For many years I actually thought that Sonic the Hedgehog on the Master System was the same as the Mega Drive version only with 8-bit visuals. Not only is it a completely different game but it actually came out almost 6 months after the Mega Drive original.

There are some similarities, the opening stage is a version of Green Hill Zone (Complete with a nifty version of the level music) as are two others leaving 50% completely original locations. The general gameplay and structure of the game is also the same with several levels per each of the 6 zones followed by a fight with Robotnik and freeing the animals he captured as was the original game's premise.

The rest of the zones contained are different for both better and worse:

Zone 1 - Green hill - I like this zone, it's an easy going classic, there are reasons it or variations of it are normally starting zones
Zone 2 - Bridge - this is weirdly for a sonic game an auto scrolling zone. It kind of works though as this is a much slower paced platformer like it's Mega Drive counter part
Zone 3 - Jungle Zone - I have issues with this one listed below
Zone 4 - Labyrinth Zone - Another similar level from it's big brother, I like the underwater Sonic levels though I know I'm a minority there
Zone 5 - Scrap Brain Zone - So much better than it's big brothers version again, easier and less frustrating
Zone 6 - Sky Base Zone - I liked this level, had a great atmosphere

Of all the zones the only one I wasn't keen on was the Jungle zone. there is a section that's a bit tricky where you climb up a waterfall jumping on ledges and rocks. once the screen goes past a platform though it locks meaning if you try to jump back to it you instantly die even if it's a millimetre which is just kind of stupid. Other minor gameplay annoyances including how the rings work as the amount only matters for gaining extra lives. If sonic takes a hit he loses them all with one visible ring dropping you can't collect so essentially you only have the one hit to take regardless. The boss levels you don't have any rings at all though I kind of liked that as you had to learn the pattern and play skilfully. The bosses themselves aren't brutally hard though, especially to a seasoned Sonic player. Interestingly when you collect a bubble shield from a TV though it does transfer between levels so you can head into a boss with one as a possibility, I liked that.

There are Special Zones accessed through non boss stages when finishing with more than fifty rings as the only other use for them. This gives you the chance to get extra lives or continues by bouncing on springs to the end of the level in a time limit. There are no chaos emeralds here though, for a bit of a change they are actually hidden in the main levels requiring good jump control, using invincibility boxes to reach in spikes etc.

The game handles really well, the jumps and animations feel like a Sonic game should. The visuals and art design are the level of coloured and varied as I would expect, though the tiny enemy models are hilariously cute. The backgrounds are pretty static but Sonic's character model and animations are really well done. Interestingly this is actually the first game made by Ancient, the company formed by legendary composer Yuzo Koshiro. It was initially created to make this game specifically and it's Game Gear counter part before going on to later fame making Streets of rage and Beyond Oasis.

Overall I had a good time with this and the thing is I didn't expect to. It looks really nice for an 8-bit game, has a banger OST and plays well with some neat little ideas. Not everything works but overall it's a good little game.

+ Nice visuals and music.
+ Zones are fun and varied.
+ No ring bosses and emeralds on stages are different.

- Jungle Zone instant death isn't very well designed.
- Losing rings all at once is kind of lame.

Not all heroes wear capes, some wear seriously outdated suits.

It's been a long road getting to this point for both myself and Yakuza's main star Kiryu Kazama. Like many people I got into this series with Yakuza 0 through word of mouth in 2017 and wondered what I had missed all that time. There simply isn't another game series like it. It's a Frankenstein's monster whose separate parts on paper don't feel like they should work but amalgamated together they create something magical. They are serious crime dramas, only they are off beat comedies. They are beat 'em ups yet also adventure games, RPGs and dating simulators. It's all of these things and yet none of them. Not all it's ideas work, when they throw so much at the wall some things don't always stick but without fail for me they are always emotional, hilarious and entertaining.

The series' big selling point to me though is actually it's world design. This series along with Deus Ex made me realise I don't dislike open worlds, I dislike vast areas for the sake of being vast with empty meaningless content, sometimes less is more. Yakuza games are open worlds done right, not gigantic bloated icon maps usually used for those descriptions but smaller denser hubs. Locations have meaning, they have personality, the cities feel like characters in the game as much as the cast. If the game tells me to go to a shop or street I normally know where it is without having to bring up a map. They are full of life, small compact and focused.

Yakuza 6's story follows this same thought, whether it was because this was the first game on the Dragon Engine at the time meaning they cut back I don't know but I appreciated the sharper focus on Kiryu rather than the overly large games before that were getting a bit too big for themselves. Kiryu was really the heart of this game, it's his personal story about his own values and dedication to family. Hard to discuss without spoilers but whilst the overall story wasn't quite my cup of tea generally resulting in some pacing issues it still has some fantastic characters, moments and voice acting. This is partially because Yakuza's cinematography for it's cutscenes are a step above most games to me. The camera angles, facial details and expressions have always been extremely impressive but I truly noticed it here.

Like every Yakuza game the side content is often as important as the linear main story. Yakuza 6 scales back on this too but there is still a wealth of content here I spent a lot of my 70 hours playing through on. Spear fishing in an underwater on rails shooter, building up a clan for street fights in a mini strategy game, helping a small baseball team beat their countryside rivals (I'm not into baseball but this is making me consider some other games for it) as well as the usual suspects like cabaret clubs, video chat dating, mahjong and arcade games. It even has the full arcade game of Virtua Fighter 5 as optional content which is pretty crazy as far as a throw away mini game is concerned.

Honestly except some story beats I just don't have anything negative to say about this game. The combat is a little simpler than some other titles though that doesn't concern me much as the moment to moment narrative beats and atmosphere are the core to the series to me. I started it because I needed to play it to play Gaiden as I skipped from 5 to 7 initially but then had a feeling of regret I hadn't played it sooner as the Yakuza magic took hold of me. I love the world, the characters, the side content, exploring and taking in the sights of the locations. Yakuza as I discussed is a lot of things but to someone who grew up as a Sega fan it really shows to me that they still have that spark that made me a fan of theirs in the first place and may it long continue.

+ Hiroshima is a great new location.
+ Cinematography and voice acting are superb.
+ Baseball, spear fishing and clan fighting are pretty fun side content.
+ It's Yakuza.

- Storyline is a little up and down.

