Ridge Racer V: Launch Titles and The Lost Magic of Console Generations
There's nothing quite like zooming through the streets of Ridge City at night time, while "Euphoria" plays on the radio.
As of recently I've been on a bit of a Ridge Racer kick again, most notably putting my attention back on the fifth main installment in the series. The best way to describe R5 is bold. It's a game screaming with confidence and promise, amazingly optimized at 60fps and boasting insane visuals for the year 2000.
But that's just right, R5 was a launch title for the PS2, one of the highest selling consoles of all time. And yet, it fell under the radar compared to many other games on the system, even when it came out (I'm assuming that goes to Tekken Tag Tournament being the more appealing Namco offering). It's buried under the popularity of the entries in the series both before and after, being sandwiched in between Ridge Racer Type 4 and Ridge Racer 2004. It's overall a somewhat forgotten game, it didn't even sell that well and has never even been ported a single time… and yet, I find it one of the most profound launch titles of all time.
R5 represents a time when the leap in console generations was greater and mattered so much more. While its predecessor RRT4 was a game about looking towards the next millennium and the future of racing, R5 is the future, as insanely flashy UI and hard techno beats blast from the television screen. It boasts the technical prowess of this new generation of gaming in every single way it can. It's fucking AWESOME.
But the sad truth is that it doesn't feel like that anymore with the last two leaps in console generations. The jump in hardware doesn't land as much because we've reached a point in graphical fidelity that can't go much further than looking more realistic and being able to handle more of said demanding visuals better. This isn't entirely the fault of modern game developers, it's simply just the sad reality of how fast digital technology has evolved. And sure, maybe I am biased… I don't despise modern games but I certainly aren't very passionate for them aside from more stylistic ones that feel like old games. But it simply makes me sit back and wonder how the hell the next generation of systems could really do anything major to impress me, something to sell me on the next console and go “holy fuck, gaming has evolved.” It makes me a bit sad I missed seeing the insane revolution that was the fifth and sixth generation consoles.
Ridge Racer V is not the most impactful launch title, nor would it have been the most important pack-in title had it been one. But what R5 is, is a game that showed the promise and passion of the sixth generation of gaming hardware, and paved the way for the most important console generation of all time.

Truly a Ubisoft Original © in a sense that it's been the buggiest release in recent memory. I had sound bugs, cutscene bugs, gameplay bugs. I found a way to glitch the game to run entirely in slow motion. One time all sound effects disappeared until I completely rebooted the app. During one of the boss fights the camera stuck to a place so I had to rely on muscle memory and sound cues when the boss was out of frame (I still defeated them which might actually speak highly of the design). Whatever this is. It was a shockingly unpolished ride which makes me believe that the last group in Ubisoft subsoils which is still allowed to make games was rushed to get Prince of Persia out the oven. And I'm sorry to lead with this, because the game itself is seriously awesome.

It's just a stupidly good game of its type. With Prince of Persia the craft of making "good ass metroidvania" seems to be perfected to a sheen. These folks in Montpelier aren't afraid to leave you alone with the whole map and vague directions to explore. They will create a wildly intricate 2D combat and not teach you any of its peripeteia unless you check with an NPC tucked at the corner of one of the rooms. They will drop you into shockingly precise platforming section required to progress. They also designed maybe the best set of powers in a metroidvania, nearly all of which used to equal success in exploration, combat and puzzles! Nothing here is breaking new grounds, but every core facet of new Prince of Persia is designed to create just right amount of friction to be engaging. Fantastic fucking time when you're not dealing with bugs.

I'm also very much enthused by artistic goals of The Lost Crown. The old Prince of Persia were good, but Persia itself always felt like an middle eastern fantasyland with corresponding iconography of evil vizier scheming behind the back of good sultan, and only you, the prince of an abstract ancient Arabic country is destinied to save the night. The Lost Crown actually strives to be a game that's unmistakably Persian, paying a lot of respect to the culture, drawing from Iranian literature, ancient Zoroastrianism and hiring Iranian voice actors to do an awesome Farsi dub. I'm not lettered enough to confirm the ingenuity of the work, but it feels authentic and reverent. And the story is quite neat too, playing on expectations that come with the name. I came for a solid metroidvania and stayed for great vibes.

