12. Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons - PS5 (2hrs)

Modern belt scroller that's billed as a roguelite in some quarters.  I usually tut at genre custodians wagging their fingers at people for lazy definitions, but that's a bit of a stretch here.  Rogueultralite maybe, but only due to the perks - there's no layout randomisation here as far as I can tell.  You'll occasionally get a choice of 5 perks (pick one) that will stay with you for the rest of the 'run'.  I only saw the Game Over screen once though, so it's not a standard rogue by any stretch of the imagination. The more you play the more tokens you'll acquire, which can be spent on playable characters and bonus tat from the main menu (there are 4 extra characters initially, with 9 more to unlock).  I was concerned about the structure for this going in as I'm something of a genre purist (I heard that tut!) and I had intended to hold off until a half price sale.  It was payday yesterday though, ergo I yolo'd it at a paltry 25% off.  Retro Gamer loved it and I often agree with their takes on retro inspired modern games, but reviews elsewhere (including the dreaded user reviews) are quite mixed. 

So is it any good?  Yes, thankfully.  It's not up there with the S-tier of modern belt scrollers but it's a fine addition to the numerous nu offerings available.  The core brawling is satisfying and the currency system is a decent enough twist on a standard lives/continues approach.  There are numerous routes through each stage, with the area order choice determining how long a subsequent level will be, adding replayability.  With only 4 unique stages it does feel a bit light on content, but it works in the context of offering a deliberately succinct package; these games are always better weighing in light than padding things out, imo.  

I enjoyed the combat loop and appreciated the attempt to do things a little differently.  It's quite generous with the special moves for a change, and there's no penalty for using them as a powerful attack rather than a get-out-of-jail-for-a-small-fee card.  As far as deep brawling goes there's not a huge repertoire of moves to flex with but you do get enough tools to stay on top of the screens - it's no-frills done well (think Fight 'N Rage rather than SOR4, which feels right for a DD game to me). Co-op is limited to couch only, which is a shame but that often seems to be the way of it for the past generation or two (gone are the days where something like TMNT Arcade would automatically be playable online on XBLA). I'd recommend it for two players keen on the genre anyway, especially if they're already au fait with Double Dragon and willing to put a little bit of time into dying and retrying before they settle into the game's groove.  One for @retroking1981 & an irl +1 I reckon - all moves are available from the start and the perk system after each boss is felled would be more your cup of tea than the grind-it-out XP levelling of the River City/Scott Pilgrim types imo.  Gonna stick my neck out and say that if you can handle the fact there's no separate punch and kick buttons there's a good chance you'll think this is the nuts.  

I'd read about brutal difficulty spikes but I battered this on default settings - will play again with different characters (and Tilly, hopefully).  Credits have already rolled though, so in the thread it goes. [7]

NB. Anyone who plays this should toggle the option to allow corpses to disappear over time, and disable the annoying special KO/crowd control pop-ups.  Both are just pointless clutter and apparently make the Switch and PS4 versions wheeze.

4. Horizon Forbidden West 40 or so hours

Finished this off having a few days off work. I started last year on the PS4 and finished it on the PS5.
Neither better or worse than the first game (so still a favourite)- but the new enemies were great and raised the stakes perfectly. There was just enough peril at the end, even if it didn't feel as epic. My biggest complaint was that there were far too many weapons and armour, when modding and fewer pieces of gear would have been less overwhelming. I felt that the game was trying to be Monster Hunter, but it didn't need to be as the game was better when spending time on the story rather than resource grinding. [9]

5. Demons Souls remake

Never expected to get into this. I platinumed the original and feel compelled to do the same again.

The audio changes are taking time to get used to - some voice work is jarring, but I like the new spellcasting sounds - reminds me of the later Harry potter movies.

What is odd is that this is neither remake or remaster, but a halfway house. It struck me how dated the healing system is. I really wish they'd changed it to the estus system. Ended up burning through grass on boss attempts and had to grind to buy more.

10. Joe & Mac Returns (Arcade) - 1hr

Unlike other games in the series this one is a single screen platformer, not to dissimilar from Bobble Bobble.

The aim is to eliminate all the enemies, but they spawn infinitely from huts, much like Gauntlet so your best off concentrating on them first.

To destroy the huts you have to stun enemies and capture them in a sack, this is done simply by running onto a stunned enemy. The more you capture the larger the sack becomes, inflicts more damage and rolls for longer.

There are 7 levels broken up into four to eight parts, each ending in a boss fight, with a boss rush mode at the end.

