37. Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials - PS5 (9hrs?)

I reckon I'm fairly enthusiastic about most of the indies I play.  I might spend too long focusing on things that wind me up with certain titles but obviously if I play a game to the point where the credits rolls and it shows up in here, it means I've either hand picked it on one of my many digital store foraging expeditions, had it recommended to me personally or spotted random internet people gushing about it.  If I buy a game I want it to be good, believe it or not, and for my needs most of the games I play do the trick.  I had this one on my Switch watch list for ages, almost forgot about it as it threatened to drift out of conscious memory like a Tolkein ring, then had Muzzy text with a 'this looks like a bit of you' reminder.  Which I agreed with.  Within a few days it dropped to the magical half price point on PSN so I finally took the plunge.  I don't tend to go hugely off-piste with the types of games I play and a retro inspired pixel art 2D Metroidvania is well inside my safe zone.  Even if I'm not keen on a game I finish I usually still kinda like elements of it, because I'm fairly risk averse with my choices, and the chances are even if something barely scrapes a Moot [6] I'll still be glad I played it. I'm not glad I played this though, and I'm quietly fuming with myself for wasting a week on it.  I knew it was dodgy early on too.  I gave Below a [6], for example - a game that was well out of my comfort zone really - and there were elements of that I loathed.  It's still one of the most memorable videogames I've ever played though, so there can be plenty of value in a [6] on a personal level.  I'm not gonna give this a 6 though, so I've lost track of my own point here.   

Moving on to the next paragraph, I hate this game.  Everything about it is needlessly spiteful, even down to how high the character can jump.  Remember when I said TotK had the most annoying jump in a game?  Ha no, no-one reads these.  I did though, and I take it back.  This would be instantly improved by just giving the main character an extra few pixels of extra clearance on their maximum jump height - as it stands so many platforms are so precisely placed to be at the absolute apex of your leap that actually landing on them can feel like a success in itself, especially if you also consider the fact that plenty of them are only slightly wider than an average Barbarian.  Sometimes you'll need to fight and jump and juggle *spoiler alert* bat companion states with the shoulder buttons, while selecting which item to throw with the L1 button and the right stick.  Perhaps all while trying to complete an obstacle course with zero leeway for anything other than pixel perfect play because you've hit a switch to open a door that has such a miniscule window of opportunity it wouldn't be out of place as an unwinnable wind up in Will You Snail.  It's insane, considering that surely part of the original vision for that game included making it enjoyable to play. These things can be done, with practice, but it's so obstinately excruciating that I just can't see why the devs wanted to torture the players en route to almost every minor success.  One boss required such cumbersome mixture of techniques that I was convinced I'd settled on the wrong approach...until I found someone else complaining about it online.  Yep, the process really was as ridiculous and unintuitive as it seemed, and my only option was to keep at it, rub my tummy, pat my head, spin multiple plates and eventually catch a break.  Or bin it, which is what I should have done.

If I had to pinpoint my main problem with this I'd probably highlight the fact that always seems muddled on whether it's a puzzle game or a platformer, isn't particularly good at either and blends them together awkwardly.  The platforming is bad - way too much readjustment required in mid-air for a character that controls like a twitchy brick.  The retro leaning combat is worse - so willfully simple and basic it's hard to pinpoint exactly which era it's suppsedly harkening back to - even the original Rastan had a wider array of sword swipes.  There's no nuance to attacks, it's just hack hack hack in the hope that an enemy dies before it ambles into you.  The biggest blot on the copybook is from the puzzles though, as they're so pace breaking, tedious and long winded that wandering into a room filled with switches and portals injected my veins with the Dawson Do Not Want gif.  Mileage may vary on these of course, but by the halfway mark I'd had more than enough and that was the point where their frequency started to ramp up.  Taking a wild stab in the dark I'm going to do the following I reckon: someone on the dev team was sulking about not making a puzzle game and repeatedly crept back to office to add them in at night, unbeknownst to the their co-workers. 

In terms of Metroidvaniaing, it's one of the ones where you need to get the monocle out and look for connecting map segments rather than being given any sort of direction from in-game dialogue or waypoints.  Or feel for the environment really - you just aimlessly wander until defeating a boss necessitates wandering somewhere else. 

TLDR it felt like a glossed up homebrew effort from many years ago to me - picture the most impressive Net Yaroze game spruced up to modern retro inspired standards with extra pixels, more rooms and some nifty light sourcing.  Knowing that I was locked in due to my own I've started so I'll finish weirdness probably raised the hatred levels a few notches in fairness, but I'll stand by the fact that this is a poor game.  So it has to be a [4] for me then.  I can't imagine playing this without most of the assists on, and thanks to Muzzy's charitable betman side soon enough I won't have to. [Evil laugh/good luck].

