Recent reviews by Scrap Reborn!

I haven't had this much freedom and enjoyment with a character's movement in 3D since... Super Mario Sunshine? A Hat in Time sort of comes close, but not quite to that same level. It definitely feels like it's been a while, man alive. On that note, I think the moveset you get here allows for some of the best platforming I've ever experienced. Holy moly, this was a short but sweet journey and one I'll be coming back to!

Honestly, my only issue is that until you find the map, it's SO easy to get lost. Even so, it's available early on and it feels so good to play! Your full moveset is so darn fun and expressive for options to get around! One of the highlights of the game for me was heading to the theatre and being told I'm not allowed in. I saw the gigantic wall in front of me and thought "Huh, I wonder if I can clear that." I darted around the room and found myself climbing higher and higher until finally, zoom! Right over the wall I went! I looked back at the closed gate and smiled at my accomplishment and charged forward into the theatre!

I used to consider FLUDD from Super Mario Sunshine the best form of movement I'd ever experienced in a 3D platformer. Heck, part of what got me interested in A Hat in Time was a mod that let me use FLUDD in the game. The game was a joy to play even outside of that, but I can't get over how much Pseudoregalia expands upon what you can really do with your movement options and only gets better from the start!

The way the game naturally shows you how everything works by asking you to experiment or having you follow a route that intuitively shows you how to use the ability. A great example of this is when you get the wall kick, where you can see a reflection of light bouncing off walls in a similar manner to how you can use the kick to bounce off walls, and said light guides you forward as well for this small segment. It's the little things in life, you know?

I love how the hand of the developer knows when to guide and when to let you figure things out on your own. Absolutely, I recommend this game! There's so little like it out there and that needs to change! If you enjoyed the kind of movement you could perform in games like A Hat in Time, Super Mario 64, and Super Mario Sunshine, you NEED to play this game. Worry not, there are no moments of automation or things like camera-locked wall jump sections with only one way of approaching platforming sections. Every room is a canvas and every ability is a new type of paint for your brush. Now go create some art!

I've played numerous Mega Man-styled games throughout my life. This is the only one I'd called a true successor. The heart, the soul, it's all here!

It's like the devs took the gimmicks and ideas of the PS1 Mega Man X games and the Mega Man Zero series and made something that works even better! The best part is that it doesn't retain the bleaker tone those games had! Gravity Circuit actually carries on the lighthearted tone of Classic, Battle Network, and Starforce! It retains the difficulty and challenge, yet doesn't feel unfair! I truly applaud how well GC balances being a love letter to the blue bomber's history, yet remains its own thing! Genuinely, the thing I appreciate the most about Gravity Circuit, apart from how it innovates on old ideas, is that when it does directly reference something, it doesn't go "Look, nostalgia! Please clap!" It instead says "Hey, remember this? Think again!"

Probably the easiest example of this is with the cylindrical enemy you see at the end of most stages, the Projectile Dispenser. It's a direct reference to the Mechameson from Mega Man Zero 4, but it has a completely different attack pattern to it. If you go in expecting the same stuff from Z4, you're getting punished with various projectiles. You can't freely whale on it as it attempts to create enemies to attack for it, now it's packing heat itself. I'm way more willing to accept an old idea being brought back if it's given a new take on how it functions. It keeps things fresh while keeping me on my toes. Wonderful stuff!

I also have to complement the gamefeel and control. Gravity Circuit controls like a dream and is smooth as butter. Anytime I'm performing attacks and comboing into a special move, known as a Burst, it flows like water and lets me pull off some really cool stuff against enemies and bosses. I especially love how i-frames for bosses are handled here. They're not tied to set points on their health bars, (save the halfway point where they begin introducing their own Burst techniques), they're instead relegated to how often and hard you hit them, so you can work this to your advantage sometimes by choosing how often you attack them, leave their first health bar at one pip, then use a Burst to go past the point they'd normally have their Burst techniques activate to get a little extra damage in, all while you grab the energy they release at the start of the phase transition to follow up with another Burst after they've shown off their ability.

Far and away my favorite innovation is how the boss rush is handled. You get a gauntlet of fights against the bosses in their second phase during intervals in an archive fight, allowing the flow of the game to be continuous, while still feeling like one self-contained boss fight. There are checkpoints in between certain numbers of bosses you've defeated, sure, but the order is different every time and I won't mince words, successfully clearing said gauntlet without dying is one of the most satisfying parts of this game. Holy moly, you really feel like you've not only gotten a solid handle on the main eight bosses, you actively feel a greater sense of growth than any other boss rush can provide. I've never been more aware of how well I can respond to boss attacks than in that successful run of all the bosses in that second-to-last level of the game. What a great time!

