jtduckman
2006
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!
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!
1995
Seems like a pretty standard version of tetris at first, but it's actually quite interesting! Weird how it's exclusive to Japan tho, i guess it's probably a bit too 2D and flat for what the virtual boy was trying to go for in the west. There's your typical A and B modes that do the exact same things you'd expect with A mode being the endless basic mode and B mode being clear 25 lines with piling amounts of garbage blocks. There's a variety of backgrounds with fun 3D parallax effects to pick from, some music selections (that are mostly a bit too screechy for my tastes, the OST ain't really my jam here), and the block clears pop out towards you as a neat effect. Theres no hold button, a generous amount of lock delay, and the highest speed doesn't go too fast so it's a basic if not a bit easy form of tetris.
The most interesting part comes from the new C mode where there's basically a double-length tetris field that wraps around itself. In this mode, getting any line clear triggers any other fully completed line on the board to also get cleared, so clever manipulation of the rotating board can make it so you can build up a massive screen-clearing super-tetris. This mode basically flips the game on its head as getting those huge clears relies on intentionally finding ways to fill the whole board without actually clearing any lines on their own, leaving intentional holes to be used as potential anchor points to build off of. It's super fresh and satisfying, and it alone makes this version of tetris definitely worth checking out. Not sure why they didnt bring this mode to other tetris games as it's pretty fun and really doesnt even make that much use of the 3D depth, like even pokemon puzzle league on N64 did the whole cylindrical 3D playfield with a stronger sense of 3D depth than here.
It's tetris! In red! With a cool exclusive gamemode! No reason not to give it a go really, just maybe make sure the volume is a bit low beforehand.
The most interesting part comes from the new C mode where there's basically a double-length tetris field that wraps around itself. In this mode, getting any line clear triggers any other fully completed line on the board to also get cleared, so clever manipulation of the rotating board can make it so you can build up a massive screen-clearing super-tetris. This mode basically flips the game on its head as getting those huge clears relies on intentionally finding ways to fill the whole board without actually clearing any lines on their own, leaving intentional holes to be used as potential anchor points to build off of. It's super fresh and satisfying, and it alone makes this version of tetris definitely worth checking out. Not sure why they didnt bring this mode to other tetris games as it's pretty fun and really doesnt even make that much use of the 3D depth, like even pokemon puzzle league on N64 did the whole cylindrical 3D playfield with a stronger sense of 3D depth than here.
It's tetris! In red! With a cool exclusive gamemode! No reason not to give it a go really, just maybe make sure the volume is a bit low beforehand.
2005
damn. Leaves good first impressions, especially for a gizmondo game, I'll give them that. It's basically like one of those ultra-linear platforming speed obstacle course type beats. Like those straight hallway endless runner flash games. The visuals and game feel are actually surprisingly solid and the game has a nice sense of speed and flow to it but the mfin level designs are so godawful that it just makes everything frustratingly annoying to play. Every level is on a timer and any remaining time carries over to the next level which encourages learning from your mistakes to clear the game, but doing 15 and 20 level long gauntlets of trial and error where each game over takes you ALLLLL the way back to the beginning where you gotta work your way back to where the game last gotcha-momented you just to get gotcha-momented again in the next level just aint fun. If the level design wasnt so focused on outright memorizing level layouts through trial and error this would probably be a "killer app" of the gizmondo (not like that really means much in the grand scheme of things i guess), but instead we just have a game thats fun to control but aggravating to play. Though considering this is a remake of some C64 game, maybe that's just how it sticks to its source material. To all you 0 gizmondoers out there, stick with sticky balls.
1986
I like the setting but even for 1986 this game a lil rough though. Hitboxes are roughly defined, Sayo-chan moves at a very laxidasical pace which makes avoiding things difficult (if the guys that cling to you and mess up your movement touch you, you're already dead). The game also likes to just absolutely throw shit at you from all directions at seemingly random and has plenty of classic "pay up sucker" difficulty spike arcadeisms to it as a whole. Definitely make sure to set the dip switches to the easy mode and/or use save states to make the game much more comfortable. Probably better to just give the SNES sequels/reboots/whatever a play instead of this, cuz unless you are historically curious to play this, its just a pretty standard difficult 80's arcade game painted with a nice youkai setting.
1994
Absolutely wild that a game like this could not only get all the go-aheads to become a full retail release, but also manage to get localized for an english market. The fact that it did though is raw as fuck
This is like the least gamey video game to ever game the videos. You basically use a cursor to push a variety of buttons in a variety of different rooms, and that's it. Some buttons take you to a different room, some buttons destroy a world landmark, and most buttons just play a very inconsequential gag. There is zero way to know what button will do what, so push away and hope for the best! There is an in-game map to show how deep in the madness you are, and provided you remember (or write down) which buttons take you where then the game is a cinch. That being said, the core second-to-second gameplay is essentially just russian roulette, and while that sounds horrible on paper, idk the games short and amusing enough to make it work. Most of the fun just comes from seeing what the fuck kind of weird shit is gonna happen, and it's a great game to show to friends just to see how they react.
