Mini-reviews are just a couple of sentences, giving a basic explanation of the score.
Title : Resident Evil 2 Release : PlayStation 1998
Resident Evil 2 was a cool and tense experience with a lot of fun scares and action sequences. Even after the main game was completed, it surprised us by having unlockable super difficult modes (most memorably 'The Tofu Survivor' where you play as a block of tofu armed with a Combat Knife and a few Herbs).
The graphics was very impressive, and the music still sticks with me. Fantastic game.
(great)Title : Castle Warrior Release : Amiga 1989
The technical ambitions for this game were high - the developer tried to create smooth bitmap-based 3D dungeons, possibly inspired by arcade games like Space Harrier. However, the experiment failed spectacularly, the game is almost unplayable, and looks awful, albeit in a fascinating way.
(awful)Title : Amnios Release : Amiga 1991
Amnios is a unique game where you fly across grotesque living planets, shooting planetary organs and horrible creatures, culminating in fights against large boss creatures. The Giger-esque graphics is by far the most impressive feature of the game, created by the talented Pete Lyon. The game is unfortunately rendered almost unplayable by its extremely low frame rate. Music and sound by Tim and Lee Wright does not quite live up to their usual standards.
(OK)Title : Battle Squadron Release : Amiga 1989
Smooth gameplay, lots of weapon variety, cool original artwork, great sound and music. The difficulty is just right, difficult but fair, and can be adjusted using the settings.
The game even has a solid two-player mode.
(great)Title : The Secret of Monkey Island Release : Amiga 1990
The ambition of this game is impressive, and it's incredibly well executed in terms of graphics, witty dialogue, and great music. However, as was the style for Lucasfilm adventure games at the time, the puzzles are nonsensical, making actually playing the game a somewhat frustrating sequence of confusing puzzles. It speaks to just how great the presentation and writing are that the game is still worthwhile.
(good)Title : Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight Release : Amiga 1991
Fantastic original multiplayer game with great graphics and sound, unfortunately plagued by fatal bugs.
(good)Title : Hybris Release : Amiga 1987
Well-designed, well-implemented shooter with awesome weapon upgrades.
The graphics emulates the arcade games that inspired it very well, and Paul van der Valks awesome chiptune-style soundtrack makes everything more exciting.
The final two weapon upgrades can be exploited to make the game too easy, but it's still super fun to play through, and the difficulty can be increased as well for a greater challenge.
(good)Title : Spyro the Dragon Release : PlayStation 1998
Fun, charming, collection-focused 3D platformer with great music and beautiful graphics.
(great)Title : The Unholy War Release : PlayStation 1998
Like Archon (1984) before it, this game is a turn-based strategy game where unit combat is resolved in a real-time action duel. In The Unholy War, these clashes are resolved in fun little 3D fighting games where each unit has fun different abilities.
The game is great, both as a single-player duel with an AI opponent, and as a local multiplayer game.
(great)Title : Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins Release : PlayStation 2000
This was the sequel to one of my favorite PlayStation games. Obviously, it had some big shoes to fill, which it almost did.
It added the ability to drag corpses, which allowed for a bit more strategy to the gameplay. I had issues with stealth kills sometimes not triggering, even though I seemed to be in range. Many times I had to draw my sword and just chop the enemies instead...
The boss fights were also not as interesting as the first game, they lacked a bit of diversity.
I prefer the original Tenchu for its unique style, music, and mystique, and varied boss fights. However, this is definitely a worthy sequel.
(good)Title : Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Release : PlayStation 1997
Combining the map exploration of Super Metroid and a fun action RPG was one of Konami's greatest ideas. The game has so much stuff in it, secrets, weapons, monsters, boss fights.
(great)Title : The Legend of Zelda Release : NES 1986
Completing my first Zelda game feels good, and this game was a cute and fun experience, but I used guides and maps extensively, and completing the game without any of that stuff seems like it would take forever. Which could be a good thing, I guess, if you got this game for christmas in 86, and had only the one game to play for months.
(good)Title : Resident Evil Village Release : PlayStation 5 2021
Intense, atmospheric horror game that expands the scope from RE7 and goes to some really crazy places. There so much here to enjoy, the guns are fun, the enemies are cool and unique, the environments are suprising, and the game has a lot of depth in terms of action modes, New Game Plus additions, not to mention the full game being playable in VR. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys action horror games.
