Hi, I'm Dranzerstorm
Welcome to the Video Game & Music Lounge
This world is dedicated to Video Games and Music as I'll be showcasing the following.
Video Game Reviews set to the same tones as Retro Retrospective's Anime Reviews
Music reviews of Anime Openings & Closings
Western Cartoon music
Vocaloid Classics.
We may even have some Top Tens
I hope this World entertains you.
A few intriguing ones today.
Ben 10: Power Trip
Ben 10, the Zoomer version, not the OG version is on vacation in a non descript European city, so Germany then. The peace is interrupted by the most try hard emo looking wizard ever seen and now he has to save the world from monster invasions, for those who don't know, Ben 10 can take on the form of ten different aliens but the game only had the budget for six, and apparently not enough for a sound fx guy either as this game lacks any audio impact. Very basic open world collectathon with lame fighting.
D-Tier Game
Clockwork Aquario
Back in 1992, this game was meant to be the final arcade title from Westone developed on the aging Sega System 18 board, it was cancelled in a mostly complete state in 1993 due to poor consumer tests, in 2017, strictly limited games purchased the rights from Sega and brought it back to life with collaboration from ININ known for rebuilding other lost Sega games along with former Westone members, 28 Years, 81 Days starting from late 1992, Clockwork Aquario was released setting a new world record for development time.
You punch colourful creatures and throw them at other creatures, the gameplay is very reminiscent of Wario Land but far more anime esque. The game is short and a little erratic with difficulty, the story behind the game is more impressive than the actual game.
C-Tier Game
Figment: Journey into the Mind
Inside the mind of a car crash victim, you play Dusty who is minding his own business when nightmares steal his scrapbook prompting him into action alongside an optimistic bird called Piper, Dusty is the Mind's Courage and it's up to him to defeat the fears of Disease, Spiders and Loss to regain his scrapbook all while piecing together the events that led to these nightmares. A competent puzzle game up there with the likes of Psychonauts, a solid game that even includes musical numbers.
A-Tier Game
It's been a while so let's fix that with some new titles.
Bluey
Little known fact that Bluey is named after the worlds oldest dog who was also from Australia. The children's show that became the first choice for millennial parents now has her own game and is written like a four part episode of the show as best fictional Dad, Bandit finds a treasure map of a time capsule during a regular family playtime session, the game is clearly for young children as it barely qualifies as difficult but more than makes up with writing that adults can relate to such as the noisy toy you conveniently lost.
B-Tier Game
Lil Gator Game
If you've ever been the younger sibling in a family, this game is for you. A few years after visiting the park as a toddler with his older sister, Lil Gator returns as a ten year old with his now college aged sister in an effort to bring back the fun times of fantasy play, Lil Gator gathers new and old friends to make the ultimate quest which Lil Gator hopes to convince his sister to come play again. Another easy title that may as well be called baby's first Zelda as it plays and parodies the fantasy juggernaut as all your enemies are cardboard cutouts nor can you get damage from anything, the game itself is surprisingly solid, it's a good sign for children if games for them can be made this well.
A-Tier Game
Botany Manor
The term Gert Lush is going to be lost on my non British audience, set in 1890 at a country manor in Somerset, botanist Arabella sets out to grow several flowers all the while piecing together her story through puzzles in a very well made Country Manor, probably the nicest looking game in quite some time. Not much else to say, it's a first person puzzle game, their shelf life is painfully short.
A-Tier Game
In the quest for something new, you sometimes have to go through the discount shelf.
Brotato
The flavour of the month among my regular gaming group, Brotato is a Vampire Survivors clone with simplistic visuals familiar to players of Binding of Isaac, build up your potato through waves of enemies to defeat the final boss, while the mechanics makes it one of the more functional clones of Vampire Survivors, it's visuals, restricted arena and odd achievements layout, makes it some what dull to look at and play which for an average of half an hour per session can get pretty tedious. There's only so far being minimalist can take you.
C-Tier Game.
