Coming fresh off my first play-through of the excellent Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando - what the hell happened??? This game did away with everything I loved about the first two games and doubled down on everything I hated. It’s ugly, buggy, bloated, and straight unfun to play. That this game has the same or higher average rating as the first two games on this site makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Up Your Arsenal is such a clusterfuck it's hard to pick a starting point. If this was a fan project, I’d give it a gold “you tried” sticker and move on. Its faults are equal parts incompetence and commitment to terrible ideas. Stick around if you want to watch me chug a whole bottle of Haterade.

At its core, Up Your Arsenal is not interested in being part platformer, part shooter - it wants to be all shooter, and apparently doesn’t care if it's a good one. “Wants” is still doing some heavy lifting, as UYA’s level geometry is so hallway-core I can’t tell if the enemies were crammed in unfinished levels to hide the fact there’s nothing else to do but shoot. The game balance is so bad I can’t tell if game design happened at all.

For example, one of the first weapons you buy is a whip. For a single button press, Ratchet whirls it around him so fast and in such a wide-reaching radius that it trivializes the first few planets. Mobs of enemies are downed without having to consider cover or positioning. Even the first boss fight is easily stun-locked to death without having to move Ratchet at all. Until suddenly, the whip is useless.

Like Going Commando, UYA has a weapons leveling system. In Going Commando, different enemy behaviors and level designs would encourage experimentation with new weapon types, so upgrading a weapon came naturally through its contextual utility. In UYA, all enemies cluster and spam high rates of fire in similar ways. This means you always want to use the strongest area of effect weapon you have at all times. Unfortunately, I repeatedly learned too late that my previous go-to weapon had a damage cap useless against a new planet of bullet sponges. This led to multiple instances where I hit hard number walls. I died multiple times, progressing only after I’d killed the same enemies a dozen times over for my rocket launcher or sniper rifle to level up and not run out of ammo before the gauntlet was over.

I cannot overstate how grueling some of the enemy gauntlets were. The first two games both had their shootouts, but those were usually reserved for the finale of the campaign. By sheer body count, UYA matched the finale of the first game within my first play session - but without all the tools to make it interesting.

Ratchet has fewer, different, and worse support and utility gadgets than the previous games, and some that returned straight up do not work. Stationary turrets and heat seeking robot minions, previously staples of open-space mob control, would routinely fail to spawn while still ticking down their limited ammo count. Or Ratchet would lag in his throwing animation and chuck them over a cliff. The new energy cover wall routinely had laser blasts clip through it, and caused major slow-down if I used more than one. Worst of all, sometimes upgrading weapons turned them into a less useful tool with different functionality, with no way to roll back to their earlier version. More than once after a weapon upgraded, its niche utility was gone, forcing me to grind to upgrade a different weapon in the hopes it would evolve into a half-way decent replacement.

The denial was strong as I slowly came to the realization this game sucked. Gone were the segments of walking on walls, the grinding on rails, transforming into Giant Clank, or go-kart racing. Variety in UYA comes in the form of shooting enemies in a linear level, or shooting enemies in an arena from a mission menu. The rocket boots, (the equivalent of a run option in Going Commando), had their physics changed, causing Ratchet to skid so far after stopping they became a liability. Nothing like clearing two rooms out of five before the next checkpoint, trying to get there faster after the 5th attempt, and falling into a pit to do it all again! Just walking at one speed forever down jaggy-lined hallways teaming with enemies who don’t go down after three rockets to the face.

Eventually by the later levels, I realized it was often faster to jump past enemies instead of trying to engage with them. The most efficient, least non-fun way to play the game was to literally ignore the shooting as much as possible.

(I guess there were some skydiving levels, but Ratchet often loaded separate and away from all the missiles and spaceships I assume you were supposed to avoid. What was meant to be an action set piece instead gave me time to admire the screen tearing of the skybox.)

Now that I’ve reassured myself that the game’s bones are rotten, I will indulge myself in hating on everything else they support.

The writing. The Ratchet and Clank wiki singles out a single writer who was responsible for the scenario, dialog and cutscenes in this game, and having a name to hate on is deliciously tempting. But this project had over a 100 people on it, and several management people who must have signed off on everything. My contempt is for everyone who allowed this militaristic propaganda and regressive, sexist bro-ish-ness (all obscene by the series’ own standards!) to come to market, and my despair for this release’s commercial and critical acclaim.