(great)Title : Demon's Souls Release : PlayStation 5 2020
The original Demon's Souls revolutionized action RPGs for decades, but had some limitations in terms of graphics, sound, and performance. This remake didn't just fix all of these issues, but went above and beyond and made one of the best looking and sounding games I have ever played, even beating the presentation of FromSoftware's own modern titles such as Elden Ring. This remake is very easy to recommend for anyone who's interested in any Souls game.
(great)Title : Sphongos Release : PICO-8 2025
This is a relaxing and satisfying resource gathering game with slow progression and a calm, solitary atmosphere. There isn't much variety, but the game ends before it gets boring.
(OK)
Title : Factorio Release : Windows 2014
I didn't complete Factorio yet, and I may never do it. However, the almost 70 hours I spent with the game were incredibly satisfying and fun. The satisfaction I feel after having constructed an elaborate factory is something I never experienced in video games before, only in programming. As the game is now, it's almost perfect in giving you this experience, even adding elements I wouldn't have expected from a relatively dry genre, such as a great atmospheric soundtrack.
(Editor's Choice)Title : Paper Beast Release : PlayStation 4 2020
Eric Chahi's VR game was an intense and beautiful experience for me. In the beginning, I was awestruck by the amazing universe, and terrified by dark caves and the digging animal. Roly Porter's astounding soundtrack is probably my favourite soundtrack this year. The game slowly turns into a terrain-deforming god game, similar to From Dust (2011). The universe is very original, yet reminiscent of classic science fiction animations by the amazing Karl Sims, specifically the budding fractal plants of 'Panspermia' (1990) and the wobbly low-poly creatures of 'Evolved Virtual Creatures' (1994).
(Editor's Choice)Title : Bloodborne Release : PlayStation 4 2015
I was utterly absorbed into this game. It is a fantastic evolution of the Souls gameplay, with a beautiful and fascinating Lovecraftian world. The minor issues with an continuously unstable frame rate and a very uneven difficulty curve doesn't detract from this game being a wonderful experience.
(great)Title : Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown Release : PlayStation 4 2019
I had a lot of fun with Ace Combat 7. the dogfighting combat is fun and has mechanics that were fun to learn and make sense, except for the last mission. The game looks and sounds great, easily the best looking fighter jets in video games right now.
(good)Title : Micro Mages Release : NES 2019
Great platformer with charming graphics, fun chaotic 4-player multiplayer, and challenging boss fights. The game executes absolutely perfectly on its concept.
(great)Title : Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! Release : NES 1987
Exciting and original take on the boxing game genre, with tight and satisfying gameplay that smoothly ramps up from very reasonable to extremely difficult. The game has wonderfully varied and expressive characters, making for an incredibly charming experience.
(great)Title : Dragon Warrior Release : NES 1986
Simple, elegant JRPG with beautiful graphics, a varied world, and satisfying progression. However, the progression is too slow and dull, making the game a bit boring.
(good)Title : SimCity Release : Amiga 1989
This game was a revelation in its time, and a very impressive simulation. The only drawback was an almost complete lack of audio, and glitchy graphics.
(good)Title : Silent Hill Release : PlayStation 1999
Silent Hill is similar to Capcom's Resident Evil games from the same era, but opted for fully realtime graphics instead of prerendered backgrounds. The result is a world that feels more open due to the camera moving, and the relatively low polygon rendering capabilities of the PlayStation is offset by clever use of fog and darkness. The game seems to have been designed with this in mind, as fog and darkness plays into narrative and gameplay alike, while helping to render an open world on limited 3D hardware.
The combat is difficult and can get frustrating - often because your weapons feel inadequate. This is supposedly intentional, making the option of running away from monsters seem like a better choice than standing your ground. This design goal can very hard to get right, but Silent Hill mostly gets away with it.
The artwork is very effective, making the most of very few polygons to evoke monstrous creatures and the beautifully bleak locations in the town of Silent Hill. Akira Yamaoka's music is very unique, he forewent the traditional orchestral horror music to go with a mix of melancholic instrumental guitar tracks and nightmarish sounding industrial sample collages.
(great)Title : Balatro Release : PlayStation 5 2024
This is a single-player poker game with roguelike-inspired mechanics. You try to make high scoring poker hands using card and hand upgrades, jokers with special abilities, and other mechanics. This is a puzzle game more than a card game, and will probably mostly appeal to puzzle game fans.
