Tag Archives: Video Game Review

Fighting EX Layer Another Dash Review

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Whenever there is a free fighting game to check out, it’s definitely worth a play. Fighting Ex Layer is much like Street Fighter X Tekken in that you can see the full game content right out of the gate in the menus but you just can’t interact with them unless you pay the full price. I went into this one with the freemium version of course so I stuck to my selection. The game’s modes aren’t too extensive anyhow.

The modes here are vs mode (Online and Offline), Arcade mode, and Training. There isn’t a story mode here and Arcade only has one block of text as a character ending of sorts. So this is really a game that is focused purely on the combat. For most that will probably be enough for them to spend money on the full version so they can play the online vs mode. Battling against people online really throws in the replay value after all. If you stay strong on that though then your best bet is playing through the Arcade mode.

You get 4 fighters to play with and each one has their own special techniques and attack options. Mastering each character is your best way to win. I was able to complete the Arcade mode on normal and easy and they were reasonably tough so I imagine going on hard mode would really be a tough ordeal. Definitely not something to do unless you’re really confident in your own abilities. You have to have absolute confidence in yourself or it’s all over. I recommend going for the leg sweep, they seem to have a hard time blocking that move.

Mix in a few aerials and just keep swinging buttons. I can’t say I had an easy time finding out which attack combo’s into another so just find a 2 hit combo and you’re set. You can at least launch a flying kick and then go for a sweep which should work for any character. Pull that off and then you’re in a really good spot. You can also use an unblockable attack by pressing the A and X buttons at the same time. It’s super slow but gets the job done in a pinch.

Another benefit to jumping a lot is that if the opponent counters you will be just out of range. A final tip I should mention is grabbing is really good here. Just throw the opponent all over the field and you won’t have a problem. It’s a great way to keep the momentum at all times. It also deals quite a bit of damage so the game reminded me of Street Fighter V in that sense. Man I used to throw all the time there and it would just work. That’s how good the throws were.

The graphics are definitely really solid here. The game looks new and has a fairly sci-fi kind of feel to it. You feel like it’s a modern title and I would like to see the characters show up in a game with a story mode someday. Now that would absolutely have a ton of potential behind it. The soundtrack is more on the forgettable side. No real bad tunes or anything but none that you’ll remember once you finish the game. It could really use one rock solid rock theme if you ask me.

In general the game is just lacking in content kind of like Super Mario Run’s free version. It would be good to have added some more things to do here or maybe we could get a story mode at some point. The best thing to do if you ask me would have been to have added some text before each opponent so the arcade mode feels like a story. I think that would have hit the best balance by far and it’s a relatively low impact way to enhance the game as a whole. I’m surprised more titles don’t quickly slap a little story together like that. Would be a perfect way to pull it off.

At the end of the day the game is still good because the gameplay is solid though. It may not be the fastest paced fighting title but the moves make sense and you always feel like you have a chance. It’s got a higher bar to really learn the controls than a lot of the other fighting games so you can’t expect to just pick it up and start landing combos. This is one of those games where actually learning the moves will be absolutely mandatory.

Overall, Fighting Ex Layer is a game that I’d recommend giving a download. After all, it’s free so there’s no reason not to. Way I see it, downloading a free game is always worth the effort. Even if it doesn’t light your world on fire, you’ll have still gotten to play a nice game and it won’t have cost you anything. I don’t think you’ll be playing this game for very long as there isn’t much to do on your own but you can enjoy the nice gameplay and characters. Slap on some more content for this without having to purchase it and you’ll definitely have a winner here. It just has to be done soon before people have forgotten about the game. Honestly the marketing wasn’t that intense so you very easily could have missed hearing about it even from the start.

Overall 5/10

Breath of Fire II Review

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I was really satisfied with the first Breath of Fire and I can safely say that this one is a really good sequel as well. I wouldn’t quite say that it beats the first as it loses out on at least one big quality of life feature but it’s still a really solid game all around. To compensate for that it does have the better story here. Either way if you like RPGs then you will definitely like this game.

It actually starts off with some Undertale type vibes as the main character and his pal enter a dark cave and things get rather trippy. You have an evil eye that it always running around, a giant monster that murders them, and things like that happen. Finally, a few years pass by and Tery’s (That’s what I called the lead) best friend Bow decided to become a bit of a thief. He is going to help this one guy who was already stolen from so in a way it’s like payback but it backfires and now everybody thinks he is a thief. Tery must quickly come to his aid and prove Bow’s innocence. Additionally Tery must find out why nobody remembers him and why his whole family is gone. Does it have something to do with the main villain?

There are a ton of monsters in this world so naturally it is not quite the kind of place that you want to be when things get tough. Tery got to meet one of the more powerful creatures in the tutorial after all even if he isn’t sure whether it was a dream or not. There’s this whole emotional system too where talking to people will light up or darken your crystal but there didn’t seem to be much of a point to it. Perhaps it alters your ending but I would have liked it to have made a bigger difference throughout the game. I appreciated how the game would get rather spooky at some points but ultimately it’s more for show than anything else.

The game is fairly long and you can certainly expect to take many hours to conquer it. Unfortunately the game doesn’t track your play time but it has to at least be 25-30+ hours. There’s a whole lot to do here, villages to help and party members to recruit. Additionally there is no easy way to bypass minions. So in the first game you could buy an item that stopped them from appearing for about a minute or so. I would stock up on as many of those as possible and it was a great deal but that’s not the case here. There is an item that (barely) reduces how often they spawn but it can’t prevent it.

