Had the pleasure to fightcade this with C_F, and it was a fun 'time', but not a fun game. Conversation helped mask the fact the whole game was a damage-spongey monstrosity.

This game has the worst boss rush ever made too, cause the whole game is 90% bosses already? Imagine if the 2nd Loop of Ghosts N Goblins replaced all the level tilesets with the last level tileset. Just doing the same thing, but harder and worse, while staring at the same graphics.

Actually now that I say that, the 2nd loop of GnG taking place in the last world would be way more badass than whatever's happening here.

Maybe this is better single-player? Always a chance the damage values got wonky because of 2P, you know how beatemup devs get with this shit

"As knowledge increases, the attitude of science towards the things of the invisible world is undergoing considerable modification." - Tulpa: Thought Forms

Frequent excursions into the retro games market have left me with less and less to collect. All that remains are those holy grails, with their inflated rarity and high price tags, which my better judgement prohibits me from purchasing. I've had to broaden my collection to keep my addiction fed, venturing into the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 libraries, which are still relatively affordable across the board. However, I am now nearing the edge of what is notable or worth playing. On my last expedition I came across Bomberman Act: Zero, which I stared at for some time, like Father Merrin face-to-face with the statue of Pazuzu... only with a dirty old Gamestop sticker on the side.

"USED $5.99" it read.

"Condition - Acceptable, $14" said the listing.

Seemed like a good deal at the time, but do I really want to play Bomberman Act: Zero? No. No I do not. Not even as a joke.

Around the same time, I was looking into matters of the occult, in particular the creation of Tulpas, or "thought-forms." These beings created from intense thought can be given material form and might be better understood to some as doppelgangers. If I were to fashion a thought-form of myself and task it with completing Bomberman Act: Zero for me, then I could log the game on a technicality without dirtying my hands...

With my mind made up, I purchased some material to study, including the predominant text on the subject: "Tulpa: Thought Forms" by C.W. Leadbeater. You know you're dealing with 1900s magic when passages like "magnets are found to be possessed of uncanny powers" are sprinkled between praise for the practice of mesmerism.

After several attempts ended in catastrophic failure and the destruction of malformed Tulpas (which I still do not know how to properly dispose of), I was able to generate a thought-form which perfectly replicated my shape and image and, hopefully, my talent for playing video games. There were still some imperfections. He continually leaked a viscous and fowl black substance, spoke in a language I do not understand nor am I able to identify as being from this Earth, and he exhibited signs of aggression whenever I tried to teach him the button layout of the Xbox 360 gamepad. I was, however, able to placate him with salty foods - pickle brine and V8 juice being particular favorites.

Out of concern for my safety, I purchased a lock and shut him off in the game room with a few jars of olives and NOS energy drink in case he got thirsty. I also set up a basic Raspberry Pi powered camera system and a monitor so I could observe his progress. My Tulpa took to Bomberman Act:Zero's upgrade system pretty quickly, often placing a priority on health upgrades to shoulder damage and corner squirrely opponents, but the third-person camera system - present only in one game mode - seemed to encumber him. He would progress through 20 or so stages, game over, and then make more or less the same amount of headway on the next run. I considered the first night of the experiment to be a success and went to bed.

I was awoken hours later by a tremendous noise, one that physically shook the space around me. Silence followed for two minutes as I sat stunned in bed. "You're alive. Get to the next stage" echoed through the wall soon after. I rushed to the monitor only to find it smeared in the same black substance my Tulpa had been producing since his creation. I decided to venture into the game room to clean the camera lens but was halted by a disturbing thought... Why does the female Bomberman have jiggle physics?

It was around when my Tulpa got stuck inside the walls of my apartment that I started to question if this whole misadventure was worth it. His body flattened, scurrying about like a cockroach, zipping room-to-room with the horrid scratching of his nails digging into my head. I smacked the wall to coral him back to the game room, then entered while banging two pans together to keep him at bay, but I was unable to find his point of entry. I quickly wiped off the lens again and retreated. I don't think I got any of this right. Maybe I should've had the courage to play Bomberman Act: Zero myself, or else had the self-restraint to not buy it in the first place.

Hudson Soft's bloodletting of Bomberman's signature style and charm and subsequent transfusion of grim-dark edge is no doubt born from a cynical perception of what "Gamers" were in the market for circa 2006. Games like Shadow the Hedgehog arguably exist for the same reason, but at least they have a sense of humor about it. Bomberman Act:Zero is so dry, so lacking in content and identity, that despite playing fine it's just uninspired. As I watched my Tulpa near level 80, I found myself reminiscing on Saturn Bomberman. Maybe I was unfair towards it. Perhaps I should play it again, approach it from a different perspective. But it's locked in the room with him. Drats.

The Tulpa died again after clipping into the side of a block and getting stuck. Fusion Frenzy 2 was made with the same engine. How could this happen? I cursed Hudson for not implementing a save system in their 99-level video game. Though each run came with a bit more progress, it was only prolonging the existence of my Tulpa and the clawing madness of keeping him under control. Every time I passed by the game room - his cage - his hand grasped the bottom of the door and jerked it loudly in the frame, then he whispered to me my fears. I began to feel sick and retched into the toilet something that momentarily appeared jet black, then clear. A trick of the eyes, perhaps. I hadn't slept in days.

