Radiohans
I started playing this today on my trusty old PSP-2000 and to my dismay there's not a single comma in this fan translation the formatting must have failed somewhere it does say beta after all. that's ok though i'll get through it somehow. at least there are full stops. soundtrack is killing it.
In a now-defunct Gamestop ca. 2010 I scavenged this for a meager buck. It dusted in my shelf for ten years, after I found its first ten minutes unbearably boring. Having granted it passage out of my backlog now, I can affirm my prior convictions that it's boring, and slow, and gimmicky. Despite that, I had some fun with the character interactions, music and locations. The central mystery wasn't exactly exciting, but the unravelling of it was. God, I miss cing.
2001
The locations, characters and music are on point, but the puzzles and lore went way above my head as a kid. Still, being a browser game that I actually remember some 20 years down the line is not to be taken lightly.
Christmas 2003, dad got me this game and I opened it pretty early during the gift opening. It did blow my mind, but I was distraught toward the end, as I didn't have a console to play the game, and doubted that dad got such an expensive game AND a game console to boot. "Oh look, what have we here, looks like there's one last present..." he said, and handed me my brand new GBA SP at the very end. Top ten memories contender. I played this game every available minute I had. It got confiscated a number of times because I kept playing it too heavily, and I always had to leave it with my mom before going to bed. One time I just turned the console on and off to see the intro and keep myself entertained without a game.
I had a hard time with it, of course, as one's first Mario game should be, and several sessions were spent exclusively trying to beat Bowser without really nailing the "kick shell upward" mechanic. That is, I didn't know how I did it, I just sort of flicked my fingers a certain way and sometimes that did the trick. Didn't know English enough to understand tutorials, and brute-forcing game mechanics don't always reveal everything.
My favorite thing about this game was... swimming... and sliding... for some reason those were so inherently satisfying. Also flying, when I eventually got that down. My least favorite thing were those continuously scrolling levels.
I had a hard time with it, of course, as one's first Mario game should be, and several sessions were spent exclusively trying to beat Bowser without really nailing the "kick shell upward" mechanic. That is, I didn't know how I did it, I just sort of flicked my fingers a certain way and sometimes that did the trick. Didn't know English enough to understand tutorials, and brute-forcing game mechanics don't always reveal everything.
My favorite thing about this game was... swimming... and sliding... for some reason those were so inherently satisfying. Also flying, when I eventually got that down. My least favorite thing were those continuously scrolling levels.
Had some fun finding an online stranger to journey the paths with, but the jagged, low-framerate experience of playing it on a Switch kept me from picking it up again. The game's movement probably was sort of slow and obtuse regardless of the Switch, though.
2024
Turning around and seeing an army of bugs coming at you is immensely thrilling. During the last five minutes of a forty minute mission I got separated from my team and had to run in loops around hordes of bugs. Most fun I've had in ages was pulling that off until my teammates got there.
2016
A soundtrack that spurred things on and kept me playing. The fish were nice. Wish there were online strangers in this, too.
2012
From what I remember about it 11 years later, it had a couple of effective jump scares and a fun plot twist... The music was good, too. No details of the plot are clear to me anymore, except some kind of betrayal. How time wears off an experience... you'd think it must not have been worth remembering, but surely it is!?
2023
This review contains spoilers
It's wittingly written, and that's what saved it for me when it got to a slog. Anyway, this is my little rant, because there's more than enough praise about it elsewhere.
I think the game would've benefited from some kind of ever-present option to just sit down and talk things out, instead of shoving a bunch of violent actions at me. Well, the first time around anyway. I was getting chewed up and spat out for my first three or four loops, just immediately out the door, getting killed left and right. Sure, some routes let you sit down and chat, but that didn't help me when I apparently went down all the snappy and action-filled routes initially.
During that segment where the Narrator forces you to stab the Princess, me using the arrow keys to pick a choice falsely made me believe there was no other choice than [Slay the Princess]. Turns out, only mouse scrolling down the list can show the singular [Resist] option. Why can't the arrow keys scroll the list? Infuriating!! Maybe this was why I felt so done with the game for a good while... And The Prisoner, who was behind the [Resist] route, turned out to be my favorite.
During the ending, slaying the Princess is such a weird choice. Isn't it completely insane to take away death? That means taking away love, feeling, anything that carries meaning. Siding with the Shifting Mound seemed like the infinitely better choice, but that was also not exactly riveting storytelling... And my ending of choice, of facing it together, went to credits as soon as it happened. I don't know what I expected, but there's more to be told here, please...
When you have two characters who essentially don't know much about anything, who exist in a literal void, and then write a whole game around them, I think the lack of narrative satisfaction I'm feeling here is a byproduct of that.
... Don't look at me that way. Yeah, maybe I should just go and play a dating sim instead if chatting's all that interests me!
I think the game would've benefited from some kind of ever-present option to just sit down and talk things out, instead of shoving a bunch of violent actions at me. Well, the first time around anyway. I was getting chewed up and spat out for my first three or four loops, just immediately out the door, getting killed left and right. Sure, some routes let you sit down and chat, but that didn't help me when I apparently went down all the snappy and action-filled routes initially.
During that segment where the Narrator forces you to stab the Princess, me using the arrow keys to pick a choice falsely made me believe there was no other choice than [Slay the Princess]. Turns out, only mouse scrolling down the list can show the singular [Resist] option. Why can't the arrow keys scroll the list? Infuriating!! Maybe this was why I felt so done with the game for a good while... And The Prisoner, who was behind the [Resist] route, turned out to be my favorite.
During the ending, slaying the Princess is such a weird choice. Isn't it completely insane to take away death? That means taking away love, feeling, anything that carries meaning. Siding with the Shifting Mound seemed like the infinitely better choice, but that was also not exactly riveting storytelling... And my ending of choice, of facing it together, went to credits as soon as it happened. I don't know what I expected, but there's more to be told here, please...
When you have two characters who essentially don't know much about anything, who exist in a literal void, and then write a whole game around them, I think the lack of narrative satisfaction I'm feeling here is a byproduct of that.
... Don't look at me that way. Yeah, maybe I should just go and play a dating sim instead if chatting's all that interests me!
1995
I probably played this on the classroom computer in third grade. I had the least fun with this, just couldn't see the appeal of placing objects around arbitrarily, no doubt preferring a ready-made world for me to explore.
1995
It was weird how the cover art seemed slightly familiar. Looking at the game footage now I can't say I concretely remember anything, yet there's this vaguely assuring feeling that yes, I know that polar bear in the sandbox, and I know this classroom. The songs, especially. This is one of those games I haven't seen since I played it in grade school. "Lek og Lær: Barnehage" in Norwegian. Fun reunion!
1999
First horror game I played. I was 13 and played it in secret to defy my parents. I just wanted to play something I absolutely wasn't allowed to play; it being Silent Hill was a coincidence. Every step I took in the "fog" of that town was hard-fought. I was scared shitless by the abrasive noise soundtrack and every time the Underworld manifested.
2004
Nails the feeling of exploring the absurd, lost and lonely dreamscapes of someone. Someone whose sensibilities are not hard to resonate with.
2021
Absurd folk horror done right. Beautiful environments, soundtrack and voice acting. Genuinely peaceful at times, making its scary segments more effective.
2006
Being holed up in the aft cabin of my father's recreational boat, playing this. Playing it continuously and a lot, rejecting all notions of going outside and eating hotdogs or going swimming with fellow islet guests. This was the first moment I experienced the true power of JRPG.