How do you follow up a game that took 139 hours of your life to complete? Big Bumpin' babyyyyyyy wooo hell yeag they put wWhopper in a bumpber cart !!

I am suffering from acute Final Fantasy VII Rebirth dissociative disorder. The idea of playing any video game right now sounds dreadful, but I have a backlog full of games and I gotta stick to that grind, so I had to find something I could stomach. The Burger King Trilogy seemed like as good a choice as any. Each of these three games are short and require little skill, and frankly, they're all on par with some of the minigames in Rebirth. Sounded like a real smooth transition to me, like checking myself into the gaming equivalent of a methadone clinic. Dr. Drew is here, and he's going to ensure I don't get better for maximum profitability.

The last time I played Big Bumpin', or any of the Burger King games for that matter, was back in 2006 when they came out. A real banner year for me and the Xbox. I had these three games and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), and then my console red ringed a few months later when I rented Chrome Hounds. I was, however, at the right age for BK's bizarre "wake up with the king" campaign, and I was not impervious to its ill-effects. I bought all three of these when they released and tossed them years later, only to have one errant thought about the King waking up in some poor soul's bed which resulted in me grabbing them all again. It might surprise you to know you can easily find boxes full of unopened copies of Big Bumpin' behind Goodwills and on the side of freeways.

Big Bumpin' is a largely inoffensive collection of bumper car minigames, most of which play totally fine but offer very little whether played solo or with friends. Look, nobody had any expectations for this game when it came out, and its most notable qualities are being one of three Xbox/360 hybrid discs, a celebration of a very weird and very specific moment in fast food marketing and having the worst hockey minigame I've ever played. The standard hot potato, destruction derby, and keep-away modes are serviceable if dry, but that hockey game... I don't think a single point was scored that didn't come from the AI or myself knocking the puck into our own goal. I was drunk and listening to Loveline, I don't know what their excuse is.

"How do you guys kill yourselves over there in Korea," Adam asked Minka as I was running a clinic on Brooke Burke and a gigantic man-chicken with a gut full of grain alcohol at 1 in the god damned morning. I don't know the answer to that, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to go out from overconsumption of minigames. I want The King to lower my casket into the cold embrace of the Earth by pushing it in with a bumper car. It's what I deserve.

Marked as "mastered," even though having owned two copies of this game proves I have no willpower and am the master of nothing.

This has got to have the weirdest story mode in any Mario Party I've ever played.

It's been several days now since I finished Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I've been decompressing, letting my experience sit in the hopes that my thoughts might coalesce into something clear and concise. But this is a game that took me 139 hours to complete, easily the most time I've sunk into a single run of a video game, and naturally there's a lot of highs and lows in there. In some ways, Rebirth is everything I was hoping it would be, especially after embracing the more contentious changes Square made to Final Fantasy VII's continuity. In a lot of other ways, it's doing crunches for three hours straight so the number of collectables in Johnny's Seaside Inn goes up by [1].

In my review of Remake, I heaped a lot of praise on Square's audaciousness in regard to how they treated the source material, especially towards the end of the game. The promise that the "unknown journey will continue" removed some of the expectation for where the plot was headed, so much so that something as well-known as Aerith's death could once again be considered a genuine spoiler insofar that it was no longer a certainty. Rebirth certainly takes what Remake set up and goes places with it, though it backloads much of this and rushes through at a pace that makes some of the payoff a bit too vague and convoluted. It's got a lot more Zack though, and as a Zack fan, we're feastin'.

Rebirth does otherwise follow the plot of Final Fantasy VII's first disc with about as much faithfulness as Remake does, which is to say you'll still be visiting the Gold Saucer, experience an extended flashback to Nibelheim, and battle a fucked up looking wall in the Temple of the Ancients. Just like the last game, a lot of these familiar locations and moments are expanded upon and fleshed out using material introduced in the Complication of Final Fantasy VII and various spin-offs.

This was at times detrimental to Remake given its focus on Midgar, ballooning what was a three-to-four-hour chunk of gameplay into a full 40+ hour experience. Though Rebirth is packed to the point of bursting with superfluous content, it suffers fewer pacing issues thanks to the portion of the original game it covers, which already provided the player more moments to breathe between visits to dungeons and towns.

That's not to say all that side content is worthwhile. In fact, a lot of it is pretty tedious, excessive, and at times frustrating, and while it's optional on paper, some amount of it will be required either by force or by need. Lighting watch towers, collecting lifestream and summon intel, completing hunts, taking on special hunts, capturing chocobo, digging up valuable loot with said chocobo, completing air-courses with chocobo, jumping around in two different frog minigames, WHEELIES, getting the high score in shooting galleries, playing Not Rocket League, taking on VR battles, destroying your tendons in god damn Cactuar Crush, taking pictures of Cactuars, taking pictures for the photography club, finishing multiple tiers of 3D Brawler, playing Star Fox, riding the G-bike, performing in two different rhythm games, MORE WHEELIES, taking on brutal VR battles, redoing the pull-ups game from Remake but somehow worse, breaking boxes in Desert Rush, catching a bunch of ffffucking Moogles, playing a more truncated version of Intermission's otherwise excellent Fort Condor tower defense game, finding PlayArts figures in well-hidden rabbit holes, setting up automated attack patterns in Gears and Gambits, playing the piano very poorly, I FUCKING LOVE WHEELIES

