Recent reviews by Rowsinator

TL;DR

Katamari is a weird game that put a big smile on my face. Great music, interesting art, and a novel gimmick for the controls. It's a little short, but very fun.

If I could describe Kingdom Hearts 2, it would be "it's a great game with some downsides." If I could describe Kingdom Hearts 3, it would be "it's a painfully mediocre game with a few standout highlights".

I originally bought this back on the PS4 when it first came out. I had been waiting for it for a long time. To say I was disappointed was an understatement. The game on Proud was and is very easy and boring, with a story just as boring and awful to boot.

Critical mode was added long after I was no longer interested, but I tried it this time around. KH3's battle system is awful, and critical mode did not make it better enough for the experience to be fun. Instead it added other problems. It is extremely unbalanced and very unfun for the beginning, and tedious and annoying towards the end. I never played the DLC on the PS4 version so I decided to do that this time around. The Re:Mind DLC is awful. The Limit Cut DLC is the best part in the game for sure, but asking me to play 30 hours to get there is extremely insulting. Imagine having paid money for this back in the day. I can't name a single boss in that DLC that wasn't obnoxious to fight. The KH2 Data fights were not like this. I even beat the special ending guy just to see what would happen. As if that would elucidate anything.

As an "Ending to the Xehanort Saga" or whatever, it's awful. All that build up for nothing. These games had been getting worse after KH2, but they only started being actually bad with Dream Drop Distance. And I'm not sure if KH3 is worse. At the very least, I am still interested in the next one, when it comes out in 30 years, but if that one is bad, I'm done with Kingdom Hearts for good. Which is probably fine, as I'll be dead before the next one comes out after that 50 years later.

I played the best this game had to offer, and I was still disappointed. Oh well. Of the 60 or so hours I spent playing this game, maybe 3 of it was any fun. That's a really bad value proposition for a premium AAA title. At least it runs well and never crashed like the 2.5 PC port.

If you are looking for a good action/platformer, or are looking for closure to the Kingdom Hearts story so far, don't bother.

!!! DO NOT PLAY THIS WITH HEADPHONES !!!

Also the farther to get into KH2, the more unstable the game is. I just want to get all the chests in Twilight town without it crashing between level transitions. I am no longer having fun. The audio issues are so bad that it is actually dangerous to play. No joke, the game can get very loud when sound effects are layered on top of each other. This is particularly bad in KH2. Square Enix selling yet another defective product. Please be careful.



!!! DO NOT PLAY THIS WITH HEADPHONES !!!

There is a lot to say about this game, but the short of it is, I have just about 100%'d the games content, and yet I keep coming back to play it. It's very fun, and a run is just long enough when moving at high speeds. Play the demo and if you like it, buy the game. That's what I did, and it was worth it. It even carried over my progress.

This is one of the few games that I enjoyed past the learning phase. The activity of shooting the enemies is fun enough to keep me playing again and again.

You play as a guy who gets different powers that let you traverse the linear levels in a fast and stylish way. The game is a teeny tiny bit jank with some interactions, but the sense of speed and flow are very fun. If you play on the "Retro" difficulty, like I did, you will have a surprisingly fair and reasonable challenge that ramps up all the way through. If you think it looks fun, you should get it.

Berserk Boy is a "retro throwback" platformer where you play as Kei, a member of "The Resistance". You need to stop the city from being over run by Dark Energy (immediately, wuh-megaman). You even get to rescue reploids... I mean resistance members. You'll see a lot of inspiration from the various Mega Man games and a few different franchises. You go from stage to stage, you fight a boss after a few and each major boss gives you a new power that adds mechanics to the next stages you need to overcome. You get a standard dash in any direction, some attacking moves and some other moves that interact with the environment in a specific way. There are lots of secrets to find and collect and even a "secret ending" if you are willing to look hard enough.