Two men approach a ledge. They are underground in an incredibly hostile environment that neither could foresee arriving in when they woke up that morning. They are tired, mentally frayed and have an uneasy trust in each other based entirely on circumstances. The first man reaches the ledge, after an awkwardly long second staring he finally drops down the 3ft drop to continue along the dimly lit path. The second man approaches the ledge but rather than drop down he freezes, staring at it whilst his comrade looks at him perplexed. The man walks away from the ledge before coming back to it freezing again. He refused to jump down to continue their trek. Was it fear preventing him? Had the ordeal and horrors he'd witnessed finally pushed his mind to far?

No, it's just that playing House of Ashes in online co-op was a miserable buggy experience.

You see I played this with a friend, we play together nearly every evening and are always looking for a new Playstation co-op experience. We had enjoyed Man of Medan despite some issues and heard this game was supposedly all around the better of the two. We ran into constant technical problems though. Characters getting stuck, locking up for no reason. The game taking forever to actually perform an action, even picking up an item to look at was a complete chore of waiting 10 seconds to see if they would actually move. We had to quit out and restart half a dozen times to get past various sections and by the end we were frustrated by it all. The thing is it wasn't just the technical problems but a variety of issues built up leaving a bitter taste in our mouths. We beat the game, kind of hated it and moved onto Wild Hearts. The thing is, I decided to go back to it to see if the game was better playing it on my own and my second experience has left me softer towards it overall though certain flaws continue regardless of player occupancy.

For those unaware The Dark Pictures Anthology is a series of horror games by developer Supermassive Games that are more like quick time event interactive movies. Your inputs decide the outcome and the wrong move at the wrong time can see characters permanently die and adjust the story outcome slightly. Our first issue with this game is the button prompts for these events. They are based on the PS5 controller with white buttons with the Cross, Triangle, Square and Circle symbols overlayed in grey. They aren't clear without colour to tell them apart and when you only have a second to work it out...well the design is awful. I went into the accessibility options to change them all to cross because it was implemented so badly when playing on my own. I will at least give them credit for those features.

A lot of the rest of the game has it's ups and downs as well. I really liked the setting going with a Mesopotamian historical influence which isn't something seen in games all too much. The modern plot setting there of the 2003 invasion of Iraq looking for chemical weapons however certainly is...a choice. It did allow a good relationship build up between two characters of Jason a lieutenant in the US marines and Salim a sergeant in the Iraqi army. Their characters and relationship are the two best parts of the whole game with some well written dialog and voice acting that bring them to life as being both professional and empathetic. If only the rest of the writing was as good or even competent because most of the other characters are just unrelatable buffoons. I didn't care for the forced interpersonal drama between 3 of them and was quite happy for them to die. They are needlessly confrontational, rude and in a lot of cases completely inconsistent. In one scene as an example:

Character 1: "What's there to think about? We go and save him"
Character 2: thinks about it for a second
Character 1: "He isn't one of us lets leave him"

It's like they are different people from line to line at times completely breaking immersion when they 180, never mind in the same conversation. Frankly except Jason and Salim they are all extremely unlikeable. I understand the developers want to build a varied cast that will leave difficult decisions for the player with conflict but they went overboard leaving a negative experience in a lot of scenes because I just didn't care about what happened to any of them.

The story also kind of lacks suspense and scares which I was surprised by. It has an interesting setting and atmosphere but it never really uses them to build up any tension or fear of the unknown. Except for a few scenes early on the game is more just a military shooter than a horror title. The magic is gone when the monster is revealed and the curtain gets drawn back. In this case it just happens all too early.

I will say my second playthrough was far more enjoyable overall regardless of the issues above. The only bugs playing solo was a trophy not unlocking (I had to disconnect from the internet and restart my PS5 replaying the scene to unlock it as a work around found by the community). I really like the visuals and general ideas presented here, they just needed more polish and to iron out the cast to a better degree. Still I am glad I went back to it as it has convinced me to play the second game in the series Little Hope which I had initially written off after my first playthrough of House of ashes, I just won't play it online...

+ Jason and Salim are great characters with an excellent comradery.
+ Visuals are gorgeous.
+ Mesopotamian setting is a nice choice.

- The other characters could all rot for all I care.
- Playstation quick time buttons are unclear.
- Online is a constant buggy mess and a semi bugged trophy.
- Not scary, no tension or build up.
- War setting is...a choice.

This is the second 32X game I've played as the system had such a limited library in it's short life span. I may decide to try some of the many ports on it to see the difference at some point but otherwise there isn't really much else to try. It's a shame really because though pretty rough in a lot of areas Metal Head does show glimmers of promise for what the 32X could do.

Released in February 1995 this game is at the time of writing 29 years old. I played this on original hardware with a third party 6 button controller. The controller is kind of needed for the variety of options this has to my surprise in controlling your mech (You can play it on a 3 button as well). The mech you pilot is referred to as a 'Metal Head' though the role you play is part of the World Federation Police taking down terrorists. There is more of a plot but it's utterly drab in how it comes across. There is an intro sequence with the background story and in between missions you have a digitised head of your commander talking to you about your objectives to push the plot along. The audio quality for the dialog is just awful, like they have the microphone in their mouth when speaking but the worst aspect of this is the digitised head animations. Look at this (0.41 seconds in). It's like trying to make a real life Terrance & Phillip from South Park. I'll be honest I found it hilarious but for a game that mostly takes it's terrorist, war, military police themes so seriously it's kind of laughable.

More positively though the visuals are actually pretty solid. Very early 3D and feels almost like it could be a launch PS1 game. You move your Metal Head through city environments and sometimes industrial warehouse / underground bases. You fight a variety of drones, tanks and mechs on these 3D battlefields. The buildings are all 3D models with a flat image in the horizon to hide the draw distance but with the slightly muddy rough visual style it all blends together surprisingly well. Much like the digitised talking heads though when the mechs are destroyed falling into their base polygons onto the floor shatters the illusion and the frame rate does tend to chug along a bit at times. These small caveats asides though I was pretty impressed overall with it's visuals.

