Lobotomized Hotline Miami.

OTXO feels like a game that overcomplicates itself from its source material and misses the points that made the Hotline Miami games enjoyable while not committing fully to its roguelike design, resulting in a confused game that lacks cohesion.

The music is great and the game has some nice fancy visual effects. The particles, the environmental debris, the lighting, the shadows, and the ragdoll physics all add a lot to the game's feel and visual feedback. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the overall presentation. The monochrome visuals resulted in a very dull and samey-looking environment, which was a lot of the appeal I felt with Hotline Miami where each level had a distinct color palette that made them immediately recognizable even beyond the level design. Not to mention visual clarity is also lessened as the white bullets just blend in more with the monochrome backgrounds.

The problem also extends beyond the presentation, as the procedural generation of the levels despite the handcrafted rooms just results in everything feeling uniform and derivative. It's usually just a bunch of rooms on the left side and right side of the map, and a big open hallway in the middle. This also doesn't flow very well and clashes with some of the more enjoyable aspects of Hotline Miami, which is to try and fully combo the entire level as you figure out the best pathway in getting through the enemies in succession.

The whole scoring aspect is pretty much gimped too. You do still want to keep up high combos for the coins so you can get more abilities, but with the way things work, it's more reliant on having a lucky seed of RNG rather than mastery of the levels and mechanics. Outside this, it's a lot less exciting and inconsistent to score, which again is a shame since I felt this is one of Hotline Miami's main sources of fun.

Then we get to one of the biggest offenders which is the whole health system. I feel a lot of the flow and intensity of Hotline Miami came from the almost-always-one-hit-kill system. OXTO opting for varying damage and health makes sense for a roguelike, but it still clashes a lot with the overall feeling of the combat which undeniably does still take a lot from Hotline Miami. All the guns sound fantastic and punchy, but it's such a disconnect when they take 2 to 3 hits to kill someone, and there's a lot less feeling of danger when your character also can tank bullets for the most part. Some weapons can one-hit kill, which extends to the fact that the game ultimately even contradicts itself with the mechanic that allows you to remove weapons from rotation, and only select the ones you want. Thus you have the option of keeping only the weapons that can one-hit kill and negating the whole damage system in the first place.

The roguelike design overall just doesn't work with Hotline Miami's style, since another large part of what made Hotline Miami work is the quick inconsequential punishment of death where you can just instantly restart, and learn the level like a time-based puzzle where memorization and then execution comes into play. In OTXO, when you die you start from the beginning, and you're more reliant on getting good RNG with abilities that can help you or layouts that aren't too much of a mess. I did finish this game thrice, with a run that didn't involve using abilities, but most of it devolved into abusing mechanics like the bullet time and dodge rolls. Especially as you get further into a run where all the enemies have different modifiers and they all get stacked haphazardly with no real design in mind how they placed.

This then extends to the other poorly thought-out element, which is the boss fights. They're neat on paper, but poor in execution. Except for one samurai-themed boss, most of it comes down to spamming the dodge roll and waiting for your bullet time to cool down, while avoiding the same three or four attack patterns over and over again because the bosses are bullet sponges.

There's an unlockable 'Impossible Mode' that makes it feel closer to the original Hotline Miami games, with damage raised across the board, which translates to all guns pretty much being one-hit kills and survivable by two to three through lucky shaves. I wish the game was designed with this mode in mind as it resolves the bullet sponge problem with the bosses and retains the fast exciting pace of Hotline Miami. The rest of the problems are still here, but this is where I had most of my enjoyment.

I feel like this game would have been better overall if it's just a linear campaign with a dozen levels or so with an upgrade system slapped onto it. There are some neat elements with the systems here, but they just don't work well together. As a Hotline Miami clone, it lacks a lot of the original game's flow and intensity. As a roguelike, it lacks a lot of the extra systems and mechanics most roguelike games have, including permanent upgrades. Outside some modifiers and the ability to unlock guns and select which of them spawn during a run, there's little progression within the systems themselves.

If you're itching for a top-down shooter with some roguelike elements and a Hotline Miami flavoring, and you're willing to look past the shortcomings, this game is mostly fine. But if you just want more Hotline Miami in general, there's a whole bunch of well-made and creative campaigns, levels, and mods out there in the modding scene, even in HM2's Workshop alone. Not to mention the massive overhaul packs and standalone projects. And if you want a roguelike in general, there is a whole sea of them nowadays that also pretty much does a lot of its dedicated systems better.

Also, OTXO's a stoopid name.

Jagged Alliance 2 is a great example of a lightning-in-a-bottle situation, where a team of ambitious developers with a similar mindset of “wouldn’t it be cool if we put this in?”, wanted to make a game during the tail-end of the wild west of 90s PC gaming. They brainstormed all their best ideas together, alongside their love of different games and various media, resulting in one of the most engaging and organic feeling turn-based strategy RPGs that oozes a lot of personality and charm.

