Never really been a fan of open world games and bounced off far more than I ever cared to admit but this one sure got me back in the day. Revisiting it now, it got its claws in me all over again. It's amusing as the city that seemed massive then isn't all that big when viewed through a modern lens, the story and its progression is a bit repetitive, and maybe there's a little too much to do with all the different events in the city but damn if it doesn't feel good to simply play the game and get that serotonin hit when you hear the music of a hidden orb while traversing the city.

This was a gem to revisit as I hadn't played in quite some time but had many, many fond memories of it. The game was really emblematic of the seventh generation of consoles were visuals made a substantial jump and the sense of scale fully embraced a sense of "bigger is better" to great effect. The ground would be littered with targets, so many it might obscure the mission objectives, and the skies would be full of planes, flak, and missile contrails. Even from a distance, you could see where the dogfighting was just by the contrails circling in the skies. It both is and was amazing. We had a full battlefield as a playground at last.

However, where this game gets some rightful flak (pun not intended) was its story. Even on release, it felt rather weak especially coming off the red hot 4/5/0. One thought you might get something like that but instead it was mostly focusing on a mother trying to reunite with her daughter who was in occupied territory. This was mostly at odds with the storytelling of the PS2 games. In Ace Combat 4, you were the nemesis to the Yellow Squadron the narrator looked up to. In Ace Combat 5, you were center stage as the main character instead of being ancillary to the story's presentation. In Ace Combat 0, you were the legend the journalist sought out. However, in this, your story happens almost entirely in gameplay while Melissa's story and Voychek's story takes place during the cutscenes with little intersection of the three until the end of the game. It was strange at the time and it's still strange now but I gave it some thought and suppose I finally get what was attempted.

While execution was lacking, it's very interesting that in a game where so much happens concurrently whether you're involved or not, the story was reflection of just this. The conflict was bigger than you so Talisman's story was just one of many going on at the same time. This is even reflected in the final mission. Whereas in 4/5/0, the final mission was the immediate personal thing, 6 made it a point to include a lot of radio chatter regarding how not reacting properly to the final threat led to issues miles away, back home in the city you'd spent 14 missions to retake and make safe once again. I can respect the attempt made in this game's story presentation even if I do find it of lesser quality than the other games.

I'm something of a sucker for WayForward's output so I shouldn't be surprised I ended up like this as much as I did yet here we are. When it first came out, I heard good things about the game but put it off until I caught it on a random sale and decided now was the time to see what it was all about. I was definitely surprised. While I knew it was a metroidvania, I didn't realize just how much of one it was. Typically these sort of games tend stray towards one of the formula or the other but I found this to be rather interesting in how it tried to walk right down the middle what with the level design, enemies, and general aesthetic leaning more toward Castlevania while character progression was distinctly Metroid. I think they nailed it owning in no small part to the short play time that makes for a fairly tight experience.

Criticisms do exist to some degree such as Russel Crowe's head popping up way too often to give direction, the strange death mechanic that should be punishing but isn't at all, and there's definitely an argument to be had if I'd had found this nearly as interesting if it was its own IP instead of it catching my interest as one of the rare "diamond in the rough" licensed games.

Still, this was my second go and it was as fun as my first so it definitely does something right.

I'd played through this in the HD edition on switch and look to revisit that version at a later date but thought I'd give the GBA version a try. I had a much easier time with this version and I can only credit so much of that to being familiar with the game already. I think it might actually work better on a smaller screen where it's easier to take all the visual information in at once. It's not a particularly good game but sometimes you just want something to kill time with and it manages that job just fine.

Another quick bit of nostalgia due to picking up the Analogue Pocket, I don't think I'd ever actually played this one properly despite owning it for years. I tend to bounce off 2-D mario but settled in with this one and was pleasantly surprised how short it was. Ten platforming levels and two sidescrolling shooter levels were enough to hold my interest and helped me realize I actually liked this entry into the series. It also helps how amusing Sarasaland was as a setting. I had no intention of playing the sequels but figure I should check them out now.

I gave this another go after picking up my Analogue Pocket and rather enjoyed it. I'll admit it's definitely an acquired taste and a game I much more appreciate having played it a few times before thus knowing what to expect out of it. The original version can be a bit impenetrable if you don't take advantage of the DSS system (ex: I have never beaten Dracula properly, always Thunderbird spammed) and the Castlevania Advance collection helped with this immensely by informing the player of possible card drops from enemies.