Half the time it feels like the item didn’t do anything to be honest so it was a bit of a waste. It’s too bad they didn’t bring the item from the first game back because it’s just so much more peaceful when you’re able to run around and don’t have to worry about minions attacking. You can explore to get treasure and all kinds of things like that. Trying to run is usually not going to work so you have to keep rewinding until it does or you could just fight every minion in your way.

It is good for grinding I suppose. Speaking of which, be prepared to grind a whole lot here because the final bosses suddenly jump up a bunch of levels. They were not playing around but I would expect nothing less from an RPG final boss. Those are the kind of opponents that you want to go all out. Show us why you are the demon king or whoever the final boss is. The final battles are really an endurance test so buy as many potions, revives, and MP items as possible. I had over 100 items when you add in the amounts for each and I still barely made it. That was definitely not easy in the slightest.

The game’s ending isn’t super satisfying though. You can’t help but feel that Tery made the wrong choice unless there is some kind of true ending here. He overthought things but it did work as an intense twist of sorts. The game always has that uneasy feeling thanks to the prologue which shows just how effective it was even if the rest of the game plays it straight for the most part. The story is really engaging so you should be having a blast from start to finish. Tery’s companions were definitely really good as well and if anything the toughest part is deciding who to keep home.

Each ally has their own special ability which you’ll need on the hub world. One can fly, one can swim, one can jump, etc. So there will be times when you have to switch companions and you just can’t worry about it. Additionally some characters have a 1 on 1 story fight that can’t be skipped so if they are at a low level then that’s game over. You obtain shamans to power up your fighters but one if missable which can be disappointing if you didn’t get him. So if you see a chance to donate some money later in the game, make sure you click donate 20 times. If you don’t do that then you won’t get him at the end.

That’s really my main tips here, you should be able to get through the game with no real issues. The graphics are real good here and some aspects of the game have aged extremely well with the visual style. For example there’s one boss fight where you’re falling off a tower and then there’s a scene where Tery is running through the flames. You don’t see a whole lot of cutscenes using the sprites like this outside of combat so I thought that was pretty cool. The soundtrack is also good although as far as RPGs go I wouldn’t say it stands out a ton.

This is the kind of game that just freezes once you beat it so that means there is no replay value. Fortunately the main campaign is so long that this really is not an issue in the slightest. You’ll get to have your full barrel of fun here. The cast is fairly solid and of course Tery steals the show even if he’s the silent kind of protagonist so you won’t really see him talk here. You just know that he has what it takes to win.

Overall, Breath of Fire II is a great follow up to the original. I would probably still learn towards the first game as a whole even though this one had the better story. Breath of Fire is certainly one of those games that could do well with a modern sequel or remake. After all stories about dragons are always cool and this one has plenty of them. It’s a very challenging game so you do need to keep your guard up but then making it to the ending is that much more satisfying.

Overall 8/10

Fall Guys Review

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It’s great to finally have Fall Guys as a free to play game. I remember that one got a ton of hype along with Among Us and really broke out into the mainstream. Well, I can say that Fall Guys lives up to the hype and is definitely a fun title. There is a lot of downtime both between and during matches so you’ll want to have something with you to read or play in those moments but the actual gameplay is a lot of fun.

The controls are extremely simple here. You can move, jump, dive jump, and grab things. That’s it, the idea is to survive until the end and have everyone else be eliminated. This is done over the course of a few different events that will test your platforming skills. At the end of the day the big thing here is definitely being able to react quickly and get to the end. The really fun part of course is that you’re up against a bunch of fellow players who are presumably good at platformers too. So it’s not like you’re styling on a bunch of A.I. or anything like that. You’re going up against potential world champs.

It’s also not easy to win because the levels themselves are also reasonably challenging. So between that and the other players then you’ve got quite a lot to balance out. I managed to get 1 win during my first day of playing but it still did take quite a few rounds before I got there. Don’t expect to get a win right away. No matter how good you are at platforming, it’s still going to take a little bit to get used to exactly how this works. Also, there are quite a few different levels and they randomly alternate so eventually you just want to be really good at all of them. Otherwise all it takes is one tough minigame to knock you out of the event.

Once you lose you can choose to stay and watch the others or leave. I personally recommend leaving so you can start the next event a little sooner. On the flip side if you win a level early then you have to keep on watching until the rest of the players make it. This is the downtime I was talking about before and so you’ll probably want to have a plan for that. Otherwise it probably can drag a little which could hurt the experience for you. It is necessary as I don’t see how the game can get around this though. So just stay ready and then you go up against all the rest in the next minigame as well. Rinse and repeat until you are the single champion

Naturally the game does have a level up system and lots of quests so you can work on those as you play the game normally. It’s always fun to have some kind of progression system and I dare say that any free to play game which is lacking in this will probably end up having a rough time. You need some kind of way to keep people coming back after all and this is a very tried and true way of doing it. The replay value never ends that way and the devs will just need to hit that sweet spot of getting new levels from time to time without removing all of the classics too quickly. I feel like they will be able to pull this off though.

It’s a rather simple formula that is hard to mess up. Who doesn’t like platforming anyway right? So long as the rest of the levels are fun like this one then I think you should be in a really good position going forward. The graphics are nice and while the little characters themselves may not be super stylish yet, you’ll unlock different wardrobe items to fully customize them. I expect within a year or so you’ll have countless items with which to make them hit the next level.