The beauty behind Jagged Alliance 2 is how straightforward the core objective is and how everything is built around it. Eliminate the tyrannical despot Queen Deidranna and liberate the nation of Arulco. How you go about completing this objective is up to you. From the beginning, you’re given a sum of cash, a laptop full of resources, intel, and websites to recruit a variety of colorful mercenaries from across the world. You can go slow and deliberate, capturing every sector in Arulco to weaken the Queen’s defenses while building up your battalion of mercs and Arulco’s rebel natives. You can also go fast and strike before the Queen even knows you’ve arrived in Arulco, carefully navigating from the north of the country to the capital in the south, blowing up the walls and somehow evading the entire army as you neutralize the Queen in her bedroom. This idea extends to everything else in the game, where quests are only marked with notes, and the solution to them is up to you.

There’s a fantastic sense of adventure and discovery, where there’s always something to find that makes each sector of Arulco a worthwhile exploration. To give an example with slight spoilers - one of my favorite questlines is meeting a mob boss who controls a city in the north side, and wants me to steal a grail for him that’s in a museum located farther south in the country. I already secured the city that has the museum, so it was just a matter of me getting someone sneaky and stealing the grail. I took him back to the mob boss, gave him the grail, and accepted a hefty sum of cash to help me out further into my journey of liberating Arulco. Hours later I secured a village and talked to one of the locals, who maintains a culturally significant ancient site nearby. He tells me they’ve been missing a grail that had been an important part of the land’s ancestral history. I felt bad that I had already given the grail to the mob boss, but I didn’t want to reload a save as I'd already made hours of progress since then. So, I went ahead and went back to the mob boss, assuming there was a way to talk to him again about the grail. He spat me the same lines after I gave him the grail, which is to enjoy the money and spend it in his city’s establishments. The whole city was surrounded by his goons, so it’s going to be a tough fight. But I went ahead and positioned my squad to advantageous points and fought them all. To my surprise, the grail was still in the mob boss’ corpse. I picked it up, gave it back to the village guy, and gained a positive reputation with the people of Arulco. As a bonus for my trouble, I even found a secret stash in the mob boss’ mansion leading underground into an abandoned mine and gained even more cash. The game is full of neat organically designed quests like this, and again the idea of leaving you to your own devices on how you resolve them.

The combat is straightforward, solid, and feels very lethal. Instead of showing the chance to hit and damage of your attacks like in most turn-based combat games, JA2 only suggests you the optimal range of your weapon. This results in less number crunching and min-maxing the situation, and encourages the player to take risks and go with their gut feeling. You can use action points to aim your weapon increasing the likelihood of hitting your shot. Do you take the risk of a farther headshot to dispatch a dangerous armored enemy ASAP? Or do you go for the safer option, where you move a bit closer, shoot unaimed toward his torso, and hope it’ll slow him down so you can assess your options in the next turn?

Going further into the lethality of combat, even a leg shot can incapacitate someone, making armor and first-aid very important. Just getting someone to bleed and not have medical assistance within the next turn can put them out of commission easily. Not to mention burst and full auto fire have separately calculated hits, making even just a single stray bullet hit dangerous, with a full hit practically a guaranteed kill. I love how the number crunching overall feels very natural. Stats and numbers give you an idea of the capabilities of mercs and weapons but are designed to keep things grounded and consistent where a bullet is a bullet, a knife’s a knife, and point-blank range even with the worst shot in the world can explode someone’s head with a shotgun. Not to mention explosives, which there are a variety of as well, coupled with destructible environments. It’s all very exciting, chaotic and fun.

Then we have the strategic layer of the game wrapping all of the other elements together. Logistics and budget management are all critical, alongside making sure your band of mercs doesn’t kill each other. You aren’t just going to have to consider the abilities of your mercs, you also need to learn their personalities, history, disabilities, prejudices, and so-and-so. Having a couple of exes for example that had a bitter break up might kill each other when you have them in the same sector, and it isn’t exactly great for morale if you pair up the racist in a squad of racially diverse people. On the flip side, you’ll also have long-time friends or potential friends build up their bonds and become an even stronger synergy beyond whatever their stats are. It’s all wonderfully designed, and you’ll be spending equal time in combat as you with the strategic management, as you make sure your weapons are repaired, mercs patched up, and well rested while making sure the Queen’s army doesn’t take back the sectors you have liberated.

All of this is presented in a campy pastiche of 80s and 90s action movies that’s a lot of fun, while also managing to keep serious moments grounded, including the potential deaths of your mercs and other characters. It’s all fantastic and strikes a nice balance between tonal shifts.

I already liked JA2 back when I first played it around the mid-2000s, but recently replaying it and giving it a more in-depth playthrough alongside the experience of playing more games throughout the years gave me a newfound appreciation of how wonderful this game is. My motivation to replay throughout the series started after finding out JA3 was released, and I even ended up delaying playing that because as soon as I finished JA2 again, I went straight for a replay onto the hardest difficulty level. JA2 shot up immediately as one of my all-time favorites in general.

