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.

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.

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.

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!

Though it got a decent amount of attention in 2021, part of me still feels like Scarlet Nexus was underestimated. Bandai Namco makes a lot of stuff that immediately appeals to me, and Scarlet Nexus is perhaps one of the best examples. A flashy as heck "Brainpunk" world with intense action RPG combat that takes a few notes from character action games (or whatever you wanna call them), likeable characters, intricate (albeit imperfect) storytelling, and a soundtrack that vibes like few others have recently makes for a game that I knew I'd love. A lot of people seem to write their stuff off as "too anime" or whatever nonsense, but ignore those claims: Scarlet Nexus is an excellent game that deserves to stand tall with the best 2021 has to offer.

The game starts off with a relatively straightforward premise not unlike something like Neon Genesis Evangelion (teens with special abilities are enlisted to fight against an otherworldly threat) that quickly escalates into something broader. Within the first few chapters, important characters are killed, the main antagonist makes (some of) his intentions strangely obvious, tons of exposition and worldbuilding is done, time travel becomes a factor, and plenty of conflicts are stirred up. It's a really exciting, fast-paced intro in a genre that isn't necessarily known for them, though such breakneck pacing can make it hard to keep up. This extends throughout the game and the main story never really slows down. Later exposition dumps can be overwhelming and the game doesn't always space them out so well, but the emotion is there and the ideas presented are strong enough that you'll likely walk away with a good impression overall. Special mention goes out to one particular use of time travel in the game that I don't know I've seen before - I won't spoil it, but damn if it isn't a wildly elaborate way to get what you want!

The story is also reliant upon the perspective of its two protagonists, Yuito Sumeragi and Kasane Randall. You can select one of them as your main character and that'll determine the viewpoint of certain cutscenes, the team that'll accompany you for most of the game, and a bit of unique content here and there. It's a really cool idea and I was excited to see how different the two playthroughs would feel, but it only really succeeds in the gameplay department. Having to practice with two wildly different fighting styles gives you an appreciation for what they can do - Kasane can keep foes stunlocked and at bay with her range from the start, whereas Yuito is more of a late bloomer, starting off a bit hard to use but becoming a veritable human blender by the end. Having to fight with different teammates is an educational experience that teaches you how to best use their powers. Kasane's team generally has powers that make it easy to press the advantage and ensnare enemies in her attacks, whereas Yuito's team is best suited to helping him actually approach foes to make use of his already dominant offense. However, the story changes between routes are disappointingly minor. All of the major content is shared between characters, so you'll be repeating most of the game just to see the occasional different morsel, and these differences dry up entirely once you approach the endgame. Considering that these unique bits really don't add a ton to the story, it's hard to justify a second playthrough (at least right away) specifically for the story content. At the very least, it's worth it for the segments where the two teams fight - the sheer emotion of both sides coming through, the intensity of the mechanics hitting a high, and the amazing track that plays culminate in moments that are masterstroke boss fights.

Combat in Scarlet Nexus is some of the most thrilling I've seen in a while. Using a combination of melee attacks and psychokinetic abilities, you can do flashy combos, powerful charge attacks, and manipulate the environment to your advantage. Your weapon does the most damage in most cases once it's upgraded, but throwing stuff at enemies is the best way to stun them and reduce their break gauge, allowing for an instant kill or high damage using a brain crush. The amount of objects to throw is always significant and certain ones result in unique quick time events of sorts that reward you with more powerful attacks. Slamming a giant truck into things never gets old! Scarlet Nexus has some character action elements, but it is very much an action RPG first and foremost. Equipment and stats are a significant factor as is using the right attacks or elements to hit enemy weaknesses. You're also very much reliant on your team that can provide you with special powers temporarily. Some of these give your weapon an element like fire or electricity, some influence your movement through slowing time or teleportation, and others like duplication supplement your offense in interesting ways. It can be a lot to take in and the game introduces new mechanics every so often for a good chunk of the game, but mastering combat is very rewarding. Combat is also supplemented by a wonderful soundtrack in each area that changes depending on whether or not you're in combat. When you're in the zone and the music is pulsating with intense electronic energy, it really makes the experience come together as something that feels truly, genuinely cool.

