"WHAT?!" I hear you saying. "ONE STAR FOR THE MASTERPIECE THAT IS DEAD RISING 1?! HOW DARE YOU!!" And yeah, I don't like rating it that either. But the thing is I'm on PS4 and that version seems to be HORRIBLY optimized! So this isn't so much a 1 star review of Dead Rising, but rather its PS4 port

Dead Rising is a notoriously stringent game series, and under normal circumstances that would be fine. The problem is this version has crashed for me no less than 4 times. My PS4 games have crashed a few times, but it's a rare occurrence and all the crashes happened to me here within the first few hours of gameplay, meaning I haven't even beaten the first story quest! I got to Carlos, beat him, and then crashed. I got to Carlos again, beat him again, saved right after, found the scientist hiding in the store and crashed. This repeated another 2 times before I finally gave up

Back in the day, when I was poor, had no xbox and youtube was new, I did go through all of Dead Rising's story. I think it's a fine story with most of my gripes being things I don't like about zombie stories in general (i.e. I hate it when all my friends die!) But it's still a neat story, the bosses being the obvious standout of character design, and the gameplay is of course fun as all heck.

This is not a review: it is a warning. PLEASE do not buy this game on PS4, because this port port sucks so much. It's such a shame, because I would love to enjoy this game more than I currently can. Bleh

Before the remaster next month, I want to log my thoughts now about this game. Thing is it's one of my favorite games ever made. Not just because it's an interesting world to explore, not just because the characters you meet are fun and interesting, and not just because the action button system basically makes critical hits into a skill rather than chance, but because this is one of the only games I can actually see and articulate its difficulty curve

Just in the first area alone we start out with Goombas that all have 2 HP. If you do an action command properly, you do 2 damage. Easy! Except the battle you encounter has 3 enemies. So you also need to learn how to defend. The next new enemy you encounter is by itself, but has 3 HP, forcing you to learn the action commands properly. The next fight you're fighting two of them (insert kittens here) and eventually you get to the tutorial boss which has a body part on the ground and in the air, both with 3 HP, which you need to attack before hitting the main body

The game continues like this in a way that lets me physically see the difficulty curve. Like I remember Boggly Woods not just for its amazing color pallet, but because that's when enemies with 4 HP become standard. I remember Keelhaul Key not just because of the shipwreck storyline, but because the Ember enemies introduced have the same 8 HP as the previous chapter but also have an elemental affinity that wasn't present up until this point.

This is also why I don't really like the newer Paper Mario games. Like, I love partners and I love the wild creativity and I hate that those were removed, but those aren't the only things that make a good game. Origami King looks like a fine game, but the battle system doesn't feel cohesive to me. Numbers feel random rather than predictable, so there's no reason for me to invest in the gameplay. Unlike TTYD where I know how much damage an enemy can do just by paying attention to what the game is telling me.

So, yeah. I like this game a lot. Both for its wild creativity but also its incredible implementation of game design that makes knowing how it works feel rewarding. I'll do a more professional (for me) log on the remaster when I've beaten it, but this is just my off-the-cuff feelings of TTYD: I like it because I am a HUGE gameplay nerd

Ninja Gaiden is an incredibly frustrating game, but also incredibly fun. It's one of those old school games that push you to be better and understand the rules in order to overcome them. And when you do, you feel incredible. Getting better at the game makes the game more fun and makes you want to play it over and over to keep getting better (or at least I did).

A lot of the challenge does come from unfairness caused by poor programming (most notably the respawning enemies and dying to the final boss sends you back to the beginning of the last level). While that is unfortunate and keeps me from giving it a perfect score, the game functions in its most important features, such as hitboxes, controls and movement.

And I think it's that paradox of being both incredibly unfair and incredibly fair that hits a sweet spot for an incredibly engaging title, worthy of being considered a classic. While rough around the edges, Ninja Gaiden is well worth playing even to this day.