I'm sure you saw the five stars I gave this and thought to yourself, "man, this guy's either joking or super weird!". Well, I'm definitely weird, but I'm only partially joking! If we're being ~objective~, Faces of Evil is nowhere near a five star game, but get this: reviews aren't objective, they're windows into the hearts, brains, and souls of individuals, so expressing your emotions, no matter how "unusual" they may be, is where it's at! Faces of Evil is a game that has been there for me for years even though I never really got to play it until now. Many moons ago, I tried a CD-i emulator and not only did it not work well at all, it also had the audacity to try and get me to pay money! CD-i emulation is far from perfect even now, but it has come a long way, at least enough to allow me to find plenty of ways to appreciate it as much more than just the "failure" history considers it to be.

If you're familiar with YouTube Poops, I was the kind of dorky kid that chugged those things down real good. I would watch so many of them and I just couldn't get enough. Seeing these absolutely ridiculous looking takes on characters like Mario and Link that I had known for years always gave me a good laugh and it got to the point where friends and I will still break out random quotes from the poops and the actual source material alike. Even in their original poopless form, the cutscenes in the Mario and Zelda CD-i games are still hilarious! So hilarious, in fact, that a game released this year, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore (made in part by the same person who made this remaster), used them as its most compelling hook! These cutscenes are truly special, but there are actual games beyond them. Said games have long been the butt of jokes by reviewers and YouTubers, but when you actually sit down with them, are they really so beyond redemption? It turns out the answer to that is no and we have Dopply to thank for making that conclusion easier than ever to come to.

The first two Zelda games for the CD-i (this one and Wand of Gamelon) play in a way that resembles Zelda II. This is a good thing because Zelda II is my favorite one! They're certainly not as tightly designed or challenging and magic isn't a thing, but the general skeleton is there, which is still appreciated. Speaking of skeletons, this game is still very much a Zelda game once you look past its legendary presentation. You go to various areas in the world, find items that let you explore new areas and defeat new foes, and you ultimately go on to defeat Ganon. You start off very weak and end up becoming a force of nature that can spam deadly ranged attacks, so even with the different style, that form of progression the series has always done well is still here. You get so strong that all it takes to defeat Ganon is throwing a book at him!

Even if the combat is simple, the variety of items you get is as satisfying as you'd expect. Some Zelda staples like bombs and the Power Glove are here, but there are some interesting new items mixed in. A rope lets you create spots to climb upward wherever you want, which can cleverly cut down on the game's tendency to want you to take the long way around things. Snowballs and Firestones replace arrows and magic, which might sound like a downgrade, but the sheer speed at which you can toss them (if you stock up) makes short work of any enemy. The winged helmet predates the Roc's Cape by several years with its ability to let you glide across gaps. Even though I've emphasized the power you can gain, Faces of Evil still finds ways of forcing you to be careful. The number of hearts you get for this adventure are extremely limited and the canteen only lets you carry one healing item, so this isn't a game where you can come rolling in with four fairies in bottles and effectively be invincible. Instant death pits litter most stages, which when combined with enemies that love to throw huge projectiles, can make finding your footing surprisingly difficult. It's not nearly as hard as Zelda II, but it still has some of that methodical swordplay that makes it work so well.

Perhaps moreso than several other Zelda games, the land of Koridai is legitimately strange and compelling to explore. Every single person you meet is some kind of freak that's way too eager to touch Link, creepily smile at him, or go on about some nonsense that the player won't have any context for right away. Except Morshu, that is; he's not a freak, he's a national treasure! This is the only Zelda game (well, and Wand of Gamelon) where encountering NPCs is just as fun as finding new items! The environments themselves are really interesting, too. There's a unique, hard to describe "lived in" nature to each level. Loads of detail can be seen in the backgrounds, especially when you enter buildings, which have all kinds of random little items in the background. It's maybe not what you'd call ~environmental storytelling~, but it gives every single screen a handcrafted, remarkably detailed feel, as if each one was an artist's canvas for them to do with as they please. Just the act of exploring is such a joy because you're guaranteed to see something you've truly never seen before, which is more than a lot of games can say.

It's worth quickly mentioning the upgrades that come with this remaster because they really do make a difference. Aside from expected niceties like enhanced image and music quality, the remaster has an added tutorial and an optional mode that includes some modern QoL like infinite lives and better checkpointing. If you're one of the rare folks who have mastered the original game, there's even a hard mode built in the image of the "Hero modes" added to official Zelda remasters. If you can beat that, you get an entirely new playable character complete with unique animations and spritework, which is a seriously delightful level of effort!

The whole package really shows just how much respect Dopply has for the CD-i and its Zelda games. It's easy for people to take one look at the CD-i and dismiss it, but perspectives like this in which people truly take the time to examine the positives of what the platform was doing are so valuable. By being humble enough to not see it as something to "fix" from the ground up to prove a point but rather something to use as the basis for a creative experiment, Dopply has proven that there's legitimate beauty in what the CD-i was doing. Faces of Evil, whether it meant to or not (I'm sure it didn't), serves as an example of what Nintendo once was in the eyes of those who have seen them grow into the obnoxiously litigious behemoth that they are today. Nintendo used to have moments of experimentation, weirdness, and "mistakes" that they simply don't now. They're a megacorporation and megacorporations are not your friends, but they absolutely were "fun" in a way that they aren't now. Things like the live action Super Mario Bros. Movie, the Game Boy Printer, Mario Paint, ROB, the Virtual Boy, all have a raw creative energy that takes risks in ways that they wouldn't dare consider now. Faces of Evil is a way to tap back into that fun period of Nintendo history, that period where I consumed the heck out of YouTube Poops, and as short as said reminiscence may be, it's an opportunity that I find impossible to say no to.

This one isn't really a full game but is rather a bonus that was given out through assorted 1994 Hudson Soft events. It's a multiplayer only sampler of Bomberman '94 that replaces Bomberman with Kabuki Danjirou from the Tengai Makyou series. Aside from this change and the ability to play 5 stages instead of 1 with a cheat code, it's basically identical to the Special Version of Bomberman '94 that was given out the previous year for the same purpose.

There's not really much point in playing it now, but it's certainly an interesting bit of history at the very least!

Resident Evil Village is a strange one - it wants to be a proper sequel to Resident Evil 7 and it also wants to take notes and inspiration from RE4, a game that couldn't be more opposite to 7 if it tried. As you'd expect, this creates an unusual, contradictory concoction that fails to hit either of the highs established in those games. It's not as scary as RE7, it doesn't offer the same level of incredible immersion due to a lack of VR support, and it doesn't have anyone or anything as compelling as the Bakers and their ridiculously elaborate house. The action doesn't feel nearly as tight as RE4's, its villains are far less memorable, and it doesn't nail the intentionally funny camp either. It certainly tries, what with protagonist Ethan's dialogue being a combination of tonally inconsistent one-liners and weird rebuttals to things people didn't say, but it never quite finds the proper rhythm. Despite that and a general plot that doesn't really pick up until the very end, it still manages to be a satisfying conclusion to Ethan's story and provides a hook that'll make a sequel or DLC quite interesting. Plus, the way Chris says "Ethan, No!" at the start of the game like Ethan's a dog with something in his mouth that he shouldn't have is extremely funny considering the context the scene occurs in.

To me, RE7 and RE4 are both games with absolutely pitch perfect pacing that balances dread and catharsis in exactly the right way. Perhaps a hot take, but I even like the Mines sequence in RE7 as a action-packed reward for all the nightmares you've been through. In RE7 especially, you start out totally vulnerable and work your way up to an arsenal that puts you firmly in control. RE4 purports Leon as basically a superhero from the start, which makes (enough) sense thanks to hin surviving Raccoon City. Ethan should be in a similar situation having fought his way to survival once before, but the game seems to have a hard time deciding whether to empower or disempower you at a given moment. The beginning is essentially a hour long "AAA" sequence full of setpieces to run away from and characters that don't last long enough to make an impression, but it also features a homage to RE4's initial village sequence. It's here where the issues with the combat immediately show themselves; the new enemies, the Lycans, show ridiculous levels of resilience, to the point that they can potentially take an entire handgun clip to down. They're also incredibly agile for basic enemies too, able to sway like a professional boxer and lunge towards you for a grab like they've got jetpacks on. They can even appear anywhere and drop in like a ninja, often leading to quick and significant damage. This section doesn't prepare you at all for learning how to deal with them since your ammo is so limited and it never really gets better from there even after multiple weapon upgrades. Even after dealing with bosses, monstrous beasts, and mechanical soldiers, I still found the "lowly" Lycan to be by far the most dangerous foe in the game. For bigger foes, I could hit them more easily and be less sparing with my ammo and tools, but since Lycans are the "zombie" equivalent, you're incentivized to not go too wild against them. The villagers in RE4 are easy individually but more complicated to deal with in groups and the level design augmented that expertly, whereas Village prefers to just throw Lycans at you without taking their surprising power level into account, never giving the player a chance to really learn how to deal with their behaviors well in different contexts beyond unloading most of their hard earned ammo in a panic.

