As a Castlevania fan, I've seen many opinions on the series' games throughout the years. Symphony of the Night is one of my favourites, and a lot of people can vouch for its quality, but there's also people who love games like Super Castlevania IV, Rondo of Blood or Aria of Sorrow.
But Castlevania: Lords of Shadow has always been an interesting one to talk about, because it feels like opinions on this one are really split.

While I have played my fair share of Castlevanias, there are still some titles in the series I have yet to experience, and Lords of Shadow was one of them. Being a complete reboot of this series, taking place in an alternate timeline, I decided to come into it with an open mind.
New setting, new characters, new lore in general! Of course, considering we haven't seen a new Castlevania game since Lords of Shadow 2, I get the feeling that this reboot's existence has put a sour taste in people's mouths, but I personally wanted to not think much about it.

So... how's the game?
Taking place in an alternate timeline, we follow Gabriel Belmont, a member of the Brotherhood of Light who recently lost his wife while demons are taking over Europe. The extensive rise of demons has been the source of the titular Lords of Shadow.
Now it's up to Gabriel to kill these Lords of Shadow to restore light in Europe and also find a way to potentially bring back his dead wife.
From there, he will meet enemies and allies, while he goes through many environments and obtaining new abilities!

At first, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow doesn't feel very remarkable in the gameplay department. While I haven't played any God of War game at the time of writing this review, I could tell that Lords of Shadow's gameplay wasn't too different from that series. Some could even say it's a rip-off.
And additionally, the first major boss you fight, at the end of Chapter 1, feels like it wants to capture the spirit of games like Shadow of the Colossus.

What didn't help matters was that, in terms of aesthetics, the game felt like a generic medieval fantasy game. I did have fun early on constantly saying "Crundle Quest V: The Crystals of Gingledoof" and laughing like an idiot, but that's more of a testament at how uninspired the game felt.

But Chapter 2 came and introduced Light and Shadow Magic. On paper, these aren't complex. While you have Light Magic on, when you strike enemies, you regain health. With Shadow Magic, you deal more damage. Simple enough. But if you perform well enough, enemies start giving you energy to restore magic, and depending on what analogue stick you're pressing, you can either restore one or the other, or even both (just split in half).
I think this made gameplay a whole lot more interesting and much more enjoyable. That, and coupled with the powerups you get throughout the game, and the abilities you can buy with EXP, the game just becomes more fun.
Although, beware of the QTEs. I didn't die to any of them, but they were a bit annoying.

Of course, I wouldn't say its complete smooth sailling from there. Sometimes, the game decides to give Gabriel puzzles for him to solve, and I wasn't the biggest fan of these. Some of them weren't too complicated, but others I simply gave up and looked up online.
I understand why they added them, to offer more diversity to the game, but I feel like the game's platforming challenges were already pretty good at that.

And yeah, while this game is pretty different from other Castlevanias, it does continue their platforming tradition, just in a different way. You can tell that the dev team was inspired by Super Castlevania IV, because this game will make you use your whip to swing from side to side or climb walls.
It's pretty different from how it was implemented in that game, but I really liked how it felt and I liked the challenges that the game provided with that, especially in 9-1. That one combines that with the Double Jump ability that you get earlier and it makes for some of the smoothest platforming in the game.
Thing is, they kinda don't do that much for the rest of the game.
Of course, there's still more platforming afterwards, but they don't combine Double Jumps and Whip Chaining as much, and that left me a bit dissapointed.

The boss fights were alright. They were definitely some better than others, but I generally had a decent time fighting against them. They really do try to be epic in a lot of them, especially the Titans that you end up fighting. These evoke that Shadow of the Colossus energy I was talking about earlier, and they're ok, but it feels like it's easy to fuck up and having to do a good chunk of climbing all over again.

In many of the bosses, you will hear either the boss character talking, or a partner of yours talking and, while I appreciate some of the tips, these got a bit annoying after a bit and I wish they would just shut up. The Titan boss fight of Chapter 2 was the worst with that shit.

