Promises a great new twist on an old genre.

Delivers low content (25 flat rides and 3 coaster types), some incredibly unintuitive and clunky building controls for even stuff like building a simple path, let alone an entire coaster, and an amount of visual and gameplay bugs that would feed Timon and Pumbaa for a decade.

Such a disappointment. Especially because the actual management part of the game seems extremely good, and even though lacking in numbers, the rides present do look great. But the building part is bordering unplayable.

What an incredible game.

It's wild to me how Kojima manages to keep raising the bar with each successive Metal Gear Solid game. While I enjoyed the overall craziness of MGS2's story a bit more, I think MGS3 is an overall better game with more polished gameplay, an amazing soundtrack and an emotionally resonant ending.

MGS3 places a lot more emphasis on survival and stealth this time around. With the addition of things like camo and replaceable suppressors, you're encouraged to use stealth whenever you can (although I still got into a lot of gunfights because I truly cannot be stealthy for some reason). The boss battles continue to be absurd spectacles with some of the the most fun mechanics of any game I've ever played. I love how each MGS game has its own colorful cast of unhinged antagonists that you get to take on.

The ending of MGS3 was a particular high point for me. Although the story here is relatively tame compared to MGS2, I think the writing is a bit stronger in MGS3, and the ending fight/cutscenes were really powerful. I genuinely felt conflicted with my feelings about how the game ended, and I always think that's a sign of a well written game to me.

These first 3 MGS games have been such a blast to play through. I value narrative above all else in video games, and I love the ambitious off-the-wall storytelling that Kojima and the team have put on display here. Can't wait to keep making my way through this series.

R-Type might be the series I give the lightest jabs imaginable when I want to critique it through written words. It's not necessarily the childhood trauma speaking from a certain SNES iteration whooping my ass, or having a handheld version to strain my eyes on through a screen that cannot be looked at clearly from any angle regardless of applicable worm lights.

I just like good art direction, a lot. It can carry some of the most mid shit ever if it was left to nothing but the bare gameplay elements. That's not to say R-Type doesn't have good gameplay elements, I love the force option, it's actually one of my favorite mechanics in shmups and can lend itself well to proper strategy. Of course however, strategy is something you need to learn and do on the fly, and in shmups you only have so much time to conduct this when obstacles and bullets are thrown at you willy-nilly-vanilly, and failure means a trip back to a potentially poorly-placed checkpoint. Personally, I feel R-Type has a fantastic first half. The battleship stage in particular I think is an amazing piece to really teach the player on how to utilize the force option.

These good vibes though only last so long, because as always arcade agony rears it's ugly head starting at stage six and onward. I think with some elbow grease I could find some hoops to jump through and commit to mental gymnastics to rationalize these last three stages, but the second loop left me in such a bad state that I just can't find the energy to start the circus act. Full disclosure, I effectively beat this game four times today if you count both loops, and I did break down and use save states. With practice I could 1cc the first loop and gain more adoration for this, but that second loop is an obvious trolljob toward MLG gamers who enjoy looking for safe paths/spots in levels with constant bullet sprays that weren't meant to be there originally. It's a shame, because it's obvious how much this influenced god knows how many of it's kind with it's giant vagina bosses, and iconic first stage boss with thousands of names thanks to terrible localization.

"Hey, what should we call this guy?"
"Gladiator. Looks like a gladiator."
"Yeah, I can see that cheddar cheese Xenomorph fighting Samnites in the Colosseum. Absolutely, good idea sir."

Will still never get where that one came from, lol. At least the Bydo will never scare people again. (Spoilers: they scare people a lot more after this.)

First loop fine, second loop bad. Don't do it, I gained five pounds from it.

