Shows its age quite a bit.
Platforming can feel pretty rough.
The difficulty can make you pull your hair out.
At least it set a foundation to improve on and which has shown it could be quite fun when designed properly.
The soundtrack is undoubtedly the thing which has aged best and is still cool to listen to.

Sometimes, we must ask ourselves if a journey is worth finishing, however short it might be. The feeling that you'll see no improvement is there, yet you've already reached the halfway point and decided to see it through. And it wasn't worth it. This was a slog.

When you think of X-COM, your first thought will be of the tactical RPG series, not an arcady 3rd person shooter. And just like Ys Strategy, there is a reason why this game is rarely talked about by fans of the series.

The one word that sums up this game is lazy. The UI is lazy. The AI just charges at you without much thinking. The bosses are bullet sponges without much more to them. You don't even have a manual save option, the game just saves after you finish a mission. The mission design almost always revolves around either searching for and destroying certain enemies or finding and saving humans. And you'll have to sit through that for 35 missions. It only takes around 6 and a half hours, so it isn't long, but it becomes painful either way.

The story has no structure and you're just a random robot named Enforcer who together with a scientist, whose name I didn't bother to remember, fight aliens in all sorts of locations - arctic bases, football pitches, and sewers (you don't even get to meet the Ninja Turtles there) among others.

The gameplay is like an AliExpress Serious Sam. It's pretty fast-paced, you have a lot of enemies that will charge at you, and you need to beat them. You unlock a few weapons over time, but slightly before the halfway point, the enemy and weapon variety dries up and the level design is just there.

The only reason why I'm giving this a 1.5 is because, as crazy as it sounds, I found the game to be enjoyable during the first 12-13 missions. Shooting and going through hordes of enemies was fun, at least for a time. Had the game ended there, despite all its issues, I would've thought it was alright.

Overall, it's rushed, flawed, and overstays its welcome. Unless you're a superfan of the X-COM series and want to play through all of its games at least once, I strongly suggest you avoid this game.

An overall pretty enjoyable game, which expands on the cryptic story the original Portal had and adds a bunch of new mechanics to keep things fresh during its runtime.

The first few chapters were a breeze, especially if you played the first game beforehand. The new mechanics introduced later can take some getting used to, but were for the most part pretty fun. However, the difficulty progression felt a bit uneven, as sometimes what felt like more difficult levels were placed before easier and more intuitive ones.

The feeling of mystery the first game had obviously couldn't be repeated, but the story works well and has some nice twists which left me surprised. Wheatley and GLaDOS were the highlights and I really enjoyed both their characters.

Personally, I felt like the game somewhat dragged on in chapters 7 and 8, but picked up to deliver a pretty good ending in chapter 9.

This game was interesting.
Imagine Diablo 1 but with a clicker/hack 'n slash hybrid battle system, a card system which is the equivalent of skills, and a more limited area you can move in during the levels themselves.

In practice, I felt like it both worked and didn't.
As a big plus, this games has some nice QoL features - it notifies you if you missed something, meaning you can 100% a run down to the most little of things, deciding the pace of exploration and that way dividing the game into as big or bite sized of pieces as you want, and a quick exit from a level if you've collected everything, thus saving a bit of time.

The card system though, I wasn't the biggest fan of. It's random what sort of cards you'll get and I felt like having a regular RPG skill system with the possibility of branching paths would have worked better. Having to constantly go back up after finishing a level to identify a card just to end up with many extra copies that couldn't be used was annoying.

The enemy variety noticeably dries up around the half way point, making the game, even if you can still romp through it, a bit of a slog.
The last stretch of the game is also kinda weird. Levels become far smaller and more linear, enemies are numerous, and you can't escape and dodge them as much as before, making you also rely a lot more often on health potions. The sudden difficulty spikes becomes overwhelming, for lack of a better word.

An overall decent game with some interesting ideas and nice QoL features, but the lack of enemy variety in the second half and the card system brought it down in my eyes.

An interesting port (one could also call it an official demake) which turns Max Payne 1 into an isometric shooter.

There's a decent amount of voice acting, the comic book panels are implemented well, the atmosphere is a good replica considering what they worked with and the developers did their best to include a good variety of weapons and make the gameplay as action packed as possible.

Your sight is a little limited which can sometimes mean taking a few cheap shots, but l didn't find this to be much of a issue with the exception of the semi-last level. That one can take a bit of patience.

The game is pretty short and can be finished in a little over 2 hours.

While not really something someone should go out of their way to play, if you're a fan of the Max Payne games, you could give this one a try and appreciate the ambition.

I don't have much experience with the Crash Bandicoot games, so I'm rating this one on its own rather than comparing it to other ones in the series.

It starts off decent, but it becomes apparent from pretty early on this both feels rushed and focuses on two distinct styles which don't mesh well.

