Played this for a few minutes on a complete whim because I was in the mood for a humble vidcon about a simulated aminal. Nothing mindblowing, but surprisingly cute! Pet games are essentially desktop toys where you throw objects into the digital pet's playpen as you watch them react with canned animations and stat ups. Dogz gba seems to revolve more around the player character living their life while a new pet has been introduced to their family, so you're doing daily child chores while balancing dog duties. This level of context to the game does wonders, and as a dogless child, I'd probably be all over it for the placebo effect tbh. Also, the sprites are adorable. I aww'd at every little thing my character did as I excitedly explored the house looking for interactibles.
Hand on heart believe that this game's exact formula but gr8ly expanded could be the next halo killer.

I can't help but feel as though I owe a lot to the first PixelJunk Eden game. In 2008, it was the first arthouse title I'd ever bought; it played no small part in easing me into becoming more adventurous with the games I try - and what better game to do that than one where a goblin cultivates and expands their worldview to reach new heights.
This sequel doesn't do a lot to shake up the original formula, but features a greatly improved control scheme that allows the greenthumb audiovisual serenity to take centre stage, where it would originally fall victim to frustrations and lost progress. It has been pretty emotional skipping through these floating lantana fields while hearing familiar remixes to tunes I consider formative!
My sticking point would be my suspicion that this is essentially just a repackaging of the mobile game Eden Obscura, which brings to the forefront far too familiar to the mobile territory progression systems and clunky UIs. Where there was once a central hub that grew around you to connect to new garden zones is now a Level Select filled with gems and exp and skins and uuuuugh. It doesn't ruin anything of course, the encroaching shadow of The Phone consumes the best of us.

First Sega CD game I've ever played! I'm hardly familiar with the hardware or the CD expansion, but I'm still absolutely blown away by the production quality of the cutscenes in this. Fully thoughtful employment of a limited colour palette that never feels restrictive. I have a soft spot for 90's fantasy OVAs and Popful Mail is essentially a playable one of those. Which is to say, it's not GREAT, but charming and short enough to never outstay their welcome. Respect the absolute fucking nerve to just not bother with invincibility frames if nothing else. Can't sing praises for what feels a little too bog-standard as sidescrolling action, but I'm always here for a goofy powerhouse of production talent making something that feels uncompromisingly corny.

If u like Popful mail check out these OVAs if you haven't already!!;
-Mahou Gakuen Lunar! Aoi Ryuu no Himitsu
-Ruin Explorers
-Armored Dragon Legend Villgust
-Record of Lodoss War
-Dragon Half
-Ozanari Dungeon

Noticeably bloated and senselessly cruel, showing this to a newcomer pretty much requires the disclaimer that "you will die a lot, just try to use all of your bombs before that happens." If this were a slightly neater package; less repetitious segments, and perhaps updated to facilitate a health system rather than one of chugging endless coins in the virtual cabinet, it'd feel less like you're just being strung along for the ride. On the plus side, it's a fucking great ride - an avalanche of spectacle propped up with just about the right amount of feedback to tell you that you're the one controlling it. The final chapter is Thrillhouse incarnate.

Ultimately, a middling Source engine mod that came out at a time when there were a thousand other, better ones of its kind. Hard to beat the aesthetic, a wonderfully gritty sci-fi """cyberpunk??"" setting that if anything still feels fresh. Enjoyed skulking around empty servers and soaking in the unparalleled atmosphere. The maps genuinely feel haunted, detailed and littered with props and history; like teleporting into a forgotten world plagued by untold stories. Whatever sickness that once resided behind these metal walls managed to remove all life therein. I genuinely implore anyone to give this mod a shot just to create a solo server and explore the maps and soak in the vibes.

The game's biggest sin is commissioning Ed Harrison to create one of the best soundtracks ever, and then proceeds to just.... not use it natively? Servers outright had to enable a radio plugin to play the songs that were dormant in the directory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPUp2PiCYBY

Dedicated a hundred or so painstaking hours to trying to understand this hulking monolith of MMO Discourse. Nigh impossible to believe a newcomer attuned to the niceties of FFXIV can find any enjoyment in this hamster wheel of hideous, thankless design, and bear asses. Either this is a piece of transgressive art I'm simply too stupid to appreciate, or just a radiant entry in a then budding 3D MMORPG genre with growing pains as noticeable as its ambitions. Thanks for paving the way for other, better games. Maybe in retail WoW they actually remembered to put the story IN the game.

For a game about perspectives, its chic wordless storytelling fails to interrogate its cast or themes and leaves Moncage as simply a short puzzle box tightly wound with ingenious mechanics and gorgeous visuals. This is one of the most well-designed nifty tactile puzzle games I've played in a long time, frankly blowing games like Monument Valley and Assemble With Care out of the water - I only wish it sealed the deal by nailing the emotional impact it clearly sprang for, but it only opted in using well-worn symbols. We've all seen the Up intro please move on.

