A great little collectathon you can beat in one sitting. The launch of Celeste 64 caught me entirely by surprise and the fact that this game was made in just a week is astonishing. Not much to say about it except that it's a lot of fun (despite the janky camera) and translates the gameplay elements of Celeste into 3D fairly well. Wish it was a bit longer, but I'm not really complaining since it was made in such a short time - maybe this concept will be fully realized one day if the reception is positive? Only time will tell.

Final stats (taken from the results screen):
🍓x25
💀x089
⏱47:55:455

The streets of Mombasa are littered with the aftermath of a Covenant war machine rampaging through. Bodies strewn, Covenant and Human alike. Cars alight, buses overturned. In the midst of all this, you, a lone ODST, wander through the dead city in search of your fellow ODSTs.

The thing I love so much about ODST is its feeling of vulnerability. It grips you the moment you jump out of your crashed pod. You're thrown into the middle of the street, not knowing what lurks behind every dark corner. Your team is scattered, and you don't even know if they survived the crash. There you are, alone in every sense of the word. Maybe if you were a Spartan then it would be fine. Regenerative shields, superhuman strength and dexterity, you wouldn't be fazed at all. It would just feel like any other Halo game to date. Yet here you are, an ODST, unaugmented, shieldless, just you and your trusty silenced submachine gun (the coolest yet worst gun in Halo). Having no shields means that every encounter becomes deadlier to you. Your screen turns a jarring red with each hit you take; your health doesn't regenerate; healing stations are few and far between. Every encounter feels fragile, every encounter triggers a fight or flight response. Every aspect of the game will tell you exactly how killable you are.

ODST's storytelling helps to further amplify this feeling of vulnerability. Right from the start of the game, you're dropped into an empty street. Empty buses and cars are left haphazardly along the roadside. Stray bodies can be found at every corner of the map. The city is silent, less for the incessant grunting of the prowling brutes and the robotic beeping of the Superintendent, Mombasa's resident city AI. Perhaps one of the most underappreciated parts of ODST is Sadie's Story, pieced together from various audio logs found in data terminals scattered throughout New Mombasa. Without getting into the details of the story, it depicts really well the chaos and panic that ensued when the invasion started It showed a very real visceral image of war from the civilian standpoint, one that we rarely got to see in Halo. What I like about ODST so much is that we get to see a more fragile state of the UNSC. The UNSC without the Spartans. One of my most memorable moments in ODST's campaign is during Uplift Reserve, listening in on an injured marine's dialogue with another marine.

The marine's dialogue is as follows:

Injured Marine: "No, no, no! You're not listening! It's a zoo, okay?"
Marine: "Well, technically it's a corporate-funded wildlife reserve."
Injured Marine: "Semantics! This whole place is one...big...cage!"
Marine: "Listen, Marine. You're wounded; you need to try and relax."
Injured Marine: "Except we, we're the zebras. All fenced in... and ready for the slaughter!"
Marine: "And the Covenant?"
Injured Marine: "They're the lions... RAAWR!"
Marine: "Careful. I think you just strained a metaphor."
Injured Marine: "Oh, oh God, oh God! Is that...serious?"
Marine: "Only if you keep it up."

While clearly meant to be a funny easter egg (which it was I laughed when I found it), it showed the humanity in the UNSC. The one with marines and ODSTs that fought against aliens taller, stronger and with much more lethal weapons than they had. Playing ODST had me feeling part of the UNSC. Not as a powerhouse on the battlefield like in other Halos, where I played as a Spartan going against inhuman odds, but rather as part of the war effort, another piece on the ground, inconsequential in the grander scheme of the war. Yet in every small battle, winning just that small an edge that the UNSC might prevail over the Covenant.

