2manyW
1728 Reviews liked by 2manyW
SIMPLESMENTE MUITO FODA!
É perfeito para quem gostava daquelas lutas épicas de Stickmans onde os dois eram extremamente poderosos. O normal já é foda, com mods ficam melhor ainda!
É perfeito para quem gostava daquelas lutas épicas de Stickmans onde os dois eram extremamente poderosos. O normal já é foda, com mods ficam melhor ainda!
Armored Core 2
2000
Interested in Armored Core 2 but haven't played it yet?
Maybe Armored Core 6 was your 2023 GOTY and you want to see what one of the older games is all about?
Check out this Prep Kit! It's full of magazine coverage, sourced interviews with Kota Hoshino & Tsukasa Saito, official renders and promo, Shoji Kawamori sketches, an action figure line, and even Frankie Muniz. I've compiled everything in one place to help get you in that Launch Day mindset! Did you know German DJ Mijk Van Dijk composed the game's theme and released it on a 12" as GameTrax Vol.2? Check it out -
https://goatedquest.blogspot.com/2024/05/070-armored-core-2-prep-kit.html
Let me help make every game you play feel brand new, no matter how old
Maybe Armored Core 6 was your 2023 GOTY and you want to see what one of the older games is all about?
Check out this Prep Kit! It's full of magazine coverage, sourced interviews with Kota Hoshino & Tsukasa Saito, official renders and promo, Shoji Kawamori sketches, an action figure line, and even Frankie Muniz. I've compiled everything in one place to help get you in that Launch Day mindset! Did you know German DJ Mijk Van Dijk composed the game's theme and released it on a 12" as GameTrax Vol.2? Check it out -
https://goatedquest.blogspot.com/2024/05/070-armored-core-2-prep-kit.html
Let me help make every game you play feel brand new, no matter how old
Isso que chamo de redenção, depois de muito tempo finalmente o Cyberpunk 2077 está jogável agora... Com alguns bugs aqui e acolá, mas dá pra jogar tranquilamente. Sobre o enredo e as mecânicas, achei muito boas, a CD Projekt Red evoluiu bastante do The Witcher 3 para o Cyberpunk 2077 nesses dois pontos principalmente, sem contar que os gráficos são bastante bonitos, mesmo jogando no low, o jogo ainda tinha o seu charme. Aprofundando mais nas mecânicas do jogo, eu não tenho nada para reclamar, são funcionais e cativantes, o enredo é complexo e melancólico, e fiquem tranquilos, vocês podem sentir um vazio existencial depois que zerar esse jogo. Sobre a dlc, se você gostou do jogo e zerou ele alguma vez ou está prestes a zerar, para mim é obrigatório jogar a dlc, ela enriquece e aprofunda ainda mais a história do jogo. Enfim, agora Cyberpunk 2077 finalmente é um ótimo jogo, recomendo bastante darem uma chance para ele caso gostem do gênero.
The debut game of Richter Belmont and just a very good Classicvania all around. The game is closer to Castlevania III Dracula's Curse in design, but has a more cinematic flair to it.
You get some cool cutscenes which shows how cool of a character Richter is, as well as highlights Drucla being an absolute dickhead that we love. This game did wonders for the characterisations for the Castlevania cast.
Gameplay-wise, it is pretty much the first Castlevania but the controls are more fine-tuned. Richter has a cool backflip move that is handy for avoiding a lot of enemy attacks. It's a shame that they didn't give it the Castlevania IV controls considering this came out after that, but I can't complain, Castlevania 1 controls are still fun.
Gameplay is a little more brutal than all the other games. The bosses are some of the hardest I've fought so far so if you are a gamer with little patience, play it on emulator or get the PS5 port.
If you know what to do, you can unlock the secondary character who makes the game a little more easier, but let's also admit a little more fun.
The music is absolutely baginging but that's almost a given for this franchise at this point. A lot of the locales are nice nods to the past castlevania games like the fist level being a Simon's Quest town.
Overall, Great Classicvania game and one of the better ones. Didn't like it as Castlevania IV and maybe III, but it's still up there. Richter is my favourite Castlevania character so far.
You get some cool cutscenes which shows how cool of a character Richter is, as well as highlights Drucla being an absolute dickhead that we love. This game did wonders for the characterisations for the Castlevania cast.
Gameplay-wise, it is pretty much the first Castlevania but the controls are more fine-tuned. Richter has a cool backflip move that is handy for avoiding a lot of enemy attacks. It's a shame that they didn't give it the Castlevania IV controls considering this came out after that, but I can't complain, Castlevania 1 controls are still fun.
Gameplay is a little more brutal than all the other games. The bosses are some of the hardest I've fought so far so if you are a gamer with little patience, play it on emulator or get the PS5 port.
If you know what to do, you can unlock the secondary character who makes the game a little more easier, but let's also admit a little more fun.
The music is absolutely baginging but that's almost a given for this franchise at this point. A lot of the locales are nice nods to the past castlevania games like the fist level being a Simon's Quest town.
Overall, Great Classicvania game and one of the better ones. Didn't like it as Castlevania IV and maybe III, but it's still up there. Richter is my favourite Castlevania character so far.
Knuckles' Chaotix
1995
At this point, we have talked plenty about the Sega Genesis and its lineup of titles from the good, the bad, and the ugly, and we have even talked a brief bit about several Sega CD titles and how good they can be when the proper time and care is put into them……… which rarely happened, but you get the idea. So, I think it is about time that we briefly, and I mean briefly, go into the last ditch effort that Sega had in order to keep the Genesis alive throughout the mid-90s, the Sega 32X. Much like the Sega CD, this was an add-on for the Sega Genesis that was meant to be a placeholder for Sega fans before the Sega Saturn came out, allowing them to play 32-bit games straight from their Sega Genesis. However, as you would expect, this didn’t really work out well at all, as not only were there only 40 games made for this system, which is practically nothing compared to almost every other video game system out there, but the games that were released onto the thing really weren’t all that special, with a good handful of them even requiring you to need both the 32X AND the Sega CD in order to play it with! But hey, at least some noteworthy games came out for it, so we may as well go ahead and cover what is definitely the most noteworthy game out of those 40 to choose from, Knuckles’ Chaotix.
Much like with Tails’ Skypatrol, this is the first and only time that Knuckles managed to get a starring role in his own game, with most people probably not even knowing about this thing existing, considering that it is one of the only Sonic games from this era to never be ported onto anything else or included on any sort of collection pack. It is a shame too, especially considering how many other garbage Sonic games have managed to get the port treatment, and back when I first discovered that this was a thing, I was curious myself as to how it turned out. The fact that it was a game starring Knuckles was enough to convince me to give it a shot, but I at least hoped it was on the same level of quality as something like Sonic CD, where I would say it is the only reason you would wanna get a Sega 32X. So, I loaded up a totally-legal emulator to play the game on, and I can certainly say that it is, indeed, a video game. It does what it does well enough, and I’m sure that big Sonic fans would have a good enough time with this, but it definitely has plenty of big issues holding it back, making for what I would consider to be a “whatever” game and nothing more then that.
The story is typical for that of any Sonic game, where on a mysterious island, the evil Dr. Robotnik and his loyal servant Metal Sonic set out to find all of the mythical Chaos Rings in order to take over the world, but when Knuckles hears about this happening, he just can’t have that shit, so he assembles the Chaotix, consisting of him, Vector the Crocodile, Espio the Chameleon, Charmy the Bee, and Mighty the Armadillo, to head on out to this mysterious island themselves and stop Robotnik from doing the evil things he usually does. It’s a Sonic game, so you know exactly what you are going to get from a story like this, but it is cool seeing the introduction of the Chaotix, who would go onto being recurring characters throughout the rest of the series………. well, except for Mighty, who is probably dead in a ditch somewhere.