Just to get this out of the way, I've seen a lot of people say "This is like X Franchise" but It's far more original than it seems. While you can see where the inspirations for this game comes from, it's very much its own thing. So if you are looking for something very similar to Mega Man, this is not that kind of game. I'd compare Berserk Boy more to "Rocket Knight Adventures" than Mega Man.

I know this sounds like a backhanded complement, but Berserk Boy really nails the "homing attack into enemies with health bars" thing Sonic Heroes was going for, but dash doesn't home-in. It's actually very fun. The key difference is that the enemies in this game don't have bloated health pools. Some enemies require more of your attention than a dash. Towards the end of the game you will have a comical amount of options to dispose of different enemies.

I played on the Retro difficulty and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The game is balanced well and feels punishing enough when you don't play carefully. It's nowhere near the difficulty of a Mega Man Zero game. Spikes don't instantly kill you for one thing. My favorite thing is that many of the levels do their best to cut down on constant power switching, which can get annoying when you have all of them. I know many people (who are bad at games) think lives are outdated, but having to do the level over again when you were reckless too many times is a fair enough in this case. Especially considering you can cruise through these levels once you know what you are doing.

The only thing that sours this for me is the "You are invincible" option in main menu. Usually, these options are put in place for "accessibility reasons", but also are a sign of an unbalanced game. It is not needed for this game. I have a lot of nitpicks when it comes to specific levels, but they were not annoying enough that I wanted to turn that option on.

Secrets have a negative I'll get back to, but they are well hidden, but also well telegraphed. You need to pay extra attention to find them, but you don't need do something obtuse to find most of them. It's what happens when you find some of them where I have the problem. But the placement of them is really good.

Please note that music is different than the audio. I promise.
The music is really well done and very catchy.

If this review turns you off from buying the game, I would recommend the soundtrack by itself.

I'm satisfied with the graphics so this is technically a positive. However the different "Art" types feels off. The art-style differences from the cut-scenes and the in-game pixel art scream "We hired different talented artists for these two things", which ok sure. But the cut-scene and promotional art have this "fake anime" aesthetic, and the pixel art has this "Every character is wider with chibi-esc proportion" look that feels inconsistent.

The non-humanoid enemy design looks dope as **** though so I'm not really upset.
I give it 3/7 Metal Slugs.

There are a lot of them, or at least many behaviors that present themselves as bugs. Including:

* Sometimes spikes kill me from full health instead of just doing damage.
* Jumping off of walls has weird interactions when doing things like changing powers or dashing.
* Corner detection (Wall, Floor) seems a bit wonky when as hitting a corner. It seems to try and auto jump me off the wall. if this is intended, it does not "feel good".

The audio mixing is a disaster, there is no audio ducking when people speak in cut-scenes. Many voice lines peak (too loud when recorded). It's like everyone involved with the voices were sharing a blue yeti with the gain cranked all the way up. You can turn the voices off, but you should leave it on for the main villain.

I keep seeing Berserk Boy is a "Mega Man" or a "Metroidvania" or a "Rogue Like". Berserk Boy is none of those things. Unlike Mega Man, you don't pick your stage. The stages are linear and you have to do them in order, so it's not rogue-like. There are hidden collectibles, but many stages require the final power to 100% them, so you will need to backtrack in order to get everything.

I don't really like this, because, other than getting a higher score (and I guess getting the secret ending), you don't really get much out of re-doing the stages. It's trivial to get an S rank if you hit every enemy on your way and don't die once.

I really hate how pervasive the patented "Inti Creates spikes below ladders you can't see until it's too late" has become in "Retro-Inspired Mega Man-esc" games. I liked the Mega Man Zero games, but this is one of those things that sucks about all of them. Berserk Boy has a ton of spikes you won't see off screen. Weather you are falling, doing a ground pound, or going down a ladder really fast, there will often be spikes where you are landing.

This is garbage game design. Stop putting these in your games. There is nothing fun about being encouraged to go fast but also having to deal with spikes when you ground pound to keep your speed going. You figured out instant death spikes were ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but you still did this? Put the spikes where I can see them. You did ok with the enemy placements, why are spikes like this?