This isn't even getting into Chocobo Races or Rebirth's persistent card game, Queen's Blood, which both feel like full games grafted on at the hip. Sure, you could do as I did and fall into the trap of trying to 100% a game and come to hate parts of it as a result, but I also think it's fair to say these games are designed in a way that try to pull the player into its side content. Indeed, the story will have you dip your toes into most minigames, and the promise of valuable gear, folios, and even a super-boss might be temptation enough to suck you into some truly dreadful stretches of gameplay. I stomached about 3/4's of what Rebirth had to offer and started to get burnt out, but by that point am I really not going to finish the rest of it?

Well, no, because the final side quest is currently bugged and cannot be completed. Very nice thing to run into after doing literally everything else.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth feels like a minigame compilation that is occasionally interested in being an action-RPG, but when it is, it's pretty damn good. I was already a fan of Remake's take on the familiar "active time battle" system that served as the series bedrock during much of its turn-based days. New to Rebirth are synergy skills, which both deal significant amounts of damage while conferring positive buffs to participating party members. And y-yeah, you know, like... you gotta beat a lot of side quests and stuff to get folios to buy new synergy skills, but if you're playing the game like a freak-ass maniac, you'll have a lot of fun messing around with different party combinations. Aerith can put on Barret's sunglasses and pose with him. She's so cool, I hope she doesn't get stabbed later.

The materia system is intact and has been expanded with new materia that allow for some pretty inventive builds, my personal favorite being Exploding Yuffie. Character playstyles carry over from the last game, though I found newcomers Cait Sith and Red XIII to be the least interesting of the bunch, and as far as I'm concerned, Cloud, Yuffie and Barret are the best combination and suitable for basically any combat encounter you'll find yourself in outside of sections where your party has been pre-determined.

A lot has been said about Rebirth's presentation and performance, and I think most complaints about it are extremely valid. Performance mode is one of the muddiest looking things I've seen and I play Nintendo 64 games on a CRT routinely. Remake's infamous door texture is carried spiritually into the wind-ranging vistas of Gaia, though the inconsistent texture work is better hidden when roaming around the open world. However, plenty of cutscenes are blocked in such a way that draws attention to low-res textures and objects, and I don't know, I think they could've swapped out Midgar's horrible looking skybox if they were going to focus on it this much.

Look, it's hopeless for me. I'm all in on Final Fantasy VII. I see Cid Highwind raise a hand to a woman and my brain goes as smooth as a marble. Palmer wanted butter for his tea, I stood up and clapped and said "yes, thank you, I will spend one HUNDRED hours of my life playing Leap Frog." I have the deluxe edition with two steelbooks, one for each disc, and worse than all of that... I tried to platinum the game. I'm already dead, man. Dump my ass in the Forgotten Capital.

I could say "Square ought to learn some restraint and reign it in with the final chapter," but even if they don't, I'll be on my hands and knees in front of the dog bowl ready for more wet slop. Mmm, diced Zack Fair for me, please!

Stop me if you've heard this one before: A vertical shoot-em-up with multiple routes, massive bosses, and multi-leveled shot types with secondary weapons that help you manage enemies on your flanks. AND it's on the Sega Saturn?

Blast Wind isn't doing anything unique, but that's fine, because it's a pretty damn good game even if it may feel derivative. I was watching Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb The Jeff Gerstmann Show rank NES games the other day, and he questioned if vertical shooters had run their course. I'd love to say the genre is still rich with games pushing the boundaries of what a shoot-em-up can be, but on my life I can't think of anything past Ikaruga that I would describe as anything other than "good but expected."

And that's Blast Wind in a nutshell. You've probably played a lot of games like this before, but it doesn't do anything wrong and pretty much nails what it's going for. Feels good, it's approachable but offers a solid challenge, the sprite-work is great, I like how the explosions sort of sound like a badly digitized voice going "bwaaaah," and the soundtrack is fantastic. Though it doesn't do anything revolutionary or break the vertical shoot-em-up mold, it doesn't need to.

However, that does mean Blast Wind's historical relevance is mostly limited to its rocky development, having failed an initial localization test that saw the game reworked into the more humorous Inazuma Saber, which also failed its own localization test. It took another four years before Blast Wind hit the home console market in Japan, and in such low quantities that it now fetches one of the highest aftermarket prices for a Sega Saturn game. It is funny looking back at old forum threads where people were speculating Blast Wind wouldn't hit triple digit prices back in 2005. Loose discs now command nearly 300$ with complete in box prices creeping just past that. Time makes fools of us all, though they were right about one thing, Blast Wind has nothing on Hyper Duel.

My friend, Haro Kid, took a trip to Japan recently to visit Mr. Gundam, and was kind enough to pick me up a bundle of old video games for pennies on the dollar of what you'd pay in US aftermarket prices. Among them was Ranma 1/2: Chounai Gekitou-hen - meaning: Ranma 1/2: Neighborhood Combat Chapter - and boy am I glad she only paid about 7.25$ for this, because it sucks ass!

