Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We’ve already gone through the basics, so I guess we can focus on the plot starting here – unless we have new gameplay elements coming soon…

Rescuing Ashley

If you need a better look at those... uh... growths,
go back to my title card in Part 1.

While making his way back to the village church, Leon finds Los Illuminados' insignia behind a waterfall. He had to kill a ton of Ganados to get to it, too; but it will let him open the church and save Ashley Graham. This chapter sees our first encounters with enemies who, after their head has been blown off, will have it replaced by a squirming creature popping out of their body with eyes, scythe arms, and limbs moving erratically. Those fucked-up things are the actual Las Plagas. In every crowd of enemies, there’ll always be a few that will pop out. These “heads” have long range due to their tendrils, so it’s best to stay away and shoot them; using the knife means being within stabbing distance, and they freaking hurt.

Las Plagas control their hosts, which is why Ganados have enough intelligence to devise simple plans like taking ladders to sneak into houses from the top floor or sneak behind the hero for an attack. These aren’t “zombies” by the modern definition of a risen undead. They’re zombies in the traditional voodoo meaning of people who've had all their free will ripped out of them. Yikes. I’d argue it’s even darker than zombies who are just undead or diseased.

These things can't even go "Gigante Smash!". 0/10.

Leon uses a boat to get back to the holding area seen before, and follows a different path that leads him to camps surrounded by cliffs. He witnesses a bunch of Ganados pulling out something large using ropes. The thing reveals itself to be an enormous, human-shaped monster, nicknamed El Gigante, which kills every Ganado that brought it out. Wait, how can Las Plagas cause the existence of monsters this fucking big??

Waggle to kill! Waggle! To! Kill!

Dealing enough damage to El Gigante causes its parasite to erupt from its back. Since the monster falls to its knees, Leon can climb on its back and slash at that weak point with his knife! This isn’t an easy battle, but El Gigante is killed. (For bonus points, if you saved a dog in Chapter 1, it comes back to help you in this fight.) Leon follows the trail back to the church, enters using the insignia, solves a color puzzle, and finds the girl’s cell. First mistaking him for her captors, Ashley throws a plank at him, but he explains that he’s there to save her.

Movie Review: Zootopia 2

Since I loved the first Zootopia so much, I knew I had to see the sequel in theaters as soon as possible. My verdict? It's a great movie overall, though I do have a few gripes with it. Beware: Slight spoilers ahead.

The story

We open merely one week after Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) saved the city from the Nighthowlers epidemic affecting the all-mammalian population of Zootopia, and successfully arrested its perpetrators. As a result, Nick was accepted into the Zootopia Police Department and became Judy's (work) partner.

However, this new partnership hasn't changed them much. The bunny is still impulsive in her dreams of making the world a better place and using her position as an officer to do so, and Nick is... well, as sarcastic as ever. The movie begins as Judy's attitude gets her team in trouble again for running into a mission before even hearing the briefing from Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) at the station. So, sure enough, their idea goes awry and they almost ruin the ZPD's plan. Even the ensuing car chase ends with them accidentally destroying a statue of Ebenezer Lynxley, the founder of the city, that was being placed to celebrate its hundredth anniversary. Lynxley is the inventor of the weather walls allowing the biomes to exist next to each other and letting mammals from all walks of life to be a part of this great city.

Investigating the van they were chasing, Judy finds dried skin that looks like it came from a scaled body. There was a reptile in there. However, due to her recklessness, her team is knocked off the case and told to stay away. And because there are clearly a few hiccups in the partnership, Bogo forces them to attend therapy sessions for mismatched PD work partners.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

This is an M-rated Wii game, so expect a lot of
family-unfriendly violence and horror.