The graphics are great, looking about as vibrant and colorful as any other Sonic game that was released around that time, even more so given what the system is running on, and they even show off some of them fancy-schmancy graphics they have their with sprites changing sizes and all that, so that’s pretty cool, the music is solid enough, having plenty of energetic and wonderful tunes to listen to while you try to blaze around at the speed of sound, although it isn’t gonna come close to the quality of some tracks from other Sonic games despite its quality, and the gameplay/control is, for the most part, typical of what you would see in a Sonic game, with there definitely being the foundation for yet another great entry in this series in here somewhere, but……….. hoo boy.......
The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of two of any of the characters I just previously mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, including some other joke characters that Sega included in there just to fuck with you, go through a set of six different zones in whatever order the game decides you will go through them in, defeat plenty of enemies as you fly and bounce through all over the place with your Chaotix powers, gather plenty of different powerups to assist you along the way in some of the most ridiculous ways that you could possibly imagine, locate all six of the Chaos Rings so that you can get the good ending of the game so that you don’t feel like a pathetic piece of shit, and take on plenty of bosses that can range from either being generally easy to being just as unmanageable as the game itself is most of the time. What we got here is mostly your typical Sonic adventure, except with plenty of wrenches thrown into the mix to change things up, and while some of these wrenches manage to turn those bolts enough to where it makes the game a little more fun, those other wrenches are turning some other bolts that I would much rather not be there at all.
To get the good stuff out of the way first, the amount of original stuff this game has in it compared to plenty of the other games in the series is quite impressive, from the amount of characters you can play as to the powerups that you can get, each one being somewhat different then what you have ever seen before, and it is pretty fun messing around with all of these different things to see what does what and what works best for the adventure ahead. It’s especially sweet whenever you find those characters and powerups that work just wonderfully for you, such as the case with Charmy the Bee, who is RIDICULOUS in this game, being able to fly around all over the place and pretty much snap the entire game in half. Kinda renders the entire main gimmick of the game mute at the end of the day, but…… sigh, we will get to that in just a second.
What I also liked about this game was the bonus and special stages that you could find in the game. Much like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, you can find plenty of big rings hidden throughout the stages, and these will take you to a bonus game where you are falling down a giant corridor, hitting all of these different blocks with goodies in them before you exit the stage. It is a pretty simple concept, not having as much interactability as the bonus stages from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but it is simple and manageable enough to where I am still able to enjoy it all the same, and get plenty of helpful goodies along the way. But of course, we can’t forget about the main Special Stages, which you get to by getting 50 rings and jumping into the giant rings at the end of the stages, and these stages are pretty much 3D versions of the Special Stages from Sonic Tw- NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO................................ ok, to be fair, they aren’t as bad as the ones in Sonic 2, with these ones being a lot more open, manageable, and instead of needing to get a bunch of rings, you instead just have to collect a few of the blue spheres again. This can be a bit frustrating at times, especially when it comes to some of the later special stages, but they didn’t manage to give me as much shit as those other stages, so I will gladly take these any day of the week over those.
But anyways, now that we all that out of the way, we may as well get to the stuff that I DON’T like in this game, and they are some pretty big parts of it to, so let’s start off with the main gimmick of the game: the Bound Rings. Throughout the entire game, you will be permanently stapled to another person, who you can swap out with someone else at these stations you find in the stages, but no matter who you play with, you are stuck with them through these rings. With these rings, you are meant to propel yourself forward and backwards with your partner, using your momentum to get you around to specific areas and to get through the stages, with you also being able to perform specific actions at certain parts where one of you will be temporarily stuck in place, while your partner will be spinning around trying to help you proceed forward. This, if you ask me, is what ultimately kills this entire game for me.
I don’t hate this idea on paper, as I feel if properly managed, this could make for a very interesting mechanic that could be very fun to fuck around with. However, when it comes to this game, it does NOT work at all in your favor in the slightest. It feels so fucking awkward to do anything in this set up, as you will either be completely halted trying to get yourself moving again, which is definitely what you should not be at all in a SONIC game, or you will be yanked around all over the place, flying around at the speed of sound, not being able to control yourself, and just begging for the end of the stage to be around the corner so that you can just get a move on. Sure, it isn’t as bad as how I am describing it in parts, but trust me, when you actually try this game out for yourself, you can feel how broken this shit is, and not in a good way, making it way more frustrating to play as a result, and can be the one thing that will decide whether or not you will enjoy this game.
What also doesn’t help this out at all are the levels themselves, as they are also pretty poor as well. Most of these levels are built in the way that you would typically expect for a Sonic level to be built like, which would usually be a good thing in most cases, but this isn’t a normal Sonic game, and as such, it suffers as a result. You will have to fight with the level design in many instances while also fighting with the Bound Rings, which can make it so that some of the levels feel like mazes, not sure of where you need to go in order to be done with this shit quicker. It just goes to prove even more that a gimmick like this simply does not work for a Sonic game, as it expects you to go about this in a way that you would usually do so in your average game in this series, minus a few sections here and there, and it just makes things all the more difficult as a result. Thankfully, there are some levels that don’t suffer from this too much, but a good amount of them do, and it can make for a very unsatisfying journey as a result of this.
Overall, despite some pretty great visuals, music, characters to mess around with, and special/bonus stages to try out, I just simply wasn’t able to get too into Knuckles’ Chaotix as a whole, with the Boun Rings making doing anything in this game much more stressful and annoying then it needs to be, making for what I can only say is an ok game at the end of the day, and nothing more. I would recommend this game for those who are huge Sonic fans, as well as those who don’t mind dealing with gimmicks like this in one of these games, because while I certainly wasn’t able to enjoy it that much, you could probably get more out of it then I could. Or maybe not, but hey, you won’t really know for yourself unless you try it out. But hey, if I will give the game any sort of credit whatsoever, I will say that it was at least one of the most memorable games from the entire 32X library. I mean hell, what other games do they have on here, anyway? Some Spider-Man game, a random shmup, an FPS or two here or there, and of course, how can we forget everyone’s favorite game of all time!…………. Slam City with Scottie Pippen.
Game #605
Much like with Tails’ Skypatrol, this is the first and only time that Knuckles managed to get a starring role in his own game, with most people probably not even knowing about this thing existing, considering that it is one of the only Sonic games from this era to never be ported onto anything else or included on any sort of collection pack. It is a shame too, especially considering how many other garbage Sonic games have managed to get the port treatment, and back when I first discovered that this was a thing, I was curious myself as to how it turned out. The fact that it was a game starring Knuckles was enough to convince me to give it a shot, but I at least hoped it was on the same level of quality as something like Sonic CD, where I would say it is the only reason you would wanna get a Sega 32X. So, I loaded up a totally-legal emulator to play the game on, and I can certainly say that it is, indeed, a video game. It does what it does well enough, and I’m sure that big Sonic fans would have a good enough time with this, but it definitely has plenty of big issues holding it back, making for what I would consider to be a “whatever” game and nothing more then that.
The story is typical for that of any Sonic game, where on a mysterious island, the evil Dr. Robotnik and his loyal servant Metal Sonic set out to find all of the mythical Chaos Rings in order to take over the world, but when Knuckles hears about this happening, he just can’t have that shit, so he assembles the Chaotix, consisting of him, Vector the Crocodile, Espio the Chameleon, Charmy the Bee, and Mighty the Armadillo, to head on out to this mysterious island themselves and stop Robotnik from doing the evil things he usually does. It’s a Sonic game, so you know exactly what you are going to get from a story like this, but it is cool seeing the introduction of the Chaotix, who would go onto being recurring characters throughout the rest of the series………. well, except for Mighty, who is probably dead in a ditch somewhere.