Outside of combat, intermission segments give you a chance to chill out and vibe with your team by giving them gifts (which decorate the hub permanently, it's really neat!) or hearing what they have to say in bond episodes. By improving your friendship through gifts and combat, your teammates will open up to you, telling you their life stories and seeking your help in improving them. This is where a majority of the game's character development lies, so it's an optional thing that kinda feels mandatory. These episodes are well worth it though and feature compelling arcs unique to each protagonist due to their differing relationships with each character. For example, the mysterious, oftentimes obnoxiously indirect Kagero tries to be something of a father figure to Kasane for personal reasons, whereas his relationship with Yuito is far more fragile as a result of his dangerous line of work forever changing Yuito's life. Shiden is an absolute asshole to both characters due to his inferiority complex, but as her teammate, Kasane takes more time to understand where he comes from whereas Yuito finds it harder to break the ice because of his privileged background as part of the Sumeragi family. Every bond episode is notable and compelling and you're likely to think very differently of each character by the time you're done. These scenes can get incredibly long though, so having to do four or more in between every chapter can get tedious fast. These segments actually take up a significant amount of the play time if you want them to and that can often be detrimental to the game's pacing. The stories here are interesting and give a lot of extra life to an already exuberant cast, but it'd be nice if they were spread out a bit more or were perhaps more consistently interactive. It's a similar problem to Tales of Arise - the actual quality of the writing is very solid, it's just the lack of space between so much of it makes it feel worse than it actually is.

Scarlet Nexus is easily one of the best games of 2021. Everything about it comes together in a package that's both incredibly cool and substantial, featuring stories and characters with relatable themes like finding your place in the world and learning to trust others that you likely won't forget. Combat is satisfyingly deep and only grows moreso with time, making you feel like a pro as you eradicate foes with the power of teamwork and public transit. If the pacing was better, namely with less exposition dumped all in one scene, more spread out bond episodes, and some of the later levels cut down slightly, it'd probably be a perfect game for me! If you enjoy action RPGs and want something that feels familiar in its coziness yet fresh in its action packed execution, don't sleep on this one.

While I didn't hate my time with it, No More Heroes 3 was profoundly disappointing to me. The original game blew my mind back in 2008 and quickly became one of my favorites. Its unusual grindhouse-esque vibes and cheeky sense of humor made for an experience unlike anything I had seen. Everything about it felt comedic yet deeply unsettling with plenty to say both about its atypical protagonist and video games as a whole. It played well too, with flashy combat that looked amazing and felt great once you got the hang of it. NMH2 wasn't far behind it in overall quality either and I absolutely loved it for its improved combat, excellent soundtrack and (slightly) heightened stakes. These games (along with Killer7) were my introduction to Suda51 and Grasshopper, and for a minute there, I was starting to think they were infallible. Shadows of the Damned proved this wrong pretty quickly, but it was still a decent enough game and removed from the expectations that come with a sequel like this. NMH3 feels like it was compromised in every aspect of its design (in part due to reasons beyond the team's control, like covid) and struggles to have anything interesting to say, leaving me with only a void in my heart and thoughts that I still have a hard time putting into words.

Travis Strikes Again certainly had interesting things to say about Suda51's career as well as the industry in general, but playing it was an absolute nightmare of tedium that legitimately strained my eyes. A lot of its choices did not jive with me at all, but I was hopeful it was just an experiment of sorts and NMH3 would veer closer to the first two games. Turns out, I was half right - NMH3 plays very much like the first two and is a more enjoyable experience than TSA by default for it, but everything else about it picks up exactly where TSA left off, much to my chagrin.

