MetalCaveman

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black More accurately, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Black. This builds upon NG Sigma 2 improving things, removing some of the boss fights that were added for Sigma, removing an area in the late game that was pretty annoying, plus some other good stuff. Overall, it's a pretty big improvement over Sigma 2, still doesn't beat OG 2 IMO, but if you don't have access to OG 2, this is the next best thing. Grade: A+

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth Though it has some serious issues with localization/translation*, it was still a really fun game, with a cool story, ending had me in tears lol. *Some stuff doesn't make sense, other stuff feels out of place, in the Digiline thing for example, there's this message exchange that went a little something like this: What?! Being the complete edition, which includes Hacker's Memory, there's a ton of Digimon that you can get, I was able to get pretty much all I wanted for my main party, only one missing was Beelstarmon, but I don't know if she was around when these games came out lol. Fun thing, on Switch (don't know if this happens on PlayStation), putting the console on sleep mode doesn't stop in-game time, this means that any Digimons you have on your farm will continue to level up. This makes it super easy to end up with Mega Digimon early on, depending on how often you play, it's cool though, because you can leave a Digimon on the farm while you do other stuff, then when you come back to play, you can add that Digimon to your party and they'll have leveled up a bunch, no need to grind for XP. The main dungeon does get a bit repetitive, different floors have different gimmicks, but it all kinda looks the same, however, that didn't bother me that much. Only thing I had an issue with was the last boss, felt more like a test of patience than a challenge, but that was mostly due to my party, apparently depending on which Digimon you have, you can end that fight super fast. Definitively recommend this one if you're a fan of Digimon. Grade: A+

It looks cool, but it also doesn't feel like real gameplay, looks really choreographed, way too smooth for a boss fight IMO. With a title like Total Chaos I was expecting full action stuff, not creepy horror stuff. This one was pretty interesting, not too sure about the rogue-lite aspects though, but it could be fun.

Would like for some of this stuff (mostly the Gabecube and the controller) to be available here, but I doubt that'll be the case lol.

RE3R might be the worst of the bunch tbf, unlike RE2R, 3 cut out a good chunk of the original, including branched paths and a full boss fight, honestly, I'd recommend checking out the original if you can, way better IMO, even with how old it is.

Edit: In case image doesn't work, game is Digimon Survive Been looking at this one for a while, was going to get it on PC, wait for the next Steam sale, but then I looked on the eshop and it was on sale there, cheaper than on Steam too.

Lords of the Fallen (2023) Easily one of my favourite non-FromSoft Soulslike lol, but it also has a bunch of issues. One of the biggest ones is how it handles item descriptions, yes, lore being hidden in item descriptions is not a new concept, but this game takes it to another level, by locking the actual content behind stat checks lol, this results in my favourite bit of lore in any Soulslike ever: Riveting. It's not a low requirement either, put about 30 points into inferno and I was still getting that message, don't know what level you need to reach before it actually tells you stuff. Boss fights were pretty disappointing too, either strength is super OP or bosses are just pathetically easy, in three playthroughs I only died a couple of times to bosses, first one was from a boss with attacks that fill the entire screen with effects, making it impossible to see what's going on, second was when I used the wrong buff on my weapon, my attacks were barely making a dent, when I switched to the right elemental buff the boss melted in less than a minute lol. Some pretty cool designs here, but the actual fights are disappointing. There's this area that's super dark, and it's by design so cranking the brightness in both the game and my tv did nothing, that place was hell to go through, though a recent update did increase brightness in that area so that one's been fixed. Enemy variety is super limited, and not helped by the fact that most of the bosses you fight will be immediately used as normal enemies. There's also some technical jank, crossbows have this line that helps you aim, except for me it would disappear every other shot, making sniping enemies take way more ammo than it should lol, there are also some spots were your character can get stuck, not even when going off the main path, just when following the main path you'll run into, "there's this one spot in these stairs that's home to some kind of gravitational anomaly" kind of thing. The endings (there's 3 endings) are also pretty lame, one of them is lame all around, with nothing cool or interesting happening, the other two are more interesting, specially the radiance one, with all the Adyr stuff, but the main issue is that for all endings, all you get a is short cutscene, all the cool stuff, the actual ending, happens in a black screen with some text describing what happened next. There isn't much variety either, one is just "Everyone dies and gets eaten by monsters", another is "Everyone dies because you're all sinners!" and the last one is "Everyone and everything dies, the end". In spite of all this, I still liked it a lot, when playing, the combat and exploration brought me back to Dark Souls, in a good way, it was cool to explore a side path, find a ton of stuff and then end with a shortcut to the beginning of the area, combat felt good, with some cool systems, like how ranged weapons use ammunition, instead of having a bunch of each type of arrow or bolt, you can use anything you want, and it all uses the same items to recharge. Spells being tied to buttons instead of having to cycle through them made buffing before big fights way faster too. There's also some cool armours and weapons here, really liked my last playthrough, with this cowboy-crusader style: Overall, it's a much MUCH better game than the previous Lords of the Fallen, but not without some issues, that it released in a pretty broken state and so close to Lies of P and Shadow of the Erdtree didn't help, still, if you're looking for that classic Souls feel, I'd recommend this one. Sequel is looking pretty cool too. Grade: B+

