87 public reviews
The views here are this user’s only and are not representative of Giant Bomb's thoughts and opinions on the discussed video game. GB's official reviews reside at giantbomb.com/reviews.
(Played for 20 hours on Steam Deck) By the time yours truly made a purchase of Dave the Diver just before 2023’s Steam Summer Sale ended, it would not be fair to say that this indie title came out of nowhere. Scored 9 on ign dot com and a million sold on Steam definitely do not register as nowhere. It’s just that after paying full attention to the so-called independent scene for a full decade now, I feel nice to see…
Read in Japanese on Steam for about 45 hours. I really do not like Disney’s Little Mermaid. No, not the 2023 live-action one I would never watch and certainly not for the usual shitty reason on the internet. The 1989 one which seemingly kicked off the so-called Disney Renaissance is the one I would rage against. The fairy tale of the same title by Hans Christian Andersen was what introduced tragedies to me when I…
(Played on Steam Deck in Japanese. 30 hours to see credits roll in Meiya routes of both Extra and Unlimited) One might say that it’s rash to review a visual novel after the playthrough of only one route out of several. But I wouldn’t have been here if I believe that, since reviewing a visual novel after only one route was pretty much how I began. Video games are usually separated into genres by this tricky thing we…
(Played on Steam with controller in English text) If you think there is a review for 2019’s Hong Kong Massacre because Chad Stahelski called this game the inspiration for that shot-from-top-down-perspective “Dragon Breathe scene” in John Wick Chapter 4 , you would be correct. But you would be wrong to assume that yours truly didn’t play the game until recently since I unlocked the Steam achievement for killing ten…
(Played on Steam Deck with Japanese text and voice-over. 22 seconds shy of 20 hours to get through Standard difficulty according to the “kill screen”.) Before I got the ball rolling, I think I owe a shoutout to video game critic Dia Lacina. Her use of the word “orthodox” referring to over-shoulder shooting (And those came and went before.) in this podcast was what inspired me to use the O word in the same way. Yours…
(Played in Japanese, both text and voice, handheld mode. ) Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon was first announced on December, the nineth, 2022 (Some minutes past nine in morning during the “Keighley’s” that year, Chinese Standard Time.) and released on March, the seventeenth, 2023. Those 2 days resembled each rather uncannily as far as my life is concerned: chilly raining Fridays in the winter when I…
Read the full review Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon
(35 hours total on Steam, seen the credits roll 5 times. Latest playthrough on the Deck being Leon first through in Japanese, 6 hours 23 minutes and 13 seconds to get the “kill screen”.) “They sure die hard” is a line uttered by Ada Wong when she shot a zombie as the player character in 2019’s Resident Evil 2 remake, or at least that’s how yours truly choose to translate that line from Japanese into English. Which…
The week before Switch launch’s sixth anniversary just seems like prime time to take out this plastic monstrosity for another ride… (My third playthrough of this port with circle pad pro in Japanese, both voice-over and text. 11 hours 48 minutes and 32 seconds clocked on the kill screen. “Jaguar” rank with 85 enemy causalities. Had to use the small window in both terms of both space and time for sniping the End so…
(Second time in Japanese on Vita, actually. 12 hours and 17 minutes to have a save file in red letters on Normal. “Elephant” rank. Guess I am the Zo Ninja there…) Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty is among the first bones twenty-first century threw at the crowd calling themselves “video game critics”. Even after this end all be all piece came out in 2007, an amateur wannabe like yours truly can still find things to…
(Played on Switch with Japanese text in handheld mode. 17 hours 37 minutes to get Mission Complete on save file with 66% complete rate.) Playing Metroid Prime for the first time through the remaster version on Switch is a revelation. It’s shocking to see how influential it is for polygonal extravaganzas including but not limited to From Soft’s bloody epics. Of course, even back in 2002, Metroid Prime was nowhere…
(My fourth playthrough. Played on Steam Deck in English. 7 hours to see the credits roll on Normal.) 2023’s Dead Space remake is faithful to a fault. So much so that Dead Space 2 still plays like an improved sequel to it as the 2011 sequel is to the 2008 original. Mostly. Yours truly believe the game to be the definitive Dead Space for it being lean and mean in terms of both length and structure. With a much cheaper…
(Played on Steam Deck with English voice and text. 15 hours and 30 minutes to see the credits roll on Medium difficulty according to Steam clock.) Horror has been for yours truly the undercurrent of science fiction ever since they started reading for amusement 2 decade ago, Hugo winner Cixin Liu was already a master in short form back then. Before being the first non-English speaker winning a Hugo rocket for Best…
(Played on PC through Steam with a controller in Japanese, both text and voice over. 10 hours and 42 minutes to see the credits roll according to save file.) Before survival horror of the 1990s and monster hunting of the 2000s, Capcom is known for fighting games, in a broad sense of course. There is the one-on-one affair we recognize nowadays represented by Street Fighters numbered sequels. Then there is this little…
