"wait - you haven't played quake?"
~almost everyone who i've gushed about this to game in the past few days

a little about me: i'm partial to industrial grit, my favorite doom games favor grimly edgy atmosphere over 80s thrash worship, i'm a big NIN fan and the downward spiral is one of my top 5 favorite albums. so this should be a no brainer, right?

well - yeah, actually. that's exactly right. throughout my playthrough all i could continually ask myself was, "why the fuck didn't i play this sooner?" and rightfully so. i think the reason quake has eluded me for so long is because its holistic reputation is eclipsed at this point by a diehard multiplayer community that i frankly don't give a shit about. i'm not much of a multiplayer enthusiast for anything - let alone tech-y arena shooters - and honestly i probably would've continued ignoring this absolute fucking masterpiece if not for my pressing curiosity towards trent reznor's involvement

that'd have been a huge mistake; quake is easily the best boomer shooter i've ever played

this is where i could talk about how i adore the weapons and their balancing, the general focus on straightforward maps with powerups everywhere, the difficulty being largely driven by how easy it is to kill yourself in tight spaces - or even the god tier ambient score that has just the right amounts of otherworldly screams and metallic chords strewn about - i COULD go into those things and we could be here for a considerable amount of time - but instead of doing any of that, i'm just going to say that the shambler is one of the greatest enemy designs in any fps. in fact, my feeling towards quake 1 can be summarized roughly with my thoughts on the shambler; he's absolutely perfect. i love this giant, dopey, teethy foreskin man in all his fleshy (not furry - fuck you) glory. and i haven't even begun to MENTION his timbs yet

my mans butters be outright otherworldly

"Yeah, I've been in love. Yeah, I've been in love... I've been in love, I mean.. that's what... yeah."
- The Hulk


This is one of these 10/10s where like, speaking as a game entirely, dunno if I'd give it a 10 but objectivity is for posers. I loved this shit for all its quirks and all, kind of like the rough headed dumbo boy at the core of this game. Game's got heart like our boy on his love quest as he grows into a young man from helping out the people in his town to prove he's a suitable boy for the girl of his dreams.

Real shit tho I would've gotten turbo filtered if I didn't fuckin use a guide so, shouts out GameFAQS.

Being young's about a lot of things y'know? Love being one of em, finding your happiness in the world and maturing into a headstrong individual in spite of all the unhappiness around you.

Also, lots and lots of hardships, especially when you're livin' in poverty like our lil guy up front. Shows up to town and just cause he's poor everyone thinks he's up to no good when he's just tryna make it. Accurate as fuck to the real world, but our main boy is idealistic in a frankly cynical world, going up and beyond to show his people that they deserve help, making bonds along the way with peeps of all walks of life.

The fact that all the Underground Residents are outsiders who are only allowed to be out at certain times despite keeping the entire infrastructure of the city going really hits home. Which is why doing the kisses is real sweet, like you’re indulging in someone else’s interest and showing them that it’s chill and people can actually like ‘em.

Game's got some heavy hittin' emotional beats too, I ended up kissing everyone (which was a cute lil way of showing the boy's solidarity with the people of his town) and for a lot of the important NPCs, their plots had lots of pretty resonant moments, shouts out to Leo and Zombie Mika especially. Bonding with the Girl's parents was cute too, also shouts out the Funny Bone City/Batayan's arc.

Other than that though, this game got vibes and chill moments for days, paying attention to everyone's schedules and catching them at different moments, bondin' over shit while you do their individual questlines. Discovering all the other weirdos living underground in squalor, reminded me of moments when I was younger having to figure out shit to do with my friends all while realizing we might've only had like 8 bucks between us, some real class solidarity goin on. Also a whole lotta real ass moments occurred like me setting my alarm an hour late and missing the bus multiple times which was a minor frustration but it totally made the goofy kid simulator even more realistic.

Totally cute talking with the Girl as the game went on, stargazing with her all while playing coy about how you gotta prove yourself to not be some dumb punk and actually a good guy, makes that ending sweet as fuck, pure lovey dovey cuteness. Would def make me cry on the right day.

Loved this lil game, all about having nothing in your life but the love in your heart as you keep goin' til you can finally find happiness.

...proof that drip and swag are all that matter in this world

make no mistake - i'm not just linking back to another review of mine for the sake of drawing attention to some obscure gem i happen to like. no - kileak just happens to be a complete and utter ripoff of iron angel of the apocalypse (or tetsujin in japan) by synergy inc. what the fuck is iron angel of the apocalypse? what the fuck is kileak?? why would one rip off the other??? all of these are valid questions you probably don't have that i will be answering anyway

i hardly believed it myself at first. but after booting it up and playing a couple stages, all i could think was "this is like if tetsujin ran smoother at the cost of its entire personality". and by golly - that's exactly the case!

