6/07 A Plague Tale: Innocence
6/18 Assassin's Creed: Mirage

Definitely a lot less completions then I expected myself to do this month. The best game of the bunch was easily A Plague Tale: Innocence. I really enjoyed the story that it told and the super dark and gloomy environments that were absolutely nasty to wade through. The gameplay was really hit and miss, but that tends to be the case with story games like this. Assassin's Creed Mirage was easily the worst game, and I generally quite disliked this game. The gameplay was somehow worse than assassin's creed games over 10 years older than it, and the story was super undercooked. I also found the game incredibly buggy with me getting softlocked twice with certain assassination missions, and also 2 separate save corruptions that I could gladly circumvent thanks to Ps Plus. I hope to get some more sizable completions next month as I'm getting close to finishing up Elden Ring's DLC and also Guardians of the Galaxy. Also itchmas is happening on the forums this month, so that should be another solid 9 completions.

Huh, I thought it was more. Still super excited regardless

Dang, were only doing 6 games this time. Anyways here are my nominations

Red Snow
https://charliedolphin.itch.io/redsnow

Nightmare Kart
https://b0tster.itch.io/nmkart

Rise of the Ronin


Rise of the Ronin is an open-world soulslike game created by Team Ninja, who are behind my favorite soulslike, Nioh 2. This game was definitely an interesting experience overall as it’s so much more different than the Nioh and Wo Long series, and I would argue that this game is a lot closer to something such as an Assassin’s Creed game. For this review, I played through the entirety of this game and achieved the Platinum trophy, due to how much fun this one was.

Rise of the Ronin takes place during the tail end of the Edo Period in Japan. The story has you create your own set of characters called Blade Twins, with whom you choose one to play and one to have as your Twin. Upon getting split up during a botched assassination, your main task is to try and find out the fate of your Twin while also getting dragged into a massive revolution to shape the future of Japan. The time period this game takes place in is quite interesting and not one I ever expected to see tackled in a game, but it was really neat regardless. The whole aspect of centering the story around this period of time when Japan as a country was dealing with an identity crisis where the residents were faced with the decision to dispel Western influence or get with the times and embrace change was really interesting. I’m not doing a great deal of service as an explanation here for this game's plot, but it was surprisingly decent. The Team Ninja games that I have played have often had some pretty mediocre overall stories that I have never been able to get invested in, but this game is an exception. This is thanks to the various opportunities to interact with and do quests for all of the various historical figures that are in this game. I found myself a lot more invested with certain characters like Ryoma and Shinsaku, who are major side characters, in comparison to someone like Tokichiro from Nioh 2. Another aspect that made this story pretty decent was the inclusion of giving the player the ability to make decisions impacting it that may cause a much different alternative to that of what happened in real life. Having the ability to make choices, despite most not mattering all that much really helped me get somewhat involved with what I was playing, rather than just praying for cutscenes to be over so that I can slay bad guys.



The gameplay for Rise of the Ronin is also pretty great, which wasn’t really that much of a surprise considering Team Ninja’s reputation for great gameplay. This game plays very much like Sekiro, but with a lot of different things to differentiate it. For instance, there is a ton of possible build variety present, which really did a great job at making the near 60 hours I spent playing it feel worth it. There are 9 different weapon types ranging from your normal Team Ninja affair like Katana’s and Spear, but also a few really unique weapon types such as the Bayonet and Sabre’s that were an absolute blast to play around with. Unlike something like Nioh 2, there really aren’t any major build restrictions that limit you to playing with only a few weapons during your playthrough, but rather you can use any weapon you want at any time. With each weapon you can use, they all contain a minimum of 3 combat styles that can be switched into on the fly that offer different ways to use that weapon along with some more dangerous attacks. The styles offer a sort of rock-paper-scissors aspect to battle, where properly managing what style is best against particular enemies will help greatly with some of the tougher encounters. To defend against attacks, there is all of your average soulslike stuff such as blocking and dodging, along with a deflect mechanic called countersparking. More or less, when an enemy is about to land an attack, you can then attack back at that moment with a counterspark which slowly builds up ki and can break an enemies stance. Out of all of the soulslikes I have played with a deflect mechanic, countersparking is probably my least favorite of the bunch mainly due to the button placement feeling pretty weird and there being something about executing a counterspark attack that just didn’t feel as good as something like Lies of P or Sekiro. Along with your basic combat stuff, there is a ton of different tools at your disposal such as usable items, firearms, and a grappling hook that can all be super helpful for more tricky encounters. There is also stealth which was also pretty fun to use and felt quite good to execute. Overall I did really enjoy the combat of this game, but I would definitely place it on the bottom end of things when it comes to those from Team Ninja’s games. A lot of it was heavily simplified to something like Nioh or Wo Long, which isn’t a bad thing at all, especially since it’s a lot easier to grasp for those not wanting a super tough soulslike, but it just didn’t please me nearly as much as that in something like Nioh.

The open-world sections of this game remind me quite heavily of the recent Assassin’s Creed games that are a lot more RPG-focused. Most open-world tasks boil down to what are normally boring tasks such as liberating bandit outposts, grabbing collectibles, and visiting points of interest which I can see a lot of people heavily disliking. That said, despite not normally loving this style of open-world activities, I had a blast grabbing nearly everything I could find. I think the main reason for this, whereas I tend to get bored with other games doing the same thing comes with how strong the overall gameplay is. Whereas something else like Assassin’s Creed, taking down an enemy camp just tends to feel like the same old ordeal of stealth-killing enemies and maybe fighting some others when I get caught, taking down an entire bandit camp in Rise of the Ronin is a lot more fun thanks to how threatening the enemies are due to a lot more threatening enemies and highly varied combat that really made things fun. On top of that, most of the collectibles are really simple and only take a few seconds to grab while on the path to another mission. I never really found my time wasted when just bolting around Japan on my horse grabbing everything I could find. Also one of the main collectible types is literally just your character petting cats, which is honestly peak collectible design.



The open world is actually split up into three sections correlating with each of the 3 acts making up this game's story. Though not the most graphically impressive, each section does look generally quite good thanks to the great use of color and layout. There are a lot of really beautiful-looking locations that if you can get past the last-gen visuals that are quite cool. The open world is also quite fun to traverse thanks to stuff like your horse, grappling hook, or glider. My favorite of the open-world sections was probably Kyoto since it had the largest overall focus on vertical city structures rather than larger stretches of mountains and open areas. Besides the open world, the game itself is primarily built on a mission like structure, where you travel to a location to start the mission, with there usually being a boss fight at the end of things. These missions play a lot like a normal level from Nioh or Wo Long, although much smaller. There really isn’t much to write home about them. The bosses often at the ends of each level are usually pretty decent, though never really all that memorable.

I also want to bring up a bunch of the accessibility and quality of life features that Rise of the Ronin has since they really do a lot to make this game very enjoyable. Though being a soulslike, this game can be quite easy thanks to the addition of multiple difficulties. I played on the hardest one available at the start called twilight, since I like a challenge with these types of games. This game is a lot easier overall than most soulslikes, and I would recommend trying this game out if you want one that’s a lot easier than many. On top of that, there are a lot of really great quality-of-life features such as making worrying about filtering loot almost obsolete thanks to how large your inventory now is. There is also something called the Testament of the Souls which gives you easy access to redo any pivotal moment again if you don’t like your decision or outcome, which makes replaying this game quite easy.

Overall, I would recommend checking out Rise of the Ronin if you want an overall simple open-world game with complex combat. It does have some of its own problems such as having overall uninteresting open-world activities and main missions, but besides that this game is really fun. I would personally rank this just behind Nioh 2 as my favorite Team Ninja game thanks to it being a lot more fun than both Nioh and a lot better put together than something like Wo Long.
8/10

I'll nominate Monster Hunter Rise

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth


Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was easily my most anticipated game for this year and it fully delivered. FFVII Rebirth is the second game in the FF Remake project, with one more game to complete the story in the following years. I loved the first remake, and so I went into this game fully hyped to see what was in store for Cloud and the gang. For this review, I completed just about everything I could find around the open world, including a majority of the minigames, which in total took me around 113 hours, which is pretty insane to think about. Though I absolutely loved this game, it wasn’t without its small problems that didn’t fully bother me, but I can see them being issues for many others trying to play through this game.

The story for this piece of the overall FFVII journey follows Cloud and the party attempting to find a way to stop Sephiroth and Shinra. It’s kind of hard to write a brief summary of the events of this story as it’s weirdly directionless for the first 2/3rd’s, but I think it worked really well for the game. I loved how the majority of the story plays out almost like a giant extended adventure/vacation for the party as they travel all across Gaia trying to find a way to save the world. This is normally a bit of an issue I have with middle pieces of media in a trilogy, where it just kind of acts as a way to bridge the first and third entries together, but I really like how it was done here. I love how each chapter of the game helps show off the world in a somewhat casual approach before locking in for the insane final 3 chapters. This game also does an amazing job at using each section to flesh out each member of the party. I already loved the party in the first entry, but this game really made me love them, even more, thanks to how much this game expands each of their roles and shows of their stories. Characters such as Cloud, Tifa, Red XIII, and Barret were some really big highlights for me here. I also really loved how this game expanded a lot of the different returning and new side characters from the last game. Certain characters that I didn’t love such as Roche were given a lot more new material that was really awesome and really redeemed them in my eyes. The story itself was a really great time overall, but some problems did start to arise as the game began to reach its close.



One thing that did make me a bit worried about the first remake was its decision to break away from the main canon with something called the whispers. I don’t hate the idea of the whispers, but the ending for part 1 did bring up a few small things that had me quite worried. The largest worry was the inclusion of a multiverse that may intertwine with the main plot. Luckily, this concept was barely even addressed until this game's ending, which I think was great since this kind of stuff always muddies the media I consume, but its inclusion with the final chapter of this game was pretty awful. I seriously still just don’t understand why every piece of media involving Tetsuya Nomura has to include this kind of garbage. All of the multiverse stuff offers absolutely nothing to the main overall story, and all it did was make things overly confusing here. It all just feels like a device to provide Zack fan service for all of his fans, and in my opinion, really takes away all of the emotion of his death. I also feels somewhat mixed on the way Aerith’s death was handled in this game. On hand, I really like the idea of showing Cloud hallucinating Aerith still being alive, as it really shows how messed up he is at the end of the game, and I think will lead to a very satisfying conclusion with the third game. I don’t mind that they obviously left out scenes from the original depicting the water funeral, as I can tell it’s going to play a big part in Cloud’s mind hopefully healing. But on the other hand, the way her death was handled with the scene itself was way too confusing. At first, it looks like Cloud stops Sephiroth from skewering her, but like 2 seconds later, some multiverse bullcrap happens and now Aerith is dead. The scene is shot in this really awful, confusing manner that takes what should be an insanely sad moment and makes it incredibly jarring and frustrating. That said, Aerith’s death did hit me hard with the Jenova Lifeclinger fight immediately afterwards thanks to the fantastic use of her theme in that fight. Though I personally didn’t love the ending as a whole, it did leave me very interested in where the story goes with part 3, and I’m fully in for the finale of this legendary story.

