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

Bro i do NOT remember this shit coming out the same year as the first game, i thought it was like at least the next year god DAMN.

Like the name implies, Wii We ski and snowboard is really more of an expansion of the first game instead of a true sequel. Not only is there the titular snowboarding that is included alongside the preexisting skiing, but the character creator has a bit more sauce to it, and they expanded the game to have TWO maps instead of the singular resort in We ski. There's both a brand new ski resort seperate from the first games resort, as well as a harsh mountain in the wilderness, untouched by the domestication of being ski-resortified. The new mountain map really felt like they took the bonus secret run from the first game and made a whole map out of it, which is hella cool. Since skiing both on real mountains and virtually was quite a family pasttime as a kid, this game and its predecessor def share a very "oh fuck yeah" place in my heart.

The ski resort map still plays namco game music through the in-game loudspeakers, they've made peak once again

Interesting game. NGL I've always been interested in this game solely on just how nice the box art looked and had no idea what the actual game was about or how it played, so I'm happy to actually have seen what's behind that beautiful cover.

It's an FPS type thing where you use the wii pointer to aim and blast these little sprite-y dudes called elebits in order to capture em. Levels are set on a timer where there's a point quota that ya gotta meet and different elebits are worth different amounts of points. The main gimmick though, is that the elebits are hiding in various places and your gun happens to double as a phys/gravity gun that can freely lift and move all sorts of things. There are also specific elebits that level up your gun and allow you to manipulate heavier and heavier things, and every level pretty much ends up looking like a tornado went through it. There's a very visceral energy to playing this, just saying "fuck this tree" or whatever as you launch it into the stratosphere, or just ripping drawers out of desks and smashing through full closets looking for more mfers to blast. That being said though, this is a launch-window wii game that tries to deal with hundreds of dynamic physics items onscreen at once, and that much processing brings the wii down to its kniis as it struggles to keep any semblance of a smooth framerate going. The chunky FPS plus the fact that the sensitive pointer controls move the camera all around from all the shooting makes the game certainly a bit dizzying to play in long bursts. The later half of playing levels can also be a bit difficult to move around in thanks to all the shit that's thrown on the floor and the levels where you have to worry about not making noise/breaking certain things certainly add variety but feel antithetical to the games primal "fuck everything in this room up" vibe that the gameplay goes for. If anything, I wish this concept would be done again on modern hardware, especially in VR, as doofy make-a-mess-with-physics games are always popular there and the hardware can actually power it this time. Too bad konami isn't interested in doing anything cool anymore...

It's just some dumb mindless fun. If I had this game back in the day as a kid I probably would have enjoyed just throwing everything around, framerate be damned. Certainly worth a play, though you'd probably get a better experience playing this on an emulator or something where the game would run smoother and have widescreen. The OST is done by konami's A-team, with Bemani and Castlevania people working on it and it owns. There are even plenty of fun konami references strewn about, like how the arcades have real modeled bemani arcade machines (but no DDR cabs :C) and the creepy bunny thing from silent hill as the mascot of the amusement park levels (which I haven't played any silent hill games, but isn't that like not a good character to be a kids mascot?). The in-game visuals are pretty just existent for a wii game, but the key art and cutscene art is absolutely wonderfully drawn with an excellent dream-like use of color and lighting, like I said before the artwork was literally what drew me to the game in the first place. With how wholesome and pleasant that artwork looks, I sure bet the main artist went on to become famous for other absolutely pleasant and wholesome things!

Have yall ever had a game where like you constantly hear gassed up by your peers and despite trying in your entire power to like the game and be a part of the cool game enjoyers club it just doesn't hit? yeah... I've seen both people I personally know as well as internet randos pour endless amounts of praise into this title, and I've always been curious to see what was up, but after playing through this game naw man it just ain't for me.

On a vibe level, this game is immaculate. Given the developmental lineage of this game being done by ex-Love de Lic members, that should be obvious. Characters have their own unique wacky designs with their own goofy chopped-up gibberish voice clips, the various other boss characters have a lot of personality thrown into them, and the story has a ton of thought put into it. The game isn't afraid to explore themes of colonialization and hierarchal government structures, and it does so in a way that's subtle enough to not feel overtly preachy about its themes, yet still heavy-handed enough to make its messages obvious. It's a game where you as the newfound ruler of this kingdom, must overtake all the neighboring kingdoms in a conquest to take over the world. How did you become king? It just happened. Why do you need to take over the world? Because the military minister said so. Are the other kingdoms actively hostile? Not really. Do your subjects and countrymen like you? Sometimes. Tonally it fits right in with pretty much any other Love-de-lic game, and if there's anything that you can absolutely count on from the people that used to work there, it's that the personality of the game shines brighter than pretty much most other games in general.

