Legolas_Katarn
BACKER
2022
An interesting concept but nothing about the mechanics, characters, segments, or narrative fits together in any kind of sensible cohesive way. Though it is often entertaining until the last few broadcasts long overstayed their welcome while doing nothing new mechanically or when it's adding odd elements of pointless family expenses, drama, or tragedy.
An FMV game that has you taking over the vision mixing, censoring, ad picking, headline lean, and other tasks at a news station just as a new political party has been elected. Your choices on what to air at certain times, choices made in text segments between broadcast days, and which and if you follow certain orders or suggestions while doing your job can see the story take different paths or characters actions and fates change over a span of around 10 years.
The actual mechanics end up keeping things evolving over time tend to be dull, often poorly explained to begin with, and trying to get a particular result can lead to confusing moments. Both poor and nonsensical as any kind of political commentary which hurts text story and choice moments drama, tone is all over, segments can overstay their welcome but each broadcast day does have a checkpoint after each ad break. Often entertaining and funny when not focused on the main plot (unless you aren't entertained by a particular segment and find yourself needing to do dull tasks for 10-15 minutes before it ends unless you fail out of it or worse miss something for the narrative you wanted to do then have to go through the whole thing again) but then, due to the style of the game, you will be punished for paying too much attention to the actors and may need to see things you missed after the gameplay segments where you can review the footage that was broadcast, play the ad videos without listening into studio talk or orders, or view the moments that weren't completely available to you. When you preform actions for narrative purposes, sometimes it hurts your broadcast and possibly your score for the segment, but letting the more obvious things happen like playing certain ads or allowing the broadcast to be disrupted don't damage your score or really cause you any problems with getting fired or arrested. I wasn't sure why I was gaining or losing score during certain segments but since it only impacts your money that doesn't really seem to matter it never made much of a difference to me if I was getting an A+ or D.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1680375861428752385
An FMV game that has you taking over the vision mixing, censoring, ad picking, headline lean, and other tasks at a news station just as a new political party has been elected. Your choices on what to air at certain times, choices made in text segments between broadcast days, and which and if you follow certain orders or suggestions while doing your job can see the story take different paths or characters actions and fates change over a span of around 10 years.
The actual mechanics end up keeping things evolving over time tend to be dull, often poorly explained to begin with, and trying to get a particular result can lead to confusing moments. Both poor and nonsensical as any kind of political commentary which hurts text story and choice moments drama, tone is all over, segments can overstay their welcome but each broadcast day does have a checkpoint after each ad break. Often entertaining and funny when not focused on the main plot (unless you aren't entertained by a particular segment and find yourself needing to do dull tasks for 10-15 minutes before it ends unless you fail out of it or worse miss something for the narrative you wanted to do then have to go through the whole thing again) but then, due to the style of the game, you will be punished for paying too much attention to the actors and may need to see things you missed after the gameplay segments where you can review the footage that was broadcast, play the ad videos without listening into studio talk or orders, or view the moments that weren't completely available to you. When you preform actions for narrative purposes, sometimes it hurts your broadcast and possibly your score for the segment, but letting the more obvious things happen like playing certain ads or allowing the broadcast to be disrupted don't damage your score or really cause you any problems with getting fired or arrested. I wasn't sure why I was gaining or losing score during certain segments but since it only impacts your money that doesn't really seem to matter it never made much of a difference to me if I was getting an A+ or D.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1680375861428752385
2019
Decent beat em up that just makes it into recommended territory for me. Four character and a large enough moveset to keep things interesting but nothing pushes it much further than being average.
Good basic combos to string together with the punch and kick button, alternating between them can extend the combo and both types of attacks have their own combo finishers with the punch combo being able to end knocking the enemy down or up if you hold that direction. You can do two special attack that drains your health with the push of a button with one activating while stationary and the other while moving, you can unleash a high damage area clearing attack when a special meter fills, activate a rage mode where you ignore damage, do more damage, and are harder to stun, can grab and then continue to hit or throw enemies from the front or behind, a dodge up or down can be performed by hitting up or down twice while hitting left or right twice or holding a button allows you to run. In a more unique feature there is a button to draw and fire a gun that can keep enemies back or destroy hazards. Each of the four characters has their own strengths, moves, and each uses a different type of gun.
