So I said I wasn’t gonna write reviews for a bit but this one ain’t gonna be nothing big.

I already don’t like fighting games but this one takes the cake for just completely riffing from Street Fighter completely down to the UI and the literal Chun-Li design ripoff. It is hilarious how dull this game is to play, as most of the characters don’t pop out and the ones with interesting designs like Clown or Zarlov are unplayable.

I played as Jean for this and all I have to say is that the French Revolution was kind of based.

Spoilers for Klonoa

Given the remake collection that came out recently which I've seen has a very mixed reception, I decided to look into the original Klonoa: Door to Phantomile.

Two of my closest friends, Simon and Luke, were both big fans of this game and told me about how it has a lot of emotional resonance with them. So, I went in optimistic about how the game would go.

At the start the game is relatively simple and sweet, the plot isn't particularly deep at this point, as all we know is that something has crash-landed from space into a nearby mountain top and Klonoa and his friend Huepow go to investigate.

The game controls like most other platformers, with one sole exception being the central mechanic of the game, the Wind Ring.

With the Wind Ring, you can press the shoot button to fire a Wind Bullet that will grab an enemy towards you and blow them up like a balloon. While in this state, you can throw enemies like projectiles to take out other enemies, or use them to give yourself a double jump, which when combined with Klonoa's natural Yoshi like Flutter Jump, will allow you to reach all sorts of heights.

This mechanic is inherently neat and reminds me of another platformer I played this year Hameln no Violin Hiki in how using enemies in this game reflects using Flute in that one. Door to Phantomile uses this mechanic in spades to create all sorts of interesting plaforming challenges and puzzles for the player to face.

I would say that as I kept going through the game I didn't find it to be overly difficult or overly easy for the most part, and our journey remained simple.

We find that the embodiment of evil, Ghadius, has captured Laphise, the Moon Diva with the help of his underling Joka. They intend to drown the entire world into nightmare, giving me a lot of Kirby vibes at the start.

So we quest along to stop Ghadius and Joka, and attempt to make contact with the other Kingdoms in order to stop their evil.

And while we finally find the Granny we were looking for, the person who would tell us how to stop Ghadius... Joka reveals he was hiding in wait and find out that an Amulet we obtained earlier in the story was at Klonoa's grandfather's house.

Klonoa makes a mad dash through a secret passage to return to his home, and sees his Jiji safe and sound.

Before his home is evaporated by Joka, and his grandfather passes on claiming that it is Klonoa's destiny to stop Ghadius.

It is very rare in media for children to show death, especially in such a upfront way. Often times you get the Disney Death where it's not actually death but a temporary state for the character to be in that builds stakes, or a Disney Villain Death where the character dies off screen or is rather implied to have died.

In Klonoa though, the game has you look death in the face, and it is a turning point for the game's tone and direction both in gameplay and story.

Levels become far more aggressive in nature, and longer. The challenges within being far more complex than what had come before while the plot itself slowly becomes more existential and sad. A reflection of the complicated emotions and turmoil that follow when we lose a loved one, perfectly encapsulated in gameplay.

When I think of how difficult the final four levels are, and how frustrated I was, I imagine Klonoa's feelings. How frustrated he feels with how he couldn't do anything for his Jiji, how sad and angry he is.

And then at the end, after you beat the final boss, it's revealed that... Klonoa never existed in this world to begin with, and was brought here by Huepow to save everyone. Everything Klonoa knows, the death of his grandpa, his friendship, his childhood... it's all ripped away from him.

I genuinely wonder how kids who played this growing up felt when they got to the end of Klonoa and saw the heartwrenching cutscene of him and Huepow trying to stay together while the black hole pulls them away, both crying and screaming like any child would when they're forced to leave a friend behind.

I know I almost cried, and I am a 22 year old man who suffers chronic depression.

I do have some complaints, some minor, some major in regards to the gameplay itself.

In regards to major complaints, the boss fights aren't particularly good. All of them have this waiting game feel to them and drag out for way longer than necessary, the Joka fight in particular being my personal low point with this game, being a fight with a cutscene transformation every 3 hits on the boss that you can't skip, and a gimmick with changing the floor tiles colors that while neat at first, quickly wears out its welcome and becomes very obnoxious.

Klonoa also doesn't really have invincibility frames, like at all. This one is mostly a nitpick but I cannot count the amount of times where I'd get hit by an enemy only to suffer knockback and hit another enemy and take damage while Klonoa is still flashing. It's definitely annoying as fuck, and led to a good amount of deaths, though I'll admit that a good number of them were my fault.

Vision 5-2's gimmick was also something that was annoying and only grew more annoying with time. It basically accentuates that waiting game problem by basically putting progression to a halt every 10-15 seconds because it becomes nighttime and you can't grab enemies and a ghost fish tracks you down wherever you go.

Also aiming through the 3D felt weird at time, again another nitpick. It's mostly the camera in this case because despite being 2.5D, it definitely sometimes feels like even if you're directly in front of an object you're aiming at in the background (or behind an object in the foreground), you'll sometimes miss because the camera angle makes your positioning look wrong.

At the end of it all, the question is, did Klonoa resonate with me?

I'd say so. The ending in particular caught me off guard with the sheer amount of emotions and existentialism that I would not have expected from a kids game.