To be fair, I knew it was a bad game before I demanded Haro consume valuable luggage space and transport it all the way back to the United States. I've played Street Combat before, and a bunch of dire sprite swaps do little to cover up how messy of a fighting game this is, even if throwing out Rumiko Takahashi's immaculate character designs for generic, westernized heroes might make it more palatable to American 90's kids prior to Anime hitting the mainstream. They mapped jump to a button. Unforgivable.

All the hallmarks of a bad fighting game are here: AI that spams the same move over and over again, hit and hurt boxes that make no sense, bizarre attack priorities, sluggish animations, crummy controls... I'm not the kind of person who likes to toss around the phrase "bad game feel," but the game feels bad. Story mode is about five fights long and locked to Ranma, though you can play through it with other characters if you cheat. Not that it matters, because the cutscenes are the same no matter who you play as. Not to be entirely negative, Chounai Gekitou-hen being short is a mercy.

Still, having a copy of Street Combat in its original form is novel both as a Ranma 1/2 fan and someone who finds Anime's early history in the west fascinating. It's not good and I can't picture myself playing it again, but I don't regret it occupying shelf space, and frankly, having it in a nice protective cover and out of UV light is probably the greatest kindness anybody has done Chounai Gekitou-hen.

About a year ago I'd never even heard of Koudelka, but that's the thing about being friends with TransWitchSammy, you're gonna find yourself waking up at 3 in the morning with "play Koudelka, it's peak...!" being whispered from your vents.

It's actually surprising that it's taken me this long to discover Koudelka and actually commit to playing it, because it's such a mish-mash of my favorite fifth generation design tropes that it seems made for me. Survival horror exploration, JRPG combat, haunting pre-rendered environments, a story told with maturity and supported by excellent voice acting...? Shit, it's even got music by Hiroki Kikuta of Secret of Mana fame, and he wrote, produced, and directed the game!

It's clear Kikuta had a well-defined vision for what he wanted Koudelka to be, being so involved with the project that he embedded himself in vocal recording sessions, opting to have all releases of the game share the same English dub. Vivianne Batthika (Koudelka), Michael Bradberry (Edward), and Scott Larson's (James) vocal performances are excellent, at times loud and theatrical in a way that suits the sort of "stage play" quality of the game's cutscenes. Character models are scarcely more detailed than those in Metal Gear Solid, rough and limited in all the ways you'd expect from this generation. Metal Gear Solid's workaround was the Codec, which used cut-outs to help connect the player to the characters, but Koudelka rarely zooms in on its characters to show us their emotional state (outside of FMVs, which are used whenever the action becomes more complex) and instead lends weight to the actor's performances with body language. Kikuta's choice to have his cast further embody their characters through mocap gives Koudelka a look that's so rarely seen on the PlayStation.

Softening up the image with a good scanline filter is something I would definitely recommend if you plan to play Koudelka through emulation, which you almost certainly would have to do since Price Charting pegs loose discs at around 142$. Maybe I'm spoiled, but the low-fidelity models can clash against the densely detailed backgrounds when viewed raw, and like most PlayStation games, there's a lot of dithering. Hitting Koudelka with a good shader can help desaturate some of the colors, and I feel a more muted pallet makes the game look even better.

As impressed as I am with the story, performances, and presentation (after shaders), the gameplay itself leaves a lot to be desired. Navigating the mansion is pretty typical survival horror fare, but there is a distinct lack of puzzles that the player needs to directly interface with to solve. For example, you might find a lock that requires an understanding of the Greek alphabet to open, but Koudelka and her companions will simply glean the answer from a note and apply the solution automatically. There's a puzzle involving some very basic math to change the counterbalance on a scale and another that requires you to rearrange the position of some dolls, and that's about the most you get. At least doing laps through the monastery feels good even if there isn't much meat to the progression. The frustrating thing is, you can see the frame of a good survival horror game in here, Koudelka just doesn't embrace it.

Likewise, the JRPG battle system is good but very dry. You navigate a sort of chess board where your position relative to the enemy's becomes a strategic factor... except magic and ranged weaponry is so grossly overpowered that by the middle of the game you'll probably have everyone outfitted with firearms and advanced spells, allowing you to comfortably take pot shots from the back row. Most battles devolve into spamming your more damaging moves, and while you can spec your characters however you wish, the short list of spells the game provides you bottlenecks your ability to craft particularly unique builds.

Koudelka has all these survival-horror and JRPG elements but it doesn't commit hard enough to either for my tastes, and so it rides out a lot of its short runtime on vibes and good storytelling, which is fine, but there's a better game here that just didn't coalesce.

I could go on, but at some point I'd just end up paraphrasing most of TransWitchSammy's video essay, which you should probably watch instead. She gets into a lot more detail about the production of the game, its themes, and stuff like the soundtrack (which is great), and I'd definitely defer to her as the resident Koudelka expert. I may keep going and give Shadow Hearts a shot, because I am interested in experiencing the series' transformation from this gloomy, mature story about religion, loss, and love to whatever goddamn goof-ass antics act as the driving force behind From the New World.