I was in disbelief for multiple characters and scenes in this game. Gone was the plucky and funny anti-hero turned ally lombax Angela, who was taller and more capable than Ratchet. Instead the new female lead has no personality, diminutive features, and a dad who reveals her species’ character design to follow this bullshit. She and Ratchet have no chemistry, but she kisses him out of nowhere, twice! They’re not even the same species! That somehow bothers me so much! But even worse, there’s a Britney Spears send-up with a sexy robot pop-idol named Courtney Gears. She gets an equally out of nowhere horny music video, and a whole boss fight, where she repeats “Ooops, I did it again~” every ten seconds. A boss fight that is legitimately terrible, as she has multiple attacks with no wind-up animation, and can teleport to vantage points anywhere the camera can’t see. I probably died more than a couple times out of disbelief this was actually happening.

In the previous two games, Ratchet was a free spirit. He had no allegiance or obligations, and wandered the galaxy for charmingly petty and self-serving reasons. But importantly, he made decisions on what to do next with his own expertise or his collaboration with Clank. In UYA, suddenly Ratchet’s a sergeant in an army, spouting jingoistic action movie quips and relishing the idea of shooting sentient aliens in a war setting. What happened to wanting to be a hoverboard racer??? My mind wanders to the proximity of this game’s release date to 9/11 and the related war in Afghanistan, thinking, did things get like that, that bad, that fast? Ratchet gets conscripted into a defense force of some sort, with a commanding officer and a hierarchy and a half dozen NPCs who all get screen time for Penny Arcade level jokes. I hate it all so much!

The decision to give the game a mother ship that acts as a hub world completely kills the pacing of the play experience. In previous games, one of a planet’s levels would end with Ratchet finding coordinates to the next planet. Planets were selected via menu every time Ratchet returned to his ship. The gap between exposition and player action was short and snappy, so I always knew what I was doing next. In UYA, Ratchet instead finds a clue of coordinates to the next level, necessitating flying back to the hub ship, talking to an NPC, sometimes playing a god-awful minigame to get the new coordinates, then walking back to his ship to fly to the next level. Sometimes I would find multiple coordinates in one trip, necessitating more menus tracking story missions and side missions. More than once would I decode a coordinate, fly to the new planet, realize the planet was optional, and have to fly back to decode the other coordinate to advance the game. This was excruciating, and completely killed the feeling of exploration both in terms of pacing and Ratchet’s agency. He’s completely dependent on the expertise of other NPCs that the game only holds in contempt.

Because they are all terrible stereotypes of how corporate adults imagine children’s media characters should be. They’re outdated, were never funny in concept, and are certainly not funny in execution here. But most importantly, the game hates them. Ratchet doesn’t have any friends besides Clank. Ratchet and his other crew members are assholes to each other in a way where they avoid outright fighting only because both parties see each other as beneath their dignity. But while you are in the hub ship, you will hear their “gags” over the intercom from the moment you arrive until the moment you leave.

Quick aside to mention, the audio of voice clips is so badly handled that multiple characters can talk at once and cause them all to cancel out. I once completed a challenge and won a new tool, and the combination of Ratchet’s happy dialog, with some NPC’s pithy intercom retort, cut over and interrupted the audio-only tutorial voice telling me what the new tool actually did. Which was then all cut out because the game immediately slammed me into another menu for taking on another challenge. Three lines of dialog recorded and I didn’t get to hear any of them! Pure insanity!

If this game has a saving grace, the villain is the obvious stand-out of the trilogy. Dr. Nefarious and his robot butler are a great comic duo that finally step away from the weird corporate-politics humor of the first two games’ villains. As much as I adore his scene chewery, the game refuses to leave any good thing unblemished and marries him to even more screen time for Captain Qwark.

I absolutely hate Captain Qwark. I do not think he is funny. Whatever conventions he was mocking in 2002 have aged out of relevance, and his material does not stand on its own. Every scene with Captain Qwark in any game absorbs all focus from Ratchet and Clank, as it is obvious the developers find him infinitely more interesting than I do. Because he is ham-fisted into games that do not need him, how Ratchet and Clank treat him is not consistent between or within games. His lines exist to hear him talk, the plot bending and breaking itself to indulge his inclusion. UYA sees fit to bless us with terrible 2D platforming levels where we play as Captain Qwark. They have the cheapest, stock sound “boing!” effect in existence that plays every time Captain Qwark jumps. If they weren’t required for story progression, I could understand their inclusion as “variety,” but by being mandatory, they feel like filler. Also I hate them.

