Need to review Gates now that I've finished it I guess

Game: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity
System: 3DS

Story: Welcome to the world of Pokemon! In this strange land we find everyone hates each other! Looks like <sPOILERS> is at it again!

The game starts with you getting a weird dream about a Munna asking you to help save the Pokemon world, followed by a vision of the Munna being chased by a Hydreigon. You get transformed into a Pokemon, and fall out of the sky and land right in front of the partner, somehow still alive. The partner makes sure that you're actually alive, you're really confused because weren't you human a second ago? and your partner tells you that he's got an important meeting that he'll be late to, so you decide to tag along. After a short tutorial dungeon, you arrive at a very barren wasteland that your partner buys from a Quagsire, saying that they're planning to turn it into “Pokemon Paradise” where everyone can live and be happy and stuff.
Turns out, they spent all that money on the land, and now you don't have anywhere to sleep. Cool.

The first part of the game involves trying to develop Paradise more, getting a Gurdurr from the nearby Post Town to help you build a house, followed by going on your first rescues and recruiting more Pokemon into your team (Emolga, Dunsparce and Virizion). Eventually, you see a mirage of the “Great Glacier”, a mysterious place that nobody's ever been to, which, of course, everyone's keenly interested in. Later, an Umbreon ends up stumbling into town, and asks you to save his friend Espeon, which you do: afterwards, they reveal that they're planning to travel to the Great Glacier, and would be happy to let you join them. You end up going there with you, your partner, Espeon and Umbreon, Virizion, and Dunsparce, and find the “Glacier Palace”, which Umbreon believes contains the legendary “Great Crystal”, an object that can make things around it float. However, as you approach the top, everyone else oddly begins to have trouble breathing, and you're saved by Kyurem, who appears and takes you all back to somewhere you can breathe. He explains that he guards the Great Crystal, and that no Pokemon are allowed to approach it, before giving you a treasure for your troubles, and telling you to leave. So the expedition ends, and everyone returns to Post Town.

Eventually, you have another dream where you manage to speak with the Munna, who tells you where she's hiding. You and your partner set off on an expedition to save her: but once you get there, Munna reveals that it was actually a trap to get rid of you! You and your partner manage to escape, but get separated. Munna's gang catches up to you, but lo and behold, the Hydreigon from the intro saves you, and the Dark type is not the villain for once! Amazing!
Hydreigon explains that he's the physical form of the “Voice of Life”, which represents the feelings of every living creature on the planet, and asks you to perform one task: to destroy the “Bittercold”. The Bittercold is the embodiment of negativity of all Pokemon (yep, turns out Super's villain idea came from Gates), and the negativity surrounding it is so crushing that Pokemon find it hard to breathe: however, there's no effect on humans. Sound familiar?
You and Hydreigon set off back to Post Town so you can get Espeon and Umbreon to send you back to the Great Glacier, but one of Munna's gang tells you that they've captured your partner, and they're waiting for you to come save them. Obviously a trap, but you go to save them anyway, because you're just that kinda guy. You almost fall into their trap, but manage to both save your partner and get away, and escape through a desert. After another dungeon, you're almost out of the desert, but Kyurem, the Bittercold's guardian, shows up, and freaking murders Hydreigon, I mean like actually, he gets frozen and then completely shattered by Kyurem, like geez! Kyurem warns you that the world's ending in a few days, and if you ever show up to destroy the Bittercold, he's going to stop you. He vanishes, but some of the Pokemon from Paradise find you, and take you safely back to Post Town.

After a while, your partner reveals to everyone in Post Town the truth about what's happening, how the world's ending, how the Bittercold is the cause, and how you're going to go destroy it, and if everyone works together to be positive, they'll win!
…And everyone thinks that, like, the world's ending? The heck are they meant to do about it? Surely it doesn't really matter what they do. Might as well enjoy the few days they've got left on the world.
Not quite the effect your partner was hoping for.
At the end of the day, however, a few Pokemon come up to you, and say that they trust you, and they'll try to get everyone else in Post Town to believe in you as well. Now that there's actually more of a hope, you and your partner, along with Espeon, Umbreon, Virizion and Emolga, return to the Great Glacier and the Glacier Palace, which is now floating in the air thanks to the Bittercold. You manage to reach it through a sort of portal that's been used before in the plot (“Magnagates”), and start climbing to reach the Bittercold. Near the top, your partner begins to have trouble breathing, but you continue anyway. Right at the very peak, you find Kyurem, who of course is going to try and stop you, but ultimately you defeat him, who then decides that now that you've shown him you actually mean it, maybe you do have a chance, and he starts supporting you. Entering into the next room, you find the Bittercold itself, but even you start having problems breathing. That's not meant to happen to humans.

However, by this time, everyone else has started supporting you more, and you manage to get enough strength to defeat the Bittercold! Hooray! You end up back in Post Town thanks to Kyurem warping you out, and meet a ghostly form of Hydreigon, who tells you that now that you've done what you came here to do, you have to go back to the human world, otherwise there'll be long term consequences.
Having to leave the Pokemon world at the end of a Mystery Dungeon game? Say it ain't so!
This time, however, there's a twist: nobody will remember you. Even your partner, and everyone in Post Town, will forget who you are, and what you did. Ouch.
So, instead of saying bye to everyone, and ruining their cheerful moment, you sneak out in the morning, and leave without telling anyone. You float back to the sky into the human world, in another of MD's sad goodbye moments, and you see your partner along with everyone in Paradise looking up at you.

However, joke's on you! Everyone actually remembers you somehow!
…Yeah, this is the one part of the plot I'm not sold on. I think it'd be much more effective if your partner managed to hang on to their memory, but everyone else forgot. It would've made the token “MD sad moment” more effective, IMO.


