Hamster's new Arcade Archives port of this game advertises itself as being a "great, easy game to get into, even for players who don't often play shooting games!"

This is a lie. A complete lie. This game is completely evil. Beneath the lovely, incredibly cute aesthetic where an otter dangles his legs out of a biplane, lies a system where you will die at the drop of a hat, you move slow enough for some bullets to barely be reactable, and the scoring mechanics are absolutely stupid.

The most efficient way to score in this game is to literally rub up against the right side of the screen, which gives you about a thousand points a second. Yes, that's where most enemies spawn - yes, there's no warning that enemies are spawning. Yes, they kill you on impact. NMK are you ok?

Alternatively, you can pick up point items or merely walk on the floor to get points. But you also get points for avoiding point items, and only 3 of the 8 stages have floors! So ?????????????

It's very stupid. And very, very hard, rivalling the likes of Toaplan's evil STGs of the period, with later levels filled with loads of enemies that will fire lighting fast bullets at your massive hitbox, and it ultimately turns into a game of bomb resource management - well not bombs, "big" items that make your otter comically huge and fire sunfish at enemies which do increased damage. Because why not.

Aside from the shitposty nature of the game as a whole, it's pretty good. It suffers from a lack of variety as the same enemy types pop up again and again and again, and it's a bit too long, but the encounters themselves are pretty fun, and it is extremely, extremely cute throughout, and when it is throwing new bosses at you the encounters are surprisingly puzzle-y and interesting. The caravan modes included in the new port are also probably the best way to enjoy it, with two bite sized portions of madness instead of half an hour, with less frustration as a result.

But yeah, this is a hilarious shitshow that I kinda respect the gall of. In an arcade setting from 30 years ago, it's probably something I'd completely avoid and would get a horrid reputation, but as a modern curiosity, it's a nice little look back into one of the first cute em ups, and one of the more silly, evil examples of the genre.

Back in the day, the Playstation Mobile version of Cytus was the first proper rhythm game I REALLY got into. Now i'm getting my teeth into the genre more properly, I thought i'd give it's re-release another go.

And holy shit the timing window is huge. It's something I failed to notice as a beginner, but now with the retrospect of at least kinda knowing a few things about these sorts of games, Cytus feels absurdly easy, with timing windows for goods is bigger than any other game i've played, and perfects even feel like 100ms+ windows even. It's a decision I don't really have a problem with on it's own, but even with it's additional TP system, which tracks accuracy more tightly, the leaderboards are absolutely flooded with max scores.

Which really, in a sense, shows the emphasis of Cytus. It's a far more casual game than most of it's counterparts, even on mobile, focused on an experiencial, almost concept-album like experience.

And in that regard, Cytus is very strong, with the framing device of the game being robots experiencing music as a way to experience human emotions being quite compelling, and the 10-song "Alive" album which forms the title track of each chapter and tells the story is quite compelling, and has some of the best tracks in the game at that. Many of the individual bonus chapters, specifically Chapters L, Knight and Timeline, also serve as individual little storyline concept albums, which is something I have basically not seen in other rhythm games.

And in general, the songs are good, which frankly, is the main thing. There's a good chunk of songs fro Rhythm game favourites like Cranky and M2U, as well as plenty of other good ones. Originally being a subscription thing, there are some issues in that you can tell the game took a while to find it's style, and whilst the early chapters are great and the final few are excellent, some in the middle are a bit dull and uninspired in comparison, though usually each of these at least has one fantastic track.

And in many ways, it is the legacy of this game being a game as a service that bogs down the new Alpha remaster most. The garbage song selection UI somehow managed to stick round 10 years, along with the weird insistence on secret tracks which are a pain to find. There's also only two patterns per song where even cytus 2 (which actually came out before this port) has 3+, and it leads to a huge gulf in difficulty between some of the easy and hard patterns in the same song occasioanlly, and is just overall dissapointing. There's a scant few patterns in this game that are very difficult, and im not even good at this game - more patterns pushing the envelope would help it a lot.