Gameplay wise as mentioned above it's recommended for the 6 button controller. It uses a couple of buttons to look 90 degrees left or right, change weapons, strafe, fire, run as well as change perspective. It's got a pretty robust set of options for the time and a variety of views including two first person variations and two third person variations. Actually firing weapons at anything though just feels awful. Weapons lack punch regardless of which one you use from chain guns to rocket launchers. They may as well be spud guns. Aiming is equally poor due to the juddering frame rate and sometimes it's uncertain if you are even hitting the enemies in question lacking impact or having pitiful explosions. For each mission you beat you earn points that you can use in between to either upgrade or buy new weapons however this resets each time and isn't permanent. You can tell this is a grift as the merchant calls you a 'chump' each time. He can see us coming a mile away apparently.

So did I have fun playing this? In small bursts kinda? Would I recommend this? No, unless you want to experience a retro piece of gaming history on a failed console experiment. The 32X had a ton of potential that people are still showing to this day and Metal Head does show this but realistically, it's not a very good game.

Also standard for me, I need to comment that I love the cover art. I wish the game looked like that actually playing it.

+ Visuals show the 32X's potential.
+ Robust control and views.
+ Digitised heads are hilarious...

- ...but also the spoken audio and digitised heads are awful.
- Story is boring.
- Missions are stale.
- Weapons lack impact or punch.

As a gaming new years resolution I set myself three goals this year; to try and beat over 100 games, buy less than I beat and to try and play at least one game from every system I have access to. So, here is the Super Nintendo Entertainment System entry for the year, Final Fight 2!

I chose this as I beat the original Final Fight on both arcade and Sega CD last year for the first time. To be honest I didn't actually like it that much which was kind of a surprise as both a beat 'em up and Capcom fan. It was a pretty early game in the genre though coming out in 1989 and helped pioneer a lot of later games so I could forgive it a bit for it's rough edges. Final Fight 2 a little less so though overall I do actually like it more.

So firstly the game feels a lot less swarm heavy, perhaps because it's a SNES exclusive (I still haven't played the Final Fight SNES port). Enemies come in smaller groups and don't feel quite as insanely aggressive though they will still try and circle around you which I like. There are three playable characters. Hagar returning from Final Fight, he's a wrestler (you can see him drop kicking a goon flexing his huge muscles on the cover art here), his South American friend Carlos who fights with a sword, (and by that I mean he has it on his back but uses it for 1 move), and Maki, who dresses a bit like a Kunoichi, a student of ninjitsu. They are after Maki's sister and father who have been kidnapped by the sudden re-emergence of the Mad Gear Gang from the first game who have suddenly gained a worldwide presence. This is evidently an excuse for visiting more locations than anything truly plot related.

The characters all play pretty much the same regardless of who you choose. A basic attack combo, a jump and a special move used for crowd control. They can grab enemies in holds when close enough and do throws is about it, it's pretty basic for a beat 'em up. My only real input on the characters is I appreciate them adding a female playable character instead of the three men from the original. My issues really stem that this game feels pretty run of the mill generally. Similar to Final Fight 1 you have seen the few enemy types by the start of the second stage and just beat the same 4 enemies over and over from there onwards with no surprises. Andore is the only memorable enemy and that's mostly because he was in the original Final Fight, is clearly andre the Giant, has a large health bar, and is everywhere. Nothing new appears over the course of the game to make it feel fresh from level to level. The level design itself feels pretty similar in that you go to multiple world locations but the set pieces are all pretty uninteresting and you fight the same 4 guys in each part of the world.

Compounding that is the bosses which all feel like a non event. They feel almost like regular enemies just with slightly higher health bars. a lot of them have really dodgy grab animations and range where you teleport into their hands a few feet away and the worst of these is Rolent, a boss from Final Fight brought back with the same grenades and running around. He can outmanoeuvre and outreach your limited move set and is just awful to fight. He's the only boss I really remember, mostly because he is frustrating. Weirdly the music doesn't change during a boss fight either to the point it's just tracks like this which is ok for a stage but not a boss. The first boss I fought I didn't even realise was the end level boss due to this uneventful feel.

Speaking of music, it's fine but I don't think a single track stood out from the whole game and I guess that sums up Final Fight 2. Nothing about it really excels and when it's been 4 years since the first game and it feels exactly the same is a bit disappointing. All that said though I had fun playing through it and don't want to sound too negative as I don't think it's a bad game, it plays well, sounds decent and looks nice, it's just forgettable.

Also, I always thought Maki was an SNK character when playing Capcom vs SNK 2 back in the day. Gaming knowledge increase. (+1exp!)

+ Maki as a playable female character.
+ It's fun enough and well made.

- Feels uninspired. Seen all enemies by the start of level 2.
- Bosses feel like a non event with huge hit pools.
- Some questionable grab detection.

Retro gaming is an interesting topic for a lot of reasons. Original hardware? Ports? Remasters? CRT? There are so many ways for people to play them and everyone has a different preference. In this instance I played this with a friend using the PS3 Sega Megadrive Collection as one of the extra games. What really matters to me though isn't how you choose to play, but how the game holds up. Considering this game came out in 1987 (and is nearly as old as I am) I was actually impressed by a lot of it but after discussing with the friend I played this with after beating it we decided your enjoyment of Phantasy Star is probably going to boil down to an entirely binary decision.

With, or without a walkthrough?

You see this game is very much a product of it's time, and I mean no insult by that. It plays akin to an adventure game as much as an RPG meaning you have to find a lot of strange items in dungeons from very cryptic clues from villagers you talk to. Going through the wrong dungeons in the wrong order without the right items or knowing how and when to use them can mean you hit frustrating dead ends. Magic spells and items don't have descriptions and the localisation feels almost machine translated it's so wooden and clunky. Wrong pronouns and spelling errors abound!

Unless you want the original experience of mapping out dungeons on graph paper and trying to work it out on your own, I'd advise using a guide personally to get the most enjoyment out of it. Playing with a friend was like rally car driving with one person in control whilst the other gave directions. The dungeons themselves were impressive in some ways regardless, despite their repetition. Phantasy Star has this cool effect where the traditional top down view of the world map changes to a first person dungeon crawler. The view change for a Master System we found really impressive with the dungeons wireframe programming and perspective being something feeling more like a Megadrive game, (I also love the catchy dungeon theme).

