has an industrial harbor level but features zero intermodal containers. if you put meteor herd OR mad space in a 10/10 game, either would drag it down to a 7/10. the tails stages are like filing unemployment paperwork and the knuckles stages are like having dreams about your old department store job, which makes the sonic stages like the distant dying memories of your fondest ten minute smoke breaks. ive watched SOV basement gore movies with better audio mixing. anyway its pretty good. i like rouge the bat.

https://i.gyazo.com/76525f4af06a9a6194b6128055fe48d8.png

yeo's environmental design, soundtrack direction, and laissez-faire approach to 'structure' elevates the somber and dour proceedings here and the title's very much so animated by its refusal to guide the player in any strict sense. it's commendable how driven yeo is towards theme and feeling and the world has just enough in the way of flourishes to stimulate a sense of role-playing but too little to fully and succinctly become immersed in; yeo does well to play with this disconnect, causing the complete and utter listlessness of the game to swell and swell and continue to swell prior to the game's climax (if you could call it that) on a frigid november day

on the other hand...there's a dearth of particulars here for me to really feel invested in or compelled by. backtracking here: ringo ishikawa's ultimate success lies in a delicate marriage between the formal & aesthetic language of a kunio-kun game, and the - you'll have to forgive the reductive if undemanding comparison - exploratory, life-sim mechanics of something like shenmue. and the idea's so obvious, so axiomatic even in the kunio-kun games that ringo does little to iterate upon that idea, with certain environmental backgrounds and even mechanics feeling directly lifted from its NES progenitor. thrusting the lifesim framework to the forefront, then, is the most transformative quality of ringo and it achieves this by inviting players to test the boundaries of the world and create their own sense of meaning within that structure - that ringo obscures how tightly directed the game actually is only serves to further entrench just how well-considered and intelligent its design is as well. the game is also underscored by honest-to-god literary ambition which all eventually coalesces into an absolutely devastating ending but whatever i digress

point is, stone buddha...bit less going for it. it's a mood piece first and foremost - which, to its credit, its executes with total conviction and belief in the premise - but everything that you'd expect a game which probes into ennui would have is here, which honestly does it no favours. a lack of concrete narrative + good deal of economical prose invites some lovely interpretations, but you can see this specific ending coming a mile away and there's just too little that's actually transformative about it to really have the same sense of emotional resonance

sounds like im ragging but it's still a great time. unpolished sections and inelegant difficulty curve, sure, but it doesn't overstay its welcome and yeo's willingness to eschew conventional game design continues to delight. there's a lot to love about how the mechanics inform the atmosphere and how you eventually build an innate and instinctual feeling for exactly what you're supposed to do (and i particularly did enjoy how rote it felt when finally mastered - that contrast between what's supposed to be kinetic and improvisational versus the reality that you're a slowly advancing turret) but im also unconvinced that that part of the game was supposed to be intentionally monotonous like everyone says or whatever which does make me feel a bit of internal conflict. id bet my apartment on yeo designing the combat with a bottle of beluga going like 'yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'. good for him

Way back in the prehistoric year of 2016 there was a notorious amount of really Weird shit that some would say felt like a calm before a storm
If you were a shit-head from the 'states that is like ya girl
I think that circling back around to this game after so fucking long and not having even touched it before is such a unique experience
I avoided it like the plague because of everyone saying it was a waste of money and that they fumbled HARD with mno9
But i never actually saw much gameplay or anything!!
I completely went with the mob on it and fast forward about 7 years later now ive finally played it

and im here to TELL! YOU!...
Its honestly fine! no really ill explain, okay so this was rightfully so deemed a flop
but the dash and combo system is actually REALLY fun and i love how the mighty number powers regenerate overtime or regenerate from different types of dash xel shit

Now if youre readin this u probably never even played this bullshit so ill briefly give u the rundown
its a pretty standard mega man story setup except youre moreso purifying beck's friends
some of the mighty number powers are pretty fun and useful in a pinch
and some others i didnt find much tangible use for, which is more of a thing with mega man design than anything else

the final level does have you using MOST of them but it still pretty much felt like the explosive missile power and the propeller power were CLUTCH
the BEST shit ever
and you dont really get a Rush style dog companion in this game tht you use for your base alternative power to test the swap up with
instead you get the ability to summon little thin laser shooting drones at about four a piece before they start disappearing
this is NOT to be slept on because even though it doesnt do hefty damage it lays on pressure rlly well and i thought it was so clutch because you dont even have to be around it to keep it shooting.

