Recent reviews by Family Team ～ 发妈

It's best to set the record straight from the outset over the matter of who this game is NOT for: If are the kind of person that has never played or understood the appeal of traditional coin-op arcade machines and the gameplay associated with them, or if you are the kind of person that wants a game to keep you busy for very long before you reach the end, The House of the Dead: Remake is absolutely not for you. As the remake of an on rails shooter originally released for arcade machines, this is an incredibly short (around 30 minutes from start to finish), very difficult game, where part of the appeal and longevity is pushing yourself harder and harder on repeat playthroughs for better scores and cleaner runs. If you're a younger person or just never cared for arcades before, it's very likely this is the very first time you've heard of the concept of a game like this. If you're used to today's cinematic 60-hour epics, this is a far cry from that and thus might not appeal to you and that is perfectly fine. This aspect of arcade-y game design is mostly extinct, these days, save from niche circles.

The Retro videogame craze does not seem to have ever truly felt the need to include the On-Rails Light Gun shooter genre. In spite all the buzz around 80s nostalgia got in the latter half of the 00s, 90s nostalgia throughout the 2010s and the 2000s nostalgia wave brewing up today, we have gotten less than a dozen new games in the genre in the last decade and a half, even less so that ever got officially ported to home platforms. The House of the Dead: Remake is one of the few brave games that dares venturing into this long forgotten genre of gaming's yesteryear in modern times, promising to revitalise one of the most important games released in the 90s.

Exactly like the 1996 original, the only real control you have is aiming, shooting and reloading. Your character automatically moves from scene to scene as you clear the area of enemies. The game has a huge interconnected web of branching paths, where defeating certain enemies, rescuing (or failing to rescue) certain civilians, shooting certain parts of the scenery or getting pushed off ledges will send you back and forth between many different routes around the setting of the game. Enemies will always appear in the exact same spots and behave the exact same way every time, encouraging memorisation and anticipation of the enemies that await you.

The creatures are surprisingly accurate to their positioning and tactics in the original game, so thankfully, your skills should mostly transfer over just fine. It's absoluytely not an exact match as the pace of the game is much faster than the original and the enemies spongier on average, but it did not personally take me very long to adapt. There are many ways to play the game, then, whether your focus is to explore the entire mansion and uncover all the paths to the end or trying to find your favourite route, either the easiest or the one that rewards you the most points.

You are given a limited number of lives and credits to get to the end of the game. Health pickups are few and far between, hidden behind scenery props or awarded by some rescued civilians. If you run out of everything, the game still allows you to continue by sacrificing a big chunk of your score as long as you have any to spare. This is mostly there if your goal is just to casually get to the end.

All of this effectively means gameplay is essentially intact when compared to the original game. Have you ever played House of the Dead 1 or 2 on PC in any capacity? Then this will pretty much feel identical to that. If you liked those games for the gameplay, I do not see why you would not enjoy this one too. If you really insist that the game must be played with a light gun, then there are many solutions for that nowadays, such as Wii Remotes + Dolphinbars, 4 point sensor guns or Sinden. One of the few real new additions are unlockable weapons and Horde mode. After your first playthrough, you unlock an Armoury and 4 guns will be hidden across the game's 4 Chapters. Find them and you unlock them for use right up. All 4 are comically overpowered in their own silly little way. The Crossbow is kind of weak against most enemies, but it can shred bosses in seconds, The Pitter is an incredibly goofy harpoon that mostly OHKO's enemies and sends them flying to the nearest wall, the Grenade Launcher blows up everything in its path and the Assault Rifle shreds through regular enemies with no aiming ability required.

These weapons trivialise the game, but go hand in hand with Horde mode, where the enemies are multiplied tenfold and you will need every bit of firepower available so you don't take damage every 5 seconds. Horde mode is just goofy fun. It's really not a mode to be taken seriously at all, but if you like over the top action, you'll probably love playing Multiplayer in this mode.

