Super cool, Metal Squad goes extremely hard.

It's very funny that From made this. Hyperjank, I guess I'll finish it for lols at some point.

I'd played the first episode of this before but decided to go through the whole thing from the start before I play Return. Promptly put it to the side after getting distracted by other stuff.

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.

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.

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.

A cool idea, little puzzle game FPS. You could do worse for a free game.

This is Video Games.

Leans more towards Dragon Quest than it does towards musou for my liking. Takes forever as well.

Replay. Can't remember why I went back to this but it's always a good time. juddajuddajudda
(me seeing this actually runs on a Windows 10 PC: IT'S WOOORKIIIINNNGGGG)

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.

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.

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?

First time playing the series. The gameplay is cool! There's some niggles - I don't think the crafting system stuff really adds anything - but the core of it is solid. Don't care at all about all the light novel-tier story guff, though, and the designs of female characters are suspect to say the least.

Just a fun arcade game. Some parts of this are absolute nails.

It was free, which is fitting because after playing I can tell you that this game is worthless.

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.

Another free on PS+ trap. Whilst I was playing this a friend sent me a message asking if I was OK and they were right to do so.

Replay. Awesome game but it is so incredibly punishing. Whoever designed the bird enemy should face charges.

This is also awesome.

Thought 2 was a bit of an easier ride and then 3 decided they'd given me enough leeway. I was happy to finally go through all of these but they were an ordeal and a half.

My 360 is broken and I couldn't be holed emulating so Black was out of the question, had to settle for this. Is it as good? Absolutely not. It's still Ninja Gaiden though, it's still a good game.

Okay this one is 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.

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

Can't stand turn-based JRPG combat unless it's tactics style, so I thought this would finally be my in as it looked like it had some charm and was an action hybrid. The combat is just too basic for me though and you can really tell the whole thing is a remake of a SNES game. Abysmal dialogue as well. I got a fair bit in so I'll maybe finish it at some point, but woof.

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

Finally decided to take the plunge and play this. It's guff. Not the absolute worst game ever made, but there's just no reason to ever play this instead of a Mega Man game. Gave up at the Call stealth section, who has the time.

Peak of the series here, I think. Copen is a great addition and is super fun to play.

Level design is more straightforward (blander) than the Gunvolt games but it's still really fun because Copen. Designs of the girls are still prison sentence bait.

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.

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

First half is a fun Ninja Gaiden clone, although nowhere near as hard. Second half is a really boring Metroidvania. Fun game that turned into a horrendous slog.

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!

I played the Japanese version, Gun-Dec. Ninja Gaiden-ish for the most part, there's also some driving stages that are essentially on-road shmup sections. Had never heard of it before this year, it's cool!

A Simple Series game, and boy, does it show. There's a character that's clearly just supposed to be Tetsuya Watari though, and that's good.

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.

Controls can be quite awkward a lot of the time and there's some real bullshit sections, but it's a good take on a mech game still.

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.

A weird one. A dungeon crawl-brawler, it seemed pretty interesting but I feel like I must have missed something with the combat. Surely can't be as basic as it seemed to me?

The kind of TV show adaptation game we deserve more of - missions are presented like episodes of the show, you get the little title stings, the eyecatches, all of it (The Space Sheriff Spirits is also very good for this stuff). Gameplay-wise it's an otherwise unremarkable TPS but if you like VOTOMs you will probably get a kick out this for a while. You skate about, it does the noise. Mission accomplished.

Played the Japanese release, where it's a game adaptation of the anime Area 88 (high melodrama, watch it). Why is this game so hard!

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.

A Castlevania that features almost no platforming. Also come on, you don't even fight Dracula!

Replay. Now this is a Castlevania. Great game and the story - WW1 as an impetus for Draculaic resurrection - is a hoot.

It's pretty cool, isn't it? I noticed the other day that I've finally been knocked off the top of my friends list by a few seconds. Raging. Will have to go back to it!

Not sure what's going on here. Gunvolt is a furry character now? And you don't actually play as him outside of a super mode? And Copen is gone? Hmm. Think I'll go back to 2.

Can't really remember it. Looks good from screenshots though!

Played this after watching the absolute garbo movie. Not particularly good, not sure why you'd want to play it over any of the more famous PS2 racing games outside of being a really big Stallone fan.

If I had a list of games I desperately wish would get translated, this is on it. An endearingly silly love letter to tokusatsu hero shows. When you create your hero you enter their name and it comes up as a big logo! Anything you put in! Wow!

