There is absolutely nothing like Illbleed.

Illbleed is an absolute achievement. Bonkers. Wild as hell. Absolutely unpredictable in everything its doing. Designed to entertain and fuck with you to a degree I haven't seen a horror comedy joint ever really quite do and only really in the way that a video game can.

Illbleed is a reminder of the kinds of things only video games as a medium can do in the ways in which they interact and interface with the player and the way the player interacts and interfaces with the game. You could adapt The Last of Us, Dead Space, God of War and Final Fantasy XV into a series or film or something. You could NOT adapt Illbleed into anything else.

You could not remake Illbleed and get the same result. You could not make a sequel to Illbleed and have it work the same at all. This is a culmination of absolutely deranged ideas all culminating into a beautiful package at one specific time by one specific team at one specific moment. This shit is special.

Illbleed frankly is fuckin peak. The more I played the more I fell in absolute love with it. It trolled me, it baffled me, it knocked me on my ass and every twist and turn had me waiting for where the fuck this thing was gonna go next.

Sorry to be vague but you should really just play it for yourself and see what this has to offer. I want people who experience it to have the raw experience I had with it. I really wish there was some Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind type procedure so I could wipe my memory and play this shit fresh cause it is such a transcendent and wild experience. I will absolutely never forget it. Don't be afraid to use a guide if ya need to, it's absolutely worth experiencing.

Make sure ya invest in them worm stocks alright?

Full disclosure: I did not pay for this (a "friend" "gave" it to me and I played it on a "nintendo switch"), so I have no fuckin' clue if this game has some dogshit payment model or whatever in terms of DLC, so that's not really something I'm bringing into consideration here.

Anyways, it's kinda cheating making a rhythm game for a series with a musical pedigree as monumental as Final Fantasy's; huge fucking shout out to Uematsu and his music teams once again coming making a game way better than it would've been otherwise. Moving from the 3DS to full button controls has made certain aspects of play awkward, but you get used to it after awhile.

Can't say I'm that amazing at this game; a lot of the higher difficulty tracks kinda enter the Taiko no Tatsujin zone of "damn there's probably some inhuman individual capable of doing this perfectly" level of complexity. But I wasn't really here for that, I just needed a comfy game to decompress with after work and it let me have a party of all the PS1 FF girlies and press buttons to my favorite video game music so it's a pretty amazing game for that alone.

Minus half a star for not including To The Edge, and then put that half a star back for actually acknowledging that Xenogears exists.

I honestly could say a whole lot of shit about Kingdom Hearts as a series but especially the first game. I've been playing KH1 very specifically pretty much since the original game released back in 2002. I have so many fond memories, so many hours spent wandering the levels, getting acquainted with the worlds and their gimmicks, platforming and ideas.

There's something tangibly there in KH1 that really doesn't particularly permeate the rest of the series. Like yeah, the combat mechanics absolutely improve, the series finds its identity in a lot of differing ways but there's something about the raw experimental edge and janky nature of this first entry that really isn't felt in the rest of the games.

The atmosphere here is almost uncannily eerie at points, especially in locations like Destiny Islands, Traverse Town, Hollow Bastion and End of the World. A kind of unsettling hint of darkness that unsettled me more as a kid (that Ansem in the cave scene genuinely scared the fuck out of me as a child I hated that shit lmao I always used to think that dude was like hiding in my closet about to call me a stupid bozo who didn't know anything) but some of the visuals, haunting gothic styled architecture and offness isn't felt to me in a number of later entries like it is here. Like some games do get closer to it again (0.2 is MAYBE the closest in years with 1 section in 3 getting a little closer too) but it's not really to the same level and degree that I feel this game really nails.

Like I adore the implications with stuff like the secret boss cutscene being really fuckin creepy and weird and off! The game is full of moments and ideas like that, the false Destiny Island in the end with the dead palm tree and no waterfall, the secret experiment room you uncover, all of Hollow Bastion and its gothic tones. It's so fuckin cool!

I like how this game integrates the Disney worlds with the actual overarching plot generally rather than just being flat out recaps most of the time (Atlantica having King Trident know what's up and shit talk the MC's is genuinely fantastic), I dig how this lays the groundwork for the rest of the series to build its world and concepts and ideas off of (even if they don't always work out the best in some of them DDD I'm looking at you).