If any of this piqued your interest, you may have come across the common suggestion of playing with the 1.13 mod. I highly recommend not doing this on your first playthrough. 1.13 itself is an amazing project, but it overhauls the game a whole lot, being a labor of love that was worked on since 2005 and is still being worked on to this day. But even when you read through the new features and settings and make it as close to the vanilla game as possible, it’s still very different and is just overwhelming overall to get through when you don’t have a first-time experience of the game. I instead suggest playing it vanilla using the JA2 Stracciatella source port which makes it run nicer on modern systems alongside some bug fixes.

This is a game I sincerely did not want to hate despite being a frustrating mess. Alone in the Dark 2008 is a game made of so many interesting and neat ideas but executed in the worst ways possible. It’s a smorgasbord of different gameplay designs that potentially could had been good, great even if there was a more cohesive direction, time and budget.

Just from the opening hours, it tries its best to be bombastic and cinematic, showing off multiple gameplay elements that showcases some advanced technologies that other games were still trying to figure out and integrate at the time. Physics puzzles and complex actions, alongside larger than life scenarios that predates more successful attempts a year later like Uncharted 2.

It’s genuinely neat to see how the various mechanics actually play an important role in progressing through the game, such as setting objects on fire and breaking down doors, where even just the straight up logic of shooting something and breaking it open works. I actually got stuck more times than not because I was thinking of it as a more conventional video game with more abstract logic, and not the straightforward idea of just letting physics and blunt force get me through a path. Even with its more fantastical leaning puzzles, there’s a clever idea behind it all. It’s a shame that all of it is wrapped around with some of the most tedious controls and unreliable inputs that make it a bigger effort than it should be. Various sections I had to repeat constantly or had to do something weirdly specific just so that the game registers it. It’s always a mixed feeling of getting very frustrated followed by a thought of how cool it would have been if it was actually done well.

The game’s combat suffers a similar way in that it does try to make you use the game’s environments and give you various tools to achieve your goal, but again, are all made to be more tedious than intended due to how broken and irresponsive the controls are. There’s even the neat idea of making things diegetic with your inventory being an actual physical jacket with all your items attached, but is ultimately frustrating as it all happens in real time and the game can’t decide between a fast-paced action game and a more methodical survival horror.

The open world portion is mostly unnecessary and probably is one of the major things that hurt the game more than it helps. There’s also the arbitrary padding of making you go through burning 50 out of a 100 ‘evil roots’ scattered across the map, which feels like a proto-version of the ubiquitous Ubisoft-styled towers we see often in most open world games today. But I admire how much it did try to tie in with the game’s core gameplay loop of survival horror and puzzle solving, such as having to use a big truck to make a ramp out of a broken road. Again, all of these things aren’t exactly executed well, but the ideas on paper are so neat that it really made me wish all of these were incorporated into a better game.

There are a couple of genuinely fantastic elements the game has. For one the soundtrack is great, elevating various scenes and making them feel better than they really are, and the protagonist Edward Carnby himself. I can’t tell if he’s meant to be self-aware and campy or unintentionally hilarious, but it’s all the better for it. It’s also just a shame that the story also ends in the wettest of farts, regardless of the two endings you choose.

Despite the frustrating experience, I do have to appreciate the game’s features such as having multiple chapters selects that takes you to various points in the game. I shouldn’t have to want or need to skip through frustrating sections, but the fact they’re there is at least also an unintentional convenience that makes the messy experience more tolerable.

Alone in the Dark isn't a good game, but it is an interesting one that has shown a lot of potential. It was weirdly ahead of its time, with some of its elements being better executed by games that came out relatively soon after. Beyond that, also a fair number of unique ideas that no other game have tried, for better or worse.

One final FACT to ponder, if you are curious enough into playing this yourself, make the experience a lot less miserable preferably if you got some friends to tag along for the ride.

I didn’t play this alone, and fuck you anyway!

A solid, if somewhat unpolished brawler, Sifu takes familiar cues from various contemporary melee combat systems and combines them with arcade-like elements.

Within the first hour of Sifu, it's hard to deny how brutal it can get, with enemies actually making use of their numbers advantage rather than attacking you one at a time, and the omission of visual cues that are usually present in similar modern melee-based games. The death mechanic may also give an impression it's something you have to grind through and unlock things so you can stand a chance through each run, but if anything Sifu actually does reward the player more by being observant and patient rather than just grinding for XP unlocks.

The unlockable skills are there to serve more as extra options to open up your playstyle rather than a necessity to get through the game. They will help a fair bit, and prioritizing certain upgrades give a notable effect, but you actually can get farther by playing it safe and focusing on the game's flow and mechanics, in particular, the 'structure gauge'. The closest familiar comparison to this is the 'posture gauge' from Sekiro, and it does work similarly here. Attack and deflect an enemy's attack enough times, you build up the posture gauge to go for an instant execution.

