I first played this last year when the Remaster came to modern consoles. However, with you now able to walk through environments, rather than viewing everything like a diorama, you feel extra immersed in the surroundings. Everything else about the game remains unchanged, even the dreadfully dull Tartarus, the dungeon that keeps going. They did try adding new elements to keep it interesting, but it's not enough to change the fundamental aspect of going through procedurally generated levels, hoping every corner produces a set of stairs. I had hoped they found a way to make it less monotonous. As always, the story, characters and music are top-tier. I loved spending time with these characters again, and sad to see them go again.

I feel so sorry for all non-Spanish speakers who will never understand just how funny the name ‘’Señor Chirridos’’ is; like… is not a bad translation of Mr. Scratch by any means, but it’s so fucking funny and it surprises me even more they just didn’t keep the original name… but I’m so glad they didn’t.

If Alan Wake is the main TV series, then American Nightmare feels like a Halloween special, which seems to be exactly what they were going for. Despite the original game having such an open finale and this going directly after it, it doesn’t really build upon the pre-established narrative beyond Alan’s character and his conflict with his doppelgänger, and that’s fine! I’m totally up for a shorter, more fast-paced story in this world, and American Nightmare does have a super interesting premise.

I actually liked how the combat worked in the first game, so expanding on that with more weapons and enemies while using the backdrop of a Night Springs episode and introducing a time-loop is the kind of craziness I can get behind, and AM does succeed at creating more interesting combat encounters than the original game ever did… but doesn’t try to go for more than that despite its many opportunities.

It does show a promising start; the three main areas of Arizona are interesting and fun to go through and a perfect excuse to battle the Taken, getting more manuscript pages, see more of Mr. Scratch and the little interactions with each of the characters, while not as natural as any of the conversations with the fellas of Bright Falls, are pretty neat. With the addition of a couple of weapons and enemies, this feels like the kind of combat sections they wanted to make the first time around; they even took out the driving section! We are freed from this accursed blight!

And we even get to hear how Barry and the Old Gods of Asgard are doing, glad to know they are still putting out pure fire!

It’s a pretty good time, a simple one, but it has some cool moments, I really liked the battles, and overall is just an entertaining time!... and then the second loop begins.

I absolutely love the idea of time-loops as a gameplay system, getting to learn more of the world and levels and using that knowledge to do tasks way faster and m is the best, however, poorly implemented time-loops can turn into doing the exact same thing x amount of times only with a different objective or two and with some new enemies… guess what American Nightmare decides to do. Each time loop is shorter than the last one, but not because you actively take decisions that make things speed up, but because either what were multiple objectives is only one now or because a NPC did the thing way before you. It doesn’t help that the major set-pieces don’t change at all; watching the petrol extractor is a cool sequence, but not one I would have liked to go through three times, and no, putting rock songs, as good as hey sound, doesn’t make it different or better.

Going through the motions the first time was fine, but having to walk through the same rope two other times is a chore, even if gets shorter every time. Worst part is that they really could have given you more openness if they really wanted; the NPCs you encounter also remember the time loops and no matter what, you can only truly win at the end of the last one, so diving you more lenience on how you deal with things wouldn’t have really affected thing at all, and we have here is just an excuse to turn 3 levels into 9.

As the loops go on, more enemies get introduced, and… listen, I really do like the combat way more on here, and some of the new enemies are pretty interesting; the Taken that throws projectiles and explosives and the one that divides each time you shine light on him are super cool ideas from a gameplay-wise and as ideas on their own but the rest of them… in many ways they feel like a waste. The enemies that replace the birds from the original game are faster to deal with but just as annoying, the giants are bullet sponges with no interest move-sets on their own, and the spiders are cool story wise, since they apparently are not part of the Taken perse and instead are part of the Dark Place fauna, but they being just big spiders feels like a wasted opportunity to create something way more cool and alien, and alsoWHY THE FUCK DID THEY HAVE TO SPIDERS O MY GOD-

American Nightmare doesn’t create challenges by throwing enemies with interesting sets of moves, it just throws at you guys that really know how to take damage or a ton of them at the same time, best exemplified on the Arcade mode. I do know and understand that this is a more gameplay-focused entry, but when in the main story you go through the same beats over and over with some minor alterations, and the arcade mode —which by the way, has some unique level themes that I would have preferred to see much more in the main story instead of going through the Observatory three times — is just Wake against waves of enemies and see what score you can get… at a certain point the game loses me, and it doesn’t pull from the creativeness that I know it has and can have to keep me glued to it.

