March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

Sup guys, long time to see! I'll be cross posting the challenge I'm doing on Facebook these days since everyone who's helped completing my grid is also a member on here. I also figure you might be interested in this stuff, and I'd love if some discussion could spawn from the challenge.

Note that the reviews won't be super complicated, or else I'll burn out pretty quickly.

Here's the schedule.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

Sup everyone!

Back in June, my bro Félix convinced me to do a one month video game challenge about video game music. I was initially reluctant to commit to it, but it ended up being fun enough so that I'd want to do something like that again, and that time is now! Basically, for the whole month, I'll be posting a small overview of a video game that best represents whatever theme corresponds to that day on the grid, on the written date. I initially didn't know what to do exactly, but after talking to T-Force about it, he sent me a basic version of this grid which only had 24 tiles. The additional 7 tiles were decided by other people, who are conveniently all members of the Flashflashrevolution community. As an added rule, I'll only do one game per franchise. I've already made a list of picks by never using a console more than once, and it was pretty easy, so this extra rule should pose little challenge while making the whole thing much more interesting.

Today's challenge is: Favorite game of all time.

It's easy enough, as there can only be one title there, and that title is Gravity Rush 2. A sequel to Gravity Rush, which was basically made to show off what the Playstation Vita could do, and which was granted a massive budget for a sequel out of absolutely nowhere, and they sure as hell gave it everything they had.

Gravity Rush is about a girl named Kat, a mysterious girl who fell from the sky and who can manipulate the way gravity affects her with the help of her feline familiar. She can fall in any direction, make objects falls in any direction, increase, decrease or negate gravity as a whole, and use a whole bunch of gravity/time/space powers.

The second game picks up shortly after the events of the first game, and immediately after the OVA made to bridge the two titles (sort of, it's a little inconsistent). As with its predecessor, the story is set in a large fictional world inspired by early 20th century Europe, and the characters speak a fictional language loosely based on a mixture of French and Japanese. The game does a great job at portraying this accurately amidst all of the fantasy elements mixed in. It is also heavily inspired by Belgian and French Superhero comics such as Tintin and Asterix, which, combined with typical Japanese game features, makes for a very unique setup.



The world itself is insanely vibrant, and the Jazz influenced OST supports the visuals like I've never seen a game do before. And as you're given more and more liberty to do as you please in this world, you start to realize the true greatness of what it is you are playing. There's a LOT of game content to go through, but all of it is secondary to the immersion into this world, sort of like the way Breath of the Wild feels, except a LOT better.

The only thing better than the universe itself is the controls, over which you are granted a LOT of freedom. There's extremely little you can't do with a character that pretty much controls the laws of physics, especially late in the game, and the fact that the game is incredibly disorienting only adds to the fun once you master the sometimes counter intuitive mechanics. There are a ton of objects to interact with, to a point where it feels almost completely unecessary to have this much, but hey, no complaints. And let me tell you, once you start moonjumping and wormhole warping all over the place, you just can't stop doing it. It feels AMAZING.



Then there's the story, which is sweet, melancholic and endearing, but I'd be lying if I said this was the story to end all others. None of the characters are super interesting aside from Kat, and this is mostly due to the first game in the series completely botching that aspect. Never the less, it does enough for you to care, and that's alright with me.

I've yet to meet anyone who has given this a fair shot who wasn't completely blown away, and while it absolutely isn't a perfect game, it is most definitely a special experience for any gamer who can enjoy an open world action game. If I had to point any major issue, it's that the camera has a lot of trouble keeping up, especially when manoeuvering around tight spaces, but even so, it's still an incredible step up from its older brother.



So why is this overall fantastic game my favorite ever? Aside from the obvious, it also checks every single “gaming fetish” checkmark I could possibly have. High speed action, female protagonist, deep aerial mechanics, movement freedom, extreme colors and contrasts, counter intuitive physics, it does everything.

Gravity Rush 2 has only been released for the PS4 so far, but it is a Pro enhanced title. If you have a PS4, or a PS4 Pro, you owe it to yourself to at least try out the demo!

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

Today's challenge is: Best Story

I pondered on this one for a while, and I really don't have a choice. I have to pick the “Trails of Cold Steel” saga, from the Legend of Heroes franchise. I know this is technically 4 games, but in my mind, it's really one game, like a PS1 game with 4 discs. At worst, you can compare it to the Mass Effect Trilogy, with the save carrying over and all that.

So what is this game? I'll keep it short, because that's not really why it's here. It's a turn based RPG made by Falcom (which easily reigns as my favorite company of the 2010s and beyond), running on the same engine as the recent Ys and Xanadu games, which are completely different, gameplay wise.



These kind of games are really, really not my cup of tea. Straight up turn based combat pisses me off to no end, and easily ruins an entire game for me if other distractions aren't constantly thrown my way. It's just how I feel about the genre as a whole, even though I've played a lot. However, this one gets a pass from me.

As with all modern Falcom games, the soundtrack alone makes playing it worthwhile. It's also bright and colorful despite not boasting top tier textures in comparison to other modern games, and has VERY HEAVY anime style. There are also no random encounters (which is DEFINITELY a good thing), features a lot of side activities (sort of like a Persona title), has a High Speed mode to ease the pain of fighting non boss enemies, and a bunch of other good things.





But again, none of this is why I'm talking about this today. Cold Steel directly ties with the setting of the previous Legend of Heroes sagas and takes world building to a new level. You're looking at a 600+ hours adventure, with hundreds of important characters and well over 50 factions, all with diverging goals and political interests, and somehow you never feel lost or feel like someone's story has been butchered. Falcom manages to keep everything interesting despite handling so much all at once, and that is worthy of praise.



I've stuck through from start to finish, and I'd love to do it all over again, especially with hindsight, trying to take a fresh look at character development. A+.

Episodes 1 and 2 out on Vita, PS3, PS4 and PC, Episodes 3 and 4 out on PS4, Switch and PC!

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

: popcorn :
Excited to see what comes up in the days to come.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

I need a spoiler, is the Indie pick Celeste? Please say yes.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

Its tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time its tricky
tricky tricky tricky tricky

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 3rd

Today's challenge is: Favorite Art Style

Tough call today. I wanted to pick a game out of several interesting yet beautiful titles from the past, and even though there are some more modern games out there with beautiful styling, I still prefer colorful sprites and sexy scanlines. But I guess I don't really have a choice but to pick Cuphead today. It really bums me out because it's yet another modern game, and everyone ever knows about this one. Plus, it didn't get a physical release yet, and that's just nope for me. I did cave in when the PS4 version was released because I'm a sucker for platinum hunting (and also needed an excuse to actually play this one on at least something). I bought a Switch partially for this game, but it took over 6 months for me to boot it for the first time because I was waiting for that fucking physical release that never came out. RIP.



There's literally nothing to say about the game's artstyle that hasn't been said to death already, but I'll try to point out a few things that meant something to me. Cute 'em ups tend to be among my favorite shmups (at least design wise, because they often play like ass, and I was pleased to see a LOT of that influence in the game, especially the airplane levels. Nothing to say about the animation that hasn't been said before, but the grainy filter applied all over was a guilty pleasure for me, especially on a CRT.



And about the game itself, the one thing that has been said a lot that I'd disagree with is that it's too hard. Honestly, the game is more than fair, regardless of the difficulty setting. Even when going for top ranks, you only have to play well for about a minute every time, and you have infinite continues. Some of the power ups GREATLY reduce difficulty as well, so it's really not that hard. Comparing with other run and gun games, it's a bit harder than Contra on NES, but wayyyyyyyy easier than any Metal Slug or Contra Hard Corps.



That being said, well it's really fucking good and y'all should play it if you haven't already. Out on PC, Switch, Xbox One and PS4.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

if only that minigame played half as good as that lmao

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 4th

Today's challenge is: “I'll finish it some day”

I thought this one was gonna be hard, but turns out it isn't at all. I usually commit whenever I start a game, or quit and don't intend to come back unless I feel like I have nothing else to play on the same console whenever I want to play it. I have a huge backlog, sure, but they're games I've never even booted. Therefore, the list is quite short, and from that list, I'll pick Star Ocean on the Super Famicom.

This game initially piqued my curiosity because of its use of the S-DD1 chip. The only other SNES game with it (and the only one we got in the West) is Street Fighter Alpha 2, a game that pretty much had no business being on that console. I later took a look at some game footage, and to no surprise at all it absolutely blew every other SNES JRPG out of the waters, at least when it comes to the graphics. I also found out that the game was remade for the PSP (and officially translated), but then playing it would “feel pointless”, as the whole point of it to me was because it was some juiced up Nintendo 16 bits.



I ended up ordering 2 reproduction carts from a shady as fuck dealer from Northern Montreal, which we made a 1h long detour for while driving to Anime North, got the two light pink repro carts from the guy and shoved one up Kommisar's ass (true story).

But anyway, let's talk about the game. It's just as pretty and technically impressive as I expected. It's otherwise your standard JRPG, except for the fact that the combat isn't really passive and more of a hybrid like Parasite Eve, something that I love a LOT. I was also surprised to see 3D cutscenes and voice acting, that SNES might start to leak smoke after a few hours of gameplay. I haven't played it enough to know how much I like it, but I can say that the game kept me interested the whole time.



So, why haven't I finished it? I don't really know. I tell myself “I should continue Star Ocean today” but never end up actually playing it. I last played it like 2 years ago! I still feel like playing it right now, but I'm not gonna do that. Soon™.

The game is only available on the Super Famicom (but playable on the regular SNES if you break the region locking edges inside the console's casing), in Japanese only (it has been fan translated, however). Additionally, there are the remakes, which came out on PSP, PS4 and Switch.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 5th

Today's challenge is: Big Personal Impact.

Despite today's theme, I actually have little... tangible (?) experience with the game I picked. That because the VAST majority of my time playing the game was spent before I had turned 5. Which means I only remembered the bare minimum to be able to find what the game was as an adult... As well as something else. Therefore, today's review will be less about the game than about how it impacted my life.

The game I picked today is Montezuma's Revenge for the SEGA Master System (my favorite console, by the way), and something I learned as an adult is that this title is a reference to the violent diarrhea one might get while travelling abroad, especially in South America. I mean, there's no way I couldn't mention this. And while I'm slightly off topic, I might as well mention that this is possibly the first videogame I've ever played, at least at my place, as I did play Super Mario Bros. 1 at a hospital when I was a toddler. Other candidates would be Hang-On, which ran on my console whenever you wouldn't have a cart in (or if it was reading it poorly, which happened a lot), or Kenseiden, which I could only find out about because I could remember the first boss enough for Marionintendo to find it for me.



Anyway, it's kind of a classic exploration game based on Indiana Jones. You select your level as you enter the temple (more on that later, this is extremely important), then you rappel down into the first area. You have to avoid monsters and other enemies and collect gems and keys to open doors. I guess you could call that a Metroidvania, except all the screens are static and there are no powerups or bosses (that I know of anyway). It's also not really good, and you're better off playing Zillion instead for a similar kind of game on the Master System.



So, why did I pick this game? Here's the thing. If you select a high enough difficulty, you can only spend a VERY limited amount of time on any given screen. Once you've been in it long enough, an eerie sound effect will play, and a bat will come screeching to capture Panama Joe (the bootleg Indiana Jones you play as). That bat is also invincible and can fly through walls. Basically, if you heard that sound effect, you had to leave the room immediately, or else it'd carry you off screen and you'd lose a life.