How long you stay with this game will probably depend on wat else you’re playing at the moment. After all, picture playing a Mario level for a while. It’s a lot of fun but how long will you keep playing until you decide to call it quits? A progression system in and of itself is probably not enough to keep you on the title forever. That said, one of its strengths is certainly how easy it is to pick up and play at any time. You don’t need to actually remember the game at all to quickly remember how to jump and move around. So as long as you have it downloaded you can easily feel like just playing it on a whim at some point.

Overall, I had a good time with Fall Guys. The developers were really smart in deciding to make a game like this. It’s one of those things that feels obvious afterwards since this is just a really great gimmick to go with. Who wouldn’t want to just be playing a lot of platforming levels and having a blast like this? It was satisfying to get the 1st place that one time after all and no matter what happens you always feel like you won or lost by your own efforts. At least right you never feel like the level RNG elements override your abilities. That’s probably the main thing the game needs to watch out for. Keep on experimenting and bringing in new things but be careful not to go too crazy. I’m confident this game can pull off the balance though.

Overall 7/10

Megaman ZX Advent Review

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This is one of those manga titles that is just so tragic on every level. It’s got solid art and it’s based on a game that should be a lot of fun. Just give me a straight to business manga where the heroes are fighting off the mavericks. It’s not that complicated…and yet the series goes straight to being a gag manga like the Zero title. It only gets serious for the final two chapters and of course by then it’s over anyway so there’s not even much of a point by then. It’s a true shame….feels bad man. Feels….baddddddddd.

So the manga starts with Ashe on one of her treasure hunts when she bumps into a little kid named Grey. He has the ability to bio merge with the model robots that are nearby and so he can become Megaman. Ashe figures that will be handy in her hunts and so she recruits him to the team. Grey is happy to help since he just loves to mess around. Their mission is officially to grab Model Ws which can be used to help resolve the energy shortage on the planet but Ashe just wants to be rich so that’s her main priority. Will she be able to get rich in 10 chapters?

Every chapter has a different maverick show up to cause some trouble and take names. The heroes pack them up and go on their way. The chapters are fairly short so it’s easy to go along with the formula approach but it’s just not a great formula. So you’ve got Ashe, Grey and Model A running around all the time. Model A’s whole character is that he’s a perv and that’s even how he is introduced in each chapter’s cover page. Man that’s a sad reputation to have. The manga seems aimed fairly young so at least his antics don’t get too crazy but he still tries to cop a feel and such which is just disgraceful for a Mega Man character.

Model A is just awful the whole time. Then I don’t get why this series decided to not have Ashe be a fighter. Basically she can’t fight at all and I don’t know what she would have been doing before Grey showed up. Evidently she’s been in the group for a while so did her hand gun actually prove to be all that she needed? This is even worse when we find out in the very last chapter that she also has the ability to merge into Mega Man but didn’t realize that because she always had to keep her distance from Model A since he was so suspect.

I don’t blame her for not wanting to merge with him but it’s all just such a forced way to keep her out of the battlefield. If you were going to make her a noncombatant anyway then just don’t even put her in that arena. Have her stay as a support/treasure hunter right through to the end. Otherwise it’s just a tease the whole time. Even with that she still manages to be the best out of the trio.

For Grey, he’s just too young. The kid is always messing around and never gets serious. I suspect that he really doesn’t even understand the true gravity of the stakes right now. Not like there’s much danger since he can dominate any opponent anyway but they should have made him a little older. That would have done a world of good for the character if you ask me.

Aside from the main 3, you have the robot for each chapter but of course they’re dead almost as soon as they appear so they don’t get a lot of character. For example Buckfire is up first and before he can sizzle the characters then he is vanquished. The water type is blown up before she can even be introduced. Rospark at least gets to have her main trait as a flirt but is still taken out without mercy. The most tragic one might be Vulturon because the poor guy was just trying to play his music but he was doing better than Ashe so she declared that he had to die.

The scene is played as a gag as they murder the poor guy but when you actually think about it, he hadn’t really done anything wrong yet. Sure, as a maverick he probably would have done something soon and in most games the villains are basically shoot on sight but with how the robot reacted you couldn’t help but feel bad for him. He really didn’t think he had done anything to deserve being completely destroyed and I can’t really argue against that.

Albert was the big villain in the game so you’re probably waiting for him to turn evil here but that barely happens. He’s the comic relief scientist for most of the chapters as he tries to use the W energy for good each time but it tends to backfire in his face. He has Ashe and Grey babysit his kids at one point as well. The only time they get to fight him is when the W energy takes him over and they beat him up real fast. Then he’s back to being comic relief again. Such is the fate of Albert in this continuity.

Interestingly in the final 2 chapters it’s like a whole completely different series just like with Megaman Zero. Suddenly Albert is evil and shady and there is a whole new group of villains. You have Prometheus and Pandora talking about how the great Megaman war is approaching as all the Megaman are gathering across the planet. We see characters like Vent and Aile, Omega, the 4 guardians from the Zero games, Grey and Ashe, and someone who looks like Copy X all show up. It’s a great premise for a series that’ll never come out.

Why have all the cool things at the very end when it won’t amount to anything? It always reminds me of what a wasted opportunity this would have been. There’s so much cool potential that you can do with this instead of the actual gag manga that we got. I suppose I’m glad that these two final chapters were added in at the end but this is really the tone and feel that the whole series should have had. It would have been so cool and I want to see those characters mix it up. There’s a lot of great lore here.