I assumed that this game served as a tech demo for Data East to understand using the sega CD hardware or something, but apparently this is the only game they made on this system and mobygames lists the director and primary graphics credit as only having worked on this sole game and nothing else so maybe this game is the result of a passion project, who knows. The sheer amount of dumb characters, animations, setpieces, and one-off jokes definitely gave me the impression that they wanted to make something that could only be done with the space of a CD-ROM disc at the time, and by god, they succeeded. Ain't no way in hell you could have fit this on a game cartridge. Honestly give it a try and very quickly you will find out whether or not you'll be into it.
This is like the least gamey video game to ever game the videos. You basically use a cursor to push a variety of buttons in a variety of different rooms, and that's it. Some buttons take you to a different room, some buttons destroy a world landmark, and most buttons just play a very inconsequential gag. There is zero way to know what button will do what, so push away and hope for the best! There is an in-game map to show how deep in the madness you are, and provided you remember (or write down) which buttons take you where then the game is a cinch. That being said, the core second-to-second gameplay is essentially just russian roulette, and while that sounds horrible on paper, idk the games short and amusing enough to make it work. Most of the fun just comes from seeing what the fuck kind of weird shit is gonna happen, and it's a great game to show to friends just to see how they react.
I assumed that this game served as a tech demo for Data East to understand using the sega CD hardware or something, but apparently this is the only game they made on this system and mobygames lists the director and primary graphics credit as only having worked on this sole game and nothing else so maybe this game is the result of a passion project, who knows. The sheer amount of dumb characters, animations, setpieces, and one-off jokes definitely gave me the impression that they wanted to make something that could only be done with the space of a CD-ROM disc at the time, and by god, they succeeded. Ain't no way in hell you could have fit this on a game cartridge. Honestly give it a try and very quickly you will find out whether or not you'll be into it.
1994
It's fuckin cotton baby! Definitely a SNES game, with everything that entails. The color range is vibrant, the soundtrack has that distinct SNES midi-y vibe to it, and the game can sometimes chug to a crawl despite not much going on onscreen. The slower gameplay and simplified magic system honestly make this game a pretty darn good beginner shmup imo as the only extremely intense section is the final boss which might be considered a pretty high difficulty spike tbh. Other than that, it's cotton! I love this doofy willow-obsessed witch girl and her empty-minded antics, and you should too.
2009
it was okay! I definitely remember hearing this game get hella marketing attention back when it was releasing, with places like nintendo power and nintendo week really gassing up this title. I guess it's weird that despite all that I don't think I ever knew a single soul that actually bought this game back at its release...
The game itself is a pretty run of the mill puzzley platformery type beat. Boy throws beans at blob, blob uses beans to change into stuff, stuff is used to overcome obstacles. I do think that they could have done a bit more conceptually with the idea, like having the beans be permanent upgrades or just having a lot more multi-purpose beans because the things the blob can turn into are really context sensitive and the levels definitely make it very obvious which beans should be used at what time. The boy himself can't really do much except throw beans and say "blob", and while he does control rather snappily on his own, the animations for doing various things combined with the blobs tendencies to get stuck on literally anything does mean that the game just has a very meandering pace to it. Lots of just standing around waiting for the blob to do its blobby things. The game has a decent enough hand-drawn animated aesthetic to it, and given the fact that the game has bespoke "hug blob" and "scold blob" buttons I get the idea they wanted to make some sort of emotional connection between player, boy, and blob, but the games real lack of any sort of coherent narrative kinda makes that fall a bit flat imo. It's just level after level with pretty much nothing in the way of cutscenes, menus, or any text in general really. They might have been going for some kinda minimalist philosophy or something, but it really just made the game feel like an xbox live arcade or wiiware title to me tbh. The music is very bland forgettable orchestral tracks too.
I definitely like the concept of having a character with a partner that can transform into anything, I just kinda hoped it was a bit more open-ended with how the puzzles were handled. I haven't played the original game on the NES, and after playing this, I should probably give it a try ngl. Doesn't really have any outstanding problems or flaws, but I don't think all the people that skipped out on getting this back in the day missed out on much.