The Taken stay completely silent, and the creepy charm that was found on hearing their grunts and lines amongst the trees is completely gone; the manuscript pages are way less interesting this time around, and the opportunity of this being based around and taking place in a Night Springs episode Alan wrote isn’t taken advantage of at any point, making for a way less interesting story, and use of the reality- bending pages.

In the end, the thing that really kept me more intrigued and wanting to see the game to the finale was, who else, Mr. Scratch himself. I enjoyed most of the villains in the original Alan Wake, but NONE feel like Mr. Scratch; the sound distorting every time Wake says his name, the way he taunts Alan and how he ENJOYS being the worst of him, a true monster all the way through, it’s a disturbing delight every time he’s on screen (literally) and the uneasiness he carries is one I didn’t expected to be done so well. I wished he and Alan had more opportunities to bounce each other, ‘cause every time they did it was a delight, and luckily it seems that American Nightmare isn’t that important to the overall Alan Wake narrative, so hopefully he didn’t kick the bucket, I’d love to see more of him…

There’s still that Alan Wake attention to detail and story in here, but it didn’t go as deep as it could have, and we have is a story that, while fun at times and with some cool extras and secrets, it still is what is: a Halloween special that doesn’t want to be a real successor or groundbreaking, but it also doesn’t take advantage of the potential it itself sets, and it can drag on at times… Still fun and funny at times, tho!

We’ll meet again, Champion of Light

I’ll see you soon, Herald of Darkness

I don't know, man. There's plenty to like here—charming characters, a cute story, semi-compelling political drama, good (enough) maps, gorgeous GBA aesthetic, whatever. But I've been frustrated and dragging my feet playing this. There is a tiny little fence between me and having fun, and no matter what I do, I cannot hop over it and be compelled to finish this game. That fence is named Seth.

Let me be clear. Lovely guy. Seems really sweet. But he is a sponge on the hypothalamus of my brain. He sucks up every drop of serotonin produced while playing this game. Instead of pumping my fist and shaking hands with another comically muscular man before we ride in a helicopter and are tricked into a death battle with a technologically superior alien species that only one of us escapes alive, I'm sucking my thumb and honk-shooing in my nightcap and gown beside a brick-and-mortar fireplace. Seth is the single most overpowered character I have ever seen in any video game. Still, with like 5 or 6 chapters left in the entire game, he one-shots every normal enemy and two-shots every boss. What are we doing here? Seth bends the very map design around him. Choke-points are no longer threatening. I stand slack-jawed as I drop the red-haired menace in front of 300 enemy goons, praying they will be enough to end his reign. Yet he stands steadfast as they all line up and take turns missing every attack and dying instantly. The Australian government cannot produce enough iron lances to feed into the Seth-powered enemy chipper. He is less a man and more an industrial machine.

Seth has ruined the thrill of permadeath. He has ruined my investment in the combat. He has stolen my crops, and he has pillaged my coffers. I never want to see this man again!

There is a lot to be said about how novel the pacing of this game is and how much I enjoy saving only at the end of chapters (and the chapter structure itself), but I'll save it for when I actually finish one of these things.

Before I started playing Halo 2, I decided to look up its development history, and I found out some pretty interesting stuff.
The folks over at Bungie wanted to not just improve on what had been established with the 1st game, but also to bring in a lot of new ideas and concepts to the table. To triple everything!
But the devs bit off more than they could chew, and the game went through a bunch of changes during its dev time, with a lack of focus during most of it. The game suffered many delays as a result.