As a 3-4 years old kid, I thought it was a crow or a raven, and my parents also referred to it as such. I also wasn't a fan of that crow AT ALL, and my parents would use it against me whenever they'd want me in bed: When they wanted me to go, they'd say that the crows came every night into my room to check if I was sleeping, and if I was still awake, they'd grab me with their talons and carry me into the night's sky, where they'd shred me into confetti or whatever. You can bet your ass I was ducking into my covers every single evening, crying and probably pissing myself most of the times, and regularly had nightmares about it.

Looking back, I think this shit is hilarious and I wanna high five my parents for doing this (they probably never realized how much it terrified me), and honestly I was a difficult kid and I'm surprised that's really all they did.

I of course bought this game again once I could figure out what it was, and I love it because the sticker on the cartridge is white instead of red like pretty much every other Master System game.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 6th

Today's challenge is: Best Combat.

Of course, since today's theme is about combat, I'm gonna talk about my favorite JRPG: Microsoft Excel.



Just kidding, I'm going to have exactly none of that here. Instead, I'll talk about Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie... For the SEGA Game Gear. Bet y'all didn't expect this right? Usually, when talking about this game, people usually think of the SNES and Genesis versions, but I'd argue the Game Gear version is the most impressive. Sure, it's pretty limited and the music sucks, but the controls more than make up for its shortcomings.

So how is this one different from the other two? Well, they pretty much scrapped the whole thing and instead of a side scrolling beat 'em up, they made a 1v1 fighter that sort of plays like a beat 'em up. You can play as any ranger, including the megazord whenever it's appropriate. You usually fight a bunch of goons, then the boss, then a Megazord/kaiju fight. Rinse and repeat, and the game will be over after half an hour or so.



So about those controls... How do you program like 20 moves per character, on top of general movement (like jumping, which you do a lot of), with only 2 buttons and a directional pad, and make it so all of them are super fun and easily pulled off, and so all the characters play so differently from each others they might as well each be from different games? Well I don't know, but this game does it and does it PERFECTLY. It's not like I had never seen this before, I've always thought that Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams on the Game Boy Color was one of the greatest titles in its franchise, but it's still not AS good as this Power Rangers game. Give it a shot and you'll see what I mean. I recommend messing around with the Pink Ranger first, as I think she's the most fun going up close and personal (yeah, I know, the one with the bow, but I don't care). That leg grab is so much fun.



This game is exclusive to the SEGA Game Gear, even though an arcade version of this would kick ass.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

sven doesn't want to feel lonely
power rangers game looks really cool not even gonna lie

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

<3 I actually love you for pointing that out high five man

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

He is. However, he's pretty easy, much like everyone else.

Also, that's like a gentle version of Parace L'Sia of Arcana Heart 3.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

Well other characters have broken shit, like uh Angelia, who was the boss of the second game. Parace is just legendarily broken lol.

I think all characters can move before a fight however, if memory serves right at least.

The video doesn't show her most bs move sadly, which she can execute at any time, is unavoidable/unblockable, is instant, and basically takes half your half bar or more. If you are unlucky, she will use it twice at the beginning of the fight, and you won't even have a chance to move before you're dead in mere seconds.

The reasoning behind this is that in the arcade, if you are to die against her, and insert coins while game over'd, you can fight her again, and she starts with less healths. Therefore after blowing like a hundred bucks on her, she goes down with a love tap.

That being said, there's no such mechanics in the love max!!!!!! edition, and she's just horrible to defeat. It took me several thousand retries to get her lol.

Also I actually never knew that about Tekken 2. All I do in that game is to spam Paul's burning fist to troll my friends.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

I know people who argue this is the first 3D Zelda that tries to replicate how the first 3 worked.

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March 12th

Today's challenge is: Game you always come back to.

Halfway point of the original challenge image! And another tough one.

I had no problem coming up with games I “always come back to”, but when factoring in some of my personal rules, it becomes considerably harder. An obvious answer could be Stepmania/Flashflashrevolution, but I'm hoping to avoid resorting to games that never had a physical release. Then you have some of the classics I kept playing here and there either from a young age or since their release, like Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64 or Super Smash Brothers (Melee or 64), but I find those to be extremely disappointing picks, as there's not much to say about those games anymore. There's another game I could name that would work fine, but it's a little too recent, and there are already 5 tiles it would have to go in, and I'm already having issues deciding where it's gonna go (can't spoil it yet!)... So I need to pick a title I keep coming back to, that there's something to say about it, and that saw a physical release. I'm finding out that there aren't that many obvious ones then.

Anyway, under these circumstances, the best one I could think of is Wild Guns, for the SNES. I played it for the first time as a kid during daycare (and played it quite a bit), then played it on emulators during most of my high school and early college days out of nostalgia, then it became the first game I've ever bought online on the Wii's virtual console, then bought a reproduction cart online as an adult (after finding out that it costs a fucking fortune nowadays), then bought the remastered version on PS4 as one of the first games I bought for that system, and I still played it recently on the Switch's SNES emulator. Therefore, I think it ticks all checkmarks.



So what is Wild Guns? Well, it's something that I'd classify as a Gallery Shooter. It's not quite a shmup or a rail shooter, because the screen is static, though it does feature similar mechanics. You must also control your character while also controlling the reticle. You can jump, double jump, roll and walk left and right. If you've played Contra on the NES, it kinda works like the middle sections where you see your guy from the back. Oh, and it supports simultaneous two-players mode!

The game is made by Natsume, which in my opinion are by far the best 3rd party developers on the system. They haven't made a ton of games, but holy fuck are all of their products amazing. Gundam Wing, Wild Guns, both Pocky and Rocky games, Ghost Sweeper Mikami, Ninja Warriors, there's some really good arcade stuff here. But let's focus on Wild Guns a bit more.



There are 2 playable characters in the game, and 4 in the remastered version, though I don't like the new ones. Those characters are Annie and Clint, and despite what you'd think, Annie is actually the main character. She's setting out to avenge the massacre of her loved ones by the goons of a big time crime boss. Early on her journey, she meets Clint, a bounty hunter, who offers a hand since he's after his “wanted: dead or alive” bounty anyway, and she agrees to let him tag along so long as he stays the fuck out of her way.



Wild Guns is also Spaghetti Western themed, with a special twist in that it also features futuristic robots, cyborgs and other machines coming straight out of Japanese sci-fi, which is a really odd mix that actually works really well. You also have infinite ammo when firing your old school rifle, but you can also pick up a few power ups along the way. Once you get them, your firearm is replaced by the “stronger” one until you run out of ammo. These are the grenade launcher, the shotgun and the heavy machine gun (in the original version at least, there are a few more weapons in the remastered version). There is also the peashooter, which does no damage, but you still have to go through its ammo in order to be able to hurt things again. Lastly, you can also obtain the mighty Vulcan gun, which is a damn minigun. It has infinite ammo and renders you invincible for a while, and you can get it by fully charging a gauge that's powered by intercepting enemy bullets with your own projectiles. You still have other means of attacking however! You have your laser lasso (which freezes enemies for a while, which you can then shoot down safely), you have the butt of your firearm, which you can use as a melee attack, you can also throw back the dynamite sticks enemies throw at you, and you can also use a screenwide attack, which you have a limited number of. Clint's screenwide attack is a TNT box that blows up everything, and Annie uses an overpowered mortar to achieve the same result. In the remastered version however, Annie's mortar attack covers only half of the screen, to balance out the fact that she's been buffed a lot over Clint with her movement.



The game isn't very long, and a playthrough consists of 6 levels total. A playthrough takes about half an hour to complete. The first one is Carson City, then you can do the next 4 in any order you want (Megaman style, and bonus stages will be triggered after beating 2 and 4 of these stages respectively, so long as their respective criterias are met), then the final stage. The remastered version has different stages available depending on what difficulty you are playing on, but still has only 6 stages per playthrough.



Last but not the least, the music and visuals are simply mindblowing, both in the original and remastered versions. Like I said before, the two themes going on are a little unrelated to each others, but they managed to blend the two perfectly in the more aesthetical department. I still don't know if I prefer the remastered style or the original game. I'm playing both versions of Carson City and they're both perfect efforts. I might like the original a bit more because, well, it's the original and its music is, in my opinion, hands down the best there is on the console, but the optional remastered music and the way the first boss blows up in the remastered version also gives me the manliest of boners.



As a bonus last note, I'd like to say that this is one of VERY FEW games where I'll occasionally play the dude instead of the girl. Their playstyles are only very marginally different, so the change is mostly in their appearance.

I'm likely to keep coming back to this one until the end of time, on whatever platform it's available on. The original version is exclusive to the SNES, virtual console versions are available on the Wii, Wii U and Switch, and the remastered version is available on PS4, Switch and PC.

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Oh god I read this wrong the first time

Hell no man, I really didn't like this one. The only 3D one I haven't done is Skyward Sword, but I'll absolutely get the Switch version, but still, I really can't deal with WW. I tried to get into it a few times for completion's sake, but, I lose all motivation a few hours in. Maybe with a guide on my knees, I could grind through to the end, but until then, fuck that one.

I'd honestly rather play the CD-i ones again (except Zelda's Adventure, that one is horrendous)

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

I mean, that's part of the plan. You get to discuss those you know, and to discover new games.

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March 13th

Today's challenge is: That atmosphere...

Today's challenge was kind of a revelation to me. I feel like my gaming experience is severely lacking in the “atmospheric” department, to a point where I almost wanted to troll and pick an aircraft game (specifically, I was gonna pick Ace Combat 7, and even more specifically, its VR mode, since it's amazing), because of the possible meaning of “atmosphere” being of Earth's actual physical atmosphere.

Anyway, while I do play a bunch of games with a great atmosphere, they're never or at least extremely rarely the reason I play them. You can argue there are several rhythm games like Rez or Thumper that I play and love with a really strong emphasis on ambiance, but I really just want to test my reflexes with hand-eye coordination challenges, and the rest is just random flavor to me. On the other hand, I would associate the concept with horror games, and I've played far too few of those to be able to say something about it. Lastly, I could talk about games with an upbeat and overblown atmosphere, since I'm a much bigger fan of those in general, but it felt like cheating. I wanted to pick a game that has a much heavier feel rather than an uplifting one.

I remembered Felix making me play Super Metroid for that reason, and that wasn't gonna cut it. But it made me think of another game he recommended me after asking about if he knew a shmup and platformer hybrid, and that's how I thought of Air Fortress, made by HAL (the Kirby and Smash folks!) for the NES.



After being gifted the game by a friend (giftwrapped with airplane lolis, thanks Phil!), I got to play it. Air fortress is exactly what I wanted Felix to suggest me. You control some guy trying to defeat an incoming army of “space fortresses” by destroying them from the inside. First, you have to fly through and past an enemy defense fleet into the main structure, then carry on by foot in order to find the core and force the whole thing to self destruct.

The game is very simple, and there isn't so much of a strong atmosphere up to that point. But then, you actually have to escape the fortress in order to move on to the next one, and honestly that part is absolutely crazy. There's no timer or anything like that, but you just know that you should probably hurry up. As you progress (and as time passes), the structure starts shaking more and more, and after around 2 minutes, if you haven't made it out, you will die with the structure itself.



I didn't play this game for this moment, I didn't even know it was gonna be a thing, but now that I know about this, I often boot the game just to go die there. I think it's fascinating, how the atmosphere changes after activating the self destruction protocol, and on NES on top of that. This was wayyyyyy ahead of its time. Sure, there were Metroid and Zillion before that, but those had simple countdowns, so nothing like what Air Fortress did in its escape sequences.