After the intro, you're thrust into Lady Dimitrescu's castle for several hours where the game seems to flip-flop between a RE7-like experience where you're (incompetently) chased and a RE4-like experience where you're gunning down faceless mooks by the dozen in a basement. Because of these constant tone shifts, how you're supposed to play never really feels natural: do you run from foes? Do you kill everything in sight? Is ammo conservation important or will they always provide you what you need? Hard to say! You just gotta push through and hope it works out. The environments and tones of its inspirations made it immediately clear how things were going to play out, but Village is so eager to have its cake and eat it too that it forgets to convey what it should convey to the player. I legitimately didn't enjoy the game until I got out of the castle, and considering it was a third of my playthrough, that's a bummer! The castle is a good indication of what's to come, though, since the game never finds a voice from there, jumping between slow exploratory moments and all-out brawls in a way that feels almost random at times.

The actual process of unloading your ammo is also at its worst here - guns sound pathetically weak and it's rare you get much in the way of feedback aside from headshots. This might have been a me thing, but the aiming also never quite felt right and required me to tweak settings to aim even remotely decently. Your guns don't betray any conventions and the upgrades you get are purely linear, removing the decision making that RE4 had with its arsenal. RE4's action worked so well because every gun felt amazing and your melee attacks gave you an unprecedented level of control for series standards, but here it just feels like they grafted RE7's basic combat onto a different game. Everything the game shows you seems like it should be more interesting, more complex than it actually is, but since your only other verbs beyond shooting include guarding and a push you can sometimes do, your only strategy is staying away and shooting until the incredibly resilient enemies and bosses decide they've had enough.

The titular village itself unfortunately failed to impress me, mostly being a series of streets conveniently blocked by rubble until the game decides to give you a new path. The idea of giving you a large hub area to peel back the layers of is a great one, but there isn't anything interesting to do in it. Duke the merchant is the only NPC there and exploring almost exclusively gets you money, which isn't as exciting as it sounds. There's tons of treasure to be found, but its only use is to make money for upgrading weapons, which opens up at a strange pace. For most of the game, you'll have way more money than you need to upgrade everything, but once you hit the final Duke location, every gun suddenly gets so many potential upgrades that you won't have anywhere near enough money for them. I was so confused by this - why give me money exclusively yet lock away upgrades for so long and make them unaffordable? Just reward me with cool stuff for doing cool things! Optional bosses are such a good addition, but they all just drop money! Imagine how cool it'd be if defeating a giant axe wielding monstrosity got you a better melee weapon or something - now that would be good side content! This just made exploring frustrating for me since every time I found a secret location or cool surprise, my reward was always the same and it never felt satisfying. This also ties into the crafting system, which results in you finding materials much more often than ammo. If I'm going to use the materials to craft ammo anyway, why not just give me ammo?

Resident Evil Village is a game I wanted to love, but it's one that I just liked instead. Despite my negativity, it does have several good qualities - some of the setpieces like Beneviento's doll house are fantastic, and the character designs are as good as ever - but the game simply feels like it's lacking a strong vision or selling point. Most things it does are good, but none of them stand out as great. Every other Resident Evil game in the current era of Capcom has really impressed me, but this one isn't quite on the same level. Between this and the RE4 remake that's coming, I'm starting to worry that Capcom is getting a little too fixated on trying to relive RE4's success. Still, I'm certainly far from the point of giving up on the series and I think whatever comes next could have loads of potential so long as Capcom takes the time to find something unique to say instead of trying to bank on past success.

As a longtime Pokemon fan who started losing faith in the franchise thanks to Sword/Shield and Brilliant Diamond (didn't even last a few hours with that one!), Legends is exactly what I was looking for. A much bolder direction than I was expecting, Legends throws out most of the elements of the main games in exchange for something that's entirely different and very much refreshing.

Rather than collecting badges and fighting an Elite Four that doesn't know how to use six Pokemon for the umpteenth time, Legends provides a far more compelling hook. As a stranger thrust into a different world, your job is to survey the lands and fill out the Pokedex. This isn't the equivalent of a theme park experience though, and this world shows a relationship with Pokemon unlike anything you'd see in the other games. In Hisui, Pokemon are territorial jerks that seek only to attack humans, who are doing whatever they can to survive. The humans aren't exactly saints themselves and they expect you to prove your worth lest you get thrown out to die. Like most stories that have you working for an organization on the bottom rung, you'll have to intervene with their politics and deal with individuals who have less than noble reasons for interacting with Pokemon. While it's a refreshing perspective, it's not an entirely successful one - writing has never been Game Freak's strong suit and that hasn't changed here (take a drink every time someone mentions you fell out of the sky and you'll be dead in a hour!), and the endgame is surprisingly unsatisfying. There's a bit of postgame story that fleshes out a particular character in an exciting way, but the game's central mystery (why you were sent to another world in the first place) is left unresolved to a comical degree.

The act of catching Pokemon is more exciting than ever before thanks to the introduction of massive, open spaces. The Wild Area in Sword/Shield was the start of this idea, but it was woefully undercooked compared to Legends. Here, the areas you explore are vast and full of life, and you'll get to witness Pokemon interacting and living in their natural habitats. Some appear out of thin air, some live in trees, some fly around, and others are just minding their own business. Seeing what each Pokemon does adds credence to the game's setup and makes the Pokemon feel more alive than they have since Black/White 2. These areas are packed with secrets and hidden areas too, so you can easily spend hours in each one. The first area alone was big enough for me to spend at least 10 hours in it and get my rank high enough to pass any of the game's later barriers! While the open world structure is a great success overall, the later areas aren't quite as compelling as the early ones since a lot of Pokemon get reused. This is something that could easily be rectified with a sequel, though, and I dearly hope Game Freak breaks their usual habit of abandoning good ideas.

Instead of having to weaken Pokemon, you can just throw balls at them while you roam around. This idea works fantastically, keeping the game's pace snappy and making it easy to keep your bearings as you go off the path to make acquisitions. Catching Pokemon is arguably more interesting than battling itself this time around thanks to all of your potential options. You can sneak around for back strikes, you can use different balls with different specialities, and you can craft items to distract Pokemon or aid in stealth. Stealth is essential here since an aware Pokemon can't be caught and won't hesitate to try and incapacitate your trainer. I wish these attacks were harder to dodge, but I love the idea of wild Pokemon being dangerous at all, so I'm very happy it's a thing. Being able to avoid combat even allows for fun game breaking shenanigans - with a bit of patience and savvy, you can catch high level Alpha Pokemon as soon as you get into the game proper!

Battling has been significantly tweaked in an interesting way. Instead of the usual system, the one presented here feels like an abstraction, similar but different. You still have your four moves and type charts, but now turn order is a more nebulous thing. Instead of speed being the stat to end them all, other factors come into play. Certain moves have hidden priority adjustments that make you move faster or slower, and you can now activate "Strong" and "Agile" versions of moves that adjust turn order accordingly. I personally really like this change, but I'm not surprised to see it as a common point of contention amongst players. The game does a terrible job of explaining how turn order works and it does everything in its power to hide the information from you, which is just plain strange. If you can accept things going south at times and are willing to rely more on slower but bulkier Pokemon, you'll find that this system adds a bit of tension to battling, something that the series has desperately needed.

