Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 7th

Today's challenge is: You like, but everyone hates.

Okay, soooo... Today was actually pretty difficult to figure out. I had two options: The first was going for a specific game that people disliked that I think is great or at least has some redeeming qualities that makes it more enjoyable. Stuff like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on NES, which people hate for valid reasons, but actually don't know about some of the secrets in the game, like how to get the true ending with the boss fight, which is actually kinda cool! My second option was to pick from a well established franchise, in a scenario where I'd really like a certain title that everyone else considers the weakest. That's what I went with today. For example, I could have picked Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, which people dislike for being clunky and having nothing to do with other Final Fantasy games (on top of not being the upgraded FFVII everyone wanted) while I personally loved it. But I'm not sure if people really dislike it for what it is.

So instead, I went with Metroid: Other M, my favorite game in the franchise so far. I've actually played VERY LITTLE from this game, but I've at least watched a playthrough in the past. People have criticized it for playing weird (it's the Wii, so par for the course in general), for ruining the ambience and feeling of solitude, for being much more linear, and most of all, for ruining Samus' character. But the thing is... None of these things particularly bothered me.



While I can see why people feel so let down by this title, Metroid in general, for me, has been a mixture of boring, frustrating and annoying. I also understand why people love the series so much, but even though I've genuinely tried to get into it, I just can't. There's too much backtracking, too much “where the fuck do I go?”, too much “why am I even here”, too much inconsistent pacing. The bosses and general ambience are cool, but the latter wears out once I start feeling too much like a rat in a maze. It's just my personal taste. The only one I managed to finish was the first Prime game, and finding all the damn Chozo artifacts made me despise an otherwise interesting title.

But Other M came to me like a breath of fresh air. I'm not saying Nintendo should just scrap the old ones because I preferred this one, but it gave me a fair chance to get into a lot of iconic Metroid stuff simply because the game felt like something I could appreciate for what it is. Just straight up guns blazing with cool abilities, and while I agree Samus kind of has an uninspiring personality, I'm not super fond of silent protags I'm supposed to project into (Prime did her far better however), and, at least, they didn't give her a gasp syndrome, which tends to be a pet peeve of mine.



I know that some people will want to give me an earful about how Super Metroid is so much better or whatever, but frankly, Other M has opened a door for me to enjoy the rest of the franchise, and that's why I've picked it today.

Out on Wii, and apparently on the Wii U's virtual console as well? Interesting...

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

This seems really ambitious to me and am generally impressed that you're keeping up with this o_o

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

It's not a huge deal haha, I already did it before with video game music, and while I was worried it would be hard to keep up with, it ended up being mostly fun.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 8th

Today's challenge is: You hate, but everyone likes.

Today's pick is Heavy Rain.

*Cracks knuckles*

I've played a lot of really shitty games, and I honestly love those. My personal threshold for “so bad, it's good” is quite reasonable, so it doesn't take something infinitely jarring for me to appreciate general incompetence, and it also works even if the game is part of a franchise I cherish. Then there's a level above, where the game sucks, but I don't really care because it's just “ meh” suckage. And there's not a whole lot of room in between for me to truly hate a game. It has to insult me personally in one way or another, and meet critical success with the general population. If a game sucks and offends me by the way it sucks, but everyone agrees it's a shit show, then I don't really care.

When Heavy Rain was released, everyone praised it like it was the definitive cinematic game experience out there. I wasn't super excited about it, but I still committed to the platinum. I think it was MikeShinoda12345 from FFR who took a look at my backlog and told me to play this one, because he “heard it was really good”. And DEAR GOD did I not have fun.



It pretty much ticked every checkmark of everything I'd consider shitty that's not the funny kind of shit. The controls are easily some of the worst I've ever experienced in a game like this one (for the sake of being fair, I've heard from people that it was considerably more playable with the PS Move, but I haven't tried to play it with that, and I dunno why the fuck this is compatible with it other than for the broken QTE sections). I legit did the trophy for the driving part on the wrong side of a highway by holding my controller like a toilet plunger and vigorously/furiously shaking it on the vertical axis in order to get one of the QTEs to register. I also got stuck for HOURS trying to make turns in the vents with the glass shards. I also got stuck in stairways a few times, among other issues. If I had clipped through the walls and fell to my doom out of bounds or something, that'd be funny, but all of my issues were more frustrating in nature.

