Finding your true self

Some might consider Dragon Quest VI to be the "black sheep" of the series, an entry that doesn't fit the conventional archetype a series has already presented itself but I feel like this claim is furthest is from the truth. It's very true Dragon Quest VI does a few things different in terms of how it presents exploration and the pace of a story being a bit erratic not to mention returning the job system from Dragon Quest III with a few quirks but I feel like that's how every entry fixes a little bit of the possible stagnation that really sticking to the formula brings. In all honestly, I actually enjoyed my time with Dragon Quest VI. Not a perfect game by any means, but it was trying out a few new spices here and there and maybe using a different part of the meat but it's still the "mom's cooking" of japanese role-playing games the series has become known for.

It almost feels odd to explain in detail what happens in Dragon Quest stories due to their true designs of being the chosen one and defeating the great evil that brought monsters to the land but Dragon Quest owns it really well that it's hard to mind. The weirdest shift in the narrative design is what happens after a certain point, the game feels really streamlined and things are happening, characters are developing until a certain point. The game really opens up and it's up to you to figure out where to go next. For a majority of the game, you don't even find out about the big bad until you are on the final fifth of the game when the name is finally uttered. The stories throughout the game relies on smaller more personal arcs you experience in the various towns, helping the various townspeople out such as fighting a strong lizard-type enemy in a cavern while carrying a huge coffin to my personal favorite short story of climbing a cliff to make a "badge of courage" to a little kid that never got the chance to live his own life. I think the small personal stories despite not contributing to the overall overarching narrative are great but I do understand that it doesn't really bring anything forward until you eventually get a little lore dump and then it's a rush to the end in a sense. The characters are good with Carver being a personal favorite, a big man with a big heart with a sense of humor to boot. Milly is the kind and motherly figure of the group harboring her own woes and development is tied to another character you'll find out about later. Nevan just kind of seems very dismissive of you and the world until the gods tell him to join you and that's pretty much how he joins. He is the personification of the nerd emoji but the guy has a good heart. The characters don't really develop much until you do their arc which really stems from the very late parts of the game with some of them never developing at all which is kind of sad but party chat always does provide a bit of insight on their thoughts at the very least. One of the biggest things I can attest to is the weird pacing in general with how the game carries itself. I'll just say there's multiple world maps you have to progress through and with that makes a longer game being it took around 45 hours to beat this one compared to barely 30 in some of the earlier longer titles before but the thing is also having to juggle progression constantly between these worlds which feels a bit like it was taking more time than it needed to just not leave the premise of what it was trying to do underutilized.

To my general surprise, the gameplay in Dragon Quest VI has improved a bit in the general sense that you finally have specific physical actions for the physical attackers in the game. One of my biggest complaints for the series early on was that going physical really just meant only being able to really just attack and that's pretty it and now you have a huge variety of physical moves to do from niche attacks that do more damage to flying enemies or group attacks and so forth. Other than that, the gameplay will feel right at home with anyone that has played Dragon Quest before barring the biggest change being vocations and how the vocation system works. After a certain point, you are able to change vocation which are essentially jobs in any other series and you can essentially change the stats and how your characters fight. In terms of what you can actually use: You got your regular physical fighters now upgraded with new abilities, your classic mages specializing in medical or harmful magic, the odd ones like dancer, merchant and gadabout (also known as jester) that do very specific things. There are also advanced vocations that pretty much serve as specialized upgrades in the sense that they require you to master two beginner vocations to grant access to them and then the ultimate vocation being the "hero" vocation which requires mastering four advanced vocations for everyone but the main character which only needs one. It sounds fun until you start to realize how slow the process is to leveling vocations which is extremely slow. I try not to grind at all in Dragon Quest to keep the challenge up but I did spend around an hour and a half grinding in purely recommended vocation spots and even after that I couldn't level up my main character to even get the "hero" vocation that already had ridiculously less requirements than everyone else and ended up beating the game without my hero ever getting that vocation which kind of sucks considering how much powerful your hero usually gets in the end. It was a bit underwhelming honestly. The one cool thing about these vocations is that any skill you learn on a vocation is permanently learned on the character regardless of vocation so you can eventually have every skill on everybody but it seems arduous to do so considering how much time you'll even need to spend doing so.

The game in a graphical sense looks just as great as any Dragon Quest Nintendo DS can look, not much is ever changed between the trilogy of games re-released on the DS in terms of general presentation and graphics. The soundtrack for Dragon Quest VI is alright at best, very few songs I generally like Saint's Wreath that really fit in with the bittersweet moments this game has throughout sharing its smaller tales of the worlds we're in. I think the soundtrack overall is a bit weaker than I would've liked but it gets the job done.

Definitely not the low point I personally thought and serves as yet another adventure and an extremely loose finale to the zenithian trilogy, Dragon Quest VI might be using different ingredients this time around to develop the iconic japanese role-playing style it's known for but it's still manages to ooze the charm and experience I've come to expect from the series. If this is what fans consider one of the lowest points of the series, I'm extremely excited for the rest of the entries going forward. An epic of self discovery through parallel realms.

Making a point in the worst way possible

It's easy to criticize anything and everything, Tender Frog House takes this idea and keeps hammering the nail past the wooden plank, past the floor and past the actual earth itself to the point you actually lose touch what the whole thing was to begin with.

At first, bringing criticisms to the "twee" or the "comfy" genre of games felt like the one thing the creator of the game had going for it in terms of their own ideas until they kept constantly quoting other people and losing the point later on. It just feels like a lot is being said but nothing from the heart or substantial is coming out. I will say you should always have the freedom to speak your mind and have your own opinions on things because that's how passionate discussion about the medium we all love as video games comes to be but it doesn't feel like I learned anything at all with the thirty minutes I spent on this title. All of this while satirizing the games you're criticizing as hell spawn. I got no personal vendetta against the main point since I'm not a fan of the genre being criticized but you need to stand on your own two feet and not rely on quotes that make it feel an AI wrote the whole script for your games because that's how it feels. Soulless and wasting data. I will say I don't inherently completely disagree with some of the points being made but you can put some effort until making those points that isn't just extremely floaty text that makes it hard to read like come on dude, you can't just put the whole fucking paragraph there of what Adorno said and expect me to read it especially when it's cut off like that.

This is also accompanied by a quickly grating midi piano piece and even from a technical side, the game crashed twice with the web version and the downloaded version with having no option but to skip dialogue to get to where I was again. I get having a save feature or some safety net is moot on a game like this but when all there is to the game is clicking a text box, something has got to give.

I'm usually not this negative when it comes to games and especially when it's a single person project, video games are hard to make. It just feels like this game wants to make a point in the most obnoxious and condescending way possible with quotes from people I haven't even heard of until today. It doesn't even narrow in on anything and just veers off the deep end and can easily lose anyone trying to understand what the game is trying to say. Only a deep curiosity will get you to play this game or someone wanting you to experience this "game" and I'd probably just avoid this and play something else. You can either play this or a game of Dota 2 and I hate to say this but I'm preferring the latter.