One of the biggest new things that this remake does is have an open world. Though personally, I’m kind of sick of every game needing to be open-world, I absolutely loved how this game integrated and used theirs. There are 6 regions, those being the Grasslands, Junon, Corel, Gongaga, Cosmo Canyon, and Nibelheim. Almost all of the regions are perfectly sized and were incredibly fun to explore and complete. I did find myself a bit burnt out by the end, but I did play this game for almost 2 months straight with there not really being any other games I switched between at the time. 113 hours is an insane amount of time for me to put into a game, as I tend to burn out on most games at the 60-hour mark, but I was thoroughly hooked on this game. Each of the regions felt overall quite unique and were a blast to explore. My favorite was either Gongaga, or Junon to explore. I really enjoyed the jungle theme of Gongaga, and I didn’t mind the initially confusing mushroom jumps to get around the area. Junon was all around really good and felt like just the perfect amount of content to where I didn’t find myself feeling slightly bored. The worst to me was easily Cosmo Canyon, thanks to the stupid flying chocobo gimmick that made exploration incredibly frustrating. If I had one complaint overall when it came to the settings, it mainly comes down to there just being too many desert / rocky canyon regions overall. Besides that I loved how full of life each section was and how cool the world was to explore. Being able to fully explore places such as Kalm, Costa Del Sol, and the Golden Saucer was amazing and one of the coolest things in this game.



Each region is filled with a ton of fun activities that though are somewhat basic, I did still really enjoy their inclusion. I understand that many may not enjoy many of the different objectives since they somewhat replicate the played-out Ubisoft open-world game tropes, such as having intel towers, but I found their inclusion here to be a fun way to break things up from the more linear main story. Most open-world objectives are tied to the ever-so-annoying Chadley as he wants our group to gather intel on the world around us. I didn’t mind doing things like interacting with lifesprings, doing combat challenges, or even the infamous Ubisoft-style towers, mainly due to their rewards all being quite great, and them being just a simple occasional distraction from the main path. You don’t have to do any of this if you want to play the game, which is nice, but I can understand why others may not love these types of activities. My biggest issue with these bits of extra side content mainly come with Chadley having to ring up Cloud and talk to him after doing literally anything, which gets incredibly annoying fast, but besides that, I found almost all of this stuff to be fun.

Side Missions are something I quite disliked with the last remake, due to how repetitive and generally uneventful they were. Going back and reading my review on the first remake, I somehow forgot to talk about them, but I generally quite disliked them. My biggest gripe with them comes with how missable they were, which is luckily not the case in this game. Almost nothing side-content related this time around is missable, which is something I’m incredibly thankful for. The side missions this time around were actually quite great, which I’m super glad about. I really liked how they helped show off more aspects of the world and also allowed for us to see more of the lesser side characters from the last game, who appear in this game. Their rewards are also quite good (Final Fantasy XVI take note) and fully felt worth doing. Some of my favorite side missions included the one where Cloud and Aerith went on a pretend date and the infamous chicken one. There is also some other chain of quests that appear in each of the regions called Protorelics, which partially brings me to one of my biggest negatives for this game. These protorelic quests have the party search for protorelics in each region, where they often end up getting into a long string of minigame-based quests that I often found incredibly frustrating. I don’t mind having expanded minigame questlines, but the way that they were included here was awful. The minigames here are overly complicated for what they were and leave little to no margin for error by the time you reach the last mission. The worst of it to me were the Gears and Gambits, and Cactuar crusher questlines, that were honestly awful. That said, doing them was well worth it as they led to the amazing superboss fight against Gilgamesh. The minigames as a whole are what slightly dragged this experience down for me.



I don’t hate minigames overall, in a matter of fact their inclusion really made this game’s experience a lot more fun. My biggest issue with them comes with the sheer amount of them, and the fact that a lot of them are just not a lot of fun to play or complete. There is a grand total of 28 different minigame types, which is quite insane. Some of these minigames are really great such Queensblood, which is this card game that reminds me somewhat of Gwent from the Witcher series. This minigame is absolutely massive and there is a ton of opportunities to play it all across the game. I went into this one kind of dreading it, as card-building minigames like this are not exactly my strong point, but I absolutely fell in love with this minigame. I love how this minigame starts out somewhat simple as the game begins, which was a great way to ease someone like me into it, and gradually introduced new mechanics and modes as the game progressed. It’s also got this entire quest line tied to it, which was really fun to go through. I also really enjoyed some of the smaller 1 or 2 time minigames that would appear at places like Casa Del Sol, and the Golden Saucer such as Run Wild, which is kind of like Rocket League but with Red XIII, and Galactic Saviors, which is an on the rails arcade shooter. I also really liked the Parade, Loveless, and Chocobo Racing minigames. The more expanded minigames, primarily the ones tied to Protorelic missions, were pretty awful. Most of the time, these ones border the line between being really great conceptually but also end up suffering due to how basic they are since they are tied to small questlines. Gears and Gambits and Fort Condor both have a lot of potential to be really great but end up sucking hear due to how stripped-back they are mechanically. I also think the completion requirements for most minigames also ended up souring me greatly on them. Ones that were initially fun like 3D Brawler, and Fort Condor, end up becoming absolute nightmares to complete, and ultimately left me very bitter on how I felt about them. The worst of the worst when it came to side missions were the returning gym one, and Gilde De Chocobo, which are genuinely some of the most miserable things I have every played and beaten in a game. I don’t think a lot of these minigames were fully play-tested since they were where I found the most bugs and glitches in this game, and some of the objectives are borderline impossible due to incredibly poor design. I don’t mind a challenge with minigames, but the ones here absolutely destroy all enjoyment I already may have had for a large chunk of them. For the third entry in the series, I would personally like for there to be a bit less minigames overall, but rather focus on fleshing out some really great ones that make me feel like completion of them is worth it. This all said, I did like the inclusion of minigames overall, I just really don’t recommend going for completion on all of them.

One of my favorite aspects of the last remake was the combat, which hits this perfect level of being fast-paced and engaging, while also offering an excellent layer of strategy that keeps me on my toes mentally. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s combat is pretty much the same, but much more expanded. One of my favorite things about it is the inclusion of a few mechanics from the Intergrade DLC for FFVII Rebirth. I’m super glad that perfect guards and teamwork attacks returned, and their inclusion really helped change up the combat for the better. On top of that is a new type of limit break-esque attack called synergy attacks, which have two characters in your party team up and perform a heavy attack against an enemy. Each of these synergy attacks has its own benefits besides the attack such as giving you unlimited mana with both characters for a short period. All of the new inclusions really flesh this combat system out even more and mostly avoid being a bit too much to handle. I do wish the teamwork attacks did a bit more, like those from the DLC, as I tended to forget they existed while playing, but they were fun regardless. I also really enjoy how this game brought back many missing materia and other mechanics not present in the first remake, but rather in the original game, as I felt a lot more prepared for them this time around thanks to my prior knowledge from the last remake. I’m also glad I get full control of my party this time around and can create my own party configuration instead of just relying on the game doing it for me. Over my 113 hours, I experimented a lot with my party makeup and was able to create some fun loadouts, My favorite being Cloud, Tifa, and Cait Sith. Speaking of your party, FFVII Rebirth technically adds two new party members, three if you didn’t play the Integrate DLC in the last game. First, there is Red XIII who briefly appeared in the last game, and is now fully playable here. Red’s combat style is primarily based around perfect blocking enemies and then buffing up your party by charging up his vengeance meter. I personally didn’t love playing as Red the most, due to his play style just not being my favorite, but he was a lot of fun regardless. Finally, there is Cait Sith, who is pretty rough to figure out how to play initially, but is incredibly fun once you get used to his controls and a lot of his luck-based attacks. There is also Yuffie, who appeared in Intergrade, but if you want to hear more about her I recommend reading that review as she plays nearly the same here. All of the returning party members have received a lot of new changes as well to their combat to allow for better usage against stuff like Aerial enemies, or even some new overall changes to how they play, as with Aerith having a larger slew of wards. Everything has been improved greatly in terms of gameplay in this game, and I can still easily say that this is one of the best combat systems ever made for a video game.



Before I wrap this up, I do want to mention the enemy and boss variety which is absolutely amazing. I’m pretty surprised that roughly 90% of the enemies in this game are all new, which is crazy to think about, but also that there is just so many different types to fight in general. I think that there is well over 100 different enemies, which is something I really have to commend this game for, as enemy variety is a bit of a problem in most modern games I play. The boss fights are also really great once again, with there not being a single bad one amongst the roughly 40-50 I found in the game. My favorite fights were Gilgamesh, Gi Nattak, Rufus, Red Dragon, Demon Gate, and Jenova Lifeclinger. My only real complaint bosswise comes with the final Sephiroth Boss Fight, which I feel is way too long. The fight, including all of the phases, is well over an hour long, which is just too much for a final boss fight. By the time I was able to finish it, I found myself quite bored or it all and just wanted it to be over. It also played a pretty negative impact on the overall emotion of the scene before it. I also want to mention the soundtrack a bit, as it’s really amazing. From what I saw online, there are roughly 400 different tracks that make up this game, which is quite insane to think about, and all of the music here is amazing. Whether it be fun remixes of already existing songs, or brand new exclusive pieces to this game, this game’s soundtrack rocks. I love the large variety of tracks such as with some of the more goofy, throwaway tracks such as the Stamp song that plays with any mission involving following a dog around, and the flamboyant jazz piece that plays for a single scene involving a minor character called Gus. Besides the fun tracks, the soundtrack really nails all of the emotional moments it strived for, while also offering a great amount of epic songs to accompany your party in combat. This is easily one of the best soundtracks ever created for a game, and will be a part of my music playlists for the foreseeable future.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an amazing game that I absolutely recommend checking out if your either a new or old fan of the franchise. This game is an incredible experience overall thanks to it’s insane amount of great side content and a meaty story that almost masterfully connects the bridge between the Remake and the inevitable third game. Though I did have some minor annoyances with aspects of the late-game story, and the minigames, those aspects were minimal when taking in the full picture. I can’t wait to see where this game’s story goes with part 3, which should hopefully release within the next 3-4 years.
9.5/10

Games
5/01 Unsorted Horror
5/07 Buckshot Roulette
5/10 Rise of the Ronin
5/15 Resident Evil 6
5/19 Stellar Blade

DLC
5/24 Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Fallen
5/28 Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide

Lots of time to play and complete games this month thanks to my classes wrapping up earlier on. My favorite game was easily Stellar Blade. This game is a fantastic, yet somewhat flawed character action game with absolutely killer combat. I also want to mention Buckshot Roulette, as though it wasn't my favorite game this month, it was still a really good horror game regardless. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Resident Evil 6 was easily my least favorite game this month and was just an overall terrible game. I'm glad the RE series went back to it's roots after this game because whats here is genuinely quite awful.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder


Super Mario Bros. Wonder was definitely a surprise to see released last year, and a welcome one. I personally haven’t been a fan of the more recent New Super Mario Bros. games for a large multitude of reasons, such as with their boring level design and overall quite formulaic feeling that just felt like I was seeing the same game regurgitated repeatedly from each entry to the next. Luckily Super Mario Bros Wonder is not that, and an excellent evolution of the 2D Mario formula.

The biggest star of the show with this game is the brand-new inclusion of the Wonder Flowers. When you interact with these in levels, Mario and the crew go on a crazy hallucinogenic trip where all sorts of wacky stuff happen until you can pick up the wonder seed. These sections range from Mario transforming into all sorts of things somewhat akin to Super Mario Odyssey, or the entire environment transforming around him. I love how this mechanic changes up each level and the overall gameplay. It does a great job at breaking up the monotony of just platforming from point A to B, and it really does a good job at giving this game its own identity. Each of the available worlds are also quite good thanks to them drastically changing up the regular themes from what I am used to with most Mario games. Instead of just having say a normal lava bowser’s castle like most of the other games, in this one you can travel through a lava-filled grotto. My only complaint when it comes to level variety comes with there just being a few too many desert-themed worlds for my taste. I believe there are roughly 3 in total that have a rough desert feeling to them, but they all still do a good job of feeling different.

