Talvez tivesse feito mais sentido eu jogar esse jogo antes do Alan Wake 2 já que ele explica e introduz uma cacetada de conceitos pro universo da Remedy, mas jogando agora foi até um refresco entender melhor algumas coisas. Control é realmente impressionante tecnicamente, ainda mais em um mundo onde os jogos carecem de personalidade, todo lançamento da Remedy esbanja disso e sempre tenta fazer algo de diferente, Control consegue fazer um ótimo uso da física, que é algo que eu me amarro, sou simplesmente viciado em ficar me jogando de prédios e carros no GTA IV só pra ver o Niko se esborrachando, e aqui os cenários são altamente destrutíveis, tudo tem interação de acordo com suas ações e a gameplay é uma delícia, os poderes são extremamente divertidos e o conceito de uma arma que se transforma em diferentes armas acrescentam ainda mais variedade pra gameplay.

Eu vi muita gente falando que a história desse jogo é muito confusa e complexa, até certo ponto realmente é, mas por trás de tantos termos complicados e conceitos sem explicação, a história é bem simples, o problema é que o desenrolar dela é bem lento e se você não ler nada ou não prestar atenção suficiente, você vai ficar boiando do começo ao fim. Superficialmente, a história não passa de uma irmã tentando achar seu irmão e salvar ele, a questão é que o universo da Remedy é repleto de coisinhas complicadas, Objetos de Poder, Itens Alterados, o Ruído, a Presença Obscura, o Lugar Escuro, o Plano Astral, mas sinceramente nenhum desses termos tem muita utilidade, o quê você precisa saber é que os objetos de poder são conectados com o plano astral e o plano astral se conecta com qualquer fenômeno paranormal no mundo, já os itens alterados não se conectam, porém, são afetados por fenômenos paranormais.

O Ruído é uma espécie de infecção paranormal que toma controle de tudo que toca, menos a protagonista por ela ser imune, aí cabe a você achar seu irmão e acabar com essa praga. O interessante é que a Jesse não tem "livre arbítrio", tudo na vida dela foi manipulado, a Polaris basicamente controla ela o jogo todo, o próprio Alan Wake interferiu na vida dela pra história do jogo acontecer, e você, como jogador, também tomou controle da vida dela durante toda a jornada, então mesmo que ela tenha controle sob o ambiente, sob os inimigos e seja super poderosa, no fim, ela não controla nada, e sim os outros personagens desse universo que controlam ela.

A trilha sonora do jogo é fodástica igual nos outros jogos da Remedy, principalmente o pedaço tocando rock com o cenário inteiro se modificando, os gráficos do jogo são do caralho apesar dessa engine ter um problema chatão de delay de render e ghosting no PC, a direção das cutscenes trazem alguns ângulos bem inventivos, o level design do jogo é bem intuitivo, raramente você se perde e quando se perde é por culpa do mapa horrível desse jogo que funde todos os andares em um só, as missões secundárias são bem legaizinhas e recompensadoras, no geral o jogo é extremamente competente, infelizmente a má apresentação da história e alguns problemas de pacing acabaram estragando a experiência de muita gente.

Control foi um jogaço, tava bem curioso pra jogar e eu me diverti muito, aí como eu sou pobre, gostaria de agradecer a @chrisredfield que deixou de comprar açaí pra me dar o jogo, te amo mano.

A game made with much love in RPG-maker, I had a great time with Felvidek. The humor is top notch, and the graphics are absolutely gorgeous, especially during the cutscenes. I loved the environment and the fight style, and really loved having an RPG party with a 15th-century priest helping you fight. There was lots of humor involving the time period, including jokes at the past's expense, that I felt played pretty well. 15th-century Slovakia is interesting because well, there was no Slovakia! The area was probably under Hungarian rule at this point (...maybe German, who knows), with threat from the Ottoman's eventually taking over as well. It's a topic brought up often in the game, and I feel it makes Felvidek even cooler! Not only does it focus on an uncommon setting for a video game, but it focuses on a precise group within the time-period on top of it all.

The music is great, the art is gorgeous, and the gameplay is fun! Check Felvidek out if you can, it's a very strong game released into the 2024 pool that's worth checking out if you're interested in playing some indie goodies from this year.