Somewhat overly long with no saves but does have a stage select, a bit too much focus on a poor story that really lacks humor or excitement. There are some different types of stages thrown in for variety like driving while shooting at enemy cars with a gatling gun and shooting down enemy jets and helicopter while in a jet of your own dodging missiles. These two different stages aren't interesting enough to want more of them but it does briefly change things up. Dull melee weapons, I don't understand why this is such a problem with beat em up games, you can get a crowbar or katana and both are swung like a club that knocks the enemy down where you can then just stand over them to repeat the attack over and over again. With the rage meter, special meter, and ability to just walk around with the katana or crowbar when you find one until you drop it three times the game is very easy and I only lost lives in the last stage when you fight some high damage dealing robot enemies, fight all the bosses again, then fight the end boss.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1678992381407014912
Good basic combos to string together with the punch and kick button, alternating between them can extend the combo and both types of attacks have their own combo finishers with the punch combo being able to end knocking the enemy down or up if you hold that direction. You can do two special attack that drains your health with the push of a button with one activating while stationary and the other while moving, you can unleash a high damage area clearing attack when a special meter fills, activate a rage mode where you ignore damage, do more damage, and are harder to stun, can grab and then continue to hit or throw enemies from the front or behind, a dodge up or down can be performed by hitting up or down twice while hitting left or right twice or holding a button allows you to run. In a more unique feature there is a button to draw and fire a gun that can keep enemies back or destroy hazards. Each of the four characters has their own strengths, moves, and each uses a different type of gun.
Somewhat overly long with no saves but does have a stage select, a bit too much focus on a poor story that really lacks humor or excitement. There are some different types of stages thrown in for variety like driving while shooting at enemy cars with a gatling gun and shooting down enemy jets and helicopter while in a jet of your own dodging missiles. These two different stages aren't interesting enough to want more of them but it does briefly change things up. Dull melee weapons, I don't understand why this is such a problem with beat em up games, you can get a crowbar or katana and both are swung like a club that knocks the enemy down where you can then just stand over them to repeat the attack over and over again. With the rage meter, special meter, and ability to just walk around with the katana or crowbar when you find one until you drop it three times the game is very easy and I only lost lives in the last stage when you fight some high damage dealing robot enemies, fight all the bosses again, then fight the end boss.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1678992381407014912
2009
Fun, fast paced, and ridiculous action game with a large number of combos, deep gameplay, varied weapons, and unique and amusing mechanics. Regular attacks can be extended with gun attacks from the pistols she carries and wears on her feet, variety of combos to chain attacks before summoning a body part or creature for a more powerful move, enemies that have taken enough damage can be finished by summoning torture machines, your whip can pull enemies to you to create openings for other combos, a sword has a variety of charged attacks that allow you to charge the weapon while still being able to perform dodges, perfectly timed dodges temporarily slows time.
The only issues I ever had with the game was how quickly you were expected to mash a button on some of the torture attacks and the large bosses you fight just aren't as much fun as a smaller scale but faster paced fight with Jeanne.
One of the best action games made further improved in the newer PC version that has a better framerate and more visual options.
The only issues I ever had with the game was how quickly you were expected to mash a button on some of the torture attacks and the large bosses you fight just aren't as much fun as a smaller scale but faster paced fight with Jeanne.
One of the best action games made further improved in the newer PC version that has a better framerate and more visual options.
2021
Solid enough combat, environment design, and variety of ways to progress that I still mostly enjoyed a style of game I'm not usually much of a fan of even without finding one of its main features interesting enough to not turn off.
Top down action adventure with Zelda like elements and a timer that can be turned off where the other characters you meet and your own character will eventually lose their minds and become like the game's enemies unless you give them a limited supply of items you can find that will add to their time limit. The story involves your character waking up with some memories missing in a destroyed city where the remaining robots were at war with humans. Years ago a meteor crash left a crystal-like object on the planet that gave the machines sentience by giving them anima. During the war with humans they did something that blocked the anima from that object from reaching the remaining robots and over time they started to lose their minds and become violent. The main character is told to retrieve five fragments from the meteor that were given to powerful robots that they had lost contact with in order to forge a weapon that will allow her to enter the structure blocking the spread of anima while also attempting to find her girlfriend she had been fighting alongside before being damaged.
You can equip your character with three loadouts of two weapons that include swords, axes, grenade launchers, shuriken you can control after throwing (more useful for puzzles than combat), and guns with some having fire, lightning, and ice elemental effects. You can slot chips into your character with stronger ones taking up more of your limited space to influence the damage you do, your health, stamina, reload speed, and to add a variety of other helpful effects. Combat is fast paced as you can quickly run and dive and turn those moves into quick attacks but your strongest source of damage comes from parrying an enemy attack right before it hits you which will put them in a stunned state where a hit will cause massive damage to them. The ranged weapons make use of a Gears of War style reload system where you can reload much faster if you hit the reload button and then hit it again when a fast moving meter is just over a notch in the middle of the UI.
You are given a variety of ways to sequence break or to take different paths as they are multiple ways to deal with certain kinds of obstacles with what you have available, skills you might not know about at first like wall jumping or attacking while jumping to gain extra distance. You might cross over water by finding switches that make platforms, use a single or double hookshot to swing across, use a spinning top you can stand on to bounce over the water, use an ice grenade to create temporary platforms of ice, etc. Your ability to do things like that are further enhanced by being able to craft most of the games items from blueprints even if you haven't found or bought the blueprint by remembering what items and configurations craft what. The environments and enemies are typically well designed and animated.