I'm just kinda upset that with all these positive I wasn't having exactly the best time with all the technical issues I encountered. Ubisoft should've let it cook for a few more months. Maybe I'll do a full map sweep after patches some months later and my impression will only improve.

Take Sonic 1 and stretch it until it breaks, then copy each stage 3 times for the time travel, throw in one of the best soundtracks ever (and an okay one for America), and the result is somehow better than the sum of its parts. I'm not even sure you can describe this game as having level design sometimes, but I admire the gall of presenting the player with random pieces of scenery, springs, and platforms, and just saying "here's your obstacle. Goal's over there. Off you go". It definitely gets in the way sometimes, and ironically despite the sprawling stages I have no desire to fully explore most of them, but at the very least it's more interesting than Sonic 1.

Mystias Izakaya is a game i am unlikely to finish due to its large amount of content, but i feel satisfied with what i have played enough to write something up on it.

This game takes place in the touhou universe, where you play as Mystia running a travelling restaurant that stretches to various environments from several different mainline games. The core gameplay loop is managing your time to strategically purchase various ingredients and learn recipes in order to appeal to the guests at whatever area you are setting up in. In the second phase of the night, you focus mainly on cooking and waitressing until the end of the day where you get paid.

This loop certainly has a very addictive feeling to it, during my first few hours i really didnt want to put it down. It has the same appeal as certain flash cafe management games i played in my youth and i feel like it carried that feeling well throughout my playtime. There was something about the simplicity of what you had to do and the seemingly endless possibilities for improvement that motivated me to continue playing, for a while.

However i feel like it gets stale after a time. You hit a limit long, long before the story ends. Nights become challenging and very long, tiring. It starts feeling like something of an endless chore to get through.

The art is nice and leaves little room to be creepy but the story and writing in general is a huge miss. Im quite certain it is not a fault of the localization team, but there are several references to online popular culture that just completely take you out of it and makes you feel like youre playing a game made by weirdos, which you probably are at this point. In one line of inquiry Chen calls someone a NEET. An otaku NEET? something to do with NEETs but definitely very embarassing. There was an entire questline dedicated to giving a youkai a picture of Meiling's... "thicc" thighs. I also see recently there is dlc where Mystia is dressed up as Jotaro from jojo. So you can see why this game has become a problem for me.

Obviously the characters suffer from the same fate they do in other fan projects which is that theyre disgustingly one dimensional, completely overtaken by a fanon element and they will run that element into the ground. I dont like much seeing touhou done so dirty when this game and normal touhou are essentially two different beasts. I feel like it does little for the characters though it has so much emphasis on it, and it feels disgraceful somewhat. Marisa likes mushrooms! Meiling is lazy shes sooo lazy she sleeps all day Patchouli likes books and hates everyone else Remilia is a vampire Rumia darkness Sayori is sleepy blah blah blah.

The brevity of your encounters with characters is what makes the people in touhou shine the most, as well as their phsyical appearance and more importantly: their bullet patterns. When one of those things has already been established and you remove the other, youre missing a lot of nuance that comes with the rest of the elements. So its flat and completely cookie cutter characters. I feel like this game has a vast misunderstanding of the world of mainline touhou, and even if its irrelevant right now i also dont like the injection of men into the game. Touhou is special for that reason and its strange to revoke that reason with various nameless customers and villagers and whatnot. Who cares?

The dialogue is definitely the games largest flaw as well as how it protrays Gensokyo, but without that the gameplay feels somewhat meaningless and it all falls in on itself. For a good 30 hours its still quite fun to play and i will have good memories of it as it was gifted to me by a friend for my birthday. Im very happy i even got to play this at all and my friends definitely made my last birthday the best one ive ever had, so i feel somewhat bad about not liking the way it went, but its on the devs for talking about Hong Meiling's thighs so much. Pick it up if you like management games but do not expect a touhou fangame that lives up to actual touhou, for once.

I really goddamn hate rating this as I am. Perhaps it's my own fault I didn't enjoy my time with this game. From what I'd seen, I expected something relaxing, but I was greeted with a convoluted, over-indulgent, and bloated management game.