3.5/5

One of my earliest gaming-related memories is of me playing this game some years before I got a GameCube, so before 2005, probably between 2002 and 2003. I loved visiting this site and Mario Party 5's site all the time. I don't recall very well the gameplay, but it was a very charming flash game, with even some minigames besides the board gameplay! The Mario Party 5 site didn't have boards, but it had this whole political campaign gimmick where you could support your candidate (ie. Mario for President, Wario for treasurer, Luigi for vice-president, etc) by playing some simple minigames and earning coins, which then iirc you could use to get some wallpapers for your desktop. The nostalgia that's consuming me while writing this is so strong it's almost making me cry... I miss those flash sites, man...

Outro Castlevania clássico incrível!
Legal que esse foi primeiro e único Castlevania que eu tinha jogado antes de começar a jogar todos os jogos da série esse ano.
Eu joguei ele quando era criança e não me lembrava de nada, mas quando eu abri o jogo, escutei as músicas e vi os cenários... meu deus, que EXPLOSÃO DE NOSTALGIA que bateu no meu corpo INTEIRO!

As músicas e os visuais do Bloodlines são fantásticos, além das fases, mesmo sendo poucas (apenas 6 fases) terem muita personalidade própria. A única critica é que as últimas 3 fases são um pouco pé no saco, mas isso vai variar também do personagem escolhido pra campanha. O jogo tem 2 personagens jogáveis e, por mais que o John Morris (gameplay clássica do chicote) seja bem equilibrado e justo na gameplay dele, n tem como n dar altos créditos pro Eric Lecarde - o desgraçado é muito roubado e divertido de jogar!

Esse foi o 3° melhor Castlevania clássico que eu joguei, atrás apenas do Super Castlevania IV e do Rondo of Blood.

Taking any sort of dormant franchise and bringing it back into the “modern” era is always a risky move, no matter what the franchise in question is, but it was clear that Rare was able to pull this off seamlessly with the original Donkey Kong Country for the SNES. Sure, the bosses may have been lacking in plenty of areas, and there is some bullshit to be found when it comes to some of the secrets, but all of that is made up for with the game’s tight platformer, superb gameplay, wonderful gimmicks, impressive graphics for the time, and wonderful music, tying everything up together in one, banana-flavored package that many have enjoyed ever since it had initially released. Not only that, but the game was also extremely successful, selling over 9.3 MILLION copies, so it was clear that both Rare and Nintendo needed to keep this money train rolling with a sequel of some kind. However, this is the part of Rare’s life as a company where they were going to go through a bit of character development: they were sitting on a gold mine with this property, so they couldn’t just hash out something cheap and terrible like they did with Battletoads. They needed to make sure that this game was better than the rest, the true king of the jungle, one that can stand amongst the greatest of the greats, and personally, if you were to ask me, I think they succeeded in doing that and then some with Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest.

While I did get the original DKC as one of the first games on my SNES, and I would go onto playing it a lot because of that, I initially didn’t get DKC2 for quite some time, even though I was well aware of it existing for a while. It was only when another video game convention managed to roll through my town a good couple of years ago that I was able to snag myself a physical copy of the game to try it out, and HOT DAMN, I definitely should’ve hopped on it a lot sooner before then. The original game was already great enough as is, but this game manages to take everything that game did, expand upon it, and improve upon every criticism that I could have with that game, making for what I would say is not only a perfect sequel, but also a masterpiece of the platforming genre.

The story is just that little more complex when compared to the extremely simplistic premise of DKC 1, where while relaxing on the beach, Donkey Kong is suddenly ambushed and kidnapped by a group of Kremlings, who take him to the dastardly Kaptain K. Rool. Shortly after this, he then sends a message to the other Kongs, saying that if they want to ever see DK again, they need to give him the banana hoard that he failed to get from the previous game, which the Kongs refuse to give up, so it is up to Diddy Kong now, alongside his girlfriend Dixie Kong, to travel through the lands of Crocodile Isle, save DK, and defeat Kaptain K. Rool once and for all. It is still a very basic premise, one that decided it wanted to be even more like Mario and involve a kidnapping of some kind, but it is still an effective story, and not gonna lie, having the main character of the previous game be the one that needs rescuing in this is a bit of a nice twist.

The graphics are pretty great, looking on par with the original game in many different aspects, but also expanding on the visuals with much more creative environment, character, enemy and boss designs, with great animations paired right alongside them as well, the music is fantastic once again, having plenty of incredible tracks that range from the menacing and exciting like this one, to the much more calm and serene like this one, all of which are an absolute joy to listen to even after all this time, and the gameplay/control is just as tight, fun, and masterfully put together as last time, not only providing plenty of fun levels and gimmicks for you to mess with ahead, but also plenty of challenges ahead that will make you feel like a true champ for conquering.