Although UYA might look the same in screenshots compared to the first two games, the art direction is substantially worse. Writing this review without the game in front of me, I can barely remember a single planet past the first, its jungle theme memorable only because of its cringey indiginous “savage” monkey people. I can remember planets from both the previous games, like the resort town, the raining city, the solar punk metropolises - UYA had at least three desert planets that all bled together into red mud. Even the mini planetoids I loved so much in Going Commando here have all the appeal of a 1980’s office poster that survived into 2020, faded in the sun and given its visual interest by a coffee stain.

Second quick aside to complain about the hideous menus. They are butterscotch yellow and orange with white text. Someone deserved to be fired. Also gone is the excellent health HUD I praised about Going Commando, instead replaced with a hard-to-discern health bar hiding behind some loud numbers.. Numbers are not easier to read than graphs! What is happening!

In my rating system, 2 stars is an average, C rank game, and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal is clearly a 1 star, D rank game. Enemies regularly clipped through level geometry, as did the camera, and occasionally Ratchet. The game is playable and beatable, but feels like the tools for winning are accidental instead of designed. I was so disappointed since I loved Going Commando so much, and was hopeful the series would keep building on strength to strength. Now I’m filled with trepidation for how the series will progress, since my experiences are now split 50/50 between having a pleasant or an aggravating time.

Growing up as a bonafide Nintendo Baby™ , this was one of those PlayStation mascot series I beheld from afar. It looked cartoony, but had guns, which made it forbidden and alluring to my sheltered upbringing. Starting in 2021, I got my hands on a PS3 and its PS2 HD remasters to see what I’d been missing. Without nostalgia, and after playing through the Sly and Jak series, I like this one best.

In my rating system, 3 stars represent a good, B-rank game. Ratchet and Clank was the first of my PS2 PlayStation mascot investigations that I felt was still worth playing today, and I strongly disagree with anyone who thinks the 2016 reimagining captured the same style of fun.

Going back to PS2 era games is interesting because many conventions of the medium hadn’t been codified yet. There weren’t strong expectations for how buttons would be used, (△ is infuriatingly “exit” in the menu system), or the default axis of rotation for the right stick’s camera controls. Playing older games now is like grasping the potential of alternate timelines that never were, seeing the human element of different people trying to solve problems at a time before there was more homework to copy.

Maybe I connected better with Ratchet and Clank better than others because of how nakedly the developers were copying as much as they could from Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Ratchet has Mario’s long jump, crouching high jump, and wall jumps. The gadgets on offer have direct parallels to Link’s hookshot, water-level-changing puzzles, and his many pairs of boots. The threads of familiarity helped ease me into a “platform shooter” after only being accustomed to pure platformers.

Sly and Jak had problems that made me think “oh, this is how games were back then.” Playing Ratchet and Clank made me realize “oh, those particular games are less good.” Jak would pick up healing items at max health and ammo packs for weapons that were topped off, while Ratchet would not. Ammo drops from breakable boxes in Jak games are predetermined, while breakable boxes in Ratchet games give a probabilistic nod towards ammo of the currently equipped weapon. Ratchet and Clank was generous in a way that felt player-focused and playtested, wanting to accommodate how the player wanted to tackle the levels’ challenges.

The level variety really surprised me. As Ratchet lands on each new planet, an establishing camera shot frames him against the theme of the planet, helping you remember the place to the name in the menus. Each one has a design and color scheme unique enough to become recognizable between visits, and at least one set piece gameplay-wise to keep them distinct. Hoverboard racing, grinding on rails, arcade shooter minigames - some of them are janky and gimmicky and a little progress-halting, but all worked well enough to make the game world feel coherent. Years before Super Mario Galaxy claimed the association with small planetoid gravity, Ratchet was walking on walls in gravity-defying ways. It reminded me of what it felt like to be a kid in the age of video game print magazines, where the optimism in the creativity of the industry was a given.

Ratchet and Clank is polished in ways that I hadn’t realized were possible on the PS2. There are several small animation flourishes that caught me by surprise, in the way Ratchet braces against different weapons and their rates of fire, or how he changes posture from a single shot into a sustained volley. Lip flaps are well synced for him and the alien denizens of his game world, which was abysmally not the case in Sly Cooper 2, something even the Metal Gear Solid series struggled with. I like Ratchet’s bouncy tail and ears that flop when his health gets low, and his idle animations of checking on his robot buddy backpack.