THAT BEING SAID, its the act of playing the game (and really more of finishing it) that is where the problems truly become apparent. For better or for worse, there aren't many other games like Little King's Story. Essentially the gameplay boils down to managing a crowd of people to help explore a large map, overcome the many obstacles held within, and use the treasures collected from combat and exploration to build your kingdom and upgrade your troops. I've heard the game be compared to Pikmin, but if there's anything that this game has done, it's given me an immensely deeper appreciation for how thought-out the gameplay in Pikmin really is. In this game, you can only send troops out one at a time, in a straight line from where you are facing. Troops don't continue doing their tasks and come back to you if you move a far enough distance away from them, and there's no way to call back particular members, with the B button serving to call everyone back at once, regardless of what they are doing. It makes multitasking in this game neigh impossible at times as the gameplay is designed in a way that emphasizes singular interactions one-at-a-time. Which makes pretty much any encounter with multiple things an absolute hassle! There is a large variety of different jobs for the troops, with each job having their own unique skills and weaknesses, some being designed to get past specific roadblocks like builders building bridges or lumberjacks to cut down particular trees, and others being more niche with their functionality like chefs that only exist to OHKO any chicken enemies that show up. Considering the fact that there are only so many people you can take with you, there's a layer of strategy and decisionmaking for whether or not to spread your crew thin but be able to handle anything that might show up, or to focus on mostly combat grunts in order to ensure any potential fights can be handled comfortably. For me though, I mostly spent my time running with the wrong crew composition unknowing of what lies ahead, getting my shit kicked in for not being prepared, then begrudgingly having to start over with a more optimized team given the foresight of knowing what's ahead. The fact that the only way to manually edit your squad is buried within 3 submenus that the game doesn't even really tell you exists is the icing on the cake too! Even things like how the large crowd of troops creating difficulty in movement as people constantly fall off ledges/get stuck on corners and how there's only one button to cycle through class types in your squad which makes getting a particular class sent out more work than necessary. The gameplay as a whole just felt like it needed a second pass to really iron out the kinks, and it does make me all the more impressed at how Pikmin was able to pull off a similar concept with so much more user-friendly execution 8 years prior on their very first go.

and the bosses. oh my god the bosses. I don't know how they did it but they managed to make 7 bespoke encounters that are just as memorable and unique as they are absolutely infuriating. Like being overwhelmed with enemies? How about playing pinball with incredibly dodgy physics? Do you remember what gibberish voices are used for each of your NPC job classes? How's your Geography? Are you a fan of boss i-frames? I'll certainly give them credit for making them unique but there were too many times where a boss fight throws something completely out of left field that I either wasn't prepared for or had little to no control over that it felt like I was wasting time trying to deal with the games nonsense. It's just all a bit too much trial-and-error for my blood personally.

All in all, yeah. Despite me not having a very good time actually playing the game, I can certainly still understand why it's so beloved. I can imagine that the games quirky charm and personality could easily leave a lasting impression on people, especially if they played it in their youth where they can take in the vibes and enjoy the game at their own leisure unbeholden to the desire to actually see the game through to its end. Maybe it's just me being fixated on finishing games that was why I couldn't enjoy this as much as I honestly should have. The game was certainly an interesting and memorable experience (for better or for worse), and I'm glad I was at the very least able to see what the game was all about, even if it did bring a lot of frustration. The game is fucking, but the vibes are amazing.

Hmm. Definitely feels more like PGR1 than PGR2 in terms of content and city count. We've stepped down from the eleven cities of 2 to less than half of that. We got Las Vegas, London, New York, Tokyo, and my favorite bustling cityscape, the Nurburgring. Seasoned PGRtaku will immediately notice that london, NYC, and tokyo were all already in the first game, so really the only fresh addition is the one city of Vegas. The soundtrack also bumps as per usual, with quite a decent amount of good ska and J-pop beats goin around.

The singleplayer basically is roughly the same as the first game, though a bit less balanced. Gone are the car classes as this game sticks to the rule of "every car has to hit 170 at minimum" so like every possible car choice is cracked right out the gate. I understand wanting to get straight to the good stuff out the door, but one of the core things I enjoy about PGR (and racing games in general, honestly) is the slow buildup from okayish cars to the good ones. I pretty much got one decent car pretty quickly on in and just stuck with it through the whole game and EASILY cruised past everything on the medium difficulty. I'd honestly suggest playing on hard or expert if you want this game to last any decent chunk of time or have any sustainable challenge.

