A classic Capcom beat-em-up that has just about all the same shortcomings as Final Fight, but its personality and expanded vision helps it stand out.

For one thing, the perspective of the game is noticeably farther, making the stages bigger and easier to see the enemies coming to better-plan your next moves. It also allows up to 4 players, but unsurprisingly this leads to pure chaos where you barely have any idea what's going on half the time.

I also like the surprising amount of violence the game has. Using the various characters, you can burn your enemies alive, turn them into bones, or even slice them in half! It makes the knock-outs more gratifying when they unexpectedly receive a brutal death. Even your own characters can be split in half from blade-wielding enemies! That's awesome.

Captain Commando has a lot of 90s Superhero charm to go around, and has a unique taste to it as well. I'm surprised they never really tried to capitalize on the style this game provided outside of guest appearances.

A somewhat rushed sequel that ups the ante in a lot of ways. Many would consider the original Earthworm Jim to be an off-beat and non-traditional platformer, which helped it stand out along with its artistry. Earthworm Jim 2 sees this, and pushes that direction so damn far, that the better terms describing this game would be obtuse or obscene. This game has such a bizarre structure that you'll be applauding the designers for their creative output one minute, then booing them the next.

Despite its gaping flaws, I definitely have a really soft spot for Earthworm Jim 2. I actually have more fondness for this game than the original, perhaps because it's so obscenely odd without really needing an obnoxious "gross" factor (Boogerman sucks).

The 1-2 punch of the Earthworm Jim series is a testament of the mid-90s where some funny folks wanted to push the envelope and express their unique ideas in a really strange way, and it's something I don't think can be replicated ever again. And, like the original game, I prefer the SNES version as I think it has smoother gameplay and better visuals.

F-Zero GX hit everything I wanted in a racing game all at once! The gameplay, the controls, the course designs, the music, the sound effects, everything just felt so damn perfect! It's almost humiliating the way one of Nintendo's own franchises reached such a level of brilliance by the likes of SEGA!

I adored every ounce of this game, most especially how intense and difficult the racing became on higher-difficulties, asking you to hone every single essence of your elite racing skills against bot racers with an endless supply of rubber bands! The tight feeling of driving your car and every teeny-tiny movement you'd make aligning with it was incredible. This game asked for surgery-levels of precision and air-tight focus above all else.

While F-Zero X felt just right with its heavy metal vibe, the hard-hitting techno in F-Zero GX fit neatly in this futuristic hell of tall buildings and industrial venues. Looking back almost 20 years later, it's still unbelievable how well this game aged and how much of it holds up. I sometimes don't need to wonder why they haven't made a legitimate successor to this, it's basically impossible!

A straight-forward sequel to the genre-defining Contra, Super C is more of that goodness you expect with slight tweaks, such as weapon "upgrades" when you pick-up the same weapon twice. They also went with overhead stages instead of the third-person scenarios from the first game, which is a slight improvement.

Contra and Super C are both suitable for beginners that want to start getting into the run-n-gun subgenre, as its sequels would up the ante in all departments, including the challenging gameplay!

An ambitious--albeit flawed--horror game. Silent Hill 4 is something that was mocked and ridiculed on all sides back when it was new by older audiences back in the day. Silent Hill fans hated it as it stripped away a lot of elements that were essential to the original games--such as the dynamic camera angles (SH4 still had some, but much less), emphasis on exploring an open town (SH3 mostly abandoned this too but whatever), the flashlight illuminating a dark atmosphere, and thought-provoking puzzles. Silent Hill 4 was 'missing' all of these elements.

Also, while the core design itself still emphasized on survival horror for the most part, elements like the apartment hub, unkillable ghosts, and limited inventory were ideas not particularly welcomed either. And it can't go without saying that the game introducing a barely cooked escort mission halfway into the game isn't something to shine on about, no matter how you slice it.

