Pretty complex fighting game with a lot of weird mechanics. Ultimately very fun, if hard to get at a competent level.
My biggest gripe is that there is a lot of character specific things that make fighting characters much more knowledge based than it needs to be. Certain combos not working on certain characters to me is really annoying. Though, it's not like I'm good enough to make use of those. I have a hunch that, if I did learn the game enough, I wouldn't mind it as much as I feel like I would. That is a part of this games personality, and a lot of people like it. I just don't wanna put in that work lol.
Otherwise it's a very fast and satisfying game with a lot of unique and interesting characters that play a unique style of gameplay that isn't in many other fighting games. Great game!

Streets of Rage 4 is a fantastic beat ‘em up. I am still relatively new to this genre, at least the more traditional entries, but I can tell this is all quality.

If I were to say the game's combat excelled at something in particular, it would be how enemies control space, and how you have to deal with it. As simple as that sounds, this is very very difficult to get right. I believe it’s generally one of the largest shortcomings to action games and I’m sure it’s a huge one to traditional beat ‘em ups as well.

Before I can talk about how each enemy in SoR4 has a defined purpose, I must talk about the players moveset. Each character has differences but ultimately it can be described pretty simply.
Every character has a simple string of attacks, offensive and defensive special, jumping attacks and a set of grab moves.

The thing I want to emphasize now is that you are able to walk OR attack. Some attacks can “move” you but that doesn’t mean you are in the state of “walking”, at least in terms of how the game defines it.

In a game where the enemies are primarily about controlling space, this is a really big deal. If you could run around slashing like a ninja slashing your sword everywhere, it would be a very different type of game. This design decision creates one of the most seemingly basic yet intriguing value judgements in action games to me. It sounds a little silly but I think the only way to really show what this is to use the statement as a question, “should I walk or attack?” If that’s hard to really think of the implications of, you can simplify it a little further and say it’s almost like “should I play defensively or offensively?” There is a catch there, you can have offensive movements and defensive attacks, but that’s the idea.

This game only excels at this and I very rarely see games that do it better. It’s all down to the enemies, which to me are some of the best in the genre.

It’s too much to cover all the potential value judgements in this game, but even with the most basic goons there is a shockingly good amount just due to the speed of the attacks and the damage they do. Most attacks are fast and pretty damaging, they are all a threat in some way or another. That actually imposing threat is what makes this really click.

At a very basic level, a lot of this game is baiting out attacks and punishing them. There are value judgments in that alone I think but those are pretty whatever, the juicy stuff is when you implement another enemy. What if he’s close enough to hit you out of your attack that was supposed to be a punish? What if he has more range than you and his attacks are harder to punish? What if you try to get out of the way of an attack but it’s less advantageous because ANOTHER enemy is nearby, in your way. You can keep asking questions that don’t have completely solid answers, and that to me is the cool part.

You not only have choice, but they mean very different things in a game as system focused as this. Your problem solving has to be top notch because even a correct decision can still lead to something more negative later, just because you didn’t choose the most correct option, which may not have even existed.

That isn’t to say there aren’t strong options, hell I know there are. Doing the back grab slam thing is generally really strong due to the i-frames. The only thing you have to consider after you get it there is the crowd control, making sure you have a way out of that attack without being piled on by enemies. It’s impossible to make a game of this complexity without strong tools and I don’t think they need to. Strong tools let you devise a plan early on, and as you get accustomed to the way enemies work and the game is played, you can get better options for more situations.

Basically meaning, the tools in the game are not strong enough to be used for every situation, just strong enough to give you a good starting point past button mashing.

There’s just so much depth squeezed out of such relatively simple systems created by enemy design that’s just so genius I can’t wrap my head around it. The encounters are good too! They always have enemies that compliment each other. Pair an enemy that controls horizontal space with one that controls vertical space and you have a pretty good encounter already! They do this obvious one a couple times, if I recall. That’s not a bad thing though, in fact I really like it.