To me, Katamari Damacy is the margherita pizza of video games. It's one of the simplest yet most innately fulfilling concepts in the medium: roll up things with your ball to become big to roll up more things. While this description is accurate however, it doesn't do justice towards the game's underlying complexity. Committal tank controls combined with the seemingly strewn about yet carefully placed objects of varying sizes means that Katamari forces players to consider both the micro and macro design which the game effortlessly excels at. The player must weave in and out of clusters of increasingly large objects, building up their sphere while also mapping out the optimal paths (snagging relevant objects while factoring in how their shapes, once collected, will alter the roll) and keeping in mind how larger objects must be avoided at first and later consumed in the growing mass as the world appears to shrinks around you. For this reason, I think it's not just a simple power fantasy, and instead more closely resembles pure obstacle escalation. Katamari Damacy really drills in the sense of player progression from how the world unfolds from sense of scale (which is why it gets away with only three distinct stages) and even seemingly inverts its own concepts with side stages that force you to avoid smaller themed objects just to get your katamari to the perfect size for the ultimate outcome: the reward is made that much more gratifying with just a bit of restraint.

This all works seamlessly because Katamari is the king of player feedback. It can certainly feel frustrating at first, getting tossed around like fireworks by these moving objects that dwarf you, but the game knows exactly how to communicate your inherent progress. As your ball exponentially swells, these moving objects go from sending you flying, to lacking any significant impact upon contact, to eventually spotting the player and running away from the growing catastrophe. There's nothing more viscerally satisfying than coming back to mobile obstacles that were pushing you around and flattening them, hearing their cry as they too become stuck in the jumbled mess of rolling flotsam while the King of the Cosmos quips in the background. Simply put, the concept never outstays its welcome.

Going back to the opening metaphor, it requires much finesse to make all these different concepts sing together with little friction in a video game, this fusion of audio-visual presentation and player input. That said, to successfully disguise its intricate design and depth beneath its far-reaching artistic vision and simple yet realized gameplay mechanics takes a master's touch. Katamari Damacy does not try to explain why it works or how it succeeds, because it simply is, and it just does. Perhaps I've moved onto greater and grander things since that have built off of this, but I have to admit that sometimes, you just can't beat the basics in life. It's always worth going back for a slice or two every now and then, just to remind yourself that this is why video games exist in the first place: because underneath all this talk of focus and cohesion, video games are just goddamn fun.

Also, it's fantastic hangover food for you and your buddies after a long night, when they come calling you for content and suddenly it's 3 AM in a packed Discord call where everyone is wailing "YOU'REEEEE LONNEEELLLY ROLLING STARRRR" as this growing, screaming ball of flailing limbs bounces helplessly about for yet another awry creation. Let the good times roll.

It may be easy to write off Pokemon Snap as yet another gimmicky spinoff of Nintendo's most lucrative franchise, but looking back, it’s honestly a very refreshing take on the arcade rail-shooter. HAL Laboratory managed to transform a gameplay vessel known for flashy, action-packed titles into one of the most relaxing and heartwarming diversions in the N64 library. Just consider how the mechanics were translated: the guns became your toolkit, in the form of your camera and your apples + Pester Balls to interact with the environment and local wildlife, and the “damage” became a photography scoring system as you carefully manipulate your surroundings and wait for the perfect moment to take your shot. The game has excellent replayability due to its depth of interactions packed within the span of a few hours, and becomes a fantastic exercise of discovery and optimization: it’s quite satisfying figuring out exactly how every Pokemon can be lured and baited into favorable positions to maximize your score while unlocking a few new courses along the way. Furthermore, experimentation never feels punishing because courses are already naturally short (within 5 min per run) and you’ll later unlock the Dash Engine to accelerate your cart if there are any particular sections you want to get to immediately. It’s a fantastic way to encourage finding as many unique interactions as possible while rewarding acute player awareness; my favorite examples include stringing together multiple far-away shots of Lapras across the beach stage to finally snag an up-close profile photograph at the end, or realizing that you can "feed" Grimer with enough Pester Balls to spawn Muk. Of course, this goes without saying that nothing quite hits the spot like taking pictures of happy, dancing creatures on a chill Pokemon safari.

