Holy shit, son. Looking back at its 1995 release, and SNES being a Nintendo console, I can kinda understand why a game like Majyūō aka King of Demons would never reach audiences outside Japan and in many ways that's a shame. Somewhat simplistic leading to my frustration fighting with enjoyment more and more as the game went on.

I assume there is more to this story in the manual provided you can read Japanese, but from what we're told in the game you're a badass dude called Abel who has to go down the very depths of hell to save his daughter and wife after they get kidnapped. What amused me at first is you're just a dude armed with a gun, pistol with deadly potential to stunlock, before your unceremonious “upgrade” following the thrashing you get in the opening bit. Let me just tell you upfront that despite getting encouraged by your loving wife, daughter and even the family cat pawing at you there is no happy ending to this story and I wish I got more of the story beyond some boss taunting and finale. Game includes then still rarely used voice clip for chilling effect later on.

Upgrade? There is no way to be nice about it so I'll just say it upfront – you defeat bosses, they drop crystals and you become a demon to handle your action platforming business. Only the earliest parts of King of Demons will have you playing as regular dude, albeit one who can shoot a Hadouken style energy attack if you hold down attack, and sadly staying purely human throughout the game is not possible. I know because I tried. In that case progression will simply stop after you defeat the next boss, timer will count down and you're stuck in a no-win loop until you spend all your lives. So you gotta choose and there are three main forms depending on which colored crystal you take. I won't go into details, but it's a smaller faster, normal balanced and larger stronger formula. Considering this is a primarily RANGED game, and you need to kill enemies to upgrade your health, what you really need to look out for is what kind of attacks each form has. For example, I found the small fast knock off Devilman the best even if I had to content with his somewhat unpredictable boomerang attack. At least it was spammable and you'll want that because area control is king. I've found health to be exceedingly rare and only in the last level did cannibalizing some enemies become viable, or perhaps I never noticed it because the game sure won't tell you about it.

Good or bad? I don't know, but I'd think real hard first. It goes back to controller snapping urge King of Demons invoked in me. I'm not that type, but games that ease you in and then pull the rug from under you are the worst. It's almost easy at first and when you get your first demon form it's like Christmas came early. Then the last level rolls and game throws a boss gauntlet at you with slim recovery chances unless you cheese it. And final boss. And then the real final boss. It is difficult to put into words how frustrated I got simply because I could not sustain high enough health. Impressive visuals, though.

They asked turret train or worm metro? I pulled out my Blue-Eyes White Dragon card and wrecked the place.

---

Violinist of Hameln is definitely a game I can see having appeal, but would also say ends up divisive depending on how much you like can stand escort missions in games. I say that because the entire game has you babying a side character, which is admittedly also the one solving most of the puzzles, while the protagonist himself does the bare minimum. Prior to playing the game I had no idea it was based on existing manga so it's a safe bet I just got the bare minimum out of it as an ignoramus.

A wandering minstrel called Hamel comes upon a village which seems to be plagued by some kind of monster invasion coming from a nearby castle. They have no idea what to do about it and somewhat cowardly aloof protagonist hears their pleas for help while a local girl named Flute seems ecstatic about the prospect... just as the village elder offers her to Hamel as payment for saving their village. He accepts and so begin humorous adventures of the unlikely pair, as well as Hamel's talking crow familiar Oboe, as they travel through various equally musically-named places and fight bosses like Trombone and such. It is hinted at and pointed towards the finale of the game there is more to our “hero” than meets the eye and he may have ties with demons, but is doing the right thing regardless and maybe fighting his destiny. I wish the story continued rather than ending in open ended fashion it does, though. Guess I should check out the source material if it's available.

At its core Violinist of Hameln is a gorgeous looking platformer with strong puzzle elements. Keep in mind when I say “puzzle” I really mean “Flute can wear costumes you find/buy and acquire new powers”. In practice this translates to the following – you come across a pit of spikes and can't progress anymore, but you also found this weird Ostrich costume some time back. Enter the menu, make Flute wear the costume and you can now get across. There is quite a number of costumes, and some do end up overlapping to add more progression, but it is nonetheless an intriguing mechanic because later on game stops spelling out which costume to use where in the levels. Speaking of levels, each world map has zones comprised of multiple levels and they're definitely in small enough bits. This brings us to the game's sidekick Flute who happens to be your permanent companion following you through levels, but you have little direct control over her beyond telling her to stop or follow. Which can be a problem when you need to navigate through levels. It's something you get used to and game never demands pixel perfect accuracy or insane reflexes to get through. There are some helpful items you can buy at village stores like more time in levels or taking less damage, but I never found myself needing either.

Taking into account you can upgrade your health size, attack range four your flute as well as get more lives, on top of game giving you unlimited continues, I can safely say we've entered an age where console platformers decided to mellow out a tiny bit. This is an approachable title I would recommend to most people because of the inviting visuals, humor and ease of play.

Vibrant colors make up for lack of music in a music-themed game.

As my first go-to choice for a retro review I decided to opt for Double Dragon in order to see if it lives up to its challenge seeing as, back in the day at least, I only played through Mission 1 and actually gave up on the game because it was relatively easy. Of course, I was a dumb kid back then with too much time on my hands so what could I possibly know? And yet answer provided is not as straightforward as you would imagine.

To get some scant narrative basics out of the way first – your girl gets FALCON PUNCHED gut punched and kidnapped by some rough looking dudes. Your time to shine has come as you embark on a journey to save her across four missions. Really, that's it. Unless you go into equally as brief manual that's all you'll get and is everything you need in a beat 'em up. Said manual provides information on enemies, moves and even spoils upcoming levels and who the final boss is. In fact, it's where you learn our protagonist's name is Billy Lee.

Actual gameplay is where Double Dragon will throw a curve ball at you. At its most basic Double Dragon discourages mashing attack buttons and rather wants you to get technical and pull off moves because you get points for doing so. Accumulating 999 of those will increase your proficiency level represented by hearts and subsequently unlock even more moves. So what does that translate to in practice? Basically, you want to keep enemies alive for as long as possible and pull off your spin kicks and uppercuts whenever you can. Which becomes somewhat difficult as you face more challenging types later on and realize cheesing it with jump kicks is the easiest way to deal with them, especially when you max out your level. And then... there are platforming sections with controls too stiff and requiring two button presses to execute required jumps and avoiding falling stalagmites. These sections, most likely meant to vary the game up a bit, were the worst parts of it and I lost count how many replays they forced on me. That is until you get to the final boss. Or should I say final gauntlet because you'll first fight everything game has to throw at you before facing off with /cue dramatic drum-roll your brother. Fighting your mirror should be tricky until you realize it's the only instance in the game where MASHING will work. He is faster than you and there are no weapons to help you in the arena so corner his ass and pray those spin kicks/back elbows come out fast enough.

So where does Double Dragon fall in terms of my expectations? It's a very solid game in its own right with some minor pacing issues notwithstanding. Real problem is you get two lives with no chance to acquire more. Ever. Health bar is mercifully replenished between zones, of which there are multiple in four missions game offers, but what you see is what you get. There are probably ~20 minutes of game in Double Dragon and it took me under three hours to finish with my last life to spare. Hard sell unless you're into embracing frustration. There is also mode B which turns Double Dragon into a fighting game for two players to face-off, but I think that's hardly the seller here. Two-player co-op may hold more appeal.

Using your surroundings to eliminate enemies is tempting, but you're also saying goodbye to those sweet technical points you'll need.

---

What have I learned having finally finished Contra veritable decades after its original release back in 1988? Definitely an iconic game for the system and one of those titles forever brought up, with a title jingle now ingrained in my brain, I would hesitate to make the call on whether it genuinely falls under “Nintendo hard” list of games. It's certainly nowhere near easy, but I found that most levels only really tripped me good couple of times. From then on it was just about proper execution... pun intended.

So what is it? Conventional wisdom would call it a scrolling shooter, but I think aptly coined “Run and Gun” fits perfectly here. I say that because Contra isn't married to horizontal scrolling and varies it a bit with perspective switches for couple of [notably easier] levels where it goes for... I'm not sure what to call it. Fixed perspective? In any case it has you firing up and simulates the character moving forward through a corridor. This still stays within the game's genre of choice and isn't jarring once you're used to it. On the story front – it's the late '80s and something horrible from outer space has landed in South America. It falls up to our burly Special Forces hero to save the day. Bring a friend if you have a P2 controller ready.

