The art, sound, and music go a long way to establishing the foggy mood of this seaside horror game. So much so that hearing these sounds or songs immediately transports me back to the time I played this game, in the first few weeks of October. 'Dredge' will, for me, help October feel more like October. And the game is just so well designed. All the systems work. Everything makes good sense. The story is clear. The economy is fair. And it's actually fun to play. Start to end. I'm interested now to extend the experience with 'The Pale Reach.'

I think I took too long to complete 'Signalis.' The story never connected all its dots for me. I finished a bit bewildered. I did connect with its moments though, and there are affecting moments communicating survival and life's value even when that life was manufactured. I really enjoyed the gameplay. Such a smart choice to include tank controls in a slow moving survival game like this. I exclusively used these controls and the game seems designed around them. The ability to walk backward while firing seemed essential and is impossible with traditional controls. Great visuals too, purposefully reminiscent of the golden years of the tank controlled survival horror game (2000–2006).

A genuinely 'punk' experience, 'Trigger Happy Havoc' is an exhilarating combination of gameplay styles in service of a rock solid mystery story. I think the closest point of comparison is '999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Nine,' that first visual novel wherein a group of strangers are forced, by an unknown entity, to participate in a life or death game to escape entrapment. But 'THH' is more bizarre. Scrappier. More...dangerous feeling. I'm late to come around to this series, but I'm settling in. This struck all the right notes with me.

I logged this as complete once I made it through the story campaign a single time (with three friends online). In order for this to feel like a complete package though, I want to do more with it. 'Shredder's Revenge' is a plenty successful legasequel to 'TMNT: The Arcade Game.' It retains the artistic style and pixel graphics of the original but is otherwise a modern feeling, beautifully animated brawler that just feels good in your hands, your eyes, and your ears. It helps that character designs from the animated series are so perfectly timeless, but this is a fun game regardless of how pleasing it is to these eyes (that did indeed come of age in the 1980s/90s).

It took his work at a child orphanage for me to fuly understand 'Yakuza's' Kiryu and similarly it took his work at a high school for me to fully understand 'Judgment's' Yagami. There are many fewer substories here in 'Lost Judgment' than in a typical Rya Ga Gotoku (RGG) game, but the game makes up for it by including enormous side story content in 'School Stories,' eight intersecting stories that arise from Yagami becoming a faculty counselor for after school clubs. I finished 'School Stories' with 100% completion and this may have required more than half of the game's overall playtime. But it's what I most remember from the experience. Much of the fun I had took place in that school and certainly most was revealed there about Yagami as a character. Many reviews on Backloggd rail against the difficulty of Robotics Club but I breezed right through it. So long as you grind out matches to upgrade your robots, you'll have no trouble as well.

The main story is a good mystery wherein the man who commits a murder on camera is arrested at the same time in another part of town committing another lesser crime. It's a well paced mystery story with many reveals along the way. If I have any gripe it's that it attempts to tackle subjects (like sexual assault and bullying) that require a more delicate touch than RGG may possess. The combat is improved over the original 'Judgment' with four stances (including the brand new Snake Stance) and an actual incentive to swap among them. This may have been the first time in an RGG game that I didn't just settle into one preferred stance and play it out until the end.

'Lost Judgment' was too quickly overlooked on its release and the series may now be over, but what a treat these games have been for those few of us who bothered with them.

The watercolor asthetic of the 'Dordogne' environments is beautiful. And the time traveling narrative allows for some really powerful and emotional character connections in the final moments. I was moved by the game's comments on living (and dying) with regrets. A heady theme, to be sure, but 'Dordogne' is otherwise a great play for the summer. The scenes in the past depict a single summer visiting Grandma in Dordogne, a French department that (at least as depicted here) is summer incarnate.

While the simple summer story in the past goes down easy, there is a deeper narrative of family turmoil that reveals itself through the letters that serve as collectibles in 'Dordogne.' I used a guide to find every collectible and even still, aspects of this deep narrative eluded me. I felt as though my understanding of it depended on my familiarity with 1980s French social politics (of which I have none). Should you miss letters (and without a guide you will, and there is no way to collect those you missed without restarting the game), I suspect you'll finish even more confused than was I.

'Dark Alliance' is a generically ugly and deeply unsatisfying action RPG. The enemy hit detection is suspect and there is an odd delay in the game's responses to not only your inputs but also to your actions. All of this makes it feel like the world of 'Dark Alliance,' and the enemy creatures within it, are barely aware of your presence. And no amount of unlocked attacks or tinkered gear will change that. At game's end, as powered up as I would ever become, an enormous sledgehammer whack to the head might not even get the smallest enemy grunt to turn around. For a game like this (equate this to the 'Diablo' series), you absolutely need to feel powerful. THAT'S the fun of these games. In 'Dark Alliance,' you are never allowed a glimmer of that feeling. Not because the game is difficult, but because the feedback loop is broken. I couldn't tell you if there is a decent story here. I played this with three friends online who talked through all the cutscenes. So, if there is any saving grace in the narrative, I can't be the one to speak to it.

