Once the credits started to roll I found I was pulling face like someone had just farted.

The writing in this is mostly quite good, the music and presentation is wonderful but the plot - I'm just not sure.

Without spoiling it, Backbone moves on from being "just a detective story" into some strange stuff and ends quite suddenly.
Not as sudden as being hit by a bus but that sort of sudden you feel when you trip on a curb and you know what's coming but time slows a second.

It was free as part of bundle on itch supporting Ukraine, so it has that in its favour.
There's a demo on steam which is the prologue and I'd say that it's worth playing to see and feel this game's world and presentation but it doesn't reveal what the game is or at least becomes so it doesn't do a good job there.

Maybe I need more time to sit and think about the game, the themes are interesting and as I said before writing, sound, graphics all of that is good but I feel like Backbone ends up being less than the some of its parts - at least that's how I feel while writing this.

It goes without saying that if you enjoyed Lost Judgment, fancy a bit more and like the character Kaito you'll fancy playing this.

Nothing I can or will say about that will make the above false and you will not be disappointed coming from that.
I enjoyed this idea for a DLC, it was nice to give Kaito some spotlight alone, more back story and unique things to slightly change up the formula.

The main mechanical differences are that Kaito has his own 2 fighting styles, I don't want to give too much away but as you can imagine he's a lot more "strength based" but still has his own riposte style mechanics.

The other difference is in his detective work, sadly tailing is still here as is stealth (although a bit better) but his crime scene investigation Kaito uses his "feral instincts" basically you can flick between looking, listening or sniffing out clues and whilst this isn't a huge innovation it's a nice change.

Kaito doesn't directly get sub stories but some of his skill unlocks are behind missions as such, mostly though this is doing moves or searching Kamurocho with feral instincts, mostly listening for stray cats oddly.
This isn't the worst collectathon but that doesn't mean it's fun, where it feels most egregious is the item you need to use_eyes for as there's no map hint, sound indication and they're easy to miss.

Still 100% his skills is only necessary if you're a completionist or a nutter like me. There is one bonus fight (sorry spoilers) but it's not all that exciting really.

You're mostly playing this DLC for the story and that it does deliver.
Overall it's a great, quite personal tale for Kaito which delves into his past, introduces new folk including one of RGG's strongest female characters (not the highest bar sadly) and is a satisfying tale with a satisfying conclusion.

Story wise there are a couple of small issues I have, there's a level of predictability but more so a certain friendly character that although played for laughs seems really off to me (but I don't want to spoil).

TLDR? I liked this, but the price it wants for what you get is a lot and although the differences from Kaito to Yagami are fun I found Tak more fun to be.

It was strange but highly enjoyable to go back to this after playing hundreds of hours of Splatoon 2 as well as recently completing the Octo Expansion.

This may have been easier than Octo Expansion but it still felt relatively inventive and was most importantly a lot of fun.

25 stages is a decent amount for a single player campaign and the boss variation was nice too, strange coming from the sequel not having weapon choices but honestly in solo play Splatoon is rarely about how you fire the ink but what you do with it.

It almost feels redundant to post a review of this not playing the multiplayer (why would I now?) but this game is barely over a fiver to pick up and the campaign alone is easily worth that.

If you're reading this you either want to know WTF this game with a long name is or if you know that whether it's any good (does Psi think 3 stars is bad).

To answer WTF, this is a point and click game which seems very much a homage to Broken Sword, similar in themes, jet-setting, comedy and even with some nods to that series.

3 Stars is because this game is good but not without faults, part of me think it's harsh "is this just the most 7/10 ever?" as it succeeds in being a version of that series both in good and bad ways.

If you liked the series, you will enjoy this but you will both find some puzzles annoying and some dialogue bad or even distasteful.
You will also though enjoy the conspiracies, enjoy the settings and probably get a small laugh at some of the jokes and some of the nods.

My lower score is simple, it's still not as good as the first two Broken Swords and it also makes some similar mistakes to them.
Annoying partly controlled timed clicking puzzles that gave me bad memories of a goat alongside not enough voice lines to tell you if you're hot or cold when on the right path.

Overall though, I'm glad this exists, I hope there's a sequel- you have to hope that's the plan with the subtitle - and hopefully with more time, money and experience the team can create an even better game.

Abandoned: I thought this would just be shelved but sometimes you just have to admit to yourself that you are never playing that game again.

As a huge fan of the Sonic Team Racing games on the 360-gen I was hoping this would at least be a good laugh to run through the campaign.

Sadly they came up with one, I think actually good, unique idea and filled the game with shite but not actual content.
Somehow after two good games they've made they game feel worse and the tracks less inspiring - you'd think that may be because instead of Sega as a whole it's just Sonic but genuinely there's enough Sonic they could theme more closely to and it'd be good.

I will finish this with a positive.
I like the "Team" mechanic" the simple follow each other's line for boosts along with sharing power ups is actually quite fun and something I came away from the game thinking "Mario Kart should just steal this as a mode".