The overall gameplay for Super Mario Bros. Wonder is quite similar to many of the past entries with a few twists. This is easily the best feeling out of all of the 2D Mario games I have played thanks to it overall feeling the most refined out of them all. Another really cool feature that is unique to this game is badges which can be equipped before each level. These badges offer up some pretty sick gameplay modifiers that can completely change up how you traverse a level in a good and bad way. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this initially, but I love the inclusion of the badges. My only real criticism of the gameplay comes with its difficulty and an overall lack of powerups. When it comes to the difficulty, I’m not asking for it to be tough like something like Super Meat Boy, but I would like for it to be a bit harder than what it was. I would put this game about on par with a Kirby game with how tough it is, and that for me is just a bit too low. I also wish there were a few more power-ups besides just the 4 that appear in this game. They wouldn’t have to be all unique as it would be fun to see some things such as the ice flower and tanuki suit return, but I just wish that there were a few more as these 4 get kind of stale by the end. That said, I really did enjoy the new power-ups quite a bit.

Besides all this, I don’t have much else to say about Super Mario Bros. Wonder. It’s a fantastic game and platformer that is well worth checking out if you enjoy 2D Mario games. It’s a fantastically creative entry in the series that really impressed me as someone who doesn’t love most modern 2D Mario games.
9/10

I'm going to nominate Half-Life 2 again.

Well, this set of reviews kinda came out of now, as this all came from a spontaneous bit of steam dumpster diving turned spooky. Unsorted Horror and Buckshot Roulette are both horror games created by Mike Klubnika. My only real knowledge of any of these titles beforehand is that Buckshot Roulette became somewhat viral earlier this year, but that’s really it. Initially this review was just going to be Unsorted Horror as I stumbled across it in the free games section on Steam, but after doing a bit of digging into who made it, that's when I managed to stumble onto Buckshot Roulette, which has been something I have heard good things about. Anyways, enough psychotic ramblings aside, now time to talk about both games

Unsorted Horror


Unsorted Horror is a collection of 5 separated horror games created by Mike Klubnika that are all centered around the theme of operating machinery. The idea sounded pretty cool once and after trying out the collection, I can say that it was. Upon booting up the game, I was greeted with a locked box opening up and 5 disc boxes being extracted from inside. From there I was good to choose whatever game intrigued me the most to begin. This menu was put together pretty well and I really liked how clean it was overall. Now onto each of the games

First I tried out a game called The Other Side. In this, you play as a person trying to escape a dystopian city by drilling a hole through a metal wall with an auger. The gameplay is primarily centered around you doing such by properly setting up and resolving issues with the auger while attempting to escape. A good majority of my time with this was spent trying to figure out how to perform each step with the parts available, and then putting that learned knowledge into play to drill a hole. I always really enjoy when a game gets technical in a sense like this as I love tinkering around with an object of sorts to try and resolve a problem, though that may just be my engineering brain talking. Once you manage to drill your way through one layer of the wall, you are then discovered trying to escape, where the game then puts a timer on you to drill through the last layer in 5 minutes before enforcements show up. This last little bit is where the spooks really kick in as it’s quite stressful trying to solve each little problem occurring in such a brief period of time. Once your drill through the wall, you win the game and get to bear witness to why you are walled up in the dystopian society in the first place. Overall, I enjoyed this little game for what it was, but it wasn’t the most remarkable. It’s got a good basis and shows a lot of potential gameplay wise that is applied better in some of the later games in this collection.



Next up, I tried Control Room Alpha, which ended up being a spider horror game, which automatically makes this game the scariest on the collection for me. In it, you are tasked with using a crane device to collect some sort of specimens from a large nest of spiders in the ground. While doing so, the crane breaks down and you need to go pick up some more specimens manually, which is just great. From there you get some spider based scares that I absolutely hated and that's this game in a nutshell. Overall, this is probably my least favorite game in the collection for more reasons than it containing spiders. The gameplay this time around is a lot less interesting as it really just boils down to you using a crane to grab some eggs and then having to grab a specimen afterward by going outside which isn’t really the most interesting. The story also really wasn’t much of anything besides you getting told to grab stuff from a spider nest. Control Room Alpha was just kinda mediocre overall, but I assure you that the collection gets a lot better from here.



Carbon Steel was the next game I tried out. In this game, you are hired to work at a research station for 3 days. Your job is to extract some sort of strange creatures using a vessel dropped deep into the earth, where you then need to extract some unnamed material for them for testing. This game was the longest of all of them in this collection, taking me around 25-30 minutes to complete, mainly due to how confusing it was to try and figure out what the exact procedure is. The biggest problem with this game is the overall visibility of each of the machines and items you need to use. The general procedure is explained well enough, but overall operation of the machinery is made tough by not knowing what do due to everything just kind of blending in visually. Mike Klubnika’s games all tend to fall under this similar rusty look, which is interesting overall, but does make it kind of hard to actually see whats you need to do. Primarily, I found myself almost lost trying to operate the anethetic machine due to not being able to see the lever you need to pull to actually begin mixing. The overall puzzle in of its self is actually pretty fun to figure out, and feels like an overall upgrade to the gameplay that came with The Other Side. I especially liked how the game introduced new mechanics as the 3 days went along such as having to measure the depth where you gathered the creature manually, and having to monitor the condition of the pod. The scares are not super direct in this game, and I really liked how it mainly focused on the unnerving atmosphere this time around. Carbon Steel feels like a more realized version of the Other Side and I really enjoyed the game for that.



Concrete Tremor is probably my favorite game in this collection due to it having in my opinion the most interesting gameplay of the bunch. In this you plays as a few different people in a massive walled off dystopian city as its being bombed by another city right next to it. The general gameplay has you playing a deadly game of battleship where you need to bomb the other sides towers before they manage to bomb all of yours. I really liked the concept and it’s generally handled really well, until you start to notice some of the cracks in the game’s seams. The biggest for me is the lack of replayability once you figure out the battleship puzzle. Initially I thought that the solution of the overall game would be different with each playthrough, but no it’s exactly the same. Ontop of that, the general story and message it tries to tell is a bit undercooked which is a bit disappointing. That said, this game does a really good job at setting up it’s depressing atmosphere and also just being fun. I liked how it took a somewhat basic game that many of have played, and created an interesting little universe centered around it. It’s very much a predecessor to the game Buckshot Roulette, but a cool little experience overall.



Finally there is Tartarus Engine, which is unique to this collection. In it you and a group of technicians are executing a plan to gain control of a portion of this VR like system that the people in this dystopian society are hooked up to. This game is primarily built around telling it’s story and less so about the gameplay which was a fun change of pace. The only real section of gameplay is this portion where your character needs to break into a wall panel to change out a data drive, where as the rest is mainly just cutscenes. I enjoyed the quick little story for what it was, but I almost wish there was a bit more to this game overall. Really my largest issues with a lot of games on this collection mainly come down to how quick and underdeveloped many of the games feel. They all feel like great pitches for something larger, but never really blew me away in terms of their overall execution. This game is good example of this as this is one of the most interesting of the stories established, that doesn’t really go anywhere in the end besides everything backfiring on the group in the end.



Overall, I enjoyed Unsorted Horror. All of the games on this collection do some pretty cool little things, but did need a bit more overall in terms of their execution. If anything I really want to see Mike try and make a larger overall game. This collection is a great example of him knowing how to make a good horror game, I would love to see him create a larger overall project that doesn’t feel so undercooked. Luckily that somewhat seems to be the case with his next game called Buckshot Roulette.
7/10

Buckshot Roulette


Buckshot Roulette is an amazing evolution on the style of games Mike has been creating up until now. In this game, you awake in a club bathroom and walk into darkly lit room where some demonic looking dealer sits with a shotgun. From here you are to play a deadly game of russian roulette against the dealer. Buckshot Roulette is a pretty short game overall, only taking me roughly 25 minutes to beat, but the experience for the main story mode was a blast none the less. The main mode is split into 3 rounds, where the stakes continuously raise with new additions to change up how you compete against the AI. Round 1 is just pretty simple, where you and the dealer take turns either aiming the gun at yourself or the dealer and pulling the trigger. You are given a certain amount of revives by a smoking doctor figure, and once you run out, your dead. Round 2 is when things really ramp up as items are introduced to the game. Each item can be used to change the tides of the round either in yours or the dealers favor. There are 5 different types of items that can be pulled from a mystery box and each have their own helpful uses. Those items being cigarettes, beer, handcuffs, handsaw, and magnifying glass. First there are the cigarettes which can be used to regain a revive after taking a shot to the face. Beer is used to rack the shotgun, which removes the shell currently in the gun. The handcuffs skip the opponents turn and give yourself another shot. The handsaw increases the amount of damage dealt by the shotgun for that one current shot, which ends up resulting in the loss of two revives if you are unlucky and shot with it. Finally, there is the magnifying glass which is used to see what the current shell in the shotgun is. Items really add a lot to the overall gameplay loop, and really add a lot of strategy with how you tackle a certain situation. If you get lucky you can take the dealer out even before they can take a turn, or they might be able to do so with you if you are not careful. Round 3 has you and the dealer face off once again, but once either of you reaches your last revive, you are unable to heal any more, and need to finish the game quickly. The overall main campaign is a lot of fun despite being quite short, and is well worth playing on its own. It’s a twisted yet fun game of Russian Roulette that both doesn’t over or under stay it's welcome. That said, the real fun at least to me comes with the double or nothing mode that unlocks once you win.

Double or nothing mode is more or less an endless mode where you can either keep the $70k you would normally make after winning 3 matches in a row, or risk it to double it to $140k or even higher if you so push. Outside of the main campaign, I have actually spent a considerable amount of time playing this mode just for the heck of it as it’s a lot of fun. This mode also adds 4 new items, being the inverter, adrenaline, expired medicine, and burner phone. The inverter changes the polarity of the shot, and transforms a normal shell into a blank and vice versa. The adrenaline allows you to steal an item from the dealer. Expired Medicine gives you a 50/50 chance at either gaining 2 extra revives or losing a revive. Finally, the burner phone tells you the location of a particular shot in the gun that you should look out for as the rounds progress. All of these new items really change up the gameplay and add another layer of strategy that really makes this mode shine. I’ve only been able to reach a max amount of 10 rounds myself, but the mode in of itself was a great addition to this already fun experience.

Buckshot Roulette is a really great little indie horror game for a large multitude of reasons besides just having fun gameplay. I absolutely love the atmosphere the game sets up, as it nails its bustling club with illegal activities going on theme really well. The game isn’t really all that scary, but it does offer some good creep factor with the dealer initially. I also really liked how this game looks overall and I think it’s easily the best looking of all of Mike’s games thus far. The gameplay is pretty simple but a lot of fun. The Dealer’s AI is really well done in my own opinion thanks for it really hitting this great balance of both being smart, but also quite fair. For around $3, Buckshot Roulette is a great usage of your time and I would highly recommend trying it out yourself if you want a really neat horror game. I can’t wait to see what Mike Klubnika cooks up next, as mentioned in a recent steam news update, this game was initially supposed to just be a cut piece of a larger overall project that may still be in the works, and I can’t wait to see what it may be.
9/10

I'd probably start replaying a large chunk of the games. If I was to get to the point where I finished every game I have, I would most likely have not replayed a ton of games that I have loved over that period of time, thus most likely having been somewhat forgotten by me. Plus, I also really like replaying certain games with great action systems and slowly learning the ins an outs of them as a whole so that's something nice to make of it.