The rest of the challenge comes in the form of getting familiar with each enemy's attack patterns and animations and knowing when to use the appropriate defensive measures. Your tools for defense come in the form of blocking which is safe but costs you your own structure gauge, parries which is a somewhat riskier but more aggressive approach as this continuously builds up the enemy's structure gauge, and dodging which you can do high and low dodges. Dodging, in particular, can be both the safest and riskiest defense at the same time, as successful executions don't cost you structure, but the wrong dodge can make you eat an attack directly.

The game isn't all defense of course, especially with the aforementioned element that enemies actually do take advantage of the fact they outnumber you in each encounter. They will flank you and catch you off guard if you tunnel vision on a single one. Thus it's important to balance out defense with aggression. Prioritizing certain enemy types, taking the first opportunity to attack, using weapons, and so on.

Sifu is also stylish and is good at making you feel like you're playing through a kung fu flick. The larger and more open areas, in particular, are also great in emulating the martial arts film the game pays a lot of homage to, as the flow of these parts lets you vault through various furniture and make use of weapons as you try to whittle down groups of foes. There are also neat little details that extend as gameplay mechanics too, with enemies being able to attack each other, giving you more incentive in dodging their attacks.

Unfortunately, not all of its presentation works in its favor, for one the camera actually manages to be a nuisance in certain areas, obscuring enemies off-screen and prompting you to get hit by a thrown bottle you have no way of anticipating for example. There are also moments where you're forced into really tight spaces as well as darker areas where it's harder to observe your surroundings.

This extends as well to the responsiveness and playability of the game, with Sifu taking priority in blending its animations realistically rather than consistent feedback. There are moments, especially with boss fights where deflecting and dodging just feels off, with a noticeable delay to your actions. They're not bad to the point of breaking the game, but they can get really annoying and add an unnecessary learning curve to adjust to.

Speaking of boss fights, they're also not the best in terms of design. Each boss has two phases, and each phase has a set of attacks they constantly rotate with depending on their health and distance. They're fine on paper, but the way they're executed makes them feel padded out and more annoying to fight over time. Figuring them out is fun, doing them over and over without variation for a few minutes straight as you build up the necessary gauge isn't. The game would have benefitted more from this either by giving more attack variations or lessening the necessary amount of attacks you need to defeat each boss.

The often advertised mechanic of dying and aging also feels very underwhelming. The fact that it only adjusts your health to be lower and damage to be higher is limiting by itself, but those things don't even feel significant either in actual gameplay. Especially in consideration that as you progress through each stage, enemies deal more damage and also take longer to defeat both through health and structure gauge, thus canceling out really any potential benefit or change of playstyle through the aging. I feel like this mechanic could have worked better with exclusive moves or upgrades through certain ages for example.

Despite its shortcomings, Sifu does provide a challenging yet rewarding experience and is a good example of how you can mix arcade-style difficulty and progression with modern gameplay mechanics.

Plus it's hard to not enjoy a game that has a crotch punch.

(This is a review of both the main game and the new World EXplosion release).

Crimzon Clover is the kind of game where it can be immediately felt that it’s created by someone who has extensive knowledge and experience of the shmup genre. Not only does it play amazingly well, but it’s also a great love letter to the genre as a whole.

The mechanics pick and choose from various other shmup titles to create a familiar yet fresh experience, with a priority in making the player feel powerful by constantly encouraging the use of the various tools at the player’s disposal. On top of the bread-and-butter regular shot you’ll be holding onto, for the most part, you also have a lock-on weapon that deals extensive damage and can prioritize various parts in bosses to not only weaken them but also to milk out further score.

Instead of limited bombs, you’re given a Break meter where you can fill by destroying enemies and collecting stars. Fill it up enough and you can bomb to clear the screen, fill it up all the way and you enter Break Mode. Break Mode is this game’s hyper mechanic where your shot and lock-in damage get stronger, alongside faster lock-in. You can even go further by filling a second bar where you can go into Double Break Mode. This makes bombs, not just a safety net, but also the main mechanic you use often to gain optimal score.

These mechanics together create a dynamic feeling rhythm to the combat on top of weaving through the hail of bullets. There’s a lot of emphasis on aggressive play and you can cancel out enemy bullets consistently through mastery of these mechanics.

The feedback in general feels really good, the constant explosions that output stars to collect alongside enemy bullets that fill most of the screen is a consistent adrenaline rush throughout the game. The feeling of power your ship is capable of compliments the experience of facing an overwhelming enemy force.

The game also features an extensive number of extra modes to play around with. All these different modes provide a different take on the same core gameplay, making the experience feel fresh as you play through each.

