary about the nature of how nostalgia shifts things into an alternate universe that is actually different from the source of the memory. "i like to remember things my own way. how i remembered them, not necessarily how they happened" says the deeply troubled Fred Madison in David Lynch's Lost Highway. but other times it feels like you wish you were spending more time in the new/more unique areas you occasionally stumble upon, and less in the 6th variation of old Mario 64 levels.

B3313 feels almost like a bigger AAA game to me in both the sheer scope of the project that's filled with a lot of internal contradictions, and in also how much it truly doesn't respect your time. that’s probably the nature of things of this size, and that a lot of people were involved contributing in what seems like a very tumultuous dev cycle after a certain point. but perhaps that explains a lot about the sometimes inconsistent/varied nature of the experience.

i will personally admit to not caring whatsoever about the personalized copy of Mario 64 meme or the numerous ways this hack borrows from different beta builds of Mario 64. i like Mario 64 a lot, but it is absolutely wild to me the way that game has been metabolized into the consciousness of videogame world. and so i do think the whole “this is a beta version of the game” thing and slavishly cobbling together any and every scrap of asset or idea that was cut from an early documented build of Mario 64 to put on this thing is a bit of a dead end artistically. most of the stuff Nintendo used in earlier builds just seemed like temp assets and doesn’t seem THAT interesting to me outside of that context. it's just not very interesting to those of us who are not 17 years old anymore and not still spooked by internet lore. it just feeds back into a lot of fan culture content machine around big franchises that just feels like this self replicating beast that never really goes anywhere and is always invariably beaten back into conformity by the big companies that are in control of these properties.

i am someone who loves strange and unique experiences. but to me, i want stuff that i guess attaches itself more to telling a specific kind of story through what it’s doing, and B3313 is a bit too much online meme-referencing for me to take that aspect of it very seriously at all. B3313 doesn’t have the narrative coherence of a MyHouse which i guess is the other big artsy creepypasta game mod of the moment. and it doesn’t have the artful direction of a Yume Nikki, which it is obviously cribbing the general kind of surreal abstract multidimensional wander maze thing from.

all of this is to say: why did i give it 4 stars and 30+ hours of my time, then? maybe it comes down to: there is an indelible, haunting Tower of Druaga-esque charm to all of it. the commitment to being cryptic and giving the player nothing and doing all these machinations behind the scenes in the game is kind of remystifying what has been lost in a lot of consumer-facing art in general. in games, with all the talk of FromSoft games or like the last couple Zeldas bringing back "old school" difficulties and design values, those are meticulously tested commercial products… not community made romhacks. they simply can’t go anywhere near as far out there as something like this. and we in general are in a moment when so much art seems paralyzed and unwilling to take chances out of risk aversion from industries that have been strip-mined by the rich and powerful. something like B3313 stands in contrast to that - completely unwilling to compromise itself.

with B3313, oftentimes there really is nothing on the other side. but that emptiness starts to feel really intentional after a certain point. as a player, what's interesting in the feeling that you want the design to follow some kind of logic that you can eventually glean so that you can understand what the designers were getting at is that it feels almost like an intentional choice to have it consistently not do that. occasionally it does hint at a deeper language/design sensibility, but mostly it doesn’t. there are times when the “story” or the progression of stages seems to be developing into something more coherent, but then the rug is pulled out from under you. and that happens over and over. because it’s all rug pulls at the end of the day. the message of the design is: whatever happens, whatever journey you go through… it’s all inevitably a way to throw you back into the maze. you’ll always be endlessly wandering the maze.

to me, that says something about Nintendo games in general - how you have these long journeys that (in the case of the newer Zelda especially) aggressively don’t respect your time and send you to all these interesting locations. and then it always just sorta ends, because there’s nothing really deeper at the core a lot of the time. it's escapist entertainment, often with some kind of crypto-conservative values and imagery in it. B3313 feels totally unafraid to unearth and make you fully experience that ugly side.

maybe a lot of our larger culture right now, especially obsessive lore-based fan culture, are just variations of that too. increasingly everything seems like it's hostile, broken down, and filled with different kind of rug pulls. the ground feels totally unstable and there is no “there” there a lot of the time, but we keep shoveling through hoping for new discoveries and hoping for it all to make sense. it’s like being in an abusive, codependent relationship. there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. it’s a disempowerment fantasy. and B3313 captures that feeling absolutely perfectly, in such a uniquely fleshed out way.

there are moments to B3313 that are genuinely unique and fun too, like some of the more creative creepypasta scenarios that i won’t spoil here. or like, occasional stages like the one when you have to climb some structures that are supposed to be some sort of bob-omb factory. you activate the “self-destruct” sequence when you enter which causes you to have to outrun rising lava until the top. and then you get to the top and there’s a little yellow bob-omb guy sitting in a little office and just complaining about how you destroyed the whole factory. it does make me wonder if there’s like some kind of commentary on the tropes of Mario games being attempted in small moments like that. like the fact that Mario is basically a cipher who everything resolves around, and none of these other characters have any agency.

