I’m not too familiar with the Ninja Gaiden series. The only other game I’ve played to a significant degree is the NES original. So, one may wonder, why did I play the modern Ninja Gaiden II instead of its more beloved predecessor Ninja Gaiden Black? Well, I’m not like other Backloggd users. I say ‘Castleroid’ instead of ‘Metroidvania’, I don’t quote other users in my reviews, I hate ironic humour, I always commit to my comedic bits unwaveringly, and I just like playing sequels before the original games (The real reason is that I had trouble trying to emulate Black and happened to see this one at a game store).

All of that being said, the game is pretty good, but fairly different than other action games I’ve played. To quote user Herbert in his review of Ultrakill, “Doom Eternal was Ninja Gaiden Black (for FPS games)”. I can’t attest to how similar Doom Eternal is to Ninja Gaiden Black, but it is pretty similar to the latter’s sequel. The brutality, the need to consider every enemy, the gratifying finisher moves, a bit of platforming every once and a while, etc… However, part of the reason I like Ninja Gaiden II much more than Doom Eternal is that you have options in this game. The best way to display this is the fact that this game has achievements for clearing the story with a single weapon. Anyone whose played Doom Eternal knows that trying to use one weapon in that game is pretty much impossible due to the way enemies and resources are designed. You will use every weapon in the ‘right’ way, or you just won’t take down enemies efficiently. Personally, this kind of restriction is not appealing.

In Ninja Gaiden II, there’s still ‘right’ ways to take down enemies, there’s just way more of them. You have a pretty solid set of weapons to use, swords, claws, staffs, chain blades, and more. Each one has different moves that will greatly change the way you need to fight. Attack power, speed, range, mobility, and even specific moves are all things to consider when choosing a weapon to wield. I mostly stuck to the Dragon Sword because it was quick and allowed for a lot of mobility and the Lunar staff because it had good range and crowd control, but I’d switch to the other weapons for certain situations too. This game is far from accessible or easy, but this one allowance is what makes the game engaging for me. Certain moves work well for certain situations, but I had to learn them for myself, and if I didn’t like that move, I could try another weapons’ alternative that, while not identical, would usually get the job done. You also have a good selection of ranged weapons that have different use cases, usually firing quick shots can be a nice disruptor while a focused attack can be used to kill weaker ranged enemies.

It also helps that the normal enemy design, while extremely brutal at times, makes fights super fun. While you have the potential to eviscerate enemies, they can do the same to you. Enemies will lose body parts in fights, and if you don’t finish them off, they will suicide attack you for a third of your health, so every enemy needs to be taken seriously. I know some people say the camera is ‘outdated’, but the truth is that enemies are too aggressive and plenty to be approached with a lock-on akin to Ocarina of Time, and the soft lock-on here was pretty consistent for me personally. Anyway, the multitude of strong enemies means you’ll need to master finishers, essence charges, and a few fundamental combos like the izuna drop to annihilate your enemies. What ties this together is the covertly brilliant ‘lasting damage system’. While health pickups are generous and you actually recover health when no enemies are nearby, your max health will slowly go down the more damage you take, and the only way to restore it is with save points and items. This makes every fight feel tense, because not only can one wrong move massively cut down your health, but even if you do overcome this particular challenge, you’re going into your next fight with a bit of a disadvantage. This means many fights have not only the frantic, all-or-nothing feeling that games with generous checkpoints do, but also the tension and call to mastery that more scarce checkpoints create. More games need to try something like this.

Honestly though, while the common enemies are mostly great, the bosses are a bit mixed. There are some good ones, and they’re usually the most conventional opponents, humanoid bosses that are hard but feel fairly similar in design to common enemies. However, way too many require you to use the bow, and I don’t mean you just fire off a shot and then go in with your blades, you have to stand still, charge an arrow for a few seconds, and shoot, and for some bosses this is the optimal way to deal damage for the entire fight, at least to my knowledge. Really though, I think one issue that hurts all bosses a little is that you can’t combo on them nearly as hard as with normal enemies. All of this makes the fights feel a little more reserved in a way I don’t entirely like that for this kind of game.

I suppose that brings us to the level design. Apparently Ninja Gaiden Black has an interconnected map similar to a Metroidvania or something, but this game has mostly linear levels. They’re pretty solid. It’s hard to get lost, but you do have some optional areas and backtracking to keep things interesting. Ranged enemies are often placed in areas above, and you usually want to deal with them first, be it by shooting them a lot or climbing up and dealing with close-range. There’s some light platforming present, which is thankfully much better than in games like God of War where it’s boring and one mistake instantly kills you. The level design is mostly a really nice blend of fighting and light platforming, and some attacks even depend on jumping off walls to use, which means level design has an added importance to fights that works well with the agility of Ryu.

Alright, I usually only nitpick the stories of games (We’d be here a while if I did so with this one), but there were a lot of specific gameplay moments that really annoyed me. First though, I have to talk about the performance and glitches. I played this game vanilla on 360, so maybe this isn’t the best way to play the game, but frame drops weren’t uncommon and there were a significant amount of glitches. One time, an enemy got stuck behind a gate. The only way to open this gate is to kill the enemy, and since I couldn’t reach the enemy, I had to reload a save. One time these enemies that sprout up from underground started coming up too high before suddenly disappearing and repeating. This made the fight trivial but annoying. A few times an enemy just started standing in the air for some reason. These kinds of things weren’t super common, but they happened enough that I’m convinced that this game needed a little more polish. Load times can be pretty long too, and that one staircase fight’s reputation is completely earned. It would be really cool if it wasn’t in slow-mo! And look, I like hard games, but sometimes this game is just mean. After beating a boss one time, it just exploded and killed me in one hit. “Ok, next time I’ll run away before it explodes.” I thought. Still, it killed me in one hit despite me being far away from the explosion. I don’t usually like looking stuff up for games, but I ended up just searching the solution so I wouldn’t waste more of my time, and it turns out you just have to block it. This is the definition of a beginner’s trap. It’s trivial to avoid if you know about it, but the punishment is harsh if you don’t. Another time, I killed a boss on an island surrounded by lava. This isn’t a big deal because Ryu can obviously run on lava, but some sadistic bastard at Tecmo decided to put some lava bombs under the lava on the way to the exit. I didn’t notice the subtle tell of these bombs, so I died and had to fight the boss again. Again, dealing with these is no problem if you’re aware of them, so their inclusion serves no purpose other than to punish someone who already defeated a hard boss.