Frankly, the main thing the port adds is the new art and a little new unlockable story stuff. The new art is absolutely fantastic and helps address the haphazard style of the original game, and the story stuff helps the original sparse narrative get a little more meat on the bones. Its still limited, but it's nice.

The other new things in this port are online multiplayer and physical controls. Neither are worthwhile, with the multiplayer already entirely dead and the the physical controls just being fiddly and i feel would only really work on a keyboard or arcade stick where you could mash really fast.

Overall, Cytus is kinda rough, and Rayark would massively improve on polish and presentation in their later work, but Cytus is arguably still their most interesting and the focus on concept albums and narrative really makes the original in particular stand out. The timing window may be way too wide for a pro to take it remotely seriously, but it's an interesting, and rather special game in it's own right.

I thought I'd check out the new switch version of this. I tend to like these complete versions of mobile rhythm games, without the hassle of paying microtransactions or trudging through an awful progression system - oh wait.

Arcaea Switch is a $40 game with the progresion system of a F2P one. That's basically what it boils down to. You start with 50 of the 150~ songs and to unlock any more, along with the support characters and so on, you need to progress through the world mode, which starts of slow for the first set of worlds, requiring about 5 song plays per getting a new song. Ok, could be worse, sure, and it'll get quicker as you level up support units for sure, right?

And then you get to the next set of worlds and unlocks take 3 times as long. And you still only have like 75 songs. And your character is probably maxed out. Oh, and the game still has the pointless decision to have like 5 different currencies you can earn in different modes that would have previously been stamina gated, but now just feels like it's wasting your time.

It's a shame because the gameplay itself is pretty good. The core gimmick, the Arcs, which are basically hold notes above the normal play field, im not huge on themselves, but when combined with notes that go under and around it, it can result in this contortionist finger play which is really fun.

Sadly, on a core gameplay level, it does also have some visibility issues. There's a colour blind mode, but it only effects arcs, and not the normal, light blue notes on white-ish background for half the tracks. I can get by, but having visibility issues at al in a rhythm game like this, which you cant adjust at all, is a huge no go.

Frankly though, it is the progression of the switch version that really kills it for me. The songs are good but you'll be replaying them like 8 times each if you want to unlock all the content, and that's assuming it doesnt get even slower later on.

There's just no need for it. I have played Mobile Rhythm games with progression systems less obnoxious, and it's a huge damper on the game as a whole. Doesnt help that there's basically a 20 second unskippable cutscene to actually show you your megre progress in getting to the stuff you spent $40 on.

Its a shame as the gameplay is good, there's some fun original songs, and the story seems fairly interesting, with a good aesthetic throughout.

But i've just come to the conclusion that it's just not worth it. There's enough good rhythm games that dont make jump through so many damn hoops to actually play the songs, which is at the end of the day, what really matters.

It's not as good as AC+R. I don't think it's particularly close, even. The lobbies barely work, the combat system is a bit too simplified, the wallbreak system is dumb, and frankly, there isnt that much do actually do in the game.

But it is very, very fun. When you actually get the game going, all the little niggles and issues strive has get washed out by the sheer wave of positive energy that comes when the battles get going, when the music's loud and the presentation is absolutely glorious.

I know its easy to enjoy anything with friends, but doing sets with Friends in strive, and for that matter, AC+R is just special. There's something about the sheer positivity and dedication to rule of cool about the series, along with the awesome characters and music, that just makes for an absolute whale of a time, ensuing with laughs, trying to avoid singing along with Chipp's theme in the discord call, and going "ooo" as your friend dunks you in the corner with an awesome Zato combo.

Particularly in these grim times, Guilty Gear has been special for me. Maybe the only thing i've played where even for a little bit, the worries of the world truly just give way to the sheer personality and fun of it all. And whilst Strive may not be truly as good as AC+R - it still has it's energy. And that's all that really matters to me.

To anyone who i've played Guilty Gear with in the past few months - Thank you.