The game is a 2D platformer, where you take control of either Diddy Kong once again or Dixie Kong, go through many different worlds of varying shape and size, each having a very different, unique theme that makes them stand out from each other, while also not feeling like complete copies of what came before in the previous game, defeat plenty of enemies using various techniques while gathering plenty of different bananas, collectibles, animal buddies, and power-ups along the way to help you out, run into many other members of the Kong family such as Funky Kong, who is STILL the coolest motherfucker on the planet, Wrinkly Kong, the one that reminds you of all the horrible teachers that you had back in school, and Swanky Kong, the one that will prove to you just how much of a dumbass you really are, who will each help you out in their own way (except for Cranky again, who I’m surprised hasn’t dropped dead from a heart attack at this point), and take on plenty of bosses who, unlike the last game, are not only very fun to fight, but also have a level of creativity to them that makes taking them each on feel incredibly fun and rewarding. As any good sequel does, this game takes all the great elements from the previous game and retains all of their great qualities, while expanding on them just enough to make it even better than before, and trust me, back when I first played this a long time ago after only having the original game some time, I was FLOORED by just how massive the jump in quality really was, despite not being all too clear by just looking at it.

For starters, since he is now the damsel in distress of this game, you can’t play as DK anymore, which does kinda suck, but hey, at least you still get to play as Diddy Kong, who still plays just as wonderfully as he did in that original game, being very nimble and quick. Not only that, but we now also have Dixie Kong in the crew, who when you start to play as for the first time, you will decide from there on out to ONLY play as Dixie Kong whenever you get the chance, because she is AWESOME in this game. Not only does she have all the same strengths (and weaknesses) as Diddy Kong, but she can also twirl around in the air with her hair, allowing her to safely glide over plenty of obstacles, which, by default, makes her the better character to play as. It’s just like when you discover how Peach can float in Super Mario Bros. 2: it is just broken enough to where you will stick with it for the whole game, and you will accept no other alternatives……….. except when you are forced to.

The game features just as many different kinds of levels as you would find in the original game, this time featuring plenty of new, creative gimmicks that do make it feel a lot more exciting and fun to play. Of course, at first, you just get your standard kinds of levels, where you just run through, jumping on enemies, collecting things, and watching Diddy perform a rap at the end of the stage, just as a means of getting you back into the groove of things, which it manages to do so very smoothly. This then leads onto the levels then quickly spicing things up, with levels where you will have to change the temperature of the water via some magic seals, making it so that you gotta make a mad dash through before you end up dead, levels where you have to ascend up a pirate ship quickly before the water catches up to you so that the piranhas will eat you, levels where you will have to maneuver on hot air balloons to catch hot steam over molten lava, and even levels where you are riding a roller coaster while being chased by a creepy spector, needing to hit checkmark barrels to open gates to avoid your own ghastly demise. Those are only just SOME of the gimmicks that you will encounter with the levels in this game, and they are much more fun to mess around with this time, making the game feel more like a proper evolution of what came before it other then just a simple retread.

This can also be seen in the game’s difficulty, because this game is HARD AS FUCK, even more so compared to DKC 1. Sure, there are plenty of easy levels that you will run into that will take no time to beat, but even by the second world of the game, you will be running into plenty of tricky platforming challenges, enemies that you can’t take out as easily as you would like to, gimmicks that push you to the limit in many different ways, even forcing you to play as certain animal buddies in some levels, and then you add getting the collectibles on top of that, and that adds a whole nother layer to the difficulty in many different instances. This even extends further beyond what you would expect to see from traditional video game difficulty, which can be seen with the simple aspect of saving the game, where you initially can save the game normally once in each world, but then after that one time, you then have to pay banana coins each time, making it so that you will now focus on collecting these things much more in levels, which can lead to plenty of other roadblocks as well. Hell, if that doesn’t convince you enough, how about the fact that there is an enemy in this game who, if he touches you, can zap away your lives from your life counter until you ultimately have nothing left? That is just one of the many cruel ways that this game can fuck you over if you aren’t ready.

However, with all that being said, the harsh difficulty that the game presents you with is one of the reasons why the game is so fantastic to begin with. It truly feels like you are being presented with a challenge, where the original DKC could be seen as the training grounds for you to get used to how this kind of game works and what it could throw your way, and now this game is the true test of everything you have learned, throwing whatever it can at you to kill you, while also giving you everything that you need to conquer every single challenge you face. It never feels unfair in that regard, which makes playing through these levels much more fun, especially whenever you do eventually succeed in beating some of these challenges, as the wave of satisfaction washes over you, making you feel like you truly have accomplished something here today, and that feeling carries out through most of the game.

