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.
Samurai Shodown	Arcade	Good	A fighting game featuring swordplay that rewards patience and taking advantage of opportunities rather than mindless rushing and combos. Highly recommended.
Samurai Shodown II	Arcade	Good	Adds more characters and tricks to an already high quality game to make it even better.
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 GT	Dreamcast	Good	A racing car sim with much tighter and better controls than the auto-obsessed Gran Turismo series that is actually fun.
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.
Space Invaders	Arcade	Good	Legendary arcade game with a simple yet compelling gameplay loop of destroying all the invaders before they kill you or land.
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.
Steamworld Dig	PC	Good	Surprisingly good action game about digging. Its story doesn't get in the way very much and the gameplay is satisfying.
Steamworld Dig 2	PC	Good	Similar to the original SWD, this game has more of the same with the same quality and a few extra elements to make it fresh enough to enjoy a play through.
Street Fighter	Arcade	Bad	The first of the Street Fighter games made before massive improvements in gameplay, this one is horribly clunky and imprecise and best avoided.
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior	Arcade	Good	The "original" Street Fighter game (if we forget SF1 existed, as we should) that ushered in a new world of fighting games. Still fun and incredibly solid.
Street Fighter II: Champion Edition	Arcade	Good	An evolution of the original that adds the boss characters to the mix.
Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting	Arcade	Good	More speed and more tricks continue the evolution of the seminal fighing game.
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers	Arcade	Good	Another evolution of the original that adds new, interesting characters to the mix.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo	Arcade	Great	One of the three Great Street Fighter games, this adds more moves, Supers, and all around better balance and fun.
Street Fighter EX	Arcade	Meh	The controls and feel of the game are a bit off in this 3d engine offshoot of SF, but there's some interesting gameplay ideas and characters here and it's not awful.
Street Fighter EX 2	Arcade	Meh	Same as the first EX game, there's enough interesting components of this game to offshoot the slightly problematic controls and gameplay.
Street Fighter: The Movie	Arcade	Bad	Imagine SF with digitized characters a la Mortal Kombat and laughable, laggy, unfun controls and gameplay. This is just embarrassing.
Street Fighter Alpha	Arcade	Good	A good re-imagining of the Street Fighter game with different characters and a more evolved play style.
Street Fighter Alpha 2	Arcade	Great	One of the three Great Street Fighter games. A perfect evolution of Street Fighter in the Alpha style with great characters and balanace.
Street Fighter Alpha 3	Arcade	Good	A bit of a step back from Alpha 2 in feel and gameplay with some strange character additions, it's still a high quality and fun game.
Street Fighter III: New Generation	Arcade	Good	New characters, solid controls, and fluid animation make this Street Fighter sequel a winner.
Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact - Giant Attack	Arcade	Good	Not really that much different from SFIII but still has enough additions and unique bits to make it a worthy play.
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike	Arcade	Great	One of the three Great Street Fighter games. The ultimate evolution of the new Street Fighter 3 games with incredibly detailed and fluid sprite work, near-perfect controls and gameplay, and tons of fun with probably the best roster in the entire SF game series.
Street Fighter IV	PC	Meh	Not as good as the 2d games and feels a bit like the EX games, it still has enough decent gameplay to make it at least somewhat enjoyable. Any of the original 2/3 series games are much better, though.
Street Fighter V	PC	Bad	An absolute mess of a SF game with bad gameplay, way too much DLC and pay2win trash, and a brain-dead computer opponent easily defeated on the top level by spamming fireballs.
Streets of Rage	Genesis	Good	A banger of a soundtrack supporting a solid beat-em-up brawler. Absolute fun.
Streets of Rage 2	Genesis	Good	What might seem like more of the same still gets you obsessed just as much and maybe even more than the original.
Streets of Rage 3	Genesis	Good	Maybe a small step back from part 2, it's still so engaging and fun that it's hard to put down.
Streets of Rage 4	PC	Meh	Tries to continue the excellent tradition of the Streets of Rage series but its poor controls and gameplay drag it down a bit. Still fun to be had, but the originals are so much better.
Streets of Rogue	PC	Good	A very good open world mission-based game where the player can accomplish his missions by any means necessary. Randomness of everything make it infinitely replayable.