Yakuza Kiwami 2


After I beat Yakuza Kiwami, I still had the urge to play more Yakuza, so I started up and beat Yakuza Kiwami 2. Yakuza Kiwami 2 is the first game in the series that I have played thats on the modern Dragon Engine that most titles in this series are made on. This change was a super welcome one in my own opinion thanks to how much more advanced it allows the games to be. Though it’s now without some of it’s own faults which I will mention a bit later, but I was super glad to see this shift. Yakuza Kiwami 2 is an overall pretty good sequel to the last games that does suffer a bit from it’s lackluster story

I’m gonna kick this review off with my thoughts on the story, which are all over the place when it comes to this game. Yakuza Kiwami 2 kicks off a year after the events of Kiwami 1, where Kiryu is overall enjoying his life outside the Yakuza. Trouble strikes when the leader of the Tojo clan, Terada is assassinated by a sect in the Omi Alliance, thus sparking massive amounts of conflict that could escalate to an all out war between the clans. Kiryu is then tasked with helping find a replacement clan leader before getting thrust into the center of this entire conflict. From here we are introduced to the main antagonist of the game Ryuji Goda, who leads the Go Ryu sect of the Omi Alliance, who wants to take full control of the Tojo clan and kill Kiryu to become the one and only dragon. Problems also arise when it comes to Kiryu and his groups attention that a Korean mafia is also partially behind the assassination as an act of revenge for a massacre caused by the Tojo alliance years ago, and now plan on painting the streets of Kamurocho with blood. The story for Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a mixed bag of really good aspects and other parts that really fell flat. Some aspects I really liked were seeing Kiryu become somewhat romantically involved with Sayama, a new police character introduced with this game. I also really enjoyed Ryuji as the “main” villain despite how little screentime he gets. He’s easily my favorite villain so far in the series, and it was really a shame with how much he gets sidelined for everything else happening in this story. My biggest overall negative with this game mainly comes with the rest of the story which I just found overall to be pretty boring or outright confusing to follow. There is just too much going on with so many clans to where I could hardly make out what was happening before the credits rolled. The entirety of the Jingweon Mafia stuff going on in the story really drags things down due to how convoluted and stupid it all gets with pretty much everyone in this game being a secret korean past or current member of their gang. The ending is the absolute worst aspect of this game’s story due to how it constantly tried to one up itself in terms of it’s insanity to where it ended on a really confusing and sour note. This said, the story is still pretty fun overall in a dumb, don’t think about it sort of way, but I can’t really say I liked it as much as that in Yakuza 0, and Kiwami.



The combat also took a bit of a hit this time in part both to it’s overall design and the engine change. The biggest downgrade to me is the change from allowing Kiryu to wield 4 different fighting styles, and now lowering it to just one. Combat is now a lot more basic and overall less enjoyable since it doesn’t have as much variation as with the past 2 games. That said, it’s still pretty fun overall, and the main combat style overall is a pretty good blend of the best features from the 4 beforehand into 1. There is also a larger emphasis on using weapons this time around, which was fun, but even then, they start to get a bit boring after awhile. Another thing that I noticed this time around was how broken heat is in this game. Ontop of your regular heat actions that are already insanely powerful, there is something new called extreme heat mode that can outright break the game. Extreme heat mode more or less is a super powered up form that Kiryu can activate upon filling his heat gauge all the way in fight. Extreme heat mode powers up all of Kiryu’s attacks and can allow him to absolutely obliterate everything in his path. It’s insanely overpowered and can almost completely break any challenge in this game, including the Jo Amon super boss, which I was able to annihilate in less than 30 seconds thanks to it. I do enjoy extreme heat modes addition overall, though I do think it would be better for it to be less powerful. The switch to the Dragon Engine also made the combat just feel slightly off to me. There was something about how the game feels now that didn’t fully click for me. That said, it also introduced ragdoll animations to when Kiryu or enemies get launched, which is more than a plus for me due to how funny it was to see firsthand.

Though I didn’t love this game's story and combat, I absolutely loved the side content this time around, especially thanks to this new engine change. The shear amount of quality of life changes thanks to the upgrade is massive and made everything all the more fun. Small things such as allowing the player to seamlessly enter stores and buildings without loading screens, on top of actually being able to explore the insides of most of them was massive for me. There were so many areas across Sotenbori and Kamurocho that I have noticed in the last few games that I have been somewhat interested in entering, and now I can, which was really cool. The overall selection of minigames was a huge improvement over Kiwami, and the ones here were mostly pretty fun. Though that said, I didn’t play nearly as many as I usually do in these games mainly since I wanted to focus on the substories and main mission. The substories were a real highlight this time around, with them hitting this perfect level of insanity that tends to keep these games fun. My favorite substory in this game and maybe in the entire series so far was Be My Baby, which I won’t spoil here as it’s worth seeing for yourself. I also really enjoyed how a large chunk of the substories connected back to ones from Kiwami with both main and side characters. I’m not exactly sure if they are new to this game or if they were a part of the original Yakuza 2, but they are still fun regardless. Doing all 78 of the substories this time around felt well worth my time and was much more fun than those in Kiwami. There is a lot more substance and more interesting scenarios than just Kiryu being robbed, which made them all a blast. The same I really can’t fully say for the large minigame storylines.



Yakuza Kiwami 2 features 2 larger overall storylines centered around a set of minigames. First up there is the returning Cabaret club minigame from Yakuza 0, which I initially skipped out on in that game. In it, Kiryu has to help a smaller Cabaret club called Four-Shine win a Cabaret club tournament against Club Sunshine who is trying to shut down the club and their competition. This whole section can be split up into two portions. First there is the main minigame where you need to open and manage the club to raise money and build up a fanbase to then compete against one of Club Sunshines groups to raise up in rank. This minigame overall is an absolute blast, and slowly trying to build the best club loadout and achieve the best performance to rise in rank ended up being a lot more fun than I anticipated. The overall story tied to this minigame is also pretty decent, and had some pretty good bits of payoff for those who played it in Yakuza 0. That said, this overall questline was a bit of a double edged sword overall thanks to the other half of it, where you need to take your platinum level hostess out for dinner to raise your overall bond for them, which was a complete drag to my enjoyment with this storyline. Each of these dates last around 8-10 minutes where Kiryu needs to listen to each of their problems and answer some questions asked to him by the hostesses. This might not sound awful right now, but having to do this around 18 times, totalling out to around 3 hours just completely destroyed my enjoyment with the Cabaret club. Though fun, I found the storyline to go on for a bit too long, and ended up taking me 12 hours to finish overall which was just a bit too much personally. If there was an option to skip through the text during the dinners instead of having to listen to all, I wouldn’t feel like this, but this whole section was just a bit too much.

The second large-scale minigame storyline was the Majima Construction Clan Creator. In this, you are tasked with protecting the construction going on at Kamurocho Hills from a group of greedy land investors who want to take the land for themselves. The minigame for this has you build up a crew of construction workers, earned by paying for them with help wanted ads, or doing sidestories and unlocking special workers there. The main minigame is primarily a set of tower defense missions where you need to protect your own construction equipment from waves of enemies. This minigame is pretty fun overall, though a bit barebones once you start to reach it’s conclusion. Unlike the Cabaret Club storyline, this one is decently short, with it only taking me around 4 hours to beat, which was a perfect length overall. The story though wasn’t the most interesting. I didn’t really like the cast of characters present besides Majima, and it really just felt like a drag out near the end, with the each proceeding main villain proceeding to be double crossed and then a new one seemed to take their place. The minigame itself also just wasn’t as fun as the cabaret one and it can really become frustrating when your team's AI doesn’t feel like listening to your commands. So yeah, these big minigame storylines were not something I all that enjoyed this time around. I think they are fun overall, but they often either overstayed their welcome or had large flaws that just made the experience not all that interesting. Their worth at the very least checking out, but I don’t entirely think I would recommend doing them to completion.



Before I wrap this review up, I do want to mention this special side mode that was included in this game called the Majima Saga. This was something that I was quite excited to see once I unlocked it in the game, but after going through it, I am somewhat conflicted on it overall. With the Majima Saga, you get to play as everyone's favorite mad dog, Majima, who is trying to solve the murder of some candidates for an officer position in the Tojo clan before the events of the base game. The main storyline was pretty interesting to see play out, and I really liked how a lot of it tied back to the main story for the base game. Though that aspect was cool, the best thing about this campaign comes with a bit of fan service and the way it wraps up a particular storyline from Yakuza 0. This aspect alone makes this extra mode worth the 2 hour time investment. That said, the rest of the Majima Saga was mediocre. Majima’s moveset this time around in combat feels incredibly slapped together, and lacks all the fun that majima was to play as in 0, with his gutted mad dog style. Majima only has like 3 different combos you can use to fight enemies with and feels like complete doodoo overall. Though I did enjoy where the story went and it’s fan service, the time it takes to get to the point where it payed off was not the most interesting. The little bit of side content present was really just Majima being able to fight a few reused street bosses from the base game which was really disappointing considering some of the sidestory potential this extra campaign had. Overall, despite some really good bits of payoff for the overall story of this game and 0, the Majima Saga was a massive let down.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a pretty good game overall. It’s got some really big highs thanks mostly in part to the engine change, and the great blend of side content, but it’s also got some of the lowest lows of the series I have played thus far. Though I did have quite a few complaints, I still loved my time with this game. Most of the stuff I talked about with this review was focused on what new stuff this game did, rather than just repeating a lot of what I have already said about this series as it can get redundant very fast considering how similar each game can be, so don’t take everything negative here as me highly disliking the game. Stuff like the great side stories, a large chunk of the story, and the overall exploration were a blast, whereas some things didn’t fully impress me. This sequel is well worth trying out if you have enjoyed the last two games prior.
8/10

4/03 Yakuza Kiwami 2
4/10 Super Mario Bros Wonder
4/11 Kid Dracula
4/12 Castlevania: Bloodlines
4/12 Castlevania Anniversary Collection
4/25 Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

I managed to grab a few good completions this month, but not nearly as many as I would have hoped for. My favorite game this month was easily Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I've practically been addicted to this game since it was released and I finally was able to finish it up this month after dropping 100 hours into it. I love just about everything in this game minor some small annoyances, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. My least favorite game this month was Kid Dracula, but I still had some fun with it regardless. It's not a bad game by any means though just the least remarkable of a ton of fantastic ones. I'm hoping for quite a bit more next month since I'm not completely bogged down by FFVII Rebirth, but who knows as there are so many cool games for me to try out that may suck up all of my time.

Mirror's Edge


Mirror’s Edge is a first-person platformer created by DICE back in 2008. In Mirror’s Edge, you play as Faith, who is a runner, which is a courier of sorts who transports stuff while evading the government surveillance. In the world of Mirror’s Edge, the main city where this is set is controlled by a totalitarian government regime that has full control of the population through surveillance. The main story is centered around Faith trying to free her sister, Kate who has been framed for the murder of a politician. To do this, you are going to need to parkour your way all throughout the city to try and find an out for your sister. The main story for Mirror’s Edge is pretty decent, thanks to it mainly sticking to the point and not really making up the whole focus of game. The gameplay is the real star of the show here, and I respect how this game doesn’t waste your time with that. Most of the story is told through stylized cutscenes that use this fun cel-shaded style. I’m pretty sure that they were done like this to help ease the budget, but I think they work well. The only real thing I didn’t love with this game’s story was it’s conclusion, which felt incredibly anticlimactic.