And speaking of talking, let's talk voice acting! I think it is alright, with the characters speaking with a British accent to add that European "edge" (for a lack of a better word), but I was quite surprised that they managed to get Patrick Stewart to voice one of the characters of the game. And it's not even for just like a scene or two, no no, while you're waiting for the game to load the next stage, he will narrate what's currently happening. That's awesome!

I mentioned the plot a bit earlier, but there is something that I do want to discuss, and I'll try my best to explain it without spoiling anything. So, Gabriel Belmont is considered to be a dark hero in the game, being a protagonist filled with anger and edge and all of that stuff. The game is not subtle about it, and constantly says that he is blinded by the love of his dead wife, and gets more and more angry throughout the game...
Thing is, I barely saw that, especially during the 2nd half up until the final boss. Most of the time, it felt like Gabriel was more so indifferent to what was happening, and just focused on his mission. The dude may have commited some sin, but because of how infrequent it was, I don't think Mercury Steam succeded in passing the message that Gabriel Belmont is a rage-filled hero.
Although, I really did enjoy that post-credits scene, it definitely made me speculate a lot! Won't spoil it, don't worry, even if I have known about the big twist for years now.

One thing that I really liked about this game though was its presentation. Now, when it comes to character models, I feel like this game has aged a bit. Not as much as some other games, but characters are generally not very expressive and enemy designs can be a bit generic.
In spite of the generic medievel feel, I loved the amount of environments Gabriel goes through! From forests, to villages, to cemeteries with poisonous rivers. And that's not even counting the stuff you see when you reach the castle! The game has a lot of vistas and sometimes the game will focus on them, since the game has a locked camera.
I find the game having a locked camera pretty weird, but fortunately it didn't cause many problems during my playthrough.
When you're buying new skills or looking at the character entries, you'll see some amazing artwork and fuild as hell animation showcasing these, which was awesome!
The soundtrack is very much atmospheric, really trying to capture grandious moments, but I do think one of the songs I heard was a remix of a Super Castlevania IV song, and if that's the case, kudos! I appreciate the reference.

You know, that's a thing that this game has sometimes, references to old Castlevanias. Keyword being sometimes, because you have stuff like the Holy Water, or the Daggers, and the whip being called the Vampire Killer, but these are very much light references, just to throw old fans a bone.

Overall, while I feel like this formula has room to grow and this game has its flaws, I ended up enjoying my time with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. It may be a different take on the series, and some of its elements are not really original, I had a good enough time that I'm curious on what the Lords of Shadow sub-series has to offer next, whenever I get to the next game (or the DLC stages for this game).

Genesis Ver Review:
Perhaps the first notable Mickey platformer. I mean back in the day, when you had to make a platformer of any existing IP, Mickey would be a no brainer.

In Castle of Illusion, Sega really uses the concept of Disney magic and applies it very well to the aesthetic of their first Mickey platformer. The game is beautiful on the Genesis and the background and sprite work really feels like something out of a 60s Disney movie. Each level feels like some sort of concept Disney has used in the past, from enchanted forests, to haunted castles, you really do feel the magic and this game is just something great to look at.

Gameplay-wise, It is a very solid platformer that does not do anything outstanding to innovate in the genre, but it works well. It takes aspects from both Ducktales with his butt-stomping cane-like bounce, and Aladdin with the apple projectile throwing. This is something anyone can pick up and play, and it's really fun.
Levels work like most platformers in the day, where you usually get through a series of stages followed by a boss at the end. Each boss feels unique and has their own way of strategy needed to defeat them. Bosses are some of the most amazing sprites in the game feeling like they came straight out of Sleeping Beauty or Snow White.

A very standard, but well done platformer that takes advantage of the IP and uses the Disney aesthetic to bring us a nostalgic setting with great vibes. Really enjoyed this one.