Well that was a long story section, let's now go to:

Gameplay:
This is more or less the same gameplay as Super Mystery Dungeon. Typical Mystery Dungeon gameplay: go through random dungeons to get to the stairs and progress to the next floor. Move selection is streamlined from past entries, so now you hold L and press a face button to use a move, instead of having to go into the menu. There's no indicator on whether or not moves are super effective unlike Super, so you do need to remember type matchups. Recruitment works the same as the previous games: after defeating an enemy, there's a random chance that they'll want to join your team. Missions are similar to Rescue Team / Sky, but with one major difference: you're only allowed to take on one mission at a time. No more going through a dungeon doing 5 missions at once. It's a bit unfortunate, and it definitely limits how many rewards you get from stuff. I found money to actually be quite tight in the midgame, and I ended up almost running out of Reviver Seeds by the end of the story.

Another major drawback is the text speed. It's pretty darn slow. If they had just included an option to up the text speed, the game would've been so much better for it, but as it is, it's a lot slower to play than the other games just because of the text.

The final reason a lot of people aren't sold on this game is the lack of the Belly mechanic. In previous and later games, all dungeons had a hunger mechanic, where you needed to bring Apples to eat so you wouldn't starve. All dungeons except a select few post-game ones have this mechanic absent, which takes away some of the challenge. Overall, the game is quite easy, actually: even as a Snivy, which is probably the worst starter by virtue of Grass being a pretty bad type, I still didn't have too many problems completing the game. The worst part is that these problems would all be easy to fix: the multiple mission mechanic was already present in earlier games, text speed could be fixed presumably just by changing one line of code, the Belly mechanic already exists, so it just needs to be put in all dungeons, and the difficulty can be changed just by buffing enemy stats a bit. If those few changes were made, I think this would easily be my 2nd favourite PMD.


Presentation:
Graphically, the game is similar to Super. The graphics are all bright and colourful, and the models look decent, especially considering they didn't have the X/Y “future-proofed” models to work with yet. It may be a bit bland to some, but I think it's fine. Music-wise, the soundtrack is still great. Come On In to Post Town actually might be one of my favourite MD town themes, and the dungeon music all fits quite well. Overall, it's a very solid presentation.


Conclusion:
Gates to Infinity is often considered “the worst Mystery Dungeon”, but I actually disagree. The story is one of my favourites, and the gameplay is better than the DS titles, bar the flaws I mentioned. The move selection alone makes this game so much nicer to play than the previous ones. Plus, Super fixed basically all of the issues most people had, so there's that.

Final score: 8/10 (Very good)

Another day, another Pokemon Mystery Dungeon for me to review.

Game: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX
System: Switch

This game is actually fantastic and I can't believe it actually exists

Story: Welcome to the world of Pokemon! In this strange land we find natural disasters happening again! Looks like wait this story section feels oddly familiar

This is a remake of the original Red / Blue Rescue Team, so naturally the story's the same, but I'll recap it again.
You play as a human mysteriously transformed into a Pokemon, waking up in the middle of a forest next to the partner. After some introductions, a Butterfree comes along and tells you that a crevasse appeared and her Caterpie fell into it. You, being a good-natured brave hero protagonist, go with the partner to rescue him. After the rescue, Butterfree thanks you, and your partner asks you if you have any place to go. Since you don't you follow them to a house, which they give you.
…Don't question it.
Anyway, they ask you if you want to form a rescue team with them, since you did so well with them on the last one. You accept, and the plot of the game really begins.
The first part of the game is mostly miscellaneous rescues that don't have much to do with the story, but one introduces you to Gengar of Team Meanies, who really doesn't like you for some reason. A later one introduces you to Alakazam of Team ACT, who apparently knows everything, or basically everything, at least. Your partner asks him if he knows anything about your transformation into a Pokemon, to which he says… no. But he tells you to go see Xatu, who can apparently see the future. You do that, who tells you that your becoming a Pokemon is connected somehow to “the world's balance being disrupted”, which is causing the natural disasters. Gengar overhears this, and links it to an old legend told to you by Whiscash: the Ninetales legend. The legend goes that there was a human that touched one of Ninetales's tails, so Ninetales tried to curse them, but their Gardevoir took the curse instead, and the human ran off without trying to save them. Ninetales predicted that that human would turn into a Pokemon, and when it did, the world's balance would be upset.

Gengar, knowing that you're actually a human, tells everyone in the town about the legend, how it's true, and saying that if everyone got rid of the human, the world would be back to normal, before revealing that you're a human. Well crud. Now literally everyone is out to kill you. I reiterate: literally everyone is out to kill you. In a Pokemon game. Like, geez. Obviously you and your partner run away, which starts the “fugitive arc”. After a series of dungeons (and fights with Moltres and Articuno), you eventually arrive at Mt. Freeze, where Ninetales is meant to live. Just as you get to the peak, Team ACT catches up to you, and you fight (in a cutscene, unfortunately, but a really cool looking one). As you're fighting, however, Ninetales shows up and stops the fight, revealing that you're not the human from the legend. So now everyone doesn't have to try to kill you! Hooray!

After this is revealed, and earthquake hits, which Ninetales says is because the legendary Pokemon Groudon has woken up, so Team ACT goes off to try to calm it down. You go back to town and resume your normal rescuing, but Team ACT doesn't come back after quite a few days, so some other rescuers go off to try to find them. Few days later, and they show up in town again, completely defeated. After a bit of pep-talk from your partner, everyone goes back off to Groudon again, you included. After another dungeon, you beat Groudon and rescue Team ACT, but as you get back to town, Xatu contacts you via telepathy and tells you that there's a giant meteor about to strike the planet, which will probably destroy everything. The only way to stop this is to get help from Rayquaza, who's up in the sky. Xatu and Alakazam teleport you up to Sky Tower, where Rayquaza is.

After the final dungeon, you get to the top and find Rayquaza, who's a bit angry about you lowly land-Pokemon trying to come up and ask Rayquaza for anything. You fight, and after defeating him, explain the situation. He says he can destroy it, but you won't get away unharmed: you agree regardless. Rayquaza Hyper Beams the meteor, big explosion, you and your partner are knocked away. You end up essentially floating around in the soul realm, half-dead? Gengar appears, and says he's going to drag you to a dark place you won't escape from, but accidentally ends up saving you. I guess that's nice of him.