The game itself is a pretty run of the mill puzzley platformery type beat. Boy throws beans at blob, blob uses beans to change into stuff, stuff is used to overcome obstacles. I do think that they could have done a bit more conceptually with the idea, like having the beans be permanent upgrades or just having a lot more multi-purpose beans because the things the blob can turn into are really context sensitive and the levels definitely make it very obvious which beans should be used at what time. The boy himself can't really do much except throw beans and say "blob", and while he does control rather snappily on his own, the animations for doing various things combined with the blobs tendencies to get stuck on literally anything does mean that the game just has a very meandering pace to it. Lots of just standing around waiting for the blob to do its blobby things. The game has a decent enough hand-drawn animated aesthetic to it, and given the fact that the game has bespoke "hug blob" and "scold blob" buttons I get the idea they wanted to make some sort of emotional connection between player, boy, and blob, but the games real lack of any sort of coherent narrative kinda makes that fall a bit flat imo. It's just level after level with pretty much nothing in the way of cutscenes, menus, or any text in general really. They might have been going for some kinda minimalist philosophy or something, but it really just made the game feel like an xbox live arcade or wiiware title to me tbh. The music is very bland forgettable orchestral tracks too.
I definitely like the concept of having a character with a partner that can transform into anything, I just kinda hoped it was a bit more open-ended with how the puzzles were handled. I haven't played the original game on the NES, and after playing this, I should probably give it a try ngl. Doesn't really have any outstanding problems or flaws, but I don't think all the people that skipped out on getting this back in the day missed out on much.
2009
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.
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 myxbox 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!
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
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!
2024
I don't remember which state of play this game was first announced in, but I definitely remember seeing this game getting unveiled and being curiously interested for both good and bad reasons. On one hand, I thought that color-based territory and movement mechanics were too cool of a concept to be only used by one particular game series, and I was intrigued to see how this game plays and potentially evolves from other titles of its ilk, especially given how this game has Square Enix backing it up. On the other hand, the CGI announce trailer and character designs definitely gave me very "overwatch SFM" vibes. The art direction and derivative game concept definitely made it incredibly easy to make low-blow jokes online over, that's for certain. And as everyone online continued to make jokes (myself honestly included at that point), this game still remained in the back of my mind until then. That's certainly not a quality most games announced at a State of Play possess.
Some months later, and another State of Play happens announcing an open beta network test to try the game out early, so naturally I had to give it a try and see what the fuck they were actually cooking, and I actually quite enjoyed it! Eventually they announced the full games release date and the game remains mostly untouched from the beta with the exception of a few new game modes being introduced (and season pass microtransactions being shoehorned into the game, gee thanks). They even made it free on PS plus this month, so I could just drop right back into the action when the game launched!
The game itself is actually surprisingly not as derivative as I thought it was going to be. Yes, you shoot blobs of color that cover the arenas and can use them for movement purposes, but there's no gamemodes where it's a contest on who can cover the most ground in their color. Rather, the main gamemode is more like the Light Vs. Dark mode in Kid Icarus Uprising, where each team has a life pool that, once depleted, turns a team member into a powered up "star" player, where defeating the opponents star player wins the game. There is also a 2v2-style game mode as well as a payload pushing tower defending mode to add some variety. It makes for a much more aggro-oriented game experience, especially considering the fact that in order to chill (not kill, DO NOT CONFUSE THE TWO) someone, not only do you need to blast them until their health runs out, but also run into their foam-balled up downed form with your surfboard. Running into downed teammates with your surfboard resurrects them from their soapy demise, so the game emphasizes huddling together and cooperating to succeed. The foam can't be used to cover walls and climb them, but rather it clumps up which can be used in various ways like making a wall, building a high ground, ensuring a spot doesn't get covered by the enemy as easily, etc. It's certainly unique. That being said, the bullets being slow bubbles definitely gives the guns less impact and the clumpy nature of the foam can kinda turn the large choke points in the maps into big uneven bumpy wastelands that can be hard to parse, so it's not like it's a flawless gameplay experience. There is a single player mode but its really more just like tutorial stuff so like PS plus is basically required to have any semblance of content out of this game, it sure as hell aint worth 30 bucks for some offline tutorials.
The biggest impression this game left on me though was its environmental design and general aesthetic. The dark blacks and blues of the night sky being contrasted with the glimmering golds of the city and bright pastel neon colors of the foam just gives the game this luxuriant appearance. Some real sophistifuture shit, where the hubworld is a high-rise penthouse, the giant neon LCD billboards play stylish ads for fictional brands, the menus are overseen by a mascot rave DJ, and EVERYTHING is a party of the most expensive caliber. The vibe is certainly strong, and Bath Vegas is certainly a video game place I would want to live in IRL. The game world feels like it is made out of money in such a pompously luxuriant fashion, and the modern game PS5-ass graphical rendering makes every golden handrail and illuminated bubble glow all the brighter. The character designs grew on me and I find their personalities endearing, the 2D CGI art from the story missions have a lot of personality in them. I even like the weird goofy mocapped animations that everyone has in the lobbies, every time I can get a full team of randos to do the doofiest synchronized dances always fills me with raw energy. There was certainly a huge amount of genuine care that went into the creation of this world and its inhabitants, and I appreciate it a lot. Did I also mention that this games OST absolutely slams way harder than it ever had the right to? Like holy shit man I am WAITING for this shit to get an OST release, like seriously dude this shit BUMPS.