Strife	PC	Bad	Tries to be a combination FPS and adventure game and utterly fails at both.
Subnautica	PC	Bad	Horribly unfocused and confusing ocean romp to do... something... for... some reason... somehow. Throws you in the deep end (hah) and doesn't really help you at all and the awkward controls and gameplay do not help this game at all.
Super 3-D Noah's Ark	DOS	Good	Even atheists love this what is basically a non-violent reskin of the original Wolfenstein 3D. I sure don't know any of the bible questions, though.
Super Castlevania IV	Super Nintendo	Meh	Leans on the SNES tricks (Mode 7) a bit too hard and stiff controls can be frustrating. Still an okay game, though.
Super Mario Bros.	NES	Great	The grandfather of platformers and absolutely stands the test of time as a great game with great controls.
Super Mario Bros. 2 (JP)	Famicom	Meh	Too full of cruel tricks and intentionally poorly designed levels to really be a good game, but it's still the same essential SMB gameplay.
Super Mario Bros. 2/USA	NES	Good	A twist on the Super Mario Bros. formula crossed with an obscure Japanese game, it's still a lot of fun and high quality.
Super Mario Bros. 3	NES	Great	One of the best games of all time and a near-perfect execution of the Mario Bros. platforming formula.
Super Mario World	Super Nintendo	Good	An ambitious adventure featuring our favorite jumpman through a colorful new world. Not quite as tight as 3 but still good.
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island	Super Nintendo	Good	Even with the annoying crying baby, this new twist on the Mario formula works very well with tight controls and gameplay.
Super Mario Land	Gameboy	Good	An impressive game with Mario shrunk down to Gameboy size with strange new worlds and enemies.
Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins	Gameboy	Good	Scaled up a bit from the original Land, this tries to bring Mario back to more familiar territory while still throwing him into strange new environments. A bit floaty in gameplay and not quite as good as the original Land, it's still a good game.
Super Mario All-Stars	Super Nintendo	Meh	Tries to update the look of all the original NES Mario games, but fails on many critical gameplay parts that make many of the games feel very wrong. It's still a fun and pretty good collection on its own, though.
Super Mario 64	Nintendo 64	Bad	What can I say? Laughably bad controls and an annoying camera make a bad game. Why haven't people figured this out?
Super Mario Sunshine	Gamecube	Bad	More 3d platforming with the same awkward controls and camera issues that drag down the gameplay to near-unplayable.
Super Mario Kart	Super Nintendo	Meh	Impressive at the time but simply didn't have the power to really shine as a good kart racing game.
Super Meat Boy	PC	Bad	Bad controls, bad gameplay, absolutely frustrating for the sake of being frustrating.
Super Metroid	Super Nintendo	Good	Unquestionably the best Metroid after you skip past the whocares story at the beginning. Great controls, music, environments, and even sequence skipping!
Super Smash Bros.	Nintendo 64	Bad	Laughably bad controls and overly simplistic "fighting game" mechanics.
Super Smash Bros. Melee	Gamecube	Bad	Takes the exact same poorly done formula of the original game and adds graphical polish, a few more characters, and a few side missions, but doesn't improve anything about the game itself.
Super Space Invaders '91	Arcade	Good	Takes Space Invaders to the next level with different formations, attack patterns, superweapons, bosses, and so on. A lot of fun.
Super Win The Game	PC	Good	I super-won this game. Fantastic platformer with tons of areas and challenges.
SUPERHOT	PC	Bad	Leans so heavily on its "time moves when you do" gimmick it forgot to have actual good gameplay.
Superman	Arcade	Meh	Side scrolling beat em up with the ability to fly as well as the occasional side scrolling shooter with Superman's laser eyes, this is a repetitive and annoying game that may not be absolutely awful, but nothing you'll want to spend a lot of time with.
Tabletop Simulator	PC	Meh	Good idea, somewhat of a clunky execution but still can be fun if you have friends.... sigh.
Tac/Scan	Arcade	Good	Vector graphics space shooter that gives you an armada of ships that you can lose individually instead of having lives (and restored by ships coming into view to dock with your armada) that switches between a vertical shooter and a third person perspective. Good controls and gameplay make this very addictive.
Talisman: Digital Edition	PC	Meh	A decent board game that loses its luster in the second half of gameplay where it is incredibly frustrating to advance to a win because of so many negative random elements.