Why are there such heavy punishments for getting an order wrong? Why can you only choose a few recipes per day? Why must I carefully figure out which recipes to take with me, or else it be impossible to give every guest the order they want? Why is the UI such a mess? Why is everything paced so weirdly? I really tried to play through the game, but I just kept running into more problems.

This game looks incredibly cozy and fun, but the gameplay is naught but. Maybe I'll give it another go some time, perhaps I'll see something in it I don't see right now.

On one hand, Palworld is on about the same level of creative bankruptcy as Lies of P. In addition to the obvious Pokemon ripoffs, you've got Zelda fonts and sounds, you've got Xenoblade world design, you've even got freakin Limgrave.

And yet on the other hand, despite all these very questionable and almost certainly litigious similarities, it's a better Pokemon game than anything Nintendo has released in at least a decade. It's also a far more tolerable crafting game than most, thanks to the Pals providing some level of automation, and pretty lenient hunger/sleep/whatever mechanics. In light of this, I find it much less egregious than something like Lies of P or Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, which were simply soulless, inferior versions of the things they were shamelessly trying to emulate.

Palworld has issues for sure. Pathing is total shit, Pals don't appear to have swimming animations so they just run in water, and building is bizarre, with objects refusing to connect to others for no discernible reason. The controls are inconsistent, where sometimes Tab will exit a screen, sometimes F will exit, and sometimes you have to hit Esc. There's no "exit game" option on the main menu, so you have to alt+f4 this bitch. It would also be nice if your Pals had a setting to stop them from trying to Last Hit every enemy like they're playing Dota.

Despite all this, I'm having a pretty good time with it. Hopefully the developers don't abandon it, but with its success, they have a pretty good incentive to keep updating it.

Also, fuck Nintendo. All my homies hate Nintendo.

EDIT -- I would like to clarify: Do Not Spend Money On This Game, You Idiots. It's on game pass if you really want to play it. I do not say this because of some moral issue regarding stolen designs or (as of yet unfounded allegations of) generative AI usage. Don't pay for games in early access! You're buying broken shit that will probably never get fixed! Goddamned Mindcraft ruined everything.

The first Final Fantasy blew my mind. Maybe it’s because it’s the first Final Fantasy game I’ve ever played, maybe it’s because it’s the first RPG I’ve played on the NES that physically shows your characters fighting the enemy rather than using the classic 1st-person view, maybe it’s because of that stupid flying boat I’m now obsessed with. Who knows. But what I do know, is that Final Fantasy I is a fucking AWESOME game that has withstood the sands of time beautifully. Throughout this review, I will be comparing Final Fantasy with other NES RPGs I have played, which is just Dragon Warrior (1986/1989) and MOTHER (1989).

I played the game on my NES and had absolutely no issues with lack of save points, enemy/boss difficulty, and getting around to figure out what to do next. The manual for Final Fantasy 1 is insanely kind, going above and beyond what the already jampacked manuals for the time usually had. Again, the manual, not the guidebook, gives the player information for where to go until you discover the airship. That’s pretty much the end game, with help knowing the best weapons and places to go until that point. The manual of course also includes all the information for enemy, weapon, and armor stats, and a map of the whole area to boot. Final Fantasy gameplay wise is also just very, very player-friendly, with little need to ever grind if you focus on destroying every group you run into. In fact, I would argue you will quickly become OVERpowered if you focus on eliminating everyone you run into. With Dragon Warrior and MOTHER, I definitely had to put aside time just to level up between bosses, while Final Fantasy seemed to always lead me to be just the right level at just the right time, even when running away from a lot of the bigger groups.

Final Fantasy is a gorgeous game on the NES, even including cutscenes and a credit roll, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen on a 3rd-generation game (though I still have lots to check-out!). The music is really impressive too, with a very large variety that I can think back on fondly (though my wife eventually had me mute the TV because she couldn’t stand it lmao). I loved all the effort put into both the visuals and music in this game, and appreciated even the little things we might not think much about today, such as being able to change weapons and visibly see your change (I love the Coral Sword for being a bright hot pink hehe), the cute little dance after beating an enemy, large and varied groups of monsters to fight against, and the awesome and varied transportation you unlock throughout that only helps you move faster and faster! That’s what’s great about the original Final Fantasy, it really feels like a great video game conversion of DND. You pick who you want in your party, get to name them, create little stories in your head, and play them through a fairly open story that you can adjust to fit in a way you may prefer. My party had two fighters, a thief, and a red mage. I drew my own interpretations of them which you can see here!