This year, I had another Wii game in the plans, and as time went on, I wondered if I would have the time to play (and finish!) it in time. But! I got lucky; I finished the game, and now I can cover it. There are Wii games that I’ve owned for a long while now – almost as long as this blog has existed. Some games have waited in the collection, untouched, for nearly 10 years! One notable title in there is today’s title, the Wii rerelease of Resident Evil 4; I bought that one at a convention in… uh… early 2016. Yeah. I was long overdue to give it a chance. RE is one of those franchises I haven’t touched at all yet, and I recall that was my specific intention when buying that game, way back.

And yet, it took this long. But here it is! Finally! And I can experience this franchise through one of its best games! Only one issue: Since I don’t know much about the franchise, if this is the fourth (…technically sixth) game in the series, I probably need to read up on a bit of lore. But thankfully, not too much, as the story here is removed from much of the connections with the Umbrella Corporation, which stands front and center of the first three games.

However, we are still dealing with zombies (but not the type you might think), and we have the protagonist of Resident Evil 2 making a comeback, with a new role gained through his status as a heroic survivor. However, do note that I am covering the original version of 4, not the remake released in 2023; my research revealed that there are many differences between the two, some minor, some significant. I’ll stick to the story in the original.

One Hell of a Promotion

Let’s recap Leon Scott Kennedy’s backstory: On his very first day in the Raccoon City police force, the promising rookie ended up in the middle of a zombie outbreak caused by the Umbrella Corporation. Their experimentations on biological manipulation and viruses of all kinds had the side-effect of creating zombies, which broke out and attacked the Midwestern city. The infected destroyed everything, with Leon as one of the few to make it out alive.

Is just one guy really enough to save the President's daughter?
I mean, when that one guy survived a zombie apocalypse...
BTW, big thanks to the World of Longplays YouTube channel
for their playthrough.

For these efforts, he got a significant promotion; he was recruited as an elite agent for the US government, usually assigned to missions that involve similar cases of bioweapons and other bioterrorism. Sounds like a fun life. The events of RE4 take place six years after RE2, with Leon being driven through the woods of Spain by two local agents. His mission? Rescue Ashley Graham, the President’s daughter. She was kidnapped in the area, and he knows roughly where to look. He can handle this on his own, as long as he stays in contact with mission control Ingrid Hunnigan, who’ll send a helicopter as soon as the girl has been rescued. Leon is dropped past a wooden bridge, with one shack nearby and a remote village down the road. Ingrid helpfully sends him (well, you) a “playing manual” to learn the basics.

Hylics 2

I’ve covered many bizarre games, yet few caught my interest as much as Hylics. It’s not that complicated; it’s a turn-based RPG made on RPG Maker, nothing special there. What sets it apart is that it was entirely designed in Claymation – there’s been a lot of hand-drawn games, but ones created with clay characters and worlds are rarer (Wikipedia's likely incomplete list of Claymation games has 25 entries).

Even the Wayne bedroom is weird.

The art style you could get used to; but then, there was the bizarre plot, and how it was presented. Most unimportant NPCs’ text bubbles were randomly generated, Mad Libs style, and made no sense. And when something plot-relevant was said, it made sense, but used archaic or uncommon words to convey the message, leading to a whole other kind of confusion. That game is an experience, I swear.

And if the first game is an experience, then Hylics 2, also developed by Mason Lindroth and released on June 22nd, 2020, must surpass it… while also being a good game on its own, a tough tightrope to walk with absurdism. Can it pull it off? We’ll see.

When even the title screen sets the tone...

An interval of renovelled tempestuousness

(…Yes. I’m gonna indulge in that silliness.)

Good boy. I bet you can't wait to have legs.

In the first Hylics, our main character was Wayne, a crescent-headed guy. This game keeps it ambiguous whether we’re following the same Wayne, or one from a new generation of Waynes. In this one, we’re introduced to an Old Wayne, a wise mentor (maybe the previous protagonist?), and to baby-Waynes that are slugs on the ground, which our Wayne can pet like they’re dogs. “Wayne” is just a species in this world, that starts and ends as slugs, and is human-shaped in the middle.