PART 1: OK, MAYBE I HATE COMPETITIVE TEAM GAMES

Before I start this review, I want to use this Part to yap for a bit, so if you are not interested in it, just skip to Part 2! Where I’ll actually start talking about my actual experience with the game.

Around 4 years ago, when I quit playing League of Legends I kept seeking another competitive team game that would tick the same boxes for me, but every game I would try one out I would either end up disliking them or not taking them seriously enough to actually consider them my “main game”. Which would result in me dropping them, and moving on to the next shiny thing, but what they all had in common is that I disliked playing with other people, League left this mental scar on me where now I think every random player I meet online is one mistake away, whether it's from me or them, from flaming the fuck out of me. This happened with Paladins, Apex, Overwatch, Dead by Daylight, Hell, it even happened to me in the Versus mode of Left 4 Dead 2, where stakes couldn't possibly be lower.

Eventually, I started gaslighting myself into thinking that all Multiplayer games fucking sucked now, and the constant tryhard mindset was to blame for it. Of course, there are clear exceptions, like Splatoon or competitive games where it's just 1vs1 where I can blame either myself for my mistakes or my opponent for doing something I didn’t know how to play around.

During the same time I stopped playing League, I was getting deep into Final Fantasy XIV, while I have plenty of things to say about it, I’ll save them for whenever I review it in the future. The point is that when I started participating in endgame content, which is for the most part, PVE Focused, I found myself having that same fun I was looking for in multiplayer games that I had been seeking for a long time. The joy of sharing a clear with your team and cheering and being way more patient with each other, went far beyond than just being relieved of having ended a stressful match that was barely won.

This is something I also noticed while playing Souls games, Left 4 Dead 2 co-op campaigns, Phasmophobia or Lethal Company with my friends, and when I recently got into Helldivers 2, I was completely aware of this epiphany by now. Multiplayer games don’t actually suck, competitive team ones do, and it's now a new age for me, where I will use this realization to get into games I’ve never thought were for me, hell, maybe I’ll actually try getting into Monster Hunter despite my initial reluctance towards those series.

Now, let’s have a nice cup of Liber-tea over Helldivers 2.

PART 2: DEMOCRACY MANIFEST

When Helldivers 2 gameplay was first revealed I remember two key things about it, one of my friends was excited about it because it was a wild glow up from its predecessor, and it had this footage where the people playing it had one of those cringey scripted voice chat interactions. But for some reason I cannot find it on YouTube, I swear it happened at The Game Awards, but I’m starting to think it's my own case of Mandela Effect.

However, things started changing once the game actually dropped, and it seemed like its growth in popularity happened overnight. The next thing I learn, the game is having so many people trying to play it that the servers cannot keep up. This is something unprecedented, and it actually prompted me to take a look, what was going on over there that had everyone so fired up? And so I started checking out some streams, it’s a 4 player co-op third-person shooter where you can fight either Bugs or Robots. On the surface, I thought it was nothing special, then I caught a glimpse of the players using the in game Stratagems and throwing them around, making things blow up and causing as much collateral damage as possible, my interest was starting to get piqued, who doesn't like to cause a big explosion? But the biggest thing to accompany all of it, was the Galactic War system with its Major Orders, where every couple of days every player in the game is tasked with working towards a common goal to be rewarded with currencies and sometimes new purchasable weapons. Apparently, this is led by a guy called Joel over at Arrowhead that acts like a real-time DM and sends out the orders depending on what the players were doing.

But what really, REALLY convinced me that I had to buy the game, was the Malevelon Creek arc, where the community tragically lost control of this particular planet to Automatons, it was a massacre, tons of brave Helldivers and Super Citizens were slaughtered in the process, but the playerbase wouldn't stand by it, and vengeance was sworn on that day. It wasn’t until the Major Order to take it back was given where the players valiantly fought in the name of DEMOCRACY to bring it back to our side, and it was done at a speed that neither devs nor players could have even predicted.