My biggest complaint with Final Fantasy is that a bunch of the spells and magic are just plain broken in the game, so stuff like mages not being able to raise their intelligence and certain spells simply not working was a bit frustrating, but I heard they fixed that in later adaptations, so that’s good! Sadly, it did affect my playthrough, so I gotta dock some points towards the game for that as it was a bit annoying, and had me restart from my original team of fighter, thief, white mage, and black mage.

I feel there’s so much more I could say about Final Fantasy I, but I feel I’ve already rambled enough. It’s truly a wonderful experience and has so many fun visual elements that I felt were missing in Dragon Warrior and MOTHER. MOTHER came out after Final Fantasy I, and I’ve never played Dragon Quest/Warrior II though which is a NES/Famicom RPG with a party system that came out a year or so before Final Fantasy I, so that might be a more fair comparison, but oh well! This is the experience I have so my review is going to play off of that! If you’re looking for a 3rd-gen RPG to get started with, Final Fantasy I has to be the most player friendly I’ve ever played, and I can’t recommend it enough!


4.5/5

You know, I joke a lot to myself about the "guy that buys the yakuza games solely for the arcade games", but here I am, I am the guy now. And how could I not be? For the first time in the 25(!!!) years since this game first hit arcades, we finally have a playable version of this game on a home console, with no need for obtuse command-prompt emulator frontends getting in our way.

This game basically takes everything that the first Daytona did and continues to do it just as well. 3 courses to drive through with the first basically being a training stage for learning how to drift properly and the other 2 being more interesting race tracks. Drifting in this game is the same as the first; you can do so through either gear shifting or braking and regardless of which option there is quite a high skill ceiling. The visuals are incredible, really leaning into the theme-park attraction style vibes and thrills that come from these kinds of arcade racers, with setpieces that include cities, ice glaciers, haunted houses, canyons, an alien space ship, wide open fields, and a giant rocking pirate ship serving as eye candy to zoom through.

With attractive visuals to lure me in with the deep mechanics to keep me playing, this is yet another example of a banger arcade racing game. The version featured in the latest Yakuza game is a rebranded version of the "power edition" of this game, which adds some new content like a marathon endurance course combining all 3 tracks together and brings the original daytona car as an option. They also changed the beginner courses scenery from a lush biodome to a generic nascar track and scrubbed out the daytona branding due to licensing, which is lame but it is what it is. A hornet by any other name drives just as fast.


if sega adds scud race to a yakuza game i will personally fly to sega HQ and kiss the entire ryu ga gotuku studio staff

i'd wager there are many who try to undertake a more fair critical analysis when writing about this game. for the sake of transparency, let's just say i can't. this isn't about a stringent inability to separate art from the artist, this is about my inability to separate art from its era.
- it is emblematic of a dark period in capcoms oeuvre, in which they repeatedly made awful creative and financial decisions in an attempt to both maximize revenue and appeal to western markets
- it is easily one of the most repugnant, misogynistic games ive ever played; it possesses some of the worst writing ive ever seen in a game while still supposedly aspiring to shakespearean greatness. none of its musings on society ever come together nor can it be enjoyed as a charming romp when so little of its characterization is either endearing or palatable
- the calvacade of capital G Gamers who were thoroughly unimpressed by this title inspired a desperate and petty form of tribalism from the likes of varying industry figures that continues to resurface to this day...
- ...which, inadvertently, largely reminds of a kind of rampant xenophobia that existed in the seventh generation of games, a quiet dismissal of anything japanese in the medium and a refusal to engage with their works on sincere grounds (look no further than the original niers critical admonishment). ninja theory felt completely comfortable disparaging and blaspheming the original franchise that they now held the keys to in an era where inescapable indie 'beloveds' like jonathan blow and phil fish rallied to antagonize an entire country's output to the medium
- ninja theory had zero right to patronize or criticize, by the way, given that itsuno had to babysit them to teach them anything at all about proper enemy design, combat design, and so on and so forth. their action game couldn't even be considered average until the release of the special edition
- honestly think the games environments look like dogshit, considering it's the one thing everyone is unanimous in praise of. 2000s movie poster type bullshit

a stark reminder of an awful time to be a participant in the medium and the sole reason i refuse to be accessory to ninja theory in any financial capacity. sacrilege if im being real. hilarious that dmc5 reconciles with this games western sensibilities to often brilliant effect by comparison