Despite all these things going for ODST, it would not be the game it is today without its music. ODST is carried by its soundtrack. The gravity of the Covenant invasion on Earth would be lost to me if it were not for 'Overture' during the introduction cutscene. Wandering the streets of Mombasa would not be as eerie without 'The Rookie' playing in the background. Or as tentative without 'Asphalt and Ablution'. Or as peaceful without 'Deference for Darkness'. I could go on forever, but it goes without saying that one of the most important elements in a game is its soundtrack, and Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori did an amazing job with ODST.

For a game that took just over a year to develop, ODST was and always will be a game that I adore.

There's really no other way to put it. This game (and possibly franchise) is morally and creatively bankrupt. Between the shallow depictions of mental health whether there's dramatic zooms of the protagonist self harming or even going as far to have chapters end with you jumping off a building and the following interludes flash a suicide hotline message until the level loads or the awkward anime dub tier voice acting berate you with insults or commentary on your surroundings because Konami needs to remind you this is in a fact a serious game and they're afraid of leaving things to interpretation, I fail to see how the 2 hours I spent with this tech demo can leave me anticipation of the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake or "missing the point".

This whole experience ends up feeling like a parody of the thing it's trying to comment and I don't think that's the takeaway someone with diagnosed BPD should be feeling.

Yakuza/Like a Dragon has been my favorite gaming series since a few years now and naturally I've been very hyped for Infinite Wealth. So much that I didn't watch any trailer past the first 10-minute reveal of the game and muted Yakuza related keywords on social media. I usually never do this for a game, but the urge to see Kiryu's fate by myself was strong, since that's a key selling point for this entry.

The new characters are great and became some of my favorites in the series, but it was also nice to see how Infinite Wealth expanded on the previously established characters from Yakuza: Like a Dragon in meaningful ways. This is especially noticeable with Ichiban himself, since he really gets to shine in many different aspects here - whether he is serious about the things that matter the most to him or if he is just goofing around with his friends, he just feels like a great guy to be around overall. There's something about him that just feels so human and real.

I always felt like the combat in Yakuza 7 was a bit janky, but I excused it since it was RGG's first attempt at creating a turn-based game. Fortunately, Infinite Wealth follows up on the foundation that's already there and adds some tactical elements like moving during turns, guaranteed crits when attacking from behind and combo attacks with party members. It really makes a big difference and makes the combat flow a whole lot better. Balancing is also just right for the most part and the DLC classes have good basegame integration this time around. No more solo-ing bosses with the comically overpowered Head Trauma move in the previous mainline game.

Story is enjoyable for the most part. There are some plotholes and other minor nitpicks that bother me, even so it's still an enjoyable ride overall with some good supporting characters and villains along the way. Pacing is a bit wonky in a way that there are some instances where you have to follow a very linear route across half the map to get to your destination while avoiding random encounters left and right. This makes sense with the narrative context in those situations, but it's rather dull from a gameplay perspective, considering you just have to beeline from A to B without being able to do anything else for that time (without prior warning). It's not a major flaw, since it only occurs a few time in the game, but what's really bugging me is that the narrative unfortunately has a lot of wasted potential, keeping it from being one of the best ones in the series. Some seemingly "major" characters are especially undercooked, which is a shame given their assigned roles in the story.

Now for some positivity again, one of the biggest highlights in Infinite Wealth for me is Kiryu's involvement. Having to come to terms with his own mortality, he decides to seek out friends and locations from the past one more time. It's really cool to see so many returning characters from the Kiryu games and what they're up to now; the little flashbacks to past Yakuza games you can see at various points scattered across the cities are also neat fanservice. While this aspect falls pretty flat for those who got into the series with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, it feels like a nice reward for all long-term fans and might even motivate some of the newer fans to go back to the Kiryu saga!

Overall, Infinite Wealth feels like a big step up from Like a Dragon into the right direction and is worth your time. It's not just a good game for Yakuza fans, but for JRPG fans in general with the amount of effort put into this game. Now onto Persona 3 Reload, another game I've been looking forward to a long time!