of course, none of that is delved upon for very long. because invariably, you're going to get fed back into the maze. and so that's both the great strength and the great flaw of something like B3313. it doesn't try to offer a way out, it just tries to express what is there. and in doing so it captures a feeling perfectly, in a way that is inspiring. even as a memey internet romhack, it is absolutely something i would call an "art game". there are a lot of memorable areas and moments that really explores the latent strangeness and darkness of Nintendo games, and the latent surrealism of a lot ofearly 3D games in general. it’s also real testament to how far romhacking/modding community projects can really go artistically, along with MyHouse.wad. it could have an enormous impact on a lot of games stuff that comes further down the line. so it’s definitely something that demands more attention and respect outside the whole memey lore ecosystem a lot of this stuff usually occupies. it of course, comes from that however and will probably will do itself no favors in distinguishing itself from that.

i only hope in the future that people take the ambition and interesting ideas from this and run with it in a way that feels unafraid to make a larger statement about the world, and doesn't just do the cowardly thing of retreating with its tail between its legs back into insular internet memes and the online lore ecosystem fed by various content creators. whether or not you think B3313 subverts or further perpetuates that that i guess is up to you. but i still think we have a pretty far way to go.

Not really much to say about this one, as it is essentially just Tetris and Dr. Mario, except they look nicer now. There is a new game mode that switches between the two games as you are playing them against another opponent, but it doesn’t really change anything around to the point where it feels like that much of a substantial addition. Not to mention, the music is butchered compared to the originals, to where it makes me wanna down a bottle of Dr. Mario’s pills, so that I won’t have to listen to it anymore from the fact that I’ll be dead.

Remakes #12 and 13

When I played Resident Evil Village for the first time a few years ago I was absolutely enthralled by the insanely fun experience it took me on. It was only on this fourth replay since then that I started to realize some of the flaws in the game. Make no mistake, I still enjoy the game immensely (the 9/10 ain’t for nothing) but this replay and review were by very nature in favor of being more critical of it, and the more I think about it the more critical I get.

To start off with let me just say, the presentation and setting of this game is still excellent and probably my favorite thing about it. One thing admirable thing that Resident Evil has done several times throughout it’s lifespan is reinvent it’s setting and tone, and while it hasn’t always been successful (glares at 5 and 6), 8 continues this theme naturally and spectacularly. The moment when you first enter the Village at sunrise in this game is nothing short of breathtaking, the scope of the incredible looking environment before you and the thought that you’re going to have to comb through all of it to beat the game blend together to make what I believe to be one of the most interesting settings in the series’ history. All of the environments on this game are incredibly atmospheric, from an ancient but well-kept castle, to a lonely and eerie house in the mountains with a waterfall backdrop, to a menacing underground factory, all of it works as really effective environmental storytelling that shows you exactly what has happened in this village and what kind of creatures live here. Speaking of creatures, another thing I really liked about Village was how it adapted the common horror tropes found in other Resident Evil games to fit the setting perfectly. Instead of hoards zombies there are herds of Lycans, instead of evil scientists or corporations as the villains there are gothic horror monsters, and instead of a virus that makes people lose their minds there is the power of ancient evil that the villagers fear. All of this adds up to making what would otherwise seem like a really disconnected game in the series feel like it fits in just perfectly in terms of vibe and atmosphere.

Resident Evil Village is no slouch in terms of gameplay either, adapting the series main formula while also trying some new things that pay off excellently. The gameplay of Village divides itself into two distinct halves, the pure horror half and the action half and while some have taken issue with this system I’ve found no real problem with it, The first half of the game is excellent and clearly more enjoyable in terms of what I play a Resident Evil game for, being the horror. Having the main character enter a completely foreign setting and being powerless to do anything against the lycans and horrific monsters is a perfect way to breed horror in the game and is done excellently in the first few sections of the game. As you progress through the game though you get more weapons in your arsenal and start feeling less powerless and that’s when the action half of the game kicks in. While I enjoyed this half less I still think it’s alright, being able to take on anything and taking on the areas where you were oppressed by monsters in the early game just feels really good and satisfying, and although it comes at the cost of the horror, I still think it adds a lot in and of itself. There’s also a treasure system in this game that’s really fun to utilize to it’s fullest capacity. Throughout the village you’ll find locked up areas that you can return to later with the right item to discover what they have inside, this can range from new weapons or weapon parts to valuable treasures that you can sell to the merchant for tons of money, it’s really satisfying to find how to get these treasures and gives the player great reason to scour and explore the whole village. All of this as well as just the basic RE formula of managing inventory, solving puzzles, and knowing when to conserve ammo and when to fight all adds up to one of the best RE games to date in terms of gameplay.