You and your partner wake up with everyone around you, the meteor's destroyed, everyone's saved, happy fun times! Except now that you've completed what you came to the Pokemon world to do, you have to leave it. You say goodbye to your partner, and float away in an orb of light, leaving your partner crushed. Roll credits.

You go back after the credits but it's the thought that counts, y'know?


Gameplay:
The gameplay is generally similar to Super Mystery Dungeon. The basic premise is essentially Rogue: go through randomly generated dungeons to find stairs leading down / up to the next floor, fighting enemies and finding items along the way. Move selection is the same as the 3DS games: hold ZL and press a face button to use the corresponding move. The standard attack has been removed completely: pressing A instead auto-selects an appropriate move to use, and R + A does a whiff attack that checks for traps around you, but now does zero damage. An auto mode has been added by pressing L, which makes you move through the dungeon automatically, but it stops when enemies are around. Technically you could try to auto through the entire game, but you will probably have to use items at some point, so it's not like the game completely plays itself.

Looplets and emeras from Super have been removed, going back to the old held items. Instead of bringing back the IQ system from the originals, DX introduces Rare Qualities: essentially a second ability each Pokemon has with effects varying from increased healing, to ignoring type disadvantages, to letting all food items fully restore your hunger. Some of these are pretty darn OP, and some of them are a lot less so. These qualities are obtained by giving your Pokemon Gummis at Rescue Team Camps: the new replacement for Friend Areas. You can't walk around in them, but you do get a nice homage to the originals with the original sprites of the Pokemon showing up to represent them. Here you can give stat boosting items and Gummis to your Pokemon before you go into dungeons.

Team selection is streamlined from the originals to be more in line with Super. You have a number of preset teams you can modify, so you just pick your Pokemon from a list instead of having to go to their Friend Area one at a time every single day. After choosing a dungeon, you choose which team you want to use, and can then change team members or manage your items instead of having to go back to town. Basically they're just making it as convenient as possible to make last-minute changes before going into a dungeon.

Unlike the previous games in the series, the game autosaves after every single action you take. This does mean you get a little bit of input lag in dungeons, but it's manageable. Essentially this gets rid of the save-scumming aspect of the previous games: if you die in a dungeon, and you don't want to wait for a rescue, you are losing your items, no matter what. I could definitely see this being a negative for some people, but… well, it matches the intended experience as closely as possible. Get good scrub

The gameplay is fairly solid, although it's definitely not for everyone. If you're not a fan of this sort of randomness-heavy dungeon crawling gameplay, I'd stay away from this one.


Presentation:
Visually, the game uses a watercolour-like art style, mimicking the art on the main menus of the original. The environments all look beautiful, and there are some really nice details, such as the shadows actually having hatching on them instead of just being a darker colour. The models of the Pokemon generally look good (they're essentially the same as the models used in the mainline 3DS Pokemon games and Sword / Shield), although some of the animations can look a bit stiff. This only applies to in gameplay, however: the cutscenes that use custom animations on the Pokemon look great. I've been joking in some places that Absol's cutscene animations are better than Zacian's / Zamazenta's, but it's actually true.

In terms of the soundtrack, almost all of the remasters from the original sound amazing. It preserves some of the chiptune of the original, while using orchestral samples for other parts. I didn't even know it was possible to improve on Sky Tower, but they did, so that's a thing. It also features a great medley of some music from Gates to Infinity, using the same chiptune & orchestral mix the rest of the soundtrack has. Go listen to some of the pieces from the OST: 90% of them are fantastic.


Conclusion:
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX is a great remake of the original. The story is mostly the same (barring a few extra lines), but the gameplay is night and day better, and it has a great visual style and top-notch soundtrack as well. If you like the series, or dungeon crawlers in general, pick this one up. It's a great jumping-in point to the PMD series thanks to its simple, but effective story, and somewhat easier gameplay compared to other games in the series. I probably still prefer Explorers of Sky thanks to its better story, still solid gameplay and larger amount of content overall, but that doesn't mean this game isn't good.

Final score: 9.5/10 (Extremely good +)

Game: Sam's Trek to the Undaunted Powerful Intimidating Destination
Platform: Scratch
Developer: Me

It's terrible.

Final score: 0/10

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Game: Candace Takes Out the Garbage
Platform: Scratch
Developer: Me

Like the title suggests, this game is garbage.

Final score: 0/10

Game: Cosmic Race
Platform: PS1
Score :0/100

Both this and Death Crimson are the worst 5th gen games and make Superman 64 look like a masterpiece, period.

My laptop is too much of a potato to run Ori and the Will of the Wisps but it's probably fantastic so uh go buy it, 10/10 must play, actual review coming when I play it for real

no one ever reads these but no one listens to me anyway so what's the diff?

anywho, Kid Icarus Uprising, could be spoilers, depends on what you consider a spoiler.

So, story is, you're a little angel boy who serves the goddess of light, it's been 25 years since you beat Medusa in the original NES game, okay now she's back for some reason. You can't fly, so green hair lady (the goddess of light) is like “k cool brother I can make you fly but only for 5 minutes otherwise you're gonna burn more than that time I tried making strawberry strudels”. You shoot and slash at the Underworld minions, gotta get the 3 sacred treasures once again as well as the key to the Underworld.

So 9 levels in, you reach Medusa. You shoot shoot shoot then she dies, and the credits roll. You and goddess lady talk about who knows what, then all of a sudden BOOM game's not over idiot how do you think every Let's Play series of it has like 30 parts. I'll let you find that stuff out on your own not because it's mindblowing just because I don't wanna go too far into spoiler territory.



Anyway, every level has a very specific structure. Flying section (my personal favorite), then the ground section, then the boss. Always in that order unless it's a boss rush level. Before each level, you can set your difficulty, default is 2, but it's a scale of 0-9 (4.0 was perfect for me). It costs hearts to be above or below 2, which are the game's currency, but the higher you go than 2, the more hearts you get during the level. There are also difficulty gates in each level that you can only enter if you're at or above a certain difficulty to get rewards and stuff.