Then, there's the cast. I can't say who of the main characters I dislike the least. They're all horribly designed and completely unlikable, and also devoid of any believable human traits. I happily forgot all of their names. Between the dad who's completely unrelatable and whose focus made no fucking sense through the entire game while he should be the one character whose emotions should speak to the player, there's the fat cop (he's the killer, I'm not even sorry about spoiling that) who was given about 10 personas too many (origami killer, rain killer, flower killer, kid killer, jigsaw and so on), who was intended (I assume?!) to make us feel a bit sympathetic towards his pains (it made no fucking sense), and who turns into James Bond for absolutely no believable reason near the end of the game, then there's the NSA “smart guy” with his fucking sci fi glasses that are completely unecessary for him to do his job, like why would you use something that can kill you in 20 minutes to solve a kindergarten puzzle? The game also tries to sell that his logic is top tier by comparing him to his brawny police colleagues, but everything is rushed out and does a garbage job at convincing anyone ever. Finally, there's the girl, who has tits and really nothing else I'd say. I probably dislike her the least, after all.



Now, the visuals. I'll concede that the textures and models are fantastic for their time, but like most “AAA titles” of this era, everything is just multiple tones of gray, and thus completely lifeless outside of the loading sequences where they do look really fucking good. Grass is green, for fuck's sake, that's not a hard concept to grasp. The “great models” are further ruined by the animation. I know a lot of people will disagree with this, but I thought the animation was jarringly bad. It wasn't like watching the Sims go on with their lives, where they don't try to make them look like real humans, but this definitely tried and failed brutally. The fight scenes were probably the worst, and I dunno how they could try to sell any of this with a straight face. It's kind of ironic, since this game came at a time when people were most divided on whether great graphics meant a great game, and this game is a big reason why I started believing it did matter a LOT, except for most people, it was thought of as a success, and for me a massive failure. Colors first, textures next.

Finally, the story (I'd talk about the music or audio engineering or whatever, but I can't talk about it since it was such a forgettable experience in that respect). I'd describe this game as like, brainstorming, but having to keep EVERY idea, because I'm pretty sure that's what they did. The general outline was probably to have a cast of people involved with a crime, and you'd have to figure out who is the culprit as well as watching every character tries to solve things on their own end. This is alright, but 90% of how they expanded from there shouldn't have made the cut. I'm guessing they didn't really care, and thought this approach would give their game a rather unique feel? That, or they just opened a “attention grabbing for dummies” book and tried to cover everything, then tied them to random stunts and elements happening in the story. I honestly felt like it was the latter scenario, and I felt deeply insulted that these events that kept happening were supposed to fool any human being with half a brain. Hell, horror movies do that all the time, and they don't fail at being simple thrill rides, you don't have to think too hard about them to enjoy them, but this invited you to think at the same time, and that's why it sucked so much in my eyes.

And no, it's not just that I can't handle this kind of game. I've done more than a few visual novels, and I think Life is Strange is a masterpiece of the genre. I've done at least one Telltale game, and even though it wasn't my cup of tea, I appreciated its distinct style. Heavy Rain is as far away from those as you could get, however.

*Deep Breath*



Now, it's 2021. It's a little bittersweet to lash out like this at my most hated game of all time, since with time, people have taken a fresh look at the game, and it sort of devolved into meme status. With the SHAUN and JASON memes, and the videos which further exaggerate the characters' animation (and those are genuinely hilarious). If this was the response back in the day, I still wouldn't like it, but I could totally appreciate its cult game status. Kinda like Marauder Shields at the end of Mass Effect 3. Therefore, before ending this mini review, I'll just list my top 6 (I wanted to do 10, but I wasn't able to find 10 things) positive things to say about this title, in no particular order.