But of course, what would a DKC game be without having some sort of collectible, and this game has plenty of them for you to find. There are still the many different bonus areas you can find, each giving you a Kremkoin for beating them, as well as the new DK coins that you can get in each level, which if you get enough of them, you can place yourself amongst the others in the Video Game Heroes Contest, allowing you to beat out Mario, Yoshi, Link, and even non-Nintendo characters like Sonic and Earthworm Jim. It’s a pretty cute easter egg to get, and it does prove once and for all that DKC is better then all of those other games, and you can’t change that fact no matter what you say. That’s not all the reward you can get though, as with the Kremkoins in hand, you can then gain access to the Lost World, a bonus world of the game that houses some of the hardest levels in the entire game, such as one level where you have to complete multiple sections as each of the animal buddies that you found throughout the whole game. Needless to say, these levels are no joke, but again, completing them only adds to the satisfaction you feel throughout, and helps you stand on top as the best Video Game Hero of all time.

Overall, if I haven’t made it clear enough at this point, this is a near-perfect sequel to the original DKC in just about every way, and one of the best games that you could find from the SNES era, not only providing many more fun levels to run through, exciting boss fights, incredible music, and gameplay that is as fresh and tight as ever, but it also provides quite a hefty challenge that feels oh so satisfying to overcome, leading to plenty of neat rewards waiting around the corner. I would absolutely recommend it, not just for those who played and loved the original DKC, but also to anyone in general, because it is just that damn good to where if you haven’t tried it out at least once, then do yourself a favor and load it up, possibly with a friend to join you, and get ready to have a blast. satisfied sigh... man, it felt great to revisit this game again after so long, and it really has me looking forward to what comes next in this series. I mean, come on, how could they possibly screw it up at this point now?............... oh right, with a stupid little fuck named Kiddie Kong, that’s how.

Game #586

A genuinely magical game that’s kept me thinking about it and will continue having this grip on me for quite some time. Games that utilise the medium to such an extent that their identity hinges on the interactive element being present are some of the most fun ones to let sit with you, and this is one of my favourite instances of it. Return of the Obra Dinn is one of the greatest mystery games I’ve played and a lot of this is owed to the structure of the game, forgoing crafting a mystery specifically designed to surprise the player with its various twists and instead laying it all out bare and forcing you to pick everything apart to fully grasp the finer details of things. The mystery and story themselves are not the important aspects here, it’s just trying to immerse you into the role of a detective without any handholding beyond the bare essentials, and it does so perfectly.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a mystery/puzzle game that revolves around incomplete information and assumption, often leaving little to no definitive evidence and forcing you to jump all around to place with increasingly tenuous lines of logic as you feel yourself going insane. It was quite funny taking a step back after combing through a few scenes in excruciating detail and just thinking “wow, this is deranged” but that’s just how the game is. The player is likely to find all of the story beats of the game rather early on without knowing the fates of the vast majority of the cast, and then the rest of the game boils down to going between the relevant scenes in the game to try and figure out how to deduce some of them, which would seem like an experience that would feel stagnant very quickly, but is saved due to the sense of progression that will take place despite it all just looking like cleanup at first. The progression gates in this game are entirely dependent on and driven by the player, hinging on multiple big realisations on how they need to approach their investigations. This culminates in a deeply rewarding loop of thinking that you’ve hit the logical endpoint of what you achieve on your own, before realising a new detail that leads you down a new line of logic to discover someone, and then applying this newfound understanding of how to figure something out to other characters. A contributing factor to how this is so successful is due to the plethora of approaches that you’re expected to work out, sometimes really being as simple but uncertain feeling as “this guy hangs around this other guy a lot, they’re probably in the same field”.

The way that your answers are confirmed is a clever way of limiting the ability to brute force a lot of puzzle answers as well, since you’ve only got confirmation on whether you’re correct or not once you have 3 correct answers simultaneously written down. While some amount of guesswork was an expected element of this game’s design, by structuring it like this, players are still forced to confidently deduce 2 other people before they can start taking real shots in the dark with incomplete assumptions, solving a problem I’ve seen time and time again in deduction games where people will often resort to total guesswork the moment they’re met with some confusion and uncertainty. The presentation goes a long way in tying everything together as well, being visually striking while having the effect of being simple enough to make the important details easier to pinpoint while simultaneously obscuring everything just enough to invite uncertainty into every observation. I adore whenever a game can keep me thinking for so long after I’m done with it, and I love it even more when it does so through something as esoteric as it is here. Total masterpiece, something new to add to my list of favourites.