Oh, and some quick googling told me that after the last fortress, the player finds out he is the last fortress, and has to kill himself. That shocks me, I'm pretty sure the ending mentions no such thing.

The game is exclusive to the NES!

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people who say that haven't actually played Zelda 1

but if you would rather play the CDi games over wind waker I'm very concerned that you may have gotten a bootleg copy or something

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how the fuck is the character the last fortress that doesn't make any sense at all

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That's a hell of a take for very different games, not sure if I can see any of it

I can confirm that everyone I know who says that has played Zelda 1, but honestly I think it's a little far fetched. You can counter each argument fairly simply, like the free roaming and little to no guidance, or so I feel.

And no. Obviously WW is a higher quality game, but it falls in the boring territory. Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon are hilarious and honestly both in the top 5 on the console unironically. They're not solid or anything, but with the proper setup, they're quite unique and interesting, and the painted backgrounds are beautiful, even if they are a bit confusing. They're also rare and some of my most expensive games too, so the collector's pride does factor in.

That's what I thought when I read that, but upon further examination, I do think that's complete BS. The wikipedia paragraph on the topic doesn't have any references, and I can't find one on my own.

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March 14th

Today's challenge is: Bad Day Cure

If I'm having a bad day, and want to cure it with videogames, I know exactly what I want. I want an uplifting game with great controls and with moderate to intense difficulty. The idea is to have a game that can resist me, but that gives me a way to vent my frustration without adding to the reasons why I may feel down. At first, I thought of Super Punch Out since it does all of the above really well, but I thought of something much better.

That game is Dragonball Advanced Adventure, on the GBA. It's pretty interesting that, considering how many games there are about Dragonball Z, there are very, very few games about Dragonball. And this one might possibly be the best of them all! It's a 2D sidescrolling beat 'em up for most of the game, with some shmup stages as well, and it sometimes becomes a 2D fighter with a completely different control scheme. And, oh, by the way, I consider this game to be the best Game Boy Advance game ever made, but for very subjective reasons for the most part, as there are plenty of other great games on the system that people might feel more drawn to.



The platformer stages cover some of the most iconic adventures in the original Dragonball saga, but taking a lot of liberties to enhance the experience. There are also a lot of hidden items to find. You can use either Goku or Krillin in the main story (each having their own routes, and it pretty much plays by itself. Everything you can and want to do comes out so fucking fast, as you'd expect of a Dragonball game. It's really fun! And this nails the Kamehameha like no other Dragonball free roaming action game.

The fighter stages are a little more interesting, as the way they work is very unique. You usually have to find a way to jump on your opponent, and trade hits with them. It does no damage, and you don't receive or deal hitstun. There's a small stamina gauge, and the first one to empty the other player's stamina bar, gets to do a combo on them (which deals damage), aerial or ground based, which may then be followed up by a launch attack or a special move. This may sound weird, but honestly it makes you feel like you are playing the anime most of the time. And this is where I would get to vent most of my frustration. I also think this is one of the most underrated “fighting games” of all time. And, cherry on top, you can use a lot of characters in this mode.



There are also bonus modes, which are mostly unlocked by unlocking every collectible. In these modes, you can use ANYONE. Down to the shittiests grunt in the game. It's not that unique, but they've made them all play really well.

The music and art are sublime. The former is actually not taken from the anime, but mostly arrangements inspired by the show's OST, and it works super well. I wouldn't listen to it on its own, and honestly it's not the same without the sound effects, but it's incredibly satisfying. The artwork did take some liberties here and there, but it does a great effort of doing justice to the source material.



If I had any complaint about this game, it's that it didn't cover the 23rd world's martial arts tournament (at least, not by a whole lot, only cyborg tao is in there), but other than that, it's fucking amazing, and it can be quite hard too!

It's only available on the GBA, and it's a must have title, Dragonball fan or not. And fun fact, I personally own a PAL copy, which features different artwork on the cover of the box. I prefer the NTSC goku look, but the one I have doesn't have a DBZ Goku in the back, so I like it a bit more.

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honestly looks fucking incredible

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

It is, pls try it

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

no

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

wow ok

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March 15th

Today's challenge is: Favorite Protagonist

I was dreading this one ever since I looked at Trevor's meme template for the challenge. It's also been a topic of discussion with fellow gamers, since for years I couldn't really think of a protagonist I was that much a fan of. Deuteragonists are another story entirely, but protagonists, I can think of some pretty good ones, but none truly satisfying, considering I can only pick one.

On top of that, I threw myself 3 dumbass rules for today's theme, and it made it quite a bit harder. The main character had to originate from the game and not from another medium, the game also had to have been released physically, and most of all, it had to be a girl. So, why the last one? Because while I can actually think of some great male characters, I've also picked the girl first in any game I could choose to (unless she was lame or if there was a ninja guy instead), and thus, picking a guy would feel like betraying myself. I didn't want to make this a waifu pick however, so this has nothing to do with it.

Before I get down with the main topic, here are some of the characters I was considering (this post is gonna be really long I'm afraid). First, there was my safety option, Aya Brea from the Parasite Eve franchise. She's not the best character ever, but I got into her world a whole lot and absolutely enjoyed her perspective of being thrown into the fray alone simply because she was naturally the only one with the means to survive the challenge. Whether or not she was the protagonist of The 3rd Birthday (fantastic game that is grossly overrated, by the way) is debatable, but despite her acute gasp syndrome, she was still awesome for the same reason.

Next, there's Ashley Mizuki Robbins, from Trace Memory. She had a fun sense of humor, and displayed a wide range of emotions that you could always relate to. You could make a similar case for Max Caulfield from Life is Strange, which was fantastic (and the cel shaded graphics probably made me appreciate her a lot more, as they really eased my way in my immersion).

As far as retro games, Ellinor Waizen from the Aleste series (specifically, from MUSHA) left a great impression on me. I thought her circumstances were quite epic, and as weird as it sounds, I loved how fucked up she got through the game. It's not that I enjoy girls getting hurt, but pushing through the pain and stuff like that is just a great heroic trait regardless of the gender, and it's not something you'd often see in games like this. For example, I think Samus Aran would be multiple times more badass if she finished the game bloodied and beaten up.

Then for some left field options, I think Neptune from the Hyperdimension franchise is incredible in her own right. She's mostly a quirky parody character, and how much she (and the other characters) make fun of other gaming related companies, games or events was a guilty pleasure for me.



These are a but a few examples of protags I had in mind, but none of them felt right for today. So how did I make up my mind? Well, I asked Thesunfan for a fresh perspective on the topic, and while we both didn't know how well it would turn out, it definitely did clear up my thoughts. Therefore, I will talk about Faith Connors' debut game, Mirror's Edge.

Faith is not really the greatest main character ever, and nowhere close to that if you ask me. However, a lot of things were done right with her design. She wasn't the kind of character you're supposed to project into, but a character that tries to tell you her story, which is something I MUCH prefer over the former option. There aren't that many flaws I can point out otherwise, other that she's a little too much of an edgelord sometimes, but she's interesting enough, and her looks are appropriate for the kind of game she stars in.



About Mirror's Edge itself. Well, that's another game that completely changed my life. I had the chance to play the pre release demo on launch and on a few occasions afterwards on my friend's PS3, and I knew I had to buy the console just to play that one game. It took a little while for that to happen however, and sure, it did come out on PC and Xbox 360, and at the time, it might not have bothered me a whole lot to pick either of those systems, but I was slowly getting interested in the trophy system.

So yes, I ended up buying a brand new PS3 on a random whim while at Best Buy simply because I was craving this game too much. Also bought my first flatscreen the next day. And yes, this is THE game that got me into trophy hunting, which is the one activity I ended up dedicating myself to the most in my entire life. I'm currently sitting at 151 platinums, and I'd have exactly zero if this game didn't come into my life.



Anyway, what is Mirror's Edge, exactly? And why did it speak to me this much? Well, the sum of my gaming experience led me to imagine something like this, and when I saw it, if felt like getting my dreams served on a silver plate in the form of a Blu Ray disc. It's a first person, high speed parkour game, with minor combat mechanics and extremely stimulating yet minimalistic graphics. The controls are a little janky, but they work perfectly when it comes to making the player feel fully immersed into the action.



The story isn't all that great, and the characters are all kind of lame, but the universe is the best representation of a dystopian future I had ever seen until its reboot came out (sorry Cyberpunk, but you can't touch this thing). The way sound effects are used is unbeatable by any game ever. The cutscenes are animated in a different style entirely, but it was a nice artistic choice. And honestly, if it wasn't for the impact this game had on my life, I might have actually leaned towards Mirror's Edge: Catalyst instead. Sure, you couldn't use a gun in that one, but the free roaming was a major upgrade, and HOLY SHIT that last mission. The sense of vertigo was always a fantastic aspect of the game, but it outdid itself there.



Now, if this franchise gave me full VR support, and did it well, it might jump dangerously close to being my favorite franchise ever, but regardless, I will forever cherish this title, and I'm 200% sure it will forever be my favorite game of the 7th generation for video game, as well as having a solid spot in my top 5 games of all time. It's this fucking good.

As mentionned before, it's available on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 16th

Today's challenge is: After Work Relaxation.

Halfway done!

I didn't think today through a whole lot, mainly because I'd honestly play anything to get my mind off work, even games I don't like, so I consider this one to be kind of a freebie. I did try to pick a somewhat relaxing game, but that's the extent of my effort. Otherwise, I just picked whatever I feeled like talking about.



I decided to talk about Magical Chase. It's a shmup (yeah, a relaxing shmup) with 3 difficulty settings: breeze, bumpy and rough, but it's always an evenly smooth experience regardless of what you pick (the difficulty does increase or decrease significantly (depending on your pick), but no “spikes” are present). You control a cute witch on a broom named Ripple, and go through horizontally scrolling stages, where you usually have to fight a boss or two (shoutouts to Fat Metal).



She has two weapons in her arsenal. One is her main gun, which is upgraded by visiting the pumpkin man in a mid level shop (you see it floating up, then fly into it and you can buy custom parts, as well as health upgrades and stuff like that). The other one is her stars, which behave in an extremely counter intuitive way. They either move around the witch in reverse, like if you fall back, they'll get in front of you, and if you push forward, they'll cover your back, or they lock themselves in a specific position, which is weird to set up and I honestly don't really understand how the hell it works. The stars can also block certain incoming attacks, and it is necessary to make use of that in some levels.



The artstyle is fantastic for the era, the level design is flawless in my opinion, and the music is great. As I've already mentionned twice, I have a soft spot for cute 'em ups, and even though I first heard of this game because of its value, that's not really why I wanted to play it. There are a lot of wacky enemies and stage mechanics, and after playing through the game with my buddy for the first time, I stayed up all night to complete it a second time on the higher difficulty setting. I found it to be quite nice and relaxing still, which is basically the only reason it's the game I picked today, as I've never played this after work. I also never even booted my own copy or played my own PC Engine console (more on that in the next paragraph).



You can't talk about Magical Chase without talking about how it is the most expensive game to ever see a regular release, with copies fetching well over 10k dollars everytime nowadays. I personally own a custom made reproduction cart, which is even rarer than the real deal. Contrary to the PC Engine (the Turbografx-16 in Europe and Japan), the TG-16 has some weird protection in its HU-cards (there exist the PC Henshin, which is the third version of the region converter which allows you to play North American copies on the Japanese PC Engine, which was actually developped by a Quebec dude, and which I own). You really have to know the right people in order to get your hands on that, and even then that's not the most likely thing to happen.