Explosive slow motion helicopter obliteration

If you were a kid during the mid to late 2000s, we've all had moments of lost concentration when we had a computer in front of us. The temptations were always too strong especially me hopped up on Concerta with an ADHD diagnosis. I just could never do my work being in front of this at the time, huge mechanical devices that connected us kids to the world be it regular office towers to colorful apple computers but I digress, too many times me and some classmates just hopped on Halo or Counter Strike 1.6 shared through the network or played flash games from Mini-Clip, Heli Attack 3 being the one I remembered the most.

The game is a side scrolling shooting game where the main objective is to survive and destroy aerial vehicles (not just helicopters) to progress to the next level. Levels range from a snowy field, a jungle, the red rocks of a canyon to a secret lab in visual design and introducing new enemies on the ground floor to keep making things challenging. One of the coolest things are the huge variety of weapons in this game from regular conventional weapons like shotguns and rocket launchers to shotgun lasers, "drunken" rocket launchers to a literal black hole launcher that eats everything on the screen. The gameplay feels a little simple on paper but what gives this a little tiny edge is the time distortion letting you slow down the action and it's hard to go wrong with slow motion action at your own discretion. With that said, you'll be aiming up a lot of the time but that's the name of the game here. This is Heli Attack 3, baby.

The era of flash games have come and gone with flash being a thing of the past in general and even trying to remember the times I had being a kid keeps getting harder and harder for better or worse. Probably played Bloody Rage where you had Freddy Kruger fighting Goku or Thing Thing where you just had gory as fuck shooting available from a middle school computer. It's not too hard to play Heli Attack 3 online still but the training map is kind of ruined due to the inability to read the actual tips and the levels themselves still being really glitchy as it is probably due to not running on flash itself from what I can guess. A blast from the past that still feels pretty fun with crazy aerial destruction when the only other choice back then was actually doing your work but can you imagine that?

Satisfying synergy

It's something when a deck building game can grab your attention as much as Slay the Spire did for me. I think it comes from a want more than a need: Wanting a turn based rogue-lite/like that prioritized classes and different abilities that gave the pick up and play format that I appreciated from the rogue-like/lite genre. Darkest Dungeon technically filled this niche but runs became too long to stay invested for when I prefer just doing a quick max of an hour run before moving onto single player experiences once more. An intermission before starting a new journey so to speak into the boundless video games I have yet to play.

Slay the Spire's narrative element isn't really apparent from playing the game itself but there's a few puzzle pieces you can put together. The spire is your enemy, the cause of your rebirths is a whale ancient called Neow as you go through three acts and areas to do the titular duty: Slay the Spire. It's here just as set up for the meat of the game which is exploring the said locations itself.

The most satisfying element of playing is finding out combinations, making the most of what you can and truly deciding your own path without any real filler in between. Changing, removing, transforming and altering yourself is how you'll eventually get your first clear as you progress through several challenging floors of enemies, elites and bosses. Finding each classes has dedicated builds and synergies that work extremely well and feel extremely rewarding when you can pull the off and the sheer variety of cards and their actions really let you go in depth with how you want to act. Playing a big deck with constantly drawing cards or playing a small deck that relies on luck less but getting that perfect card at the perfect time? It's all possible in a run. There's a lot of variables and factors you can grab and address to go through each time that it never feels easy or monotonous but the fun is making do with what you can get since truly trying to strive for each build might actually harm you in the long run since you're relying on card drops at that point. I think it's best to not play with any guides and figure out your own combinations until the higher ascensions (difficulties) when you truly want to do everything the game has to offer. Average runs of Slay the Spire can take up to forty minutes to an hour from my experience which is just barely long enough to fill that pick up and play situation I'm looking for in games like these.

The art of the game is alright but there's a few things that leave a bit to be desired like some of the card art being first drafts still and the models but it's really hard to care much since I feel like the gameplay does so much to elevate the experience anyway. The soundtrack is good with boss tracks raising the tension pretty well and area themes feeling like you're in a D&D session of sorts which fits.

A lot of popular rogue-lites/likes from my experience are purely action oriented and as much as some of them are fun, I do wish there was something like this where you can take your time a bit and properly plan things out and Slay the Spire fills that niche perfectly for me. If you take the time to think things through and find out some clever combinations yourself, you can get a clear no problem and it's all about doing it your own way. The game always keeps its hand close to its chest but you're playing with a full deck. Use it.

Fostering those connections

If you want to know my thoughts on Death Stranding, please click on this as I'll mostly be going over my thoughts on the Director's Cut additions in this review.

It's really funny when you give Death Stranding a director's cut considering how much Kojima himself said that what we got was what he envisioned and more just corporate speak for a definitive edition of the game with better graphics and new gameplay additions that are pretty popular during the console generational leap going on right now and the past few years.

We can ignore the usual suspects: better graphical tech, quality of life stuff, extra cars and mission to focus on the big additions.


The new ruined factory area and missions are pretty cool additions as I've realized that you mostly always fight and operate in these outdoor and open spaces and being an actual indoor location brings some much needed variety in the folder with a pretty good arc and conclusion.

Open world additions like new roads being able to be built and new structures like jump ramps, cargo catapults and chiral bridges bring a bit more versatility into the fold granted I never understood the use for cargo catapults as much.

One of the most surprising ones is an actual racetrack in which you do time trials in an effort to unlock the cool and click roadster which looks like an expensive car that goes really fast but completely awful for rough terrain so only good on roads. A few new additions like a firing range to test stuff out and drills for more opportunities to actually use guns in general.

Apart from new enhancement to already existing gameplay systems such as better melee, being able to replay certain moments, new regular orders. This is pretty much your run of the mill definitive edition with extra content in which I feel that you will probably appreciate the quality of life more than the actual additions but considering that this version is the most accessible, it's the best version of Death Stranding barring some performance issues.

Building connections

It's funny how life works sometimes. I never had the original intention of playing Death Stranding until a friend gave it to me out of nowhere for giving her something for Christmas and yet here I am several weeks later thanking her once again after going for every achievement and over a hundred hours. The reason I bring this up is that it relates to how Death Stranding wants you to experience the benefits of being part of something more than a single entity hoping we don't regret it.

I had a lot of reservations going into this one with how I knew that if the gameplay didn't keep my hands moving and my mind contained throughout the whole experience in that I wouldn't like it but Death Stranding has a surprising amount of depth in how to approach every delivery. The act of just delivering and constantly running around isn't what makes Death Stranding completely unique in this facet but the act of "walking" and "traversal" makes this one of the most engaging experiences for a first time. All of this wrapped in one of the most heavy handed and odd writing style for a Kojima game in my opinion makes this one of the best open world games by a long mile.