The game does some other really neat things too, the character and enemy designs are really neat. Having a female protagonist is still rare in JRPGs now never mind in 1987. though the story is incredibly threadbare of Alis avenging her murdered brother by going to kill the evil king, she doesn't come across as some weak damsel in the few animated cutscenes either, she just gets the job done. Other party members follow you on screen as you move around and I loved Myau the space cat's animation as he runs behind you. A lot of the enemy designs and sprites are really unique too with Phantasy Star's heavy Star Wars influence at the forefront with robots, sandworms and Jawa looking enemies. Some of these have surprisingly fancy and varied attack animations that kind of show what the Master System was really capable of for an 8 bit system.

Honestly I was surprised just how much I really liked this. Yes engaging with it as you would have in 1987 on it's own terms in 2024 is a somewhat painful experience, but playing it with a guide to experience this sci-fi and fantasy mix is kind of a delight. The music is surprisingly great, the art design is good and overall it still holds up well still. All that said I wouldn't play it again, at least this version. I do want to try the Sega Ages 2500 remake at some point, just to see an updated space cat if nothing else.

+ Great art design and enemy sprites.
+ The first person dungeon crawling is a neat effect.
+ Surprisingly catchy music (if limited on tracks)

- Dungeons do all look identical.
- Extremely difficult to know where to go or what to do without following a guide, a product of it's time.

This is my second attempt to play Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I originally bought it when it launched in 2010 having been hyped by the launch trailer with Patrick Stewart and Robert Carlyle narrating. Its been 14 years since then and all I remember is not enjoying it much and eventually trading it in but nothing specific about it. A friend of mine bought it so we decided to play through it together as Castlevania fans, what could go wrong?

Everything about this game feels bad to play.

Let's start with the protagonist Gabriel Belmont, he has all the personality and emotional range of a slab of granite. Literally anything that happens gives him no reaction at all like the developers forgot to animate his face. A magic horse teleporting in next to him? No problem. Giant titan smashing out of the lake? Sure. Dead wife appearing in front of him? It's Tuesday. Not a flicker of acknowledgement of surprising events like an animated corpse. His voice actor Robert Carlyle is normally a great performer but it doesn't seem like he was given much direction here. Perhaps it's because voice acting is a very different skill? but it really sounds like he is just reading off a script. Perhaps I'm underselling him here and he is acting to the characters visually displayed emotions, which is absolutely nothing, so in fact an A+ performance.

I could overlook this if the game was fun to play and control Granite Belmont but that's actually the worst part, by a country mile. It's a 3D action game but has a fixed camera with a soft lock following the action. Because the game lacks personality as much as Mr. Granite it's essentially a God of War clone but it fails to understand the level design to make that enjoyable leaving large dead zones of the camera view constantly. The combat just feels terrible, It's slow but not deliberate. Attacks lack weight and impact yet everything is unresponsive at the same time. The controls are somewhat baffling in their design to compound this further. Roll is on L2 with the left analog stick, the right analog stick doesn't seem to be used at all as you can't control the camera. There is no manual lock on to attack enemies, just a soft lock that's easy to lose. It's feels so cumbersome, even after a few hours it still felt like we were learning the controls.

A second friend came by when we were playing and gave it a go and their only impression was "This doesn't feel good does it?"

You can buy more combos for your whip using experience gained through combat but none of them feel easy to pull off or actually useful in any way when you do. The whip completely lacks impact. Enemies will just interrupt you mid attack so most the time hit and run is the most effective strategy. It's Castlevania yet you get access to one sub weapon of a throwing knife and two magic spells of light and shadow. Light heals you, shadow increases your attack. It's...coloured auras in which you collect orbs from enemies with L3 or R3 depending which pool you want to refill. Getting access to this IP and only giving that as options feels so...derivative.

This complete lack of imagination extends to the level and enemy designs equally. Enemies are bland fantasy archetypes of werewolves, trolls, goblins, and spiders. We completed 14 levels in two chapters with several hours of play and barely saw anything else. This is a series known for animated armour, floating medusa heads, dancing ghosts, chimeras etc. How do you take the past games and boil them down to such uninteresting foes? The first main level after the tutorial fight was a swamp you slowly trudge through with some goblins. It's so painfully generic but it's not even done well or designed interestingly to make it fresh. It utterly lacks the panache and style of the series it's based on.

It feels like it's aged terribly going back to it, it has all the worst aspects of the PS3 era. Quick time events for finishing enemies or traversing with a circle going into another circle. Balancing to cross a beam and having to hold R2 if you are about to fall. The game also constantly takes control away from you like it's mansplaining everything feeling incredibly patronising. Constant tutorials, pop ups, camera sweeps. Just let me play the game! I know I can pick up items with R2, I've been playing for over 2 hours! It treats you like your memory is wiped every 15 minutes.

The game tries to be a large epic with high production values with epic music and voice acting yet there are large chunks of levels with no music at all but it's not atmospheric, just empty. What music there is is forgettable like a generic orchestral theme for a summer block buster but no punch or stand out beats. Like trailer music.

After several hours my friend and I just called it quits. Maybe it gets better further on? I am aware of the twist but after learning there were still 34 more levels we just didn't actually want to play anymore. We moved onto Space Marine after this as my friend hadn't played it and the quality difference on the same system was night and day. Full camera movement, easy fluid to use controls, and interestingly a better frame rate and clearer image quality. It really just emphasized all of this game's flaws.

The thing is, I'm sad about this. We wanted to like this, we wanted to beat it and play Lords of Shadow 2 to fill in some gaps in our Castlevania history and see Granite Belmont's story unfold. There isn't an original idea to be had here though and everything just feels so banal with it. Playing this feels like a PS3 game with all the negatives that sentence implies. It takes the worst aspects of gaming in that generation and merges them together but above all it's just forgettable.

Even Patrick Stewart can't save this.

+ I like Granite Slab's outfit.

- Awful camera, controls and combat.
- Bland level, skills and enemy designs.
- Gabriel has the personality of a plank of wood used in a button measuring contest.
- Everything feels so safe and by the numbers like designed by committee.

The name "Monster Attack" reminds me of when I was in my late teens staying up late on a Saturday night so I could record anime on the sci-fi channel using VHS. It wasn't so prevalent at the time. Whilst waiting I would watch whatever bad horror or sci-fi movies were being shown on the run up, it became such an ingrained memory as an adult I would later host bad movie night with friends where we would watch Sharknado, wolf cop, Killer Clowns from Outer space and other dubious films.

