Hey, y’all remember that one Konami game, Contra? You know, that really fun run ‘n gun game where you and a friend can join together, blast apart a bunch of aliens, take on a bunch of ruthless, yet incredibly satisfying platforming challenges, and just have a grand ol’ time together? Yeah, weren’t all of those games great? Well… what if we just made a game that kinda takes all that and… ruins it? Like, it doesn’t necessarily make the game one of the absolute worst things in the world, but it just removes a lot of the elements that made the original game fun to begin with, and what you are left with is an empty shell that feels like it is trying to be Contra, but it just can’t quite get there. That, my friends………….. would be Contra: Rouge Corps, but that’s for another time, because today we are talking about Cyber-Lip instead.

I had never heard about this game before playing it today, and it didn’t really sound or look like the most appealing thing in the world. The few screenshots I had seen did look cool enough, even if it looked like it was trying a little too hard to be exactly like Contra, but nothing about what I was seeing was really telling me that I had to check this out. That is, until I found out that the game was developed by SNK, and if there is any chance that I can take to make fun of SNK, then you damn well know I am taking it. So, I downloaded it on totally legal software, played it, and realized that… yeah, this is literally just the poor man’s Contra. This game is like when you have some kid on the school playground, doing some cool shit that everyone else is impressed by, but then you have that one kid who then goes “Not impressed! I can do that too!”, and they try to do the exact same thing, but ends up slipping up and falling on their face, leading to all the other kids thinking they are a loser and going back to the cooler kid. That is essentially Cyber-Lip in a nutshell.

The story is as generic as the game itself, where in the year 2030, a supercomputer named Cyber-Lip that was created for the sole purpose of fending off an alien invasion suddenly goes haywire, turning evil and joining sides with the alien forces to take over the world, so it is up to androids Rick and Brook to set out and take both Cyber-Lip and the aliens down and save the world, which is about what you would expect from any Contra game or Contra-clone, so this all makes sense. The graphics are fine, looking like if SNK just took the visuals of Contra and slapped their own filter over it, which does look nice enough, but nothing too impressive or memorable, the music is alright, having plenty of tracks that fit with whatever is going on in the levels whenever they pop up, but it is, again, nothing too memorable or exciting, and the gameplay/control is… well, take a wild guess as to how it is.

The game is a 2D run ‘n gun game, where you take control of either Rick or Brook, go through a set of six and a half different stages across plenty of different boring environments, shoot down any moving thing that you see before they can get the jump on you using whatever kind of weapons you can find, gather plenty of different weapons for your gun, as well as additional support upgrades to help you on your way, and take on plenty of big, threatening bosses that do have the same amount of difficulty and strategy one would find in a Contra boss, while also forgetting to bring the charm along with it. A lot of it is pretty standard for the genre, and I imagine if this was someone’s first exposure to run ‘n gun games, they would have a great time with this, but for all of us who have played one or two of these before in our lives, this is nothing all too exciting or fun that you can’t get from other titles from before and since.

I will give the game credit, as there are some interesting ideas at play here that I did enjoy, things that was implemented here before Contra would do the same in their series. First off, in terms of the weapons, not only are there a lot to choose from that can be refueled inside of these rooms you will find throughout the levels (which is kind of pointless, but whatever), but you can even swap between all of the weapons whenever you get them, even after you die. It isn’t much, but it is very helpful just in case you wanna stick with a specific weapon throughout, and it makes dying less of a bitch, as you can jump right back in with a power up as if nothing happened at all. Secondly (spoilers for a game that is over 30 years old), I also really like the ending, where you end up destroying the Cyber-Lip computer, and the guy that has been giving you mission briefings the entire time reveals that he is one of the alien invaders, and now that we have killed the supercomputer, he and his race can come down and take over the planet for their own use. Not gonna lie, that’s a creative plot twist for a game made around this time, and a pretty grim ending too, which I can definitely respect a game like this for doing.

Unfortunately though, everything else is either incredibly lackluster or plagued with issues. The main gameplay itself is very uninspired, providing very little innovation to the run ‘n gun formula other than that weapon swapping thing I mentioned earlier, while also feeling like a downgrade in comparison to those games, such as with aiming, where you can only really aim in several different directions, rather then the full 8 you got from Contra, as well as with the movement, where it can feel really weird and janky to control at times, especially if you try to move and shoot at the same time with some certain weapons (because you know, how dare I try to move and shoot in a RUN AND GUN GAME). Not only that, but there is also, of course, the typical problems that these kinds of games loves to throw at you, such as arcade syndrome, where they will throw plenty of enemies at you to deal with while paired up with difficult platforming sections, and a boss rush at the end of the game, although this boss rush is thankfully not that much of a ball-ache compared to other games.