Klonoa deals with complicated issues that I think most kids should be allowed to see and experience, and it deals with it in a very mature and respectful way that I think a lot of other media doesn't. So I'd say that if you haven't already, try Klonoa.

Of course getting it physically is probably going to be impossible given the price ranges, but emulation is the next best thing. Just don't buy the remake, this game is very pretty for a PSX game and from what I've seen the remake butchers the artstyle and makes it look so bad and bland.

P.S.
The voice actor for Klonoa in this game deserves a raise, being able to express the emotional range of a character who speaks mostly in gibberish as well as them is something I wish I could do.

On a different note, this is going to be my last review for a while. I have played well over 50 games this year, and we are only halfway through 2022. I have been making this Backloggd account my job for the past 6 months and it has honestly burnt me out from games to the point where I feel I have no enjoyment while I'm playing them and only get it after the fact during the review.

That is not how I want to be so I will be taking at least a 2 week break from reviews and new games in order to get an actual job and replay some of my favorites to get a nice refresher without feeling obligated to review. When I come back to reviews I don't know what will be next, whether it's on my Obscure Game's list or not.

Regardless I would like to say thank you to those who read my reviews. You are what makes this site worth coming to and I myself need to spend more time reading other's reviews for a while instead of writing my own.

Take care for now!

Another part of my Obscure Games Recommendation List that is unfortunately going to go shelved for the time being.

This was recommended to me by Retyl and I appreciate the recommendation.

Gitaroo Man is a game that within just the past few weeks my friends have played and loved, but I honestly just can't get into it because of the massive difficulty spike at the beginning of the game.

I do not play rhythm games frequently, and even then they're more of your Guitar Hero/DDR adjacent type of games than Gitaroo Man's approach. The game teaches you the basics and gives you a first level that seems to fit with the level of skill a new player would have by that point, but the jump from the first level to the second is just so massive that yeah, I burned out quickly.

I am not a rhythm gamer nor am I good at this game and I'll accept that I'm not good, but I also have limits to how long I'm going to keep throwing myself at a brick wall and compared to other difficult games that I've played Gitaroo Man just isn't one I can keep justifying myself to keep playing.

It has a great aesthetic, and good vibes, but this is a rhythm gamer's rhythm game and I am a filthy casual in that regard.

I'm not gonna give it a score, I only got to Mission 4 before I got filtered. If you think you've got the skills to play Gitaroo Man, I'd say give it a shot, you'd probably make it farther than I did. I on the other hand, need to play something that doesn't raise my blood pressure.

This review ain't gonna be particularly deep, if anything I'm just surprised I hadn't logged it yet at all.

It's exactly the kind of game you'd think it would be, a silly Lego filled romp with all sorts of tracks that most kids would recognize but at the same time it introduced me to musicians like David Bowie, The Kaiser Chiefs, and Incubus, in that regard I think it was a good way for giving me a nice view of all sorts of genres and sounds.

I'm listening to Dig as I'm writing this right now and I have this game to thank for that.

I also like the customization you can have with both your player character and your band mates, allowing you to fulfill the childlike fantasy of having your own Rock Band.

The cutscenes are whimsical, the gameplay is solid Rhythm game affair. Just all and all a solid game I find, but I also haven't played it in quite some time, maybe I should dust off the Wii U again.

This review is specifically discussing the Separate Ways scenario of RE4. Spoilers Warning for those who did not play this yet.

So, I started this scenario about a month ago but got distracted by my CAG Marathon, so I decided to finish it off within the past two days.

Separate Ways sees you playing as Ada Wong as you arrive slightly before Leon and explore different parts of the map at adjacent times to the man himself.

Ada controls basically the same as Leon, though she cannot Suplex enemies, and she cannot upgrade her weapons at the Merchant. To compensate, her weapons have higher ammo counts than Leon's by default, and she has weapons unique to her like a Pump Action Shotgun and a Crossbow that fires explosive arrow rounds.

Unlike Leon who has several individual chapters per section, Ada has 5 missions which cover from the Village, Castle, and Island respectively. They are also far shorter than Leon's campaign, but also have Ada going through different routes.

I think the coolest aspect of this campaign is how you can see how it ties to the main one not just in story but in effects. Let's say a treasure item you get early in Leon's campaign, that little gem behind the Church that you can pick up. In Ada's campaign, you put that gem in there in order to pick up another item.

This is something that occurs multiple times, but every time it did I perked up because it showed that my actions had active consequences on the world around me, and that's cool.

Back to Ada's arsenal, among the various weapons you can utilize, she also has a Hookshot that can take her to higher areas be it to escape an enemy to get a safe distance, or to traverse the level. It's a cool visual but I wish it could have been utilized more as a combat option. Imagine hookshotting fallen enemies to you to get a quick stab, or using it to grab an enemy in the distance and use it to pull down other enemies for crowd control. I think it's a bit of a missed opportunity we didn't get it but it's not game ruining that it's not there.

Ada doesn't have too many boss fights, but she does have a couple unique ones, like one with Krauser who apparently survived his explosive demise after the fight with Leon. He's piss easy with Ada though because of the explosive arrows, there's also a fight with Saddler... this fight kind of sucks because it lasts quite a while unless you manage to land consecutive bowshots on him to get the Stab prompt.

