Outside of some wonky hitboxes, I find this to be near perfect. It's very linear and fairly dialogue heavy for a metroidvania, but that lends itself to a more engaging story and tightly paced experience.

The combat is the main draw here, with it definitely taking heavy inspiration from Sekiro, and it's great. The bosses in particular are all very well designed. You die quickly while fighting them, but once you figure out their pattern the encounters become beautiful dances that feel as if they're over in a flash.

The story and characters are all surprisingly great. I really enjoy the mesh of Taoism and sci-fi, it lends itself to a ton of great imagery. You'll be asking questions throughout the whole story, culminating in a phenomenal final boss fight and a great ending (assuming you go for the true one).

Presentation and soundtrack are also a plus here, game is beautiful and the music really elevates everything.

Holy shit I was not expecting to have that much fun with this. Nightmare Kart is what happens when someone with too much autism plays a 24 hour marathon of Mario Kart and Bloodborne (or judging by the style this game is going for, Nightmare Creatures). It's a gothic horror hack and slash on wheels, with plenty of grotesque characters to see.

Now when I heard "Bloodborne as a 90's kart racer", I thought "That's probably gonna be fun for 5 minutes, not that great as an actual racer." Nightmare Kart looked at past me with spite, and proceeded to be an amazing and fun as fuck kart racer. The items are simple, yet enjoyable, and the track design is imaginative and fun. Although some mechanics that confused me were the difference between drifting and power braking (although that may just be me being an idiot), and tricks (which you have to do in the air, not while your jumping off a ramp, thanks Mario Kart muscle memory).

Oh, by the way, did you know this game has a story? I haven't seen a kart racer with a story in a long while. You play as the Hunter, racing through gothic streets, spooky forests, and Clock Tower-ass clock towers, all in search for the origin of the Nightmare you're all trapped in. It even has boss fights! Fun boss fights at that! I think Nicholas may be up there as one of my favorite bosses in a video game (he's just so much fun)!

All and all, this game was treat. I loved every second of it, and I might even go back to 100% it.

MAY THIS NIGHTMARE NEVER END!!

Yuck. The switch to teams is really awkward. Even the change to it being a watch and repeat, would be cooler for more engagement, but the older more fighting game style from the first two games called out to me more. It looks better, that's for sure, but the music is sadly the weakest part of this game. The songs just aren't that catchy and don't feel like the songs I would choose for a dancing centric rhythm game.

I should like this game, and that's the part that's tearing me up inside. It just doesn't feel right. Every time I finished another team's story, I was kinda lukewarm about it. The visuals during the stages are a little too over the place, which took me away from enjoying the dancing once it got too hectic.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the team system, nor with the change in the core gameplay to more simon say-esque button presses. Yet the jump into the next generation didn't necessarily call for such sweeping changes, when Bust-A-Groove 2 was already a great improvement on the first. A more fleshed out story and interaction between characters that the PS2's power would've allowed for could've been the right call for the game. More depth into the actual combat that happens in stages. idk

Just an Assassin's Creed game without the climbing mechanics.
Both the story and its characters are so bland that I legit got annoyed. It's so long-winded, gets nowhere, predictable, and just boring. It's obvious that the blank main character is gonna go "fuck honor I'm using all these skills" after meeting all the other boring teachers, which in turn will make the game just another third person melee game instead of a unique Japanese samurai open-world game.
Aside from its visuals, there's nothing interesting about it. And with a bold choice, they not only chose to make the dialogues unskippable, but on top of that, every character waits like 2 whole seconds before saying their next line. Like, are you serious?

I really wanted to love this game and tried my best to power through it, and not that its bad, but it ultimately feels kind of unremarkable.

It looks and sounds beautiful, and I do appreciate the minimalism in UI when exploring as the game guides you by wind currents to let you really soak in the beautiful Japanese environments. That being said, at the end of the day, this is just an Assassin's Creed game with more competent design.

The novelty of being a samurai and sword duelling across Japan only does so much when most of the game is travelling from horseback between objectives that are basically the same thing. The combat is quick and calculated, making it fun for the first couple of hours, but then it just gets tedious as the game throws more and more base captures at you without introducing more enemy variety or deepening the combat mechanics any more than the basics. The few overworld objectives the game does throw at you aren't given enough focus or reason to follow them through, ultimately making them feel like padding. This is definitely one of the better open worlds I've played in, but it's still very Ubisoft-esque in comparison to its contemporaries, like the freedom of completion mindset of Zelda's recent outings or the lore/character-building objectives of FF7 Rebirth.