What does hold Pokemon Snap back a bit is the scoring system. It unfortunately feels like a crapshoot trying to snag a perfect score, since Professor Oak’s requirements regarding size seem a bit nebulous besides the obvious guideline of “make the Pokemon as large as possible within the frame with the whole body included” and pose specifications feel even more arbitrary (given that the Pokemon is facing forward of course), with anything that’s not an aggressive or flashy Pokemon stance often meeting the fate of “it’s so-so,” whatever that means. Also, needing to be exactly pin-point accurate on the reticle in order to associate a score with a particular Pokemon species should work well in theory, but this concept doesn't quite hold up in scramble situations when multiple species are present in the frame and none of them are covered by the reticle. Case in point, Professor Oak was very sure that this was meant to be a picture of Haunter. Let’s just say that being at the forefront of Pokemon research with a PhD doesn’t necessarily make him the most qualified to judge photography. The flimsy scoring mechanics aren't a huge deal for most of the game, given that unlocking courses seems to be locked behind photographing a certain number of different species as opposed to sheer score accrual, but it does hurt the post-game appeal of trying to beat the challenge scores.

Regardless, Pokemon Snap remains a somewhat overlooked and innovative twist on a classic video game genre, popularizing photography games and spawning many spiritual indie successors that have begun sprouting in recent years. While a part of me does wonder what HAL Laboratory could have done with a bigger development budget, given that there are only six main courses and only 63 out of the original 151 Pokemon were included, I have to respect how so many different hidden secrets were packed into a game that can be easily completed in a single afternoon. It never fails to put a smile on my face, playing the Pokemon flute and watching Snorlax bob its chubby face to the rhythm, or luring a horde of Charmanders from over a hill with apples and snapping shots of them jumping joyously about. I’m very much looking forward to committing to a full run of the long-awaited sequel later this year to see how the franchise decided to expand from this snug and breezy little package.

Pros:
- Story has a lot of heart in how it handles its themes on mental health, with a particularly beautiful ending
- Lovely pixel style and very pleasant soundtrack
- Strong lead characters (Atma and Raya)
- Surreal fantasy in 90s Indonesia made for an interesting setting
- Multitude of small mini-games and (admittedly simple) puzzles helped add some variety to the gameplay
- You can pet and name a bunch of cats

Cons:
- Much of the game is spent running back and forth through the same few areas looking for items to collect, which got a bit repetitive and slowed the pacing down

cock: legend of the blowjobbos

now that that's over with, on with the review:

Croc is the little mascot who could. They even gave him a backpack to disguise how uninteresting his design is. Don't you love backpacks???

The game is so ok. You collect things and go through levels. There are 6 Gobbos to collect per level, with the last being put behind a bonus room at the end of the level, which is sometimes platforming but other times a minigame. You get one chance at this minigame, which usually starts with a tenuous indication of what you need to do, so by the time you've figured it out you've already lost. Now you need to do the entire level again. This game doesn't want me to 100% it.

Although I gave up on even completing it at all. I do like some things: the music, the odd bit of satisfying platforming, and I even like how Croc controls (with an analog stick, probably sucks with a D-Pad). But sadly for Croc, I had an existential realisation that I don't play games to tolerate them until I reach an ending that will absolutely be unsatisfying. I'm sorry Croc. Like a failed relationship, we've both learned an important lesson from our time together and I'm sorry we must part. Goodbye.

They just fucking nailed it. Do I have to say anything else? Well not really but I'm going to.

RE4 is an intensely rare game. I think I'm quoting Noah Gervais here, but it truly did come out fully formed; both a new genre was birthed overnight, but they also got so much so right that it still stands today as a pillar of everything its genre can be.

RE4R is an intensely rare remake. It so deeply understands what makes the original work, and not only recreates all the best parts of the original with a deep love for it, but also has the courage to go beyond and expand upon it in such interesting ways.

The combat still has so much of what you loved, but with all the lovely modern sensibilities from RE2 remake integrated into it. They expanded on the knife in ways I suspect will be controversial amongst diehard fans of the OG, but I love it. Essentially making it way more useful, but also having it be another resource you need to keep track of. Parrying is quite ridiculous but it fits RE4 Leon so well. After all, isn't the biggest change from the old survival horror entries to more modern RE4-likes just how cool Leon is and how eager he is to face his enemies head-on? Let him parry that motherfucking chainsaw. He deserves it.