Contra is a blast even today. It will bust your balls, but once you have that Spread gun you better hold onto it like your life depends on it because it does. By far the best screen clearing weapon of the select few you'll find in capsules and bunkers you shoot down – laser is far too slow and I haven't really found flamethrower often enough to make it a worthwhile substitute, for example. You will want as much coverage as possible to keep blasting away as you platform among enemy gunfire and other obstacles. Which is good because other than handful of gear options you can find and ability to gain more lives, this game does not give you a lot to work with. Toolset is basic which in turn means mastering it becomes instrumental to victory. There is no health bar so every hit equals a lost life and you will burn through pitiful three lives you start out with incredibly fast. Keep in mind there's also no password save system in Contra meaning it's jungle time whenever you GAME OVER and you begin to see where infamous difficulty comes from, but I would argue that's because you activate a death spiral once you die. Getting that Spread gun and losing it upon death in later levels means you might as well restart the game and play smarter this time. I do wish game had more enemy variety to throw at you, though. It's all variations of soldiers and turrets who will, naturally, open fire at you. Only in the very last level when aliens get thrown into the mix do you get to see some variety, but even than it becomes more about breaking muscle memory because you now have to evade melee enemies. Which may be why I died more than I should have at the final boss considering he likes to spawn these purple bozos to throw at you.

So yeah, game gets a thumbs up from me. Contra is still a title that's eminently playable because of how responsive it manages to be decades later. Directional shooting is taken for granted and reduces difficulty in that aspect if you don't rush. I think the fixed camera corridor levels could've been expanded upon a bit, but I also saw them as breaks from the main game.

Jungle? Check. Destroying computers in rage? Check. I think we know who our protagonist may be.

---

People have the weirdest nostalgic games that sometimes defy those conventional “these are the best games available on the system” lists out there. For me one of those is undoubtedly Gyruss in its simplicity and days I spent on it as a kid must have been great. Even though all I remember was a space ship going around the screen in circles and creepy opening track. What I was actually surprised to find out in the present is the game really was sort of a lightweight.

There are two story screens in the game – about how mankind is under attack and finale screen where you save the day. Not that manual provides those usual tidbits we've come to expect. What you'll be doing in practical terms is flying from the edges of our Solar system towards the sun itself where a great mystery awaits. Game's map will show you passing to and past other planets in our system as each journey consists of three warps aka stages, third always ending with a boss battle. I remember this blew my mind back in the day and probably kickstarted a brief obsession with all things space related. With bonus stages accounted for, and you will want to because those are where you'll get extra stuff to keep you alive considering this is one of those “any contact kills you” kind of games, there's a total of 39 stages which is impressive. They're short, but game does vary it up by introducing new enemy types and making things spicy with how much more chaotic game becomes.

Speaking of which what do you actually do? Well, Gyruss is one of those relatively uncommon “tube shooters”. Which means your ship rotates clockwise and counter-clockwise, with unusual controls that will probably get you killed until you grow accustomed to how they work seeing as you need to actually make a circle with your gamepad to perform a full 360 rotation aka merely holding LEFT or RIGHT will not rotate you fully in either direction because UP or DOWN need to get involved as well, as enemies come at you in weird arcs and rotations of their own from beyond the screen. Truly weird aspect is they're harmless to you and considering they come in very neatly arrayed manner if you position yourself correctly and hammer the laser button you can take them out for a score bonus. This way you also rid yourself of the real issue enemies present – if you fail to destroy them as they move inward toward the center of the screen they will nestle there, become much smaller targets to acquire and open fire on you or throws asteroids. That's the basic mechanic involved, but Gyruss varies it up with enemy offering as it goes on up to including some especially vicious like one that teleports right in front of your ship and you have a second to react, rotating enemies where one side is invulnerable so you need to time your shots, enemies that break off into shards and create cover for everyone else, etc. Pretty breathtaking variety for very simple base idea. You'll be glad to hear your little ship is not entirely useless against all of the above, though. Basic laser can be upgraded to firing two shots and is absolutely invaluable in keeping you afloat and in addition you also have cannons which will one-hit kill everything except bosses. This is deemed enough to go and save the galaxy with so good luck. No shields or anything, but game is fortunately pretty generous with how it dispenses extra lives and spare cannon ammo so I never really found myself saving the later. It is handy to have a few for later bosses.

In all honesty this may be a case of strong nostalgia overtaking actually taking a critical look at a game. Is it a bad title? Hell no and you will still die until you figure out the gimmick of all the enemies game throws at you in seconds you have to react. I think it just depends on how much you're into the genre already and Gyruss never managed to hook me in the first place. Supposedly an improved port if that's a deciding factor in which version you play. I still had a great time playing through and even a good playthrough after you become proficient will take almost an hour or so. You'll have to get there, first.

In space no one can hear you scream. Or sneaking up on them, for that matter.

Tomb Raider

☉ PC (Steam), ₪ Action, Adventure, ☑ March 2013 ♬ Main Theme ♬

---

Looking back at history of Tomb Raider I am brought to realization just how many games in the series I've missed out on. Not the earliest PS1 titles with those, let's call them charming, controls, but rather installments that followed on the next generation of consoles. PC as well, of course. This puts me at odds and essentially drawing from memory as to what the series originally was. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. One should keep in mind my modern experience when it comes to “gun-totting action platformer” had been tempered already by Uncharted, though. This game strikes a resoundingly familiar tune in comparison.

Story concerns exploring this lost island called Yamatai, but it takes a while for our cast to really get into things. Understandable when you take into account their ship wrecked and things start going awry almost immediately. Even if you ignore the fact they're largely regular people, aside from Roth who happens to be ex-Royal Marine and badass to the bone, there's bad blood on the island since it turns Lara and her crew are hardly first to get stranded there. Why and how would be spoiling, but considering this is Tomb Raider and they're looking for “mythical civilization lead by the Sun Queen” I'll let you piece it together on your own. Speaking of Endurance's crew and related characters we have our own Lara Croft alongside Sam who's family is actually funding this whole expedition as kind of archaeological research. These three figures are the most important ones and game really never makes much of an effort to characterize everyone else past the intro itself and brief radio communications. You have your grumpy mechanic, fellow naive student, professor so drunk on his ego you can see disaster waiting to happen, etc. They're archetypes for the most part and if there are twists to be had you can probably how they'll unfold. Story is not really the focus of Tomb Raider as it focuses more on Lara's own journey of survival and saving others as she gets entangled with things way beyond her ability to deal with at first glance. As game likes to remind you, she's a Croft and it's in her blood, though.

Lara herself is one I have even more problems with. I remember it was all the rage back when this was a new release to toss around “ludonarrative dissonance” in order to sound smart and yet these people were not entirely wrong. What does that term mean? Put simply it's when story and gameplay narratives are at odds with one another... which happens to be absolutely true in Tomb Raider. Vulnerable girl persona they have going for Lara takes forever to wash away considering that in gameplay department you're wasting crazy cultists and wild life out to get you about ten minutes in. It's a permanent obstacle if you want to take Lara's character development seriously and I never could. To be fair there are moments later on when she's in full hardcore mode taunting enemies and they genuinely fear whoever is thinning their ranks, but such moments are far too rare and her character is not significantly altered. This one is a personal pet peeve, though – I could not stand Lara's voice. Yeah, posh Brit was always her thing, but if there's an English valley girl equivalent stereotype this is probably what it would sound like. Fact half her script seems to be grunting in pain and game mostly serves to be a sort of origin story for her character doesn't exactly help.

With all that out of the way we can finally get to gameplay and other bits

As I hinted above this was instantly familiar to me, although that could be simply because similar games have codified particular aspects like control schemes, character progression, and others over the years. If you've played one modern third-person action game you could make an argument you've played them all. In that case it's a good thing Tomb Raider is still built on very solid foundation. Yeah, Uncharted with female lead vibe is very strong, but I really liked how tight the game felt and in terms of shooting specifically I think it gave you more freedom as opposed to sticking to cover and taking potshots. In that regard maneuvering through combat zones takes a significant step forward in opposition to more static yet similar games of its time.

Camps are your headquarters. You conveniently find at least one in each zone.

Cult imagery you come across in caves, which only gets stronger as you go on, is the visual highlight of the game.

Over-the-shoulder camera is game's chosen perspective, but every now and then it likes to get fancy and break out fixed angles on you.

Another day, another couple of dozen bodies to go through.

Shut up. A guy can dream.

If I had to divide it very roughly I'd say game has in equal measure platforming, combat and collecting various trinkets, but how they're distributed is not necessarily balanced out perfectly. What I mean by that is there are segments where you're on rails as setpiece after setpiece is, sometimes quite literally, firing around you and you're either doing your best to parkour your way to the objective OR shooting through waves of enemies to stay alive. For a good chunk of Tomb Raider you'll be putting combat aside and exploring zones to get all the sweet experience and collectibles. I come back to it again, but it's the latter that will actually stand in for largely absent story as you discover more about how previous shipwrecked individuals coped with their situations, find relics Lara will expand upon for some ancient Asian history, etc.