There is nothing more frustrating than finding a secret, but you either don't have the last power in the game, or you are too early in the level to have found 60% of the resistance members in the stage. Backtracking specifically for these reasons suck a lot. Everybody said it was bad when Mega Man X 3 did this and I know you played that game, so how did you make the same mistake?

I'm not going to spoil it, but getting 50 Medals and fighting the final boss was very disappointing. Your attacks are so slow, the fight is more meandering than it is "Epic", which is what I think they were trying to go for. Spark 2 final boss fight this is not.

Overall, I liked my time with Berserk Boy. As good as it is, it could use a bit more time to polish the less good bits. The less good bits are at like 80% though, so there isn't much to complain about really. I would highly recommend Berserk Boy, short as it is.

But I guess the real question is, "is this game as good at that song by Eminem?". Almost.

I'll probably write a longer review later, but I think this game is well worth your time. Nice art, decent music, and an interesting story that I was compelled to finish by it's quality.

I highly recommend Mondealy.

This game requires you to always be online, even for the single player. It also looks and behaves like a Unity project that heavily relies on bought assets. That's gonna be a no from me, dog.

This game is basically Jet Set Radio/Future 2. Sega once again proves they hate money and lack vision for the future. You could play this game for the music alone. A surprisingly competent "extreme mixed sports" game with a lot of content. If you saw the price tag of $40 and said "maybe I'll wait", I'll say right now it's worth the price. If you've been waiting for 20 years for a new JSRF game, this is it.

You want it. Go grind those rails.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a mixed extreme sports game in the style of JSRF. If you don't know that means, here's a TL;DR: Skating, Skateboarding, BMX and some Parkour with fantastic music, a very awesome graphic style, and a lot of wacky places to grind on rails.

This game is exuding with style in everything it does.

The style isn't an excuse to have bad graphics because this is the best they can do. It goes for a stylized cell shaded look that exudes "funk" and "style". It's probably the first thing anyone will notice about the game, and is constant through the ENTIRE game. I love it. I love that everything looks like an HD PS2/XBOX game.

The game looks great.

If the graphics don't grab you first, it will be the music. The mix of strange, weird and funkiness first made popular by JSR and JSRF is here. "The vibe" is here. Even Hideki Naganuma is here, he's got 3 songs. Play the game just to listen to the soundtrack. And then buy the soundtrack so you can listen to the soundtrack when you aren't playing the game.

The only song I really don't is that "Nails Done" song. It's very annoying.

Unlike JSR/JSRF all characters play the same, the only difference is in the vehicle you choose; Skates, Skateboard, or BMX bike, though there isn't a big difference. A lot of time and effort went into the levels so that they flow properly. And that's a good thing to because if you want all the characters, you will need to get a good combo flow going. The last couple maps are huge, and FUN.

Protip: Use the "Manual" button, and do a "Boost Trick" to extend your combos FOREVER!

While the game does have a tutorial, it doesn't keep bothering you. It's on you if you don't want to know that you can lean into corners for an easy score multiplier, or that you can manual to extend your combo when not grinding. Basically, the game will show you things the characters are doing, but won't constantly be like "WOOOAAAHH ISN'T THAT COOOOL, MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY THAT!!!, LET'S TRY IT RIGHT NOOOWWWW!!1!!!"

Don't be surprised if you get stuck after the Franks because you can't read, and have zero patience.

The game lets you explore in most areas, even if you aren't supposed to be there yet. No area is too big that you can get lost for hours. Oh and the game doesn't explain what everything on the map does (in a good way). Things like the bike shops or the fire hydrants are for you to figure out. The fire hydrant threw me for a loop until I remembered in one of the Tony Hawk games you can do a trick on them, then it clicked. I really like that the game doesn't point out exactly where you need to go for secrets. You have to beat the level before you can get the map that shows you the graffiti points, which you also have to find yourself. Even still, the map doesn't tell you where the extra graffiti types, outfits or music tracks are. You need to figure it out.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, it's like I'm playing a video game and not an endless tutorial.