Let's not beat around the bush anymore though, nobody else really cares about all of that. Despite the beta being loudly announced in a large playstation announcement video I had a hard time finding ANYONE else who even knew about its existence, yet alone was actually PLAYING it. Whenever I would bring it up in various servers I was in, I would mostly get ridiculed for wanting to play "the shitty splatoon for straight people", and to "just play actual splatoon instead", dismissing me the same way they dismissed the game. It reminded me of trying to talk about Yo-Kai Watch back in the day with friends of mine only into Pokemon, they just don't care and only made the same low-effort jokes about something I genuinely liked just because it was similar in the most surface-level aspects. I did manage to convince some of my friends to give it a shot during the beta, and the gameplay left them unimpressed. They likely won't ever play the full game. While the game being free on PS plus certainly gives it solid publicity and a decent starting playerbase, I can't help but feel like a lot of the players trying the game out are going to bounce off of it after only a few hours of playing. In fact, I already have seen plenty of reviews here that are from people that have done exactly that. At least they gave it a try instead of just outright making fun of it without even playing it, i guess... Normally I don't really take very much into account what a games general reputation is, but in something that's trying to be a more multiplayer focused live-service type beat, having the game be such a huge punching bag is a huge problem that's entirely outside the developers control. I've seen more people online compare this game to fucking Morbius than actually talk about the game itself. Searching the game up on youtube brings more videos with shocked clickbait thumbnails titled "will it die?" or "is it ACTUALLY good?" than not. Mainstream gamers don't know the game even exists, and it's a laughingstock to the more core gaming crowd. I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist; I can't see this game gaining a large enough playerbase to last more than a year because of its reputation.
And that really sucks!!! Because this game is actually really cool and it feels like a lot of work and passion went into this game! It really reminds me of stuff like Survival Quiz City, where much like how for that game the small team of Gyaar studio was able to make it under the funding and publishing of Bandai Namco, ToyLogic was able to make this game with the backing of Square Enix. It has that solid AA feeling that a lot of modern games these days don't have, ironically something clamored by most of the same core gaming audience that dismisses this game in the first place aaaaAAAAA!!! I've been having a lot of fun with it though, and will continue to do so. I put like 5-6 hours into the beta, and have pretty much spent all of my fleeting free time just playing the full game constantly since it dropped, which is saying something, considering the fact one of my favorite games of all time got remade quite recently and yet I play this instead. If you have PS plus to be able to play online, I highly recommend giving this game an earnest shot. It's certainly not perfect, but the game is fun! The vibes are cool! What use would a giant golden festive city be if nobody wants to party in it?
Some months later, and another State of Play happens announcing an open beta network test to try the game out early, so naturally I had to give it a try and see what the fuck they were actually cooking, and I actually quite enjoyed it! Eventually they announced the full games release date and the game remains mostly untouched from the beta with the exception of a few new game modes being introduced (and season pass microtransactions being shoehorned into the game, gee thanks). They even made it free on PS plus this month, so I could just drop right back into the action when the game launched!
The game itself is actually surprisingly not as derivative as I thought it was going to be. Yes, you shoot blobs of color that cover the arenas and can use them for movement purposes, but there's no gamemodes where it's a contest on who can cover the most ground in their color. Rather, the main gamemode is more like the Light Vs. Dark mode in Kid Icarus Uprising, where each team has a life pool that, once depleted, turns a team member into a powered up "star" player, where defeating the opponents star player wins the game. There is also a 2v2-style game mode as well as a payload pushing tower defending mode to add some variety. It makes for a much more aggro-oriented game experience, especially considering the fact that in order to chill (not kill, DO NOT CONFUSE THE TWO) someone, not only do you need to blast them until their health runs out, but also run into their foam-balled up downed form with your surfboard. Running into downed teammates with your surfboard resurrects them from their soapy demise, so the game emphasizes huddling together and cooperating to succeed. The foam can't be used to cover walls and climb them, but rather it clumps up which can be used in various ways like making a wall, building a high ground, ensuring a spot doesn't get covered by the enemy as easily, etc. It's certainly unique. That being said, the bullets being slow bubbles definitely gives the guns less impact and the clumpy nature of the foam can kinda turn the large choke points in the maps into big uneven bumpy wastelands that can be hard to parse, so it's not like it's a flawless gameplay experience. There is a single player mode but its really more just like tutorial stuff so like PS plus is basically required to have any semblance of content out of this game, it sure as hell aint worth 30 bucks for some offline tutorials.