Another thing that holds the series back is that it’s not very funny. I can’t say I’m surprised as comedic manga tend to be funnier when they aren’t the gag types. Gag manga tend to rely more on crude humor and everyone being super exaggerated instead of acting like real characters. That’s what holds them back here. The crude humor isn’t excessive at least, it’s probably just a scene or two but the main humor like Grey having to mimic animals to transform just doesn’t land. You probably won’t crack a smile here.

The art being strong is definitely the best point of the series. That’s at least something that you can point to if you want something really good to say about the series. There just isn’t much of a sense of purpose to this title and since I liked the original ZX a lot, this felt like a real step down. As always I’m glad for more Megaman content but I’m not sure why the Zero and Zero related titles tend to become gag titles. Doesn’t feel like that would be the first thing you think of when it comes to Zero right?

Again I have to point to the final 2 chapters on what you’d want to see in a Megaman title like this. A Megaman war would be unbelievably awesome. Even if you don’t go and grab some of the ones from alternate timelines like EXE or Starforce, there is still a lot to love here. My money would be on Omega and Vent as the top big dogs in the arena for sure. They should be able to soundly crush all of the other Megas in attendance but the fights would all be awesome nonetheless. You shouldn’t waste someone who is really good at drawing action scenes on a series without much action.

Overall, Megaman ZX Advent is a series that you’ll probably finish very quickly. After all 10 chapters goes by in the blink of an eye especially when they’re short like this. It’s not good but if you really want to see some more Megaman action then you may as well go with it. At least if they ever do decide to bring this one back and adapt the Megaman war then you’ll have some context for it. That’s definitely the best case scenario by a mile and is the optimal way to think about it even if that’s a super long shot. It’s more likely to hope for an X Dive manga which would be pretty awesome to be fair.

Overall 5/10

New Super Lucky’s Tale Review

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This is a platformer that got a whole lot of hype back in the day. It looked very polished but also retro in a sense as it would be a simple platformer filled with a lot of fun and no real gimmicks. I’d say it delivers on that too, you’ve got a solid amount of level variety. Each level is rather short but they all feel different and are very fast paced. You shouldn’t have any problems playing through it and there is also a good amount of replay value.

Lucky has to try and get the chapters of the legendary book back before it’s too late. There’s a dark overlord scheming to use this for evil and the whole world is pretty much in jeopardy. This is perhaps an oversimplification of the plot to be fair but it’s a classic story that will get you right into the mix to try and save the world. Most of the other characters can’t talk in English voice acting at least so it’s going to be up to you to confront the villains and save the day.

Lucky’s a fun lead. There isn’t a whole lot to his personality as I couldn’t tell you much beyond him being a nice guy but he gets the job done. He has two jumps and can do a spin in the air. I always like when platformers let you spin in the air because it really helps you work on your timing as you try to dodge enemy attacks. Every game that has this feature has really benefited from it. There is also some combat in the game as you can attack with a tail swipe but aside from one boss fight you won’t really need to use this very much. It’s nice to have but never feels super necessary. A lot of enemies you can just stomp on anyway.

There are also puzzles here but this is one of the rare games that actually gets them right. The puzzles tend to be about pushing statues into the right spots. It takes a bit of work but you’ll find out the right answer if you keep at it. It reminds me of something out of Professor Layton and has that very calm appeal to it. You can reset the puzzle at any point to try it again from the beginning as well.

Most of the levels are traditional style but then you also have a few auto runner type levels where you just start running and have to try and be at the right place at the right time. These levels fit in well with the normal ones I’d say. I tend to enjoy that kind of gameplay as well. There’s a good amount of variety here and each of the styles control rather well which is important too. I would say the strongest part of the game is just how smooth it is. I doubt you’ll encounter any true glitches or issues that make you do a double take. It’s as smooth as butte and that’s what you like to see in a platformer like this. It’s critically important you could say.

Now if the game has any issue it’s that it can be a bit short. Yes, platformers are often short but this one feels even shorter than usual. I believe it’s because of how the worlds are set up. In a lot of platformers you have to complete every level to get to the end but in this one you don’t have to do that. In fact, a ton of the levels are optional. The reason for this is each world has a boss level at the end and you have to get a certain number of leaves in order to access it. Typically this number is 10 while each world has about 22. Each level has 3-4 leaves in it. So for example if you get all 4 leaves in the level then you only need to complete 3 levels instead of completing more like 7 or so.

It puts you in the driver seat of how quickly you want to complete each of the worlds. I quickly got the hang of how to obtain all 4 in a level and once I did that was it. I was getting 4 on each one so I was blasting through the worlds. Typically you get one leaf for beating the level, 1 for 300 coins, 1 secret page somewhere in the level, and one for getting all 5 letter of the word Lucky. Getting the coins and the letters are real easy once you start paying attention to them so at the very least you should get 3 each time but eve the secret one’s usually not super hidden or anything. That’s your chance to grab it as soon as possible.

Of course the good part about this is even if you complete the game quickly, you can always go back to try and get the leaves that you didn’t get. It’ll certainly take a while to nab them all and to get the Platinum trophy for this game so that would be worth a shot. It definitely looks very achievable after all so you’ll just have to hunker down and try to knock it out. Pull that off and you’ll have another nice achievement to your name.

The graphics are really solid here. It all feels like true HD and goes hand in hand with how good the levels look. As for the soundtrack, that is a bit more forgettable. I wouldn’t say that it particularly stood out to me. It’s absolutely not bad in any way but there wasn’t a single tune that I found to be really catchy. This is something that I think they could improve upon in the sequel. Get some really fast paced tuned and maybe even a rock theme or two. You really can’t go wrong there.