TSA served up a significant transformation of Travis' character. Rather than the sociopathic yet oddly likeable killer we had come to know, he had become more of a recluse, intentionally hiding away from society to play video games in the woods. While a sensible enough change considering all he's been through and the end of his arc in NMH2, he felt like he had become a completely different person so suddenly, less of an individual and more of a mouthpiece for Suda51's views and experience with video games and the industry he works in. This isn't inherently a bad thing and considering how many people seem to consider TSA the best entry nowadays, it seems to have resonated with its target audience, but I found this change to be mostly insufferable. Part of what made the first two games so memorable to me was how bizarre yet driven in personal ways everyone was. Watching Travis bicker and interact with similarly deranged people, some of which simply enjoyed the thrill of the kill and others who were more nuanced, made for entertainment that was like watching reality TV - you know everyone involved kinda sucks, but that's what makes it so fun! But here, Travis is so far removed from all of that and it just makes him boring by comparison. The game is so fixated on video games that you generally know what's coming and what he's going to say based on the environment alone. It reminds me of Eat Lead if anyone remembers that game - a game that just reeks with "how do you do, fellow kids?" energy. It's a weird choice to me because prior to this I wouldn't have questioned Suda's love for the medium at any point, so I don't really understand why the game was so insistent on trying to relate to me through video game references instead of through the perspective and experiences specific to the character I had grown to love.

I bring this all up because NMH3 takes this and amps it up further. TSA Travis at least had his moments of introspection and intrigue, but NMH3 Travis is all figured out. He loves video games and Takashi Miike films and he'll let you know about it constantly. He grew up with a video game he has a personal connection to called Deathman (just like you, a person who probably likes video games!). He's essentially a rich superhero with access to advanced tech like Iron Man and everybody loves him and lives with him now. It is a "proper" conclusion to his arc in that he has come a long way since his early days and learned a lot, but it's also a far less interesting conclusion that feels surprisingly normal coming from a team that tends to do anything but. Celebrated, 100% competent heroes like this are a dime a dozen in video games, so it was a shame to see Travis become someone far less interesting than he once was even if he is a better person for it.

This kind of treatment technically extends to the rest of the cast as well. Much ado was made about Bad Girl and Shinobu returning in TSA, but here they're sidelined until the end immediately. Badman gets even less time in the spotlight (for a good reason, admittedly) and Sylvia is mostly reserved for a lingering plot thread/recurring joke that never gets resolved in a satisfying way. Henry is a completely different person now and goes from a perfect foil to Travis to a brief, purely antagonistic force that ushers in the most nonsensical portion of the game. Naomi is a tree now, for some reason? At least Jeane the cat gets a new, extremely deep voice that's pretty hilarious; they're probably the most entertaining character in the game now! But beyond that, the characters we've come to know over multiple games are at their least nuanced and likeable here, and considering that this may be the last NMH game ever, that's a huge bummer.

The new characters vary in quality to dramatic degrees. Some characters, like new antagonist Fu, get plenty of time to showboat and do ridiculous things that make them fit right in (though he also gets what might be one of the worst boss fights in recent memory, what a tragedy!), whereas other characters get a scene or two at most or remain mostly unexplained to those not familiar with Suda51's older work. The majority of the alien bosses you fight are some of the dullest foes Grasshopper has presented - most of them are unceremoniously killed in a cutscene or have little of interest to say when you do actually get to fight them. It's telling that the best boss fight by far is the one that's a direct callback to NMH2! There are attempts to make the player see the aliens from Fu's perspective as he bonds with them one last time before their battles with Travis, but these rarely make a lasting impact because of how disposable they end up feeling. It's a noble attempt though and is the only aspect of the game that feels like a proper commentary on a greater theme (the power of friendship vs trusting only yourself and how Travis and Fu represent this) instead of Suda51 just reminding you of what he likes again and again.

Among the game's many polarizing elements is its presentation. The previous games, even TSA, had style in spades, but NMH3 is much shakier. In some places, such as the anime-style intro and ending used for each chapter, the game looks gorgeous, but when actually playing the game, specifically while in the open world, it may very well be one of the ugliest games I've ever seen. Bringing back the open world was a controversial idea considering how it wasn't super well received in NMH1, but theoretically it would have been possible to expand upon it and make it more compelling and fully featured. That... absolutely did not happen here. The open world in NMH3 is probably the most unenjoyable open world I've ever participated in and I found it had absolutely nothing to offer me. Likely due to a combination of budget, time, and covid, the world looks completely unfinished, consisting mostly of empty space, some cats and scorpions to find, aliens that give you t-shirts, and some of the most bright, eyesearingly white buildings I've ever seen. It got to the point that I had to keep my trips in the first part of the open world short because my eyes couldn't handle looking at it! There are some things you can do for cash like various minigames, but once you've got some ranking fights and required qualifier battles under your belt, you'll never need the money they can provide. The minigames honestly aren't bad this time around, it'd just be nice if they were more worthwhile in terms of rewards. Luckily, none of the other areas are as blindingly white as the first one, so I was able to explore them more, but they all fail to impress, with the last two being particularly dumbfounding.