At least between the intervals where the game isn't chugging. There's frankly not much wrong with the actual gameplay of the game itself. It's a faithful recreation of the original game, but performance is all sorts of screwed up an easily the biggest dampener on the fun. Despite the Recommended Specs implying this is a GPU heavy game, I was far more CPU throttled throughout my time here, but this game will still drop out of 60FPS often. Depending your hardware and graphics settings, at least it will not go below 30 too often, but still, performance is floaty. Similarly bad are the loading times: If you do not install this game on an SSD, you WILL regret it. On first load, the game often takes damn near two minutes to start on a mechanical drive. The game stuttering or outright freezing for a second or two as it loads new areas mid-stage is also not uncommon. Perforomance wise, the game is thankfully not the horror show I hear the Switch version is, but this still could've been optimised a whole lot better. Thankfully, the game does have very good Ultrawide support and turning the graphics settings all the way down doesn't hurt the looks of it too badly while skyrocketing the consistency of performance. If anything, I find the excessive bloom of the game very ugly, so turn that off for a big performance increase.

Speaking of graphics, the game looks solid, but, the art style and vibe of the game are completely different from the original. If you were a fan of the moody and somewhat sincere atmosphere and execution of the original, this has mostly been replaced by somewhat standard horror vibes, as the game is mostly trying to appeal to the "unintentional cheesyness" side of the original. For lack of better words, the parts people made fun of the original for and not the parts they celebrated. Due to licensing issues, not even the melodies of the original's soundtrack remain, which is certainly one of the most disappointing aspects of the remake. The new soundtrack isn't bad, but it really doesn't hold a candle to the iconic tunes of the original.

I do overall recommend the game, though this is mostly me expecting the awful performance gets patched later and acknowledging that missing the original soundtrack is very disappointing. For the sake of transparency, it must be said that I have been credited in the game under "Special Thanks". Despite my best efforts to write an honest, critical review where I highlight what I liked and didn't like about the game and why I feel it would or wouldn't fit you, whether you believe that impacts my ability to reach a truly impartial conclusion is entirely up to you.

The days of us Western Puyo fans having to resort to imports is finally over. Puyo is finally here to stay for us!

If I am not mistaken, this is the first Puyo Puyo game to have been localised for the West since 2004's Puyo Pop Fever and only the third as a whole to have made it to us unaltered. I am pleased to announce we got the best game we could've asked for to kickstart the renaissance of the series in the West.

Obviously one of the biggest draws of the game is in its very title:It is Puyo Puyo AND Tetris. A truly legendary, once-in-a-lifetime combination of two of the best puzzle game series ever made. For the price, you are getting these two superficially similar puzzle game styles in one very convenient package: the colourful 4-blob-matching chain-reacting gameplay of Puyo (complete with two separate rule styles: the simpler, more competitive Puyo 2 style and the far more elaborate, gimmicky Fever style) and the brick-stacking line-clearing gameplay of Tetris, fully embracing all of its different competitive quirks such as T-Spins and chaining line clears. You can even do versus between the two styles, and it's very fun and quite amazing how they managed to make it work as seamlessly as it does!

As far as gameplay goes, that is about it. The game is exactly what it says on the tin and it's very fun. I believe that, for a mostly unchanging, long-running series with relatively simple gameplay rules like both Puyo and Tetris happen to be, it makes more sense to evaluate what is AROUND the gameplay rather than just the game itself. At the end of the day, albeit a very nice and convenient package to have these two games done so well and together at last, odds are you have played Tetris or a Puyo-styled game before, and it will not really differ at all from how this one handles that aspect. Although obviously how the game plays is the most important part to consider for any purchase of a video game, most people are not going to just buy this game to get Puyo and Tetris action on a vacuum.

Before buying this game, you have to ask yourself this question: Are you here JUST for the gameplay and nothing else, or are you here for the story, content, characters, presentation and everything else? If you just want a good game to practice for competitive Puyo Puyo specifically, I shall direct you to purchasing Puyo Puyo Champions instead: very similar, but cheaper and much better optimised for competitive Puyo gameplay than this game is. That game is MUCH lighter on content than this one is (it's just Puyo, for one, no Tetris), but if you want a Puyo game you can grind as an e-sport, that one will be a much better investment. You will not really mind the missing features all that much.