At last I come to part which I feel is the weakest in Resident Evil Village, the story. On the first few playthroughs of this game I thought the story was passable, nothing groundbreaking or anything, but alright, now I see that I couldn’t have been more wrong there. While I still don’t think the story brings down the amazing gameplay present here, it is absolutely not something I’d call good. While Ethan Winters was not an incredibly likeable character in RE7 he wasn’t unbearable either, he was just a normal guy who got dragged into a messy situation, this is not the case in Village. In Village Ethan Winters is an unbearably annoying character who doesn’t seem relatable in the slightest, he makes increasingly stupid one liners that don’t sound natural from a character like him, asks increasingly stupid questions to other characters (usually along the lines of “What the hell is going on here”) despite things being completely cut and dry, and makes increasingly stupid decisions in every situation he finds himself in. Ethan isn’t the only one who’s dumb here, Chris’ decision to not tell Ethan what was going on when he shot his wife point blank and took his infant daughter at the beginning of the game will never not be confusing and a really stupid inciting incident, and Mother Miranda’s plan to split Rose up into parts and have Ethan go and collect them only to take Rose back instantly after he’d done that rather than just starting her evil ceremony with Rose instantly is a baffling oversight. It’s lazy writing like this that infuriates me that I ever thought this game’s story was decent, still if seen as just a means to end for the incredible gameplay it’s easy enough to ignore and doesn’t take anything away from that.

Resident Evil Village is a really fun game with some serious narrative issues. The incredible atmosphere and really fun gameplay still manage to save the game for me, but the bafflingly awful story annoys me greatly and is gonna make it hard for me to want to replay this game anytime soon.

Back in the day when Darksiders initially came out, I was a big action game fan (still am). I loved my DMCs and God of Wars, and so with the combat that Darksiders did have, my expectation was a cool action game but based on the Abrahamic religions as it's backdrop. Instead I got a semi decent action game, but filled with puzzles, dungeons and exploration. I wasn't a big fan of Zelda back then and I thought the puzzles/exploration were boring. I just wanted to fight stuff. So by time I got to the final dungeon, I was overwhelmed and just quit the game.

Fast forward to today, Zelda is one of my favourite franchises of all time. I love the classic Zelda formula of dungeons, exploration and puzzles. So I thought back about how Darksiders was basically a Zelda game with an Abrahamic lore, and wanted to give it another chance with my new Zelda-liking mindset.

Darksiders is a great Zelda clone. It is pretty much an Arbramic Ocarina of Time where it follows the same formula. You explore an overworld, solve puzzles dungeons to get new items that help you defeat bosses and gain access to new areas in the overworld. The more you explore, the more upgrades you will find that will make you stronger etc etc. It's not so different from Ocarina Of Time, you even get a horse.

The one thing that does really separate Darksiders from a Zelda game, besides the setting, is the combat. Zelda combat is usually nothing to write home about, and serviceable. Darksiders takes note of the action games from those days, like DMC and God of War and kind of melds it's combo focused action with Zelda's -targeting system. It works, and quite fun to play, but it's not as mechanically deep DMC or God of War. It feels more like an enhanced OoT combat system, although there isn't much enemy variety so towards the end of the game it starts to feel quite repetrtive


I love the post apocalyptic modern setting, which definitely helps separate itself from the fantasy medieval setting of Zelda to offer it's own unique experience. The lore is quite good, especially if you are familiar with any of the Abrahamic religions, it takes concepts and events and twists it to it's own dark universe. You can tell they really want to set up a larger universe with multiple games, just from this first game which was ambitious of the team and (almost) delivered.

It's not a masterpiece like Ocarina of Time, but it does what it sets out to do very well. Nothing here is ground breaking or innovative. It's just a great all around Zelda clone, which I'm glad I revisited to give a second chance.

Well, mathematically speaking, it's just as good as McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure.

I didn't give Prey a fair shot back when it released. 2017 feels much further away than it actually is, so I can't explain exactly what had me so distracted that I couldn't invest myself in "the best immersive sim of all time," but those opening few hours didn't hold me. I found myself meandering around and bounced off right around the point where you do your first spacewalk.

But here's the thing, if you're friends with Larry Davis, you can't just be like "oh I didn't enjoy Prey." That doesn't fly. You'll start getting texts while you're out that are just pictures taken from inside your apartment, some of which show you sleeping. He lives halfway across the country, how did he get in there? When was he there? The only way to stop the threats is to acquiesce to his demands. Play Prey or else. I always negotiate with terrorists, I'm a huge coward.

