Game Finished In 2024 #9:

This is gonna be a bit of a weird one. A couple of circumstances aligning led me to playing this utter curiosity of a game.

For context: Mighty Action X is a game in the universe of Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, the Rider show about gamer doctors, a premise exactly as cool as it sounds. Mighty Action X is the action game Gashat [a cartridge representing a game that allows one to become a Rider by inserting it into the Gamer Driver] of the protagonist, Emu Hojo, aka Kamen Rider Ex-Aid. This is that game defictionalized, to the point the splash screens include the in-series game maker Genm Corp. This was released on the 3DS and included as a promotional bonus with another Kamen Rider game

As a game, there is very little to actually talk about. It is a completely standard platformer. A normal run takes approximately ten minutes to see everything, and a full playthrough would be maybe an hour at best. Unfortunately, with this game never being officially released in English, as the series it is from never was either, the menus are unreadable to me and there are no good guides online I could find to go for 100%. But going for 100% wouldn't really change much, all things considered.

The main appeal, perhaps the only appeal, of the game, is being fanservice for people who like Kamen Rider Ex-Aid. I like Ex-Aid, so this pleases me for what it is. The fact it exists is enough, honestly. I chose to give this no score because it feels weird to.

I can't believe the MCU ripped this game off.

Hyrule Warriors is a wild trip. As a Zelda fan, it's incredible. A perfect trip through the franchises history while still managing to tell a new and satisfying story. However, as an actual game it is WAY too repetitive. That's kind of just the flow of Warriors games to be fair but that doesn't excuse how tiresome this game can get if you play it too long.

As long as you just do the main story you probably won't run into this issue assuming you only do like 2 or 3 missions in each session but dear lord avoid the side content at all cost. This isn't even a criticism of the game. I am genuinely fearful of anyone who has completed even one of the Adventure maps.

This game's plot is surprisingly well done. Its not amazing and most of it happens purely for the sake of fanservice but they very easily could have done worse or just had put no effort into it. I think Cia is a really good villain and oddly tragic. They do the usual trope however, where the really cool new villain is just a servant for Ganon and after you fight them get completed overshadowed by him. This is especially funny because they include Zant and Ghirahim, two of the most glaring examples of this trope, and they don't give them ANY significance beyond being minions for Ganon or Cia.

I do love all the fanservice here. A majority of it is directed to Twilight Princess for some reason. Most Zelda games at least have one character to represent them or an Adventure mode map to reference them. However a lot of the 2D games hardly get representation. A Link to the Past is kind of represented with the Lorule map but not much else that I can rember. The Oracle games literally don't get anything besides a couple character alt outfits and Minish Cap literally gets NOTHING. Real shame because literally ever other mainline game gets some form of recognition.

Thats this game's charm in a nutshell. A whole lot of Zelda fanservice with some pretty mindless, albiet relaxing in the right mindset, gameplay. If you are a fan of Zelda games and do like the Warriors style of games this is more than worth the price. There is so much to do here that I'd argue there's TOO MUCH content. I dread 100% of this game.

A game by absolute freaks, for absolute freaks. If you don't lab kart racers everyday like they're fighting games and try your hardest to complete EVERYTHING in those games, this game is NOT for you.
Almost avant-garde in how little it cares for the casual kart racer audience, forcing you to complete an excruciating tutorial that can take between 30 minutes and 1 hour. To complete one grand prix before you can unlock multiplayer (or use a cheat code). To complete FIVE grand prixes before you can unlock the ability to use old SRB2kart MODS! (or use a cheat code). To stay with one color for your character unless you collect the others, and collect all 82 to unlock time trials. Never has there been a game so obsessed with making players master its mechanics before letting them play with others, as if they were preparing you for real-life war or something.

The game even opens slowly walking you through every option, unlocking each thing in the menu, everything contextualized with Tails and Eggman speaking to you, as Metal Sonic. Clearly, the devs tried to defeat Sonic Robo Blast 2's unnecessarily long intro cutscene, and in their quest for Genesis nostalgiawanking, they made the awful choice of only having the button prompts of the Genesis controller in menus and tutorials, not a huge issue in controller, it is on keyboard, especially because this game just has way too many mechanics and when you finally have to use an obscure one, you gotta press every key or go to the menu to check what key you assigned as the Y Genesis button.

Back to the tutorial, what did they think they were making here, Final Fantasy XVII?? It doesn't even explain things that clearly and there's so much dialogue, no option to reread, just once and trial and error.
It'd be one thing to make a kart racer with a lot of complex mechanics if they all feel cohesive and the races really push you to your limits, like Sonic Riders or even Bomberman Fantasy Race, but I don't think this is it when the mechanics are like 8 different types of boosts, one for each hazard, a charged melee attack? A parry? Two different types of roulettes that by default you have to stop manually???
A lot of this doesn't even come up in the races, it's for the single-player challenges, if it is in the race, you can also probably brute force it and use boost mechanic #54 instead of boost mechanic #301 as originally intended.