That “fully realized game” feeling is probably what I liked the most. Yes, you're unlocking weapons as Lara goes through the story and you're using scraps you collect from crates you seemingly find everywhere, even in ruins untouched by mortal hands, but it's how these weapons are incorporated into the world is what really makes them more than merely how quickly they can kill things. Shotgun can be used to clear barricades, bow used to connect two points and create a rope to traverse over, etc. Fact you can upgrade all available weapons and will keep doing so until the very end of the game means you'll have something to do. One issue that kept rearing its ugly head is lack of any real stealth for a game where you're a single person going an entire garrison and your name isn't Rambo. You can creep on enemies and even stealth execute them if you get close with your mountaineering axe, but when you take into account you have three silent weapons (bow and upgraded pistol/rifle) you really have to wonder why that's the case in the first place. As you can probably predict game dispenses with any of that and likes to throw you into gauntlets as enemies surge in waves. I did appreciate the change of pace towards the end when new enemies appear even with staying up to date with upgrades meant I was never really out of ammo. Weapons having multiple uses also means you'll be using them to gain access to more than you initially could in the world aka going back to re-visit with fast travel to collect what you missed on your first pass.

Much to my own enjoyment I was pleasantly surprised by how Tomb Raider kept up visually. Most of its failings in that department really come from intentional choices. Be they from the setting game went with (jungles and caves, until the last quarter or so when you see more variety) or simply due to trends in the industry at the time still going strong. It's a game that really wants you to mash those buttons for QTE as interaction and core part of combat itself. I could've frankly done without them in both instances, but usage was not nearly as overbearing as some other titles in the wilds. Voices, aside from our protagonist whom I've already discussed, were singularly solid and conveyed what they were supposed to be. Various voiced logs Lara finds and Roth's VA were more notable examples. Concerning music. It tends to embrace native beats except when it ramps up to emotional pieces in somewhat dramatic fashion, which fits with the kind of story of being broken down and rebuilt.

Being a dense block of granite that I am, I had no idea Hush was apparently just a demo until I started actually playing and noticed the obvious where it says “Play Demo” in the main menu. Huh. I have no idea how or where I got the game, but it would still be nice to know that it's not the real deal considering dev is charging 10€ for it. So other than being a candidate for a very short review with its 10-15 minutes of play time, what is Hush?

Going by visuals alone you can tell game appears to be an action adventure of the most catch-all type, but I like how it incorporates things like light play aka you need to loosely stick to light sources or bad things will happen to you. This feeds into what brief snippet of the story you get where our titular girl is running away from someone or something and finds herself tumbling down a set of stairs leading to the basement in order to get away. Did I mention she goes there through drawn doors? Yeah, there are fantasy aspects here. There could be something way more foreboding at work, especially when you come across children locked into cells saying “they're safer” in there, but what you'll come across as enemies are weird animated barrels and flying books who have decided to sprout arms and attack our heroine. Which is where Hush's problems really begin – controls and combat. Now, I've read some opinions post fact and while I can see their issues with controls I used my Xbox One gamepad to play and didn't really experience any. What was unavoidable, though, was clunky and inadequate combat which has this “land a punch with your trusty toy, roll away, do the same again” routine instead of an actual combat system. Does that wreck the game or make it unplayable? No, but it's just awkward and shows either incompetence or lack of thought put it into designing something appealing. Which is an issue all you're left with are pretty appealing visuals, for what little we saw of the basement, and a single block dragging puzzle. I could do without that last one.

Hell if I know how you should spend your quarter hour or not in this case. It's not a broken game in any real sense and some issues can be alleviated by not using the M&K, but it's real short and needs fleshing out in all departments. This is one of those reviews that will require amending or complete rewrite when/if the game comes out.

Beware of Darkness, beware of Sadness.

---

Bullet hell games, especially the twin stick variety, aren't exactly my strong suit and when you boil them down to essentials it's about mastering higher levels of difficulty or chasing high scores. Neither is necessarily how I would spend my time with games which leaves me with typing a brief take on Nex Machina having now finished it on the easiest difficulty and partway through one higher. Amusingly enough, Rookie is the recommended difficulty for newcomers and considering even I got through it without dying until the last few stages you can assume it's definitely easy enough for anyone to give the game a whirl and walk away with something.

Story? Man, I don't know. Robots have gone crazy and seem intent on killing humanity. You're a badass dude riding an even more badass bike who swoops into levels and proceeds to kick robot ass. That's gist of it and game's ending is about as satisfactory as that. That's besides the point, anyway. What we're here for is to shoot some metallic contraptions apart and we'll get it. Over the top perspective and twin sticks control scheme work just fine in keeping visuals clear enough to not get bogged down in too many particle effects. Keep in mind that jumping in difficulty absolutely makes enemies more numerous and faster, their deadliness is never in question because one hit without a shield and you're toast, but you have a tools in up your sleeve to even the odds – trusty dodge with invincibility frames to get you out of sticky situations, which can be upgraded with power ups you get on levels to become a triple dodge and even cause explosions upon landing, to additional weapons when your basic blaster isn't enough even with wider spread. Laser, rocket, sword, etc it's all here and if you wait for the power up to rotate said offering you can usually choose which one to take. Whenever you die you also drop one of the upgrades you had, but it's not gone and you can collect it again. And I realize what I'm saying is probably 101 to experts, but you really really want to hang onto your pickups because it's the shock of forgetting you no longer have that charging laser to clear the screen that will get you. Other than wasting robots you will also be doing things like rescuing humans, destroying emitters and specific enemies, finding secrets exists and stuff like that before you clear individual levels and proceed to the next world. Good stuff.

Drawback I'd still list is inability to save during Arcade mode because developers decided giving you unlimited or 99 lives, on easy and medium difficulties respectively, was a fair exchange. It's not like the game is long or anything, but I found myself just wanting to take a break and you can't without starting all over again. What brief time I put into Nex Machina I enjoyed and might even check out other modes... even if multiplayer/avatar customization seems borked for some reason.

Stills fail to convey the idea of a bullet hell. Good luck taking a screenshot mid-action, though.

---

I'll be perfectly honest with you – I gave up on Saturday Morning RPG about halfway into episode five. Before I even get into review proper and why I did something I basically never do it should be noted this is an incomplete game seeing as episode six is still missing. So that's already something going against the game, but it turns out it really didn't matter in this particular case because base product had enough problems.

At its core this is effectively a JRPG albeit one styled after Saturday morning cartoons of yore. Admittedly, not being a US resident it did not speak to me on that level specifically, but I get what it was going for. I was personally less into G.I. Joe and Transfomers, more into Conan the Adventurer and Bucky O'Hare myself. Game comes with that kinda derpy protagonist + geek friend included. So much so the entire first episode is actually a dream that sets you up for way more... or does it? Setting and episodic, literally and figuratively, approach to it is not one of the problems game suffers from. There's a HOOD commander who will totally get you next time, suspiciously familiar vehicle transforming robots who have a show-off of their own in one of the episodes, and plenty of pop culture references anyone in the know with media should recognize. For god's sake, the Wizard with his BAD glove is your spiritual guide early on.

It's mechanics and design where game fails, sadly. Episodes are mercifully relatively short which still manages to be a problem because for overwhelming majority of play time you'll be fighting couple of re-skinned enemy types. Pair it with simplistic combat system itself relying on timing defense hits to reduce damage or varying degrees of annoyance to execute attacks of your own and you have helluva time ahead of you. See, all of that isn't really a problem and other JRPGs have done it to varying degrees of success, but the real problem with Saturday Morning RPG lies in just how common place combat is. I got bored with it by the time episode two ended, and inventory management was a separate source of annoyance that reared its ugly head at about the same time. Your attacks depend on items you've found to equip and out of about three dozen I've found probably six that weren't completely annoying to use? Add to that sticker scratching you can do before combat to gain bonuses and you're looking at a prospect of tiring your thumbs out real fast.

Should you play this one? I'd advise against it unless you've tapped out all other JRPGs under the sun. If I was honest with myself I would've probably stopped way earlier, but I hoped game would improve as it went on. It does go up in scale, at least.

Screen you'll be staring most of the time as you mash, pattern match or time QTEs.

Book of Demons

☉ PC (Steam), ₪ Hack & Slash, RPG, ☑ December 2018 ♬ Town Theme ♬

---

Action RPG time it is! Or was it hack & slash? I don't know, God of War kinda co-opted the term for some reason, but it doesn't matter because we're talking about Book of Demons and how I finally finished it... once. By their very nature these kinds of games cannot really be easily called finished yet I would list “completing the main story” as a valid quantifier. So let's delve deeply and greedily into these ephemeral loot drop tables with strong Diablo homages I got on a whim at 66% discount + coupon.

Story-wise this game knows for sure what it is and makes good use of it. Stop me if this sounds familiar: you arrive at a village tormented by demons who make their home out of a descending church that eventually goes straight to hell, and along the way you're helped by a motley crew of villagers counting among themselves a tavern girl, priest, witch and a mysterious geezer to identify your crap. Alright, some of the genders are bent, but it's the first Diablo and you love it. Major difference is Book of Demons takes a tonally different approach in a sense it embraces the self-awareness of the material it draws from and makes light of it whenever it can with references and jokes. Grimdark fantasy this is not. Characters themselves also adhere to the above and once in a while even got a smile out of me so job well done, especially not!Deckard Cain who hams it up as much as he can get away with. Outside of their gameplay functions these characters have voiced gossip topics that really let the VA shine and I did not expect such a production level from an indie game. They all eagerly expect the protagonist, whichever one of thre three you select – those being Warrior, Rogue and Mage, to get to the bottom of things and vanquish the Archdemon.