It's looks and sounds decent and is perfectly playable, but in all honestly I found it to be just dull and repetitive to play.

4/10

---

11. Haunted Castle (Arcade) - 1hr 30mins

This is undoubtedly to worst Castlevania platformer I have played, only Judgement challenges it for the all time worst.

Horrible stiff controls and animation, ruthlessly unfair enemy placement, and oddly easy boss fights.

Makes Altered Beast look like a masterpiece.

3/10

My list

Good review, doesn't sound half bad if you put it like that. It was one I half intended to check out, never did in the end. Agree about the 3DS graphics - I thought ALBW looked like a turd from screenshots but it was actually a pretty nice looking game when playing.

13. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown - PS5 (20+hrs)

I'll keep this one fairly short as it's an easy enough game to recommend - if you like 2D Metroidvania experiences and reckon you might enjoy one that scores way above average on each of the main pillars of the genre - which for argument's sake let's say are controls (character movement), layout (exploration, secrets, backtracking management), additional abilities, bosses and combat - you'd be a fool to miss this.  Or just someone with a moral compass firing on all cylinders, perhaps; it hasn't escaped my attention that the Ubisoft thing is a thing.  Personally speaking I avoid most of their games simply because I don't tend to like them these days, but in terms of nefarious cuntery I doubt they're much worse than most other companies just because they failed to keep a lid on some unpleasant events (or deal with them correctly).  I kinda think higher-ups and CEO types just sort of gravitate towards being arseholes everywhere, and maybe most of the rest of the staff are quite nice?  Anyway, with my half hearted apologies for buying this at full price out the way, back to the game - admittedly it's not quite best in class in any of the subjects mentioned (the movement in Ori is marginally more sublime, the exploration in Hollow Knight is more organic/rewarding and so on), but it's getting a fantastic end of term report from each teacher nonetheless.  

The style was a mis-step for me.  It's a Prince of Persia with go faster stripes, for want of a better description, and I wasn't taken with the character artwork (either in terms of model design or the talking heads that pop up), the cut-scenes or the Godawful voice acting.  Maybe a spikey haired lightning bolt fade cool vibe is precisely what was needed for true mass market appeal right now, so I'll let it slide.  Much like Rive, which I tend to mention from time to time, if you wrap a great game up in a slightly wanky package it's still a great game.  

I'd advise anyone interested to wait for a patch ideally (and maybe a price cut for a sounder night's sleep), as it's a bit buggy in its current state.  As mentioned elsewhere there's a special move cooldown glitch that did my head in throughout the quest (which means the specials can't be relied on in boss battles, which is poor).  I also thought it was odd that the Athra surge bar has three levels, with multiple abilities that require a specific level of juice to use, but unless I brain farted my way through that menu you can only assign two at once (surely having an available move for each tier makes more sense?). I also disliked the way the tier 1 move is mapped anyway, because I often inadvertantly let one go while parrying against fodder enemies. So yeah, I've got a bone to pick with someone about the specials in this, but I forced myself to get over it.

All in all though, even with the occasional glitches and minor irritations it manages to land a big [9] from me. An excellent addition to the top 5 or 6 games in a genre that was already in rude health. I wouldn't agree with it, but you could make a case for this being the best Metroidvania ever through sheer weight of averages - there really is nothing less than great about it, other than the PoP-with-attitude style. When your character is laden with the full repertoire of moves it's still intutive to play, and even when you're rolling with the barebones moveset early on it feels good to get about each screen, which is a difficult balancing act to get right. Top game.

14. 64th Street: A Detective Story - Arcade (35mins)

Another random scrolling beat 'em up that was near the top of the list as I was scrolling down.  It's a basic one, with just the two buttons, no run ability and so on.  Your character selection options are an angry Dennis Farina lookalike (RICK) or an even angrier looking chap dressed like a young Tom Waits (ALLEN).  There's more of a story running through this than in most similar games, with text exposition at the end of each stage, but I wasn't in the mood to read any of it so I'm not sure what was going on.  Something about a crime syndicate, I assume. 

Some of these games simply mimicked and some mimicked but tried to add an extra feature to stand out from the pack they were copying.  This falls into the latter category as you can throw enemies into background panels, denting the scenery and sometimes yielding collectibles or weapon drops.  It's kinda neat in an 'I guess' kind of way.  Both characters have a terrible flying kick - the kind where they just stick a weak knee out in midair - which never feels right for these games imo, so most of my brawling was done on the ground.  Another bugbear was the fact that bosses are capable of continuously punting you around the screen while you're down.  Remember when SFII: Champion Edition first appeared in arcades, and you could do relentless troll-slides with Bison, sweeping player 2 off their feet just as they hauled themselves back up with huge AHAHA energy, regardless of any attempt at blocking?  Well I do, because that's the reason I got punched in the chip shop at the top of my road by Leeroy from the year above.  The third boss is particularly guilty of a similar faux pas here.  

