Very weird e-mail themed shmup? Not really that great but worth a look for the unique theme.

You walk around in eight directions and you shoot stuff, but it's worse now.

Adding in live-action FMVs are fun but otherwise this is an immediate step down from 3.

Impressive amount of playable characters by the end of the game but otherwise not really all that great, I thought.

Tiny indie platformer that had been sitting in my Steam library for ages and could be finished in no time, so I threw it on. One of those you play once and never again, but neat idea.

Okay, by this point I'd played a bunch that were better so it didn't do that much for me.

Still playing this, it's pretty cool! Obviously doesn't have the budget and weight of even the GBA Ace Attorneys behind it but the total devotion to the hard boiled clichés is very endearing. I like how much of it is just down to legwork. So far I think I would play a bunch more of these.

It's fine. I don't like that title though.

Replay, technically. I've started this a bunch of times, shelved it, forgotten all of it and restarted. Gonna try and not do it this time!

It's really fun that a game devoted to a mainstay Italian cinema duo exists, and it looks really good, but the gameplay could never be accused of being deep. Whole bunch of beatemups like this.

Hyper-edgy game. Combat is pretty satisfying but not deep enough to justify the length and large number of samey enemies.

Genuinely pretty cool, slamming people into the background rules. I didn't really feel like finishing it at the time but want to go back to it. Boss fights are a bit crap though.

Absurd amounts of creativity, just throwing wild scenarios and locales at you constantly, but feels pretty dated to play. SNK Style! There it is!

Didn't play this at the time because I assumed it would be crap. It's okay! The open world is a bit naff but the parkour is still really fun.

Saw a free shmup on PS+, got a bit into it and then got the pervert shit dropped on me when I got hit. That was a surprise! Found out afterwards you can turn that stuff off, so that's a mercy.

Golden Axe II - it's like Golden Axe. I like Golden Axe. I like Golden Axe II!

Don't remember much, other than it being pretty bland outside of the player character being a kabuki guy, which is cool and more games should do.

The Golden Axers Once Again. It's still much the same, I still enjoy it, and I think the stage on the back of the giant eagle is badass. Good music here.

Decent enough for an arcade movie adaptation, although it's a little long. It's Irem so it looks good.

Replay. This isn't a good release, but the core gameplay of VF5FS is great, so if you have no other access to FS you should get this. Can't say enough good things about Veef.

This is probably one of Konami's better licensed efforts if you're a fan of the comics, but I don't really give a shit about Asterix, sorry.

I've played all of 10 minutes of this so far, can't say anything.

Thought this might be cool but as soon as I saw the battle system I nope'd straight out. Not in the market for turn-based beatemups, sorry.

Had this game in progress for literal years, finally made the effort to finish it this year. It's fine for a short choose your own adventure type thing, don't really have all that much to say about it.

The title of this game is so funny. It's like a weird post-apocalyptic setting! Undercover cops for what?!
Anyway it's decent, it's Irem so everything has that slightly Metal Sluggy look.

It's cool that an SD Go Nagai World game exists but that's all I can really say.

More Gunvolt Burst. It's still easy, still fine to zip through if you have 20 minutes.

Pretty bad, but I at least appreciate any game that has Hiroshi Hase in it.

What came out in the West as Shatterhand. Movement is a bit weird but you punch everything, including bullets, and that is cool. Good music too!

Fairly standard beatemup but the Conan aesthetic is very strong here. Has that one great track that's in Taiko as well.

Not very good, is it? There's a kind of charm to it though. I think I will go back and finish this at some point.

Don't have much to say about the game, but Joe Madureira should be outlawed.

Emphasis on the melee attack is cool, but otherwise I wasn't that into it.

These polygonal entries don't ever really seem to have the oomph of their 2D counterparts, but it's still a good game and I had a big smile on my face when the one boss shifts into TFIV player form and Lightning Strikes Again starts playing.

This shifted between regular respawning and moving back to checkpoints on death, which was very annoying!

I think this is the one where you can possess enemies? Not great but an interesting attempt.