The biggest impression this game left on me though was its environmental design and general aesthetic. The dark blacks and blues of the night sky being contrasted with the glimmering golds of the city and bright pastel neon colors of the foam just gives the game this luxuriant appearance. Some real sophistifuture shit, where the hubworld is a high-rise penthouse, the giant neon LCD billboards play stylish ads for fictional brands, the menus are overseen by a mascot rave DJ, and EVERYTHING is a party of the most expensive caliber. The vibe is certainly strong, and Bath Vegas is certainly a video game place I would want to live in IRL. The game world feels like it is made out of money in such a pompously luxuriant fashion, and the modern game PS5-ass graphical rendering makes every golden handrail and illuminated bubble glow all the brighter. The character designs grew on me and I find their personalities endearing, the 2D CGI art from the story missions have a lot of personality in them. I even like the weird goofy mocapped animations that everyone has in the lobbies, every time I can get a full team of randos to do the doofiest synchronized dances always fills me with raw energy. There was certainly a huge amount of genuine care that went into the creation of this world and its inhabitants, and I appreciate it a lot. Did I also mention that this games OST absolutely slams way harder than it ever had the right to? Like holy shit man I am WAITING for this shit to get an OST release, like seriously dude this shit BUMPS.
Let's not beat around the bush anymore though, nobody else really cares about all of that. Despite the beta being loudly announced in a large playstation announcement video I had a hard time finding ANYONE else who even knew about its existence, yet alone was actually PLAYING it. Whenever I would bring it up in various servers I was in, I would mostly get ridiculed for wanting to play "the shitty splatoon for straight people", and to "just play actual splatoon instead", dismissing me the same way they dismissed the game. It reminded me of trying to talk about Yo-Kai Watch back in the day with friends of mine only into Pokemon, they just don't care and only made the same low-effort jokes about something I genuinely liked just because it was similar in the most surface-level aspects. I did manage to convince some of my friends to give it a shot during the beta, and the gameplay left them unimpressed. They likely won't ever play the full game. While the game being free on PS plus certainly gives it solid publicity and a decent starting playerbase, I can't help but feel like a lot of the players trying the game out are going to bounce off of it after only a few hours of playing. In fact, I already have seen plenty of reviews here that are from people that have done exactly that. At least they gave it a try instead of just outright making fun of it without even playing it, i guess... Normally I don't really take very much into account what a games general reputation is, but in something that's trying to be a more multiplayer focused live-service type beat, having the game be such a huge punching bag is a huge problem that's entirely outside the developers control. I've seen more people online compare this game to fucking Morbius than actually talk about the game itself. Searching the game up on youtube brings more videos with shocked clickbait thumbnails titled "will it die?" or "is it ACTUALLY good?" than not. Mainstream gamers don't know the game even exists, and it's a laughingstock to the more core gaming crowd. I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist; I can't see this game gaining a large enough playerbase to last more than a year because of its reputation.
And that really sucks!!! Because this game is actually really cool and it feels like a lot of work and passion went into this game! It really reminds me of stuff like Survival Quiz City, where much like how for that game the small team of Gyaar studio was able to make it under the funding and publishing of Bandai Namco, ToyLogic was able to make this game with the backing of Square Enix. It has that solid AA feeling that a lot of modern games these days don't have, ironically something clamored by most of the same core gaming audience that dismisses this game in the first place aaaaAAAAA!!! I've been having a lot of fun with it though, and will continue to do so. I put like 5-6 hours into the beta, and have pretty much spent all of my fleeting free time just playing the full game constantly since it dropped, which is saying something, considering the fact one of my favorite games of all time got remade quite recently and yet I play this instead. If you have PS plus to be able to play online, I highly recommend giving this game an earnest shot. It's certainly not perfect, but the game is fun! The vibes are cool! What use would a giant golden festive city be if nobody wants to party in it?
Not really TOO much to say here, it's a pretty standard adventure game with a very simple gameplay structure given that every screen only has one interaction that can be done, and that interaction is always done by pressing up on the D-pad.
I do think the game is much more vibe-focused than gameplay-focused, though. The mansion is rendered in very early 90s CG, and most of the time the single interaction that you can do in each frame is simply zooming in and looking at a particular item in the frame. It's really like the developers spent a lot of time modelling a 3D house with the fancy new CG tools that existed, and really wanted to make a game that allowed players to look around and admire that work. If you take your time looking around and exploring everything, you will rather easily bump into all the necessary items for progression. The mansion isn't big either, so it's actually quite easy to take your time to see the sights, even if they move at a solid 4 FPS.
The game has this really interesting concept about this mansion existing as a place for people to shed their human bodies to instead become these spiritualized butterflies, and each room in the mansion is home to a different character that has their own sorts of reasons to become a butterfly. It's honestly pretty neat stuff but the game doesn't really dive deeply into the concept very much, leaving the NPCs to not really have very much actual bearing on the narrative. I could certainly imagine the concept alone definitely sparking the imagination of like someone renting the game back in the day, but the game does feel a little narratively half-baked in a sense. Doesn't help that the voice deliveries were definitely 90's video game acting, and for some reason the game just loves to have the voices way too quiet and absolutely drenched in reverb to the point where it's hard to make out what people are actually saying half the time. I wonder how much better the game would have been had I played the original Japanese release tbh, might have to give it a go one of these days.