I have no love whatsoever for FFVII. This was free on PS+, so I decided to see if things would be different after nearly 20 years and a different combat system. Nope! I think I might like this even less.

They do the Lightning Strikes Again bit in this one too, and it still rules.

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.

You can learn the bassline for the Pepsiman theme very quickly! Try 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.

Copen's gameplay is switched up to make him more melee-focused and he loses some of his movement options. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Definitely a step down from the first game, but I like Brigade's design.

Can't really remember any of the tunes from this. Wanted to like it more than I did.

Not really that into it. Not bad, but not very interesting either. Fast forward for cutscenes is good, but a skip button would be even better.

Oh, this is just Beatmania. Well cool, I like Beatmania! Also I'm terrible at Beatmania!

Well, this is no good. Solid remix of the main theme though.

Not really a great shmup but the biggest love letter to super robot shows there ever was. This is a 2D horizontal shmup that comes on four discs because of the amount of video and music shoved in to make this as much a super robot anime as is possible. Nice!

Okay NES platformer, only really playing it for the license.

A much worse NES platformer that I played for the license.

Replay. Perfect game.

Gave it a bash because of the associations it's had with Castlevania, but I wasn't that into it. That one track is still a banger though.

Another NES platformer that wasn't very good. Think I was playing these because they had translations.

Another PS+ game. I guess I don't mind Minecraft, but I haven't put much time into this because it keeps trying to get me to do story stuff that I don't care about.

I've only played up to the initial reveal - it seems cool but I'd rather play it on PC.

This was utter guff and there was no reason for me to finish it, but here we are.

Replay. I'd started this aaaages ago and gave it another bash this year. It's very impressive, but there really is only so much you can do with Skyrim. It's a great effort but it's just not built on a good base.

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!

Only just getting round to playing this now with the full release. It's Warband but more, which is fine!

Replay. Went through this again for Halloween. Cool game! Tim Curry's attempt at a New Orleans accent is very endearing.

Replay. Golf It night with the boys. Get a solid custom map and it's a great laugh.

This is how you do an FMV game! I wanna see those digitised folks walking around, picking up stuff and looking at it - maybe even reacting to it!
Really cool, all the hokey charm of FMV combined with a pretty cool story that involves some real-world history, which I like. Education!

Replay. Semi-regular runthrough - I didn't write anything about it at the time because I honestly wouldn't know where to start. It's just one of my favourite games ever and hit me like a truck when I was younger. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

Replay. Had been reading The Oral History of Street Fighter II and they talk a fair bit about Darkstalkers in it, so I gave this a quick run. Still not really into how it all shakes together but it's not a bad game. I would play Bishamon.

Played this for the first time after having it installed on like three separate PCs at this point. I'm not far enough in to say much about it.

Tried this after enjoying the Gunvolt stuff but I wasn't into how it controlled at all.

Replay. Same story as VSav. Weird game. Love Omega Red's theme.

Replay. Same as VSav and COTA. Maybe the most 90s game of all time.

It's definitely cool, but these tiny bullets are killing me, man. My eyesight is bad.

Knocked me for six. What a cool game! Boss health is excessive but that's my only issue. This one really got me itching to go on a run of shmups.

Really cool just how many combinations of your team are possible. This kicked my ass and then I read the review on here about difficulty scaling with credits. Absolutely fiendish.

Think this was an Eighting one? Tiny bullets. Tiny!

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.

Replay. Old reliable. I love how the big blue laser looks.

I feel like your ship moves a little too slowly and your hurtbox is massive.

More of the same. The cover art for these is really cool though, right?

It feels really difficult in these Psikyo joints to claw back your momentum after getting killed. Like, moreso than most other shmups. And I get killed a lot so that's trouble!

Cool game. Iceman's post-mission dialogue is incredible.

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.

Obviously a very cool game but I didn't know at all how to play it. Need to read the constructions (used to call instructions this as a kid haha) and go through it again.

Oh, so the bug princess does nothing but kill bugs? Typical royals. These Cave shmups with tiny hurtboxes are very fun!

Definitely seems like Psikyo games follow a formula. Not my preferred style but this game still has some charm to it.

Same as Gunbird.

Unique presentation although I didn't think it was an especially great game. Great title though.

Another cool Cave (kool Kave) game. Not into the look as much as I am ESP Ra.De. but it's fine!

Similar to Battle Garegga, so it's decent enough but not one of my favourites. The number of ships available is pretty good!

From what I remember this was the sequel to Sorcer Striker? Hasn't really stuck in the mind much for me. Dimahoo is a very fun name to say though. Dimahoo, Dimahoo, Dimahoo!