It's probably the first time in a while that I felt like it was quite obvious what Kojima wanted to tell with this title. The world is disconnected from everything due to an deathly apocalypse called the Death Stranding. Everyone is out for themselves and too scared to even go outside relying on porters to survive like our protagonist, Sam Bridges. Sam never had a connection to the human society except for one moment and then it being taken away has let him believe that connections are meaningless and only bring pain. One of the best parts of his development was going all over America, meeting new people and helping them bring stuff. There's a personal satisfaction when you've done all you can and their best reward isn't some random item or overpowered item but opening that door for you and letting you in. Doing all this made me feel the change was genuine as I felt the same way too, I ended up helping everyone except one person. I won't say who it is but one of the preppers you meet is really sick and their deliveries consist of bringing medicine to them. I ended up doing this for a while until I almost maxed them out until I decided to do story and hold on delivering packages to them. After a while, I decided to deliver one final package to this person so I can max out our connection and then I wondered why they didn't pick up when I came but saw a BT. After I delivered my package and received an email from them asking where we were and only hoping we were continuing the good fight before sharing the news that they moved on from this world. It's a small thing but it made me sad that I couldn't deliver that one final package for them. To my dismay, I found out you can keep them alive but you had to constantly deliver to them throughout your whole experience but people will probably tend to move on from them from a gameplay standpoint like I did. "Why go back when you already maxed them out?" is what people thought until this happened but it's just surprising that it actually happened. With all that said, the supporting cast are interesting and even with cheesy names like Deadman or Heartman (guess what this guy is all about), they still manage to hit the right spots in the emotional space with the game beginning how it ends in a sense.

I feel like watching Death Stranding's gameplay is deceiving yourself in the sense you only see it in its simplest form. When you watch someone going up the hill carrying something in their hand, you expect not much is happening on the controller or attention span but to someone actually holding the controller, there's a lot going on and this is one of the best strengths of Death Stranding. Open world games tend to have this problem of going from point A to B being some of the most minut interactions in their games with the player running forward or being in a vehicle and driving there but in Death Stranding, the world puts up a fight. It won't make things easy until you work to make them easy. Running up hill requires you to manage stamina and your balance along with any cargo you might have, holding an item in your hand isn't just a button press but requires holding down the trigger button based on your hand. I initially thought it was tedious to constantly hold down the trigger to hold something in your hand but it does make sense. When you're holding an item in real life, it's not a touch but a constant effort of holding and holding down the trigger represents that your arm is in constant effort of holding up the arm which I thought was pretty intuitive. The gameplay loop mostly kept my hands and fingers on the control going through a death torn America trying to get a video game collector an old PSP system. Fortunately that's not all there is to the "traversal" as the game gives you plenty of tools to circumvent the worst the world and the terrain has to offer. Starting out with ladders and climbing hooks and then turning into elaborate structures like ziplines and bridges. You can eventually build a network of structures that make the world a little easier on you and your boots but that's not all. The online experience is what I feel is the definitive experience for Death Stranding as you don't just your world but a shared one. Various signs of life, tools rusted out from use long ago, and networks already set up are here to help you as your tools and structures help them. You are never alone. It starts to feel more like collective doing everything it can to make everything easier which is how it should be. Personal satisfaction when I poured the most effort into making roads for everyone to get through easier and the only form of thanks is "likes" which don't really serve much of a purpose is all you need sometimes. It also helps that the world just provides a variety of challenges to confront to endless ravines, rocky surfaces, to snowy mountains that tax every facet of your health and tools so you'll need to stay connected to make the most of everyone's efforts. There are vehicles in the game and you're probably thinking "well that'll just make everything easy and trivial like every other open world game" but actually using them might make you think otherwise. They're mostly for flat surfaces or roads you already built since the rocks on the ground will immediately stop you on your tracks to frustration even more so with trucks that provide a lot of cargo space for bigger orders but become bordering on wielding outside of anything but roads unless you know how to drive up the terrain properly. All these tools and I'm reminded of Metal Gear Solid V where Venom Snake had every tool and gun in his arsenal to perform stealth and missions however he wanted in an open world environment and now Death Stranding gives you these tools and structures to perform deliveries and missions in any way you wanted in an open world environment as well.

Apart from "traversal", there's two forms of combat in Death Stranding in which you fight the living and fight the dead. Fighting MULEs which are the human combatants will eventually be required of you and you'll hopefully prepared some tools for it. Early on you'll have a Bola gun that only really ties them up for you to incapicatate later until later on when you get non lethal conventional weapons like assault rifles and shotguns. I really think you can approach these camps early on in a stealthy manner and it would work for the most part and feel a bit fun since you don't have much but eventually when you get the bola gun, you can just shoot them at mules that essentially just run towards you anyway so it stops being a challenge. Later on though, MULEs get a huge upgrade in capability that makes them pretty fun to go against for a while in that they're actually trying to kill you with guns. It's pretty jarring that they do this considering actually killing someone is something you don't want to do. BTs initially feel like this horror mechanic in the preferred way is to go past them undetected since you don't really have any single way of fighting them for a bit and I liked this dichotomy of relaxing traversal and having to keep focus on going through a BT infested zone in the world. You do eventually get tools and weapons that let you fight BTs more efficiently that it unfortunately feels like an annoyance more than something you should be scared of at some point. Boss battles rely on these huge creature like monstrosities that take a lot of damage to defeat and will probably run out of ammo if it wasn't for the other players coming from the tar and helping you by throwing blood bags and rocket launchers. I do recommend playing on Hard at least to keep this a bit challenging and not completely mindless as you will still die pretty quick without armor on Hard. Overall I find this aspect of the game adequate but it was never really the focus of the experience but a good way to break up the action.

As I've mentioned before, the multiplayer aspect of Death Stranding is essential to fully enjoying this experience. Apart from being in a shared world where you can see other people's structures and struggles, you can see warnings of danger, deliver their lost cargo for them if it's on the way anyway, help them with weapons or tools if they really need it or donate materials so everyone can use them. There's a lot of ways to help the collective of people you're with and I think it's the best use of asynchronous multiplayer yet. The traversal also doesn't get made easy by this as you have to face the challenge yourself at least once before you get connected in specific areas too.

The sound of metal clanking against the weight of your cargo, small medleys playing during specific moments in the world. The music and sound of Death Stranding reaches a high note in what was used and how it was used. The highlight is the usage of music throughout the game playing these licensed haunting and serene songs from Low Roar and Silent Poets to give a few examples. It really helps to reflect how quiet the world can be in its photographic view of america based on Iceland from what I can tell. Going down a snowy mountain and it becoming a grass hill while this is playing is a zen like experience that's hard to describe when the game puts you into this reflective state of mind. My favorite original piece has to be this and when you hear it makes it one of my favorite experiences I've had in a bit. The whole song feels somber and later on sounds like one of Sufjan Steven's electronica efforts. I do understand why they didn't have a music player for this game considering its use during certain moments but they could've made it a reward for completing the game or a 100% reward at least.

With all that said, I can understand that this game isn't for everyone or a purely perfect game to anyone but I think in terms of how this game carries out itself is extremely rare and something I wish for more in the industry in general. Death Stranding practices what it preaches and then some with some of the most innovative open world gameplay I've played in a long time, themes I can understand due to my personal isolation barring COVID and the fear of connecting with people. I always felt like every link I made with people is something tangible people can eventually cut off and cutting something always hurts. Reaching out might not be so bad after all. Even in the way BTs are, even in death we are always connected and are never gone from this world as long as that connection is there. We are always connected.