I was most surprised at how much I liked Ratchet’s character, and how uniquely 2000’s American he felt. He’s a no shirt, no shoes, no obligations punk, motivated by desires simple and petty. He set out on an adventure with no goal in mind as soon as he could drive, and chose his next course of action based on greed as much as curiosity. His vagabond spirit contrasts nicely against all the villain’s jokes of corporate life, as Ratchet is detached from that reality and would rather freelance as a skateboarder or a gearhead.

It’s then interesting to me to see his progression from experimental new IP to established face of a brand - I played the 2016 reimagining before playing the next PS2 games out of curiosity to see what he would become. They covered him up, they softened his voice, they sanded his edge. Really didn’t like it! There are few games that feel age appropriate for teens in both tone and gameplay without being condescending. I know there are over a half dozen Ratchet games before I eventually get to the PS5 era, and hope he can retain his punk spirit for as long as possible.

Was willing to like this, but ended up dissatisfied. If you want a quick byline, the walking speed is too slow. This game would have been better paced at a tighter 4 hours, but at the 8-10 hours to which the game is stretched, there isn't enough to sustain it.

Normally I like both character action games and introspective, metaphorical walking simulators. So I was disappointed that this game annoyed me on both fronts by the end of it.

Gameplay wise, the combat lacks depth, and feels like an aside from the environmental puzzle solving. There are some neat concepts here that play with perspectives and real-time level changes. The graphics are detailed enough to make their design subtle to the point of confusion at times, (in a good way!). I also like that there is a plot / character reason for why these puzzles function the way they do. Unfortunately, the character's low movement speed, even at a jog, creates too much distance between when the player conceives of a step and when they can execute the next action. This in effect had me holding down the run button for every part of the game that would let me, which is tiring and makes everything feel more tedious.

However, the game lost me after the half-way mark when it introduced levels with such gimmicks as "it is too dark to see but you must stealth-mosey past monsters or die instantly" and "run from an un-seeable terror in a maze or die instantly". Such level designs betray a lack of confidence on the developer's parts that their game isn't interesting enough just to walk through and explore, and have to include the threat of a cheap death to keep the player engaged. Which is a shame, because the story is compelling the more of it is revealed.

Without spoilers, this game is metaphorically about mental illness. The game says so on the boot screen that great care was taken to research the experience of psychosis for this game's depiction. As such, not everything in the game is as it first appears. I'm all for a good twisty plot with a surprising ending, but this game is too ambiguous right through to the credits to get full marks. And I don't mean that it should have spelled out exactly what the metaphors stand for, what was real and what was not. There is simply too little context given early enough to ground us in Senua's experiences to take the revelations literally, and not enough effort made to establish what level of metaphor the game is working with so players can determine connections themselves on a first play-through.

Altogether, my overall impression of this game is confusion. There's real effort on display here from more than one aspect of the project, but to what end? It is so committed to its messaging, environment, and aesthetic so as to sacrifice playability as a video game, but does not invite the player along to understand enough of Senua's experience to feel justified. There just isn't enough substance provided to spark my curiosity for attempting a deeper analysis.

In my scoring system, 2 stars is an average game, so 1.5 stars is about a C-. Its short enough I think many people will get something out of their time with it, but it probably won't be very fun or thought-provoking. Recommended to people who want an easy suspense horror experience, or fans of I Spy Letters books.

From the creators of Abzu comes Abzu: Breath of the Wild. If you are unfamiliar, Abzu is an atmospheric, interactive fish tank simulator with the main mechanics being 1) navigating a colorful environment and 2) meditating to look at the fish in that environment. This context is crucial for understanding The Pathless' appeal.

The Pathless, despite the dynamic and striking cover art, is a game about movement and exploration for their own sakes. The game is completely dedicated to creating a feeling of flow as you move throughout the game world. There is no in-game map, there is no fast travel. There is no combat outside of scripted, chapter ending boss encounters. The story exists not as a plot so much as a setting.

Your run speed is fast, but costs stamina. Shoot the plentiful targets sprinkled throughout the game world (with your unlimited arrows) to keep your stamina up. Shoot targets while in the air to double jump. Chain targets to feel like flying. This system is simple enough to become almost automatic, but requires just enough concentration you can lose momentum if you stop paying attention.