A great addition to the Definitive Edition package.

A lovely extension to Melia's tale, which for me has raised my appreciation of the character.

Kino and Nene are great fun, the fact they're essentially Sharla/Reyn skins may feel lazy but this isn't a full game and there's enough to flavour them to keep it fresh.
Their dynamic is fun and hearing about Riki away from Riki also helps elevate his character too.
Personally it was nice to play with essentially the squad I completed the Wii original with.

That and I love Kino and want to protect him.

You're not playing this unless you play Xenoblade Chronicles and you shouldn't.
If you have played XC though, I would definitely give this a go, the quality of the main game is there and the little differences keep the experience chill but exciting enough to keep you on your toes in places.

Funny to see a Poke game inspired by Inscryption using stuff from the GameBoy PTCG which inspired part of Inscryption.

I like what they've gone for but it's too grindy too many cards are similar even with the fun of Pokémon typing.

Above is what I said when Shelved this game and after grinding out to finish it I can sadly tell you that never really changed.

The things I like about this are taken from games which are far more enjoyable and well thought out.
It's probably going to turn out the programmer is a professional Pokémon TCG player now I'm going to say this but; I don't think they understand card games all that well.

The berry resource mechanic is half Inscryption's sacrifice and half your typical mana/energy thing you'd see in MTG/PTCG but it's both the poor halves of each.

There should be an advantage to reward the risk of taking a mix of berry types but there doesn't seem to be, it's not like Energy in PTCG a blue berry can summon every Type of Pocket monster in the game.
Placing the berries first rather than after is more annoying and having the separate deck doesn't work like Inscryption's Squirrels because you can sacrifice what is in play to get something else (hopefully better) out.

I could pick more a part from this game, it's progression trying to be like Inscryption but without any risk just encourages grinding and even doing so to "get ahead" like you might in a JRPG doesn't tend to work so grinding now does not stop grinding later.

When your card game has a poor resource mechanic and your risk/reward elements have no real risk your design is bad and this is sad.
I hate to slag off someone who's made something for free but in the end I only really got through this like I was playing an idle clicker and because my broken brain would not let me leave this unfinished before passing judgement.

Add this with Power Stone to the list of odd forgotten games Capcom need to bring back.
Although as I type this I'm having a horrific image of Zack & Wiki in the RE engine.

A game that after finishing it again in 2022 I can confirm is deserving of being on all of those "Wii Hidden Gems" lists, whilst not perfect in it's execution it's a game that is up there with the most fun and interesting uses of motion controls.

The frustrations come with, not a lack of inaccuracy which all can suffer from, but for me with the attempt at putting some timing and reaction based bits in alongside auto fail options.
The final boss in particular I had to turn the console off yesterday because I didn't get the timing and didn't want to throw a wiimote out of my window.

The presentation of this game is great, the characters are joyful, the items work as you'd expect and most of the puzzles have a simple but fun logic to them only held back by the occasional experimentation which turns into failure (you'll become familiar with the restart screen).

The random map scouting collectathon thing feels a bit weak and tacked on but "content" wise there is a decent amount of stages, some fun variation, funny bosses and even some hidden stuff for after if you so desire.

If you hate motion controls this game is clearly not for you but do not except to be standing up doing bowling poses.
If you are fine with them, you need to get this played.
Frustration can happen like any point n click which this game definitely shares DNA with but the internal hint system is very generous and hey, it's fifteen years old you can look up a guide if you like. I won't tell.

I'm glad I finally played this game, being a big fan of Cing, this was always a game I had meant to play through and was sure I'd started - I discovered I must've because the disk was still in my now packed away Wii.

There's something about the style or writing, the atmosphere and art direction about Cing that I just find magical.
The simple music, the sketches; I find it evocative but then I can't really put a finger on what.
I'd guess a big part now would be nostalgia and a yearning for another Kyle Hyde game but it's also a feeling I had when I played Hotel Dusk the first time.
I'm sure if I was more eloquent I could find the words.

Another Code: R for those not in the know is boiled down to its simplest terms a point and click adventure style game with Japanese visual novel leanings about a girl named Ashley searching to find more details on the death of her mother.
I won't go into details because explaining the story of a game that is majority story vs "gameplay" will ruin it, but the way the story progresses is a fantastic mystery novel-like tale, with a small cast of characters who are, in my opinion, all quite well realised with quality dialogue.

You learn a lot about Ashley as a person through her interactions with the world and the dozen or so characters, most importantly Matthew.
Matt, minor spoilers, is a younger lad who has run away from home looking for his father who went missing five years prior and the obvious similarities there create an interesting dynamic and a way to see an angle on Ashley you wouldn't typically.

Outside of talking and making a few conversational choices you're walking around the small area- done so by either using the d-pad or clicking the sides of the screen until you get to rooms you search with a pointer.
A lot of these areas are just to look at, flesh out the world. The rest are to find items which in a simple point and click style are there to solve puzzles.