It's honestly the stuff in the previous paragraph that made me bump this down from an 8 to a 7/10. This does mean a replay on an emulator/updated version might have the potential to bring it back up to an 8, but I think I want to play Ninja Gaiden Black first. If that game has what I like about this one and what I don’t like isn’t present, I could see it becoming a personal favorite. As for this game, 7/10.

I didn't review the first Chameleon Twist, but I did think it was an alright 3D Platformer. There were better 3D Platformers at the time, but it was unique and mostly fun. I was expecting this game to be more of the same, but I thought it was a much lesser experience for multiple reasons.

Let's start with the moveset. Everything from the first game returns. The jumping and running, tongue pull and twist, and the high jump. This game adds something new though, which is that you can now tongue grapple onto any surface. This is really fun to mess around with, and it's such an obvious idea I wonder why it wasn't in the first game.

So really, most of the issues are with the level design. The first was mostly very compact. Many levels took place indoors, which is pretty uncommon in the genre. It was a short and sweet game. By contrast, Chameleon Twist 2 is short and bitter. Every level takes place in some floating location in front of skyboxes that are pretty poor looking. Aside from that, the levels are a bit bigger in general. This is fine, but it means enemies are usually very easy to avoid. You can just walk past most of them, as you're rarely required to or rewarded for engaging with them. The more open levels may also attribute to an issue where the game would regularly place me at checkpoints to areas that I didn't actually reach yet. Multiple times I would barely miss a jump, but I'd be put ahead in the level when I respawn.

I'm also kind of impressed that despite how short and easy this game is, it seems to waste your time a lot. Levels often involve waiting on or for moving platforms. There's also a lot of trial-and-error sections for some reason. There's also powerups here, some of which are detrimental to you. It's completely random which one you get, and one of them makes you slower. Why?!?! Even when you're not waiting, the level design doesn't take advantage of the core mechanic nearly as well as the first game. It's fun enough, but most of it is pretty basic platforming made a little better by a pretty solid moveset.

I think the bosses are on par or even better than those of the first game. They're still pretty basic, but they can be alright.

Overall, this game sucks. It's worse than the original in nearly every way, and the one positive I had was done far better in Super Sami Roll. 4/10, closer to a 3.

Suggested by @moschidae for this list. This probably wasn’t the kind of review you were hoping for, but I must be honest with my opinions.

Warning, this review does talk about suicide in the section about story.

To be honest, I haven’t played that many survival horror games. I’ve played a few Resident Evil games, Parasite Eve II, and little else. However, I think I have a decent grasp of how the genre usually works. Looking at the GameCube version of Resident Evil, you can see a lot of systems working together to make an incredible horror experience. Resource management, tight exploration, a few puzzles, story, atmosphere, etc etc… Maybe I’m being a bit harsh comparing one of the greatest of the genre to Yomawari: Midnight Shadows, but I do think it does a good job to show just how much this game falls on its face.

Let’s start with the gameplay. Most of the gameplay is walking around at night avoiding ghosts, exploration, and a few puzzles. You have a flashlight that can help you see spirits and a few items. As simple as this is, ghosts being invisible without the flashlight does add some good tension to gameplay. Anyway, let’s say you see a spirit and you want to get away from it. What do you do?

1. Just run away from it.
2. Hide in an object and wait for the ghosts to leave.
3. Throw one of two items at it.

This is 9/10 encounters in the game. Very few enemies non-boss have unique properties, and even the ones that do are very simple. Shining the flashlight at this enemy makes it stop. Shining the flashlight at this enemy wakes it up. Etc etc…. Almost all either have a set path/location or will chase you when you get close to them. Maybe if this game was super short this would be acceptable, but it lasts for 7.5 hours according to Howlongtobeat.com (It took me just short of 9 though). Even if it was short, this wouldn’t excuse just how cheap some of the obstacles can be sometimes. Often, the game feels like trial and error, especially since you die in one hit, honestly. This isn’t the worst because of how plentiful save points are, but the abundance of save points also means that there’s rarely any tension. You’ll pretty much never lose more than a minute of progress. The game even did the thing that Resident Evil did where you need a usable item to save, but pretty much every save point had one lying nearby, and I always had more than half of the max. It literally serves no purpose, along with all the other resource management. This is because not only are items plentiful, but most aren’t super useful. Maybe I’d be compelled to use them a little more if there was any tension, but usually just running past an enemy worked fine regardless. The most interesting items were extremely rare. There was one item that’s basically a portable hiding place. In a better game, there would be a few of these strewn about, such that it was a rare resource, but still have an impact on gameplay. Combine this with sparser save points, and this game would automatically be significantly better. Instead, this item only shows up in one area of the game. Why is this the case? Who knows.

Since horror can’t be derived from gameplay tension, it’s mostly done through jumpscares. Honestly, I’m not averse to jumpscares as a concept, but I find them more funny than anything, especially since I’m usually not startled by them, especially when I know it’s gonna show up. It’s not my go-to for what makes good horror, and this game is no different.

Next let’s talk about the exploration. It’s not particularly great. While you can ‘explore’, there are two caveats. One, you must go to a specific location to progress the story, and two, the game aggressively nudges you to go that way most of the time. There’s very little to find exploring. There are a few collectibles, and seemingly many optional areas, but these are not particularly important to a casual playthrough. So, there’s really no reason to actually explore, and the game the game doesn’t want you to anyway most of the time. Cool.