The game loop consists of solving puzzles to obtain tokens. While en route, you will discover smaller puzzles that award currency that will eventually allow you to jump higher, and thus more easily obtain more currency and tokens. Find enough tokens to unlock another level. All puzzles are based on the same mechanics of shooting, evaluating lines of sight, and directing your pet eagle to reach switches and gizmos. It is up to your mindset whether this becomes repetitive, or you find the familiarity soothing.

Following its dedication to the feeling of exploration, you do not need to collect all tokens to unlock all levels, nor find every puzzle to reach the maximum number of jumps allowed. You can have a leisurely, complete experience in 15 hours, or rush through the bare minimum in half the time.

In my rating system, 3 stars is a solid B rank game. Do not think of this as a full action exploration game to be marathoned - it works bests in small bursts where you want a charming texture of adventure for a low-impact level of tension. Recommended for people who like endless runners, brain teasers before bed, and games with dedicated "pet animal" buttons.

I nearly gave up on this game a half hour before the end due to a terribly designed combat encounter. This game is designed for aesthetic first and foremost, and it is wonderful. However, there isn't quite enough gameplay for an easy recommendation. It becomes clear after the 75% mark that the developers became insecure with what they had, with sudden introductions of artificial difficulty spikes unrelated to the core mechanic of weaving and knotting.

In my rating system, 2 stars is an average game, so this game gets a C-. It crashed more than once, and the story has way more text than it is interesting to read. Maybe worth getting on sale for children, as it does feature a free-weaving cooperative creative mode.

Have you ever thought an acquaintance was funny until you listened to their favorite podcast and realized they were copying the personality of someone else? Meet the podcast that inspired Undertale.

That said, Earthbound is different. Earthbound is slow. Earthbound is weird. In 1994, it would have been revelatory. In 2022, the first time I managed to finish a full playthrough in an emulator with a fast-forward button, it exists more as an insightful piece of the medium's history than an easy recommendation of "fun-to-play videogame."

Set in 199X American suburbia as filtered through 199X Japan, Earthbound is a Dragon Quest style JRPG that exchanges swords for baseball bats. The whole combat system is filled with status ailments such as crying, uncontrollable sneezing, and homesickness - realistic reactions for a bunch of pre-teens fighting stray animals and aliens.

Given its foreign origin, the earnestness of its political critiques strike me, an American, as audacious and hilarious in the way only an innocent mind can. With your baseball bat, you beat up hippies, Mormons, and tons of cops. (There are no friendly cops in this game. Only cops who want to beat you because they have been possessed by aliens, or cops who want to beat you because they are corrupt.) You befriend down-on-their-luck musicians who have been caught in debt traps, and your enemies are opportunistic capitalists who abet alien invaders for profit. These sentences sound sensationalist, but are mere window dressing for the typical play experience.

When I say Earthbound is slow, I mean that in all aspects. Movement is slow, and the game has many time-consuming graphical flourishes to hide what would have been longer loading times on its original hardware. But beyond that, the story is incredibly patient. The full scope of the game is slow to reveal itself, confident to hide progressively more fantastic and unhinged scenarios tens of hours after most players will have given up. But once cults, ghosts, and zombies have become passé, you will not be able to predict where the game will go next. My mouth hung open in shock more than once during the ramp up to the end, which is the highest testament I can give to the game's enduring appeal 28 years later.

I don't want to give the wrong impression - Earthbound is also funny. It has a peculiar sense of humor that is constantly taking the piss out of JRPG conventions and you, the player. A mix between juvenile dad-joke crassness and self-aware meta jokes. Game interactions that won't necessarily make you laugh will still rattle around in your brain days later, until you realize the joke was - you wasted your time. Days after that, you find the joke charming. Days after that, its a part of your memory of the game's charm.

In my rating system, 2 stars represent an average game. At 3.5 stars, Earthbound earns a solid B+. It is impossible to have a hot take regarding Earthbound. It is too dense, too convoluted, and brimming with too much variety to easily recommend in an elevator pitch. I played it to lose my Mother series poser-dom, and was surprised in ways that commanded my respect.

But it does not hold a candle to Mother 3.

This is an explorable fish tank simulator. It has a dedicated meditate button. Explore the game's levels to find more fish to see while you meditate. The controls might take some getting used to for people who have not played many flight simulators, but there is no combat or such a scenario as a "game over". If you want light interactivity while looking at a variety of sea creatures, present and extinct, this will last you a couple of hours.

In my use of the star system, 2 stars represent an average game, so I award ABZÛ a C+. It is exactly what it says on the tin - a relaxation aide for an evening or two.