Certain boss fights take a vastly different approach, (mostly) forgoing battling for having to throw balms to pacify a special Pokemon. These encounters are frankly bizarre, feeling more like something you'd see in a modern action adventure game, but they're pretty enjoyable for what they are. They test a different suite of skills (aiming and using i-frames to dodge) compared to conventional battling, which makes for another refreshing change of pace in a game full of them.

While the catching and battling systems were strong enough to carry the game for me, they're really all the game has to offer after a certain point. Side quests rarely provide significant rewards and the story tends to be pretty sparse, so this is a game that rewards those who love to catch 'em all. If you're the type to rush through campaigns, focus on multiplayer battling (which isn't present here) or only catch Pokemon you want to use, this is not the game for you. There are some clear improvements to make here, but I really, really hope that Game Freak works on a sequel to this. This game was exactly what I've been wanting from Pokemon and it was such a delight to get absorbed into its world all over again.

You ever play a game that's so close to greatness but just barely misses the mark? That's Xeno Crisis for me - on one hand, it's a fantastic tribute to the Neo Geo in the form of an arcade twin-stick shooter with tight action and gorgeous visuals. On the other hand, it succumbs to popular indie trends that do it no justice, seemingly shoehorning in roguelike elements that are seldom additive to the experience.

If you've played the likes of Smash TV or Robotron 2084, you know exactly what to expect here. Using a variety of guns, grenades and a powerful but risky melee attack, you have to rip and tear your way through seven levels chock full of alien monstrosities. At the macro level, there really isn't much that Xeno Crisis does wrong; some enemies take too many hits and stage 3 just sucks because of its reliance on enemies that burrow underground and waste your time, but otherwise Xeno Crisis is one heck of an adrenaline rush. Your default gun feels amazing and remains effective throughout the entire game, and every melee kill you earn feels sufficiently meaty. The risk/reward balance for using melee attacks is very finely tuned too; melee attacks instantly take out most foes, so if you're willing to risk getting hit, you can immediately take out enemies before they even start moving and shooting. Some levels are so overwhelming with their hordes of foes that this tactic becomes regularly valuable and worth pursuing, encouraging players to get good at dodging and relying on their peripheral vision. Other gun pickups are unfortunately on a timer, leading to situations where you get them with no enemies to use them on, but the majority of them are powerful assets that give you a chance to go hog wild for a bit, empowering the player in times of, well, crisis.

Shooting hordes grants you dog tags that can be used to buy upgrades in between levels. These include the likes of health/speed/attack boosts as well as increased grenade and ammo (yes, ammo, more on that later) capacity. There's even a niche upgrade in the form of the gas mask that protects you from poisonous gas, something's that's only useful in stages 3 and 5 but is extremely so in those two cases. This system provides a small but enjoyable way to give each run a different approach. You can go all in on attack to make the start easier, you can buff speed to make sure your runs go cleanly, or you can save for the gas mask and make your life easier later. You can eventually afford everything if you're thorough enough, but this little bit of decision making turns Xeno Crisis into a game that's more thoughtful than the average game of this ilk.

The game is also a visual treat full of massive bosses that play as well as they look. Each boss has very fair, understandable attack patterns and are reasonable to defeat even with the default gun. Curiously, level 3 doesn't have a boss fight which is a shame considering it's the one in most desperate need of something to break up its monotony.

It's unfortunate that Xeno Crisis wasn't actually a Neo Geo or Mega Drive game released in the appropriate time period, because I probably would have been able to leave it at this and give it 4-5 stars as a classic of its era. But since it was created in the age of modern indies, where so many games need to pull from popular trends to get any kind of attention, Xeno Crisis has ideas that unfortunately do it no favors. Primarily, most aspects of the game are randomized, from parts of the level design to item drops, and that randomless leads to frustration in short order. Games like this are at their best when mastered by a player who knows everything about the game, but with randomness injected, all of the skill in the world can't save you from a streak of bad luck. Everything that drops from enemies is randomized each run. What that means is it's possible that a player who takes occasional hits but otherwise does well will slowly bleed out in one run thanks to a lack of health drops, but in other runs will be able to get far because they got lucky. This same player might blaze through a boss because a weapon dropped mid-fight, but then their next run might leave them to dry wondering why they're doing so much worse. Normally in a game like this, you'd be able to focus purely on getting better and eliminating those mistakes, but knowing that you could luck out at any point leads to sloppiness and reliance on hoping for the best. It promotes bad habits that just make for a less fun game and your victories hardly feel earned because of it.

Worst of all, your basic gun runs on limited ammo and after it's depleted, you have to scramble to grab the ammo crate that, you guessed it, spawns in a random location. Oftentimes this won't be a problem, but those few times where it gets you killed will forever stick in your head and keep you up at night. Many foes take dozens of bullets to kill, so even with a fully upgraded gun, you'll be running out of ammo constantly. Knowing that every time you run out of ammo you're rolling the dice with your life is something that'll chew away at your confidence in short order, which is a terrifying prospect in a game that's as hard as Xeno Crisis.

The icing on the cake is something you'll be familiar with if you followed the game after its release and it's hard not to agree with the majority consensus on it: to see the game's proper ending and actually fight the final boss, you need to finish it without dying once. Naturally, such a Herculean task was criticized by most people who played the game, since such a requirement isn't made (fully) clear until you've failed to meet it at the game's end. The brief story segments in between levels hint at the fact that there's something suspicious about the elixir you use for your equivalent of extra lives, but there's no way to know that using even one will make the game's ending as unsatisfying as possible. Missing out on a bit of story wouldn't have mattered to me, but not getting to fight the final boss is a punishment that I couldn't get over, so I kept playing the game until I eventually nailed it. Turns out, the final boss isn't even all that exciting and it's easier than the level that immediately precedes it!

While the idea of making your extra lives punish you later on for story reasons is an interesting and subversive one, it takes away from the fun of the gameplay. 1CCs should come because a player enjoys the game enough to strive for them, not because they need to do it to get some kind of resolution. The randomization only makes this task worse and it eroded my goodwill away with every subsequent run. Xeno Crisis should have been a game about the journey and not the destination, but by making the carrot on the stick so needlessly harsh and placed in the perfect spot to maximize frustration, it makes peoples' experience with the game one that ends on a sour note they won't soon forget.

I sincerely hope Bitmap Bureau gives a sequel a shot someday. If they remove the randomness and reconsider the ending trickery, I may very well be there day 1! It's a testament to how good Xeno Crisis plays that I didn't immediately drop it as soon as it started asking something ridiculous from me. It was an experience that started off wonderful and gradually wore down my patience and goodwill, each run ending with a lack of drops or a mistake at the end of a hour long run causing me to lean ever so closer to quitting. A non-insignificant amount of each run being spent on stage 3 sure didn't help either! I'm glad I didn't quit and was able to finish it, but I wish my time with it ended on a high note that properly summarized the joy of the experience instead of something that I and others will mostly remember for how mean it was out of nowhere in a game that's otherwise so fun and welcoming.

On paper, Pupperazzi should have been the easiest slam dunk possible. Dogs rule, so a game about dogs should rule too. Developer Sundae Month wasn't able to make the play, however, because Pupperazzi stumbles hard. What should be a jolly time taking photos of dogs instead feels like filling out a rote checklist while covered in molasses. This doesn't appear to be the developer's first effort, but it sure feels like a first effort considering how hard it is just to move around comfortably. Combine unexciting gameplay with an aesthetic and tone that's a bit too twee for my tastes and you have my first (and hopefully only) disappointment of 2022.

Like the name implies, your job is to take photos of as many dogs as possible as they do various activities or interact with various items. Depending on the location you visit and the the time you choose to visit at, you'll encounter different dogs doing different things. That's all good and well on paper, but in execution it's all a bit too dull. This isn't a game that has any kind of challenge to it, and that can be ok under certain circumstances, but it also results in there being little motivation to take things seriously or try to do your best. Photos aren't graded and you have all the time in the world to do what you need to without pressure or stakes, so unless you're trying to get every achievement, there's no way to really improve or refine your photography skills in a way that feels meaningful. Taking photos in certain genres like artsy, sports, or fashion and then uploading them gets you followers, but these followers also don't really do much of anything. They're required to some degree for progression, but going the extra mile only gets you currency that can be used to buy additional camera lenses and film types. Maybe I'm just a moron, but I thought all of these filters and lenses made everything look terrible, so the only one I really got any use out of was the zoom lens for obvious reasons. The best part of the game is how cute the dogs are, so distorting the look for no reason just doesn't feel like a good reward.