(Review of the demo)

This game being the largest meme aside, the demo was pretty sick. It pretty much boils down to the combat system, which the snippets from the trailer made look very just "blargh swing beeg sword around and glory kill", when it's surprisingly intricate and cool. I'm not the expert on these sorts of things by any means, but the action/jrpg gameplay fusion is really sweet, and for me scratches a similar sort of itch to something like kingdom hearts. Switching Jobs being something you do as an animation cancel, cool useage of parries and blocking, even a pretty neat little blue mage ability stealing system, it's all pretty damn cool and when it comes together in the demo's one boss fight, which is really good, its a great time.

There's clearly a lot of influence from Nioh here, with it's job switching taking the place of stance switching, the level design, demons souls shortcuts and the bosses. And it actually works.

Of course there's the whole CHAOS thing to address, which is here in spades and is delightfully stupid. Fortunately, when you get some other clothes on your main dude (which you will do in literally 5 minutes) and play for a little bit, it seems a bit less absurd and the style meshes together a bit better. It is still delightfully cheesy and at least somewhat aware about it though, particulary with the bombastic fnal moments of the game's boss fight, where an EDM version of FF1 music is playing over it and it turns a bit into metal gear rising.

Honestly, my main problems with the demo are that your supporting party members feel absolutely worthless and are more of a nuisance in battle (and frankly, dont have much to say in story), and the progression/loot being extremely fast and demanding menuing after basically every battle. That second one has probably been amplified to get more done in the demo, granted, but I dont think i'll be fond of it's loot system regardless, it feels a bit overdone for very minor benefits.
Also, as someone who, frankly, is pretty damn shite at action games, I'm willing to bet one of the mechanics here is utterly busted - such as the ability that prevents you taking hitstun, the animation canclling magic block that gives you MP, etc - that I just can't extract myself. Clearly i think people better than me at this sort of things need to give it a look before any conclusions are made on that though.

Overall, it's a good start, frankly. The trailer might be hilarious, and the game is a bit too, but frankly it doesn't do it justice. If you have a PS5 absolutely check it out. Yes, it's a meme, but there's definetly something cool here, and frankly, the bizzare direction for a retelling of FF1 that's been taken is kinda something worth seeing for yourself, like it or not.

Also, yes, the lines "Chaos." >"No, I am become Chaos, who are you">"We're here to kill chaos" basically happen in that exact order within 30 seconds. Its fantastic.

Touhou, by and large, is something im not a huge fan of. Its a series of wildly varying quality that suffers from sameyness, a terrible fanbase and some general gameplay issues that pervade from game to game.

Most notably of these, Touhou stages are shit. The games are always defined by their fantastic boss battles, but the other half of the game is always, always, forgettable and nothing special. And this is where UFO really shines.

UFO's key is in its eponymous system, where collecting
3 UFO items of the same colour or of all different items spawn a UFO, a docile enemy that sucks up drops, and when it's sucked up enough and killed, drops additional items such as life fragments, bombs, or a shittonne of score. More importantly than this, on death, they cancel all enemy bullets, which is absolutely massive. It is frankly, a Genius system, mostly because of how it interacts with the existing Touhou item drop formula, how it encourages both clever stage routing and on-the fly adaptation, and encourages the player to be far more active in movement as UFO items are so important to both scoring and survival, and therefore it rewards weaving through bullets and take risks to make the most out of it. It is exactly the sort of thing Touhou stages need, and it turns the worst part of the EOSD-onwards Touhous into the best part.

Well, maybe. I think it's fair to say UFO also has incredibly rock solid bosses. Touhou never really falters on the bosses, and whilst I can hardly call myself an authority on them, they're great here, particularly Stage 6's boss.

The music is also just lovely. ZUN spices this one up a bit more than the other Post-EOSD games i've played, with the latter stages including some more varied instrumentation and styling to his traditional faire, which really works well. Stage 4 and the Stage 6 boss track are clear standouts for me and just make the game that little bit more special.

It's still a Windows Touhou, so the art is bad, it looks very similar to other games from the time, and frankly you have to jump through some hoops to get it in english and you're stuck with awkward compatibility and resolutions going up to the mighty 1280x960. Fuck you if you want it fullscreen, by the way.