I'm also not a fan of how the story is presented, as I would've much preferred a more linear narrative that would have required more diversity in mission objectives. As it stands, your basic objective is supported by missions helping other allies of the Sakai family, which is fine in concept, but doesn't do a lot to build intrigue overall, as each story is pretty similar without adding much to the main plot. Considering Sucker Punch's Infamous series, I was also expecting to have more free rein over who I shape Jin into, but his character is pretty set in stone, and your freedom as a character is limited to the occasional meaningless dialogue choice.

I think there's a blueprint for something great here, but the tedious combat and objectives, as well as the overall really disconnected story with a lack of flow and narrative cohesion, leads to this feeling like a very disconnected and scattershot experience without much to offer past being a samurai.

i absolutely adore rhythm games. i love Spin Rhythm XD (2019), which is one of my favorite “pure” rhythm games, thoroughly enjoy Crypt of the Necrodancer (2015), have dabbled in Osu! (2007) a little bit before, and enjoy me some classics like Guitar Hero and PaRappa the Rapper (1996). i also love me some action games. granted, i’ve never played any Devil May Cry-adjacent game, but i really enjoy reflex-based experiences. yet, this isn’t actually the first time i’ve played a game that marries together rhythm and action! i have played a whopping TWO hours of BPM: Bullets Per Minute (2020), which is an action-roguelite/fps/rhythm game. i absolutely adore the concept of linking together dynamic, fast-paced situations with the beat of a song, but BPM didn’t really do it for me. enter: Hi-Fi Rush (2023)

that’s right. it’s time to Hi-Fi Gush about Hi-Fi Rush. (mae ain’t pick the verbs.)

this game very quickly earned a spot in my top 10 favorite games of all time. it is pure sex from every angle. i love the vibes, the visuals, the characters, and the fun, albeit simple story. it truly checks all of my boxes. yes, you could argue that sometimes the humor is a little too “erm, that just happened”, but for the most part, i do be giggling like a little idiot at every facet of this game, and not just the jokes. so many things are just absolutely delightful. the environment pulsing to the beat, the mini-cutscenes of Chai and 808 in between waves, and who knew that all quick-time events needed to be fun was synchronization with the music??? like yeah, mae that’s uhh what a rhythm game is. you're just QTEing constantly, but here it's soooo damn satisfying and oozing with style that i felt child-like joy throughout the vast majority of the game.

it is a universally known fact about letter-based scoring schemes that being able to spell out ASS on the score screen is the highest honor you can achieve. it doesn’t get better than that, folks. uh, sorry my “producer” (if you can even call him that) is trying to tell me that SSS is the best you can do. not really sure what that’s about. SERIOUS MODE. it is an extremely rare occurrence for me to actually enjoy going for high scores. the idea of combos is usually so frightening to me. they’re complex, and i often fall into the trap of just mashing, completely destroying the purpose of having a well-defined combo system in the first place. Hi-Fi Hi-Fixes that (admittedly skill) issue through the nature of syncing to the beat. you’ve pretty much just got a couple buttons when it comes to the basic attacks. light (L) and heavy (H). you start out with just some chill easy to remember combos at your disposal. wanna hit a dude quick? LLLL, my friend. have a bit more time to really bonk a bot? HHH. essentially all of the core combos in the game are just permutations of L’s and H’s. but, what’s that you say??? to do something like HHH, you don’t just do H on beat 1, then H on beat 2, then H on beat 3? nope! game design win inbound: light attacks take one beat, heavy attacks take two. whaaat???? “holy shit, you mean the heavy attacks are heavier and thus take longer, ms. maeam from backloggd.com???” yep. as a consequence of this, the timing of EVERYTHING is hardwired into your brain. “how many frames does the tremolo attack have to start-up? blah blah blah” you don’t need to know. you know that its HLL, so,, a total of 4,,, plus the three until the beat hit. whaaaat?? “a beat hit?? maeam from backloggd.com, you buried the lead, you sly dog!” don’t talk to me like that, i don’t know you. anyways, yes. at the end of basically every combo is a three-beat countdown with an Osu circle to the final big hit of the combo. except,,, you can instead shmix on em and substitute that final hit with a unique, context-sensitive move from your currently selected partner. i don’t want to go into partners too much for spoiler reasons, but i will say this. by the end of the game, you can use partners SOOO frequently that “optimal” gameplay involves a bajillion people saying voice lines and doing a quick little attack and then recharging in like 5 seconds. obviously, you can just not do that, but like,,, it’s kinda funny, if not a little overwhelming. to wrap all this fighting up, the game does a fantastic job of easing you into the game’s mechanics. you don’t learn the parry move until like stage 4, and you have to purchase the vast majority of the combos and counters and special partner moves. this is really good! you don’t even technically have to follow the beat early on, and you don’t feel like you have to memorize everything right out of the gate. there were a couple times where i technically had the currency to purchase a new combo, but i said “nope. i wanna get more comfortable with what i have first” and that is such a blessing. a rare combo system i love to interact with. for real, i be goin like LLHHH+LHLH (goated combo) and shittt. also. the multiple-parry sequences with bosses and more significant enemies are a fantastic bite-sized helping of Rhythm Heaven. i played through the whole game on hard mode without streamer mode turned on for a first playthrough, and it was a consistently challenging, yet rewarding experience.