The combat is not horrible, but it's very monotonous and not helped by the fact that the enemy variety is pretty shallow (most "new" enemies you encounter are reskins) and you're often stuck in situations where you'll fight multiple large enemies and have to button mash your way out of it. It's even more baffling that the combat takes up a really large part of the game. And the enemy's AI leaves much to be desired overall, so it can becomes a pretty miserable experience with all those factors.

And the game has limited lives per level. At least it only send you back to the beginning of a level if you lose all of them, but they felt unnecessary.

The platforming is there. It felt fun at times, but nothing in particular stood out from it. Had it taken up a far larger part of the game, I would've enjoyed this far more.

A neat little JRPG which while not revolutionary, takes a lot of tropes from the genre and executes them well.

The graphics are pretty good and if you compare them to other games on the PSP, are amongst the handheld's best. There wasn't anything from the soundtrack which stood out though.

The combat system and overall structure of the game was pretty similar to Final Fantasy 1-3 for the most part, albeit very linear, though with a good amount of side quests to make up for that.
The combat also has a "unity command" which is basically like techniques from Chrono Trigger, which I liked.

The game is on the easier side, but the last 2 bosses were tough and you'll have to grind for a bit before being an adequate enough level to beat them without much issue.

The game also does a few small things which were cool. An example was the enemies looking exhausted which indicated they were at low HP.

An overall solid JRPG, though if you've played a large amount of games from the genre, you might find it a little lackluster, since it doesn't do anything that hasn't been done before. If you haven't, this is a good choice to start with, as it's both casual and has a lot of tropes common for the genre.

I got this in a bundle with Cthulhu Saves the world, and it was decent.

The in-game systems, graphics and presentation are almost like Cthulhu Saves the world. With some minor exceptions like the inability to teleport back to a certain point, which was a shame.

The story is pretty comedic and fine to go through once. Your standard fantasy setting is there and this game doesn't try anything innovative. The battle system is alright, and with the game only being around 4 hours long doesn't overstay its welcome.

Overall, if you enjoyed Cthulhu Saves World, you'll enjoy this game as well.

Last year, the first game I played was Slender: The Eight Pages, a game that I should have played many, many years ago.
Now, to continue the trend of playing a horror game (I'm using the term very loosely here) and keep up with the times, but mostly because I made a bet with a friend that this would be the first game we play in 2024, well, I'm playing this...

Is it good? I guess it's ok with friends, but there's only so much you can do because of the boring gameplay, boring design, and lack of levels.

At least I got it at a discount... I'll take that small W, however miniscule it might be.

Out of morbid curiosity, I gave this game a try, and it pretty much deserves all the flack it gets.

The story is bland and there was nothing that stood out at all.

The atmosphere is a severe downgrade from the first game and the overall style feels soulless and boring.

The AI is poorly designed and boring to fight against. There is also a severe over reliance on devil trigger and skipping fights almost feels encouraged with how sloppy the combat feels. Not to mention the style meter disappears if you don't do damage for 2 seconds.

The game's levels are far too big and shrinking them to be thrice to five times as smaller wouldn't have resulted in much being lost.

There are some small positives, though.
The inclusion of a dodge button, which would be expanded to the trickster style in the 3rd game, was nice.
The game includes multiple playable characters.
There is quick weapon switching for guns.
The amulet mechanic, which allows customization of your Devil Trigger was neat.
The orb design is bad, but in hilarious way. That first red orb face you see sets up the tone for the game perfectly.
And the voice acting, despite Dante feeling like he knows he's in DMC2 is so cheesy it's loveable.

I was looking forward to playing this one due to the bizarre concept. Card games on motorcycles is... a very interesting idea and this was a very interesting game overall.

Imagine Mario Kart with awkward controls and a card game system in it, but the game had an incredibly limited budget and had to be made incredibly quickly, and you have this game.

Your deck must have a minimum of 15 cards (but could have more) and naturally the card effects wildly vary. You could also summon a monster and attack with it.
However, with the way the game is designed, it's best to make yourself a deck that slows down your opponent and speeds you up. The only monster that should be running is Sonic Chick. It basically nullifies all damage you take, an invaluable effect that lets you circumvent so many headaches, making it the MVP of this game.

The controls are awkward and it does not help that this game felt like it was designed to heavily punish you for playing it how you'd naturally think it should be played. The opponent can catch up to you incredibly easily if you are ahead, so it's discouraged to be ahead. Why should you then make a deck to slow your opponent down and speed you up? Well, that final nudge comes in handy at the end of a race. Activate all your cards, gain a large surge of speed, and speed through to the finish line. You'll be hitting a lot of walls and generally having a lot of difficulty maneuvering during the race, but that hardly matters if you keep those cards towards the end.

A very bizarre game, which has to be experienced to be completely understood. It's not good, but it's intriguingly gripping, in its own way.