It's neat, certainly a unique entry in the Sega CD library for sure. The game has a super short length of only like 2 hours so if you are even interested enough to be looking at this review then like yea bro go give it a play.
also lmao despite being an adventure game the mega mouse support on this is basically just binding d-pad inputs to mouse movement, which causes way more misinputs than not, it was really designed to be played with a controller i have no idea why they programmed in mouse support for this
I do think the game is much more vibe-focused than gameplay-focused, though. The mansion is rendered in very early 90s CG, and most of the time the single interaction that you can do in each frame is simply zooming in and looking at a particular item in the frame. It's really like the developers spent a lot of time modelling a 3D house with the fancy new CG tools that existed, and really wanted to make a game that allowed players to look around and admire that work. If you take your time looking around and exploring everything, you will rather easily bump into all the necessary items for progression. The mansion isn't big either, so it's actually quite easy to take your time to see the sights, even if they move at a solid 4 FPS.
The game has this really interesting concept about this mansion existing as a place for people to shed their human bodies to instead become these spiritualized butterflies, and each room in the mansion is home to a different character that has their own sorts of reasons to become a butterfly. It's honestly pretty neat stuff but the game doesn't really dive deeply into the concept very much, leaving the NPCs to not really have very much actual bearing on the narrative. I could certainly imagine the concept alone definitely sparking the imagination of like someone renting the game back in the day, but the game does feel a little narratively half-baked in a sense. Doesn't help that the voice deliveries were definitely 90's video game acting, and for some reason the game just loves to have the voices way too quiet and absolutely drenched in reverb to the point where it's hard to make out what people are actually saying half the time. I wonder how much better the game would have been had I played the original Japanese release tbh, might have to give it a go one of these days.
It's neat, certainly a unique entry in the Sega CD library for sure. The game has a super short length of only like 2 hours so if you are even interested enough to be looking at this review then like yea bro go give it a play.
also lmao despite being an adventure game the mega mouse support on this is basically just binding d-pad inputs to mouse movement, which causes way more misinputs than not, it was really designed to be played with a controller i have no idea why they programmed in mouse support for this
2000
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.
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.
Definitely a peak DDR game. DDRMAX is pretty much a soft reboot of the series in a lot of ways. The setlist is almost entirely brand new, the announcer dude has been replaced, the rendered dancers have been replaced by FMV shots of various vibes, and the game has a brand new focused goal of getting players to challenge themselves and push towards new limits.
The setlist, while actually smaller than 5thmix, is way more dense with bangers to make pretty much a quintessential DDR setlist. They got funky grooves, sugary speedcore, eurobeat, J-pop, penis music, whatever the fuck you'd classify telephone operator as, the setlist is just fuckin LOADED dude. quality over quantity for sure. My personal favorite song in the setlist is www.blonde girl, that shit goes directly into my bloodstream dude fuck yeah
The biggest tonal change of DDRMAX just comes from its difficulty. This game is HARD, dude. I'm still not that great at DDR with my skill mostly capping out around the high 8-low 9 mark for heavy charts, and I found I wasn't able to clear a lot of the heavy charts in this game. I've noticed that compared to the earlier generation of DDR, this game is much more punishing with misses and it was extremely common for me to slip up and watch my entire health meter just plummet right into danger booing territory. Considering the fact that this is the 6th mix in the series and I'm sure that the people living in arcades at an eternal DDR grind needed something new to eat so konami had to deliver the goods, but it does come at the cost of feeling like quite a difficulty spike. The game doesn't even have foot ratings anymore, so you just kinda have to eyeball a weird 5 point graph to predict how difficult the song might be. Honestly I am fine with the lack of foot ratings because that lack of info definitely made me more willing to experiment and try things that I otherwise might have been scared off by a high foot rating to try.
Self-improvement is the name of the game here, and DDRMAX actually is genius in how it very subtly leads dedicated players to its true goal that they should strive to clear: take the MAX 300 challenge. The game slowly leads you on through notifications that there's something hidden in this game, and only by mastering the game can you find and clear it. By getting a final stage full combo on any heavy-difficulty song, your game will be greeted by the EXTRA STAGE, where MAX 300, the legendary 10-foot boss song, will be your only selection. It's an incredibly difficult song, moving at ludicrous speed and requiring fast reading and faster footwork to actually stand a chance against. Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn't clear it myself, though I one day hope to be able to. I can read the notes just fine, I just have slow-ass gamer legs that can't keep up with the heat that song demands. I could clear it in training with the speed set to 2/5 though!!!
This game basically marks where DDR starts cranking up the heat, both metaphorically and literally. Despite the arcade versions remaining on system 573 hardware based off the PS1, the console versions are now on 6th gen hardware. I will admit, the slower PS2 saving times definitely give me some time to breathe after hard songs, so that's pretty cool. I've already been deeply sunk into the DDR realm at this point, and these games just keep staying as fun to play now as they were when I was starting.