The way challenges (achievements) in this game work also proves enjoyable! Due to how great your reportoire of Bursts and upgrades is, you get so, so much to experiment with and the game even gives you the ability to create loadouts as well, so you don't have to keep switching out in the menu and thus keep the pace of the game as uninterrupted as possible. The upgrades also have a phenomenal way of being handled! You can find eight rescuable bots in each of the main eight stages, much like Mega Man X6 and X7, only they cannot die and they don't carry the upgrades themselves. Now you get a point for every one you rescue and you trade those in for upgrades that you can choose in any order as freely as you like. On top of that, while some bots are found along the way in levels, usually requiring some minor platforming to reach, there are a good amount of hidden spots in the levels that offer unique, short tests of your abilities and some of these hidden locations can offer you a health or energy upgrade, or even a pallette chip to change your moveset.

Oh man, speaking of returning ideas with fresh spins, do you like the Chain Rod from Mega Man Zero 2? Same here, it's pretty sick! Gravity Circuit brings that back in the form of a hookshot and it's even better here! Not only can you grab the ceiling and swing off of it, not only can you rip shields off of enemies to go to town on them, boy oh boy, you get a neat new move! Now you can grab damaged enemies and throw them like you're in a beat 'em up! There are few things as satisfying as grabbing a dude, throwing them into another enemy, and then grabbing that new enemy to keep a chain going. The sheer variety of enemies and placements for them also lends itself well to your improvement at the general game. You can throw in eight directions and hitting a flying enemy with another guy to watch them bounce into a third enemy and damage them so you can grab them to is endlessly enjoyable. The final boss's last phase even rewards your hookshot use by... well, let's not spoil too much. When that moment of realization hits, it'll be darn good. That's all I'm saying!

Oh! Speaking of enemies, these guys have functioning brains! They require you to pay attention and are fun to fight! It's a perfect complement to how versatile your own moveset is! There is nothing worse than having so many cool and fun moves to use against enemies only to learn they all share one brain cell and thus take six years to remember the gun they're holding has a trigger on it. I'm so relieved to say that's not a problem here. It not only makes combat gratifying, it also makes mastery of a level that much more satisfying, as it means the hurdle of clearing a level now becomes that much more cathartic!

What's greatly appreciated is how snappy you load back in if you die or reload at either the beginning of a level or a checkpoint. This game wants you to dive back in easily and it's so nice when you're trying to pull off a challenge, like going through Cable's stage without getting zapped by certain surfaces. Heck, the optional boss selection room to help you train in the highest floor of the main hub even has this feature. It's so cool how as soon as you beat a level, the boss of that level is now freely selectable for you to practice to your heart's content. Major props to any game that does this.

Gravity Circuit trims the fat and gives you an experience that not only focuses on giving you a fun set of challenges, it focuses on giving you the means to really push yourself further and further as you improve. I didn't even mention the completely optional medals you can earn on every level, which exist only for bragging rights, sure, but also serve as proof of your mastery of the game and can be viewed in the circuit vault. I could gush about Gravity Circuit for hours, I can't think of anything to complain about. A select few games out there can truly be deemed perfect, and frankly, I think this is one of them. I adore Gravity Circuit with all of my heart! Get out there and go have fun! This game owns!

While I haven't finished my first playthrough of killer7, I have been really enjoying it and learning it's now been tarnished with AI upscales of the art and made it all look absolutely horrendous is super disappointing. There was no reason for this. The game was incredibly charming and a nice period piece. What was the expectation here? Stop adding AI to ♥♥♥♥! No one with a functioning brain is asking for this!

Jet Set Radiooooooo!

I've been listening to music that both matches the style of or actively is used in Jet Set Radio for well over a decade, from Hideki Naganuma's work on Sonic Rush's music (and other projects), to finding Rob Zombie's Living Dead Girl and Dragula, to 2Mello's Jet Set Radio tribute albums, Memories of Tokyo-to and Sounds of Tokyo-to Future. I never actually played the game until recent years, however, and I'm glad I did.