I could spend another paragraph listing a few things I liked - such as the robust and welcome assist features - but I'm not going to bother.  If they'd made a more balanced and enjoyable game the assist features wouldn't represent such a relief anyway. The scarcity of healing items would've almost definitely done my head in if I'd played on default settings. I'm not convinced the XP/levelling system is a worthwhile addition either, and the spinning wheel that added a random element to the three upgrade categories was just annoying. I'll stop now, but I could genuinely bitch about this game for days.

I'm still quite enjoying Batbarian FTR

Thank you

39. Mundaun - PS5 (roughly 6hrs)

Without question the best horror game I've played.  I loved The Excavation of Hob's Barrow for the atmospheric slow build, tone and style, but this pulls off the trickiest of tricks with aplomb - it manages to be genuinely chilling in places.  The events reminded me of John Langham's The Fisherman at times - a novel I expected to love but struggled to enjoy.  I mean that as high praise, because it succeeds where that book failed for me - I was transfixed for the majority of the events here, whereas The Fisherman had the right folk horror ingredients but executed its vision poorly.  It's best not to go into details as going into Mundaun cold is of course preferable to getting any sort of heads up, but I will say that the way the game commits to its otherworldly elements early on is masterful.  There's a drip feed of course, but the tale goes beyond eerie in its opening beats and balances the psychological horror, intrigue and tension perfectly throughout.

Visually the pencil-sketch style is wonderful.  The way things subtly shift and distort, the way reality blends with the supernatural, the woozy zoom when focusing on pertinent happenings, even the way the grass bends in the wind with a purposefully unsettling animation is magnificent.  The strong score is suitably foreboding too, and judiciously draped over proceedings at all the right moments.  I was hugely impressed with the whole thing, and discovering that it was mostly the work of one person added another level of admiration.  Most importantly it's not just artifice either - the dark central tale holding everything together is excellent.

In spite of a clumsy inventory system, occasionally finicky button prompts and slightly clunky enemy encounters (that can still be spine-tinglingly tense, thankfully), this manages to be a top tier effort and possibly the best 'walking sim' hybrid this side of Finch. I've been thinking [8] due to these rough edges running through it, but now that the dust has settled I'm in an appreciative [9] mood instead.  There are too few horror videogames that are crafted even remotely as skillfully as this.  The aforementioned Hob's Barrrow hit its intended sweet spot for me.  A Taiwanese effort called Detention was laborious to play but glorious in the telling.  I'm sure there are others, but for actual unnerving chills this is the goat.  A remarkable achievement and genuinely something I'd be confident recommending to non-gamers as an example of 'we can do art too!'.

Oh, and the achievements/trophies have terrific names.



It also elicited my biggest laugh in gaming for many years, albeit unintentionally.  Not quite a ruinous spoiler but just in case:

Oh dear.

40. Berserk Boy - Switch (4-5hrs)

I hate it when games you thought were made for you don't stick the landing.  I've had Batbarian recently, plus Tiny Thor and Gunbrella last year.  Going back further I was disappointed with Spectacular Sparky and I've got to finally admit that Grapple Dog is quite laborious once you get going due to the stages and the game itself being far too long, ergo I may have finally binned it off after three attempts.  There's always something extra annoying about not clicking with something I expect to love.  I don't mind bouncing off an shmup or the latest must-have roguelike as they're not always my jam, but a MegaMan inspired linear 2D platformer that screams GBA and received plenty of plaudits in reviews? That's supposed to be a bit of me right there.

I just couldn't feel the love for this one, much as I tried.  Playing Gravity Circuit and Mighty Gunvolt Luminous Avenger iX recently probably didn't help its cause, as they're both far superior imo, but I think fundamentally this just isn't anywhere near as good as the positive reviews suggest.  The graphics certainly didn't help as I turned my nose up at the visual style immediately.  Without beating around the bush, I hated the look of pretty much everything in this game, from the sprites to the backgrounds to the artwork for the talking heads to the ghastly cheap looking font they chose for all dialogue exchanges.  Admittedly it did look a little more appealing in docked mode, but the whole aesthetic flirts with being hideous for me.  To make things worse it has a bad case of the dreaded 'attitude dude' coursing through through its veins, a hereditary affliction handed down from early 90s platformers.  Choose your poison when it comes to videogamecringe - goblins, leather clad buxom anime girls, super army soldiers - the blue haired gnarly wisecrack mascotman shtick is a killer for me (in non-Sonic games ofc).  The stock for that sort of thing has plummeted since the 16-bit era, and rightly so.  