I dig the gameplay systems and what they were going for with magic being more of a resource you have to build and manage, encouraging you to be more aggressive in order to build it back up. Though I do wish that being a purely magic focused build/character was a little more doable but whatever. Final Mix does add good additions like a camera that makes some goddamn sense and having Triangle be for opening chests and stuff like some of the moves you unlock like Sonic Blade and stuff to more reflect games like 2 and what they were going for more there. Though a Final Mix change I don't particularly enjoy is the color changes to the Heartless, I think the way its handled takes away from a l o t of the atmosphere and art direction of this game specifically and some just aren't good recolors like LOOK AT THIS

Potential hot take as well maybe possibly or maybe I have 2002 brain worms but honestly I really love the platforming in this game. I love how much they kinda messed around with it and while a bit slippery at points felt like something that could've been built upon or made a bit more interesting to do! Maybe made more interesting challenges or anything with it but I feel the series kinda just gives up on that aspect after this and that's kind of a shame. I really find it fascinating how much of that identity and idea permeates a loooot of this first game and how immediately 2 does away with pretty much the rest of that, with some lightly coming back in bits and pieces as apart of fights and some light exploration but otherwise nowhere near the same degree as explored in 1. I feel like that does make 1 stand out a little more in the kind of shit they were throwing at the wall to try out and everything too, same with the colored health bars idea that I honestly really fucked with!

Also something specific with this HD edition is I think some of the music is slightly just a little worse than the original. Like the original Night of Fate has a particular intensity to it that STILL to this day gives me fuckin goosebumps. The new version of Night of Fate does NOT hit in the same way at ALL. Something about it feels almost dulled? Like parts of it just aren't mixed how they originally were and I think it massively dulls the impact and effect of the track. Multiple songs in this version are like this and its kind of a bummer that there's still no kind of option like in the later releases of the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster that let you choose the OG OST if you prefer that. I know the remaster process for this was a bit of a mess due to supposedly all of the original assets being lost and having to essentially remake it all from scratch but I feel like the music out of all of it would've been the easiest to reimplement. But maybe they didn't have the original files of the tracks or something like that who the fuck knows. It's a bummer to me either way!

Overall though, this game will always stick with me, I will pretty much come back to this game forever for the rest of eternity. I could completely burn out of this series or hate some entry or whatever and still be all into playing KH1 all over again because it's so utterly special to me. I could go on and on about little strats for fights or what worlds can be completely skipped or how to get through world's quickly or fun facts about certain inclusions and ideas within the game itself. It's a personal heartfelt favorite that makes me feel a lot of things and I absolutely can talk about to absolute fuckin death man.

Kingdom Hearts opened my mind to the possibilities of what video games could be. More than just the Mortal Kombat 2's and Super Mario 3's of the world. It was the first game to really get me into its narrative, to really hook me and never really let me go. Even now I'm still invested in this series, its characters, its secrets, its fun goofy nature and its heartfelt messages and ideas. I love Kingdom Hearts for everything it is and while I wish certain elements of the series were carried forward in ways I am still happy overall with where things have gone since 2002.

Do I desperately miss the stories and the business management elements? Yes.

Is the handling of gender and bodies cowardly and prejudiced? Yes.

Is there a BAFFLING lack of a neckware category? Yes

Do I get a bigger rush than anything else in my entire life when someone deems my avatar worth making a thoughtful outfit for, or when they like an outfit that I made for them? Yeah man. Yeah. Sorry. Can't help it. Nothing like it.

Born too late to explore Earth.

Born too early to explore the stars.