I switched to Linux for about a month, then went back to Windows lol, started with Bazzite, which, to be fair worked pretty well from the start, installing and running games can be a bit of a pain depending on the game though, you have to check protondb and see what settings people use to run their games, assuming the game runs in the first place lol. Still, all the games I tried ran without issues once I found the right settings. Pretty surprising too, Bazzite has a bunch of emulators ready to go on its official store, if it wasn't for the issues I ran into (which might be pretty niche lol), I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a gaming PC without Windows. The problem I ran into though, was that my drawing tablet doesn't work, a Huion Kamvas Pro 13, Linux detects it, but it detects it as a generic screen with some touch capabilities, this means: Can't calibrate it Can't tell it to limit itself to the tablet screen, so the stylus movement is all weird, slide a tiny bit and congrats, now you're on a different monitor lol Can't use the tablet buttons Can't remap tablet or pen buttons Pressure sensitivity can't be adjusted The official Huion Linux drivers didn't work, neither did Open Tablet Driver, even tried different distros, Pop Os, Mint, nothing lol. Had the same issue with my amp, it was detected as a generic IO device lol. Then at some point one of my drives stopped working, disk manager said it was an empty partition lol, plugged it into another PC and all the data was still there, it's just Linux on my PC that refused to read it lol, it was even formatted to Ext4. So yeah, back to Windows it is. I have Pop Os on my old PC, which is a media PC now, and that one works fine, my dad has Mint on his system and it works well too, for basic use. The thing is, if you actually want to use your PC for other stuff, then Linux can be a pain, also, it's not really an OS to use, as much as it's a tech project where, depending on what you want to do, you might want to have a spare couple of hours/days just to try and get whatever you're trying to do running. Overall yeah, if I had the money to get a new gaming PC, I'd use Linux on it, keep Windows on this one for work and other stuff. Dual booting isn't an option either since apparently Windows updates can break it, meaning you'd have to install Linux again whenever an update breaks it lol.

The Suffering: Ties That Bind In a word: Downgrade. Yes there's a bigger arsenal, but now you can only carry two weapons at the same time. There's more enemies, but the addition of more human enemies just results in some really frustrating fights. The city environments and NPCs never match the feel and atmosphere of the first one, in fact, it feels more like an action game with monsters, rather than a horror game. The story is also a weak point, the first one is no masterpiece, but it works, this one, retcons a bunch of stuff and changes other in a rather lame way, one of the worst parts for me is when this character from the first game shows up, summarizes the events up to that point and goes "Seems like a pathetic retread of a recent favourite doesn't it?" The fact that they knowledge it in such a way was more annoying than funny IMO. The reveal of a certain character's identity was also pretty bad, getting the good ending on the first one, I was really interested in who the Colonel was and what beef he had with Torque, who the Colonel was and how he was connected to Torque was a disappointment. Also ran into a bunch of bugs, had to reload checkpoints several times after NPCs or events failed to trigger properly lol. Overall, I'd definitely recommend the first one, even though it shows its age at times, this one, skip it. Grade: D-

The Suffering Played this game aeons ago, on PS2, but never made it past the prison section lol. Kinda glad I never made it past there back then though, don't think younger me would have been able to clear the last boss. Overall, it holds up pretty well, outside of jump/dodge being mapped to one of the triggers, there aren't any super weird controller shenanigans, the gameplay is pretty simple but that works in its favour, the main thing is that the voice acting for most NPCs is hilariously cheesy, so much that it clashes with the atmosphere and monster design. The last boss being a gimmick boss is also pretty annoying, specially with how hard it is to actually hit the target while dodging attacks. There's also a morality system, leading to one of three endings, good, neutral or bad, managed to get the good ending lol. You get good or evil points depending on certain things, some actions give good points, some give evil points, some give you a choice, or you can do nothing and get the neutral ending lol, these are pretty obvious for the most part, help a prisoner escape the island and you get good points, keep turning on the electric chair, and you get evil points, some are really hard to get though, simply because of how hard it is to keep NPCs alive in this game. Still you don't need to get all of them for any of the endings you want. A neat thing that ties to the story, Torque carries a photo of his family, depending on your choices, the photo will look cleaner or dirtier and crumpled, looking at it tells you which path you're on. A good way to start spooky month, now onward to the sequel. Grade: B+