I tend to like 2D games where you have to time your inputs to remain airbourne - the high/low bounce on the Godly DKC: Tropical Freeze, for example - and the air dash tag in this is satisfying, it's just ruined by the general level design and all the character swapping.  Manually changing forms to approach certain obstacles is a bit of a bugbear of mine as the extra layer of thinking often ruins the flow state of games for me, and some of the layout design here is just silly.  You'll often reach a part of the level that requires the use of a certain character to progress - annoying, but that's how plenty of games roll - then you'll get supposedly character specific obstacle courses that are rendered totally redundant by the fact that roughly two thirds through the game you unlock a character that can literally fly.  Odd design; it's like the devs occasionally forgot what abilities you have for the back half of the game - why ninja hang on suspended beams that scroll through a stage when you can just bypass the annoying bits by flying through them?

Music is by the annoyingly named Tee Lopes, of TMNT: Shredder's Revenge/Sonic Mania fame, but they mostly feel like offcuts from the Turtles sessions tbh.  Not bad, but certainly not something he's put an outrageous amount of effort into imo.  Restart points are annoying, insta-death traps are everywhere and there are numerous instances of spikes being placed directly underneath your drop-in point on a screen, which can result in being whisked to a restart point 7 or 8 screens back, all thanks to falling foul of a cheaply placed trap.  Even things as simple as respawning platforms feels cheap a lot of the time - there's one that shoots off on a prescribed path through the stage that you have to tap your foot (with attitude!) and wait for for about 30 seconds if you miss it, and I missed the fucking thing twice.  

Anything else?  Yes, the wall jump is shit (pulling away from the wall makes him jump, which feels wrong).  I didn't like this much at all on the whole, so annoyingly it's a [5] for me.  Check some reviews if you're interested - you don't have to look too far to find people saying nice things about it, so perhaps I'm just being a grump.  If you want a MegaMan clone I'd recommend Gravity Circuit ahead of this all day long, and if the super GBA thing appeals Flynn: Son of Crimson is immeasurably more accomplished.  Disappointing.  As a speedrunner I can see how it might work but there's no way I'd ever be bothered to git gud.

42. OTXO - Switch (10+hrs)

Stylish roguelike with a superb screen to screen gameplay loop that significantly hobbles itself with an irritating structure.  The Hotline Miami vibes are unmistakable - a massive debt is owed to one of the modern GOATs.  The blood splattered thumping electro choon room clearance core here is a worthy homage (bullet time is added, one-hit-kills are mostly removed), it's just a shame that the rogue element constantly harshens the buzz.  The essential sensation of gradually breaking the back of the game was virtually non-existent for me.  I'm aware that all rogues lead to ScourgeBringer for me, but I have to mention it - this beat me down even more than that game did but due to the lack of accessibility options I couldn't face seeing it through (unlike SB, which I did eventually crack with some assists on after 15-20hrs or so).  So yes, it's a lesser-spotted 52 Games DNF from me, and I give absolutely no fucks because I need a place to praise it and vent.

Opinions will differ on this but imo if a roguelike takes over 45 minutes to finish from start to finish then concessions need to be added to keep the player hungry for more by taking the edge off the repetition.  Some offer area skips, most gradually sneak perma-perks into your utility belt for repeated runs (more healing potions from the get go, starting with levelled up weapons, etc).  In OTXO the boosts are provided by performance enhancing tonics that are offered randomly every three stages. The first one is on the house but the rest cost cash, which is earned from kills and combo kills.  Alternatively, you can pay a premium to research and eventually unlock additional tonics (say 1300 coins, which is fucking pricey, for a tonic that increases your movement speed).  Anything paid into research stays banked between runs, mercifully, but it still tends to be a run ruiner if you want to invest as doing so means you probably won't be able to afford any tonics to assist your current attempt.  Plus anything you unlock is just added to the pool of existing tonics, meaning that you'll likely not see it again for an hour or more as the bartender only offers three per visit.  So if you've unlocked 12, good luck being offered that speed boost again any time soon, which means it feels a bit like swallowing a spider to catch a fly, plus crap ones dilute the pool.  As an additional kicker, all currency is lost upon death.  Did anyone follow all that?  Probably not.  The TLDR is: perma unlocks help less than they do in any similar game I can think of, and the boosts are far too luck dependent.  Couple this with the fact that the game is quite miserly with its currency even once you get good enough to keep combos going and it all starts to feel a bit much when you've died for the umpteenth time 30 minutes into a run.  Square one is much more deflating here than it should be, and dusting myself off to go again eventually became too much of a chore.  There are weird bonus screens that might randomly appear between stages, containing gatcha machines which may or may not contain a useful item, but they're so random they often appeared before I'd amassed the 250 coins necessary to buy the prize.  When you speak to the chap who deals with these unlocks there are so many mystery items that you'd probably have to play for 60hrs to unlock them all.  Which is a hard no for me, especially as most of them appear to be purely cosmetic keepsakes. 