(good)Title : Crystal Castles Release : Arcade 1983
Sometimes, I don't understand what made an old game a success. Crystal Castles is quite famous. Through a period of 6 years it was ported to 8 home platforms. The Atari ST port got an almost perfect score. I don't get it.
The game is a maze game like Pac-Man from an isometric perspective. That's cool, I like those. It is one of the first isometric games, only preceeded by Congo Bongo, Q*bert, and a few more. It has a quite different style from those, an abstract, almost cyberspace-like look, and several levels have big letters as part of the geometry. It's weird, but neat. The bear and trees and other stuff populating these levels don't really fit that well, but it's OK.
However, as a maze game, the level design isn't that great, it commits the maze game sin of double-wide paths with dots in many levels. But the worst part is the controls. It is played with a trackball, and unlike Marble Madness, where you are rolling a ball freely over open surfaces, here you are constrained to the cardinal directions in most cases. A trackball feels really awkward for this, and to make it worse, the game is insanely fast. It feels messy and frustrating. I don't understand what people like about this game.
(bad)Title : Helldivers 2 Release : PlayStation 5 2024
This game has issues, but somehow it's occupying more of my brain space than any other game since it came out a month ago. It does a lot of things incredibly well that I'm missing from other games.
(good)Title : Mortal Kombat Release : SEGA Genesis 1993
The home ports of Mortal Kombat came out during the First US Console War between Sega and Nintendo. The blood effects from the Arcade game were disabled per default on both the Super Nintendo and the Genesis, but the widely known Genesis cheat code ABACABB re-enabled them, a code possibly inspired by the 1981 Genesis album 'Abacab'? The Super Nintendo had no such code, making it the 'tame' version of Mortal Kombat. Of course, the Amiga version that I played as a 17-year old, always had blood. No code required, no censorship on the Amiga.
The Genesis version has very good music by Matt Furniss and Shaun Hollingworth. Furniss was well-known for making really great and fun Amiga game music.
Title : Ray Tracers Release : PlayStation 1997
This game is a PlayStation sequel to arcade police chase game Chase H.Q. You get a target that you have to catch up to and bump into until it explodes, in a old Hollywood movie car chase fashion. This is a genre that barely exists anymore, but it's super fun.
The game plays well and runs smoothly at 30 FPS with some barely noticeable tearing.
In a time where everyone is talking about ray traced reflections, I feel I need to mention that despite the name, this game obviously does not have ray traced reflections in 1997... The reflections in the car windshield are using a copy of a section of the screen to the upper left of the car. It's noticeable when you drive past a sign on the left, which is copied into the windshield.
The smooth gameplay and nice animation is hampered a bit by very rough sound effects and a curiously unbalanced mix, where the music is all but completely inaudible during gameplay.
However, this game is a lot of fun and you can beat it in half an hour.
(good)Title : Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Release : PlayStation 5 2020
Great game, although the last few encounters were a bit messy and restarting the encounters after failing had that annoying Deja Vu feeling. The museum was great, and cool to have that extra emotional weight before the final battle with The Tinkerer.
(great)Title : Vib-Ribbon Release : PlayStation 1999
Vib-Ribbon is an early rhythm game, with a unique art style and the option of playing levels generated from the music on any audio CD.
The gameplay idea of associating shapes with 4 controller buttons and combining them in pairs of 2 is neat and plays pretty well. A few times during the levels, shapes are moving in different overlapping speeds at once, but ending up in the right place to match the rhythm.
The shapes are rendered as a line, in the style of the 1970s animation 'La Linea'. The level graphics and your character shake when you're close to losing a health level, which is a great effect.
However, I don't think the levels are particularly well-designed, they don't teach you the shapes at a reasonable pace, and the difficulty seems to vary wildly within the levels. Also, I have to note that it was a incredibly strange choice of having all the included songs vary in speed for a rhythm game. It sounds weird and kind of bad, and makes the gameplay way more difficult.
Apart from these minor issues, Vib-Ribbon is a unique and awesome game.
(good)Title : The Great Waldo Search Release : SEGA Genesis 1992
This game is a surreal nightmare with Bosch-like hellscapes, endlessly repeated spoken instructions, the same flying dog sequence in every level, and clapping that feels very sarcastic. There was a Being John Malkovich level, where everyone was Waldo. I can't believe how weird this game is. I will say, the music is actually great. Malu and I completed the game in about 15 minutes.