A problem I had with this though is I would always die the room right before the boss, I'm talking this happened probably 8-10 times, then the difficulty level would go down, and I wouldn't want to slog through 15 minutes again, so the boss would be terribly easy. Maybe I just suck, but it was the last room every darn time.

Also, there are an absolute ton of weapons in this game. Just a ton. You can combine weapons to make others and they have a unique playstyle (i.e the Skyscraper Club only allows you to shoot charged shots but those shots are super powerful). There are also these “powers” things, but I only used 2 the entire game, health recovery and towards the end of the game, invisibility.



spoiler warning for towards the end of the game, skip to the next section if you don't wanna hear it:

The enemy variety is good until like 2/3 of the way through the game. You have the underworld enemies, and just as you get used to those the goddess of nature is like “screw you I want you dead too sucker”. Then there's this Aurum thing, which is just robotic copies of previous enemies, which I would be okay with as a one off thing, it was a weirdly placed but solid plot point. Then you have to fight the Skyworld (your side's) enemies there for a bit but that does last long and they're the least interesting in the entire game. Then in the last 1/3 of the game it just chucks all the Underworld, Nature, and Aurum enemies at you repeatedly, no explanation (at least not a good one).



The game feels kinda thrown together after those first 9 levels, they're still polished, but they aren't nearly as creative. You go from exploring a digital labyrinth and invading space pirates and defeating a space kraken to some rather bland locals. There are definitely some interesting ideas, I just wasn't as wowed. With the plot, it feels like they just kept coming up with new ideas and didn't know how to fit it together.

Also, not exactly an oversight but just something I've noticed, they put a lot of work into the character art at the bottom screen while they speak, but the screen is often so chaotic you can only listen/read the text at the top to see know what's up. It's a nice touch but it goes rather unnoticed.

The game is absolutely reliant on it's characters. They are talking constantly, you, the goddess ladies, the enemies, everyone is constantly joking around. A lot of people seem to really like the characters, I just thought they existed and gave me something to listen too while I killed dudes.

Speaking of killing dudes, the controls are often a complaint. I was totally fine with them except the camera, because the camera isn't nearly sensitive enough. takes like 2-3 swipes to turn where I need to usually. The rest was totally fine and made sense.



Anywho, I enjoyed my time with Kid Icarus Uprising. I beat it in exactly 10 hours, and those 10 hours were great. It's not on my favorites list, but I'm glad I played it. While I have negatives with the game, or areas that I just don't care much about, the combat system and level design are engaging and I never felt like I wanted to get a certain section over with except the two parts of the game that take forever on purpose and even then the characters being self aware about it was entertaining.

-ColorMaster- wrote:

“k cool brother I can make you fly but only for 5 minutes otherwise you're gonna burn more than that time I tried making strawberry strudels”

I'm guessing there's a reference to something I'm missing here but this is great

DaEpikDude wrote:

-ColorMaster- wrote:

“k cool brother I can make you fly but only for 5 minutes otherwise you're gonna burn more than that time I tried making strawberry strudels”

I'm guessing there's a reference to something I'm missing here but this is great

nope, came up with that myself

Game: Half-Life Source
Developer: Valve
Publisher: Valve
Release Date: 2004
Rating: 83/100

Story: Gordon Freeman, a scientist at Black Mesa Research Facility, conducts an experiment involving an alien crystal and an Anti-Mass Spectrometer. The experiment goes wrong and causes a resonance cascade, which creates portals from an alien world called Xen to Earth. Millions of aliens come flooding through. Gordon goes through hundreds of rooms and corridors filled with aliens and U.S. Marines who have been ordered to kill everyone associated with the disaster. Gordon eventually makes it to the Lambda Complex, where he uses a portal to teleport to Xen. He makes his way through the low-g environments until he kills a giant floating baby with 3 arms and a guy in a suit puts him in storage for 30 years until the sequel comes out.

Game: The game keeps practically every aspect of the original Gold Source game made in 1998. The game now have improved physics and ragdolls, but it's still broken in several areas. The original game was well-known for being the first game the have a story that unfolds around you while still being an FPS. The game does give you a surplus of weapons, yet some become obsolete once you get powerful guns. The game is amazingly fun, but gets annoying once you have to kill several marines while on 54 HP or having aliens spawn behind you. I personally experienced several bugs, including scripted sequences failing and serious graphical glitches (Skybox clipping in and out of reality, and green-black triangles filling the screen).

(i honestly don't know what to add, so feel free to give your critiques as well.

I reviewed an indie Metroidvania with a lovely artstyle, great soundtrack and great gameplay a while back, and this time I'm doing something completely different and reviewing an indie Metroidvania with a lovely artstyle, great soundtrack and great gameplay!

Game: Hollow Knight
System: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch (playing on Switch)

I'm just going to say this straight out of the gate: this game is like $30 and you should go buy it right now, then you should go buy it again because it would still be great value for money

Story:

…yeah, I'm not even going to try to get into the story properly. There's a lot of lore to go over. As in, enough lore to make a video over an hour. I should know, I watched one.

TL: DR there's a kingdom, bad stuff happened in it, explore.


Gameplay:
Move with the analog stick / D-pad, jump with B, attack with Y, use spells with A. Eventually you'll get a dash, wall cling, super-dash and double jump. That's basically it. The controls may be simple, but there is a ridiculous amount of stuff the game gets out of it. The movement isn't slippery at all: as soon as you let go of a direction, you stop moving. As soon as you let go of jump, your momentum stops. The attack button makes you attack immediately. Everything feels really responsive, and it's great to control. This is needed because the game is very much focused on combat: there are boss fights to stumble across everywhere, an incredibly wide variety of enemies, and even gauntlet and boss rush areas. Pretty much all of the bosses are really well designed, with patterns clear enough to learn, but still difficult enough to understand that they'll be a challenge. Speaking of challenge: this game is hard. If you haven't gotten a grasp on all the different things you can do by the end of the game, you will struggle. But the challenge never feels like it's the game's fault: you can see what's coming, and it's on you for failing to avoid it.