I also seeked to buy two copies of this, which I did. A friend of mine bought one from a Canadian turbo enthusiasts' test run batch, and let me in on their little experience. They eventually sold a tiny batch of these carts, and I got there just in time to buy what I wanted. I gifted my friend Phil (who doesn't like cutesy girly games at all) one of the copies as a troll gift (he likes horizontal 2D shooters, however, so it wasn't entirely troll).



I've technically lied though, as I actually had heard of Magical Chase before (in a litteral sense). During FlashFlashRevolution's 6th Official Tournament, a chart for a song called “Ochitsukeruwakenaiwayo!” (by a guy going by “Yuuyu”) was used for Round 3 in my division. I later learned that the song was sort of a medley/arrangement of music from the Title Screen, the jingle that played after pressing “Run” on said title screen, and the first level of Magical Chase.

The game was initially released for the PC Engine, then got a slightly enhanced version 2 years later on the Turbografx-16. It was later made available on PC and on the Game Boy Color.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 17th

Today's challenge is: Biggest Letdown.

Another easy one today, which I'll try to keep short since I'm getting a little burned out. The thing is, I rarely let myself get let down by games, because I rarely get hyped for games. When other people hype up games, I tend to approach them with extreme caution, which hinders my personal enjoyment and leads me to be cautious even more. When I do get hyped up, it usually does live up to my expectations, so I guess I'm fairly lucky. The only other scenario is if a game starts up pretty good but then quickly goes down the shitter. However, I'm gonna focus on the other one.

Examples of games that fall in that scenario for me are Pokemon Stadium, Hagane and Smash Brawl. But I'm not gonna talk about any of those. Instead, I'll talk about Dead or Alive 4, mostly because I wanna have at least one game from a Microsoft console. I don't know how many times I watched the first trailer from that game, I actually saved it to my computer when it was released. I thought it was sooooooo epic, and a great step up from Dead or Alive 3, which had been my favorite fighter ever since I got to play it for a few days straight the very week the original Xbox came out.



It took me forever to get to play it, since I was already fully into trophy hunting at the time and thus spent most of my “modern gaming” budget on the PS3. Hell, I already had over 500 hours of playtime on Dead or Alive 5 at that point. I actually accidentally bought a 360 while doing late night eBay auction sniping. How did that happen? Well, someone online was about to win a 360 with a 20$ bid. I was like “fuck that you aren't paying 20$ for a current gen console”, so I bid 40$ just to raise his bid (I can be a real asshole sometimes). However, 20$ was close to his max bid, so I ended up being the highest bidder with 30$ or something, and I won it myself for that price. Oh well, there was a handful of games I wanted on the console anyway, so that didn't really annoy me.



Dead or Alive 4 was the first game I bought on the console, and I played it as soon as the 360 arrived. And I felt let down, but why that happened is hard to put into words, but mostly, I thought it was a little stiff compared to DOA3 and DOA5, that the new cast and new costumes were lame, and it didn't have huge launching attacks like the one before (when Ayane would shitkick you across the arena). Plus, having played DOA5 a lot beforehand, I felt like this was a major downgrade. I could feel something similar when playing the first two games, but when comparing them to their contemporaries, mostly Virtua Fighter and Tekken, I felt like they were pure gold.



It's honestly a game I should revisit with a new mindset, as it's really bumming me out how that's the only game in the series that didn't blow my mind once I had actually played it. I played 3, 5 and 6 on their release day (or close to), and the only one of them I encountered any sort of issues with was the 6th one, although it still felt great. Maybe one day, I'll play it again and enjoy it like the rest.



Oh, and juuuuust in case: I know everyone knows it as the “tits fighter” with the whole boob physics engine thing, but it's so, so much more than that. You shouldn't dismiss the franchise because of this, because you'd be missing out on what is, to me, the greatest fighting game franchise of all time, no less than that. At least among those with 3D models.

Only available on the Xbox 360.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 18th

Today's challenge is: “Back in the day” Game.

Let's go way back, to a console I've very rarely had the chance to play: The Atari 2600. I actually don't own any Atari console, but that will change in the future, I'm sure, as I've been looking up for 7800 offers here and there. Anyway, one of my friends (sup Jay) has a small Atari collection, and he once tried to impress me with one of the games he had. It worked, and I went and bought it afterwards, despite not owning the console to play it on.



The game he made me play was Solaris, a very late release for the console. I'll do my best to explain what the game is, because I don't really get it, and I just go into a crazed frenzy whenever I play it. It's an open world action game, and you're a lone spacecraft pilot travelling across the galaxy, fighting against alien squadrons, conquering planets (or blowing them the fuck up, more on that later), invading enemy bases, picking up people on planets, stuff like that. Like I said, I don't have a clue what's actually going on, but it's somewhere around those lines, and I'm not going to research it, I'll discover what it's about by myself in the future.

So, for a game I know so little about, why is it my pick for today? BECAUSE IT'S AMAZING, OH FUCK IT'S AMAZING. There is literally nothing on the console that looks and feel as advanced as this game, save for maybe some modern day tech demos if you wanna count those. The game graphics may be ahead of their time, and the whole concept might also be, but those sounds are pure Atari 2600 gold. You know the classic explosion noise on the console? Well, variations of it play non stop through the game. It's crazy.



Let's talk about the planet blowing thing. You can select a planet on the map if you wanna visit it, and you'll “jump” there afterwards. You'll fly close to the ground and do whatever it is you need to do near ground level. Eventually, you'll come across a small building that is basically a gas station, you can go there to refuel your airplane. What you can also do, however, is shooting it down. It doesn't blow up just the gas station, oh no, somehow I guess those are always connected to the planet's entire fuel supply. So after shooting it down, your spaceship will automatically speed up, as the whole planet starts to collapse, then after takeoff, debris from the planet will fly all over the place from behind you and the whole galaxy will try to hunt you down. That is so fucking crazy, I literally can't even. Oh and you better believe that the Atari's soundchip is having a fucking seizure while this happens.



Sadly the above gif runs at too few FPS, so you can't see the planet flashing and breaking down before the ship escapes.

Ah, just thinking about it makes me happy, and I wanna play it. Exclusive to the glorious Atari 2600.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 19th

Today's challenge is: “Not the best, but having fun.”

I thought I should play with the meaning of this theme a little. I'm pretty sure it should be “average game I enjoy”, but I decided to take it a little bit more literally. Therefore, today, I'm gonna talk about Psychic World (or Psycho World, if you're playing it on the MSX2), a great game that is mostly defined by not being “the best”, according to yours truly. I will cover all three versions of this rather obscure title in order to explain why I'm saying that.



First of all, all three versions of the game are the same at the core, but they're also all significantly different. It's essentially a Megaman clone (and even though I enjoy playing this more than playing Megaman, it is definitely not as good), where you play as a girl with latent psychokinesic powers unlocked with some cutting edge headband. As you play, you can unlock various powers and switch between them as you need to. You mainly have elemental powers (like fire, ice, sonic, etc) and some support powers (like levitation, teleportation and invincibility).

The girl in question is called Lucia, and she was the assistant of a certain Dr. Knavik along with her twin sister, Cecile. Cecile is kidnapped by some monsters, and Lucia sets out to rescue her. It turns out that this was all part of Dr. Knavik's plan, who mind controls Cecile to turn her against Lucia. After peacefully incapacitating her twin sister, Lucia is shocked to find out that Dr. Knavik actually is in alien (sounds familiar?) and unleashes all of her abilities in a furious rage, which is where the story concludes.



Now that this has been said, let's talk about all three versions, starting with the Game Gear as it was the first one I've played. This version probably has the best combo of storyline, sound and controls, however almost half of the levels are missing, and the game doesn't look super great. I don't know the reason behind this as the Game Gear is pretty much identical to the Master System in terms of hardware, except slightly better since it makes use of a better color palette. The psychic powers are lined up horizontally, which makes it easy to stop and pick which one you want. Plus, the game pauses while you switch powers, which seems obvious, but sadly the Master System version doesn't do that. The music and sound design are identical to the console version, and it's absolutely fantastic, which is rare by 8-bits SEGA standards. The whole storyboard cutscene set is there (but it's ugly). However, due to there being fewer levels, some of the game engine cutscenes are missing, which is a shame since those were more on the lighthearted side, which gave the game a lot of personality. The cover art also sucks dick, unless you get the Japanese version, which looks pretty cool. Another plus exclusive to this version is that it's dirt cheap.



The Master System version is probably the one with the best presentation and graphics overall, as all the cutscenes, be storyboard or game engine, are present. All the levels are there, with some being slightly different from the Game Gear version, mostly due to how that one would sometimes blend two levels together. This would be the best version of the game if it wasn't for the fact that the game doesn't pause while selecting your powers, which make some sections very frustrating design wise, such as when you're forced to switch back and forth on top of a conveyor belt that drops you to your death. Also, you really have to be a fan of the Tonka artwork, because that's what you'll get on the cover, but honestly it's one of the less kitsch ones they've done. You can get this one for several times the price of the Game Gear version, but still usually under 60 USD.



Lastly, you have the original version on the MSX2. I haven't played this one, and I sure as hell am never going to own it because like most of the games on the console, you have to expect paying over a grand to own it. The cover art is one of my favorite of all time, however, which is why I've used it on the grid above. In this version, the artwork and sound engineering are drastically different, and all the levels are designed differently, though I'd say the Game Gear and Master System versions were improvements on that end. There are no cutscenes made with the game's engine, but a few more with detailed pixel art. I still count this as a flaw, however. This version also has the best music of the bunch, and the final fight with the alien doctor is a lot better than it is in the other two versions. And thank god, you can pause while switching which powers you are using. I don't know how well the controls feel in this one as I've never even seen a MSX2 in real life, but I'd like to assume they at least function like the other versions, since they look to me like they would.

So, which one is the best? Honestly, you could go either way, there's no clear cut winner. They each have their own strenghts and issues, which is why I said this game was “defined” by never being the best. It's not the best when you compare it against Megaman, and it's not the best when you compare it to either other versions. If you want the best controls, you pick the Game Gear version. If you want the full experience, you go with the Master System version. And if you want the most advanced version, you go with the MSX2 version. If I'm picking myself, I'll give a tiny, TINY edge to the Master System version, because I'm able to ignore the power switching issues and because I'm a diehard fan of that console.



On a last note, the first I heard of this game was after skimming through my friend Phil's personal list of “Master System games to look out for” after he had looked through the console's library. I was pretty shocked when I checked it out, and I then made acquiring both the SEGA versions a top priority. As it stands, I rank it as the 2nd best Master System game, so it is really fucking good, and definitely not average. What is my #1 game on the console, you ask? I think you'll find out sooner than later...

As mentionned multiple times in today's post, the game is out on the MSX2, the SEGA Master System, and the SEGA Game Gear.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 20th

Today's challenge is: Criminally Underlooked.

As hinted yesterday, today will be about my favorite game on my favorite console (the SEGA Master System, to reiterate), which is itself criminally underlooked, unless you live in Europe or in Brazil. Let's get into it.

Most people have heard of Ninja Gaiden. People will usually think of the NES trilogy or maybe the more recent ones when hearing the name. If you're asking for old Ninja Gaiden games not on NES, you might hear about the arcade version, but no one ever mentions the Master System version while that one is easily and by far the best one in the series. THAT should be a retrogaming sin, and therefore I'm gonna talk about SEGA's take on Ninja Gaiden.