With all of that being said, it's a fucking miracle Halo 2 turned out as great as it did!
Now, it's not free from issues, but I had a lot of fun with this title, and it improves on everything that Halo 1 offered!

The plot tackles many more themes than last time, ranging from politics to religion. We see more of the Covenant alien species this time around, and hear them interact with each other.
And this also adds to the fact that there's a 2nd playable character who's from the Covenant, the Arbiter!

And that leads me into the gameplay. You'll alternate between Master Chief and the Arbiter throughout the game, especially when you pass the first third of the game. They don't play much differently from each other, except Master Chieft has a flashlight, and the Arbiter has a temporary camoflauge system.

The biggest new addition to the game, however, is that you can now dual-wield weapons! Of course, if you wanna use a grenade, you will have to put down your left weapon to throw it, but you can easily pick it back up afterwards. Not all weapons can be dual-wield, but many of them do.
It's crazy how such a simple addition can make a game more fun!

There are also some new weapons like the Spartan Sword, which are really fun to use! And the vehicles are also back, and they control better too! The Warthog didn't feel as slippery as before, and the new vehicles are just fun to use... except the tank, that one was a bit too slow for my liking.
At least you only use it in one level.

The overall level design has also seen a significant boost! I criticized Halo 1 for having a lot of empty space, and Halo 2 fixes that by being very no non-sense.
Sometimes you do have to stop for some enemies to appear, and at the beginning of the game, it was a bit annoying. But as you go through the game, you find less and less of those situations, which I appreciate.
The variety of environments, too, is also a big step up from last time! There's a lot to see and to explore, and there were some part where I found the game to be gorgeous!
And this is from 2004!

On the topic of presentation, this game also very much improves on that. Human character models are way more detailed and expressive, and don't feel as dated as last time. I will say that the Alien character models weren't super great, but I do appreciate some of the detail on their models.
The voice acting is also stellar, with the Arbiter being voiced by Keith David, who does an excellent job!

I do think that the game's lighting system is not the best. Like, most places that have light in them are just fine, but when it's dark, it's really dark. The few times that I did get lost, it was because I couldn't see shit. The Arbiter not having a flashlight made it worse.

Although since I was playing Halo 2: Anniversary, I could temporarily go to the modern graphics, and see that the lighting was better. Then I would switch back to the old graphics, once I found my way, so that the game would run smoother on my PC.

All in all, while Halo 2 is not perfect, it was a really fun first-person shooter, that I'm glad I got to play!

Not sure if I'll be able to play Halo 3, but I want to, one day, finish the fight!

I held off on playing Tinykin for an unduly long time because I think the protagonist has a stupid haircut. As it turns out, even the in-game NPCs tend to express similar sentiments. Amusing.

The enviro art looks great, and calls to mind many hours spent traversing the world of Chibi-Robo. While Tinykin is clearly Pikmin inspired, it lacks any of the task-management of the series, and instead plays as a very conventional collectathon. Just rummage over every inch of level geo and pick up all the glowing edible looking collectibles on autopilot and the game will complete itself. Tinykin coasts by on delightful style and amusing NPC dialog to create a pleasantly memorable experience.

I gave up on trying to 100% my save, and am dearly wishing for a pollen radar. This is why I really don't like collectathons, they tend to resort to tedium rather than challenge. At least the time trials actually put your management of soap-board and bubble-hover schmoovement to the test. Showing that Tinykin can provide satisfying platforming sequences.

I was not expecting to love this as much as I did. It's not perfect for sure, but what it did right was more than enough to push it to 5 stars for me!

The combat felt THE best I've experienced in a soulslike outside of Fromsoft, even surpassing Dark Souls 2 or Lies of P for me. Aggro Crab just gets it somehow! My only gripe with the combat is just that the game got a little bit too easy towards the end. I think this is because you can unlock so many powerups that you get to a point where you can just mow enemies down without much trouble. I fought the final boss with full upgrades and took almost no damage (I didn't use assist mode a single time except to get the gun achievement post game). I would've loved to see a NG+ mode or boss rush to address this or just better scaling at least.

