Stray

• Genre: Adventure
• Time Played: 5 Hours, 18 Minutes
• Too Short/Long: Just about right for what it is, I wouldn't have complained if it were another hour or two if there was more unique content.
• Pleased/Disappointed: It was a cute game, I am pleased with it.
• Why I played: There was a good bit of hype around the game back when it first launched I think because the lack of other PS5 exclusive games at the time and I liked what I had seen from the trailers well enough.
• Recommend to others: Maybe. It's not like a strong recommend, it's not a game I feel everyone needs to play, but if you want to play a fairly short little cat adventure in a sci-fi robot world, I would say go for it.

Stray is a cute game. It's just a little cat adventure where you are the most cat out of any game where you can play a cat. It's mostly just about going from place to place doing cat things. It has that kind of auto-platforming, so you're not actually jumping about with any skills required. Sometimes you have to play with tricky camera angles to make sure you are aiming at the correct platform, but that's about it. There are some simple puzzles, and some hidden items and areas, but it's mostly a pretty straightforward game. 

It has a couple areas with some gimmicks, like some chase areas where you have to dash quickly and out maneuver some enemies, a period where you can "fight back" for a little while, and an area where you have to go about stealthily. It doesn't have the tightest controls, but I think it has the best for what it's meant to do, and that's be a cat adventure. It's not an action platforming game by any means even though there are a couple "action" sequences and it would appear you are consistently "platforming", but like I said, it's all auto-platforming. You never miss a jump, there is no jump button. It's cute though, and pretty much exactly what I expected and maybe a bit more, so I can't complain. Also my wife was watching ecstatically the entire playthrough.

Streets of Red: Devil's Dare Deluxe

• Genre: Beat 'em up
• Time Played: 2+ Hours
• Partner: Alice, Rey, some others a long time ago.
• Too Short/Long: It's about what it needs to be for the kind of game it is.
• Pleased/Disappointed: It's a fun game, and I went back to it after years, so I'm pleased with it.
• Why I played: Picked it up again after just looking for a good game to play three players.
• Recommend to others: Yeah, it's not necessarily the first, or even top few beat 'em ups I'd recommend, but pretty up there.

Originally released as just "Devil's Dare", I had played this a good bit years ago, but didn't finish it to my recollection. Or maybe I did, and I just felt like replaying. I'm not too sure because I originally owned it on Steam. My Steam time says 5+ hours, but I feel like that may have been accidently left open or something, especially considering my 2-3 hours on the Switch version has 3x the amount of in-game achievements unlocked.

Everything is the game is a reference to something else. Many video game references of course, but also a good bit of movie references and just other miscellaneous pop culture references. I don't think the entire Gex series has as many references as this couple hour beat 'em up.

We played with Rey and got the bad ending, not knowing we were going to be asked for a ton of money to get the good ending. Alice and I played a few days later, having a better idea of how to earn and save money and knocked it out. It's a fun little romp if you've knocked out some of the more popular options for beat 'em ups.

Inmost

• Genre: Puzzle Platforming
• Time Played: <5 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Fine for what it is, I wouldn't have minded some more Knight sequences extending it out a little.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Played through in one sitting, so I think I enjoyed it a bit.
• Why I played: I like a lot of the games Chucklefish publishes, and I think that might be the only reason I really checked this out. It's been on my wishlist forever and maybe I initially added it for another reason, but I forgot.
• Recommend to others: Maybe, if you wanna be sad.

Back in the day when the indie gaming scene wasn't as prevalent I would exclaim that 90% of indie titles are either Metroidvania, Rogue-likes(or lites, whatever), or allegories for depression. This ticks two of those boxes, so I'm not thinking things have changed too much.

In the case of Inmost, it literally has you jumping from the allegory parts to the not so allegory parts. Basically the game's story is saying in both an obtuse and not obtuse manner is that how you act has an affect on others. If you need help, get help(which it very literally says during credits).

Gameplay-wise it's a pretty fun little adventure with a guy where you go around and figure out how to unlock the next areas and backtrack and unlock the next areas, except when you're playing as a little girl wandering around in a house, or a Knight absolutely destroying the enemies that kill the other dude on contact.