Hollow Knight takes the “open world, exploratory” idea from the Metroidvania and runs with it about 10 km further than anyone else did. The game starts with a reasonably linear intended progression: start in Forgotten Crossroads, go to Greenpath after getting the spirit, go to Fungal Wastes after getting the dash, go to City of Tears after getting the wall climb, go to Crystal Peak after getting ground pound, get the Dreamnail. After that, the game becomes basically completely open, and you can do basically whatever you'd like. The objective of the game is to go to 3 different locations around the map and kill each of the “Dreamers” in each one, so you can access the final boss. After you're given this objective, the world becomes basically completely open, and you can go anywhere you want. For example: in my first playthrough, I didn't know to get the upgrade that lets you swim in acid, which is what you're meant to use to get into most of Fog Canyon: instead, I ended up getting the shadow dash upgrade first, which is meant to come in much later. There are also plenty of skips around the place you can use: for example, you're meant to use the double jump to get to the Dreamer in the City of Tears, but instead you can use your attack to bounce off of a destructible background object, and get up the ledge anyway.

The world design also really helps with the exploratory aspect: every area excluding one connects to at least two other areas. From Deepnest, you can go to the Fungal Wastes or Ancient Basin. From the Forgotten Crossroads, you can get to Dirtmouth, Greenpath, City of Tears, or Crystal Peak. The only area that doesn't connect to 2 others (the Hive) is really more of a small sub-area gauntlet than a full exploration-based one. There are plenty of times when you'll get surprised seeing how the different areas connect to each other, especially because of the game's map system. When you first go into each area, you won't have any map at all, and you'll have to rely on your own mental mapping, Metroid 1 style. After finding the cartographer Cornifer in each area, you can buy a map, which starts of very sketchy and incomplete. From there, each new room you go to is added to your map, but only after reaching a save point (bench), which are quite sparsely placed. The system makes it so that you still get the experience of having to map out the world in your mind, but also lets you see where you're going when you're retreading ground. It's a nice midway point.

However, there are a few problems I have with the gameplay, the biggest one being the death system. When you die, you leave behind a “shade” in the room you died in, which holds all of your money, and also temporarily cuts your maximum mana. If you get back to where you died and defeat it, you'll get all your money back, but if you die again before reaching it, you lose it all. The problem with this system is that if you accidentally stumble into a difficult area and die horribly, you can only really go back to that area or you'll lose all your hard-earned money. This runs the risk of dying again, meaning you lose everything, or reaching your Shade but dying on the way back, which just resets the problem, really. Instead of encouraging you to explore new areas, it punishes you for doing so.

The placement of save points in relation to boss fights can also be an issue. For many of the optional bosses, and even some main ones, the nearest bench is still a considerable trek away, meaning if you do die to it, you'll have to spend a few minutes just getting back so you can have another shot at it. For example, take an optional boss hidden in the first area of the game, the Brooding Mawlek. I stumbled into this boss before I had the shadow dash upgrade which lets you avoid it more easily, so I had a rough time with it, and died quite a few times. Each time I did, I had to spend a few minutes just navigating the same terrain again to get back to it. And because of the shade system, I couldn't really go somewhere else to prepare first and come back to it later: I had to go back to it then, otherwise I'd lose my money.

There is a system to get your shade back without having to go find it, but the only way to use it is at the town at the very beginning of the game. If you're not near a fast travel station, then good luck getting back up there, and good luck getting back to where you were before you died.


Presentation:
On a much more positive note, the game looks beautiful. Much of the game's colour palette uses similar cool blues and greys, but that doesn't at all mean the areas blend together. The Forgotten Crossroads look completely different to Greenpath, which looks completely different to the City of Tears, which looks completely different to Deepnest. If you took a screenshot from anywhere in the game, I could probably tell you roughly where it is, or at least what area it's in. The dark colours of the background also help the white shell of your player character to stand out easily, so you never lose track of where you are. The blues also help make the “infection”, the main thing that you're trying to fight against throughout the game, stand out more thanks to its bright orange colour. The art style of the game also looks really nice, with a lot of detail put into all the backgrounds and foregrounds basically all over the game.

The soundtrack of the game is also fantastic. Each piece sets the mood perfectly for whatever area it plays in. Much of it does feel fairly ambient, but there are still strong melodies in pretty much all of the pieces. The ambient, slow tempos of the area music also contrasts really well with the more tense, rhythmically driven boss battle themes, of which there are quite a few. Basically, Christopher Larkin is great.


Conclusion:
Hollow Knight is an excellent Metroidvania, with responsive controls, engaging combat, and an amazing map design. It's definitely a tough game, but that makes it all the more rewarding when you manage to overcome whatever challenge you've gotten stuck on, helped by the game's combat always feeling like it's fair. I have my gripes with the death system, but it's still a great package overall. And considering how ridiculously underpriced it is for the content it offers, it is more than worth buying if you have a console it's on, or a PC that can run it.

Final score: 9.5/10 (Extremely good +)

Well I have acquired a sick gaming rig so I can now run Ori and the Will of the Wisps, I'm 4 hours in which seems to be about the 1/4 mark of the game (just unlocked the ‘will of the wisps’ quest). Impressions so far:
- The opening is just as good as Ori 1's
- I like the addition of the NPCs, most of them have quite charming writing, although it'd be nice to have a few more named ones
- The combat is pretty much completely fixed now that Ori can actually do something instead of running away and mashing Y to kill stuff with Sein, the different weapons really help making it more dynamic as well
- Game still looks and sounds beautiful
- The new grapple ability is really fun, and it's a natural addition to Ori's moveset as a sort of extension of bash
- I do like how you get movement upgrades rather quickly: you start with wall jump already unlocked, you get double jump after an hour or so, and bash comes in pretty quickly as well (which is excellent because bash is the best movement upgrade in any game ever)
- Ori's voice clips are changed so they're a little bit deeper, I like this but at the same time it means Ori is slightly less cute than in the first so

Basically, it's Ori 1 but better, I think for now I'll give it a tentative 10/10 because it's just really fun. I gave Ori 1 a 10/10 at first but I've lowered that a bit since because it does have a fair number of problems, but most of those seem to be gone in the sequel.