Level 99. Dehydrated and weary, I watched as the battle played out, my Tulpa struggling against the last of his computer opponents. Blocks began to fall, closing in around the two. It was a matter of mere position that led to my Tulpa's victory. As Bomberman looked to the sky, gates opening overhead to grant him freedom from his prison, I felt calm for the first time in days. It was over. A bit anticlimactic, like Hudson never had any faith someone would play that much Act:Zero, but at least the nightmare was at its end.

I don't think Bomberman Act:Zero is a good game, and I can't even respect it for being different. It kowtowed to the Western market's hunger for muddy, brown, edgy games out of some pessimistic belief that something was wrong with Bomberman. There is no vision here, and beyond its lackluster aesthetic, it's a skeleton of a game. Even at $14 it feels anemic. Like other multiplayer arcade games, I thought that playing with another person might improve my opinion of it, and so I offered to face my Tulpa in a one-on-one battle. He knocked me over and bit my hand. It still burns and the wound continues to widen, but I was able to escape and lock the door once more.

When C.W. Leadbeater pontificates about the power of mental projection and the ability to will thought into form, it's hard not to consider the relation of these occult beliefs to the act of creating media. After all, what is a book, a drawing, or a game if not the manifestation of our thoughts into something tangible, which can be expressed to others with such vividness and clarity as to be understood as it exists in our mind?

You also got a lot of Tulpamancers out there trying to will My Little Pony characters into existence. It's an interesting field of study!

I don't think Hudson Soft set out to make something bad, but the terrible end result of their efforts now exists with a life of its own. So too did I approach the creation of my Tulpa with the best of intentions, only to release a great evil into the world.

And I must now destroy it.

This ost is a hidden gem and some of David Wise's best work. The highlight is the title track with its heavy stoner rock vibes and satisfying dynamics. The level themes channel classic rock, and the "game over" theme weaves major and minor 7ths into a bittersweet nostalgic number. Wise was one of the few NES composers who effectively used the triangle synth channel for an instrument other than bass. The harmonized leads with two disparate voices (square and triangle) was unique, and the fuzzy square bass was warm and heavy.

The game itself was stinky bucket of chum.

Ive slowed down a bit on the amount of reviews I write because I feel like for most games I play I simply dont "have anything to say" about them. I think thats still the case for this game but I just kind of need to get it out of my system : fuck this game.

What an amazing first impression, the music, the artstyle and even the writing with its subtlety and charm. Unfortunately as you get through it all you'll start to realize how boring most of the game is, mainly through repetition. Its kind of impressive how much a mere 3 hour (at least thats what my 2 runs ended up clocking at) game can outstay its welcome in this manner. The very backgrounds that were once gorgeous to look at become a reminder of the annoyance of having to see it again. You basically go through every single location twice, in a game which demands multiple runs of you!

I get the feeling that at some point someone is going to beat this game and tell me that "oh, that was the point" somehow, as usually happens on the internet whenever I dislike a particular design decision, but honestly I dont see it. I fail to see how the repetition adds to anything, it isnt moody or atmospheric, it doesnt reinforce any point about the themes of the game (unless being bored out of my mind has anything to do with entropy, stories or colonialism) and even if it did would not be worth doing anyways.

The puzzles are lame but honestly I didnt even mind that all that much. More than anything I think Ive started to despise the "syke, you got the bad ending! try again to get the good one" structure that historically a lot of videogames have adopted, doubly so in a game which is again, repetitive and boring. I am admittedly unhinged and I did think for a joke about copy pasting each paragraph of this review 3 or 4 times to make reading it a chore in a parallel to the game but even I'M not pretentious enough for that.

At the end of the day, I ran through the game once, got a bad ending, got told to find something, did another run, this time doing different things and seemingly being pushed in a different direction, but again a different bad ending. Now, am I going to run through again to get the good ending? No, get fucked, the game already lost me after the first run, a third run would count as self flagellation. Its my own damn fault for playing an adventure game on launch, always play this shit a few months down the line when you can look up the true ending path and not have more of your limited time on this planet wasted.

Edit : half a star for the "flora de las islas canarias" tome in the background of one of the locations

Edit 2: Okay, someone posted a walkthrough of the game and now I can say for sure I didnt miss much by bailing on this game. As it turns out the "runs" are entirely artificial, they all go the same, you do 1st run, then 2nd then you get the true ending on the 3rd. The ending sort of contextualizes why and its not the worst thing Ive seen, but the writing in general smacks of (to quote fellow Backloggd user Gare) "this is my project in submitting because I want an internship at Pixar but I never learned how to tell a story" though I guess that should be toei and not pixar cause its a japanese game. The runs are KINDA justified in conveying the themes of the story but that still doesnt make the game any less dull or repetitive so whatever, I stand by my original review

who wrote this description ??

"On the NES, Double Dragon II is a much more innovative and unique sequel than in the arcade, but it marks also the time Double Dragon started its schizophrenic shifting between wildly different tones and gameplay styles. In a way it’s one of the best games to bear the Double Dragon name, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that Technōs had already started to loose a cohesive vision of what it meant to be Double Dragon, both in tone and in gameplay."

why do people see an IGDB description box and paste in their 8 hour video essay script like calm down

my genuine absolute belief is that all FPS games needs at least one or two kinds of enemy that makes you go "Oh fuck not this fucking guy" and you drop everything else to zero in on killing that dude as fast as possible, Doom has shotgunners, chaingunners, pain elementals and archies, Quake has slimes, shamblers, vores and fiends. Quake ii really lacks these kinds of enemies, and above the boring aesthetics and the loss of arcade smoothness, this is what holds it back. The new level pack is solid though.