But yeah, ZUN did it. This is by far the best Touhou i've played and just a top-tier STG in general. A fantastic gimmick accompanied by a Touhou game of high quality in the first place. As far as I'm concerned, this is his Magnum Opus.

I hope the money I unneccessarily spent on the Steam version of this game gets ZUN a nice beer. I almost forgive him for Violet Detector.

All the jank, technical issues issues, and rubbish stages of a ZUN game without the overwhelming charm those games have. FDF2 is a fan remake of Perfect Cherry Blossom that is just a waste of time.

I will say there's some good stuff here. The character artwork is fairly nice, and it's quite interesting to see a game basically be extremely faithful to the ZUN formula, but with a bit of a twist in that it almost seems like a mirror world touhou where ZUN got away with tracing the art well past EOSD, or maybe had a bigger support team.

And if the game had the polish to go along with it's artwork, it would be fine. But it's not. Controller compatibility is an absolute mess, resolution only goes up to 720p for no apparent reason, you have to use an awkward setup every time you boot the game - the UX in this game is as bad as the early windows XP touhous, which is very bad for a game from 2019.

And frankly, the game would just be better off doing it's own thing. The team here clearly has some aptitude, the art's nice, the remixes are good, and there's definetly room in this world for a more polished fan approach to Touhou - see Luna Nights. This is just the worst of both worlds.

A wonderfully maximilist, bonkers Shmup-Rhythm-Fighting-Action game... thing. Akachiverse is absolutely, wonderfully committed to the bit - that it's so ridiculosly intense and intricate that it's hard to tell what's going on at all.

The game's core conceit is that you're playing an overpowered character in a ridiculous world. Bullet patterns might be blatantly impossible for half the game, but you're also given a character who is given the ability to spam the shit out of fighting game moves that deal high damage, cancel projectiles, and do other shit. These bars charge really quickly and there's loads of options here, and thats only like, half the kit you have at your disposal. All the while you get Lunatic level touhou patterns sent your way at speeds rivalling dragon blaze. Oh, and occasionally there's dialogue sequences going over it which the game somewhat expects you to parse? Oh, and the bullets will often stop and start in beat to the music so i hope you've got your rhythm game hat on. Oh, also you have a super that turns you into a giant mecha boss with MORE special moves.

Even in a 30 minute STG, this could burn itself out or get stale fast. You'd think there's no way the game could keep it up, and it doesn't. It gets even more ridiculous, breaking its own rules, going full yume nikki and changing up the player character's own kit. It is utterly ludicrous, and feels like it shouldnt be playable at all, but it kinda is.

Kinda goes without saying at this point the game is bloody hard, even on the novice difficulty which gives you about 5x health. Even for STG veterans you're likely to struggle with it's smorgasboard of weird systems that the game expects you to remember and incorporate whilst bullets are flying at near-unreactable speeds towards you.

And to an extent, I feel there's only so good a game so committed to the bit like this can be. It's some Asura's Wrath levels of absurdity, and that's kinda it. It blows it's main influence, Hellsinker, out of the water and is really quite fun and absurd, but makes it also a little hard to take seriously beyond that, especially when the million moves the MC has dont exactly seem well balanced.

But this is a wild ride worth experiencing at least once. It's like £7 on steam and it's well worth that for how hard it goes. In a genre full of things that turn the intensity up to 11, Akashicverse breaks the dial.

Also, why is there Hotline Miami music in the tutorial? Did they get permission for that?

What the fuck happened here?

If no more heroes replaced its obscene amount of filler and bad ideas with the potential the things blatantly left on the cutting room floor had, It could be close to as good as the first game. Would probably still be a messy game that really didnt seem to get the original, but I think there's room in this world for such a gratuitous, cathartic game to exist.

A few individual components of NMH2 absolutely slap. The soundtrack is legitimately fantastic in a way that's different to the first game, and has some absolute belters, particularly "kill or be killed" and "philestine". The combat has been dramatically improved, and there's a handful of good boss fights. The new movesets are fun, The presentation is generally good and the budget has clearly massively increased this time round.