(Played on PC through Steam with a controller in Japanese, both text and voice over. 10 hours and 42 minutes to see the credits roll according to save file.) Before survival horror of the 1990s and monster hunting of the 2000s, Capcom is known for fighting games, in a broad sense of course. There is the one-on-one affair we recognize nowadays represented by Street Fighters numbered sequels. Then there is this little…
(Played with Japanese text on Switch handheld mode) I t goes without saying that this is a review reader should read with at least a grain of salt. Then again which piece put up by some anomalous strangers on the internet should be taken at face value? Witch On the Holy Night is something closer to a motion comic than a visual novel and it is certainly not a dating dim or gal game as some Japanese people would call…
(Played on PC through Steam in English with a controller for about 12 hours according to save file. Got the Promise ending for those in the know.) Yours truly consider video game a vice instead of a hobby because just as they think they are out the bloody thing would pull them back in. While I thought I was done with thinking back about the 1990s in 2022, the act of “thinking back about the 1990s in 2022” grew a…
(Played as “Star’s Kirby: Discovery” with Japanese text in handheld mode. It runs pretty well.) 2022 was a year made yours truly, a 32-year-old then, thinking about media they enjoyed as a kid in the seemingly simpler days of the 1990s. Sifu is a reminder of all those better movies Jackie Chan made at his prime, then there is Freedom Planet 2 reminding me of action adventure cartoons. Between those 2, Kirby and the…
(Played in Handheld mode with Japanese text and voice. So, no comment on the English recast fiasco. Since this is kind of tear-them-a-new-one review, beware of the spoilers.) This is a story about how an impulse purchase on Halloween bit someone in the ass. On October, 31 st , 2022, yours truly decided to participate in some seasonal consumerism. They went to a video game store, paid about 39 us dollars for a…
(Played on Vita with Japanese text. Funny enough, there is one pornographic bit in this one…) If any visual novel despising Game Bro has played everything Bioware had prepared for its Mass Effect trilogy, they had already experienced what visual novel loving weebs know as Fan Disc in Mass Effect 3’s the Citadel DLC. Like Fan Discs, Citadel goes for a different tune than its main game in the usual direction of from…
(Played with Japanese text on Vita. So no, I have not experienced the “pornography” bit.) There are several barriers between visual novel Fate/Stay Night and the people who might want to get into it. One such barrier that can serve as two is called “no official English release”. Emphasize on “official” here because there is a beloved fan translation if language barrier is one’s only concern. But with the variables…
(Played with Japanese text on Switch) I became aware the remake of visual novel Tsukihime in 2012, when the outlines of new designs of characters were shown on the developer Type-Moon’s 10 th anniversary book. That same year, CD Projekt Red, fresh off porting Witcher 2 to Xbox 360 then, announced Cyberpunk 2077. While those 2 games were announced way before the Xbox One and PS4 console generation, neither would come…
(Played on launch Switch, Handheld Only, in Japanese text) Metroid Dread is not a game yours truly would recommend over several more modern and cheaper exploration-based side-scrolling action platformers. The newest in the Metroidvania name’s sake series did not take enough lessons from the newer titles in a subgenre its predecessors helped to define. But just like From Soft’s Soulsborne series, there always seems…
(Played on OneXPlayer Windows gaming tablet through Steam in Japanese, both voice and text.) If Tales of Arise set out to be the dark and gritty reboot of its 26 years old series with the marketing buzzword like “mature”, then it can be regarded a failure. What it did achieve is to attract yours truly, who once swore off Tales Of series, to play through it from start to finish. Tales of Arise has a very refined…
（Played on PC with a controller in Japanese through Steam） If any of the NieR games got “demade”, the end result would look a lot like Ender Lilies Quietus of the Knights. Marketed as a dark fantasy 2D action RPG, Ender Lilies is a Castlevania-Symphony-of-the-Night-like dipped and soaked in a sorrowful yet soothing vibe. In a year when your truly finally got to play NieR Replicant, it’s actually preferable to play…
(Played in English on PC with a controller and OneXPlayer gaming tablet through Steam) Star Wars Battlefront II campaign was marketed as a Star Wars story with genuine imperial point of view. But in the final product, the player character defected to Rebel Alliance before the first third of the story is done. It got me thinking, Mass Effect trilogy’s Commander Shepard is actually quite the uncompromising agent of…
(Played in English, on PC, with a controller, through Steam) Death’s Door is an isometric action-adventure game very much in the vein of Zelda games such as A Link to the Past and its “direct sequel” A Link Between Worlds. It’s rare for being very balanced between its combat and puzzle while its peers on PC usually lay heavily on either of those 2 aspects. Its music and graphic combined also makes it one hell of…