So to clarify, this game isn't a port or anything, but a brand new game with a similar design. Everything other than how it remains a ninja platformer has changed, so much so that you could call this Ninja Gaiden 4 or something. The special weapons are mostly different, you have a special move that hurts everything on the screen at the cost of 5 units off your lifebar, you can hang pretty much everything your hands come across, the wall jumping has been rethought into something that feels a whole lot more natural, and the knockback hitstun has been made a lot more fair.



In comparison to the NES games, It's definitely on the easy side, but while some people may complain about that, I don't think this is a bad thing. It's not too easy, you still have to put in the work in order to complete the game, but I'd rather have than than having an unfair experience, like the respawning enemies you'll find in the NES trilogy. Sure, they're not impossible, and difficulty is a good thing when the game gives you means of fighting back, but I still prefer the easier one because of its design.



While the SMS game is visually a LOT superior to the NES games, the same can't be said of the music. Even though it did do a pretty good job overall, the SMS can't compete with the NES there, but that's a console issue, and imo the only area the SMS falls short in the 8bits console war (unless you count the library, but that's not the console's fault). Even with a FM enabled console (and there aren't many compatible games), there's just no way you can compare them. Also, the NES trilogy's music is legendary.



Back to the game itself, it also features those storyboard cutscenes, and in my opinion the story is pretty fun, though the translation seems to have been botched. There are some fun and unique moments in the game too. In the second level, you can see “SEGA” written on some buildings, and the boss of that level is sitting down the whole time as his goons come after you, and he just gets more and more beaten up the more you slash him down. There's also this little bandana animation on your character, which wasn't a very common thing at the time. All the levels are very unique themselves. They're also nice and colorful, and their bosses all work in very unique way. The boss of the waterfall level might be a little disappointing, but at least he has two phases. Other than that, it's just a pleasure to go through them.



When I got this game, I went to visit my friend Phil (always the same people coming back in these stories, huh) so we'd go through it together, and I think it left a great impression on the both of us. About 2 years later, I showed it to his brother Jay (yup, same people), which led him to buy a Genesis SMS adapter which he had ignored up to this point, and which was pretty weird considering he was also a SEGA fan. I ended up gifting him a SMS myself recently, as Felix (oh god can't I stop talking about the same folks) was getting rid of his collection. I know full well that he's going to add this game to his collection eventually, and in the meantime, I'll try to spread the gospel of 8bits SEGA a bit more.

The game is exclusive to the obvious GOAT of retro consoles.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

I really dig these write-ups, it gives surprising insight into your video gaming universe. It makes me want to try it out, see what games I'd end up talking about!

Also, I have never tried Mirror's Edge. I feel like this is something you should introduce me to...

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

Anytime you're over here then!

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 21st

Today's challenge is: Depressing Game.

Today's challenge is a fun one, despite the theme. While it could be interpreted as a depressing gaming experience, in an unintended way, I prefer to think of it as a game that emphasizes a “lower” mood overall. And while I'm more of someone who likes high octane stimulation, I can definitely appreciate a game that tries to pull me into a state of vulnerability, if it's done right, and that's what I'll be focusing on today.



The game I picked for this theme is A Rose in the Twilight. It's a 2D puzzle platformer, and one of the games in a series of “cute horror games” that give similar vibes, courtesy of Nippon Ichi Software. The other games in that series that I'm familiar with are the two Yomawari games, htoL#NiQ and void tRrLM();. I however consider A Rose in the Twilight to be the greater one. You play as a little girl with a rose tied around her waist, which has the power to either draw or give the color red from and to various objects. Removing the red color from an object freezes it in place, even if it's falling mid air, and giving it back allows it to behave normally. There's also an egg shaped Giant that can help you progress, either by acting as a platform, tossing items or tossing the little girl herself. You have to progress by using those mechanics. There are also a few sections where the only way to progress is to commit suicide, and you'll usually find a device to help her do so (in the most brutal of ways, so that her spilling red blood can activate a mechanism). The little girl is immortal, but is not without fear or pain, so these segments do a great job of conveying strong emotions.



You might be wondering how horror and cuteness work together, and honestly I can't exactly explain it. So many opposing themes occur at the same time in these games, and it's really something you have to experience yourself to understand. All I can say is this formula needs to be explored a lot more. If you've played Undertale, you can kiiiiiinda get a similar vibe, although in my opinion it only conveys a tiny fraction of what it can feel like.



The story is told through blood memories that you collect through the game, and it's honestly very hard to make anything out of it until you've collected all of them. The soundtrack that plays through those is absolutely gorgeous, and has an organic feel that you don't find all that often in gaming anymore. I'll take the liberty of linking one of my favorite pieces from the game after this paragraph (really love how clearly you can hear the piano's hammer in this one). Style wise, since colors are so important to the main mechanics, the entire game is black, white, shades of grey and red, and it further supports the depressing mood this way. It doesn't look nearly as good as htoL#NiQ did, but I feel like it was intentional.



I played this one shortly after its release in 2017 (pretty much the best year in gaming in my opinion) since I had been very impressed with it's predecessor. I absolutely ate it up, and I give it a solid 9 out of 10 at the absolute lowest, despite how simple and short it is. Get yourself a nice blanket, and give this gem a shot if you're interested. Also, try to find all the small Easter eggs. I personally loved killing the friendly giant in the only way possible.



The game is out on PS Vita and PC. It's also one of the rare games in this list that I do not own a copy of, and instead only have the digital version. It did come out physically however, so you can be sure that I'll get it sooner than later.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 22nd

Today's challenge is: Favorite ACTIVE Franchise.

Alright, I'm starting this one late so I don't have a lot of time. Let's hurry up!

I went back and forth with this theme, and it was another problematic one since I had to add rules to avoid lying. Those rules are as follows: Even though I'm picking an active franchise, I have to consider every game in the series, including spinoffs, and if there is a sub par title in said franchise, I can't use it. That's because otherwise, I'd have to pick a game from a franchise I've already used or planned to use in this challenge, which was bound to happen since I'm mostly using titles I really, REALLY like. I had initially narrowed it down to Gal*Gun, which isn't all that great, but everygame is solid and pretty much the king of its near extinct genre in the modern era. But then, something happened this week, and I thought of something much, much better.



That franchise is the Aleste franchise, which I wasn't really considering because the last Aleste game was in the early 90s... Until Christmas of 2020, that is! Just a few months ago, Aleste collection was released on PS4. It features all of the Game Gear and Master System Aleste games, with a brand new Game Gear title made for the occasion, known as Aleste 3. On top of that, a new, modern era game is currently in development, codenamed Aleste Breach (sure, Compile no longer manages the franchise, but M2 is, so close enough). And since Aleste kicks way more ass than Gal*Gun ever did, it was a very satisfying epiphany.

While I used the collection for today's challenge, I'll mostly focus on Power Strike II, and I'll include a story about another title, which is the one that made me think of this franchise. But first, let's say what I have to say about Aleste Collection. I received my copy last week, and I haven't played it yet. However, I'm really disappointed that they only included the 8-bits games, and not the other 3, which are MUSHA, Space Megaforce and Robo Aleste. Also, I almost gave in and let myself buy the 400$ collector's edition, which came with a mini Game Gear that could play the new one they made. But I only got the regular one for one fourth of this figure. Oh well.



Anyway, about Power Strike II... Well, it's about as amazing an 8-bits shmup as you can get. In my book, nothing even comes CLOSE to packing as much of a punch as this one does. It has the best graphics, fantastic controls and weapon systems, a mindblowing and over the top soundtrack (might be the very best soundtrack on the Master System period). I had a copy made-to-order just for myself from some guy on the internets, and I carry it everywhere I go where I can introduce it to people. The only things I'd do different with this one is that I'd rather play as Ellinor instead of this pothunter mercenary asshole, which is a very minor complaint, and I'd make the game sliiiightly less unforgiving when you take a hit. You lose half of your power ups, and you're better off resetting the game if it happens even once. I've only beaten it once, and otherwise, I get a game over on stage 4 or 5 if I get hit a single time before then.



That was a tiny review, but like I said, I'm short on time. I'll be sure to add a bunch of Gifs, however. Now, about the other game... Well, that game is MUSHA, a crazy expensive Aleste title on the Genesis (though, to be faire, almost all the Aleste games are well into triple digit figures, even for loose carts, with the possible exceptions of the first Aleste on Game Gear and the first Power Strike, but for both of them, you still have to be lucky to find them under 100$.



Some of you may know about Felix selling his video game collection. Recently, he approached me and asked me if I was interested in buying Musha for 100$. I was like “lolwat”, then he said he would do 50$, but no lower (apparently it was a typo, but he still rolled with what happened next). I said “lol sold” and sent him 60$, then he actually sent me his game for a joke of a price. And now I own it.

Upon receiving the game, I inspected it and noticed a star was scribbled in a small hole visible from the inside of the game's case. I looked at the reverse side of the cover art and found a gigantic, heartwarming message addressed to me (though I initially thought it might have been there since before Felix aquired it). Normally, people would be outraged that such a valuable collectible would have been done like this, but I thought it was the most amazing thing of all, and actually ended up reversing the whole cover so that his message would be showing on the front.

Felix, thank you so much for this, it feels as though our nerdy bromance has reached unspeakable levels. I love you man, and I will take care of and cherish this lil' kid of yours that I adopted as though it was of my own blood.



Aleste 1 and 2 are out on Game Gear. Power Strike and Power Strike II are out on the glorious Master System. MUSHA is exclusive to the Genesis. Space Megaforce is the sole Nintendo Aleste title, and is available on the SNES. Robo Aleste is exclusive to the SEGA CD, and the Aleste collection is available on PS4 and Switch.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 23rd

Today's challenge is: Indie Game.

We're doing an indie game today, awesome! This theme is one of the more promising ones as these games don't necessarily get all the coverage they deserve, and there's also a huge variety of titles to choose from. That being said, however, I knew what I was gonna talk about today from the very beginning of this challenge. My pick for “Indie Game” is Rabi-Ribi, my favorite Metroidvania (it overthrew Strider 2014 to take the title, which is no small feat).



Back in 2016, a collector friend of mine (same guy that let me in on the Magical Chase thing, actually) told a little discussion group we're both a part of that a company called LimitedRunGames was releasing physical PS4 copies of “Shantae: Risky's Revenge” and “Shantae and the Pirate's Curse”. Upon learning of this, I immediately flocked over to their website and lined up to order a copy of each of these titles. I thought their business model was cool, so I checked out their confirmed upcoming titles, and found out they specialized in distributing physical copies of relatively niche games, usually independent ones. I was rather unfamiliar with most of the titles, though one of them caught my attention pretty quickly. It was listed as a platformer and bullet hell hybrid, which was a surprising combo. That was how I first heard of Rabi-Ribi. I decided to stick around and regularly check out the company until that game was up for sale, which ultimately ended up costing me SEVERAL thousand dollars along the way, as I ended up buying a LOT on there in the years I spent waiting for Rabi-Ribi, and I guess that I'm still doing that to this day.

I already said Rabi-Ribi was a “platformer bullet hell metroidvania”, but what else is it? Well, a lot of things, so let's take it from the top. You play as a pet rabbit named Erina who was turned into a bunny girl, who must travel the land in order to subjugate and rally other pantless girls to your cause with the help of her trusty squeaky hammer, a time stopping amulet, bombs and various weapon, and, of course, the naggy yet adorable fairy named Ribbon. If you haven't figured it out from this description, it is indeed a moe dream consisting of only the cutest anime girls.