The graphics are okay-ish but the music is incredibly repetitive and it's genuinely one of the worst scores I've encountered for this type of game.  I also couldn't shake the feeling that the whole thing came across like a perfect pastiche; like if they bothered to part-code an arcade game that AI-generated American sit-com characters from an approximation of 1991 were playing in an episode of Black Mirror or something (a later episode could revolve around Rick & Allen's detective agency, perhaps, and THEY DON'T KNOW THEY'RE IN A GAME UNTIL THEY DO SOME DETECTIVING.  Gotta go deep).  Back to the game: the last boss has the lamest last boss vibe ever, which is a bit of an anticlimax - it's just some bloke in dungarees flanked by clones of a boss you've already defeated, with no extra hidden underground metal lair when he falls, just the credits.  I sort of enjoyed it on the whole though, as ever.  It's hard not to when you love the genre (and the person playing with you!) and they only last 30 minutes from coin drop to THE END, INSERT NAME.  Gains half a point because player controlled characters can throw each other into enemies and it's actually useful.  [2.5 out of 6]

Gaming fact: This spawned the Rushing Beat franchise on SNES.



15. Drainus - Switch (2.5hrs)

Absolutely essential hori scrolling shmup for anyone with a passing rather than full-bore affection for the genre.  If you're a fairweather dabbler such as myself the lack of absolute finesse and deeper balancing won't matter a jot as it's basically a thrill ride you can blast through with a big grin. #ScrubsNotDubs.

It looks fantastic, sounds pretty good and plays superbly.  At first the manual upgrade system felt like a bit of a problem (pausing to tinker with the menu mid-game felt like a hmmm), but it does work and it allows players to tweak certain things to their liking.  The central guard move where you deliberately soak up enemy fire to clapback with your own attack added an extra hook to the gameplay loop that I thoroughly enjoyed.  There's a touch of Bangai-O to it, but I don't play a vast number of similar games so there's probably a much better comparison out there.

I won't attempt to go deep on this as I didn't play it long enough to form a shmuphead's opinion on it (I completed it fully once, on easy), but £12 for 2.5 hours of pew pew exhilaration was fine by me in this instance.  I'm too lazy to go to the cinema these days, so in terms of value I'll just shrug and look at it like that, plus I didn't have to pay through the nose for my salty snacks.  [8] 



16. Captain Commando - Arcade (40mins)

Proof that a) my memory is shot and b) these games have started blending into one a little by now: I spent the first half of this wondering how the fuck I'd managed to not play Captain Commando, given that it's a well-known example of the genre (that I owned on two collections on Switch before I got even my retro devices).  Then I died and decided to try someone other than the ninja, recognised Mack the Knife (yes, that's his name in the game) and realised that of course I've played it before.  Fairly recently too.  Naturally I chose the same gif last time, look at it. 

The last boss is a floating cheesy prick (with a proper bossman name: SCUMOCIDE) and it's probably one or two stages too long, but this a still a quirky goodtime and further confirmation for me that Capcom were much better at these than Konami.  [4 out of 6]

5. Slay the Princess (Steam/macOS) - 5 Feb (4hrs)
Visual novel with horror overtones and an intriguing story. Dialogue choices are great, lots of humour, but the voice acting and delivery of the well-written script was the icing on the cake.
[8]

Not the best year to pick this challenge.



So far I'm at YAKLAD (57hrs)

Person 4 Golden (58hrs)

Infinite Wealth (can expect at least 60hrs)

Then FFVII Rebirth, Enshrouded, Persona 3 Remake, Cyberpunk (eventually)

I really need to get my shit together and finally try that. Great write up mate.

I played a bit on release, liked it, fell into my Pile O' Shame.

That Neon White looks ace!

19. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Switch (45-50hrs)

All the booster packs are out so this one can be ticked off.  In its final ultra super deluxe form it now has a ridiculous 96 tracks (each playable in mirror mode, so going by the MD Virtua Racing rule that's essentially 192 courses) and 48 playable characters, ergo I think I'm ready to stick my neck out and state my case for this being quite possibly Nintendo's greatest game of all time. 