Cool stuff here, almost rhythm-game like. Some of the bosses can be frustrating but I had a good time with it.

Just not that engaging after playing a bunch of games that were the same thing but better.

The kind of FMV game I do not like.

Absolutely not the first game I played this year but the earliest one logged for 2022. Haven't finished it yet; it seems nice enough but just takes a bit longer than I would like.

Replay. I like this game still! The not-Conan world is really cool, love the big turtle village and the eagle stage.

I have no idea what the original cabinet was like for this, but this is a bit of a chore to play on a regular controller. I like the general weirdness of it though, and the invincible Robojacko. However it is unbelievable that it has tons of licensed Jackson music and the zombie level does not have Thriller. What the fuck!

Wasn't really into this either. Wouldn't be the Game Gear if it wasn't hit or miss, I guess!

Replay. Actually feels kind of satisfying to play but the enemies and environments are so bland.

Another free PS+ game. Serviceable beatemup, it's way longer than it needs to be but the combat is decent and I had replayed Sifu a few days before so I was in the mood for more kung fu.

Never let something like a license stop you from making the Gundam game you want. This is pretty cool but it's also a shooter where you're bumped back to a checkpoint whenever you die, which is infuriating when you're as bad as me.

Mechanically fine but the style just isn't my thing.

Wanted to replay the Blade Runner game after watching some Trancers and gave this a go. Decided it just looked a bit too weird at higher res/framerate and dropped it to go back to the original.

Liked this more than the first game, but the difficulty is still absolutely sadistic.

Replay. Designed by Cenobites. You know how everyone talks about the Turbo Tunnel? Real testament to just how bad the Turbo Tunnel is that you never hear anyone talk about the level immediately after it which is even worse.

Didn't blow me away but it's fine. I'll play it a bit more at some point.

Replay. King shit. Double Dragon II is a good-ass game.

Got tricked into playing this by friends (i.e. they said I should and I agreed despite knowing better). The first one sucked, this one is even worse.

Oh jeez, I'm sorry, no, Sigma 2 is fine. I couldn't finish this. No idea what they were thinking.
Mizuki McCloud is a really funny name though.

Cool idea that doesn't quite come together. I can't say I've read Mazin Saga; maybe it's the same!

Free on PS+. I don't follow the UFC (a friend of mine refers to it as a putrid cretin spectacle and I may be forced to agree), and maybe that's just as well cause if I did I'd have ended up wasting my money on this. Series peaked with Undisputed 3, all downhill from there.

Replay. Thought this game was cool as hell as a kid, and hey, I still like it! The first-person sections are still very fun. Did this have Menacer support?

It's fine, but I'm not really sure why it exists. What reason is there for not just putting all these characters into Warriors Orochi instead?

A game you need a pencil and paper for. Or a pen. Just something that writes, really.

Relentless game. Cruel!

Didn't think this was really all that good but I do like the Conan-rip aesthetic.

It's Renegade again, so it's not really very good, but the Tim Follin soundtrack is hot fire.

Really disappointed with this one. It looks good, I love the parry system and the animations that come out of it, it's really satisfying to catch a strike and then kick the shit out of the guy, but it takes 100 years to kill anything at all. A slog in the purest sense. Really sad.

A little sluggish for the time, but full of cool monster designs for you to punch. Also has a fun title to say.

It's Panzer Dragoon, it's fine, but it's always a little weird to me to play these remakes with modern graphics but unchanged gameplay. Always just feels slightly off.

I was hoping for a cutesy DW4, but this was just clunky and slow. Really weird considering DW3 had already come out by this point, they obviously knew how to make a good musou. Odd.

The first cutscene was taking too long to load so I skipped it, and then the second cutscene loaded straight away and I was like oh, this is a porn game isn't it. Well, they made a pretty okay shmup when they probably could have gotten away with a lot less effort, so well done!

Replay. Snake Pit, Clinger Winger and Rat Race are all worse in this one than they are in the original game. Rare is made up of the most extreme sadists on Earth.