It's only gonna get weirder from here.

Exploring the Switch's Nintendo Classics #3

I'm still working towards the next major review, so in the meantime, I'm taking today for another review of games I played on the Nintendo Classics. This time, I'm doing something different; two different consoles! Today, we're starting on known ground with the SNES, and then moving on to games from a console I've never played, the Sega Genesis!

The SNES: Fighters

I found out there was an undercurrent I hadn't heard about from the SNES era: The massive success of Street Fighter II Turbo led to a swath of copycats trying to hit the same level of fame by repeating the formula. But it's like I said a while ago: "If you follow the leader, you stay behind them". I bet you haven't heard of these games!

I mean, it does look a lot like Street Fighter II...

Fighter’s History: Developed by Data East, first released in arcades in 1993, then for the SNES in 1994. Play as one of nine fighters from around the world, each with their own reason to be in this competition; and learn to use your moves against each opponent. This game reminds me of Street Fighter II Turbo in terms of setting; it does try to set itself apart with new mechanics, however. One such mechanic is the “weak point” system, where you can temporarily stun a fighter once per round by hitting their weak point. But with that aside, it didn’t feel too revolutionary or special on its own – in fact, it looks so much like Street Fighter that Capcom sued Data East over it, though Data East won the suit by claiming that several elements in their game were inevitable for the genre.

Oh yeah, that's not Ryu at all.

Tuff E Nuff: Another trend-chasing “clone”, released in 1993 and featuring only four fighters. In 2151, the world is in shambles after an apocalyptic war. Something about one powerful guy rising above all others using technology and becoming like a god, and setting up a worldwide tournament to find the strongest among the survivors… I guess. Anyway, you can only play as one of four different characters, going up against the other three as well as seven additional opponents in Story Mode. It’s… well, if we put aside the stupid story and the lack of playable characters, this one just doesn’t catch my interest at all. It fares even worse than Fighter’s History.

Exploring the Itch.io Collection #4

I’m in-between big articles, so I figured I’d do one more of these in the meantime.

However, I must bring up something important first, while I’m at it. Earlier this year, online gaming platforms such as Steam and, yes, itch.io, faced a major problem. An organization known as Collective Shout wrote an open letter to all payment processors, lobbying them to act against online gaming platforms that housed video games containing heavy topics such as incest, rape or child abuse. Payment processors (PayPal, credit card companies, and so on) acted with a swiftness, threatening to pull their services from Steam and itch.io unless adult-only games with those themes were pulled or impossible to purchase from now on. A request that Steam and itch.io agreed to follow!

Okay, so let me start by saying that these topics are horrible things in the real world. Do I really need to state such an obvious? However, video games are a medium for fiction, and as such they, too, should be allowed to cover these topics, in the same way that movies, TV shows, music and novels have for decades. Imagine if, at the height of the popularirty of Game of Thrones, VISA or MasterCard decided, "Nope, some people don't like the stuff in there, therefore we won't let you buy that Blu-Ray set or subscribe to HBO!"

By the same metric, we can assume that people who purchase and play those games consent to experiencing these themes (bonus points if the game does come with a trigger warning just in case), and have enough of a head on their shoulders to understand that what’s going on in the game is NOT glorification of those themes. (If a video game seriously advocated for rape, incest, child abuse, whatever, you’d be able to tell, and such a game would be rightly called out for it.)

Tons of games were stricken down that had nothing pornographic about them, and were either portrayals of LGBTQ+ experiences and/or were autobiographical in content. Experiencing something difficult safely through the medium of fiction can mentally help those who have lived through similar things in the real world, with the barrier of fiction giving some distance. Use of these themes in fiction can also help others recognize when such situations are, in fact, happening in real life.