Fuck off Moot, said everyone at once (armed with additional shouts of "Super Mario World!" "Breath of the Wild!" and so on), but I'm not as wrong as you think I am if you think about it.  For starters this appeals to an impossibly broad spectrum of gamers.  It's absolutely kid friendly, to the point where 4yr olds could enjoy a few races with the excellent assists activated.  On the flipside of the casual/HARDCORE divide, the time trial mode (and leaderboard/ghost chasing within) is a legit timesink for the srs gamers.  The three laps/three mushrooms TT system is great.  Online play is smooth and seamless drop in/drop out stuff, which never seems to get as much credit as it deserves lest it derails the general 'Nintendo so shit at online lol' narrative.  Split screen with two players is silky smooth (while maintaining most of the glorious sp sheen), and four player local races are much more impressive than you'd expect too.  Battle mode is back, and it's not half bad.  You can system link, if that's your bag, and there's even enjoyment to be eked out of the replay mode - something which I don't think I've said since the days of Sega Rally.  Tilly makes us watch the highlight reel after every single race, and never fails to crease up about something that she slows down at the point of impact.  You can even upload them for others to view, I think.  The graphics are spectacular - astonishing considering its age and roots - and the music is similarly superb, with full effort tunes for each track.  In terms of attention to detail and nice little touches I can't think of anything that comes close really: from the characters eye-tracking incoming shells to the warped music when you get shrunk by a lightning bolt, it's all absolutely top drawer stuff.  And that's without mentioning how well it plays, which is pretty much perfect for an 'everyone is here!' Nintendonly chums Kart racer.  Yes, getting hit by a blue shell is annoying - it's the blue shell, that's what it does.  It's also very satisfying to throw, or to slow down to avoid.  Plus I think you can turn it off for custom matches now.  

It's a nigh-on faultless package.  Considering what it set out to do in 2014(!) and how astonishingly well it achieved and now exceeds these goals, it's an irrefutable [10] for me, and pretty much the most evergreen title I can think of since Tetris.  The newer tracks lack some of the fancypants gloss of the originals, which is a shame, but the earlier dlc waves have almost definitely been spruced up since they appeared, and a good chunk of them look great.  Plus - more importantly - some of the later courses are excellent.

Reasonable to put it up there with the all-timers, I think.

It definitely feels like the next one either has to be a Mario Kart Ultimate type thing that is basically just 8 with every track and racer ever or some kind of open-world revolution - I don’t see how they could reiterate on 8.

22. Steel Assault - Switch (35mins)

A couple of long car journeys the weekend just gone meant I had plenty of Switch time on my hands, but instead of tackling something from the POS I just snoozed and replayed this instead.  I've played it and summed it up in one of these threads before and there's not much to add really, so I think I'll subtract instead - much as I love the game it's not an [8].  The gameplay is solid but isn't as wonderful as the visuals deserve, both sets of music are a wee bit weak and it's too short for the price, even for me.  Sunday's playthrough was on very easy, which meant bosses rolled over and died without the need to pay much attention to patterns - normal difficulty was a different beast but at 5 stages it's still tiny.

In my previous review I said this is one of the nicest looking games I've ever played and I'll double down on that today - it's an incredible looking pixel art game and absolutely pitch perfect in terms of monstrously swish nu retro style.  [7]

If I could hang gifs on my wall, which let's be honest I probably could if I could be bothered to actually look into it, I might pick one of these:











Glorious.

23. Gear Shifters - Switch (3hrs 18mins)

Top down run based road shooter with unlockable perks and weapons.  I say run based but there's an arcade mode in there, which is how I played, and I presume that halved the runtime. 

It didn't feel particularly well balanced and it's hardly a stretch to assume that plenty of players would find the simplistic arcade driving shmup loop monotonous but I thought this was great fun.  The graphics are far better than I expected, the framerate seems locked at 60 and the Action Fighter/Spy Hunter style road blasting did the trick for me.  It doesn't seem to let you grind, so I assume this gets tricky on the standard YOU DIED GO BACK TO HQ mode, but as the arcade mode adds restart points at the beginning of each stage I wouldn't know.  The full price doesn't feel right to me (£22.99).  It's currently £5.74, hence the purchase, which is well into bargain territory.  Despite the fact that you'll be blasting your way through the stages rather than coaxing enemies to kill each other it shares a few similarities with (the admittedly superior) Swordship in terms of constant positioning shifts depending on hazards.  I find that the why not both? suggestion can be applied to these smaller titles though.

Not perfect but it was worth pulling out the wreckage of the EShop.  One for @DrewMerson, perhaps. [7]

Can't see you not liking it. Same goes for Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider (from the Blazing Chrome devs).