I guess it really helped solidify not only my love of B movies, but also due to the PS2 of just mid budget game equivalents as it seemed there were so many of these at the time before everything started being swallowed up in consolidations now days. Back on the PS2 this was such a line of thinking that a simple series) of extremely mid budget cheaper games was launched. A bizarre mix of titles some of which make Dead or Alive Volleyball look tame. A big selection of these got Western releases in the West and a couple even became successful enough to spin off their own series. Some of these are still going to this day such as Onechanbara and Monster Attack, you see Monster Attack is actually the first in the Earth Defence Force series.

The Simple Series 2000 was apparently named this because the games would cost 2000 yen which today is just over £10 and considering this fact, Monster Attack is really quite good. All the staples of the series are still here. There are giant ants, UFOs, walking robots and giant dinosaurs. You can get in tanks and helicopters and there is even a nifty hover bike. Buildings collapse in chunky explosions as your stray rocket accidently slams into it with smoke from the collapse. In some ways despite the progress made in a lot of areas in later games there is actually something extremely pleasant about the simplicity of the game here.

I feel the scale a lot more in Monster Attack. My character is small compared with the surroundings, it's slightly more claustrophobic in some ways. The music and designs have a lot more of a retro inspiration with purple spinning top robots and UFOS with purple bulging discs to the sound of music like it was played on a Theremin. Things collapse and explode with surprising impact through my headphones with beefy explosions and the game doesn't out stay it's welcome. An issue I have despite my love of the later games but at 25 missions it is easily played in a couple of evenings. You only have a generic trooper and as you kill enemies they will occasionally drop weapons and armour boxes to expand your overall health and give you combat options. The growth rate is such that at the moment playing through easy, normal and hard I haven't had to grind at all as it curves out nicely.

Where the game does fail for me though is on two fronts, original design and localisation short cutting. On the original design front it's incredibly easy to bounce off of this game from it's base controller setting, it's pretty evident even here on backloggd because the initial set up is truly abhorrent. This mode doesn't allow you to manually aim vertically or use the right analog stick. It's basically unplayable and it's utterly baffling how this was thought to be a good idea as the standard set up. There is a control option that allows you to move with the left stick and aim with the right like a traditional third person shooter in the settings that makes this infinitely more fun though you can't remap the other buttons which I would have preferred but that's the lesser of two evils here. Equally it has a cinematic cam that makes you watch the UFOs as they burn and descend into epic explosions when you destroy them. It gives a great field of view blurring you out and looks pretty awesome. What isn't so wonderful about this though is that enemies continue their relentless assault upon you with a fixed angle and no reticule. Just terrible idea, you need to turn that off in the settings to then the game plays pretty well.

The second issue is the localisation. It removed all the voice acting from the game. I get it might not have been worth dubbing it financially but it also didn't add subtitles to the point it even removed the tutorial messages at the start of the game for the controls. Such an odd decision and it makes the levels feel so silent without them. I had to watch a playthrough with the voices and subtitles to see what was actually missing. It's kind of night and day.

Those two pretty glaring flaws aside though I can see why this super cheap budget game got a franchise because 21 years later it is still extremely fun to play and the idea of giant insects, robots and monsters attacking cities will probably never get old. Whilst I would still recommend the later games over this, it's still not a bad place to start the series.

+ Basic idea is just fun to blast monsters and robots.
+ Has pretty good pacing and levelling curve compared with later games.
+ Holds up really well...

-...after changing the settings. The starting controls are bafflingly bad.
- Localisation removed all voice acting and even the tutorial boxes. Really impactful on the overall experience.

So this year I was going to make a conscious effort to work through my backlog. Buy less games, play more etc. That quickly fell apart in the first month however I've done decently at playing them so far and the Odin Sphere remaster Leifthrasir is one of the older PSN purchase I have yet to play . I decided it was a good title to finally finish on my 2024 games played list.

Odin Sphere is the third Vanillaware title I've played at the time of writing. The first was Dragon's Crown, a game I truly hated but perhaps approached wrong expecting a four player Guardian Heroes. The second was 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim which I utterly adored for it's keep you guessing sci-fi story. (First quick review I wrote on Backloggd actually) It's fitting then that Odin Sphere would sit somewhere in the middle between them as a game I like but with a lot of flaws preventing me loving it and hard to actually recommend.

So lets get the positive aspects out in the open first as this game does have a lot of good going for it. Firstly the artwork and animations are pretty stunning. Vanillaware is pretty famous for it's layered 2D art style and animations. The characters and enemies all stand out and the usage of colour and style makes it feel like a painting in motion. To carry on the presentation side of my positive compliments, the whimsical soundtrack is stunning. I especially like the theme song but it's all gorgeous wrapping up Odin Sphere into a great looking and sounding package.

I actually had to double check this was originally a PS2 game because even as a remaster it just doesn't feel like it. Equally it just doesn't play like it came from that console. The combat animations and battles are all so smooth chaining from moves to move. This isn't an insult to the PS2, it was an amazing system, just a compliment to Odin sphere's visuals and animations. When in combat the characters have a large amount of moves with more unlocking as the game progresses. It allows you to chain various moves and skills into large combos. Hitting a group of enemies into a huge combo with perfect blocks to keep the chain is initially really fun. I'm saying initially because this is where my praise of Odin sphere starts to breakdown a bit unfortunately. The game is based around five characters:

- Gwyndolin, a Valkyrie Princess.
- Cornelius, a prince cursed into a beast form.
- Mercedes, a fairy Princess.
- Oswald, an orphaned knight with a cursed sword.
- Velvet, a forest Witch.

Similar to Vanillaware's later title 13 Sentinels each character has their own story arc playing the game from different perspectives before a final chapter linking the full story together. In principal the idea is great. Vanillaware themselves proved this can work wonderfully as a concept. Here it is extremely flawed though. My biggest issue is there is no variety between each character play through. They have different moves, weapons and some unique skills on a couple of them but they are fundamentally the same. When you take that into account along with the fact that each one of them plays through the same 6 locations fighting the same 20 ish enemies and same bosses and no matter how gorgeous Odin Sphere is, and no matter how nicely it plays it just becomes tedious. You have to play all five scenarios to see the ending and by the 4th character I was just feeling burnt out of it all.