The graphics are great, looking about as vibrant and colorful as any other Sonic game that was released around that time, even more so given what the system is running on, and they even show off some of them fancy-schmancy graphics they have their with sprites changing sizes and all that, so that’s pretty cool, the music is solid enough, having plenty of energetic and wonderful tunes to listen to while you try to blaze around at the speed of sound, although it isn’t gonna come close to the quality of some tracks from other Sonic games despite its quality, and the gameplay/control is, for the most part, typical of what you would see in a Sonic game, with there definitely being the foundation for yet another great entry in this series in here somewhere, but……….. hoo boy.......
The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of two of any of the characters I just previously mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, including some other joke characters that Sega included in there just to fuck with you, go through a set of six different zones in whatever order the game decides you will go through them in, defeat plenty of enemies as you fly and bounce through all over the place with your Chaotix powers, gather plenty of different powerups to assist you along the way in some of the most ridiculous ways that you could possibly imagine, locate all six of the Chaos Rings so that you can get the good ending of the game so that you don’t feel like a pathetic piece of shit, and take on plenty of bosses that can range from either being generally easy to being just as unmanageable as the game itself is most of the time. What we got here is mostly your typical Sonic adventure, except with plenty of wrenches thrown into the mix to change things up, and while some of these wrenches manage to turn those bolts enough to where it makes the game a little more fun, those other wrenches are turning some other bolts that I would much rather not be there at all.
To get the good stuff out of the way first, the amount of original stuff this game has in it compared to plenty of the other games in the series is quite impressive, from the amount of characters you can play as to the powerups that you can get, each one being somewhat different then what you have ever seen before, and it is pretty fun messing around with all of these different things to see what does what and what works best for the adventure ahead. It’s especially sweet whenever you find those characters and powerups that work just wonderfully for you, such as the case with Charmy the Bee, who is RIDICULOUS in this game, being able to fly around all over the place and pretty much snap the entire game in half. Kinda renders the entire main gimmick of the game mute at the end of the day, but…… sigh, we will get to that in just a second.
What I also liked about this game was the bonus and special stages that you could find in the game. Much like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, you can find plenty of big rings hidden throughout the stages, and these will take you to a bonus game where you are falling down a giant corridor, hitting all of these different blocks with goodies in them before you exit the stage. It is a pretty simple concept, not having as much interactability as the bonus stages from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but it is simple and manageable enough to where I am still able to enjoy it all the same, and get plenty of helpful goodies along the way. But of course, we can’t forget about the main Special Stages, which you get to by getting 50 rings and jumping into the giant rings at the end of the stages, and these stages are pretty much 3D versions of the Special Stages from Sonic Tw- NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO................................ ok, to be fair, they aren’t as bad as the ones in Sonic 2, with these ones being a lot more open, manageable, and instead of needing to get a bunch of rings, you instead just have to collect a few of the blue spheres again. This can be a bit frustrating at times, especially when it comes to some of the later special stages, but they didn’t manage to give me as much shit as those other stages, so I will gladly take these any day of the week over those.
But anyways, now that we all that out of the way, we may as well get to the stuff that I DON’T like in this game, and they are some pretty big parts of it to, so let’s start off with the main gimmick of the game: the Bound Rings. Throughout the entire game, you will be permanently stapled to another person, who you can swap out with someone else at these stations you find in the stages, but no matter who you play with, you are stuck with them through these rings. With these rings, you are meant to propel yourself forward and backwards with your partner, using your momentum to get you around to specific areas and to get through the stages, with you also being able to perform specific actions at certain parts where one of you will be temporarily stuck in place, while your partner will be spinning around trying to help you proceed forward. This, if you ask me, is what ultimately kills this entire game for me.
I don’t hate this idea on paper, as I feel if properly managed, this could make for a very interesting mechanic that could be very fun to fuck around with. However, when it comes to this game, it does NOT work at all in your favor in the slightest. It feels so fucking awkward to do anything in this set up, as you will either be completely halted trying to get yourself moving again, which is definitely what you should not be at all in a SONIC game, or you will be yanked around all over the place, flying around at the speed of sound, not being able to control yourself, and just begging for the end of the stage to be around the corner so that you can just get a move on. Sure, it isn’t as bad as how I am describing it in parts, but trust me, when you actually try this game out for yourself, you can feel how broken this shit is, and not in a good way, making it way more frustrating to play as a result, and can be the one thing that will decide whether or not you will enjoy this game.
What also doesn’t help this out at all are the levels themselves, as they are also pretty poor as well. Most of these levels are built in the way that you would typically expect for a Sonic level to be built like, which would usually be a good thing in most cases, but this isn’t a normal Sonic game, and as such, it suffers as a result. You will have to fight with the level design in many instances while also fighting with the Bound Rings, which can make it so that some of the levels feel like mazes, not sure of where you need to go in order to be done with this shit quicker. It just goes to prove even more that a gimmick like this simply does not work for a Sonic game, as it expects you to go about this in a way that you would usually do so in your average game in this series, minus a few sections here and there, and it just makes things all the more difficult as a result. Thankfully, there are some levels that don’t suffer from this too much, but a good amount of them do, and it can make for a very unsatisfying journey as a result of this.
Overall, despite some pretty great visuals, music, characters to mess around with, and special/bonus stages to try out, I just simply wasn’t able to get too into Knuckles’ Chaotix as a whole, with the Boun Rings making doing anything in this game much more stressful and annoying then it needs to be, making for what I can only say is an ok game at the end of the day, and nothing more. I would recommend this game for those who are huge Sonic fans, as well as those who don’t mind dealing with gimmicks like this in one of these games, because while I certainly wasn’t able to enjoy it that much, you could probably get more out of it then I could. Or maybe not, but hey, you won’t really know for yourself unless you try it out. But hey, if I will give the game any sort of credit whatsoever, I will say that it was at least one of the most memorable games from the entire 32X library. I mean hell, what other games do they have on here, anyway? Some Spider-Man game, a random shmup, an FPS or two here or there, and of course, how can we forget everyone’s favorite game of all time!…………. Slam City with Scottie Pippen.
Game #605
Mario Builder 64
2024
Haven't messed with the builder portion much, but I've already played some really impressive levels such as Whomp's Graveyard. I also like how star collecting handles like it does in Odyssey- you don't get booted out of the stage at any point for collecting them. It's also a plus that you don't have to deal with slightly altered physics- that was something that always bothered me about mario maker. I just wish the process to download levels was a bit less tedious. For now, you have to go to level share square and manually download them+ drag and drop them into a virtual SD card to get them to load. (It's still worth it tho don't get me wrong!)
Mega Man Zero
2002
This review contains spoilers
This game was my bisexual awakening. And what better way to celebrate Pride Month than reviewing Mega Man Zero?!?!?!
Mega Man Zero is a misunderstood classic that ranks among one of the best Mega Man games, and also as one my favorite games of all time. But honestly, yeah, it’s not surprising why it has such a mixed reception among the Mega Man community. The game is very good in my eyes, but leans pretty hard into the difficulty, which absolutely turned off some people, especially with the original GBA release (more on that at 11). However, Mega Man Zero was rereleased on most modern platforms with the release of the Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection. God, what a mouthful. I don't like abbreviating titles, but I just have to, at this point. MMZ/ZXLC (LMFAOOOOOO) added the Save Assist feature, which was essentially designated Save States with free healing. It's an optional feature, which is good, as I think it makes the games too easy in the scoring department, but most players have opted to leave it enabled. I personally leave it off, but hey, player accessibility should take priority above all else in my eyes. Having it as an option is great, for sure. And for the record, I left them on for my most recent playthrough. I've beaten all but Mega Man Zero 4 without them (and I have some major reservations about that game), and scoring really wasn't a priority for this playthrough. Even then, I still beat the game without many deaths. I've beaten Mega Man Zero several times beforehand, about… 6 or 7 times at this point? I should really start a Hard Mode playthrough at some point… But, without further ado, let's look at Mega Man Zero!