This is something I had to take part of, there was one issue, however. At the time I was busy playing other games, so despite buying it, it wasn’t until recent weeks that I started playing it a lot more, it is one of my biggest regrets to not have been part of this when player counts still soared over 500k every day, but it still warms my heart to log in and see over 100k still playing actively. One of my most common fears with live service games is that at any moment where failure starts to be shown, it's only a matter of time when the publisher says it's time to turn the lights off, and all that time invested gets flushed down the toilet (RIP Knockout City and Rumbleverse, I still think about you two now and then), but Helldivers 2 seems like its here to stay, and I’m happy to be a part of it, to be spreading justice and freedom for as much as I can. To hopefully one day participate in a Major Order as iconic as The Battle for Malevelon Creek

If there's something I had to complain about the game is how some types of enemies are extremely obnoxious to fight against (I fucking despise Chargers and Hulks), and that Arrowhead has a weird philosophy when it comes to weapon balancing, I don't consider myself an expert in game design, but at the end of the day, this is still a PvE game, one that can become really fucking tough at times, if anything I think everything should be busted, so there’s no meta to be enforced by whatever toxic players might be out there and everyone can play their own way.

To wrap things up, on top of my brief rant about Competitive Team Games, there’s another type of game I dislike a lot nowadays and that’s not a controversial opinion, we are all tired of Live Services, games that don’t respect their customers and that think we all have unlimited time, games where just playing them isn’t enough. Gone are the 7th gen days when games would drop with a weirdly, yet charmingly designed Multiplayer mode whose servers barely worked in favor of rotating shops and time-limited Season Passes that unlock only fluff most of the time. Make no mistake, Helldivers 2 also has some of these tropes, but it appears that this time it remembered it still has a box price, so what would be the point of time gating battle passes and having absurdly expensive cosmetics? None, get all of that shit by playing, go out there, kill some bugs and bots, get that rising feeling of power when your Helldiver starts maniacally laughing because you kept firing for a full mag. Drink of the cup of Liber-tea.

I now have two big regrets when it comes to gaming. The first is that I have gone through life having never owned a PlayStation 2, and the second is that I didn’t support and play Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush before the studio was unfairly axed by Microsoft in 2024. The year prior was a crazy year in terms of the amount of quality game releases, and it was quite frankly, a tad overwhelming keeping up with them all. Despite all of the praise being given to Hi-Fi Rush, there were just so many other games that were coming out, or games that I wanted to get to, that I just threw it on the backlog thinking that I’d get to it eventually. Unfortunately, 2023 was also a year with a heartbreakingly large amount of game studio closures, and this is something that is continuing in 2024, with Tango Gameworks themselves being a recent victim at the time of writing this review, despite all of the success that Hi-Fi Rush had achieved the year prior. Coincidentally, the game also had gone on sale as part of a Humble Bundle around the same time the studio was shut down, and fellow Backloggd user duhnuhnuh had an extra key for the game that they were offering (huge shoutouts to him by the way, I’m extremely grateful). Given the timing of everything and an opportunity to play the game in a way that doesn’t directly support Microsoft, I leapt at the chance to give this game its due diligence, and I was absolutely floored at how much the game truly lived up to all of the praise people had given it.

Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm-based action game that takes place in a city in the far future. It stars Chai, a sarcastic and oblivious slacker dude with a disabled arm who really wants to become a rockstar. He volunteers for a cybernetic limb replacement program being run by Vandelay Technologies on their very own campus. Shortly before the process begins, CEO of Vandelay Technologies: Kale Vandelay, a callous CEO stereotype, observes Chai’s records. Unimpressed, he harshly dubs him a loser before he carelessly tosses Chai’s music player away, causing it to fall into the testing site onto Chai’s chest. During the limb replacement process, the music player becomes embedded within Chai, giving him electromagnetic powers while also causing his environment to sync up with the music itself. However, this causes him to be labeled as a defect by Vandelay Technologies, whose security forces attempt to bring him in. As he flees, he meets up and makes a deal with Peppermint, a robotics prodigy with a grudge against the corporation, who helps him escape in exchange for helping her investigate them. Together, the two team up to uncover the shady secrets behind the scenes of Vandely Technologies so that they can expose them to the world and stop their plans from unfolding.