Perhaps because it's an action RPG there is a greater downtime between the story sections that could have kept the mystery going for me to want to push onwards but I feel the narrative behind the game overall just isn't strong enough to justify the multiple perspectives. There isn't a huge mystery that gets unveiled or a surprise twist. Each scenario explains a few things more but I didn't find any of it compelling. Everything around the multiple protagonist formula here undermines the story and the mechanics. Some of the story arcs on each character don't quite match with some odd reasons to make sure the character does visit the snow mountain or lava kingdom etc. Having a food resource cooking mini game for levelling is a neat little idea but gets boring having to save ingredients and feed each character as a core way to level them up every time. Exploring never has anything new on different characters, same levels, same equipment. This feels like a 6 hour game padded out to a 30 hour game and the fairy tale esq setting and lore aren't strong enough to carry that.

I hate typing this as I wanted to love Odin Sphere like I did 13 Sentinels. I am however grateful to it for being the game that put Vanillaware on the map, the game that is almost like a later prototype they built on. I'm glad I played it, it's well made, and looks and plays wonderfully it's just lacking meat on it's bones.

I wish you really could just grow sheep from trees.

+ Gorgeous art design.
+ Fun , fast and fluid combat system.
+ Pleasant whimsical soundtrack and great voice acting (I played it in Japanese).

- The game loop is extremely repetitive and the story cannot carry nearly the exact same content from a slightly different view point. Only one real negative but it's a big one.

There is a moment in Mushihimesama where I started to feel guilty. Not for the act of playing the game or anything but upon hearing Reco the game's protagonist death scream a bit too frequently as I weave her into yet another purple ball of bug plasma. This really struck home though when I paused the game and the music and sound effects stopped but her scream continued, echoing into the void reminding me of my failure.

In case it's not apparent I'm still pretty green to shoot 'em ups though I've been investing time playing them more and more since joining backloggd. I see people here discussing in their reviews completing a 'one CC' run and I laugh at the the very idea of the practice it would take me to do such a thing. You see I normally play a shoot 'em up once, see the credits, take time to think about what I played, what did I like? what didn't I? and then move on. There is something about Mushihimesama though that keeps drawing me to play it again and again. For the first time I feel I almost understand hardcore STG players, at least a little bit.

The immediate thing I need to talk about with the actual game though is the cover art here. It's the thing that made me aware of this games existence. A friend here started playing it before I started delving more into the genre a couple of years ago and my first thought was "what on earth is that?" You only make first impressions once and it's absolutely sublime. Taking a mixture of anime and art nouveau with the curved backdrop, colours and flowing hair. It's like if Alphonse Mucha had become an anime artist and I utterly adore it. The art is one of the stand out elements of this title for both aesthetics and design. Taking influence from studio Ghibli's animated classic Nausica Valley of the Wind, you play the afore mentioned Princess Reco. She is due to be sacrificed to stop the Miasma that threatens her village from the giant Koju insects. On her 15th birthday she takes flight on her Rhinoceros beetle to stop them. The game's theme is entirely about insects bugs and nature, even the game's title Mushihimesama translates roughly to bug princess.

It spans five stages and I love the visuals and details. Lush looking forests, petrified centipede husks with fauna growing out of them, lava stages, crane flies floating on water and not to mention the way the stages are so active in the backgrounds. On one stage you can see this ginormous beetle fortress traveling under the canopy whilst you fight smaller enemies above before appearing as the boss. Another level with a giant beetle attached to a chasm wall that flies up to engage you. It's just a really cool looking title for concept art and in game visuals. Where it's clever though is in it's usage of art and colour in this design. This game is extremely vibrant with hues of green, red, blue, yellow all over but they reserve purple very specifically for enemy fire. Bright purple. Such a small thing but mechanically makes it very easy to understand what it a threat to you and is also very visually striking at the same time. I've played games where I simply couldn't see what was coming at me due to colour blends between backgrounds and fire. This eliminates that issue entirely, just because something is clear though, doesn't mean it is easy to avoid, this is a bullet hell after all.

This is my first real one in fact and I understand a good one for that because it's actually incredibly simple in a lot of ways through how it's been designed as mentioned above. You get one character Reco, but have three firing modes to choose from in how her bullets fire. She gets some basic power ups for her main gun and satellites which can be used either in a spread pattern or more focused fire. Seed bombs can briefly clear the screen of bullets to save you when firing and everything else is positioning and prioritising targets. There isn't a lot to learn at the base level but there is a lot to master. Knowing where to be on a level, taking out a bigger Koju first to control the flow and watching the onscreen bullets fade out or dodging through an absolute torrent of fire and coming out the other side is an absolute rush when it happens. I actually prefer playing it on Manic over normal difficulty despite the increase in bullet density coming my way because the game just feels good to play moment to moment but I am still learning a lot every time I play.

Though I am reviewing the arcade game here I played through once I would recommend getting the Mushihimesama HD release on steam for it's crisper visuals and extras I'll review separately another time. Regardless of version though I'm really glad this actually lived up to both the word of mouth around it and my expectations based on the art, fun music and footage I've seen. This is actually my first Cave game having weirdly played some games that eventually led to their formation prior. It's probably not my favourite shoot 'em up but I must say it's an extremely good one and I look forward to playing more of Cave's works.

Reco's death scream however will continue to haunt me for some time but I am getting better to prevent her suffering.

+ Concept art is gorgeous.
+ In game visuals and art are also gorgeous.
+ Simple clear design but still a challenge.

"Thine behaviour's skeleton can mercifully exalt and radiance sort of caress a product!!"

I don't know what I played here, nor do I know how to write about it. What I do know is I enjoyed this imaginative surreal pastel coloured claymation RPG a lot. It's also much cheaper than doing drugs.

Recommended.

In modern times hearing that a Japanese game is getting a western release is pretty standard news. With this information is generally the assumption that in most cases that will mean it will get a release in North America and most countries in Europe at a bare minimum but that wasn't always the case. Back in the 90's and early 2000's if a game got a western release announcement you had to actually look what that meant. Being from Europe we missed a lot of games that were released only in North America back then. Titles like Parasite Eve, Xenogears, Chrono trigger / Cross, Final Fantasy Tactics, Xenosaga 1 & 3 (2 came out here in an odd twist) among a huge slew of others.