One of them is called "Call of Battle", which as the name implies is a cheeky reference to Call of Duty, I guess. Except that... there's no joke and it has no reason to be here or fit in with the rest of the world? It just looks like a brown war-torn wasteland with ruined buildings, people walking around as if nothing's weird about it, and nothing else of note. It even has a weird grainy CRT filter on the screen whenever you're there, which is such a weird place to go with the idea. Call of Duty games were on older consoles like the PS2, sure, but does anyone actually think of Call of Duty when they think of CRTs? It feels wildly out of touch and random in a way that's almost embarrassing to witness and I constantly found myself wishing that I didn't have to be there.

The other one that really stood out was Neo Brazil. With a name like that, I was expecting some kind of cool futuristic city, but instead I got a flat white plain with a few buildings and some grass on it. It legitimately feels like someone had just started a new project in whatever their program of choice is but had to save it and ship it out before they could finish. This is the last area you see before the final one, too, so it's a hell of a way to fail to impress players with your late-game! It's staggering just how empty and lifeless it is, so much so that I'm wondering if there's some kind of joke I'm missing. Is this a weird jab at Brazil, a reference to yet another anime, or is it exactly what I think it is and covid just hit this game extremely hard? Who knows!

The one part of NMH3 that doesn't feel like a pure downgrade is the combat. It's essentially a continuation of NMH2 that exchanges some of its depth for accessibility and speed. You unfortunately only get one beam katana this time around, stance changing is gone, and you can't punch people to break their guard, but combos now flow more easily from the start thanks to weak/strong attacks having clear, specific combos. Perfect dodging works much more consistently now and the death glove from TSA returns to give you four special attacks on a cooldown. Each one is really useful, ranging from a drop kick to a continuous area of effect that can be placed down to damage foes further as you wail on them. The slash reels return and activate a bevy of random effects that feel too rigged in the player's favor this time around. I was surprised how often I was getting tremendous power boosts and super modes in the middle of boss fights - it made several of them a total joke! The best part of all is that the enemy variety is by far at its best this time around. The game shows its hand too fast and reveals every type surprisingly quickly, but each one fights in pretty different ways; some types prefer to snipe from afar whereas others will rush at you relentlessly or use unique gimmicks like shields that require different approaches. I really missed the bloodcurdling screams that came with fighting normal people in the first two games, but considering how many games neglect and underestimate the importance of enemy variety, seeing it here was very much appreciated. This is also the one part of the game that actually looks and feels good to play, since the excessive particle effects and loud beam katana sounds are back once again to make combat as flashy and impactful as it should be.

Even with all its improvements, combat eventually wears thin thanks to the open world structure. Instead of unique levels tied to each boss, you just have to find copy-pasted battle arenas to fight enemies in until you're allowed to challenge the boss. While the levels in the previous games could run far too long for their own good, completely removing them wasn't the solution. Now, it just feels like you never get a break from the open world grind. What you do at the start is what you're doing at the end, and Travis' arsenal isn't big enough to keep these fights interesting forever. There's incentive to fight enemies multiple times to afford stat upgrades and get materials for chips that can be equipped, but at least on the game's default difficulty, you really don't need to engage with these systems much at all. Stat boosts are obviously good, but some of the moves you can learn are either superfluous or flat out interfere with your usual combo structure. I found a few chips that didn't have drawbacks and had no trouble holding onto those the entire game. Making your postgame content of sorts a grind to get better gear so you can re-fight things you've already fought isn't exactly a compelling way to extend playtime for me and probably many other people, if I had to guess.