But that's about as far as I'll go regarding the story... which honestly is about what you'll get. Now it's time for systems and all the nitty-gritty.

In case you've never played Diablo or any of all the Diablo-clones out there the basic idea is you go down descending levels of ruins with steadily increasing challenge to find better loot and fight more dangerous enemies. You then return to town, identify and sell off stuff while keeping the good to advance your character. Rinse and repeat in a satisfying loop. Satisfying provided that basic moment-to-moment gameplay is on the level and it is in Book of Demons. There are couple of major differences developer committed to that really makes this game stand out among the clones, though. I'd say both are game changers in their own ways. First – there is no conventional loot in the game. Whatever could you mean, you ask? This is a part-time card building game. Wait wait wait. It's not like that. Cards are your loot. Whereas you would find Goreshovel in another game here it would be a Legendary card you can upgrade further to make it even better. You use rune cards and gold for upgrades and both are relatively plentiful when you hit your stride and learn how the game works. Second big change is the following – game runs on lanes, corridors, whatever. Meaning you can't actually navigate through levels freely and are rather constrained to tight corridors that branch. This doesn't actually affect picking up loot (hover over or click) or attacking enemies (you don't have to be directly in their face to attack), but what it does impact in a major way is positioning becomes the new king. You can get easily cornered later on and it is highly recommended to have an “escape” ability or at least something to crowd control with.

While we're on the subject of combat and enemies I might as well get into some things I liked here. Small touches like ability to dispel poison manually when you see the icon change over your health globe, getting knocked out actually knocks you out and forces you to click on the stars to wake up as well as disturbs some of your cards so you have to “fix” them before they're usable again, freezing you actually chills the interface and seriously messing with your mobility, etc. Now imagine all of those happening at the same time in one combat encounter because by god does this game love to check your resistances. While enemies do tend to be new skins as you go further down there are also quite a few enemy TYPES and some will annoy the hell out of you. Nothing like getting focus fired by flaming skeleton archers hiding behind health bars of enhanced armor you have to bust through, for example. And there are myriad of types like summoning reinforcements, suicidal variety, frequent impervious periods, etc. This is not even getting into named sub-bosses which go through phases of their own. Sadly, I think having only three major bosses is one of the game's mistakes even if they do mark major milestones. Drawing from Diablo is all fine and dandy, but considering other strides they've made adding more bosses should've been one of them as well.

Never again feel like you're stuck in a long level with only five minutes to spare before you have to leave.

This might look familiar to Diablo fans. Just a smidgen.

Using “lanes” versus usual level free roam is probably the most defining feature of the game.

Some really want them gear sets while others settle for Legendary cards.

Three classes definitely don't play like mere re-skins of one another. Sass is shared, though.

Craziest thing is I'm already so far into this review and haven't talked about what is arguably the third biggest inclusion – Flexiscope. Never again will a game of this type waste your time with needlessly short or long levels when you don't have the hours to sit your ass down and play in one continuous session without losing progress. I didn't exactly see the point of Flexiscope at first simply because I accepted how I played these dungeon crawlers so far. Now I realize having the ability to set your own session length, visible in minutes and number of rewards/gold you're likely to extract, is invaluable. Yes, about five minutes for one short level option is there for when you need that fix. It goes up to 50+ minutes. Needless to say game tracks progress constantly and no “Save on Exit” is going to waste a single second as you immediately return to where you left. Having progress presented in such block format also motivates you to go push forward for that small chunk of completion. It does mean there's little unique content until you reach the bosses because it's procedurally generated and interchangeable, though. But what else is new?

So what haven't I talked about yet? Audio and visuals? Alright.

Thing Trunk developer said Book of Demons is part of their Paperverse, where they have more games planned as you can see in the game lobby where you choose Book of Demons'... book, and I think they nailed the aesthetic for sure. Traditional animation is scarce as everything is made of paper and tends to animate in that fixed fashion where it plops up and down, is jerked strongly from side to side, or such methods. You'll rarely see an elaborate show off. That works for the kind of game this is and, as I said above, feeds into very competently executed flow of action and pacing. Nothing feels like it's wasting your time. As far as audio goes I'd say it's on the same level. Already mentioned VA is pretty damn good and soundtrack itself is downright impressive albeit scarce. Village theme hit all the right notes for me as far as nostalgia goes. All the hits and bumps are gloriously exaggerated and now I know the MISS MISS MISS cue all too well.

It seems to have become a thing these days to offer what are essentially demos of yore in some form or another, and Unsung Story – Prologue is one of these offerings. What we have at hand is quite short, but I think it represents a decent so-called “vertical slice” of what the game should turn out to be. Baring some major development changes along the way, of course.

At first glance game looks like dime a dozen 2D platformer with someone who cares about what they're doing and operates within his means helming the art department so we have actual drawn art assets versus someone's misplaced notion of what 8bit and 16bit games from their childhood looked like. And it is all of that, but you'll also notice something that makes it stand out – characters appear quite small or maybe the camera is simply zoomed out more than I'm used to from these games. Maybe it'll factor into larger areas and bosses than caves and skeletons we see here? In any case, this is a platformer where combat appears to be second despite how much effort is put into systems backing it up when you take into account gear system at work. You can buy new equipment from the shops with loot you occasionally find from fallen foes or salvage from chests you come across, although at the moment this was limited to whether you wanted one-handed + shield or two-handed weapons in addition to ranged attack. Prologue culminates in a boss fight following a rather tense platforming section as level continues to collapse and demands you combine double jumping with dashing to get across where it turns out not everything is exactly operating under the premise which lead our hero to enter the cave in the first place. Plot thickens.

All in all, it was a good first taste and all the groundwork is already here if you ask me. Now it's just a question of whether Unsung Warriors proper will materialize considering their Kickstarter pitch failed.

Among other things. Sprinkling of revenge would also be nice.

---

Sometimes you get tidbits representing what a game may be in the future and sometimes you get what is couple of hours worth of content. Sin Slayers: The First Sin is definitely among the latter. Before I even get into talking about this... well, honest to god demo in everything but name, it's probably worth pointing out Sin Slayers will most likely resonate strongly with the Darkest Dungeon audience due to its reliance on challenge, difficulty and running the same content over and over.

So what is it? Basically a roguelike with 3v3 RPG style combat considering it is party-based and people take turns. If not for clear cut reference above one might even be tempted to call it JRPG combat, but I think the rest of the game themes itself rather nicely in a different direction. There's little story to speak of – your playable character help two people slay some demons and they all retreat to a nearby church where others have also taken refuge. Local priest also seems to have a plan regarding how to get rid of the corruption infesting the land... and conveniently splitting it off into domains themed after Deadly Sins. Cue content progression in traditional roguelike sense where each “sector” is randomly generated upon initiating each new session. This naturally lends itself to replayability, but one aspect I like is Sin Slayers' genuine difficulty early on because you don't really get natural increment in power through level ups. No, you need to craft better equipment with slowly acquired materials and recipes, unlock new tiers of skills by directly paying money, etc. Where crafting giveth, character management taketh, though. There is no handling your characters between sessions and they recover to full health. Real focus is on the exploration map and combat here with intricacies like enemies being vulnerable to specific types of damage, weighing PROs and CONs on which decisions to make with events and such.

This one is a game that will find its audience, and probably already has one, not to mention it is a pretty impressive showcase if it was intended to get you into the entire package. However. For the exact reason of being what it is game will also be avoided. I can already see grinding zones for materials and to do all specific quests will take a while, but stuff like characters having skills they can use outside of combat for level navigation, witty writing if that's your thing, etc it may still be worth at least checking out. Maybe you just like detailed sprite work.

Future proofing your game with mobile-friendly UI seems strange considering it wasn't released for mobile platforms. Not yet, at least.

---

To be perfectly honest with you Stoneshard: Prologue is essentially meant to last about 25-30 minutes. Fact it took me over two hours for just as many successful runs should clue you in on two possibilities: A) I really have lost my edge or B) gods of RNG were not looking favorably on me. Maybe it was a deadly combination of both?

Despite what I can see from Steam's store page for the main game itself, which promises much more and has you leading a caravan among other proper RPG things, Prologue I've played is a roguelike through and through inspired by some of the most stalwart genre classics. Which means turn-based combat and managing Verren as he struggles to escape from a prison cell he finds himself locked in by a mean looking vampire. As a matter of fact you'll be dusting quite a few vampires on your way up and let me tell you Stoneshard has no intention of making it easy. Mainly because enemy distribution and loot can make or break your thankfully short runs for the purposes of this limited experience. What really sold me on the game was the fact your inventory will be more loaded with things to handle your condition over some brand new gear. For example, standing near explosions can cause a concussion, blocking a particularly harsh blow could cause long-term arm damage or Verren can simply get depressed if things start going badly for you. There are solutions for these things such as bandages, food/drinks you need for survival aspects, ether inhaler to give yourself a boost with detriments in the long run, etc. It's a dynamic puzzle you have to balance and it makes the character actually feel alive on top of classical character building with stats and skills.

