#Review
#Review
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Releasing alongside Puyo Puyo 2, Sonic 2 provides an interesting contrast within the SEGA AGES Switch lineup. Unlike Puyo Puyo 2, which has rarely been accessible outside of Japan, Sonic 2 is a game that’s been ported to nearly every generation of hardware following the Genesis, even having a separate release on the Switch as part of the SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis Classics collection. Some of these previous releases are arguably superior, such as the mobile ports which rebuild the game from scratch for modern systems, with widescreen support, higher framerates and added content.
Instead of shooting for the definitive release like Puyo Puyo 2, the AGES version of Sonic 2 positions itself as an alternative way to play the original, adding new modes and options to change how you approach the original. All the previous modes from the 3D Archives release are here, alongside the addition of 100 Ring Challenge, Super Sonic mode and the addition of Sonic Mania’s Drop Dash.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Take the elaborate bullet patterns of modern STGs, give them to adorable fantasy monster girls, then combine them into a fighting game and you get Maiden & Spell. A niche within a niche, Maiden & Spell is part of a line of surprisingly varied shooter-fighting game hybrids, following in the mold set by G-Rev’s Senko no Ronde. As you might expect from a combination of such obsessive niches, Senko no Ronde was a maximalist game, one with highly detailed mechanics and obtuse nuances that required serious effort before you could begin to understand what you were playing.
Compared to its contemporaries, Maiden & Spell is stripped down, focused on immediate communication. It turns an intimidating genre into an inviting one, one you can show to your friends and immediately have them understand.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
“Learning Puyo Puyo” is one of those intangible goals I always come back to, in the same way I tell myself that I’m going to get good at fighting games, or learn Japanese. SEGA’s been making that goal a little easier lately, localizing new entries like Puyo Puyo Tetris, Champions and now returning with an official English release of the highly regarded Puyo Puyo 2, two and half decades later. The AGES release is a port of the arcade game, specifically worth noting as it’s talked about in the same way as SEGA Tetris or The Grand Master in terms of the specific feel and details serious players prefer.
The package feels as celebratory as its history might suggest, with developer M2 adding several special features to make it the definitive edition. But there’s one standout feature that changed my approach to Puyo entirely: the ability to rewind moves.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Releasing at the peak of the considered, slow paced cover shooter, Vanquish felt like a game from the future. Despite a short run time that repeated several tricks, Vanquish’s attempt to subvert genre conventions with high speed moves gave in an edge people still praise today. But what felt futuristic now feels out of time. Ten years is a long time to reappraise a work and its flaws have only become more apparent with time. Vanquish remains enjoyable, but almost in spite of the game presented to you.
By: RJ (@rga_02)
It would be hard to mess up a game such as Bayonetta unless your name is the PlayStation 3. Plagued with frame-rate drops and longer loading times than a scratched PlayStation 2 disc, it was truly a botched release.
Ten years late, the Bayonetta name once again graces the PlayStation gaming landscape, but does it live up to the caliber set by its other platform release?
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Compiling six shooters from developer Psikyo, Shooting Stars Bravo follows an evolution in their philosophy of creating shooters. Shooting Stars Bravo is split between two series: the mythical Japanese themed Sengoku Aces, and the colorful fantasy of the Gunbird series. Each series follows a similar trajectory, with a no-frills first entry, peaking at the second, then going to wildly different places with the third. They each get to that point in unique ways, with wildly varying results.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
The act of playing Shinobi is a performance. Each attempt is practice for the choreography. Every shuriken in the right place, every jump predetermined and every kill premeditated. The instant you throw a shuriken you know the fate of you and your enemy. Either they’re dead in the next second or–as is more often the case–you are.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Everything in Straimium is a little off. What initially presented as a regular rogue-lite shooter became something more curious as I realized how obscured its details were. Each screen is a miniature ecosystem, with flickers of life within its biomechanical interiors. Enemies, constructed with sparse pixel counts, swarm you as you enter new areas, while bosses and NPCs dominate the space with elaborate detail. Powerups appear only as symbols, leaving me to figure out their effects only through experimentation. All of this is obscured with a haze of color and visual effects, blending foreground and background, and having me wonder which parts of its ecosystem are hostile to you.
But as I began to parse its visuals and understand its small eccentricities, I came to another realization: under all its obtuseness Straimium Immortaly is a deeply average game.