In case it wasn't obvious by now, I found No More Heroes 3 to be thoroughly underwhelming. Though its combat is good and the soundtrack, while not up to the standards of the first two games, is pretty decent, everything else was a significant step down. The story is the weakest I've ever seen from a Grasshopper game and it completely fails to do anything interesting or emotional with its characters. Instead of making this a properly satisfying conclusion to a series more than a decade old, it insists upon providing rote, neverending winks towards its audience along with an almost cringeworthy amount of Takashi Miike fanboying and expects you to accept it without question and believe it's leading up to something. Even the finale is mired in wacky, random video game references that hog the air in the room and a cliffhanger tease that sounds way better than the story we actually got! While I can certainly respect personal passion projects from creative, interesting individuals, this one somehow feels too personal and indulgent, to the point where it forgets that there are people out there who aren't necessarily interested in hearing about its creator's every little interest. This game is a Q&A session between Suda and his diehard fans first and foremost, not the story of the weirdo assassin clawing his way to the top that I fell in love with. I can't help but wonder and become wistful over what could have been if the game had more time in the oven, zero interference from covid, and more visible signs of other creative voices involved in its production. What was once one of the games I was most excited for in the history of my entire time with the medium ended up leaving me feeling frustrated and retrospectively uninterested in exploring the rest of a catalog I was once really interested in doing so. For 15 hours, I waited for the one ridiculous moment, the one laugh out loud joke, the one exhilarating boss fight that would have brought me back to the wonder I felt in 2008 all over again, but that moment never came.

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.

Elden Ring requires no introduction. In fact, I bet other people have already used this kind of introduction to mention the lack of needing an introduction! But that's for good reason - Elden Ring has sold millions of copies, has been the talk of gaming circles everywhere since its release, and is the newest in a long line of proven bangers by From Software, so it's unsurprising to see all this hype. Perhaps predictably, it lives up to the hype and provides an experience that'll probably make GOTYs for 2022 the easiest they've been in a long time.

Elden Ring sticks very close to the Souls formula - you play as a character who rises from a pitiful weakling to someone capable of reshaping the world in their image and you do that through leveling up, finding your weapon(s) of choice, calling upon others (if you want), and smacking around freaky monsters as you frantically roll around to avoid attacks. At first, Elden Ring wasn't particularly exciting to me because it just seemed like more of the same. Sekiro was a refreshing, exhilarating ride whereas Dark Souls 3, while good, felt like From Software was beginning to run out of ideas. As someone who enjoys Metal Wolf Chaos for more than its memes, who found comfort in Enchanted Arms because it was the first JRPG I had on the Xbox 360, and as someone who started getting into Armored Core a few years ago, I have mixed feelings about From Software's direction. The Souls games are fantastic, but there's something bittersweet about seeing a company that used to be so experimental becoming so mainstream and content to stick to one specific formula. Luckily for me, the shakeups provided through Elden Ring make the formula feel a whole lot more refreshing and ambitious. Once I got my hands on it in the closed beta, my concerns were quickly assuaged.

Elden Ring feels like a proper culmination of From Software's work since Demon's Souls (aside from Deracine, anyway). You can dual wield weapons like in Dark Souls 2, you have unique skills for each weapon and have to balance two types of flasks like in Dark Souls 3, combat is fast and furious like in Bloodborne, and you can jump and use stealth like in Sekiro. On their own, these elements aren't anything unexpected from video games, but putting them all together in one place does wonders for Elden Ring's combat. Having so many options available at any moment gives you more ways to approach any given situation and the game is built to encourage this while disassuading the R1 spam that could carry you through the original Dark Souls with the right build. Jumping attacks are extremely deadly and can turn the tide of a fight in an instant if they stagger the foe. Ashes of War (weapon arts) are far more powerful than they were in Dark Souls 3 and can do things like buff your character, deal devastating AoE attacks, and even provide new evasive maneuvers. There are new options too, like the ability to craft usable items and summon NPC monsters to help you out. Not only is it fun to fight alongside monsters and bosses that once gave you trouble, these characters are tremendously strong and can make a boss fight go from very hard to pretty easy just because of their ability to hog the boss's attention. The myriad bosses you'll encounter are designed around the bevy of options as well and expect you to try different things rather than relying on the same strategy for 100 hours.

