I was confident about all of these games, since I played the first two a long time ago already, and I had confidence in the second pair.
Report 30: Credibility Batch
Since the remake is coming pretty soon, I thought it’s a good time to revisit the original.
Like many others, I really like this game despite its’ occasional clunkiness and frustratingly hard difficulty at times.
The plot is a really engaging homage to all of the mafia-related fiction. While some parts of the gameplay can feel a bit tedious, I think that kind of routine actually helps you immerse. The game is obviously limited technologically, but it’s still one damn atmospheric experience.
I find the shooting parts somewhat questionable in quality, since it made me feel like the game is forcing me to cheese through them to win. It was pretty apparent in the last mission, which was pretty hard to get through with almost no checkpoints and the last boss that was unbelievably precise with his aiming.
Overall, despite its’ flaws, I consider this a great game that was fun to play even all these years later.
Had a blast going through it once again many years later. As you could’ve guessed, it’s a western action-adventure game. It was pretty cinematographic for its time and is still entertaining now.
The game switches between two protagonists, and their segments bring a very interesting (and well done, imo) balance in the gameplay. The parts where you play as Billy are more stealth-like and involve many jumping/climbing segments, and the parts where you play as Ray are very action-heavy - you’ll be leaving a triple digit bodycount behind you by the end of the game. You can also quote Bible by taking it out of your inventory while shooting, which, while useless, is cool as hell (no pun intended..?).
You can dual weild weapons, and it’s just as fun as you think. There’s also rifles, dynamite (I think I picked it up at some point but never used it), stationary machineguns, and, the most overpowered weapon of them all, a bow. It slows down time every time you’re aiming, and that makes Billy’s later stages a lot easier than they could’ve been.
I really liked the levels in the wilderness and their scope. The game really feels like some kind of adventure or a journey with them. There’s also quite a few horse chases that are really fast and engaging.
If I had to pick something I didn’t like, it’s three things.
1) The duel mechanic works in a very strange way - and by that, I mean sometimes it didn’t work at all. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but still it felt very clunky and I never felt I survived the duel due to my skills and not just luck.
2) There’s a midboss near the finale that moves very fast between four rooms. The fight was very annoying and just looked ridiculous.
3) At the finale, there’s a moment that uses a duel mechanic, but the game never hints you at that. I had to replay the segment and watch the supposedly dramatic cutscene before I finally figured out how am I supposed to do the thing I needed to. It left a somewhat bad taste in my mouth.
Overall, it’s still a great, even if a bit janky game, and on a surprisingly short side too - I could’ve sworn it took me more time than that before.
Mega Man is a classic platformer and the first retro game I’ve tried in a while because I got hooked on Game Center CX recently.
Well… I guess you could say that was not the most fortunate choice. This game turned out to be pretty hard (I mean, I know Mega Man is hard in general, but still). The rewind feature is pretty much the only thing that allowed me to finish this game. I suck at hardcore platformers.
I’m not a fan of the fact that you have to return to one of the stages for the special weapon to complete one of the final ones, especially since I used the weapon on two of the screens I was having problems with and never again.
Overall, it’s still fun, but very, very hard. I’ve heard the second installment is better.
It’s another game directed by SWERY. I am a fan of this guy - I loved Deadly Premonition, had a good time with D4 (even though it’s not finished), so when the new SWERY game came out, it was a no-brainer.
It’s a puzzle platformer with very unusual mechanic of dismemberment and inflicting self harm to solve various puzzles in your way. There are few of them being not that obvious, but the majority of them are pretty simple to get through. But man, the sound effects and voice acting during these scenes… ugh.
I can’t describe the actual plot without going into spoilers territory, so yeah. Let’s just say it touches upon, uuuh… touchy subjects.
The dialogues and line delivery are just as cheesy and weird as in SWERY’s previous works.
This game is unusually stable technically-wise. It only kinda froze a few times near the end and during the credits (bravo, SWERY).
Overall, it’s a very good (and pretty short) game. I’d say check it out.
Backlog progress status: feels good to play something good for a change