Usually I am not a fan of this kind of Zelda like genre. I normally find combat and combat options too simplistic, which is improved here, but what I didn't find any better is the environment and puzzle design. There is a lot of fairly useless things to find, you'll run into multiple puzzles where to need to push blocks around or slide them over an icy surface in ways that will land them in the correct slots, you'll run back and forth to activate switches to make the right blocks appear or platforms to rise or lower. There are a lot of dungeon design choices and side activities that are little more than time wasting busywork to run the clock out for yourself or other characters, a timer which I just ended up turning off as it both added nothing to the game for me and I wanted to take some time to test things out. New game plus and new game extra modes allow you to start a game again with different things carried over from your last playthrough and that combined with the knowledge you have of the game now is the main way you would be expected to be able to save the majority of or all of the game's characters if you are playing with the timers. Most of the game's characters are pretty low on personality and likely due to the mechanics of the game most aren't able to do much for you when they are alive as what they provide can often be earned in other ways or just isn't important at all. It gives you very little personality to your existing enemies and most bosses and that seems like a place where more of the narrative could have focused. There's some small moments with characters like the one that just uses the last of his time fishing to clear garbage from the water for the remaining fish but I can't find much use for the timer when you only vaguely care about like three people and the game would just be set up to say, "ok just run through it all again but faster now that you know exactly what to do and start with an advantage." It's not Pathologic where you have to make some hard choices.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1677886408860762113
Top down action adventure with Zelda like elements and a timer that can be turned off where the other characters you meet and your own character will eventually lose their minds and become like the game's enemies unless you give them a limited supply of items you can find that will add to their time limit. The story involves your character waking up with some memories missing in a destroyed city where the remaining robots were at war with humans. Years ago a meteor crash left a crystal-like object on the planet that gave the machines sentience by giving them anima. During the war with humans they did something that blocked the anima from that object from reaching the remaining robots and over time they started to lose their minds and become violent. The main character is told to retrieve five fragments from the meteor that were given to powerful robots that they had lost contact with in order to forge a weapon that will allow her to enter the structure blocking the spread of anima while also attempting to find her girlfriend she had been fighting alongside before being damaged.
You can equip your character with three loadouts of two weapons that include swords, axes, grenade launchers, shuriken you can control after throwing (more useful for puzzles than combat), and guns with some having fire, lightning, and ice elemental effects. You can slot chips into your character with stronger ones taking up more of your limited space to influence the damage you do, your health, stamina, reload speed, and to add a variety of other helpful effects. Combat is fast paced as you can quickly run and dive and turn those moves into quick attacks but your strongest source of damage comes from parrying an enemy attack right before it hits you which will put them in a stunned state where a hit will cause massive damage to them. The ranged weapons make use of a Gears of War style reload system where you can reload much faster if you hit the reload button and then hit it again when a fast moving meter is just over a notch in the middle of the UI.
You are given a variety of ways to sequence break or to take different paths as they are multiple ways to deal with certain kinds of obstacles with what you have available, skills you might not know about at first like wall jumping or attacking while jumping to gain extra distance. You might cross over water by finding switches that make platforms, use a single or double hookshot to swing across, use a spinning top you can stand on to bounce over the water, use an ice grenade to create temporary platforms of ice, etc. Your ability to do things like that are further enhanced by being able to craft most of the games items from blueprints even if you haven't found or bought the blueprint by remembering what items and configurations craft what. The environments and enemies are typically well designed and animated.
Usually I am not a fan of this kind of Zelda like genre. I normally find combat and combat options too simplistic, which is improved here, but what I didn't find any better is the environment and puzzle design. There is a lot of fairly useless things to find, you'll run into multiple puzzles where to need to push blocks around or slide them over an icy surface in ways that will land them in the correct slots, you'll run back and forth to activate switches to make the right blocks appear or platforms to rise or lower. There are a lot of dungeon design choices and side activities that are little more than time wasting busywork to run the clock out for yourself or other characters, a timer which I just ended up turning off as it both added nothing to the game for me and I wanted to take some time to test things out. New game plus and new game extra modes allow you to start a game again with different things carried over from your last playthrough and that combined with the knowledge you have of the game now is the main way you would be expected to be able to save the majority of or all of the game's characters if you are playing with the timers. Most of the game's characters are pretty low on personality and likely due to the mechanics of the game most aren't able to do much for you when they are alive as what they provide can often be earned in other ways or just isn't important at all. It gives you very little personality to your existing enemies and most bosses and that seems like a place where more of the narrative could have focused. There's some small moments with characters like the one that just uses the last of his time fishing to clear garbage from the water for the remaining fish but I can't find much use for the timer when you only vaguely care about like three people and the game would just be set up to say, "ok just run through it all again but faster now that you know exactly what to do and start with an advantage." It's not Pathologic where you have to make some hard choices.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1677886408860762113
1993
Horizontal shooter. I played through the Japanese version which has an ok if unmemorable soundtrack (and story wise is apparently still in English), US release had terrible sounding dance tracks like Y'all Ready For This that were also too quiet compared to the other sound effects. You have a main shot that can be turned into a wider spread, laser, or wide shot in front and behind you and two missiles that can be set to straight, spread, or homing based on powerup. A fast charging bar allows you to activate a rotating and damage causing shield you can fire at enemies.
