I am convinced videogame isn't sufficiently considered as a media. Evoland is one of the few games that tries and actually succeeds in both telling the videogame and thinking the videogame (all things considered : don't get me wrong, this game isn't Metal Gear Solid).

Evoland's a journey through your culture and your memories. At least it seems so. In reality, a non player or even a very young child can play Evoland as their first game and enjoy it. This is a tour de force considering how referenced the game is : if you've played either a Zelda, Diablo or 90s Final Fantasy game, you'll say a tons of time "Hey, I got it!". There's even a triple triad TCG copycat as frustrating as the original.

Eventually this, with the pace, is the aspect I disliked the most in Evoland. Referencing is... something I do not like. Because it does not mean anything to me : "Yeah game, we've both liked FF6, and so? Do you wanna talk about it? If you do I'm in. No you don't want to? That's... A shame. I would have loved to."

The game's fine tho. It focuses on what's matter : not being too difficult, smartly use very few solid core mechanics, and varying the game experience from the begining to the very end even tho yes, the other critics are right, Zephyroth is a (light) pain.

Considering the game's based on a game jam concept and has been made by 4 people, it would be a shame to point out its few true default. As a consequence I recommend you play it and I hope you'll enjoy it.

My gf bought this because she likes to punch things. And also because I told her SOR4 had a reputation.

Here's an opinion I try to establish as a fact : SOR4 might have the most beautiful 2D animated graphics currently available. It is candies for my eyes. Everybody, from Blaze to the most random punk have tons of animated moves that both capture the essence of early 90s SOR and benefit from the 20 years past since. I must point out chara design, which is peak.

The gameplay isn't in rest. Punching thugs lessen their health. If you press a magical button called X on the switch controller, you do a special powerful move. Using this move is an interesting tradeoff : it diminishes your health, but you can regain it by doing normal damages. Nonetheless, if you're hit on your way to recovery, you definitly lose your health. That's the salt of SOR4. It is fun. Oh, and if you're an hardcore player, be sure the combat system is deeper than that and there are many difficulty level to choose from.

Overall, a very good retro beat'em all that is definitly a 2020 game, that knows where it comes from and respects its legacy. The only "default" is the game announces 17 characters whereas in fact there are only 5 characters made out of 2020 standards, while the other ones are retake from the genesis era.

A game that begins with aggressive electric guitare cannot be lame, can it?

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, that I will call DDGROTD for the rest of this critic just because how absurd it sounds, asks you to choose two characters and a level. Then you hit thugs.

It is one of the simplest beat'em all I ever played. You hit with a button. If your special gauge is full, you can use a special attack among 4. Killing enemies rewards you with mana that refill your special gauge and money, that is used to both upgrade your character throughout your run AND buy new content in the outgame (including playable characters).

The original feature of DDGROTD is what I call the trukey feature. Each mission has secondary objectives. Some of theme imply turkeys and/or crowd controls. Crowd controls is the name given to simultaneous last hit done with special moves, ranking from 3 to 5 enemies eliminated simultaneously, respectively rewarded with an hot dog, an hamburger and a Turkey. The subtelty that gives its flavor to this system is that an enemy is considered eliminated once is health bar reaches 0, but it can be crowd controlled until its body disapears. That means mutilating corpses is a great way to achieve crowd controls, which is a way to heal your character and increase your overall money.

All in all, DDGROTD is as simple as fun. To play with your lover after a long day at work. Plus, it's cheap: I bought a physical copy 30€ day one.

Ingredients :
- A good part of Counter Strike for the competitive PvP shooter without respawn taste.
- Some fancy racing game with gun like Vigilant 8.
- A little bit of Super Monkey Ball. If you don't have enough Super Monkey Ball, replace it by any 3D Sonic game.
- A huge part of Smash Bros.
- Eventually, funny pseudos from steam.

Mix it up in a huge blender and you'll obtain something like BCA. As you probably guess, it can be very fun. As you also probably guess, it's impossible to market, so nobody play it.

I had a very good evening on this though.

Yeah, it's... Disappointing.

I love the Wii. I think it is one of the most daring moves of all the videogame industry, that fortunately led to a tons of ideas. The Wii relies on the Wiimote, that is a motion gaming pad good at pointing things, shaking, sweeping all the screen and detecting large movements.