The end of the game is heat though, a countdown sequence to give Leon the rocket launcher as you make a mad dash and hookshot towards it, with the scenario ending with smooth jazz befitting our illusive lady protagonist.

I think the additions to the story are neat, and gives a different perspective on Ada's actions towards Leon throughout the game that feel pretty natural. Also love the inclusion of Wesker, with his hammy British Bond Villain accent taking the cake in this game's sense of humor.

Outside of that, it's more Resident Evil 4, a game I already enjoyed quite a lot, so it's just more fun for me to have.

It also unlocks Ashley's Suit of Armor outfit that makes her unable to be grabbed or injured by enemies which means next playthrough is gonna be very fun for me.

I definitely recommend giving it a shot, after all, Ada Wong is a part of this game that just can't be let go.

Well, we are at the end of my little Character Action Game marathon. At the same time this is also my 350th review on the site, so what better game to cap both of these off with than the underappreciated Capcom cult classic, God Hand.

I have known about this game for, I wanna say the past 2 to 3 years thanks to my buddy Simon who showed me of course, the SsethTzeentach Review of the game. What I saw looked like some of the most comical shit ever made in a video game, and made it all the more surprising to me that this was the last game created by its developer, Clover Studios.

My friends have all gassed this game up to me for years now, and so I finally decided that 2022 would be the year I would play God Hand.

So now allow me to make a huge disclaimer: I fucking suck at this game. I doubt that's a huge surprise, God Hand is known to be a very challenging game and it will kick your ass, as it brutally did mine.

So do not take my opinions here as fact, but just as my personal views for my first playthrough, as God Hand is meant to be played many many times.

Right from the offset, God Hand comes at you in full force with its vibes, showing the "Graphic Violence, Discretion is Advised" statement that had been put in both Devil May Cry and Resident Evil games at the time. The image of course showing a screen of our protagonist Gene kicking an enemy in the testicles until his face turns blue.

Then there's the menu theme.

I sat there for a solid 2 and a half minutes just, absorbing the absolute bop that is the menu theme. All of the music in this game is fucking excellent, from the theme of Fat Elvis, this absolute bop filled with Elvis Presley sounding noises and a sensual backing track, to the intense rocking theme of your rival Azel, quaintly named Devil May Sly. It's all fucking phenomenal and gets you in the mood.

Of course, what follows after the music is also one of the funniest games ever made. Usually I find weird voice acting to be laughable for the wrong reasons but here I'd honestly argue that the weirdness is 100% both intentional and what makes the game work. Elvis being the most stereotypical version of a Hispanic male, which I also am (Hispanic, not stereotypical lol), gave me a good amount of laughs as he cracks Spanish curse words calling Gene all sorts of things from "pendejo" to "puta" and all that in between.

There's just so many funny moments, like when you encounter these Super Sentai looking mofos and they have these weird Stich like voices, doing weird poses and then you kick them into the ground like a nail and proceed to stomp their heads into the dirt. Or the scene with Gene kicking the thugs out of the window, and the last thug agreeing to get kicked out midscene with a tiny head nod.

And that humor stays in the gameplay as well. You have various ridiculous moves that you can and will use on your opponents, like your Roulette Moves. These can vary from beam like attacks, a flurry of punches, getting a Home Run with a Baseball Bat you summon, or my personal favorite: Kicking people in the balls.

The attention to detail is great too, because that kicking in the balls move only applies to male characters, and will not effect female or robotic enemies, and a specific boss who lost their testicles in the war.

Going more into the combat, my friend referred to it as a "spiritual sequel to Resident Evil 4", which makes sense given that both are Shinji Mikami titles. Both games work with an adaptive difficulty that changes depending on the skill of the player. It's a lot more subtle in RE4, but in God Hand it is the game.

The better you perform at the game, the higher the Tension Gauge goes up. It grows from Level 1, to Level 2, Level 3 and finally Level Die. Full transparency, the highest I ever got was to Level 2 because even on the lowest levels this game absolutely dominated me with its Alexander the Great obsessed cast of characters.

Combat works as follows: You use the Square Button to use the combo chain, which you can customize, the Triangle Button is your combo cancel move, and the X button is your spacer move, with Circle being your Reaction Command button.

All of the moves, for all buttons except Circle can be customized to whatever you wish. You want your Square Combo Chain to be an assortment of kicks, or a near infinite juggle combo, you can do that. You want your combo cancel to be a Pimp Smack, you can do that. The level of customization is endless, and even outside of that you have direction based moves that can also help you.

Let's say you do a spot dodge, you can press Triangle during it to do a slide kick which can easily knock down crowds of opponents and works great as crowd control option. If you're particularly skilled, you can knock an enemy high up in the air and press Back and Triangle to do a Shoryuken, and chain it multiple times until you do a forward triangle to kick the enemy in front of you, using them as a projectile to knock down other opponents.

All of these can help to take down the hordes of enemies you face, alongside the power of the God Hand. When you raise your God Hand Meter high enough, you can press R2 to activate the awesome powers of a God, and absolutely decimate your foes. They cannot block the attacks, and you are invulnerable while using it. Truly, an awesome ability.

This does bring up though certain other aspects of your playthrough, resource management. In your first playthrough of God Hand, unless you are some supernaturally gifted God of Video Games, you are going to suck ass. You will often find yourself breaking open various containers be it boxes or jars to get health, Roulette Wheel meter, God Hand meter, and cash. These drops are entirely random, as the game doesn't want you to rely too much on them.