Provided Stoneshard can deliver this and more, I'm sold and game has its place on my wishlist. What I have played is an extremely tight roguelike that manages to evoke terrific atmosphere with relatively simplistic visuals and certainly got me hooked on its greater story with mere journal entries and some lines of dialog. Just... prepare to die.

Get accustomed to vampires in dungeons, my friend. We'll be here for a while.

The Dwarves

☉ PC (Steam), ₪ Action, RPG, ☑ December 2016 ♬ Main Theme ♬

---

Product of Kickstarter funding and adaptation of an existing series of books, The Dwarves has been sitting on my HDD for a while now and I'm happy to confirm that it has indeed been finished. Was it worth? Well, first I'd like to say I am unfamiliar with the series of novels, but game is based solely on the first one and ends on satisfactory note with some minor bait that will most likely never materialize in a sequel. For what it's worth it sure got me interested in the novels as of today.

Girdlegard is something we must tackle first seeing as it is the setting of the game. And oh boy, is it overwhelming unless you're familiar with the property. Not that I mind “sink or swim” approach where you have to puzzle things out for yourself, but where The Dwarves stumbles is in sheer quantity of information thrown at you in such a short time. To simplify – Girdlegard is a region primarily populated by human kingdoms, but also home to various Dwarf clans in the mountains edging the region. Five dwarven kingdoms, to be specific. Game refers to them as Firstlings, Secondlings, Thirdlings, Fourthlings and Fiftlings respectively. This is important because you can easily mix it up until you're about a third into the game, reach one of these kingdoms and start to piece things together. There are also magical fields in Girdlegard where Magi make their bases. You can imagine the issues from all of this amalgamating and interacting, but there's also added tension because there are other factions at work – Elves, Orcs and Alfar... who are kinda like evil Elves. The Perished Land is also a thing and it's an evil spirit/region, but also something that seemingly has a will of its own and seeks to infiltrate Girdlegard while the Magi are holding constant vigil to keep it outside.

With that out of the way our story proper concerns Tungdil Goldhand, a dwarf youth who oddly enough does not live with his kin but rather in one of Girdlegard's enchanted realms where a Mage Lot-Ionan rules. Tungdil was orphaned you see and saved by said mage who kept him to work as a smith where he has now built his life. Sadly, things take a grave turn when Tungdil is sent by his master to deliver an important package to a meeting of Magi deciding how to protect the land. Along the way he comes across two dwarves who manage to save his life, stakes get raised as dangerous Alfar massacres a village and suddenly our dwarven lad is in a fight to save his life while his two new companions seem desperate to take him to Secondling's fortress for some unknown reason. Plot thickens.

So yeah, that's the gist of it. While this is technically an RPG, and what isn't these days, I wouldn't really focus on story in The Dwarves. It's there and typical fantasy fare is what you'll get, but what game focuses on is gameplay.

Best way to explain the combat system at hand would be to imagine an action RPG except you can also pause to input commands from instructing characters to move to a specific point or use abilities. Sadly, it's a single step kind of input so you cannot queue actions aka you cannot order “move here and THEN use ability X” which tends to make combat hectic because it is, essentially, a dynamic puzzle board that never stands still. Overhead view with freedom to rotate the camera and limited zoom is maintained, and there are times when you don't want to keep it zoomed out to the max. Mastering the combat system definitely took me a while, though. Tutorial overwhelms you without necessarily breaking down the very basics so you think simply standing still and bashing will work when in reality getting surrounded is a quick way to die.

Reading the above you may think fighting is what you'll be doing for most of the game, but that would be wrong. Mostly. Traveling across the world map is really what will take a big chunk of your time and let me tell you it's not all peachy there. World is divided into nodes you move to and from with each transition taking a day's worth of time. You also have a food supply to keep an eye on. Yes, it's one of those games. Twist here is you will not starve if you run out of food, but it will cripple your characters' ability to heal injuries sustained in battles while traveling. This becomes less of a problem later on when you expand your roster, but that raises a separate conundrum I'll get into later. Once the shine wears off you'll realize there are too many nodes in the world that serve no purpose other than to waste your food and time. Former can at least be replenished through events or straight up buying it at outposts for gold which you'll honestly be swimming in anyway. Little one-off events you come across are the main attraction and most have alternate outcomes. For example, how you handle a mercenary situation could result in fighting half the town or getting their support. I liked this element of the game and wish it was condensed a bit more. Then again, you can also ignore everything and just go for the main story question mark.

Story quickly turns grim, but that's seemingly a requirement to embark on the hero's journey.

Sprinkling of choices populates the world map and even becomes CYOA-lite on occasion.

Fully produced cutscenes are as rare as directly having impact on dwarf politics.

Seemingly familiar real-time with pause combat definitely takes a while to get used to its flow because it's so reliant on using abilities over everything else.

Surprisingly jankier than it appears I saw little use for game's status screen. Aside from occasionally switching a skill or two my resources ended up hoarded. As usual.

When you get into fighting is when entirely separate set of issues rears its ugly head. For starters there's how the game handles physics and idea of “force” behind attacks. When you select which attack to initiate it usually has a cone or arrow of direction where it'll fire off to or what area it will affect. Thing is, this also affects allies and you can cause massive damage or displace them resulting in stuns. You can hand wave this early on when only couple of characters have AoE clearing attacks, but as they get more prevalent it becomes a serious issue requiring careful positioning and party composition. Problem – this is a highly melee-centric game and not everyone is built like a dwarven ironbreaker your main cast is. Secondly, there's also pathfinding which tends to lose its shit the moment you're not in open fields and calling characters to your position can have comically disastrous results. Nothing like being close to finishing a level only to send your ally tumbling down a cliff because you accidentally caught him with a sweeping attack.

Which feeds into another matter and that's highly imbalanced characters. You'd have to be crazy to take some of them into combat with you... except you end up doing precisely that with the game forcing them on you in couple of situations. This could be entirely on me and maybe it changes if you play on hard difficulty, but trying to charm enemies to fight for you is nonsensical when you could just focus on knocking them down, executing them and gain those sweet sweet APs you need to activate abilities. The more varied party you bring to fights the more incessant micromanaging is required on your end to keep everyone alive. This is generally not a problem because there are couple of situations where you really don't want to fight through hordes of orcs, who make up 90% of game's enemies, and rather rush to green exit marker, but towards the finale game likes to surprise you with three back-to-back fights without chance to recover health unless you spend/have potions so you'll be forced to rotate your party. That was probably the worst part of the game for me because it felt like I was dealt a bad hand and somehow had to make it work regardless.

Taking into account The Dwarves' Kickstarter origin you may think compromised visuals or cut corners elsewhere, but if I'm being perfectly honestly only problems I'd call out in production department would probably be related to Unity engine itself. Loading screens are way too frequent and ended up breaking already questionable flow of the game which may have been the result of trying to stay faithful to the book and balancing it out with the development process. Game is definitely in somewhat a of a lull until the second half and then punches full on into overdrive for the final act. It also takes a while to move past green meadows and burning villages until locales diversify a bit, but when it does it's dwarven architecture aplenty until the end.

Of the three games included I think Santa Monica by Night is probably the closest to a full-fledged game you can get and by that I mean it's a point & click adventure that has a beginning, middle and end. Needless to say, it does fall on the extremely short side of things and it took me about 20 minutes to play through, but the foundation is there. Playing the game coincided with the fact Bloodlines 2 got announced not to long ago to much hype and anticipation.

Getting down to it the game does have an interesting premise – it takes place between the original Bloodlines game and the upcoming sequel. You also play as someone who really liked the game when he played it years back and was fascinated by what he saw... only to get turned into vampire himself at some point later on. Your sire sends you to Santa Monica on a mission to find out more about another vampire and extradite him safely out of there if possible only for things to quickly complicate once you hit the ground and learn more. What I found the most appealing is this is the first foray into the new 5th Edition of the Masquerade ruleset with the accompanying lore changes. Hell, this ties intrinsically into who your character is and there's a brief snippet into the Second Inquisition and their impact on the vampire society. It goes without saying you'll also see some favorite characters making a cameo.

I have this nagging feeling game was not really meant to be played in full HD widescreen as it really brings out the pixels. Nails the atmosphere, though.

---

You would be amazed how many games there are on itch.io that have Red in the title, but make no mistake because this Red is an expanded take on the Little Red Riding Hood tale if Little Red decided to defeat the big bad wolf by combining clues.