The gameplay of Mirror’s Edge is primarily centered around momentum based parkour. Faith is capable of all sorts of crazy parkour maneuvers that I did find to be kind of confusing at first, but I ultimately came around to quite enjoying it. The fluidity once you get a grasp on it all is pretty good. My only real complaint with it mainly comes with the speed of it all which is just a bit too slow for my taste, but that’s I think mainly due to it trying to be somewhat realistic instead of some cracked out movement based game that I normally enjoy. Though the fluidity is generally really good, there is still a lot of room to improve with that. On the other end of things, there is also some combat mixed into this game, and it’s honestly really awful. Mirror’s Edge attempts to try and blend the momentum of parkouring with combat through parkour, and it really just doesn’t nail the mark. The game doesn’t really explain how to perform the melee aspect of it all that well, along with it just not feeling all that great in practice. The shooting portions don’t really fare all that much better as well. Luckily most combat heavy sections can just be avoided outright and it’s often incentivised. Running away from large patrols of armed security forces is actually pretty fun.



Level design plays a good part in what makes a game like this fun and I think Mirror’s Edge does a mostly good job. For the most part, each of the levels in this game are quite fun. Each one usually has some pretty cool and unique locations and set pieces that made them all pretty memorable. Portions like the construction site in the chapter Heat, and the mall section in New Eden really come to mind when it comes to quite fun sections. When talking about level design, I think it’s also a good time to mention the overall use of colors that do a really great job of setting up the world and helping guide the player through the level. The city that this game takes place in is almost entirely the color white with some variation in color usually to mark certain buildings around the area. This ends up making the game look very slick in terms of its appearance while also does a good job at tying back to how sterile everything is here due to government control. It also works really well with how this game uses the color red to very subtly influence the player’s decision making and to act as an almost guide on how to proceed in a tough to figure out section. I never really found myself all that confused on how to proceed forward which was nice, and by doing this it very subtly makes it much more easy and fun to just focus on keeping up a quick pace with the gameplay. The only real thing that I wish this game did different with it’s level design was maybe being a bit less linear. Most of the levels just have one definitive way of progressing forwards, which isn’t inherently all that bad, but with a heavy momentum based gameplay style like this, I personally would have preferred for some more levels that allow for player experimentation with how you can progress through them rather than a static solution. That said, the level design is still pretty great and was a blast through my 6 hours.

Before wrapping this review up, I have a few small things that I want to mention. First off is the lighting which was really bad on my end. I’m not sure if the game was intended to look as bright as it was, or if it was a side effect of everything being the color white, and the overuse of lens flares. I spent a lot of time in the settings for this game trying to fiddle with the brightness to bring it down to a level where I could fully see what was going on in the environment, but I was unable to do so. I could have sworn that when checking around online at the time I played this, it might have been an issue with the PC port in general, but I could also be mistaken. This game overall is just a bit too bright, which is something I don’t normally have to mention. I also did have some issues with trying to get the PC port of this game to run properly, which is somewhat of a norm for older EA games with things like Dead Space, but this game also does fall victim to similar problems like that. Things like constant crashes in areas like the sewers, or the resolution and frame rate being really all over the place were things that I had to tinker around with for a while. This is definitely something to do with the age of this game more than say the game itself, but it’s worth bringing up for anyone that still wants to try this game on PC. Anyways, Mirror’s Edge is still a pretty great game and is worth trying out even today. It’s a quick and fun 6 or so hour long experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
7/10

I'll nominate Half-Life 2

Castlevania Anniversary Collection


The Castlevania Anniversary Collection has been something I have been playing through slowly over the last year and a half. This collection originally released back in 2019 and contains 8 classic castlevania games, which range quite heavily from good to bad. I picked this collection up for pretty cheap when it released since I’ve always wanted to give this series a try and where else would be a better starting point than the series original games. Anyways here are my thoughts on the entire collection.

Castlevania


Castlevania is still a really good platformer from the NES era today. I really love the 8 bit visuals in this game, especially with how each stage feels vastly different than one another. Castlevania is indeed very tough, but for most of the game, I found the difficulty to be actually pretty great. The progressive ramp of each stage getting harder was paced really well for the straight forward nature of the game. Although, near the end of the game, there is Stage 15, which is a real test of patience and is honestly extremely unfair. Simon Belmont feels pretty decent to play as, with gameplay being a simple dash to the ending of each stage while fighting off obstacles. I like the weighty feeling of how Simon moves and jumps, although it can be rather annoying on sections involving staircases. The sub-weapons you can unlock are all pretty fun to use, with the cross being my favorite of the bunch, followed by the axe. The bosses in this game range from being pretty fun, to being an absolute nightmare to beat. Dracula and Death particularly are very rough to face, with Dracula almost being the breaking point in this game for me. It mostly comes down to the fact that a lot of Dracula’s moves aren’t the best telegraphed with the 8-bit graphics, along with me not knowing the trick for the second phase of the fight. Death’s fight, although brutal was really neat, and considering the fact that it’s supposed to reappear through a majority of this franchise, i’m interesting in seeing the evolution of such a tough encounter. This really wraps up what I have to say about the original Castlevania. Its still a pretty great game after all this time.
8/10



Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest


Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest is an infamous mess of a video game that was definitely an experience to check out. I do appreciate that this game is willing to try something new with its somewhat open Metroidvania style, which if i’m correct, hasn’t been attempted yet up to this point. The problem with this comes with the fact that it's a complete boring and confusing mess. I assume part of this is due to hardware limitations that were on the NES, along with it releasing less than a year after the first. Anyways, though most of the new stuff kinda sucks a lot of the great aspects of the first Castlevania return. Things such as the tough but fun gameplay, good soundtrack, the pixel art. That said, the pixel art can be a bit repetitive with the main mansions and overworld reusing a lot of the assets and areas. The main gameplay loop of this game has you play as Simon again, where he needs to find pieces of Dracula to destroy Dracula once and for all to cure a curse put upon him. Throughout the game, you will be venturing from mansion to mansion to collect a Dracula piece. The mansions all had a good opportunity to be different smaller levels, but ultimately look nearly identical and offer an annoying gameplay loop of saving up enough hearts to buy a wooden stake, where you can then use it to destroy an orb and obtain a dracula part. Most of the gameplay boils down to saving up hearts from slaying enemies to buy upgrades to your whip, and other goodies to better make your journey more pleasant. This does make this game overall probably the easiest of the Castlevania games, and with how boring the main gameplay loop is, i’m alright with it. Extra frustration with regular Castlevania annoyances on top of the fact that this game is pretty confusing would have made this game borderline unplayable, at least to me. Going back to what I said about this game being confusing. Most of the main gameplay here is frustrating thanks to not very great direction in the hints, and even clues on how to progress to areas. The worst of all is with the infamous red gem needed to reach a much higher-up area not specified by the game. Another thing that absolutely sucks are the bosses, who can all be best described as small road bumps. There are only 3 of them and each of them can be defeated in less than 30 seconds. The Dracula fight is especially baffling. I managed to defeat the boss with the fire whip before Dracula was given a single chance to fight back. More or less Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest is a pretty awful sequel to Castlevania that I don’t really recommend playing.
4/10



Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse


Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse is a pretty great sequel to Castlevania. Instead of continuing forwards with the more Metroidvania established style with II, this one goes back to the series roots. One cool new feature that this game has is branching level paths where you can occasionally choose between playing through one level or the other. This was a fun new feature that does bring some replayability to this game. Castlevania III is easily the hardest of all 3 games in this collection which is something I’m kind of mixed on. On one hand, most of the levels are tough but fun in an overall fair way, but on the other there are a lot of really annoying elements that make this game unnecessarily frustrating. The first few levels hit this pretty good balance, but the issues begin to spring up once you reach the ghost pirate ship level. Stuff such as stair being used everywhere with the most annoying possible enemy setups and an insane amount of bottomless pits really makes this game a nightmare to play. Without save states, I really doubt that I would have been able to beat this game just due to how unfair and unfun some of the later levels are. This all sucks since everything else this game does is amazing. The levels and artwork is a massive step up from the first two games, and the music is great. The gameplay is just as good as ever, especially thanks to you being able to switch characters on the fly. Castlevania III has you primarily play as Trevor Belmont, but depending on which routes you take when venturing through the game, you can come across 3 other characters who are all quite a bit of fun. For instance, I primarily used Sypha Belnades as my secondary character, who can use magic to defeat enemies. Despite not really enjoying how unfairly difficult this game can get, I still had a lot of fun with this game thanks to the inclusion of save states in this collection. I try to keep save scumming to a bare minimum for games like these and Mega Man, and thus I only really save at the start of each level and boss fight. Being able to do this made going through this game quite fun despite some annoyance and it really allowed certain aspects to stand out without a lot of the stress of managing lives. For instance, this is actually the first game of the collection that I have played where I enjoyed the final Dracula boss fight. Everything all said, I had a pretty good time with this game and I would recommend playing it if you are up for a challenge.
8/10



Super Castlevania IV


Super Castlevania IV is a fantastic game and I think easily my favorite of this collection. The jump from NES to the SNES was absolutely massive and ended up resulting in something really amazing. Visually this game is amazing and easily my favorite up to this point in time. I love the usage of color, which is a lot more vibrant this time around thanks to the SNES. I also love the shear amount of variety when it comes to each level and how they play out. Up to this point in the series, most levels felt pretty static on what they were able to do, but this game really switches things up with different level themes. Where as in the game prior, most levels just kind of stuck to their unique visual’s and themes, most in this game really change things up as they progress. Take for instance the first level which begins at a ruined fortress which eventually leads to a barn where the boss is located. The levels in this game were fantastic and hit this really great balance in terms of their difficulty both thanks to the much more enjoyable level design, and movement. Out of all of the games in this collection, I think that this one may have the most fluid gameplay thanks to it’s snappier movement and Simon now being able to whip in 8 directions instead of the usual 2-4. My favorite new addition is when you hold down the attack button, Simon holds the whip and then you are given the ability to control how the whip swings. At first I just assumed that it was a fun little gimmick to show off the SNES capabilities, but you can actually do a lot with it, such as using it as an almost shield against certain enemy attacks. I love how this game feels to play, and I honestly think it and the more fair level design make this game easily the most enjoyable of the series to me. The boss fights are also quite a bit of fun here, with this game also having a pretty fun Dracula fight, with a real kickass final phase. I think my favorite boss was the Dancing Spectres in stage 6, due to the really cool concepts of two people attacking and dancing together and sliding arena that just looked awesome. Overall, I honestly really liked Super Castlevania IV. This game is well worth trying out and has been a real highlight of this collection.
9/10


Castlevania: The Adventure


Castlevania: The Adventure is a pretty awful little gameboy game that may be the worst game in the entire Castlevania Franchise. Most of the problems with this game stem from its overall janky platforming controls. More or less, the already slow platforming mechanics in Castlevania games prior are a lot worse here and end up making any moment involving platforming a real frustrating experience. This game is comprised of 4 stages you progress through similar to the original Castlevania, albeit a lot shorter overall. Each area progressively gets harder and ends up leading towards some incredibly frustrating moments. I do think that there are some decent things about this game, but they do get dragged down by the frustrating gameplay. Most of the enemies in this game are completely new and somewhat unique to this game which is pretty cool, and I don’t really mind most of the enemies here such as the Zeldo, and the large zombie torturer-like enemies throw boomerang-like blades. Bosses range from very easy to unnecessarily frustrating as the game progresses, with the Dracula Fight yet again being the worst of the bunch. The Dracula fight starts off pretty decent with the first phase, but the final phase where he turns into a bat is a complete mess and is very annoying. The pixel art is decent for a gameboy game and the soundtrack, although not amazing, is still relatively decent. I don’t really recommend this game as a whole, even though it's only a bit over an hour and a half long with save states. It's a really bad gameboy and castlevania game as a whole. I’d much rather recommend it’s sequel Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge, which I will talk about next
3/10



Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge


Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge is a pretty huge step up when it comes to the last gameboy title. This game is structured very much like a mega man game where you are given the option to choose the order in which you tackle each of the levels. There are 4 main levels that you can choose from and then a final one once you complete those 4. The levels are all based around an element and were all pretty fun. The gameplay was still a bit stiff, like with the last game, but it was still pretty fun. Sub weapons are actually present in this game, and though a bit basic were a welcome return. I had a really good time with the game up until the last 2 boss fights that honestly brought the overall great experience down quite a bit. Soleil and Dracula are both really awful fights that are borderline impossible to beat normally thanks to how you need almost computer-like reflexes to evade attacks. Both of these bosses took me almost longer to beat than the rest of the game which is frustrating. Besides these bosses, Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge is a pretty solid game that I had a good time with
5/10



Castlevania Bloodlines


Castlevania Bloodlines is the most modern out of all of the games on this collection as it came out in 1994 on the Sega Genesis. In this game you are able to choose from two vampire hunters named John Morris and Eric Lecarde to go after and slay Dracula once again after he is awoken by another vampire named Elizabeth Bartley. This game consists of 6 stages which were a mostly great time. This game is easily the best one visually in this collection as it does an amazing job at showing off the power of the Sega Genesis. Though there were only 6 stages, each of these stages are pretty long and overall have a lot of variety visually and from a gameplay perspective. This game takes place over quite a few recognizable places in Europe such as Greece, Rome, and Paris. I really liked just about every stage minus some parts in stage 5 that are just a bit too annoying. This game mostly hits a really great balance of being difficult and fair with my only real issues coming from how you only get 3 lives in like the entire game and some of the levels being just a bit too long. These are mostly alleviated with save states, so it all ended up not being too big of an issues. I also liked how there are 2 players to choose from. John primarily fights with a whip and Eric uses a spear. I played this game as John, since I already felt pretty comfortable with the whip, and didn’t really want to change it up for this collection. The gameplay did however feel like a bit of a step back in terms to how it feels since Bloodlines decided to do away with the better controllability in air, 8 directional attack, and flacid whip ability from Super Castlevania IV. That said, it still does feel pretty good and is easily the best feeling game in the collection besides IV. My favorite thing in this game were the boss fights, which were both some of the most creative and enjoyable of the series. The fact that I came out of this game having both enjoyed the Death and Dracula fights despite usually not liking them in the games prior is something worth calling out. I also do want to mention the Gear Steamer boss fight that was easily one of the coolest in the game due to how it breaks apart and rebuilds itself with it’s almost 3D visuals. Castlevania Bloodlines is a fantastic game that is well worth trying out in this collection.
8/10



Kid Dracula


Kid Dracula is a real oddity in this collection. Kid Dracula is a Castlevania game that was released on the Famicon, where you play as who I assume is a younger Alucard. This game was never released in North America and Europe until now with this collection, which makes this game especially interesting to me. The story for Kid Dracula has him venture off to beat a demon king named Galamoth who stole his army and woke him up from his slumber. This game is a parody game and isn’t canon in the overall Castlevania series, but I did still think it was a good bit of fun. I enjoyed the more cartoony artstyle this time around as it was a fun switch up from the more spooky one that the last games all had. There are 9 levels, and they are all surprisingly varied in terms of their level design and appearance. For instance, one level you may be all the way in some snowy field platforming on icy platforms, and then the next level later you are in New York city platforming off buildings and subway trains. The overall level design up until stage 7 and 9 is pretty fun and overall quite fair. My favorite stage was easily the New York one I mentioned before. Stages 7 and 9 do end up kicking the difficultly up to what I would say is pretty unfair with some of the platforming and enemy placement. Overall gameplay was also quite fun as Kid Dracula controls pretty differently to how the main series plays. Kid Dracula plays somewhat like Megaman in where he shoots out fireballs normally and can charge them to a big one with a held button press. After you finish each level you are usually rewarded with a new powerup that can be switched on the fly that allows him to perform various other attacks such as homing fireballs, or platforming based abilities such as turning into a bat. These were all quite a bit of fun to experiment with as I blasted my way through this game. Another quite fun thing were the boss fights which although are pretty easy, were pretty fun thematically. One real notable one was the Lady Liberty boss fight that literally just has you play trivia based around the Statue of Liberty and American history. I had a pretty good time overall with Kid Dracula and I would recommend trying this game out if you pick up this collection. It’s a pretty fun little experience that I’m glad got a port.
7/10



And that was the Castlevania Anniversary Collection. I had a pretty good time overall playing through these classic games, despite their varying levels of quality. The collection itself is mostly put together pretty well, with my only real issues coming from some technical hiccups. Throughout each of the games, I would notice that occasionally the games would slowdown quite a bit once either a bunch of enemies were on screen or there were a lot of particle effects, along with some serious issues with screen tearing and flickering textures. They were at their absolute worst with each of the gameboy games and Kid Dracula. Besides those issues, the collection is mostly well put together. Everything is bundled up pretty neatly and has a good chunk of extra content such as their overseas versions and guidebooks bundled into the main launcher. Though I can’t really say that every game in this collection is really great, I’m glad that they included these titles for both preservation and completion sake. It’s nice to be able to try out bad older games from time to time just to see where the series went astray and how it evolved over time. The Castlevania Anniversary Collection is a pretty great bundle of games that can go for as cheap as $3 at times and I would absolutely recommend it if you want to try this series out.
8/10

Series Ranking from Best to Worst
1. Super Castlevania IV
2. Castlevania: Bloodlines
3. Castlevania
4. Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
5. Kid Dracula
6. Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge
7. Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
8. Castlevania: The Adventure

These are just a few things I'm pretty hyped for in the next year or so

Stellar Blade
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
Black Myth: Wukong
Silent Hill 2 Remake + Townfall + F
Hollow Knight: Silksong

I'm hyped for pretty much everything but these are the ones that really stand out the most as of this moment.

Marvel's Avengers



One of my favorite things to do is try and pick up games that may have been critically panned and haven’t entirely sold well in recent years for a pretty cheap price and then play them to see if they are truly as bad as I have heard they may be. Sometimes doing this can lead to surprisingly rewarding experiences with games like Outriders or Scarlett Nexus that though do have some big flaws are still a lot of fun. However, this often does lead to me playing games that are stinkers and do kind of deserve their infamy. Marvel’s Avengers is one of those games, in which I spent an exorbitant amount of time playing last month despite really disliking it. Most of that time was used to play through its story mode and extra DLC chapters, but I also did attempt to try the multiplayer out as well. This game is currently not available for purchase as of around September last year when this was taken off most digital stores. I’m pretty sure this is due to licensing fees expiring and Square Enix not wanting to continue paying for this game due to how badly this game flopped. This does suck as I’m pretty big on video game preservation and it will kill off the potential for more people to try this game out and somewhat keep the online function alive, but it is what it is. I managed to pick up a copy of this game for like 10 dollars a year or two ago and I went into this pretty hopeful since all of the microtransactions have been removed and all of the premium cosmetics were given to the player base for free, which is amazing. I do have to give this game that, instead of just shuttering everything and just outright removing the ability to earn these cosmetics, they gave them all out for free which was really nice. That said the actual game itself is a mess where I fully understand now why this game completely bombed. There are some things to enjoy, but the overall experience is just bad.

Where to even begin, I definitely thought that when I made it to the main menu for this game. If you also have this game and haven’t checked it out yet and are interested in the story mode, don’t click on assemble and go directly to campaigns because if you try and access the online mode, you are greeted with a confusing cutscene spoils the entire campaign to catch the player up on what's going on before giving access to the multiplayer. I definitely got confused with this and seeing the entire campaign spoiled through this cutscene before I even knew what was going on was frustrating. The menus overall in this game are pretty bad and are genuinely some of the most confusing I have navigated in a game. Overall movement through them can be incredibly confusing thanks to awkward UI and bizarre controls that just don’t work. The worst is honestly the war table, which is used to select missions in this game. There really is no easy way to cycle through what you want, and the method needed to select each of the main and DLC campaigns is a confusing mess that required me to constantly go to the main menu to cycle to another campaign, which sometimes may not have what I want which would require a lot more tinkering to try and figure out. I think this partially is behind a common game-breaking bug that I experienced where the game will not mark the main campaign as complete once you finish it and will lock you out of a ton of side content in this game since it needs to be completed to access certain raids and main game modes. This game is a complete mess in a lot of ways and just trying to figure out how to play it is a massive problem.


(This is the main menus I was talking about. To access the campaign, you need to click on operations instead of the play now button)

If you want to try and play this game I recommend starting with the main campaign, which though I think is a bit of a mixed bag, it’s honestly not awful. The main Reassemble campaign is roughly 12 hours which is a solid length for a multiplayer game’s campaign. In it, you primarily play as Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel), as she tries to reassemble the Avengers who disbanded after something called the A-day incident. She is doing so to stop a massive corporation called A.I.M. which has replaced Stark Industries and controls a large portion of the world. Their main goal is to outlaw superheroes and “cure” the mutations that cause them to have powers. The main campaign’s story isn’t awful but it’s filled with a lot of missed potential and overly repetitive mission design. Kamala Khan as the main protagonist wasn’t something that I really found all that exciting once I began the campaign, as she is a superhero that I have never particularly liked, but I actually really enjoyed her involvement in pushing this campaign along. Her being a fangirl of the Avengers and the main catalyst for getting the team together was a pretty smart move. Trying to pick one main character from the main Avenger’s cast would be tricky and trying to make separate main campaign structures centered around whichever one you pick sounds like an absolute nightmare development-wise. Picking someone else not already part of the team to bring everyone together was a good call. Kamala Khan also was pretty decent as a protagonist and her overall story arc, despite some more messy bits of writing and cringeworthy dialogue. In terms of messy writing, I’m more just referring to most character decisions being based on leaps of logic and then treating all of that like fact. The rest of the Avengers cast ranges from pretty good to heavily underutilized. Bruce Banner and Tony Stark were some particular standouts for me, but that’s mainly due to them actually being present in this game’s campaign. Thor and Captain America in the campaign was pretty disappointing as they only really appear within the last 1-2 hours of the campaign and have little to no part in this game’s story.

All good aside with the main campaign, there was a whole heap of issues I did end up having with it, mainly regarding the mission design and gameplay. The story itself just kind of meanders around and doesn’t do all that many interesting things through its runtime. I mentioned a bit above about Thor and Captain America’s involvement overall, which disappointed me immensely. I understand not wanting the player to feel overwhelmed with the ability to play all of the characters at once, but having these two locked up until the end was really lame. The story also has a large slew of pacing issues that make everything all the more disappointing. A lot of the time it just meanders around when there is a lot it should be doing and by the time when things start to get interesting it just kinda ends. The most disappointing thing for me with this game was the lack of overall Marvel Villains. Square Enix had access to the entire Avenger’s catalog of characters, and they chose to only include 3 super villains, 2 of which are introduced near the start of the game and immediately dropped after their respective fights. M.O.D.A.K. as the main villain was fun, but I really wish this game at the very least brought out some various minor villains to spice up many of the story moments instead of just having the crew fight boring robots. I also really disliked the overall mission design mainly due to how boring it was overall as I can tell this game was attempting to cut some corners by including a majority of the multiplayer maps with some objectives included inside. There are some unique ones, but they are very few and far between.