Rock and stone

December 18th, 2022
9:01pm
Hazard 5
Egg Hunt with Ebonuts as a secondary objective

Another day playing Deep Rock with two of my friends that have already played this game for over four hundred hours to the point that Hazard 5 is the only way they can even be challenged more. I played Gunner and my friends picked Scout and Engineer respectively due to their synergy. The mission was going smoothly until a meteor hit in our map and we decided to try and do it. The rock crackers spawned way higher up than anticipated and we didn't have a driller so we spent the next twenty minutes trying to set up cables to the rock while fighting for life and death during it. Just as we got the first cable, two bulk detonators show and almost wipe us if not for the fact that I had Iron Will and managed to recover. Our engineer has essentially placed platforms on every location of this big room just to properly place cables and we were already regretting not bringing a driller (I should've went driller). We ended up deciding for our scout to go actually complete the main objectives while I help our engineer with the cables because sunk cost fallacy was starting to kick in. We eventually ran out of Nitra (ammo and health) and our Scout and I managed to get the rest of the materials to actually leave because we essentially had enough ammo for one more group of enemies. My friend insisted we do the event because after spending thirty minutes setting up cables just to leave, it would probably hurt so we ended up doing it. We got destroyed almost immediately. 50 minutes in that cave and we failed utterly with nothing to show for it. But it was the most memorable and fun experience I had in Deep Rock Galactic regardless and why I finally decided to write my thoughts finally.

I love co-op experiences and more specifically co-op hoard shooters of the first person nature.

I've played every notable one from the original Left 4 Dead, Payday 1 and 2, both Vermintides, both Killing Floor 1 and 2, every Borderlands game even the recent Back 4 Blood and the weird part is despite their flaws, with my most hours being over one thousand hours in Left 4 Dead 2. I had fun with each of them to an extent although the "It's more fun with friends" idea does play a large role in my general enjoyment of these titles. I remember being so happy when I got my first laptop and a copy of Left 4 Dead 2 after I made my steam account. Ever since falling off Left 4 Dead 2 and hopping on more competitive team shooters (Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch), I was looking for "the one". The one co-op game I can always come back to in my late twenties that I did for Left 4 Dead 2 in my teen years. Deep Rock Galactic has proven in the two years since I've owned the game and the one hundred and sixty five hours I've poured into it by myself or with my friends that it might actually be "the one".

If I had to spell it out a bit more, Deep Rock Galactic is a co-op first person shooter in which assume the role of one of four dwarves as you do extremely dangerous mining work for Deep Rock Galactic, the namesake of the game and the big corporation you work for. You start right off the bat that working for Deep Rock Galactic is essentially like working for Amazon in that you're completely expendable and are doing the bare minimum to even keep you here. There's no real narrative device driving the experience here other than giving you a premise and the means for it. Going deep is like your nine to five, killing bugs and mining morkite is another Monday for you.

Once you pick a mission from the multitude of main mission types and varied biomes, you're off into the dark depths. The game has four main classes each with a variety of tools as your disposal. The gunner is the guy that never lets go of the fire button with his big minigun, shield to protect your team when a swarm is upon you and a zipline as a utility navigation tool for your team; the engineer is great at holding down a spot with his shotgun and turret which can provide covering fire when you need to transport heavy rocks or precious minerals with being able to create platforms that look like nilla wafers as his utility navigation tool; the scout is your most quick and nimble class with his iconic grappling hook on a low cooldown that lets you dance around the cave in record time as his navigation tool with his utility to the team being a flare gun that can light up even the most dim of areas; last but not least is the driller with his crowd control, explosive armament and his drills for arms as his utility to the team as he can quickly dig through anything to make opening or even tunnels to quickly escape oblivion. No one class is better than the other and if you're missing one, you're gonna sorely miss it with my recent experience but the best part is that everyone can synergize well and it never feels like you're lacking something with a team of one each. An iconic combo is engineer creating platforms in high up places for Scout to grab materials or objective for instance. The caves themselves are one of the crowning jewels of this whole experience too. From an outside perspective, it sounds like procedurally generated would lack polish or even detail that a handcrafted level would make but it complements with the classes well as it allows player expression in how you want to approach things. You are not limited to the walls of the game at all and everything is destructible from the bugs, the walls and everything in between. I think giving the classes these tools to mold the environment into what they want is the best thing you can do when you approach making maps like these. It never feels tedious since you can always forge your own path and you never have the same experience even though I feel like I've seen some similar room layouts but with so many variations to them with how everything can be destroyed that I never notice this and even acknowledging the fact that I'll never notice this. This is all how you can magical moments like my initial memorable recent experience.

Fortunately there's a lot more to it with customization of your own dwarves themselves with a huge majority of the cosmetics being completely able to earn without spending a dime other than the cosmetic dlc packs. The game even has a season pass that's free and doesn't even incite FOMO (fear of missing out) due to the items in the pass eventually being able to be earned ingame later on at no cost. I really think this is one of the best strengths of Deep Rock Galactic: being able to stop playing for a while and come back with feeling like you missed out or behind in any sense. Even the current christmas event gives you every cosmetic you missed out on just for logging in. Apart from fashion, there's customization in the gameplay sense in your tools of the trade. Every class as of this point in time has three main weapons, three secondary weapons and four types of grenades with the weapons having aesthetic customization along with being able to tune the specifics of each gun. More ammo, faster firing speed, more damage to more elaborate tuning like making your plasma rifle shots do splash damage instead of precision damage. The best part is that each weapon acts, shoots and even feels completely different from each counterpart. An example is that the Scout gets a regular assault rifle, the universe equivalent of the M1 Garand or a plasma rifle that shoots out quick plasma balls extremely quick. Gameplay customization goes a bit further with being able to modify your armor properties, how your utility tools work and which grenades to use and even a perk system. Passive perks that grant passive bonus and more active ones that range from giving you a second chance at the cost of going down again soon, hover boots so you can mitigate fall damage more of even the ability to befriend a bug and make them your own ally. Once you get promoted (level a class to 25 and complete the assignment designated to it), you get access to overclocks and deep dives which act like extra things to do more than just purely endgame stuff. Overclocks is where you can unlock more customization options for your guns and dwaves from a fashion sense but also can completely change the way a gun acts and even works. Some are pretty safe but some upgrades, some are an exchange of good and bad and some are drastic like changing the grenade launcher into a fat man from fallout with way less ammo. You can really make most things work too which is the coolest thing but I feel there's never a rush to get something as it feels more lax in progression in general.

Something I don't usually talk about is the community in online games since they're usually par for the course in my experience but Deep Rock Galactic makes playing with randoms surprisingly fluid and fun with how chill everyone usually is. There's a ping system and people are usually quick to talk if they want someone to something specifically but missions in Hazard 3-4 (I usually play these with randoms) go pretty smooth with no problems at all. Even Hazard 5 which leaves little room for error has some people helpful people that rarely rage and know exactly what to do, they rarely put you down and try to bring you up rather which is pretty refreshing. I did get one person that decided to spam platforms in the drop pod so we couldn't leave but that was one incident out of over a hundred of hours of gameplay. With that said, this is just my personal experience mostly playing with randoms in these Hazard levels and there's always a solo experience that's great too if you prefer to play with pause or none of your friends are online right now.