I've seen several people complain that this is just a repackaging of the GBA game that's compromised in several ways. I don't really know about that because I haven't played a WarioWare game a day in my life, I'm as bare and pure as the day I was born, covered in fluids and screaming in the corner of the WarioWare elevator as the door keeps opening up to wacky minigames. I don't know how I got here and I'm scared.

The multiplayer component seems to be the big draw, but "come over and play WarioWare, Inc: Mega Party Games!" doesn't have the same magnetism today that it probably did in 2003, and for that reason I experienced the game solo. Which, again, is just the GBA game (or so I'm told), and since it's all new to me, I had a good time with it regardless.

I am currently playing through Mario Party 6 with Appreciations and TransWitchSammy, and while that's obviously a more complex game, I do think it's funny to compare how minigames are designed between the two. WarioWare fires its microgames at you rapidly, but they're so simple and intuitive that you're rarely left wondering what's expected of you, which allows the game to maintain its pacing. Mario Party requires a team of adults carefully study the instructions to each minigame, examining them like a technical manual several times over before jumping into a practice game to ensure everything is operating correctly. Saw a log, pick your nose, dodge falling debris... Easy. I do that every day of my life. Navigate the Gomba maze in Hotel Goomba by punching Goombas in the back of the skull to coral them into the correct positions? Yeah, hold up, gonna need to do a couple dry runs.

"But George, that's an unfair comparison. The connection between the two is predicated on the presence of minigames as a generalized concept and is tenuous at best!" Oh, well look at what we have here. A Mario Party defender! Well guess what, I called Dribble and Spitz and they said they're coming to your house tonight!

Jerry, it's Gen Fu! Tengu's here, Fame Douglas is dead, call me back!

Confession time: though I've repeatedly touted Dead or Alive 2 as my favorite game in the series, the majority of my playtime comes from the demo available on the second volume of Dreamcast Generator sample discs. Look, I was about 13-years-old, my parents weren't buying me the jiggle game, but despite DOA2 being patently Gooncore, I swear I liked it because it's fun to play. Jokes on them, anyway. They bought me Sonic Adventure 2. They couldn't have possibly anticipated Rouge the Bat! Nobody could've anticipated Rouge the Bat.......

Part of why DOA2's demo left such a strong impression on me was my total lack of exposure to 3D fighters at that time. I hadn't really played anything like it, and the game's relatively low difficulty coupled with its smooth controls made it a perfect way to ease into a new genre. I've played the full Dreamcast version via emulation over the years, but prior to installing a GDEMU in my system (which I just finished only a couple weeks ago), a copy of Hardcore that I grabbed for the PlayStation 2 was set to be my new version of choice... Until I played Ninja Gaiden Black and had realized Ultimate probably looks about as stunning.

Confession 2: I abhor people who tie their personality to media, but I will forfeit my finances and grant power of attorney to Itagaki if it allows me to fill my life with more Dead or Alive 2. I am as bad as those I criticize, if not worse.

The sharpness of the character models and environments, smooth performance, and glut of additional outfits (with Ninja Gaiden (2004) costumes available for Ayane and Ryu, a nice bonus after just finishing Black) might just make this my favorite release of the game if it weren't for one little thing... Aerosmith. The bulk of DOA2's backstory is bottled up in this opening, and I gotta listen to fucking Steven Tyler? Horrible. The sound of his voice is enough to ruin my day and is a stain on an otherwise flawless game. I'd hit him in the mouth if I weren't so sure he'd unlatch his jaw and swallow me like a god damned Kirby. I can't tell you how much I don't want that to happen to me again.

Thankfully, you can find an incredible amount of story in the game's manual, which might be a useful read if you want to know why there's vats full of Kasumi's or what Tengu's like, whole deal is. It's also completely unnecessary. I suggest you just watch the Dead or Alive movie instead and treat it as the series bible. That's what I've been doing for the last 15+ years and it's been working out just fine.

DOA2 is an arcade fighter through-and-through; easy to pick up and unlikely to demand much more than ten to fifteen minutes of your time if you want to run through a character's single-player campaign. That's exactly what I want from a game like this. Give me enough fun side modes (which DOA2 has plenty of, Survival being my personal favorite), make it feel good to play, offer me some outfits to unlock, and I'm happy. Just don't put Aerosmith in your game. That's all I'm asking, and for the most part, Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate delivers.

My parents shipped me off to a vocational school when I was 16, at their wits end with my hooliganism. I suppose they thought learning how to weld would sort me out or something. This school was a "last stop" for a lot of kids whose parents ran out of rope to give, or who were otherwise court ordered to attend short of ending up in juvie. A considerable amount of the student body had a rougher background than mine and came from homes more fractured or communities that were deeply disenfranchised.

And everyone there loved Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 (also, Gauntlet Legends, but we're not talking about that today.)