This creates a system I call the "Gamble". Where you have to base your current battle situation around the resources available to you. Do you get a fresh fruit that restores your health while you're topped off and let it sit for later on in the fight, or do you get a Roulette Wheel card. You gotta take the risks and see if you'll survive.

Gambling honestly is a central mechanic to this game even outside combat, your hub for God Hand's sake is a fucking Casino on a remote island. You can play Slots, Blackjack, Poker, or even bet on racing these Poisonous Chihuahuas. (Always bet on Lucky Clover, should be obvious enough). Gambling is a major way of winning money both in combat and out of it, so to say that this game is very much about gambling is correct.

Of course a skilled enough player can work well without luck, but that was not me and it will not be you either on your first go.

In another refreshing sense, God Hand also lets you avoid entire encounters if you have what you need. If you just feel like you want to proceed through a level and aren't locked behind keys or the like, you can easily avoid combat in general. I wouldn't recommend avoiding all combat obviously, but if you're in a risky situation it is a completely valid option for progression. You aren't given a grade at the end of the level, the only thing decided is the bonus money you receive, and when you die you keep any money you gained from before hand. It results in the game not actively demoralizing new players unlike in other CAGs, which I find gives it more of an appeal than most. It also helps that the individual levels are themselves, very short. With there being 9 stages, with various small levels within each. It makes you feel like you aren't losing much progress when you die.

It's shit like this that makes me question how this game flopped. Everything here is incredibly appealing to a casual player, and there's all sorts of tech that more advanced players can learn and master. So why is it that this game got a 3 out of 10 on fucking IGN. You want my guess? The reviewer got to the first boss, thought it was unfair, and dropped the fucking game.

God Hand is a game that instantly brought a smile to my face, and even when I would get frustrated due to the many challenges, there was always a funny moment or a goofy encounter that would soon follow.

You can kick men in the balls, suplex a man in a Gorilla suit, fight Elvis, spank dominatrix women, get your ass beat by actual clowns, and save the world. What here is not at least somewhat entertaining?

Also this game had a ending dance sequence before Bayonetta did, so Bayonetta is easily the inferior copy of God Hand.

I implore you to play God Hand, or else I'll dragon kick your ass into the milky way. I'm Alexander the Great, and this has been God Hand.

P.S.

COME ON, HOW WAS THIS CLOVER'S LAST GAME?!?!?!? YOU KICK MEN IN THE BALLS! YOU KICK MEN IN THE BALLS!!!!!!!!!!

Y'know, having now replayed this like, 3 times, one time on hard, doing several entire levels without taking damage I think I can unequivocally say the gameplay in this game is ass outside of the bosses.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance lives and dies on its hype factor, and y'know what, I am completely fine with that. It is a game that is balls to the walls in your face, firing off all cylinders to give you that sweet, addictive dopamine while the funny Darwinian Senator says not to fuck with him, and asking if you want to play hide and seek you little bitch.

Outside of that, a lot of what this game says about the nature of violence and accepting the past I find is pretty relevant, even if the game doesn't go too deep with it like Kojima's works, and of course the spreading of meme culture discussion this game brings up has only made this game remain viral to this day as compilation after compilation of MGR characters cockblocking you have continued to pervade every inch of Youtube and the rest of the internet.

However, this game is very much a pump and dump kind of game. The gameplay just isn't mechanically deep enough to keep players coming back, myself an exception because I WANTED TO PLAY AS SOMBRERO RAIDEN AND GREY FOX, OK, I WANTED MY PEAK FAN FICTION FANTASIES.

If you do decide to replay MGR, I suggest getting the Fox Blade and buying its Special Ability because it trivializes most encounters by basically being an instant kill. That or just refight the bosses, they're easily the best part of the game (minus Monsoon, that fucker can eat my ass).

This review is pretty negative but yeah, the game gets 4 stars from hype alone so I think it's fair for me to be negative about it. The DLC is also pretty good, Sam is fun to use and Blade Wolf has better stealth mechanics than Raiden so it all works out.

Was there ever any value to this game's existence? This is a genuine question I have over this game. Did Super Smash Brothers for the Wii U truly have to exist in this world?

Take away the competitive aspect that all fighting games have and what you're left with what is the most corporate and soulless Super Smash Bros. game in fucking existence.

Sure, you could argue the series has always been this corporatized, actively milked cash cow that has done nothing but drain Masahiro Sakurai and his team of the back half of their lives, but this one to me takes the fucking cake.

The Classic Mode is this bland, move your trophy around the board with no thematic reasoning or purpose behind it. Take on the new Master Hand forms that are just generic shadow monsters ending with this sole tiny core that isn't even satisfying to beat up because it feels like a representation of the creators' giving up.

What about Smash Tour, the most boring and pointless sidemode addition ever, that barely makes any fucking sense and the end result winds up feeling hollow. Even then, that's if anyone wants to play the damn thing.

The artstyle is the worst of it for me, it's just this hollow lifeless standardized HD crap that just feels so flat and awful.

I'll admit, I grew up with Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it's still my favorite of the series even now. Sure it had that overly realistic artstyle where Mario wears denim, and characters slip and slide everywhere but it also had a fucking soul. You could tell the developers wanted to make Brawl the best it could be. I never felt that with 4.