However, I played this a LOT when it was fairly new. And letting the mood settle right--starting the game up in the middle of the night with only the big-ass tube TV providing any sort of light-- it scared the crap out of me! I think the introduction of the game itself really gives you the best idea of what you're getting into. Strange, hazy visions of these corrupted venues that would otherwise be mundane, if not for the disheveled ghosts and gored-up creatures. And that jumpscare fake-out to top it off! That--like the games before it--finely emphasized that the developers didn't want to startle you with jumpscares, but instead keep you in that perpetual state of fright as you try to prepare for one!

But that's just the intro. The game itself further pushes this kind of atmosphere, the deeper you get into it. Which is appropriate, considering the story's centerpiece is about a lone man getting deeper and deeper into a serial killer's psyche in order to discover a way out of all this. The atmosphere in its lore and storytelling is rich and very intriguing, I'd argue it easily stands with the previous Silent Hill games in that regard. And while I definitely miss the puzzles, I did like that they focused on combat challenges instead. In that sense, this was a more straight-forward survival horror that emphasized on being more of an actual video game than the previous. At least, in my opinion.

The "Silent Hill" aspect of Silent Hill 4 is probably its downfall. It's no secret that it production initially started as an original horror game, but undisclosed reasons had them attempt connecting it with the previous 3 games, and most of said connections feel very superficial or uninteresting ("I think I got these shoes at Silent Hill!"). Perhaps fans at the time felt slighted, or tricked into buying a game that doesn't really build upon the world of Silent Hill that already felt complete by the end of the 3rd title. Still, there's nuggets of interesting emphasis on previous characters . . . although pretty easy to miss. I also have to criticize the sound designer's use of stock noises, makes it hard to take some of the game seriously, most especially the dogs making that jaguar noise when you kill them.

Overall, I have a bias towards this game. The last bastion of Team Silent, or at least what remained of them. And I kind of love what it did, as it's a game wholly unique. Nothing else plays like Silent Hill 4, not even 1-3! Also, P.T. is a bite-sized SH4.

Oh, there's a separate page for the worse version of Turtles In Time now? Cool, I can now describe my thoughts before really diving into how I feel about Shredder's Revenge.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time is a sequel to the original arcade game, and it does provide an overall better design, most especially the visuals. However, where it falls short is how its combat was designed. The enemies have less i-frames between hits, but can still overpower you if you aren't trying to mix up your assault. They also overbear the player pretty easily, especially in single player. More often than not, you get caught in loops by them where even the 2-button attack won't help much. This is mainly due to how little stun the foot soldiers receive when you land attacks on them. That would be somewhat forgivable IF the hitboxes weren't crap. Everyone is paper-thin, and you'll constantly whiff attacks that look like they're supposed to land. The foot soldiers, suspiciously, have no trouble getting attacks on you, though.

The boss fights are somewhat more consistent, and a few of them have exploits that are easy enough to discover. Much of it is a game of touch-and-go, much like the bosses in the previous. Overall, this game is more intense and has more impact than the first Ninja Turtles game, but the combat still falls short. Anyone who thinks this is the best version of the game probably have no idea what they're talking about and think the posterity of 4-player co-op automatically brings it leagues above the SNES version, which is simply not true.

I wasn't really into hack-n-slash games back when this game was new. In fact, I had a strong (and foolish) animosity for them because of a bad experience with the original Devil May Cry when I was like 11 (see my DMC1 review if you're curious). I wasn't even aware of the game Bayonetta, but during that time, I played and loved No More Heroes. However, I chalked it up to loving the brilliant characters and writing, along with the core combat being pretty simple.

No clean way to put it, I was on the internet . . . a lot, and I saw various drawn porn of Bayonetta back then and got the hots for the character. She was practically the ideal depiction of what got me going, so I wanted to learn more about her!

That was when I looked the game up, found it for cheap at a local store, and was blown away by how good it was! Punchy combat, intuitive controls, the rewarding flowy combos, the badass enemy designs, the jazzy music that has a nice blend of angelic and actiony, and of course Bayonetta herself being so funny and endearing as a character with attitude!