Overall, New Super Lucky’s Tale is certainly a fun game to check out. It’s got the right balance of action, adventure, and puzzles. I definitely didn’t think I’d be complementing puzzles anytime soon but this game just pulls it off. Honestly if all of the games would handle it like this then I dare say we would be in a really good spot but unfortunately I know that this is more of a one time deal. For every game that gets puzzles right, 9 more show up with really annoying gimmicks that don’t make any sense. You definitely need to play this game if you want to see a platformer that’s solid around the board.

Overall 7/10

Frogger: Helmet Chaos Review

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It’s time for another Frogger adventure. You know that things are going to get intense when this guy’s around. It’s a fun enough game but does suffer from being a bit short and not having a level select. It’s one of those games where when you beat it, you’re taken back to the opening cutscene. So that removes pretty much all of the replay value that you could possibly have had for this one. It’s a shame because there was some possibilities here to at least see if you can collect all of the coins but that’s gone now. You can have a good time here but it won’t last.

So the story starts with Lumpy getting attacked as a brainwashing helmet is put on him. He didn’t realize this until it was too late and now Frogger has to go and save him. Can he possibly pull this off? Well, to be honest he pulls this off almost immediately but it leads him deeper into the fray as he must now stop this villain empire before they go too far. Only Frogger can possibly stop these guys and so he is on his own now. If he can’t win this…then nobody can!

The gameplay is your classic Frogger experience so I don’t have any real issues with that one. Hop around and get to the end while trying to avoid enemies. One thing I do like here is that you don’t immediately die when bumping into things. I may be misremembering but it felt like in a lot of others you would die right away while here you have 3 health points. Additionally, the levels are all just constructed really well so you’ll have a good time going through the motions.

One thing I don’t like is that your jump has lost a lot of its ability and use here though. For example, now when you jump you don’t go over an enemy so you bump into them instead. A big part of what made the jump good was how you could actually just go through enemies that way. Now you have to run around them. I suppose you can say that it adds strategy but to me jumping was a key part of the strategy. It’s just a different one but not necessarily a better version.

As for the boss fights, I did like the fact that the game had them in the first place. They were very different from the actual levels too. They could and should have been explained better like the fact that some bosses can’t be beat and you have to dodge, but they all had unique mechanics. I felt like the devs paid extra special care to this part of the game which was appreciated. If the overall title could just have been a little longer then I think all of the hard work would have paid off.

It’s just hard to glance over the fact that the game is only a couple of hours long with absolutely 0 replay value. I probably would have been lightly salted if I had bought this game day 1. It just wouldn’t have felt all that enjoyable to have been done with it so quickly. The story is decent enough but it’s not like it’s something that could carry the game either. The story would have to be truly spectacular to pull that off in such a short experience and clearly Frogger was not going to be able to do that. It’s too far out of his wheelhouse.

The Frogger franchise hasn’t always been known for its high quality games. The gameplay tends to be solid but then like with this game you tend to come across some issues. If a game is too short and there’s nothing to do then it’s going to be rare that you get a really good score. I would say that the game is good but not very good. It’s still lacking just enough oomph to get it to the next stage.

At least the graphics and soundtrack are okay. I wouldn’t say it’s super memorable or anything with the music but the game looks nice. There is also full voice acting here which is a big win for me. I still say that having voice acting automatically bumps you game up a tier because it just makes the whole story more immersive. Even a story that’s not too impressive like this one gets better when you’ve got full voice acting to back it up. It’s kind of odd that the text doesn’t auto scroll while they’re talking so you have to time it and click A as it’s moving forward but that’s a small thing I can overlook.

Overall, There isn’t a whole lot to discuss with Frogger since the game’s so short. I will say that if you like the Frogger gameplay then you should check it out. It’s a straight forward game that should give you a good amount of enjoyment for 2 hours but you really need to make sure that you get a good price for it. If it costs a lot then it’s not worth it. Full stop. The price is the big deciding factor here because it’s a good game but one that you feel should be free the whole time. I can’t even imagine paying full price for this one. Now that would be a complete travesty. Hopefully Frogger comes back with a big budget full experience at some point. With this gameplay it would have a lot of potential but I suspect that we might have to wait a while for that.

Overall 7/10

Rival Turf! Review

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Rival Turf! is a fairly intense beat em up, but it’s the kind that forces you to start all the way from the beginning when you lose all of your lives. This is not completely unheard of within the genre but I have to say that I never liked this approach. To me, there should always be a way to continue until you get to the end of the game. There have to be checkpoints or some place to return to. Not including that feels like an unnecessary hurdle and it’ what keeps this game back.

It’s hard to say what the plot is here at all since there isn’t even an opening cutscene. You beat a lot of dudes up as you go through the game though so I’ll assume it’s your classic gangster story where a bunch of gangs have taken over the city and you have to stop them all. Either way the focus here is definitely just on beating everyone up and it’s fair to say that the villains made a huge mistake in going after the main character’s town. That’s going to come back to haunt them.

Each stage has you beat up a ton of enemies until you get to the end. At that point there is a boss that will show up to fight you in deadly combat. Don’t give the opponent an inch, just keep on going. Now this will be easier said than done though as each of the enemies do have some fairly good attacks to hit you with. One of the toughest kind of enemies to deal with is one that always approaches you with a big flying kick. The only way to effectively get around that is often to try and land the kick first or just stay out of the way.