Alright, so this is the first time I’ve ever beaten the first Mario on the NES, and after playing a bunch of old games that came out before the first Super Mario Bros, it helped me come to appreciate it to a whole new level. It’s making me interested in doing some kind of analysis on home console games before Super Mario Bros. and after, because just looking through this “History of Famicom” catalog book I got that talks about EVERY game that was made for the Famicom EVER, it’s crazy to see how the first Mario completely turned the gaming world upside down on its head. I won’t go into too much detail for this review, but Super Mario Bros essentially put home consoles on equal playing level with arcades. Not in graphics obviously, but rather in public interest. What would you get a home console for before 1985? To play games from the arcade but at home instead! Sure, these consoles had their own unique games that you might not be able to find at arcades, but the point was to emulate the arcade experience, so the majority of games focused on exactly that. One screen, maybe several if you’re lucky, with usually the same goal: get the highest score!

The only game I feel I can closely compare Mario to from before it came out, is the arcade game Pac-Land. They’re both side-scrolling platformers that feature a silly little guy running to the end of each stage to move on to the next. But Mario took that formula and made it like… good. Really good in fact! Absolutely excellent! Pac-Land isn’t bad by any means, but having to move right and left with two big red buttons instead of a convenient joystick or D-pad is hard to adjust to, and after playing Mario, feels so awkward.


Super Mario Bros itself has aged wonderfully. The controls are great and the levels are short and easy to learn to master, with the final world really putting your skills to the test. The way you control your gameplay through power-ups and physically growing larger and gaining fire projectiles as rewards is insanely unique. The gameplay is enough to offer a challenge, while still being very player friendly. The warp tubes and the start + a for continues is very, very kind to players, while still being hidden enough to not ruin all the fun. My only personal complaint is that Mario does slide around a bit which can be annoying to get used to, but my bigger complaint is the random maze parts in the later castles. I’m such an idiot that I couldn’t figure out the first two, and was forced to look up the pattern I needed to follow, which took away some of the fun, but is really more of a personal issue than a real issue in the game.

Super Mario Bros as a game is just weird too, but in a fun way! We’re so used to seeing him everywhere involving video games that we don’t really think about it… Sure, the Mario character was used before Super Mario Bros, but he was used in environments that fit his character a bit more. Mario, or Jump Man, was always in scenarios with construction and sewers, and is probably why you’re playing an Italian New York man anyways. Donkey Kong is clearly based around King Kong, which takes place in New York, so Mario was branded accordingly. But with Super Mario Bros, you’re in some far off land with a kidnapped princess of mushroom people, fighting off a terrible dragon turtle man to save her… You’d expect some kind of warrior or stereotypical hero to come save the day, no? Well, here’s an Italian-American man in overalls that climbed straight out the Brooklyn sewers to come break some turtles’ backs! It’s so random, it’s so weird!! I guess Mario was randomly hopping on turtles even while in the sewers in the original Mario Bros. arcade game, so at least he's following a theme it seems, but I would honestly have understood a monkey coming to save the day more in Super Mario Bros. because that at least would have fit the Journey to the West inspiration they seemed to be going with! But I’m so glad they didn’t go that route, because now it’s so much more odd and memorable just having this random everyday-man fight in this mystical world. Can you imagine American players seeing it when the NES first came out over there? Here you go kids, some arcade-style games, some sport games, a few shooters, and this random game where you play as an Italian beating the shit out of turtles and helping talking mushrooms... of course! Well, if the game is fun, who cares what wacky cast it uses ⸜(ˊᗜˋ)⸝

Mario absolutely blew up the home console market, and made it so getting a Famicom or NES was a must have, not just to enjoy arcade favorites in the comfort of your own home, but to enjoy video games in general! Sure, you could argue there were more complex and advanced things already happening on home computers, like the PC-88 for example, but the Famicom, and in turn Mario, was insanely user-friendly in a way many had not seen before. It makes sense why the system was such a hit, with Mario really helping push the future of gaming into millions of households throughout the entire world.