The enemies that uppercut you out of the air control your jump-ins, which is a really easy way to get combos. The enemies that run at you horizontally control horizontal space really well. Enemies who control the ground with poison are literally making some areas just bad places to be in. Some enemies have really long attacks and move fast, making it hard to whiff punish. Even with that roster alone, you can make really interesting encounters. Yet there’s so much more, and I can’t particularly think of a bad example.

The whole game is about pushing space control based judgement values to as far as the games systems allow and it does one hell of a job. If you even just like action games, this one is a great pick.

Just to get it out of the way, the game sounds and feels great. Top notch there too.

I played this for a few hours recently, I am kinda surprised there wasn't much talk about the game, at least presentation wise. That’s it’s strongest suit I think, and to me, I think it’s not only unique but also quite good! Very nice visual design.

I don’t remember much from the first GoNNER but I do think this is a step up. More variety in where you go, more enemies, more heads and guns, etc. A thing an arcadey sequel should have. Interestingly, it also seems to have balanced out the obscurity of the systems a little. I’m sure there’s still really weird tid bits here and there but the first game didn’t explain anything. Everything was a surprise.

That kinda has to do with the fact the game is also pretty obscure. This is the first review of it on this site and I think that’s to be expected. It’s interesting to see a relatively good game in this genre not have all its secrets spoiled in a week or two. While I’m sure they’re online somewhere, they aren’t easy enough to find where it will be accidental. I think it is kind of fun to discover how the systems work on your own. Little puzzles that can give you the edge in the game.

Speaking of, maybe I was just bad at the first one but the sequel has a much better difficulty curve. Once you learn how the areas work and which ones to pick for your strengths in gameplay, it isn’t as brutal as the first. It still is pretty tough, just a bit more accessible. Though it still does ramp up to the same spot pretty quick, so nothing is lost in terms of that nice bitter difficulty.

Ultimately the game is pretty nice! If you have gamepass, this is a good way to spend an hour or two trying it out. Otherwise it’s probably worth the price if you like action platformers.

An amazing example of simplicity and depth in one.

Celeste is a platformer about climbing a mountain, and thematically it’s about overcoming your fears and reaching your goals. A really easy to understand and implement theme in games. Mix that with what I interpreted as anxiety or depression and you have a nice touching story about a girl accepting what is a part of her, while literally and metaphorically overcoming a mountain of troubles (heh).

That’s kind of all the story? Maybe I’m misremembering but other than a couple character interactions that’s really it. Simple but definitely effective. While personally biased due to my mental health history, I do find stories about that stuff pretty nice.

I was going to just talk about gameplay but I realized the story also kinda matches with my opening sentence. Kinda cool.

The gameplay is a much better example of this, however.

Aside from movement keys, there are only three buttons. Jump, grab and dash. The last two are quite unique to this game.

The one a teeny bit less tied to the core of the game, the grab is, at a lower level of gameplay, mostly just a way to stop you from infinitely climbing a single wall with wall jumps like Super Meat Boy lets you. Mostly a good thing, the amount of freedom that’s lost is really small to the amount of level ideas the devs are able to make out of this extra restriction.

The way it works is simple, if you’re right up against a wall, you can press this button to grab onto it. You can then climb up and down it pretty easily. It is tied to a meter however, and once you start flashing you start to slip. This gets refreshed every time you land. Otherwise, I feel as if it’s just a breather button. Most of its use comes in from being able to take a small break and mentally prepare yourself for the next jump mid room.

The more interesting mechanic is the dash, to put it simply, at the press of a direction and a button you can dash in any of the eight cardinal directions mid air or on the ground, one use until you next touch the ground again. On its own already a really unique mechanic if used well with level design. However, this game takes it so much further than a unique mechanic.

For example, dashing diagonally down and forwards then jumping does something of a long jump. However, if you delay the jump a little bit you will be able to regain your dash, as the “dashing” state is over, and you are still on the ground. This will mean you will jump with the speed of a dash, yet be able to dash once again in the air.

The same works vertically with a slightly different input, I don’t believe you need to be holding up forwards to wall jump and get the big jump with this mechanic, just up. Nifty for sure!