This game is incredibly flawed, but I love it. The developer’s ambition outstrips their abilities in many ways, which creates a fun, uneven, unique experience.

A couple caveats going in - this game's flaws are easy to describe, while its appeal, less so. The game shipped literally unfinished - the ending was sold months after release as DLC. Textures can pop-in if you skip through cutscenes. Reading a wiki summary of the plot and setting may lead you to expect elements of Buddhist and Hindu influence, but they are little more than aesthetic inspiration for a cliche'd anime space opera. Altogether, its a weird, hard sell.

Despite all of that, the experience of playing the game is fun in an uncomplicated way. Asura is angry, and will tear the heavens apart to save his family. The set-up is simple enough to seem contrite, but Asura's characterization is handled with enough nuance to explore the depth of his rage. Asura's anger is fueled by grief, loss, injustice, indignation, hopelessness, insecurity, and righteousness at different points, which grants enough variety to always enjoy expressing his over-the-top violent rage.

There are a couple boss fights in this game that are all-timers. Asura's Wrath is not a difficult game for its genre, and that is fine. Its design sensibility is to immerse you in the mindset of a character who can interrupt villainous monologs by punching them in the face. Once you've rehearsed a level a couple times to know what QTEs to expect, you can feel like a performer who knows their choreography as well as their acting (gameplay) down pat.

Asura’s Wrath elevates quick time event button presses into a defendable game mechanic, and shows why QTEs are so terrible in most games that use them. Every QTE in Asura’s Wrath is matched to how you would perform the corresponding action in the character action levels of the game - punches, jumps, or stick inputs for movement. Failing a QTE does not slow down the action or cause a Game Over, and in some cases makes the game go by faster. Generous windows make missed inputs rare, even on your first time playing a level. But more importantly, the cinematography is always directed in a way to anticipate your next action. The camera will zoom out to show the sky, and linger before it asks you to jump. Asura will pull back his fists to an absurd degree before you are asked to punch. Actions performed with the control sticks are repeated across chapters, (not exactly, but close enough to breed familiarity), so that you can develop an intuition of which situations will require you to pull or rotate the control stick in different ways. Every new set of cutscenes will include QTEs towards the beginning, so you are not caught unaware. And that is the real reason why QTEs in Asura's Wrath feel different than other games - everything about the games design from the top down is focused on keeping you engaged and anticipating when you get to perform your role.

In my rating system, 2 stars represent an average game. I award Asura's Wrath 4 stars, a solid A-rank game. I was completely satisfied playing the content that was included on the disc, but the true ending is in the DLC Part IV: Nirvana. Which, unfortunately, is some of the best gameplay and boss design of the whole experience. I strongly recommend you give this game a try while the ending DLC is still available for purchase on your platform of choice.

Make no mistake, this is the ending that the base game Asura's Wrath was intended to have. The extra time allotted to its delay shows - framerates and texture loading are more consistent than in the base game, and the creativity and utility of QTEs are elevated to the game's best.

Even without context, the boss fights in this game are insanely entertaining. If you ever wanted to punch through the moon so you could uppercut God in the chin, this is your time.

Visually, the game drops the sci-fi aesthetic of the base game in favor of more Hindu and original imagery, and is all the stronger for it. Many games feature "kill god" as the setting of their finale, but few feel as earned and full of surreal cosmic splendor as this one.

For an old game on old systems, don't expect this DLC to be around forever. If you have even the slightest interest, you owe it to yourself to experience the true ending of Asura's Wrath.

(Bonus cameo by Chun Li!)

My sister wouldn't let me play this when we were kids, so I played it now, triple the probable recommended age. As such, it was kinda hard! The game is damn arbitrary, and years of playing other games have conditioned me in certain ways that limited my creativity in how I approached the game.

All actions Hamtaro takes are from a menu wherein you select an emote for him to perform, your basic emotes being say hello, sniff, tackle, and dig. Talk to more hamsters to learn more emotes to perform more context-sensitive actions.

Although simple enough in concept, in practice I struggled because of my own gamer habits. Many solutions for advancing questlines involved selecting "tackle" against various innocent hamsters. Because "tackle" was introduced as the mechanic for knocking items out of trees, it didn't cross my mind to tackle NPCs, because I generally try to treat NPCs with respect. But I forgot that they are hamsters, and the consequences of being tackled by a hamster, even when you are a hamster, is nothing. And when you are a preteen, you will use the most violent option against every NPC you can just to see them make funny faces. In that way, I can only imagine that it is correctly balanced for its target demographic.

