okay actually what the fuck? what the dog doin

This games fuckin weird bro. Pretty much every individual part of this game goes for a completely different tone, and it all comes together as the gaming equivalent of eating paste made out of bananas, peas, and sardines. The visuals are made up of reasonably solid looking (albiet framerate-chugging) levels populated by uncanny-looking people. The writing is immensely crass and immature, with a wise-cracking snarky dog interacting with a myriad of cheesy stereotypes with enough poop/fart/sex jokes added in to make any middling dreamworks movie blush. The soundtrack ranges from bumping techno jingles to ambient music that straight up astral projects me to another plane of existence. Our doggy protagonist moves and animates with a shockingly realistic attention to detail compared to other cartoony platformers. It really does feel like the games director, writers, animators, composers, and designers all misunderstood the assignment in their own unique way, making the game an absolute tonal rollercoaster. And that's not even considering the unfittingly eerie and morbid ending.

The thing is though, the actual core game is a pretty solid collectathon, and the more I played it and got used to the serial-killer vibes the game has, the more I honestly enjoyed it. It really did feel like there was a lot of genuine thought in analyzing what dogs do and how to convert them into palpable game mechanics. Like dogs usually just beg, retrieve stuff for people, piss and shit everywhere, dig around in the mud, bark at things, sniff around random places, and eat potentially questionable food from god knows where. All of those aspects of being a dog and more are covered in this game, and the main gameplay of doing dog things to accomplish tasks to earn bones to progress is just as fun as collecting progress mcguffins in any other collectathon.

The game is weird, but it's not half-assed shovelware. If anything, the bizarre vibes make this game certainly hard to ever forget, and I could definitely see this game leaving an impact on me in many different ways if I had played it growing up. It definitely has a cult following, and I can honestly see why. Give it a shot if you enjoy some absolute strange fuckshit. Sasuga europe

If Peppino was a journey through an anxiety-induced fever dream from a man who's been driven to the very edge of his own helpless sanity, then the Noise is a journey through a man's own vanity, going through the same struggles as Peppino not because he wants to or needs to, but just because he can. Noise is much more akin to Wario than Peppino in this matter then, effortlessly blazing through the tribulations presented to them for the sake of their own greed and ego. With such a shift of character then, playing Pizza Tower as the Noise is not a lame excuse for replayability, however it is a whole new experience within the same game.

Just like Peppino, Noise can go really fast, if not more so. Unlike Peppino though, the Noise cant climb up the walls out of sheer desperation, instead opting for his skateboard to act as more of a wall jump that gets instantaneous speed when landing on the ground. The Noise can also do a tornado spin when using his skateboard that decimates enemies. To counteract this lack of verticality though, the Noise can super jump at any time and has access to an uppercut with much more force and range to it. Bosses are also different, with the Noise deciding to gleefully throw his own bombs around the arena, instead of grabbing the bosses out of abject rage. These new movement options and every transformation having new control methods create not only just a different game feel than Peppino, but one that beautifully balances on the line between a chaotic and smooth experience.

The movement isn't just the only thing that makes playing through Pizza Tower as the Noise feel so fresh, but rather the fact that the Noise is a god damn scumbag cheater. He often just ignores several mechanics in the game, such as changing the stroke limit in golf so that he always gets the primo ‘burg, or not delivering the pizzas in Gnome Forest and instead opts to destroy the customers' homes to get the toppins. Not even the bosses are safe from the Noise's wrath, as he just flat out shoots the Vigilante in the climactic duel and even scares off Fake Peppino in the final chase phase. He doesnt even have his own title cards for each level he just slaps stickers of himself over all the faces that were present in Peppino's adventure. And that's only tipping the iceberg when it comes to all of the delightfully cheesy flourishes that the Noise adds to make for a hilariously cheap playthrough.

The Noise reinforces the chaotic and insane energy of Pizza Tower that, in my opinion, makes it one of the best 2D platformers ever made, and is a more than welcome addition to this amazing game. The Noise even gets some great new music tracks that compliment an already fantastic soundtrack.

Now all we need is a playable Gerome update to make this game a complete masterpiece. Come on Tour de Pizza I know you can do it!!!!!!

A very disappointing follow-up to the clunky but excellently-directed Clock Tower on the Super Famicom. I'm not referring to the wooden voice acting or the blocky graphics, which are par for the course for an early PSX game - there are other more fundamental issues where this drops the ball.