Another important point is that your speed is NOT capped in this game, meaning, if you get really good at planning out where to jump and dash throughout the level, then get even better at executing it, you can fly through stages at lightning speed.

What I described is the VERY tip of the iceberg. I genuinely believe it’s one of if not the deepest modern platformer in terms of player choice and expression. I would recommend looking up speedrun tutorials and guides on how to properly move in this game. It’s quite stunning to see. It’s not my type of speedrun, but even then, it’s surely one of the best of its type.

The levels aren’t bad either! They are certainly made with almost every trick in mind. This was even admitted by devs. There is only one I know of that wasn’t intended, but it only gets used twice or so in a full game run. There are a handful of gimmicks that aren’t too fun I think but I think that’s more just me being really picky.

All of this combines into a game that not only expects something from you mechanically, but also gives back in terms of rewarding gameplay for those who really want to go above and beyond. That’s… kind of why I play games? There are games that do that better, but not games that do that with the goal of being as simple as this one. This game is a masterpiece from that perspective.

Everything I’ve said has already been said, but the game is quite personal to me. Especially story wise, it’s rare a story gets me in games, but this had just enough going on while being simple enough for my dumb brain while also just being an important topic for me. I really like it.

Overall, if you're a fan of platformers, I'd be surprised if you haven't already played it, actually. If you're not a fan, definitely try it out, it might convince you otherwise.

Initially I wasn't the biggest on this game. Characters were too similar. With the base roster, you can learn one combo that works with 95% of the cast that does enough damage to carry you a shockingly far way.
With some of season 1 and most of 2, that is different. The characters are much more unique and require at the very least different inputs. Some require different routes all together.
Not only that but block strings just... feel less prevalent? Maybe I'm just more used to them now but I don't feel like I'm waiting hours just blocking. It still is definitely too long but it's either much better than before or I got used to it.
It feels like more characters can ToD now, which is an interesting thing to me. In concept I hate ToDs, however, that's just what kind of game this is. It's a game where you have to do millions of things per second, mess up once and the opponent realizes, you might just lose a whole member of your party.
Learning more of how the combos work in this game is really fun! I encourage at least watching some tutorials on how to extent combos further than the light auto-combo.
Overall the game turned from one of my least favorite fighters of recent time to a really solid 3v3 combo fighter. Doesn't excuse the TERRIBLE online, but IF you can find a good connection it works well enough.
Solid fighting game for sure!

Holds up really well!
Devil May Cry is one of my favorite series in gaming. This one holds up really well, having played it for the first time sometime last year.
This game is much less combo focused than the rest of the series. Devil May Cry 3, 4 and 5 seem to mostly be about what you can do with the player side of the combat. This one, however, is much more balanced towards the enemies.
They have many tools to deal with your move set, which is much more limited than in the other games. You only have access to one gun at a time, and switching between one of two melee weapons is quite slow. Not to mention that their move set is generally smaller than in the newer games. It's about mastering the system with the challenge of not having very many, albeit very useful tools. The later games are about mastering the system within the complex and large set of tools.
Kind of a dumb way to put it I guess but I think I got my idea across??
The issue with the game is that, due to technical limitations, they've never actually ended up putting multiple enemy types in a single encounter. This could have GREATLY increased the quality of the encounters. Many enemies have weaknesses that can be strengthened by enemies that cover those options.
For example, maybe in an encounter with Sin Scissors, the flying enemy with large... scissors, you could put an enemy that covers the ground really well. This would make positioning in that encounter much more strategic, as neither the air or the ground is completely safe.
The enemy design is just begging to be mixed up! It's really a shame they couldn't do that as almost every enemy would be interesting with at least one or two other types.
The combat is still really solid, lots of nice tricks and cool enemies to deal with. Even without mixing types there is a lot of variety within the enemy design that I don't think it's the biggest downfall. There is a little sign of aging in terms of controls, camera stuff and signposting but I honestly was able to ignore it. I still had a great time.
I think the issue with the combat outside of encounters is just that Devil Trigger is REALLY strong. Enemies get Devil Trigger on the highest difficulty however, which makes up for it. Though I can't say it doesn't feel a little cheap to use on earlier difficulties.
Everything else is also really nice. There is a fun atmosphere that treats horror as if it were the coolest thing ever, instead of as if it was scary. This is quite unique and even shows itself a bit in what came of RE4. I quite like the music as well!
Overall I have to say the game was original and executed on those ideas very well. I can highly recommend it. Just remember that your jump has i-frames, there is your dedicated dodge button, nerds! ;)