Not really a kart racer guy but this seemed decent enough. Did you know Yoshinori Ono of SF4 fame was the composer for this? Crazy!

Beatemup/adventure game hybrid that isn't too great but has some real slick animation. There's one kick in this that I've absolutely seen before but I can't place where from. I think it might be a KOF2002 animation.

Not great. I'm not sure why they bothered to make a musou of Berserk in the first place given how few characters fit the style.

Another kind of drudgy SNK effort but worth a look for KOF history reasons.

Game was fine, but the thing that stuck with me the most was the music.

Not really that great but not terrible. Whenever Banpresto strays away from SRW into other genres it always seems to just be not quite as good as you want it to be.

Very easy Mega Man clone. I'd seen people say that Beck is hard mode, and I guess he is in relative terms, because I replayed this later in the year as Gunvolt and I could probably have done it with my eyes closed.

I really wanted to like this, but it's too slow. Put Sonic Blast Man in a better game please.

Why does this game look like this? Who put them up to it?

Replay. This game is very, very boring, and at no point do you ever actually feel like Superman in it. Why am I not punching all these little Igors and weird goatmen into space? Why am I having to combo them?

Feel like I missed some controversy over this maybe? Had never heard of it but it showed up on an itch.io page I was on so I gave it a bash. Played it for 10 minutes and don't see myself ever going back to it.

Wanted to like this, but I just found it kind of obnoxious, and I don't think it's a particularly good beatemup. Disappointing.

Interesting in that it's an unlicensed game but otherwise not much going on here. I've just noticed the title font on here is in SSF4 Abuket font, fuck me. I thought we'd escaped that.

Some sections ended up just being way too frustrating for me to actually finish this game, but everything up to that point was absolute top notch kusoge. Amazing how janky and low-rent one game can be. Highly recommended.

Not interested at all in Overwatch and its ilk but I gave this a go because it's Gundam. Looking down ironsights? In a Gundam game? You're having a laugh mate. Also if someone picks the suit I want I can't pick it? Seriously? Is this what these games are like? I thought we solved this shit in Champion Edition. Absurd.

Wanted to like this more than I did (due to it being a few characters removed from being called Dynasty Warriors).

The first stop on my journey of playing every game listed in the beatemup history book Go Straight. Not great.

Was free on PS+ so I grabbed it. Looks great but plays exactly like the Master System version, i.e. horribly. Can see no point in it.

Don't remember much of this beyond there being some long button combinations you had to do for specific sections.

Indiana Jones shoots hordes of animal poachers and also an alien (?). I dunno, I think this game is pretty cool!

Now we're getting it. Still very playable and has one of the best title themes of all time.

Completely odious game. I genuinely have no idea why or how this got made.

Just a very average game. Apparently a Playstation launch title in Japan? Only thing really notable about it.

Another game where if I'd played it at the time I would probably love it, but now just doesn't really hold my attention.

Had to give up on this one because I was playing on emulator and the button sensitivity stuff just didn't work. From what I played it felt like this game could probably be finished in about 15 minutes if you skipped every cutscene (which I will absolutely be doing if I ever play a proper copy).

Got suckered in by the Hiroaki artwork. Lackluster beatemup for anime perverts. I'm good, thanks.

Interesting as a weird curiosity - a beatemup spinoff of House of the Dead - but otherwise not much to enjoy here. I do like that they threw in a Yusaku Matsuda-inspired guy for no reason.

Fun point-and-click that has a bunch of sections where you'll have to do some googling about real-world locations and history. I like when games do that kind of thing!

Pretty much the same feeling as the first game. Atomic Guy is cool though!

Still sitting unfinished. A cool look and concept but the race gameplay feels a bit sparse. I'll get round to it eventually.

All the big colourful sprites are cool but I wasn't that into it at the time. I might give this one another go.

Replay. Loved this game as a kid and still enjoyed it here. It's very basic and enemy variety is nonexistent but it just feels good to hit stuff and it's colourful! Great music too. OK, GO!