That payment processors suddenly get to decide what the average person can and can’t do with their own money is outrageous, ‘cause last I checked it wasn’t illegal to buy fiction. The response from the Internet has been to organize campaigns and mass-call the credit card companies and PayPal’s phone lines to tell them to reverse the decision. As far as I can tell, a first step was made by the platforms enacting their own rules to circumvent some of the payment processors’ new requests, and even today I don't think all the games are back for sale. Despite the Internet rersponse, don’t be fooled; if Collective Shout's ploy has worked once, even temporarily, it will be attempted again.

Call it what it is: It’s censorship. It may benefit a small group in the short term, but it will penalize everyone in the long term, and we can NOT let this slide. We must never forget that this happened. We must not let up in calling the payment processors who took part in this, and admonishing them for it. They do not have a right to block legal purchases, based solely on their content. Nor can we forget the gaming platforms that bowed. Slippery slope is a sophism, fair; but we must be prepared for the possibility that another group tries to make this happen once more. I did not address it until now because I just didn’t have the time to write about it at the height of the issue in July; I figured I’d use this article to talk about it in the intro, since the itch.io platform was affected in a significant manner due to its creative community being struck hard by that controversy. Anyway, in short: Prepare yourself, just in case this happens again, because it could.

Sorry about the downer starter. Anyway, here’s a bunch of games under 13 minutes long.

Experiences

Yeah, that thing ain't right.

ring ring: A mysterious phone found on the beach, which functions without electricity or a phone line. Calling any 4-digit number leads to odd discussions, but something’s off. Someone contacted, named George, tells you that everyone you’ve spoken to is trapped in the phone, and so your goal is to avoid getting taken as well (which is a Game Over) while looking for a way to defeat the evil spirit it contains within that's causing all this. This one’s simple, you use the rotary dial to make random calls, occasionally get proper phone numbers to call and further the plot. The only thing on the screen is that clay sculpture phone, so it’s minimalist yet does things very well. Be aware, there may be jump scares!

ZOMBI

For once, on Halloween, I wanted to be on topic! At the start of the year, I select which games I might like to play across the following 12 months, and back at the start of 2025, I had two horror picks in my list; today’s game, and Resident Evil 4 on the Wii. I will try to cover the latter in November – however, for now, I have Ubisoft’s zombie game to get through. I can’t chicken out of this!

Uh oh, here comes the horde.

Ubisoft has many famous series, but also quite a few standalone games. Today’s title was first released as a Wii U launch title, with the title ZombiU, in November 2012; but then it was given a second life as a port made by Straight Right, retitled ZOMBI, and released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on August 18th, 2015. Although… calling it a “second life” may be a little gauche; we are talking about survival in a zombie apocalypse here. This game is known for doing something never seen before – fresh, new ideas, those are rare nowadays, especially those that directly affect gameplay. Enough beating around the bush, let’s see what this is all about.

London has Fallen

Well, can't say it's a great living arrangement, but...
it's not like there are better options right now.

The zombie apocalypse is underway. Your survivor is surrounded by undead, but a voice from the metro PA tells them to run into the station. They race through and end up in a Safe House designed by their new friend, the Prepper, who will help them survive. Out of the goodness of his heart, sure, let’s go with that. Before the survivor can go on missions, they need to get a weapon – a cricket bat – and a Bug-Out Bag (BOB), with room for the survival tools they’ll gather. You also get a handgun, with limited ammunition (for survival horror, that’s par for the course). Finally, you get a Prepper Pad, which scans the area and detects anything of interest: Dead bodies, containers, doors, hidden items. Scanning doors with this can often allow the Prepper to hack them and open the way for your protagonist. Similarly, scanning security cameras can reveal the map in their areas.

Your first mission is to scan a grocery store’s CCTVs at Brick Lane Markets. After getting a key card, you gain access to London's sewer system, which serves as quick travel between areas. Be careful when you explore, though; your only save points are beds, and though you can find some aside from the one in the Safe House, those are few and far between.

Zombies, if you come back, you get the whack!