Now the level design IS REAAAAAAAALLY where this shits difficulty curve goes bungee jumping LMFAO
like i picked Dyna(electric girl)'s level first, and i thought it was solid, acceptable
and then you get to Shade's(sniper) level and its like oh? why is this completely horizontal level cool but why are the aesthetics just buildig building building

hes also very easy but thats okay because atleast he was cool! somethin i cant say for the Mine guy who has a level gimmick thats fine but i really didnt like it apart from his actual fight
And even then i didnt use the power you get from him much at!!! all! and idk why
i was like that with the pyro ability too,

but we can talk specifics and nitty gritty all day i think the most important take aways are how I think Call shouldve got more things to do in a more optimized gameplay sense
and speaking of optimized!!! this game doesnt run like dog shit! like the explosions look like some dude goatsie'd with spaghettios up his ass Sure but the game also still runs pretty smooth and i didnt find ANY bugs or glitches

youd think a game with a rep like this one's that there wouldve been a good serving of those but it genuinely is just all the empty content promises, the hit or miss level design and i guess the voice acting too(which im not gonna sit here and say is awesome bc its not)

I also think its cool there's like an online racing thing, so many challenges, able to tweak the amount of lives the game gives you and get some things to make the game easier on you
I think that mighty number 9 really is just a Fine game with at worst mediocre traits going on that REALLY reared a lot of heads of criticism because of all the lip service they were giving before
All the premature celebration absolutely had this game goin through it
cause i dont even hate how the game looks, i think its weird the mouths dont move for these close up voice acted bits
and i think its weird there's TWO gun related powers
and i think everyone deserved one final big moment together with the big bad.... but its honestly a miracle this happened At All regardless of the outcome
im like one of the only people on the planet now that doesnt think this is garbage
and i rlly wish there was ATLEAST a comics thing to go off of :( because this Does seem like itd be a cute little universe to flesh out better, the show absolutely is still never gonna fucking happen though pftftft

but yeah thats it, its a secondhand sometimes hard sometimes piss easy mostly classic inspired with a hint of X mega man game
mighty number 9 3ds port amazon listing will be the EVA01 of our generation
that shit is not gonna budge and at this point, i hope it never does

edit: yes i know these little assholes are in mighty gunvolt, i MIGHT play that sometime if i remember <3

When I picked up Pikmin 4 I did so almost out of obligation. I told myself I wanted to - and was gonna play this game - I just wasn't really in the mood, largely because the demo I'd tried weeks earlier hugely me put me off! This game's tutorial (which is what the demo is) is easily the worst part of the game. A solid 90 minutes of walking in straight lines and then being stopped so characters can talk at you, it's incessant, and Nintendo's continued refusal to just put in a fuckin "I've played these games before I know what I'm doing" button irritates me to no end.

And yet, once Pikmin 4 finally lets go it didn't just become my favourite in the series - it retroactively made me like Pikmin 1 and 3 even more (I never played 2.) This may sound like a weird thing to say, but it's because Pikmin 4's design and gameplay loop is so laser-focused that it better illuminates exactly what the previous games were going for, where there may been some distractions obscuring that a little before. I really never thought I'd end up liking a Pikmin game more than I like Pikmin 3 because I really like that game and yet here we are, Pikmin 4.

That aforementioned laser focus is on organisation and efficiency (I'm not saying the word bc I fear this already sounds too much like an IGN review) and between the caves, D!ndori challenges and battles that compliment the overworld maps, everything you do in this game is geared towards making you feel like a competent and efficient organiser. That is not a feeling you think would be so satisfying to experience in a videogame, but it is! It's so satisfying! When you have a squad of Pikmin carrying one thing one way and then you look in the distance of the map and can see your other squad closing in on the base from a different direction? That shit is crack cocaine, it's like crystal meth for people like me with organisational difficulties.

Beyond its tutorial, Pikmin 4 is almost perfectly paced. The "main story" (as in, the part you have to beat to make the credits roll) only runs about 12 hours, but the "post-game" as it were is where the game really begins. The maps that unlock after the credits are the densest and most satisfying in the game because you have more Pikmin to juggle and more responsibilities to optimise. And the secret D!ndori challenges that unlock after you beat Olimar's mode? And OLIMAR'S MODE???

Bro.

Here are my few, very minor complaints that hold this game back from being 5 stars;

-Music. It's not bad, but forgettable and often a bit too understated. Nothing as memorable as Garden Of Hope or Forest Navel from Pikmin 1.

-I kinda miss when it was only hinted that Olimar and co were actually tiny creatures on a real Earth. Now that the presence of humanity is so overt, the game feels like it loses a fair amount of its "alienness" that I love so much about the 1st and in particular - 3rd game. I wish the locales got just a bit weirder! (Though the novelty of a map like Hero's Hideaway is not lost on me, even if I didn't love it personally.)