- The game originally came with a small piece of paper, and you could learn to fold it into various stuff with the game itself. Honestly, I thought it was a really, really cool gesture, and by far my favorite thing about this game.
- The QTE section with the electrical wires was surprisingly well done, and had probably the best QTE sequence I've ever seen in a game. How they'd make you twist your hands around, like a mini game of Twister, was a superb idea, and I'd like to see mechanics like that in other games.
- The loading sections with the close up of the models' faces, as mentionned before, looked really good and were fun to look at. I'm a bit worried that they made the loadings even longer, but they were impressive anyway.
- The “Prologue” with Jason at least gave me high hopes for the rest of the game. It wasn't anywhere near as great as the one for The Last of Us (and nobody is holding it up against that juggernaut of a prologue), but it was the only time in the game I could feel actual anguish along with the main character. The ending was ridiculously convenient and dramatic, but hey, it was alright.
- Of all the cheap thrills in the game, and despite talking shit about the character herself, dangling the female character's tits in front of me was probably the only welcome one. The shootout in the mansion, the “cut your finger to get a clue”, the driving against the traffic, the escape from the rooftop, or the dumbass fights left and right, they really didn't work. The girl actually fulfilled her “traditional gender role” and didn't feel too out of place, as sad as this may sound. I'll just say that I'm glad that Quantic Dreams had the COMMON COURTESY of giving this attention grabber up. Bonus points for also showing high levels of gratuitous man ass, gotta be inclusive.
- The scenery in the STUPID VR glasses looked SO MUCH BETTER than anything else in the game, and I especially liked the mountain and fall backdrops.



And that's about it for today. Longer than usual. And yeah, I know it may seem like I gave this title an unfairly tough time, but I'll add that this is how it goes if I get into a title with my expectations raised too high. I'm not a gaming hipster, but I usually try to avoid top rated games for a while for this reason. But in this case, I feel like it was well deserved.

Out on PS3, PS4, and PC (3 systems too many).

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

JASOOOOOOOOOOOOON

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

SHAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

I googled that to watch the cutscene, and omg @ at the comment that listed Big Smoke's order, holy shit I died.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 9th

Today's challenge is: Underrated.

Today kinda gave me trouble. “Underrated” felt somewhat redundant with “you like, but everyone hates", so I had to come up with a very specific interpretation of “underrated”, and here's what I've got: I have to pick a game that's generally understood to be great, but that I feel like is still not valued as it should. Thinking of it like that, a few titles were singled out in my mind, and I think I've found a satisfying example. But first, some context.

The console wars of the early 90s could be particularly difficult for the average gamer. I'm talking Genesis/Megadrive versus the Super Nintendo. For most gamers who could not invest in both systems at the time, they'd feel like both systems had exclusives that more or less countered whatever the other one had. That is, unless you were strongly skewed towards certain genres. For example, if you were into RPGs, this choice was pretty simple. Sure, SEGA had the Phantasy Stars, the Shining series and a few other gems like Beyond Oasis, but there's no way it could match what the SNES had to offer in that respect. On the other hand, if you were into shmups, Nintendo might have had a few heavy hitters, like Space Megaforce/Super Aleste and a few others, but there's no way it could rival with SEGA, who was the king of all arcade genres and ports in my mind.

And I am going to focus on shmups here. The Genesis is one of the consoles any shmup enthusiast has to own given what it has to offer, but if you look at anyone's top 5 list or whatever, you'll see titles like Thunder Force IV/Lightening Force, MUSHA, Eliminate Down, Gley Lancer, Elemental Master, but there's one title that's usually missing from those lists, and I'd argue it should sit at the top of most of those lists, or at least tied with Lightening Force or something. That game is Battle Mania Daiginjou, also known as Battle Mania 2, which was unreleased in the West, but was a sequel to Battle Mania, which was known over here as Trouble Shooter.



So what exactly does Battle Mania Daiginjou do that the rest doesn't? Well, a little bit of everything. It offers multiple playstyles, an extreme and tasteful variety in level design, great characters and a fun storyline (yes, really), perfect controls across the boards, great arsenal customization, a fantastic soundtrack, wacky enemy designs (remember how I said I was into cute 'em ups?), amazing visuals and a plethora of other great features.



So, what's the catch? Well, feel free to look the game up on ebay to find out that it typically ranges in the 4 digits (not counting the pennies, so at least a grand to get your hands on a genuine copy). It also wasn't released in the West, so gamers didn't grow up with this title. Those who played it know it's amazing, but that doesn't include a whole lot of people. Even so, I find it odd that this game is so often excluded from personal lists, especially nowadays, with the everdrives, emulators, fanmade translations and reproduction carts. I honestly cannot comprehend how it could fall off of anyone's top 3 among the shmups on the console if nostalgia is ignored. And there's a level in which one of the enemies is Super Mario himself, hurling mushrooms in your face. I am not joking.



