Recent reviews by Hideo

Unlike many others, I like the concept of this kind of retro collection, although I wish it would've been realized even more. Having all the games presented as their own customizable cabinets is appealing, but they all seem to be generic ones. Nevertheless, I liked the concept and the easy and legal availability of these older games.

Personal favorite: Progear, a Shoot 'Em Up Bullet Hell by Cave.

But now Capcom retroactively added the Enigma Protector DRM many years after release, preventing the use of mods. While I haven't used any mods myself, this can still lead to issues later on, not to mention that I wouldn't want other's experiences diminished.

I don't recommend getting any DLC for the title at least for a while. If the situation ever changes, please feel free to notify me via a comment under this review.

It's a lovely little title that I played for quite some time and intended to get back to in the future to finish the Raid Mode. Normally, I would wholeheartedly recommend.

But now Capcom retroactively added the Enigma Protector DRM many years after release, preventing the use of mods. I used an FoV mod myself, because the camera was adjusted more for consoles, and it helped me a great deal.

One of my favorite games of all time that I don't get bored of and love every new playthrough in Coop. I fully intend to play it more in the future and to finish the Mercenaries Mode with all characters with the highest possible rank, as I already did with many.

But now Capcom retroactively added the Enigma Protector DRM many years after release, preventing the use of mods. I used an FoV mod for some time myself, because the camera was adjusted more for consoles, and it helped me a great deal. As well as custom outfits, because that's a lot of fun.

I don't recommend getting the title at least for a while. If the situation ever changes, please feel free to notify me via a comment under this review.

I got the game to play in local splitscreen multiplayer via Big Picture Mode, but I couldn't navigate the main menu with a controller. I know that the game lists only Partial controller support, but what gives? The developer could implement splitscreen, but not menu navigation?

There was a community configuration that I tried out for a moment that seemingly had the mouse bound to the right stick, but it felt really janky.

After waiting for years to get this game, I'm extremely disappointed. By the looks of it, even what is there is very barebones. Maybe the long-awaited sequel will be better.

There are worse F2P games. But never pay anything, you would only support predatory practices. There are no "ethical" gachas.

Note: Written because of a requirement for the Steam Awards 2023.

I want to be completely open and let you know that this is a temporary review that I only put out to get level 4 of the "Steam Awards Nomination Committee 2021" badge.

First impressions:
Great atmosphere, mostly through the first character you meet, and as interesting as I hoped it would be. The control method utilized, blinking, makes it a very unique experience.

It was hard to find time to game this year at all and I hope to soon be able to update this review after I played the game further.

Being drawn to the titular Judgement Silversword and Cardinal Sins mainly because they both look and sound like a GameBoy Color game on steroids, I was hoping for a nostalgic experience. And I indeed got one, but not the kind I hoped for.



I consider myself average in Shoot ‘Em Ups, so I always choose Normal as the difficulty setting. At first, it seemed like every other modern Shoot ‘Em Up I played: I progress, hit a wall, overcome it by learning the ins and outs of the game, repeat. But that quickly changed.

Unlike in other Shoot ‘Em Ups, I almost never felt a sense of achievement by progressing in the game, but rather dreaded what kind of impossible situation will come up next. Instead of giving you a reasonable challenge, the game beats you down repeatedly.

After running 8 hours against a wall, I decided to swallow my pride and play on Easy. 1 hour later, I beat the game, but without facing the true boss.


The concept of Cardinal Sins is very different from Judgement Silversword, as you have to achieve high rankings on 7 different stages – only Normal difficulty available. It’s a classic highscore chase game and it's fairly easy to achieve at least an overall B-Rank (S being the highest), so I didn’t feel like a complete failure like in Judgement Silversword.

However, the final boss (only accessible when reaching an overall B-Rank) felt just as unfair as the ones in Judgement Silversword and I ultimately decided to call it a day.



I now understand why there are so few reviews (only 20 at the time of writing this one). Judgement Silversword is the kind of oldschool game that was made for a very specific group of players who are willing to dedicate a large amount of time playing the same stages over and over again to master them or are just savants of the genre.

But an average player, just looking for a unique experience with a moderate difficulty, should stay away from it - and it’s a real shame, because it’s a pleasant looking and sounding collection, somehow very reminiscent of GameBoy Color titles.



- To even have a fighting chance, I had to use an “advanced technique”, which I found out about in the guide of a representative of Degica Games. It involves tapping the wide shot button while still holding down the frontal shot button, effectively combining the strength of both and rendering separate usage pointless. But since I’m not a maniac, I set up a gamepad configuration that tapped the wide shot button automatically when holding down the frontal shot button. I uploaded it for everyone to use. Using a keyboard? Sorry, you're on your own.

- Random Trivia: The original system the games were designed for, the WonderSwan Color, was designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the same man who designed the GameBoy. Maybe that’s where the similarities with GameBoy Color titles in look and sound come from.

- If you haven’t even played a Shoot ‘Em Up before, I highly recommend Jigoku Kisetsukan which is free and very beginner-friendly. Also, I reviewed it before (Review).

I bought DEEP SPACE WAIFU in a sale because it was one of the cheapest games in my wishlist and I vaguely remembered it as an easy looking Shoot 'Em Up which I was in the mood for. I knew it was somewhat pervy, but I only briefly glanced over the store page when it was released and was now surprised by the nudity (although censored) when I played it.