If you've ever played a first person game in your life you'll certainly think it's the best controller for this type of game. I think you're right.

EA produced for the Wii my reference of motion-design-based-FPS which is Medal of Honor Heroes 2. In it, you have to put your Wiimote on your shoulder to fire the bazooka, you have to adjust your sniper's sight with the nunchuck and to pump the nunchunk to load a shotgun shell. It is incredibly fun and well crafted.

Medal of Honor Heroes 2 X James Bond stuff including fancy environements, silly gadgets, some boss design, a nice infiltration gameplay and a not boring asenal were my expectations when I launched Goldeneye Wii, which is a remake of Goldeneye 64 which automatically lessen my own will to play it because i hate remakasters. Let's discuss these points one after the other shall we.

"Fancy environements" are quite cleverly done. The game feels hemmed in the Wii, namely compared to the COD-hype that occured on the HD console at the time, but it somehow manages, by switching from inside to outside levels and alternating the snow decorset with other decorset, to hold it quite well in comparison. Some environments, like the nightclub for instance, are honestly superb, and rely on a smart technical tweak to be this impressive (using sprites instead of 3D models, which is a cool aesthetical way to match the nightclub theme of the level).

"Silly gadgets" are a joke. The game was out in 2010, so James Bond uses a Blackberry phone. That's all. In a way, it matches quite well this Quantom of Solace era of James Bond that I personally don't like very much, in which "realism" was more important than "arcady-fun" and gadgets were replaced by extinguishers and arm muscles.

"Bosses" are inexistant from what I've seen of Goldeneye. There a tank level which adds a bit of variety. That's all.

"Infiltration" is okay-ish. You know, it's the old kind of boring way of stealthing into an area with a crouch-get-behind-enemy-and-press-A-button-to-eliminate infiltration gameplay. Not good, but I cannot blame the game for it considering it was out in 2010. Not bad either, because some area are cleverly deisgned, with good patrols patterns and vents tunnels.

"Arsenal" is composed of pistols, machine-pistols and rifles. Yay. No golden gun. No rail guns. No "prototype weapons" that try something different. More disturbing: no explosives! No grenades in 2010! As we say in french "Aie aie aie !"

So... Yeah, you better play Medal of Honor Heroes 2. Plus, it is cheaper. And less rare.

Goldeneye 64 is a classic. Goldeneye Rogue Agent is a very bad joke, way too hard and not so interesting. Goldeneye 2010 is simply forgettable.

A very smart way to polish a ludum dare game.

It is simple: you have a gun, you fire it.

Unfortunately, there is no enemy. You aim for your own head.

So what will you do to survive? Will you buy a helmet? Will you improve your dodging abilities? Will you improve your luck so the barrel jams more regularly? Will you buy a bigger revolver featuring more bullets in the cylinder? Will you buy regeneration items that provide you health and mana on shots that don't hit? Because yes, there are also magic spells as well as an xp system.

Very clever, very well design. Unfortunately, relies a bit too much on the first shots.

Tetris is one of the most famous game in history. It has many children, some of them had great destiny, like Puyo Puyo or all the match-3 genre.

Suika is based on Tetris, but twist its core essence in a clever way. In suika, you don't manipulate tetrominos. You manipulate spheres. If two spheres of the size touch each other, they merge into a bigger one. Simple and smart. The biggest size you sphere can reach is the size of a watermelon (suika in japanese).

I must say, due to the very cute look of the game and its juicy sound desing: this game is fairly addictive. The brilliant idea of the game is using round-shaped puzzle piece. This lead to a lot of rythm variation. On time, you drop fruits as fast as you can to transform a fruit just before it falls on a pit. Another time, you precisely point the very specific location you want your fruit to fall on for it to stay in place.

But there are a low of small flaws that, added to each other, lead to a not-so-good game experience. For instance, you will loose. This is mandatory. Of course: fruits add on top of each other without being deleted in any way. All they do is gaining in size. This mandatory deafeat isn't pushing you to play, and displayed highscore look like an absolute unreachable limit. Another default are collisions, which aren't great at all. Sometime fruits touch each other and do not merge. Sometime fruits are displayed on onto another, which leads to strange physics beahviour. Fall location detection isn't precise, which might be frustrating.