The original Clock Tower took place entirely in one location, allowing the spooky vibes and storytelling-through-contextual-clues to shine. This sequel takes place over several days with multiple scenarios and multiple locations - it tries adding more of a plot to string the setpieces together, but this just shines an unwanted spotlight on how threadbare the plot is and how weak the writing is. After scissorman appears and terrorizes Jennifer, butchering several security guards in the process, why does a single guard outside her home keep her safe? How does one of the characters go from hearing a passing mention of a castle that used to belong to the same family as the mansion in the first game to "let's round up 10 people, including two traumatized minors, to go on a field trip to this scary castle in another country"?

To me, the different playable characters and 'levels' feel like a band-aid over the fact that this game seems to have a lot less content than its predecessor. The levels are a lot smaller and generally less interesting than the mansion in the first game, which felt like a character in itself. And it misses the opportunity to at least provide some nice worldbuilding through flavortext, with the player character rewarding exploration of the environment with insightful gems such as "this is a couch."

I think I'd be much easier on this if I played it when I was younger - the tension of being a slow-moving defenseless waif who needs to evade a relentless pursuer is worth a few good scares - but without nostalgia goggles this comes across as a far weaker game than both its iconic predecessor as well as its survival-horror contemporaries.

Far and away the most egregiously misguided attempt at myth-making in games history. This isn't the worst game ever. It's not the weirdest game ever. It is not the 'first American produced visual novel.' Limited Run Games seems content to simply upend truth and provenance to push a valueless narrative. The 'so bad it's good' shtick serves only to lessen the importance of early multimedia CD-ROM software, and drenching it in WordArt and clip art imparts the notion that this digital heritage was low class, low brow, low effort, and altogether primitive.

This repackaging of an overlong workplace sexual harassment/rape joke is altogether uncomfortable at best. Further problematising this, accompanying merch is resplendent with Edward J. Fasulo's bare chest despite him seemingly wanting nothing to do with the project. We've got industry veterans and games historians talking up the importance of digital detritus alongside YouTubers and LRG employees, the latter making the former less credible. We've got a novelisation by Twitter 'comedian' Mike Drucker. We've got skate decks and body pillows and more heaps of plastic garbage for video game 'collectors' to shove on a dusty shelf next to their four colour variants of Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl on NES, cum-encrusted Shantae statue, and countless other bits of mass-produced waste that belongs in a landfill. Utterly shameful how we engage with the past.

AVGN was absolutely LYING about this one, what the hell. Castlevania 64 is great! Tons of fun and charm.

It does have its shortcomings, of course. Textures look a little rough, some heavy slowdown in certain areas, cutscenes tend to go on for a little long with nothing happening, and respawning enemies can get sort of annoying. That said, CV64 has motorcycle skeletons, so It's a 5/5 by default.

In all seriousness, I love that this game isn't trying to be a 3D Metroidvania; you progress through stages, mowing down skeletons, zombies and vampires in a pretty linear fashion. There are a few instances of backtracking like the infamous Nitro+Mandragora section(which is NOT NEARLY AS BAD as the aforementioned nerd made them out to be), but for the most part things keep moving forward. After leaving an area you never really visit it again, indicated by a pause and your health refilling before the screen transition. It doesn't take very long to beat either; short but sweet, offering a bit of variety with exclusive levels for both characters.

Combat takes a little bit of time to learn, but once you do, it works pretty well considering the tech at the time. Some people say that Carrie is the easier character to play as since she has a homing projectile, but I had no issues with Reinhardt.

Despite the super blurry textures, CV64 has atmosphere for days. This game perfectly captures the kind of "spooky vibe" that early Castlevania games were going for. The same could be said for the music; like CV4, it's very lowkey instead bringing the energetic vibe usually found in the other games.

If you're willing to put up with its janky spots, Castlevania 64 is a keeper.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the time mechanic! CV64 works on a day/night cycle. It's.............. unnecessary. I feel like the game would be better off without it.

One of the most atmospheric, creative, and surprisingly hilarious shooters I've ever played. Everything from the ground up is built around this hyperspecific time and place of 1980s Czechoslovakia that makes it feel so personal. This is not the kind of game that would ever come from a committee, this is the work of one lunatic through and through.

The "game-feel" is one of the biggest challenges for retro shooters in my opinion and HROT nails it. The weapons aren't the most unique but they all serve their purpose well and are satisfying to use. Beyond the gameplay there's just so many bizarre and memorable things in this game that I could easily ramble about for hours but I'd rather not spoil them all. All I'll say is the amount of work that must have gone into one-off gags just makes them all the more hilarious to me. Play this game. It's legitimately one of a kind.

I was meant to play this game and I was forged in the fire of it.