It's a shame, because the gameplay is borderline magnificent at times.  If I had to grumble at the gunplay I'd highlight the fact that there seems to be a massive disparity between useful guns and shite ones - automatic weapons good, rifles & pistols bad, at least with analogue sticks - and I suppose that's an eye-opener in itself because it's hard to trust the balance of the whole shebang if the fundamentals are off.  Srsly, the rifles are shocking for busy screens as you'll get swarmed by enemies that can decimate you in the time it takes to miss once and reload.  I couldn't understand the inclusion of grenades or kunai either, as picking up a one shot weapon that leaves you empty handed just felt like hitting the suicide button.  Still, it lets you turn off most of the weapons you don't want, so I just binned rifles and avoided picking up shotguns for non-boss rooms.  

I don't like to feel locked in by games unnecessarily because I've always got half an eye on playing something else, even if I love what I'm playing.  With accessibility options this would've hit the [8] zone no problem, but as it stands it the shonky rogue elements hit it with a sizeable facepalm even when it's in full swagger mode.  Maybe I'm crap at it and I should have finished it by now, but I only saw the 4th area once and I've had enough.  For what I put in I feel like this should have given me more in return.  While I'm on my soapbox, the bosses are crap and the enemy traits that get added the further you progress felt like difficulty scalers gone awry - it's tough enough without making their reactions superhuman.  Also having the roll assigned to the B button never felt quite right but I couldn't get used to it after I remapped it to L.  Ergo :shrug emoji:  

A heavy hearted, miserly [6] in the end then, which is low for a £10 game I can still see when I shut my eyes.  If they ever patch this and add some much needed QOL concessions it still has the potential to be marvellous.  I could stop typing this and happily play it right now, but I've deleted it to remove temptation.  As soon as I spotted this on a 2023 GotY list I knew I had to have it, unfortunately after a hugely promising start it was a swing & a miss for me on the whole.  I don't regret playing it in the slightest though.

Didn't play that one because what I played of 4 was so rubbish.

*runs away*

I DON'T EVEN LIKE THE FACT THAT YOU CAN RUN, CHIEF

43. Ninja Gaiden - Master System (1hr)

I had this, and I liked the look of it so much I bought it after I got my MD in '92 - off the top of my head that was the only time I went back to 8 bits after my tardy gen jump.  It has faults, chiefly the bats and birds (which are basically homing pigeons designed to test your patience - they don't have set flight patterns, they just come straight for you), plus maybe one of two overly annoying bosses.  On the whole this is peak 8-bit side scrolling ninja goodness though, and I'd have it higher up my list than Shadow of the Ninja (NES) and the MS port of Shinobi.  It looks better than the vast majority of Master System games, sounds decent, mostly plays very well and doesn't short change you by ending after a handful of stages (there are 8, which is plenty).  Time has taken some of the shine off of course but it remains one of the most complete action platformers on the first console I ever owned.  Impressive stuff.  90%



44. Captain Silver - Master System (30mins)

Early MS swords & pirates standard that passed me by.  Never owned it never borrowed it never played it.  Big sprites and less sprite flicker than expected can't quite mask the fact that this is incredibly simplistic and bizarrely easy*.  I came away quite liking it tbf, but it's very much of its time and I'd suggest that by 1987 (PAL release in '88, apparently) it was a smidge out of step already - we're talking about a post-Monsterland world, after all.  Music is amusing - I think I counted three distinct tunes - but the quality is low so you'll be [taps borked mic] shivering at the timbre in no time.  The basicness reminded me of Alex Kidd & The Lost Stars, which was slated by all and sundry at the time.  I borrowed that when I got my MS in 1990 and liked it, so I dare say I would've been a big fan of this too because PIRATES and SWORDS.  It's high time we had a remake, if only because afaik the subtitle 'Rebooty' is still up for grabs. 71%

*I suppose 'bizarrely' is unfair here - of course a one hit kills game is a cinch with save states if you use them to avoid getting hit.  Even so it did feel more of a breeze than most arcade ports of the era.



Edit: Apparently the PAL release adds two stages and extra bosses - looks like I played the JPN one.  Add 5% to the 71 if you so wish, but pls be aware that this is intended as a rough 'wot I might've thought at the time' score - if this dropped on the EShop as a nu retro experience it would barely scrape a [1].