The game kicks off with a mysterious young girl, fairy, and a band of soldiers fighting off a mass of reploids, who look oddly like X. As the men continue to fall, the robots only continue to fire back. Eventually, this only leaves Ciel, and two other soldiers. As the reploids gain distance on the three, they come to a dead end, with a disfigured reploid in the same room, unconscious. Before they can take a look at the young robot, the X reploids arrive at the same room, and promptly kill the two soldiers, leaving only the girl and the fairy. Without any other options, the girl casts the fairy, named Passy, subsequently killing Passy, but revives the reploid, without memory of the past, kickstarting the first stage of the game.
Mega Man Zero takes the best elements of Mega Man X and simply adds to its already great gameplay, but with the tradeoff of having an incredibly high skill ceiling for newer players. It’s an incredibly difficult game to learn, but equally as satisfying to master. Your primary weapon of choice is the Z Saber, a close ranged combat tool, which slices enemies in two, while also doing great damage on its own, being a quintessential tool for combat. Your longer ranged option, the buster shot, is a long ranged tool, but is heavily nerfed from the X days. It does decent damage compared to the Z Saber, but can be charged up, making it a great room clearer. This balance between a great short ranged and long ranged attack plays well into Mega Man Zero’s high skill ceiling. Better players will typically wield the Z Saber a majority of the time, with efficiency and damage on it's side at the cost of putting the own player at risk, while newer players will typically stick with the Buster Shot, due to its solid damage and longer ranged potential, but not being as strong as the Z Saber. Only when you truly get great at the game will you use both in perfect conjunction, as well as the other two, optional weapons; the Shield Boomerang and Triple Rod. Both of these share similar design philosophies to the main two weapons. The Shield Boomerang deflects incoming fire, but lacks a good attack game, and the Triple Rod having a superb ground game, with a neutered air game. Additionally adding to the balance, is the Element Chips. After defeating certain bosses, the player can gain one of three Element Chips. For the love of god, DON'T skip these. They are crucial to succeeding in Mega Man Zero’s relentless combat. On top of being a part of the weakness chain of bosses, they also provide bonuses against enemies. From stunning to burn effects, one should almost always be equipped. I think these were amongst my favorite weapons in Mega Man history. I do like the weapons of traditional Mega Man, but Zero is much better in this regard. Not only do the weapons consume no ammo, encouraging experimentation, they're seamless in the combat. No potentially finicky weapons in the way of your weakness chain, charge and use your weapons like normal. It's certainly less varied, but it's so practical. Charge it up, and bam. Plus, even without elements, the Saber and Buster are needed for optimal times, rather than just spamming the same shot over and over again (hint hint, classic and x series). There's actually a strategy! The amount of depth that Mega Man Zero has is commendable for a GBA game. While the combo game would only keep improving in future games, Zero 1 is still remarkable in this regard. Look up Mega Man Zero: The Ultimate Disrespect, and you'll see what I mean. If Zero gets in Smash 6, he'd become among the most hated platform fighters in a WHILE. Combos are an entirely optional element of the Zero series, but I'm not saying that Zero lacks any tech at all. I'm not going to explain it all, but if you're curious, do look it up for yourself.
Mega Man Zero's high skill ceiling always brings me back for more and more runs. Starting out, Zero is a glass cannon. He can take some hits, but he's a pretty fragile character. This is a pretty big turn off for newcomers, but hear me out. While it's possible to turn Zero into a practically unkillable god, this would take multiple natural playthroughs to do, or takes hours of grinding, which is obviously pretty boring, and even when you do so, your rank suffers from it. Why? The Cyber Elves. These are one time use fairies that either install a permanent upgrade onto Zero, or provide a one-stage effect. Pro tip; avoid relying on these. A majority of them just aren't worth it for the hit to your rank alone. Maybe use the Health up ones, but other than that, they are almost entirely disposable. I usually never use any, except for a Health up or two, which are undoubtedly the ones that anyone should instantly feed and upgrade. But you're definitely tempted to use them, with how dishearteningly oppressive this game's world and difficulty are. Mega Man Zero is among the hardest games in my eyes, especially for casuals. You will get your shit promptly wrecked if you aren't careful. Enemies deal massive damage, instant kills are prominent, and the bosses can be pretty brutal. But MAN, crushing that A Rank always feels great. I always feel like my Rank parallels my own skill level with Mega Man Zero. And keeping that A Rank ain't easy. My 7th Grade English Teacher always told me, “You get a Free A when you enter this classroom, but you have to be able to uphold it.” Compare that to Mega Man Zero. If I'm eating shit one too many times, it always feels like my fault that I got a D Rank. The bosses and enemy design is almost perfectly fair. The stages allow you to speed through with grace, so long as you take the time to learn them. The game responds accordingly to your skill level, by adding some new boss attacks at A Rank or higher. And when you nail that A Rank, it's an immaculate feeling. Oh yeah, can I talk about the BOSSES?
First off, this gangster-ass song. Secondly, good. LORD. These bosses are goddamn awesome. The most perfectly challenging (but screw you Phantom), thrilling boss fights in gaming history. When you hear those loud-ass sirens, you know it's about to be a good beat down. The bosses truly feel intimidating, potentially even stronger than Zero himself. They can easily kill you off in seconds. They're quick, but all of their attacks are dodgeable. It's just a matter of actually getting skilled at the video game. You no longer feel like the lone Reploid. You ARE the lone Reploid, fighting for dear life, as he knows that only he Zero, can save the day. X and Axl may be gone, but Zero's still kicking ass. Anyways, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Anyways, the bosses are awesome. Yeah, not much more to say. All of them were bangers for the most part.
Of course, no game is perfect. I don’t have many major qualms with Mega Man Zero overall. It’s a foundationally solid game, but one with a few too many flaws, keeping it from a perfect 10/10 in my eyes. For one, fuck the Retry Chips system. Okay... “fuck” is a strong word. I just had to get my “fuck” quota out of the way. Anyways, on paper, the Retry System is similar to Devil May Cry’s Yellow Orbs. But the issue is that Retry Chips are scarce as hell in Mega Man Zero. In Devil May Cry, not only is Devil May Cry more forgiving in general, it's always super easy to find more. And if you can't find more, you always have the option of buying them. I'm not saying Mega Man Zero needs a shop, but upping the drop rate of them would be well appreciated. Now, as someone who's beaten Mega Man Zero several times, I could care less about not having the Retry Chips. I can very easily clear the game without any. But for newer players, this is a very punishing system. Because when you run out of Retry Chips, you're straight up out of Retry Chips. You don't get 2 extras upon finishing a mission; honestly the best way to fix this issue in this eyes. Also, note that when you Game Over, that's it. You can either give up on the mission and skip it (NEVER do this), or reload your save. And that can be a killer for some stages. Like PROTECT THE FACTORY!!! Easily the WORST stage in the game, in part to the GBA’s awful screen crunch. If I had like, 5 or 6 more pixels, this stage would be SO much better. You have these safe zones above moving platforms suspended in midair, but they're just BARELY low enough to see on the screen, so you have to awkwardly wall jump in order to see the platforms. This ruined an otherwise solid mission. I just straight up skip this mission whenever playing casually. It's too annoying to put up with. D Rank my ass for all that I care. Also, this is more of a nitpick, but I gotta say, Mega Man Zero would greatly benefit from some kind of tutorial. You're thrown into all these different systems and missions at once, and it's pretty difficult to get into the groove of things. Almost everything that I praised about Mega Man Zero is poorly explained, in my eyes. So 1 or 2 tutorials here or there would be well appreciated. And finally, a very small nitpick, Weapon Level Ups are weirdly irritating to me. I'm fine with unlocking the combos, but Charging should be a default IMO.
