Game Reviews Part Five

My Game Reviews

# - C | D - G | H - M | N - Q | R - T | U - Z

Game	Platform	Review	Comments
Race the Sun	PC	Meh	A boring "dodge all the things, get powerups to win" game. It's fun for a bit but gets old very quickly.
Ridge Racer	Arcade	Good	A very simple one-and-done racer but still has great arcade-style controls and a nice sense of speed. This is how you do racing games, GRAN FREAKING TURISMO.
Risk of Rain	PC	Good	A near perfect difficult platformer/roguelight that gets absolutely frantic while still having solid controls and gameplay.
Risk of Rain 2	PC	Bad	An embarrassment to the original game that throws out everything good about it for "LOOK WE CAN DO 3D" trash.
Risk of Rain Returns	PC	Good	Essentially a remake of the original Risk of Rain with more content, this proves that the original Risk of Rain was far, far better than horribly done 3d pile of trash RoR2.
River Raid	Atari VCS	Good	Fly down the river to destroy enemies and keep that fuel up. One of the best games on the Atari VCS.
Robotron: 2084	Arcade	Good	If you enjoy being a pixel or two away from death 99.99% of the time, you will love this game. It's almost a pixel dodger but with much better controls and concept if a bit frustrating.
Rocket League	PC	Bad	Laughably awkward controls and 3d "we don't need depth perception, oh wait, we do" gameplay makes me think everyone playing well is really a bot.
Rocksmith 2014	PC	Good	This is a review of the version before they turned it into a no-songs slop version. Learning guitar/bass made fun by making it into a Guitar Hero-like game is a fun and helpful idea, and the ability to mod it (unsupported) and put any song in is a good extra.
Rogue Legacy	PC	Good	Action-platformer with the gimmick of collecting enough coins to upgrade your arsenal over multiple generations and each playthrough being a different "person". Fun.
Rogue Legacy 2	PC	Bad	I liked the original but this is just too limiting and restricts you from really getting anywhere organically like the original, which is what made it fun. Lost interest quickly.
ROGUE-FP	PC	Good	A simplified yet incredibly addicting 3d version of Rogue and its clones.
S.T.U.N. Runner	Arcade	Good	Nice sense of speed, good controls and gameplay, and just plain fun. This was a blast in the arcades.
Satan's Hollow	Arcade	Good	An underrated hidden gem vertical shooter that has you build a bridge to the main boss. Very simple yet incredibly fun and challenging.
SEGA Bass Fishing	Dreamcast	Good	Hook that bass with great, logical fishing controls that make fishing fun. Take notes, STARDEW VALLEY.
Sega Rally Championship	Saturn	Good	Rally racing game that taught everyone about rally pace notes (Very Long Easy Left, Maybe!) and was way too excited when it was GAME OVER, YEAHHHH!!! Excellent game.
Serious Sam: The First/Second Encounter	PC	Good	Both games are very visceral and fun FPS with hordes of enemies that doesn't fall into the same trap as other enemy horde games by allowing enemy crowd manipulation.
Serious Sam HD: The First/Second Encounter	PC	Bad	Game adds tons of graphic barf like shiny textures and other unnecessary trash and removes the ability to manipulate the horde of enemies to let you kill them easier. Typical remake garbage.
Serious Sam 2	PC	Bad	A strange story-heavy Serious Sam taken to ridiculous and poorly done extremes. Just play the originals.
Serious Sam 3: BFE	PC	Bad	A poor modern FPS take on Serious Sam with poor gameplay and far too much forced story.
ShellShock Live	PC	Bad	Essentially Scorched Earth but with tons of randomness, unfairness by matching unskilled/fewer unlocks players with better ones, and an otherwise clunky and unpolished feel.
Shenzhen I/O	PC	Meh	It's a challenge, but not so much a "game" than a programming and design simulator with unreasonable restrictions and problems that would frustrate even the best embedded dev.
Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove	PC	Meh	Starts off a very good game that mirrors the platformers of classic games but advances to become yet another artificial difficulty modern game that betrays its roots.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri	PC	Good	Almost as good as the best Civilization game (2) and by far better than any other Civilization game.
Sid Meier's Civilization II	PC	Great	The perfect Civilization game that focuses on the important parts of building and progression and has none of the fat and other weirdness that comes with the later games.
Sid Meier's Civilization IV	PC	Good	Honestly, not the best Civilization game and definitely not recommended for people new to the franchise, but even the worst Civilization game is better than most other games.
Sid Meier's Civilization V	PC	Good	This is the ultimate beginner's Civ game and still has a lot of good things for people who have played the others. Still a bit much compared to the perfection of 2, but it's still very good.
Silpheed	Sega CD	Good	A well-executed shootemup that is just fun to play and is enhanced by the Sega CD's capabilities.
Sim City 3000 Unlimited	PC	Great	If you want to play the best version of SimCity, this is it. Near-perfect building mechanics, options, and everything else that makes SimCity what it is.