45. Jitsu Squad - PS4 (2.5hrs)

Reasonably well received modern belt scroller that can't hold a candle to Streets of Rage 4 but doesn't necessarily need to imo.  It certainly adds to the feeling that the genre has been successfully resuscitated in recent years.  Just quickly, for a genre once considered beyond the brink of death, in the past 10 years we've had SOR4, TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, Wulverbalde, Fight 'N Rage, Mutant Mayhem (which has a sequel on the way), Mother Russia Bleeds, the Slaps & Beans oddities, at least two Asterix efforts, Coffee Crisis, Battletoads, Final Vendetta, River City Girls 1&2 (and further spin-offs/River City releases), The Takeover, Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors, Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, 99 Vidas, Super Punch Patrol, Viking Squad, Dawn of the Monsters, Streets of Red, Way of the Passive Fist, Raging Justice, Paprium, Double Dragon IV and other faux 8-bit efforts, plus more I'm either forgetting or haven't heard of (and that's without mentioning the 3D visuals/2D gameplay efforts like 9 Monkeys of Shaolin and Young Souls).  Toxic Crusaders is also coming in hot.  Right - your two minutes on genuine golden age belt scrollers starts now. *BUZZER*.  Could you name 30?  Castle Crashers and to a lesser extent Scott Pilgrim Saves the World/Dagon's Crown get an assist, but the majority of the resurrection thanks should go to SOR4 really.  It's a stealth boom and I'm loving it; next time I raise a glass I'll raise it to the humble belt scroller's second wind of rude health. 

This is a good one.  I thought it looked borderline horrific from screenshots but there's plenty of appreciation for it online if you look in the right places (i.e. feedback from people who play and enjoy games like this, rather than people who treat themselves to one per decade or prefer to turn their nose up at TEH OLD FASHIONEDS while playing whatever it is they like).  It turns out it's actually quite a looker, albeit in a style that might be off-putting to some.  8 levels of exquisitely repetitive brawling, 4 playable characters, an XP system for unlocking moves along the way (not my usual preference) and tunes that occasionally have lyrics sung by the bloke wot did the ghastly metal tracks on some modern Sonics.  If you're in the minority of people who might find that fun it's a mid level [7] for sure, with a point shaved off if you have to pay the full £25 (I nabbed mine for £14.99 on Amazon).  

It's not perfect.  Helper specials felt particularly off as they're just dropped in specific positions - screen clearance moves feel a bit pointless if there's no much leeway to time when you use them.  Grabbing and throwing isn't as meaty as I'd like for crowd control but there's plenty of scope for juggles and combos.  The increasing reply damage on parry moves is a nice touch though (you can build up extra attack power by successfully parrying without taking a hit).  All complaints here are quite minor; it's plenty of fun regardless and would probably go in the upper-mid tier for modern examples of the genre.  

There is one big problem though, and it's ridiculous: there's no drop-in co-op and only one save slot.  So if you start a game solo you have to restart to add more players, and if you start a game in mp you have to wipe your save to play solo.  Great work, numpties.  There is an 'unlock everything' option in the menus, which I assumed would be what I needed to enjoy co-op with Tilly but it doesn't unlock all the stages so you're still locked into the whole one playthrough at a time thing.  Madness.  



46. Tenchi Wo Kuau (Dynasty Wars) - Arcade (40mins)

I cant belt up about belt scrollers and it might be my specialist subject now. I often flick through this superb book about them and it's probably the only genre I'm always up for playing, hence half the glorious guff I review in this thread looking at least vaguely similar to the screenshot below.  

This is the absolute definition of 'serviceable' for a scrolling beat 'em up, albeit with the curio curveball of mounted horseback gameplay.  The whole thing plays a bit like a one-shot bonus stage stretched out over a full game.  One button attacks to the left of the screen, one attacks to the right, a third is basically the Golden Axe magic button (or SOR squad car, depending on your preference of touchpoint).  You can also charge an attack by holding a button down, which is useful-ish (and makes the character art at the bottom of the screen grimace with concentration the more you charge, which is a nice touch).  The sequel to this is called Warriors of Fate, and unless you're deep mining the genre I'd suggest ignoring this in favour of that (or perhaps playing neither if you're fussy).  It's worth mentioning that the final boss in this is such a bigbadass he's mounted on two horses at once, which got the chef's kiss from me.  I enjoyed myself tbf, but I can't go higher than a [2.5 out of 6] for the sake of consistency.  Not great, passed the time nicely.