Recent reviews by Alex

NOTE: demo lacks control rebinding but the main game has it, also the walljump doesn't suck in the full release either

At it's best, Cogen is just dollar store mega man zero. Very uninspired level gimmicks, meh boss fights, uninteresting story, it sure is a game trying to play like the zero games. It's extremely short, only 5 levels and then a hard mode for the true ending, and a weird in-game achievement system that means pretty much nothing. At it's worst, Cogen is ungodly frustrating, with some really finicky controls and hitboxes, slow bosses, screen crunch (yes, screen crunch in the modern day), and obnoxious enemy placement. It doesn't make good use of it's time rewinding gimmick, despite the fact that the whole THING about the game is "you die in one hit, use your time rewind to escape death", the rewind meter might as well be a healthbar anyway since it does NOTHING interesting with it aside from 2 very basic platforms that are affected by you rewinding, and the fact that getting hit will pause everything so you can rewind back anyway. The aforementioned hard mode is just "play the game again, but with extra ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enemy placement and the rewind meter no longer auto recharges", which 1. isn't very fun and 2. further reduces the rewind mechanic into just being a more complicated health bar. If you DESPERATELY need to play this, at least wait to get it on sale for 10 bucks like I did, even if the game played well the extremely limited amount of content doesn't justify the high pricetag.

All style, no substance. The game looks and sounds great, but once you actually get into it, the gameplay just doesn't hold up. The nonstop action is blindingly fast to the point that it all turns into overstimulating slop, as you mindlessly spam right click to move as fast as possible while clicking on enemies whenever they show up, until you snap back to reality because two shotgun guys you couldn't see from around a corner suddenly evaporated your entire healthbar. There's so few room layouts that you'll see the same ones repeating over and over even within the first chapter, and since they're all connected by closed doors you have zero time to even anticipate the next one, which just adds to the mindless gameplay. Most of the upgrades are pretty useless, lots of percentage based things that don't help you in any significant way with how the game is designed, and even the useful upgrade just aren't very interesting. All this game has going for it is the visuals, which are genuinely extremely well done, and maybe a few pretty alright songs. The story is pretty alright, a little blunt with it's message but it works overall. Honestly I just hope someone takes all these assets and puts them into a doom mod or something so they can be used for a game with good gameplay.

It may not be perfect, but Raw Metal is an extremely good fusion of a stealth game and a beat-em-up with an incredible soundtrack and visual style. Both the combat and stealth feel fantastic, with some unique stealth gimmicks for each area, and several great boss fights (and one not so great one). The roguelike elements are very weirdly implemented though. Gear doesn't feel useful enough for how much effort and time it takes to get and upgrade a good set of it, and dying once will force you to go back in with nothing to get back the gear you had on, with the potential of it being completely erased if you don't get it back within a few tries. You can do the entire game without gear though (hell, that's what I ended up doing), so if it doesn't click with you the game still works 100% fine, you'll just have to get really good at the combat mechanics. Not a perfect game, but still an extremely good one.

Hey you, looking at this review. Yes the OST is worth it. Even if you aren't buying the game itself. This soundtrack has earned a permanent place in my mind for the rest of eternity. Every single song on here is fantastic.

Please play this. I can't express how much this game made me feel so many different things, but it's one of the most incredible things I've played in a long time. Sure it's not perfect, if I wanted to be a critic I could find a dozen things to complain about, but being a critic isn't fun. Kitten Burst just *hits* in a way that only a small handful of games have for me. No matter where Jam2go ends up going with their next project, I'll be right there to check it out myself.

GLHF

damn. for 5$ you're getting a LOT. it may only be 6 missions but they're all very unique, missions 4 and 6 especially so. if you enjoyed the basegame, there is no reason not to pick this up. absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ incredible.

A pretty decent star fox style shmup that unfortunately suffers from a lack of variety at times. The core gameplay and visuals are great, the arrow has a really satisfying set of weapons, and a very unique melee attack thingy that i've never seen before. soundtrack is jammin all the time (there's even 2 vocal themes), and special shoutout to all the ship, character, and enemy designs, they're all really cool. The game's variety issue comes in two parts. It's enemy roster only changes by having stronger versions of already existing enemies, meaning you'll have seen pretty much every single enemy type after about 3 stages. The "branching narrative" is less a cool world map where differing mission performance will send you to different stages, and more a linear choice partway through each run where you pick between between 2 easy stages, 2 hard stages, or 3 of the previous with one new one, as well as a 4th "true" path that's just the previous path but with 2 alternate versions of previous stages. I do like the idea but pretty much having to play each of the same stages several times across what's supposed to be unique playthroughs makes the idea feel pretty eh. The ship upgrades are also not the most interesting, doing certain actions/using certain abilities well will give you points towards different categories to get upgrades for your ship's mobility and weapons/shields. At first its a cool choice between what you want to specialize in, when you likely only have significant progress in one/two categories, but the end goal is to just get an upgrade that gives you nearly max power on everything, making the other choices feel pretty redundant. It's also a decently short game, 100% achievements in 4.5 hours (though it's important to note that i'm an unhinged shmup and star fox enjoyer, you'll probably take longer) so your mileage may vary in terms of how worth it the game is for the price. Considering this is seemingly the dev's very first project i'm very impressed despite my criticisms, and the overall vibe of the game still made the $20 feel worth it.

The "OST" is just 24ish random songs from previous games, none of the actual music from shadow generations or even sonic generations. Good job sega, very cool.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The "OST" included with the deluxe version is not the OST for the game itself, just a bunch of random sonic songs from throughout the series, you don't even get to download them. Really SEGA? Come on.

Sonic generations is as good as ever, with some slightly rewritten and redubbed cutscenes to make it fit better with shadow generations and the current sonic canon. Shadow generations itself is FANTASTIC. Every stage is really good, the music remixes are on point, and the story (while less in depth than i was expecting) is still very enjoyable. I'd say its still worth getting even if you've already played the original game, but if you REALLY don't want to re-purchase a game you already played, shadow generations on its own might not be *quite* enough to be worth the full 50$. The deluxe edition is honestly not worth it. The art book is neat, but as stated above the "OST" isn't the soundtrack for the game itself, which is really annoying and honestly im willing to call it false advertising. The Terios skin is just kinda there, and the music pack + skill points might as well be nothing.

it's sonic adventure 2