Whenever you start a level, you're given a list of tasks to complete. These are mostly pretty straightforward, ranging from things like taking photos of dogs in a certain location to dressing them up in certain ways or even taking pictures of specific non-dog places and things. There's a good variety of objectives, some of which are pretty clever like finding a dog that's posing as the Loch Ness Monster, but some of them are either comically obtuse or don't work correctly at all. For example, a few missions ask you to take a "really good" picture using specific lenses or film. What's a "really good" picture, though? With no grading mechanics, all you can do is guess and hope the game agrees with you or isn't bugging out. It's kind of maddening! At one point, I got a task that involved some kind of elaborate riddle about the moon, a lighthouse, and multiple dogs, and I had zero idea what to do! But since the only reward for tasks is usually followers or currency, you can skip any mission with zero repercussions. This makes sense for a chill game like this, but it also means that there's nothing to really get the player invested either. Nothing you do technically matters or has consequences, so why even bother? Perhaps that's my old man brain taking, but Pupperazzi feels too much like a sandbox for my tastes. To its credit, this is a very accessible game with options that allow for anyone to easily play it (there's even a toggle to remove the cars in case they trigger someone's anxiety, which is a smart idea), so it's probably a better fit for someone not used to many video games and needs time to get acquainted with how they operate.

In an amusing twist, you play as a camera with legs and you can see that through your shadow and any selfies you might take. It's a pretty cute and clever idea, but navigating your literal camera man around feels unbelievably bad. By default, your turn speed is ridiculously slow and you speed up very quickly with just a bit of input. You can adjust look sensitivity as you'd expect, but it's hard to find a level that feels remotely alright since the slider doesn't appear to reflect reality. A couple of bumps jacks the speed up to wild degrees, and it's kind of strange in the first place considering no reflexes are required for this game. I want to say that you eventually get used to it, but you never do! The control scheme in general is quite weird as well and I was never quite able to get used to basic things like switching film or zooming in. Again, these quirks don't cause any real problems due to the lack of stakes, but it's hard to chill with a game that wants to be chill when it's fighting you every step of the way.

Beyond everything I've mentioned, the elephant in the room is just how bug-riddled Pupperazzi is. It might very well be one of the buggiest games I've ever played! I had visual glitches where the lighting went crazy, physics glitches where items and characters got stuck, AI glitches that made it so dogs just wouldn't interact with items, objective glitches that prevented me from completing tasks, and more. Worst of all, after I finished the game and went back to fill out the Dogpedia, I had a glitch occur that both crashed my game and corrupted my save! Even if DLC or patches come out that fix the game, I won't be able to try them out without deleting my save, and that really, really sucks. The game's lighthearted and goofy tone makes visual glitches easier to take in stride, but when they prevent me from playing the game, there's no choice but to emphasize how disruptive they can be.

Even though I tried this game out with nothing on the line thanks to Game Pass, I still found it very disappointing. Even with its short runtime of about 2 hours, Pupperazzi quickly wears on one's nerves. When the core gameplay is dull and the game is fighting you tooth and nail every step of the way through endless bugs and poor controls, cute dogs aren't going to be enough to salvage it. I'd really like for Sundae Month to revisit this concept with more polish and additional mechanics. I absolutely love the idea and photography games have done well in the indie scene recently, so they could potentially have a respectable hit on their hands with something that gets the time it needs to cook in the oven. Whether that potential ever gets realized or not, I can at least say one thing for certain: Yes, you can, in fact, pet the dogs in this video game.

I've always thought of Rainbow Islands as a bizarre sequel living in the shadow of an arcade classic. Everybody knows Bubble Bobble is a great co-op game with single screen levels in which you encase monsters in bubbles so you can pop them. Rainbow Islands, in a way, is the exact opposite. Rather than remaining on a single screen, you climb your way up increasingly tall levels, and instead of having to trap enemies, you either shoot them for a direct kill or crush them with your rainbows from above. You also can't play it with two people simultaneously, which seems like a huge downgrade at first glance. But after giving Rainbow Islands more time than I did back when the NES was contemporary, I found that it faithfully picks up where Bubble Bobble left off in terms of its creativity and how it gets so much mileage out of simple game mechanics. Fear not, for Rainbow Islands is absolutely a worthy sequel.

It's worth noting that there are actually two NES versions, the US/Japan release that does more of its own thing and the European release that sticks closer to the arcade version. The US/Japan version replaces one of the worlds with one that's themed around Kiki KaiKai (aka Pocky & Rocky), so that made it an easy choice for me!

As mentioned before, your one and only option (aside from jumping, anyway) is the ability to create rainbows in front of you. These are used to defeat enemies and can also serve as makeshift staircases, allowing you to climb upwards in an arc. You can't jump on them without them crashing down, which is something that you'll be making use of a lot, but it means that you can't use them as traditional platforms. Therefore, you need to be careful with how you use them, since it's easy to slide off of rainbows or accidentally walk into an enemy. This unique projectile takes getting used to and the difficulty curve thankfully takes this into account.

The first few worlds are easy enough, featuring slow enemies and plenty of platforms to give you enough time to learn how setting up rainbows should be done. Later worlds become pretty merciless though, as per Bubble Bobble tradition, and the game starts taking away platforms and expects you to deal with fast foes that shoot projectiles en masse. The endgame feels a bit too harsh and the overly long levels combined with limited continues can cause unneeded stress, but this is ultimately a game that can be mastered and doing so comes with noticeable results. Once you've gotten comfortable with rainbows, you can set up multi-kills, blaze through levels quickly, and make it impossible for foes to approach. It's really satisfying to get the hang of this game's unique mechanics, and much like fellow NES classic Bionic Commando, this is a game where I went from not really getting it to fully grasping just how clever it is by the time I was done.

It wouldn't be a game in the Bubble Bobble series without an incredibly elaborate, entirely hidden system for power-ups and other items, and Rainbow Islands delivers in spades. Killing enemies gets you power-ups, but what exactly determines what you get felt all but random to me. According to various online resources, every 3rd kill is supposed to get you a power-up from a fixed sequence, all of which make Bubby a much more capable fighter, but I found myself never able to follow that sequence consistently. Sometimes I'd get some of the more powerful items like the potions and tiaras that make short work of enemies, but oftentimes I'd either get items I already had or the diamonds that you need for the true ending (not a bad thing!). There's a crystal ball item that's required to see the bosses of worlds 5-7 and it doesn't sound like it should be too rare to come by, but I had no clue how to get it to appear and experimenting didn't really help. I did it in world 6, but for worlds 5 and 7, I had to fight invisible bosses. An interesting idea to be sure, but not exactly one I'd call fun! You lose your power-ups should you die, and you'll definitely die, so learning how exactly this convoluted system works isn't necessarily useful or additive to the experience unless you're looking to get an impressive score.

The most important items are the seven colored diamonds that need to be collected in each world. They match the colors of the rainbow and the ones you get are supposedly determined by where on the screen you kill an enemy, which isn't something I even knew about until after I beat the game. Diamonds will primarily be generated when crushing enemies with rainbows, so going for them adds a satisfying layer of complexity that requires you to set up kills more carefully. Anybody can fire rainbows indiscriminately, but only those who know how to maneuver and patiently create the necessary moments will reap the rewards. Collecting all 7 in a world gets you one of the 7 huge diamonds needed for the true ending and 8th world, so they'd be very much worth it just for that, but they come with additional benefits too.

If you obtain the huge diamond, you'll be given the opportunity to either get a free power-up from one of two treasure chests or to speak with a NPC. The NPCs don't always have useful information, but what they have to say can sometimes be amusing enough that it's worth sacrificing a power-up for. In one world, a NPC talks about how he was a hero until he fell victim to his vices and couldn't support his family anymore, and in another world, you get to see Bubby cure Bobby's sudden bout of vampirism by breathing garlic into his face. The game also gets weirdly horny at times and Bubby is way too eager to flirt with every girl he meets despite having a girlfriend and looking like he's 5 years old. It's really something else! If you manage to collect the 7 colored diamonds in ROYGBIV order, you not only get the above perks, you also get the chance to skip the boss fight (if you want) and a special item that permanently improves Bubby in some way. It's cool that playing the game extra carefully and extra well is rewarded in such a significant way, and while none of those power-ups are needed, they're worthwhile rewards nonetheless and I'm sure speedrunners appreciate being able to skip bosses too. The bosses aren't bad or anything, but most of them come down to just moving and shooting while you avoid their large sprites, so being able to skip them to preserve lives once their novelty has worn thin might actually be for the best.