(that all being said, pour one out for the redoctane ignition 2.0 pad I was using for all of my DDR sessions up to this point, the DDRMAX heat caused a tear in the fabric that my attempts to recover only ended up worsening. Shoutouts to Tom James, legendary game localizer and the tony hawk of dating sims, for supplying me with the dance pad that got me this far down the rabbithole, and I'm glad I was able to use it to play tokimemomix, but alas, she has reached the end of her times. Now I am using a DDRgame bootleg TX-2000 hard pad that I've coupled with an assload of penny mods and controller converters to work across all my consoles at a tolerable level. It was actually one of the lead directors at Epic Games of all people that helped me get this replacement pad, so I guess my DDR pads are always going to have some sort of game industry connections, for some reason.)
The setlist, while actually smaller than 5thmix, is way more dense with bangers to make pretty much a quintessential DDR setlist. They got funky grooves, sugary speedcore, eurobeat, J-pop, penis music, whatever the fuck you'd classify telephone operator as, the setlist is just fuckin LOADED dude. quality over quantity for sure. My personal favorite song in the setlist is www.blonde girl, that shit goes directly into my bloodstream dude fuck yeah
The biggest tonal change of DDRMAX just comes from its difficulty. This game is HARD, dude. I'm still not that great at DDR with my skill mostly capping out around the high 8-low 9 mark for heavy charts, and I found I wasn't able to clear a lot of the heavy charts in this game. I've noticed that compared to the earlier generation of DDR, this game is much more punishing with misses and it was extremely common for me to slip up and watch my entire health meter just plummet right into danger booing territory. Considering the fact that this is the 6th mix in the series and I'm sure that the people living in arcades at an eternal DDR grind needed something new to eat so konami had to deliver the goods, but it does come at the cost of feeling like quite a difficulty spike. The game doesn't even have foot ratings anymore, so you just kinda have to eyeball a weird 5 point graph to predict how difficult the song might be. Honestly I am fine with the lack of foot ratings because that lack of info definitely made me more willing to experiment and try things that I otherwise might have been scared off by a high foot rating to try.
Self-improvement is the name of the game here, and DDRMAX actually is genius in how it very subtly leads dedicated players to its true goal that they should strive to clear: take the MAX 300 challenge. The game slowly leads you on through notifications that there's something hidden in this game, and only by mastering the game can you find and clear it. By getting a final stage full combo on any heavy-difficulty song, your game will be greeted by the EXTRA STAGE, where MAX 300, the legendary 10-foot boss song, will be your only selection. It's an incredibly difficult song, moving at ludicrous speed and requiring fast reading and faster footwork to actually stand a chance against. Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn't clear it myself, though I one day hope to be able to. I can read the notes just fine, I just have slow-ass gamer legs that can't keep up with the heat that song demands. I could clear it in training with the speed set to 2/5 though!!!
This game basically marks where DDR starts cranking up the heat, both metaphorically and literally. Despite the arcade versions remaining on system 573 hardware based off the PS1, the console versions are now on 6th gen hardware. I will admit, the slower PS2 saving times definitely give me some time to breathe after hard songs, so that's pretty cool. I've already been deeply sunk into the DDR realm at this point, and these games just keep staying as fun to play now as they were when I was starting.
(that all being said, pour one out for the redoctane ignition 2.0 pad I was using for all of my DDR sessions up to this point, the DDRMAX heat caused a tear in the fabric that my attempts to recover only ended up worsening. Shoutouts to Tom James, legendary game localizer and the tony hawk of dating sims, for supplying me with the dance pad that got me this far down the rabbithole, and I'm glad I was able to use it to play tokimemomix, but alas, she has reached the end of her times. Now I am using a DDRgame bootleg TX-2000 hard pad that I've coupled with an assload of penny mods and controller converters to work across all my consoles at a tolerable level. It was actually one of the lead directors at Epic Games of all people that helped me get this replacement pad, so I guess my DDR pads are always going to have some sort of game industry connections, for some reason.)
2014
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.
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.
2008
EA usually doesn't make very much that interests me outside of the Need For Speed series, but occasionally they make something that's super interesting like this or Unraveled (which I still haven't gotten around to, but will eventually!). Aesthetically, this game owns. There's an excellent use of color and lighting here as each setpiece and landmark is clearly and carefully shaded to make such a unique visual identity that no other game before or really since has recaptured. The fact that this game happened to release in the gaming era where all the other heavily-marketed blockbusters shared the same gritty tone and oppressive color palettes also helped it stand out among its peers. It certainly did for me; I remember seeing gaming sites and magazines cover this game back then and being enamored by its visual style, and while I never did play this game in its time, I definitely gave the PS3 demo a shot. The clear blue skies contrasted with the pure white/reflective cityscape highlighted only by the red context-sensitive objective points is that good shit.