The DSS system itself is interesting given how equipment drops are just stat adjustments and flexibility of gameplay is tied to the card drops. I'm not so sure I'd ever want this system back but it makes for a very, very interesting novelty that I could see some indie metroidvania adopting down the line albeit with far more polish.

I'm not nearly as hard on this game as others seem to be on this site either as my ire is wholly reserved for Harmony of Dissonance but I suppose each of the Advance games is worth playing at least once if only to fully appreciate how well Aria managed to round out this group of Castlevanias. For as much as I enjoy playing this on the original hardware, the Advance collection is definitely the way to go given the QoL improvements present.

I'd held off on writing anything up on this until I'd played through the first season of which I had started quite late due to other commitments from life. At first glance, I was quite in love with the game as it seemed to have learned a lesson in presentation that Diablo III had chosen to ignore, leaning hard into the dark atmospheric nature of Diablo and Diablo II. In fact, my initial impression was it had sort of cobbled together the best element of those games into something really great and even through the campaign I felt the same. It was this fun (albeit long) campaign with the occasional story misstep here or there that was clearly the result of story changes during development. I could mostly overlook those and just enjoy the campaign enough for what it was.

Cracks began to show after as I'd wondered how this game's version of Diablo III's adventure mode would work. I was pleased to see it was the default after the campaign was completed but there were minor hiccups here or there that left things wanting compared to Diablo III's bounty system. Having to return to the Tree of Whispers so often to re-enable Grim Favor collection dampened fun and a lack of variety of endgame activity made things worse. Nightmare dungeons and helltides are fun but the game definitely needed a bit more variety in its open world so it wasn't just the same handful of things to do over and over. Diablo III's inclusion of bosses in the bounty system is something sorely lacking here as they added that little extra bit of spice to things that broke up an otherwise monotonous flavor.

Nightmare dungeons struggle in comparison to Diablo III's Nephalem Rifts which were quite fun not just due to the sheer amount of mob density but how it leaned into a more arcade style time attack mode where you wanted to rush through as fast as possible to complete things. Diablo IV"s misstep with nightmare dungeons centered around how the dungeons were gated by various mechanics (collect this, click here twice, etc...) that prevented progress and acted more as a time sink than anything else. The nightmare dungeons are fun but in spite of themselves and not because of the actual content which isn't that much fun at all.

I think this is a good game that was standing on the precipice of something far more dire but signs point to the devs looking to right the ship after their own missteps post-release and the next season's changes look interesting. I look to Diablo games to be these evergreen titles I revisit now and then rather than live in them as I find playing games like this much more enjoyable with that approach and I think Diablo IV does succeed in this respect. There must be something there if I'm looking forward to season 2 as I am now.

I'd always been curious about this series yet never really indulged in it for one reason or another, typically because the moment had passed me by whenever it did end up back on my radar. The Game Awards announcement trailer did its job though and left me hyped for some months. When it released, I wasn't disappointed in the least. Sure, the beginning took me a bit as a newcomer to the series but once I found my bearings, it was smooth sailing from then on. I loved every last bit of this game from the stellar OST, the story presentation, the incredible level of customization offered, and the short objective based missions that lent itself well to shorter play sessions. Finding out Shoji Kawamori had returned to the series with this entry was just icing. I ran through it three times to get each ending and the game never felt boring on each subsequent playthrough. This is partially due to how missions had small changes here or there to keep me on my toes but mostly because of how good the game felt to play. I'll end up achievement hunting in the near future and still owe myself one more playthrough to activate a mission I had missed. One might think I'd be dreading all of that but it's a testament to the game's quality that I am not.

I gave this a go on the analogue pocket I'd picked up as there was a certain novelty in exploring an older licensed game I had no idea existed. I was pleasantly surprised at first as the game presented itself a low budget side scrolling action game with combat that was fairly fun. The first three levels weren't amazing by any means but a neat way to kill time. However, the fourth and fifth levels served to undermine the front half of the game. The fourth level added additional platforming elements unbefitting of the controls, a labyrinthine maze to navigate, and enemies with annoying debuffs that only cleared with time. The fifth and final level had a timer running throughout (even upon death) in order to get the game's good ending which, in turn, incentivized avoiding the game's lone strength of combat in order to complete the stage in time. It's disappointing as I thought I'd encountered a forgotten gem only to see it all fall apart at the end. I'm not sure I'll ever revisit this one.