But don't let any of this fool you. This game is INSANELY brutal, and by far one of the most difficult games I've ever had the chance to play. Even on the normal setting, you'll be wondering how the hell it's even possible, and I'm not even talking about the fact that “normal” is only the third difficulty level in a set of 8. Thankfully, the game is very fair towards the player and doesn't rely on cheapshots to increase the difficulty, but you have to be REALLY good for sometimes very long periods of time without missing a beat. I lent a PS4 copy of the game to my great friend xXOpkillerXx/Oppiie, who is one of the best gamers I've ever had the chance to meet, and he's almost thrown the towel on the fourth difficulty, something I could not have imagined him do ever.



Design wise, the graphics are bright and colorful, and styled in a very retro fashion. The landscape varies a ton in very refreshing ways, and makes sure to always keep you visually stimulated. The game being a danmaku (technical term for bullet hell) boss rush as well, that stimulation is increased a hundredfold by the beautiful and dazzling boss attack patterns. The music is absolutely incredible here as well, and I regularly play the soundtrack disc that came with the game (it's actually been sitting in my CD-i for the past year at least!), and recently, a symphonic album of the game's OST was released to celebrate the game's fifth anniversary. I bought it despite of how it added up to almost a hundred dollars with shipping and everything, though I haven't received it yet. I must also add that I'm usually iffy about metroidvanias because of the backtracking which is a major pain in my ass, but this one makes sure that you never need to do that if you don't want to, as there are warp points all over the damn place.



Overall, Rabi-Ribi is an amazing, adorable and unique game that, if the ruthless difficulty doesn't discourage you, will have you coming back a lot. I consider it to be an all time great game. Special shoutouts to Volupture (aka xMUSICxMASTERx (sorry lol)) who has a spectacular enough set of balls (or boobs I guess?) to try and beat this game on her first playthrough on stream. You get my admiration for that, and I hope you do manage to finish the damn thing.

If you, too, are a bunny lover, the game is available on PS4, PS Vita, Switch and PC. And as a last note, I know this might not qualify as an indie game depending on your definition of the term, but I don't give a shit as it is definitely worth talking about for any excuse you can get.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

the most Sven "ongoing series" choice that was ever possible

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

What, Aleste? Why?

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 24th

Today's challenge is: “Not usually my thing, but...”

Last one from the original template image, and the last 7 themes of the challenge will be ideas given to me by various friends!

Soooo, today could have been two things. Either a turn based RPG, which I universally despise, but I've had enough of those in this challenge. The other option would be a very very passive game, like a visual novel that doesn't have any real skill required (therefore, not like Ace Attorney or Zero Escape). And I decided to go with the latter.



Not too long ago, a friend of mine asked me about a great anime that had H-scenes in it, because a friend of his wanted to watch that, and apparently I was the man of the hour to him for this stuff. I'm not really into hentai, it doesn't really bother me, but it's almost always complete shit. I told him that, but also said I would think about it. A few days passed, and I thought of the Grisaia franchise. Told him that while the anime had some sex, the visual novel had the hardcore stuff, at least the PC version did. I actually had the Grisaia Trilogy on Switch, so around that time, I decided to give it a shot to see if I recommended something that at least made a bit of sense (the Switch version doesn't have porn in it).

Sooooo I started the whole thing, and... Well, at first, I wasn't really impressed. It was entertaining at times, and didn't mind the cast at all, but the cringe was real. However, a few hours in, I found myself in the Amane route, and then this big dramatic flashback started. And holy fuck did the whole thing start blowing my mind.



When it comes to anime, I'm FAR more of a slice-of-life guy than an action/drama/whatever person (so, like, the opposite of what I like in video games I guess), but this massive change in tone got me hooked instantly. The narration was superb, and savored every minute of this 8 hours long arc. There wasn't any choice involved for this whole section, just followed along as the girls (and their teacher) tried to survive their bus crash in the middle of nowhere in a rather relatable fashion, and they all had great personalities as well. This flashback alone made the game worth playing, and that was only one of 5 routes, which all split into 2 other routes each for a bad and good ending each. The other ones aren't quite as good I'd say, but most of them were still really nice.



Once you're done doing all of the routes, you can move on to the second title in the series, which is litterally just a background read for the protag, and I thought the whole thing was quite nice, even though it was a little over the top dramatic. The reason I thought it was great is because I'm not a fan of flavorless protagonists you're just supposed to project into, and I much, much prefer a well constructed character whose perspective you're supposed to warm to and understand separately. I wouldn't say he was a super well constructed protag, but hey, I'll take what it can give me, and I support the design choice.



Then, in the third game, the protagonist is captured and the girls from the previous games unite to save him using the skills the protagonist taught them back then. I thought the whole operation was an incredible thrill ride from start to finish, and the “final fight” at the end was also pretty good. Again, this game is almost all story and no interaction, aside from a few things at the very end, but this convinced me I absolutely had to watch the anime (it wasn't quite as good, but there was no way it could live up to the whole thing anyway, so considering that, it was alright).

Lastly, you have some “what if” and “after story” special features, which are either extentions of girl routes, or silly fanservice, and other stuff like that. Overall, the whole thing provides almost 100 hours of reading content, which may seem like a lot, but I was totally captivated by the whole thing. I guess I did suggest my friend something legit after all!



On a last note, I had actually played a game from that franchise before, a spinoff title on Vita (Japanese only), which was called “Grisaia no Kajitsu Spin-out!? Idol Magical Girl Chiruchiru Michiru”. I got it because it was only text, and I got the platinum on it after like 5 minutes of holding R on the console. I made a silly video out of the whole thing, which I will link after this paragraph. A lot of my friends actually got that platinum using my copy, so it was totally worth the 40$ I paid for it! I think an English version of this was released somewhere at some point, but I've never seen anything about it anywhere.



While the original games were released on PSP, Vita and Windows, the English trilogy is only available on Switch and PC. You'll have to play the PC version if you want the pornographic scenes, and you'll also have to look somewhere other than Steam to find it.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 25th

Today's challenge is: “Best game recommended to me by a friend”.

All right, now we're onto the additional themes that were suggested by friends of mine. This theme was suggested by T-Force.

A couple years ago, I asked Felix if he'd want to do a little challenge with me. We'd each give the other a retro game to complete/master, and go back and forth like that in hopes of expanding our gaming experience beyond what we naturally feel drawn to (reserving a right to veto dumb suggestions, of course). He gave me Atomic Runner, which I beat fairly quickly (found out that the spiky balls were OP against bosses, something Felix was surprised to hear), then he gave me Eternal Champions on the Genesis (he said I could use any character, and only had to beat the game once, but more on that later), and I gave him Keio 2 on the Sega Saturn (and the fucker never even beat it). I went to a local game store, bought the game for 5$, then I completed the Eternal Champions challenge in a rather ridiculous way: I got to the roster in arcade mode which only shows one character at a time, scrolled right twice to see this circus girl called Jetta, didn't even bother to look at the rest of the cast and grinded her until I could beat the game like once every two tries. When I told Felix, I don't know how he felt about it exactly, but he probably thought it was fucking retarded.

After that, I said he could still do Keio for the next round (I don't think he even played it again), and he gave me another childhood game of his, which is the game I'm gonna talk about today: Rocket Knight Adventures, for the Genesis as well.



I didn't own this game, but my friend Phil had it and he agreed to lend it to me for a while. At first, I wasn't too impressed with it, and I thought the first 3 levels had great variety, but were a little boring. Things picked up after that with the 4th level, which was the flying battleship level. There I thought the design was starting to look like something I wanted in a game like this, then on the next stage, it started out with a shmup section, then you were attacking the main enemy base, then you saw your rival, who climbed into a giant robot that's several time the height of the screen and tried to crush you, and then you found a robot of your own while running away, jumped in the cockpit and your cutesy face turns into a pissed off frown, then the screen says “FIGHT!” and then the two robots engage in spiky ball fistycuffs and OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS GAME?!



And guess what? It only gets crazier from there. You go into outer space (yes, shmup level), the rival is there, and has a laser cannon that can cover almost all of the screen, and then a giant spaceship that can warp and morph into pretty much anything as you destroy its parts, then it's on to the mothership, which has a ton of bosses. You settle the score with your rival, he gets frustrated when you defeat him and blows up the wall behind you, and now you're being sucked into outer space. You have to hold onto some bars to avoid dying while the enemy is trying to make you fall, but eventually you succeed and he's the one who gets sucked outside to die a miserable death.



But oh dear god, you've haven't even seen the best yet. Now you have to defeat the true mastermind, a pig uploaded into a computer that controls a giant robot. A cute boss fight plays as you start beating it up, but then it gets pissed and the regular boss theme plays, but faster and in a very eerie way. You still break it down and the whole mothership gets destroyed. You manage to escape into a tiny escape pod, BUT IT'S NOT OVER YET! As you plummet towards earth, the boss chases you to kill you before you escape, but you're out of ways to attack, so all you gotta do now is survive and hope that atmospheric reentry friction gets the best out of him...



When I first saw that, I had no fucking words to explain what happened. This is stuff made from dreams, and this being one of Felix's favorite games ever is no nostalgia goggles issue, because it definitely stands as one of my favorite Genesis games as well now.

Rocket Knight Adventure is just your average platformer. With a very unique and fast paced rocket mechanic. With incredible and diverse level design across the whole game. With the most unbelievable set of bosses you've ever seen. With some fairly great music and graphics slapped on. No, really, it's crazy good, and you should play it. Felix, thank you for making me play this, although you should finish Keio 2 you stupid fuck kthx.



The OG Ossum 'Possum game is exclusive to the Genesis. The Super Nintendo “version” is called Sparkster, but it sucks anyway.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 26th

Today's challenge is: Game that no ones seems to know.

This theme was suggested by Hakulyte.

Honestly, I could have picked a lot of things if we were talking about your average gamer. I mean, most people I know know at the most about 5 games in this entire challenge so far. Even with some of my more connoisseur friends, I could still have picked some obscure Japan only modern game, and it would definitely qualify. However, I have something better in mind for today.



The game I picked is Blue Reflection, a turn based RPG (yes, another one of those, that doesn't really please me lol) that's very similar to the Persona games. It's also published by Koei Tecmo (the people behind Ninja Gaiden) and developed by Gust (the guys who make the Atelier games). Not exactly small studios, but despite that, and despite the fact that a lot of my friends are into these kinds of games, only one of them had even heard of the title before, and all he knew of the game was a shitty trailer for the Vita version (which is only available in Japanese). I personally had never heard anything about this game either; I just saw it sitting on a shelf in one of my preferred modern gaming hunting spots, and since it intrigued me, I ended up picking it up blindly.



In this game, you play as a former ballet prodigy who can no longer dance due to an injury. She meets with two strange girls and gains the power to transform into a mystical warrior or something (magical girl style) to fight against emotion monsters, predominantly in the other dimension, which she is quite thrilled about since in that form, her leg is no longer injured. The game has two main segments: one is the real world (which is mostly limited to her school and some cutscenes at home) where she can talk to other students, text people on her smartphone, start quests, improve her friendships and whatnot, and the other is the other world, which is governed by strong emotions, and depending on which emotions are in play, the world changes accordingly. You can also find a girl in the real world, trigger an event that will overwhelm her with an emotion, and you'll have to go defeat enemies to bring her back to normal. Really, it's a Persona game. Sometimes, big ass monsters will attack the school in the real world, and you can attack them there as well.