While I would say Elden Ring is probably the easiest game in the Souls legacy, its bosses still have plenty of mean tricks like lengthy combos, delayed strikes, surprise reinforcements, and powerful long range magic. Because of the sheer number of bosses, you're bound to encounter something that has the upper hand over your chosen playstyle. I've seen a lot of people complain about getting stonewalled by some of the endgame bosses, claiming that they need to be nerfed or that they're unfair. In reality, the solution has been right in front of them all this time: pop into that inventory full of dozens upon dozens of weapons and spells and try something different! You don't have to stick with the greatsword you got in the first hour of the game and you don't need to pretend that using magic or summons is "cheating". More than ever before, Elden Ring is designed as a game that facilitates flexibility while also demanding it of players. It's not a coincidence that the item required to reset your character's stats is very easy to come by and unlocking the ability to do so is connected to a boss virtually every player will encounter at some point. Demon's Souls was 13 years ago, it's time to let go of some of those old habits and embrace change!

Fighting a boss that's too hard to approach? Don't bother and just shoot them from afar instead! Can't roll through someone's 8-hit combo? Pump up your endurance, grab a greatshield, and block your way through it. Need to kill a boss faster to reduce the odds of it using a certain attack? Focus on strength or dex, dual wield your favorite weapon type, enchant them with bleeding capabilities, and watch that boss melt in seconds. Admittedly, it's not a foolproof system considering upgrade materials are hard to come by for significant portions of the game and upgrades make a huge difference in weapon performance, but the sheer amount of possible weapons and builds available is no less exciting and the game does a fantastic job of making you jealous and curious enough to experiment even with weapons that aren't upgraded yet. This is also the rare game that makes crafting both quick to do and actually feel experimental instead of formulaic. I hate crafting systems, but for most of the game, I found myself gathering materials to stay stocked up on throwing knives and fire pots with nary an objection. Those items are the real deal and they saved me multiple times! Nearly every area you explore will reward you with a new weapon or spell at some point, and seeing so many cool, creative weapons that I could use made me indecisive in a way that I never am. I set foot into Elden Ring expecting to do a dual wielding setup the whole way through, and I mostly did, but the way I went about doing that was far more dynamic than I anticipated.

To give you an idea of my journey, I used two curved swords with a shield for tougher foes for a while, but then I shifted over to rapiers once I got a cool one from a quest. It didn't take long for me to find a badass greatspear enchanted with the power of madness, so I immediately adjusted for that. Madness doesn't seem to work well on enemies, however, so I bounced between things like fists, claws, greatswords, and even whips for a little bit. Eventually, I got some twinblades and fell in love with their moveset and mostly settled on those with a bit of faith magic and a backup crossbow, but I did end up playing through the entirety of the Mountaintops of the Giants and most of the endgame with a purely faith-based build because I really wanted to shoot lasers with my eyes. Every time you find something cool, it's From Software's way of telling you to give in to temptation and dig deeper into their sandbox of a world. The unfortunate reuse of many bosses, including some notable or story-relevant ones (Godefroy? Really now?) is the most disappointing aspect of Elden Ring, but it's at least partially counteracted by the fact that their potential drops are always unique. You might have to fight the Crucible Knight what feels like 20 times, but at least he drops awesome stuff almost every time! By stubbornly sticking to one specific playstyle, you're denying yourself the joy of constant dopamine hits forged with the greatest of care by From Software. The world is designed in such a way that everyone's journey will be different even if they start off the same way, both through the places they choose to go and what they decide to pull from their ever growing toolbox.