(awful)Title : LEGO Worlds Release : PlayStation 4 2017
In LEGO Worlds, you play with mini figs in randomly generated environments where everything is made of LEGO. Similarly to Minecraft, everything can be destroyed or modified, and similarly to No Man's Sky, you travel between randomly generated planets with different biospheres. The environments look amazing - this is the first game that clearly reminds me of how it felt to play with LEGO back in the early 80s. However, the game is far from perfect: the quest system is rudimentary, the planet generation is overly primitive to a degree where No Man's Sky's planets look sofisticated, and the game is somewhat buggy overall. However, the game still works for me on a basic nostalgic level, in a way that no LEGO game has done before.
(OK)Title : Tenchu: Stealth Assassins Release : PlayStation 1998
Tenchu grabbed me completely when I first saw it: the atmospheric graphics, the slow-paced yet intense gameplay with brutally satisfying stealth kills, the colorful characters, and the absolutely beautiful soundtrack by Noriyuki Asakura.
I played through it in 1998, and again in 2017, still very enjoyable.
(great)Title : Menace Release : Amiga 1988
I first heard about Menace in Blood Money that came out the following year. Menace is a decent shooter with fun graphics and a steadily pumping Dave Whittaker soundtrack. Blood Money is unmistakably a spiritual sequel to this, although the graphics and code was refined a lot.
The ROOKIE difficult is very reasonable and has infinite continues.
(good)Title : Ape Escape Release : PlayStation 1999
Ape Escape was the perfect game for my DualShock controller, and the game was just well-designed and cool in many ways. There is something extremely satisfying about capturing one of those little annoying monkeys in your net.
(good)Title : Loom Release : Amiga 1990
Loom is an impressive adventure game, with a unique musical spell system and sleek, modern game design. The game has a short, yet grand story, with a tone that is unique among adventure games, serious and poetic.
However, the Amiga version is not great, on an Amiga 500 it runs at an appaulingly low frame rate, and the amount of disk swapping is downright crazy and ends up detracting from the experience. Preferably, it should be played on a newer Amiga with a HD or 3 disk drives.
If you find a way of playing this game using a hard drive, it's a great experience.
(good)Title : Apocalypse Release : PlayStation 1998
Apocalypse was generally pretty fun, but got a bit frustrating at certain points. The challenge was never completely unfair, and the basic gameplay is enjoyable, although I wish Neversoft had done something a bit more clever with cover and ducking. There is a top-down Gears of War somewhere in here, but they didn't quite find it.
(OK)Title : Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade Release : Windows 2006
Although the campaign mode of Dark Crusade has a lot of good ideas, I don't particularly enjoy playing it. Still, the RTS action of this series is excellent as always, and playing skirmishes is a lot of fun.
(good)Title : Borderlands Release : Xbox 360 2009
I was obsessed with this game, played it solo and in multiplayer, I completed it twice, played DLC, and got 100% achievements.
The blend of first person shooting and action RPG was insanely addictive.
(great)Title : Turrican II: The Final Fight Release : Amiga 1991
Turrican 2 was one of my favorite games on the Amiga, in part due to the great action gameplay and detailed graphics, and in part due to Chris Huelsbecks amazing soundtrack. Even when I didn't play the game, I would still occasionally enjoy booting it up and use the soundtrack player in the main menu.
(good)Title : Little Big Planet Release : PlayStation 3 2008
LittleBigPlanet is just the cutest!
This game is all about the graphics. It is interesting because it uses a theatrical approach, combining stage setups with mechanical animation driven by ropes and chains and some incredibly realistically rendered textures, such as patterned velvet and sponges. The attention to detail is remarkable, right down to real-time reflection in every little glass bead-pickup.
As a single player platformer, it has a small selection of levels, with some very innovative graphical ideas, but not much in the way of gameplay. The final couple of levels are really hard, which almost seems too much compared to the low difficulty of the rest of the game.
I played a game with Martin L. K., and to demonstrate 'Decorations', I decorated his face with a car engine! He proceeded to play a level with me, with the engine still strapped to his face. Hilarious!
This is the first time I've played on a PS3, and I must say that this is definitely the coolest game console of this generation. Every little detail of the interface, the built-in web browser, the sound design (tuning orchestra, relaxing bell sounds, mmm...), is just so much cooler than the other consoles.