Speaking of being fucking cool as hell, I was really curious/nervous about how everyone's characterisations would turn out. There was certainly room for improvement in the original (a lot of the characters were likeable but didn't have much actual character to them (Ashley)) but if they went too far into seriousness they would lose what made the original's tone so special. Well, they somehow had their cake and ate that mfer too. Leon is more sad, angry and visibly scarred from the events of RE2R, yet still ready to quip at a moment's notice, and somehow it works so well. I think this is going to end up being quite subjective, but I never thought they were reaching to include certain lines. Leon is less silly action man, and more cop who is so done with these zombies that he's gonna shit-talk them all day. I couldn't stop laughing every time him and Salazar interacted, because Salazar is still a silly little castellan man, but Leon is just that bit more grounded than he was before, allowing him to act as a (somewhat) straight man to this gleeful creepy funhouse castle boy. And I've gotta say I loved every cutscene with Leon and Luis together, and Leon and Ada together. They all have so much charisma and chemistry together. A joy to behold.

Ashley is also a huge improvement. She's still absolutely scared, but has so much courage. Ashley coming to trust Leon is handled quite subtly too, mostly done through gameplay early on. Her questioning certain things Leon asks her to do that would be questionable but eventually seeing his logic, both of them asking the other if they're ok after particularly painful fights, it works.

And I also loved how they expanded on the treasure/PESETA/upgrade systems. Giving you more choice with gem placements, way more lil side quests like the blue medallions, and especially the shooting range which is like the best fun fair attraction you've ever been to. It even has gacha! It all combines to keep my almonds activated consistently throughout the entire experience. Also the egg is still in the oven, which was the best part of the original.

Some people have called this game soulless and honestly I couldn't disagree more. First of all, we all know the soul is stored in the Regenerador ass jiggle physics. Second of all, this game is just bursting with love for the original, a clear understanding of what made it good, and a willingness to go out there a bit and juggle between the OG and their own take on the material. And that's exactly what this: their own take on the same gameplay philosophies. It doesn't supplant the original, they both stand together. They're both kings in my book.

It must have been crazy for people in the western world to see Final Fantasy go directly from FF1 to this. Much more emphasis is given to the story over the typical JRPG progression of: starting as a regular guy in a town at level 1, going out and fighting animals, getting lost in the overworld and starting to curse the existence of random battles. This one is far more linear, which sounds like it might go against the idea of a big adventure, but really it just cuts out a ton of bullshit and gives the game more focus. Despite JRPGs being one of the only genres of the time to have big maps to explore, I think those of this era work best with a certain amount of linearity - see Super Mario RPG, Earthbound, probably a bunch more examples when I get round to playing them.

Speaking of Earthbound, my favourite thing about the combat in that game (although it takes ages to get there) is the rolling HP. It's still turn-based, but having your HP gradually decrease after being attacked adds much needed urgency to your heals and finishing off battles as quickly as possible to presumably staunch the bleeding these children are experiencing. Well, thanks to the patented Active Time Battle system, every fight in this game has urgency. Everyone has their own speed stat that determines when they're gonna attack next. Those goblins aren't gonna wait for you to decide to slash them. They're on a schedule. They've got an appointment for gobbling at 2pm and need this fight to be over as soon as possible. Don't think too hard about that last sentence.

A cool intersection of gameplay and story is the sheer number of times your party changes. People move in and out of your party at the whim of the game's story, which I really like because other games would be like "nooooo!!! you can't just add a character 10 levels above everyone else to the party!!!" but FF4 is like, don't worry bro, it'll work out. And it does. I appreciate the willingness to give you fairly overpowered characters when it makes sense to, and then just balance the enemies accordingly. Another advantage to having a revolving door party is that your playstyle and strategies change up every hour or so. You might lose a tank melee character and gain two sorcerers. Better put the remaining tank up front, and use the sorcerers in the back to heal everyone and start focusing more on the elemental weaknesses of enemies. Not to mention all these characters have things to say and things to do in the story, which is normal now but pretty cool for 1991 on a 16-bit console. I wouldn't say the story is particularly high art or technically proficient, but it had Themes, a pinch of meaning, and at least a few characters I did end up caring about. At a bare minimum, it made me want to keep playing to see what it was gonna pull next. That's a low bar, but I've played Breath of Fire so believe me when I say these games can miss that bar.