On top of the brutal yet fair Original Arcade Mode, the Novice Mode provides a great experience for newcomers of the genre, providing a good balance between a softer pace and a genuine challenge that has to be overcome. You also have a Training Mode that allows you to jump onto any stage with any ship, and even adjust conditions such as lives, Break Gauge, and stars collected. It could be a bit more extensive, such as being allowed to skip through specific sections of a stage or at least a mid-boss. But it’s still a great tool to learn the game.

There’s the Boost Mode that also changes the way the Break Mode mechanic works, where it’s instead automatically triggered by collecting enough stars, and the player is put onto a constant state of Break Mode, only being stopped through bombing or dying.

Unlimited Mode can be described as the Original Mode on steroids, with faster bullets, more complex patterns, and overall harsher difficulty. People familiar with Mushihimesama’s Ultra Mode will be right at home with Unlimited Mode in particular. Finally, a Time Attack mode akin to older caravan-style shmups where you play through a single-stage within a 3-minute timer, with the goal to earn as many points as possible towards the end.

New to the World EXplosion release is the Arrange mode, which features a Gradius-style power progression system. Collecting stars will increase the gauge, which gives you various upgraded abilities such as faster speed, extra lock-ons, weapon options, auto-bomb shield, and the familiar Break Mode. It’s a really fun mode that adds a new layer of complexity to the core gameplay without straying too far from it.

You also have a brand-new soundtrack option, which features a noticeable different set of music. I still prefer the original tracks, and there are some songs I felt that were rather underwhelming with this new set, but there are still some good highlights here, such as the sortie tune and second stage theme, and it also gives another way to keep each playthrough feel fresh.

There’s also the addition of extra customization in the form of selectable new color palettes for each ship. I would have loved to see more color options, but the options provided are still a nice touch that adds a bit more personalization to the game.

The extra polish is also appreciated, including better resolution outputs for HD displays which scale better for modern screens. There’s no dramatic visual rework here going on, so it’s still the same original visuals everyone knows and loves but finally presented with more clarity.

Overall Crimzon Clover is an amazingly fun shmup, it’s designed and balanced in such a way that you only get from someone who has the player’s mentality and a love for the genre as a whole. This World EXplosion re-release is also a testament to the passion both the fans and the creator have for the game and is overall a great experience for both seasoned veterans and new players.

MDickie's games have a history and reputation of being low-budget works where their ambitious concepts are endeared more on being barely functioning novelties rather than actual polished experiences. Of course, it's hard to deny the fun and absurdity of seeing the results of using the same broken wrestling core platform to power a boxing game, a prison simulator, a football game, and even an interactive experience based on Jesus Christ's life.

However, those years of creating a variety of games based on the same core platform and design philosophy may have finally paid off with Wrestling Empire. Not only is Wrestling Empire a notable improvement in terms of polish, but it's also a really fun wrestling game that has an engaging set of systems and mechanics that makes it genuinely one of the best wrestling games around period.

The crude visuals may imply otherwise, but Wrestling Empire actually features a rather intricate combat system that leans more on the simulation side. The size and stats of wrestlers matter a lot, and regardless of the movesets you've chosen, each wrestler can fight and react differently depending on the environment, weight and height difference, and the overall capabilities of the wrestlers. Even the inputs and minigames required are less on button mashing and timing but instead based on context. The more simulation-like mechanics end up not only creating more dynamic-looking fights but also end up adding to the absurdity if you double down on ridiculous scenarios such as stacking 30 tables on top of each other while setting them on fire. Granted the way it plays is still a bit rough around the edges, but it functions just enough to be completely enjoyable where most of its mechanical faults result more in happy accidents rather than frustrations.

A familiar constant element with the MDickie games is the sandbox-like freedom, and Wrestling Empire is no exception in exhibiting that element. What Wrestling Empire lacks in production values, makes up for letting the player do anything. From moving around to your own entrance, with different props and gestures, to continuing beatdowns even after the bell rings for the end of the match. As long as you're in control, you can pretty much do anything and interact with characters and the environment as you see fit.

All these neat systems extend to the career mode, which is the highlight of the game. You start off by choosing and modifying any character to your liking, as you carry them towards a career that can span for years on multiple promotions. It's all completely unscripted, with a variety of feuds, events, and happenings that can happen based on a variety of conditions. This makes the game a sort of story generator, as anything can happen not only based on your own choices but just as how the game world simulates throughout.

If the base career mode wasn't enough, there's also a booking mode that lets you play as the manager of any of the promotions in the game, as you book your own matches, shape your own roster and try to take over the ratings throughout different territories. It all makes for a great excuse to mess with the game's systems by giving you an objective alongside.

The way everything interacts with each other just creates a large amount of potential. Even when you start to see the patterns of the content generated, it keeps itself entertaining just due to how much variation there can be and how everything actually moves forward with effects and consequences.