Elden Ring is the game that feels like the purest, most complete expression of From Software's ideology. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki has been on the record multiple times as saying that he doesn't think an easy mode suits his games because he wants a shared experience amongst players. Some people may try to refute this by claiming his philosophy is inherently flawed because nobody is the same and thus cannot have a 100% shared experience, but that's not what he's saying; his philosophy is akin to older games you'd see on, say, the NES, in which the game is a strict set of rules taken as is. The game is the same every time with no way to change its variables outside of cheat devices or romhacks. This creates a particular, increasingly rare experience that starts everybody out in the same place and asks them to forge a path in any way they can think of. Some people will tackle the challenge head on, others will give up, some will ask around for advice and eventually overcome the challenge, more sociable individuals will enlist others to do it for them, and a crafty few will create trainers or hacks to bend the game to their will. Though everyone is different and it's not likely everyone will be able to or want to handle the tasks ahead of them, the challenge, the set of rules that they are given is the same and a shared experience is born.

It's not a design philosophy that every game should follow, but as someone who still regularly plays and enjoys older video games, I'm very glad to see this particular type of game design still exists in some capacity through games like Elden Ring, which inherits this old school mentality and executes it with an elegance like little else. The world that From Software has crafted is immensely mysterious, captivatingly beautiful, contains a whole bunch of weirdos with ulterior motives, and is chock full of dangers and treasures alike, but no matter who you are or how you like to play, Elden Ring only has one question it's interested in asking - given this world and its inhabitants, how will you survive and reshape the world?

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.

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.

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.

Since Touhou Luna Nights was such a pleasant surprise, I figured Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth would be too. I recently watched the Record of Lodoss War anime from 1990 and quite enjoyed it for its beautiful animation and cozy fantasy storytelling that went on to influence loads of other Japanese works, so I was ready to roll with whatever Team Ladybug was offering. Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is the exact opposite experience of its source material - instead of being an impressive trendsetter, it follows in the footsteps of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night so precisely that it ends up feeling too derivative and lacking in ambition for its own good. It's a good game, but there's really nothing exceptional about it, and that's a shame considering how inspired and inventive Touhou Luna Nights was.

Using a similar premise to Luna Nights, Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth follows the story of Deedlit, everybody's favorite elven spellcaster, as she finds herself trapped inside a mysterious labyrinth. The game doesn't specifically call it a wonder labyrinth, but I certainly won't stop you from calling it that! Deedlit comes across her deceased lover Parn (this game takes place years after where the anime ends and high elves outlive humans) who is suddenly alive but unresponsive to her presence, which naturally has her questioning her current location and state of mind. Chasing down Parn and figuring out what's going on is her main goal, but along the way, she'll meet up with friends and foes from her past adventures.

While this game does absolutely nothing to bring people up to speed if they're unfamiliar with the source material, having that knowledge doesn't feel particularly valuable either. Most instances of dialogue in this game consist of Deedlit encountering characters who posit increasingly abstract and philosophical positions on life, death, regret, ambition, and other vague themes meant to make Deedlit doubt herself and her place in the world. That sounds compelling in theory, especially since Deedlit is likely the best choice to do a deeper character study on out of the anime's cast, but the writing just fails to make it interesting at all. Because of how often the game likes to repeat its core themes, every character eschews their personality from the anime in exchange for for being identical mouthpieces. There's no banter, no wit, no charm, and no surprises, just people going on and on about things that sometimes don't even feel coherent. The one exception to this is Woodchuck, who isn't involved in the story but gets his own gambling game in which he'll call you out and ban you temporarily if you try to reload when you lose! Knowing that the game takes place in an alternate realm where nobody is technically real gives something of an excuse for this, but it also makes the stakes feel low and it's hard to care even when villains who didn't survive the events of the anime get another chance to make an impression. Touhou Luna Nights didn't have particularly impressive dialogue by any means, but it had at least a bit of personality to it, something that I can't say the same about here, aside from Woodchuck, anyway.

Stop me if this sounds familiar: in this game, you'll be following a map as you explore areas, kill enemies, and find new weapons and abilities that help you traverse areas that you couldn't access previously. There are thankfully some wrinkles in the formula that we'll get to, but most of the game is extremely familiar if you've played Castlevania or any Metroidvania from the past decade. Not inherently a bad thing, but to belabor the point yet again, nothing here surprises or impresses. Weapons are mostly linear upgrades and generally handle the same (the greatswords being the only real exception with their overhead slash attack that's taken straight out of Castlevania: Aria/Dawn of Sorrow) and traversal upgrades consist of the usual double and super jumps. I understand a lot of people love this genre and the cozy familiarity that comes with it, but I've hit a point where I've played enough of them and it feels so oversaturated that I really need something compelling to hook me beyond good "game feel" or pretty graphics. Deedlit does have a couple of unusual ideas to help it stand out, but I wasn't a fan of either of them, generally finding that they detracted from the gameplay more than they added to it.