It wouldn't be farfetched to call Deep Rock an "ugly" game due to the amount of polygons being lower than a Rick and Morty fan's IQ but then you realize this game is only like 3GB with me starting out two years ago when the game was only 1GB. In 2020, the game was just about as big as a PSP game with still a lot to do. The game does a great job with the environments themselves being extremely unique with their own dangers themselves. In terms of general performance, it's pretty good and wouldn't be too hard to run on relatively modern computers except when swarms comes and on higher difficulties when there's more of them in general. The soundtrack is just as excellent with music switching from ambient electronic when things are going smoothly until mission control picks up several praetorians are here with the sound of the minigun slowly revving up. When all is said done, it's time to go and the bugs won't let you leave as it becomes everything or nothing as hell literally dragging your heels to keep you here as you rush towards that drop pod since it won't be there for you forever with a triumphant synth playing over when nobody is truly left behind.

I can understand the format not being for everyone and I don't think it's a perfect game for everyone in general sense but it's hard to deny Ghost Ship Games's labor of love that has paid dividends in the gaming space to the fact that I sing its praises and even bought the supporter upgrade in support of these devs. Every gameplay oriented update is free and the only DLC is cosmetic packs not to mention the game is regularly on sale for 9-14 bucks with the current price being 9.90 at the time of writing this review. If you want something to play with your friends, this should be the first pick.

Rock and stone.

Landmark espionage thriller

I feel like I can go ad nauseam about how Metal Gear Solid changed the game industry back in 1998 with its innovative narrative design, gameplay, voice acting and graphics. Approaching it from a more personal appreciation, I really think this game is amazing and still holds up despite those years later. The story beats don't hit as much considering I know it by heart at this point but everything feels well done, cohesive and never really pulls the brakes from beginning to end barring a few speed bumps. One of the few games I can really call a work of art from a visual and storytelling perspective and from a personal perspective as well as I feel gaming wouldn't be the same without it.

Solid Snake, the protagonist of the first two Metal Gear games on the MSX gets out of retirement in a personal operation to stop terrorists from launching a nuke from Alaska. The game does a great job getting you up to pace with the previous operation tabs and the briefing file itself. I can't imagine playing the game without the briefing file itself since it gives a lot more context in what you're doing and why you're even doing it but you can play it without it if so desired. What feels like a spy movie thriller, Metal Gear Solid always keeps you on your feet from beginning to end due to its amazing pacing. For the most part, you are always moving forward in the story and something interesting is happening which never left me bored even with essentially memorizing the story at this point. If you never played the game, I can easily imagine just binging the whole nine to ten hour story in one go just trying to see what happens next. I will say one of the few speed bumps in this game is the backtracking which felt like padding more than anything but it wasn't too bad as things mostly do happen during this. One of my favorite things in the series in general are the codec conversations in general, important exposition and information relayed to Snake free from the stress of what's going on now. Campbell generally giving you hints when you need it acting like a free game tips hotline, Master giving you some general advice how to react to nature and your own instincts, Nastasha giving you insight on how each of your weapon works and the magic behind them. What I enjoy is the overall theme and narrative feeling surprisingly grounded despite the ridiculousness of some of the things portrayed in this game. Everyone treats Snake as this legendary hero but he always rebuffs this knows his true nature and the game never shies away from that. The voice acting here also helps as I felt like nobody really put out a bad performance throughout the entire cast which must have raised the bar even further at the time. Not to mention the camera shots and general cinematography of every scene feels years ahead to the point you forget this came from the last millennium.

The name of the game is "tactical espionage action" and feels accurate to the word. Snake is a legend but he's still human. He can't take many hits and you start off with nothing. The game quickly teaches you that avoiding conflict is the best approach as even one soldier shooting you is a quick death. The general AI of enemies might seem a bit barbaric to recent titles but it feels a bit more consistent in the way you can manipulate how they act. They will see footprints in the snow, react to sound when you step on metal or knock on a wall, even hear you sneeze if you stay in the cold too long. Their general vision is displayed by a cone area of effect on your soliton radar system that lets you get a better picture of the general area. Don't always rely on this though as it goes away in harder difficulties and goes away pretty frequently during the game due to being unable to use it in closed spaces as often. Other than that, Snake can move freely around enemies as long as they don't hear or see his footsteps and stay away from their general line of sight as it's all played from a mostly top down perspective which makes for a simple but fun stealth experience. You're given a surprising amount of tools too from a silenced pistol to eliminate a guard without raising an alarm, an assault rifle when it becomes "you or them", stun grenades that quickly incapacitates an area to get away or even chaff grenades to get through the various gun cameras through out the game. Using the weapons themselves does feel a bit unwieldy at times with how enemies interact with getting shot sometimes other than the pistol but it still feels good enough honestly. There's a surprising amount of interaction with the tools in the world too like having a specific item will make it easier to get through a wolves den to even finding secret rooms in a storage area. The boss fights themselves are surprisingly varied with each of them having a different way of approaching them with some iconic ways I won't even spoil but I'm sure everyone that has played the game know which fight I'm talking about. I'm just happy a lot of care was also given in the gameplay department considering it feels like the general cinematics are amazing as it that it didn't feel like anything was compromised for it.

I think some people might be turned off on how face textures look in this game but I think everything else from a graphical perspective is pretty good. The models in game animate extremely well all accentuated from the action and voice acting when serious moments happen. Metal Gear Solid did actually get a remake in the form of Twin Snakes on the gamecube but I still recommend playing this first and Twin Snakes being a companion piece rather than a replacement, I actually think the wackiness the cutscene direction took looks pretty fun and the gameplay enhancements to MGS2's style looks great albeit with none of the balancing it seems but I don't think it should be a replacement to the original PSX/PC experience that feels more like a landmark than the remake does. Something I haven't really got into as much was the soundtrack and I forgot how somber some tracks are with The Best is Yet To Come and how disturbing some can be like the sound you hear in a specific hallway. The general sound of Metal Gear Solid's soundtrack is industrial with what feels like hearing machine clanging in the background with the synths for most of the music you'll hear while infiltrating.

Focused, thrilling, cinematic, meaningful. Four words I would use to describe the original Metal Gear Solid. I feel like even with some of the personal gripes I have with the game like backtracking more than I remembered and the gunplay not being up to snuff, everything works pretty well still. I usually hate stealth games due to my inherent impatience with a lot of things but I never really had the thought of purely go guns blazing not only because it would feel less satisfying but because it actually gave me a bit more to think about in the method as well. A spy movie thriller that I feel would be hard to replicate in any medium but video games.

A leap of faith

I can remember my first initial exposure to Mirror's Edge watching the tv ad for it back then and being enamored with the music track they used. The track in question is Still Alive by Lisa Miskovsky being one of the few things the general gaming community probably remember about the Mirror's Edge. I personally remembered really being into Mirror's Edge and its eccentric parkour gameplay at the time to the point I started playing Parkour Fortress, a modified version of TF2 that essentially made the game play like Mirror's Edge itself and it was surprisingly solid. Sadly on a recent replay of the game, I start to see the pertinent flaws the game had and bordering on frustration that the game can have for the concept.

The story of Mirror's Edge is pretty streamlined and one of those narratives that's use to set up the setpiece levels rather than actually trying to tell something extremely thought provoking. I would even say it's alright with a little bit of seeing two loved ones on complete opposite sides in a sense. That's not to say the narrative is bad or anything but the overall ride is pretty short and a lot of the world itself is left to question only with a few conversations between Faith's colleagues that give some insight. Most of the story is told in animated art cutscenes which I think does a decent job of presenting said story.