Compared to Half Genie Hero's hub-based level design, Seven Sirens shifts into a singular metroidvania world map, and I'd be lying if I said that this has done Shantae any favours.

Where the isolated stages used to provide a sense of theming, helping the world feel cogniscantly designed with particular mechanics and visuals in mind, each acting as engaging steps in your overall journey - Seven Sirens is happy to be a sweeping topography of almost amateurish, vaguely comprised rooms using palette swaps and clashing assets, spending the majority of the playtime in claustrophobic spaces enclosed by sewer and cave walls of only minor variation. The game is mercifully short, which is nice because I found myself lost and bored numerous times in the labyrinth of repeating room layouts.

Wayforward are about as good as it gets at capturing the feeling of a game that belongs on like, the Nintendo DS, and I'm sure part of the appeal is the overall simplicity, but it can play into why I rarely find any of their games all that engaging. Seven Sirens is essentially a track back to the school of Risky's Revenge or something.

Worth noting that, also compared to Half Genie Hero, this ~wasn't~ Kickstarter funded, so the relatively slim levels of quality and content may be explained away as there simply being less on the line.

Liked the Studio Trigger intro though!!

Giving the player the opportunity to control a terrifying and foreboding fleshy monstrosity, picking off your targets with the animalistic brutality of a pack of hungry lions - much akin to the thing from 'The Thing' or the alien from 'Alien' - Carrion has a fairly unique premise that made me eager to play the game from the day I'd heard of it. Sadly, fails to fully capitalise on the idea's potential.

I feel your mileage for this game will hinge almost entirely on how gratifying you find mindless violence and gore. Personally, I stopped playing with my food barely an hour into the game, when I realised that the enemies are little more than screaming health kits. There is no lore, no dialogue, no justification behind what is happening in this game, outside a handful of "memory" sequences, which were similarly plot anaemic. Novelty can wear thin, and there wasn't a shred of it left come the time the credits to Carrion finally rolled. Encounters and gauntlets quickly become a mere routine that no amount of upgrades could obfuscate. There's only so many times you can hit the same pinata before every last piece of candy has fallen out.

With each level being a samey-looking environment with little to no unique identifying landmarks, and no map to speak of, I found myself completely lost for progress for much of my playthrough. The spritework is stunningly detailed, but none of it clicked with me to a point where I was in awe with what I was looking at. It mostly blurred together as a grossly busy pastiche of repeating assets, vents and corridors. I don't think I ever found myself sure of my place on the map, convincing myself that any step forward I manage to make is by complete coincidence.

The puzzles in this game are impressive, but I can't help but find the size requirements to most of them to be a complete hindrance to the pacing. Pacing back and forward, to and from a blood pool to shrink yourself down so you can use a different set of abilities, then doing the same to size back up. I'm amazed I had the patience.

I can't exactly place why, but Carrion reminds me so much of the PS1 Oddworld games to the point where I wish I was playing those instead. Slig Barracks music played in my head throughout the armory section.

Hard to express my disappointment in Giant Squid's output. It wasn't until the last legs of this game that I learned it was by that studio; the developers of Abzu, and offshoots of the crew from Thatgamecompany - but it contextualised everything.
It's almost insulting how formulaically they seem to conceive their titles, they might just continue to make 'emotional, artsy' games where the Good Blue defeats the Evil Red until heat death. It's all too convenient, it's the type of theming you come up with while playing Halo multiplayer, made all the less engaging and challenging when you take into account that it follows the very same beats as Flower, Journey, and now Abzu. Giant Squid's games feel robotic, outside of paying the aesthetics lipservice, there is no narrative throughline to keep them together, everything feels present because "they should be" rather than because there is a story that needs told.

It takes more key inspiration from Shadow of the Colossus this time around, the framing and gameplay is essentially identical. This only serves to make Giant Squid's unsubtle hand cause ripples throughout the game at the absolute worst moments. Trying to conjure the quiet grace of Team Ico in one scene, then throwing a tutorial prompt that pauses the game at your face which reads "Press and hold flap while gliding to perform a Super Flap. This powerful move will consume a large number of flaps.", I couldn't help but laugh.

Pathless was not without merit - if it innovated at anything, it was making the normally tedious task of travelling across a vast videogame landscape into a far more engaging affair. A sprint meter that would only get refilled with well-timed shots at ever-present targets that litter the world map. I'll miss those next time I'm expected to hold the analogue stick forward for ten minutes to heavily approach a waypoint on the other side of an empty grassy field. Also present is some nice music that punctuates key setpiece events, including some very engaging boss chase sequences.