Project: What Are The Top 12 Most Obscure Games I Covered?

Hello everyone! I've got something ready for Friday, but I also have a project for December that I've been planning for a month... and it's a project that you can help with!

For a little while now, I've been trying to have my regular Top 12 lists in December, as a bit of a closer on the year. I remember loving all the research I had to do in order to get accurate information in my previous lists about bad video game marketing campaigns, and so this year I had the idea to dip into a different facet of research journalism: Data collection!

What am I planning to do for a Top 12 in 2025? Well, I was hoping to do a list of the most obscure (or least known) games I hae ever reviewed on here. I covered a lot of games that I've never heard of anywhere else, so making such a list on my own would be very difficult. This is where you come in!

Do you want to lend a hand? I've plugged into a Google Form the my entire Index of games reviewed (up to the last games for this year's Quick Reviews). Now, for every one of these, you can say whether you:

-Have played it (owned it or not isn't relevant);

-Own or have owned it (I know a lot of people with humongous game backlogs, and I include myself in that category; you probably own games you haven't played - or maybe you recognize games you have once had, but no longer have);

-Have heard of it (never played nor owned, but the name rings a bell; seeing someone else play such a game counts in this category); or

-Have never heard of (if the game's title is entirely unknown to you).

At all times, you can use the Index to help you with this, if you choose to fill in the form. Whenever possible, I included links to Steam pages (since 75 to 80% of the games I reviewed are on Steam) to jog your memory.

You can access the Google Form here! Please help me, I hope to collect over 25 responses, and I would be incredibly grateful if I could get a hundred! The more responses I get, the more I can narrow down the list to just the 12 I need, but the remainder of the information could be used for other observations.

See you on Friday for a Halloween-themed review!

Quick Review: Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York

Oh hey, nice coincidence covering this game in October.

I went for the artist. Didn't even know he was gay.
As an outsider, I'll say, I do appreciate VtM having
decent LGBTQ+ representation, and general diversity.

Developed by Draw Distance, published by Dear Villagers, and released on December 11th, 2019, Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is set in the universe of the Vampire: The Masquerade RPG. I’m not too knowledgeable with most tabletop game universes, including this one, so I’m learning and discovering that world as the game progresses. This is a visual novel, so there’s little “game” to speak of, aside from getting to choose how some interactions go and the order in which to do the quests.

Feels like I'm  being kidnapped by Vampire John Wick.

You pick one of three protagonists – they have preset names, but you can change them. A good chunk of the visual novel remains the same, but elements will differ, such as the inciting incident and specific personal elements. The three are [Eric], a hot-blooded Asian American; [Amanda], a businesswoman; and [Lamar], a gay African American artist. One way or another, they are bitten by a stranger and transformed into a vampire (a kindred, as the secret society calls it). The character is then found and taken to the Camarilla, the leading caste of vampires in NYC, and forced into this new life. Not that they have a choice; it’s not like there’s a cure. You character is basically a dead person walking.

Again, not much of a choice. You can leave this room
undead, or dead dead.

The Camarilla have a strict set of rules regarding the Embrace (the act of turning someone into a vampire); if the act was not permitted by the Camarilla, final death (since vampires are already undead) for both the childe (the newly created vampire) and their sire (the one that transformed them). However, before your character is executed, they beg for mercy and are taken under the wing of Sophie Langley, a member of the Camarilla that advocates for this childe to stay and become a valuable member of the secret society.

Welp. Gotta pick someone to assault for blood.
Just gotta hope we don't run into another secret vampire here.

Your character will need to learn to control their thirst for blood (the Hunger). They’ll learn to hunt; they’ll have to keep themselves in check by feeding regularly, but never to the point of overfeeding, as both it and underfeeding have dire consequences. Once the character is settled into this unsettling new life, they’ll be told by Sophie to assemble a team, a “Coterie”; basically, go out and make friends. Her suggestions involve four vampires from other clans; there’s 13 such clans, of varying levels of threat and trustworthiness. Create your friend group, prove your worth, learn about all the inner politics of this society. Still, through all this, one question will remain: Who turned the protagonist into a vampire… and why?