There's potential here, but it doesn't feel as good as SRB2kart to be honest. I gave up at the drift section in the tutorial cuz I just couldn't get it to work and the only drift you HAVE to do to proceed is the ultra charged one that gives you max boost #302! If the kart stops moving while you try to drift you instead initiate, you guessed it, another boost mechanic, one that has its own separate dedicated button so why make the drift worse by putting it on that button as well?

I usually don't rank games if I know that they're just not for me or if I played that little, but I don't see how the things I complain about would really do any good to any game in any genre, and even if all players use a save file with everything unlocked, I'll have to stand my ground unless they rework everything.

They tried to make a kart racer with more complex mechanics than Sonic Riders, and thought they had to have THE MOST mechanics to do that. They saw that some Riders players missed mechanics because of the lack of a tutorial and thought they had to overtutorialize EVERYTHING and demanded they mastered the game before even letting them race.
Don't think this will ever catch on and most will probably continue to just play SRB2kart.

Finished my replay of this game on hard mode. There wasn't much of a difference with normal except that obviously you take fewer hits before you go down. Perhaps one day I'll play on realistic but something tells me that will cross the line into being annoying for my playstyle.

If you've followed me for a while or even if you've been in the same room as me for more than 15 minutes you might now that I despise stealth games. I've tried, but I genuinely hate them all. MGS, Thief, Dishonored, even stealth sections in games I like (shenmue, max payne, disaster report 4). I've had bad luck with so called Immersive Sims because of it, as most of them are essentially stealth arpg hybrids like Deus Ex, but so far its basically only the OG (and consortium by virtue of not having stealth) that I mess with. Its not exactly a mystery why, and consider this a plea for other games to follow suit : let me murder everyone. Give me an actual choice between stealth and combat and not just stealth and "you fucked up the stealth you idiot! you might as well reload a save"

Importantly, Deus Ex's combat is deceptively fun to get to grips with. Its so simple but really effective the way that you start out as someone who takes 2 business days to line up a pistol shot to being able to run around with the gep gun blowing people up like nothing. I'm surprised no one else has tried emulating the system, with your RPG esque weapon stats determining how fast your crosshair takes to narrow and become fully accurate, presumably imitating how it takes someone to aim down the sights and prepare to fire a shot.

Now, obviously for this kind of game there has to be push back, and even with a combat build your ass is not going to last if you're trying to play the game like half life, which is precisely why its satisfying to completely forgo stealth and murder everyone through traps, ambushes etc. This playthrough I discovered how useful the non lethal gas grenades are for murder runs (ironically) cause it makes enemies freeze up to rub their eyes, lining up to get headshot with the pistol for maximum murder efficiency.

The playthrough did however highlight Deus Ex's biggest flaw : the save system. Its one of those systems which is simultaneously too annoying and too forgiving. Its annoying because I am forgetful, and losing 15 mins of progress because I forgot to save is just... frustrating. On the other hand, there is basically nothing stopping you from hardcore save scumming every 5 seconds. Ironically, there is nothing more appropriately "mean" for a choice based rpg than an aggressive auto save, as it is, you can basically game most of the big decisions and encounters. Maybe even a save room system like RE4 might be appropriate? Could even lock them behind doors with an interesting weighing up of resources if its worth risking a loss of progress for a lockpick or multitool? Idk now Im playing armchair designer but either way.

Area 51 is still kinda annoying, I didnt use console commands to noclip through it this time but I still fused with Helios because it was the fastest way to complete the level, the later bits of the game are kind of a downgrade from the initial half of the game.

Most people nowadays that pick up Xenogears go in knowing it's going to be a good game, a great one, even. Word of its quality has spread gradually over time, primarily due to the success of its descendants; Xenosaga and Xenoblade. What people don’t seem to know is how ambitious it was.
The game having a good story is practically a given thanks to the names behind it, but it's the rest of the game that really impresses. Not only does the game have a ‘normal’ form of combat, in which up to three of your party members use their three attack types to combo their opponents into hell, there’s also gear combat. Gears are the mechs in this game, and unlike the normal characters, gears need to build attack level to combo, rely on fuel, and can’t be healed normally. The game switches between these two combat forms depending on the situation, and each of them are remarkably fleshed out, making it much harder to tire of combat than it is in most jrpgs.
Besides the main combat forms, there are also side modes and mini games such as gear combat. Not the same gear combat as before, the battlin’ gear combat is a lot more comparable to an arena fighter (albeit much less fleshed out) giving the gameplay even more variety. There’s even a speed minigame, a goddamn fully built card game that looks pretty good even now.
Xenogears bleeds creativity and is fully deserving of its legacy. The game is far from perfect - there are some glitches and some party members feel a tad underdeveloped, for example - but it's a truly one-of-a-kind experience worth anyone’s time.

Plants vs. Zombies is so fun at it’s core that I kinda had a teeny tiny bit of fun for the first few levels of PVZ3 but I kept being told about my ‘task list’ and how cool my daily login rewards are. Plus the new cartoon art style tries to bring more personality to the series but it ironically just makes it more generic.

Anyone can tell just by looking at Plants vs. Zombies 3: Welcome to Zomburbia that it’s a soulless way of milking a franchise that essentially died years ago and every second I played it just made me more and more depressed.