Honestly, the game got ever so slightly better in Chapter 6, as the checkpoints become more sparse, leading to more tension. This gave me a bit of hope. Of course, the game couldn’t let me be happy. First, they introduce an enemy that, while unique in behavior, is completely useless. All it does is block you. It can’t hurt you. WHY?!?!? One of the few unique enemies and it has no impact?!?! Then, there’s another new enemy type. All these guys do is sit there. That sounds easy to get around, right? Wrong, because the hitboxes on these guys is absolutely nonsensical. I know it’s a top down game though, so I thought, “Maybe it’s just perspective”. But just watch this!! Honestly, this would be a slight annoyance in most games, but it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back here! WHY?!?! WHY DOES IT DO THAT?!?! WHY CAN’T THIS GAME LET ME BE HAPPY!?!?!?!?!?!?

Ahem

Most Survival Horror games have puzzles, and Midnight Shadows kinda does. There’s few overt puzzles like the kind in Zelda or Resident Evil. The most puzzle-esque moments occur in the ‘boss fights’, where the game foreshadows how to defeat them with cutscenes, books, items, etc.... I like this, despite how obvious some of the hints can be. However, it’s not enough to make up for just how boring the rest of it is, especially since actually executing on the solution to a boss is just as boring and annoying as the rest of the game.

Since I’ve been really negative so far, let me give a positive: The game is really good when it comes to horror by exception. What I mean is that it knows when not to show you something. As I said earlier, you can’t see most spooky creatures unless you shine the flashlight on them. However, to run away from them, you obviously have to turn around. As such, when you’re running, you never know quite where the enemy is. This is pretty effective in a vacuum. A few neat things are done with the hiding mechanic too. Most of the time, it’s not great. You just go in a bush or whatever and wait for spirits to go away. You can’t see them, sure, but you also know they can’t hurt you while you hide. Not super engaging. However, they actually do something with it near the end. Yeah, just sitting there is annoying, but there’s a pretty effective moment later on where spoilers a monster basically kills another one while you’re hiding from them. It was a well-presented moment, and it sold me on the power of the spirit I was running from. Still, this moment wasn’t necessarily effective for gameplay, it was mainly just a story segment presented with a game mechanic.

Speaking of which, let’s talk about the story. Let me tell you, I rolled my eyes when the game opens with a character hanging themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I take this topic seriously. However, this game just throws it out right in the beginning in the most manipulative way possible. Why should I care about this other than basic empathy? I know nothing about this character! I’m fine with a story tackling pretty much any subject matter as long as its done with respect, but there’s nothing respectful about this! It’s manipulative!

Does the story really justify this? Not really, at least not in how voyeuristic it feels. If they wanted this opening, I think just implying suicide would’ve been better. The actual reason this girl hung herself was because her dog and dad died and her friend was leaving town. That and ghosts of course. I can’t really say the suicide element added anything overall, despite a literal noose being in the game logo. So we’re off to a really bad start here.

Okay, what if we ignore all that? The story is still mediocre. Spoilers, I guess? Early on, each chapter of the game goes like this: Haru is trying to find her friend Yui. At the beginning we play as Yui for a bit. Then, we play as Haru searching for Yui. Often Haru goes to where Yui was earlier, but Yui is no longer there. Then, Yui is in a new place now for some reason. There’s other stuff, but it doesn’t matter at all in terms of the overall story. As such, it feels pretty repetitive and meandering. I forgot to mention that there’s another character here, Yui’s dog. It’s a dog. For some reason though, it seems to always know where Yui is. It’s not a bloodhound, mind you, but a little Pomeranian. I looked up the breed of the dog, as I’m not a dog expert. However, the dog is a ghost expert for some reason. Honestly, the dog probably does more to find Yui than Haru does, at least in the first half of the game. Really, the dog is little more than a plot device though. The dog runs somewhere, and you have to follow it. Haru wouldn’t get anywhere without this dog. Why isn’t the dog the main character anyway? It can probably hold a flashlight in its mouth. Just let me play as the dog. At least then I wouldn’t have to listen to Haru’s dialogue, which basically adds nothing. Everything she says is either exactly what you’d expect her to say or is just an obvious observation that feels patronizing when pointed out. Later, they try to give her an arc of becoming braver and not being scared of the spirits, but this comes out of nowhere, and it doesn’t actually change the gameplay. She can say she’s not scared all she wants, but the gameplay still revolves around running away, and the heartbeat effect still gets really fast when a spirit is close. The dog was never afraid of ghosts though. Just let me play as the dog, please.

Anyway, surprise, it turns out Yui has been dead this whole time. This isn’t a surprise, considering she hung herself in the opening (Haru is the friend I mentioned earlier, in case you couldn’t tell. The game seems to imply she was dead for a decent amount of time though, and that her and Haru hung out a little bit while she was a ghost. This doesn’t make sense to me because later Haru can’t see her. What changed? That aside, this implication doesn’t make sense at all. Haru is a kid, so I’m sure she told her parents what she was doing. If Yui was missing or known to be dead, wouldn’t people question her about this? Maybe this did happen, but I’d think Haru would’ve brought it up. I guess there’s plausible deniability in this case.

The ending is honestly alright. It does one unique thing regarding actually taking advantage of being a game, and I liked how it ended with Haru having to let Yui go. It’s nice, but it’s also connected to the rest of the game and the actual message wasn’t built up to particularly well. So overall, the story is not great either.

I think the best part of the game is the audiovisuals. All of the backgrounds and monster designs look really good, and the game has some really good sound design. I really love how the menus are made of the main character’s drawings, as it really reminds you that you are indeed playing as a kid. I only had one problem with the audiovisuals, honestly. Occasionally the layers of objects will be off, like an object that should be behind Haru will appear in front of her, for example. Other than that, it’s really great, and it contributes to a decent atmosphere. It seems that this was the bulk of the effort, but it makes me wonder why the creators didn’t just make a manga or anime, considering how basic the gameplay is. It doesn’t really take advantage of the medium in any way that a show or comic couldn’t, and the best parts are the audiovisuals and story, which is perfectly doable in a show.

Anyway uhh… This game is awful. It’s a failure on almost every level. 2/10, although much closer to a 3. It’s saved by the audiovisuals. It’s been a while since I played something this bad. Play Luigi’s Mansion instead or something. Sorry @Moschidae. At least I enjoyed reviewing it.

Recommended by @LordDarias for this list.