I wrote a very long review of the game that’s double in size. If you want to see that it’s here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NtzV254ZRV3g4_e9gzxEge5CBjylbcA7ORH1nPs_hfY/edit?usp=sharing), otherwise the shorter one is posted here.Thanks to the user Tatsky for helping me shorten it a lot!

This game is something very special. I don’t even know where to begin. I guess with the negatives since it will be so short.
Some cutscenes aren’t skippable. Oh well. None in 2016 were so it’s an upgrade either way. There are some invisible walls and some weird places that count as falling out of the map. These don’t kill you anymore so it’s kind of fine just a little annoying. I guess it’s a bit buggy. There are times you can get stuck in a level because it’s not 100% clear where to go. To fix this problem, open the map. It’s very clear where to go then.

That’s kind of it?

Almost every choice in this game is almost a direct upgrade from Doom 2016. To be quite honest, I didn’t like 2016 at all. I think 2016 existing the way it does now explains why people are having complaints about Doom Eternal. It all comes down to one major problem.
Doom 2016 is way too easy.
It expects very little from you. The two most threatening enemies are not the big ones that do damage. One of them is the Imp, who has a small chance of hitting you with a hitscan fireball. 99% of the time they are true fodder enemies. The only other threatening enemy is the Pinky. I actually kind of like this enemy. It forces you to move in a more interesting way than every other enemy in the game.

2016 mostly requires you to circle strafe around enemies while shooting. The ammo is always plentiful for pretty much every gun so there is no reason to not switch from the strongest weapon. In most situations this is the Super Shotgun or Rocket Launcher. In others it’s the Gauss Cannon. Depending if you want damage with Super Shotgun and Rocket Launcher or some movement with Gauss Boosting. There is practically no reason to use any other weapon.
With basically only two useful weapons and gameplay as simple as “Hold W, A or D while aiming at an enemy so you move around or towards them” it gets very boring very quickly.

Glory Kills are freely given to you. All you need to do to get health is find the zombie that barely attacks, punch it once or twice and by then it’s in a Glory Kill state, giving you a bunch of health. Enemies are not aggressive enough to punish you in this game for doing that in a bad situation. This would be like if Dark Souls had an invincible heal that stopped enemies from attacking until it was over, and you can always roll out if an attack comes after. It makes Glory Kills have no risk, completely free health packs just for spamming punch on a guy two or three times.

Doom Eternal not only fixes these problems amazingly yet creates an interlocking system with them as elegantly as I can imagine.

For one, almost every enemy in Doom Eternal is a threat. They’re aggressive and will attack you at any moment. Not only that, but because they actually get to show off their aggression and AI, they are much clearly more unique and have many more roles in combat now. I am going to leave most of that in the indepth review but believe me that they are all threatening. That along with the amazing encounters make you have to play differently when different enemies are around. This dynamic almost doesn’t happen in 2016 due to enemies just not being aggressive enough. They can’t pressure you or make you do anything so you can just wail on them with bullets.

Speaking of, your moveset is much larger this time around. Not just because you have more moves but because the old ones that were useless are now useful. Every weapon has a use, however going through how each one is used is a bit long so I’m going to also leave that to the indepth review.

Before I get into the rest of it, let me clarify. You don’t need to constantly be switching to every weapon every chance you get. Infact, you can get away with using 2 or 3 of your favorites as long as they are different ammo types, then using the others when you are low on ammo. You also don’t really need to be switching weapon mods, it’s kind of just there for the cool factor. Pick the mods that you like and you’re fine.