The music is pretty great honestly, and I think the graphics are fantastic, especially in the other world, where everything looks incredibly vivid. The combat system is also surprisingly satisfying, even for a turn based hater like me. Even when it's not your turn, there's a bunch of shit you can do and there's always some kind of passive strategy you have to keep in mind. By the end of the game, you manage a ton of gauges at the same time in order to give yourself an edge, so you really are always doing something, which is great! The attacks you use are also super flashy, and that's also a huge and welcome distraction.



There's one more thing this game is known for (among its small dedicated fanbase, at least), and it's the ungodly amount of fanservice the game gets. It's ridiculous how often you see characters half naked or bathing or trading underwear or grabbing each other's boobs or doing other stupid anime girl shit, to a point where it can become an annoying distraction, but I'd say it doesn't hurt the experience too much if you can deal with this kind of stuff. Personally, I'd say I didn't mind the game taking every excuse to turn the entire school into a gigantic wet t-shirt contest because it never felt like it was the real meat of the game, and there's always something going on I guess.



While I honestly liked this wayyyy more than Persona 4 (the only one I played and completed), I'm not gonna pretend that this is a better product overall. Sure, the dungeons are far better, the visuals are uncomparable and so is the gameplay, and the main character is honestly cute and fun to get into, but it's not without its shortcomings. You do so little stuff in the real world, it can feel pretty constricting. There are also only 3 playable characters, so there's not much room for variety or customization. The biggest flaw is probably how the game is all about emotions, but sucks ass at conveying anything other than depression. But hey, I still liked it, and I think any Persona fan should check it out and give it a shot as they'll probably have a great time with what this has to offer.



Blue Reflection is available on Vita (only in Japanese), PS4 and PC.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

I really like the transformation!

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

I rly like ur sig

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 27th

Today's challenge is: Dead franchise you wish would be revived.

This theme was suggested by Evascythe.

I had a lot of options going into this one, yet I kinda knew from the start what I wanted to talk about. I'm gonna talk about Atlus' Trauma Center series, and besides general talk about the franchise itself, I'll focus on my my favorite game in the series (which is also my favorite game on the system itself), which is Trauma Center: Second Opinion.



I was never a huge fan of motion controlled games (until recently, as VR is a completely different experience), so I definitely had a weird relationship with the Wii. There were a few things I really liked about it, such as being able to play Gamecube games on it, and having an open arms setup with the controllers (with the Wiimote and the nunchuck, something I could only replicate using the weird Phantasy Star Online Keyboard Gamecube controller). That being said, It is still the only console my family went for during that generation.

Soon after it became obvious we would be getting one (and my dad did buy it on a whim at Walmart, which pissed off my mom), I started looking up games for the system, not wanting to be stuck with Wii Sports for like 2 years before I got anything else, and while watching trailers and other gameplay videos on a French video game website, I immediately became interested in Trauma Center after watching the French dudes play it. I ended up renting 3 games soon after we got it, which were Mario Galaxy, the Trauma Center game, and some other game my sister got for herself that I can't recall (I don't think I even played that other one and I'm pretty sure it was just some gay shovelware, and just in case you find my previous statement weird, know that video renting stores are still alive and well across Quebec).



I played Mario Galaxy for a bit, then started playing Second Opinion on hard difficulty and beat it in one sitting through a 30 hours session (excluding the extreme stages, I sucked at them). I just couldn't put the game down, I was too engrossed in it. I thought the difficulty scaled very nicely, yet always remained very challenging. I loved the storyline and the characters themselves, and the last level made me hold my breath for most of it because it was simply too epic.

That's about it for how I was introduced to the game, now let me explain what it actually is. It's basically a surgeon sim game, where you use a bunch of medical tools to perform operations on patients. At first, it's all about regular procedures, just to warm you up to the many tools at your disposal, then you start using a special power called a Healing Touch (its effect varies depending on the character you're using), then you start doing some unconventional stuff like fighting against bioengineered giant bugs (called GUILTs) causing lacerations all over the place and stuff like that (you also have to disarm a bomb). The key thing that made the game great (gameplay wise) in my opinion is that it's all about speed and precision, and it does a great job at sharpening your gaming instincts.



Upon finishing the game (or getting stuck on the extreme stages, but that's just an extra), I went to bed, then I looked up the series a little more, because I was still craving what it offered me. Turns out that besides the DS game that Second Opinion was a remake of, there was another game about to come out, New Blood, so I eagerly waited for it to be released, then got it pretty soon afterwards. It wasn't quite as good as the other one, and I found it to be much harder, but it was still a ton of fun.

Not too long after, I moved, and the third Wii game in the franchise (Trauma Team) sort of flew under my radar. I did get it eventually, and... It was really weird. I thought some of the characters sucked, and there were some drastic changes in flow and gameplay. But I still liked it. It's great, but doesn't shine when compared to the rest of the series. Then many, many years later, Felix gifted me a coral pink DS Lite that came with a ton of shovelware and a hot pink jewel box, which gave me a chance to play the only game in the series I hadn't played before, which was Under the Knife 2 (or Second Opinion 2 going by the Wii title). Now, maybe I suck ass with the DS, but this was way, wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy harder than the Wii games, mostly because you couldn't simultaneously switch tools while operating. It was still pretty fun, but I couldn't even beat the last stage on normal difficulty, and I felt like this had little to do with my reflexes or anything, so I chalk that one up as a slight disappointment.



All that being said, every game in the series was released in the same time period. Under the Knife 1 and 2 are available on the original DS, and Second Opinion, New Blood and Trauma Team are Wii exclusives. Considering how wildly the Switch has taken off, I'm very surprised that Atlus hasn't tried to bring it back, as it seems like a perfect console for that. I'd really, really like to jump back into it, preferably with a more modern take on the concept. But we'll see if it ever does.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 28th

Today's challenge is: Game with favorite music.

This theme was suggested by xMUSICxMASTERx (aka Volupture).

Alright, this is the big one I had to stretch my interpretation of certain themes for, since it fitted almost everywhere. And I'm actually going to cheat and pick two games for this one, as there's a lot to say here. That being said, the games are closely related, so it's not much worse than it was on Day 2, and they're games made by the same company, actually. Still, this is going to be a heck of a post, so let's get into it right now.

I'm talking about Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana and Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. Although if I'm being completely honest, Ys VIII is the one with the ever so slightly superior soundtrack, so I'll focus on it a little more. It's not exactly an obscure franchise, but it was never super popular in the West, despite how the recent titles were critically acclaimed. Before VIII came out, the only one I had played was Ys: The Vanished Omens on the glorious Master System, and it kind of sucked. The bump combat (basically, you don't have an attack button, you just hug your enemies to deal damage) was just really weird, though I still thought it was cool for what it was.



Fast forward a few years, and I ended up hosting Keith at my dad's place to help him ease into his new Quebec life. I was definitely intending to stimulate his interest into a broader spectrum of video games as well, and I'd say it worked out rather well. Among other things, he mentionned being a huge fan of Final Fantasy, which honestly made me cringe a lot, so I tried to introduce him to other franchises. I made him play the demo for Tales of Berseria, and it definitely worked out as he got the game himself pretty soon afterwards. On that high note, I told him to keep an eye on NIS America's games, as they were porting a new Ys a few months from then. I had seen screenshots and some online talk about it, but that was it. We looked up some trailers together, and I ended up being the one whose interest spiked this time around.

I preordered the Vita version at a local store, and picked it up on release, as I was absolutely stoked about this one. I mentionned in a previous write up that I've rarely felt let down by a game I was anticipating, and this one sure as hell isn't an exception. If it wasn't for Gravity Rush 2, this would probably be my favorite game of all time. I was actually the second person in the world to platinum the North American Vita version, and then while looking up the trophy lists and regions of the game, I found out you could platinum the game a total of 6 times. There are three regions with separate lists, those being Asia, Europe and North America, and they all have two versions of the game in the PS4 and Vita versions. “Cool”, I thought, “time to buy the same fucking game 5 more times”. I did just that and completed all of them for a total of 12 playthroughs. I also bought a 7th copy just because I wanted one with the Collector's Box. And I'm probably gonna buy an 8th copy in the future (for the Switch, this time), just because the reversible cover art is incredibly gorgeous. I have problems. On a side note, I did the same thing for Ys IX, but I preordered all three versions as soon as they were available. But more on that one later.



It's a little hard to explain what the story is without spoiling the entire thing, so BEWARE OF SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH. True to Ys tradition (with the sole exclusion of Ys Origin), the story covers a travelogue written by a man known as Adol Christin, the crimson haired adventurer. While travelling on a ship on his way to the unknown and working as a sailor to pay for the fare (along with his partner in crime, Dogi the wall crusher), a giant creature showed up and wrecked the ship as they were passing by the cursed isle of Seiren. Finding himself stranded on said island, he tries to round up survivors to work with them and figure a way out, though he himself is more interested in exploring the mysterious area than in saving his own skin. Soon after arriving however, he starts being plagued with weird dreams in which he observes an unknown civilization and its Maiden of the Great Tree, Dana Iclusia. While scouting the island, he figures out that this Dana is actually from the Jurassic era, and was a leading religious figure for her dragonkin people. Somehow, both Adol and the Dana of the past learn to communicate, and she helps him progress in his adventures. They eventually find the lady in question sleeping in a tree, seemingly for millions of years, and the group now tries to figure out what happened to her people, and what are all the strange things happening on this island, such as the resurgence of the dinosaurs, which should have been impossible. It turns out that Dana was chosen as the eternal watcher of her entire civilization as her people was brought to extinction through a process that was occuring once again in the current time. Dana fought valiantly against her fate, but even though she failed, she refused to ascend with the other watchers of the past, and managed to stick around until Adol's time to fight the process once more. With their new friend, Adol's party shifts to a new focus and hopes to find a way to stop the extinction event and thus save humankind. I'm not gonna go so far as to say what happens from there, but it's a great story in my opinion.



While this is undoubtedly a RPG, this is NOT of the shitty turn based variety. It's a high flying, blazing fast action RPG, almost like a Musou game. Each of the 6 playable characters has a wide array of offensive skills, and a decent amount of movement based skills as well. Design wise, the dungeons are mostly designed to look like natural formations, and it's therefore not just a bunch of crypts and temples that exist just to be dungeons basically. You'll instead have jungles, forests, mountains, caves, stuff like that, and I think this is one of the strongest points of the game. Hell, this is probably the only game in which the “water temple” is arguably the best dungeon. Along the way, you also gain adventure gear, which lets you progress to new areas in different ways, much like Link would with his hookshot, power gauntlets and whatnot. Speaking of Link, I want to say that as a life long 3D Zelda fan, the new Ys games shit on the entire Zelda franchise. So please, take notes and give them your attention. Praise Falcom. Oh and as side note, sure, the graphics arent super detailed or anything, but considering it was designed as a vita game originally, it holds up really well. And it's bright and colorful, which is personally all I could ask for.



But what about today's theme itself? The music? Oh fuck yes. It's the very best, at least to me. The majority of the game is balls to the walls power metal, with some tasty violin licks mixed in, and it works incredibly well with the gameplay and context. I honestly think I could round up my top 3 video game music tracks of all time with this game, and my top 5 by including Ys IX, and I wouldn't feel like I'm pushing it. Mitsuo Singa might take some flak for his hentai work, and he may be a one trick pony, but he and the JDK Falcom Band are fucking geniuses. “A-to-Z” is the true ending's final boss' theme, and hands down the best video game track I've ever heard in my life. “Deadly Temptation” is the regular boss theme, and probably my favorite boss theme as well across all of gaming. Then you have stuff like “Hope Alive” which plays at the climax of the prehistoric Dana side of things, which is not really the greatest track on its own, but within story context and with the accompanying visuals and sound effects, it carries a lot of weight. You also have the orchestral theme song, which brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. And that's already 4 all time great songs, and there's more than those in this game for sure.