I would have liked to have seen more Knight sequences, and maybe a couple like fights or platforming challenges using it's unique mechanics. The Knight has a grappling hook, which you do use a good bit in it's first couple sequences, but almost none later, but see him use it in cool ways in cut-scenes. That said, I don't think this game was made with the intent of any of the action being all that challenging. It just would have been really cool and likely taken the game to a definitely recommend from me.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons

• Genre: Beat 'em up
• Time Played: 2+ Hours
• Partner: Alice
• Too Short/Long: Overall the game feels too short.
• Pleased/Disappointed: It was fun, pleased on that department, just wish there was more.
• Why I played: No reason other than it was Double Dragon and I needed something different to play than what was already in my rotation.
• Recommend to others: Overall I'd recommend it, with the warning of how short it is for a single run.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons is a perfectly serviceable Beat 'em up. It doesn't have the fan service of a game like Shredder's Revenge, and it doesn't have the longevity of River City Girls. It's controls are pretty tight, and I'm glad I can do specials without sacrificing health. There are also a decent selection of characters each with their own special moves to make them fairly unique.

The main problem I have is just, it feels too short. Granted, a lot of old beat 'em ups are only a couple hours long if you can actually get through them, but they're difficult due to either clunkiness or weird hit detection that this game doesn't really suffer from, but it makes them feel much longer because you're likely not going to get through on your first try and have to restart.

While there is an option for it, if you fail, you don't necessarily have to restart if you either have money to revive or tokens to continue, but at least on default settings, this wasn't really a problem for Alice and I. We had a lot of fun with it, but even though there are a bunch of unlockables, there isn't really much of an incentive to continue playing to see more in-game content.

Levels can be longer depending on your order, so I guess it may be worth at least a second play through, playing the opposite level order, just to see some of the areas we may have missed out on, but I think I'll save that for 4 players... is what I would say if it had 4 players. One other glaring flaw is that despite the fact you take 4 characters into battle, and with 1 or 2 players, there is a tag in-out system. There is no option for 4 player. It seems like the game may have potentially been made with the idea of 4 player in mind and for some reason it wasn't implemented. Maybe they thought it was too chaotic on screen? Couldn't balance the difficulty? I don't know but it feels like a missed opportunity.

Other than that, I guess if you're the type of person who likes replaying games just to play them at higher difficulties and get better scores or something, there might be a bit of replay-ability. There are mutators available for your run available from the start, so that's neat, if you like that. I personally don't care about those options too much.

Blasphemous 2

• Genre: Exploratory Action Platforming(Metroidvania)
• Time Played: 15+ Hours
• Too Short/Long: A little longer than it needed to be, granted, I did 100% it, if I would have just played through more casually maybe it wouldn't have felt too long.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Pretty pleased. I thought it was overall an improvement on the first, which I thought was fine anyway, if not a bit flawed and overrated at the time.
• Why I played: I liked the first well enough to want to play this one.
• Recommend to others: I'd recommend it over the first and some other well known Metroidvania titles.

Blasphemous 2 is a pretty solid improvement over the first. I remember the first being a bit frustrating in the platforming aspect and a bit too easy in the combat past the early stages of the game. The second is a bit better balanced and your special movement is no longer tied to button/directional inputs that make it easy to accidently execute a different command in their place.

While I found it to be an overall better experiencing from a mechanical perspective, I feel like the flavor wasn't as strong in this one. Don't get me wrong, it's still filled with allegories for the high level biblical mythology, but as someone who doesn't really know too much about that stuff outside of video games, it's honestly kinda over my head. While I don't entirely follow, I still appreciate the theming. I just feel like that theming isn't as strong as it was in the first one. The art and overall direction of the game is just a little bit more standardized, and a little less original.

Don't get me wrong, it's still great in this game, and maybe part of it is only because now it's been done, so it just had less impact than the previous for me. While gameplay was generally better, I do feel some of the quests are a little obtuse and some regular enemies are a little too spongy. 

I liked how it handled your starting weapons and what the means for how you approach the early stages of the game, and how they each had progression based abilities tied to them. It's a bit of a shame the best progression mechanic was tied to what I feel was the worst weapon, and the best weapon had the worst progression mechanic. I would have liked to have seen more puzzles and challenges that explored the mirror jumping mechanic. If the other two weapons had cooler abilities like that, it would have really left an impact. 

Otherwise, it doesn't really do much from a gameplay standpoint to really set itself apart. It just does what it does pretty well. 