As time has gone on, I've appreciated shorter games more and more. Tet is probably one of the shortest games I've ever played. However, Tet itself is made up of even shorter minigames. There's many layers to the shortness of this game! I've seen comparisons drawn to WarioWare, and while I haven't played that game yet, it seems to be an apt comparison. You have a limited time to understand and finish these extremely brief cooking minigames. They're all fine enough, although not particularly great or anything, especially once you've already figured out how to do them. As short as this game is, I don't think it's particularly replayable because of this.

There's really not much else to say here. The presentation is fine, but it could've been better overall. Honestly, one could ascribe that to the overall game. However, I enjoyed it well enough. It's super short and free, and even gives you the recipes for the food, which is neat. This game is somewhere between a 5 and 6 out of 10, but I'll give it the benefit for now.

Recommended by @Gare for this list.

I think many people are familiar with Little Samson and how even back in the day when retro games were far cheaper, it was ridiculously expensive. This is mainly due to it selling very poorly, only to receive a cult following years later. Sorry Mom, but I think I’ve gotta join the cult on this one.

Little Samson isn’t overtly revolutionary, unlike many beloved NES games. For this game, I think many would agree with the description of “Wonder Boy III combined with Castlevania III.” Certainly, this game takes a lot from the former (Multiple controllable characters, a few RPG elements) and a bit from the latter (Linear stages with a few branching paths, switching characters in-level). However, I think that misses a lot of why this game really works for me. To me, the biggest strength is how well the game is designed around pretty much any combination of your characters. The titular Samson is the all-rounder, the Dragon can fly but attacking and defense is sub-par, the Golem is slow but has the best attack and defense, and even the mouse, while very frail, is also very agile and can be surprisingly effective against some bosses. This isn’t everything that these characters can and can’t do, but it demonstrates the main choices a player will be making. You could fly over many gaps with the Dragon but abusing it too much could cause the Dragon to die which would result in you losing it for the level, inevitably causing problems down the line. The Golem can take a ton of shots before dying, but it also is the only character that can walk on spikes, so is it worth it to use it as a tank all the time instead of waiting for an area with spikes? Which character should I heal or increase the max health of? No matter what though, the level design feels well made for any character(s). What ties this together is that every character goes away permanently before being restored on a game over, which honestly makes replaying levels a little more fun, as your new try at a level will most likely be different from the last. It also creates a natural requirement for players to use each character to the fullest to succeed.

Every character goes away, that is, except Samson himself. He will always be playable. Honestly, I think this was a bit of a missed opportunity. This means the strategy is always to switch to Samson if your other guys are low on health, especially on boss fights. It also means that one of the strengths of the mouse, running on walls and ceilings, is basically null and void as Samson can do these as well and you might as well just use him instead in most cases. It’s not that bad, especially since the revival potions kinda negate the issue, but I do think the game would be better if Samson was treated the same as the other members, although a few challenges would need to be tweaked to compensate.

I also think it’s worth mentioning that this game has an easy mode! It’s far from the best implementation of a difficulty mode in a game (That goes to Armored Core: For Answer and Wario Land 4), but it is well made overall. There are some distinct but not ridiculous tweaks to enemy placement, health, bosses and more. Usually, I wouldn’t care about this kind of thing, and while this game is far from the hardest NES game, it’s difficult enough (Especially near the end, which seems to be a rule for NES games) that I think this option was a good idea.

This was a late NES game, and it’s one of the prettier games on the console. The backgrounds look really good, and the animations are pretty smooth for the NES. This game was released two years after the SNES came out, but I feel it’s still worth mentioning. However, it seems the music took a hit as a result. There aren’t actual stage themes here, but character themes. If you’re playing as Samson, you’ll always hear his singular theme, and the same goes for every other party member. The music itself is solid, but not enough to stave off the repetition.

Overall though, this is undoubtedly one of the best games of the 8-bit era. Is it worth thousands of dollars? Uh… maybe if I was a millionaire, I’d shell out that kind of cash. Although, I did win a bet with @Gare, who said he’d give me a million dollars. I gotta collect soon… anyway, 9/10, definitely closer to an 8 though.

For some reason, I still have that stupid NSO subscription, and in an effort to get the most out of my wasted money, I’ll sometimes check out the more obscure stuff in the retro sections. Fire ‘n Ice always kinda looked like a Tetris clone or something. In reality, this is a sequel to Solomon’s Key, which is a puzzle platformer I’m not super familiar with. However, it’s clear that despite their similarities, these two are distinct games. In Solomon’s Key, you have a time limit, you have aggressive enemies, and gaining height is trivial given enough time. It’s a fairly even blend of action, puzzle, and platforming.

In Fire ‘n Ice, enemies are stationary or have predictable paths, and are not obstacles but necessary to defeat. There is a timer, but it’s only there for intrinsic motivation. You can’t jump, although you can climb up a block in front of you. Given that your sole ability aside from movement is placing an ice block diagonally down and forward, gaining height takes some effort. Mix in some properties of blocks sliding, blocks connecting to walls when created next to them, and gravity, all of which are mostly based on contextual actions from the player and environment, and you have a very simple basis that allows for a lot of great puzzles. Figuring out how to hit enemies with your ice blocks will start out simple, but as time goes on, even the most minute detail can have a big impact on how you approach a challenge. Everything is very simple at first in terms of the amount of things to consider, but the game gradually adds more and more new mechanics that’ll change the approach of levels entirely. There’s pipes you can travel through, but not if ice is blocking the exit. There’s torches that will permanently light up if an enemy touches them. These are simple mechanics, but when they’re combined it creates a really challenging, fun experience. It also helps that despite the minimalist-yet-polished presentation, there’s a lot of ‘noise’ to the puzzles because you have consistent, broad rules of where you can put the block.

I usually don’t do this, but take a look at this screen. This is midway through the game, and I’m going to spoil the solution, so skip to the penultimate paragraph if you care. Now, due to the enemy placement and terrain, you can’t create new blocks within the structure without it being connected to the walls, which means they can’t be used to attack the enemies. The exception is the block up top, which isn’t connected to anything (Note that because it’s a 1x1 block, you can’t jump on it and can only push it). My main question was pretty clear: How do I manipulate this one block to get enough blocks to kill all enemies? My first thought was to go to the left side of this block through the pipes, create a bridge through the hole near it, go back and push the block into the wall on the left so I can stand on it and create new blocks with it.

