Recent reviews by Weasel

As soon as I had the opportunity: stole some guy's slippers and dropped them into some water. Made a guy drop his sandwich, stole the bread. Allowed someone to pet me and then took a swipe at their legs for no particular reason. Took a nap on a copy machine. Knocked several plants off of garden walls. Made a general nuisance of myself, then demolished Tokyo. (Or a rather convincing scale model of it.)

Bliss.

What appears to be a Normal Card Game on the surface (albeit with a psychedelic look), after a few runs, becomes an oddly captivating game of number-go-up. Every time you're given a new kind of Joker or a new effect, and when the various ways they synergize together start to click - that's where the real fun begins. It helps a lot that basically everything has a nice little impact to it. Stuff pops and clicks when it's activated, the mult chimes subtly start pitching up as long payout combos start firing off, and then the score counter sets fire when you've kicked butt hard enough.

I, for one, am highly looking forward to the inevitable slew of Balatrolikes that are sure to be coming soon.

The changes to the battle system in this game fix every single complaint I had about how battles worked in Y:LAD, with visible AOE radius, better indications of when street weapons are used, and being able to manually move around before issuing orders. The storyline lends the usual grit and gravitas to a tale of international politics, organized religion, and questionable ethics.

Also, you get to beat up a giant roomba (again), save an island resort (and its sketchy mascot characters) from being buried by trash pirates, and recruit wacky-costumed musclemen around town to fight for you in an underground fight club that doubles as the best Pokemon parody I've seen in years.

This game very much does its own thing with the ideas and concepts that inspired it. It's stealth, but stealth is a means to an end more than it is the _only way forward_. It's old-school, but in that imaginative way that keeps stuff interesting. It's the good kind of "inspired by" - it's not a spiritual sequel to anything, it's not "we made a new Thief game because we loved Thief and wanted more Thief." It blazes its own path and takes along a small handful of familiar mechanics from newer games for good measure. Get on it.

Of all the graphics programs I've tried to use for my purposes, in the wake of losing access to Adobe Photoshop, this is the one that strikes me as the most generally useful. There are things it does not have, that I liked to use. But it also does not have the crippling performance problems, has never once crashed, and works on very low-end hardware without any fuss at all. Also has a fairly good animation suite, which I've used once in a blue moon to do some GIFs.

It's also _infinitely_ cheaper than a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, for the convenience of having pre-built binaries with automatic updates. You -could- compile it yourself, but honestly, $20 is good for free updates for life without having to think about it.

Solid updated port of the game that runs just fine on low-spec hardware. I mean, I'm running it on a 2014 Mac Mini under Windows 10, this thing doesn't even have discrete graphics and the CPU is 10 years old. Game still pulls a perfect framerate at 1920x1200. Excellent selection of video and sound options (including two different OPL banks for those who like the music oldschool but not TOO oldschool), lots of great gestures and shouts out to the community that kept this game on peoples' radar for so long.

Best of all: it gives you achievements for warping to "This Causes an Error." The things that truly matter.

"Would you recommend this game to other players?" Yes. Absolutely. Quite possibly one of my favorite handheld games, and one of my favorite stories of recent memory. Looks beautiful in 4K and the new arranged soundtrack pretty much smooths over any rough bits that the original sample set would have had. Go for it - if you didn't get on it back in 2010, let's hope you don't repeat that mistake 13 years later.

It feels quite a lot less substantial than the Links games of yore. As much as they get fanservice points for including the "hit the tree, Jim" line and the title screen music, there's no onscreen golfer, the swinging doesn't quite feel right, and I have no idea why the game keeps giving me a sand wedge when I'm on the green.

There is something resembling a competent golf sim, here, but me, I'm just gonna reinstall the older Linkses.

"Survival horror" golf is certainly an interesting take. Unfortunately this game is less about survival and more about getting jumpscared a lot. It's one of those horror experiences where you're doing a lot of running and hiding and that's just not my thing.

Almost entirely recommending this on the strength of its solo content. World Tour isn't just great fun as a fighting game with RPG elements, it's also a brilliant way to drip-feed newbies the knowledge they need to play against actual people. Still early days yet to tell how balanced it is, what changes Capcom have in mind for updates and new fighters beyond the impending first season... but I very much like what I see. SF6 is the first 2D fighting game I've ever bought day one, and I'm glad to see it wasn't a mistake.