4.5/5

Given that a full 17 years passed between the release of Streets of Rage 3 and the superb fan-made Streets of Rage Remake, and another 9 years between Remake and 4, I still can't fully believe they announced this, never mind released it - it feels like a fever dream. It would be like if they suddenly announced Phantasy Star 5, or Megaman Legends 3, or SatAM Sonic season 3!

The updated hand-drawn art style is really slick, but the core beat-em-up gameplay remains intact - with a new element that adds an extra layer of depth. I'm referring, of course, to the big flashy combo counter which increases in number whenever you land a hit on anything (an enemy, a destroyable item, a falling KO-ed enemy) and awards you points based on the length of combo you can build. These points can be used to get extra lives (which you absolutely will need on the higher difficulties)... and thanks to the addition of wall-bounce and air-juggle mechanics, combos are relatively intuitive to learn and satisfying to perform. SOR4 is a game that not only rewards you mechanically for mastering its core gameplay gimmick - it ensures that gimmick actually feels good to do. Few things beat the visceral satisfaction of grabbing an enemy and wailing on them, then throwing them into a wall and hitting them with a blitz as they bounce off.

In this way, this new and evolved iteration of Streets of Rage kind of feels like a shmup! It rewards points not on progression but on skill - your main source of points is no longer stage completion or item pickups, but the abovementioned combos as well as picking up health items with full health (i.e. not getting hit). The fact that you get ranked on your performance after each level on story mode and can eventually unlock a stage select to try and improve on those scores really pushes you to get better at the core gameplay - and makes it feel more like a 'score attack' game than any of the previous entries.

That said, one of the biggest virtues of SOR4 is that it has something for everyone to enjoy, whatever your skill or experience level is. Because of the addition of charged attacks and a more robust move-cancelling system, some of the more fanciful combos available require finger dexterity and timing not unlike what you would need in a modern fighting game! But you can also stick to basic beat-em-up stuff (start a combo and then switch to a more damaging move/throw before you knock them down) and the game still feels like a lot of fun. The basic story mode (where your lives are reset every level and you can restart from the beginning of the level if you get a game over) is simple enough for casual players to get through, but the game also has an Arcade Mode for players looking to get that 'original hardware' experience.

Streets of Rage 4 looks great, feels fantastic to play, and has that new combo counter that appeals to the dopamine addict in all of us - ordinarily that would be the end of the review, but being the overthinker I am I also do want to add in some thoughts on how this could have been better.

- A relative lack of content especially compared to Streets of Rage Remake. You can unlock the 'classic' pixelated versions of the characters from earlier SOR games, but that's it really. It has 12 levels and no branching paths, which means you know exactly what to expect after going through them once. A bit like death by snu-snu, it's possible to have a bit too much of a good thing.

- Shadows. In previous games, the characters' shadows were a useful way of lining yourself up with enemies, as well as knowing their position when they jumped. SOR4 handles shadows more realistically - we don't have round black blobs underneath our feet at all times - but not having a clear way to tell exact character placement affected the game feel a little. I found myself whiffing a lot more often, and not being able to easily tell if we were aligned horizontally or not does get annoying in some sequences (for example when fighting enemies that jump offscreen, or those Galsias that walk diagonally across the screen holding a knife in front of them).

- For as much praise as I give it, the combo system in the game could have been better executed. While the game doesn't tell you this, if you get hit in the middle of a combo, you lose all your combo points. And I get that this is a risk-vs-reward, mechanic, but if you want to get the points (which you need for extra lives, remember), how it plays out is that you will rack up a big combo, and then just walk around idly for a while so you can 'cash in' your combo for points, which really breaks up the momentum of the game.

I think it's cool that between SOR4 and the fanmade SOR Remake, they basically have created the perfect beat-em-up. SOR4's combo mechanics (perhaps slightly tweaked) on top of Remake's branching path structure and wider variety of unlockables, SOR4's graphical style with clearer character shadows like in previous games. Which of the two games you prefer is entirely down to personal preference - a lot like choosing your favorite character.