Rainbow Islands feels like a celebration of Taito at times and I really appreciate how it goes about doing that. Worlds 5-8 are all dedicated to themes based on other Taito games. World 5 is based on Arkanoid and replicates the audiovisual experience by removing the music and having the sounds of the blocks constantly echo throughout the stages. World 6 not only takes the yokai from Kiki KaiKai, it also provides renditions of its music and even recreates the final boss within the context of Rainbow Islands. World 7 is themed around Darius, so it naturally has enemies that favor projectiles. Best of all, its boss encounter uses the same "A huge battleship is approaching fast!" warning screen to introduce the fight, which brought a smile to my face. The final world is based on the original Bubble Bobble and plays its iconic theme as you deal with familiar foes. Taito has such a fun and memorable catalog of franchises, so it's nice to see them flaunt it here in such a creative and high effort way.

Though it may be needlessly obtuse and punishing at times, Rainbow Islands is a joyous game that has no problem standing alongside its predecessor. It's easy to see why it was a hit in its time, between its easy to learn yet hard to master mechanics and its colorful presentation, and those factors are why it still holds up so well today. This is a game that rewards practice and mastery like any good game of this vintage should and it does so in a way that allows you to learn something new with every play session. Whether you like Bubble Bobble or not, you should absolutely try this game and give it a chance to allow its best qualities to shine like a rainbow.

What a pleasant surprise this one was! I have no experience with Touhou, but I decided to try this game out before it left Game Pass and I'm glad I did. While the main Touhou games are shoot 'em ups, fanmade ones explore every genre out there and Luna Nights just so happens to be a Metroidvania. This is the hardest genre to stand out in, but Luna Nights manages to do so thanks to creative mechanics and a successful incorporation of bullet hell ideas like grazing.

The story follows Sakuya Izayoi the maid as she finds herself trapped in the mysterious world of Luna Nights with her powers mostly stripped away. While there's a bit of intrigue that comes from discovering what exactly Luna Nights is, the story is never the strongest driving force the game has to offer. Much of the dialogue is between characters who have past history with each other and the game doesn't have an interest in bringing newcomers up to speed. This honestly didn't bother me too much though, since the personality of each character still came through in their interactions. This is a fun batch of characters with weird quirks, chemistry or the lack thereof, and hidden agendas that inevitably clash.

The highlight of the game lies in its combat and boss fights. Sakuya is armed to the teeth with knives and is able to throw them in various ways and at various angles. You can't just throw willy nilly though, because a MP system enforces a limit upon how many knives you can throw. MP is a precious resource that's also required for powerful skills and you can't attack at all without it, but you're encouraged to stay in the fray thanks to the grazing mechanic, which awards you with HP and MP healing if you can narrowly dodge enemy projectiles. You can also manually reclaim knives in the ground or walls to get a bit of MP back. All of this encourages a gameplay loop in which you fight boldly, keeping up the offense while never forgetting your defense in order to ensure that you always have enough gas in your tank and it works extremely well, resulting in some of the most dynamic bosses the genre has seen. Bosses in this game are no joke and will expect you to get their patterns down - they have loads of health and can take Sakuya out in just a few hits, so you need to maximize your MP efficiency while avoiding their attacks the entire time.

Sakuya also has time stopping and slowing powers that can be used in combat and for solving puzzles. Stopping time is an easy way to set up stylish kills or avoid foes, but it too runs on a resource that slowly recharges over time, so you can't rely solely on it. Slowing time obviously isn't as drastic, but it is effective for dodging attacks that linger and for solving certain types of puzzles. Plus, it doesn't pull from the same pool as your time stop, encouraging regular use of it. This game might have some of the best implementation of time-altering mechanics I've ever seen because it immediately feels natural and balanced in a way that's powerful without feeling cheap or finicky.

Strangely, exploration is the area where Luna Nights falters the most, being something that's typically essential for success in the genre. While the individual areas are inoffensive, containing several ideas like castles and clock towers pulled straight out of Castlevania, none of them feel standout or particularly interesting. They're more linear than they look and not all of them contain traversal puzzles, so you end up finding many areas that are just straight lines. Metroidvanias typically love to shower you in hidden treasures and paths, but Luna Nights is also conservative in this regard. While you can find and buy upgrades for your time gauge and knife capacity, these upgrades rarely feel substantial and the map doesn't mark their locations even if you spotted them before you were able to get them. The mobility upgrades you get feel powerful but are widely spread out and not used particularly often, with one of them being reserved for a single instance in a post-game area. The ill-advised, borderline useless placement of teleporters plus the game's heavier reliance on skill-based play made it so I never felt excited about backtracking, which is a shame in a genre like this.

Luna Nights is a very short experience, clocking in somewhere between 5-10 hours depending on how much exploring and post-game content you do. While this worked out well for someone like me who was trying to finish it on a deadline, I also found it disappointing since I was having a great time and didn't want it to end so soon. It really feels like a game that could have used another area or two to let some of the exploratory abilities shine more, and I certainly wouldn't have said no to more boss fights either. It's a shame that it was taken off of Game Pass because it really is a perfect fit for the service. It's breezy, mechanically thrilling, and it has a killer soundtrack - all of these things make it an easy recommendation to anyone into the genre.

When I picked up this game, I didn't really know what to expect. I don't know a thing about vocaloids or Touhou and I've never played previous iterations in arcades or on phones, so I was taking quite a risk. Even on sale, Groove Coaster cost me $35 with loads of DLC as an option too (the game is normally $50), which is way more than I typically pay for digital games!. Luckily, I found myself hooked in pretty quickly and grew to appreciate both its choice in music and its fast paced, extremely flashy gameplay. If you like rhythm games and want one that feels designed with controllers in mind, this is the one to go for.

Groove Coaster's gameplay is right in its name; your job is to follow your avatar of choice as it moves along a literal track and press buttons in time with the notes that appear. All you need are two buttons and two sticks, but the game gets a lot of mileage out of them. You'll be flicking and jiggling sticks, holding buttons, pushing/pressing in unison, and doing tons of tapping. It's frantic and intense in all the right ways while never feeling like it's going out of rhythm or isn't meant for a controller. As much as I like Taiko no Tatsujin (which is probably the closest rhythm game mechanically to this one), it never feels 100% right on a controller, so I was pleasantly surprised to see Groove Coaster feel so natural in comparison. The game does an excellent job of slowly doling out new notes over the course of each difficulty level, too. Easy mode only has you doing the most basic of notes and each step up adds some of the others in, giving you a natural curve where you get time to learn everything you need to know. You can also equip items to make things easier or harder, such as items that nullify a number of mistakes or give you more coins for missions at the cost of a stricter win condition. These items don't cost anything to use and they don't prevent you from getting S ranks or mission progress, so there's no reason to be shy about trying them.

Equally impressive are Groove Coaster's visuals, which are incredible to an almost unbelievable degree. Every single song has completely unique visuals, all of which tie into the song both thematically and mechanically. For example, the song "Lost Colors" starts you off with dull, colorless notes that gradually gain more colors as the song goes on. It's a great bit of visual storytelling in a genre that you wouldn't expect it from and it even bolsters the gameplay too. As much as they're out to blow your mind, the visuals are also out to kill you, and the game has no problem distracting you with flashing lights, images that obscure the track (the Misc genre tracks in particular love to do this), and sudden twists and turns that mess up your timing. It sounds like it'd be cheap and frustrating, but since you have plenty of leeway to succeed in a song and the game makes its intent obvious from the get-go, this instead just feels like a cheeky bit of fun and a clever way to challenge players.