Thanks for reading.

Halo 3 is the culmination of Bungie’s space opera classic and a very strong experience in it’s own right.

It’s been a blast playing through the original games with some of my friends, and the constant improvements between installments both in gunplay and narratives has made this little walkthrough a real pleasure.

While I was never a super fan on the same level as some friends, it’s clear Halo 3 warrants it’s legendary title as a fitting finale and a game that will never get old. Might be close knit in terms of preference with Combat Evolved, but this is a game I can see myself revisiting for a long time

I want a sequel to Bulletstorm so fucking bad.

I loved this game as a kid back on 360 and played the shit out of it there, playing it again almost 10 years later and I love it even more than I did back then.

Skillshots are genuinely one of the coolest mechanics I've ever seen in a game, finding creative ways to take down enemies and getting rewarded for it is so fun and all the weapons in the game are all so unique and a joy to use.

The game art style wise still holds up very well and all the areas look great, especially on an OLED screen from my Steam Deck

The writing is ridiculous and over the top, usually I'd find it pretty cringe but I think it matches the tone of this game well enough to where I didn't really mind it much, it is also genuinely funny at points too.

This game was just so fucking fun. It is Insanely underrated.

Playtime: 8 Hours
Score: 8/10

A perfect little game for me to play just before Persona 3 Reload comes out! I had heard this game was a sleeper hit and after playing it, I can see why. But what is this game about?

It combines so many genres into one compact little game. Its part story driven game, part cooking sim, part skateboarding game and part JRPG. You think some of those wouldn't go together, but it suprisingly worked very well! I loved every aspect of this game except for the skateboard sections which were not for me really, but hey its there for anyone who grew up playing Tony Hawk or Skate! I was more interested in the story and RPG mechanics personally, which are pretty sound.

The game starts you with three attributes, with one main one based on a questionaire you do at the beginning. As you level up you can put points into them and they also increase as you pick dialogue options in conversations. You also have the basic stats that go up the more you use them like attack and defense. I thought these were some decent RPG mechanics overall and I liked engaging with them.

The combat is very much like Persona where you have to target enemies weaknesses by taunting them like making them angry as an example, and then using abillties that target that weakness type for maximum damage. Also as you defeat the exes, you can do side missions for them afterwards and unlock them as summons in battle which I thought was cool. I also liked how you couldn't use certain summons in certain fights based on that exes story ties to the enemy you were fighting. Just small attention to detail that I liked.

The story was easily the best part though! What I like is that they don't present Jala as some kind of Mary Sue with no flaws, as they make it clear to you from the beginning that she has made a lot of mistakes in the past, and your choices will effect her path to redemption. I thought all of the dialogue was great and its all voiced which was surprise for a smaller game like this, but very appreciated as it makes the game easier to get invested in. The characters are all just teeming with great energy and it was blast to interact with all of them. They also do a great job of repersenting gay characters which is always nice to see in a video game in my book! The ending I also thought was very good and fitting for everything that the story was building up to.

The only part of the story I found a little disappointing was the side plot involving the towns teenagers being groomed by a cult leader. The game builds it up like your going to take this guy down, and I always love me some cult take downs in video games, but the ending to it was VERY anti-climatic. I don't know if this was based on choices I made in dialogue that lead to the ending I got, or if there even is another ending get. I couldn't really check as of the writing of this review, I couldn't find any real guides or walkthroughs to check if I did something wrong. They do bring it up again at the end of the game, so I don't know if thats sequel bait or something. I will be disappionted if it is, not that I wouldn't want another game from this team, but that I would have to play a second game to get a proper resolution.

Overall though, this a solid little indie RPG and I can recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs, story driven games or skateboarding as thats a whole aspect to this game I didn't really touch much of.

All Games I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/

I thought this was terrible, no other word for it. I got as far as the first boss before giving up, and even that was a painful and deeply unpleasant experience, and I simply do not want to subject myself to any more.