If you value content over competitive optimisation, you'll much prefer getting this game instead. It comes with 3 main modes of play: Adventure, Solo/Multiplayer Arcade and Online Multiplayer. Solo/Multiplayer Arcade simply lets you start a match with any character you currently have unlocked with any set of rules you wish, either alone or with a friend and with up to 3 CPU controller characters. Online MP is fun and mostly unaffected by lag, although it's sadly rather inactive, nowadays..

Adventure is the story mode, divided in 7 acts of 10 levels each for the main story, with 3 more acts opening up after finishing it. Every level has different gameplay rules (any combination of a challenge or versus with either Puyo and/or Tetris) and goals to beat. Beating those goals (usually score or time limits) awards you with stars for that level, with 3 being the maximum. Getting 3 stars in every level will be necessary to complete the game 100%. If you consider yourself to be unskilled in Puyo or Tetris, don't be discouraged, as overall the story mode is very easy to clear. 70 levels for the story mode sounds like a lot, but if you don't care for getting 3 stars in every level, you will probablly finish it in about 5 hours. Even then, getting 3 stars in every level isn't usually difficult until very late into the game when a brand new game mode, Fusion (where you play Puyo and Tetris at the same time), is rather inelegantly forced on you and the requirements for a 3 star are upped severely.

The story itself is... rather unimportant. It is just an excuse plot to get the characters to interact in quirky situations. I don't think stressing over it matters, as the storytelling really isn't what you are here for. It's more important to focus on what's actually being presented with the story than the storyline itself, which is the humour and the characters. The game is, in my opinion, very funny. It's pretty quotable and full of silly lines from all the characters. Thankfully, if you are a newcomer to the series, not much of it hinges on you being familiar with the characters, so you can dive right in no problem. This isn't necessarily a style of humour everyone will appreciate, though. Some will definitely make the argument that the jokes are overdone or forced, and it's easy to think of some of them as a bit childish. Even with a character (Schezo) that is pretty much dedicated to being the personification of out-of-context dirty jokes, the overall humour of the game will still give off a vibe of being "kid friendly". Transitioning into the characters but still in relation to humour, if you are the OPPOSITE, however, coming from the older games into this one, you're definitely going to get the feeling the characters have been flanderised. The old school characters (especially the old series' protagonist Arle) will feel like they had any semblance of edge blasted away as they've been reduced to rather cartoonish exaggerations of their older selves. This will definitely impact your enjoyment of the humour if you're coming into this expecting Arle to still have a razor sharp tongue, or for rather awkward pervy jokes to be strewn around the dialogue at random. The character designs,as a whole,are excellent,and the series has a now iconic, highly stylised and expressive art style that really makes it stand out. It's good to see the art style now refined to near perfection, as some of the previous entries of the series had some characters definitely get the short end of the stick with the new style. I am pleased to say it's not the case in this game, as all characters look really cute, distinct and expressive. Still, it's not all winners, however. Although thankfully no character has to suffer through having sloppily drawn portraits this time around, the original characters representing Tetris in this game, while they don't look bad, are just not as interesting or colourful as any of the established Sega and Compile characters.

One thing you'll notice a lot about the characters more than anything else is their voices. I am glad that we have the option to toggle between English and Japanese voices, always a welcome addition. It's also very good to see that the English dub is pretty good. However, even the most open minded among us is probably, at some point, going to get really tired of them if you play this game a lot. The cutscenes have a rather decent amount of dialogue, but you'll mostly hear them during chains/line clears as you're playing the game, where they will talk almost constantly. It'll become impossible to ignore how overly squeaky a lot of characters sound if you chose the Japanese dub. If you're an older fan of the series, you'll especially notice how the voices of the characters have gotten higher pitched with every installment,to the point where the next step down from the JP voice acting in this game is having them be voiced by middle schoolers. It's rather sad... I don't feel like the voice acting needs to be this overbearing. I don't think it's as big of a problem with the English dub, but the characters will still speak every bit as much during matches.

I still highly recommend this game. Very fun and full of unlockable content!

Yume Nikki is a classic and it is a delight to finally see it on Steam. I think I should be straight up about it from the start and say this is absolutely not a game for everyone, though.