Super Alloy Ranger

• Genre: Action Platforming
• Time Played: 4 Hours
• Too Short/Long: I could have swore I played far longer than 4 hours. Probably means it was too long.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Ehhh, mostly disappointed. I liked the character art.
• Why I played: On a Mega Man-like Roll.
• Recommend to others: Not really, even if you're hard pressed for games that kinda play like Mega Man, you can probably do better.

Super Alloy Ranger is a very okay game. It's playable, it's not the worst, but the best thing about it is generally the art. The detailed pixel art cut scenes, character portraits, and even character sprites are all great.

Otherwise? It's a little rough. It's not a very difficult game, in fact, it rarely offers much of a challenge, but the character controls don't feel as precise as they should. Levels are a bit long, and kinda repetitive feeling? There isn't much in the way of gimmicks, even if there are some unique(from other levels) platforming challenges.

Music is a mixed bag. Some amazing tracks, but some are just way too loud/fast. It's like they turned up the volume and played them at 2x speed. It's a bit much. Other tunes are catchy or fitting.

I do really like the character designs, and it's probably mainly why I bought the game. I also really hoped there was gonna be a shmup or other kind of vehicle section because it's teased in the base area with big detailed sprites of a vehicle for each of the main characters and it never happened.

The localization is abysmal. Probably the worst I've ever seen on a game with an official English release. I feel like it was either DIRECT google translate or just like one person who has maybe got like a 1 year Duolingo streak in English and took like a 101 class in grade school. Maybe a combination thereof.

That doesn't make it unplayable, but when the thing I am kinda enjoying the most, the characters, are just speaking nonsense half the time, I can barely even enjoy that. I do feel like this was a passion project that someone put a lot of effort into, it just, could have been more. The ending strongly hinted at a Super Alloy Rangers 2, and despite everything I said, I would give it a shot.

Mighty No. 9

• Genre: Action Platforming
• Time Played: 17 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's pretty much the perfect length, my playtime is a bit long because I played through as both Beck and Ray, did some challenges, redid levels, and after a long hiatus had to get my bearings again.
• Pleased/Disappointed: More pleased than anyone else in the world, I think.
• Why I played: Had to keep the Mega Man's coming. I kickstarted Mighty No. 9 way back when. I also played it as soon as it came out. I also took a huge hiatus probably because those last levels are very difficult.
• Recommend to others: I would definitely recommend Mighty No. 9, especially over most other Mega Man-likes and even over many Mega Man games.

Mighty No. 9 gets an completely unjustified bad rap. I think because it was one of the earlier kickstarter's that blew up and failed to immediately deliver a triple-a product. Mighty No. 9 is not without it's flaws, but they're hardly in the game play. But honestly, so what that the mouths don't move during cutscenes, do you know how many games I've played where mouths don't move during cutscenes? It's not that weird.

Sure it got a lot of money, nearly 4 mil in the kickstarter, but it's only, and only ever was meant to be a 20 dollar game. It's definitely a 20 dollar game, if not more. I already went on a bit of a tangent when I finished Mighty Gunvolt Burst, but I do really wish people wouldn't give this game so much flak. I feel it's gotta be either from people who didn't bother playing it, or are just so hard-up with their bias of kickstarter controversy, which I feel like is barely a controversy. Missed launch dates and delays? Oh my word, I've never seen that in a video game.

It doesn't play EXACTLY like a Mega Man title? I'm glad it doesn't. It's fun. Not that Mega Man isn't, but while Mega Man 9 was a GREAT throwback at the time that really leaned into it, making it unique as a classic mega man in a more modern era. Mega Man 10 felt lacking as just more of the same. 11, which I just recently finished does have some decent level gimmicks and does try something with the Double Gear system, still felt like it was missing something.

Mighty No. 9 generally speaking, plays like a Mega Man game, has a bunch of variety in level gimmicks, has a lot going for it presentation wise, more story throughout the game, more character interaction, more fleshed out bosses and even it's own unique gimmicks that keep it feeling fresh, faced paced and fun to play. Damn, what a disappointment.

If you like Mega Man games or any of the other platformers Inti Creates makes, give it a shot if you haven't, and if you had and only had negative things to say about it, maybe take off your 2013 kickstarter green tinted glasses and try to enjoy it for what it is a stand alone product. Honestly I think this is one of the best Inti Creates games, and wish they would followed up with more of these, rather than Gunvolt and spin offs.