A game I know isn't perfect, but I don't care. It's perfect in my eyes. No More Heroes is a great hack-n-slash game with gratifying visuals, visceral combat, and a supremely interesting story that has a lot for both people that want a fun, simple adventure, and people that want a deep, profound narrative.

The game has a lot to say about how witnessing death can change you as a person, and it's firstly disguised as a goofy action game. This and the director's previous game "killer7" heavily influenced me as a teenager and what I look for in a video game's story.

The Wii version is the most authentic experience, but the Switch version is mostly competent while sporting a better framerate. PC version is very rough and doesn't even include kb+m controls.

It's 1999, and the developers behind Silent Hill were demanded to make a sequel. The parties involved apparently only had two options.
1. Leave the company.
2. Make it depressing as shit instead of scary.

Toyama--the original game's director--took the first option, while everyone else stuck around, excited to make a new experience on the next-gen hardware. While Silent Hill 2 still has scares, the inner-turmoil inside the mind of James Sunderland and the people he interacts with are what truly makes this a memorable experience. A harrowing tale of a desperate man allured by the calling of his late wife, and anyone with half a brain won't even question why this lonely man continues to fight otherworldly creatures for a chance to see his wife. "I guess I really don't care if it's dangerous or not. I'm going into town either way."

It's funny seeing old reviews of this game on magazines back in the day, as they disparaged the story for being "confusing, vague, and never explaining itself." because the story itself is why people love this game so much, and why it's revered as a classic today!

The gameplay isn't groundbreaking in any way, but it's serviceable, and easy-going for a survival horror. Everything else is what makes this game an incredible experience, including the demented sound design, emphasis on exploring the town's amazing atmosphere, solving brain-teasing puzzles, well thought-out scares, and (mostly) great voice-acting!

I can't wait for a dogshit remake to come out in my 40s.

EDIT: Looks like the dogshit remake is coming out much sooner than that. Whoopee.

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE ORIGINAL WII GAME. This is a terrible demake of the original No More Heroes, which is a masterpiece. With the original version being ported onto Switch and PC in recent years, there are finally more suitable versions for people that simply want to play the game with traditional controls. Below is my handy list on why this awful, janky, glitchy, ugly port is one to avoid.

Reasons why Heroes' Paradise is dogshit;
-Nobody at GhM worked on it
-Horribly ugly texture replacements on literally everything, most character models look like laminated turds
-The blood effect when killing enemies looks particularly awful. Instead of the spraying liquid effect from the Wii version, it looks like PNG files falling out of their bodies
-Terrible sound design (fucking with Fukuda's sound design should be considered an act of treason on humanity)
-Horrible framerate, it's like 20 with constant dips (original game had unlocked framerate that would sometimes be 60, Switch and PC have much more stable 60 fps consistency)
-Gameplay is literally slower, and has asinine mechanics added to make it drag even more
-The extra bosses are just poorly programmed NMH2 bosses
-The premium they put on "QOL" changes go so far as lopping off like a quarter of the Santa Destroy map
-There's stupid-ass glitches, most notable one is how the execution move likes to randomly miss
-All the extra DLC stuff is cosmetic junk, most that will probably get modded into the PC version

Please don't allow newcomers to play this version with PS3's horrible loading times.

You'll never find another game like this if you live to be 7,000! killer7 is a mind-bending piece that never stops taking turns you won't see coming! The gameplay, the mechanics, the story, the visuals, it's all so insanely creative and unique!

The game benefits from multiple playthroughs as well, especially if you want to understand the story better. This experience was made with the Gamecube in mind, but the recent Steam port is a fine substitute with considerably better controls. Avoid the horrible PS2 port at all costs, though.

The Japanese title for this game is SHIN Contra. As in, TRUE Contra. Which is perfect, because this game is the ABSOLUTE PEAK of the Contra series. This was a very interesting period for classic franchises, as many wanted to approach the 6th generation with a darker, more sinister-looking approach. Contra: Shattered Soldier really wanted to separate itself from the more colorful "Alien Wars" and "Hard Corps" it had already established back in the 16-bit era (while erasing the shitty PS1 games from its continuity).

With the help of Ashley Wood--best known for his work on Spawn--the original creators of Contra III and Hard Corps made an AMAZING game glazed in a run-down industrial atmosphere full of disgusting alien beasts, and big brutish bots ready to take you out in a single hit! The music throughout ranges between high-velocity techno and head-banging heavy metal, mainly composed by Akira Yamaoka--not just the sound director for the original 4 Silent Hill games, his first job at Konami was composing Contra Hard Corps!

The gameplay itself is phenomenal too, it feels PERFECT. They simplified the gameplay a bit by removing weapon drops. You only have 3 different guns, but are free to swap between them anytime and don't lose them if you get killed, making death a little less detrimental. Of course, this doesn't mean the game is easier. It's probably the hardest Contra game of all to clear perfectly! They also added a mechanic where you can keep the angle of your gun, but continue to move. This made angling your shot much easier with this new option! Something I wish new run-n-gun games have but NEVER acknowledge.

It's tough-as-nails, it's fun, it's disgusting, it's brutal, it's . . . Contra. You're an idiot if you don't like this game.

It's great, it's bad, it's enthralling, it's confusing, it's a goddamn Suda51 game. Granted, one that falls short in some aspects. No More Heroes III is a culmination of Suda51 emphasizing harder than ever what he was trying to say with the original No More Heroes. The idea that an endless life of slashing, killing, and achieving is nothing short of hell-on-earth. Which in turn, works in both the depiction of Travis' own character that's accumulated these past 15 years, and an ongoing video game franchise. This "hell-on-earth" is already a reality for once-beloved franchises.

