Recent reviews by Max

The jankiness can be fixed with a patch.

This has been one of the best-written experiences I've played in a long time. Great story, extremely memorable characters, and enough diversity in the different vampire Clans and outcomes of different choices to warrant playing through multiple times.

Saying that this is the weakest of the Yakuza games thus far damns it with false condemnation. It's just not as good as the themes and executions set up in Yakuza 0 and Kiwami. It's always a joy, though, coming back to Kamurocho now and seeing what has changed since the previous games, what has returned, what hasn't, and what new songs are available at the karaoke bar.

It can be forgiven that this game came out so early in the series that there's a little bit of weirdness involved in its storytelling, namely the Sayama romance plot that was dropped in 3 onwards and then pretends like that never happened. Granted, you could read it as Kiryu rebounding after losing Yumi in the previous game.

This game continues to make callbacks to side stories that happened in 0 and Kiwami, like the cabaret club and the extra chapter that concludes things with Majima and Makoto, as well as showing what caused Majima to step away from the Yakuza and start up a construction company.

It took 18 years for me to finally play this game.

So I actually knew about this game from the hidden game on an OXM demo disc way back in the day, a game that was all in Japanese (except for the voice acting, which was English), made FOR a US audience, and scheduled to be released in the US... except it never was, for weird reasons.

It shows its age in some gameplay aspects, and is very much unfair in its difficulty a few times, but damn if this game wasn't enjoyable to play through (and disturbingly apropos for 2022). It's ridiculous and over the top, the US President piloting a not-exactly-giant mecha (closer to a Warhammer 40,000 Terminator in size) and taking America back from the vice president, who has enacted a military coup and is being cartoonishly evil the entire time. It's hammy and cheesy from start to finish, and was somehow deemed TOO jingoistic even for US audiences, hence it not being released over here (mind you, this came out in the early 2000s, when not being jingoistic enough could get you branded a traitor and a terrorist sympathizer). It's not "worth waiting 18 years" levels of good, but it was still very much enjoyable.

A remake of the original Yakuza that started off this entire series. This game, in light of 0 and seeing more of the development between Kiryu and Nishikiyama, makes the downfall of Nishikiyama all the more tragic. It also expands more on the strange relationship between Majima and Kiryu with the Majima Everywhere system. It's a good thing that Majima is an enjoyable fight (using all of the styles and abilities you got with him in 0), because you'll be fighting him about as regularly as your everyday goon.

Ultimately, it's a step back from Yakuza 0, but that's because this is a mostly loyal retelling of Yakuza 1's story, while 0 was a follow-up to 5. It more has the feeling of the morning after a very wild party.

It's a hard sell to people, but it's a real trip when you look past all the gore and shock value.

Very short, but so flavorful and amazingly 80s that it almost hurts. Best Far Cry game by far.

A refinement of the formula that Sonic Adventure set up, but still has a few lingering threads of jank. The ending is a little... odd, and quite insane, but it makes a lot more sense when you look at it from the perspective that Sega was preparing to shut its doors and didn't think it even had a future as a game developer, much less a console developer.

Obviously they are still around, and many more Sonic games were made since this one than what came before, but I like to view this in the lens of one of many possible finales for Sonic in the canonical multiverse.

I played this to death on the Gamecube. Sonic's first foray into the 3D world (3D Blast doesn't count) was janky as hell. Still very janky, and then they add in all the weird side stuff, like the Chao gardens and the other five characters (seven if you count the Super Sonic and Metal Sonic sagas). The end result is a huge amount of things to do, but none of it truly amazing or even that well designed.

Still, it's an important milestone in Sonic's development as a series, and I recommend it on that merit alone.

It's not bad, but it's pretty milquetoast compared to Transformed and it's basically impossible to recommend this over that one. Just go and get Transformed.

A proper mascot racing game to rival Mario Kart, with a much greater emphasis on the racing aspect.