The gameplay is that of a character action game like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, but with rhythm game elements that supplement the combat and platforming. Before I played the game, I heard a lot of people comparing it to Devil May Cry, but I wrote those comparisons off as an over-exaggeration, since I feel like a lot of people will compare any action game with combat they really like to Devil May Cry. I was delightfully surprised to learn that no, the game really is essentially Devil May Cry, but with rhythm game elements. You can perform a variety of combos that are dependent on the timing of your button presses, you’ve got a stiff yet highly vertical jump, you’ve got short platforming segments to serve as variety in-between the combat, you’ve got a ton of different upgrades and additional combos you can purchase with the game’s currency, and you’re graded on your performance after every battle and level with a letter ranking system.

Everything in the game is tied to the beat of the song that’s currently playing, and I do mean everything. The attacks and movements of your enemies, platforming hazards, sound effects, and even animations in the background are all tied to the music, and the game tests you on your ability to not only perform well while in battle, but doing so while also staying on beat with the music. I did find it a bit difficult to get used to timing my attacks to the beat at first, but I got better and better at it as time went on. I can’t tell you how satisfying it feels when you’re able to successfully perform attacks in sync with the rhythm. Just like in Devil May Cry 5, the music will add additional layers of instrumentation the higher your letter score, and the game will also play the sound of an audience chanting Chai’s name as well. The better you do, the more ecstatic the game feels, and performing really well during a fight can feel genuinely euphoric.

The rhythm game elements don’t stop at syncing your attacks to the beat, however. There are a number of quicktime events where you need to press the correct buttons at the correct timing, such as during certain special attacks Chai can perform. Additionally, when close to death, more powerful enemies and certain bosses can force you into a one-on-one segment where you’ll need to successfully parry or dodge their attacks, which are telegraphed to a series of specific beats that you need to replicate with your button presses, and successfully doing so allows you to finish them off with one final strike. As someone who is a big fan of character action games, it’s extremely surprising how fresh and satisfying adding rhythm elements to this genre’s gameplay makes the game as a whole feel. This melding of the genres works fantastically. There is a great sense of cohesion between the two, and for the most part, elements of one genre don’t overshadow the other.

There’s only one element of combat that I have some small issues with. As the game progresses, you will meet additional characters who become allies that you can call upon during combat to aid you in battle. They’ll perform a special attack that has a cooldown once it’s executed. Your allies become a pretty key part of combat, as these special attacks are needed in order to make certain enemies or bosses vulnerable. The issue is how inconsistently your allies’ attacks function. You can’t manually target enemies, so when you call on your allies to use their attack, they can sometimes use it on the wrong enemy, or they’ll miss entirely. If this happens, then you’ve just wasted that summon and you now have to wait for the cooldown to finish before you can summon your ally to attack again. This was especially annoying with Macaron, who needs to use his ability twice in order to break the shields of certain enemies, and whose cooldown takes twice as long compared to your other allies. If he misses or targets the wrong enemy, then you’re basically a sitting duck until his ability recharges, which can be very frustrating. You can purchase some upgrades to make the cooldown slightly better, but they do cost a lot of currency, currency I’d rather spend on other things that can enhance the gameplay experience for myself, like additional combos I can perform, or items that increase my health or special attack gauge.

The game’s tone is very playful, upbeat, and fun, complimented by a gorgeously colorful artstyle that’s inspired by a combination of western and eastern comic books/manga. It tells a story that is a not at all discreet criticism regarding how the leaders of corporations frequently interfere with, mismanage, and ruin the lives of those who work under them. It also goes into demonstrating how much this hurts when the job is something that people have aspired to do for much of their lives, and are very passionate about. The story is extremely straightforward, but you can tell it’s one that comes from very real experiences that I’m sure the folks that have worked on the game have gone through, and considering what ended up happening with Tango Gameworks, it’s a story that resonates now more than ever.