I'd heard about how the game's controls had some jank to them, and I can confirm that's the case, but I grew up on Sonic Adventure DX. I was born in the jank, molded by it! It would take more than that to stop me from enjoying another of SEGA's most charming games of the Dreamcast era. Hearing the full soundtrack to this game in-game for the first time has been a blast and it's so cool to see the locales of each location ooze with soul and style! The characters are no slouches in this department either! Everyone's got a great kind of attire to them; it reminds me of what I loved about the outfits and character designs of The World Ends With You, which is another of my favorite games to date!

There's an argument to be made that the control hasn't aged the best, but that didn't stop me from having a great time with one of the best period pieces of its respective era. Jet Set Radio isn't just a video game, it's history you get to play, and I strongly encourage you to do so! Join the GGs and get ready to breathe new life into the world with art and style!

I heard from a few people that the previous patches improved Colors Ultimate a fair bit, but I was still pretty skeptical and not super willing to part with $40 to find out. Fortunately, the recent sale has dropped it down to about $12 and I can say the game, while not perfect, is much better and more stable than at launch. It's faster to load, runs at 60 FPS, and feels better than I remembered! The Jade Ghost Wisp is also less shoehorned in than I expected and adds new sections of level design, both to increase replay value, and skip over some parts of slower-paced levels. I can honestly say I had a good time!

Most of my complaints were either nitpicks, like sound effects not consistently playing for some things or Starlight Carnival's color palette looking duller than it used to. The only major complaints I have with Colors Ultimate partially stem from issues I had with the original release not being fixed, such as the Double Jump and Homing Attack being on the same button, which led to some collectibles being a pain. The Homing Attack ALWAYS takes priority over the Double Jump, which gets frustrating at times, and I was really hoping there would be an option to separate the two, but no such luck. Another issue I have is that they didn't fix the audio issue from the base game with Eggman's PA Announcements. Despite Colors having my least favorite Sonic script (until we got Lost World), the PA Announcements were the one thing I could always count on for a good laugh, but they're just as hard to hear as they were before unless you stand still and do nothing in certain spots, but who the heck wants to do that in an action game, much less a Sonic game? That shouldn't be a thing you have to do.

The only other complaint I have, and it's also true of the original release, is the scoring system in Colors is DUMB. Man alive, as someone who struggles to find any sense of purpose or use for score in 99% of the video games I have played, this game did NOT do anything to change my stance on it. I say this only because I actually put effort into getting all the S Ranks in Asteroid Coaster, which is my favorite zone from this game, and a few other specific levels from different locales.

The best way to rack up points in most of these levels I've attempted seems to be to spam Wisps and stay in their forms (excluding the one-and-done Wisps like Rocket and Laser) for as long as possible without going over the time limit. This means you're hovering near the goal ring a decent amount of the time either sitting around doing nothing or going in circles with the Drill Wisp. If a level or boss has a quick step gimmick in it, you're spamming left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right over and over and over again and it looks so weird and unnatural. You HAVE to do it, too, if you want S Ranks on the Frigate bosses and the Final Boss, and man does it take you out of the fight something fierce. This is not a competent way of handling things, it doesn't feel good or look good. Just... no. Ignore score, you get nothing out of getting all the S Ranks besides some achievements. It's not needed, useful, or fun.

Honestly, for the price it's at now, I think it's a worthwhile experience. I think enough has been improved that I'm willing to stick with this over the original release, though I admit I didn't have much attachment to the game before my recent playthrough, which I had a shockingly good time with compared to when I played the Wii release at launch! I think Colors holds up better than I remembered. It's not clearing any of my favorites, but it's still a mostly fun time! I'd call it an 8/10.

Man, can I just say I love Castlevania? There's a special kind of charm the metroidvanias in particular bring and it helps that there's some good humor in them as well! Juste Belmont is my favorite Belmont just because of how funny he is! The man wanders into Dracula's castle, finds an empty room, and decides to decorate and fully furnish it before besting Dracula, knowing full well the castle will be destroyed afterward.

Juste Belmont does what no one else has: best Dracula in combat AND Feng Shui. What a guy! Be sure to give Harmony of Dissonance a spin! My man Juste needs more love!

If you're looking to give Castlevania a shot, this collection is an absolute must-have! Start with Aria of Sorrow and branch out from there! Aria's a top contender for one of the best Metroidvanias in this series as well as proving time and time again to be a fantastic game for both veterans and newcomers. Circle of The Moon is a sort of branch between Classicvania and Metroidvania, and Harmony of Dissonance is basically a remix of Symphony of the Night with the most versatile and funniest Belmont in the series. Have fun, everyone, and don't forget to hit Alt and Enter to activate full screen upon bootup.