This is actually a fairly unique and interesting mechanic that needs to be taken advantage of both as a means of doing extra damage and to survive the fairly large number of fast moving shots enemies can fire at you. The quick recharge rate of the shield and the balance between keeping it on you and launching it at enemies gives some strategy but often doesn't leave you completely helpless. Some sections have walls or paths in the stages and with most enemy shots not going through objects this cover can also give you a chance to recharge. Death will also use up a life but will spawn you back where you died with the same upgrades as the game keeps going.
The problems with the game is that the enemies are fairly dull and most are repeated in each stage, there is nothing interesting about your main weapons, the bosses are pretty easy and don't do anything mechanically or visually interesting, it is on the shorter side, level have some ok backgrounds but don't do anything interesting, and for a 93 release the game is bland visually. And I would definitely not want to listen to the US versions terrible renditions of dance music.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676873523753816066
This is actually a fairly unique and interesting mechanic that needs to be taken advantage of both as a means of doing extra damage and to survive the fairly large number of fast moving shots enemies can fire at you. The quick recharge rate of the shield and the balance between keeping it on you and launching it at enemies gives some strategy but often doesn't leave you completely helpless. Some sections have walls or paths in the stages and with most enemy shots not going through objects this cover can also give you a chance to recharge. Death will also use up a life but will spawn you back where you died with the same upgrades as the game keeps going.
The problems with the game is that the enemies are fairly dull and most are repeated in each stage, there is nothing interesting about your main weapons, the bosses are pretty easy and don't do anything mechanically or visually interesting, it is on the shorter side, level have some ok backgrounds but don't do anything interesting, and for a 93 release the game is bland visually. And I would definitely not want to listen to the US versions terrible renditions of dance music.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676873523753816066
Vertical shooter. You can adjust your speed, fire bombs, and in an usual feature hold L and R to direct your shots to the left or right or hold both to fire behind you. Your health and weapon power is connected to collecting three small cakes or one large one that can enhance your power twice, getting hit drops power by one. Enemies and bosses are mediocre, none of the other weapon pickups seems like they would be more useful than the default, stage design is dull, music is instantly forgettable, it is almost impossible to die until the last stage and death starts you in the same spot you died. Playable but does nothing well.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676493912553422848
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676493912553422848
2020
FMV video dating sim where you pick three of five girls for a first date, two for a second, then one for a third as long as you are able to answer questions in a way that they like. In between dates main character and his best friend interact over calls, of course they seem to have as much or more chemistry like always. Acted well but its too short and limited to particularly care about anything, and the only one of the five dates I could almost tolerate in real life or would find attractive would be Shaina. Part of the problem is there are multiple questions you really should ask and that might be somewhat obvious but you never get an answer for unless you start the game again to choose different, needing to replay a character multiple times in completely new games is a needlessly tedious way to try to create replay value when just getting more time with each character in one playthrough would have just made more sense.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676409036101779457
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676409036101779457
1991
Horizontal shooter. Drops the two player support of the arcade version and adds the ability to select between eight weapons at the start of each stage or at each continue use instead of four. Also changes some stages and enemies, and removes the ending plot.
You can swap between three speed levels, though I never felt a need to go under the max. As you gain score your weapons level up to five and get stronger, you always have two option weapons you can change between four different modes as you level they both do damage to enemies they touch and destroy some types of enemy bullets. You first have the ability to have them inside your ship or to spin more defensively around you while firing and as you level up you get the choice to have them act more independently as they split up and move around based on your movement and finally you unlock a more aggressive mode that has them both move together locking onto enemies and staying right in front of the until they are destroyed. Some weapons are more viable as you level up like the grenades and some like the homing shot or s laser are great all the time (except for the final boss where they auto aim at an unkillable target). You can take three hits and dying allows you to continue at the start of the stage but you keep your current level progress. Decent music, nothing too interesting about the backgrounds or enemy design but not bad or too repetitive. Solid shooter with a fairly easy normal difficulty (depending on weapon choice, and ignoring the final boss).
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676354381384675329
You can swap between three speed levels, though I never felt a need to go under the max. As you gain score your weapons level up to five and get stronger, you always have two option weapons you can change between four different modes as you level they both do damage to enemies they touch and destroy some types of enemy bullets. You first have the ability to have them inside your ship or to spin more defensively around you while firing and as you level up you get the choice to have them act more independently as they split up and move around based on your movement and finally you unlock a more aggressive mode that has them both move together locking onto enemies and staying right in front of the until they are destroyed. Some weapons are more viable as you level up like the grenades and some like the homing shot or s laser are great all the time (except for the final boss where they auto aim at an unkillable target). You can take three hits and dying allows you to continue at the start of the stage but you keep your current level progress. Decent music, nothing too interesting about the backgrounds or enemy design but not bad or too repetitive. Solid shooter with a fairly easy normal difficulty (depending on weapon choice, and ignoring the final boss).