And I'm glad I did, because Larry's right, this is (probably) the best immersive sim ever made. I do, however, have to dock points for not having any Art Bell, something Human Head's Prey has over Arkane's. I'm aware that these games are not related at all outside of a very ill-advised, corporate decision to cash in on Prey's red hot brand name, but the least they could've done is throw in a few Midnight in the Deserts as audio logs. Not a problem, I just played a few in the background while making my way through the wreckage of Talos 1, bashing Typhons with a gnarly looking wrench while listening to Art's guest drone on about collecting and selling Big Foot scat.

Art: When I was in high school I ate erasers. No erasers on my pencils. I guess you could call that a strange addiction. When I went to erase something, I'd just scratch through the paper. Mmm... Erasers. That flavor has faded as an adult.

Ah, the true Prey experience.

That omission aside, Prey checks all the right boxes for me. Talos 1 is a great setting populated by interesting characters and engaging side quests that command your attention from the mission at hand not because they supply you with a list of things to do, but because Arkane has crafted a world so interesting and so fun to occupy that you want to delve into every nook and cranny. I see a locked door and I find myself compelled to know what's inside, even though the last three rooms I busted into had like, a corpse with a single discarded lemon peel in their pocket. Why did they have that? Every body tells a story...

Some of those side quests are going to stick with me for a while, which is both a sign of solid character writing and good mission structure. The fake chef booby-trapping fabrication machines and entry ways after you let him go adds a fun twist to revisiting old locations and makes your revenge that much sweeter when you finally catch up to him, and it's hard to imagine what shape the end game would take if you ejected Professor Igwe from his derelict storage container and skipped his multi-part quest. Which, you know, I initially did because I wasn't patient enough to hear him out. It's fine, I had an autosave, Igwe is totally okay!

That's just the way I play these games, with a dozen backup saves so I can test the boundaries of every moral crisis my character finds themselves in. I'm the kind of dude who will release a Typhon halfway into an inmate's cell just to see what kind of reaction I can get while turning over the long-term consequences of pushing the big red button. Not enough mirror neurons in my head, that's my problem.

Early in the game, you're presented with a personality test, an ink blot, and several variations of the Trolley Problem. An excellent way to establish what Prey hopes to accomplish with the player long-term, as so much of the game is affected by the choices you make both on a macro and micro level. The ending you get is clearly delineated between one of two set paths, but how those play out on a more precise level is affected by the small choices you made along the way. Take that chef, for example. You did get your revenge, but what of his other victims? Did you help them? Did you even try to find them? And what of your brother, Alex? So much of what happens aboard Talos 1 is his fault, but does your love for him win out in the end? Can you condemn him to his fate, or will you spend 30 minutes trying to wrangle his limp body in zero-gravity because the game won't trip one of the god damn objectives, which are clearly bugged-- oh wait, shit... I put him in a grav lift and it snapped his neck. Problem solved.

One area where I deviated from my typical immersive sim habits was combat. I often build my characters around stealth and avoid direct confrontation, but the Typhon abilities you're given work so well in concert with your weapons that turning Morgan into a violent powerhouse felt much more satisfying. There are also a few "survival" modifiers you can toggle at the start of the game, and I went with allowing injuries and suit damage, but not weapon degradation, because weapon degradation always sucks and is not as fun as getting concussed and needing to take "brained pills."

These modifiers add an extra layer of tension to resource management, something you'll be doing a lot of as you lug around literal garbage in the hopes that you might be able to squeeze a few extra shotgun shells out of whatever hard drives and bananas you have on your person. Fabricators are far between in the early parts of the game, often requiring you to loop back to your office for resupplies, which is a smart way of teaching the player the ins-and-outs of the game's resource economy while drilling in how Talos 1 is interconnected.

Is Prey the best immersive sim ever? Look, it takes a very boring man to admit when he's wrong, but it may very well be. Everything from the setting and story, to combat and the larger ways in which the game questions the player's morality is fantastic. My only complaint outside of some technical issues like the aforementioned problem with tripping objectives and a few crashes/freezes on the Xbox version is that there's no Art Bell. A whole .5 off the top of the score, I'm afraid. What's that? Art Bell was dead at the time? Nonsense. If Arkane only opened up a time-traveler's line, they could've booked him. Not an excuse.

If I was asked to name the greatest game of all time, I'd take approximately 0.03 milliseconds to answer, "Resident Evil 4." The 2005 classic holds a special sentimental value to me that almost no other media does. So when plans for a remake were leaked a couple of years ago, I wasn't happy about it, quite honestly. My thought process was this: Capcom, we get it, you had a lot of success remaking the PS1 entries, you want to keep riding the gravy train - but don't mess with perfection. Don't mess with Resident Evil 4.