It took me forever to play this title. My bro Felix bought me an everdrive for my 28th birthday, which I spent with Hakulyte (given that we share the same birthday). It was one of the first game I wanted to try out, so I handed him the controller after selecting what I thought was the first game in the series. It blew both of our minds, and instantly overthrew MUSHA as my favorite Genesis shmup, and became my favorite “classic and retro” shmup as well. It's a little hard to admit because I really, REALLY like Power Strike 2 on the Master System, but this is just too good.

The game was only out for the Megadrive, and if you ask me, I do think it's worth its hefty price tag.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

That was honestly one of my favorite games when I visited too. Shmups are usually kind of intimidating because there's often a few iconic sections in these games that are very very difficult.

This game was somehow more approachable and everything felt paced nicely. I guess it's not too surprising it's underrated because it's not a game people could find easily to judge in the first place.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

very cute art wtf

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 10th

Today's challenge is: Overrated

Like with yesterday's challenge, I had to change my interpretation a little so it wouldn't be a repeat of Day 8. This time, I'm going to pick a game that's understood by everyone to be good, myself included, but nowhere near as good as the majority of people think. There's no need for a big introduction here, as I'm sure pretty much anyone interested enough in gaming to read my posts knows about today's title, which is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Let's start with the good stuff everyone can agree with: This is a GORGEOUS game, and absolutely fits my preferred palette. There's nothing wrong with the world here, maybe a few rough spots here and there like any similar game would have, but it does score perfects across the board in visuals. Only problem is... That's just about all I'd say is as good as people would say. The rest is either slightly flawed, or has major issues. Let's get into all of that.



First up, the controls and game mechanics. I'm bringing them up first because overall, I really like the way they feel, however I don't think they're flawless. The stamina gauge has to go, it serves no purpose. Having an infinite gauge right off the bat wouldn't sequence break anything, and the only times where it really matters are when taming horses and lynels. It's just annoying. Normally, in a game like this, you'd need an upgraded stamina gauge in order to access a new area, which sort of applies to Eventide island, but food gets the job done. Throwing weapons is absolute jank, and that's too bad considering chucking out some of your inventory at enemies comes in pretty handily. The boomerang works well, but everything else is thrown in the worst ways possible. I'm not even gonna talk about the weapons breaking all the time, but I see absolutely no reason why Link shouldn't be at least a little apt in close quarters combat. He has the bombs, but come on, every other enemy in the game can fight bare handed. And cooking showed promise since you can mix so many ingredients, but you can't actually cook a wide variety of dishes, which was disappointing.



Now, onto some bigger issues. What the hell was that story? Was there even one, at least one in the present? I loved collecting and watching the memories, definitely some great stuff, but in the present time? I felt like there wasn't much. It doesn't make sense that the present era species representatives or whatever got so little exposure when you could almost feel a connection to the ones of the past. I have to mention the blood moon as well. There's a lot of wasted potential here, but at least I'm thinking that it was only there to reduce the game's memory usage by “cleaning it up”. Also, the sheikah slate is a big no, that is so dumb. And oh dear fuck, what was that ending? I felt like I reached the end of a demo, but last time I checked, I was not playing a trial copy. And this, in my opinion, ties in with the biggest issue of all, one which took the game from a 9 down to a 6 or 7 at the very best.



The biggest issue with Breath of the Wild is its skeleton. Outside of the first area, what do you have that constitutes the main game? Four “dungeons”, all available after completing a short quest each, and they're almost all the same, with equally similar “bosses”, then... not only it's time for the final boss, but you could actually go there as soon as you'd gained your freedom. You could have 100 more shrine sidequests, 10 more minigames, and 500 more fucking korok seeds, this issue wouldn't be any less of a massive flaw. The entire "main game" is about as deep as Ganon's Castle on its own (from Ocarina of Time). And even moreso, you have this gigantic and diverse landscape, but probably about 20 different enemy types at the most, which is TINY.



I'm not trying to say Breath of the Wild was a bad game by any means, but the issues I just listed definitely kept it from being a truly great game. And for context, I remember rabid fans being personally offended whenever someone would say it wasn't the greatest game of all time. THAT is exactly what I mean by overrated. I still have high hopes for the sequel, but I'm hoping for more meat on my plate this time. And people better not go DDoS-ing and death threat-ing independent reviewers AGAIN if they think it's a little less than perfect.