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676354381384675329
1993
Horizontal shooter. Three ships to choose from that each go through three different shot types as you max out your weapon upgrades. The difficulty of the game comes more from how long it takes to max out your upgrades, potential upgrades that can temporarily make the game more difficult, and a checkpoint system that has you lose your upgrades. The main way to stay alive is through frequent shield drops. You can also swap between two sub weapons, higher damaging missiles or faster shooting lasers. Firing the main and sub weapon together lowers the power of both, which probably wasn't need. A lot of sections where a wave or waves of enemies suddenly appear from multiple angles and have difficult to avoid attacks unless you knew about it ahead of time due to your fairly slow movement speed. Has more subdued soundtrack but I liked it. Multiple routes to choose from but some levels are fairly similar to others and many of the bosses pose little threat.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676174878175797249
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676174878175797249
1991
Horizontal shoot em up. Upgrades to main attack, shield, and additional weapon that starts by dropping a bomb in front and below you and will later fire out beams in four directions in front and behind you. Stages can become repetitive, it becomes overly difficult with no continues and enemy attacks that just kind of appear out of nowhere for some enemy types while others can just rush in from off screen behind you.
1991
Horizontal shooter. SNES version removes some opening scenes from the original X68000 version but offers a more enjoyable game by allowing you to cycle between weapons and movement speed, also has a different soundtrack which is just ok. Gives you a health bar and weapon powerups will also add to your health. Some backgrounds and good mechanics that allow different weapon types, missiles, and sacrificing weapons as different types of bombs can be strong options at different times but it can take a long time to see a particular kind of weapon drop again and some of their bomb features are very lacking compared to others. Dull enemy and boss design with little animation to them, overly long, and full of fairly repetitive sections where the same patterns of enemies can keep coming at you two or three times more than is normal for the genre. Apart from stage five which has you destroying a ship where the screen only scrolls based on your movement and you can blow up parts of it and its guns to enter little passages to get to three openings that lead you to mini boss fights, it's a fairly generic shooter (and apart from the US box art that they chose just to confuse people into having to look at a generic shooter).
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676111806455255040
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1676111806455255040
2016
A short visual novel about the developing relationship of a two woman that happen to meet while one is on a road trip dealing with the recent loss of her grandpa and the other is hunting treasure. Decently written but doesn't spend enough time with what matters or adds to the main women's characterizations, instead often focused on bad or ridiculous elements, seems to forget about or ignore what should be more important parts, and falls into too many cliches. Nothing special artwork wise but the voice acting is good.
A large part of the story is focused on a ridiculous treasure hunt road trip that would be ok serving as a macguffin just to bring the women together at first, but with so much time spent finding different parts of the treasure, introducing a weird and unlikable side character and her group as people looking for the treasure and apparently related to the guy who hid it, and actually having the characters find the treasure but it never really mattering or meaning anything to the plot really makes it seems like any other excuse to have the characters together would have made more sense. Looking for the treasure also involves them trespassing on native American territory to try to find gold and the more unlikable side character wanting to blow up landmarks and for no real reason being the only ones to find the parts of the treasure compared to massive crowds of other people looking just because Amber has read some landmark/road attraction flyers and pamphlets while on other trips in the past. There are multiple parts of the plot that just seem to get dropped where you don't know what one of the characters was doing when she says she will be away for a few hours to get a surprise for the other one, you never really learn what Marina wanted the treasure for even though it seemed that the question created awkwardness at first but was then forgotten about, Amber's issues with being in a relationship while dealing with her Grandpa's recent death both seem a bit ridiculous and overblown in a way that isn't really addressed well more so when it portrays her in a more abusive way at some parts.
There seems to be a problem with the game, that has lasted for some time now, where the achievements just don't unlock. One scene had one of the character being removed for a few lines with some placeholder text put over where they used to be saying the game was unable to find a certain image.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1675673408284278784
A large part of the story is focused on a ridiculous treasure hunt road trip that would be ok serving as a macguffin just to bring the women together at first, but with so much time spent finding different parts of the treasure, introducing a weird and unlikable side character and her group as people looking for the treasure and apparently related to the guy who hid it, and actually having the characters find the treasure but it never really mattering or meaning anything to the plot really makes it seems like any other excuse to have the characters together would have made more sense. Looking for the treasure also involves them trespassing on native American territory to try to find gold and the more unlikable side character wanting to blow up landmarks and for no real reason being the only ones to find the parts of the treasure compared to massive crowds of other people looking just because Amber has read some landmark/road attraction flyers and pamphlets while on other trips in the past. There are multiple parts of the plot that just seem to get dropped where you don't know what one of the characters was doing when she says she will be away for a few hours to get a surprise for the other one, you never really learn what Marina wanted the treasure for even though it seemed that the question created awkwardness at first but was then forgotten about, Amber's issues with being in a relationship while dealing with her Grandpa's recent death both seem a bit ridiculous and overblown in a way that isn't really addressed well more so when it portrays her in a more abusive way at some parts.