I think Remake still takes the edge for me in the way that its gameplay is simpler but almost as satisfying, and its greater variety in the form of branching paths and host of unlockables. Still SOR4 is an absolute triumph of a series revival. It's a great entry point into beat-em-ups and an equally great game for veterans to refine their skills, and (I foresee) an early contender for one of the best games I play for the first time this year!

(Beat story mode on hardest, arcade mode on hard. Mained Adam)

100 Asian Cats is a short, free hidden objects game. I was enticed to try it, thinking it’d be a standard, cute little experience that I’d write a paragraph or two about. I had no idea the gripes I’d come out of it with; not only because the game itself is mediocre at best, but also because of how this free content tries to snag your money in ulterior ways.
But before I get into all of that, let’s break down the game itself. The player’s goal is to find the eponymous 100 cats scattered throughout a single level - this level being a scrollable art piece depicting an Eastern-style building overrun with kitties. There’s no color, except for splashes of yellow filling the page for each cat you find and click on.
The art style of 100 Asian Cats isn’t terrible by any means. In fact, I quite liked the level of detail put into it. However, the thin lines and near-complete lack of color makes those same details muddied - especially because most of the so-called ‘cats’ are actually half of a vague ‘cat’ shape fit into any nook and cranny possible.
Somehow worse than the art, though, is the music. It’s fast and chaotic, to the point that it honestly stressed me out more than anything. I would’ve much preferred something slow to set a relaxing tone; I have no idea why they chose something so high-energy, especially when the track just doesn’t sound that great in the first place. At least the cats make cute little meows when you click on them?
Speaking of clicking, let’s briefly discuss the gameplay. At the end of the day, it’s the most barebones version of a hidden object experience you could ask for. It’s fine, but there’s absolutely nothing special about it, either. I didn’t even need to use the hint system until near the very end.
Now, I really want to dig into 100 Asian Cats’ strange avenues of monetization - starting with that same hint system. Although I didn’t run out of them, there’s apparently only a limited number of hints available to the player. I figured this out because, if you were to buy the game’s DLC, it lists itself as including additional hints! Even if I barely needed them, I think it’s plain weird to monetize a mechanic in your 20 minute-long, free Steam game.
And even though the base game is free, that DLC is not. To play this content - AKA, the only other level in the game, which is probably also 10 minutes long – you have to fork over a dollar. Not worth it, in my opinion. I also found it shady how there’s a vague button on the main menu that, when clicked, redirects to your Steam cart with the DLC already added to it.
Somehow, though, this tiny DLC is far from the only way you can spend money on 100 Asian Cats. You also have the option to spend five dollars apiece to receive what I can only assume are a laughably small art book and soundtrack. Ten dollars is a crazy ask for one or two levels’ worth of content.
At least then you’re given some actual content in return, though. Because there’s also five separate options to donate to the developers… and the highest is a two hundred dollar donation. These ‘donations’ are deceptively marked as additional DLC, and the only reward offered for each of them is some sort of in-game cat (a different color for every tier.) Even then, the descriptions aren’t clear about what purpose this reward serves in-game.
Okay. I have one last thing to complain about. 100 Cozy Games, the people who made 100 Asian Cats, have released another free hidden object game called 100 Christmas Cats. I was going to give that one a shot, too… until I found out that two of the achievements for it are locked behind a paywall. Absolutely not, that’s ridiculous.
So, although 100 Asian Cats is free and short, you can see why I ultimately think it’s a waste of time. The presentation is mediocre, the gameplay is reductive, and there are simply better options in the hidden object genre. What bothers me most, though, are the strange ways it tries to get your money (again, when it’s a very short and supposedly free game.) I’d say skip it - and probably all of 100 Cozy Games’ releases - entirely.