The platforming and movement were an absolute joy. Rolling around in one of the many incredibly creative shells and using the grappling hook had a great sense of speed. Sure some platforming sections could be janky but it never bothered me to the point of frustration. I wasn't even expecting the platforming going in so the level of quality it's at was a pleasant surprise. It also sounds like the team is hard at work on fixing bugs as well. Speaking of bugs, most of the ones I experienced just had to do with me getting launched after using certain moves. This also didn't happen often enough to frustrate me either.

The story is the other part that was a huge surprise. I was fully expecting the story to just be goofy crab shenanigans and there's for sure a lot of crab/ocean related humor that was mostly just fine and sometimes fell flat, but the main character actually goes through a lot of meaningful growth, the story gets pretty dark and serious, and it even had me on the verge of tears a few times. It wasn't a life changing story by any means, but it felt way more epic and meaningful than I could've anticipated.

The game also has a lot of references to other games which were kind of fun to discover though it felt like there were a little too many references at times. Now and then the attempts at humor even went a bit too far imo. Still, it was a great experience.

HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone who enjoys soulslike games or is looking for a challenge/different experience. I have heard about more bugs on other platforms so it could be worth waiting a while for more bug fixes. I'm feeling pretty strongly that this'll be my GOTY this year.

Picture this. There is a game where you play as a high-tech sentient motorcycle tasked with the one mission of going to a motorcycle festival in Gurnee, Indiana; all while the creators of the motorcycle hunt them down by sending tanks, mechs, a shit ton of guys with guns, and another much more evil sentient motorcycle voiced by Robert Patrick. On top of that the main motorcycle also has some poor bastard getting dragged along by the pant leg for the whole 4 day trip as he screams for mercy and repeatedly yells for help as the motorcycle uses him as a weapon while also doing karate moves mid air on jet packed goons with laser guns. That game.........is LocoCycle, and it is so fucking dumb that I kinda love it.

The main downside I can see most people having with this game is that it can be really repetitive with how most of the game is just doing the same stuff over and over agian. But to that I say; this is a Twisted Pixel game their known for their Xbox live arcade games which are very much one gimmick stretched out to the farthest it can go so really expecting anything else from them is kind of on you, and second the game is like 4 hours long and like 10 dollars not on sale so like really idk what else you could've possibly wanted?
Yeah the game is pretty much the same stuff but each level adds a new enemy or a new set piece so it's not like each level is the same stuff over and over again. Honestly I kinda love how with each level the game finds a new way to get more stupid and over the top with it's action, probably the hight for me is when the bike is getting shot at by an aircraft carriers and in retaliation it makes a big jump over a bridge and shoots at the aircraft carriers from the sky as they blow up, that's such a stupid and far out there sequence that only people with the brains of kids could've came up with; but man it's really fucking fun.

I may be a stupid sucker for really dumb action (I mean for fuck sake I like the kingsman and the Monsterverse movies) but I'm sorry when I see a motorcycle do karate kicks mid-air while also using it's two back wheels to grab missles and throw them back at the tanks or using the poor bastered it's dragging along as a boomerang as he screams for god...I.........I'm sorry I think it's fun. Am I a sucker, probably; but also you people need to take that stick up your ass and enjoy dumb fun and whimsy.

(I didn't know how to tie this into the normal review but this game also has live action cutscenes since it was an Xbox One launch title and they are fucking bizarre. Not only do they look like an amateur porno rivaling only Doug Walker in terms of cinematography and bad color correction, but they also got real "popular" actors/people to be in them. They got James Gunn before me ended up in the super hero slop mines to be the creator of the bikes, they got Lloyd Kaufman President of Troma to play a one off bit character which, if you know who Lloyd Kaufman you shouldn't be surprised why the cutscenes look like amateur porno ( or as creeps like to call them "Troma Originals") and probably the most strangest outlier being famous and renowned horror make-up artist/actor Tom Savini, who just plays the main villain. I'm not even complaining because all the live action cutscenes are really funny but like......how did this little no name studio get these people? Is Microsoft money just that powerful?)