The issue is that by creating this bridge, I blocked my only way to get to the other side of the block, which was falling through the hole. So I tried the same thing from the other side: Create a bridge of ice that goes all the way to the right wall, then push the block into the right wall so I can stand on it and make more ice blocks. The issue here is that in order to get to the left side, I need to go through the pipe, which this ice bridge would block.

I continued for a while, a few different things before I finally realized the solution. First, slide the block into the enemy highest up. Now with it out of the way, you can create new, slideable blocks where the enemy once was. After this, slide a block into the lowest enemy, and keep sliding them until you stack high enough to defeat the final enemy (If you want to watch this happen to better understand the game's workings, you can do so here.). I’m explaining this because pretty much every detail is important. If there wasn’t a drop on the way to the left side of the block, I could’ve backtracked and executed my first plan. If the one on the right extended up one more block, I wouldn’t need to cover it with the ice bridge for my second plan.

All of this shows just how deliberate the designers were with this game, as despite how integral every detail is, there’s still a lot of potential solutions for the player to consider before getting the correct one. The game isn’t perfect though. Some of the ‘boss fights’ have cycling autoscroll maps that move very slowly. I understand they wanted to create tension with these levels, but often I’d ironically be forced to go slower, which is all too common with autoscrollers. A better idea likely would’ve been to add a limit to the amount of blocks you can create or something, or just scroll the screen with every block creation. The game even ends with a pretty unique boss who intermittently uses fire to melt your ice blocks, and I think something like that could’ve been used for more bosses.

Other than that though, I just wish there was more. Not necessarily more levels (There’s over 100 here, and honestly some of those could probably be trimmed out), but more mechanics, and honestly, more games like this. Games that are simple, but still unique. Games that know exactly what they want to be and be it. Despite my reservations, I was anything but lukewarm on this game. This is undoubtedly one of the best NES games, and a great game in general. 8/10

If there's one thing I love about Wario Land 4, it's the meticulous level design. And the genius use of mechanics. And the incredible variety. And the thematically perfect subversion of traditional platformers. And-

Anyway, back to level design. It's a game where pretty much every little detail of the level is perfectly considered, and I think the game being slower paced than many other 2D platformers helps the level design feel truly compact. The slow pace was almost certainly due to the small screen size, but it also meant the designers had to engage the player in more thoughtful ways, where players had to consider their surroundings in ways that you're not really going to do in a game series like Sonic the Hedgehog.

What does this have to do with Pizza Tower? Well, after playing the demo, it felt kinda like a mix between Wario Land and Sonic the Hedgehog, which, as I have established, are on pretty much opposite sides of how you can design platformers. As fun as the demo was, I wasn't sure if the game could actually blend these two polar opposites together in a cohesive way. After playing the game though, I think it did a surprisingly fantastic job at it.

The way the game handles difficulty is one of its best aspects, and a great way that it blends these two series together into something completely new. Just like in Wario Land, Peppino can't die in most cases, and hits are penalized by losing points and, often, a waste of time. This works extremely well in a speed-based platformer for two reasons. One, it keeps makes the pacing feel great for any player, and two, you obviously don't want to go slower in a speed game, especially in the escape sections where actual death is often only a matter of time.

This could trivialize any sense of difficulty aside from a player's intrinsic desire to improve, but the game actually requires you to rescue nearly of the Toppins to fight the bosses, which are analogous to the Teensies from Rayman. So basically, players are gonna have to do pretty well at all the levels anyway.

This could hurt the pacing in another way; If a player only barely scrapes by with Toppin requirements, they may have to replay a lot of levels before the climax. I only had to replay one to reach the requirement though, and I have to say, I don't know if I would've minded replaying more levels, because the one I replayed actually enhanced my experience.

This is because the game is far more difficult when you try to achieve the elusive P Ranks, or just try to improve your ranking in general. On replays, you get the opportunity to do the escape sequences twice in a row, which are consistently some of the most exhilarating moments of any game I've played.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. What about the bosses? These are the other times Peppino can actually die, and can be pretty difficult. However, they're mostly pretty fun, although maybe a bit disconnected from the core game. It likely would've been possible for the game to have really challenging bosses while also keeping its core systems. If, for example, the game had a time limit for bosses and the bosses used transformation attacks that wasted your time. However, the bosses were still fun so I'm not too upset.

Speaking of transformations, the mechanics work a lot better than I would've expected. All of them are introduced well and are mostly simple enough to immediately understand. A few feel a bit disruptive, such as the bombs, but most promote the fast-paced nature of the game, and many have that true to Wario Land style of 'power-up or detriment based on context'. By far the best example of this is the level (Excuse my language) 'Oh Shit!', which may be the best level in the game. And while a few of these transformations are analogous to those of Wario Land, they're all pretty distinct and well done.

I could certainly see someone not liking the visuals, but I though they were excellent, and the 90s cartoon style greatly enhanced the energetic nature of the game. The animation and attention to detail is incredible, but I noticed that at least one stage has no parallax scrolling with the background, and I think this may be universal. It's not a big deal though, and is really only noticeable in stages with more expansive backgrounds.

Audiowise, the sound effects and soundtrack is great. However, I wish the soundtrack leaned more into either stereotypical Italian music or 90s Cartoon music instead of Funk and Rock. It would've added to the thematic unity a bit more.

Everything considered, I love this game. It's truly something special, and one of the few spiritual successors to truly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the game it succeeded. Dare I say, it's a Masterpiece. 10/10.

...By the way, you unlock a costume if you keep Peppino in the dark for about a minute on the menu screen. Go do that right now. Actually, maybe wait until night to do it.

If you follow me and have played this game, you may have known this review was coming. I'm always on the lookout for a new 3D Platformer and this one got a lot of praise. I heard it was a 3D Castleroid with a platforming focus. The only other game that I know of that fits that description is Blue Fire, which, while a fine game, was pretty uninspired in many ways. As such, I was looking forward to seeing if this game reached the potential of the concept.