I usually never cover stories in my reviews, but for the Mega Man Zero series, I have to make an exception, because Mega Man Zero has a pretty cool story. It doesn’t go as hard as the following entries, but I still think it’s enjoyable from start to finish. As I previously stated, after a deep sleep, Zero awakens from his 100-year slumber, after Sigma was defeated in the X Series. But a lot can happen in a 100-year time span. Disregarding Zero, there’s seemingly no survivors from the X Series. X, Ailia, Axl? Nope. They’re all gone. After the final confrontation with Sigma, a new government, dubbed Neo Arcadia, would be formed out of what was left in the X Series. However, the Neo Arcadians are highly unjust, slaying any Reploids that come their way. Ciel, a young girl, would flee Neo Arcadia and form a Resistance, believing that the Reploids were wrongly executed. This is where Zero, in a coma at this point, comes in and saves Ciel. Zero is truly the last hope for the Resistance. As we saw in the intro, the Neo Arcadians aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty for their own sake. So, Zero agrees to help fight back, to save the Reploid race. While I did state that X was technically deceased, he lives on in two different forms. X, the X we see in Mega Man X, and Copy X, a false X, and the leader of Neo Arcadia, created by Ciel, having a crucial flaw of lacking any sense of moral judgment. X assists Zero, by giving him his saber, while Copy X only wants to see Zero’s ashes. And stopping Copy X ain’t easy either. Because, at his disposal are the Four Guardians, Sage Harpuia, the hot one, Fairy Leviathan, the one that wants the D:/ drive and fast, Fighting Fefnir, the token hothead of the bunch, and Hidden Phantom, the cool ninja one. I really like these four. They’re pretty intimidating, having a unique battle intro theme, that sounds… holy??? IDK, but it’s still cool, but who cares. Oh yeah, can I talk about Zero 1’s stellar world building? Zero 1 is a semi-open world game. Sure, you can always stick down in the Resistance, but do a few dozen wall jumps, and you’re on the surface! Almost everything is connected in Mega Man Zero, and missions also affect the world as well. After the “Retrieve Data” mission, the Underground Laboratory is permanently locked off, as the area begins to collapse when Maha Ganeshariff is defeated. It’s a nice attention to detail, and it actually made me care about what happened to the world. Speaking of the world, once all missions are fully completed, Zero can finally head straight for Neo Arcadia, with the help of Spirit X. After Ciel says her goodbyes, it’s time to get Copy X’s head on a wall! The final missions are also pretty solid, but that leaves us with the final battle. Copy X vs Zero! This is, in my opinion, the hardest of the fights in the game. Copy X, specifically his second phase, does pretty crazy damage. It’s not impossible by any means, but I did almost Game Over on my first try. But, after Copy X is defeated, Neo Arcadia begins to fall, leaving Zero alone in the Desert, with Spirit X passing over the torch to Zero. Shortly after this happens, Zero notices a horde of Reploids coming towards him. With no other option, the war on Neo Arcadia begins, as Zero tears straight through the robot, concluding Mega Man Zero
Casting aside my gripes with Mega Man Zero, Mega Man Zero is a one of a kind masterpiece. It's up there with the best GBA games in my eyes. It's one of the most challenging, but also most replayable games that I've played thus far. Its low points are definitely pretty low, though, which is why I hesitate to give it a perfect 5 star. I still do love it though, and it’s been a constant replay of mine over the years. I recommend giving it a shot if you can. If you didn’t like it at first, I may suggest turning on the checkpoints in the Switch release, which seems to be a popular option among fans. But, that’s all I have to say right now. Zero 1 is a pretty good game!
okay imma go back to bayonetta origins now i swear….
Mega Man Zero is a misunderstood classic that ranks among one of the best Mega Man games, and also as one my favorite games of all time. But honestly, yeah, it’s not surprising why it has such a mixed reception among the Mega Man community. The game is very good in my eyes, but leans pretty hard into the difficulty, which absolutely turned off some people, especially with the original GBA release (more on that at 11). However, Mega Man Zero was rereleased on most modern platforms with the release of the Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection. God, what a mouthful. I don't like abbreviating titles, but I just have to, at this point. MMZ/ZXLC (LMFAOOOOOO) added the Save Assist feature, which was essentially designated Save States with free healing. It's an optional feature, which is good, as I think it makes the games too easy in the scoring department, but most players have opted to leave it enabled. I personally leave it off, but hey, player accessibility should take priority above all else in my eyes. Having it as an option is great, for sure. And for the record, I left them on for my most recent playthrough. I've beaten all but Mega Man Zero 4 without them (and I have some major reservations about that game), and scoring really wasn't a priority for this playthrough. Even then, I still beat the game without many deaths. I've beaten Mega Man Zero several times beforehand, about… 6 or 7 times at this point? I should really start a Hard Mode playthrough at some point… But, without further ado, let's look at Mega Man Zero!
The game kicks off with a mysterious young girl, fairy, and a band of soldiers fighting off a mass of reploids, who look oddly like X. As the men continue to fall, the robots only continue to fire back. Eventually, this only leaves Ciel, and two other soldiers. As the reploids gain distance on the three, they come to a dead end, with a disfigured reploid in the same room, unconscious. Before they can take a look at the young robot, the X reploids arrive at the same room, and promptly kill the two soldiers, leaving only the girl and the fairy. Without any other options, the girl casts the fairy, named Passy, subsequently killing Passy, but revives the reploid, without memory of the past, kickstarting the first stage of the game.
Mega Man Zero takes the best elements of Mega Man X and simply adds to its already great gameplay, but with the tradeoff of having an incredibly high skill ceiling for newer players. It’s an incredibly difficult game to learn, but equally as satisfying to master. Your primary weapon of choice is the Z Saber, a close ranged combat tool, which slices enemies in two, while also doing great damage on its own, being a quintessential tool for combat. Your longer ranged option, the buster shot, is a long ranged tool, but is heavily nerfed from the X days. It does decent damage compared to the Z Saber, but can be charged up, making it a great room clearer. This balance between a great short ranged and long ranged attack plays well into Mega Man Zero’s high skill ceiling. Better players will typically wield the Z Saber a majority of the time, with efficiency and damage on it's side at the cost of putting the own player at risk, while newer players will typically stick with the Buster Shot, due to its solid damage and longer ranged potential, but not being as strong as the Z Saber. Only when you truly get great at the game will you use both in perfect conjunction, as well as the other two, optional weapons; the Shield Boomerang and Triple Rod. Both of these share similar design philosophies to the main two weapons. The Shield Boomerang deflects incoming fire, but lacks a good attack game, and the Triple Rod having a superb ground game, with a neutered air game. Additionally adding to the balance, is the Element Chips. After defeating certain bosses, the player can gain one of three Element Chips. For the love of god, DON'T skip these. They are crucial to succeeding in Mega Man Zero’s relentless combat. On top of being a part of the weakness chain of bosses, they also provide bonuses against enemies. From stunning to burn effects, one should almost always be equipped. I think these were amongst my favorite weapons in Mega Man history. I do like the weapons of traditional Mega Man, but Zero is much better in this regard. Not only do the weapons consume no ammo, encouraging experimentation, they're seamless in the combat. No potentially finicky weapons in the way of your weakness chain, charge and use your weapons like normal. It's certainly less varied, but it's so practical. Charge it up, and bam. Plus, even without elements, the Saber and Buster are needed for optimal times, rather than just spamming the same shot over and over again (hint hint, classic and x series). There's actually a strategy! The amount of depth that Mega Man Zero has is commendable for a GBA game. While the combo game would only keep improving in future games, Zero 1 is still remarkable in this regard. Look up Mega Man Zero: The Ultimate Disrespect, and you'll see what I mean. If Zero gets in Smash 6, he'd become among the most hated platform fighters in a WHILE. Combos are an entirely optional element of the Zero series, but I'm not saying that Zero lacks any tech at all. I'm not going to explain it all, but if you're curious, do look it up for yourself.