You play as Madotsuki, which for reasons unknown, refuses to leave her room. That is as much context as you are handed out by the game. When Madotsuki goes to bed, she begins lucid dreaming and thus we can explore the strange, ominous and occasionally terrifying world of her subconscious where we can attempt to piece together the backstory that led up to what we see now. Presented as a traditional top down, grid movement RPG style game (albeit, with no combat, as this is an early "walking simulator type of game), you're only given a very vague goal of collecting all the "Effects" within her dreams, although I'd argue it is not necessary to properly "finish" the game to claim you have experienced it.

It's one of the most atmospheric games I have ever experienced, with a very good use of its mostly ambient soundtrack and an application of clashing art styles to truly drive the weird and scary moments home. It's a game that has really mastered the art of "dream logic": an incoherent and corrupted mix of the nonsensical with the mundane, things don't act as they should, places sometimes don't take you where you'd expect them to and, a lot of times, different events might happen if you visit the same area again. You have many areas to explore, which often interconnect and can go very, very deep in, getting stranger and stranger as you go. That said, it should be stressed that this is definitely a very slow paced game. It does take a while to get anywhere truly interesting and the game is especially slow if you do not make it a point to acquire the Bicycle effect first. Getting lost will be extremely common, since areas are often extremely large, looping and sometimes the road ahead is unclear. Getting lost is part of the experience, but it's not something everyone will appreciate. Not really having a clear or necessary goal is another approach that, while unique, some will not like. I'd highly recommend not making it a "point" to actively finish the game on your first playthrough, it can become very frustrating like that (if you're not using a guide) and most of the iconic events fans associate with the game aren't even related with how you'd finish it. I'd recommend just trying to visit as many areas as you can, take it all the sights your first time around, and then after you think you've seen enough, you decide if it's worth making an effort to try and see the Ending.

I'd recommend anyone to give Yume Nikki a shot. Especially because it's free. You might find something you really enjoy. It being on such a slow burn means it'll inevitably fail to ignite some people's interest, sadly. But it's definitely worth the try.

I am going to recommend this game, albeit, somewhat reluctantly.
This release of The Typing/House of the Dead: Overkill is the HD version of the original Wii game released in 2009. You can choose to either play it as a "parody" typing tutor like the title implies or as the rail shooter it originally was.

Whether you choose typing tutor or rail shooter, the premise of the game is the same: presented in the style of old exploitation horror films and as a prequel to the rest of the House of the Dead series, you play as Agent G and Isaac Washington in a "buddy cop" style of dynamic, where they shoot their way through hordes of "Mutants" to rescue civilians, defeat bosses and try to uncover the plans of the mad doctor Papa Cesar. The game is riddled with a truly silly amount of profanity and witty dialogue from start to finish and it never breaks character from the films its paying homage to, giving it a lot character and style. The dialogue is honestly really clever and embraces its own stupidity, while adding a lot of subtle fanservice for long time fans of the series. You can perfectly play this game without even knowing the rest of the series, though; it stands on its own merits very well. If you enjoy this sort of intentionally campy humour, you'll love going through this game for the cutscenes alone. A lot of the level music themes have a lot of style, too, although some of the boss themes feel really uninspired. If you don't enjoy profanity, gross-outs or how silly the acting can get in the name of keeping the cheap 1970s zombie films vibe alive, however, you will find this game gets grating fast, especially as the characters do still talk a lot mid-levels.