Tallowmere	PC	Good	Pretty challenging and fun gameplay make this a surprise hit.
Tapper	Arcade	Good	Serve thirsty beer-swilling customers in several settings while trying to keep them at bay and not spilling any precious suds. Unique and fun. A "Root Beer" version was also made for the poor, defenseless, innocent little children; how dare we expose them to alcoholic products in a videogame?! Sigh.
Team Fortress	PC	Meh	The original. A bit dull in execution and gameplay but can still be more compelling than how its sequel eventually turned out to be.
Team Fortress 2	PC	Meh	Started out as one of the best games on PC but devolved into a mess of alternate weapons, collectible dress-up trash, boring alternative play modes, and absolutely infested with cheaters despite its anti-cheat software.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles	Arcade	Good	It's an absolutely solid beat-em-up starring your favorite adolescent variant terrapin martial artists.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge	PC	Meh	You would think that a fresh, updated, new version of the classic TMNT beatemup games would have new, interesting, fun stuff in it. Nope. Might as well play the originals.
Tekken	Arcade	Good	A very intense fighting game with cool characters and good controls.
Tekken 2	Arcade	Good	A good update to Tekken that adds more stuff and more fun.
Tekken 3	Playstation	Good	Again, another Tekken update that brings even more to the table while still managing to retain its charm and quality.
Tempest	Arcade	Good	Shoot and superzapper your way down a hole full of all sorts of vector graphics baddies. Needs a paddle controller, really, but a mouse for emulation will do in a pinch.
Tempest 2000	Jaguar	Good	A very fun update of the original Tempest with power-ups and more enemies. Held back a bit by the fact that it uses digital controls rather than the paddle, but it's still very good.
Terraria	PC	Great	The best game of the last 20+ years. Not an exaggeration. Action/adventure/platformer/world builder/everything. GREAT.
Tetris	Arcade	Good	The familiar drop tetris blocks into the well to remove lines puzzle game done as well as can be done, which is to say, pretty good.
Tetris	Gameboy	Good	Tetris given away with the original Gameboy and the most compelling reason to get the tiny little black and white eyestrain device with no light.
Tetris	NES	Meh	Sort of a lazy port by Nintendo done when they obtained the rights and screwed Atari (Tengen) out of the rights to the NES version of Tetris. Still Tetris, just could have been so much better.
Tetris (Tengen)	NES	Good	This is how Tetris for the NES should be and was before Nintendo got mad that Tengen (Atari) beat them to the punch and forced this superior version off the shelves.
Tomb Raider	Playstation	Meh	A clunky game with poorly realized controls that could have been better because the core of the gameplay is at least good.
Tomb Raider (2013)	PC	Bad	Filled with quick time events and Lara Croft torture porn, this poorly done mess is worse than even the clunky originals.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2	Playstation	Meh	Probably the best of the THPS series, it's still fun but the controls are inherently frustrating and overly stiff in general.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3	Playstation	Meh	More of the same as THPS2 with the same issues. The soundtrack is killer, though.
Torchlight	PC	Good	A new twist on the dungeon crawler/clickfest Diablo made by many of the same people. A lot of fun and lots of enjoyment to be had.
Torchlight II	PC	Good	The Diablo II version of Torchlight with an open world and so much more to do. Must play.
Tron	Arcade	Good	In a very fun game, you play four different scenarios -- a tank battle, blasting through to the top of a cone, the famous Tron light cycle battle, and shooting a nest of "grid bugs" to reach the center -- to advance through the different stages named after programming languages.
TUNIC	PC	Bad	A confusing, unfocused mess of a game with same-ish areas and no clear direction to go in. It could have been so much better but failed in so many ways.
Turok	PC	Good	It's not a fantastic FPS like many of the legendary games of the genre, but it's fun enough and definitely better than the N64 version with its laughable controls.
Typing of the Dead, The	Dreamcast	Good	I never played the original House of the Dead series so I wasn't in on the "joke" but even by itself this is a phenomenal re-imagining of a lightgun shooter using typing drills as ammunition.
Typing of the Dead, The: Overkill	PC	Good	Not quite as satisfying or high-quality as the original, this is still very compelling and fun to sit down and type words quickly to kill all matter of undead creatures.