Recent reviews by blue

a decently paced puzzle game with a chill soundtrack to accompany it.

the game looks good - the voxels accompany well the chill atmosphere of the game but you can tell a decent amount of thought went into making buildings not look bad.

if you go only through what constitutes the "campaign", you are served several worlds with their own custom goals each, that range from saving money as much as possible while building a track or simply clicking things located on the level. on top of that, each level has a goal that asks you to spend as little money as possible. there's a decent amount to sink your teeth into.

also, there's a level generator to play at your leisure, as well as a level creator.

my only big complaint is that for the kind of game this is, it does not run too well on the steam deck - performance becomes better when you lower the settings but it really feels like at no point it should make the device chug this much.

i would say it's not a "conventional" puzzle game, considering the genre usually does not float my boat yet i bothered to pick up (and play!) station to station. i think it is worth your time!

tobyfox was right. imperial china is my favorite chapter.

a solid twin-stick scoring arcade type shooter. really not much to say : what you see is what you get, solid gameplay loop and a decent difficulty curve. worth your time!

adds a whole other island to the game, and the difficulty builds off isle 3/casino. i do think sometimes the screen gets a tad too crowded on these new encounters so it makes learning them a bit harder, but once you learn them they are fairly in-line with the rest of the game.

you also get to play as ms chalice, who plays differently enough from the two boys from the base game that it warrants trying her out in the rest of the game to see how you can tackle the old bosses. if you get cuphead you might as well get the dlc, it's more than worth it!

i will be upfront about this : i am not an atari fan. because of its steep price, the only reason i even got my hands on this was because it got bundled with the recharged titles in a humble bundle offering a while back. i think that most atari offerings are not good, even for the time period they came for, and time has not been kind to them.

now, with that said however : i do think this is a decent offering overall. digital eclipse is good at what they do, the selection of games is good and includes jaguar and lynx titles, as well as brand new games (!) made by digital eclipse. i am not the most picky person when it comes to quality emulation, so i couldn't tell you if this meets high standards, but i didn't notice any major hitches.

so, is this worth your money? it depends on if you want to pay for a curated experience of the Atari legacy. i don't like saying "paying for an experience" when it comes to games, because i think "fun" is the most important argument, but i think it's what describes this collection best. for most people i would recommend on sale, but this is a decent interactive museum.

a solid time. does not waste your time for re-attempting bosses, controls are tight, art is fantastic and music is great. pacing is also solid and i would say the only thing that really brings the game down ever so slightly is the penultimate boss gauntlet that goes on a little bit too long to clear / reattempt.

overwhelming game that i dropped but might revisit in the future. a game for genuine sickos that encourages and strongly rewards experimentation on every single level (combat, exploration, puzzles). i do not know if it is the "best" immersive sim ever, but i can certainly say that the level of options puts a lot of games to shame. has a decent story too as a cherry on top.

reason i dropped it is that after 10 hours, i realized just how many options i had, but would either require massive amounts of backtracking to accomplish or to restart a playthrough. this is combined with the fact that the game is *not* easy, at all, and it just made me want to move on. i still find it hard to not give credit where credit due though.

on a technical level, the game still looks and plays great, which once again puts a lot of modern games to shame. this is quite frankly the peak of what a game should play and look like.

unfortunately Arkane got sent to the live service mines then taken out back and shot by Bethesda, so extremely unlikely we will see more like this from this specific team in these conditions.

a decent enough arcade-scoring twin-stick wave based shooter. don't think it'll keep your attention for dozens of hours but at its price point it is hard to complain.

most props i can and will give for this collection is the work m2 put in. this is a solid collection. with that said, there's a couple things holding it back : the price, and the fact that gradius, especially III, is not really good. that game is genuine torture, and i think playing it is more efficient than waterboarding. i had never really tried gradius before, and much like the average person only had heard of it because of its legendary status. needless to say i will not be recommending people to play gradius.

the salamander side of things is better, with 2 being a real video game, and 3 being a brand new entry by m2 that's decently enjoyable to play. i can see myself playing those again, but by god will i never touch gradius ever again.

the features here are great : several versions of each title, with a break down of what changed, filters, hitboxes, rewind, save states, training mode for certain titles... you name it, it's probably there. m2 are masters of their crafts and it shines through here.

get this collection if you are a fan of m2's work or if you are arcade georg who has looped gradius III 234 times.

there is a lot of talk and praise about how the game looks but mechanically this is an insanely fun shmup with its weapon, shield and shot level systems. retro excellence coupled with really really fun gameplay. if you're wondering if you should pick it up you should just pick it up.