But boy is the connective tissue of this game terrible. The throughline of the plot alone relies on a severe stretching of a relationship from the first game and travis' personality, and it doesn't work. On top of that, the sequence of events is just all over the place, with things just happening one after the other. Travis has very little agency in a plot that is meant to be a personal revenge... thing.

NMH is really a shift. NMH1 is carried by theme and vibes, of which NMH2 has basically nothing. There's some gesturing towards... things but there's no time to dwell, most of the bosses barely say a word and the open world of santa destroy - a character in it's own that gives a grounding to the events of the game, is barely even a factor.

So the game's core strengths shifts to bombast and catharsis, in the improved combat and the bonkers set pieces. And about half of them are good. But again, they're completely all over the place, probably in the wrong order, and the pacing is bizzare.

For instance, late in the game, one of the best boss fights, with a great Vocal music track, and a good level before her - is proceeded by an outright bizzare 20-minute long fight against endless mooks in a car park without any music at all.

This car park fight is so remarkably, blatantly terrible and pointless that it almost makes me wonder if it's making a point, that the whole game is this deliberate kusoge mishmash about riding highs or something. I think that would be some serious Copium abuse though, frankly.

All said, NMH2 doesn't work. It's a very, very weak sequel to the original and is more interesting to disect than ponder. But for a short, wild ride, it's got enough bombast and absurdity to carry it for it's 5 hour runtime. And that's pretty much it.

What possesses a person to make this?

Regardless, it's good. A surprisingly intricate immersive sim tactical shooter... thing, as portrayed through some combination of team fortress 2 community servers, deep fried shitposts, quake, geocities websites and pure abject horror.

It must be said that it's really the tone that carries cruelty squad. From start to finish, it is intensely uncomfortable, in both its visual design, music, and what i was able to actually gleam of the context of the game's events. There's two missions in particular, one near the middle, and the other being the penultimate, which have just fantastic atmospheres and are probably where the game veers most into the horror side of it's absurdity.

The gameplay is pretty alright. The closest comparison I can think of it is probably dishonored of all things, and it frankly has similar issues. The level design is great, creating little sandboxes for you to tear shit up in, and you get some particularly interesting upgrades like your intestines becoming a grappling hook that can latch onto everything - but the balance isnt quite there and it has the classic mini-sandbox-murder-game problem of the route of least resistance - i.e, running up and shooting your target right in the face, or sniping them from a distance - has little to no downsides. There's some levels that mix this up a lot and later in the game the emphasis becomes far more in getting to to the target in the first place, which is nice, but it's still an issue. Also must be said that the AI is dumb as a bag of rocks, which feels mildly deliberate but also means they're not that engaging to mess about with and have nothing in the way of interesting interactions.

Aside from that, my only real issue is the escalation, or rather, for the most part, the lack of it. The two levels in mentioned earlier are fantastic and really kick it up, but aside from them most of the game retains this very constant level of bizzare intensity. The game arguably starts at 11, but it never quite getting to 12 means it's kinda easy to get used to the atmosphere by the time the game is wrapping up. If the main story maybe had a few levels less it would probably be better off. Also, the last level is absolutely awful. It might be making some sort of statement with it's awfulness but the one prior is immensely more cathartic and would have been a good way to go out.

Overall though, this is very neat. One of the more effective horror games I've played in a good while, and a decent immersive sim murder simulator thing to boot.

Special mention for the soundtrack, by the way, it's fantastic and the game would not be nearly as effective without it.

So many components of the Silver Case are absolutely amazing. The dialogue and writing in general is good, the aesthetic and presentation is wonderfully executed, the characters are great and the Soundtrack is utterly fantastic. And when it comes together, especially for some of its better sequences, it's really something quite special, and the vibes throughout are wonderful. At it's best, the silver case is creepy and offbeat and covers a broad scope of topics with interesting ideas and "what ifs", and its incredibly compelling.