I think more Silent Hill fans should play Signalis. Not just because of how much this game is in tribute to those early titles, but because they'd really appreciate and relate to the main character. After all, both the SH fans and LSTR are on a mission to grant death to what they love. For LSTR, it's [REDACTED]. For the Silent Hill fans, it's the Silent Hill IP.

Mega Man: "Hey, could you say, "Battle Routine, Set!" for me? 1... 2... 3!"
Me: "Battle Routine, Set!"
Mega Man: "Execute!"

Even if I had recorded this little moment I shared with Mega Man.exe, I do not believe I could've convinced anyone that a human being produced the joyous sounds I made afterward. I love my blue son so much. These two collections are fantastic and the definite way to play these games, primarily due to how much the devs provided regarding the formerly event or Japan-only content. The majority of those two features have been unavailable to the rest of the world for nearly 20 years, so being able to experience all of this finally is awesome! Thank you, developers, and thank you, Capcom!

Okay, listen, I've been playing the Battle Network games for a little over a decade now, and I thought I'd basically experienced the peak version of Battle Network 5 with the Nintendo DS release, known as Double Team DS. I have my copies of BN3, 4, 5, and 6 on GBA as well, and even got the Bass icon on my BN5 save file so I could access Bass Cross on the DS version AND send over whatever the heck kind of folder I wanted to build from the GBA version of 5 to the DS one.

Let me tell you that all of that does not even compare to how shwacked the mod cards are for BN5 alone. Holy moly, I loaded up FireMan's card immediately because I love that guy and I get a Fire Arm Charge Shot AND a Heat Elemental affinity, complete with a new super rad color scheme to boot. I usually don't bother to get the Black Bomb R from the Purple Mystery Data in ACDC 2 until I've at least got the Hot Body chips at my disposal, but with the Fire Arm charge shot, I made that the first thing I beelined for in this new save file. It is BUSTED this early on AND there's a mod card section for items. Guess what's among them? BLACK BOMB Z. I have two, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ TWO Black Bombs in my folder and I haven't even put ProtoMan in his place yet.

This is the most cathartic run of Battle Network 5 I've ever done and I have so many different ways I can now modify my play style. I loaded up a card with the Status Bug for a free 50/50 shot at either a temporary buff or debuff, which is normally something I have to bug my Navi Cust for with more than four colors, but now I just have that! I had experience with Mega Man Zero 3's mod cards before thanks to the Zero Collection on DS and the Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, but those pale in comparison to what's offered for the Battle Network games. Oh my god. I'm already making plans for my next Dark Soul playthrough of Team Colonel after I finish my current playthrough of Team ProtoMan.

Good lord, this is a whole new way to play some of my favorite RPGs of all time. I've already been juggling these games for roughly a year now on my DS, as the combat's so consistently satisfying to me that it never gets old or leads to burnout, but this pair of collections has reignited my passion for experimenting with loads of different folders and strategies. I haven't felt this close to combat nirvana since the first time I used the different Mod Codes in Battle Network 3's Navi Customizer all those years ago. KTEIUE2D, the Super Armor code, still remains embedded in my mind and I'm convinced it will remain there until the day I die.

So yeah, the collections ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ own. Play Battle Network 2 or 6 as a starting point and go from there. 1 and 4 are super rough and I'd recommend at least having a foothold in the series before attempting them. 5's probably the hardest one, so while I love it to death, I can see it being a bit much for newcomers at first. Still damn good though. Absolutely give 5 a shot. God, I love Battle Network so much. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

P.S. If anyone's interested in doing some netbattling and/or trading together, I'm down for that! I've been wanting to finally experience the PVP side of these games for years!

I have to hand it to SEGA, unlike every other game company that joked about making a visual novel for April Fools, SEGA weren't cowards and actually went through with it.

You know what though, this is fantastic even outside of the context of an April Fools joke. I legitimately had a great time with The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog! It kept me smiling and laughing throughout, and the art direction and music are both great! Everyone's written accurately and they all feel so natural in their dialogue that between this and Frontiers, it's like they never left at all. I'm so glad to say that Sonic's gotten two fantastic wins under his belt recently! Absolutely, I recommend this game!