(OK)Title : Bioshock Release : Xbox 360 2007
What a nice game. Bioshock succeeds in being a cool and well-thought out vision of retro sci-fi, and an effective horror game with nasty psychological twists.
If you have tried Bioshock, you'll instantly sense that this is a game of the highest quality; Everything is polished and intelligently designed. The graphics is overwhelmingly detailed and quite unique and the sound design is eerie and menacing. The AIs of the enemies also work perfectly. The Splices wander around aimlessly, talk errantly with themselves, and launch savage attacks, which fits the story background of the game perfectly. An important point in good game design: turn eventual weaknesses of your game into strengths through the story.
The game is quite long, and it sometimes seems like an grueling death march, but only because you are sucked into the dark, evil atmosphere of Rapture. The game isn't really hard, as the Vita-chambers (= respawn points) ensure that you always will be able to continue the game. I didn't really die a lot of times, just by playing a little bit carefully, which seems reasonable in the generally unpleasant surroundings provided by the game.
But a little warning to avoid disappointment - the end sequence for completing the game is ridiculously short and uninteresting.
(great)Title : Devil May Cry 4 Release : Xbox 360 2008
Devil May Cry is a series of hardcore action adventures, known for its complex fighting system and difficulty. I've played DMC3 a bit, and found it very difficult. I usually play quite defensively in this kind of game, learning to block perfectly, and use counterattacks, but DMC doesn't cater for that style of playing. You have to be all out aggresive all of the time, and blocking really isn't a factor, although there is a great dodging system in DMC. To avoid being totally pummeled, I started DMC4 on the easy 'Human' difficulty. Completing the game was perhaps a bit too easy, but it was nevertheless an extremely entertaining experience.
DMC4 is an epic and operatic story of demons and romance. It can be a bit much at times, but I guess I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, as I enjoyed it very much. The one-liners by Nero and Dante, and the braindead sexiness of the female support characters are annoying, but get balanced out by some very entertaining bad guys.
The fighting system in DMC4 is complex, yet easily learned by way of tutorials. The first tutorial is an insanely action-packed boss fight between Dante and his brother (?), Nero and I don't hesitate to state that this is the most entertaining tutorial in the history of gaming. And as you learn more abilities, the flow and satisifactory feel of the battles is easily the equal of both God of War and Ninja Gaiden. When you have completed the game, you'll want to play it again, to learn to use the abilities to their full potential.
And I will do so - on 'Devil Hunter' difficulty. Thankfully, I get to use the experience gained during the first playthrough, so I won't be bored during the second playthrough.
(great)Title : Mortal Kombat: Deception Release : PlayStation 2 2004
I managed to finish Konquest Mode - and how incredibly lame it was. It follows the less-than-proud tradition of such sub-games as Tekken Force. I only played through the damned thing to obtain new fighters for the main attraction in MK:D, namely the Kombat Mode. MK:D is a very good fighting game, with lots of moves and complex combos. Konquest Mode, however, is horrible.
You run around in a boring world, without any means for interaction, except pushing people out of the way, hitting them over the head, or pressing X to hear their one-liner. The maps are quite large, so this running around becomes extremely boring. The events in Konquest Mode are mainly character tutorials, which are lame to get through, and when you finally are put into a real fight, you may get pummeled because you haven't learned anything from the tutorials. The story is sometimes a tiny bit interesting, even though I figured out 'the great plot twist' in the very beginning. Other times, however, the story devolves into pure nonsense. I will give you an example. The main character, Shujinko, is out late at night, looking for Hotaru, the 'Chief of Police' in the Order Realm. When he finds him, Hotaru informs him that he has broken a curfew, and he arrests him on sight. Shujinko is transported to a prison in the Order Realm, where he awaits trial for 20 years or so. Shujinko actually grows older and attains a long beard in prison. Then, suddenly, his guards are attacked and killed by an assassin. The now elderly Shujinko escapes from the prison, finds Hotaru, who tries to convince Shujinko that he would actually testify to the fact that Shujinko did not break the law at all (even though Hotaru arrested him himself). But now, that he's escaped from the prison, he would have to sentence him to death. The old Shujinko rapidly turns into a young woman and kills Hotaru. Afterwards, he finds a Kamidogu (key to another Realm) lying around somewhere. The author may have had a tumor or something, because that is just stupid. But anyways, I finished Konquest Mode, and I've got Zombie Liu Kang to play with now :).
(OK)