Smash 4 is just the stepping stone to Ultimate that didn't need to be, because regardless of the quality of that game, given the sheer level of content it has it already eclipses Smash 4 several times and then some. Where was the Adventure Mode for Smash 4? We've had an adventure mode in Smash games since fucking Melee in 2001, why didn't Smash 4 have one?

Why does everything in Smash 4 feel like the developers didn't want to make the game?

Outside of that on a more personal level I fucking hate this game. It's my least favorite game yes for those reasons above but how it affected my life in highschool is why I sold the game off and will likely never play it again.

Friends of mine so much more entrenched into the Competitive Scene than I was constantly wound up fighting among each other, within our school gore would be sent due to disputes over the game, friendships were ruined and shit, it was all fucking stupid but at the time it was utter misery that I wouldn't want in my life ever again. It ruined fighting games for me, permanently.

It killed any interest I could have had in that genre by showing me the absolute most toxic direction that playing those games could go.

Smash 4 is the video game equivalent to gonorrhea, because once you have it flushed out of your system, you never want to experience it ever again.

2012.

Imagine a young preteen boy living out what was one of the worst years of his life. Puberty was settling upon him, causing massive changes to his body and mind, a torturous calamity the result of aging in the physical sense. This kid was a dumbass clown, never taking the right things seriously, never taking the right things jokingly.

An amoeba of borderline incel like emotions, harboring feelings for every pretty girl he'd lay his eyes on regardless of if their character was good or if he was even being reasonable in his attractions.

During one of the most emotional and terrible times of his life, the man who would eventually become his brother in law got him several Christmas Gifts for the Xbox 360 he had gotten maybe only a year or two prior. There were many games, Gears of War, Batman Arkham City, etc.

But chief among them was Fallout New Vegas.

2009-2010

Jump back a few years to when the boy was younger. He had recently left public school to enter what would be a hellish and depressive 3 year stint as a homeschooler. His half brother had recently returned into his life after mostly being out of the picture. At this point of his life, the boy was losing connection with his social life, becoming an isolated little shrimp who dare not speak to others in complete social fear. Alone, every day in his house, learning propagandist Christian homeschool work. Just him, and his brother, a recovering alcoholic.

One day, the boy and his father go to the basement where the brother lived his days out. He was playing a particular game on his Playstation 3, wearing this Abe Lincoln hat in game and wandering this devastated yet familiar landscape. The brother talked about it being the third entry in the Fallout series, and mentioned that a new game would be coming out called Fallout New Vegas.

2000-2009

The boy is born, his life shaped by his parent's love for old media. His dad really loved old music like Frank Sinatra, and once in a Blue Moon, the boy and his dad would watch an old picture together, something that made the father very happy.

The boy spent a lot of time with his mom in this time, his parents were divorced around his second to third year of existence you see. The boy would visit her work place and her parents frequently, the D.C. area was very familiar to him.

It felt like home.

2009-2010

The boy recognizes the setting of this third Fallout game to be a destroyed version of his home, with music playing that reminded him much of songs his father and him would listen too.

2011

The brother would leave and join the military. The boy never felt so alone before in his entire life.

2012

The boy returns to school, his social awareness crippled by years spent languishing on Youtube alone and being brainwashed by the Christian agenda.

He meets friends he would keep for what is currently the remainder of his life.

Which brings us to Christmas of 2012 once again.

At first the boy was not interested in this Fallout New Vegas, his cousin had ruined first person shooters for him, constantly tearing away his freedom from his own devices in order to play schlock like Modern Warfare 3.

There was a trauma that happened, we won't go into the details, but it severely impacted the boy for the rest of his life, even now.

Fallout New Vegas is what carried him through it.

It's what carried me through the difficult times in my life.

Fallout New Vegas is a game that is so heavily focused on showing both the consequences of your actions while simultaneously telling you to move on from the past and keep living.

Despite its post apocalyptic world, the people of New Vegas are always trying to keep going, with the backing track of songs like Jingle Jangle Jingle being very much about continuing forward through life, while other tracks like Blue Moon and Ain't That a Kick in The Head show the positive consequences that showing affection to another person can bring.

All of these songs brought together by the calm yet caring voice of Mr. New Vegas, who despite not being real in both the game and in real life, comforted me greatly and made me feel like I was wanted. That I belonged somewhere in this twisted awful place in my life.

I spent a lot of time with my companions, one in particular being Craig Boone, the soldier who lost his wife to slavery. Even to this day I sympathize with his character. This is a man who has had to suffer so much pain, even outside of just his wife and unborn child being enslaved and him mercy killing them. He's killed innocent people under orders, despite not wanting too, and at the end of the day he can atone, and be loved.

Many of the companions fit with this central theme of moving on from the past and embracing the choices you make. Veronica, Raul, Cass, Rex, ED-E, Lily, Arcade, and that's not even getting on the DLC companions, all of them have to learn to either move on or accept the past.

I think that's why this game has the draw it has, and honestly why it's so beloved by the transgender community. I'm not going to speak for them honestly, I am a cis male, but I think I understand why they love it so much.

The freedom of being able to carve your own path forward, and leave that past behind, having the choices you make find you a place to belong, I get it.

