Heavenly Sword was a project borne into a rough situation. Being one of the PlayStation 3’s headlining exclusives at the time meant it had the unenviable task of trying to sell the PS3 in 2007, which meant it had to convince people of two things: 1.That the PlayStation Triple Ballin’ was worth paying $599 US Dollars for and 2.That the SixAxis wasn’t a pile of shit. Unfortunately, this was not a task Heavenly Sword nor its developer Ninja Theory were up for.

Heavenly Sword certainly looks great. If there’s something Ninja Theory has always been good at, it’s the visual design of their games. There are some very good character designs here, the main character Nariko being the obvious standout, and your journey takes you through these lush locations inspired by both Eastern and Western fantasy (Ninja Theory named Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lord of the Rings as inspirations) that keep the game still looking good despite the fact it’s rapidly approaching 20 years old. The game isn’t free from technical issues, however. There’s constant framerate drops and some absolutely vicious screen tearing, and inconsistent audio mixing where cutscenes will be much quieter than gameplay.

When it comes to gameplay, that’s probably Heavenly Sword’s biggest stumble. In this game you block attacks automatically while you’re not attacking. If you press Triangle at the right time while blocking, you’ll counter their attack. Another wrinkle is added with your stances. You have three stances, and your stance has to match your attacker’s in order to block their attacks. In theory this discourages mindless button-mashing, in practice this and a crappy dodge roll just ends up with you constantly getting hit out of your combos, leading to a combat system that isn’t very fun, especially since you have to use the dreaded SixAxis to initiate air combos. Boss battles alleviate this a bit since you only have one enemy to worry about, but they’re extremely mediocre and one-note, which wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t take so goddamn long to get over with. They made 5-minute bosses that take 10+ minutes to beat.

The hack & slash gameplay isn’t all you’ll be doing here. At times you’ll be controlling Nariko’s friend Kai, whose weapon of choice is her trusty crossbow. Kai’s sections are the worst parts of the game. They move at a snail’s pace and you have to deal with aiming so bad you’ll struggle to hit enemies at point-blank range.

These days Heavenly Sword seems to have been almost entirely forgotten, and it’s no mystery as to why. Apart from its looks and cinematic presentation, there’s very little here to recommend. Doesn’t help that it released just two weeks before Halo 3. “Don’t buy an Xbox 360 and Halo 3, buy a PS3 and Heavenly Sword instead!” is an extremely hard sell. Really, I think the most interesting thing about Heavenly Sword is the context in which it was released. I have a fascination with early 7th gen releases. They have a special kind of jank that is different from that of the previous gen and also later in the generation. It’s a jank borne from developers still getting used to HD development being very excited to show off what they can do with the new hardware but whose reach still exceeded their grasp. That’s Heavenly Sword to a tee. As a game it’s not very good, but as a piece of PS3 history I’m genuinely enamored with it.

(Finished this one about a couple years ago before I even knew this site existed)

A very cutesy, non traditional shooter where you pilot an anthro helicopter. It's very much a STG that thinks it's a platformer in many regards. You have a health bar, but it drains incredibly fast from what I remember. In addition, there is a MASSIVE difficulty spike with the second boss. It takes up almost the entire screen and from what I remember simply touching the thing will kill you and (in regular shooter fashion) strip you of all your powerups on top of yeeting you to a checkpoint. I would advise save stating here in practice runs. I do remember 1CCing the first loop, but did not bother with the second quest.

Producer: How's the development on the Batman game?
Developer: BATMAN??? I THOUGHT YOU SAID PAC-MAN!!!
Producer: ARE YOU KIDDING ME???
Developer: I'M DEAD SERIOUS!!!!!!!!
Producer: DUDE, WE'RE SENDING THE GAME TO FACTORY THIS WEEKEND. WE'RE SCREWED
Developer: WAIT... I THINK I HAVE AN IDEA.

And that's how the Turbografx 16 Batman came to be.

It's Sonic Colors but worse. To me, Sonic Colors was already an extreme product of its time, answering complaints that fans had constantly had over the series until that point ("Sonic has too many friends" "Sonic's plots are too serious and moody" "Sonic games should just be the daytime stages from Unleashed" to name a few), but those complaints don't really exist in todays day and age so I think remaking Colors of all things was just a bit of a strange move. This game is up there with Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania and Sonic Origins as HD remakes that kinda sorta become less than the sum of their parts due to lack of polish and strange development choices. They overhauled the visuals to be FULL of bloom and oversaturated lighting, they kept the controls pretty much the same as the wii game despite the clear opportunity to allow sonic to control exactly as he did in Unleashed, Generations, and Forces, and they shoehorned in some weird race with metal sonic mode that only happens on one level in each world and never again. The game is also buggy. Very buggy. Even on the latest update, which is what I played. Planet Wisp didn't have a skybox once. I fell through the floor on multiple different occasions. There just doesn't seem to be very much polish put into this game to give it the same merits as the original, and even then I think the original was kinda eh. That all being said, if you HAVE to play sonic colors and don't have a wii, or if you are a kid or have a kid that wants to play sonic colors, this is sonic colors. I played Sonic Adventure DX as a kid and that games graphics were butchered to all hell and back and I wasn't aware, so I'd imagine to the casual player, this is as good a sonic colors as any. I just wish they put a bit more effort, and picked a different sonic game to remake.

FUCK YEAH, KABOOM

im biased as fuck, this is easily my favorite game on the atari 2600. Using the paddle controller to catch bombs from the mad bomber is hella addicting, specifically due to just how unrelentingly difficult the game is. You gotta be mfin FAST to get anywhere past level 5, and scoring high is actually a reasonable challenge. Unlike Pitfall and Oink, the other two activision games I hit the manuals target challenge score for so far, getting 3000 points in this game to enter the Bucket Brigade takes a sizeable amount of practice and skill to pull off, where you get that one hot run going and it all just comes together, like shit man it's just satisfying as fuck to play this. It just gets me in that flowstate man where every game over has me immediately reaching for that reset button to play some more. God I love kaboom dude if you have an atari and a paddle controller for it this shit is an on-sight play

It's nothing. There's nothing here.

If this were an abstract art piece on how little you have to put in while still making something that can recognisably be called a video game, then I would praise it for that, but alas no.

The box for the game will provide you more amusement than the shoddy quiz game itself ever can.

Psycho World (not Psychic like the ports) is a pretty impressive MSX2 game for 1988. If you’re familiar with the Game Gear or Master System ports then you’ll know what you’re in store for in this adventure. It has more worlds than the other versions. I can’t tell if the GG and SMS versions just combined the last few levels into one. There’s also a jungle level I don’t even remember from the other versions.

I always really loved how by the end of this game you feel so strong that nothing can stop you. Psycho World is a pretty easy game though there’s no checkpoints for levels. I think there’s a lot about the game that just feels interesting for a computer game. I love all of the platforming you have to do and all the cool abilities you have. Getting to upgrade all of your attacks is also cool, again adding to the strong factor of it. Even the music and graphics are nice and this probably has the best cutscenes of the three versions.

It’s a must play if you’re looking for MSX2 games to play and it even has a fan translation for the few cutscenes it has though it sadly doesn’t translate the text for two moments. If the awesome cover art didn’t convince you to try it then I hope my review will at least convince you to give it a go. I’m still not sure if this is my favorite version but I still really enjoy it regardless.