Not to be a downer or anything, but I think this just might not be a game for me. It's not like I need story in all my games yet this game will deliver what it has in the form of an interesting cutscene where you see the big bad wolf chomping on grandma as you run away from the house with a mystery note that starts you down the path of adventure. Alongside collecting mystical stones, mushrooms, etc to progress you will also have to navigate the forest itself which is pretty damn immersive now that I think about it. Visuals are what they are, but I think setting lighting plays a major role in setting the mood – from ominous dark woods navigable by following fireflies to thorny patches. Did I forget to mention that werewolf will occasionally be on the prowl to get you? Well, now I have. Red is a game about exploration and collecting things so you can progress further through claustrophobic environments with the occasional puzzle to break it up.

You better run, you better hide. And hope werewolf can't find you with that depth of field effect going on.

---

From what I've gathered 7 Days in the Fire Mountain was made in under a month during the studio's “team building” exercise or whatever you call it. For what it is, it's pretty alright, but I think there also exist clear asset limitations because of such short development period that were smartly compensated for by choosing the correct setting and type of game, but does it succeed?

To put it plainly, no. At least not for me. What we have on our hands is an exploration game with survival elements taking place in a mountainous forest area. Two problems rear their ugly heads: survival and forest. There is, take a guess how many, set number of days to explore around and your health ticks down with time so you have to find means to increase it which becomes a chore and yes, you can GAME OVER if you hit zero. On the other hand the setting itself is fine. I mean, I have nothing against temperate forests personally. Problem is there's only so many different sprites and tileset variety and you'll see pretty much all of them in the first few screens so get used to disorientation which is a problem when you're timed on screen transitions. Some things also appear at different times of day so that's something to factor in.

I would also point out there's a story here about finding yourself and what happened. It's intriguing at surface level so I won't spoil it, but it sometimes comes off as pretentious in that indie way when an indie studio misunderstands what “less is more” means. That could just be me, though.

The owls monkeys are not what they seem.

Grand Theft Auto IV

☉ PC (Steam), ₪ Action, Adventure, ☑ December 2008 ♬The Soviet Connection ♬

---

Grand Theft Auto 4 s probably one of those games I should've reviewed years ago when I first played it, but I also imagine it would've been received much worse considering the state of the PC version. While I'm on the subject it's only fair to emphasize I modded the game with GTA4 Reborn mod which largely handles all the [now] leftover GfWL/XBox Live issues, bug fixes and restored some content like all the songs Rockstar in their expiring licenses wisdom saw fit to remove. Real question is how much can you fix a game that has such deep core issues related to its platform and does it stand the test of time after a decade of open world progress? Well... let's find out, cousin.

Following my usual format story is up first, but honestly if you have any GTA experience you can kinda tell where it's going – start from rags and become a very rich person or disappear anonymously.

This fourth installment does its own thing with a certain twist ending, but that's clearly spoiler territory so we won't go there. In any case, we assume the role of Niko Belic escaping his history concerning Yugoslav Wars shenanigans and who has some pretty bitter memories on the matter as he finds his way to Liberty City where his famed cousin Roman is living the high life. Except it all ends up being fanciful tales considering he barely owns a taxi service and has to deal with pushy Russian mobsters. Well, NB being the protagonist that he is, things certainly take a turn following his arrival and it's not long before he gets to pursue a certain obsession that has essentially ruined his life – track down the person who betrayed him back during the war and got his other friends killed in the process of selling them all out. This becomes the proagonist's primary motivation when you're not being an errand boy for everyone under the sun with their greed and need.

Which is already where my problems start to rear their ugly head. Story in GTA4 isn't really that good and never goes beyond the basic level it starts out. That department is carried more by whether you care about the main cast or not... which could be said about all the Grand Theft Autos from 3 onward, though. And I do care about Niko. Roman less so, but they make for a great dynamic duo until the game kinda forgets about them after the first third or so after which you get mired neck deep in the affairs of organized crime simply because you want to get paid. I'll touch on this more when I get to discussing actual systems and gameplay. Let's just say you're not really working for all that useful payout, so real currency you're looking for are interesting character stories. GTA4 thankfully delivers on those in spades even if they end up being little more than criminal/national stereotypes at their core. From your friendly Rastafari masquerading as a mobile weapon shop to myriad of Italian/Russian/Irish gangsters and other small time pushers. They all have missions that desperately require someone to solve them and you happen to be available. I would like to point out there are story choices on multiple occasions, but only the very last one truly matters in a sense it determines the ending. Meaning it's not some extensive investment to see both of them unfold.

I feel like any city GTA game is set in almost acts as if it were a character in its own right so Liberty City deserves some attention. Definitely not one of my favorites. It goes without saying the city is based on New York City, albeit representing four out of five boroughs, but I'm not a fan of it being so heavily urbanized and split onto islands. Meaning you're always crossing bridges and I can only assume it may have something to do with hiding loading times because it ended up annoying me and just taking taxis to distant locations was far easier than driving there myself. That's a problem in a game where hijacking cars and driving are both kind of a big deal.

While I'm on the subject I might as well transition into gameplay itself.

Before anything else is said there's a HUGE elephant in the room that has to be addressed – driving physics. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how mad they drove me and were going to play a major role in rating GTA4 negatively as I set out to play the game even back in the day. Until they just stopped annoying me one day as I realized it simply took time to, as kids say these day, “get good” at driving. Not all cars were manufactured equal and you really end up looking for those better, premium cars that handle better overall. Where game makes a misstep is missing any form of car customization past getting a new paint job. I feel like at least some of the inherent problems with these driving physics, where most cars handle like tanks trying to ice skate, could have been alleviated with customization where you get to tweak things like breaks, suspension, etc. Alas such system is absent from the game and it takes a while until good cars become easily available. Thankfully, you can at least store them in front of your apartment(s). It is worth noting there are also bikes, helicopters and boats in the game with airplanes being suspiciously absent. Less said about helicopter controls the better. I just don't get what is it with Rockstar and helicopter controls, but there was little fun to be found in matching altitude while dodging rockets and trying to hit my target with the machine gun simultaneously.

Yeah. Let's see how long that lasts.

That's Niko, our cheerful protagonist with a very positive outlook on life.

I killed this guy only to forget to check whether his replacement is equally as bitchy or he simply comes back to life. Taxis were unavailable for a while, though.

You could make a valid argument out of which is deadlier – that plaid shirt or sticky cover system GTA4 employs.

Just in case you felt like driving a mobile fortress there are trucks.

Second-most thing you'll be doing is shooting, naturally. This entry sees the first modern implementation of a sticky system for the series and naturally there were some bumps left to iron out in the future. After pressing the cover button Niko will stick to the nearest viable cover from which you can then shoot wildly or take aim for more accurate shots. Standard fare for modern TPS so far. My problem with the system was this weird [lack of] accuracy if you take your time to aim shots because you kinda have to take into account Niko has to make a move to “step out” of the cover to actually fire which throws off your aim. It's something you learn to compensate for, but bullets basically won't be landing precisely where you've aimed them at. Speaking of movement this ties into the way protagonist moves about as GTA4 embraces that slow, almost weight-based movement some don't like. I didn't mind it, but it certainly takes a while to get used to coming from snappy arcade approach of older 3D titles in the series. One thing I do not like is walking being the game's default movement speed and having to constantly keep a button pressed to run or, god help us, mash the button to sprint. Analog sticks were in use so why couldn't have that range of motion been used instead? At least basic running. It comes off as one of many pet peeves it would probably take Rockstar a game or two to figure out fully.

Earlier I spoke about how money isn't really your reward for doing things in the game. Except it is, but you have nothing to spend it on. Game loves to shower you in cash, and even netting you real nice lump of change after the final mission, but unlike previous games where you could buy real estate to serve as a noticeable money sink, once you buy the clothes you want there's nothing to invest any of it here. This is not helped by the fact game gives you apartments, where you sleep to advance time/save and change clothes, for free as the story progresses. I kept saving my money wondering when I'd be able to spend it all only to be disappointed. This problem kinda extends past financial matters into the game as a whole – I feel like GTA4 ended up being too boring, too mundane in its pursuit to be serious. I mean, unless you really like hunting those 200 pigeons and have given up on life. Even customary taxi and police missions, along with Brucie getting you into the car stealing business, feel like they barely make a difference in the overall content drought unless story was what you signed up for in the first place.

So you've been reading up to this point and probably thinking “Whoa, that's a lot of negatives!”. You're right. Problem is that positives in GTA4 are actually under the hood or simply far too outweighed by the negatives to make a difference.

Euphoria system, for example, is one of those sadly forgotten gems that combined physics, adaptable animations and AI to create true semblance of a living world, eschewing pre-determined animations and overt recycling thereof. It also permeates the entirety of the GTA4 experience and is mind blowing once you actually realize how it's working. Shove button is in the game for a reason. I wish it was used for more tangible things than that seeing as it makes for a very immersive addition that never goes past that, though.