Alongside your melee weapons and special magic attacks that you can acquire by exploring (these work identically to the ones in Luna Nights, only not nearly as powerful), you also get a bow that obviously serves as an effective projectile attack. Different bows have different elements or projectiles spreads which is cool, but you'll typically use the strongest one regardless. Your Bow is also used to solve a variety of puzzles, which typically consist of reflecting arrows off of walls or shooting a gear enough times for it to turn and activate a contraption. It's a nice gesture to have something to do beyond fighting and platforming, but I found these sequences to be absolutely miserable roadblocks whenever they appeared. The problem is that the act of using your bow is made convoluted to a ridiculous degree. You can shoot straight, angle shots, stay fixed in place to aim more carefully, move while aiming, aim while floating, change directions while aiming, and you can even jump while aiming. Each action requires a different button or multiple buttons held down simultaneously while moving and doing other things, so to aim effectively at all, you need to fumble around the controller like you're playing a game of Twister with your fingers; it's wild how unintuitive it feels! Combine that with strange physics that make judging reflections difficult and make it so you can undo progress by shooting a gear in the ever so slightly wrong place and you have yourself a total nightmare. Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is mostly a cakewalk, but any section where I had to use the bow really tested my patience in a way that nothing else in the game (or Luna Nights) could compare to.

The other big mechanic of the game lies with the wind (Sylph) and fire (Salamander) familiars that Deedlit acquires early on. These familiars allow Deedlit to swap between these elements at will, granting her immunity to the selected element as well as some minor perks like being able to float. It's very much in the vein of something like Ikaruga, though nowhere near as intense. You're expected to make use of this mechanic constantly; getting kills and collecting cubes levels up each element, making them stronger and also allowing for constant health regeneration, but getting hit levels them down. It's an interesting idea that encourages proper defense like grazing in Luna Nights did and when you're on the ball, there is a thrill to deftly swapping elements to nullify even the scariest of projectiles. But that's really all there is to it for the entire game - damage negation and the occasional boost to your damage if you're hitting a weakness, and neither makes enough of a difference to demand mastery of the mechanics. Having more elements to play with that had more specific or interesting uses, say for better designed puzzles or other forms of exploration, would have done a lot to make the game more engaging. Beyond Oasis, for example, is a game that does a wonderful job of making its elemental summoning mechanic remain interesting throughout by challenging you in all sorts of ways beyond just combat, so the idea is clearly sound. The game has a whole system for exploiting elemental weaknesses too that's almost impossible to use - how am I supposed to exploit a dark weakness if I don't have a dark familiar? The answer Team Ladybug came to was "using one of like three weapons in the game or a sole magic spell", making the system feel like an incredibly obvious missed opportunity.

After loving Touhou Luna Nights, it's a bummer to be so down on this game by comparison, but I can't help but feel that Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is a regression in nearly every way. If you put them side by side and asked me to tell you which one came first, I would have picked this game because it really feels like a first draft! It looks great and animates beautifully, the action feels competent enough, and some quality of life ideas like better warp and save point placement were implemented, but it otherwise does very little to try and raise the bar of the genre. Luna Nights combined the metroidvania essentials with a lot of innovative and fun ideas that encouraged player expression and overcoming intense foes, whereas Wonder labyrinth feels liked going through the motions as if you rented Castlevania Symphony of the Night for the 20th time. It's easy and short enough too that it feels like it's all too eager to be out of sight and out of mind, which lacks confidence in a surprising way. If metroidvanias are your comfort food, this will absolutely serve that purpose, but if you're looking for something that'll make a lasting impression, this ain't it - much like the labyrinth it takes place in, this game is ultimately one that faded from my memory as quickly as it came into my life.

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...