Metal Wolf Chaos is the game that is best known as "the most American game ever made", and that's no hyperbole as it lives up to its reputation! The best way to describe this game is an arcade-styled Armored Core game with the rampant environmental destruction of Otogi and the most over-the-top patriotic B-movie story ever to be penned by the land of the rising sun. Despite its simplicity compared to Armored Core, Metal Wolf Chaos doesn't stray too far from being challenging. The game also encourages exploration to find secret weapons and power-ups. Visually it still shows its age, but it's far from a bad looking game, and the music is pretty good too. Sadly this remaster is not without its problems, and to make matters worse, General Arcade abandoned support for this game after their last patch. Issues still prevalent in this remaster are some game-breaking bugs where one of the bosses can be rendered invincible, the Lock-on Speed stat for Missile Launchers and Multi-Missile Launchers does not display anything, the developers broke the once-functional special effects for the Moonlight Sword bazooka from earlier builds in the v1.03 patch, some visual effects are still missing, sound balancing is still rough, the helicopter rotors in one of the FMVs looks wrong, and the game is still prone to crashes/freezes during long sessions. I have tried reporting these issues to General Arcade via e-mail, but they did nothing about it... There's also an achievement in the GOG version that does not work at all, no matter how many times you meet its conditions and I had to contact GOG Support about this issue. Despite the problems I ran into with this remaster, I'm glad this game finally got the overseas release it deserves with its legendary dialogue and over-the-top action in tact. This was a game I've been yearning to play this game for many years ever since seeing the titular Metal Wolf as a cameo in Enchanted Arms as a secret golem, and the wait was certainly worth it!
I have played the original version of X-Blades and this new "HD" version is not any different outside of higher quality FMVs. All of the lighting, shaders, textures, models, and audio are all exactly the same from the original version, not to mention the original version already has widescreen support, so this re-release's big selling points are straight up lying to you. As for the game itself, it's just as trash as the protagonist's fashion sense. X-Blades is a button-mashing snore-fest at best and a tedious, poorly-designed slog at worse. The best way to describe this game is Tomb Raider meets Devil May Cry 2; the game has awful controls, floaty physics, terrible and uninspired level design, monotonous and tedious combat, meaningless collectibles and upgrades, annoying enemies and lousy boss battles, and it's just not fun at all. The handful of spells you can learn sometimes costs an insane amount of points to unlock, and even then they are not worth the hassle when you can either mash the X button to win most of your battles or use the one elemental spell your opponent is vulnerable to. The same can be said about most of your unlockable gunblade moves which often have obtuse command inputs that are difficult to execute, making them ultimately worthless. Presentation isn't good either; the game's graphics are bland with repetitive locations, the HDR lighting and effects that are an eyesore, and the art direction clashes badly between realistic environments with animu-styled characters. The game's theme song is easily the most cringe-worthy Linkin Park cover I ever heard and the rest of the game's sound design isn't any better with forgettable music and dull sound effects. Story is non-existent, the characters are about as one-dimensional as the protagonist's thong, and the game's multiple endings sucks. I wanted to give this game the benefit of the doubt a few years ago, but X-Blades ultimately lives up to its reputation as soulless garbage. Avoid at all costs.
Cave Story is a wonderful game, it's easily one of the greatest games ever made and among some of my my all-time favorite video games. Without spoiling anything, Cave Story is a one-man passion project by Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya that pays homage to classic video games with beautiful pixel art graphics, amazing music, a great story with memorable characters, and gameplay that builds up to a fun and challenging Metroid-styled experience. Cave Story is a lovingly crafted game and I highly recommend everyone to go play it. So why am I giving this game a negative review then? NiCALiS, the publisher and current prison warden of the Cave Story IP, has abandoned the PC version of this supposed "enhanced" version of Cave Story for years and treating PC players like second-class citizens by not giving them updates from the later released Switch port, which has much more features, new bonus content, new lighting effects, 16:9 widescreen presentation, and in a later update, local co-op support and more soundtrack options than what this obsolete PC port has. This game also has been rendered incompatible for MacOS users as well. Please heed my advice and do not spend your money on this outdated version of a beloved classic.
Before people get their pitchworks and try to silence this review, I love Beat Hazard, it's one of my favorite games since discovering it on Xbox LIVE Indie Games, it's a simple and fun twin-stick shooter with a lot of replay value thanks to the ability to use your own music to play the game, and the Ultra version added new content and features that helped breathed new life to the game. However it seems like every new update recently has been hurting the game more than anything else. I don't own this on GOG though I do own the Steam and DRM-free Humble Store version, however the problems are pretty much applicable across these releases. As of writing, the game suffers from a broken fullscreen bug that causes it to not work upon launch (even using BeatHazardPref.txt doesn't work), poor support for wireless Bluetooth XInput controllers with no vibration or analog trigger function, Shadow Missions not working properly, and with the DRM-free builds, missing Internet radio support, and most damning of all, a bug that breaks the folder options to change between the game's own music and ones stored on your computer while rendering Internet radio inaccessible. This not only kills most of the appeal of this game, but also renders the game unplayable as, if you index too much music that the game can't handle it without the folders working, it crashes thanks to this bug. It seems like the dev doesn't care about fixing this game anymore now that Beat Hazard 2 is out while this is just an afterthought, and even worse shipping this game in a broken state for unsuspecting customers. The version of Beat Hazard on DRM-free platforms are even worse thanks to these game-breaking problems I mentioned, the dev not playtesting the game, and shipped it that way. May as well stick to the CD-ROM version I got from Amazon for $1. It may not have the new content from Beat Hazard Ultra, but unlike the recent updates for the digital releases, at least the CD version works fine out of the box.