In many ways, it does. This game has one of the best movesets for platforming of any 3D Platformer. Expressive, unique, but also classical. Many of these moves are conceptually similar to those in other platformers, but the execution makes them special. There's a wall kick, but you only get three per jump, and you're given a lot more control of what angle you jump out. There's a slide into a long jump, but it's fully committal. There's even this hidden, crazy side jump that's hard to use but super good. Pretty much all of these are upgrades characteristic of the Castleroid structure. One problem I had with Blue Fire is that the platforming upgrades just trivialized sections, but in Pseudoregalia, the upgrades make the gameplay more complex. At first I thought I was really clever doing some sequence breaking here and there, but eventually I realized there's no real sequence to break at all in many cases. Several challenges can be cleared with a multitude of move combinations, and it's up to you to discover how to progress. It also helps that your moveset will increase your mobility, making backtracking much faster in general. It's a really awesome way to blend Platforming and Castleroid structure.

The more contentious part of this game is the exploration and the lack of a map. However, I believe the root of the problem is the level design. The rooms independently are pretty well designed, but it's looking at them altogether when some issues emerge. Many rooms are distinct to an extent, but considering the game's low-poly, low detail style, it can feel somewhat homogeneous. Really though, I think the main issue is that the path to the boss keys feel the same as the other paths. The door needed to advance will look just like the door that might just be an alternate path to where you just came from and nothing else. If you look at the Castlevania series, notice that not only is it portrayed that you need to get to the top of the castle, but the required detours from that path also have a clear direction, it makes a little more sense why many people get confused here. Very rarely is there an intuitive direction to go, as most entrances to important rooms are placed right beside entrances to less important rooms that might possibly have an upgrade but could very well not (They probably should've added more health/stat upgrades...). Of course, this wouldn't be as big of an issue if you simply had a map, but for game as small as this, I think a map isn't particularly necessary. If the doors to rooms were more unique (And not covered by fog), it would be easier to tell where you've been, even without a map. It's not a big deal, and I'm sure if I replayed this game the issue would be far less detrimental to my time, but it's still a problem.

The other thing that kinda holds this game back is combat. I mean, it's fine I guess. There's few enemy types, the ones that are here a pretty simply designed, and your attacks never progress beyond a 3-hit combo. You get benefits for fighting, but most of those are to solve problems caused by the combat in the first place. You can just run past most enemies, but if that's a positive, something went wrong here. It feels added out of a sense of obligation, which is the worst feeling to have about something in a game. The only boss fight is the final boss, which is solid overall, but it still kind of irks me that a platforming game has to end with a fight where platforming is mostly an afterthought. There's not even a final section to the bossfight here. Once you get all of the keys and go to the big door, it's straight to the boss. There was a missed opportunity for a final area that tested you on all of your abilities. Oh well.

It's a pretty good 3D Platformer, but it doesn't quite reach its potential. 7/10, very close to an 8.

Gotta thank @Galaxy003 for gifting me this along with the entire trilogy.

You see a lot of fourth-gen inspired games, and a decent amount of third-gen inspired games too, but there's not many games inspired by titles from before those eras. Faith is one of the few that actually fits that category, and there is a deliberacy in this stylistic choice. The game is trying to evoke that era, one that housed a 'Satanic Panic' where many Christians in the US would accuse new things of demonic for some reason. Naturally, one of these hobbies was that of videogames. It's not like this sort of behavior is completely gone (I used to live in the Deep South of the US and you could still find multiple people who hold these beliefs there), but it was most prevalent around the early to mid 80s, so making a game styled around that era of games is an interesting choice.

I must confess that I haven't played many Atari games, and the few I have played are just arcade ports. However, this game does seem mostly faithful to that era, no pun intended. The only things you can really do is walk around, hold up a crucifix to scare demons, and open a map. Any important objects are interacted with by either flashing the crucifix or just walking into them. I must admit, I wish this game had some kind of interact button, because most user interaction is pretty repetitive. Walk around, point your crucifix at the creepy guys and anything that looks suspicious, repeat. This is pretty much how the entire game works . One could argue that deeper interaction wasn't really common in the era, but neither was the walls of text that this game tells the majority of its story with. I understand that visual storytelling is probably difficult to do when your game has less detail than Super Mario Bros. I think the game should've made more use of text in the style of the 'Kill her' that was painted in blood at the end. Even if it kinda lessened the impact of such moments, it would've been better on multiple fronts in my opinion. The actual story is fine enough, but I feel that the way its presented hurts it.

I also liked the rotoscope moments well enough. Sure, they definitely wouldn't be on the atari 2600, but it stays consistent with that console's limited range of colors.

Overall, it's fine. I definitely think this game's brevity is a positive, but that doesn't negate a few of the issues I have with it. It's fine, but I'm hoping that the sequels are better. 5/10.

A while back, I saw a trailer for a game called Momodora: Moonlit Farewell. It looked interesting, seeming a bit more intimate and less empowering than many Castleroids. I would later see this game while browsing the Nintendo eShop and it was on sale, so I bought it.

It's a pretty good game, but it's also lacking in a few key areas. I like the combat well enough. It's very simple at the end of the day, but it's deliberate and can be pretty fun. The bosses seem intentionally designed to be less of an endurance test and more of a short burst of a challenge, as your character can often die in two to three hits. There aren't many items, but the ones here are pretty well-designed and implemented.

The game in general is fairly difficult, and it has the old-fashioned system of 'if you die you lose all progress since save, no and ifs or buts'. I'm fine with that, honestly. There are a few times where save rooms were a distance away from bosses though, and getting back to the boss was usually a cakewalk, so this choice was just tedious.

In terms of ability progression, this game has very little. You earn a midair dash and a cat transformation, and... That's about it. There's a fairly good sense of exploration here but backtracking is very rare, so I feel that there was a missed opportunity with the structure. It lacks the best parts of both linear and non-linear games to me. The level design is good enough but not great and you rarely feel like you're truly exploring because most detours are very accessible and short. Maybe I would've been more accepting of this if it felt in service of story and worldbuilding, but both of those felt pretty underwhelming to me.