Typically in games like this what I like to do is wait a little higher or lower than the opponent so when they walk over I get the first hit. In a one on one scenario this does tend to work but it’s hard to set up when there are a bunch of enemies rushing you at the same time. At that point you just have to fight hard and try hitting as many of them as possible. In a lot of ways it feels like a button masher so you just have to get in there and keep on landing blows as quickly as possible. If you get lucky or do really well then you may be able to beat the level without losing too many lives.

There are 6 levels here and I died in the 5th one. You get 6 lives and can continue 5 times so in a way you’ve got 30 lives. Typically I would lose 6 lives in each stage but that number kept increasing as I made it through the game. Ultimately that’s what got me here. The enemies were just too vicious and they really showed me what was going on. This is where I say there should be a way to continue the game from the 5th level. To me that makes sense so you could hat least see how it ends and go from there. This is the kind of game where even rewinding and restarting doesn’t help a lot because of how crazy strong the opponents are. Sure, with enough patience you could probably pull it off but it would take a long while which is probably not worth the hassle for this game. You would need something a lot more high end which should already have that feature anyway.

Aside from that one big feature not being here, the gameplay is solid. 2D beat em ups don’t tend to be my favorites until you reach the 90s and later on where they added a bunch of depth to it. Like I really enjoyed the X-Men GBA beat em up game because of how it incorporated all of the X-Men special techniques and powers into the combat. It wasn’t just any ole beat em up, it felt like a real X-Men game. For a game like this I know powers are off the table, but giving the characters more to do would really help it stand out. Of course this game is fairly old so that critique doesn’t apply as much but this game just doesn’t stand out.

I thought Double Dragon did a much better job of executing on this concept, not to mention it also had more of a plot. Considering that this game is for the SNES, I don’t think there is an excuse not to have some kind of story included in the game. At least if you ask me that seems like a reasonable request. Ah well, at least the graphics are solid, I do think the game still looks good all the way through. There are a good amount of level designs and they all look different so it’s not just reusing them.

Additionally, I would say that the soundtrack is solid as well. So the game does have some things going for it. There’s no real replay value but the game is difficult enough where that shouldn’t be a problem. Even though you theoretically can beat the game within an hour, the odds of you doing that are slim to none with how hard the game is. You really have to learn all of the villain patterns and movements to take them down efficiently. Additionally it’s hard to plan when so many of them are rushing you at once so good luck with that. A lot of it will come down to instinct.

Overall, Rival Turf is a game that has a good combat system but other areas of the game hurt it like the whole thing about not having a way to restart at a specific level. Going back to level 1 is something I never enjoy, it just feels way too harsh of a punishment if you ask me. You should be able to beat the game normally and if needed just have the extra continues destroy your score at the end or void it. Seeing the cutscene as the game ends is the important thing. Either way there are other titles you should check out within the genre for a better all around experience.

Overall 5/10

Mario Party: The Top 100 Review

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Mario has returned! It’s been a while since I got a Mario game but in my defense, Nintendo doesn’t churn them out nearly as quick as they used to. Back in my day it felt like Mario games would come out every other week. Well, this one’s not known as one of the better Mario Party games and I can see why but I had a good time with it. You just wouldn’t want to have paid opening day prices for it because it is extremely short. You can complete the entire game in 2 hours which is really not very impressive.

There isn’t really a story in this one after all. Instead what happens is you go onto a map where you have to clear each minigame to go forward. There are 4 worlds and around 25 minigames per world. There are 300 stars to collect in total with each level having 3 stars to obtain for coming in first and 4 for boss battles. You can lose every non boss battle minigame and still get to the end of the game so there’s no pressure. That said, I expect you’ll still complete most of these with ease since the game’s not difficult like that. The only exceptions are the luck based games.

But of course now you can see why the game is so short. Most minigames can be completed in around a minute after all since they’re so short. Since you can skip the enemy turns that makes the minigames even shorter. You’ll be breezing past the game like it’s nobody’s business and then there isn’t a whole lot of other things to do. There is free play with the minigames of course and little tournaments you can do with the computers. It just boils down to the fact that you have to like going up against the computer or you will end up getting bored very quickly here. For the most part the Mario Party series are famous because you get to play with others.

That’s really the main draw of the series after all so if you don’t have that then you’re not going to be having fun for nearly as long. Sure enough, I would say that this is the kind of game where you complete it and then you’ll probably never turn it back on again. The games are fun and all so I do enjoy them but there just isn’t a whole lot of reason to play the game unless you just never got a chance to play all of the mainline games. It is cool seeing them grab so many iconic games to play through but there should have been more content here.

This is the game’s biggest weakness. It’s even shorter than Sonic Forces and you definitely don’t want to see that for a Mario title. What I would have done is add a challenge mode so at least for all of the minigames like Booksquirm where it’s about surviving, you could play it on your own and try to get some super high scores. I think that would be the best way to effectively add a lot of single player content to Mario Party real quickly. It may feel like it goes against the spirit of the Mario Party series but what else are you going to do to get around the whole multiplayer angle?

If you ask me, this is just what you gotta do. Still, the game deserves some props for the solid graphics. It looks like a really solid game and they didn’t cheap out on this one. Even if the developers probably knew that this one wasn’t going to be the next big thing, they still put in a lot of effort here. The game would fit in with any of Mario’s other 3DS adventures. Then you’ve got the soundtrack which is catchy enough. You should definitely recognize all of the minigame tunes right away.