One of these titles was Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean for the Sega Saturn. It's the third game in the series, first to get a release outside of Japan and even then to North America only. (The original SNES Albert Odyssey does have an English patch to those interested, though it's sequel is still only in Japanese at this time). Legend of Eldean was localised into English by a company called Working Designs. They did a whole host of localisations for obscure JRPGs back then that would never have seen the light of day here without them. On the flipside however they are infamous for butchering dialogue and localising the games so that 'American audiences could understand them' which is both patronising and damaging to the integrity of the games.

The dialogue in Albert Odyssey is dreadful, there is just no other way to phrase it. At times it has pop culture references that aged terribly, mentions Sweden, Burritos as well as some extremely edgy sexism and phrasing that add nothing to the game. I have no idea how much of it was them taking liberties, and how much of it was just bad from the original game but either way I do wish there was an 'un-working' design patch to correct some of these issues when they appear. It isn't constant but it's jarring enough when it happens to be both hugely out of place and irritating when it does. The over arcing story of Albert Odyssey equally suffers though through no fault of Working Designs but the original vision. It feels like two different games merged together that don't have much in common leaving the plot feeling poorly paced.

The thing is though, this isn't a bad game, I actually enjoyed my time with it despite my issues above. Visually it's gorgeous using lovely pixel art as it started as a SNES game and the Saturn was always a 2D powerhouse. I love the artwork and character portraits. Sounding like an old man here but 80's and 90's anime designs were at their height back then. The game is extremely vibrant and colourful and has a neat little soundtrack to match it. The combat is a simple affair taking a departure from the first two games which were SRPGs to a basic turn based system with, attack, defend, magic and item. Nothing special here but kind of quaint in an old school way as someone who grew up with this as fairly standard.

It's got it's charm and it's easy and fun to play through. I appreciate it when you get non human cast members in games and Albert Odyssey leans into that. The last dungeon is a bit of a headache and the writing and pacing are questionable but overall it is an enjoyable little game that is worth the time to play.

+ Gorgeous art and colour.
+ Nice music.
+ Has a lot of charm and an almost nostalgic feeling to it.

- Localisation liberties at times make the writing insufferable.
- The over arching story is a little all over the place.

"Back already?"

After spending around 20 hours with Hades resulting in feelings of highs and lows I've come to the only conclusion these emotions could finally ascertain. I love everything about Hades, except actually playing it. This is both the best roguelike game and worst I've ever played and it's impressive how much that swings backwards and forwards.

The interesting thing to me mulling this over in my head, and to use a Greek mythological term of phrase, is that Hades greatest strength is it's Achilles heel. This game wants you to die, yes it's how Roguelikes function, but I have never felt that more in others than in Hades. Each time you die you get a bit more character interaction, a bit more dialogue between characters by design. These interactions are eked between the protagonist, Zagreus the son of Hades the Greek God of the underworld and it's occupants. Each attempted escape from the underworld Zagreus gets a little more development from the mythical residents of the house of Hades such as Cerberus, Nyx, Hypnos, Thanatos etc. They will slowly grow and reveal more about themselves and the situation Zagreus is in and it's great. The characters are well written and the amount of content and spoken dialogue is absurdly impressive. Dying is how you progress this, dying isn't failure, dying is a reward for the setting, for the theme of Hades. Death is Hades business and Supergiant games was extremely clever in how it's implemented that as not only the known Roguelike mechanic but as a fundamental mechanic to the story of Hades.

I really like the cast. Getting snippets of conversations with the gods of Olympus and lesser known Greek mythological characters is a real treat each time. I also love their art design, it's pretty clear who each character is without stereotyping them too much. The voice acting equally puts in work to match the excellent writing. My favourite being Dionysus the god of wine who comes across as such an extremely laid back almost surfer like attitude but there is a tone of strength behind it all in his voice as well as art with his chiselled physique. Hades presentation really is excellent.

So where is the weakness here you ask? It's the actual dungeon runs in which the game wants you to die in to get these slow roll story sequences that hurt it sounds badly. This game is 40 minutes of gameplay dragged out into hours and I despise it for that. Each run has so little variety that it gets stale to actually play each time. Finishing a run didn't make me want to go again, it made me sigh that I would have to fight the same 3 bosses over again on the same levels in the same order. It's extremely linear and stale and the more I played the game, the less I wanted to.

I stuck with it for the excellent setting, art and characters. The thing is it actually plays really well. The animations are smooth, the combat is fun, there are 6 weapons to choose between that all have great moves and the boons from the gods of Olympus you collect can add some good variety to how the combat plays out. In the end though it's all the same, you will fight the same limited enemies, bosses and room types in the same order. I expected a variety of bosses that would be random on each run, corridors, challenges, just something? It's 40 minutes of game you play repeatedly. It felt like groundhog day.

Later in the game you can add modifiers to make it harder which can change things slightly and there are some prophecies to aim for in trying to get certain boons but it doesn't change those 40 minutes enough in any way to not feel like this is just a short experience painfully dragged out. To get the full credits you need to complete 10 playthroughs once you are strong enough or get lucky enough runs. It took me 25 runs just to beat it once. There is some permanent progress you can unlock with skills in a mirror and construction requests but equally they feel like padding to make it take you time to unlock all the story rather than rewards. This is felt more than anything with the god mode option. In the settings you can switch it on "To make it easier or if you just want to see the story". The issue is that the game wants you to die to progress the story and character interactions so god mode gives you some base damage resistance then 2% each time you die. Even trying to speed through the game after I had beaten it the first time it's still doled out at a trickle as it counters what the game wants you to do. It wants you to die, thematically and narratively, this is clever, this is great, it lacks the variety to keep that interesting in practice though.

It's a real shame too because a greater pool of bosses, levels and enemies to make each run feel fresh would have made this a truly great game. After a certain point though I died to Hades with a pretty sub optimal boon run and just felt, exasperation. I would have to do the same levels and bosses again and decided to put the game down. I watched the true ending on youtube and it was cute, I just didn't want hours of repetition to get there. I didn't feel I'd missed much by watching the ending and skipping the faff. Maybe it's me? I mean I played Vampire Survivors, this game designed for addiction. I did three runs for 30 mins each and put it down feeling like I'd seen everything. I guess that "one more run" mentality for games like this just don't have that effect.