y'see, tetsujin dropped in 1994 on the 3DO. i'd wager about three people in total played it outside of japan. maybe three and a half, but that's pushing it. anyway - like synergy inc, genki was a 3DO developer that released 'burning soldier', an fmv-based rail shooter just a couple months after tetsujin. so given that both companies had a thing for videos, cg and guns i don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to infer that some of the fellas over at genki played and got a spark of inspiration from synergy's negative framerate nightmare crawler

the similarities here are shameless. instead of controlling a mech that's ascending a tower you're operating a mech that's... descending a tower! enemies are laid out in alike fashion (though they tend to fight back more) and levels are totally corridor-based, only ever allowing you to strafe more than a few centimeters when inside the box-shaped spaces that link halls together. even the fmvs are nigh identical in how they're placed throughout the levels - being triggered either by interacting with certain objects or through codec-esque calls while walking around. see this for yourself

to kileak's credit, it does have significantly greater enemy variety (not saying much), better controls and runs at a pretty stable 60fps. on the other hand, it's just not fun. kinda hard to get invested in a shooter where you can infinitely stock ammo for weapons that have infinite range. literally 80% of the enemies in this game can be killed before even being encountered. this even applies to some bosses. shout out to the final one btw - i think i killed him before he even fired off a single attack. made me laugh pretty hard and in fairness, gave me more enjoyment than the rest of the game

anyway this is painfully mediocre and a pale imitation of something cooler. don't bother unless you're like me and you feel some irrational need to play the sole tetsujin-like

this would have scared the fucking SHIT out of me when i was 12

fun game - especially when you get the second mode. makes me lose more respect for a certain other popular thing. shame about all the writing being translated absolutely terribly though. i guess it at least gets the point across

BTW: if you didn't get 20k points in one game, you didn't see the ending (or at least not the good one)

three minutes into super dodge ball: "heh, yeah this is pretty cool. damn i didn't know i could do that. oh shit you totally just died. wait you can still control everyone? yooo this is cracked. matches are kinda long tho"

twenty minutes into super dodge ball: "i'm going to fucking kill myself"

Is Super Dodge Ball the WORST game of all time? Discuss:

soul crushing at points, but one of the best 2d platformers ever made nonetheless. boasts some especially well-thought-out level design and enemy placement that does not get NEARLY the credit it deserves

i feel the respawning enemies (especially the priests) are ridiculously overhyped by people who fail to understand that this is ultimately a game about constantly moving forward. like, you aren't supposed to slash at them mindlessly and hope that they just stop appearing - you gotta jump INTO and slice THROUGH those motherfuckers

oh and just so we're clear: this is about the nes game. not the arcade one. no more funny business, aight, igdb?

i, for one, am thoroughly appalled that this series would ever have the audacity to feature a player character who isn't a totally morally righteous person. this is a travesty. completely out of touch

and the gameplay? it's such a shameless ripoff of the last acclaimed silent hill project that was released. what the fuck were they thinking?

i'm going to go return to silent hill 2 now - the most subtle and least blunt horror game ever created. at least that game doesn't have sticky notes with "bullying" written on them (granted, this one doesn't either, but that's not what i heard from the people who didn't play it, so it must be true)

drip and swag are all that matter in this world; assimilation is underway

the atmosphere here is so oppressively dense that it almost makes me forget i'm playing one of the worst feeling shooters to ever be released by a professional company. it's like if faceball 2000 somehow ran at an even lower framerate and was intended for people who'd never had nice days in their entire lives

but that fucking vibe is immaculate. the premise is hopelessly bleak without feeling tryhard, the industrial soundtrack is somehow more mechanically clunky than the gameplay itself and the cutscene direction rivals actual fucking cinema despite being from 1994. who the fuck made this??

oh - it's the guys behind gadget: past as future

alright that explains everything

...eh

tetsujin is one of the most unique shooters in the genre for how it validates conventionally god-awful gameplay with incredibly thick atmosphere. it's a game about being trapped in a hunk of metal, stumbling through corridors that invoke claustrophobia and dread. you have few allies (one, to be exact) and a pretty vague goal, but ultimately the only thing that really matters is getting to the top of the tower you inexplicably awoke within

but what if you took all that away? what if - in the name of "sequel improvements" and "quality of life" - you amped up the movement speed? how about ironing out the framerate? or adding regenerative health and ammo? what if enemies were a little more satisfying to shoot at and the gunplay was a smidge "better"? how about if you tossed a more ambitious narrative into the mix? and what if you included an automap?

well, you'd end up with something that essentially puts on the shell of tetsujin but doesn't actually feel anything like being inside of that shell. you'd get a 90s blockbuster with a japanese sci fi twist. you'd get a lesser clone of wolfenstein with more interesting art direction and some nice cutscenes

you'd get tetsujin returns - and honestly, maybe that's something you want - maybe you even would prefer it over the original. it depends on where your priorities lay, but if you enjoyed that for everything this game isn't, then you're ultimately going to be left feeling disappointed

it's decent and it does reach some atmospheric heights toward the end, but overall everything feels pretty misguided and unaware of what made its predecessor so bold