The characters are decent, they serve the story well enough. I will say I’m not the biggest fan of Chai, but he did eventually grow on me. He’s a huge dork who’s very self-serving, unmotivated, and oblivious to those around him. He does get better as he starts to take the situation at hand more and more seriously and comes to care more about the people he meets and works with to take down Vandaley, though his ego remains pretty big still by the end of the game. He’s not at all a bad character or protagonist, he’s just a little too white bread for my tastes. The other characters don’t get much of a focus during the game’s main story, but talking to them in-between missions at the hideout allows you to learn more about them and how they feel about the unfolding events of the narrative. I think I might’ve developed a stronger attachment to them if they had a larger presence in the main plot, but this is still a fine and fun cast of characters.

While I personally would’ve preferred the tone be a bit less playful and to have had a little more edge to it, like the old school Guitar Hero games or Brutal Legend, I feel that would’ve made the game somewhat of a harder sell, not just to general audiences but to get approval to make the game in the first place. The exaggerated, Saturday morning cartoon-esque personalities of the game’s characters (the villains in particular), really manage to offset how personal, and in a way, sad the message that’s being communicated under the surface is. The villain Zanzo in particular is an excellent demonstration of this. His manically over-the-top demeanor and constant Jojo posing, to a certain degree, masks the very real, outrageous, and constant demands the person in charge of a team may have, and how their ego can get in the way of seeing the project to completion, making the efforts of the overworked people underneath them all for naught. The game’s current tone isn’t at all a bad one either. I can see some folks not jiving with the comedy, and I can also see certain people writing it off as “reddit humor”, but even if the game didn’t necessarily make me laugh out loud, I still found it to be endearing.

I’ve really enjoyed the rhythm games I’ve played, but I don’t play too many of them because the vast majority of them don’t appeal to my taste in music, so I’m really glad this game exists. I played the game with its original soundtrack instead of the licensed music (in case I decide to one day stop being a coward and start making YouTube videos), and I gotta say, it was pretty fantastic. I’m more of a metalhead than a rock guy, but this game’s music is still really good. The soundtrack has a lotta groovy riffs and decent solos that are never tiresome or boring to listen to.

Hi-Fi Rush was truly a surprise for me. I went into this without much in terms of expectations, but its fluid and immensely satisfying combat and complete banger of a soundtrack kept me hooked the entire time. I’m heavily debating doing a quick second playthrough of the game even though I’ve finished it because I was just that hooked and enamored by its gameplay. If the game had a different tone and a heavier soundtrack, I genuinely think it would’ve ended up being my dream video game, but even as it currently stands, it’s a brand new favorite of mine. The irony of a game condemning the actions of corporate dickheads becoming a massive success while the studio that made it gets shut down a year after it launches is honestly extremely tragic. It’s not like my $30 was the $30 that would’ve kept Tango Gameworks from shutting down, but I still feel really bad after finally playing this game that I didn’t purchase it and support Tango while they still existed. If you haven’t played Hi-Fi Rush, I implore you to, and I also implore you to learn from my mistake and actually support those games that don’t get AAA marketing, yet gain an outstanding reputation via word of mouth. Don’t just put them on your wishlist forever and wait. I can’t stress enough how much we need more games like Hi-Fi Rush, and if we don’t make our voices heard with our wallets, we hurt the chances of these games being made in the future.

Forever and always: Fuck You, Microsoft.

I love you Tails, but you have disappointed me so. You might think silly of me to be let down by such a game. Even if a metroidvania with Tails using all his little gadgets and doohickeys is a really cool concept for a Sonic spinoff that gives my boy the spotlight he needs, this is still a Game Gear title after all, so naturally you’d expect something short of stellar.