Go Mecha Ball
Playing as a group of cats, (why is it always cats?) They find a mecha suit and embark on a journey to defeat the robot uprising, shooting guns and rolling around like a rampant pinball, this roguelike is one of the most creative I've seen in quite some time, and considering how sick I am of the genre, it's impressive that this title held my attention beyond it's first playthrough, it's because I genuinely enjoy pinball and the frantic action keeps me on my controller.
A-Tier Game.
A Little To The Left
A simple puzzle game of organizing typical household objects into patterns, shapes and colours, going in full force is not recommended as you will only give yourself brain damage by not seeing the oh so simple solutions right in front of you, for something that wouldn't even be thought of as a game a few years ago, Little to the Left gave me a proper lesson in how to properly de-stress, it's surprising how easy it is to forget to think logically when the typical gamer is trained to juggle ten different tasks in your average triple-A epic, I do feel like a better gamer for playing this.
A-Tier Game.
Several things you'll see quite often on an achievement hunters list, quite a high number of low quality 5000G titles, a large number of puzzles and shooters from the mad lads over at East Asiasoft and most of Ratalaika's catalogue.
One other thing you'll find is a little known game series called Aery - Little Bird Adventures.
Produced by EpiXR Games, the Aery games take you on a journey through a dynamic polygon landscape through the views of a little bird as a narrator commentates on the deep philosophy that surrounds the area you explore while collecting stars.
On it's merit the narratives can come across as a little too real or a little preachy especially when the music is designed to provide a zen like aura to your gaming experience, the first few games certainly keep up that appearance, but as time went on, the games were getting worse and worse.
16 games + 1 spinoff that uses a paper plane later and the problems keep piling up.
Collectables out of sequence.
Slow framerate performance issues.
Constant crashing.
Corrupt graphics.
Achievements popping at the wrong time or not at all.
A skip option on PC that let's you gain achievements by skipping all the levels.
Reusing levels multiple times.
Vikings in every bloody game possible.
Collectables stuck behind impassable walls.
Having the same soundtrack in every game.
And the biggest one of all, forgetting to add all the levels!
This should've been problems solved in game one but they've taken the Ubisoft approach of not testing their games and wonder why there are so many problems, and it's getting worse with every game; what started as a simple bit of escapism in a zen like environment has turned into an example of gaming greed at it's most vile.
At time of writing, I've played six of them, I've no plans to play all 17 titles any time soon, only 15 of them are fully completeable as the two most recent ones are broken until patched.
To put that into perspective, assuming I make 500,000 lifetime gamerscore this year and I play all the titles, 3% of my score would just be Aery games.
D-Tier for all the games.
Trash Tier for just the developers, stop being bitches and hire a play tester for god sake!
Getting into some triple A action today.
Halo Infinite
The spartan shooter that rewrote the FPS genre is trying things, an open world environment and a grappling hook are two big selling points of this iteration of Halo, however the game lacked alot of content on release and to this day is leagues behind it's rivals and extremely poorly managed; while the multiplayer continues being a great time, the campaign is woefully mediocre, it shouldn't be acceptable practise to wait over two years or more for a game to get good, this should've been sorted in the first month.
D-Tier Game
Forza Horizon 5
Were in Mexico for the ultimate car festival but I'm getting bored of it at this point, my biggest issue is how much the npcs want me to play, they never shut up, I feel like I'm not allowed to choose my own path as everytime I open the map I'm dragged to somewhere else, it's ten minutes of gameplay before I'm interrupted to do a race I don't wish to do yet, what made me retire was poor DLC, I know this franchise is better than this.
C-Tier Game
Sea of Thieves
The definitive game of piracy where you take a crew of rogues across the sea for rare treasures and dangerous adventure, if PvP allows you to even play without being killed every five minutes, thankfully it's been fixed with private servers. As for the gameplay, it's not for single player, I suck so bad at this game that I sank my ship immediately after leaving port, you need a crew to enjoy the experience.
B-Tier Game