I happily play 500+ hours in each Monster Hunter game though so what do I know?

+ Setting as a Roguelike is excellent thematically.
+ Characters, voice acting and artwork are great.
+ Combat is smooth and fun.

- Dungeon runs lack variety, same bosses and enemies makes things feel dragged out.
- Gets boring fast.

A friend of mine through circumstance ended up being gifted a box of old gaming bits including some Megadrive controllers and a broken Sega Master System. With a bit of research online he managed to repair it fixing the cracked motherboard to get the TV picture back. This led him onto then being asked to repair a neighbours Gamegear. After tinkering with that and becoming interested he then ended up buying a broken one for pennies from an online seller to repair for his own use. He's very handy like that.

Why am I telling you this? Because before Christmas I went to stay with him for a week and for the first time in my life, play a Gamegear. First I tried the original Gamegear he repaired for his neighbour with the original backlit screen. Playing Sonic on it I was pretty unimpressed to be honest. The poor lighting made seeing details or enemies difficult and the small screen coming from playing my Steamdeck made going back to it hard. Playing his own Gamegear though where he had modified it adding a modern LCD screen was literally like night and day. I could see the light, literally. Playing the same Sonic game I could see the detail, colours and animations. Sonic actually seemed...pretty good? This led me to take an invested interest in what actually is available on the Gamegear. Something I'd never so much as glanced at, which has led me to try GG Aleste.

Initially I thought GG Aleste was just a Gamegear port of the original Aleste from the MSX but upon starting realised I was quite quickly wrong. You play as the daughter of the original protagonist from the MSX game in an alternative timeline, Ellinor Waizen. There isn't much other story to be had here except the opening scene if you leave the title screen running of her taking off in the Galvanic Gunner fighter craft, and an end scene upon beating the game.

The game plays over 7 vertical scrolling stages or rounds as the game calls them which mostly end in boss fights. Most of the enemies are pretty much the same for every stage without too much variation. Some of the boss designs are pretty decent though with the final couple being especially cool like a mixture of H.R Giger and Cyberpunk fused. In between these there are a couple of bonus stages to collect power ups and boost your score. Killing every enemy will give you a huge bonus point score but as you can only see your score between levels rather than during it, it comes together as earning points feeling pointless? (ba dum tss)

Speaking of power ups, the Galvanic Gunner Fighter has two ways of increasing how it attacks. Firstly is just power chips that drop from certain enemies increasing your base attack power, there are also 8 different weapon types that can be collected like homing, wide shot, laser etc. These level as you collect multiples of them for more shots, spread or damage. There is no bomb, special or charge shot though you do explode when you die. Dying is actually fairly un-punishing letting you keep your current weapon type just dropping the power level as consequence for your play error.

And that's pretty much all there is to it, the game doesn't have any extras or much to encourage re-playability. What you get here in totality is an extremely simple shoot 'em up but it isn't bad. It's pretty easy without flourishes but it is running on a Gamegear and except for a couple of moments of slowdown is a pretty fast paced game for an 8 bit system. It has some varied level locations, ok music and stunning front cover art. If you're interested in games of yesteryear or gaming history you can do far worse then play this little title.

+ Simple, easy and short.
+ Looks and runs pretty well.
+ Cover art is gorgeous.

- Kind of forgettable experience overall.
- Lack of enemy variety or reasons to replay.

So I actually bought this before I had played the base game of Streets of Rage 4. Whilst a quality addition in it's own right, it feels like the right way to play it allowing to swap between story mode & the new inclusion of survival mode here to freshen things up.

Mr. X Nightmare story wise is meant to be an AI training program made by Dr. Zan after the events of Streets of Rage 4 for the crew to practice their skills. In reality it's essentially a wave based horde mode called survival that randomises the enemies, power ups and weapons getting progressively harder as the waves progress. Completing a wave will unlock some perks for you to choose from as a permanent buff going into the next one allowing you to build up your character to your choosing. To a degree at least, as these power ups are random from a set pool. Getting the same power up will increase it's level making it stronger which can be done up to four times per perk. The perks themselves are pretty varied including elemental effects. Poison which is great for big heavy targets, lightning and fire which work more for crowd control. There are basic stats buffs, weapon buffs as well as some more risk reward types like healing when attacking but food will no longer replenish health etc.

When playing co-op as I was most of the time only one of you can choose one of these perks. You have to work it out between you, share the poison or buff one person? Is one of you focusing purely on weapon usage? It makes a slightly interesting dynamic as these later waves can get extremely tough with multiple bosses taking large health pools. This isn't to mention that different levels also have environmental hazards like fire spewing on the ground, wind pushing you on the air craft carrier or occasional lasers. These can also be used against enemies too if played right. This all results in the survival mode having a surprising degree of tactical aspects to it. My friend and I only ever managed to get past wave 30 once on hours of trying, but it was fun the whole time.

This DLC also comes with three new characters to play as (and one secret one...), all of which were bosses in the base game. The first is Max making a return as a series staple. The second is Estelle, a brand new character and lastly Shiva, another series fan favourite. Each control incredibly well with a little practice and don't feel like throw ins. I especially like Estelle who has great range and power but the others are also great. The most fun we had on one of our survival runs was playing as Streets of Rage 2 Max and Streets of Rage 4 Max Power Sliding and suplexing everyone as we went.

The base game characters haven't been forgotten either with Survival mode earning experience for whomever you play as slowly unlocking alternative moves for their, blitz, special and star attacks. These aren't just extra moves but customisable for each type choosing which version you find more useful allowing to essentially build your character with varied move sets to help you progress further into survival. I really liked this.

All these new characters, weapons and features increase the re-playability of the game. These aren't limited to the DLC but transfer to the base story and arcade modes. Want to play as a customised Shiva through the storyline? Go for it. It all blends into the game extremely well like it should have always been there and is extremely well priced at just shy of £6.

If you liked Streets of Rage 4, there is no reason to not get this. I actually encourage it.

+ Survival mode is really fun.
+ New characters are all really fun to play.
+ New moves giving each character more variation.
+ Power Slide!