The gameplay consists of parkour freerunning from point to point in order to clear various levels. It's got a decent amount of heft to it, a la cinematic platformers like Prince of Persia or Out of this World, but done in a first person perspective and smoothened out just a tad. The level designs are open and multifaceted (except for when they aren't), and even if you get lost theres a button that points you in the right direction (except for when it doesn't). Sometimes the game slows the pace of the parkour running down to instead focus on either puzzle platforming challenges where ya gotta figure out how to get from point A to B, or combat challenges where there's tons of enemies and ya gotta beat em up to proceed. The game has a short length, roughly 4-6 hours, which honestly became a godsend to me as the further the game went, the less patience I had with it. The reason for that being....
The game makes me motion sick! I've played a lot of games in all sorts of perspectives and framerates, and with the exception of VR titles I don't get any sort of fatigue/sickness from vidya gamin. This game actually got to me though and gave me headaches!!!! The first person perspective is constantly bobbing, even when standing still, and doing all sorts of acrobatics, ledge climbing, wall jumping, pole sliding, and parkour rolling just got me disoriented. The game also has quite a closed-in FOV that didn't make things much nicer. The lack of any sort of static HUD alongside a crosshair that's just a miniscule dot also doesn't give the game any sort of static anchor on the screen to help with the motion and FOV problems. I'm sure on PC there are settings and mods to fix all of those issues, so I'd def suggest playing this there if you are sensitive to that kind of thing, but on console you just gotta take the vertigo like a man. If this game was in VR it would absolutely kill me for sure.
It's certainly a one of a kind game, for better or for worse. Can't really even blame the lack of accessibility options, this game came out at a time when most people didn't think about that kinda thing as well as them very clearly wanting to have this distinct gopro-core POV feel to it with the freerunning so yea. I don't see many other people complain about the motionsickness here and my friends that have played this were unaffected so maybe everyone else is just built different. Shoutouts to the xbox version essentially being remastered when played on series X, as there's a 4K resolution bump, native HDR support, and an FPS boost to 60 from the original games SDR 30FPS 720p output. It really makes the already-timeless artstyle shine even more, the upgrades def make this 16-year-old game look almost current gen! though honestly if you are to play this just get the PC version instead to potentially make it more comfortable...
sasuga mirrors edge. the only flat 2D TV ass game to give me headaches from playing. it was cool! but im gonna go lie down now
The gameplay consists of parkour freerunning from point to point in order to clear various levels. It's got a decent amount of heft to it, a la cinematic platformers like Prince of Persia or Out of this World, but done in a first person perspective and smoothened out just a tad. The level designs are open and multifaceted (except for when they aren't), and even if you get lost theres a button that points you in the right direction (except for when it doesn't). Sometimes the game slows the pace of the parkour running down to instead focus on either puzzle platforming challenges where ya gotta figure out how to get from point A to B, or combat challenges where there's tons of enemies and ya gotta beat em up to proceed. The game has a short length, roughly 4-6 hours, which honestly became a godsend to me as the further the game went, the less patience I had with it. The reason for that being....
The game makes me motion sick! I've played a lot of games in all sorts of perspectives and framerates, and with the exception of VR titles I don't get any sort of fatigue/sickness from vidya gamin. This game actually got to me though and gave me headaches!!!! The first person perspective is constantly bobbing, even when standing still, and doing all sorts of acrobatics, ledge climbing, wall jumping, pole sliding, and parkour rolling just got me disoriented. The game also has quite a closed-in FOV that didn't make things much nicer. The lack of any sort of static HUD alongside a crosshair that's just a miniscule dot also doesn't give the game any sort of static anchor on the screen to help with the motion and FOV problems. I'm sure on PC there are settings and mods to fix all of those issues, so I'd def suggest playing this there if you are sensitive to that kind of thing, but on console you just gotta take the vertigo like a man. If this game was in VR it would absolutely kill me for sure.
It's certainly a one of a kind game, for better or for worse. Can't really even blame the lack of accessibility options, this game came out at a time when most people didn't think about that kinda thing as well as them very clearly wanting to have this distinct gopro-core POV feel to it with the freerunning so yea. I don't see many other people complain about the motionsickness here and my friends that have played this were unaffected so maybe everyone else is just built different. Shoutouts to the xbox version essentially being remastered when played on series X, as there's a 4K resolution bump, native HDR support, and an FPS boost to 60 from the original games SDR 30FPS 720p output. It really makes the already-timeless artstyle shine even more, the upgrades def make this 16-year-old game look almost current gen! though honestly if you are to play this just get the PC version instead to potentially make it more comfortable...
sasuga mirrors edge. the only flat 2D TV ass game to give me headaches from playing. it was cool! but im gonna go lie down now