An IRL friend of mine read my Tears of the Kingdom review and said, "You talked all about how bad it was and then said it was a great game." I feel like this review would probably illicit a similar reaction, but I still enjoy the game well enough because it was very brisk in pace and had pretty good audiovisuals. If this game was a lot longer, I'd probably dislike it because of a lack of interesting level design or abilities. Ironically though, I think a few of the problems also come from it being underdeveloped and missing a lot of opportunities, opportunities that would probably make the game longer. Oh well. Maybe with the sequel they'll make a true banger.

Overall, a fairly good game. Might play the other ones. 6/10.

Suggested by @MrTheMan for This list.

It seems that every indie game nowadays has to be a spiritual successor to something or a combination of two games. I can empathize with developers, as this is a good way to sell a game at the end of the day, but it means that often, the games that have the most potential to experiment will stick too close to their inspirations. While concepts like Dark Souls Castleroid, Quake mixed with Blood, and Super Metroid with more platforming can be cool, rarely do they reach the height of the games they’re inspired by.

Ultrakill is one of those few cases that just about does. You can’t deny the influences here, because typing devilmayquake.com into your search engine of choice will lead you to this game’s steam page. This game is a clear attempt to make a stylish, expressive boomer shooter-character action hybrid. While this concept sounds cool, the actually details of executing the concept seem somewhat dubious. How do you combine the flashy excess of Devil May Cry with the raw simplicity of Quake into a good game?

I think one of the best ways to demonstrate this game’s qualities is with one of its most iconic elements: the coin. Basically, you flip a coin into the air, and if you shoot the coin with a hitscan gun, your bullet will become stronger and hit the nearest enemy’s weakspot. The first positive of the coin is that it allows for a lot of strategies. You can use it to hit enemies around corners, shoot through an enemy, hit the coin, and then hit another enemy, hit a lot of coins to build up more damage, and more. This simple idea allows for a lot of strategies, and this applies to the rest of the surprisingly small loadout. Honestly, the guns are pretty conventional at a glance, but their alternate fires give a little more complexity and uniqueness, at least as much as you can have for a game so dedicated to being fast paced. The nailgun has a magnet for attracting shots, there’s these rockets that you can hold in place and let fly after a few seconds, it’s not the most unique weapon loadout I’ve seen but they’re all fun to use and fit the game.

Another positive of the coin is that it basically tells you an enemy’s weak spot when you use it. It’s a kinda genius way to show weaknesses for enemies, as while it’s a pretty simple method, it’s not overtly signaled to players. This is indicative of how the game lets the players figure out mechanics on their own with minimal guidance. When you get a new weapon, a brief summary of the weapon appears on screen, and you go through a small section to demonstrate the weapon’s properties. While this game can occasionally be overwhelming, it gives enough wiggle room and information to let the player choose their playstyle. This leads well into the third positive of the coin…

It’s just cool. This is, of course, subjective, but ricocheting shots off coins is awesome, as is a lot of other stuff in this game. You can slide around and rocket jump, punch projectiles back at enemies, you can also punch shotgun blasts after you shoot them to make them stronger. There’s a great mix of options being balanced while also just being intrinsically fun to use. In this way, Ultrakill does have some of the “Rule of Cool” appeal of Devil May Cry, although I wouldn’t call it quite as over-the-top. Unfortunately, you can’t surf on enemies or use motorcycles as weapons in this game.

The coin does show one of the issues with the games, which is that abilities are kinda easy to spam. The obvious note is that most guns have no ammo or reloading. Spam that shotgun all you want, you’ll never run out of bullets! This is fine, my main issue is how easy it is to get alt fires and dashes back, which usually return after a cooldown. Considering that one of the main mechanics is that the only way to recover health is to get up-close-and-personal with the enemy, I don’t get why they didn’t put a kill or damage requirement to earn alt fires back. I suppose this is less of a problem as the skill ceiling goes up (missing a coin-deflected railgun shot is kinda just punishment enough sometimes), but I think some of these guns could’ve used more punishment for missing shots.

Just like how the coin deflects shots from linear-shooting guns, the level design here is more linear than any of its influences. Most of the time, backtracking is minimal, which I’m honestly fine with. This doesn’t stop the developers from hiding a few secrets, which were fun to find. Most encounters take place in arenas that feature solid cover and verticality, and the enemies that populate these arenas are also pretty varied in terms of how you want to take them down. There’s a decent amount of visual variety here, and while I’d hesitate to call it cohesive in the greater game, each act’s levels usually lead naturally enough into the next one.

This game also has a story. Much how I couldn’t think of a way to tie this to the coin metaphor, I feel like the story is somewhat tonally disconnected from the rest of the experience. For how “Rule of cool” this game is, I’m surprised that they try to build lore and stuff. They even have optional history books in a few levels. The story stuff is fine, I guess. I don’t really care much about Gabriel as a character, although he is a pretty decent rival character a la Vergil or Genshin. It’s easy enough to ignore either way, and I can’t imagine the story being the main appeal to anyone.

Ultrakill is still in early access (As of now, ACT II is complete), but I’d say it’s worth buying regardless. If you’re experienced with fast-paced FPS games, go ahead and try the demo, and if you like it, toss the creators some coins and buy the full game at some point. Honestly, those who aren’t as familiar with games like this may be better off trying the essentials like Doom or Quake first, as I think this game works best with knowledge of games like that. I’m gonna give Ultrakill a 9/10, close to an 8.

As of writing, I have yet to play any Dark Souls games, or any games spun off from that series. It initially started off as a lack of interest and opportunity, but I think that at this point it's just a personality trait. The thing is, despite never playing any of those games, I can still tell that Blasphemous derives quite a bit from them. The flasks, the tone, the general gameplay, it all seems pretty similar, although feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Whether or not my lack of experience with Dark Souls had an effect on my perspective, I did enjoy this game. There are some issues, as there are with pretty much every game, but as far as Castleroids go this isn't bad. I think one thing this game does very well is backtracking. The map is tightly designed and a pretty good size. It's not too big or small. Even that aside, many in the Castleroid genre simply give very generous warp points for backtracking, unlike Blasphemous. While the opportunity for that does eventually present itself in this game, much of the level design is simply built around making backtracking easier, with switches and doors that will open and make travel more interconnected and convenient.