Mega Man Zero's high skill ceiling always brings me back for more and more runs. Starting out, Zero is a glass cannon. He can take some hits, but he's a pretty fragile character. This is a pretty big turn off for newcomers, but hear me out. While it's possible to turn Zero into a practically unkillable god, this would take multiple natural playthroughs to do, or takes hours of grinding, which is obviously pretty boring, and even when you do so, your rank suffers from it. Why? The Cyber Elves. These are one time use fairies that either install a permanent upgrade onto Zero, or provide a one-stage effect. Pro tip; avoid relying on these. A majority of them just aren't worth it for the hit to your rank alone. Maybe use the Health up ones, but other than that, they are almost entirely disposable. I usually never use any, except for a Health up or two, which are undoubtedly the ones that anyone should instantly feed and upgrade. But you're definitely tempted to use them, with how dishearteningly oppressive this game's world and difficulty are. Mega Man Zero is among the hardest games in my eyes, especially for casuals. You will get your shit promptly wrecked if you aren't careful. Enemies deal massive damage, instant kills are prominent, and the bosses can be pretty brutal. But MAN, crushing that A Rank always feels great. I always feel like my Rank parallels my own skill level with Mega Man Zero. And keeping that A Rank ain't easy. My 7th Grade English Teacher always told me, “You get a Free A when you enter this classroom, but you have to be able to uphold it.” Compare that to Mega Man Zero. If I'm eating shit one too many times, it always feels like my fault that I got a D Rank. The bosses and enemy design is almost perfectly fair. The stages allow you to speed through with grace, so long as you take the time to learn them. The game responds accordingly to your skill level, by adding some new boss attacks at A Rank or higher. And when you nail that A Rank, it's an immaculate feeling. Oh yeah, can I talk about the BOSSES?
First off, this gangster-ass song. Secondly, good. LORD. These bosses are goddamn awesome. The most perfectly challenging (but screw you Phantom), thrilling boss fights in gaming history. When you hear those loud-ass sirens, you know it's about to be a good beat down. The bosses truly feel intimidating, potentially even stronger than Zero himself. They can easily kill you off in seconds. They're quick, but all of their attacks are dodgeable. It's just a matter of actually getting skilled at the video game. You no longer feel like the lone Reploid. You ARE the lone Reploid, fighting for dear life, as he knows that only he Zero, can save the day. X and Axl may be gone, but Zero's still kicking ass. Anyways, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Anyways, the bosses are awesome. Yeah, not much more to say. All of them were bangers for the most part.
Of course, no game is perfect. I don’t have many major qualms with Mega Man Zero overall. It’s a foundationally solid game, but one with a few too many flaws, keeping it from a perfect 10/10 in my eyes. For one, fuck the Retry Chips system. Okay... “fuck” is a strong word. I just had to get my “fuck” quota out of the way. Anyways, on paper, the Retry System is similar to Devil May Cry’s Yellow Orbs. But the issue is that Retry Chips are scarce as hell in Mega Man Zero. In Devil May Cry, not only is Devil May Cry more forgiving in general, it's always super easy to find more. And if you can't find more, you always have the option of buying them. I'm not saying Mega Man Zero needs a shop, but upping the drop rate of them would be well appreciated. Now, as someone who's beaten Mega Man Zero several times, I could care less about not having the Retry Chips. I can very easily clear the game without any. But for newer players, this is a very punishing system. Because when you run out of Retry Chips, you're straight up out of Retry Chips. You don't get 2 extras upon finishing a mission; honestly the best way to fix this issue in this eyes. Also, note that when you Game Over, that's it. You can either give up on the mission and skip it (NEVER do this), or reload your save. And that can be a killer for some stages. Like PROTECT THE FACTORY!!! Easily the WORST stage in the game, in part to the GBA’s awful screen crunch. If I had like, 5 or 6 more pixels, this stage would be SO much better. You have these safe zones above moving platforms suspended in midair, but they're just BARELY low enough to see on the screen, so you have to awkwardly wall jump in order to see the platforms. This ruined an otherwise solid mission. I just straight up skip this mission whenever playing casually. It's too annoying to put up with. D Rank my ass for all that I care. Also, this is more of a nitpick, but I gotta say, Mega Man Zero would greatly benefit from some kind of tutorial. You're thrown into all these different systems and missions at once, and it's pretty difficult to get into the groove of things. Almost everything that I praised about Mega Man Zero is poorly explained, in my eyes. So 1 or 2 tutorials here or there would be well appreciated. And finally, a very small nitpick, Weapon Level Ups are weirdly irritating to me. I'm fine with unlocking the combos, but Charging should be a default IMO.
I usually never cover stories in my reviews, but for the Mega Man Zero series, I have to make an exception, because Mega Man Zero has a pretty cool story. It doesn’t go as hard as the following entries, but I still think it’s enjoyable from start to finish. As I previously stated, after a deep sleep, Zero awakens from his 100-year slumber, after Sigma was defeated in the X Series. But a lot can happen in a 100-year time span. Disregarding Zero, there’s seemingly no survivors from the X Series. X, Ailia, Axl? Nope. They’re all gone. After the final confrontation with Sigma, a new government, dubbed Neo Arcadia, would be formed out of what was left in the X Series. However, the Neo Arcadians are highly unjust, slaying any Reploids that come their way. Ciel, a young girl, would flee Neo Arcadia and form a Resistance, believing that the Reploids were wrongly executed. This is where Zero, in a coma at this point, comes in and saves Ciel. Zero is truly the last hope for the Resistance. As we saw in the intro, the Neo Arcadians aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty for their own sake. So, Zero agrees to help fight back, to save the Reploid race. While I did state that X was technically deceased, he lives on in two different forms. X, the X we see in Mega Man X, and Copy X, a false X, and the leader of Neo Arcadia, created by Ciel, having a crucial flaw of lacking any sense of moral judgment. X assists Zero, by giving him his saber, while Copy X only wants to see Zero’s ashes. And stopping Copy X ain’t easy either. Because, at his disposal are the Four Guardians, Sage Harpuia, the hot one, Fairy Leviathan, the one that wants the D:/ drive and fast, Fighting Fefnir, the token hothead of the bunch, and Hidden Phantom, the cool ninja one. I really like these four. They’re pretty intimidating, having a unique battle intro theme, that sounds… holy??? IDK, but it’s still cool, but who cares. Oh yeah, can I talk about Zero 1’s stellar world building? Zero 1 is a semi-open world game. Sure, you can always stick down in the Resistance, but do a few dozen wall jumps, and you’re on the surface! Almost everything is connected in Mega Man Zero, and missions also affect the world as well. After the “Retrieve Data” mission, the Underground Laboratory is permanently locked off, as the area begins to collapse when Maha Ganeshariff is defeated. It’s a nice attention to detail, and it actually made me care about what happened to the world. Speaking of the world, once all missions are fully completed, Zero can finally head straight for Neo Arcadia, with the help of Spirit X. After Ciel says her goodbyes, it’s time to get Copy X’s head on a wall! The final missions are also pretty solid, but that leaves us with the final battle. Copy X vs Zero! This is, in my opinion, the hardest of the fights in the game. Copy X, specifically his second phase, does pretty crazy damage. It’s not impossible by any means, but I did almost Game Over on my first try. But, after Copy X is defeated, Neo Arcadia begins to fall, leaving Zero alone in the Desert, with Spirit X passing over the torch to Zero. Shortly after this happens, Zero notices a horde of Reploids coming towards him. With no other option, the war on Neo Arcadia begins, as Zero tears straight through the robot, concluding Mega Man Zero
Casting aside my gripes with Mega Man Zero, Mega Man Zero is a one of a kind masterpiece. It's up there with the best GBA games in my eyes. It's one of the most challenging, but also most replayable games that I've played thus far. Its low points are definitely pretty low, though, which is why I hesitate to give it a perfect 5 star. I still do love it though, and it’s been a constant replay of mine over the years. I recommend giving it a shot if you can. If you didn’t like it at first, I may suggest turning on the checkpoints in the Switch release, which seems to be a popular option among fans. But, that’s all I have to say right now. Zero 1 is a pretty good game!
okay imma go back to bayonetta origins now i swear….