I'll finish this with a quick summary of the PC port. In short? Pretty low on the totem pole of ports out there. I'm grateful for not having to play the game in the state it was released in, but even modded and with the benefit of a modern PC it still has issues like reliably unreliable framerate that varies all over the place, even more awkward vehicle controls with M&K, etc. Most of the problems lie on the technical side of things and I have found solutions but some, like uncapping the framerate to get around jerky performance, leads to further comedic situations like camera zooming in extensively during cutscenes. Its a mess all-around and I would not recommend playing the vanilla version if you ever intended to play GTA4 on PC.

Call of Cthulhu

☉ PC (Steam), ₪ Adventure, RPG, ☑ October 2018 ♬ Entirety of the soundtrack, seeing it works atmospherically. ♬

ᛝ

I have no idea what the hangup in question was, but Call of Cthulhu is one of those games where I took a break between finishing it and penning the review. Before I get into reviewing proper I'd like to say I really liked the way it used Lovecraft's writing as a whole and goes beyond widespread stuff you are likely to be familiar with if you know the author by reputation alone. I just wanted to point out upfront there's plenty of little stuff Lovecraft aficionados will notice even if it is in distilled form for the most part.

So what do we have on our hands? Is it another Dark Corners of the Earth? Surprisingly enough that comparison strikes closer to home than you'd expect in some aspects, but we'll get around to it.

We step into the shoes of Edward Pierce, a war veteran turned private detective during the 1920s and one who may have drinking problems. Or not, depending on how you play it throughout the game. Other pressing matter is his PI license might get revoked if he doesn't get off his ass and actually starts taking cases. This just happens to coincide with Hawkins senior coming with an offer – solve his daughter's death on an island called Darkwater not too far away from Boston and small enough to be remain quite isolated. Being pressed into it more by an earlier call about the license Pierce accepts and he's off to adventure. All of this really the first ten minutes or so summarized, though. As you can imagine things take a turn and matter escalates into considerably more than “Was my daughter's death a case of foul play?” it initially appears to be. Let's just say that Darkwater Island for sure lives up to its name and I'm not talking about waters running red from the now dead whaling industry which put the screws on the locals as they conveniently found an alternative. Really, if you manage to not see it from a mile away it's a fairly entertaining story if not engaging.

Characters themselves were more of a mixed bag for me, though. If I had to put a phrase to it I'd probably say very few stuck with me. This was not helped by the fact the more interesting character was or had a cool premise the less we see of them. For example, Cat. She comes off as a highly competent gang boss who can potentially give Edward a whooping, but is absent for 80% of the game and when we eventually get back to her she's used to introduce a mechanic I couldn't care less for. Someone like that at least got a resolution, but even characters who are genuinely sympathetic or who's goals align with the protagonist's tend to float in and out of the story leading to a very disjointed flow. I think the problem is the same one that applies to the story above – it feels as if like large swathes of the narrative were cut or extremely simplified to get the basic gist of the plot across. Considering the kind of property we're working with here, and scale of things as story advances, you can imagine most of these characters do not have a happy ending. Or possibly even worse it may feel as if the game had forgotten about their existence past a certain point.

Kicker of the review is that the above, as conflicted as my feelings were about narrative elements at times, would arguably have to be the highlight. It's an immersive game if you soak it all in and marvel at the green rot that comes through its every pore. Games don't live on story alone, though. “Walking simulator” is a derogatory descriptor many apply, but is that truly the case for Call of Chtulhu? Gameplay and things thereof to follow...

Considering you actually get to, you know, do things beyond just walking and inspecting items to no impact or significance you'll be glad to hear that Call of Cthulhu is, in fact, not a walking simulator. Regardless, game is still rooted in shallow adventure mold where gameplay is stripped down to basics while puzzles themselves are not at all engaging. That's what we popularly like to call “casting a wide net” aka hoping you'll catch multiple audiences at the same time with just enough basics. If not to keep them throughout at least past that initial hour or so. You should also keep in mind this is a first-person only game so if some swaying and dramatic setpieces shaking the camera have detrimental effects this might be a tough sell.

I like to imagine Edward is mocking her for playing on easy mode in Cthulhu.

You'd be surprised to find out which skill is least used. Or not if you're familiar with Call of Cthulhu RPG proper.

Uh, sir? One-way ticket for NOPE express, please.

Because of course it always has to come back to guns. Hope you like auto targeting.

Famous last words.

Call of Chtulhu has the added benefit of RPG elements on top of it.. which is something that has become ubiquitous in modern gaming in a way it no longer raises eyebrows in curiosity. In game terms this translates to Pierce having couple of skills which you can raise with points you get as game advances. Not a leveling up system per se, but still one in all but name. Skills are separate matter unto themselves. At times there are hard checks (can't really expect to overcome a groundskeeper without decent Strength, for example) and unlockable dialog options depending on how high your skills are, but there are two skills that cannot be raised normally past character creation and in order to advance them you have to track down fitting items – Occultism and Medicine. Throughout the game you'll have some HAX opportunities to raise your Occultism at the expense of sanity, but even having located a truckload of medical books I was surprised to not have increased my Medicine significantly. I saved the worst/best of the bunch for last though, and that would Spot Hidden skill. Why the conflicted impression? On one hand you have a game that actually makes use of what's typically a filler skill everyone avoids, but on the other it's also a skill that triggers on percentage chance. Now, all skills operate like that but failing to pick a lock or convince someone you are on their side is different from items plain NOT SPAWNING depending on your Spot Hidden ranking. Even early on this can lead to awkward situations where, for example, to open a sewer grate and create an alternate passage to a warehouse you need three pieces of equipment to fix the crane. Two you can find normally, but the last one spawns if your said skill is high enough. Provided it isn't you're left wondering where you went wrong or is it yet another case of game bugging out. Add inability to save manually into the mix with percentage-based successes and you have a recipe for frustration provided you're not game for some RNG.

Dialog itself is one of the systems I'll praise because it does have options that depend not only on your skills, but also on clues and information you've gathered as Edward did by locating snippets here and there or by reconstructing scenes. Why he can do this? Well, you could argue it's because of story reasons but when you see another unrelated character pull it off it loses all the mystery. It's basically Sherlock mode where you examine clues and Pierce narrates. Surprisingly I have a feeling this was done more for player's gratification and understanding in some cases because the game doesn't really bring it up when it really should. If you're used to RPG dialog where choices and consequences are actually worth their salt that's not really the case with Call of Cthulhu. Dialog and entire presentation is really geared towards pushing you down a set path with couple of forks that come into play later down the road for binary results. You won't lock yourself out of content by pursuing non-optimal choices because the game is already slim as it is so no worries there is what I'm trying to say. You will still benefit from maxing two skills you can probably already figure out.

Those among you who may have played the game for yourself may be wondering right now “No way, is he not going to talk about it?” and you can put your fears to rest. It's time for stealth talk. Video games devs? This has not stop. I thought we were past forced stealth sections years ago but that's not really the cause. No, to be perfectly honest I think it's worse – stealth, such as it is, is actually a big part of the game. Keep in mind when I say “stealth” I really also mean “crawling through a pitch black asylum while pursued by a monster and your lamp oil reserves are dwindling down” kind of stuff on top, you know, regular crawling around the asylum and avoiding guards. Stealth is just too basic and you have no tools beyond crouch and pitiful lean function. It will happen multiple times and several people I talked with have bailed on the game at those specific points.

You have been warned. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Go bask in its emerald madness.

NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM

☉ PC (Steam), ₪ Fighting, Adventure, ☑ August 2017 (PC) ♬ Big Fight with the Giant Toad, The Ones to be Protected and Dream and Determination ♬

〒

Let's get some prep-work out of the way first before I delve into reviewing – over the course of this summer I sat through Naruto Kai and caught up so I would be informed about the material I previously knew nothing about beyond “ninja in orange suit” thing. Well, considering the way game dishes out story I'd say that was a pretty prudent decision in hindsight. This comes at odds with my overall ignorance regarding fighting games considering my last foray into the genre was... Tekken 3, I think? Turns out neither of these are really much of a handicap with Ultimate Ninja Storm.

Let's dig in, bakayaro konoyaro.

And now I realize I have to explain Naruto to people. Well, basically it's a society where you have countries but real deciding factor are their Hidden Villages aka villages where ninjas train. All of that is grand scheme background stuff that doesn't really matter for this game past the fact ninja from other villages gather at Hidden Leaf for a sort of student promotion tournament-style event at one point and shenanigans start from there. Before we get to that point we follow the story of Naruto Uzumaki, wannabe badass ninja and future Hokage aka leader of the village who has to persevere through tough life of being an orphan from toddler days and largely ostracized by other villagers because of a dark secret he's not privy to yet – Nine-Tailed Fox beast that destroyed the village when he was young is actually sealed inside of him. Add to that the fact Naruto is a pretty bad ninja and he has a tough life ahead of him. That is, until certain things are put into motion. If you've seen your fair share of anime you can kinda guess where these things go on from here with forging friendships, enduring rivals, secret villains working in the background, ever increasing cast of characters that will be tossed aside eventually, upping the scales of combat, etc.