Before talking about the mission design, I should first talk about the general gameplay. The overall gameplay plays somewhat similarly to something like the Batman Arkham, or Spider-Man games, which was inherently what got me somewhat interested in this game. That said the general gameplay is this weird amalgamation of overly complex and annoying mechanics, on top of the somewhat easy-to-recognize gameplay of those other games. Besides the overall common gameplay that comprises of beating up enemies, and dodging attacks, there are a bunch of other things inter-spliced into the gameplay such as parry’s, special attacks that have a cooldown afterward, and this one strange counter-like move that does different things depending on the hero, but It mainly powers up their attack while also allowing for a dodge. I don’t personally know what it does since it’s so confusing and its effects are almost negligible in gameplay. When compared to that of something like Spider-Man, this game’s gameplay just feels overly confusing, and this is coming from someone who loves games with a lot of complexity in the combat such as Devil May Cry, or Nioh 2. I blame a lot of it on the tutorials, which are both incredibly intrusive due to how many different ones this game has, while also never really feeling all that helpful for explaining things in the gameplay due to the overall focus of them being all over the place in terms of trying to teach the player each character’s mechanics. Aside from the gameplay being overly confusing for a new player, it also lacks the weight and feeling that the other superhero beat-them-up games do so well. Every character feels incredibly sluggish to control while also lacking the weight when each attack aligns which makes other game’s combat satisfying.

I partially blame this on the fact that there are so many different Avengers and that they each play so differently, but it really shouldn’t feel as bad as it does. I do have to praise the fact that each plays pretty differently from one another, and I actually did like to play as about half the roster I tried out. Iron Man, Captain America, and Kate Bishop were my favorite of the bunch to play, whereas I would argue that Hulk and Thor were the worst. Hulk suffers from the problem where his moves are incredibly slow and weightless thanks to how bloated enemy health bars are, and he really lacks the destructive feeling that playing as the Hulk should have. Thor’s entire moveset feels incredibly sluggish and almost none of the attack flows together well. On the fun end of the spectrum, I like how Iron Man balances his ranged and aerial gameplay with his melee combat, along with the sheer amount of tools at his disposal. Captain America also hits this really great balance with his gameplay that fits how I presume he would fight in combat. The other characters either play just fine or are kind of boring overall.



The just ok gameplay is especially hurt by the repetitive mission design and lack of enemy variety to keep me wanting to play. In total, I think I counted 9 different enemy types in total for the main game, which is awful, especially considering that this is a live service game. This has been something that has been frustrating me a lot in modern games, especially in live service games. You can’t have a good combat system in a game without having fun foes to fight and use it with. Fighting the same 9 enemy types that you have seen since the first hour of the game without any new ones introduced as the campaign passes by is awful and makes everything super boring. This is especially bad when almost every single enemy is a basic boring humanoid robot with similar movesets and widely bloated health values. I get that this game wanted to primarily stick to having robots as the main enemy, considering that A.I.M. specializes in robots, but you can also do so many cool things with robots if they put their minds to it. The few bosses in this game and its dlc campaigns are mostly regular enemies and minibosses repackaged with bloated health bars which are incredibly disappointing. All of these issues I have already mentioned connect back to the mission design which is abysmal.

Each and every mission in this game takes place in similar boring badland, tundra, or laboratory setting that lacks any sort of interesting appearance. Each of these areas are littered with the same reused A.I.M. facility assets that were already boring the moment I booted this game up and relies on reusing them at every possible moment. Most missions require you to go to an objective which is usually kill enemies, and then progress forward to do more boring objectives comprised of standing around an area to capture it or opening a safe, and you repeat these things until the mission ends like half an hour later. There are some side objectives such as opening loot chests scattered around the level, or freeing prisoners, but none of them are worthwhile since they all reuse like 3 different assets and building structures across the large amount of missions I did. Every single mission that wasn’t handcrafted to be used specifically for the main campaign is a slog like this and I just don’t know how anyone can have fun repeating these over and over again as a live service-like game, even with a group of friends. Every single mission is grindy and boring and just the sheer amount of levels and gear you need to grind to try out the harder missions that were added to new areas added with new updates is a drag. I just don’t understand how publishers and developers can think this kind of content can hold itself and a player base up for years as a live service project.



I do need to talk about the live service elements as though the microtransaction-related stuff is gone now, the general live service structure is still here and it’s still awful. First up there is all of the loot and gear you can collect by completing missions, defeating enemies, and opening chests which is all awful. The best example for having fun loot in a game I can think of always comes down to the Borderlands franchise thanks to how that loot can greatly change up gameplay. Each piece of loot you can collect in those games can drastically change how you play depending on what the weapon or item’s loot can do. You could find something cool like a gun that reloads by you chucking it at enemies, or something like a shield that drops your main health value to 1hp while having an absurdly massive amount of protection from that said shield. Every single item like this does an amazing job of spicing the gameplay up. Compare that to something like Avengers where all of the loot you pick up and equip to your characters only does things like increase attack and defense exponentially. Why would I, the player, want to grind crappy loot like this that will not matter in the long scheme of things instead of something interesting like say giving the Hulk new attacks or changing how I would play as him. There is no fun grind in this game as it takes forever to really get anywhere with any character. I partially wanted to try and fight a super boss that was added with one of the updates, which I figured that I could reach pretty easily considering my level after playing through all of the extra content, just to learn that I would need to grind with a single character up to 15-20 more hours just to even get to a point where I could even unlock the level, followed up with the fact that I would still need to do even more to have a chance at that said super boss. Like I understand that something may be a super boss and that requires a bit of grinding, but I just can’t force myself to even want to play the game in general, why should I want to farm for so long to attempt something like this?

I think it’s time now to briefly talk about the main extra free content added to the game. There were 3 main story mission drops before this game kicked the can. Each of them ranges quite a bit in terms of quality. The first that I checked out was Taking A.I.M. which is the first part of a 2 part Hawkeye storyline. In this, you gain access to play Kate Bishop, who I think is the best feeling character to play in the game. Her moveset feels good to chain together, and her overall kit is really great. The campaign isn’t so as it reuses the same tundra environment from the base game and the campaign is mainly centered around setting up the story for part 2. There are no new areas or side objectives and the campaign is laid out almost the same as every single multiplayer mission in the game. There are technically 3 bosses, though only one of them is unique. The other 2 are just reused enemies from the base game which is disappointing. The new boss at the end absolutely sucks as it just doesn’t work well in a multiplayer-like setting due to how the moves mainly lock onto a single character. The second operation, Future Imperfect was a step forward in terms of quality as it features a whole new area and a pretty fun campaign overall. Hawkeye is a more boring version of Kate Bishop which was a bit disappointing overall. The storyline itself was pretty fun up all the way until the end where it just kind of ends unceremoniously with it expecting you to beat the Scientist Supreme super boss I mentioned earlier, which wasn’t going to happen for me. The new main campaign boss fight was also absolutely awful. You fight Maestro who has this insanely bloated health bar that no joke took me 15 minutes to whittle down with constant aggression. Finally, there was the War for Wakanda operation that was actually quite good. It’s got a basic but fun storyline, a really cool new area, new mission and side objectives, new enemies for the first time since the game launched and new texture change-ups to just about every single thing that returned from the base game. This campaign was a huge step above every other one in the game and was easily some of the most enjoyable content overall. Really, the other 2 DLC campaigns should have been more like this, and if so I think this game could have had a future. Sadly this is where the game just kinda died off. There were a few extra characters who were added which I didn’t try out besides Spider-Man who played like complete crap.



Overall, I kinda hate this game. I think there are some pretty good bones here to be something cool, but the overall focus on being a live service completely takes away from all of that. I feel as if this game was developed solely to be a single-player game. It could honestly be great if they put in the effort to really polish the present characters and have an interesting campaign with interesting level design. It’s a shame that this project ended up being a dud, and that I couldn’t come around to liking it in the end regardless of its flaws. I can’t recommend this game, both since it sucks but also since it’s not available to buy. That said, you're not really missing out on much.

5/10

03/12 Mirror's Edge

Surprisingly only one completion for me this month since what time I have had has been mainly put aside to play FFVII Rebirth this month. Mirror's Edge was a pretty great time that definitely does feel its age now. I should have quite a few completions next month since I'm getting close to wrapping up Super Mario Bros Wonder, and Yakuza Kiwami 2.

Hey there! I was just wondering what method you use to upload images in your forum posts. I'm thinking of starting my own blog and I'm not sure what the best way to add pictures is. I personally upload the pic to Imgur as hidden, copy the link, and paste here but I don't know if that's the most efficient way of going about it.

From my time on here, doing that or copying an image's address online is the quickest way of doing so. I don't believe that there is any other way sadly.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe



The Stanley Parable is a really quite bizarre experience that was well worth checking out. In it you play as an office worker named Stanley who works a mundane job of just following orders on a computer without questions. One day Stanley the computer Stanley is working on doesn’t give him any sort of orders in the slightest. From there you are lefts somewhat to your own devices to explore and forge Stanley’s path. Throughout the game, a narrator is both present to explain Stanley’s journey and even help give Stanley directions on what to do next on a particular path. This is definitely a tough game to fully describe since it’s so abstract, but it’s also really cool and worth checking out. It’s also kind of hard to talk about this game without outright spoiling some of it’s best moments.

Your main goal for this game while running through it can really be anything. From disobeying the Narrators orders, to maybe following some of their orders and disobeying others. By forging your own path, you will find yourself reaching a variety of crazy endings. These can range from something thats quite funny, to something a bit more thought provoking. I really liked how this game does it’s looping playthrough style as it doesn’t take a super long amount of time to stumble into many of the endings. Most playthroughs only take somewhere around 5 to 10 minutes to complete, and all of them are pretty fun. The writing plays a pretty big part in why this game is so much fun. I love how a lot of it centers around analysing player choice and just story writing in general. Stuff such as the not listening to the narrator ending and doing something like carrying around a bucket the whole time spark some really fun playthroughs. The game is also pretty funny thanks in both to the pretty solid writing and narrator. The Narrator of this game is phenomenal and really makes the experience. I love all the commentary that comes from him and the voice used is pretty iconic.

Originally I was going to play the 2013 remake of this game that I bought a few years back, but since I bought that version, a brand new ultra-deluxe version of this game dropped, which is the version I played for this review. This new version is a much more expanded version of the game with a bunch of new content. The main meat of this version comes with the new content storyline that was honestly amazing. The few new endings attached to this storyline are actually pretty long, but are a really fun piece of satire on stuff like remasters, remakes, sequels, and the game industry as a whole. I honestly think this main storyline added for the Ultra Deluxe version to be the best content in this entire game just due to how nails it’s commentary and overall humor. Overall, I don’t have a ton more to say about this game, besides that The Stanley Parable is a really good time. This is one of those games that you should really jump into blind as me explaining what it is doesn’t give it justice and it also ruins a lot of the best moments.
8/10



Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty


It’s been about 2 months since I talked about Cyberpunk 2077 and I kinda forgot to talk about the DLC once I finished it. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is a large story DLC that was released last year alongside the 2.0 update. After sitting down and playing through everything this expansion had for all of the stories, I can confidently say that it’s pretty much up to par with the base game in terms of overall quality, especially since this DLC didn’t launch overrun with gamebreaking bugs. That said, I personally didn’t have the best of time with it, not because the DLC is bad or anything, mainly just due to me being a bit burnt out on Cyberpunk. I didn’t realize this upon booting the game up a few weeks after wrapping up it’s platinum trophy, and then after just a few hours I found myself just completely worn out. I did do everything here for this DLC, but I can’t say that it was the most fun experience for me personally.

