This Platventure stars a cute little kitty that finds a giant mech suit, and cat lovers will adore this, because Kiki acts just like a cat would in almost every situation. The mech is big and powerful, but can't touch water; you can leave the suit behind to swim or climb walls, but one hit and you explode... though so does whatever hit you; told you she's just like a real cat! Naturally, you get upgrades for the suit as you go along, and they're very obvious; no miniscule upgrade hidden in a single block, forcing you to blow up every square inch of the game just to find everything. The game is fairly easy, as most games in the genre tend to be, except for the boss fights; they will push your skills to the limit! The monochrome visuals are lovely, and you can find items to unlock a total of 16 different palettes (you start with 2) along the way, making the visuals customizable to boot! The music is a bit weird, but I think it adds well to the atmosphere. Great title for fans of the genre!
Unlike its predecessors, this is an open-world Third-Person Shooter, and it's the Grand Theft Auto I never knew I wanted. What kind of mayhem can you cause in Grand Theft Auto? Rob a convenience store? Steal a cop car? Pay for some fun with women of the night? Yawn. How about driving a truck to an enemy outpost, driving that truck THROUGH the outpost, taking out walls until they damage it enough to blow it up, causing it to take out even more of the building. Finish it off with your sledgehammer, blast enemy troops until they get mad enough to send armored personnel carriers, shoot the guy firing at you from the turret on top, hijack the thing, and drive off with his corpse flapping in the breeze like some eye-catching gimmick you'd see at a used car lot. You get to pick targets and blow them up, so the destruction element of this series is finally worth something. You collect salvage to buy upgrades and new weapons, including some crazy new arms, and there are plenty of side missions. You're waging a war, but as a one-man army; no troop placement orbabysitting, like a Strategy game would have. The game lets you go about things however you like, and there are plenty of ways to victory. Mars is beautiful in this game, and you finally get to explore it; the different regions are surprisingly diverse, and occasionally haunting. You're not going to care about the characters, story, or soundtrack, but if you care more about fun and gameplay, that won't matter. Even if you don't like the first 2 games, you might want to give this a try.
Keep in mind that I don't play multiplayer, so I don't care about it one bit; that might change how useful this review is to you. If the first game wanted to be Half-Life, this wanted to be Turok, so it's already more fun. The vehicle sections are surprisingly good, and the weapons, while not on Turok's level, are a pretty good bunch, even if many of them become immediately obsolete. It also doesn't throw nearly as much bullshit at you as the first game does; no more instant kills at full health. Your ability to blow up your environment is scaled back quite a bit, but since the first game forgot about it pretty early on, it's no big loss. Maybe not mind-blowing, but definitely an improvement.
I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but this is like Half-Life, except better... and I didn't like Half-Life. It wants to be Half-Life SOOOOOOO bad, too, having the same weapon select system, only having occasional music (which usually apes Doom), and even recycling one of its plot twists. Still, it's not nearly as janky, and there are several vehicle sections, most of which are actually fun. Problem is what it throws at you: stealth sections, escort missions, and even a "lure the invincible baddie into a trap that may or may not work while it drowns you in a hail of gunfire and rockets", not to mention that you die VERY easily; plenty of enemies can one-shot you, even with full health and armor, especially later in the game, not that the armor does much of anything to begin with. On top of all that, the weapons are so limp that they aren't much fun to use; believe it or not, the pistol remains your best weapon for most of the game, until you find a precision rifle, and the shotgun is almost completely worthless. Yes, it has destructible environments, but it's usually tedious to tunnel your way through anything, and the fun of circumventing a door with a brick of explosives that weighs the same as a small child dies out less than halfway through the adventure.
Another great Action-Adventure in the series! At first, I'd worried about the party-based combat, because in games like this, the AI can be pretty stupid, and it is, but they very rarely get hit for some reason. Boss fights are intense, and the combat is fun in general. There's a neat skill learning mechanic reminiscent of Final Fantasy 9, but with how long they all take to master and how many there are, they got REALLY carried away with it. Seriously, I put almost 90 hours into this game that could easily have been just 20-40 at most. Lots of cool environments, though, and while the music is hit or miss, I'll definitely be adding some of it to my collection. If you like Ys, this is definitely worth your while.