This seems like a good place to start talking about Ys IX as well, as the fantastic music found in this game doesn't really need much context at all. All you need to know is that it's set in a fictional Paris of yore, specifically in the gothic era. And you can again hear some of that glorious power metal, coupled with harpsichords and even fucking saxophone, and yes, it works really well. All of the Grimwald raid themes are fantastic battlefield themes, like “Lacrima Crisis”, then you have stuff like “Cloaca Maxima”, which is just a very interesting track overall, and is a dungeon theme in-game. The theme that plays when facing strong enemies is “Feel Force”, and it has more of a prog metal feel instead, and it's really great too. The big, killer song from this game is “Norse Wind”, which is a loop that lasts over 2 minutes long and acts as a theme for... A gigantic open field. If this was Ocarina of Time (pardon the Zelda references, but both franchises are quite similar, so it's only fair), this would be Hyrule Field's theme. That is absolutely crazy. Like with VIII, there are also a ton more legendary tracks in here, like the main city theme, but I don't think the soundtrack (or even the game as a whole) is quite as legendary to me as what you had with the previous title, but it's just a tiny difference. The game itself did a few things better, but overall I think it gets outshined. Ys VIII has better colors, slightly better music, better level designs, better story, but Ys IX has better balance, movement, exploration and graphics. Opinions vary a great deal on that topic, but I think we can all agree they're both fantastic.









I'm not gonna go too much in depth about this one, but I'll still say a few things about it. I actually started playing the Japanese version as soon as it was released, and it took me just under a month to complete it. If you wonder how it's possible to 100% a game that's only in Japanese without a walkthrough, let's just say it's the kind of skill you might develop if you're a kid growing up without knowing a word of English. I remember having to “brute force” Metal Gear Solid as a kid, so it was a similar kind of experience, and I still have the luxury of using Google Translate whenever I wanna read what something is saying. This was also not the first time in recent history I went in blind into a huge foreign game, and another game like this might be coming out sooner than you'd think. Wink wink nudge nudge.



And speaking of walkthroughs, being the insane fuck that I am, I'm actually the one who wrote and posted the 30 000+ words walkthrough on Playstationtrophies.org, about 2 months before the English release. I bought the very computer I'm using right now just to do this, and I'm actually in the process of writing a new one that's better suited for the English version. And since I don't do things halfway, I also decided I wanted to be the first and fastest person to platinum the North American version of the game, since I had an obvious edge over everyone else. It turned out to be impossible to be first, because a couple journalists with review copies already got the platinum trophy, and I couldn't do anything about it. However, I did manage to be the first to do it post release, and also the fastest to do it as well, which I performed on stream. A 32 hours long stream, for a 32 hours long run.



I FUCKING love Falcom's modern games.

Ys VIII is out on Vita, PS4, Switch and PC. Ys IX is out on PS4 only, but will be coming soon to PC and Switch as well. And you should play them. Hell, Ys VIII even came out on mobile, and it looks great! You could always give that version a shot!

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

ok blue reflection looks cute as hell WHY IS IT SO EXPENSIVE

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

It is cute as hell! And I have no idea why this game is still crazy expensive. Sure, the physical version, I can wrap my head around, considering how there's rarity in play, but I have no idea why the digital version is so expensive. Hakulyte checked out the DLC set for the game, and it's all some serious bullshit as well.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 29th

Today's challenge is: Game you played as a joke but enjoyed unironically.

This theme was suggested by sanzath.

As was hinted yesterday, today's another Japan exclusive, and a game I'm about a thousand hours in and that I'm trying to make a decent strategy guide for. It should be the Magnum Opus of my “guide” career, because I don't think I could ever top this project. And all this for a game I bought because I thought of it as a joke...



To be fair, I wasn't the only one who thought of it as such, and I learned of the game the same way everyone else did. I randomly asked a friend of mine to introduce me to a game I had never heard of that I'd absolutely need in my collection, and he introduced me to this insanity: there's a sandbox picture mode in the game that our lovely nerds in the land of the rising sun have taken in a very cursed and you-are-going-to-hell direction. Also, the game is notorious for having the longest title in gaming history, which, when translated, reads as follows: Summertime High School: A Young Man's Notes—How a New Exchange Student Like Myself Ran Into His Childhood Friend on the School Tour, Then for Some Reason Became Super-Popular with the Girls for His Daily Scoops on the School Photography Club Even Though He Only Takes Panty Shots, and What He Thinks as He Goes on Dates During His Summer of Island School Life.

Doesn't exactly roll right off your tongue now, right? But what is it? Well, it's pretty unique, so I can't really compare it with any one game, however I can try to explain how it works. It's an open world game in which you play as a student attending summer classes on an island. The world advances linearly (like it does in Majora's Mask, except over the course of almost 3 months instead of 3 days) at a slightly faster rate, but there are way to make it skip ahead to avoid having to waste time idling or something. You can take a leak to skip ahead about 15 minutes, take a nap in the nurse's office, work a day shift at a summer job, stuff like that. An interesting aspect of this is that there's “almost” no real way to tell the time other than finding a clock on a wall somewhere and looking at it. I say “almost” because you can make a save, then look at your savefile, and it will say what time it is.



This game isn't really about studying however, but interacting with the students, citizens and island workers, so it's a bit more like Animal Crossing if I have to compare it with anything. It's fairly big too, and there's a decent amount of stuff to do in there. It can also get pretty crazy, like meeting a god at a shrine or whatnot. The main set of quests would be those having to do with the photography club, which the main character is a part of. Those usually involve interviewing various people on the island in order for the club to write a blog article about it. Despite what is hinted in the game's title, taking pictures of panties, while being something you can do, is super counter productive. It permanently messes up your diary entry for that character by displaying a photo of whatever underwear they were wearing during that day instead of their portrait, which, if you care about trophies, makes it really hard to complete the whole album of every single person that visits this island over the course of those 3 months, plus, if you are noticed, it damages your reputation, and might lead someone to call the cops on you.



There is no huge, long term consequence for being arrested other than having your reputation lowered a lot, but it's better to avoid it anyway. You can raise your reputation by completing sidequests, giving gifts, selecting the best options in dialogs, returning lost money, and being an overall good person. You can lower it by raising havoc, bumping into people, running them over with a bike, crawling on the floor, looking at women's underwear, kicking people and so on. You could say the whole thing is a mix of Majora's Mask, Animal Crossing and Grand Theft Auto. With a huge anime slice-of-life skin. And even though the game is made by the same people who are behind Senran Kagura (the character models even look like they're from the same franchise), it is actually quite wholesome overall.



It's a shame I cannot understand a word of what is going on, because honestly I at least feel like I'm playing something really interesting. I've gotten a grasp on how to get every ending (there are over 300 characters on the island, and about 15 of them have their own ending with the main character, some of which are exclusive to NG+) even though it was an absolute nightmare to figure out. I like that there is so much to do in your free time as well, and even though the game's mechanics are a little clunky, it feels like you're playing something that the devs put some serious efforts into. I really hope to finish my guide for it, which might make the other trophy hunters consider importing the game, which in turn is the slightest chance I've got to help the game getting a western localization (it's incredibly unlikely to happen, but I'm doing what I can).

On an aesthetical note, while the game itself doesn't quite look like the sharpest thing ever made, it is still bright and colorful, which is not unlike the modern Falcom games. The main theme can get a little repetitive, but it never ended up bothering me a huge lot.



The game is available on PS3 and PS4. While there's no region locking on these systems, do know that this game is extremely import unfriendly, mostly due to how much Japanese you need to know in order to truly play it. Lastly, major shoutouts for the dedicated Japanese wiki of the game, which at least lets me know where something is happening on any given day. If I didn't have that, I'd be looking at a 10 000 hours project instead.

Re: March 2021: 31 days game review challenge
 

March 30th

Today's challenge is: Cereal Box Game.

This theme was suggested by xXOpkillerXx.

I'm a little disappointed today. I really wished to have my entire grid free of PC exclusives, but Oppiie really threw a wrench into those plans. While doing research on it, I was counting on Japan to have some sort of Famicom cereal box release, but no dice, since apparently that's a Western thing. That's too bad, because I would have taken any weird mahjong/pachinko garbage over a PC game (you know, the kind that littered those illegal multicarts in the late 80s and early 90s). Then, upon learning how Europe was also into cereal box bonus games, I hoped that they at least had some micro computer game, since that would be a bit more interesting to talk about. But that didn't happen either. There were some DOS games early on, so at this point I'll just throw the white flag and talk about a DOS game you can actually say a bunch of things about.



I don't actually hate computers or PC gaming, far from it. I think they're the most powerful machines to play on, and with certain genres, like FPS and RTS games, they're by far the go to platform, and I'm 100% ok with that. If you're into modding or fanmade stuff, they're also the first choice, and they come with insane multiplayer, multitasking and broadcasting convenience. Really, PCs are great. But my personal love for pc gaming has long since died. It died on the day I became a video game collector, where my focus has shifted primarily to beautiful plastic and dedicated systems, which became a necessary part of the experience to me. I know a tiny bit of PC games do get physical releases nowadays, but it's a dead art in my mind. I can respect a collection featuring many individual builds from a variety of eras, since in my mind it works like having a collection of micro computers (one of these days, ZX Spectrum, one of these days), but I can't buy and store everything. And since this challenge is also a very personal thing to me, well... That's why I was so adamant not to include PC games. Oh well.



Anyway, I'll talk about Chex Quest. I know, I know, very predictable, but there's a very good reason why I picked this one. Not because it's the best one, I haven't even played it, I've only watched part of a speedrun of it after seeing the AVGN's episode on the game. Also not because it's the one cereal box game that's still being played by a significant amount of people to this day. I picked it because LimitedRun Games rereleased a massive collector's edition of the game for 150 fucking dollars, and it's the most amazing thing ever. If this was a console port with the same amount of goodies, it would be sitting on my shelf as we speak.

For those who don't know, this is a DooM clone that is breakfast themed (too bad that's not today's theme, else I would have picked Captain Novolin (or Captain Diabetes, you pick) for the SNES instead, which has a lot to be said about, starting with how it was never sold in stores, but given to diabetic kids by physicians to teach them how to manage their sugar levels and insulin dosage). Like I said, I haven't actually played it, but it looks pretty cool, and all of Doomguy's arsenal is in there as mods for the Zorcher, a special remote that pacifies breakfast aliens. Other than that, well it plays like DooM, but it's not like they were straight up reusing levels or anything, it's its own project. And there's no E1M1 theme in there, or anything close to that, which is really disappointing.



And that's about all I'll say about it, since that's all I know about it, and this challenge should be more about my knowledge of the game rather than me doing research on games to then talk about them. That by itself is kinda sad, because I used to collect these games as a kid. I'm pretty sure I had all of the cereal box games released in Quebec from 1995 onwards, but despite that, I must admit that Chex Quest is the King of the “genre”. RIP to the Tycoons and Age of Empires of the world.

Chex Quest is a PC exclusive. Today was kinda lame, I apologize!