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Review – DuckTales 2
DuckTales is pretty great. Not just the cartoon, but the first NES game which I usually point to as a baseline for licensed platformers. It has unique mechanics partially informed by the subject matter. Duck Tales 2 is more of that. More of that and not much else.
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Review – Black Bird
Yoshiro Kimura and his cohorts have my eternal gratitude for Chulip. So, I don't think there's any situation where I wouldn't be willing to try something new from them. Black Bird is a pretty far cry from promiscuous smooching, but that's okay. At least in this case.
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Review – Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
The sequel to the extremely non-existent Super Puzzle Fighter I and the updated version of the also non-existent Normal Puzzle Fighter II, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo brings you all the puzzling and fighting you'd expect from such a celebrated series. No Zangief, though, so that's a bummer.
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Review – Pu-Li-Ru-La
The beat-'em-up series is a varied as you can get when it comes to putting fists into faces and faces into concrete, but Pu-Li-Ru-La stands apart in its cartoon art-style. It's just too bad that it can't live up to the intense, wall-to-wall weirdness of its third stage.
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Review – Slime Rancher
Slime Rancher is among the most successful cozy games in the niche, and for the most part, I love it. However, it's like a glass of milk; it's very enjoyable at first, but if you sit with it too long, it starts to smell and you don't want to drink it.
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Review – Alien vs. Predator (Arcade)
If you were tickling me mercilessly and would only stop if I named what developer made the best beat-’em-ups, I’d say Capcom. Without coercion and with some time to think about it, I might come up with a more interesting answer, but it’s more likely that I’d still just say Capcom. I grew up in rural Ontario, which is a…
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Review – Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer
A lot of great games that I admire have received 7/10 reviews on the Game Complaint Department. By this site’s standards, it’s a good score, safely above a mere recommendation and only slightly below an enthusiastic one. Many of them have left a big impact on me, like Rule of Rose, Yomawari Midnight Shadows, and Hypnospace Outlaw. What often keeps…
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Review – Elevator Action Returns
How is Elevator Action Returns not talked about more? Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the absolute most obscure arcade game that I’ve covered. It even recently got an enhanced port (of the Sega Saturn version) called Elevator Action Returns S-Tribute, but it’s so much better than its niche suggests. I already love Elevator Action, the 1983 game that is…
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Review – Zunzunkyou no Yabou
When it comes to arcade games, actually being enjoyable to play isn’t always the most important aspect. To succeed in the arcade – and really, this is still true in what passes for an arcade these days – you needed to be attention-grabbing. Look at the original Mortal Kombat, for instance. It was absolutely shit to play, but the mix…
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Review – Hoshi wo Miru Hito
I’ve spent quite some time mired in the sticky pits of kusoge. Crap games are becoming an area of expertise for me. That’s not simply to say that I know of a lot of bad games, but rather that I know how to appreciate them. That’s right. Did you know you can enjoy bad games? Not just in an ironic…