This also works well with the death system, something else taken from Dark Souls. Now, if there's one thing I didn't like about Hollow Knight, it's dying and having to return to where I died lest I lose all my money. I think that's a pretty annoying punishment for non-linear games where I might just want to explore another area. Blasphemous has a similar system, but I like it a little more because it's not quite as punishing. Honestly, it maybe should've been even more punishing than it is, as a few times I'd just not bother to collect my guilt, even before a a couple of bosses. At the end of the day, I'd still just prefer a flat money decrease upon death to this shenaniganry that seems so prevalent. However, I'll take my blessings where I can get them.

The combat is good, barely above average. You have your basic sword strikes, special attacks called prayers, a ranged attack, and a few more sword attacks, many of which... honestly don't matter. Honestly, aside from using the different prayers I didn't really feel that combat ever actually changed. Most fights I would just do chip damage, see a big opening, raise attack speed, and unleash whatever sword combo I had. There's also a parry and dodge with i-frames. They're... fine, but some enemies are explicitly designed around waiting and parrying, which I don't like, and I'm a bit tired of dodges with i-frames. Generally though, my biggest issue is that I don't think the progression changed my combat approach that much.

That stagnation of gameplay unfortunately extends to any platforming abilities. If you think of most Castleroids, you'll notice that almost all of them have some kind of platforming upgrade. Double jumps, high jumps, grapple hooks, jet packs, high-speed dashes, and more. These are very effective because stumbling across a future area, you go, "Oh, I guess I'll be able to reach that place somehow with some new ability." Different Castleroids have varying focus on this aspect. Metroid has tons of it, whereas a game like Iconoclasts has very little. Blasphemous is one of the few Castleroids where you essentially gain no new abilities that allow you to progress further in the world. Instead, you gain items that will add extra platforms to the world or grant you immunity to poison, along with quest items that open up new paths. The fact is, very little of what you earn in this game actually changes the way you play. This is fine I guess, but I still would've liked something to actually change how I traverse the world, since that can often be the best part of these kinds of games and I can't think of any downside to adding such a thing, especially since the level design rarely feels super specialized or finely-tuned.

What about the story? What's it about? That's a good question.

Anyway, onto the audiovisuals. I say once again, "I'm kinda tired of indie games doing pixel art but this game does it really well". There's clear inspiration from Spanish Catholicism with the imagery here, all of which looked really cool as it went over my head. The music is also pretty good.

All in all, a pretty good game, but I think better progression would've improved it a ton. I'll probably get the sequel not too long after it drops. 7/10, closer to a 6 than an 8.

Suggested by @DeemonAndGames for this list.

Wario Land 4 is one of my favorite games of all time, and the overall Wario Land series is great for what is basically a Mario spin-off. It uses an exaggeration of Mario, an icon of gaming, as a vessel for a subversion and exaggeration of tropes of 2D Platformers and games in general. What’s so interesting about WarioWare is how despite its similarities, it’s an extremely different game. WarioWare is more overtly about games, but I don’t think this means it’s entirely without subtext. A very surface-level look of this game would say that it’s composed of titular microgames that, for the most part, are completely different from each other and very simple. I complain a lot about unnatural variety and minigames, so I should hate this game.

However, there’s a little more to the story, and I mean that literally. Microgames are presented as solutions to the current character’s problem in every stage, but... why is this? Why does picking your nose help Mona escape from the cops? Yes, many games have stories that are clearly excuses for gameplay to happen, but most try to provide some kind of context or reason why you’re doing what you’re doing. When I play Donkey Kong Country, I know that I’m going through these levels because the banana thief K. Rool is at the end of my journey, I know the bananas along the way were likely dropped by him, and I know the enemies are his subordinates. And while I do like many of the characters in the game, the story is basically just there to provide that context and sense of cohesion.

WarioWare is a game without context or cohesion, and this is actually its greatest strength. The most context for microgames is a single descriptive word of your goal, and the only cohesion is some kind of basic theme of the microgames like “sci-fi” or “nature”. Even artstyles change between games, as one may go for realism while another is retro-game styled, with everything in between. All this leaves is extremely short and simple games with extraneous details stripped out. You need to figure out your goal and execute it all within a few seconds. It’s a novel idea, but the way WarioWare executes the fine details is what elevates it to greatness. As a set of Microgames goes on, the pace increases and twists are thrown into microgames which you previously played, and there are different variants of these microgames, meaning that even when you become more familiar with one microgame it can still surprise you. It also helps that while different in most ways, many microgames have some level of consistency for the less forgiving aspects of a microgame, and the more unique games are often focused on that uniqueness. At the end of a stage, you have a ‘boss’, which is a little more complicated than other microgames, and these are still simple but have a little more to them. One’s a little shmup, one’s basically Punch-Out!!, and they feel fitting to top off the smaller challenges. It helps that even after these bosses are defeated, you can return to a stage and enter an endless mode where you can try to top your high score, leading to tons of replay value. It’s all an unexpectedly exhilarating playing experience.

Honestly, my main issues stem from the fact that while microgames are mostly consistently great, there’s a few exceptions. Some don’t feel doable first time around, whether it be for an inaccurate opening word or aspect of the game that isn’t readily apparent. Some detail of controls may not be clear until you try the microgame once, which makes some harder than others when playing for the first time. Also, a lot of these microgames are just some kind of timed button press, which is slightly disappointing. Really though, this is still a great game. Through its sheer lack of consistency and theming, the game feels ironically unique and iconic. I’m definitely going to try more of these games, but I’m not sure if they’ll really hit the same way this one did. If there’s one thing that this game taught me, the feeling of trying and solving something for the first time is core to games. Replicating that feeling in a sequel is a tall order, but if there’s any gaming icon I’d expect to pull it off, it would be Wario.