Guess what, I've finished Ori
oops

Game: Ori and the Will of the Wisps
System: PC, Xbox One (played on PC)

Developers: “This game wasn't inspired by Hollow Knight!!”
Also developers: the game

Story: Welcome to Niwen! In this strange land we find everything dying again! Looks like shenanigans with trees and light and stuff is at it again!

The story starts after Ori 1 (obviously), where Kuro's egg has hatched into a mini birb named Ku, who, like 60% of the characters in the Ori series, is adorable. There's a montage of Ori, Naru, Gumo and Ku doing various things, partly related to trying to get Ku to fly: however, one of her wings is damaged, so it doesn't work. Ori gives her Kuro's feather from the last game, and after it's strapped to her bad wing, she can suddenly fly! Hooray!
So Ori and Ku go on a (really beautiful) flight around Nibel from the last game, before following some other owls across the sea to the new land Niwen: but as they get there, a storm hits and the two are flung away into different places. So the first third of the game follows Ori's journey to try and find Ku.
I'll leave it there to avoid spoilers, but you do get more heartwarming stuff like in the last game, as well as a bit of a twist at the end.

Gameplay:
The game features the same acrobatic movement from Ori 1, with Dash, Double Jump, Wall Jump, Kuro's Feather and Bash (AKA the best one) making a return, along with the new Grapple, Launch, Water Dash and Burrow. Moving through the world is just as fun as it was in Ori 1: Grapple especially is a really natural addition to Ori's moves. If I had one major gripe, it'd be that the new abilities don't get a whole lot of use outside of their respective area (Burrow's basically only used in “the sand area”, Water Dash's basically only used in “the water area”), unlike Ori 1 where things like Bash get used throughout the entire game. Overall, I'd say it's a step up from the first game, especially since none of the abilities feel as “oh okay” as Climb did.

But of course, that's not the main improvement in the sequel: WotW features a much more extensive and varied combat system. Gone are the days of “mash Y while stomping to win”, now you have a range of different weapons with different strengths and weaknesses to use: you have a sword, hammer, bow, javelin, bomb, summon… Some of these abilities are definitely more useful than others, though: I find the bow to be the strongest overall, as when you equip the upgrades for it it outpaces even the sword and hammer for close-range DPS, while using next to no energy. Some other “combat” abilities like Flash and Light Burst also feel very weak and underutilised, especially Flash (it drains your energy constantly for… 2 damage every second. hooray.) It's not a perfect combat system, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of the first, and honestly the core combat itself is on par with something like Hollow Knight.

The combat system also means that the game can feature actual boss fights, alongside Ori 1's escape sections that kind of filled in for them. All of them are quite good fights mainly involving pattern memorisation and reacting to the boss's tells, which is always a great way to make an interesting boss fight. The final boss especially is very enjoyable, going from fight to mini-escape section to fight, and then you lose the floor so it becomes an aerial battle using Bash, and any excuse to use Bash more is fine by me.

Replacing the ability tree from the last game is the new Shard system. It's like the charm system from Hollow Knight, where you have a certain number of shards you can equip that give you special bonuses, ranging from simple “get extra health” to taking and dealing extra damage to turning your bow into a split-shot. Many of these are quite useful, and at the start you'll be struggling to decide what to put on, although your finishing slot count is large enough to where you'll probably have a single setup on the whole time. Some of the shards are more helpful than others (“swap max health and energy”? really?) but they allow for a pretty varied set of playstyles. Want to outrange your enemies so you won't be getting hit? Equip the shard that reduces energy usage but increases damage. Want to turn your bow into a short-range crowd clearing DPS weapon? Slap on the two bow shards and you're good to go. The fact that you can swap your shards anywhere is also nice, as you can have utility shards on most of the time but swap to combat shards for a boss fight, for example. I think it's a step up from the ability tree as it gives more variety to your playstyle, while not feeling too restricted in terms of your slot count.

In terms of the world design, it seems to take a page out of Hollow Knight's book again: the game starts linear up until completing the first “dungeon”, where you then get a main objective that takes you to three different places around the world you can do in any order you want. This helps it to feel a lot more like a proper Metroidvania compared to Ori 1, which was really just a linear platformer that happened to be open world. You do get a nice final challenge area at the end, though, even if it again doesn't make a whole lot of use of all your abilities.

Will of the Wisps has quite a few NPCs in it as well, which dare I say has a fair bit of HK influence again. There's a main town in the centre of the map you'll be coming back to throughout the game, which features various vendors as well as a few game-wide quests: the main one being a quest to rebuild the town. A new ore collectible is used to unlock various extras in the town, such as removing thorns to fixing the warp point to opening a cave for exploration. I think this works well as an excuse for a new collectible, and the rewards you get are nice. Wellspring Grotto also just has a really nice atmosphere and soundtrack, which made me quite often warp back to it just to finish my play session.


Presentation:
Oh yeah, the soundtrack. Gareth Coker composed the soundtrack again, and they're all just as good as the tracks from the first game. It uses the same main theme for several tracks, along with a new motif for one of the more major characters (Kwolok). Kwolok's motif especially I find is really well used: you first hear it in the theme for the area leading up to him, before hearing a much more grand usage of it when you actually meet him. The soundtrack overall complements the game very well, and is definitely worth a listen.

As for the art, like with Ori 1, it's absolutely beautiful, and probably the game's biggest strength. I think you can do the same thing where you can take a screenshot pretty much anywhere and it'll look amazing. The environment is also a bit more dynamic, with certain platforms bending when you stand on them, or being moved around by enemies, etc. Niwen also features a few more varied locations than Nibel, and all the new locales look great as well. The intro cinematic is also amazing, by the way. Just throwing that out there.


Conclusion:
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is pretty much an improvement in every way from its predecessor. The art looks nicer, the combat is improved like a million-fold, the movement is just as fluid, the map is more open, the NPCs work well… I know I gave Ori 1 a 10/10 at first, later bumping it down since it does have a few problems, but WotW fixes pretty much all of them. So:

Final score: 10/10 (Must play)

If you have a PC capable of running this game, go play it. Actually go play the first one while you're at it, but definitely play this. It's absolutely worth it.