Gameplay wise, this game can be somewhat divisive. This is, as far as I'm aware, one of the very last "AAA" Rail Shooter games ever made that got a home release. I can only think of Time Crisis: Razing Storm having come out after and Time Crisis 5 came out much later, but will probably remain arcade exclusive for the foreseeable future. You automatically walk around the level, spot from spot, to slay the undead, either by typing words at them if you're playing Typing of the Dead, or by shooting them with your cursor using your Mouse in House of the Dead and the game is the exact same every time. Your only interaction is typing or shooting/reloading. You can occasionally shoot bits of the environment for a brief advantage, like to crush Mutants under signs, get health packs, grenades or slow down time and many different enemy types and variations are added, alongside different ways they ambush you in the environments, which helps with variety. This is one of the longest Rail Shooters around to go through the "campaign", being roughly 3 hours long with its 9 levels and it manages to keep itself relatively fresh throughout its runtime. The Typing half of the game is very funny with the words it throws at you and it's very difficult even from the start, so it's a good typing challenge and will help you get better at typing in no time, I bet. The Shooter half can run into some problems, though. You have a selection of guns you can buy and upgrade. Your starting pistol is terrible and makes the game a slog to go through at first. However, one level in, you get enough money to buy an SMG, which, if you don't care about scoring and accuracy, completely trivialises the rest of the game, especially as you get money to upgrade it. Having infinite continues makes it great for accessibility, but coupled with how whack the gun balance is, it can make the game way too easy. It'd be nice if Infinite Continues were either unlockable or at least an option, as they are in most other games on the genre. You can still buy other weapons, and they're all good too, but nearly all of the other weapons in the game you can buy are for accuracy/scoring purposes. So you should only get them if you want that out of the game. They're a waste of money if you're playing it just to finish. You also need to beat the game once before you can unlock the "Hardcore" mode, so even if you don't want to, you have to play through the easy game to actually get to the challenging part. This does mean that for a casual player, it might be very fun, but no more than an afternoon throwaway experience and a bit of a laugh and for veteran Rail Shooter fans, a bit of a slog before you get to a point the game can actually challenge you, which is a knock against the game, admittedly.

Compared to the original version, this release has 2 more levels (the Wii version had 7, this version has 9), far more collectibles and a hardcore mode + challenges. I think the original version was overall better, though, even while having issues of its own. At times, this version proves to be a bit of a sloppy remake. The two levels added are kind of boring, especially so for the second one, it's very uneventful and empty. The cutscenes have all been re-acted, but the motion capture looks very off, almost broken. It also still uses the audio meant for the cutscenes as they were originally acted, meaning quite a lot of times the characters' actions fall off-sync with the sound. I don't think there's a single gunshot in any of the cutscenes that's actually synchronised with the sound properly. The sound mixing is all over the place, it's not hard at all to glitch the game into muting the voices, gunshots or music and the gunshots get muted most of the time the characters start talking mid level, and riding off that, there are a few instances where the game goes mute for seemingly no reason, yet if you played the original version, you'd know that in those spots there would originally be dialogue that seems to have been cut seemingly for no reason, with the game seemingly getting muted as if they were still to talk. They also added quite a few instances of Quick Time Event into the game. Many times during levels and boss fights, either an undefeatable Mutant will charge you or the boss will do something quirky where the game will slow down and force you to shoot cartoon targets to "dodge" an attack or to physically brawl against your enemies to save yourself. These are quite buggy, feel unnecessary and kill the pace of an already relatively slow paced game of its genre. It's already pretty annoying the Mutants that do this to you are invicible, but often times you see them running through walls or under the floor which isn't a good look... all of the QTEs, by the way, are incredibly easy and you pretty much cannot fail them unless you try; most concerningly, most of them are entirely mute and really long. It's no fun having to watch your character beat up a Mutant, completely mute, for 20 seconds, for the third time in the same level. This was a very bad idea that was executed very poorly. Considering this is a 2013 game and it's 2020, it's easy to say the developer will never fix these issues, as well. Not a big knock against the game, but if you're playing the Rail Shooter half, this is really something that benefits a lot from a "light gun" or a Wii Remote... some might not find it as satisfying to play it with a Mouse.

Overall, even though I'll recommend this game, I do think you should consider all these asterisks I brought up. I'd honestly recommend, if you can access it, the original Wii version over this one if you're just going to play the Rail Shooter half. The added content is nice, but the sloppyness of the execution of this remake/port is sad to see. It's not that much worse, though, at least, so if you see this game is having a good discount and you want some silly chuckles for an afternoon (or if you want the most hardcore typing tutor ever conceived) I feel it'd be a good purchase.

Jogo é muito bom, até que o port não é tão ruim assim.
Mas o problema, por enquanto, é a estabilidade. O jogo tem a tendencia de travar e parar de funcionar muito, no momento. Eu ainda recomendo, mas seria bom se esse problema você consertado imediatamente.