Other than a few annoyances, there is nothing wrong with this game that makes me not want to recommend it, but there are things that could be improved.

The combat is fine. There is a move you can do where, as part of a combo, you can paint a cop and send him flying. For whatever reason, the prompt for this goes by so fast I have spam the button for it to work. It might be my framerate (uncapped 144hz), but I haven't checked.

There have been a few occasions where I ended up doing a boost immediately after my jump, and I'm 100% sure I didn't double press the button. I tested this with a few controllers, so it's probably the game. In my ~15 hours, This happened maybe 6 times.

Sometimes when you jump on a rail, or into a sign, it will send you the opposite way you were going/the way your stick is pointed. I'm not sure why it does this, but it was most egregious when I was trying to do Coil's final trial to recruit him. Not the biggest deal, but having to re-try a section like that can be a bit tedious. Got it on my 3rd try.

I want to state that the camera is great, even fantastic 98% of the time. The other 2% can really mess with your jumps. Sometimes it's done for cinematic reasons, other times it's so you can make a jump, but having the camera move and changing what pressing forward on your stick does is very annoying. But it did look cool.

I will also say that the camera never caused me a problem when I was going for a long combo challenge, so it's probably not a big deal.

I don't mind having to do a risky jump to get a collectible; it's part of the challenge. What I do mind is having to do the same jump 4 times because even though I made the jump, I was slightly too high, or my character just clipped it but didn't go through the center.

Specifically, the jump for the map in Mataan made me really dislike how precise the collectibles are. Just make the collection radius like 20%-30% bigger and it will improve things a lot. The challenge of the jump is mostly in getting there, not in actually making it, per say.

Seeing the police show up is pretty cool, I like how authoritative they look. That said, seeing all of them 3 times in one map because I'm getting all the graffiti is not cool. You can reset your heat meter, and when you do, you will see all the police cutscenes over again.

Please make a toggle to turn them off, and have a text prompt to show when my meter goes up. You already have a sound and an indicator in the top left of the screen. This should be fine.

While this game does have combat, it's very rudimentary. The bosses are unobtrusive enough, but the later bosses in the game are a bit unfair with how they hit you. The shockwave on the mech (that you have to fight twice) when it steps down and swings its fists hits you in the air. The hitboxes on the arms are also a bit big and move a bit to fast. This is also true for the final boss.

The final boss is very cool, I like the spectacle, but has a lot of problems that don't make the fight flow as well as the tricks/combos you do in the rest of the game. Still very cool.

If you couldn't tell, I'm a huge fan. I haven't gotten everything at the time of writing this, but I've gotten most of the characters and completed a few zones in terms of graffiti. The $40 I paid was well worth it. The game plays very well, the music is fantastic, and the whole game is a visual treat. Just imagine, this is what games could be like if everyone tried as hard as these developers did.

Buy the game, buy the soundtrack, and enjoy a good time. (You can also buy the DLC characters if you want to support the developers).

You should also pick up Lethal League Blaze, the other game this developer made, if you haven't; It's good.

This game has all the cards and they all work like they should, but if you've played modern Yu-Gi-Oh and recoil at how the game is played now, I would avoid this game like the plague. If all you care about is being able to try/play modern Yu-Gi-Oh for free, this is your best bet.

If you are feeling nostalgic, The fun will last right up until you get to the LINK summon tutorial. I'd say that tutorial is a pretty good indication of how awful the game is to play in these modern times.

If you want a fun Yu-Gi-Oh experience, I would recommend any or all of the Yu-Gi-Oh tag force games instead of this one. They aren't modern, but that's not a bad thing.

This is as much a critique of modern Yu-Gi-Oh as it is of the simulator used to play it. As far as I can tell, this game has every card that currently exists, and you can, maybe once a month, get any ONE deck you want to play.

This game supports all of the mechanics that exist in Yu-Gi-Oh.