‘Moss: Book II’ is another enjoyable visit to the world of Quill and the animal characters around her. It is ‘more’ than the original in just about every way except for, perhaps, play time. More varied environments. More abilities. More weapons. More verticality. More playable characters. More boss battles. I enjoyed trying my hand at all of the new features. And the storybook dioramas that make up each screen remain detailed and really beautiful. VR serves this series very well. A few things hold the star rating back for me. For one, though I played 'Book II' on PSVR2, the quality of the visuals did not seem to be improved beyond the game designed for the last generation console. For two, each level of ‘Book II’ is behind a door in a central hub castle to which you return after completing the level. That prevents ‘Moss II’ from ever feeling like the epic journey of 'Book I.’ So, while ‘Book II’ is ‘more’ than ‘Book I,’ it doesn’t ever feel quite as big or as grand.

'Famicom Detective Club' is an outstanding series of too few games. It is ripe for a revival. I prefer the story of 'The GIrl Who Stands Behind' to 'The Missing Heir;' this the sequel game to 'Heir' but the prequel story. 'Stands Behind' is a good, creepy (suprisingly adult) horror story. It is a ghost mystery with an emotionally satisfying explanation that smartly doesn't strip away all of the supernatural intrigue that comes before it. I'd recommend this one for the Halloween season. My one gripe with 'Heir' applies here as well: the pattern of actions required to advance the story is not always intuitive. But just as in 'Heir,' there are never too many actions possible, so it's usually easy enough to brute force your way over the speed bumps along the way. Excellent game. I'll start praying now that Nintendo gives this same treatment to the Super Famicom Detective Club game, 'Lost Memories in the Snow.'

A joy to play and a master class in open world design, ‘Tears of the Kingdom’ takes the bones of ‘Breath of the Wild’ and builds it out into a grand playground of creative expression. Even moreso than ‘BotW,’ ‘TotK’ encourages you to solve a puzzle, traverse a space, or accomplish a task in a way that makes sense to you (and perhaps only you). No two players will move through this game the same way, and that is remarkable in an open world space. More remarkable still is how the map is managed. The map is not one littered with icons representing the few repeating chores you’d expect to see in other open world games. It is instead a blank slate, encouraging genuine exploration and testing your own skills of mapmaking. And the world is so densely interesting that it is nearly impossible to stay on task. No matter where you go, you’ll encounter (or spot in the distance) something you’ve never seen before. Something you need to quickly check out before you return to your task. And from there, another. And another. And it ends up a miracle that you ever see the credits roll. Roll they did for me, but my time in ‘TotK’ feels even more incomplete, more unsettled, than was ‘BotW’ when I stepped away from it. I put 105 hours into ‘TotK’ and there seems easily to be another 100+ hours of game that remains. And that will beckon to me as I try to make progress in other games. ‘TotK’ is an outstanding game that ranks right up there with the very best in the series, and therefore with the very best in all of gaming.

The visuals aren't particularly artful. And the double jump controls have far too much irreversible momentum. But 'Mechstermination Force' knows what kind of game it is. And it has the very good sense to never slow you down with story and dialogue. You start the game, some superior shouts a line at you, and you are immediately fighting the first boss. First of fourteen you fight before the end credits roll. The bosses are big enough to sometimes become platforming levels in and of themselves. The action is constant and fun.

This is a 'Contra'-like and so most every weapon you remember from that series is here: machine gun, spread, laser, bomb, and hey why not, the wave beam from 'Metroid.' And to make matters easier than 'Contra,' all weapons are always available so you need not collect (and will never lose) a weapon once you purchase it in the shop. The ability to purchase such upgrades (including a seemingly unlimited supply of HP extender hearts) makes the game easier as you go. I suspect the final few bosses are the toughest in the game, but by the time you reach them, you'll be powered up enough that you shouldn't have too much trouble with them. Adding a second (local only) player to your game brings all the same advantages and disadvantages it does in 'Contra,' but very glad to have the option.

Three stars only when compared against the best of the 'Contra' series. But I managed to pick this game up for Switch for $6 and it was well worth that small price tag. Recommended!