There seems to be a problem with the game, that has lasted for some time now, where the achievements just don't unlock. One scene had one of the character being removed for a few lines with some placeholder text put over where they used to be saying the game was unable to find a certain image.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1675673408284278784
2016
Great update to the original SNES game with two new characters added that have their own playstyles and two new stages with one replacing a stage on normal and both replacing a stage on hard.
Wild Guns is an action gallery shooter with a mixture of western and steampunk visual design. Holding down the fire button locks you into place while you can move the reticle around, it also changes your jump and double jump button into a roll that avoids attacks while you are preforming the move. Some enemies move to your plane and attempt to melee you and getting near them turns your shot into a melee attack of your own that launches them across the screen. Tapping the shot button multiple times allows you to aim a lasso that will stun hit enemies. Bombs can be found that do high damage to most of the screen and since shooting enemy bullets destroys them it also tends to keep you safe while used. There is a wide variety of enemies across the stages that have their own movement styles, types of attacks, and some have multiple ways of being killed or destroyed depending on where you shoot them. Destroying objects in the environment can get you points for extra lives, bombs, or a variety of sub weapons that you can use until the ammo runs out.
The two new characters add more gameplay variety. You can play as a dog with much faster movement who is followed around by a drone that automatically aims at enemies within a certain range of the section of the map you are aiming at and the dog can latch onto the drone to momentarily fly up into the air. The other new character is a much slower strongwoman when it comes to her walking speed but she is able to preform very fast dashes that can get her out of the way of shots but will not provide her with invincibility. Her method of attacking is different as she has no guns or weapon pickups and instead throws bombs where the longer you hold the attack button the more bombs she throws at once with the number going up to seven. She also has a lightning ground punch she can do by jumping into the air and slamming down.
The two new stages are probably the worst part of the game. There are some visually interesting but they are overly easy (even on hard as you need to play on hard to even see one of them) with simple early sections then followed by overly difficult bosses that require to know what you are doing ahead of time to know where to shoot them or how to even begin to dodge their attacks. The airship stage is also over quickly while the underground stage drags on a bit too long.
Playthrough Video: https://youtu.be/ewWkL12UPS4
Wild Guns is an action gallery shooter with a mixture of western and steampunk visual design. Holding down the fire button locks you into place while you can move the reticle around, it also changes your jump and double jump button into a roll that avoids attacks while you are preforming the move. Some enemies move to your plane and attempt to melee you and getting near them turns your shot into a melee attack of your own that launches them across the screen. Tapping the shot button multiple times allows you to aim a lasso that will stun hit enemies. Bombs can be found that do high damage to most of the screen and since shooting enemy bullets destroys them it also tends to keep you safe while used. There is a wide variety of enemies across the stages that have their own movement styles, types of attacks, and some have multiple ways of being killed or destroyed depending on where you shoot them. Destroying objects in the environment can get you points for extra lives, bombs, or a variety of sub weapons that you can use until the ammo runs out.
The two new characters add more gameplay variety. You can play as a dog with much faster movement who is followed around by a drone that automatically aims at enemies within a certain range of the section of the map you are aiming at and the dog can latch onto the drone to momentarily fly up into the air. The other new character is a much slower strongwoman when it comes to her walking speed but she is able to preform very fast dashes that can get her out of the way of shots but will not provide her with invincibility. Her method of attacking is different as she has no guns or weapon pickups and instead throws bombs where the longer you hold the attack button the more bombs she throws at once with the number going up to seven. She also has a lightning ground punch she can do by jumping into the air and slamming down.
The two new stages are probably the worst part of the game. There are some visually interesting but they are overly easy (even on hard as you need to play on hard to even see one of them) with simple early sections then followed by overly difficult bosses that require to know what you are doing ahead of time to know where to shoot them or how to even begin to dodge their attacks. The airship stage is also over quickly while the underground stage drags on a bit too long.
Playthrough Video: https://youtu.be/ewWkL12UPS4
2011
Has some of the good Yakuza flavor and characters but tells a much less interesting story but wastes what could have been a great combat system fighting zombies and monsters with even more ridiculous melee attacks and weapons by turning the game into a mediocre third person shooter and has less interesting side activities than the rest of the series.
2021
Mad Games Tycoon 2 offers a lot of options and it can be fun to run your own game company but more so here if you are more focused on numbers and imagining what your business is like because the lack of detail and personality can easily lower that enjoyment and really hurts some features.