We'll get back to this, but I want to stress that the animation speed is very fast. This makes the battles look very simple, but I prefer it that way, and I assume most people do too. The PC controls are also above average.


You can link your account to play on your phone, and I think the switch. Play it where and however you want. This was actually really nice when I had to go somewhere for work and could keep playing.

I do have criticisms, but when it comes to the MECHANICS of Yu-Gi-Oh, each tutorial does an excellent job of explaining how each type of card is meant to be used. Magic, trap, and all the different summonings. Normal, Tribute, Special, Fusion, Ritual, Syncro, XYZ and LINK are all explained to the player very well in terms of using them.

However, It doesn't do a great job of preparing you to play Modern Yu-Gi-Oh.

It has all of the cards. Starting out, the game gives you enough free points to remake your awful beatdown deck that got 6th place at your LGS, where you told your opponent to read what "Destiny Board" does, and that they actually have to spell FINAL correctly for the effect to even work.

I would really recommend against doing that if you want to win in modern Yu-Gi-Oh because...

I am not one of those "Yu-Gi-Oh was better when there were no syncro" people. I played all the way up to the beginning of the Pendulum era, and think Syncro and XYZ are fantastic additions to the game. These card types made older, less useful cards into amazing options and increased the variety of the game by a huge amount.

You may feel that Special Summoning during those eras was a bit much. Well, starting with Pendulums it got even worse. This also created a meta of "Stop your opponent from playing" that permeates the meta.

It's very degenerate to play a game where the key to victory is to stop your opponent from playing at all, where you don't let your opponent develop their board on THEIR TURN, and then ram 3-5 3000/ATK monsters at them directly.

LINK monsters were supposed to make special summoning more "strategic" but actually furthered the degeneracy by introducing a monster type that you can summon over and over. The LINK Summon tutorial is particularly awful.

Winning in modern Yu-Gi-Oh is about these things:

1. Go First
2. Put as much power on your board as you can
3. Have as many cards as possible that stop your opponent from playing the game entirely
4. Ram all your extremely powerful cards into the opponent

The tutorials may teach you how to fusion summon, but it won't tell you why you might not want to fusion summon a 2300/ATK monster that has no effect and isn't used for anything else.

I do not have a problem with reading. I'm telling you this because things could be MUCH better.

During the "GX" era of Yu-Gi-Oh, the amount of text on cards ballooned like crazy. Modern cards often have 2 or more effects. Despite the complaints over the entire lifecycle of the game, the English card game staff has done almost nothing to reduce the time it takes to parse a card. This is because the English Card game translators are morons.

The Japanese cards have little dots in front of card effects so you know where each one starts. This is so you can skip reading things like "You can special summon this cards from your hand if..." that you don't need to read, and start reading things like "When this card is sent to the graveyard...". MTG (Trample), the Pokemon TCG (Paralyzed), and many more, figured out keywords a long time ago. Yu-Gi-Oh actually has some keywords like Banish (remove card from play*) or Pierce (Deal damage to player even if the monster is in defense mode). Just changing those 2 sentences into 2 words does wonders for readability. You could also use symbols instead, like they already do for things like counter traps and quickplay spells, but not for things like "(Quick Effect)". Don't accept their rhetoric.

You won't see text like "This card is a quickplay spell, and can be played from your hand on your turn, or from a set position on either players turn." printed on every quickplay spell BECAUSE YOU HAVE A TINY SYMBOL ON THE CARD THAT COMMUNIACTES THAT FOR YOU!!

There is a nice thing as part of the simulator, where if a card effect is being triggered, it highlights the effect in a different color so you know which one is being triggered when you look at the card, SO WHY NOT JUST COLOR CODE THE DIFFERENT EFFECTS ALL THE TIME!! This would be very easy to do considering they already do it.

This is, objectively, a huge problem. There are a million cards in this game, and almost every single card is legal to play with. Knowing what all the cards do is asking for too much.