Out for Switch and Wii U, and despite the overall negativity in this mini review, it is definitely worthy of being picked up! Last note, you gotta love doing seal jetski while dodging thunderbolts and bombing the fuck out of an AT-AT's legs.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

Unpopular opinion, but I've always felt BotW was not as a game changer to the open world genre as majority have cited.

It has a really neat sandbox, don't get me wrong. But calling it innovative and breaking the boundaries for the genre?

Idk maaaaaaaaan

GTA, among other open world games before BotW would like a word with you...

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

Pls visit again so we can discover more great games.

Yes it's adorable, play it and spread it around pl0x.

BoTW absolutely had its own thing tho, and other games did directly get inspired by it, namely Genshin Impact? Pretty much all creative work is derivative, especially in video games. But you're right in that it's not like this rule doesn't apply to BoTW.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

Nuclear take here, but botw isn't actually that great of a game. The story is told in a super unique way, and it's actually pretty good imho. That's about what it has going for it, other than the art style and music direction being about as on-point as it could be.

Collecting all the korrock seeds and Spirit Orbs, is not really all that interesting? Unless you're playing the game in such short bursts it doesn't have time to get stale, and you hopefully don't have a nasty case of ADHD.

The missions to get on the beasts are... Not that great IMHO. And motion controlled puzzles can actually blow me in a dark alleyway. I'd still pick it up before a few other games (Skyward sword, zelda 2, even TP and WW for the moment - haven't played them yet to be fair though. I only just got my WiiU back.)

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

botw is like a cross-genre remake of super mario sunshine where all the bosses are the sand bird and most of the equippable items are the watermelon

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

I have no idea what's the nuclear take here, or what you are replying to, or what you are saying in general.

Yeah, you could litterally do that. I mean, I gave it a fair shot, like I said on a previous day, I tend to commit whenever I start a game no matter if I like it or not, so personally I wasn't gonna do that. But yeah lol.

This is hilarious.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 11th

Today's challenge is: “Why do I like this?”

Today is pretty interesting, because I hardly have anything to say about the game itself, but a lot more about the circumstances behind the game. Sort of like how it was with day 5. The game I'll be talking about today is The Yakyuken Special, which I own on the 3DO.

So what is this game? It's a strip rock-paper-scissor FMV game. You pick your desired partner among the featured Japanese women, and play a best-of-9 set with her. When you win, she removes an article of clothing. You don't have to strip down if you lose (duh). However, if she wins 5 games first, then you'll have to replay the set if you wish to see the girl wearing less clothes. If you're wondering, they all do strip to their birthday suit, so yes, definitely an adult game. Every round comes with a song and dance in the girl's current attire, and often she looks like she's being held at gunpoint, which can be very disturbing.



Now, I know. What the fuck, right? Well, here's the thing: I don't really care for the game itself, nor did I ever look for it specifically. However, this game has grown to be quite special to me and a lot of other people, so now, it's time for Story Time.

Every year, I host a party with other FFR folks (we haven't done it this year because of Covid, but we typically do it in January otherwise). A few days before our first annual meetup, I saw an ad on one of the game collecting groups I follow about 3DO demo discs, the guy had 4 of those and was selling them for 10 bucks each, and had a bundle deal of 25$ if someone took everything off his hands. I contacted him since I wanted them, and he asked if I was interested in a 3DO “Japanese porn game” as a free bonus. I obviously said yes.



I got those discs on the day before the meetup, and after playing a bunch of other games with the guys, I decided to give Yakyuken Special a try, and none of us knew what we were getting into, or what the game was even called. Thankfully, it was very easy to figure out, and we ended up getting quite a bit into it, especially the little song and dance bits. We were cheering for whoever was using the controller as though we were watching a damn sports game. I probably have a video or something of that moment, I'd have to look.

It has become a staple of our little meetups, and honestly everyone seems to cherish it, and yes, even the girls (who we'd usually have using the controller as we discussed our "epic winning strats"), which makes it even more awesome. And to answer the question written in today's theme, I guess we can all agree the game sucks, but why is it such a successful title to boot up while partying? I think our shared love of irony is the biggest factor. Could also be the absolute power of women's T&A. Could be both.



Apparently there's a sequel, and I now need it. Otherwise, the game is available on 3DO, PS1 and SEGA Saturn.

(For those of you wondering, here's the song (from the Saturn version). No dance though, but I'm sure those of you curious enough can find it easily)

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

as a huge zelda fan I hate botw for what it does to traditional zelda
I love wind waker though it's the best give it a shot