It takes a while before you finally have your entire
nights to yourself, with a lot of possible quests to take on.

You can worry about vampire nicknames later.

As you can see from this plot-heavy description, there’s a lot to take in. This game is more of an interactive story with moments where you can occasionally pick the course of the plot. Your choices do matter in the long run; it all depends on how you interact with the other characters. The story is set over a specific number of nights, one that makes it impossible to recruit all four potential members of the Coterie in one playthrough; thus, you have an incentive to play through the game multiple times.

You will often need to use your character’s new abilities to turn events to your favor, but this may cause their Hunger to grow and they’ll need to suck blood from a prey – however, the chances you have for feeding are limited depending on the current scene and which options pop up. It’s limited to very specific points, with only your character’s first “hunt” being the one time they have freedom to choose a “victim”. It hardly comes up otherwise, aside from dialogue options that either close or open depending on whether they feel the Hunger or not.

Yep, I needed that dictionary to properly write some of the
paragraphs in this article. Hey, it served its purpose!

If this priest truly knew who he was talking to, our character
would be on the receiving end of a Vade Retro Satana.

You even have access to an in-game dictionary of terms specific to this world, since they add up over time. Once you can choose what you do each night, you get more freedom, with occasional quests adding themselves on top of your search for a Coterie. Some nights you’ll be able to pick two plotlines to follow, but usually you’ll have one mandatory plot event and then just one of your choosing. Hey, nights are short, and you can’t stay up till dawn. And, well, as soon as you finish one character’s story and begin a new one, you’ll notice just how similar all three end up being – you have some agency in what you can do, but everything builds up towards the same climax, even if the events leading up to it, and its resolution, can differ based on your choices.

This guy looks intense, but then again, most vampires do.
But don't worry, gathon is a good dude, if you can disregard
that he's basically a wizard doing blood magic.
Hey man, wanna join a Coterie?

That said, there were two DLCs added that I’m told diverge a lot more from the base game’s three scenarios. Personally? I might do one scenario and be satisfied with it. If you already like this TTRPG series, or are intrigued by it, I could see this as an interesting purchase, since it has a good story, and explains a lot for beginners.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is available on Steam on sale for 3.99$ till the end of October!

Alright, gonna be back to regular-sized reviews soon enough – I might take a week off, these Quick Reviews took a lot out of me.

Quick Review: Transistor

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These things don't look friendly.

Created by Supergiant Games and released on May 20th, 2014, Transistor is the story of Red, a singer in the futuristic city of Cloudbank, where the population can vote to change everything, up to and including the color of the sky. One night, Red is attacked during a performance but is saved by her bodyguard, who takes a mysterious sword to the chest. That night, Red awakens only to realize that her ability to speak is gone, and the soul of the man has been transferred within the sword, the titular Transistor, which has bizarre properties related to computing. Something very wrong is going on in the city. It's infested by robots known as the Process, which are dead-set on “processing” everything and everyone into data. They were seemingly unleashed by a mysterious group known as the Camerata. With the city almost deserted, it’s up to Red and her companion to fight the threat and, if possible, restore Cloudbank…

Nope, not friendly. Good thing I have this big magic sword
that draws from the powers of souls!

Red moves around with the arrows, or you can give her a location to run to with the mouse on the grid-like maps. When she encounters enemies, she can fight using one of up to four Functions (keys 1 to 4), pre-set among the ones unlocked, and chosen at Access Points. (Some of these functions are collected from dead bodies, also taken into the Transistor.)

Let's see if these robots still stand after these next seconds.