Even with all its DLC, the base game still offers an impressive 100 songs, 29 of which are unlockable through some of the game's 300 missions. It's awesome to see this much unlockable content in a modern video game, but I wish the implementation of the missions was done in a way that felt more varied and interesting. Missions are completed through playing specific songs, completing multiple songs in a genre under certain conditions, or by simply buying your way past them with coins. This is all fine and good, but for whatever reason, the game loves to repeat objectives and genres for many of the unlockable songs specifically. Several of them are locked behind the "Complete 10 songs in the Original genre with a full chain" missions, which is obnoxious for multiple reasons. While a good batch of songs, there aren't that many songs in the Original genre, so you'll definitely be replaying those songs many times (I swear if I have to play Kimi no Starlight Road one more time!). The Misc genre also ends up in a similar situation where it gets reused for challenges constantly, except that genre has even fewer songs! It's a strange choice for sure and focusing on the missions means you'll have to neglect many other songs, so I recommend balancing out your playlist and taking breaks from missions every time they want you to play Link Link Fever yet again or whatever, just so you get to make use of that huge tracklist.

Full chains are a pain that can turn the experience from an immersive one to one that's the musical equivalent of a checklist, and that just plain stinks. You see, to get a full chain, you need to hit every single note in a song, including the "Ad-lib" notes that are completely invisible. You're meant to figure these out based on the rhythm of the song, but considering that a typical song has near or more than a thousand notes, it's very easy to miss them in the heat of the action. There's an item that makes them visible, but with that on, you can no longer use an item to nullify misses, meaning you need to be absolutely perfect. Unless you're really good at the game, you'll likely want to stick to Easy and Normal songs for full chains, which means even more repetition in that you'll be replaying the same songs on the same difficulties. Ad-libs are an interesting idea on paper and probably make more sense in the arcades as a way for skilled players to flaunt their knowledge, but at home, they just feel like someone slapped a collectahon checklist onto this rhythm game and I found myself wishing they weren't a thing.

With an impressive variety of songs, including picks from anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gurren Lagann, tons of Touhou remixes, as well as music from various Taito games like Darius, Bubble Bobble, and even Lufia 2, Groove Coaster feels like one of the best rhythm games in years. It plays fantastically, has what may be the best visuals to ever grace a game in the genre, and is chock full of content. The asking price is steep, but this is one that's still absolutely worth buying. I get the impression this game went somewhat under the radar and that's a shame considering how rare rhythm games tend to be nowadays. If you're like me and you wish the genre had more of a presence, check Groove Coaster out and you'll quickly learn that the genre still has life in it yet.

While this DLC did offer some fun, I gotta say... I came away a bit disappointed! Five years was a long time to wait, but that time obviously allowed the development team to perfect their artistic craft (while preventing crunch, which is important!) and make some of the finest animation ever seen in video games. However, to me, it feels like their desire to one-up the animation of the base game led to everything else getting neglected. This DLC has very little in the way of meaningful mechanical additions, does nothing to address (and even doubles down on!) some of Cuphead's weaknesses, and even its story veers too closely to that of the main game's with its "twist". The base game managed to strike an extremely skillful balance between its presentation and its gameplay, but here it feels like they leaned much harder towards style over substance. Cuphead is known first and foremost for how gorgeous it is, so I understand the impulse, but I can't help but feel disappointed with that choice considering how successors to games like Gunstar Heroes and Alien Soldier are so rare and difficult to get feeling mechanically right, which is something that the base game genuinely succeeded in doing. You could also just say that I'm being too harsh towards a DLC that they only charged $8 for and could have easily gotten away with charging more for, but hey, we like to have fun here, right?

The focal point of this DLC is the introduction of Ms. Chalice as a playable character, which sounded great on paper, but I found the execution to be surprisingly lacking. Cuphead and Mugman are identical, but Ms. Chalice feels superior in every way. She gets an extra hit point, she can double jump, she has a dodge roll with invincibility frames built in, her parry feels more reliable to do thanks to it being part of her dash instead of an additional button press mid-jump, and her specials are conveniently better suited for the new bosses too. The "catch" is supposed to be that using her requires you to reserve your charm slot for the Astral Cookie needed to summon her, but considering that every charm from the base game except the Smoke Bomb either kinda sucks or is partially built into Ms. Chalice anyway, this isn't actually a drawback at all! It definitely feels like they want you to play as Ms. Chalice exclusively, which is understandable since she's new, but this becomes a problem if you're playing in co-op. Since there's only one Astral Cookie, only one person gets to play as her, which means that only one person actually gets to experience one of the DLC's major selling points. It wouldn't have made sense for story reasons to have two Ms. Chalices running around, but I think it ultimately would have been to the game's benefit instead of making one person feel like they're having a compromised experience.

Another selling point of the DLC was the addition of new weapons and charms. This was something I was excited for since the weapons in the base game had some noticeable balance issues (like the Charge Shot being way better than everything else until they patched it later) and injecting some new options for playstyle variety is exactly what the base game needed. The selection of charms in the base game also felt very underwhelming and in need of some more appealing options beyond the Smoke Bomb, so the idea of fixing that was practically worth the $8 alone. That... did not work out here at all! Somehow, they managed to reintroduce the exact same issue through the new Crackshot weapon, which combines the tracking capabilities of the Chaser with the power of the Charge Shot to create something that's too good to pass up. Why bother with pesky things like swapping weapons based on the situation when you can just do more damage more quickly than any other weapon without having to worry about aiming? The other new weapons, Converge and Twist Up, are certainly good too, but they're not on the same level as the Crackshot. The Heart Ring is pretty good against certain bosses since you can accumulate extra health by parrying enough, but I just found myself relying on the Smoke Ball like I had been. You can still succeed just fine without the Crackshot if you want, but it was disappointing to see that the team made the same mistake again after 5 years and having already dealt with a similar problem not long after the game's original release.

As for the bosses themselves, I found that none of them compared favorably to even the mid-tier stuff from the base game in terms of quality. Cuphead is a frantic game full of things to react to and patterns to analyze, but the bosses in this DLC feel downright incoherent at times. Because of how beautifully animated each boss is and how much effort was put into them, the bosses aren't so much an opponent to face as they are a scene to decipher. So many elements are at play all the time, from detailed, moving backgrounds to multiple bosses appearing at once and minions constantly showing up simultaneously alongside them, that it feels nearly impossible to understand what you're even looking at the first few times you try any boss. Eventually, you'll be able to parse the noise and realize that the bosses really aren't so bad, but at the same time, you'll also realize that they all rely on the same few dirty tricks that occasionally comprised the worst parts of the original game.

The fight against Glumstone the giant loves to obscure information from you in ways that don't feel intentional, like gnomes popping out at random and doing whatever attack they want to, the platforms always going up and down at the absolute worst time and not in a specific pattern, or even spawning gnomes behind background elements during the second part, making them nearly impossible to notice. Some of the other fights, like the ones against the Moonshine Mob, Esther Winchester, and the final boss have strange rules alongside the constant barrage of onscreen elements that either never leave or pop up and do whatever they want, making any misunderstandings or surprises harshly punishing. Why does touching the mob's gramophone (not its energy beams) hurt you? Why is the eagle that Esther employs during her first phase completely invincible unlike every other minion in the game? Why is the third phase of the final boss like five seconds long and almost completely non-threatening? It just feels like some choices were made because they looked really cool or because they didn't want certain animations interrupted, not because they had mechanical cohesion. I've always been the kind of guy who can play the ugliest game in the world if it's mechanically rich and I really don't place that much value in visuals most of the time in general, so I found this increased focus on the "rule of cool" to be frustrating. Games are ultimately a set of rules when you boil them down, so if those rules don't make sense, then the trust between you and the developers begins to break down, and nobody wants that.

The fight against the Howling Aces is notable in that it's pretty straightforward in comparison and actually chills out on the screen clutter, which is great until they decide to throw in a screen rotating gimmick that's deeply disorienting and serves as the only reason the fight is challenging at all. The weirdest part about it is that the gimmick is strangely lacking in confidence and handled in a sloppy fashion - pausing the game spoils the surprise because it lets you change the controls to a different scheme specifically for that section before you even get there. The problem is, how am I supposed to know what the options do without context? I know something about the fight is going to change, but how can I make an educated choice without any explanation for them? If you need to offer different control options just for a minute or two of your game because it might be frustrating or incomprehensible to players by default, maybe that part is worth reconsidering entirely then? Apparently, there's a trick that lets you avoid dealing with the screen rotations entirely, but said trick isn't likely to be found by most people naturally and still begs the question of why the gimmick is even there in the first place if they knew that avoiding it altogether would be the more appealing option to discover.