You're asking why is a theme of absolute monotony being exhausted in a game directed by Suda51? I guess you didn't play a lot the games he actually directed. I guess you didn't walk for virtual miles just to be told to run back to where you came in Flower, Sun, and Rain. I guess you weren't demanded to climb through 10 huge towers and check each individual room for small clues in The Silver Case (not even including the similar tasks before that near-end chapter). I guess you weren't told to check-in on every single apartment door in a huge complex in Moonlight Syndrome.

I refrain from using the phrase "shitty on purpose" because I feel like that degrades the point a creator is trying to get across when their top priority of a game isn't pure enjoyment from beginning to end. Not that this game can't provide that for some folks (the score it has is honestly surprising here). I'm just interpreting some of the game's rather confusing design choices. I don't think it's just sheer incompetency, considering this company's output.

I loved deciphering the narrative, and was happy to see the final cleanse of the NMH sickness Suda has been dealing with, finally declaring his end of this relationship. I think a lot of it is very congruent if you take the time to dissect and analyze the scenes. Granted, there are aspects of the writing that feel short-sighted. As for the gameplay, it was pretty damn enthralling, and easily the most intricate the series has provided in regards to third-person hack-n-slash combat. It can be argued that it was designed more-so for the boss confrontations, which is also the best the series has ever been. The open world is charming in some ways, but also considerably rough.

I also appreciate Grasshopper refusing to conform to modern standards and accept its blotchy-ass textures in order to focus on the artistry. I won't deny how rickety some things look, but the game shines and glows at the points where it needs to, in my opinion. Music was aces too, but I am certainly sick and tired of listening to Beast Test.

All-in-all, there's things I love about this game, and things I question. But the heart I look for in a Grasshopper game is certainly still there and beating. And in the end, I also find it amusing that Travis Strikes Again ended up being the better and more worthwhile game.

You know those games that people describe are "so bad, they're great"? If anyone describes Deadly Premonition in this way and tries to make it the main selling point, they have no fucking clue what makes this game a worthwhile experience, and probably just follow meme shit like a mindless trog.

Yes, a lot of the game design is bizarre, and some of its presentation can get unintentional laughs out of the player, but this game would not be revered as an absolute classic if it didn't have something genuinely endearing about it. The characters are incredibly charming, especially York himself. The atmosphere is interesting, and while the gameplay is far from stellar--its the tale of murder and mystery in Greenvale that really makes you want to keep going.

Still, I'm not one to ignore the jankiness, and it doesn't take much to realize this project was something the devs were trying to get off the ground for a long time. It's a case of a past-gen game that happened to get shoved into a current-gen (at the time) console. In another world, this would've fit perfectly in a Dreamcast or PS2, but at least the framerate is better.

Xbox is still the way to go when it comes to playing this game, especially Series X.

Something something Puyo Puyo. I remember being a kid and finding it weird that this played exactly like Kirby's Avalanche, not knowing better until excavating an early Wikipedia around the mid-00s.

Anyway, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Pretty Hate Machine is a game I played every once in a while, because--like Sonic Spinball--SEGA is very insistent in porting it on everything possible. I'd play the "Scenario mode" and get a few stages in, until the bot decides to wipe the floor with their fast, calculated moves. I decide I'm not smart enough for what is Puyo Puyo's simplistic puzzle system, and move on.

UNTIL TODAY. I fucking beat it. I finally got to see all the ugly bot designs I never actually saw, and that disgustingly (awesome) Robotnik design taunt me to the end. I got rocked pretty often against these asshole bots, but eventually won! Only for the ending to say "Now do hard mode" to which I said "Fuck you, no" and shut the game off.

I'm still not very good at this game, but I do understand that an easy way to get chain combos is to stack colors near each-other (something a child could figure out) and try to get single colors lined up correctly so they pop and fall in the right order. But time is of the essence, because your opponent can chain combos and throw blank balls onto your lane to mess up your strategy. So the constant question is, do you have enough time to stack up a chain to hit them hard? Or should you go for a quick 2-hit chain in order to mess them up briefly to keep up?

I don't find Puyo Puyo as engaging as other puzzle games, but it's got its own rhythm and sense of satisfaction. I probably would like the game more if I played the original version, instead of this weird product designed "for Western audiences" by coating it in the paint of this Saturday morning cartoon.

This game looks like goddamn tech demo, and you know what? I fucking LOVE that. I'll be fucked if Super Mario 64 isn't satisfying to run and jump across. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but damn was it everything we needed in 1996. A world before my brain got corrupted by analysts and blowhard reviewers just itching their boners to call something "janky."

I loved this as a kid, and still revisit from time-to-time to love it some more, whether as a half-assed Switch port, or the code-dumped re-engineered PC port. This game still rocks. I'm going to tattoo low-poly Mario on myself someday.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8sxTdvX4AAMqbd.jpg

Where the original Mega Man games up to this point emphasized careful platforming with limited movement options while trying to shoot peas at bug-eyed bots, the psychos behind Mega Man X said "FUCK THAT! Wall-jumping, dashing, huge charge blasts to destroy these robot goons!"

Mega Man X spoiled me so much that I can't really look at the previous games too fondly, it feels way too good to move and shoot in this game. They cranked the pace of this so much that it must've been hard for some fans to even consider it a Mega Man game. The iconic soundtrack also adds to the atmosphere, and I love the secret pathways that are often found by brute force, rather than leaps of faith like the original games. A cool detail they never really reprised for the series was how clearing certain stages would effect other stages, such as beating Storm Eagle would make his ship crash into Spark Mandrill's domain.

This is simply another game I can't even attempt saying what hasn't been already said. Mega Man X has insanely good movement options and controls, while still managing to blend in that careful platforming of the original series nicely.