I think a part of me is very sentimental over this game, despite its various bugs and gameplay issues, but you'll have to forgive me it's almost been 10 years that this game has been in my life.

Fallout New Vegas is very much about making a new chapter in your life, and honestly...

It saved mine.

You know, there’s something about both movies and video games where you can often tell who directed what you’re experiencing based on the quirks that appear throughout. You can tell you’re watching a Sam Raimi film when you see women screaming in an exaggerated fashion and a slow build up showing something small become something big. You can tell you’re playing a Hideo Kojima game through the very cinematic cutscenes and constant references to earlier material.

So when I picked up The Wonderful 101, I knew I was absolutely playing a Hideki Kamiya game, with all of the positives and negatives that brings.

I’ll start more on why I played the game. My buddy, Luke, is a big fan of this game, it’s his favorite. So I got curious and bought the game at Target about a year ago. I played it until the start of Operation 2C and then dropped the game.

There was just something about the game at that point that I just didn’t like. Combat encounters felt incredibly dragged out and sluggish, levels would go on for what felt like 25-30 minutes, with many mini-game encounters appearing to break the pace of the game and introduce entirely different control schemes to a game that already has an unorthodox style.

Of course, I was still engaged with the witty dialogue and pure spectacle that are the cutscenes, but that could not save the game from just being unpleasant to play.

Now, I’m coming back after playing Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, Bayonetta, Devil May Cry 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. So how has my opinion changed between last year and now?

At the beginning of this playthrough I didn’t think it would. Despite being told about things I should get and about the mixing system that I didn’t even know existed in my first playthrough, the first third of this game is one of the biggest slogs I have ever experienced in a video game.

It comes down to a few things, but mostly that compared to many other Character Action Games, you are so limited at the start. If I had to compare it to one of Kamiya’s other works, I’ll go with Bayonetta here, it’s night and day. At the start of that game, you have a dodge, various combo chains, Dodge Offset and Witch Time for in between those combo chains.

At the start of the Wonderful 101 you have only 2 abilities, Fist and Sword, you don’t even have a block or a dodge, those are something you have to buy after the first mission, which a first time player might not even know to do if they’re not told. Sure, you can do combos with the Fist and the Sword but even those are limited by this game’s Rank system, which while I’m sure isn’t random, feels that way during a first playthrough, and this leveling up system is what unlocks individual moves for the various Unite Morphs you attain throughout the game.

Why is this in the game? That is the question I have been asking since about half of the way through because it just doesn’t make sense to me. In a game, a genre type where you want to push forward as much as possible, why are there these RPG mechanics awkwardly implemented. It doesn’t make sense, especially when you consider that Kamiya also directed the first Devil May Cry. Why couldn’t the abilities like each weapon’s individual stinger or air launcher attack not just be something you can buy in the game’s store? I mean, you have to buy the block and dodge in the store after all, so why not have the other skills be unlockable that way to be consistent?

But back on course, because of these limitations the early game feels incredibly sluggish, especially because they have to introduce the various main Wonderful Ones and their abilities, some of which like Wonder Pink’s Whip feeling incredibly situational, and being tied to some of the worst time wasting enemies in the game, more on that later.

I’ll be completely honest, throughout the entire first third of this game, I wanted to drop it harder than the quality of the Mega Man X series’ second half. It was so dull, so exhausting to go through, I was constantly being reminded of things I didn’t like about Kamiya’s other work’s but at their most maximum force. Using only one weapon at a time, the drawing controls sometimes getting an entire morph wrong, Spiked Enemies that can only be hit by the whip and without knowing the proper strat take an asinine amount of time to de-spike and kill, awkward platforming sections that don’t work with this game’s stationary camera in mind, really just the utter sensory overload and sometimes not being able to see where the hell I was on the screen at points, it all added up to a level of frustration and exhaustion that I had only truly felt with the second half of Bayonetta.

And alongside all of that, there were the Kamiyaisms of having Mini Games with their own control schemes, specifically to note this one mini game where you manually control a ship by having the Wonderful 100 walk on buttons within the ship and it’s super awkward and this gameplay style never shows up again so it is a literal waste of time that does nothing but freeze the gameflow for what feels like a solid 5 minutes.

I felt awful, I felt very dissatisfied and tired.

Then, I got Multi Unite.

A lot of people say that the game eventually clicks with the player after a while, and personally I’ll have to disagree. It isn’t so much that the game clicked with me but rather that your options open up by the second half of the game, and you are now capable of much more feats then you were at the beginning, but none of that is because you as a player began to understand the game more. The game gave you these tools and now you have access to them, nothing more nothing less.

Multi Unite in my opinion, is what makes this game work. Being able to chain multiple Unite Morphs at once to absolutely decimate an enemy, like using Unite Bomb to freeze time before making a Unite Sword, a Unite Claw, and a Unite Fist to attack the enemy all at once, evicerating their health bar within seconds, creating a massive combo. There are few things as cathartic.

Which is what makes the fact that Multi Unite was something on by default in the original version of this game, but something you have to buy in the remaster is something way more asinine to me.

This is easily the biggest mistake they made with this game. Not having Multi Unite at the start of the game really drains the combo potential you could have. It’s like taking Dodge Offset away from Bayonetta and making it something you have to buy, it would cripple the mechanical depth you could achieve in the early game.