It’s all very nostalgic just playing the games again. While they won’t beat the home console counterparts since squishing the minigames into a smaller screen is always tricky, they’re still a lot of fun. I even played a few extra minigames after I cleared all 100 to boost my score up a bit. After all, you can sort of say that collecting the 300 hearts is like completing the post game. I beat the normal campaign with over 250, but I didn’t actually 3 star all of the levels. A part of me was tempted to quickly go and do that just so I could say I’ve made it to the top.

What stopped me here is that some of the minigames are luck based which means it could be a little annoying to try and get the top spot. For the luck based ones I guess you just gotta keep on playing until you’re at the top but something about that didn’t sit right with me. Why include luck games at all here? The ones that are purely luck should not have made the top 100 at all. It feels like a cheap way to extend the play time a bit since you would have to just keep on playing these until you get the 3 stars. Realistically it won’t take too many tries I’m sure but more than I was planning to go through.

Overall, Mario Party will always be a blast and a half to play through. There’s just so much to go through in the series but you can’t really access that with a 3DS port. It’s a fun game but the experience is over way too quick which does end up shaving a star off. If you can get it for a good price then by all means you should check it out, but otherwise I’d say it’s time to give this one a skip. There are a lot of other Mario Party titles to check out which are all considerably better and feel like they give you the complete experience.

Overall 6/10

Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom Review

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Kemco has delivered quite a lot of amazing hits over the years and this one is no different. It’s definitely very different from their other titles in a few ways which I’ll get into, but it nails it. This is really trying to cross the classic RPG style with more of a gathering game you’d think of for mobile or online gaming. It works really well in doing so.

So the game follows a kid named Volker. His father died in an accident a while back and so he had to start running the blacksmithing operation on his own. At the same time he always wanted to be an adventurer though and is at a cross roads. Fortunately his best friend says she will man the shop while he is away and a fairy also shows up to help out. Now Volker can focus on being the best in both fields and along the way he may uncover some conspiracies. At the end of the day he wants to keep his kingdom safe, whether it is through creating equipment for them or by clearing quests. Will he be able to do this?

The game’s hub world has several areas including the shop, mission area, infirmary, food store, the arena, the dungeons, and the workplace. Each area has tasks that you can do once a day. For example you can enter a dungeon once a day and you can eat once a day. When you are ready to go to the next day you can head home and build a lot of equipment to sell which triggers the end of the day. The typical flowchart here is that you will complete a bunch of ordinary missions which involve building things for people until you get a story mission. The first story mission is always to investigate a dungeon which means getting to the final floor. The second story mission will be to fight a boss at the end of it.

The story missions are unlocked by completing a lot of normal missions. There are 296 missions in the game and you need to complete almost all of them in order to unlock the final story mission so prepare yourself. While combat is important, just as important is having a lot of materials at the ready so that you can build things as needed. Each time you complete a dungeon you unlock new materials. Also be sure to stop at every store each day in order to trigger cutscenes that move the story forward.

As you can probably guess, this means you will be moving around a lot. You will also have to spend a lot of time crafting weapons and shifting materials from one form to the next. There isn’t a lot of downtime here, you’re always just pressing on to the next thing. You gotta be ready for that without a doubt. It’s more fun than it sounds though so you’ll like it. At the very least I get a kick out of it. You usually have to do this kind of thing in mobile games and it can take hours sometimes as you have to allocate resources and then just wait it out. If you’re not used to that kind of thing then it may seem tedious. I would go as far as to say that this is the tipping point of the game. Whether you love it or not will depend on how much you enjoy crafting objects.

Trust me, you’ll be crafting a lot too. I nearly completed the 100% secret gallery (Made it to 97%) by the time I beat the game because I had to cook so much. Also, the game is difficult. I had all my guys maxed out at level 99 and I still barely beat the final boss. In a sense this is because I didn’t fully master the different concepts in the game. There are just so many from the prayers you use before battle to the orbs you equip to each piece of your equipment. Each character can choose 2 classes out of 12 in order to build a solid formation and each formation can be altered. There are also active and passive skills that you have to choose.

That sounded like a lot? Well it’s even more imposing while playing. So I did my best and crafted a team strategy that I thought sounded good but if there had been any more bosses then I may have had to rethink that a bit. They really were quite difficult and the final boss took over 30 minutes. It doesn’t help that a lot of the bosses like to heal themselves or summon an infinite amount of minions. You often have to decide whether to go for them or the minion first. Each strategy has its ups and downs in that respect.

Also, they love going for the paralyze option and if that happens then your character can’t attack for 3 turns. Definitely watch out for that since it gets really tricky. The challenge never feels unfair or broken though. You’re always left with the thought that you could have assembled your team better in order to win. So as you can tell I liked this game quite a lot. It’s just a very great all around experience and there’s so much to have fun with. I very nearly got all the trophies along the way.

Now if the game has a weakness it’s that there isn’t much of a story for about 90% of the game. There are hintings at one for a while of course but it never really happens until you’re at about the climax. Then we get a cosmic being and some nice action but it’s all at the very end. It’s clear that the story wasn’t really the focus here. The focus was definitely on the whole harvesting/gathering aspect of the game. It’s a fun aspect of course so I’m glad that they handled it well but a nice story would have been fun to have too. As it is the cast is incredibly small since the rest of your party is made up. Because of that there are just a few characters around the hub world and a villain or two.