Unfortunately, there are some things that hold Wrestling Empire back. For one, there is a notable lack of raw content, from limited movesets to a lack of variety for character customization pieces. You can still create a diverse cast, evident by the game's recognizable lawyer-friendly versions of real-life wrestlers built-in. However, you really will start to notice the lack of things fast, whether you're just going through the career mode or trying to create a variety of characters.

Fortunately, the game is still being actively worked on, with it receiving updates that add content and other changes slowly but surely at the time of writing this.

All in all, Wrestling Empire is a really enjoyable game and almost feels like the dream wrestling game of every kid that grew up with the likes of Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain and Fire Pro Wrestling. The amount of freedom the game offers on top of its fun mechanics makes up for an experience that anyone can sink countless hours into despite its roughness and shortcomings of being a low-budget solo-developed game.

Boogie Wings is the kind of game where it exudes so much charm and fun, its shortcomings are rarely felt throughout it all.

The first minute may give an impression that it's just your typical horizontal shmup with only the wacky early 1900s ragtime theming setting itself apart from other shooters. But then soon enough you'll come to notice that the plane you pilot has a hook that can grab anything to be freely swung and tossed around. Once you get shot down the first time too, you'll also realize it's not a life loss yet, as your pilot is now on-foot comically running with his pistol, being able to pilot new vehicles as they come along.

These surprises keep coming along, as you get to ride on-ground vehicles from typical ones such as tanks and motorcycles to more outlandish things such as robots and animals.

This variety extends to the levels themselves, each with its own theme built around them. From a Christmas-filled city, a spooky Halloween town to a large theme park and museum. You're never really doing the same thing twice too since each level will force you onto a gimmick with its own set of vehicles and enemies. A particular highlight comes in the form of raiding an airship, where the game feels more akin to a 2D action sidescroller.

Boogie Wings is far from perfect, suffering from a lack of polish with its mechanics and the length of the levels themselves feeling a tad bit too long. But the sheer variety of stuff and charming presentation makes it hard to dislike.

This is also one of the few shmups I feel like where it actually is more fun to play without autofire. It's nicely balanced for tapping gameplay, with rapid tapping enabling a more powerful version of your shot that captures a wide area and kills enemies quickly. You can elect for autofire as you wish especially if you're trying to be efficient with clearing the game, but it's definitely balanced without it especially since part of the fun is having your vehicle destroyed and hijacking another.

Boogie Wings is rough around the edges, but it also offers a highly enjoyable time where it's easy to just smile and laugh throughout its whimsical presentation. I highly recommend it especially if you can get a friend to tag along with you. Something like Fightcade actually supports this game quite nicely from personal experience.

A definite improvement over the first game. There's less filler, with this one taking the best levels from the first one and mixing them up with new ones introduced here.

There's a lot more variety in general, ranging from stopping an elevator by shooting a bomb on it, blowing up a tank by shooting at its barrel to stopping a rally car during a race. The difficulty is a lot more intense this time around as well, to the point it uses the last level from the first game as a halfway point here.

It modifies the original levels just enough as well so that it doesn't feel like they were just directly recycled. The pacing overall is a lot more intense and dynamic. The final boss is genuinely really challenging as well.

Enjoyed quite a bit just improving my accuracy and score here. I think the first game is still worth playing, but if you have to play at least one of the games from this series, this one is definitely what you want to go for.

Fun sniping game and probably one of the only few sniping light gun games around outside the Silent Scope series. Golgo 13 puts the player as the titular character himself in a variety of levels based on the manga.

One of the most notable qualities right from the start is the presentation, making good use of actual manga panels and adding in sound effects, camera pans, and cuts to evoke a stylish way of delivering bite-sized pieces of the narrative.

Each level takes place in a unique environment with a different target, with each having varying conditions including non-lethal methods and non-human targets. Score is awarded based on how close the player is able to hit the target on the indicated spot. The levels are also short and quick, lasting only around 5-10 seconds, with most even only allowing the player a single shot to execute the target.

The game manages to create a good variety of challenges with its straightforward premise, if you're not just shooting heads, you're doing precise shots on stiletto heels to make something look like a falling accident, or shooting a noose to save someone from an execution.

Some levels feel like breathers in-between, being pretty straightforward before pushing the player into more intensive scenarios. The pacing overall is enjoyable, but I feel like the variety of the targets starts to fade halfway through, with a lot of stationary targets that are easy to pick off filling in almost half of the levels.

Despite that, Golgo 13 still does offer an intense and enjoyable sniping game experience. I'd even go as far as to say it manages to create a more interesting experience than the original Silent Scope, and all in all feels like a faithful and stylish adaptation of the manga it's based on.

I also just want to note something neat, the original machine's scope is an actual sniping scope rather than a separate screen inside the rifle's scope. With the game's main screen zooming in automatically based on a proximity sensor.