While we're still on the subject of story I think that's one big aspect Naruto: Ultimate Ninja STORM actually has a problem with – you get really the barest of barebone cliff notes possible. I have no idea how someone is supposed to get anything past the general gist of things from this unless you already have some experience with Naruto. Which is weird because game also clearly shows inclinations towards making original content in the form of side missions with their own snippets of story and character development. I think the problem is more along the lines of coherency and budget allocation than lack of will on developers' end, though. There are also examples where pre and post mission flavor text will tell you the opposite of what happens during the mission itself aka “character X got defeated regardless” because that's what happened in the story... while you just played through the fight as character X and won. That's something I could've used less of. In case you're looking to find out which part of the source material this game covers it's Part I. Shippuden is not included.

Structure is something that warrants couple of lines of explanation as well. Game runs on having a large hub area, Hidden Leaf Village in this case, where you can faff around for a while until you discover it's pretty damn empty. You get some shops and save points alongside NPCs to talk to here-and-there, but seemingly nothing else. That's only the case until you get a grasp on how missions work because they're apart from the main hub and you have to select them from a menu where they're separated into rank tiers ranging from D to S + main tab for the campaign which has point requirements you need finished side missions to accrue. Finish a mission, get your reward in the form of currency and items, progress! Completing missions also spawns stuff like collectible scrolls, ingredients and secret move scrolls in the hub which you collect. Thing is, this happens after almost every mission AND they always pop up in the same half dozen locations.

Let's just say I got tired of jumping around like a money to collect scrolls and moving around blocks/barrels to get to chests or bags after an hour. Fortunately game varies this up somewhat when you unlock Rasengan move and can bust down doors or spin around on wires to get scrolls faster, but that comes way too late in the game for my taste. You'll know Hidden Leaf Village by heart before the story's over.

Boss monster battles are sadly something game rarely brings out. Expect QTEs and clumsily hitting a house-sized opponent.

Even in story mode there are handful of missions where you don't play as Naruto.

Well... it'll take some self-awareness even if it comes from a designated villain.

Given the source material it covers a lot of the flashy stuff is absent. Once in a while you get to go all out with finishers, though.

Hidden Leaf Village is where you're usually up to no good and indulging in collectathons.

Now, gameplay is really the meat and potatoes of the game as far as I'm concerned and it's one element I find myself at poor footing in this case considering it's a fighting game. Fortunately for me, Ultimate Ninja STORM also happens to be a pretty casual one at it so you'll be spared reading my fumbling over technical terms and such. I should first point out game runs on three pillars: platforming and collecting stuff in the hub area, fighting in arenas and some mini-games on the side. While couple of mini-games like jumping up tree branches, playing hide and seek with locals kids, etc are amusing distractions (except hide and seek, and whoever approved that needs to never again approve anything) it's the fighting part that's the real attraction of the show. You'll be doing it for about 80% of the game. Is that bad? Well, no. This really is a fighting game at heart but one bent more on spectacle and playing as your favorite characters versus pixel accurate zoning or some such. Not to say there isn't technicality to different types of characters, but I simply found that one of these two approaches will get you through the game just fine: A) gather Chakra and close distance to pummel enemies to death or B) gather Chakra and spam Ultimate Jutsu until it connects. Games gives you various tools like items and support characters that can not only be used as attacks on cooldown, but also be your safety net that can literally catch you if enemies launches you with their attacks. Iffy substitution dodge made me weary of actually trading blows with enemies, though. Freeform arena with camera doing some heavy lifting to keep the action framed yet cinematic took me some time to get adjusted to but once I did it was alright. None of that “my character is too far to see what he's doing” from my experience.

At some point I realized I was overthinking it and simply went with the flow instead. Not all characters are created equal and my favorite (Rock Lee, man. Rock Lee!) is sadly not featured enough in the story, but I'm convinced you'll to find characters interesting enough to play with considering they run the gamut of your melee-focused, range-centric, Chakra-heavy, etc. You should keep in mind I'm talking about the story mode where you slowly unlock stuff until you have a full deck of cards towards the end. Game also has a traditional versus mode... and that's it. Only two modes are included which might be a deal breaker for some of you alongside the fact there is no online multiplayer so you better have a local buddy.

Time to have to decide whether to go back and complete all the missions I have left, including dreaded hide-and-seek, get enough money to unlock extras and go for the true ending. Or not, because you get constant familiar loops over and over again with surprises running out early on.

Tail Concerto

☉ PlayStation, ₪ Action-Adventure, Platformer, ☑ November 1998 ♬ Panta's Theme, The Iron Giant and Alicia's Mischief ♬

戌

You know, I don't really wake up one day and think to myself “kinda want to play a game that's turning 20 this year!” and yet these things happen. Lost Concerto somehow found its way to my list of games to play. Possibly because it got recommended on similarities to a certain other game at one point? Well, I'll get around it but don't expect my usual excessive review with this one.

Following the abrupt morning call which cuts his vacation short our protagonist Waffle is called back on duty as policeman seeing that Black Cats Gang is running wild in local town. Well, “policeman” in this setting means you get to drive a cool ass Police Robo, a one-seater mech with surprisingly nonexistent defenses because the driver is pretty exposed. Another interesting cosmetic choice is usage of continuous tank tracks for arms which presumably allows the Robo greater increase in control freedom. Also worth noting is “town” stands for a floating island in the Kingdom of Prairie where game is set and populated by Dog-People as well as Cat-People. As you can suspect something is afoot and it doesn't take long before Waffle runs into one of the leaders of the Black Cats Gang and recognizes her as Alicia, cute cat girl he seemingly gave a pendant to when they were kids in a flashback cutscene.

What could it all mean? What deeper mystery is afoot? Well, surprisingly quite a bit in the story department, but it's all filtered through a game clearly aimed at kids that never goes beyond that even with underlying stuff that's clearly laid down. For example, I was surprised that racial animosity seems to be behind events, but more than that it's character archetypes that drive the story. You've seen it all – dutiful, straight face protagonist who has to contend with eccentric support cast, energetic sidekick, aloof love interest two timing as the antagonist, hot-headed rival, etc. It is what it is and I have no complaints in the this department other than game being short seeing as I clocked in barely four hours to finish. This is not necessarily a horrendous thing it would appear to be in modern times, though. Game doesn't waste time nor does it pad its run time.

While I'm on the positives still I should probably mention the most apparent one and that's the games production value at a first glance. Those low-poly graphics have aged pretty decently if you squint hard enough because while they lack the distinct cell-shading art style a certain blue bomber game employs they're still put to good use and everything clicks together marvelously. Another major point is the fact game has voice acting for all major scenes and that's most of the game seeing as there's little side stuff beyond collecting pieces of photographs.

Said illusion falls apart somewhat when you actually play Tail Concerto and see the framerate vary wildly, but I'll get into that stuff soon. As in now.

It doesn't take long to start sympathizing with Waffle and all the shenanigans he has to deal with from seemingly everyone else.

Let's just say you'll be seeing a lot of the same robot bosses with more and more gadgets bolted onto them. And helping couple of mechanics along the way.

World map and low-poly graphics? Sign me up!

Ice themed location somehow seemed appropriate to pair up with an ice queen melting

I don't know what's worse – cast getting so obviously played by the antagonist, or sheer villainy this game commits by forcing you to platform with very loose controls.

Now, I don't really have any game breaking bugs or design issues with Tail Concerto, but there are definitely two aspects of the game that somewhat drag it down. First more than the other.

Firstly – it's a really simple game. Yeah, I get it because it's aimed at kids, but I'm referring more to the fact it had more to do with struggling with some systems like early 3D camera. Even beyond that and drawing actual comparisons to Mega Man Legends is the fact nothing really changes from the beginning to the end. You'll rely on your trusty swipes and bubble gun to occasionally capture rogue kittens and deal with bosses in highly charming action adventure ways as camera moves around because analog stick was a novelty, but that's it. There's no progression involved and game only gives you a jetpack for level which is probably for better considering how it controls. Which brings me to...

Platforming and controls. Sweet Jesus. Can you believe this brought the game down from a good score for me? It's all fun and games until the you're about three quarters into the journey when it seemingly piles on. Maybe it's the same boss over and over again fatigue kicking in with smaller arenas where camera has to find the right angle, but I got a bad feeling when you had Waffle jumping between pipes and doing a timed platforming escape from a collapsing evil secret base that's only made worse by the fact very long winded and lose controls are not built for this even if you disregard early 3D games not knowing how to handle such things at first. Last section of the game has it the absolute worst with moving platforms, inability to judge jumps due to having no direct camera control, etc. I lost more lives aka Whistles during these two levels than I did in the entire game up to that point and it was pretty rough crashing down from smooth and almost too easy of an experience.