-Petty one, I really miss Olimar's journal entries with the little illustrations at the end of every day in Pikmin 1. The ones randomly generated based on things you did or encountered throughout that day? Ah, man, those were filled with so much personality. I miss those.

-Bro, we do not need the same cutscene every single time a Leafling is absorbed to the S.S. Beagle, every time we get one out of a cave, every time we administer medicine to one of them etc. - we have seen the same characters say effectively the same thing every time! Just give us a little ping in the corner of the screen like when we absorb treasure! Jeez!

-It's a bit too easy and too nice to you all the time. Being able to "rewind time" after just about any mistake feels like appeasement to an unnecessary degree. I lost a lot of Pikmin to disco ball spider guy and felt nothing bc I knew I'd just be able to reverse all the damage done in literal seconds. Give me some stakes!!

-The obnoxious tutorial, which I've already touched on.

Pikmin 4 fucking goes. Don't let anything I've mentioned turn you off, this game sucked hours out of me - I haven't 100%'ed a game for as long as I can remember! It is so satisfying, so compact, so dense without being overly long and so full of personality. I love it. I've always "liked" Pikmin before but with this I think I can officially call myself a fan.

Pretty curious to try Pikmin 2. I cleared Pikmin 3 years ago (which was my first Pikmin game), and remember liking it although it didn't leave a particularly deep impression.

My overall impression is this game feels a little underbaked - which makes sense because it was released one month after the GameCube launched, so it probably got rescoped at some point.

It's hard to know how much to criticize the Pikmin AI, the finicky controls. Part of that adds to its charm and I think when you see that kind of problem in a game, it's also evidence that the game is designing in a new space. Only uninteresting games have no 'problems', except for the problem of being uninteresting.

The main issue is that the combat felt a bit at odds with the enemy variety presented. Pikmin would die by the dozens, or the boss would lose half its health in 10 seconds, and I had no real sense of what I ought to be doing better.

I like the game length - nice and short, memorable levels you remember. More games should be like this! That being said, some of the level design felt like straightforward puzzles that just took time and planning to execute. Like converting blue pikmin to red to get an item through fire - idk, I think there's a more interesting puzzle direction than that. IIRC Pikmin 3 had some interesting puzzles but it's been a while.

If this game were released now I'd probably give it a 3 but it was Nintendo trying to 'casualize' RTS games, after the jump to 3D, and they really did propose some interesting solutions to making a casual RTS for controllers, so yeah it's hard to fault it too much.

Beat the whole thing sittin in the laundromat which is pretty funny to think about really. Warioware is a series that to me is like playable candy or bubblewrap, it may not be the most complex thing ever made but it's minigame gauntlet style is enticing enough to the point where I don't think its possible for me to dislike literally any of these games ever. Touched! (still a weird name but im over it i guess, the "touched" mini series of nintendo games always was weird so lol) is no exception as this feels like a precursor to the one on the Wii which is the only one i havent finished at All now, much to my dismay!!
I think if you were really to dig teeth and nail for gripes to have with WWT you could say "wow this was too short" or "wow nintendo rly? MIC FUNCTIONS? get real! blow it out your ass nintendo!! rahhh!" like nah i had a lot of fun, made waiting for the laundry a breeze and even though i got some funny looks in there for blowing on my 3DS lookin like a whole looney bitch, idgaf! LMAO if anything that made it more enjoyable

I actually forgot the robot guy was a character, i cant recall if Mike shows up in any wariowares afterwards but he probably does, im just moreso a Mona/Jimmy/9-Volt type of fan so if he does thats why I didnt rlly notice him.
The climax to the "story mode" is also pretty fun!

Shit go for it, play it, its warioware babe. thats all i got

I am not sure whether it's ever truly possible for a video game—at least not one with goals to achieve, metrics to manage, and items to hoard—to transcend the inevitable compulsion toward completionism, to halt the ever-present pull toward efficiency maximization, and to re-direct the player's energies toward less narrow-minded, less mastery-focused, less algorthm-aligned, more expansive, more observant, more convivial, more vibes-based ends... but damn if this one doesn't make a valiant effort.

Really great!! I love the visual style this has going on and the timing of some of the creepier aspects of it, Candelaria is a cool mc and I really enjoyed this VN! It's kinda like the Milk Outside/Inside games in length where it's not too terribly long but there's oodles of shit to come across from repeat playthroughs to mull over and think about what the bus itself symbolizes and really the CGs you unlock for certain actions you make as well...
if you got a few hours to spare and you like games that are Juuuust that specific amount of unnerving and beautiful. go for it babe
final thoughts: ive never been fortunate enough to ride in a bus with reclining seats...
also this was released on Homestuck day slow nodding