What a fantastic game. Ketsui has all its elements just fall into place perfectly throughout its 5-stage run, where everything feels tightly designed and memorable.

The core gameplay element in Ketsui is the scoring system, where the player earns multiplier chips from 1 to 5 based on the proximity of the enemies destroyed. The closer you are, the higher the multiplier. Everything is designed around this scoring system and to that extent, it's what brings out the addictive and satisfying gameplay loop in Ketsui.

The game is really brutal but never unfair. Ketsui is one of the finest examples that arcade games are meant to be replayed and learned, where every second throughout its runtime is meant to be mastered. Ketsui keeps this process of learning interesting as every enemy layout is designed with the aforementioned scoring system. To play effectively, you have to be aggressive and keep in mind how the scoring works. And there are no cheap surprises, alongside minimal random factors that can sneak up behind you, any mistakes you make all feel like it's your fault rather than the game being underhanded.

Hesistation and playing it safe can actually lead to more errors and bigger obstacles over time as the enemies can pile up even more and lead to your potential death.

Each stage is also completely distinct, with its own set of enemies and completely unique patterns, which works well in creating both a challenge and a great way to make each part of the game distinctive and aid in memorization.

The attack patterns themselves feel organic, and once you learn how to get through them, it feels really good to just go with the flow and weave through them with like it's no effort. Coupled with the way you go through enemies as you rack up high multipliers consistently feels rhythm-like.

I clocked over 100 hours already with this game just to get my first single credit clear, and I'm still not tired of it. There's still a 2nd loop of the game that can be accessed, two different 2nd loops even. One where it requires the player to die or use bombs less than six times. And the even harder one, where it requires no deaths and no bombs while attaining at least 120 million in score, on which this more difficult loop features the true final boss of the game, which is also a genuine challenge on its own.

Ketsui quickly became one of my recent favorites. Alongside the strong gameplay design, there's also the great soundtrack that compliments the intensity of the game, and an excellent presentation that makes good use of pre-rendered models alongside its cohesive visual design of a grounded near-future military backdrop.

If you're a fan of shmups, or even just challenging games that you can replay over and over and find enjoyment in mastering well-designed levels and mechanics, I highly recommend checking out Ketsui.

A neat, if somewhat unremarkable Time Crisis clone.

Endgame plays nicely as far as lightgun games go, with the game taking most of its base mechanics from the first Time Crisis. With the player being equipped with a 6-shot pistol, and a cover mechanic to avoid enemy attacks while the game runs on a time limit through each section.

The enemy variety is decent enough, where you got your standard grunts as fodder, with special types such as instant damagers and shield enemies peppered in-between. The game however suffers from dull level design, where a lot of set pieces and enemy placements being repetitive. Unfortunately, this extends to most of the boss fights as well, where they just feel like spongier and harder versions of the existing enemy types.

It does somewhat pick up towards the end, with two bosses offering a more interesting dynamic. Including Endgame's own discount version of Time Crisis' Wild Dog (who also survives a few times before going down for good).

Sadly the final boss is just a remixed and amplified version of the enemy types again until the game decides to do its own cheap version of House of the Dead's Magician during its final phase.

I feel like the game could have been stronger if it removed and combined most of its stages together, and opted in for a shorter but tighter pace rather than just padding it with a lot of similar feeling levels.

I did enjoy at least the cheesy voice acting coupled with its cheap pre-rendered cutscenes. There are also some neat unlockables, including a mirror mode and dual gun mode alongside some challenge levels.

One thing in particular that I really liked was the game having a playable version of an in-universe game being played by the protagonist called 'Mighty Joe Jupiter'. It takes the base lightgun gameplay from the main game and wraps it around a cartoony sci-fi setting with aliens and such. It has its own campaign and even its own set of challenge modes which is nice.

Endgame doesn't really hold a candle as the game it takes its inspiration from, but it does still offer a fun lightgun shooter experience that's at least worth going through once.

Nice little cute game! Tadpole Tales is a pretty simple horizontal shmup that exudes a lot of charm and straightforward mechanics that are easy to grasp but fun to master.

The game is all one continuous stage, separated by 3 checkpoints with each capping off with a boss fight. The game gets progressively difficult where it throws more enemies at you after each boss fight. I feel like this setup does a good job in creating a difficulty curve that warms up and familiarizes the player quickly while not being afraid to show its teeth just shortly after.

This also extends to the movement and shooting mechanics themselves, where it only takes a few seconds to learn, where you just have 4 buttons of movement and a single shot button to worry about. Shooting slows your character down a bit, which does add a small amount of decision-making as you have to be mindful of when to let go and be faster in navigating through enemy projectiles. There are no bombs and other weapon types to worry about, and instead, it ties your lives to your power and speed. This feels fine, with the starting 2 hearts being more than optimal already to deal with everything, and 3 hearts allowing you to move and shoot faster. I do find the maximum 4 hearts mode somewhat annoying, as while it does grant you a wider spread shot, it also increases your hitbox and lessens your movement speed again. Having a trade-off like this for such a linear progression system feels a bit unsatisfying.