I unashamedly admit to my cynicism throughout RE4 Remake's development. You see, when a game like Resident Evil 2 or Final Fantasy VII gets a remake, it makes sense because these games - excellent as they are - are retro titles made for outdated hardware. Resident Evil 4, despite being almost 20 years old, is still a modern third-person shooter because it fucking invented the modern third-person shooter. A remake was unnecessary. The first time I watched footage of the game, I felt a bit sad, as it wasn't particularly exciting - it was from the post-church segment of RE4, and the remake's take on it felt subdued. You also have to bear in mind that we were just coming off of Resident Evil 3 Remake, which was decent but disappointing, and Resident Evil Village, which I hated. Then the chainsaw demo came out, and I watched my friend stream it, and finally got excited. It looked faithful to the original, which was my biggest concern.

Now, having played RE4 Remake, my conclusion is this: it's still an unnecessary remake, but a worthy one regardless. This game does not replace or supersede the classic RE4 for me, but it's still an incredibly well-made third-person shooter. It's laden with nods to the original, even in places where it deviates from its parent game - be it for pacing reasons, or to better suit the grittier, grounded tone of this version. Almost all sections from the original that felt too Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider-esque have been excised, as have most quick-time events - a concession to players' changing tastes. Even as I missed the couple of areas that were entirely removed, I didn't mind too much - unlike RE3 Remake, where it felt like laziness, here it felt like a weighted decision to prevent chapters from becoming overlong or exhausting. Even when a section was abbreviated, there still existed some trace of the original that you could recognize.

On the flip side, certain sections have been expanded, modified, and reimagined entirely - with admirable results. Sometimes it felt like these curveballs felt like they were aimed specifically at players like me, who know the original game so well we could play it with our eyes closed. Having the rug pulled out from under me like this kept the game fresh and exciting.

However, there is one area where the changes are not welcome: characterization. While Ashley has been greatly improved in this version, to the point that I prefer her to the original 'HEEEEEELP! LEEEEOOOON!' screamer, the same is not true for the rest of the supporting characters. None of the rivals feel better off for their redesign: Mendez, Salazar, Krauser or Saddler all are less charismatic than their original counterparts. Mendez never shuts the fuck up, even during his boss fight, which robs him of his strong-and-silent menace. Salazar has a worse design and isn't as charmingly cheeky. Krauser has too much backstory and too much emotion, robbing him of his mystique. And Saddler is probably the worst-hit: he believes his own lies in this version, and I feel the Osmund of old, who was openly in it for the money and power, was a more effective villain. He also takes far too long to appear, compared to his early introduction in the 2005 original, which allowed him and Leon to develop a suitable antagonism towards each other.

And Ada, dear God, Ada. Her voice acting in this game is fucking atrocious, and I have no idea why her actress from RE2 Remake wasn't retained. Her new actress has no previous voiceover experience and had an extremely immature response to players criticizing her work, calling them racist. It isn't because you're Asian, Lily, it's because your voice work sucks. Ada's characterization in this game is also a lot colder and less likeable, and a mid-credits scene meant to redeem her would have been better if replaced by nothing.

I should mention that, in a vacuum, it's not like the characters' new motivations and dialogue are bad - indeed, Salazar's revamped boss fight is quite engaging, while the others faithfully recreate their original battles to great effect. It's just that I feel the original game's incarnations were superior.

Finally, there's the dynamic between Leon and Luis - one of the most beloved RE side characters. They take a lot longer to trust each other in this one, but it pays off well. I do feel Luis's character concluded better in the original than in the remake - but in case you've somehow managed to avoid the plot of one of the most popular games of the last 20 years, I won't spoil it for you. Also, Luis is finally playable in Mercenaries mode now! This was something I've wanted since 2005.

Resident Evil 4 Remake looks and controls like a dream. It should, because it runs on the RE Engine. I played through the game on Hardcore difficulty, which is recommended for people who've played the original. Here's a fun anecdote that shows my love, and countless playthroughs, of the original RE4: I kept dying at the first village fight because muscle memory kept kicking in, and I'd try to play this game with the 2005 RE4's controls! But once you're used to it, the gameplay really is super satisfying. Perhaps it's just my rote learning of the original, but I think this version is harder. It was shocking how intelligent and aggressive the enemies were.

RE4 Remake is a thrilling new take on a game I know by heart: when it deviated, I was suitably thrown off-balance, and when it remained faithful, I basked in its familiarity, the beautiful recreations of objects and environments from the original game. The soundtrack similarly defers to the great work of the original - it's a little more downbeat, but reuses musical motifs of the original to stir your memory.