So before getting into the breakdown of what I didn't like here, I'll take a moment to say I like the visual design of the environments. The pixel art is pretty good and, for the most part, this game looks the part. Also, I can't say if this carries on throughout of course, but the early game enemy diversity at least is pretty decent too.

But apart from that.... no. Nothing about this feels good to play. The combat and platforming both feel incredibly clunky; movement is floaty and slow, and even the weapons with 'fastest' strike speed kinda waft across their strike arc with the speed, weight and grace of a fly swatter. I can feel the Dark Souls influence in the enemy design here but it just... doesn't work at all. Most enemies provide no threat at all, and you can either trivially stunlock them to death or just walk on by. But others are just... unfair. Despite how little of the game I got through, I had already run into multiple enemies where so much as grazing one of their attacks would result in a certain stunlock until you died.

And the UI looks terrible it's literally just textboxes in some default-looking font and looks so odd with all the pixel graphics. And the writing is next-level dreadful; the story and textlogs you can find read like they were written by a ten year old. And for some reason you can't save whenever you want, and have to rely on built-in savepoints. But who cares about any of that right? Because as far as I can tell, this game is just an excuse to put endless scantily-clad underage anime girls on the screen. As far as I can tell, literally every character (most of the enemies included) is an underage anime girl. And the game is super thirsty... it's really, really uncomfortable. All the characters gyrate around constantly in their idle animation like someone gave Shantae a line of cocaine. Every time you or one of the anime enemies takes damage they scream and grunt in that classic anime young girl voice, and every attack is some kind of thrust or suggestive lunge. Like, I'm not here to kink-shame if this is what you want out of a game, but it made me feel physically sick. The final straw for me was the second phase of the first boss, when the mandatory slime girl emerged from the arena floor, breasts flapping so violently they took up about a quarter of the screen. No. I'm not doing this to myself. I want no part in this.

So yeah. I think I actually hate this game. It gets a full star rather than 0.5 for actually having a somewhat playable game in it and, like I said, for having some pretty decent pixel art in the backgrounds and environments. But I will now be uninstalling this game, uninstalling steam, turning off my PC and throwing it in the nearest river.

Portal 2 feels like the fully realized version of the original Portal. At it's core it feels the same, but the sequel just has so much more going for it, more personality.

In this game, Chell is no longer bound to the test chambers of Aperture Science like in the first Portal. After an incident in the story, she decides to take a little stroll through an abandoned salt mine and the backstage parts within the facility while she's at it. All of this while she is accompanied by three unique companions throughout the game. Speaking of the companions, the dialogue in Portal 2 is a big improvement over the one in Portal. In the first game, GLaDOS' comments happened every now and then, but here you pretty much have a narrator by your side all the time. This alone makes for quite the tonal shift in atmosphere to Portal, which had a pretty isolated and empty feeling to it - I can see how people prefer that, but personally I really enjoyed the extra dialogue and characters, since GLaDOS' remarks in the first game were one of the best parts for me. Back to the atmosphere in general, I think Valve did a really good job with setting an unique vibe for each individual area. My personal favorite is the salt mine, the vintage setting really landed for me!

As for gameplay, Portal 2 introduces a variety of mechanics to make the puzzles more enjoyable than the first game. Energy balls are completely gone this time and are replaced with light bridges, gravity beams, new cube variants and three different sorts of paint. Sounds like overkill at first, but those mechanics don't really overstay their welcome and they are really fun to play around with.

The narrative weaves those puzzles together in a logical way, while also delving into the background story of Chell and Aperture Science; there's some really good worldbuilding in there. The companions aren't one-note personalities and each one adds to the story with a different purpose, which makes them distinctive and memorable in their own ways.

Overall it's an amazing puzzle game, absolutely deserves the praise it's been getting. Had a good time with the main story, but the community maps are a nice treat if you're still in the mood for some more Portal action.