The true interest, however, is the Turn() feature the Transistor has, which allows Red to go execute a series of commands in a split second. In that moment, you can move around, which costs time, and then use your Functions in any order. There’s a limit to how much you can do, but said limit will increase each time you level up. Still be careful; a fully used-up Turn() will have to cool down for five seconds, potentially leaving you in harm’s way.

And that's just early into the game, imagine all the
things you'll be able to do down the line.

At the access terminals, you can do far more than just set up your functions. You’ll unlock many over time, as well as new slots to use them. Each main function can be further enhanced with two more that will apply extra effects when used. Beyond that, you can unlock extra slots granting passive bonuses when filled. Every single function has uses programmed in when used as a main action, as an enhancement, or as a bonus – so, experiment! Oh, and every function has a cost in Memory (MEM), which means that you will have to choose wisely how you mix-and-match everything. (The level-up system can occasionally grant you additional MEM, giving you more options. It can also unlock Limiters, which will grant you more experience after each victory at the cost of making the game harder in some way, and yes, you can have all of them activated at the same time for the most challenging experience.)

In fact, some of these Process things are really strong.
Even this first boss is nothing compared to later ones.

In fact, you ARE encouraged to experiment, especially if things don’t go your way. When Red’s health bar is depleted, it will refill at the cost of losing your function that’s taking up the most MEM. You’ll continue the fight with three functions left, and losing one more if your health hits zero again. A Game Over is seen only if Red loses them all, so you basically have four health bars. Lost functions are broken and aren’t restored right away, either; it takes visiting two access terminals to repair a broken function so you can equip it again, which means that you’ll have to resort to new tactics for a moment afterwards if a battle didn’t go your way.

Learn to plan against every Process machine's eccentricity.
No need to smash a Younglady twice, they teleport after
you hit them once.

Robots that can obscure the screen with photos of Red, all
while shooting at her, and other robots whose entire goal
is to protect other Process on the battlefield. Oof!

The game is story-heavy, even if most of it has Red and her companion traveling the increasingly blocky “processed” surroundings of Cloudbank and reading reports of the worsening situation. However, progress is very linear, with nothing but the occasional reveal interspersed with battles against the Process. That said, you can find Backdoors that lead to a beach-like area from which Red can access challenges testing her speed, endurance, puzzle-solving skill, all through more battles. Also of interest is the New Game unlocked after beating the game once, which allows you to keep everything you've unlocked, while all battles (aside from bosses, of course) are now randomized.

The cutscenes look so damn great, too, even with their
limited animation. So much style through the entire game.

The Process even has chicken-like robots? Weeeeird.

I was a bit disappointed by the rigid linearity, but everything else is spot-on. The music is nice, the story is excellent, the environments are varied and impressive, and there are tons of inventive ideas to find here. I love the massive number of options in battle – once you learn to use them effectively, every one can become overpowered and tear through everything quickly. Some enemies and bosses have abilities that complement and challenge your skills in ways that could only happen with this system (the final boss is chef’s kiss). Worth playing, since it cemented Supergiant Games’ reputation for stylish titles packed with powerful storytelling, as the studio has done before with Bastion and would do later with both Hades games.

Transistor is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Toonstruck

Completely loony!

Toonstruck was developed by Burst Studios, first published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in October 1996, and then re-published to Steam by Interplay Entertainment Corp. on November 15th, 2016. I rarely covered Full Motion Video (FMV) games before, so this could be interesting! Especially since it stars Christopher Lloyd. (The low video quality isn’t great, but it's okay for computers of the time!)

"Drew?" "Flux? ...I gotta lay off the bourbon."

Hey, it's not every day you get to visit a cartoon castle.