You might have heard that modern Yu-Gi-Oh is fast; it is. Kind of. Yes, the mechanics happen very quickly, but there are so many that many games take a very long time to finish. I didn't play at the highest level, but I reached the point where both my opponent and I were competent enough to know how to play our decks, and it still takes ages to win or lose.

The fact that 2-3 turns can take 10 minutes or more is laughable considering how slow Yu-Gi-Oh was in its original incarnation.

There isn't another game like Yu-Gi-Oh. Almost all of the modern digital card games feel and play like derivatives of Magic the Gathering. Not a single one captures the feeling and gameplay that Yu-Gi-Oh has(had). MTGA, Hearthstone, and Eternal, are all basically the same. They may have different cards and different metas, but they feel really similar to each other. Vangaurd is different from MTG, but isn't enough like Yu-Gi-Oh to make me want to drop $70 on it after trying the demo, and the Pokemon TCG has its own degeneracy problems. Yu-Gi-Oh is truly unique.

I had just finished Tag Force 5, and decided I wanted to give modern Yu-Gi-Oh a try after being disgusted by the Pendulum era. LINK monsters while not a bad idea on their own, are currently extremely degenerate. To say I am saddened by how awful this game is play is an understatement.

If you are new to Yu-Gi-Oh, I would recommend almost any video game starting from the GBA era of consoles than this game. While they won't have all the cards, I'd say its a blessing. I cannot say enough nice things about the tag force games, start from the first one once you know what you are doing.

In its current form, Master Duel is very unfun to play. Only play this if you want to play modern Yu-Gi-Oh in an "Official" capacity, and against real people.

Wario Land 5.

Personally I always liked Wario Land 3 better, but to each his own. This review won't go into too much detail. Just trust me on this one. This is a very polished game with an amazing art style and great music. Grab both the game and the soundtrack.

BUY PIZZA TOWER
HURRY UP!!!!!

Pizza Tower is a 2D platformer that plays almost exactly like Wario Land 4, but with an emphasis on speed, and combos. There are secrets to find, treasures to collect. Grab enemies and fling them around to keep your combo going.

It's like MSpaint became a style and not a medium. I know that sounds strange, but I mean, just look at it. You will see what I mean. Amazing art. 10 metal slugs out of 10.

It reminds me of Sonic CD but a bit more "Trippy" and "Out There". I particularly love the track in the space stage. Buy the soundtrack.

The game is short if you want to rush it in an afternoon, but I think the most fun you can have is going for A ranks. There are "P" ranks, but I did not enjoy trying to get those.

Very fair length for its price.

For the most part the controls and level design are great. If you can handle a controller, you can handle this game.

The art really shines in the boss battles, and while I do think some of them take too long, they require enough skill that they are worth mentioning. You won't force your way through these bosses. Don't be a Journalist.

This is a bit of a nitpick, but when going at high speeds, I had a lot of problems when I wanted to just go straight down. Not a problem for causal play, but if you want those "P" ranks, you will need to compensate, which I don't like.

You really need to grab the wall at a jump, but it will still play the animation if you are too close to the ground when you do it. Kind of annoying but not a big deal.

If you want to go from floor 1 to floor 5, you need to traverse through floors 2-4 on the way up. Same for the way down. An elevator where you can choose your floor, and placed in the same spot would have made this a lot better.

Not a big deal, but kind of annoying.

BUY PIZZA TOWER
HURRY UP!!!!!
I had a good time with this, and have been wondering where the real Wario Land 5 is. It's like the developers played Wario Land 4 over and over again and set out to make something just like it, which he did. Nintendo doesn't like making games in earnest anymore, so you should stop waiting for them to make anything good in the way you used to like, at least if it's not a remake.

As much as I liked it, I am still waiting for a Wario Land 3-esc game to be made by someone else. I got my New 2D sonic, I got Wario Land 4-2, why not Wario land 3-2, or maybe a (good) Custom Robo-like? We can all dream.


BUY PIZZA TOWER
HURRY UP!!!!!