Once you unlock it though and upgrade it, hoo boy, the game opens up in a variety of ways, allowing for the player to do unthinkable things to their opponents, speeding up the combat in a way that the first third of the game wishes it could achieve.

The mini games too start to improve as the game goes on, with references to Libble Rabble and Punch Out being among my favorites, with this game’s mandatory Space Harrier section being easily Kamiya’s best due to having a system where you can slow down the game to lock on for the tracking attacks, and is not nearly as long as in his other games, or in other levels in this game itself.

We even start to get unique sections where we go into a flashback and play as the original Wonder Red, or fighting Wonder Blue 1v1.

And that ending… I’m not going to spoil it but… god damn. This game is very much one of the most Gurren Lagann Adjacent games I’ve ever seen in my life.

If I really had to summarize this game, it would go as follows:

The Wonderful 101 is Platinum Games’ Platinum Game.

From the various Platinum Games iconography that pervades throughout the game, references to their other titles, and the sheer amount of mini games, it very much fits the description in my mind.

And that leaves me in a bit of a predicament because I think I’m in a rare position on this game. I am someone who doesn’t dislike playing the game, but I understand why there are people who don’t. I am also someone who doesn’t unanimously love the game, but I understand why there are people who do.

It has an unparalleled amount of charm, an artstyle that exudes the same vibes as watching a Saturday morning cartoon, incredibly witty and funny writing, a simple yet engaging story, fun characters and a triumphant main theme…

It also has one of the worst starts I’ve seen in a character action game in regards to pacing, it’s chocked full of mini games that break the pace, it still has the signature Platinum Games self-mastubatory score system, and it’s unorthodox…

So, if you’re looking for something fresh and innovative in the Character Action Game genre and are willing to stomach a rough start to see a solid game through, The Wonderful 101 is for you.

And if you’re not, might I recommend Devil May Cry 3 for you instead.

Hideki Kamiya, you have my respect. I may not fully enjoy the way you overindulged in this game, but I respect it.

If you do decide to go into this game, I recommend looking up a tutorial online to get more insight on your bearings. This is a game about working together after all, so we should work together to spread this experience the best way we can.

That’s what’s truly wonderful.

P.S.: I don't know if this is just a Switch port issue, or if this is a problem in all versions of the remaster, but around Operation I wanna say 5B my game softlocked me due to a cutscene not loading in properly and I had to replay 5 minutes of lost game time, and at a later point I think 5C or 6B the game flat out crashed completely when I got to the final boss of the level and I had to do the entire level over again, so keep in mind that the remaster might be a bit buggy at points.

You are blood.

Blood of a young girl murdered within a Quantum Prison for Troubled Youths. Blood oozing through the cracks of the prison to set the others free.

I am not the best at giving very insightful thoughts onto most games, I'm very much a neophyte in that regard but what I can tell you about this game in particular is why I gel with it.

Quantum Bummer Blues is a game very much rooted in the macabre, as much of the writing paints the picture of a very violent and unsettling world that our unnamed female protagonist has had to live with for several years. Lobotomies, begging for release, possibly even being assaulted for her sexuality. This prison is one of both the mind and soul.

Much of the game (as I interpreted it, I believe this game is vague enough to result in many interpretations to its meaning as I imagine that is the intent.) is the dying thoughts of the murdered girl, as we wander through very bizarre visual rooms, some shaped like a husky, others being what appears to be a human heart. All the while having thoughts of parents abandoning her to this place, and wanting to be freed from the torment.

We start in very simple geometric rooms but soon evolve to these more strange and specific designs that very much gives the vibe of life flashing before your eyes. The music as well gives this feeling of nostalgia washing over you but the hum of static and numbers never truly goes away.

If you'll pardon a personal anecdote here, this game reminds me of something that happened to me only a few months ago. I went to get a routine blood test, as you do when you have a family history of diabetes and heart disease.

These always make me nervous you see, because I hate needles and seeing blood leaving my body. As the doctor shoved the needle in I felt an indescribable pain. Soon I noticed my world fading to black, fuzzy like an old black and white film. My ears began to only hear the staticy noises.

I felt the closest to death I had ever been in my entire life within that moment, but I still didn't pass out.

The fear though, the sheer terror of that moment has stuck with me ever since that day, and I believe that same fear can be found within the contents of Quantum Bummer Blues.

The state between living and not living, self harm in order to survive, this game has an approach that I believe most games wish they could attain.

The gameplay itself as someone else has pointed out is very reminiscent of Libble Rabble, and I would find myself having to agree. The game rewards you for circling around the microbes you can absorb for points by letting them grow bigger to absorb them for even more points without raising the amount of blood drain you have.

It asks you at various points to prioritize which resource you will sacrifice in order to survive, self harm being one of the many ways to regain blood in order to progress.

You can even use this risky shot maneuver that will drain a lot of blood fast, but can also help in giving tons of points as well as speeding up the process of making the microbes larger.

It is also very difficult, and I have not beaten it as of this review (I did use the coloring book mode to see how far I got, and I was very close to the end with my last scored playthrough). I think the difficulty is fine, the game asks the player to reevaluate their approach to video games as a give and take system and I can appreciate how it does so.

Edit: I forgot to add in a part, but the amount of cool things that high level players can do is awesome, Heather's High Score Run Video gave me a lot of insight and is how I was able to improve my skills and get as far as I did.