the stages, er,, tracks, as the game calls them. they’re pretty fuckin neat. rather than enemies just being continuously spread out across every single possible part of the level, they’re in discrete mini-arenas (called Choruses), which helps isolate battles from platforming; you’re never worried about some robozo (robo bozo) waiting to clock you on a ledge. on the subject of platforming, i have some reservations. the exact same movement system functions for both fighting and platforming, which makes sense! you’re not stepping into an arena and then suddenly worried about Chai controlling in a completely different way. however, i feel as though the Chai’s movement physics are far more geared towards combat than they are navigating a 3D space with obstacles. that’s not to say that it’s complete dogshit, but while it may feel really nice and snappy to have Chai have a super high fall-speed when you’re fighting, it feels weirdly clunky when you’re trying to jump from platform to platform. there’s a bit of end lag when you land too, adding to why it doesn’t necessarily feel as fluid as i would like. the beat is constantly going even when you’re not in battle, and you can jump when not on beat, but that just kinda feels bad. at the same time, i think that cycle-based platforming is automatically elevated to a higher level when it’s aligned to rhythm, such as with the cassettes in Celeste (2018). as i mentioned before, there’s some actually fun QTEs to break up the levels, and of course, a bottomless well of charm and silly antics that bring a smile to my face every time. there’s also some secrets here and there, as well as numerous reasons to return to previous levels on replay that i have not yet explored myself.

the art direction (and the characters). hoo boy, the art direction (and the characters). i like em! there's a lot of visual flair with onomatopoeias, the environment, and the general aesthetic. the game frequently transitions completely fluidly between 3D cutscene, gameplay, and even 2D cutscenes at times. it’s drool worthy. the character designs are absolutely fantastic!! world’s first “Handsome Jack” type individual. jojo’s bizarre adventure. cinnamon without the toast crunch. HR? nah, that’s noir. there’s a satisfying range. Korsica and Peppermint, my beloved. there’s some FANTASTIC English voice acting in this game, especially for those two. 808 is probably one of the cutest fucking things in any game ever. on a slightly different note, i was not expecting this game to incite bisexual panic in me. as embarrassing as it feels to say: yes, i even have a tiny crush on Chai. silly people do me in. sue me or something. for real though, it’s a great cast of characters that doesn’t take itself too seriously. love the stuff. i’ve even got a Korisca pfp at my time of reviewing this. overwhelmingly gender. i wish she would hit me over the head.

i’m hoping to finish this review before Monday 3, so i’ll wrap it up. Hi-Fi Rush is a fantastic game that had me gripped from the start of the opening cutscene to the end of the credits. i can not think of a more transformative gaming experience that i have had in the past several months. yet, there’s still SO much more that i have left to do in the game! there’s a wall of fame with a bunch of optional challenges that give you tangible rewards in terms of currency, but also adds new portions of the mural, which is a great way of incentivizing completion outside of simply ‘having done it’. beating the game unlocks a suite of new features and modes, and even a new difficulty. needless to say, I WILL BE RETURNING TO THESE HALLOWED HALLS OF BEATS AND BRAWLS. CAPSLOCK IS BROKEN! MAE WORKS HARD AND TYPES HARD!

fuck you, michaelsoft, if that’s even your real name.

guys wouldn't it be really fun if we made you grind really early and lock an exp share behind a gym that you need to beat in order to get access to the exp share?
Which leaves your starter and every other pokemon you catch at a massiv power gap?

i think that'd pretty fun ngl

PSA: Everybody is completely allowed to like this game. I just didnt vibe with it in the beginning. I'll prolly come back one day to actually progress lmao. I'm just being stubborn :p

I was originally going to write a joke review this game that it was basically just lesbian papas pizzeria (I still go by that though) but the more I played it a got a really cool and interesting game to go with it. You play in the pov of a girl named Jill, who lives in the futuristic cyberpunk world as you see her be a bartender as meets different people she talks about and helps with their problems while Jill has an underlying issue herself. The game has no stakes or anything in that matter and that's a good thing since this was very comfortable to play through as it was a slice of life vn as we go through Jill's "normal" life in what seems to be a dystopian world. The characters backstories give you a better idea of how this dystopia is like and gives you more lore about glitch city. A very relaxing and fun vn about a very interesting premise with a cool protagonist and an interesting message to go with it