Because I left many NPCs alone after their initial reaction to "hello," it took me over half way through the game to realize that new emotes would be available after you'd started a conversation; that the game was trying to more organically simulate having a conversation wherein you got to select the next topic. My hubris in looking down on this children's game showed me the fool for not realizing its goals for engaging players who are not used to playing other games. And simultaneously made me realize how comparatively shallow most modern games are that "press A to talk" is the extent of how much the human player is expected to bring to the conversation.

Aesthetically, it looks pretty good! I was surprised how well it held up for a Game Boy Color game. All the hamsters are expressively animated, and little flourishes in the environment exist exclusively as an excuse to watch a hamster do something cute, like slip on a banana peel or patch of ice. More than once the perspective of the level art made me feel lost because I didn't realize I could simple climb up a brick or ledge.

What surprised me most about this game was how many hucksters it has! Everyone is out to grift your sunflower seeds! I have no idea what kind of message this game is trying to teach kids, when sunflower seeds are such a pain to collect, and can be irreversibly lost by the dozens in countless ways. Anyone trying to 100% this game by buying all the outfits and music tracks is insane.

In my rating system, a 2 star rating represents an average game or grade of C, which I think fits this one well. It's short, varied, ambitious for the hardware it was released, but still a little obtuse by the same limitations. I almost gave this game a D rank for being kind of slow, and then in my final hours with it realized there was a run button. I had a great time.

This DLC consists of two parts - a fight against Ryu where Asura's movements are confined to 2D as if he were in a Street Fighter game, and a boss fight against Evil Ryu using the normal gameplay mechanics of Asura's Wrath. Prevailing in both unlocks more challenges for the Street Fighter mini-game.

The Evil Ryu boss fight is great, challenging and absurd in the same flavor of the boss fights of the main game. It only has one phase, but took me a few tries to learn his patterns. Some of the animations of combos he can pull on you get annoying - just like fighting him in Street Fighter mode, an authentic experience!

If you want the achievement that comes with the DLC, you need to do all the Street Fighter challenges, and they are a pain. KO Ryu in reduced time, with reduced health, without getting hit, etc.

The pain comes from the discrepancy between Asura's abilities and Ryu's in this mode. Ryu has multiple striking zones, the ability to block, invincibility in certain animations, multiple projectiles, and the ability to counter with attacks immediately out of certain animations. Asura has the same button mashy moveset from his character action base game, which means no ability to block, a useless dodge, and get-up animations balanced for a different environment. It gets pretty frustrating! But it shouldn't take you more than an hour or two to figure what needs to be done.

I'd only recommend this to fans of Street Fighter, (which I am not), or people who want to 100% all that Asura's Wrath has to offer, (weirdos like me.) Should have been Chun Li.

This DLC consists of two parts - a fight against Akuma where Asura's movements are confined to 2D as if he were in a Street Fighter game, and a boss fight against Akuma using the normal gameplay mechanics of Asura's Wrath. Prevailing in both unlocks more challenges for the Street Fighter mini-game.

The Akuma boss fight is really hard! It retains the absurd flavor of the boss fights of the main game, but I put it on Easy just to finish it.

If you want the achievement that comes with the DLC, you need to do all the Street Fighter challenges, and they are a pain - and more demanding than the Ryu DLC. KO Akuma with reduced health, without getting hit, then KO'ing Akuma 10 times in a row with minimal healing, etc.

The pain comes from the discrepancy between Asura's abilities and Akuma's in this mode. Akuma has multiple striking zones, the ability to block, invincibility in certain animations, multiple projectiles, and the ability to counter with attacks immediately out of certain animations. Asura has the same button mashy moveset from his character action base game, which means no ability to block, a useless dodge, and get-up animations balanced for a different environment. It gets pretty frustrating! But it shouldn't take you more than an hour or two to figure what needs to be done.

I'd only recommend this to fans of Street Fighter, (which I am not), or people who want to 100% all that Asura's Wrath has to offer, (weirdos like me.) Should have been Chun Li.

Minit has been described as a timeloop game, but its scope is so small I don't think that term quite applies. This game feels similar to an arcade game like Dragon's Lair. Mechanically, you get teleported back to a home base every 60 seconds, which doesn't feel that different than, say, needing to touch bubbles for air in a game with an underwater swimming component.