The thing that prevents it achieving greatness though, for my money, is the pacing and gameplay segments. The gameplay segments are just flat out shit. They control badly, and mostly consist of you being stopped every single step you take to hear something unneccessary. I get Suda is a dude that loves his downtime and slowing things to a crawl to allow time for reflection and shit, but in the silver case it just breeds frustration for me, in scenes that could be the game at it's best. Lifecut should be an amazing chapter full of revelations and things paying off, but instead it's lumbered with the worst gameplay sections in the entire game and in general, things just taking too long.

The Placebo chapters I also find pretty weak. Im almost Glad that I missed them entirely until case 3 of transmitter because Placebo 1 in particular is absolute misery. They do help clear the fog of the transmitter chapters but they're so unreasonably long and the gameplay sections are so ludicrously nothing that I found it hard not to lose attention attention at times.

All in all TSC is really not much longer than No More Heroes or even Travis Strikes Again, and whilst it does cram more in that time it fails to really be as impactful to me as either of those games whilst also feeling about twice as long as it really is.

But I do think it's a good game. The vibes carry it super hard, as do a couple of the characters and the superb presentation, and it's best chapters and moments are utterly exceptional. Its just, in a sense, a game that almost feels like less than the sum of it's parts at the end of the day for me, which is a real shame.

Also, brb gonna try telling people "i've killed my past" as an excuse for not giving them back the 50,000 yen I owe them.

A hilarious, poignant, silly, shitpost of a game. Flower Sun and Rain is a surreal sequel to the silver case that's somehow more bonkers, yet easier to follow and digest simultaneously whilst hitting harder for me. It's also a really pretty lame puzzle adventure game.

None of the enjoyment from FSR comes from the puzzles or to an extent, even the execution of the quests you go on. The solutions to every puzzle barring a scant few boils down to finding the right terms in handbook and connecting the dots, and somehow by plugging these numbers into things your magical computer does... stuff?

There's some fun to be had in the sheer absurdity of the bad puzzles, but really the appeal here is all in the adventure, the encounters and the sheer atmosphere. Which are all consistently top drawer, and unlike the Silver Case, usually fairly bite size. The only real issue i have with them, and its by far from ever-present, is the occasional awkwardness with hitting the right flags or getting lost in where exactly you need to go or talk to next. Its nice to wander about in FSR but it can get aggravating when you're stumped.

FSR is a short tale, but its one that gives you all the time to soak in the atmosphere you want. Other Suda games are driven by atmosphere and tone, but in FSR it is unquestionably the main draw. The island of lospass is arguably the main character of the game, the music - mostly consisting of wonderfully remixed classical music, gives this surreal, vibe, and there's multiple extended sections where FSR almost compels you to just take it all in. And even on the fucking awful resolution of my DSi XL where i can count the pixels of the trees in the distance of the beach, there's really something to it.

The more relaxed nature of the game is also a boon. The subject matter of stopping a terrorist attack is honestly about on par with The Silver Case's plot in terms of grimness, but the presentation and the weird, ephemeral/purgatorial nature of lospass really makes FSR extremely relaxing. Even when the game really boils down to a bunch of increasingly tedius Fetch Quests, it somehow melts into just being amusing, especially in the blatant piss-take that is Request 14.

FSR in general is just so pleasant. Aside from all it's thematic stuff, its just a lovelly little world to lose oneself in for a bit. I guess that's also what it is for Mondo as well.

Thematically, despite being literally a sequel to the Silver Case, I actually think the game's themes of finding your true path and paradise are actually way more in line with No More Heroes. I still think No More Heroes is probably the better game, with more polish, less bullshit and less outright antagonistic design probably ultimately being for the better. But this is special too.

This is probably the most awkward of SUDA's english pantheon to get into. It needs experience of the the silver case to really be fully appreciated, is even more offbeat and antagonistic to being a game than his other works, and unless you can read japanese you're laboured with a pretty mediocre DS port. But somehow, it's probably definetly one of my favourite suda works and one of the best experiences i've played recently in general. Other people in this review section have probably put a better finger on what quite makes this game tick than me, so i'd check them out, particularly drigo and mr pixelton.

Thanks to all you Suda heads for getting me to give this a go. I'll consider lending you all 50,000 yen.