Out of all my complaints though, I think my biggest one would have to go to the game’s auto scrolling levels, because they are EVERYWHERE. Seriously, I think half of the levels in this game are auto scrollers, which completely kills the pacing of a game like this, where instead of having non-stop, explosive action taking out all of these enemies, the game puts a hand in front of your face, causing you to have to play at its pace, which is not something my fidgety-ass wants to deal with. Now, I don’t wanna throw auto scrolling levels right under the bus, because in some RARE cases, these can actually be decent enough and provide a good challenge, while also not feeling like that much of a pace breaker. However, when these levels do pop up and break the pace, you FEEL it, especially when it comes to this game.

Overall, despite some neat little quirks here and there and having a gameplay set-up that works well enough, this is definitely the poor man’s Contra in every sense of the word, trying to imitate and copy everything that those games did while adding some more to it, while also completely missing several of the elements that made Contra fun and wonderful to begin with. I would recommend it for those who are HUGE run ‘n gun fanatics, as well as those who maybe wanna get into the genre somehow, because the game certainly isn’t bad, but trust me, you could do WAY better than this, even with the games that came out before it. But you know what, at the end of the day, if I were to give SNK and Cyber-Lip any credit for doing anything whatsoever, I will give them this………… this game is a hell of a lot better than Ikari Warriors. It shows that maybe, just one day, SNK will actually make a good video game that isn’t a fighting game….. or one that isn’t named Metal Slug.

Game #577

"In my restless dreams, I see that house. Silent House." Connoisseurs will know for sure that this is the game that dared to ask "Better to cum in the sink? Or sink in the cum?" sounds familiar... and such a loaded bull of a question for an oeuvre directed at girls (you can tidy the house and decorate it) but perhaps the fairer sex can womansplain their rhetoric to me. Wait, where does the microwaved food come into this? If we were all being fr rn, even if you don't have a gender, nobody can be expected to handle the ephemeral art that is cooking. Moms hit different. Somehow this has nothing to do with the topic at hand, let's get back to this game rated E for everyone.

One indie horror game a day keeps the streamer away (from society). Streamers be like "I HEARD A WATER DROPLET AND SHAT MY PANTS GRAAAAAAH" they know they would be jobn't without them though. Devs be plotting this in advance doin that devious ahh shit flies do when they're landed on the table. Nah honestly we're not cooked yet, see there's no jumpscare! No horror! Just psychological breaking & entering teehee. I'm swearing off drinking water after this, we are officially breaking up 💀 I will turn to vodka for sustenance. Deep down somewhere in the trenches of GameBanana, therein must lie a mod overhaul aptly named "The Windows Are Goon".

It's not a bad game in retrospect, even while I mischievously clicked the 1 star icon in Backloggd I knew as much, but these games really feel dime a dozen these days, haven't they? This is the scapegoat for my frustration!! Well, I wish I could say that, but I was just existentially bored. There's not a lot of entertainment in that horizontally challenged household. The camel that strawed the broke back is homie sleeping with the door open, bro dreaming he's fresh in the countryside tired of making a few easy bucks on the bustling streets. The takeaway is that bro needs therapy. Mods, get that Kickstarter goin.

Mega man and bass is often described as a very difficult and unfair game, but that wasn't gonna stop an epic gamer like me from giving the game a try. Boi am i glad i gave this game a shot because for me, this is easily a top 5 mega man game.

You get to choose between 2 characters to play as which are of course Mega man and Bass. In my playtrough i decided to play as Bass.
Bass is really fricking fun to play as! He has a dash, a double jump and his base weapon has the abilty to fire rapidly in almost all directions. The weapons that Bass acquires throughout the game are all very fun. Copy vision, lighting bolt and spread drill are my favorite weapons.

Copy vision creates a clone of Bass fires for a few seconds and then disappears, and thats cool as fuck!

Lighting bolt summons a bunch of lightings that will inflict damage on everything on your screen.

Spread drill shoots a giants ass drill tha can transform into smaller drills.

You can also buy many upgrades by using bolts acquired during levels. These upgrades are very useful and some of them are definitely worth buying to give yourself an easier time, the one that i mostly used is the one that upgrades your base weapon which is very useful for both enemies and bosses.

I was a huge of fan of the levels in this game.
Every single level is just the right lenght and all of them are unique, challenging and very fun to go through.
My favorite levels are: Magic man's stage, cold man's stage and astro man's stage.