This is the best horror game to come out in years. It already had most of the work done for it, all it had to do was eat at the table that the 2005 game had set. But Capcom made sure to put in the extra love and care that Resident Evil 4 deserves. This is a worthy remake. Not as good as the original - for me at least - but an amazing game in its own right. It would be too big of an ask for it to surpass the original, really. When Resident Evil 4 came out in 2005, there was nothing like it. When Resident Evil 4 came out in 2023, everything was like it. Every game that has an over-the-shoulder camera, every third-person shooter made after 2005, owes something to RE4. That's the level of influence this game has had, and as someone who has such an emotional connection to it, I give this remake my stamp of approval.

Man, I'm in a real rough spot. Family members are getting older and sicker, I'm overworked, not getting enough sleep... I need a real pick-me-up, something that's easy to play and has a lot of charm. Help me, Hello Kitty!

Gets cracked in the nose by a disc travelling at 95MPH, completely caving in my facial bones.

hello kitty ,why. ..........?

Like Tetris Battle Gaiden and Windjammers, Sanrio World Smash Ball! is a game I was first exposed to through Giant Bomb, where it ended up in their rotation of competitive multiplayer games on more than one occasion. And I can see why. Even sticking to the single-player mode, Smash Ball's head-to-head Breakout-inspired gameplay is addictive, and in its later stages, weirdly demanding.

You have precisely two moves: hit disc and hit disc harder, and while the early game is such a breeze it can be played on autopilot, the later stages will see you smacking that disc around an inch from your opponent's faces - which the stage itself is designed to resemble, as if Keroppi's smug visage was there to mock you - all in a frantic bid to keep it from your side of the court, which has progressively been designed to put you at a disadvantage. This is still a kid's game at its core, so the difficulty never excels to the point of brutality, but there's a curve here that keeps Smash Ball surprisingly engaging.

I hope one day I can find someone willing to sit down and actually play Sanrio World Smash Ball! with me, I think that'd be cool, I wish I had friends like Hello Kit-

Gets hit in the mouth by a charged shot that ricochets off of and back into my teeth several times

uuugh i thinki n eed to go to the hompsital

The type of shovelware well-meaning grandmas used to buy their grandkids for the Wii on Christmases and birthdays back in the late 2000s, now on the 9th generation of consoles! Look, developer IguanaBee was forced to make this under some brutal time and financial constraints. They're a talented studio which can be seen in titles such as their incredibly charming MonsterBag. Oddly enough, despite the ultimate results this might actually be further proof of said talent. In roughly a year, without guidance or proper monetary support from the publisher to staff a full team on the project, and after a bit of post-release patching to update stuff such as the map so that it now shows your position on it, they churned out an entirely playable open-world action adventure. Doesn't make it a fun experience, but it's impossible to not be at least minorly impressed with what they were able to accomplish (however minuscule) with so many hurdles in their way.

Alright, now that I’ve given its makers a somewhat obligatory “it’s okay bud, we know it’s not really your fault” pat on the back, it’s time to mercilessly crap all over this abomination! We are looking at a genuinely abhorrent product here. Sure, Rise of Kong is a disaster from technical perspective with bugs that cause you to inexplicably get stuck on invisible snares forcing autosave reloads, graphics that look like they're from a PS2 offering (and not one of the pretty ones), environments that sometimes awkwardly melt into shape as you approach them in a manner akin to a hallucinogenic induced trip, and audio quality so bad it needs to be heard to be believed, but its worst aspects are easily those opening chapters where things are unreasonably challenging.

If there's any ish I can’t stand it’s when a bad game doesn’t have the decency to just let you steamroll through it with little trouble. The early hours are brutally plagued by the titular ape’s pathetically limited range and wimpy attacks that barely chip away at the health bars of his enemies. Shouldn’t this have been some kind of power fantasy? Why am I getting wrecked by what appear to be little green dodo birds? At no point do you feel like a beast powerful enough to have slugged it out in movies with the King of the Monsters. Even the way basic trees and other objects in the scenery tower over him give the impression that you’re controlling a regular-sized gorilla rather than one humongous enough to climb the Empire State Building.

Eventually you do begin to attain the true might you would expect from a kaiju with the first name of “King,” but it never seems to be the result of your investments into any of the skill trees. I can’t prove it, yet I have this unshakable suspicion that the devs artificially lower the difficulty in later chapters to give players the ​illusion of getting stronger rather than legitimately allowing them to become so, because it’s not remotely believable that those meager initial stat boosts I was unlocking would have had such a profound ability to leave foes that were previously causing me problems all of the sudden crumbling at my feet.