The online support was a key part of what made PGR2 so cool, and this game appears to have tried to expand upon that by way of this broadcasting system showcasing what people are doing around the world. Key word being "appears" here though, cuz the servers are long dead so I can only really speculate what this game was like at its prime. There is the regular online multiplayer still up though, and I have heard that they added a bunch of cool new game modes like legitimizing the "cat & mouse" house ruleset into an actual playable game type. Can't say I've actually tried it as not only have I not found anyone that still has a 360 lying around for car gamer time and even if I did my xbox live gold game pass core membership has expired so i'm SOL on the online features, unfortunately.

Visually this is the game to take the series into the HD era, and it looks quite good! Only real gripe is that the dark areas of the game are really crunched out, and no amount of RGB range adjustments on either my TV nor my console could fix it so I guess that's just how it's supposed to look. I do think though that even if we specifically compare launch racing titles on the 360, ridge racer 6 has this game beat in terms of aesthetics both in menus and in the actual game rendering itself.

Overall it's certainly just existent, which is really surprising for me given how much I've enjoyed the first two games. It's really apparent from a lot of early 7th-gen titles that the jump in fidelity really cost a decent amount of game content from their late 6th-gen peers as devs require more time to make the most out of the new specs (sure hope that doesn't balloon over time!) Maybe my time would have been a lot more exciting had I been there in 2005 racing with the homies. Regardless, it's a game!

Ridge Racer V: Launch Titles and The Lost Magic of Console Generations
There's nothing quite like zooming through the streets of Ridge City at night time, while "Euphoria" plays on the radio.
As of recently I've been on a bit of a Ridge Racer kick again, most notably putting my attention back on the fifth main installment in the series. The best way to describe R5 is bold. It's a game screaming with confidence and promise, amazingly optimized at 60fps and boasting insane visuals for the year 2000.
But that's just right, R5 was a launch title for the PS2, one of the highest selling consoles of all time. And yet, it fell under the radar compared to many other games on the system, even when it came out (I'm assuming that goes to Tekken Tag Tournament being the more appealing Namco offering). It's buried under the popularity of the entries in the series both before and after, being sandwiched in between Ridge Racer Type 4 and Ridge Racer 2004. It's overall a somewhat forgotten game, it didn't even sell that well and has never even been ported a single time… and yet, I find it one of the most profound launch titles of all time.
R5 represents a time when the leap in console generations was greater and mattered so much more. While its predecessor RRT4 was a game about looking towards the next millennium and the future of racing, R5 is the future, as insanely flashy UI and hard techno beats blast from the television screen. It boasts the technical prowess of this new generation of gaming in every single way it can. It's fucking AWESOME.
But the sad truth is that it doesn't feel like that anymore with the last two leaps in console generations. The jump in hardware doesn't land as much because we've reached a point in graphical fidelity that can't go much further than looking more realistic and being able to handle more of said demanding visuals better. This isn't entirely the fault of modern game developers, it's simply just the sad reality of how fast digital technology has evolved. And sure, maybe I am biased… I don't despise modern games but I certainly aren't very passionate for them aside from more stylistic ones that feel like old games. But it simply makes me sit back and wonder how the hell the next generation of systems could really do anything major to impress me, something to sell me on the next console and go “holy fuck, gaming has evolved.” It makes me a bit sad I missed seeing the insane revolution that was the fifth and sixth generation consoles.
Ridge Racer V is not the most impactful launch title, nor would it have been the most important pack-in title had it been one. But what R5 is, is a game that showed the promise and passion of the sixth generation of gaming hardware, and paved the way for the most important console generation of all time.

hoo boy where do I even start here? This game stands proud as one of the vibest of vibe games, and with good reason, because the vibes here are truly on another level compared to most games today, let alone on the PS1.

It's a game where in the grand scheme of things not much happens as you spend a month over at your cousins house in summer. What you do with your 31 days at their countryside abode is entirely up to you. It is your summer vacation, after all, so there's no real correct or incorrect way to spend your time, and the game is entirely developed with that in mind.

The game very obviously isn't designed much like a traditional video game, as rewards for exploration are more scenes that try to evoke a particular emotion rather than being any sort of progress-making videogamey reward. I guess a good example is a random well that exists in a corner of the countryside. It's a dead end, there aren't many bugs to collect near the well, nothing inside the well, you can't go in the well to a new area, all that you can do is examine the well. Doing so plays a cutscene showing Boku looking down the well in intimidation before taking a few steps back in fear. That one particular area really has very little significance in the entire map as a side route, and it's really not like that area has any real threat to it. But like, I'm sure there has been a time in all of our youths where we ended up wandering somewhere we probably weren't supposed to be unsupervised and getting psyched out from something completely harmless. Bokunatsu is absolutely chock full of moments like that from start to finish. Regardless of whether or not you actually have experience of being a child living in rural 1970's Japan, this game covers so many aspects of being a kid in general that there's bound to be tons of things to relate to in spite of its setting.