But the thing is, this game starts off really good!! Apart from it taking me too long to figure out how to change abilities, the levels are fun to go through and Tails controls well. His movement physics aren’t bad and the flight option allows for some unique exploration challenges not typically seen in the genre to this day. I was pleasantly surprised with how much fun I was having!

It’s once you get a few levels deep do the cracks start to show. Eventually you are required to do a fair amount of backtracking, using your abilities to open the routes that you’ve missed. Of course, this should be fine in theory but I found two main issues:

Firstly, Tails can only carry 4 abilities at once, if you want to swap them out you need to leave the level you are in (by walking either all the way to the end or back to the start), then return to Tails’ House and swap them out. Obviously this kinda BLOWS because your time is wasted if you don’t happen to bring the right thing with you. It may have been a hardware limitation, or maybe it was intentional to pad out the play time, but if Tails simply had access to all his abilities at once, he would be able to spend less time faffing about for no reason.

Secondly, Alternate paths are often very camouflaged. You will certainly walk past a mostly regular looking wall without knowing that it could have been blown up with the 3rd or 4th bomb ability that you unlocked. In general, bad level design is more common as you get further into the game, so I resorted to a walkthrough and much more common save states for the second half.

Other than those fundamental problems, the rest of the experience was just alright, the item selection is half creative and fun (abilities based on Sonic, Knuckles and Fang are here!), but half useless or samey (which you probably won’t even entertain trying out because again, your slots are valuable). The story is simple and cyuuuuuute but nothing to shout about. Level theming is VERY underwhelming for a Sonic game (even if we do get to swim in a submarine), and the few boss fights are mostly mediocre with one or two cooler ones.

It may be because I spent more time in the levels but I thought the music was good and for sure one of the better game gear soundtracks! Some nice compositions here! I was a little disappointed to not find many covers / rearranges on youtube, rare sonic fanbase L, but this one I did find was indeed very nice.

So here I am disappointed purely because my hopes surprisingly shot up at the beginning, but it's okayyyyyyy... Tails Adventure may be very flawed, but it was a cool time and as a certified Two-Tailed Fox stan I am quite glad I played through it since it does carry my enthusiasm for his character very well. Safe to say we probably ain’t gonna get anything like this from SEGA again.

Me and my sister used to play this, not knowing that it was a PETA game. It was fun, at least at the time.

I think this is worth a playthrough for it's sheer bizarreness alone. Yes, it's bad, but it's one of those funny kind of bad games. The controls suck, but the minigames are really short. The graphics are your typical PETA shit. Uhhhh... the ending was funny? IDK. It's not a very long game; it took about 5 minutes to play. As someone who's played some of the earliest Newgrounds shit though, I wasn't phased in the slightest. Sorry, PETA! Try harder next time.

I already made a review on Devil may cry 3 before, but it was a shit review so i deleted it and i wrote a new one.

The first devil may cry has plenty of issues but i enjoyed my time with it overall, and a good sequel could fix its issues!
Right after i beat dmc 1, i immediately jumped onto the next entry which is the one and only DEE EM CEE TWO! Dmc 2 somehow manages to be worse than the first game in literally almost every aspect.
Well after dmc 2 it was time to jump onto dmc 3.
Dmc 3 manages to improve from the previous games in pretty much every single way while also fixing many problems.

I wasn't expecting the story in this game to be so fricking awesome, mainly because the first 2 games had quite lame stories. Dante and Vergil's beef is the most intriguing part about the story, Dante is a more goofy and energetic person that cracks many jokes and Vergil is a way more serious person. Lady is a really great character that was introduced in this game, and Arkham was aight i guess, Jester is much better. The story of the game is also filled with so many memorable lines and cutscenes, a lot of the things that Dante and Vergil say are stuck in my head just like the many kewl ass cutscenes in the game.

Dmc 3 adds tons of improvements to the combat system. This time you can choose different styles that you can equip which will change Dante's moveset. The style that i used the most is swordmaster which gives Dante's melee weapons more attacks allowing you to pull off much cooler combos against enemies.