Personal recommendation when you play the game: play on keyboard. I had been playing on Xbox One controls for most of my playthroughs and outside of hurting my thumb, it is not remotely as precise as keyboard controls.

Quantum Bummer Blues is definitely a game I recommend for people who want to see a very intriguing take on the results of violence, law enforcement, among many other things, as well as a unique gameplay style that will test you in ways few other games can. It's definitely MeCore that's for sure, and I'll have to look into Heather's other games in the future.

P.S. Gonna go listen to that Johnny Cash album later, love that guy's music.

Well, this is it. My first review on the new and improved Backloggd and my final review of a Devil May Cry game for the year.

I will say, looking back at those past two weeks, it's been a blur of crazy, wacky combos, incredible fights, the Lucia Disc of DMC2 and so on. This very much feels like the finale to something big I've experienced in my life, and what better game to end it with than the finale of the series, Devil May Cry 5.

Off the bat I want to say that I really dig the combat in this game, though it did take me some time to adjust between playing DMC4 and DMC1 and coming into this. Combos have different timings in both of those games and so it was weird to change it up for myself.

Nero controls great, I love the addition of the Devil Breakers for him which ask the player to work with the individual addition of the moveset while also being cautious to not break them unless required for a tight situation. It results in him having a lot of variety in combat...

...but not nearly as much as Dante who is still my absolute favorite character to play as in these games. His weapon variety is top notch, bringing back weapons like the Cerberus from DMC3 and even the Sparda, while also adding the awesome Devil Sword Dante and my personal favorite weapon, Caveliere.

If you told me years ago that Dante could combo enemies with a chainsaw axe motorcycle, I would not have believed you. But it is real, and absolutely fucking amazing. I don't know why but I always find myself getting drawn to the weird weapons in these games, like Nevan in DMC3. I think it's more so in that the concept of fighting hordes of demons with shit like an Electric Guitar or a Motorcycle is just inherently awesome, and it just feels right to me.

I also got a lot of use out of switching the different styles, which has gotten me to Level 60 of Bloody Palace with him. Also really love Dante's design in this game, it really captures the mature, joking uncle character that he has evolved into. Really, all of the character designs in this game are top notch.

Vergil is also once again, incredibly fucking powerful and fun to use. Seeing how broken his Air Trick ability is especially in fights like the Geryon boss just makes me cackle. I love his moveset, and his DT using the Doppelganger style from DMC3 is a great nod towards that game.

The only low point gameplay wise comes from new character, V. I should stress, I love V as a character. He is the mysterious, sly sneaky boy that this series has never had before, and his design is absolutely immaculate... but playing the game with him feels like I'm not playing the game.

With him you control your set of demons, as he is a Demon Summoner, and you basically spam both the X and Y buttons to damage enemies enough so that V can unleash a killing blow. The killing blow stuff is fucking cool no doubt, but the mashing of the buttons definitely feels mindless in execution, and hell, you can even do a summoning technique that makes the summons act on their own, completely removing that aspect of gameplay for like 20 seconds at the expense of one bar of DT.

It's not remotely satisfying as Dante or Vergil's gameplay for me, and doesn't even scratch Nero's. The plus side is that you only play like, 4 mandatory missions with him total... but one of those missions is a boss rush where you lose your summons before hand and have to regain them in each fight... so yeah.

As for the levels themselves, they're alright. I'll blame this on overexposure from the two previous games but initially I wasn't vibing with the destroyed city look because both DMC2 and DMC4 did it as well and it was something I had grown a little tired of seeing, but I did inevitably warm up to it as time went on. They have more interesting branching pathways than either of those game's levels and discovering stuff is much more entertaining.

Personally though, I wasn't really a fan of the Qliphoth levels, mostly due to aesthetic. The demonic wooden tree looks gets very samey very quick, and while that may be the intent, it's just not something I was particularly fond of seeing, especially given that there is just a level where you fall down a singular shaft and that's the level.

Spoilers:

The game however truly picks up around the final third of missions where the plot reveals that the Demon King we've been going up against has been Vergil all along and that V is the human part that was cast off after Vergil's many defeats. Vergil is reborn when V and Urizen are rejoined and an even bigger reveal is made: Vergil is Nero's father.

The final two missions are absolute kino as we get to see yet another legendary Dante vs Vergil fight, which is just as good as it was in DMC3, followed by a Nero vs Vergil victory lap where Nero unlocks his true Devil Trigger and regains his Devil Buster powers. It's truly an amazing experience and a great way for this series to go out on.

The music for this game is fucking incredible, I don't think I need to stress. Tracks like Devil Trigger, Crimson Cloud, and Bury the Light are all phenomenal bops, and I even like the track Subhuman that plays for Dante quite a bit for its really goofy charm it has despite its dark metal sound.

However, at the end of the day I still think I prefer the overall vibes of DMC3, and the sheer raw intensity that game provided in comparison. That opinion may change of course, but as of this review those are my feelings.

Devil May Cry 5 is a great game, and I definitely look forward to replaying Bloody Palace with Dante until I finish it. It is one of the best Character Action Games ever made, and I highly recommend it.

At the end of the day, I only have one thing to say about my final thoughts on the Devil May Cry franchise.

"Jackpot."