It's just weird, is all! The base game had such a wide swath of bosses that challenged you in different ways along with run and gun stages that tested different mechanical sensibilities. Some bosses were pretty basic, others challenged you by using the arena in different ways, parries felt more valuable, and there was even a boss rush with its own self contained progression mechanics. In the DLC, almost every boss is exactly the same mechanically to such a degree that it feels like they ran out of ideas on how to design bosses and challenge players - drown the screen in nonsense, distract the player with beautiful animations, spawn minions constantly from random parts of the screen, have at least one element remain on the screen to harass the player, and make some projectiles constantly vary in trajectory in unpredictable ways. Ironically, the most tightly designed and unique boss is hidden behind an elaborate optional puzzle that's not particularly well explained and has its solution randomized per save file. The boss is much closer to the strong design philosophy of the original game - it's more consistent in its patterns, it doesn't constantly move around the screen, it doesn't have any minions, and it has a unique mechanic that affects how you damage it without having to drastically change how you play the game. Solving this puzzle without any help and getting such a cool reward was my favorite part of the DLC and yet there's a good chance people missed out on it!

Aside from that boss and puzzle, the only other part of the DLC I particularly enjoyed was the King's Leap, a series of minibosses that challenge you to defeat them with only your parry ability. These bosses are bite sized compared to the regular ones, since they only have a few methods of attack and don't change phases, but not being able to pump them full of Crackshot for an easy win inherently makes them far more interesting. With such a limited arsenal (and no Smoke Ball!), you really need to familiarize yourself with how to avoid each attack, since these fights require a bit of stamina and patience to endure long enough. They're not all perfectly designed - the Knight is hell on earth until you figure out that you're supposed to stay near it, and the Rook feels so clearly designed for Ms. Chalice that playing as Cuphead during it felt like I was being mocked in comparison - but just having to think outside of the box and fight new bosses in new ways is exactly what I wanted from the DLC. The simplicity of their designs and their arenas does so much to make the action more readable and fair, so dying was rarely a displeasure. Having to coordinate with my co-op partner to decide which of us parries when and how to get around each attack was so much more satisfying than the "play this stage a dozen times until you figure out what randomly spawning thing out of the fifty different things onscreen is hitting you" design ethos of the rest of the DLC.

I suppose that's my personal issue with the DLC overall: after 5 years of waiting, I didn't just want "more Cuphead", I wanted some kind of evolution or twist on Cuphead that felt like a proper expansion. King's Leap and the graveyard puzzle were exactly the kinds of things I consider a worthy expansion to the high quality of the base game, so it was disappointing to me that most of the content wasn't that clever or enjoyable. This DLC didn't reignite my passion for the game, but instead made me question it more than I previously did, which does in fact wound me! I imagine this is going to be the last bit of Cuphead content for a very long time, so I hope the development team takes some time to really reevaluate what they want to do with the gameplay. To me, it feels like they were running out of ideas on how to add onto the existing Cuphead formula without just making it harder in ways that don't always feel fair, so maybe something more drastic is needed entirely. A new genre of gameplay, maybe a greater focus on different aspects like levels or the story and world itself, or heck, maybe even that Netflix show is closer to what they want going forward! Regardless, I really am curious to see what Studio MDHR does next, since they're clearly extremely talented individuals who have a lot to offer. I just think that, maybe, they need to decide whether or not they want to keep focusing so strongly on animation in their games and whether or not video games are the ideal avenue for their particular specialty in the first place. I wonder how that Netflix show is, now that I think about it...

If you're like me, you like Space Invaders at least a little bit. Of course you do, it's a classic after all. But at the same time, you're terrible at it and you don't exactly LOVE it. It feels like it needs a little something extra, some more spice to put it one way. Space Invaders '95 is exactly what the doctor ordered - it takes the classic formula, moves it closer to the shoot 'em up conventions of the 90s, and adds in a boatload of charm through creative twists and a ridiculous cast of characters. Parodius is the most obvious comparison, but it's also like Galaga '88 and Donkey Kong '94 in that it expands upon its predecessor in bold ways while also respecting its legacy without abandoning the fundamentals that worked.

Instead of one ship, you now get a choice of several different ships with different pilots. Some of these are cameos from Taito characters like Kiki KaiKai's Sayo-chan and Darius' Silver Hawk, but others are original creations like a dog in a trash can and a sentient pile of poop. Each character gets a unique weapon that can also be charged for a more powerful shot as well as a similar counterpart for cooperative play. Not only does your character choice affect the gameplay, it also determines the dialogue that you'll see throughout the game. Characters will comment at the beginning and end of some areas, before boss fights, and when the player runs out of lives. Story isn't exactly much of a thing here, but the dialogue is so bizarre and strangely translated that there's a lot of joy to be had in seeing what each character has to say.

Much like Donkey Kong '94, the first level tries to trick you into thinking that this is just another game of Space Invaders, but that facade quickly gives way to a wacky cast of aliens. You'll encounter aliens with cartoonish proportions and faces, pig aliens, aliens that split in two or extend upon being shot, and aliens lounging at the beach, and even the spirits of dead aliens that possess furniture in a haunted house. The sheer variety of aliens to encounter turns Space Invaders '95 into a genuine spectacle that you'll want to push through just to see what happens next. The silly visuals aren't just for fun, but they also affect how Space Invaders is played. In the beach area, the aliens are so chill and so over the usual rules of the games that they no longer come at you in formation; instead, they fly all around the screen, using the tide and nearby sand and trees to take cover from your shots and come at you in trickier ways. In the haunted house level, you don't fight aliens but instead fight the furniture that their spirits possess, meaning that anything can happen from any direction. Plus, your shields can be covered by a tombstone-like object that shoots at you and it's a huge pain to deal with! Even with all these changes, the aliens can still cause you to lose by getting too close to the bottom of the screen, which fully resets the level if it happens, so it's a win condition for them that you desperately need to avoid at all times, just like in the original game. Therefore, you're still playing the original Space Invaders while playing '95; it's like two games in one! Bosses weaponize this fact in clever ways too, primarily by summoning aliens to distract you from their deadly attacks. At its best, Space Invaders '95 is a balancing act that keeps the action frantic at all times.

It's important to remember that Space Invaders '95 is an arcade game though, so expect to die many times while you learn the levels. Some onslaughts can feel a bit cheap the first time you encounter them and depending on your character choice, you might not feel like your weaponry is up to the task. Luckily, you can continue as much as you like by pumping credits in, and you can even change characters if you find yours isn't cutting it. It's also a pretty short experience that doesn't last more than an hour, so it never overstays its welcome. In a lot of ways, Space Invaders '95 really is the perfect arcade experience - it's incredibly charming with some flashiness, it's easy to pick up but takes skill to master, and it's quick enough to be something you can pull out whenever you want. Whether you like Space Invaders, shoot 'em ups, or both, this game is one you should absolutely try as one of Taito's many classics that are woefully underdiscussed nowadays.

More often than not, the Shinobi series liked to jump around and try different things instead of finding its footing with truly iterative sequels (ever play The Cyber Shinobi or Shinobi Legions? The latter is better than it looks, promise!), so Shadow Dancer is all the more valuable for that reason. It was the one time they looked back at what they had accomplished and said, "how can we directly improve upon this?" Revenge of Shinobi to Shinobi III and the PS2 Shinobi to Nightshade could be argued to be iterative sequels, but in my mind, they make different enough choices that there's just enough riskiness in the design so that they're not totally iterative. If you like the original Shinobi, I'd be incredibly surprised if you didn't like Shadow Dancer, and if you ask me, it's a straight improvement upon the original arcade classic.

One thing worth noting is that the arcade version of Shadow Dancer is a different game from the Genesis version. The Genesis version is probably a bit superior overall, I'd say, but they're close enough in quality that playing both is my recommendation. There aren't all that many Shinobi-likes running around, so why not enjoy both?