When it comes to puzzles I personally found most of them a little too easy but I do have an uncommon enjoyment of them it seems.
The most difficult were due to my impatience because Cing loves to play with the hardware and a couple of things weren't as intuitive as I thought.
Counter to motion controls annoyance, much like Zack & Wiki you're not waving your arms around all the time and in fact even less so.
Also this game has the single most, what I would call a hype moment in Wii games, using hardware to solve a simple puzzle that genuinely eliminates any hard feelings I have for things where I had to hold still for longer than I'd thought.

The long and short of this is, if you dislike games with little in action then move on, however if you want a nice relaxing game with a well realised small contained world and cast of characters with a few fun puzzles and great atmosphere this is worth playing.

The saddest thing really, to end how I began this "review" is that Cing are no longer around and the game - whilst having a completely satisfying ending, feels like it was open for a third that we will most likely never see.

Much like how Future Connected does it for XC1, Torna distils Xenoblade Chronicles 2 into a shorter game.

A great cast of characters, beautiful settings, an arguably better variant of XC2 combat and zero gacha bollocks.

I'm yet to do the "Golden" stuff, IYKYK.
However I ticked off nearly all the content and it was mostly all very enjoyable and importantly not necessary.
My time could be cut in half without the side quests although it does seem the game may force you into doing some to build the "community".

Due to how I play these games and how I've come to it, it's hard to fairly judge Torna but much like I said with Future Connected and Kaito Files; you're not playing this if you haven't played the main game.

Doesn't quite get the full 5 stars for me even though it does get rid of a good lot of XC2 baggage.
The simple and vaguest reason being, I'd have liked more on certain characters so it didn't quite fill the lofty expectations I had for it.

Xenoblade Chronicles as a series though continues to be the absolute best, Definitive Edition is still currently the Definitive game for me but what's more of a good thing hey?

I for one am very happy for the beat 'em retro revival that seems to be going on and am all for more of these games coming out.

Shredder's Revenge is undoubtedly good, the combat is probably the best a TMNT game of this type has had with an almost Marvel vs Capcom level of complexity hidden within if you want it.

It looks and sounds exactly how you remember TMNT arcade games, as in, still pixel but actually slightly better than the reality of the retro games.
It's got all the classic enemies and side characters of the Hero Turtles cartoon. (Baxter Stockman being a favourite of mine).

The arcade mode's Mario style map and missions are a nice touch from just going stage to stage but with all this positivity why the "low" score.

First off 3.5 is a good game 7/10 is a good score.

The marking down if you want to look at it that way comes in the form of a few things.
To start, the lazy reason is - I much prefer Streets of Rage 4.

I am not as keen on the way special attacks work in this game.
I'm a little saddened by the current lack of extra characters (there's one to unlock).
Whilst the combat is good to me if feels "soft", Streets of Rage (to continue the comparison) every punch and kick feels like it has heft where as in this Raph poking his sais feels fluffy and light.

The bosses in this are mostly uninspiring, a couple stand out, a couple are just kind of boring and a few too many are repeats either literally or they feel like a palette swap.

Maybe when I play some more of this I'll give it an extra star.
I feel like this game is exactly where you want it to be as a start but it's too scared to take any strides forwards and that holds it back.

No rating for this right now because in the end I skipped through the story as I just wanted to fiddle with stuff and I cannot with any confidence tell you if the story is good, bad or in-between.

I can say the bit of voice acting I heard was nice, but I wasn't downloading this for an emotional journey.

What I was downloading it for was some simple puzzles with a tactile feel and I would say I got what I wanted.
I'd have liked the if the complexity had a higher peak and it went towards that faster, not even necessarily asking for a head scratcher but when it's too simple it felt too guided.

The simple swipe controls were great, I barely felt I was fighting with them and more often it felt actually like things would move exactly how I liked them and if this were a 90's magazine review I'd give Tactility 95%.

I do want to see what the story was along side this, so maybe check back in the future. Or don't, I'm not your mum.

It has to be admired how far these cat lovers went into animating and getting the feeling of being a cat and what doing cat things is like.
Every small interaction gives you a small smile but admittedly that novelty for me wore off quick.

Thankfully that novelty wearing off quick wasn't a huge issue because the game itself is so short.
I don't want all my games to be 200 hour epics, I generally mark the runtime of this game down as a positive but seeing they want £24 on steam for this makes me wonder if I would have felt short changed if I had not got this through PS+

The world is beautiful, the story is simple and nice.
There's enough variety in it's short run time and a small list of tasks that can definitely extend that further.
It's good! It just didn't blow me away and maybe it couldn't, not with what it aims to do.

I was hoping by the time I finished the game I'd have decided exactly what I felt about the platforming being all contextual, I still haven't.
Part of me likes the simplicity and ease of it, but another part of me hates that it feels so unskilled.

Definitely grab this on PS+, upgrade for a month if you need to.
If you don't have a PS4 or 5 and are eyeing it up on Steam just be aware it's short and not particularly deep. If you're mad on cats or even like them and (like me) enjoy robots that'll definitely help you enjoy your time.