Born just in time to play Rock Band 2 throughout the entirety of high school.

so glad something like this can exist today. crisis core is probably one of the most expressively “edgy” mid to late 2000s games i’ve ever played - edgy in the sense that it’s filled with stylized teenage blood pumping action and nomura character designs fit for its audience - it’s so gratifying that this era of games can still remain relevant. in 2022 i’m watching a pre rendered fmv of smug long-sworded swordsman do battle on the edge of a nuclear cannon while the hardest drum n bass heavy guitar infused battle music beckons alongside. crisis core’s essence has remained untouched.
while the story is very clearly flawed in a handful of areas (specifically genesis’ handling), zack is still just such a joy to watch, despite the unfortunate decline in voice quality compared to the original. i can look past a lot of flaws because of how heartwarming the story and surprisingly great the gameplay are. every grievance i had with the original’s combat has been completely fixed to my shock. still has the bones of its psp blueprint but its a lot more fluid now and isn’t as easy to bore.

this is for sure the definitive version of crisis core to play with the visual and mechanical upgrades alongside some new bonus content and remixed music. but… i still do think the original is worth playing, being a bit of a time capsule for that era of the ff7 compilation and height of the psp; pushing the hardware to the limits alongside attempting the ambitious endeavor of further contextualizing one of the most beloved titles in the medium. nowadays there’s a lot less risk for square to do something like this, what with basically anything ff7 selling like hotcakes today lol. anyway i had a ton of sentimental fun reminiscing the compilation days while playing this, great remaster!

Ever have a fucked up night where you wake up from your eternal slumber in the graveyard to your now happy no-longer grieving pink-haired girlfriend, only for the pumpkin asshole buried next to you to also wake up and kidnap her right in front of you? (Who the hell buries a pumpkin? Who held a funeral for it?)

Welcome to Devil Town motherfucker.

Good simplistic tasty Famicom action at the core of it's apple. You move, you jump, you hit things with your adorable little axe and you sometimes have a shotgun. The standard action-platformer affair of it's time, but surprisingly competent in it's philosophy despite the appearance of being a parody. Movement is tight, hitboxes are right, and the most dastardly thing pulled on you is falling into pits and being sent back a bit, which is like a 2 on the scale of NES bullshit with 10 probably being that room in Dirty Harry that softlocks you until you reset. The only thing I could nitpick was the fly boss whose hitbox seemed to be the wings and not his face, sorry I like hitting things in the face.

Functionally sound, and that's probably at least half the reason it has a decent speed run scene along with some of the other comedic elements that never really get old like the girl who walks off having 50 chestbursters fly out of her, or being assaulted by haunted shit coming out of a cursed toilet complete with possessed plunger. Probably an NES/FC game I should be hocking to people more often since it's very beatable, and not as capable of filtering people like a Ninja Gaiden-branded faucet attachment.

It's here that I remember, was it a movie I watched or was I daydreaming just now?

looks at the camera and points to the audience

Remember kids, winners don't use drugs.

I picked up Slay The Princess because I've seen almost exclusively high praise for it - and to be fair, it is really solid. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I do wonder if it's mostly by people who aren't big into VNs, since if you aren't familiar with them, I think you'll get a huge kick out of the meta and time loop elements

It's kinda hard to talk about the parts I liked without spoiling stuff and this is a game where you wanna go in blind so tldr - the art is really nice, it's always intriguing, it pulls off the meta gimmicks very well (im sucker for games that use steam achievements!!), the writing is good, the atmosphere really achieves what it sets out to do, etc

There are some aspects of STP I didn't vibe with but I can't really explain it, but I'm gonna try because I've not seen much critique at all and I think it's important

I think I just wanted it to take things further? The characters are quite intentionally "shallow" but I still ended up wanting more. Everything is also purposely somewhat vague which isn't a bad way to tell a story but personally takes me out of things

Maybe it's the overwhelming amount of dialogue options you're given at once, and that it's sometimes not clear what is flavour text and what progresses the story. For example, sometimes the game will give you like...8+ choices at once, and it'll be contained to half the screen, and require you to scroll down, instead of being given more space - and it just felt really claustraphobic at times lol

I also felt unsure if I should be making multiple save files while going down a route and exploring the sub options, or if I should just be committing to my first choice - and after hitting a few endings, I'm still not sure

The voice acting of the male hero character I think is really good and fine, but the princess has the same problem that I just kinda expect every indie/mid budget VN with voice acting to have, and that's her microphone makes her S sounds very sharp (which i have to cut off because i have sound sensitivity issues out the ass)

It's also not a super long game for the price but I do not regret picking up Slay The Princess and think it's worth playing. It's obvious that a ton of love and care has gone into crafting something unique and I'll take something like that, that has some flaws, over something bland any day

Hey, this game is pretty good! And it has a fully-done fan translation as of about two years ago so it's more accessible than ever.