Shadow Dancer really isn't much different from Shinobi, but the things it adds make a notable difference, the main one being the addition of a dog companion. Not only is that inherently cool because it's a dog, it adds a really nice layer of strategy that the game takes full advantage of. Your canine friend can be sicced on an enemy to stun them and leave them open to attack. This is great for reducing the amount of attacks coming your way if you need to handle a pincer situation or if you're not quite sure how to get past a trigger happy enemy. It's not a foolproof thing, though, because the dog can be hit by enemies and rendered unusable for just long enough that his absence will get you killed. Thus, you need to know what enemies to sicc him on and when to keep him at your side for something that might come up later. Enemies that use guns are a prime target if they're not crouching, whereas enemies with shields will usually knock him away before he can do anything. He's an unlimited resource, but not one that's without flaws, lending Shadow Dancer an interesting ebb and flow that gives it an identity when compared to the original game.

Shinobi, like Rolling Thunder before it, is all about approaching an engagement from the right angle or with the right timing. Combat itself is little more than just pressing the button because you and everyone else are taken out in a single hit, but how you choose to start the battle is the difference between cleanly surviving or ending up in an unavoidable deathtrap. Shadow Dancer uses the addition of the dog to provide new kinds of situations that strongly encourage a calculated approach. A lot of the level design is even more vertically oriented than in the original, which leads to plenty of situations where the enemy has the high ground or you're "forced" to step down into an obvious trap. Normally, these situations could be cheap, but having your dog friend lets you get the jump on them in ways not possible. That risk is ever present, though - what if you use the dog to get past the next segment only for the next one to throw a jumpscare at you that would be way easier if he wasn't on cooldown? Well, that's where the game's place as an arcade title comes into play; you're gonna die, you're gonna have to learn where enemy placements are, but once you do, you really can take out every single foe with surgical precision and the exact right allocation of resources just like a ninja should.

Beyond that, Shadow Dancer plays it faithful. You've got four areas, including caves, an airport, a bridge, and sewers, boss fights, and a between level minigame that feels like it's impossible even though it surely isn't. The aesthetics are totally on point, as you'd expect from a Sega game, so much so that there's graffiti on one of the walls that literally says "Sega Aesthetics"! There's a dark, grungy vibe to Shadow Dancer that's far removed from Sega's blue skies reputation, but it really works for creating an atmosphere of tension, one where you never quite know what's going to jump out at you. The bosses are an interesting batch, too, the most notable of which being a robot train thing and the final boss, who summons these weird, tiny floating ninjas at you? It's very strange and actually made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it, I'll admit, but when she drops the act and comes at you herself, it goes from funny to nightmarishly difficult!

Shadow Dancer is everything good about the original Shinobi and more. The dog adds a lot, the level design is even more thoughtful, the visuals are improved, the new power-ups instill even more variety, and the difficulty is more reasonable. They even cut out the "preventing continues during the last boss without warning" thing that nobody likes! Though Shadow Dancer ultimately wasn't the future of the series and isn't on the level of Revenge or Shinobi III, it's still a quality game worth running through at least once. There are different schools of design one can apply to Shinobi, all of which proved to be successful in their own ways, so having a "definitive" version of the original style in the form of both Shadow Dancer games is a very nice thing to have. Even if you prefer the later Shinobi games, heck, especially if you do, you should really give this one a try to get a better idea of how the series became successful in the first place. Sometimes, it takes thoughtful iteration on something to understand what choices are timeless and which ones need to evolve with the times before you can really go wild with future ideas. You gotta practice your dancing before you can become a master, after all!

Sometimes, you just have to appreciate a well-oiled machine, and Nobody Saves the World is exactly that. It's a game that reveals its entire hand to you in little more than an hour's time, but it's also a clever game that finds a way to make its transparency work in its favor. Though its presentation is very much modern (as long as you don't mind characters that are adorably and intentionally kind of hideous), its focus on maintaining an extremely consistent gameplay loop feels delightfully old school. You could easily call it a one trick pony, but it's a dang good trick!

The story provides a sufficiently interesting mystery to explore, has charming characters with humor that generally lands and visuals that do an excellent job of depicting genuinely disgusting things as a way of portraying a world covered in a calamity that seeks to warp it into something unhabitable. Ultimately, though, the crux of this game, what makes it truly stand out, lies with its transformation system and how everything you do feeds into it and other aspects of the game simultaneously. Your character is capable of using multiple transformations that allow him to take specific forms for the matter at hand. To give a few examples, you can become a knight and fight at close range, you can try becoming a mermaid to travel across water and find different approaches, or you can just turn into a slug and shoot tears from a distance while your sliminess slows your foes down. You can even become an egg and roll around if that's your thing! Combat on its own isn't particularly deep, with a basic attack and three skills being all you get per form, but the sheer flexibility you have in choosing your skills is what keeps things interesting.

As you use transformations and satisfy goals such as "kill x using this skill y number of times", you'll gain experience for that form that feeds into its rank. Ranking up gets you new skills that can be used on any form you have, which naturally leads to some wonderful combinations. Sick of having to turn around to use the Horse's kick attack? Give it the Ranger's arrow attacks and you won't have to bother! Want the minion-heavy Magician to get even more minions than just his rabbits and tigers? Give him the Zombie's ability to infect people and you'll be running with a small army of zombies in no time! Even with just three skills, the amount of options you have really adds so much room to express yourself and find creative solutions to the game's many quests.

Instead of grinding experience or brute forcing things with a single build, you're meant to shift around constantly and try new things. If you ever struggle with a quest, you probably have a skill that'll secretly turn it into a cinch! Those aforementioned challenges serve as a wonderfully elegant way of teaching players about potential combinations, too, which is very helpful for those not accustomed to the particular logic that "Job System" games run on. To give an example, one of the slug's challenges asks you to poison enemies using your basic tear attack. By dedicating one of your four passive skills slots to the Ranger's poison accumulation ability in order to solve this "puzzle", you'll end up learning that poison works extremely well on rapid fire attacks in the process. It's really a stroke of absolute genius how well this system works in both educating the player and providing them a canvas with which to express themselves however they please!

Completing quests and form challenges also earns you experience for your general rank that serves as a base power level to be applied to any form as well as Stars, which are required to unlock the game's main dungeons. These requirements may feel a bit arbitrary at first, but they encourage you to engage with the game in all sorts of ways without forcing you to do dungeons that you may not want to do. Depending on how you play, you can knock out sidequests to get stars, you can just buy some using money, you can try out different forms and complete challenges, or you can discover optional demi-dungeons and complete those for stars. You wouldn't think the dungeons would be the lowlight of the game, but they kinda are, unfortunately. Each one features an incredibly inspired design (like entering through the mouth of a corrupted whale or a weird creature) and modifiers that limit or tweak every combatant's abilities/stats, but they never feature any interesting gimmicks or design twists within the dungeons themselves, ultimately resulting in dull corridors full of enemies you've already fought a bunch of times before. Boss fights are incredibly underwhelming across the board as well, usually consisting of a bigger version of an enemy you've fought combined with infinitely respawning allies. Main story dungeons have all the same issues alongside a restriction that prevents you from gaining experience inside of them at all, which feels like a somewhat bizarre choice. The idea is for you to "choose a build and rely on it for the challenge at hand", but considering how reliant the game is on that constant feedback loop of completing tasks and unlocking new tools to keep your attention, stripping that away just exposes the game's magic tricks in an unflattering way.

Nobody Saves the World is an interesting one to talk about because it feels like the kind of game where words are guaranteed to undersell it a bit. Unlocking forms and experimenting with them is an absolute joy, but it's also a fundamentally simple game to actually play, perhaps to a fault. With only a few buttons needed to control it and a dearth of interesting foes or dungeon threats to navigate around, its core gameplay loop can feel like something you'd mindlessly grind through in a free to play gacha mobile game or something, and it's honestly hard to deny that or defend it against skeptics. But if you're open-minded, this is the kind of game that you should really try for yourself and see if you have the kind of mindset that it needs to really thrive. Even if you lose interest in the gameplay, I feel like this one is a great case study in how to make interlocking systems successfully. It's truly commendable how DrinkBox made everything come together in a way that encourages any and every option you have, which is absolutely ideal for any kind of job system game. Definitely something to take note of if you're looking to develop a game like this! If you enjoy optimizing character builds, enjoy Gauntlet-esque mob clearing, using a variety of goofy looking characters, or just appreciate a constant drip feed of dopamine, you'll be impressed by how much this game can sink its claws into you and capture your heart.