Oh well, at least when that happens it becomes pretty smooth sailing to the credits. You’ll still struggle to reach them though. Your motivation will be low. The entire runtime of Skull Island is a mind-numbingly dull loop of running around massive maze-like environments of identical assets to find unmarked, sparsely located “ascension event” arena fights and pick up the occasional collectible on your way to the area’s boss. There are plenty of threats along the way, but engaging with them is totally pointless. Not just because the combat sucks either. Defeating foes outside of the required sections grants you no additional EXP points, meaning they’re literally a complete waste of time. You’re better off simply sprinting past everything and focusing exclusively on whatever boring platforming segment is between you and the next mandatory encounter.

As much as I believe the small Chilean indie developers mostly deserve a pass for this given the circumstances, it is simultaneously not hard to wonder why they continued to try to create a package so grand in scope rather than reducing its scale to something more reasonable. Perhaps they shouldn't escape blame entirely. Their ambition paired with the lackluster resources from GameMill seriously cost them here. There were quite a few shockingly dreadful releases in 2023 and Skull Island: Rise of Kong blows the few I personally played out of the water, proving far fouler than the likes of Gollum or even TWD: Destinies. Is it the worst game of that year? That's highly likely. It's easily the top contender in my eyes.

1/10

Theres really only 2 things I can say about this game, and its the same 2 things everyone else can say about Mosa Lina: its (1) very fun in a kinetic, flow state brain improv kind of way and (2) its very pointless as a game (as a statement). People have a strange and delicate relationship with RNG, and some people might hear “your ability to complete a level is randomized and not at all guaranteed by the games systems” and think “this will straight up piss me off”. More and more lately I personally welcome opportunities to hone my sense of instinct and intuition when it comes to physically playing games I think are interesting and fun to pick apart, to strengthen my connection to “the flow”.

But its just impossible to avoid the feeling of directionless-ness when games dont have intrinsic goals. You could absolutely make the argument that gamers have addled, unimaginative minds that have been spoiled by reward systems and that we are no longer able to just be present with games - but this is also an inevitability in a world where theres just so many games to play. I can do my part and come up with a few extrinsic reasons to play Mosa Lina for more than 30 seconds and once I accomplish those few extrinsic goals I gotta move on unless Mosa Lina wants to sweeten the deal. Sometimes its just a matter of a game providing excuses to continue playing and Mosa Linas all-or-nothing principled stance leaves it hard to engage with as anything other than a very clever toy.

A good while ago, I took a shot in the dark and reviewed a little title known as Captain Novolin, which was a PSA game that was meant to teach diabetics how to handle their diabetes properly…….. and the game itself was a complete trainwreck. Sure, it was pretty informative for someone like myself who had basically zero knowledge about diabetics and what they do on a daily basis, but that doesn’t excuse the ugly graphics, the basic-ass set up, the bullshit enemy placement and difficulty, and little to no variety to make the game any more enjoyable than it already was. Needless to say, it wasn’t a pleasant experience, but I did have a bit of a spark of hope in my soul, thinking that this was just gonna be a one-time thing that I could just move on from and never think about again……. only for that spark of hope to then immediately be shot down when I discovered that there were three other games like this made by the same company that tackle different issues. It has been long enough now, so I think it’s about time I start to face these demons, starting off with Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon.

Unlike Captain Novolin, which focused on diabetes, this game is pretty much one giant PSA for smoking, and just from learning that fact alone, I was already pretty much tuned out from the get go. Let’s face it, ladies and gentlemen, smoking PSAs are EVERYWHERE, being one of the most over-abundant types of PSAs out there, and most of them don’t have any kind of effort when it comes to making you listen to what they have to say. Sure, I get it, it’s important to teach people, especially kids, the dangers of smoking, but at this point, it's become so abundant to where I wouldn’t be surprised if most people end up doing something like this because of it. Despite that though, I didn’t wanna go into the game with a negative mindset. After all, they could potentially be as informative as Captain Novolin was when it comes to the dangers of smoking, and the game itself could actually be pretty fun if proper time and care was put into it. So, does it manage to do either of those things?.............. I think you know the answer by now.

The story is admittedly hilariously stupid, where it centers around a man named Jake Westboro, who seemingly had it all made, but, due to the fact that he had been smoking since he was 15, he is now dying from the effects of not only smoking himself, but also from the cigarettes that he has sold through his company. Thankfully though, all is not lost, as the experimental surgeon Rex Ronan offers to shrink himself down, enter Jake’s body, and get rid of all the tar and disease that is slowly killing him, which he then proceeds to do. However, the Blackburn Tobacco Company, the company that Jake was the CEO of, start to worry that if Jake survives this, he will potentially spread the word of how dangerous smoking is and cause them to shut down, deploying several microbots into Jakes body to try to combat the experimental surgeon, so it is up to Rex to not only get rid of all the tar and disease within Jake’s body, but to also fend off the many foes that he will now face so that Jake will potentially live to see another day……………………….. it’s a pretty fucking stupid set-up, ain’t it? Although, not gonna lie, I am a huge fan of incredibly stupid premises in games like this, so it was enough to convince me to actually try to play this game, just to see how this “thrilling” tale could conclude.