Okay, that sounds insane so let me explain what I mean. In an issue of Game Informer that came out sometime during the 00s, there was an ad for a game.
I remember the ad very well. The game it described was fascinating. A tense survival horror game, a genre I'd never played. One where you were alone in a run-down village. But what interested me the most was that its story was told out of order, the levels taking place at different times, and you'd have to piece everything together yourself if you wanted to understand the full story.

I remembered that this game was called SIREN, and I never forgot that. Thinking back on it, the ad was likely for Siren: Blood Curse, the remake/remix of this game for PS3, but what cemented itself in my mind was the PS2 game. There was no point in time where I ever wondered "What was that game I saw the ad for?" ; I never forgot. Every once in awhile, I would think about Siren, and wonder if one day I'd ever be able to play it. I never looked it up, never watched any videos of it. I just kept it in my head, a gaming white whale, like Asura's Wrath is for me still.

But in December 2016, I was able to buy the game. I had no idea it was even on PS4, upscaled with trophy support. It was like a miracle, like they'd put it there just for me. Maybe it wasn't important, but it felt important. And I resolved that I wouldn't just play the game, but I would stream it, every time I played it. This isn't something I often do, there's only a handful of games I've streamed all of and most are shorter than Siren.

What I quickly discovered was that Siren is not an easy game to play. Its controls are only slightly better than tank controls, the levels don't give you much direction, sight-jacking often requires a lot of waiting around for enemies to move where you want them to, and dying could often set you back pretty far. For someone like me who usually tries to play games without looking anything up, it was a real challenge. Even learning that the manual had tips for every mission only helped a little bit. Eventually I did have to look two or three things up online. It took me a year and five months, but I eventually beat Siren, getting the full ending, doing everything but getting all the archive items.

It was tough. At times I disliked the game. There were streams where I'd only manage to do one level, parts of the game that I absolutely dreaded getting to. But even so I saw how special it was. Especially these years later, the bad memories fade away and I mostly remember the parts I loved.

And those parts are fantastic. The atmosphere and area design is second-to-none, I feel like there are probably Japanese villages that look exactly like this. The village has 9 areas and you can see exactly where they are in relation to each other. After awhile, a couple of those areas transform as the monsters build new structures over them. I can still describe every single area.

The sound-design creates ever-present tension. The monsters are awful and memorable. The archive isn't just data files or audio logs, they're random bits and bobs that you find around town, sometimes offering insights, sometimes just adding color to the world. The main characters are rendered in this way where real photos of facial expressions are recreated in polygons and animated - it actually works really well, even with the british accents they give everyone in the dub. Each of them is distinct and once again I could easily describe every one, even if I couldn't remember all their names.

For every way the gameplay is frustrating, Siren is a master-craft in another. Even its story, its out-of-order, incredibly confusing story, still feels cool and epic even if you only get the broad strokes. I came out of it being thankful for having played it.

There's one level in the game specifically that bowled me over. In it you play as a pre-teen girl looking for her parents. You go through the farmland/dried-up river area, and it looks different from when you've seen it before. The air is full of bright lights like fireflies. There's weird noises all around. It's almost beautiful. But the enemies are still there and you still have to avoid them like usual. So you sneak through, coming close to being detected once or twice but - phew - they don't notice you. You wouldn't have any way to defend yourself if they did. Finally the girl reaches the church where her parents are. The door is locked. She goes to the window and knocks on it, yelling for her mom and dad. In the church her parents shriek and move away from the window. Then you see - the girl has become a monster herself, the zombie-like shibito that wander the village. First I realized, oh, that's why the level looked weird, because that's how shibito see the world. And it gives you insight into some of their actions later in the game. But then I realized something else, and thought "Hold on a minute...If this girl is a shibito...And the monsters in the level are shibito...Were they even looking for me? Would they even have hurt me if they caught me?"

I later tested this and found that, no, they wouldn't. They completely ignore you, you're just another shibito like them. Throughout that level, the fear is entirely in your head, and even if you get within a distance where they'd normally notice you but they don't, you probably don't even realize it, you just think "oh, that was a close one, they almost saw me." I don't know how this level plays out for everyone but I imagine that figuring out that the enemies are harmless during the level itself is a rare occurrence, because it goes against everything you've done up to that point. It's incredible.

One day, a youtuber will discover this and put it in a video essay and Siren will begin to get the respect it deserves. For now, it'll continue to be played by horror game fans and Silent Hill lovers - neither of which I am - and influence Japanese horror games, including, seemingly, director Keiichiro Toyama's next game, Slitterhead, which also features a realistic Japanese setting - urban this time - and has creatures that look like shibito on steroids.

I don't have a great way to end this review, but if this sounds like an experience you'd get something out of, it's on the PS Store; try throwing yourself into that fire.