I found ‘Truth Quest’ to be quite a bit less appealing than the main game. The story didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me (something about a world takeover scheme involving insectoid viruses and vaccines?) but that doesn’t matter much. I really enjoyed the base game and I couldn’t, today, tell you what it was about. I think the two biggest issues I have with 'Truth Quest' are 1) the amped-up difficulty and 2) the requirement to reach infamy level 5 before the final boss will spawn. ‘Truth Quest’ is much more difficult than the base game. Here, for the first time, you need to consider your shark build. That might seem like a good thing, but honestly, ‘Maneater’ is a game with slippery enough controls, and a chaotic enough camera, that it needs to stay easy. This is a game of stupid fun, not one of precision combat. So any time precise combat is required, the experience suffers. And the requirement to reach infamy level 5 was a bad idea. To raise infamy a single level, you need to increase a (very slowly filling) meter by eating humans and destroying hunter boats. Once it fills, a hunter leader spawns in some armored vehicle with a ton of HP and you need to destroy it to go up an infamy level. This gameplay loop was in the base game but I ignored it completely because it’s, ya know, not fun. So here in ‘Truth Quest’ I needed to get myself all the way up to level 5 and so spent an entire game session working on just this. And like I wrote above, difficult combat, slippery controls, wonky camera, etc. I still look forward to a ‘Maneater’ sequel. ‘Truth Quest’ was not the 'Maneater' followup I was hoping for.

With my ‘Backloggd’ reviews, I try to warn prospective players of those things I wished I knew before I started. Here’s my warning for ‘Jenny LeClue: Detectivu.’ This is not a full game. It’s episode 1 in an episodic series that started all the way back in 2019 and, now here’s the important part, no other episodes ever came out. Or have even been announced (unless you count a single developer tweet from January 2022). So this episode (you really can’t call it a game) develops all these curious threads in a mystery that is never even remotely resolved. And may never be resolved. Maybe it will come back one day. Maybe the pandemic is to blame. But no one should have to wait four years to hear about an episode 2 in a game that was designed (though duplicitously never advertised) to be episodic.

To compare this to another episodic mystery game like, I don’t know, ‘Life Is Strange,’ in both you can decide how to react to situations and characters around you. But again because this is only episode 1, most characters disappear from the story after your one encounter with them. No resolutions to be had, sure, but also no understanding of how any of your decisions impacted the world or the characters in these dialogues. It all just goes nowhere. I have no idea how any of what I did matters. IF any of it mattered. Imagine playing episode 1 of the five part ‘Life Is Strange’ and then nothing happens for years subsequent. Would you say that ‘Life Is Strange: Episode 1’ is a satisfying....game? I played ‘Jenny’ here in 2023 and I’m frustrated by this. Imagine if you played it in 2019 and then were expected to pick up the pieces and resume your investigation all these many years later. Come on now.

I accept part of the blame for my not enjoying ‘Kena: Bridge of Spirits.’ It was only in my final play session that I realized that there were multiple difficulty levels. Good thing I learned then, because I was considering abandoning the game on the final boss. I finally did beat this damn game on ‘Apprentice’ difficulty, ultimately accepting that the default difficulty is way too hard for an otherwise cutesy, Disney-looking adventure game. I’m not ‘bad’ at video games, I don’t think. I beat ‘Doom Eternal’ on console on ‘Ultra-Violence’ difficulty and with the aim assist turned off. I beat ‘Contra 4’ on Nintendo DS (if you know, you know). So why was I beating my head against the wall trying to defeat low-level bosses in this cartoony indie game? It’s such a frustrating kind of difficulty too. Kena falls squarely in the ‘your hits do no damage’ category of difficulty. On default, even the smallest grunts require massive damage to kill. When I dropped to ‘Apprentice,’ finally my attacks did actual damage. What a refreshing feeling!

Considering the artwork seems catered to four-year-olds, and the difficulty seems catered to the ‘Dark Souls’ crowd, you really have to wonder the intended audience for this game. It’s not all bad. I did like the music. And there were some stirring story moments. But I really think this developer needs to rethink combat. No one likes to feel ineffectual in a video game, and ‘Kena’ is ‘Ineffectual: The Video Game.’ On default and higher difficulties, at least. One more note: the map sucks, and why oh why was there no minimap on the HUD? This is a big, complex game world with no way of finding your way around outside of the (itself terrible) pause screen map. While traversing the game world, I was pausing, no lie, every fifteen seconds just to make sure I was getting closer to my goal.

Cozy, like a coffee shop sit on a rainy day. And also IS a coffee shop sit on a rainy day. The political aspirations are really blunt, though, so some of the character work is more likely to induce groans than insight. And the gameplay is virtually nonexistent. All you ever do is combine three ingredients. That's it. Compare this to the progression of gameplay in, say, 'Strange Horticulture' and 'Coffee Talk' just comes up short. This is a decent enough diversion and I'm not upset I spent the few short hours with it, but I'm also not likely to play future installments.

Best advice if you do play: spend time in the free brew or endless challenge modes before getting into the story. You need to learn recipes before you go into the story mode and start making mistakes. Challenge mode is where you learn recipes without any risks involved in failure.