Tetris Evolution
2007
This is a fairly mediocre version of Tetris. You've got a handful of game modes plus online play and that's kind of it. I had to guess what most of the game modes were though, since the game doesn't actually include a description of any of them. The music is pretty bland, and the visuals consist of mostly stock art that looks like the stuff you'd see on an apple tv in standby mode. An unfortunate side affect of this being exclusive to the Xbox 360 is that you need to play it with the 360 d-pad, which is way to sluggish and clunky to work well in the later levels of marathon mode. Definitely not my go-to Tetris game.
Blasphemous
2019
Blasphemous is an absolute anomaly for me. I love me some Metroidvanias but I always want either the movement options or combat to be high level for me to really enjoy it. Blasphemy’s movement is as basic as it gets and the combat is virtually one combo, hit, parry, hit, repeat. But for some reason even though this game does neither of those things this game just hits. While the combat isn’t impressive I appreciate the difficulty in boss battles, i appreciate the fact that for many bosses you will probably fail once or twice but you learn just enough to quickly pick up the right ideas to come back and go toe to toe with them. The boss fights are my favorite part of this game as they all feel quite a bit different and visually are very unique and well designed. While the combat and movement don’t always hit the third huge part of Metroidvanias, exploration, was very good. The map isn’t huge but it’s end up being bigger than you’d think and it’s full of secrets.
The art in this game is extremely good. The gothic culty religious themes they went for hit. Main characters and bosses are very unique and carefully designed. Each area is eerie yet beautiful. It has an overall pretty good sound track with a few top notch songs. Superb voice acting by the entire cast.
The best way I’ve heard a description of this game is through the awesome FallenGrace “A little Castlevania, a little Dark Souls.” If you are a fan of either of those series or Metroidvanias in general I would say this is a definite recommendation from me that you should play.
My 2024 ranked:
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/
My Metroidvanias ranked:
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/-metroidvanias-ive-played-ranked-/
The art in this game is extremely good. The gothic culty religious themes they went for hit. Main characters and bosses are very unique and carefully designed. Each area is eerie yet beautiful. It has an overall pretty good sound track with a few top notch songs. Superb voice acting by the entire cast.
The best way I’ve heard a description of this game is through the awesome FallenGrace “A little Castlevania, a little Dark Souls.” If you are a fan of either of those series or Metroidvanias in general I would say this is a definite recommendation from me that you should play.
My 2024 ranked:
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/
My Metroidvanias ranked:
https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/-metroidvanias-ive-played-ranked-/
After many very good and a single bad 2D Mickey platformer of the 16-bit era, we end with one of the best looking and animated games of the 16-bit generation.
Mickey Mania takes Mickey on a platforming journey through his most iconic episodes such as Steamboat Willy, The Giant Beanstalk, The Mad Doctor etc. All the stages and sprites feel like that came right out of the cartoons as this is some of the best animations on a 16-bit device period.
With most other Mickey platfomers being a great Mario/Ducktales type of fun arcadey platformer, Mickey Mania takes a different approach of trying to be something more of a "cinematic" platformer. Something along the lines of SNES Dragon's Lair, Prince of Persia, Heart of Darkness, Another world etc. While I do think the idea is neat for a game about Mickey's classical episodes, the execution is not great.
The game is just not fun to play and is absurdly hard relying on a lot of trial and error moments, bad enemy placement, bad hitboxes, bad platform collision in the sense where you will sometimes be falling through the floor even though you clearly landed on the platform, and enemies you can barley see. So many bad and frustrating design choices that it just sucked any enjoyment I wanted to have with this game as I loved the premise and visuals.
After getting through a chuck of many trial and error moments, just shredding lives and continues to get through most of the game, the game has the gull of letting you know that this game actually does NOT give you infinite continues despite being based around trial and error. Normally I don't have an issue with finite continues, but the game doesn't tell you and whenever you are on the continue screen there is no counter of any sort. So you have a game that really wants you to die and try again but also forces you to start all the way from the begging if you do die. Really bad design and I won't be continuing this one.
Mickey Mania takes Mickey on a platforming journey through his most iconic episodes such as Steamboat Willy, The Giant Beanstalk, The Mad Doctor etc. All the stages and sprites feel like that came right out of the cartoons as this is some of the best animations on a 16-bit device period.
With most other Mickey platfomers being a great Mario/Ducktales type of fun arcadey platformer, Mickey Mania takes a different approach of trying to be something more of a "cinematic" platformer. Something along the lines of SNES Dragon's Lair, Prince of Persia, Heart of Darkness, Another world etc. While I do think the idea is neat for a game about Mickey's classical episodes, the execution is not great.
The game is just not fun to play and is absurdly hard relying on a lot of trial and error moments, bad enemy placement, bad hitboxes, bad platform collision in the sense where you will sometimes be falling through the floor even though you clearly landed on the platform, and enemies you can barley see. So many bad and frustrating design choices that it just sucked any enjoyment I wanted to have with this game as I loved the premise and visuals.
After getting through a chuck of many trial and error moments, just shredding lives and continues to get through most of the game, the game has the gull of letting you know that this game actually does NOT give you infinite continues despite being based around trial and error. Normally I don't have an issue with finite continues, but the game doesn't tell you and whenever you are on the continue screen there is no counter of any sort. So you have a game that really wants you to die and try again but also forces you to start all the way from the begging if you do die. Really bad design and I won't be continuing this one.
Halo 2
2004
People really weren't joking when they said this game improves upon the original in every way. Gameplay-wise master chief’s movement feels significantly better, vehicles are actually controllable, and levels now consist of more than one repeated room. Aside from being super fun, Dual wielding weapons also brings in significantly more strategy to your gameplan for every level. You have to pay far more attention to your ammo levels, and making calls on what weapon to use when ends up being pretty important. Now that levels consist of more than one room, finding where you need to go has been made much easier, meaning nearly all frustrations I had with the first game have been dealt with in this one. Story-wise Halo 2 is also better in every conceivable way, which made me much more interested in the game during my playthrough. The original Halo’s story definitely had some interesting aspects to it, but I felt it wasn't particularly well told. Cutscenes were basic as well as few and far between, there was only a very small number of speaking characters, and the dialogue was often pretty cheesy. Halo 2 definitely does have its fair share of cheesy dialogue, but now there are real cutscenes all over the place, some real characters with actual depth, and even more crazy and cool scifi concepts explored. The cinematography in this game has also been massively improved over the original. I still get chills from watching that opening cutscene of master chief planting the covenant bomb. It also helps that the graphics are significantly better than the original, and fairly impressive for the Xbox. It's really hard for me to believe sometimes that Halo and Halo 2 even came out on the same system. My two complaints with this game is that, one, I don't particularly enjoy running through narrow, dark, crowded corridors filled with enemies that run straight at me and can 2 shot me (especially when one of the playable characters doesn't have a flashlight), and i'd say this game features a few too many levels with that structure. Two, the story ends really abruptly and out of nowhere on a fairly major cliffhanger. All said and done however, I think halo 2 is easily one of the best first person shooters ever made. It did everything the first game wasn't capable of, and I believe it's taught me why this series is so widely loved.