Enemy variety is also nice, where each is distinct and have their own style of attack patterns. This extends to the 3 bosses throughout, where each feels completely unique from the other and employs different strategies that make each fight feel fresh.

I'm not a fan however of the game opting for completely randomized enemy spawns and placements, as I feel like it undermines the potential for the enemies themselves, where sometimes patterns can feel a little too empty or really messy when you get bad luck on certain runs.

The main highlight of the game definitely comes from the presentation. The visuals are lovely and the music really compliments its adorable atmosphere. Every character looks great, from the little tadpole the player controls to all the enemies and bosses. Despite only having two tracks, they all serve the game well with the final boss track, in particular, fitting the intensity of the fight nicely.

There's not a lot of extra content, but there is a surprising amount of room for mastery and replay value in the form of an unlockable expert mode after beating the game. The expert mode in particular I feel improves the base game itself, with a faster pace and just enough enemy tweaking that feels challenging but fair.

Overall Tadpole Tales is an enjoyable and charming shmup, and for a free one to boot, it exhibits some nice production values.

Really fun! It Takes Two is the kind of game that does a lot of things, and for the most part, does it well. Coming from the same developers of the co-op-only game A Way Out, It Takes Two takes that familiar brand into a more gameplay-oriented experience.

The game at its core is a 3D platformer and builds on top of that by throwing a variety of different gameplay concepts and scenarios built around the co-op experience.

There's a lot of enjoyable platforming sections, and while going through them, you and your friend will be occupied as well with a different gimmick through each chapter of the game. Such gimmicks come in a mixture of different combat methods such as having one player cover enemies and obstacles with a flammable sap that the other player can detonate with their own unique fire projectile.

During sections where it takes a focus on puzzles instead, you get different gimmicks such as the player navigating through an obstacle while another uses a device or ability to help the other player get through things. I found myself just enjoying spitballing ideas and figuring things out with my friends, and on the times we got stuck, it's less on the game being obtuse and just more on us just having moments of hilarious stupidity, which is its own kind of fun.

Optional activities also are peppered throughout the game, with various competitive minigames and moments of exploration to serve as breathers between chapters. If you loved goofing off and playing minigames such as Connect Four in A Way Out, It Takes Two amplifies that idea further in this game.

The game keeps this pacing mostly consistent throughout, and you'll never be doing the same thing twice. However, it does feel like the ideas start to falter towards the end, where the new gimmicks start just feeling like less interesting variations of what you were doing a few hours earlier. The game could have merged and cut out a few things to make the experience tighter and make the last hour less of a slog. Still, for the most part, there's hardly a dull moment throughout the game thanks to just the sheer variety it offers throughout the hours.

Visually, the game looks fantastic. The environment variety alone is great, but the details put into them really show how much work is poured into the game. From experiencing daily household areas as miniature toys to beautiful snowy mountains, green gardens, and even really abstract spaces, it consistently manages to look really good.

The narrative itself unfortunately isn't as compelling as A Way Out, and at best you might find the dialogue passable with a few chuckle-worthy moments, and at worst annoying. Nevertheless, the premise does serve its purpose as a vehicle for the scenarios you go through the game, and it does have a few notable moments, which I won't spoil, but I can say that it's both hilarious and horrifying and can guarantee that it will elicit a reaction.

It isn't a deal-breaker but it would have been interesting to see if they minimized the plot further and just focused on the gameplay parts, as I feel like it is enough to carry the game, and taking out the story won't really impact the main enjoyment of the gameplay itself.

I personally played this twice with two different friends, with the playthrough months apart to keep my experience somewhat fresh, and absolutely enjoyed both playthroughs and had fun rediscovering solutions to the game, alongside finding new stuff I didn't come across on my initial playthrough. It isn't the easiest game to do full replays with considering its long length, though the option for chapter selections and jumping through minigames instantly is a nice way to do bite-sized revisits.

All in all, It Takes Two is a really enjoyable experience, and there is a lot of fun stuff to go through even on just a single playthrough. Like the neat thing with A Way Out, only one of you needs a copy to play the game together. If you're in the mood for a fun co-op experience, It Takes Two will provide a solid experience.

Tightly designed Bomberman game with an insane amount of content. Fair amount of game modes with each level having a unique gimmick and filled with neat details, on top of having variations to choose for each level.

Online works wonderfully with a painless setup even across different countries.

There's so much content from across different Bomberman games, including ones you most likely haven't heard of, on top of different IP cameos. Everyone is acquired through an in-game gacha using coins you earn just by playing.

Amazing how all of this is for a free fangame, and it's still in development as of writing this, yet feels feature complete. If you're looking for a party game with a group of friends, this is definitely something to try out.