Another impressive aspect to me was just the design of the whole world and it's characters. It's probably one of the most peaceful games to ever exist, with breathtaking hand-drawn 2D backgrounds of natural countryside landscapes and characters that feel like actual people just living another month in their lives. The wide age disparity between the different characters also provides insight in how summer is spent at different points of life. Kids like Boku and his little sister spend their time completely free and at their own discretion, being curious about the many things in the world, generally playing around every day with all their free time. There's Moe, the older cousin in her teens, where she struggles with growing up, spending most of her days studying inside or sitting outside at night thinking more philosophically about her future as she is about to enter high school. And then there's your Aunt and Uncle, where to their adult lives August is just another month of the grind doing work stuff and housekeeping. This game just excels at being a window into this precise household in this precise one month in time, allowing you as the player to observe the countryside and the family living in it just the same way as Boku does.

I could honestly keep going on about all the various moments in the game and the many different memories they made me feel, but I think yall get the point. Would definitely highly rec to anyone even remotely interested in these kinds of peaceful vibes, as this game definitely hits in a unique way to everyone who would play it. Much like actual summer vacation to a kid, this game is entirely what you make of it. or something like that.

more like the mid

I was planning to play this way later but the whole server shutdown turning every copy of this game into a coaster in 3 months forced me to play my hand and see what this game is all about.

Considering the fact that I've mostly been playing racing games from 5th/6th gen, getting whacked over the head with all the modern gaming tropes in this game was certainly jarring at first. There's a HUGE open world of fucked up america to drive around, and I really do mean HUGE. It takes about 45 minutes just to drive from one end of the map to the other, and while the copious amounts of space definitely allowed me to get into the zen headspace that long scenic car rides do, it also is just too overwhelmingly massive for me to really know what to do with. I'm the kind of guy that likes to slow down and appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into game worlds, and there's just not enough time in this universe for me to really be able to see all the sights that this game has, much less before the imminent server shutdown. So my options with world interaction slowly became a choice between slowly meandering through large empty spaces unrelated to anything else in the game, or just bumrushing straight from waypoint to waypoint to progress as much as possible. Neither of them really felt very satisfying, as both had this sense of "am I really playing this right?" lingering in the back of my head. Maybe I just need to get more comfortable with large-scale open world games, I don't really play that much in the genre.

The plot was a whole lot of whatever. Absolute junk food western shlock, yanno? Join car gang, rise the ranks in the car gang, it's edgy and gritty and written like a cheesy action movie and I can't tell how seriously it really wanted me to take it, but I eventually tuned most of the plot out and focused more on the road trips. The main character looks like what would happen if Gordon Freeman and Alex YIIK had a child, truly terrifying.

The actual racing is also solid enough. The cars control with a decent amount of weight to em, but also slide around a lot and sometimes the physics can freak out in comical ways so it's all decent enough fun. The events where you gotta take down other drivers kinda suck though, its like trying to ram a bar of soap into a drunk driver.

The game also has this huge focus on online multiplayer, with the always-on structure and how players are supposed to populate the game world in real time alongside the game being entirely playable in up to 4 player co-op meant that the biggest focus of the crew is in your literal crew of fellow players. Ironically though, in my entire playthrough of this game throughout this entire month of January I didn't bump into a SINGLE other player, despite what the large populated map every time I signed in would suggest. I left my game in "searching for crew members" mode the entire time, and not a single other soul answered the call. Surely, due to the fact the game is 10 years old and I am playing on Xbox (which is a platform that I do not really associate with active playerbases), there's not much surprise in the game being a ghost town. But that also begs the question of why this game needed to be always online in the first place when you absolutely can play the entire game solo and enjoy all the game has to offer that way. The closest thing I got to human interaction was spending like 5 minutes chasing a player location waypoint only for their car to vanish like a ghost once I actually got up close to them.

Overall, it surely is a Ubisoft title. Doesn't really do anything atrocious, but also doesn't do anything amazing. I will say that the licensed OST so far has been one of the most irritating setlists I have heard though, and the game constantly rerouting my GPS waypoint to fucking Ohio or whatever to try and get me to buy the delisted DLC was very annoying. But at least I got the chance to squeeze a playthrough in before the end of times. Maybe someone might make a fan server or offline mod or some shit to keep this game preserved and accessible down the line, but I won't hold my breath. Shame too, because while the game was certainly kinda existantcore to me, I definitely think enough effort was put into it that it's lowkey a waste to just get rid of it. Please look forward to my review of the Crew 2 in 2028 when the servers for that are about to bite the dust.