This DLC takes place during the events of the base game as V is contacted by someone called Songbird about a possible solution to their chip problem. Your main task is to help save the president of the NUSA who was just shot down in their aircraft above a closed off district of Night City called Dogtown. After rescuing them you are thrust into a spy drama centered around assassinating the Dogtown leader named Kurt Hansen alongside a group of undercover spy’s such as Solomon Reed who is voiced by Idris Elba. The story for this DLC is pretty great, but it never really grabbed me as much as that in the main game. I think it’s mainly due to V taking a bit more of a backseat this time around, but this DLC’s story is great. I also really liked how it branched off depending on your choices near the end. There are 4 DLC storyline endings, and one brand new ending to the overall main game. I honestly didn’t really enjoy the new endings added with this DLC. It feels a bit tacked on and doesn’t really do a good job at nailing down everything by the end. I found the way that certain characters react to V’s solution to feel very out of character, and some of the new narrative elements it adds to fall flat.

The new location for this DLC, Dogtown, was a pretty cool place overall, but I can’t say that I really enjoyed it as much as Night City. Everything was a bit too worn down and post apocalyptic feeling for my taste as this is an abandoned city still under construction. I also wish it was a bit less cramped together, as it made driving vehicles around a bit of a pain. Besides that, the area is pretty cool. The side objectives are a bit different than those in the main campaign. Gone are the NCPD scanners which was nice, and the few new things such as enemy bases and relic chips are pretty fun. There are some brand new vehicle hijacking sections added that are a bit boring overall when you are primarily trying to do them to get and achievement, but I would love to see these return for a potential sequel in a larger scale. The side gigs with Mr. Hands were also pretty good and I really enjoy what they did with his character here, compared to the base game. The main gigs that you can do are also pretty good, but I can’t say that I enjoyed them nearly as much as those in the main campaign. Besides this, I really don’t have much else to say about this expansion besides that it’s pretty good and well worth checking out if you love the base game. The new story and content is all really solid and I would say is up to par with the base game.
9/10

Great Yakuza post. Also funny story I actually onely played one yakuza game. The original on the PS2 about 15 plus years ago.

Nice, I lowkey kinda want to try out the original game for it's English dub. It seems pretty fun from some of the clips I have seen.

Yakuza Kiwami


I have been quite interested in returning to the Yakuza series for a good bit of time now after beating Yakuza 0 a few years back. Initially, I was considering just jumping into the new Like a Dragon series so that I can be somewhat up to date with this franchise, but I decided to opt out of that due to it looking like the newest game, Infinite Wealth heavily involving the past protagonist Kiryu. From there, my best course of action was to pick up where I left off with Yakuza Kiwami, which is a remake of Yakuza 1 from the PS2. I went into this game pretty interested to see if I would want to continue the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series from here, and after becoming incredibly invested in this game to the point where I did all of the substories, I can thankfully say that I am now kinda in love with this series.

Yakuza 0 is a pretty great game overall, but for some reason, it didn’t really grab me like it has for so many. I partially blame it on me being a bit too invested in juggling around a ton of games at the time, which is something I’m trying to avoid as much. That said, I went into this game with the mindset of giving it all of my attention and I am really glad I did because. The story for Yakuza Kiwami takes place a bit after Yakuza 0. The game opens with things seemingly going well with Kazuma Kiryu and his crew, before things go wrong with Nishiki murdering the Dojima clan leader who attempted to assault one of their friends, Yumi. Kiryu takes the blame for the murder to protect Nishiki and ends up serving 10 years in prison. Upon getting out, Kiryu is met with a Nishiki becoming one of his former clan’s leaders, Yumi going missing, and 10 billion yen being stolen from the Yakuza. From here Kiryu is set on trying to figure out where Yumi is, while also coming into contact with a girl named Haruka, whose aunt is Yumi. The story for Yakuza Kiwami isn’t nearly as strong as that in Yakuza 0, but for some reason, I somehow liked it a lot more. It may have been how absurd some aspects of it are, and the over-the-top cutscenes that never ceased to make me laugh. I also found myself surprisingly invested in Kiryu as a character a lot more than in 0, I think mainly due to how much this game focuses on him and his bonds with his prior friend group, new friends, and with Yumi and Haruka. The story is definitely not without its faults, particularly near the middle of the game where you can tell it’s trying to pad itself out to be longer overall, but I honestly really liked it here. I also think I enjoyed it more due to it having a lesser focus on the Yakuza clans overall and more on the characters. A lot of the Yakuza clan stuff is kind of hard to follow in these games due to how much they change up in and outside of each game, and having less of a focus on them directly and centering it around the many different characters across Kamurocho really did it for me. I also really enjoyed how it all wrapped up despite the main villain and their boss fight being just the worst.



Instead of somewhat half-assing the combat this time around such as with Yakuza 0, I dived fully into learning all I could about it and I am glad I did so. Since Kiryu has been locked away in prison for the last 10 years, he is back to square one when it comes to his fighting prowess. You ultimately start off super weak once the game begins, but as you progress you can become insanely powerful by gaining and spending XP along with participating in the Majima Everywhere system. I am personally super glad that this game moved to an XP-style system for leveling up instead of paying money as with Yakuza 0 since that system somewhat didn’t vibe with me since I didn’t participate with the Mr. Shakedown encounters, and the various major money maker side activities and I was often left trying to hoard what money I did collect. Yakuza Kiwami brought back the 4-style combat system as with 0, where you can swap on the fly between 4 combat styles. Those are Brawler for overall balanced movement and attacks, Rush for quick attacks, Beast for slow and heavy combat, and finally Dragon style which is pretty much cheat mode if you are willing to grind this system out. I really like the 4 style combat system and even more so this time around due to me being more willing to experiment and learn the ins and outs of it all. Having 4 styles to master did a great job at keeping combat interesting over roughly 40 hours. I’m also glad that this game got rid of the heat gauge from Yakuza 0 since it was a bit overly complicated for its own good. That said there is another new addition to make combat somewhat annoying, with Kiwami actions. In particular fights, an enemy may slump over and heal a ton of health, with the only way of stopping this being Kiwami actions that cost heat. This idea isn’t all that big of a problem in the late-game, but it’s an absolute nightmare in the early-game sections. Besides this, combat felt mostly the same as 0, which was already pretty good. As much fun as the combat is in this game, I can’t really say that it’s my favorite aspect of this game. That honor goes to just exploring the semi-open world of Kamurocho.

Instead of having two cities such as with back in 0, Yakuza Kiwami is tied directly to one playable city as with the original game. That city is Kamurocho and from what I have heard is in every Yakuza game. Revisiting Kamurocho was definitely a bit weird since I already knew how to maneuver it from 0, but I really like how this game changes up the city from that game. Stuff like the brand new millennium tower, or the park turning into a homeless city was really cool to see in contrast to how they were back in 0. Kamurocho is definitely not as filled with things to do, which was slightly disappointing, but I didn’t mind it all that much due to the stuff being here being a lot of fun. As someone who loves travel but can’t due to it being way out of my budget, just being able to run around this city and soak up the culture was something that I honestly loved. Every single section of Kamurocho feels alive and really just allowing myself to soak in the setting was really cool. Thus this brings me to the side content.



The Yakuza games are plentiful when it comes to this aspect, and this game is no exception. There are all sorts of different minigames to try out along with a wide slew of substories to really liven things up. The minigames have always been a bit hit-and-miss for me, especially since they are needed for 100% completion and the NPC Ai is on something else when it comes to some of the harder ones. I love their inclusion and they can be a really fun distraction from the main campaign, with things like Karaoke. There are also some larger sets of minigames in each of these Yakuza games that play like entirely different games within themselves, which are incredibly impressive. I didn’t do the Real Estate Royal and the Cabaret storyline back in 0, which in some ways I regret, but I at least want to give these modes a try with the future games I play. In Kiwami, there are two pretty big minigame modes that have a large storyline that is attached and honestly worth sitting through, those being Pocket Circuits and Mesuking. Pocket Circuits is a minigame that I can’t say that I love due to how time-consuming and overall annoying it can be without a good guide, but it was well worth doing here for the storyline involving the Pocket Circuit Fighter. Mesuking was a lot more up my alley as it’s a rock-paper-scissors card game where you play this totally kid-friendly card game against some kids across various arcades. The overall game mode was really fun, albeit a bit cringey due to how NSFW the card game and visuals are. It’s not something to be played in front of your parents, that’s for sure. The storyline for this one was actually pretty good.

The substories this time around definitely ranged quite a bit in terms of quality. Substories 1-7 are honestly really good and are well worth consulting a guide on how to access them. The rest are really take it or leave it. Instead of being like Yakuza 0, where nearly every single one is a really fun break from the story, these ones tended to be quite dull. A pretty large amount of them are based around Kiryu either getting or almost getting scammed by a variety of con men on the street, which are not bad substory concepts in general, but the sheer amount with this premise and the overall execution leaves a lot to be desired. My favorite of that trope were the 4 substories where the same group of thugs try scamming Kiryu repeatedly by faking an injury, just due to how stupid it was overall. Besides those and a large amount of also still fun ones, what felt like half of the substory list was stuff like training with Komaki, or playing Mesuking which really were not that remarkable. I still did have a lot of fun with the substories, but looking back after playing 0 and currently Kiwami 2, they really were not all that impressive. That all said, amongst the midst, there is one other piece of side content involving a particular Yakuza member that I really enjoyed despite some of the issues with its system called Majima Everywhere.



For anyone unaware, one of the main protagonists named Majima from Yakuza 0 returns to this game to cause as much trouble as possible against Kiryu. This system is introduced very early on in this game, as Majima both wants to reawaken Kiryu’s fighting prowess as the legendary Dragon of Dojima, and also just for fun. The Majima Everywhere system more or less has Majima attempt to hunt Kiryu down everywhere to cause problems, which is honestly one of my favorite things everywhere. Majima is such a likable character and this system really lets the Mad Dog of Shimano shine with his crazy antics. I loved how creative this system can be with him literally appearing anywhere to attempt to issue a fight, such as in something basic like jumping into a street fight out of nowhere or even something more egregious like him out of nowhere being your bartender and attempting to scam you out of a lot of money if you don’t fight him. One of my favorite moments with this system was when Majima somehow staged a zombie infection spreading around Kamurocho just to scare Kiryu into fighting him to stop the invasion. Stuff like this really made the system shine and allowed for some absolutely absurd moments in the best way possible. That said, for everything amazing that the Majimi Everywhere system does, it also comes with a lot of its own downsides that take something incredibly fun and waters it down into something tedious. One of the main gameplay styles for this game is completely locked into you engaging with this system if you want to upgrade it, and trying to do so really ruins a lot of the magic for this. Having to continuously fight Majima over and over again to where the surprise really begins to lose its luster along with trying to land the perfect RNG to get a certain variant of an encounter just so that I can unlock a new move for the Dragon-style really twists this from something fun into a pointlessly annoying grind. I also think Majima appears a bit too frequently across the city in general which can really become annoying after a while. That said, I love this system’s inclusion and it really made this game a lot more fun.

Overall, I had a blast with Yakuza Kiwami. I went into this game with little to no expectations and left more than satisfied with what I played. The story, despite being a bit messy at points was really enjoyable. The overall gameplay and combat was really fun and the various side activities despite being a step down from Yakuza 0 were still a blast. Definitely give this game a try if you are interested in the Yakuza series past 0, and if you haven’t played 0 beforehand, go play Yakuza 0.

8/10

For my main choice, I'll pick Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

For my Fool's Choice pick, I'll pick Squirrel Stapler.

1. All of the Silent Hill games with good ports, on modern platforms (Including the bad ones)
2. Bloodborne 2
3. Borderlands 4 with a new team of writers that are not complete doodoo.