The graphics are, admittedly, pretty impressive for what we have here, but I’m not gonna lie, a lot of it does look butt-ugly, with plenty of drab, uninteresting looks to all of the levels, as well as freakish sprites for the human characters to be seen throughout, the music is not very good at all, just being a bunch of stockish rock tracks that don’t fit with what is going on whatsoever, and none of them stand out as memorable or likable in the slightest, and the gameplay/control is simple for the most part, but then actually trying to get a handle on either of these aspects of the game is a whole nother story with how jank and awkward it can really be.

The game is a… 2D action game of some kind, where you take control of Rex Ronan, go through many different parts of Jake’s body where disease and infection have spread like wildfire, use your mighty hose-thing to spray away all of the infection wherever it may be so that Jake can live another day while also taking out plenty of enemies as well, gather plenty of different powerups that can do a multitude of things, such as giving you extra health and lives, as well as changing the type of shot you fire to either help make taking out the tar much easier, or way harder than it needs to, and in-between each level, take on a generic flying stage where you venture deeper into Jake’s body while avoiding plenty of obstacles so that you yourself don’t end up as another part of his body all together. It goes about as well as you would expect, and while I would say that I actually had a much better time with this game compared to Captain Novolin, I can’t lie and say that the game is better than that one, when in reality, it is on the same level as it, and in some cases, even worse than that previous game.

You wanna know what it is like to play a game of Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon? It’s like playing one giant game of Red Light Green Light. For every single main level of the game, it will mostly consist of you running around for one or two seconds, taking out an enemy if one manages to show up, and then you stand around and awkwardly shoot at tar in order to get rid of it. That is literally 90% of this entire game, which turns the game from being… you know, a game, into a repetitive chore that puts me to sleep every time I need to take part in doing it, especially when you have to work around the GARBAGE aim controls, which will have you constantly fidgeting around just so that you can find the proper spot so that you can hit a piece of tar depending on what type of shot you have. Mix that with all the other, awkward-ass functions you can do, such as a really over-the-top somersault and a useless kick move, and you have a control setup that is meant to make you feel pain and misery throughout the entire journey.

This also doesn’t help when you have to deal with the enemies, with some of them being manageable, but then you have some who have way too much health, and can definitely score a couple of hits on you if you don’t know they are coming, especially with the garbage scrolling of the screen. And if you think any of this is further expanded on with more gimmicks or different types of levels or foes, then you would be wrong, as every single level, despite looking slightly different, pretty much looks and feels the exact same, with the exception of the mouth level, but then again, that’s the first level of the game, with it all going right downhill from there.

So yeah, as you probably expected, the gameplay sucks shit, but how exactly does the game work as a PSA? I mean, after all, the game is meant to inform you of how dangerous smoking is, so does it manage to do this in a creative and meaningful way?............. no, not really. Throughout the game, there will be these mechanical orbs that you will find floating through the air, and when you shoot at it, it will give you a true or false statement about smoking and what it can do to you. If the statement is true, then you can touch the orb, and that somehow manages to cause a chain reaction that causes enemies to burst due to……….. them not being able to handle the truth, I dunno. These moments are the only instances in the entire game that give you any sort of “information” about smoking, and while I guess a lot of this info could be useful depending on who you ask, a lot of it is shit that you have probably heard many time before in your life, making you wonder why anyone would want to play this game in the first place when they can’t even properly deliver the message they want to get across, which shouldn’t be hard to do in the slightest.

Overall, despite me having a better time with it then I did with Captain Novolin, I can’t say in good conscience that this game is any better, because it just frankly isn’t, with it having ugly-ass visuals, boring as hell gameplay, janky controls and actions, little to no variety throughout the whole thing, and not even being able to properly tell why smoking is bad in the first place, which is especially important since it is a game meant to tell you why smoking is bad. The only real positive thing I can say about the game is that it has a very dumb, yet entertaining set-up, which can only get you so far at the end of the day, frankly, as there is no reason for anyone to play this, and you would be much better off just watching this game play out on YouTube rather than trying it out for yourself. But, before I go, there is one last piece of info that I want to share with you all, and that is the fact that Rex Ronan SUCKS at his job. How? Because despite how the game encourages you to eliminate all of the tar or infections in a level, you don’t actually have to do so in order to proceed forward and to beat the game. Sure, that does make the game much less of a repetitive slog, but in this case, if I am not required to get rid of any of the infections inside of this dude whatsoever, then WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT OF ANY OF THIS?!

Game #590