Post apocalypse fiction comes in different shapes and sizes and recently it seems like chill rather thrill wasteland became a thing. 2017 gave us the animated adaption of manga Girls’ Last Tour. It is about 2 girls’ journey through a war torn wasteland yet it’s more delightful than it sounds given the lack of gruesome danger they would have encountered in any other wastelands. 2018 gave us a cinematic platformer…
(Played on OneXPlayer Windows gaming tablet through Steam in English) The Steam Deck might have appeared as the first handheld device that runs Steam games, but as this PC Gamer article point out, there are at least 3 Windows gaming tablets allow us to take Steam games on the go. Personally, I think such devices would benefit Kinetic visual novels exclusive to Steam a lot. I cannot see myself reading through the…
(Played as part of the Chronicle of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena on PC through GOG with a controller. Last hour or so viewed online as a result of save data corruption.) Playing the Chronicle of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay more than a decade after its release is a baffling journey full of “only ifs”: only if there is a manual save feature; if only Riddick can stealth kill rather than just back stab; only if…
Read the full review The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
(Played on PC through Steam with a controller in Japanese, both text and voice.) (Minor spoilers for both NieR Replicant and NieR Automata) By the time I felt satisfied with playing NieR Replicant Ver. 1.22474487139..., the save file told me that I had put more than 50 hours into it. The first 39 or so of those were spent on reaching the end credits for the first time while completing all the side quests of various…
(Played on PC through Steam with controller in Japanese, both text and voice-over) Playing through Death Stranding is not unlike climbing a mountain. It’s a uphill battle at first, with even basic movement being an adversary to player moving more cargo. Then near the mountaintop, with fatigue turned into euphoria, figuratively fresher air and literally better views, the game started to feel magical. Finally, on the…
(Played on PC through Epic in English with an Xbox One controller) The third and final installments of trilogies are quite uneven in my experience during the last decade of video game. 2011 alone has Gears of War 3 and Uncharted 3, the supposed finality of both undone by their arguably better sequels on new hardware. 2012 sees the flaws of Mass Effect 3 blown out of proportion by its user base. Then, there are…
Id Software is a developer who often let its success go to its head and nothing marks those moments more clearly than DOOM sequels in the 21st century so far. DOOM Eternal proves that even without the 2 Johns id’s personality can be too much for its good. DOOM 3, the first polygonal entry in the series, is id doing an experiment at the expense of most players’ enjoyment. In the end, I found DOOM 3 to be a…
(Played with Xbox One gamepad.) The announcement of Control at E3 2018 was the rare moments I felt seen. I was about to finish reading Authority by Jeff Vandermeer back then and Remedy’s new game’s premise sounded awfully a lot like that paranoia inducing New Weird novel. I felt as if the universe was pulling my leg. 14 months later, I played the game on Epic Game Launcher and it became my favorite action game of…
I plan to write a review for the “Game of the year edition” of Control by the time all its DLC has hit the digital shelf. Somehow, it would not be fair to review Control without a look at Remedy’s previous game, Quantum Break. So, I bought and played that game on Steam. What was intended as tipping my toe into the pond soon turned into an Achievement hunt. After 20 hours of play time, I unlocked all 42 Steam…
The first time I got my hands on an id Software game was playing Quake III Arena in an Apple store. It was around the time PS2 launched in Japan. Back in those days, Apple stores are showcasing the hardware power of the Mac computers by letting people playing so-called resource intense games on those machines. In that same store, there was also a 3D mascot game starring a purple ladybug, which I did not catch the…
(Game played with Japanese text.) I imported Tokyo Mirage Sessions # FE Wii U bundle from Japan at the tail end of 2015. Not a wise purchase choice by any mean. In terms of the industry, while the Wii U exclusive Super Mario Maker was winning Game of the Year 2015 from at least Giantbomb and Usgamer, it was clear that Nintendo’s struggling console had entered into its twilight year. In terms of personal experience,…
I recently purchased and played two movie games from gog.com, Midway’s Stranglehold and Westwood’s Blade Runner. I would have loved to call them a “Good Old Double Feature”, but this first half is not appealing to me at all. Here is my review of John Woo Presents Stranglehold. 2007 was a great year for video game. More importantly, it was a big year for debuts in the sense of “Best Debut”, that Giantbomb Game of the…
(Reviewed with Shin Sakura Taisen copy released in Japan) During the Autumn of 1996 I as a 6-year-old saw Mighty Morph Power Ranger for the first time. Therefore, I got in touch with a particular type of ensemble cast, combatants in color coded uniforms who would fight for their friendship as hard as they fight against their adversary. Unknown to the boy back then, Japan in that same year witness the birth of a…