Simpsons, The	Arcade	Good	A hilarious and fun beat em up with the option to play as Homer and that's all because who picks Marge, Bart, or Lisa when HOMER?
Simpsons: Road Rage	Gamecube	Good	A clone of Crazy Taxi with hilarious Simpsons one-liners and gags, good controls and gameplay. Much better than the boring GTA ripoff game they did.
Simpsons: Hit & Run	Gamecube	Bad	A lazy and boring knockoff of Grand Theft Auto with bad controls that would have worked better as just an episode because of all the whocares forced plot.
Sinistar	Arcade	Good	A race to collect space rock fragments for bombs to defeat a boss made with the same fragments. So much fun and love the voice!
Skullgirls	PC	Good	A well designed and enjoyable beat em up with some really fun character designs. Unfortunate that some are locked behind DLC.
Slime Rancher	PC	Meh	A very repetitive and dull collect things and unlock new areas slog of a game.
Smashing Drive	XBox	Bad	Poorly executed racing game with nothing really original about it.
Sniper Elite V2	PC	Bad	Yet another "realistic" war shooter with a boring premise and the same old trash gameplay.
Sonic the Hedgehog	Genesis	Good	A solid first entry to the series with great level design and gameplay.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2	Genesis	Good	Level design is near-perfect in this one with so much more added from the original to make it a blast (blast processing?) to play.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3	Genesis	Good	Slightly worse level design by increasing level size to near-ridiculous size and putting several annoying obstacles into the game, it's still a fun and quality Sonic game.
Sonic & Knuckles	Genesis	Good	Basically Part 2 of Sonic 3, the same minor issues apply to a game that is still very good.
Sonic CD	Sega CD	Good	Well-designed levels that have alternate levels via time travel. Sonic really doesn't get any more fun than this.
Sonic Adventure	Dreamcast	Bad	Sega just had to copy Mario 64 by making a Sonic game with bad 3d controls and camera, didn't they? And cutscenes and story on that? Sigh.
Sonic Adventure 2	Dreamcast	Bad	Another 3d Sonic game that proves no matter what, 3d platformers are bad.
Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1	PC	Meh	An attempt to go back to 2d Sonic platforming but with far too many control and gameplay issues to make it even close to the originals.
Sonic Mania	PC	Meh	It tries so hard to be faithful to the original Sonic games but the new engine that causes many control glitches, cheap enemies and obstacles, and overly long levels drag it down so much.
Soul Edge	Playstation	Good	AKA Soul Blade, a very fun 3d fighting game with great characters, moves, and, well, everything.
Space Ace	Arcade	Meh	The difficulty levels, alternate paths, and Space Ace transformation tries to open up the gameplay of a QTE game, but just isn't enough.
Space Channel 5	Dreamcast	Meh	A soulless call and response rhythm game that isn't all bad, but doesn't have the charm of something like Parappa the Rapper.
Spelunky	PC	Good	A very good exploration game that requires tons of skill and paying attention to your environment that is mostly satisfying except for a few minor irritating traps and gotchas here and there.
Spelunky 2	PC	Meh	A sequel that adds a whole lot to the Spelunky formula -- almost too much given all the secret alternate paths and things to do, really. Worse is that it quintuples down on the irritating traps and gotchas to make it much less fun and makes a lot of damage and deaths feel random.
Stanley Parable, The	PC	Meh	Interesting for a short time but isn't really a game so much as an interactive experience/ride and thus becomes boring quickly.
Star Wars	Arcade	Good	Vector graphics Star Wars with the movie soundtrack and voices where you have to attack and blow up the Death Star over and over? This is a true classic and the best SW game ever.
Star Wars: Dark Forces	DOS	Good	An incredibly fun Star Wars shooter that is the true story (resolved early, at that) about how the Death Star plans were taken. To hell with Rogue One.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords	PC	Bad	One of the absolutely dull modern story-heavy pseudo-RPG slogfest games like Mass Effect. So boring they should have made it a movie. Can't be any worse than any other modern trash SW movies.
Starcraft	PC	Meh	Okay, to be honest, it's actually a pretty good game, but when someone has played the same exact type of game over and over with very little variation (several iterations of Warcraft and Command & Conquer) and Starcraft really offers nothing really new at all except it's IN SPAAAACE, it really becomes a "Meh".
Stardew Valley	PC	Bad	The daily routine is a laughable grind that makes you tired way too early and your only recourse is to go to bed at 10AM and sleep until the next day if you do more than a couple of things, which is ridiculous. Also, the absolute worst fishing mechanic in videogame history. No exaggeration.
Stargate	Arcade	Good	AKA Defender II. Having the original arcade controls layout makes emulating this not as good as playing the original, but the game itself is a blast with so many more elements than Defender that make it even more frentic and fun.