Royal guard is used for blocking enemies attacks, and blocking an enemy attack fills up a meter for a powerful attack. I only used this style for a little bit since it is very hard to learn.

Gunslinger is similar to swordmaster but instead of expanding the moveset of the melee weapons, it expands the moveset of Dante's guns.

Trickster style is used for evading enemy attacks and i think that's it? Idk i never used this style.

Quicksilver and doppelganger are 2 styles that you unlock later in the game.

Quicksilver basically slows down everything on your screen except for Dante allowing you to deal a lot of free damage to enemies, but to make it less overpowered they made it cost devil trigger energy.

Doppelganger spawns a clone of Dante that can perform attacks, and similar to quicksilver it will consume devil trigger energy.

Another thing that makes dmc 3's combat so great are obviously Dante's weapons which unlike in the previous 2 games, all of the weapons are actually unique.
Rebellion, agni & rudra and cerberus are the weapons that i found myself using the most mainly because all 3 of them are fast weapons that aren't very difficult to use.
Beowulf is a fairly slow weapon that can be a bit difficult to use, but i often equipped it right before boss fights because it can deal some really good damage.
Nevan is a very tricky weapon to use... I'll learn how to use it one day

Vergil is also a playable character which is pretty radical! Do you guys know that one meme where the boss fight is overpowered as fuck when you fight him, but when you unlock the boss as a playable character he becomes trash? Well Vergil is basically the opposite of that meme, Vergil is overpowered when you fight him, and Vergil is overpowered when you play as him.
You have access to 3 weapons which are the Yamato, Beowulf and force edge, and instead of guns Vergil only has summoned swords.

Dmc 3 has a larger variety of bosses and unlike in the 2nd game (god i hope i haven't been mentioning dmc 2 too much) they are actually good this time. Well 99% of them at least.
The worst boss of the game is easily Arkham, this boss fight had so much potential, but for some reason they made you fight this giant ass blob that spits out eels i think? But thankfully this is the only boss in the game that i would consider bad. The bosses that i enjoyed fighting the most are: agni & rudra, cerberus, jester and obviously all of the fantastic Vergil boss fights.

The music is pretty damn great!
My favorite tracks are: taste the blood, Vergil battle 1, Vergil battle 2, divine hate and devils never cry.

Personally i don't have many gripes with this game other than the terrible 18th mission with the stupid ass obligatory boss rush, and a few enemies being annoying as hell to fight.

Dmc 3 is a game that i will never get tired of no matter what, every single replay that i do is just as enjoyable as the last one thanks to its amazing combat system, and the cutscenes are way too entertaining for me to skip them on replays. Oh yeah this is kinda random but pls capcom REMAKE THE FIRST 2 DMC GAMES.
Dmc 3 gets a 10/10

WAIT TIL THEY GET A LOAD OF ME!
Virtual Boy Wario Land is quite the step up from the first Wario Land. The level design is of similar quailty (no train level though), however the controls and overall smoothness of Wario is massively improved. It makes sense, as the Virtual Boy is a more powerful machine than the Game Boy.(Yeah I just praised the Virtual Boy's hardware, what are you gonna do about it?) The bosses are pretty fun, my favorite being the third with you having to jump as head, however his main attack comes out of his head. All and all, it's actually a good game. Damn good. But, only one problem: it's on Virtual Boy.

I loved all the homages to the movie, the beautiful, pixilated, cyberpunk art design, and the hilarious dialogue. The moody environments, combined with a soundtrack that incorporates songs from the movie, really pull you into the blade runner universe. Rainy, neon streets, dingy cop offices, weird ass sewers with giant rats and fucked up sewer people -- just a delight walking through this game. And the storyline is engaging enough to keep you interested. Though, it's not perfect. I mean it's glitchy as fuck and completely unplayable at times. I nearly gave up on this game, but I'm glad I stuck through it. This is definitely a hidden gem, and as a blade runner fan, it scratched that cyberpunk itch perfectly.