Running and fighting is the name of the game here in Mirror's Edge. It shines brightest when you're keeping up the flow and momentum of going fast in a first person perspective. That's really the bread and butter of the experience, dodging bullets, climbing buildings and keeping up your runner's flow. Items around the world shine red as a quick visual compass of the right way to go so you don't spend too much time just standing around although sadly standing around is a bit inevitable at least to most players in this game. That also said, it can also feel a bit finicky when you try to grab onto a ledge when you hit jumps you feel like you should be able to grab a ledge and it just doesn't which leads into a reset. It doesn't feel consistent enough to not be a problem sometimes and can lead into more frustration. I never expected the combat to even be good as it really feels more like an afterthought to appease the first person shooting fans and it's just serviceable at best. Moments where you have to decide whether to fight or keep running but considering dying will put you back a bit, it's better to completely edge the threat unless you're feeling confident on where to go and exactly what to do.

The art direction in Mirror's Edge remains one of the most unique ones in terms of an Electronic Arts game of all things. The color scheme usually deriving of white and red or some other color at times while maintaining this odd sanitized dystopian feel makes it one of the most stunning visual experiences so far even in the modern day. The soundtrack comprising of calming and energizing electronic music during the most tense segments also do a great job of keeping said tension while avoiding a plethora of gunshots. One of the best moments oddly enough when it all comes together is the main menu itself with its serene music and a clean model of the city obstructed by four red lines especially when you beat the game. I think this aspect is one of Mirror's Edge strongpoints along with its parkour gameplay.

Mirror's Edge is not a perfect game by any means. The parkour gameplay mostly feels fluid but controls can feel a little rough sometimes and combat is a simple counter and point and click maneuver. The art and music is amazing and the story while can be easily ignored doesn't provide much of worldbuilding other than Faith's background and why she's actually doing this. I still have to give some credit to DICE for trying something creative here in the era when first person shooters are starting to head into a modern direction. Rough gem in a dystopian world, just like Faith.

Intergalactic guitar hero

I can remember writing my initial thoughts on Gitaroo Man Lives! during a rainy spring afternoon earlier this year and nearly the year's end I find myself coming back to it with a replay of the PlayStation 2 version. It's not much different barring the missing additional content, better resolution and framerate and quality of life (and also Flyin' to your heart in English in the PSP version) but it still has the same beating heart as always. I thought initially that I felt I didn't have too much to say about Gitaroo Man during my initial thoughts but as time moved on, the words swelled and expanded into more intricate thoughts on why I love this game. It's truly something special.

The story of Gitaroo Man feels ridiculous and yet extremely personal at the same time considering I could see myself easily sympathizing with U-1 during his journey of fully establishing himself in this universe and proving to the world that he isn't this awkward loser but someone with a soul, winning them over like a hero would, like a true Gitaroo Man. You battle objects, animals, a man in a bee outfit up until the spitting image of your worst enemy in playing the gitaroo (guitar) and proving your worth each time. An endless battle accompanied by some of the most emotional quiet moments making Gitaroo's Man short runtime something easy to come back granted you have the skill to beat the stages as intended.

Rhythm disguised as a battle, Gitaroo Man relies on a phase system followed by tracing for attacking and button inputs for defense. Starting most of the battles with gathering your strength, followed by the main event in which you fight it out with the finale being essentially a victory lap you can still screw up. The main three things you have to do is tune your analog stick in the right direction and hold down circle (or any face button really) to attack and rely on quick button prompts for defense. What it becomes is this surprisingly hectic experience after a while as this game can be pretty difficult if you don't have good enough reflexes to be able to defend yourself and quickly get knocked out, it'll take a bit but you can always get up and try again. Something to note is that Gitaroo Man Lives! (The PSP version) is known to be an easier version of the game so if completing it is your true goal, there's that option for you.

I always felt like music is something that improves a game more than just merely enhancing it from a general perspective. I really enjoy great video game music in general and Gitaroo Man is the true exception that without the music the game has, it wouldn't nearly be as good as it is. COIL managed to do an excellent job creating the soundtrack with various types of genres here. Traditional rock to reggae to even a little bit of shoegaze, I can say essentially every song here is a banger and the crown jewel of it all is the Legendary Theme. The fact that this this theme not only lives up to its name but also plays during the right time in the story turned this game into one of my personal favorites, I haven't really ever had an experience like that in a long time. The art is also extremely unique and creates this saturday morning anime vibe from the early 2000s that seems accurate considering when this game actually came out too.

Gitaroo Man is something I wished I played as a kid. I understood what it was like to be bullied and called a loser as a kid. There really wasn't a lot of media that gave me an idea on how to overcome that stuff nor really anything I could do but I felt like if I played this game, my life wouldn't be different but it would've been a little more bearable. It would be something I'd able to come back to when I was feeling little of myself and realize again and again that I have some worth in the world. I think that's why Gitaroo Man really hits it home for me purely on a personal level. It also helps that the music is amazing and the gameplay although challenging feels satisfying to pull off against these evil agents that only want to put you down, just like the bullies in real life. It's not just a game, it's honey-love.

Vibrant emotion

It can be hard to understand people sometimes. To know exactly why people feel the way they feel and to feel the extent of that feeling to its true form. There's something special about starting a brand new game of True Colors and reading all of the text messages of our protagonist right before anything happens at all. Seeing all the interactions she had with people years before this game even came out and seeing the text threads right before the actual story begins is an amazing touch because I feel when stories and characters begin that past events don't get revealed unless it's important for the story and timing. At the first minute of being able to move your character, she has these text threads spanning years ago and a journal displaying her thoughts about some people she "felt" before. It really feels like she already had a hell of a life right before the first second and now we're here for one of her most important chapters, going to Haven Springs to see her brother.

It's say to say the overall mystery is interesting from start to end with some caveats. The main arching narrative doesn't really turn gears into the very end since it feels like it spends its time trying to get you invested into Haven Springs and it's small and tight knit community. There's another factor to the text threads and journal entries I neglected to mention and that's the facebook equalivent of an overall community space for everyone in the town. These things update frequently and manages to give a lot of interaction between character that aren't just Alex herself. Speaking of Alex, I think she's actually great as a protagonist. She feels believable for someone of her age and has her own idea of humor and creative process. Most of this is illustrated in her examining objects which I'm sure was in the original Life is Strange too, making some corny jokes here and there can be a bit much but it makes sense considering it's all her mind most of the time anyway. I think I enjoyed the game the most interacting with the denizens of Haven Springs the most, the small town locale makes it easy to only focus on a few characters and flesh them out each appropriately. There's something satisfying about seeing everyone see Alex for what she really is instead of something not from this world.

Apart from examining stuff, talking to people and making choices is one of the game mechanics is Alex's so called "ability". She's able to detect how people are feeling with an intricate level of detail to the point that she also feels the same way the person does if it's at an extreme level. Like imagine if you were Disco Elysium and you completely maxed out the Empathy stat, that's essentially how Alex is. You only really use it for information and rarely actually use it in a more proactive state but I kind of never minded that honestly. A decent chunk of the time you have freedom to explore Haven Springs and check in with the local residents to help them with certain tasks or examine stuff for Alex to give her thoughts on it. It feels a bit more open than the first game from my experience but it does feel a bit to traverse through sometimes especially your home where you have three levels and each one is separated by a loading screen followed by another one just to leave as well. Other than it's pretty straightforward with what you can do in the game including playing a couple of games of Arkanoid every now and then and another arcade machine in Alex's room.

