There are three Metal Gear Solid 4:

- The MGS4 that wants to push the ideas of Metal Gear forward exploring the concept of war economy and mass produced soldiers as a product of capitalist greed aided by gene manipulation and nanomachines.

- The MGS4 that wants to burn everything to the fucking ground Hideaki Anno style and spit on MGS fans for asking for more games. And it'll make sure that any grave that the franchise has left is getting pissed on.

- The MGS4 that's a caring and touching love letter to everything the series represents. A celebration of everything that's dumb and fun of Metal Gear.

Three games, three different core ideas and themes, and and it doesn't mesh all that well. It's a freaking mess of a game and has both the lowest and highest points of any Metal Gear.

But despite its flaws, I had a lot of fun.

In a 2012 interview Cave devs explained that if SaiDaiOuJou was going to be their last game, it had to be a very straightforward experience. A game that's very simple and puts all of its focus around the good ol' dodging bullets, but with a contemporary approach. As a result, SDOJ is a pure bullet hell with 0 gimmick mechanics, but with all the over the top excess of the later Cave releases. The game can be way too much, and leaves very little window for casual plays. If you want to make a dent in it, you gotta sit down and commit to getting your ass kicked. There's very little in the way of strategy or understanding how to play it, you just need to dodge like your life depends on it. It's brutal. It's insane. It's non stop sensory overload. But at the same time it's oldschool as hell.

I'm still figuring out my feelings towards this game because, aside from the amazing OST and ultra futuristic presentation that pushes the limits on what can be readable in a 2D bullet hell, there's not a lot to say outside its intensity. I respect the back-to-basics approach, but it's easy to feel like there's nothing in the game you haven't seen from previous Cave offerings.

But what the hell. Even at its most derivative, Cave games can be a fucking blast, and this is no exception.

Let's pray to god we get a proper Steam port. I can't buy the wonky Xbox port from my European 360 and I'm not paying 4000+ bucks for the Exa version and system.

Love the story developments, I kinda feel bad for Yuko for being dragged into these fantasy Civil War shenanigans without knowing a thing. The cutscenes are great, the sprites aren't that great but they do the job, and the music has some stellar moments.

However the game itself is just not good. The first two stages are pretty simple and awkward but, you know, they are doable. They aren't that taxing if you're constantly blasting your weapons, and you can turn off your brain while you let the music carry the moment.

Stage 3 tho? I noped the fuck out. It's bad. I gave it a good try but it's just too obnoxious. Spongy enemies, awkward spots, very plain presentation and level design... I'm sorry, I can't. I watched the rest through YouTube, it's just not worth it.

A big shame tho, I really fuck with the game in a spiritual way. I love the universe it's building, the pathos the characters are going through, the dramatic scenes, the surreal and psychedelic aesthetics... but gameplay-wise it's just... no.

Oblivion is the videogame definition of "accidental genius". If you dissected everything that's wrong with it, it would look like a mess of game... and it is, but Oblivion is a sui generis case where the good absorbs you so much (I can still play it any day and spent 7+ hours messing around the same way I did 15 years ago) it brainwashes you into thinking the bad is part of the experience. You know it's not true, but you can't help but believe it when much more recent, ambitious and technically apt games today that have way more budget struggle to be as fun as this 16 year old decrepit buggy ass game.

The way they are managing content so that in the first few hours you see the same 5 dinos and only after (story event) you start to see some damn good setpieces and levels... is a bit backwards, specially for a multiplayer game that has the risk of alienating players early on.

But the game is really fun! It's like a ménage à trois between WWZ, Overwatch and EDF while Dino Crisis 3 filming everything. It's very derivative gameplay-wise but also very solid. The concept is kind of insane but backed up by some surprisingly convincing worldbuilding.

There's not a whole lot to comment because you look at it for 2 minutes and you already know what it's about and if you're gonna fuck with it or not.

El Shaddai needs no introductions: one of the most beautiful and artsy games to come out of the peak 360/PS3 era that has a so-so combat system and a very unfocused and barebones plot that's also a reinterpretation of the Book of Enoch. Very easy to appreciate on the surface, but very hard to stay engaged with as it has a chronic lack of depth. Still, worth the ride if you're into these kinds of japanese oddities. I would rate it a perfectly good 6... ¿So how come that I'm giving it a 7?