The time constraint does a good job of narrowing the player's focus when trying to solve a puzzle - you know the next step has to be somewhere within the 60 second walking distance of your latest home base. That knowledge, with the short amount of time it takes to try another run, keeps the player motivated to figure out the puzzles themselves.

I finished my first run in 69 minutes, having found about 40% of what there was to find, and felt comfortably done. Minit was designed with speedrunners in mind, as subsequent runs allow you to show the clock as you play. That realization is what made me understand who this game is for, which is more arcade-y than I tend to enjoy.

In my rating system, 2 stars represent an average, C rank game. Minit delivers on its concept well enough to have some enjoyable friction as you figure out what it expects from you, but I also think it undermines its own mechanics by the end. Once you know how the world map intersects and have the tools to shortcut through it, the time mechanic starts to feel both trivial and a little of a chore. With its novelty diminished, the actual things the game was expecting of me became more apparent, and are as blandly game-y as you can get.

This may not be the best game on the DS, but is one of the best DS games. Although this game has been ported to traditional platforms, the DS is the only platform that has the game's complete soul.

The concept of the game is solid and on the tin: 9 people have 9 hours to make their way through 9 escape rooms, or die. The character writing has a small dusting of anime flavoring, but the translation is a wonderful example of fun localization. The DS version is voice-less, but later ports contain full voice acting in English and Japanese.

Only 3 rooms can be explored per play-through, and the game expects many runs to find its final puzzles in the true ending. Full and partial replays are easier tracked and accessed in the game's re-releases.

Ports of the game may feature "updated graphics," but I personally think they make the elements of the game less visually harmonious. The low pixel count of the DS helped unify the flat drawings with the pre-rendered 3D environments you explore and the 3D puzzle items you interact with. Seeing these low polygon models on more powerful consoles makes the game look dated in a way that's more easily glossed over in the now retro feel of the original platform.

Every puzzle is designed with the DS' touch screen in mind, a feeling that cannot be perfectly captured with cursor controls. Many puzzles involve inputting passwords, arranging keys, or examining objects for clues in a way that is inherently less engaging, and remove the light role-playing element of mimicking the frantic note-taking of the player character.

Most crucially, 999's true ending has a twist that will make or break the player's experience - and is built around the DS's two screens. Narratively, it is a bit of a genre jump, and makes little sense on paper. In practice, on the DS, a highly dramatic scene shows two sides of a conversation, with one perspective per screen. The impact comes from switching the player's focus from the internal thoughts of one character to another as the last words spoken aloud of the other remain on their screen. In later ports, this exchange is reduced to showing one screen at a time, sequentially, which is incredibly clunky and hard to follow by comparison.

There are other moments like this that show intense awareness on the developer's part on how people would be playing this game on the system it was released. One puzzle flips the screens' displays, forcing you to hold the system upside down to solve it. A harmless gimmick that is cute on a handheld, but obviously cut from the later versions.

In my rating system, an average game is 2 stars. I award Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, 3 stars on the Nintendo DS, a solid B rank game. The plot is engaging enough, but the experience of playing the game on the DS elevates the script and the types of puzzles contained. When I played it on the PS4, it felt like a 2 star game. Still fun, but if it were my only experience with the game, I'd be wondering why this game was remembered so fondly.

Perfectly fit my needs as an evening puzzle before bed time. The gameplay has you controlling different colored blob-men from a starting configuration to a final resting place, with some color-coded bridges they can cross, and some color-coded doors they cannot. There are 40 puzzles in total that took me about 6 hours to get through.

There are just enough gimmicks for variety for each new set of levels, such as primary color blob-men merging together to create secondary colors, which changes which doors and bridges they can access. Some of the solutions are not straight forward, and I only felt I was properly adapting my mindset towards how to approach the game by its final puzzles.

There is a "story" in the sense that there is flavor-text between levels - I was happier the more I ignored it, and it does not impact gameplay at all. The text feels more like setting the mood for the game, as atmosphere is one of its larger selling points. The same gameplay could have easily been accomplished with lines and dots, but the presentation really punches up the experience.

In my rating system, 2 stars represent an average, C-grade game. I award She Remembered Caterpillars 3 stars as a B-rank game. With no real fail state, an easy reset button, and a delightful, vibrant art style, it was a relaxing experience that provided just the right level of engagement to see me want to finish. I did get stumped on a couple puzzles more than once, but often coming back the next day shifted my perspective enough to solve them in minutes. An easy recommendation to fans of unique puzzlers.