You will build up your studio over time by hiring employees that focus on fields such as game designer, programmer, graphic artist, sound artist, office worker, technician, tester, and researcher and building up job focused rooms to fill the kind of tasks that you need done. Outside of just making a game there is a wide variety of things to do be they major options like creating your own console or producing your own arcade cabinets, creating production runs of the game's you develop or produce, and making server rooms to support your MMOs, to minor details like setting prices of fan merchandise for the IPs you own, buying a license from some form of media to make a game around, setting amount of or ending crunch time, deciding how much you want to charge for your games and what you want to include with each regular, deluxe, collectible box. From the years 1976-2030 set events will see the release of new consoles, handhelds, computers, phones, technology, and genres for you to work with.
Your game's sales and review scores are determined by a large number of things such as platform market, engine specialty, your skill with genres/topics/platforms/technology, employee numbers working on the game and skills in each area, features your engine allows to be in a game, marketing, genre and possible sub genre combination, topics chosen for the game to be about based on the genre, using support offices that focus on things like graphics design, recording music and sounds, motion capture, bug testing, and managing a variety of sliders that when set to certain levels for a particular genre can lead to better or worse games being made. It sounds like a lot but once you figure out or look up where to set the sliders (game testers can create game reports that tell you if sliders were optimal and you can automatically set them to optimal settings you have identified whenever you make a game of the same genre), you are mostly just clicking on the same kind of things over and over again. Getting extremely high reviews does become more difficult on hard and legendary difficulties as you might need to adjust some developer area focus mid development to fill lacking areas but it's still a similar feeling game. An option can be chosen to randomize those perfect genre options in each game but then you tend to be moving even further away from it feeling in any way like a realistic kind of game as the natural position of the sliders tends to at least make decent sense for a genre (you probably won't have much luck making a children targeted heavy military violence focused puzzle game with a massive focus on story, character design, and game length over the options that would influence level and puzzle design).
Because there is no real personality to employees or other developers and publishers it does tend to make certain options much less interesting than they could be. Unless you are fully committed to the roleplay of your company there is just very little reason money or content wise to getting into publishing games for other people or buying out other companies. Developing retro games for off the market consoles or creating old bundles, abandonware, or re-releases of your old games and filling out your published game boxes with maps, figures, and posters doesn't really have any feeling to it. Even more so because, while you can create a support department to gain new fans and answer fan mail and calls, you don't really have interactions with fans outside of occasional message in a few readable fan mails and reviews that include a small number of generic comments.
There are a lot of useless or almost useless employee perks. There are some that are obviously nice to have like talented to increase skills faster, faster movement, no bathroom breaks, no breaks, completes tasks slightly faster. Then you can have extremely minor situational skills like working on engines faster or doing slighter better when games are sequels that mean very little in the long run. There are a large number of completely worthless perks like not making a mess, not caring about being in a mess, not caring about overcrowded offices, not quitting, half the jobs only focus on one skill so a perk that gives their non specialized areas higher maximums doesn't do anything for them, etc. These perks are worthless because you end up in a situation where lets say you have comfortable room for 30 people and you put 50 in there and the office is a mess, if two people don't care about crowds and two don't care about a mess that only takes care of half their problems and 46 others are still 100% upset. Without your employees even showing any kind of personality many of these traits just feel throw in just to be there even after all this time of development, it would actually be easy to fix the one that doesn't care about crowds by just making them not count to the total office crowd limit (maybe everyone likes them because they are attractive, smell nice, and bring in donuts).
The look of the game is another lacking area. The character models themselves are bland enough but there is a surprising lack of options when it comes to office decorations and options. You have posters, pictures, carpets, and plants to make people enjoy their environment more and more necessary objects like water, trash cans, fridge, seats and benches for breaks (oddly the benches take the space of two chairs and should fit two people but your employees end up taking a break by sitting on the middle of a bench), and things like arcade cabinets, treadmills, and dart boards to increase motivation when they need to unwind but there is such a lack of variety of options in these areas and almost every type of room contains the exact same type of décor that actually growing and designing your building layout and rooms just isn't interesting so you aren't really able to make a visually interesting environment. There are helpful and time saving features such as having your rooms automatically set up after choosing the size of the room, updating all outdated work areas as improved versions are unlocked over the years, and the ability to just pick up and move entire rooms if you end up wanting to quickly change your building layout or the size of certain rooms.