The 2021 PC "Remaster" (AFAIK it's just a straight up port, but nowadays ports can't be marketed without some fancy words) is about what you'd expect from these types of rereleases but what I didn't expect is that it includes an extract of the El Shaddai novelization that coincidentally includes a new ending for the game. The prelude actually explains that El Shaddai faced a lot of development troubles and the novel was meant as a way to release the intended experience in some way or another.

The writting isn't top notch stuff, but I think the concepts at hand help a lot into giving a proper third act to the game that ties together the elements of the game for a pretty climatic payoff... and then the novel kinda just speedruns through a whole sequel. I'm not kidding.

It's pretty interesting, and it's sad that the original game couldn't really do everything its creators wanted to do. The director/writer/designer is still repping El Shaddai really hard to this very day, he actually just released a whole new spin off manga staring Enoch and Lucifer, so finding out about all of this just made me look at this weird little experiment in a much more positive way. This was someone's passion project, they got the one chance to make it a reality, and things didn't go according to plan... but they still pushed through and managed to finish it even years after the development ended and then bring it to a whole new generation.

When it's all set and done, even if I think the end result was lacking in some areas, I wish every release had the passion and ambition this had.

THIS WAS MADE WITH GAMEBRYO, THE ENGINE OF FALLOUT 3. ARE YOU KIDDING ME????

🟢 Uses minimal force and avoids aggression despite his life being on the line
🟢 Cute as a button
🟡 Despite fighting organized crime, the items suggest he's merely recovering bourgeois property.
🟡 Did he really get into the cats' building without backup?
🔴 He's a cop
🔴 Cat's name is Nyamco and I love him

I'm a bit on the fence in the Mappy ACAB debate, but the game is a lot of fun.

Producer: How's the development on the Batman game?
Developer: BATMAN??? I THOUGHT YOU SAID PAC-MAN!!!
Producer: ARE YOU KIDDING ME???
Developer: I'M DEAD SERIOUS!!!!!!!!
Producer: DUDE, WE'RE SENDING THE GAME TO FACTORY THIS WEEKEND. WE'RE SCREWED
Developer: WAIT... I THINK I HAVE AN IDEA.

And that's how the Turbografx 16 Batman came to be.

The opening level, exploring the Enchanted Kingdom, going to the Badlands and being greeted with an ongoing war, visiting the first two towns and solving sidequests using your wits and powers, their corresponding action stages... I think the first two thirds of the game are great stuff and showcase Rare's strengths as game developers. They were aiming to deliver an 3D action-adventure platformer effectively blending something more akin to 3D Zelda with a Rare flair, and you can definitely see that with the transformation gimmicks, and some of the puzzles being effectively an optional collect-a-thon, but they also wanted to throw in some combat mechanics that make the player find synergies between transformations and adapt to each scenario or horde, and it's honestly pretty good and can lead to some cathartic moments when you're going full on DMC in this mf.

However upon entering the third town (which is a pain in the ass to navigate) and discovering that its Elementals are two of the most circumstantial of the game, plus the game kinda just running out of ideas for interesting layouts, make the last third a bit of a letdown. Not helping the situation is the fact that Thermite, the last Elemental, is so OP that in the final stretch I rarely used any other Elementals unless necessary. Feeling so powerful makes for a cathartic climax, yes, but I prefered when the game wanted me to be creative or kept me switching between transformations, which was the bread and butter of what made the first two thirds so fun.

The game almost manages to end in a good note with some spectacular setpieces in the last level, but it gave us the most uninspired boss fight of the entire game as the final encounter. Man, that was a letdown.

The first two thirds I would rate as a perfectly good 7, but the last third just loses focus on what are the game's strengths and so it ends up being a very close call between a 6 or a 7. There's a lot of potential here for a sequel, and Rare seemed to think alike, but alas Kameo 2 didn't take off as a reality. In the meantime, despite some mixed feelings and a lot of room for improvement, I did appreciate Kameo a lot, and thinking that it was supposed to be originally a GameCube title makes some of the things it pulls off even more impressive.