The music feels alright with its acoustic guitar center but I think the most surprising and baffling thing to me was that the main character actually did a cover of Radiohead's Creep. I was just in complete awesome and in complete disbelief someone actually put that in a video game and it actually makes sense. Haven Springs itself and the game in general is gorgeous with how it blends its mountains and nature with the town itself. It definitely feels like home away from home in a sense.

I'm usually not one for these narrative adventure titles but I feel like always taking a chance outside your comfort zone at least in media can always surprise you and True Colors did just that. An emphatic and cathartic journey that may rush to the finish line but still makes it on the podium.

The true original that started it all

I wanted to do something a little different in that I wanted to get a quick playthrough of the original under my belt as well as finishing the remastered modern version too because of how much I grew to love this game. Reborn carried a lot of quality of life changes and balance updates stemming from the original PSP remaster back in 2010. I won't be talking much about the original's game concepts and focus sorely on gameplay differences going back to the SNES version of the game. Thought about going through the PSP version but considering Reborn is stemmed from that version, it would feel a bit more fruitless to do so.

Apart from the writing itself feeling a bit more dry, the gameplay is vastly different enough to the point that it feels like a different game. For starters, people get experience points differently compared to Reborn at least. A lot of the baseline stuff is mostly the same in a sense from turn order, the same isometric SRPG combat but a bit more sluggish. No Chariot system to take back turns and when your units health drop to zero, they are gone for good with no way to get them back making this a much more punishing experience. I really would recommend save states or fast forward if the game's speed is up to snuff since I'm probably spoiled on Reborn's fast mode. Magic spell slots range from none to up to three slots which I was surprised by considering I felt like Reborn's four slots was limiting in a way but works nonetheless. No buff cards on the field (compared to Reborn at least) and other things like attacking first means ending your turn without moving, only a maximum of ten party members in a fight, no trajectory assistance and random battles make the original version a little hard to come back to. Even with its original intention trying to be less difficult that Fire Emblem at the time, it still feels pretty difficult especially swapping between this and reborn's more quality of life features.

That said, this is still Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. One of the best tactical role playing games ever made regardless of what version because you'll be experiencing the excellent story, music and characters here. SNES version is worth a look if you enjoyed Reborn but I really think Reborn just feels the most smooth to understand for newcomers and to really have access to. The original dark and bloody tale.

The horrors of war

Tactical or strategic japanese role playing games weren't much of a thing until the creation of Fire Emblem in 1990 that put the thought on Famicom owners everywhere in Japan. Despite my inexperience with the Fire Emblem series, tactical role playing games have slowly nurtured my appreciation for the gameplay style, music and the stories they try to tell. Final Fantasy Tactics was one of my favorite titles and honestly my favorite Final Fantasy title ever bringing everything iconic about the series with deep gameplay mechanics, interesting jobs/classes, excellent music and one of the best political fantasy stories ever told. Before Final Fantasy Tactics, there was Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. Originally a strategy game before turning into a fully realized tactical game with the sequel in question. Matsuno's sophomore effort will eventually leave an impact on the tactical japanese role playing genre forever even now until the modern times with the new release of Tactics Ogre: Reborn allowing people to experience what started it all in possibly the best way you can. I haven't been this enamored with this game in a way to the point I started another playthrough on the Super Famicom version shortly after playing a bit of the modern iteration of Tactics Ogre. This one is for the ages, the crown jewel of the tactical japanese role playing genre lived up to its name and so much more.

Instead of relying on a purely fantastical premise with the powers of good versus the powers of evil, the story is more grounded in reality in political and ethnic struggles. No one is truly a "good" person in this story as everyone has their own strong stance on what is truly right and rides this dark line throughout the whole story. The great thing about a grounded tale is how easy it can be to be immersed in the Valerian Isles, the location in which Tactics Ogre takes place in. The main three characters are extremely flawed takes of the regular japanese role playing protagonist, the heroine, and the childhood friend. Each of them can take a turn for the better or worse depending on your decision and the game throws a lot of difficult decisions, life or death or changing the entire course of the story itself. There's rarely a truly moral answer and rides on your own personal sense of righteousness to see if it was the right thing to do but considering how war is, you always lose something regardless of winning. The main players of the play are important and fleshed out but we can't forget about the supporting cast you can completely easy miss out on. Extremely obtuse requirements required to even see them or have them join your battalion carrying unique skills sometimes with unique interactions with the main narrative itself that fleshes out the little bits even more. The interesting part is that almost each main leader in a story battle has their own page in the Warren Report giving more insight to them and even the current happenings of the world that actually gives you more content to do. The voice acting delivery in Reborn is a little bit mixed I feel with some decent performances but some voices sounding a bit off that might be because of my personal bias with Ivalice or Matsuno's work mentally associated with british voice acting but then again when you hear the protagonist and realize it's Ryuji from Persona 5's english voice actor doing an English accent, you can't help but be taken out a little bit despite the guy really trying his best.

Not mentioning much of Reborn's changes in my thoughts about the narrative and characters earlier because most of the changes the new iteration gives is from a gameplay perspective. Three versions of Tactics Ogre exist with mostly different gameplay in each with the same room premise. Reborn takes its core from the PSP remaster/remake and makes a lot of quality of life adjustments that makes the gameplay a little more forgiving and easier to digest compared to its older iterations. Don't get me wrong though, Tactics Ogre is a pretty difficult game even with a literal tool that lets you turn back time at will with no limit. You'd think with something like that then the challenge would be gone but you'd be surprised. 3D isometric fields with smudgy pixelelated characters that I kinda got used to after a while, it feels familiar if you played Final Fantasy Tactics before but it's a bit different and a bit more streamlined here. A big change is the party size while Final Fantasy Tactics usually have up to five units up at a time, you now have up to a whopping twelve to control at the max with other times being eight to ten at specific moments. If you couldn't tell already, battles in Tactics Ogre can be extremely long at times and the game throws a lot at you to do near the end that almost feels like a third of the game alone in content as a post game of sorts.

Fortunately there's a lot of variety in ways you can create and customize units and even gather units that aren't even from the same species as you such as gryphons, dragons or even skeletons into the fray. Reborn essentially streamlines a bit of stuff from the PSP and make it easier and simpler to an extent such as crafting not failing, different rules for equipment, the leveling system being completely different, skills and jobs being different and tuned and so much more and I honestly think from a gameplay perspective to go to Reborn if you just want to experience the story. I can understand some complaints about the story level cap and not being able to overlevel but I think it's good so you actually have to think about battles instead of brute forcing through higher stats. There's a lot of ways to tackle battles and so many tools the game gives you with actual things to do that challenges that knowledge that I feel pretty fulfilled with the eighty hours I sunk into this game and the extra fourty I sunk into the SNES version itself. I will say I'm not that keen on the buff card system since it brings more randomness to battles where with what cards will spawn and where they spawn that might buff up enemies even more than they already are barring the bosses coming with a full deck of card buffs since it's appropriate given the nature of the gameplay. Ending battles can mostly be easy from just defeating the solo leader unit most of the time and it never feels like there's a reason to defeat everyone else before just the leader considering there are times when I only got little experience points for defeating everyone above my own level and a lot of experience points for just gunning straight for the leader. There's no decent way to calculate experience gained until the very end of a battle so I'm left a little confused on that front but I can say that training battles (which have replaced and removed random encounters) are quick battles you can do for great experience. I prefer this approach as it lets players decide their own pacing.