Fortnite Festival
2023
Decent rhythm game, just don't like the fact you have to either buy the songs you like or wait till they are in free rotation
Alan Wake Remastered
2021
NOTA: 7,5
Alan Wake Remastered é um survival horror com foco na ação representanda por um combate de bom ritmo e com uma mecânica de utilizar as luzes para vulnerabilizar inimigos e elementos hostis e então, descer bala neles.
O game levanta uma trama bem diferente do habitual, ao registrar o protagonista escritor vivendo sua própria história escrita por ele, com intuito de salvar sua esposa e enfrentar uma entidade sombria que já havia feito vítimas no passado. A história começa de maneira mais complexa instigando o player a deduzir o que seria realidade versus ficção e por fim tem seu climax e conclusão desenrolado de maneira um pouco mais simples.
Por outro lado, minha experiência com as histórias malucas de Alan Wake me decepcionou um pouco, o game explora muito pouco o cenário e a ambientação para criar uma atmosfera mais de terror e na verdade até mesmo para o gênero survival horror, achei que faltou algumas reações ou aparições mais bizarras para a trama, que não representa tão bem o que os personagens estão passando.
Além disso, o game têm uma cara bem de remaster mesmo, as melhorias em relação ao original são perceptíveis mas também deixam a desejar.
Sobre a dificuldade, apesar do game muitas vezes oferecer recursos até de maneira exagerada, alguns trechos podem dar dor de cabeça devido à esquiva do game um pouco estranha. Os dois capítulos extras da DLC são muito bons e bem desafiadores, e de certa forma até ficam mais interessantes que a trama principal ao levantar duas versões do protagonista batalhando entre si e buscando a sanidade ( será que não valeria a pena as histórias serem invertidas?)
Em resumo, Alan Wake Remastered é ação pura, mesmo um pouco repetitivo, o combate até que me engajou. Enquanto sua história embora se demonstrasse complexa, tenho a sensação de que poderia explorar mais a parte mental e emocional de Alan. Mesmo assim recomendo o game! E agora partiu se aventurar em mais uma história de nosso escritor maluco na sequência desse game.
Alan Wake Remastered é um survival horror com foco na ação representanda por um combate de bom ritmo e com uma mecânica de utilizar as luzes para vulnerabilizar inimigos e elementos hostis e então, descer bala neles.
O game levanta uma trama bem diferente do habitual, ao registrar o protagonista escritor vivendo sua própria história escrita por ele, com intuito de salvar sua esposa e enfrentar uma entidade sombria que já havia feito vítimas no passado. A história começa de maneira mais complexa instigando o player a deduzir o que seria realidade versus ficção e por fim tem seu climax e conclusão desenrolado de maneira um pouco mais simples.
Por outro lado, minha experiência com as histórias malucas de Alan Wake me decepcionou um pouco, o game explora muito pouco o cenário e a ambientação para criar uma atmosfera mais de terror e na verdade até mesmo para o gênero survival horror, achei que faltou algumas reações ou aparições mais bizarras para a trama, que não representa tão bem o que os personagens estão passando.
Além disso, o game têm uma cara bem de remaster mesmo, as melhorias em relação ao original são perceptíveis mas também deixam a desejar.
Sobre a dificuldade, apesar do game muitas vezes oferecer recursos até de maneira exagerada, alguns trechos podem dar dor de cabeça devido à esquiva do game um pouco estranha. Os dois capítulos extras da DLC são muito bons e bem desafiadores, e de certa forma até ficam mais interessantes que a trama principal ao levantar duas versões do protagonista batalhando entre si e buscando a sanidade ( será que não valeria a pena as histórias serem invertidas?)
Em resumo, Alan Wake Remastered é ação pura, mesmo um pouco repetitivo, o combate até que me engajou. Enquanto sua história embora se demonstrasse complexa, tenho a sensação de que poderia explorar mais a parte mental e emocional de Alan. Mesmo assim recomendo o game! E agora partiu se aventurar em mais uma história de nosso escritor maluco na sequência desse game.
As a kid, whenever I saw an arcade cabinet of Metal Slug, I would flock to it begging my parents for just a quarter so I could play a bit. At the time (and perhaps still today) Metal Slug was one of my favorite arcade games of all time. But because I was a kid, and this was an arcade game, getting around to finding an opportunity to play it was really hard.
In this case, having metal slug on a portable system such as a Neo Geo Pocket Color would have been more than serviceable to me between the moments of not being able to play the arcade game, and would've loved owning Metal Slug: 1st Mission. A portable Metal Slug, but rather being a downgraded port, it is it's own unique game.
The title implies this is a prequel to Metal Slug, but like who cares the story in Metal Slug doesn't really matter anyway. It plays exactly like metal slug except the physics are a little weird. The turns are a bit delayed and not as smooth and the jumps are a little higher and longer due to this game having more of a focus on the platforming element.
The arcade games being known for their beautiful pixel art animations are not found here. Of course, this is expected from portable titles at the time, but the pixel art animation is 90% of the Metal Slug charm, so you just gotta accept that you won't be getting that going into this game.
So what we have left is serviceable portable 8 bit graphics, barely any animation - mostly being choppy, and okayish feeling floaty controls. The only stand out difference in it's design is the level design. I guess because this is not an arcarde title, there is less focus on the run and gun and more of a focus on platforming. I don't mind this change, as verticality means good level design, but some of the later levels go really crazy with some of the jumps and platforming sections to the point it doesn't become fun.
I would have loved having this as a kid, but today this is just more of a product of it's time. Today there are many ways to play the arcade Metal Slugs portably, so there's no real reason to visit this one unless you are a die hard Metal Slug fan that just wants new levels and bosses.
In this case, having metal slug on a portable system such as a Neo Geo Pocket Color would have been more than serviceable to me between the moments of not being able to play the arcade game, and would've loved owning Metal Slug: 1st Mission. A portable Metal Slug, but rather being a downgraded port, it is it's own unique game.
The title implies this is a prequel to Metal Slug, but like who cares the story in Metal Slug doesn't really matter anyway. It plays exactly like metal slug except the physics are a little weird. The turns are a bit delayed and not as smooth and the jumps are a little higher and longer due to this game having more of a focus on the platforming element.
The arcade games being known for their beautiful pixel art animations are not found here. Of course, this is expected from portable titles at the time, but the pixel art animation is 90% of the Metal Slug charm, so you just gotta accept that you won't be getting that going into this game.
So what we have left is serviceable portable 8 bit graphics, barely any animation - mostly being choppy, and okayish feeling floaty controls. The only stand out difference in it's design is the level design. I guess because this is not an arcarde title, there is less focus on the run and gun and more of a focus on platforming. I don't mind this change, as verticality means good level design, but some of the later levels go really crazy with some of the jumps and platforming sections to the point it doesn't become fun.
I would have loved having this as a kid, but today this is just more of a product of it's time. Today there are many ways to play the arcade Metal Slugs portably, so there's no real reason to visit this one unless you are a die hard Metal Slug fan that just wants new levels and bosses.
A welcoming switch-up in gameplay. Gives me a reason to actually use cars in solos. Game practically turns into Twisted Metal when there's only 10 people left.