The bosses are hit or miss. Some bosses in the game are very solid but some bosses are straight up poo poo stinkers.
King, burner man, cold man, magic man and ground man? Very great bosses and my personal favorites of this game.
King's tank, atetemino, jet king robo and green devil? EW! DOO DOO! POO POO! STINKY BOSSES!

The graphics are very nice and colourful, like seriously every single stage looks really good in my eyes.

The music is pretty great. Some of my favorite tracks include: the robot museum, king stages, boss battle and astro man stage.

So yeah i really like this game! Wanted to make a short review during school since i was bored.
8.5/10

Was one of the most boring horse riding games I played as a kid. Had it on pc and it was confusing trying to figure out where everything was. You had to actually go over to things to use them, which was fine if you know where to go. But frustrating when the game is all like "your horse has xyz disease" and doesn't tell you what to do about it. At the age I played this, I didn't know these kind of things. We had dial-up internet so I wasn't about to look it up. Anyways, you could ride your horse out in the open, but the competitions as I recall, were just boring dialogue "congrats, you got 3rd place" or whatever. Tons of items, feed, & meds but it seems like I didn't have the right thing when my horse was sick so she got taken away. Broke my heart. I cringe (my heart still hurts) looking at other people's screenshots of this game.

Das beste 2D Mario Spiel. Oft werden die 2D Teile selbst trotz guten Level Designs irgendwann ein wenig Monoton, was einfach der Limitierung eines 2D Plattformers geschuldet ist, doch Mario Wonder überrascht in fast jedem Level mit einer neuen coolen Idee. Wie ein kleines Kind freue ich mich in jedem Level erneut auf die Wonderflower, welche das Level dann komplett auf den Kopf stellt.
Auch wenn da durch so ein bisschen Brot und Butter eines soliden Plattformers auf der Strecke bleiben hatte ich damit ungemein viel Spaß.

Dazu kommt noch eine hervorragend designte Overworld. Man hat Einiges an Freiheiten im Bezug auf die Reihenfolge in der man dieses Spiel spielen möchte und eine Reihe normaler Levels werden immer wieder mit kleinen, abwechslungsreichen Minigames aufgemischt. Zusätzlich verstecken sich ein paar simple Rätsel in der Overworld und die Spezialwelt ist auch gut eingebunden.

Wonder ist für mich das neue Benchmark für 2D Mario Spiele und ich hoffe es wird eine Fortsetzung geben.

Una de las cosas que más impresionan de esta franquicia es su apartado visual y como te puede poner los pelos de punta al visitar, no solamente nuevos lugares con el estilo de Star Wars, sino también lugares y naves emblemáticas de la saga.

En este sentido Jedi Survivor es excelente, e ir dando vueltas con el sable láser es todavía más gratificante con mapas enormes interconectados a los que ir accediendo gracias a las nuevas habilidades que Cal va aprendiendo en su viaje.

Un viaje, que, por cierto, tiene una trama con personajes bastante interesantes y el giro de turno no te lo ves venir, lo cual siempre es de agradecer aunque el resto de la historia no sea para tirar cohetes, pero si está bien llevada para que despierte un nuevo poder que resulte muy útil para acceder a nuevas zonas.

Las diferentes habilidades y posturas de combate también son bastante interesantes, al menos para personalizar un poco la experiencia de cada uno y adaptarla, también, a los encuentros de turno contra enemigos.

El problema viene en el mismo punto central que el anterior, las recompensas en la exploración. Bien es cierto que no es tan desesperante como en el anterior donde los cosméticos eran en mayor número lo que podías conseguir y aquí hay bastante más.

Hay cámaras Jedi con puzles que resolver, rasgaduras de la fuerza con diferentes pruebas cronometradas, puntos de habilidad y ventajas pasivas, pero la sensación en general llega a ser la misma porque los cofres a la vista acaban dando patrones de colores, piezas de ropa y componentes del sable y el bláster, que, como en el anterior, no añaden ningún tipo de estadística útil.

Si además le sumamos que el contenido secundario, en mayor medida, es igualmente conseguir coleccionables que se intercambian por más cosméticos, se empieza a ver la exploración y recompensas con cada vez menos interés.

Si además se le añaden algunos lugares con muchos enemigos y la fórmula de reiniciarlos (todos, incluso si son hordas) al descansar para recuperar vida y algunos errores con la cámara en según que espacios, lo que puede dar un juego enorme para moverse y ver nuevos lugares se convierte en tedio.

Sin embargo todo está tan sumamente bien que siempre te va a dar pena no aprovecharlo ya que el mundo con sus atajos, sus preciosos paisajes, su buen ritmo narrativo y montón de cosas que hacer va a estar a la altura de lo esperado.