The combat is pretty simple as it's just your usual turn-based system. The five character classes are all pretty interesting and each have their own mechanic such as the Samurai having two 'stances' that you switch between to change what skills are available or the psychic being your main magic user and having to balance using powerful offensive spells with your heals and recovery spells. The game does offer some challenge in bosses and mini-bosses but it can be pretty easily overcome if you just grind out a handful of levels now and then (which the game makes very easy to do, because of some nice quality-of-life mechanics).

And while we're on the topic of crunchy mechanics, I want to mention the level design in the dungeons because it was pretty consistently very good. It had a lot of interesting moments where what is revealed on your map or what you're able to see with the fixed camera is taken in to account to either try and pull a fast one on your or to tease you about things that you won't get around to until later. It's all very cleverly designed (except for the ice dungeon which just felt cruel and confusing).

And, hey, speaking of design: this game is chock full of good design. I'm pretty ambivalent about the chibi character models but the portraits that go with them are all pretty cool (outside of a few that are a bit too fan-servicey for my tastes). The enemy design were all very cool, although I wish there was a larger variety of things. Seeing the same cool frog get recolored multiple times was a small bummer. The real star here, though, is the environment designs because they really went hogwild with it. Each dungeon has a unique aesthetic that is a part of Tokyo combined with some wild magic nonsense and it's always extremely cool. One of my favorite parts of the game was unlocking a new area so that I could see what it looked like.

The idea that you get to create your characters is neat but I feel like the game needed to either fully commit to more customization or not have it at all. Only getting to pick one of ten portaits, a custom name, plus one of fifteen voices (per gender) doesn't give me much to really play with in terms of making my own characters. Especially when you shove your trio of OCs into the main plot to try and fill the gaping hole where a protagonist would normally go. Since everything has to be written around that hole, it means that your characters basically don't matter. Sure, you're the ones fighting the dragons but anyone with your level of ability could do it and the game is sure to let you know that you're just one group of many that could be doing this (everyone else is either busy or dead, I guess). But also this is one of very few games that let me have a big tiddy milf as a main character so maybe that balances it all out. Who could say.

The main plot itself is pretty milquetoast. Dragons have invaded and it's up to you to unite and defeat them with the power of friendship or whatever. Also you fight god at the end. It's a lot of very common and predictable JRPG tropes shoved together and while it executes on them all pretty well it ends up with something that isn't going to stick in memory for much longer after beating it. The rest of the world, however has some very interesting bits of information that the game has seemingly no interest in actually exploring. Aliens, synthetic humans, secret goverment supersoldiers, plus more, that all get introduced on the fringes of the story but never given much actual detail of. If some of that had even been better incorporated into the plot then it could've been something more engaging but instead it's just a story that is only good enough to keep you going through 'til the end.

One thing I'd me remiss to not mention is that Hatsune Miku is in this game. You save her before she gets eaten by a dragon and then she rewards you with an alternate "Diva Mode" for the soundtrack. The developers got a bunch of vocaloid artists to make Miku remixes of the game's entire soundtrack. At first I thought that was an awesome idea but as I switched back and for between both OSTs I realized that I liked the original one better. Vocaloid music is good but the tracks in this game are just pretty mediocre vocaloid songs. Miku's character model and portrait are very cute though, so that's fun.

Finally, I need to talk about the post-game dungeon. After you roll credits, one of the aliens tells you you need to talk. So after you clean up the last few dragons it unlocks one last dungeon and each bit of progress you make in it rewards you with just a smidge more lore about the dragons and aliens and how they all got here to Earth. At first the dungeon was a neat idea - a mix of all the previous dungeons with only dragon enemies to challenge you with - but after getting halfway through it, it was just too much of a grind for me. The little tidbits of lore weren't worth all the time I was putting in to getting through all these day dragons and doing re-fights with all the bosses of the game. I'm sure I could do it and finish the rest of it off in a few hours but the game has just worn itself out and I wasn't having fun anymore. Whatever happens at the end is extremely unlikely to significantly change how I feel about the game anyway so I don't think I'm missing much there.