Actually, it may be more accurate to say they just loved Dragon Ball. Budokai 3 was the newest game at the time and so it got the most play, but it was just as common to find kids huddled around a CRT watching Dragon Ball GT. The guy who had that GT set was also had a copy of Big Money Rustlas and I'm sorry to report that I've been conditioned through overexposure to adore both. Many flavors of Faygo touched my lips during this era.

The thing about Dragon Ball is that it had penetrated so many social barriers by 2004 that it had attained total cultural saturation. Playing these games, Budokai 3 in particular, and simply sharing a love for the series helped me expand my social bubble and connect with others during a particularly low point in my life. I also mained Kid Buu, so everyone knew I was a motherfucker. My Dragon Ball GT loving, Juggalo, furry friend taught me to never hide who you are, and who I am is a little pink goblin that can't be touched and will send his fist through the ground to punch you in the groin.

Though I'm typically bad at fighting games, there was a period where I was so practiced at Budokai 3 that nailing precision dodges and teleport chains was purely reflexive. Sure, this is partly due to being confined to a facility where the only other things to do was play billiards or hang out at a rundown single-screen theater that mostly ran crap like The Ladykillers, but you know, some of that was pure talent! Revisiting it now for the first time since leaving that school felt like slipping into a warm bath. Familiar, cozy, and-- whoa wait shit why is Cell spamming his ultimate like that HELP!!

Budokai 3 plays a lot better than the previous two games but is still compromised in several areas. Characters control largely the same as each other with little in the way of unique playstyles, but the capsule system feels more robust and better allows you to create a build unique to you, for example. Techniques look flashy and do well to capture key moments from the show and manga, but the rush attack and accompanying button guessing minigame wears thin and becomes a pace breaker fast. There's a lot of give and take here, but you can unlock Kid Goku so I'm afraid it's just the best Budokai game there is. I'm sorry. I don't make the rules.

The story mode is limited to 11 of the roster's 32 characters, and most of its replayability comes in the form of alternate routes, hidden fights, and secrets. There's a good amount to do, but the jog through DBZ's main four arcs is severely truncated and at times plays fast and loose with its canon (Goku survives the Raditz fight in Piccolo's story, for example, but the game doesn't explore this fully.) Dialog is rife with spelling errors, kerning issues, and there's a number of portraits that are off-model. Characters who existed mostly on the periphery like Tien or Yamcha or even those who were present in the story but largely inactive during long stretches are represented here, but much of their story modes involve bouncing between disperate points on a map to get maybe two or three lines of dialog... Many of the Dragon Ball games of this era just assume you're deeply familiar with the story and don't make much of an effort, so it's not surprising that Budokai 3 offloads a considerable amount of its narrative to your imagination.

And I'm fine with that. Budokai 3 isn't perfect by any means, but like the very boring man that I am, I'm perfectly capable of recognizing its faults and enjoying it regardless. That's only possible with the maturity laying bricks for two years builds... I think, I don't know.

I had planned on replaying this much further down the road (maybe around September), but as Akira Toriyama's untimely passing affected fans all over the world, it made me reflect on my time with Budokai 3 and appreciate something I understood back in 2004: Dragon Ball suffers no barriers.

What we have here is an incredible action game with a high skill ceiling. Would be a shame if someone added worms to it...

First things first: Ninja Gaiden Black looks incredible running on a Series X. There is a level of clarity and sharpness here that you just won't see in most other backwards compatible Xbox games - not unless it's also developed by Team Ninja - and even some 360 games upscaled to 4k don't look nearly as good. You can see every pixel on Rachel, and I know because I've spent hours in the lab analyzing her model. I have access to high-end Digital Foundry tools, and you will not believe the frame graph I've generated for Ryu's crotch-- this technology was NOT intended for these purposes!

Now this is where I out myself as a hack, because I did not beat this game on Ultra Lord-God Ninja mode or whatever the hell Ninja Gaiden Black's most powerful warriors insist is the one true way to enjoy the game. I'm a Centrist Ninja, I think any way you enjoy a game is the best way to enjoy it, even if you're a dog. A ninja dog, as some might be.

Even though I lack the requisite amount of skill to play Black on its highest difficulty, I'm more than capable of seeing what the game is going for and respect how technical it is. Look up any boss tutorial and you'll get a sense for how layered and complex Ninja Gaiden's combat can be. It's worth noting that none of the strategies therein actually helped me overcome some of Black's nastiest bosses when applied directly, but they did give me insight into the game's underlying mechanics which allowed me to develop tactics that worked for me. Brute force is seldom the answer, and Black rewards experimentation and thoughtful play, which is appreciable on any level of difficulty.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can jump onboard with the sentiment that this is the best action game ever. The rote reuse of certain bosses on normal difficulties and below can get tiresome, and though you can mitigate this by playing at higher levels, the trade comes at the cost of adding more mobs to boss battles. The few tastes I had of this during my playthrough didn't leave a positive impression, as the increased number of enemies didn't pay nice with the camera. An egregious case of this comes early with the second boss fight, where you have to manage an enemy on horseback running between the two edges of the arena while contending with wizards sniping at you and vanishing.

