Creative, original, and barrels of fun. Everything comes together so well; the graphical style, the smooth animations and controls, the weapon combination system that lends a decent amount of depth, and the almost unparalleled variety in the moveset for a Genesis shooter.

Edit: just finished a replay and just had more things to gush about.

Quite atypically for a game made in '93, the game's difficulty level is pretty low. You have plenty of moves and are armed to the teeth, and you can take a lot of hits before going down. The game also does something extremely difficult to pull off: it communicates to you extremely clearly what you need to do, so much so that even though the game was blazingly fast and frenetic, I never once felt like the game was hitting me with 'gotcha' moments to score cheap hits. The game is also very short, and while I do wish it was longer, its short length combined with the casual-friendly difficulty and unlimited continues seemed to be making a ballsy statement. Unlike other games at the time that hooked you in and kept you playing with their difficulty and their length, Gunstar Heroes seems to be saying "yeah, you'll beat the game on your first time through. But it's so much fun that you'll be back to play it again." And play it again I did!

There are 4 basic weapons which can be fused together in various combinations to form 10 different "level 2" weapons. Experimenting with them is a lot of fun, and they push you towards extremely distinct playstyles. The chaser+lightning combo is totally auto-aiming and the best choice for newbies since you can just focus on finding safe spots on the screen and let the weapon aim for you, whereas lightning+flame is an extremely high damage but low-range weapon that pushes you towards a high-risk playstyle. Flame+chaser is a unique weapon that is probably best left to the experts: firing it creates a fireball that you control with the D-pad as it flies around the screen. It sounds interesting and is also an absolute pain to aim. Yeah, some weapons are clearly more efficient than others, but in a game as unabashedly fun and as forgiving of mistakes as this, balance issues seem almost irrelevant.

Nights into Dreams is a game that is hard to categorize, and a game that I'm sure was a nightmare to market (hence it completely bombing everywhere).

Despite it not really controlling like one, the game functions very similarly to a current 3D Sonic game: you want to get the most points possible and score the best rank, by doing combos or chain actions and what have you.

The difference is though that you're not actually supposed to finish stages in the quickest possible way; the timer the game gives you is actually the time you have to go around the stage over and over and score the most points you can before getting out and moving on to the next segment of the level. This creates a great risk vs reward situation at times where you have to make a very quick decision on whether you want to make just another trip before leaving or if you don't think those 20 seconds or less are enough.

When you realize this, you start understanding the entire flow of the game, the level design starts looking better and better, and the frantic pace of the game and initial sensory overload on the visuals becomes second nature; in general, everything starts to click. This will only happen if you do want to replay this game multiple times, which is another hard sell about this game: if you want to just get it over with once, it will be done in less than 2 hours and you won't really get much out of the experience.

Having said that though, I really wouldn't have minded one more stage per character, because as it is the game only has 7 of them, one of which is repeated twice. They're all great and very well designed mind you, but they go from training wheels to "possible game over" really quickly.

If you're into arcadey games that are meant to be replayed over and over, you can't go wrong with Nights into Dreams. It might take a bit to get used to its unique systems and controls (even the whole aesthetics of it are probably an acquired taste), but if given the time, there's a great game worth discovering and rediscovering here.

Hey Elon Musk, I know your fucking nerd fans love that you used JC Denton on twitter as a profile pic, but the one most likely to be a part of an evil organization of rich assholes running the world is you, you fucking fascist billionaire. Fuck Elon Musk.


Also good game, fun times with soy food and cybernetics.

EDIT: this review is funnier after the whole twitter thing. I’m glad that pompous dickhead is finally getting publicly humiliated so thoroughly.

I am incredibly conflicted on New Super Mario Bros Wii. So much so to the point where I am reconsidering a lot of the criticisms I levied on the DS original. This game always existed in my mind as a fun nostalgia piece, much like many of the famous Wii titles that my generation of gamers ooze over. However, coming back to it, I realized the game has many more flaws than just being an "alright game".

We're looking at one of the best-selling games of all time right now so I will just run through the things everyone says about this title. The game controls smoothly, exactly as you'd expect it to and I never found a hiccup anywhere. I'd even say that it's fun to run around in this game, more so than the original. The spin allows for much more leeway when platforming and being able to play the game from the Wii remote upright with a nunchuck or the Wii Pro controller means that anyone can play in any way they please. Music is alright, although incredibly generic and quite repetitive, as even for someone who has a soft spot for these games and their soundtracks, I got really tired of hearing the same song for every grass, water, or desert level. Level design is good enough; nothing ever feels like it pertains to the particular world's theme but they do a good job of introducing ideas and expanding on them. Although that's where my praise towards level design stops and my criticism begins.

This game has nothing interesting going for it, and I feel it makes the game feel even more painfully generic. With the original, I at least remembered most levels when playing them again and a few levels genuinely stand out to me as unique ideas. Nothing about this game is memorable. I played it in the span of a week and the only level I remember is the second to last level because the star coins were so difficult. Speaking of, why do the star coins exist in this game other than as a stand-in collectible? What do they do? They unlock a special world, sure but that could be unlocked after you beat the game normally anyways. Super Mario World doesn't force you to collect all the dragon coins in order to unlock it's special world. What else can you do with these collectibles? Spend them on hint videos that would not be necessary if you had no star coins in the first place. These things are literal contradictions in this game, their only prize is themselves which basically makes them pointless to collect in the first place. Not to mention they are not hidden cleverly at all because you really have to go hunting if you want to find these things. Most of them are hidden in an unnoticeable wall or barely take any effort to find as they just take a well-timed wall kick to reach. So effectively these things have no reason to exist, as all they do is pad out the game.

But of course, that's just if you want to beat the game to completion. What about those who just want to run through the game? Well then I am sorry for you because this game's difficulty dips and spikes sporadically like it has some kind of quota it has to fill. Most of the difficult levels are placed somewhere in the middle of the world and are usually only difficult cus they restrict something like your vision or natural progression like a sidescroller, and they can really be pace breakers. Not to mention the levels attempt to actively harm you for exploring which further puts the star coins into question. All around my feelings about the pace of the game is best summed up in World 8 where levels that take place in dark caves make it difficult to find your way through but have some genuinely creative ideas at play, there are lava rollercoasters that are probably the most fun part of the game and then the final castle just finishes the game with no interesting mechanics and no final gauntlet that tests your skill of the game like the original. I actually got all three star coins and beat the final boss in one try, it was that much of a breeze. Which pretty much sums up the whole game if you're just running through it. It's a breeze.

So those are my feelings on New Super Mario Bros Wii. Coming back to this honestly made me think about why people do not like this game as much as the original and coming back to it made it clear to see. The game has no reason to exist or be a sequel other than to cash in on 2D Mario hype and was pretty much the place that any hope for New Super Mario Bros to improve as a franchise died. I will always love this game but I will never want to return to it, not when the original outpaces it in every way.

It's been a long time since I've played a game this crushingly bleak and abjectly horrifying. Even longer since an experience where that bleakness is contrasted with just enough hope and ambiguity made traversing the world not feel pointless, despite how many times you may question yourself during the journey. Soma is about existential trauma and horror, about what it means to exist and how easy it is to other those who don't conform, about how we can conceive of continuing on when all seems lost. It explores these ideas with a philosophical confidence that I wish more games had the conviction to explore. A masterpiece.