There's some missteps, such as a couple scenarios that feel obtusely designed to be frustrating, most-especially QTE scenarios that not only have very small windows, but kill you instantly and ruin your stage rank if you fail it. The story is a little basic too, IMO. If it wasn't for the characters being so charming, I would've considered it entirely hollow. Regardless, the good outweighs the bad in this game by a longshot.

So yeah, seeing a couple of porn doujins as a teenager lead me to properly falling in love with the hack-n-slash genre. I should probably be more embarrassed by that, but here we are. What's important is that it also lead me to properly playing and loving the original Devil May Cry!

This should've been called Warner Brawlers. Anyway, it's hard to really judge everything about this game, considering it's still in beta/early access/whatever, but there's a few lines in the sand I'm drawing;

1. If you're dedicating yourself to 1v1, you're going to have a bad time. This game is very blatantly designed around the 2v2 dynamic. 1v1 was merely included out of obligation/expectancy that is the nature of this formula. We are no longer in the period of happy accidents, this isn't 2001 anymore. And speaking as someone that's played Smash with its competitive norm for nearly 2 decades, Multiversus 1v1 is not fun at all (IMO).

2. Trying to play this like Smash Bros. also guarantees that you'll have a bad time. Just like how if you try to play Marvel VS Capcom like Tekken. It's time already that we start understanding that there's more than 1 way to make a competitive [REDACTED].

3. Playing as Iron Giant after having seen the movie implies a moral cavity within yourself. I won't give any friends shit for playing as him, but I don't ever want to touch the character. Just seeing the defensive transformation put into play is odd. That shit drew me to tears when I watched the movie as a kid, knowing the struggles and heartbreak this robot was facing, and giving into the darkest part he was fending off for the entire movie. It was scary! And seeing it bounce and blast around as a clutch move in this game . . . just feels weird.

Presentation feels only partially finished, but even what is already there, it's leagues ahead of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, which shamefully disregarded how important presentation is in order for one of these games to do well.

I guess I'll update this when it hits 1.0, but so far I'm enjoying it as a brain-dead Finn player.

EDIT: Finn nerfed to shit. Now I'm a Batman player.

I've played the recent remake of Wild Guns on-and-off, but decided to stop and play the original through to the end, just to better understand the initial game. And, frankly, it works! It works a lot better than I expected it to.

I was a bit miffed by the idea of a rail shooter with a d-pad, but this team designed the game around that, for obvious reasons. And they nailed how to make it feel good while keeping the confrontations challenging. It's easy to see what's coming at you, but will you make the leaps and jumps to avoid enemy fire, or risk yourself in order to land more damage? The gameplay has a certain rhythm to it, and it'll be really alienating to anyone that's played similar games with a lightgun, but it's pretty easy to understand and have fun with it! The whole game is a shooting gallery, after all, which fits the Western style perfectly.

Speaking of which, I also adore the aesthetics, which went for a tech-Western feel. I like how most of the machinery and robotic foes aren't too slick, but just really goofy and sometimes dressed as ol' West outlaws themselves! Everything is so big and bulky, feeling more steampunk than sci-fi to me.

My only complaint is it's just a tad too short. Even for a game this challenging, I was a little surprised that I was able to complete the game fairly quickly. I'm not sure if that calls for more of a challenge (guess that's what hard mode is for) or longer stages.

A game that absolutely excels in just about all departments . . . except the gameplay.

The music is charming as hell, the art style is fantastic, the sound effects are nice and punchy, the voice-acting is good with great commentary by Proops and Dimaggio, and it bares a lengthy campaign full of incredibly unique bosses! Too bad playing this game is not fun at all.

The arcade style scoring system is a nice little idea, but they do almost nothing with it, I can only sign post + trashcan + dumpster toss a single enemy so many times. It's such a weird, ham-handed way to add some sort of "style" to this rough hack-n-slash. I occasionally try to go back to this game to see if it's better than I remember, and am reminded the harsh reality every time I try. Why_are_you_booing_Im_right.jpg