As the game crept on and abandoned interesting traversal for intense combat challenges in its last two levels, I found my investment waning. In a way, this is true to Ninja Gaiden's NES lineage, because like those games I found myself nearing the end and thinking "yeah I've had enough, I'm good." I understand clawing your way through several small rooms of meaty and tenacious enemies and rolling right into a boss rush is meant to be a true test of your skills, but I personally didn't find the attrition nearly as enjoyable as others. This shouldn't be taken as a full-throated dismissal of the game's combat, which I do like overall, but I did find myself waxing between disengagement and frustration towards the end.

Maybe some of my issues stem from a real bad case of Resident Evil brain for which I'm entering the terminal stages, because I found the parts of Black where you're roaming around and solving puzzles to be the most enjoyable. Yeah, I know, I'm a freak for thinking the combat is secondary to platforming and picking up weird totems to trek back to locked doors a level-and-a-half away. I have to live with myself every day of my life.

It's easy to get lost in the minutia of Ninja Gaiden Black's combat and difficulties, and if you really want to trip headfirst down the rabbit hole, you should check out all the subtle and big differences in Ninja Gaiden's many releases. I actually own a copy of 2004's Ninja Gaiden, which I mistakenly bought thinking it was a totally different game. It was only when I was a breath away from grabbing Sigma under the same assumption that I realized what I'd done, so I just have a spare lying around if anyone wants it. Just post your full address in the comments (DO NOT DO THIS, I WILL DELETE YOUR COMMENT AND SEND YOU A COPY OF AMERICA'S AMY INSTEAD AND IT WILL BE ON YOU FOR TRUSTING ME.)

Some problems inherent to the game and more still that amount to personal taste keep Ninja Gaiden Black from leaving the same impression on me that it does others, but I certainly see why people feel so passionately about it. I eagerly await them telling me how I played the game wrong and am a bastard for it, which is always the best way to get people to enjoy things the same way you do.

Panzer Dragoon Orta is another one of those games I mostly remember hearing about in magazines. It received a lot of praise at the time, but being as it was an Xbox exclusive, it was forever out of reach like other well-regarded classics of that generation, like Jet Set Radio Future and Blinx the Time Sweeper. You have no idea how much I longed to play Azurik: Rise of Perathia, there was a whole universe of games just beyond my grasp!

Unlike JSRF and its own predecessors, Orta is actually fairly accessible today thanks to the Xbox marketplace, and used copies are still reasonably priced. I've been thinking of grabbing one as recent delistings has inverted my prior (psychotic) belief that I need digital backups of all my physical games. Gotta cover all my bases, I need to be able to play this grungy-ass port of the PC version of Panzer Dragoon whenever I'd like, that's important.

In any case, it's nice that I finally got to check this game off my list after 20+ years of thinking "I really should play Panzer Dragoon Orta," and I'm happy that it lived up to years of continued hype. Orta feels like a culmination of Panzer Dragoon's narrative and mechanical ideas, borrowing from all three previous games in one way or another to create what I think is the most fully realized entry in the series.

Obviously, Orta models itself after the on-rails entries rather than continuing down the turn-based RPG path laid out by Saga. That's not to say it jettisons all of that game's identity, of course. Orta is similarly narrative heavy and makes good on Saga's world building and storyline by focusing on Azel and (presumably) Edge's daughter. Look, it's a little hard to say, Azel just downloaded some DNA and I'm not about to check the file properties on that. Orta also borrows from Saga's positional combat in a way that feels very naturalistic, so much so that I had to question if it was present in Zwei.

Speaking of Zwei, the dragon yet again has the ability to grow over time, but no longer does so based on end-of-level scores. Rather, it changes shape in real-time when enough power-ups are collected in a given form to advance it to the next stage of its evolution. This feels like a natural progression from Zwei, and though the effect might seem quaint today, that level of skeletal deformation and changes to texture mapping is one of Orta's most impressive features. Being able to swap between different attack types also adds a layer of depth, and the deeper into the game you progress, the more rapidly you'll find yourself flicking between forms in order to manage different enemy types. Though I found this a bit overwhelming initially, once you find the right flow and develop an eye for what enemy types you need to counter, it feels pretty good.

Unfortunately, I live in an imperfect, shitty, fucked up world where a sequel to Saga and the overall health of the franchise was solely dependent on how well Orta performed. Since then, we've gotten a remake of the first game that released 18 years after Sega put the series on ice, and people tore it apart for reasons I still can't quite wrap my head around. I think it's safe to say the book is closed on Panzer Dragoon, and that's a shame, but I do think Orta is a good note to go out on. There's no cliffhanger ending here to weigh down on me, though Orta's story is left open, and the gameplay is so tight and refined that I'm not left with a sense that they needed one more game to get things right.

Sometimes you just gotta be grateful for the Panzer Dragoons you got.

Memento mori -- remember, you will not have enough time to complete all your Social Links if you focus on the old couple and their stupid persimmon tree the second you start the game. Do any of these kids even go to school!?