Overall, 7th Dragon 2020 is a cool game. It was fun to playthrough and it makes me glad that the fan translation has been completed. It's a little hidden gem of the PSP that I hope more people check out because, despite the issues I have with it, I think it's worth the time to play it.

Far and away the most egregiously misguided attempt at myth-making in games history. This isn't the worst game ever. It's not the weirdest game ever. It is not the 'first American produced visual novel.' Limited Run Games seems content to simply upend truth and provenance to push a valueless narrative. The 'so bad it's good' shtick serves only to lessen the importance of early multimedia CD-ROM software, and drenching it in WordArt and clip art imparts the notion that this digital heritage was low class, low brow, low effort, and altogether primitive.

This repackaging of an overlong workplace sexual harassment/rape joke is altogether uncomfortable at best. Further problematising this, accompanying merch is resplendent with Edward J. Fasulo's bare chest despite him seemingly wanting nothing to do with the project. We've got industry veterans and games historians talking up the importance of digital detritus alongside YouTubers and LRG employees, the latter making the former less credible. We've got a novelisation by Twitter 'comedian' Mike Drucker. We've got skate decks and body pillows and more heaps of plastic garbage for video game 'collectors' to shove on a dusty shelf next to their four colour variants of Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl on NES, cum-encrusted Shantae statue, and countless other bits of mass-produced waste that belongs in a landfill. Utterly shameful how we engage with the past.

When I tell people I'm a Sonic fan, the first question is, unsurprisingly, "Why?" That's not an easy question to answer, but a big reason I've always loved Sonic is the characters. I've loved this cast, for better or worse, before I even had a way to play the games; I voraciously read the Archie Sonic comics as a SNES/N64 kid.

I can't say that I've always agreed with Sega's depiction of Sonic's cast, though. For a long time, it felt like Sonic Team was at odds with the fandom's interpretation of their characters. For example: fans love the dynamic of Shadow, Rouge and Omega, aka Team Dark, depicting them as a dysfunctional odd trio. Despite this, Sonic Team claimed Team Dark were never friends and would never hang out. Fans loved Tails' plucky resourcefulness, yet he spends like an hour in Sonic Forces crying in a corner wondering where Sonic is. For years, it felt like Sega couldn't figure out what to do with Amy Rose except make her a creepy stalker obsessed with marriage and having kids.

All of this is to say that The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, a mystery visual novel released on April Fools by the Sonic social media team, is full of the kind of character moments and interactions I've wanted Sonic games to have for years. It's very clear this game was written by fans for fans, and all of the characterizations are on-point. Amy is emotional and passionate, so of course she'd get a bit too invested in a murder mystery game; Tails is a little naive but kind and strong willed, immediately befriending the protagonist; And Shadow, despite constantly keeping up appearances as a gruff loner, still cares about his friends when no one is looking. A+, no notes.

As for the game itself, it's a very charming little adventure clearly inspired by the Phoenix Wright series. The gameplay is mostly just a vehicle to get to the dialogue, but it never feels obtrusive. Even the little endless runner minigame that happens during climactic moments is surprisingly competent and helped with the pacing even if there isn't much to it. And it's cool that the player character (canonically nonbinary!) has their own personality and eccentricities, including their steadfast belief that there's always a secret in the garbage can. They're the perfect little weirdo to fit right into a cast of lovable weirdos.

While Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is explicitly not a Sonic Team game, the fact that Sega greenlit it as an official Sonic product is a genuinely heartening development. Between this and the character writing in Sonic Frontiers, it feels like Sega finally understands why people love these characters so much, and it's made me considerably more optimistic about whatever happens next. We're one step closer to that comic about Rouge being angry at Shadow for making Kraft Dinner wrong becoming canon.

This was super cute!

It's slightly embarrassing to admit, but I'm always interested in Sonic characters just being Sonic characters around each other and this was like a sniper aiming straight for my heart. I hate to beat on the drum that's already been beaten to death, but it says something when a game as simple as this accomplishes the role of a self-insert better than Forces. I don't need to save the world with Sonic, I just wanna hang out with them for a bit!

Any game that lets me compliment Knuckles on his hat is one worth enjoying, and yet again I'm reminded that Blaze is still my role model. God, she's so fucking cool!