Now to talk some mad shit about the game since I've been very positive so far. I don't think I'll ever like random battles. Very controversial opinion I know. I just don't vibe with each footstep feeling like playing Russian roulette with the bullet being about a minute of enemies that are the equivalent of Desert Bus - easy enough to coast through but you can't stop paying attention juuuust in case you total the whole thing. Even if you get rewarded for winning, sometimes I just wanna explore and look for chests please. It's a system that I haven't found a satisfying iteration of yet.
Also, the translation in the original NTSC release is a bit sketchy. I usually felt like I at least got the gist of what they wanted to convey, but what hurts it most is the severe text box limitations from differences in how much you can convey in Japanese vs. English within a certain number of characters. It does lead to some lines being slightly baffling. That's what I get for forgetting to do two minutes of research before playing a 20 hour JRPG. A quick look at available translations seems to conclude that the 3D remake has a considerably better script, as well as there being numerous fan translations, so look into it!

I'm not entirely sure why I chose this as the start of my old JRPG expedition over FF6, which was originally the plan, but I'm glad I did. I think this game has less baggage in terms of being an all-timer you have to experience, and to be honest I just wanted something chill to play before TotK comes out. Having looked into how pioneering this game was, I think it was the start of most things I value in this genre. It might be half a star higher with a better translation, but I really enjoyed my time here; it's truly a big hunk of lovely JRPG beef. The story comes at you fast, it's surprisingly investing, and there's plenty of meat and potatoes JohnRingoPaulGeorge mechanics to sink your teeth into. What I'm trying to say is that you should eat The Beatles. And play this game.

To quote another Capcom game, "a solid beginning may lead to a perfect ending". A solid beginning was something that Street Fighter V unfortunately didn't really have, and it pretty much haunted it for the rest of it's life, even if it deserved the contempt or not.

So what can Capcom do to deliver this solid beginning to 6? Well, how about a fun as shit mode where you make your own self-insert, and run around Metro City delivering shoryukens to the back of some old lady's head and initiate fights with everyone you see? A Yakuza-like perhaps, but for me it's Mortal Kombat Deception's Konquest Mode expanded and perfected. It turns out all you need to attract more casual fans is a cool single player mode that just so happens to have a neat fighting game attached to it. Vets like myself love it too, because the Capcom references and lore drops never stop falling on top of you, and the cellphone interactions with the fighters is so fucking adorable. God, it's probably the best mode I've ever played in a fighting game.

Capcom is always Capcom, they do silly things constantly, but here they've proved that they've learned from the last game. I haven't felt this good about a Street Fighter entry since Third Strike, and obviously it remains to be seen whether this can have that kind of longevity. Regardless, everyone I know who's playing is absolutely fuckin' happy, and you know what? I'm fuckin' happy. It feels so nice seeing the game launch this well after V's clumsy-ass stumble out of the starting gate. I do think there's a special kind of quality to having Street Fighter do good, and attract all this attention even from friends in my circles who don't normally play fighting games, perhaps more good things will come in the end....more fighting game friends.....yes....let's fuckin' go. Yes, I WANT YOU TO PLAY FUCKIN' FIGHTING GAMES!!

For now, I have high hopes.... perhaps a perfect beginning may lead to an even better ending. Rooting for ya champ.

First game is perfect but this one is better. More rolling but with more varied objectives, a bunch more content, and a goofy meta story. Still makes you feel like a mad scientist as you go “YES! YES!” as you roll up buildings and shit. I also like that each level has multiple objectives to master. God tier soundtrack, similar remake quality to the first reroll, etc etc.

4.5 because the new five levels range from bad to okay to one reasonably fun one, mostly frivolous overall. Also some awkward hitching on Switch occasionally, but I knew what I was getting into with this port.

I played the first remake for 5-6 hours but I’m already around 10 with the new one. Great stuff.

We Love Katamari, and We Love Bandai Namco for remastering this PS2 classic! There's nothing quite like rolling up paper clips to people to buildings to countries to planets against the Japanesque funk of catchy songs (I still hum them...). While I'd put 'Forever' as the greatest game in the franchise, there's no denying the innovation We Love Katamari introduced with its level variety and addictive rolling. Every single frame is charming, even in the more frustrating levels (I detest the campfire level...).