Visuals: 2/5
Sound: 1/5
Gameplay: 2.5/5
Worldbuilding: 1/5
Replayability: 1/5
Overall Game Score: 1.5/5

My introduction to vocaloid outside of playing a tad of Project Diva Extend, and it’s a fun and cutesy take on the project series, I really adore the chibi style and characters. The game is insanely easy for a Project Series game (going off of what I know of the other entries), I got A and S ranks on every song on my first attempt on normal mode. This game does suffer from some bloat issues, notably the fact that there are SIX difficulties for each song (3 on tap mode, 3 on button mode), made worse by having to unlock hard mode by beating the song on normal first. The actual music at first turned me off a bit but vocaloid actually is pretty solid once you get used to the voices, and I found myself liking it quite a bit eventually. There’s also a mode where you can give the vocaloids money and you can see what things they spend it on, alongside being able to decorate their humble abode. ALSO also there’s a puyo puyo mode so I think that makes the game a 6/10 minimum.
This is a scattershot review and I apologize, I really just wanted to yap for a bit about this game because I honestly enjoyed it much. Vocaloid is a weird facet of 2000’s-2010’s otaku culture that I’ve wanted to dig into for a long time so it was nice finally looking into it, I actually went ahead and got both the original Project Diva and Mega Mix (both on Switch and PC) to play later because I had so much fun with this one. I haven’t felt the best recently so I needed something like this to lean on for a bit. Miku is gender

Making the intricacies of fine art history enjoyable is an unenviable task that CD-ROM interactive experiences fervently tried to surmount throughout the 1990s. Whereas Mystery of the Orangery and Mission Sunlight opted for narrative adventures that happened to teach art history through immersive paintings as setpieces, Night Cafe takes a drier, safer approach. Wandering the streets of Montmarte with nary a pedestrian in sight. Overcast lighting doing Haussmann's Paris a disservice. Setting off to some select locales, able to wander just enough to question why the option exists when one is intended to beeline to the puzzle objectives.


The narration is smooth and deep, but fails to impart knowledge on the why of the Impressionists, opting instead for discussion of relations and painterly methodology. While this is fine for those already familiar with the subject matter, it assuredly would leave the casually interested in the dark as to what the point of it all was. Yes, the Impressionists sought an interplay of light and colour and open compositions, yes they painted en plein aire, yes they were rejected from the Salon de Paris, but why does that matter? Académie des Beaux-Arts is mentioned in passing, but little is said of the wilful rejection of contemporary standards.


Of interest must be the methodology herein. Outside those typically solitary narrations, much of the text exists as excerpts from correspondence. This holds true in the 'adventure' part of the game, and in the unlocked galleries of each artist's works. If a painting does have an accompanying document (in both French and English), it establishes some slight context, but leaves the work itself unexplained and unexplored. Perhaps a scholastic explanation of each work would be excessive. But as it stands, one is left wondering why these specific paintings matter. We are told Manet's Olympia was controversial and important, but not how or why. With the dictionary/encyclopedia ever at the ready within the program, it seems a misstep -- the primary sources could be front and centre, with greater detail and sources in that secondary space.


The loose gameplay of Night Cafe disappoints as well. Sometimes one wanders through each and every pre-rendered scene in a space, collecting objects or figures. These are then placed blindly onto a painted surface to reconstruct a relevant work, or are arranged into sequence despite the player having no means of knowing the solution. By way of example, in Theo van Gogh's apartment, sepia prints of Vincent's works are gathered, then put into frames labelled with years and locations. Two of these can be solved by comparing the tiny image to sketches on letters nearby. The rest cannot. Except there is no consequence for mismatching frame and picture, so just drag them one by one onto each frame to see what sticks. Absolutely nothing is learned here. The same holds true for when placing figures into a scene. One has no clue who these figures are, nor where they are situated, nor why this even matters. The figures aren't even named. The other puzzles invariably require moving sliders to change 3x3 tiles of paintings, only the sliders affect two tiles rather than just the one selected. It isn't challenging, only frustrating.


Despite doing nothing particularly well, Night Cafe nonetheless is a cute enough experience for the weary art history student. It is a short romp where I could smile in recognition of critical artworks, and raise an eyebrow at the inclusion of Post-Impressionists. Outside of that, there is little (if not nothing) to be learned here and not a shred of fun drawn from the adventure and its challenges. It is a testament to misplaced zeal in the heyday of multimedia, a presupposing that anything is implicitly interesting by virtue of being on a poly-carbonate optical disc.