This one isn't really a game but a website but who cares?
Starfall 4/6 (Not Bad)
Graphics are great, Characters are unique, Music gets stuck to your head, It's nostalgic, Some moments might be unsettling to you, and You need to pay for the full experience.

Demo Review because I'm bored. I'll review these demos based on what content is provided to the player and if I'm interested in the full game.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy

Platform: iOS

While this game is on multiple platforms, the iOS version is free to start. You get the first two trials of the first game, giving you a good taste of the experience. Rather than testing your reflexes and reaction time, Ace Attorney tests your mind. As a public defender, you must prove your client's innocence by using evidence and flaws in witness testimonies. The second chapter expands on this by allowing the player to interrogate witnesses and collect clues by investigating a few areas in a point-and-click style. The trials feel like a massive puzzle to solve and making progress is so satisfying. The soundtrack also does an amazing job of setting the mood.

Conclusion: This demo set an amazing first impression. Ace Attorney Trilogy is definitely on my most wanted games list. I plan on getting the 3DS version.

Layton's Mystery Journey

Platform: Mobile

This game is also on the 3DS and Switch. However, the mobile version is free to start just like Ace Attorney Trilogy. You get the first case. Layton's Mystery Journey is about solving puzzles. The demo shows off a variety of puzzles, both required and optional. I got a little under two hours out of this demo. Most of the puzzles are really interesting and fun to solve. However, my favorite part of the game are the gorgeous animated cutscenes. I'd pay just for these. They look amazing and the voice acting is pretty good to boot. This game deserves an animated series.

Conclusion: The Layton series looked pretty interesting so I got this demo to see if it'd be something I'd enjoy and
I'm definitely interested in this game, but I'm going back to the older Layton games before diving into the full version.

game: breath of the wild

rating: 10/10

reason: prince sidon is in it

More Reviews, and darn. My right arrow key broke around the time I play LoLK. So I may rarely play some stuff now. If I can get that wired keyboard tho.
Reviews on the games I beat the extras on.


Touhou 6: The Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil
Developer: ZUN

Okay, I'm done with the unique games on my PC. Now lets review more of these.

Story: Someone covered Gensokyo with red mist.

Gameplay: The usual bullet hell game with no unique gimmicks (Ever consider Sakuya's Dio Powers.). Resources rely on Score and the unusual thing is the lack of hitbox indicator. So the patterns here are much simpler than the games above it. After all, it's his irst time to make a game for Windows.
Difficulty is balanced really. But most patterns are just RNG mess. Adds the inconsistency for you to win. And that's one thing I like for a strange reason.
Extra requires lots of practice and A LOT of Luck. Patchy mid-boss mostly relies on RNG on 1st and 3rd cards and 2nd is static but hard to figure out. What makes it hard is the scarcity of lives. You only get 4 lives if done right, so it is forced to dodge. Flandre is simple to follow tho so as long as you do things right. You're safe, oh and you never get extends during the fight. Even the score thing won't work.

Soundtrack: The soundtrack of this game is pretty recognizable all throughout. Really oriental, which is ironic because the villain was a WESTERN vampire.

Art style: Meh… but AAAAH!

Rating: 7/10, I know its ZUN's first Window's game tho. But I can encounter some problems to playing this, the others don't have problems. And the art is weird but it improves. The patterns are a bit weird. But good game.


Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
Developer: ZUN

NO! I am not referring to Geometry Dash.

Story: A geyser unnaturally erupts so Reimu and Marisa goes underground to solve it.

Gameplay: They got more simpler, eh?
So your power goes with your bombs, like 10. So if you bomb, it will decrease your attack. So use wisely.
Lives are harder to get, for every nonspell and spell. You must NOT get hit, bombs won't affect it. So you must play good for you to get more.
Shot types are really bad. Ideal is Reimu A or Marisa A.
The patterns are already hard, but learnable. Overall, a really hard game not for beginners. But you can if you want to practice your general bullet dodging skills.
Extra is something I hate, its really learnable. But you need to do everything right to get adequate stuff. Mid-boss is common for mistakes but rather consistent. So was Koishi, the patterns are strange (Yeah, like she literally shoots HEARTS. One time she shoots a lot of bouncing… uhh… That thing… And roses.) but learnable. Still you need to do everything right like don't ever get hit, she is really stressful to fight as. ESPECIALLY THAT LAST SPELL. DARN, I GOT HIT ON THE ROSES A LOT.

Soundtrack: One of my favorite ones. It's hard to describe why.

Art style: It evolved right, at least it gets good around it. But, darn. I never noticed Koishi's strange arms at the screenshot.

Overall: 10/10, A good game, but it's hard (I like hard stuff, and I also said that the patterns are learnable. So that is something to decrease it). Story is the usual (at least, a villain who wanted to destroy Gensokyo. She's so dumb tho.), Interesting characters (Psychology in a youkai land, huh?), good soundtrack.


Touhou 16: Hidden Stars in Four Seasons

When the colors of the 4 seasons reminded you of the 4 Celestial Pillars. And I learned that Terraria was released FIRST than HSiFS. (Dunno, what was first released. I know this is from 2017, but dunno when was Moon Lord released.)

Story: The 4 seasons go weird, so the 4 protagonist investigates. Leading to a world inside people's backs.

Gameplay: Usual bullet hell game, resource relies on score. But it can drain at any point.
The new addition is the season release, it's like a small bomb that erases bullets. You will pick to 4 seasons (Extra only has the 5th Season option, you can't use the other 4. It only gives back shots which you really need in the stage. It only cost one option for a release.), they also serve as additional attack options. Spring covers a wide area depending on the level you have. Autumn gives you hyper speed and a shield to erase bullets (You can still be hit while on release tho.) Summer gives a small area but costs 1 season level. And winter gives a small area at your position that increases attack. Oh, Spring gives small homing bullets, Summer shoots ice bullets at an inconsistent angle, Winter gives lasers, and Autumn shoots straight bullets.
It may seem normal, but it kinda breaks the game. You can earn lots of score around Stage 1 to get a life by releasing. Especially, Spring (due to the immense area) and Autumn (Dunno why tho.) So you can early on have a lot of lives before Stage 4.
Extra Stage uses only one season, but the Stage itself, its a bit simple if done right. Most of the bullets come from BEHIND, so you must be aware, Okina is yet a simple Ex boss. She's pretty easy considering the release mechanic. And yes, this game have glitches and I encountered one. You can beat her timeout by depleting her life out. Release at any point, there. She shows her HP, and you can attack her.