Finally, the way the equipment works is a bit too time consuming if you ask me. So here’s how it goes, when you want to change equipment you go to the screen as normal except you can’t see your current weapon’s stats compared to the one you are equipping. As a result you have to switch screens a lot to make sure you’re getting the right one. Upgrading a weapon or transferring effects also takes you to a screen with tons of weapons so you have to make sure that you’re grabbing the right one. The equipment part could be a bit of a pain so in the end I just ended up going for the ones that had the highest stats and called it a day instead of always looking to optimize. It just was not very user friendly.

Naturally the graphics are solid here. I like the illustrations and the levels look good. I wouldn’t say it feels as dynamic or polished as the Asdivine Hero titles but it still looks good enough. Meanwhile the soundtrack is good. There are some solid tunes here although a lot of the battles are so fast that you won’t get to hear it much. I tend to have the team set to auto battle in most fights because manually battling takes forever in this game. If they can’t handle the battle then I take the wheel as needed. Another small thing I like about the game is that there are keyboard shortcuts for everything and you move faster than the villains. So if you don’t want to fight some minions then you don’t have to. It’s the quality of life features like this that always put Kemco at the top.

Overall, Blacksmith of the Sand Village is definitely a great game. The way the very game is developed does mean that it won’t be for everyone though. I just get the feeling that not everyone is going to want to be spending some hours crafting equipment over and over which is understandable. It’s just so smooth and enjoyable though that you don’t even notice. I ended up having a very good time with the game without a doubt and would love to see a sequel. Just give us more of a story next time.

Overall 8/10

Rayman 2: Revolution Review

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It’s time for some Rayman hype! The series is always guaranteed to give you a fun platforming adventure but there has yet to be a definitive title in the series for me. I’ve played some good ones of course but none that made me think it had to be the king of the series. Well, this one changes that as I would say Revolution is the best yet. There are no mandatory collectibles or anything like that. No, this is all about just getting through the levels and having a good time. I can definitely respect that.

So the game starts off with the villains taking everyone out including Rayman but fortunately he is able to get out in one piece. He is depowered now and the pirates are taking more and more people as slaves. At one point in the game the ticker shows that they have over 30,000 people captured which is insane. Rayman will have to save them one by one and to do that he will need to get his powers back and also hit some of the installations so he can weaken their forces. He will have some friends to help him along the way but at the same time they can also be liabilities with how they can’t really fight all that well.

With the gameplay you’ve got your classic 3D platformer. You can run and jump to get to the end of a level. Rayman can also punch and his fist goes far which is really handy. He can even glide for a bit so there’s a whole lot that you can do in the levels. Rayman definitely has variety in his move set which is always important. It also means that the levels are able to do a whole lot because more movement options means there are more ways for developers to set up their obstacles.

It works well and the gameplay is always fun. There is a decent amount of difficulty thrown in but I wouldn’t say it’s comparable to Crash or anything like that. It’s more classic in that sense but you still shouldn’t underestimate it. Some segments took me many tries like some of the rocket runs. Those are levels where you have to ride a rocket and zoom around all over the place. That level is really set up so it can be as difficult as possible. Good luck getting the rocket to go where you want it to go! It just seems to have a mind of its own the whole time.

The game has a lot of constant check points though so that’s really appreciated. If you get a game over then you go a little further back but it’s never all that crazy. Odds are that you’ll never feel discouraged as a result and that’s why the game handled this in a very smart way. The only area where the gameplay wasn’t amazing was with the camera angles. Those could definitely be rather brutal but you’ll get the hang of it after a while. It can make some moments a little harder than it should be but ultimately you will be able to press on past that.

As for the graphics, I’d say it’s pretty solid. It’s got that very retro look which still has a good amount of detail and personality to it. You really can’t go wrong with Rayman on this. The soundtrack isn’t very memorable though so it looks like I’m in a bit of a streak on that lately. I need another all star soundtrack soon! After all great tunes are really what gets a game to the next level.

As for the story, well I’d say it’s fun enough. The game’s got a nice sense of humor and so while the game never feels very high stakes, you get to enjoy Rayman as a hero and root for him to save the day. The characters around him are solid and the villain certainly works hard. Technically with that many prisoners you could say the pirates did well. They were one Rayman away from total global conquest.

There is a bit of replay value here in terms of grabbing all collectibles but I’m not sure what you actually unlock with that. It better be something really good because there are a ton of collectibles to grab here. If they had been mandatory that definitely would have been really discouraging but I assume the developers knew that and that’s why they went all out since this would only be for the players serious about 100% completing the game.

Because of this the game can be a bit overwhelming at the start since you feel like maybe you should try grabbing these things. The hub world is also huge with many different areas to it so you can easily get lost or enter a level by mistake. Doing so triggers an unskippable animation and of course it just slows you down so try to learn the place little by little. Once you do then you’ll be all good. The game does have a good amount of quality of life features in it like being able to sense when an orb is nearby after beating the game. You just have to get there so this is very much a game where the more you play it, the easier it gets. It’s not as much of a plug and play title though so you have to be prepared for it.

Overall, Rayman 2: Revolution is a very fun game. It really knows how to get the best out of being a platformer and keeping you wanting more. The game’s fairly straight forward even if it can be a little overwhelming at first. Once you get the hang of it then you’ll be blasting all the way through the end. The dialogue can be fun and so you’ll remember Rayman quite well and even some of his friends. Their names escape me most of the time though so they’re not quite at that tier yet. Soon I’ll get another Rayman game so we can see how he’s doing in more of a modern era. In the meantime I would definitely recommend checking this one out.

Overall 7/10