This game is super addictive. That's a fact. I surprised myself not wiling to let the controller down when it was 2am because I had to water my vegetables. I HAD TO.

IMHO, this addictive force is due to 5 factors:
- Routine: You know what you have to do tomorrow when you go to sleep, and you know the convenience store will be oppenned at 9am. Pace-wise, it's wonderful.
- Very good small feedbacks: The fishing sounds, the sound when you gather things, the colors of sprites... All of this is well done and polished. It makes playing the game without purpose a fun time on its own.
- Indicated hard-reward: You want a henhouse? Please bring 6000 coins, 400 wood and 200 stone. If you do so, you'll have your henhouse. Beleive me this encourage a lot mining stone and chopping wood.
- Fishing: It features a fun mini-game and can be done whenever your near water. Considering the level design places very smartly rivers, seas and lakes, you find yourself able to fish whenver you want to fill a gap in your schedule. This again, is brilliant pace-wise.
- There is no failure

Unfortunately, in my eyes, all this seem... Way too big. Pointless. I found myself walking, walking and walking again to do what? Gather shells? I Gather a TON of ressources to... To do what? Gaining access to cows, whom I'll milk, to do whoever knows what with this milk... What is the point of planting a tree that need 28 days to grow (which is an entire season) and gives fruits in spring while you already are in spring? The point is to benefit from it next year? Seriously? That means you'll harvest fruits in at least 32 real-world-hours!!!

I question myself: is it fun? I mean, it looks like work. I don't want to water my plants. I want to harvest them. I don't want to go in the mine. I want to have copper ingot to upgrade my tools. Eventually: I simply don't want to go to the convenience store because it takes me 1h in game to reach it, which is way too much.

Too much to do, so little time to do so. I wonder how a game advocating a peaceful return to what's important, to a quiet pace of life can be so stressful. Timetables are the worst idea this game might have had. It feels like this game... Doesn't care about the player. I mean yes, it is 17h10 and you end your day at 17h00. I get it. But guess what? Your a robot constituted of 0 and 1, I'm a player. Let me in, I have garbage to sell. Many many times I get to places to do a precise thing, I did other thing there, left, and totally forget about the thing I was supposed to do until I reached my house and it's 18h, which means in my eyes I wasted my day. This is one of the most frustrating feeling I ever had in a videogame.

I must point out the combat system isn't good. That's cool, because we're not here for a combat system. But here's what impressed me: you spend winter in the mine, using the combat system. This is... Audacious at least. Unseen and mad considering this is a farming game. Kudos to the devs for believing this much in the game's combats.

I must point out I played it in split-screen. This imply two major flaws:
- We can't see nothing
- The time continues to fly during cutscenes, dialogs, inventory managment, which believe me is a HUGE waste. As a consequence, I skipped every piece of narration because I wanted to not waste my day.

I get why it is the favorite game of a lot of people, but this isn't for me.

Gun mecanics are simply WONDERFUL. The bullet time is straight on point, and the level design is precise enough to create an action game in which you feel endangered. Guns are varied, so are the situations and objectives. One mission is an escort mission, another one is a sniper assist mission, another one features a lot of plateforming, another one is a giant ghost train featuring small puzzles, another one is a race to find back your weaponery...

Characters are iconic and quite well written. It is as goofy as parodistic as... I don't know, serious? Sam Lake does seem to be serious about it... Boss fights are great, mise-en-scène is inspired. The pace is 20/20, the game length is ideal. Art direction is strong even nowadays.

I see no reason for you not to play except the PC version is, apparently, bad. Like really bad.

I didn't liked Bioshock. At first glance, it is promising : a lot of different guns, magic powers, attractive ennemies. Then, you find yourself in the arboretum. Where should you go ? Why is the gunfeel so poor ? Why are gunfights so unreadable ? Is there anything else to shoot at other than... Well, speaking zombies ? What are the differences between all this different types of ammunitions ? What are the differences between electricity and fire aside from interacting with water instead of oil ? Why is there oil on the floor ? Why everybody praise this game for narrative design, when you simply pickup audiologs you don't understand because they are in the wrong order with way too much characters and you don't even hear because you shot your shotgun while it plays ?

I tried it in 2007 and finished it arround 2015 : it was lame at both time. I do not recommand.