Apologies to FES devotees, but the "Persona 5-fication" of Persona 3 has, in my eyes, been nothing but a net gain. Sure, it's upsetting that the only other legally accessible version of Persona 3 is a ho-hum port of a compromised portable release, but I'm no stranger to the base game, and when stacking it up side-by-side with Reload, it's hard to not internalize the remake as being the superior way to play the game.

Pretty much every facet of the original is improved or otherwise preserved, and nothing has been downscaled or infringed upon in a manner I would view as harmful. That extends to giving the player direct control over their party, a choice that was originally made to suit Persona 3's themes of communication and bonding by treating each member of SEES as their own individual with their own will. You could largely avoid Mitsuru's habitual casting of Marin Karin by engaging with command presets, my issue is not with the AI. I just think having input over 25% of my team in battle makes the game a little too passive and boring. Well, not anymore. Now I have total control, me, and I'm using my newfound agency to... habitually cast Marin Karin-- wait what the hell

An expanded list of spells and abilities adds a lot more variety to combat, and having more input over how your Personas are built permits more strategic planning over the original's randomized inheritance. All quality-of-life changes that are more or less standard parts of the modern SMT experience, effectively bringing Persona 3 on par with Persona 5 and Shin Megami Tensei V. It is likewise as easy as those games, but being accessible to new audiences isn't necessarily a bad thing. I opted to play through Reload on hard and found the difficulty curve to be more enjoyable this way, though by the time you reach the end game you'll still likely be overpowered. Armageddon is basically the "bully The Reaper" button, and I feel a little bad about it, but that's free EXP so what're you gonna do?

Even the individual blocks of Tartarus, Persona 3's massive procedurally generated labyrinth, are fleshed out in a way that makes navigating less rote and tiresome... though it doesn't completely alleviate some of the tedium. This is perhaps one area where Reload is a bit too slavish to the original game. Enemy designs are turned over and recycled constantly, and the limited number of blocks ensures that even though the geometry is more varied, you'll still probably get sick of exploring before reaching a border floor.

Though I've seen people upset that Reload recasts everyone (except Tara Platt, who apparently had the one unassailable performance), I do think the new cast is excellent, and emotional beats that I found affecting when I played the original game were even more impactful despite anticipating them thanks in large part to better voice direction, more emotive character models, and more dynamic cinematography. I've seen mixed opinions on the soundtrack and changes to Persona 3's aesthetic, but I'm way into all of it. These are my favorite versions of familiar songs, I think the character portraits are a clear step up and I adore the hard lines segmenting areas of shading, I am 1,000% down with the water theming in the menus, and I think the new SEES uniforms are great and actually make the party feel like a well-backed force.

I also have nothing but praise for the new Not S. Links Reload adds, which provides the male members of SEES additional screentime for their individual stories to develop. I think this helps bond the player with each member of the core party even more than the original did, something that Persona 3's two sequels got right by giving each member their own dedicated Social Links. Strega and their ideology are also given a greater amount of time to develop, which helps build them as a credible threat and enhances their presence in the story. However, I must dock points for not being able to date Takaya, I can fix him

Reload might be me at my most defensive of remakes, and at my most insistent that changing material is not inherently bad. The few ways in which Reload does lack is still a noted step up from the original, and the content which is outright excluded is material I didn't care about anyway (I think The Answer is the closest any expanded content has come to essentially being an IGN "ending explained!" article, and unfathomably boring besides.) That said, I think it's possible to feel this way about Reload and still lament the fact that the original game is only accessible through piracy or by overpaying on the aftermarket, and that even more Persona 3 media is outright lost to time.

"It's like Smash before Smash" is a sentiment I've run across throughout the years in regard to Fighters Megamix, and I think the comparison is a bit discourteous. Megamix follows directly in the lineage of Virtua Fighter and Fighting Vipers, and while I don't care much for those games, they are closer to a proper fighting experience when stacked against Smash Bros.'s distinct party-brawler flavor.

The roster isn't even as broad, being less a celebration of Sega's many franchises and instead more focused on AM2 specifically. Even Sonic is represented by Bean and Bark, two characters from the AM2 developed Sonic the Fighters. I've been pretty vocal about not liking AM2's Saturn era fighting games, I believe I called them "shit from ass" and said something to the effect of "Yu Sazuki is spending three hours in the contraption," but I gotta admit... They have something here with Megamix. It is not bad, I might even go so far as to call it good.

The general feel and responsiveness of Megamix might not be on par with Dead or Alive (for me, at least), but it is a noted improvement over the developer's past games and conveys some sense that they've just learned how to put one of these together better. Characters move smoothly, strafing around opponents feels a lot better, and impacts are satisfying - especially when the game's physics freak out and cause your opponent to hit a wall at a weird angle and bounce off into space, which happened more than once. I also think designing each character around the more idiosyncratic qualities of the games they hail from was a smart move and adds a surprising amount of depth.

There's also multiple single player "routes," which send the player through seven fights against a themed set of combatants, like girls, dirty fighters, and "muscle" (see: himbos.) Completing each route unlocks a new character in Megamix's already sizeable roster and provides more of a reason to stick with the game. Having to log 84 hours to unlock the AM2 palm tree is completely unreasonable though. I've opted for leaving the console running, but it's taken on a reddish glow and appears to be pulsing while emanating a horribly loud hum... I don't think you're supposed to leave a Japanese Sega Saturn on that long!