If you're playing to chase those high numbers, watch your office grow over time, and to imagine your long running IP about fire fighters just trying to do their job in a world of dangerous fire breathing dragons you can have a great time. But if you want a more detailed personality driven side where you have employee events or them giving out ideas for a game or suddenly demanding a raise or quitting, having more direct struggles against competitors aside from just not wanting to fill the market with too much of the same genre and topics, you wanted a more varied highly detailed and decorated office, or if you wanted to see some kind of either visual or just descriptive version of the kind of game your employees ended up making then you will likely start to get tired of the game sooner than later.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1674297005559128071
You will build up your studio over time by hiring employees that focus on fields such as game designer, programmer, graphic artist, sound artist, office worker, technician, tester, and researcher and building up job focused rooms to fill the kind of tasks that you need done. Outside of just making a game there is a wide variety of things to do be they major options like creating your own console or producing your own arcade cabinets, creating production runs of the game's you develop or produce, and making server rooms to support your MMOs, to minor details like setting prices of fan merchandise for the IPs you own, buying a license from some form of media to make a game around, setting amount of or ending crunch time, deciding how much you want to charge for your games and what you want to include with each regular, deluxe, collectible box. From the years 1976-2030 set events will see the release of new consoles, handhelds, computers, phones, technology, and genres for you to work with.
Your game's sales and review scores are determined by a large number of things such as platform market, engine specialty, your skill with genres/topics/platforms/technology, employee numbers working on the game and skills in each area, features your engine allows to be in a game, marketing, genre and possible sub genre combination, topics chosen for the game to be about based on the genre, using support offices that focus on things like graphics design, recording music and sounds, motion capture, bug testing, and managing a variety of sliders that when set to certain levels for a particular genre can lead to better or worse games being made. It sounds like a lot but once you figure out or look up where to set the sliders (game testers can create game reports that tell you if sliders were optimal and you can automatically set them to optimal settings you have identified whenever you make a game of the same genre), you are mostly just clicking on the same kind of things over and over again. Getting extremely high reviews does become more difficult on hard and legendary difficulties as you might need to adjust some developer area focus mid development to fill lacking areas but it's still a similar feeling game. An option can be chosen to randomize those perfect genre options in each game but then you tend to be moving even further away from it feeling in any way like a realistic kind of game as the natural position of the sliders tends to at least make decent sense for a genre (you probably won't have much luck making a children targeted heavy military violence focused puzzle game with a massive focus on story, character design, and game length over the options that would influence level and puzzle design).
Because there is no real personality to employees or other developers and publishers it does tend to make certain options much less interesting than they could be. Unless you are fully committed to the roleplay of your company there is just very little reason money or content wise to getting into publishing games for other people or buying out other companies. Developing retro games for off the market consoles or creating old bundles, abandonware, or re-releases of your old games and filling out your published game boxes with maps, figures, and posters doesn't really have any feeling to it. Even more so because, while you can create a support department to gain new fans and answer fan mail and calls, you don't really have interactions with fans outside of occasional message in a few readable fan mails and reviews that include a small number of generic comments.
There are a lot of useless or almost useless employee perks. There are some that are obviously nice to have like talented to increase skills faster, faster movement, no bathroom breaks, no breaks, completes tasks slightly faster. Then you can have extremely minor situational skills like working on engines faster or doing slighter better when games are sequels that mean very little in the long run. There are a large number of completely worthless perks like not making a mess, not caring about being in a mess, not caring about overcrowded offices, not quitting, half the jobs only focus on one skill so a perk that gives their non specialized areas higher maximums doesn't do anything for them, etc. These perks are worthless because you end up in a situation where lets say you have comfortable room for 30 people and you put 50 in there and the office is a mess, if two people don't care about crowds and two don't care about a mess that only takes care of half their problems and 46 others are still 100% upset. Without your employees even showing any kind of personality many of these traits just feel throw in just to be there even after all this time of development, it would actually be easy to fix the one that doesn't care about crowds by just making them not count to the total office crowd limit (maybe everyone likes them because they are attractive, smell nice, and bring in donuts).
The look of the game is another lacking area. The character models themselves are bland enough but there is a surprising lack of options when it comes to office decorations and options. You have posters, pictures, carpets, and plants to make people enjoy their environment more and more necessary objects like water, trash cans, fridge, seats and benches for breaks (oddly the benches take the space of two chairs and should fit two people but your employees end up taking a break by sitting on the middle of a bench), and things like arcade cabinets, treadmills, and dart boards to increase motivation when they need to unwind but there is such a lack of variety of options in these areas and almost every type of room contains the exact same type of décor that actually growing and designing your building layout and rooms just isn't interesting so you aren't really able to make a visually interesting environment. There are helpful and time saving features such as having your rooms automatically set up after choosing the size of the room, updating all outdated work areas as improved versions are unlocked over the years, and the ability to just pick up and move entire rooms if you end up wanting to quickly change your building layout or the size of certain rooms.
If you're playing to chase those high numbers, watch your office grow over time, and to imagine your long running IP about fire fighters just trying to do their job in a world of dangerous fire breathing dragons you can have a great time. But if you want a more detailed personality driven side where you have employee events or them giving out ideas for a game or suddenly demanding a raise or quitting, having more direct struggles against competitors aside from just not wanting to fill the market with too much of the same genre and topics, you wanted a more varied highly detailed and decorated office, or if you wanted to see some kind of either visual or just descriptive version of the kind of game your employees ended up making then you will likely start to get tired of the game sooner than later.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1674297005559128071