Soundtrack: This is a bit hard to decide tho. It's good but I have mixed feelings on it.

Art Style: It became good tho, the stages are colorful. But you know, you can blindly get hit by a bullet tho…

Overall: 8/10, Its a good beginner game tho, Extra's a bit easy. But it has a flaw to its system that breaks it. The soundtrack is a hard one to decide.

Yeah, what I feel now. Jealous, my PC don't have my previous games like Terraria… And they all started to talk about that update. And I keep thinking of death every time I sleep.
I might do a review for my android games but it will not sound interesting…
Bullet Hell Monday

Spycapt54 wrote:

Demo Review because I'm bored. I'll review these demos based on what content is provided to the player and if I'm interested in the full game.

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy

Platform: iOS

While this game is on multiple platforms, the iOS version is free to start. You get the first two trials of the first game, giving you a good taste of the experience. Rather than testing your reflexes and reaction time, Ace Attorney tests your mind. As a public defender, you must prove your client's innocence by using evidence and flaws in witness testimonies. The second chapter expands on this by allowing the player to interrogate witnesses and collect clues by investigating a few areas in a point-and-click style. The trials feel like a massive puzzle to solve and making progress is so satisfying. The soundtrack also does an amazing job of setting the mood.

Conclusion: This demo set an amazing first impression. Ace Attorney Trilogy is definitely on my most wanted games list. I plan on getting the 3DS version.

The original Ace Attorney is absolutely in my top 10 favorite games ever. The 5th and final case in the game is one of my favorite sections in any game ever, absolutely brilliant stuff.

Ok, I'm gonna review this game that I love.

Enter The Gungeon
http://u.cubeupload.com/Insanity/maxresdefault.jpg

If you looking for a challenge, this might be the game for you.
This game is as unfair as a parent saying “because I said so.”
Every other run, you might make it a bit further but when you die,
you have to start all over again from Floor 1, the farthest I've gotten is Floor 4: Hollow
There's also unlockable characters which has shops and buy it with things called “Hegemony Credits” (currency that drops from bosses)
The only thing that sets it off from it's ruthless difficulty, is it's goofy visual style.
EVERYTHING is guns. The other currency are pistol shells. There is a T-Shirt Cannon. You have a gun shaped like a crown that you put on your head and when you fire it, bullets scatter everywhere around the room. There is a gun which is actually a bullet and when you fire it, it shoots out guns that shoot out their own bullets. You see what I'm saying?

My Rating
—————
84/100
Charming style, Pretty difficult, if you're looking for casual games, this ain't for you.

Wait, I forget one game to review.

Undertale
Developer: Toby Fox

Ummm… Don't mind the screenshot I used here. I was playing with something.

Story: Child falls into a hole and meet monsters in the Underground.

Gameplay: There's both RPG and bullet hell here. But the bullet hell part can be replaced by like a platformer depending on the SOUL. The story relies on what do you pick during encounters, if you kill or befriend. If you befriend then you're a good person and ends good, but if you kill then you are such an evil person.
It can throw up puzzles at you too.

Soundtrack: I liked it tho, ironically. back when I don't play the game. It's still memorable. There are a lot of atmospheric tracks tho. Snowy was my favorite.

Artstyle: I don't get what's with most indie games being in retro style. Not hating it, but its really ubiquitous. The battle sprites are white because they are like hostile to you, so as how most of the bullets are white. Maybe, but its really expressive tho.

Overall: 8/10 - Good graphics, lovable characters (Papyrus…), but its not really my cup for the difficulty. I can beat a route within a day, even Genocide. But it's for the story to. Which is also one thing to like the game. I kind of want more tho…

And you notice the games I pick… Are they still having a war or what?

Dreams for Playstation 4: 100/100 (Not just my opinion almost everybody has given it that)

Dreams was, and is, a great game. Haven't heard of it? Well, Dreams was created by Media Molecule (Creators of LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway) over the span of 8 years and is a creation tool that allows you to make anything you want. To name just a few, you could make a Telltale-esque stroy where you are a pig detective, a huge RPG where you travel to different worlds, or a series where you avoid a clever and somewhat annoying game developer while you make your way through crazy games and a yeti soda corporation plans on wiping out the Earth. Yes, those are all real. And they are amazing as well. The game also has a story mode, Art's Dream, which is a film-length story with a very heavy tone compared to LittleBigPlanet. Seriously, LBP3 was about a lightbulb stealing creativity, this is about a depressed jazz musician going through childhood memories and taking down his nightmares.

You select things by using a motion-controlled creature (an Imp) around as a cursor.

But anyways, here are some pros:
- The story mode has lots of prizes to be found, you just have to look around.
- Although there are many low-quality games out there, you can always find something you like.
- Media Molecule constantly spotlights good games and features them in streams. They also host collaborations and weekly contests.
- If you can't make something, there are many step-by-step tutorials that are great help! You can also play them while you work with a mini-player.
- You can also get items from other people for your games.

Here are a few cons:
- The story is pretty easy (mainly cutscenes), but the final boss REALLY kicks it up a notch, and I found myself having to do, like, 15 tries to beat it. (Kinda like MK11's story mode.)
- You can play through entries in weekly contests to vote for them, but many of the entries are horrible and are not even based on the theme.
- You cannot play a tutorial in Mini-Player unless yo have completed the original tutorial already.
- Imp customization, although pretty good, does not really allow you to mix-and-match, as you can really only choose what it looks like and what color it is, depending on what you have unlocked.

Dreams is pretty much confirmed to come out on PS5 eventually, and people have been asking for a PSVR release for a while now, so look forward to those if they happen.