I'm glad AM2 finally figured out this whole 3D figh[USER HAS DIED IN SEGA SATURN INDUCED EXPLOSION]

"The US military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn't real, so why should you care?"

I began collecting physical copies of Xbox 360 games almost a year ago, anticipating seventh generation releases might suffer from the same degree of inflation that's plagued earlier console libraries in the aftermarket. This was perhaps a foolish concern as many seventh gen games are still widely available on digital storefronts, but occasionally there's an exception, a game that gets delisted and which sees a hike in value that makes it highly sought after and prohibitively expensive. I picked up Spec Ops: The Line last March, and I'd say the near five times increase in its market value is a damn good ROI. That's why they call me Mr. Money.

Being delisted and thus becoming more relevant also served as a great motivator to finally take the game off my Xbox shelf and fight the good fight, oorah! shoot a bunch of unarmed civilians. My curiosity for it had been mounting for some time anyway, in no small part to the march of retroactive playthroughs and ensuing Hot Takes that have ended up in front of me with increasing frequency. Some of the more disparaging opinions I've seen cast Spec Ops as boorish, weakly imitating the broad strokes of its inspirations, most notably Heart of Darkness. Hell, the main antagonist, John Konrad, shares a name suspiciously similar to author Joseph Conrad -- it doesn't get more on-the-nose than that.

Indeed, when you compare Spec Ops: The Line to the quality of meta-narrative games releasing today, it seems downright quaint, maybe even oafish in how it makes its case against the institution of war and the distressing consequences of "justifiable violence." With a setup that amounts to "respected military leader has gone off the grid and established a cult" that uses borrowed imagery from Jacob's Ladder, and story beats that are undercut by the repeated pop of achievemnts, I can get where people are coming from.

However, Spec Ops is very much a game of its era, and it's easy to take for granted what it's doing when you aren't being mindful of the climate of gaming circa the late-aughts and early 2010s. This released during the height of Call of Duty's popularity, in a time when military shooters played more like propaganda for America's actions in the Middle East. These games frequently cast the player as the hero, whose actions were unassailable or at least justifiable enough that the player was never made to see or consider the consequences of what they'd done. America's Army was allowed to hit the mass market roughly around this time, for chrissake.

Spec Ops is a military shooter about military shooters, and directly addresses the way gaming culture insulated players to the violence of war by glamorizing it. It accomplishes this in ways both subtle and heavy-handed, typically within the same set piece, like the infamous white phosphorus scene which is set up like a typical mortar firing mission that then forces you to slowly walk through the aftermath and survey the horrific results of what you've done. Kid Coolout angrily yelling at Nolan North for having yet another mental break might functionally serve as an awkward statement of intent by the writers, and other games before Spec Ops looked into the camera and stated in no unclear terms that "war bad," but the very specific and pointed way in which Spec Ops attacks its particular brand of shooter makes what it's doing both novel and necessary.

I especially enjoyed some of the ways Spec Ops preys on how players might approach a game of this type during this era, too. The opening sequence has one of your squad members attempting to reason with a group of insurgents by speaking their language, leaving you in the dark as to what is being discussed while another squad member gets in your ear about an interactive piece of the environment. "Hey, that bus is full of sand, if you shoot it you can take them out..." Yeah. Yeah, what's a little war crime in my shooter? This is a video game, I'm doing that all the time. I see a window flashing yellow and a prompt that says "shoot" and I squeeeeze the trigger...

Of course, a lot of these choices - and those that are larger and more narratively driven - are an illusion. "I didn't have a choice," is something Walker repeatedly states to make peace with his actions. It's a video game, you did what was expected of you, so why should you stop and feel bad about it? The more you progress and the more Walker deteriorates physically and mentally, the more you're hit with these excuses. Even the loading screens trade helpful gameplay hints to press you on what you've done or otherwise steep you in Walker's headspace.

"To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless."

None of this is particularly special when viewed strictly through a modern lens, but as a piece of work so heavily characterized by when it came out, I think it's pretty damn great. Less great, however, is its gameplay, which even by 2012 standards was about as dry as a cover-shooter could possibly get. This is partly the result of being hit with delays, one of which was to force a multiplayer mode into the final product, as was the trend at the time. I didn't bother to mess around in that, but having watched a few videos, it does appear very tacked on and lacks the core game's subversive spirit. If only that time were spent elsewhere, like incorporating more dynamic elements to the sand that's blanketed Dubai as was originally intended... oh well.

I think there's a lot of fair criticisms out there about Spec Ops: The Line, but I also think some of them are perhaps too colored by what is expected of a game today rather than appreciating the atmosphere of the time. There's enough of value here that I think it's worth playing even outside its notoriety as a delisted game, and as my pal Larry Davis pointed out to me in private, it's also crazy that this is where a series of 10$ PlayStation 1 games eventually ended up.

"You are still a good person."

(Sad "oorahs")