It's not a Square Enix tactical role playing game without an orchestral soundtrack and Reborn has essentially remastered it as such and I really dig it. A lot of intense battle themes during important moments as always elevate these experiments and really sell you on these huge epic tactical battles of war that the game is known for at this point. Listening to Limitation and Faraway Heights are some of my favorite battle tracks just for that reason alone.

Let us cling together. A poetic subtitle for the game that works twofold that I won't delve on due to spoilers but it's very appropriate after the credits rolled. A story of a country ruined by war and lords lusting for power, grasping for it at whatever cost. Tactics Ogre is not a walk in the park but a sprint through a minefield with how everything clicks and hits you right off the bat. It requires more patience than most games but if you give it that patience, it'll be rewarded and then some with some of the best tactical gameplay in the video gaming space.

Can you get your hands bloody for peace?

Dealing with life with the few ways we know how

The world can feel like a soul crushing place from time to time. Financial burdens, losing loved ones, failing to be accepted into society and dreams being crushed can bring despair into the soul but the reprieve from it all is far fewer. For the people of the experimental Glitch City, there's not much but VA-11 HALL-A. A small hole in the wall where we take the role of Jill, thickheaded but earnest bartender. VA-11 HALL-A really nails its intentions with incredible pixel art reminiscent of old japanese adventure titles, a soundtrack that perfectly encapsulates the joyous and bleak times to be had in a bar, with great characters that each have their own story of making it through this cyberpunk dystopian world.

The music and the art would be all fluff without the story and characters and that's the pièce de résistance here. Jill has her own problems and is a fully realized character herself with her own arc and her own reactions and experiences to what the regulars will convey to her on a daily basis. The only times you'll choose what she says isn't purely from speech but from the drinks you make your patrons. Everyone has their own story especially in Glitch City and everyone that comes in VA-11 HALL-A comes from all walks of life. Rich women to grizzled mercenaries, it's up to you to serve them the right drinks and listen to their woes. The amount of characters you'll see is surprising but I think the variety and intricacies of each one is what made the game engaging and not boring to read at times. Jill does have her own arc that coincides with being the main story in how she deals with it but I feel like everyone's stories almost holds as much weight as well.

Using a tagline from the likes of the Metal Gear Solid series, Cyberpunk Bartender Action is accurate in some sense. The game essentially plays out like a visual novel in many ways one would expect with mixing drinks blended in too. Some regulars will make it easy to make the drink they want from just telling you which drink they want specifically and looking it up in the recipe book to being extremely vague and giving you a specific taste or feel they want. You have complete freedom in whatever drink you want to make and some drinks give you secrets, unique dialogue and so forth. Be sure to do your job well too if you want your bills paid as there is a reason to spend money when you finish a shift. Returning to your home, you'll have a variety of options before going back to work. Reading the Augmented Eye which acts as general news for the world you're in or danger/u/ which acts like a 4chan equivalent in the world without the images. Jill can also buy some things for her apartment at JC Elton's, a store that sells a variety of stuff and useful if you want to keep Jill focused throughout the game. Like some people sometimes, there's something you want that you can't keep your mind off of and unless you get it, you can't focus on much else. Failing to get something for the day will make Jill completely forget her orders at work with no way to remember so something to keep in mind. Nonetheless this is a relaxing experience through and through with little to worry about. Take your time, the game wants as much for you to take it easy just like the patrons of VA-11 HALL-A does.

The cyberpunk pixel aesthetic is nailed here with how detailed your work area is, how detailed each character is from cybernetic enhancement on some of them to how their expressions are in response to several things. Always a pleasure looking at the game and just as much of a pleasure as it is to listen to it too. Everyday when Jill starts her shift and when she comes back from her break is when she can adjust the jukebox is a surprising form of player expression. I went for the happier and upbeat music early on and as the game was nearing its end and arcs were mostly being resolved is when I put on a bit more melancholic and somber music to fit the mood. An outstanding soundtrack that I found it hard to really dislike any of the songs and with the choice of what you want to listen to during your shift really helps this.

Saying goodbye to this world is pretty tough especially when you serve some of your favorite regulars for the last time considering you'll never see them again, fully resolved to continue on. Life will continue on in this world with or without us and we can only hope the best for the people there and in our own too. A relaxing experience set in a cyberpunk dystopian world viewed through the eyes of a bartender. Things are never pretty completely set in reality but it's nice to have own little heaven to escape to, our own little VA-11 HALL-A.

A virtual museum into the genesis of video games

I'd like to preface this review by apologizing for the recent review spam as I go through most of the games in the collection.

I can safely say I was never into video games of a pure retro nature mostly. I lacked the patience and my brain has rotted to the point that I found it hard to really go back sometimes. I knew about Pong and Asteroids and my only real experience with Atari's legacy was a parody of it via watching Code Monkeys as a kid and just know seeing how much it really influenced that show. Most of my arcade experiences themselves derived from Namco mostly due to the fact that The PlayStation 1 titles worked as virtual museums as well as its own space which I also recommend you check out if you enjoy this type of collection. That said, this is a pretty great collection that goes in depth of what exactly Atari did for the video game space and as a company itself.

I really don't want to delve too much into the story of Atari due to the fact that the collection does a better job of it than I ever will but I will say that it manages to go into depth a bit with the people that were actually there at the time. Video interviews, statements, reading the flyers from then and even secret memos and corporate documents from then really give you the context of what went into making the games. Going into Adventure's influence, explaining how hard it was to make games for the 2600 due to the fact that they had to constrict themselves to a specific limit compared to creating arcade titles and even crazy stories like how much weed the developers smoked. There's a lot more here to unpack but I really do believe the collection does it justice better than a few sentences I could muster really do.

The games themselves are cool as every library is covered barring a few important ones sadly. The Jaguar collection itself seems to be lacking as well (for better or worse) but I feel like you got a lot of the important classics for the most part. Tempest ended up being a personal favorite of mine for the visual style and fast paced gameplay and this also its Jaguar counterpart, Tempest 2000. Classics like Pong, Asteroids, Star Raiders and Adventure are here with some wacky concept games like Ninja Golf really surprising me. Also a cool addition is that each game comes with its manual and appropriate media to get the most out of the games too making this much more than just a regular collection of emulated games.

Digital Eclipse did a great job with this collection. Being given a bit more insight into the inner workings of how the concept of household video games as a whole is something I didn't expect to come out of knowing. Really wish a lot of arcade or early game collections were like this where you have first hand accounts and documents explaining the intricacies of making a specific game or how something specific came to be. If you have a huge appreciation for the medium, this is definitely worth taking a look at and only hoping more things like these comes around.