I got this mostly for King's Quest 7, and while that wasn't as good as I'd remembered, it at least doesn't have that bug with the firecracker that makes it impossible to finish the game; I'd only ever played through it once because of that, and it was a huge pain to get to run. Unfortunately, the graphics are... weird. I imagine the grainy-looking backgrounds are a result of running this on a resolution never intended when this was created back in the '90s, but some of the sprites are only 2 colors; they look like I made them in MS Paint. I don't remember them ever looking like that, but maybe that's the fault of my memory. On the bright side, you can always tell when you can interact with something, because it looks all goofy. The actual game is alright; it's way too Disney in its art and its humor for my liking, but the worlds are beautiful and imaginative, and deaths don't set you back very far. King's Quest 8 is the only game in the series that wasn't part of the colletion that I picked up years ago, so this collection might also be worthwhile for that. Personally, I absolutely hate it; tank controls are already practically unplayable, in my opinion, but this has combat and platforming thrown into the mix. Then again, Resident Evil and Silent Hill are super popular, so what do I know? If you'd like to play a 3D RPG set in the world of King's Quest, and you're okay with these archaic controls, it might be for you.
Of the King's Quest collections, I'd recommend this one the most. 4 is still a bit rough, and the hit detection seems a bit off, not to mention that it's still possible to softlock yourself out of the ending not all that long before it happens. If you're used to such frustrations, you'll be just fine, since 5 and 6 are even better. 5 is the first game in the series that truly is a Point-and-Click Adventure, since the text parser is now gone. The voice acting is done in house, and it shows at times, but it's not terrible... except for your owl companion, who sounds like someone doing their best Miss Piggy impression. Still, 5 has an excellent villain's lair at the end, and is a worthy journey overall. The best of the bunch is easily 6, which has professional voice actors, many different lands to visit, and an unforgettable adventure that drew many fans into the series and the genre back in the day.
These are the original versions of the first 3 King's Quest games, and I'm glad to have them here. These are venerated classics of the Point-and-Click Adventure genre. I like them a great deal; they have simple, but enjoyable stories, and lovely worlds to explore. My favorite is easily the third game, which eventually allows you your own base of operations, down in a cozy (I think it is, anyway) basement laboratory, not to mention that mixing up the spells is a lot of fun. While these are great for historical curiosity, they are absolute relics; character movement is slow, you have a text parser, and deaths or unwinnable scenarios can come out of nowhere, and you might not even realize that the latter has happened. While I like them, and fans of these really old installments will like them, just know what you're getting yourself into.
This Platventure has more of an emphasis on shooting than on upgrades and exploration. As such, the game doesn't mess around; it's not brutality incarnate, but it can be fairly challenging at times, especially if you're going for the best ending. The guns are all very diverse, and can be leveled up; there are tons of hidden secrets; and the atmosphere of the game feels so much like home. You'll also encounter a lovely cast of characters that maybe aren't super deep, but are more than charming enough to make a lasting impression. It was unbelievable that just one person made this back when it originally came out, and it still holds up today. Of course, everything above applies to the freeware version, which is still available. The question is whether or not you should shell out for this. The + version features new music, which is even better than the original chiptune in many cases, since it doesn't forget its origins; this particular version has 3 different versions of the soundtrack, but I prefer the one called "New", which is the same as the WiiWare release. You've got some spruced up graphics, which I don't think are all that great; they have that kind of melted crayon look to them that some pixel game ports have. What I find to be the big selling point is the inclusion of Hard and Easy Modes, the latter of which means that you might actually make it through Hell this time. There are some additional challenges, too, if you're into that sort of thing. For my money, this port is worth it if you can grab it on sale, but otherwise, I'd go with the original freeware version.
This is a Match 3 Puzzler that's about sex. Now that most of you have made up your mind about it, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. This isn't usually my sort of thing - Match 3, that is - but the difficulty ramps up in such a way that I never felt like I couldn't handle it. There's sort of a Dating Sim element to it that's integrated well, and also not too intimidating. I'm going to be that person and say that the writing and music are really good! I'm not going to say that I only like it for the writing - you're not stupid - but most of the girls were very likable and the dialogue was very natural. In case you're wondering, yes, the stills that you unlock are also very high quality. Overall, there's a lot to do, and plenty of fun to be had.