This "Reroll" adds new levels, stickers to collect and a fresh lick of paint to make the cosmos even more cosmically inspiring. The object pop-in could've been improved and the sound effects less compressed, but again, We Love Katamari...and so should you!

As someone who feels like they're in a constant game of tug of war with each Yakuza game they play, I was genuinely surprised with how much I ended up enjoying Ishin. As far as ones I've completed go, this very well may be my second favorite in the series.

Yakuza games are often funny and unique, with really entertaining characters. I really think Kiryu is one of the best protagonists of all time. But theres always some things that bring them down for me. Grueling pacing, terrible boss design and lackluster endings are what a lot of this series has left me with. Most of the games make up for this overall (besides Yakuza 4. Sorry I dont usually like to use reviews to insult other games but god I fucking despised playing that). But starting with 0 which does have some of the same issues but is by far the strongest I've beaten yet has made the entire series onwards feel a bit disappointing. Especially with my last two experiences, Yakuza 5 and 6. I never ended up reviewing them but they did so much that I wanted from the series and I really felt the Yakuza love again (much needed after 4), but then both of them completely dropped the ball for me with some of the most unsatisfying endings I've ever experienced.

So yeah, I made sure my expectations were tempered for this one. Which I think in the end made me enjoy it more. Its completely fair to expect the mainline series to be high quality but in most cases its understandable to expect a spinoff to be a little weaker. But damn, not this one.

I'm not really familiar with the history behind what inspired the story, but the small amount I do know tells me they definitely took some liberties. I can't really comment on if thats a good thing or not, but the way they play off of some of the real life events is pretty damn cool. Even without the history aspect, its just a badass story to begin with. And my god, characters are getting murdered every other chapter. I love that shit. And! Half of them aren't ridiculously stupid fake out deaths, hallelujah. I can't really get into too much detail because of spoilers but, for basically every Yakuza game there's a few chapters in the beginning or near the middle where I want to cry myself to sleep, but with Ishin I was hooked the entire time past the end of chapter 1.

The combat is already pretty fun. Yakuza needs more guns. Wild Dancer obv is the most entertaining but Swordsman and Gunman are both fun in their own right. Brawler is completely useless, barely touched it lol. The card system is fine, It wasn't implemented all that great and the best cards in the game are free DLC so I just used those the whole time, but It existing is neat. There's also the Another Life farming sim side mode that was cute and fun but for a reason I'm about to get to, I didn't get too far into it.

By 'about to get to', I mean we're going to talk about it right now. The only thing I really disliked about this game is how god damn grindy it is to interact with the side stuff. I usually skip a lot of the side content in this series but I like to do a bit of it when its one of them I particularly like, and it really felt like this one was fighting against me. The battle dungeons are absurdly long, everything in Another Life takes ages (also you can't pay off Haruka's debt with your own money normally for some dumb reason) and trying to upgrade weapons and make the blacksmith actually useful is a nightmare. The light rpg elements and how slow everything is really take away from wanting to interact with much of that.

But that rather large-but-not-really issue aside, this was definitely one of the most surprising games I've played in a minute. Very high contender for the most fun and best written game in the series.

We are now at the blog portion of this review. Skip to the bottom for a TLDR and my final score if you don't care about all that. Things have been going solid, this was one of 5 games I beat in a day (not in their entirety obv) the other day so I'm pretty proud of that. Found a sealed copy of Persona 4 Arena for PS3 so happy to get that. Been playing Breath of the Wild too. Not sure what my next review will be but a MGRR one is quite likely. Also been doing a lot more creative writing which made trying to do write this review harder than usual. I hope this turned out good enough and you enjoyed reading it. If you did, thank you <3

-----TLDR-----
+ Great story
+ Fun gameplay
+ sexy music
- Extremely grindy side content

Nancymeter - 89/100
Trophy Completion - 41%
Time Played - i forgor I'll add this in later
Completion #3 of May
Completion #92 of 2023