The story: Drew Blanc (Lloyd) is a struggling animator so caught up in his job that he forgets to care for himself, while at the same time being behind on assignments. He hopes to see his wacky creation Flux Wildly get a show of his own someday, but for now, he must draw for an unbearably child-friendly show starring bunnies. One night, while he’s behind on the latest project forced upon him by his boss (played by Ben Stein), he falls asleep on his drawing board and dreams that he gets sucked into a nearby television by a UFO-like device. He lands in Cutopia, a world that combines the show he works for and his own creations. Its monarch, King Hugh, would like to help; but first, Drew will have to defend it from the dangerous overlord Count Nefarious, who plans to make everything in that world ugly and dangerous through his Malevolator.

And yes, Lloyd remains in live action throughout. Like in Cool World. Or maybe Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but reversed. At least, this time around, he’s not talking just… like… this!!!

Every single line of dialogue is voice-acted, by the way.
It's awesome.

We start with one item: Sugar to counter the Count's spice.
What's next? Against the bolts, we need... nuts. Against a
 bow, we need... an arrow. Against a polish, we need...
a spit. It's a very tricky puzzle, especially for those who
aren't native English speakers.

This is a point-and-click; almost everything is done with the mouse (though you can skip dialogues with Space, save with F5, load a game with F6, and turn off the game with alt+F4). Drew and Flux walk around, talk with the varied and bizarre inhabitants of this world, and solve their problems to progress. The plan to restore Cutopia involves creating a machine that counters Nefarious’ Malevolator, which functions with 12 items – thus, we embark on a quest for 12 opposite items. Upon meeting the royal scientist, you receive a blueprint of the Malevolator (to roughly know what to look for) and a bottomless bag to carry anything you’ll find. You can access the bag from the bottom left of the screen. On a few occasions, events during animations still allow you to point and click at items, like when dancing royal guards accidentally drop a key to a locked room in the Castle. Other times, actions can only be done when a character is looking away.

"WACME?" "Sure, if you say so!" *pulls out huge mallet*

Flux travels along Drew for a good part of the game, and the snarky weirdo voiced by Dan Castellaneta can be used to solve puzzles. Click him, then click at something to interact with, and see if something happens. On the topic of roles, we hear several names among the most famous cartoon voice actors of the '90s across this adventure: Jeff Bennett, Corey Burton, Jim Cummings, Tim Curry, Dom DeLuise, Tress MacNeille, David Ogden Stiers, Rob Paulsen, Frank Welker, April Winchell… Now that’s my kind of nostalgia! But don’t mistake this for a child-friendly game; there’s blood here and there, and sooooo many innuendos. All over the place. This game proudly sports its T rating.

Let's see... which of these things could we mix together...
Meat and the poison? Do we need to kill someone?
(The answer is probably yes.)

How many uses can there be for a fly costume?
...Well, at least two or three.

Although this is an excellent point and click with funny moments and many animated cutscenes, I did notice a few issues. Act 2, set entirely within Count Nefarious’ Castle, is a lot shorter than Act 1, as though a lot of elements had to be cut from it. The original plans were for Toonstruck to be double its size and split across four acts, one disc for each, while the finished product only has two, with everything else cut out due to budget constraints. (The game's poor original sales didn't help. A Toonstruck 2 allegedly exists unreleased, but we have yet to see anything about that.) As a result, this game ends on a cliffhanger. And it shows, as even at the end we can think of quite a few unresolved plot threads. There are a few moments where the game shows its age; there’s the use of some stereotypes that are outdated nowadays, like the blatantly gay “carecrow” met during the story. Also the game crashed near the very end when I hadn’t saved in a while, and it took me 30 minutes to get back to that point, but – that’s partly on me, and unlike another game I covered recently, it only happened once.

I doubt this fortune-telling cat lady is to be trusted.

Still, great game with clever puzzles and many memorable characters. Yeah, not every solution makes sense, but that’s common in a point-and-click, plus we’re in a cartoon world so the silliness is entirely excusable. If you like point-and-click games, it’s one you absolutely should try.

Toonstruck is available on Steam for 9.99$ USD. (Also, finish and release Toonstruck 2 dammit! A guy can dream.)