Now to the other moves.
The most important one is the chainsaw. It’s basically a single Glory Kill that instead of giving you health, gives you ammo. The last pip recharges so as long as you aren’t missing your shots and being careful with not killing every Fodder enemy, you will always have at least half of your ammo. I think this makes a really cool choice. What’s more useful? Ammo or health? Health costs a little time to get with shooting an enemy with the Heavy Cannon and Ammo takes a resource that takes time to recharge. Either way, each enemy is a choice.

Ammo is low. This is 100% true. However, you almost always have the tools to get more ammo. As long as you are using weapons of different ammo types and using the chainsaw when you can, you almost never run out. Easier difficulties give you more ammo, for regular pickups and the chainsaw, so either way if ammo is an issue, you can always turn the difficulty down.

There is also a Blood Punch system. By doing two glory kills on Fodder or one on a larger enemy, your regular no damage punch becomes an insane health deleter. It’s the reason why you end up getting close to enemies. It’s just so strong. Worth being strong too, many enemies have really fast or strong melee attacks so it’s nice to have it that you can get them back that way.

Overall this game has a lot of systems (I didn't mention all of them in this short review) With the enemies creating as much pressure as they do, it does feel like you have to use all of them. That long with base ammo being relatively low makes this game demanding. Maybe too demanding for some, but this is why I mentioned 2016 may have had something to do with the reception of this game.

Even Nightmare in 2016 doesn’t push you as much as Hurt Me Plenty in Doom Eternal. Players who want to play Doom Eternal on the same difficulty that they did in 2016 are going to be met with expectations that were never there previously.
If Eternal named the difficulties in a traditional way I don’t think this would have been an issue. And yet when people are playing this game they end up going on a difficulty too high because they assume it’s similar to the last game, which is completely reasonable to expect.
Most people's problems with the game directly come with higher difficulty. Read the issues people have. “Ammo is too low and you have to use the chainsaw too often” is fixed with lower difficulty. “The game demands too much of you” is a very obvious one fixed with lower difficulty. Other than visuals, story and some bugs, everything is fixed by going on a difficulty lower and just playing there. The names aren’t even demeaning like in Wolfenstein so I don’t know why people won't just go down one to have a better time.

I mentioned visuals briefly there. I think the cartoony look is nice but I understand not liking it as much I guess? I think it makes the battlefield much clearer so it’s easier to see what’s going on, allowing for more stuff to do in gameplay. Items and enemies are colorful and easy to spot. Overall this is a good trade off, function over form.

I also think it’s funny that people complain about tutorials and yet people also say the game is too complicated or hard. I know both can exist but in this case I think they just aren’t listening to the game to be honest. Many people don’t know how the chainsaw refills the first pip, despite the game literally transporting you to a training room to tell you how it works. It’s screaming that it’s different from 2016. Yet there are, or at least were, many people who had no idea that’s how it worked.

Not to say the game is perfect. There are definitely stupid things in the game. I mentioned the bugs and invisible walls before, those are self explanatory. There are a few annoying enemies. The Marauders are kind of too easy once you figure them out. You clear the room and click on their face when they glow green. That’s it. Learning how to parry it was fun but it very quickly lost its charm for me. The bosses aren’t that great either honestly.

I can understand not having much fun with the game, maybe it just is too stressful. What I can’t understand is thinking it’s straight up bad. It uses the unique qualities of the medium in what I think is the best way yet. No other action game requires you use this many systems and think this much this quickly.

That is what games, not just video games, are about. They are about interactivity. If you’re not thinking, you’re not making choices or interacting with systems. If you are, it is at such a base level it doesn’t really take advantage of the medium I think. Not to say it has to be as complex as this, this just is one of the first action games to really go as far as it has.

Art doesn’t have to be for everyone. I think to make a good game you’re going to miss out on a lot of people. This game would catch a lot more if people were willing to turn the difficulty down.