Still, this is a game after all, so let’s look at the gameplay, shall we?


Are there any advanced mechanics to learn and use? Not really. The default fire type (focused) and special (bomb) are the best, the others are pretty much pointless. There’s no grazing mechanic or anything else to add “depth” to the experience. To get more points, you can time the destruction of particular clothing pieces to when a lot of enemy bullets are on screen to convert them to stars (stars = points), but the problem is: There’s no point to that, because...

The game doesn’t encourage you to get highscores for unlocks. You can get up to five stars (overall rating) on a stage (girl) which just unlock more stages, but the amount of stars required is extremely easy to reach.

Well, are there at the very least leaderboards for friendly competition? Sorry, but no.


I said that I was in the mood for an easy Shoot 'Em Up, but DEEP SPACE WAIFU is too easy even for an intermediate player like me. I breezed through the stages and ultimately, this game was a rather “short affair”.

I even imposed a challenge on myself by playing with only two lives, but there seem to be no penalties for playing with more, so you could realistically beat the game in under two hours and just refund it (not that I encourage such behavior).


DEEP SPACE WAIFU just doesn’t have enough “meat on the bones”. Too easy, without depth and no explanation as to what the gameplay sections even are (odd fantasies of the protagonist?).

The few “story bits” can be at times funny, especially the “Streamer Girl”, but they are too few and too short. And the girls are, with the exception of maybe 2 of them, rather crudely drawn – you can find better “art” completely for free in probably a few minutes.

Lastly, I can’t help but mention how tasteless some of the bosses are. Similarly the achievements: When I normally played the game, I noticed that I unlocked a new achievement seemingly every minute, and most of these were just filler to reach “69” in total. Very poor taste.

I can’t recommend this game to anyone, even if it is on sale and costs less than a dollar. It’s above the usual shovelware, because it has at the very least functional and bug-free gameplay, but not by much. To the developers: In the future, focus on adding depth to the gameplay and stop with the juvenile humor in regards to the bosses and the achievements.


- Surprisingly, the Art for the game was made by a woman, Fernanda Rodriguez[www.facebook.com].

- The DLC stages are actually somewhat challenging, at least compared to the main game.

- The only interesting aspect of the game is the “Mouse Only” mode, in which you can use the mouse (Captain Obvious, I know). I didn’t know how much I would appreciate the degree of agility and precision that mouse input could give me in a Shoot 'Em Up.

ICEY, pronounced “Aishi” in Chinese, is the best Chinese game I have played so far. It is a “meta experience” unlike anything else, which might be not to everyone’s liking because of the cryptic nature of it. I can safely say though, that it is not a “Stanley Parable Hack 'n Slay”, even though they share some similarities (Disclaimer: I find “The Stanley Parable” obnoxious).

The gameplay itself feels good for the most part, but some normal enemies and bosses feel rather unfair. Many bosses also don’t have clear patterns, making you guess what they’ll do next, and many are only beatable with cheese tactics, resulting in “who cheeses the other one first”. But for the most part, fighting normal enemies can be a lot of fun when you purchase some upgrades and learn the intricacies.

The weakest aspect though, is the way to “complete” the game. Sure, there’s an ending that you’ll be able to achieve normally, but there’s also more for which a guide is basically a necessity. I explored for an hour on my own after I got the ending, but discovered only a little of what there still was. The developers really should’ve made it less obscure, since they obviously wanted people to discover it or there wouldn’t be so much of it.


ICEY might be the best Chinese game I’ve played so far, but it’s still very rough around the edges. The narrative is certainly unique and the gameplay overall fun, but the “cheesy” bosses can be grating and finding the endgame content is unnecessarily obscure. As a Hack 'n Slay, I feel that it’s not for the serious “combo players”. For normal players, it might be “too meta”.

So I recommend this game to players who want unique game experiences and can accept and live with glaring weaknesses.

I certainly hope to see more such experimental games from the developers in the future (ICEY 2 is supposedly coming) and more quality games from China in general.


- The English voice over is one of the worst I have ever heard. Not only do I think the voice actor for the narrator was miscast, he had clearly no idea of the context when he spoke the lines. If you can follow subtitles moderately well, do yourself a favor and switch to the original Chinese voice over.

- The Soundtrack is surprisingly good. It’s interesting to hear something from Chinese composers and definitely adds to the atmosphere of the game.

- The sprite-based graphic style felt “cheap” at first, but quickly grew on me. In the end, it does its job and the developers even managed to do some neat things with it.

- I managed to get to the Ending in ~5 hours on Hard, but completely without the Health, Shield, “Perception” and Regeneration upgrades because I overlooked them - which makes me either an idiot or a badass, you decide.

- The best spot to grind currency for upgrades: The Puppet Theater. Just dash to the top left and get the three “currency boxes” in the following rooms. You get around 120 currency and can quickly reload the area and repeat.

- To fully complete the game, i.e. to reach the “Endgame”, you have to get specific achievements, which is almost impossible without a guide. Using a guide spoils some of the things a little, but there’s really no alternative. I myself used this one: iCEY Achievement Guide!

- If you’re interested about the full meaning of the cryptic story bits, I recommend this thread: [Spoilers] What lurks beneath

- The free DLC “UCEY's Awakening”, which chronologically happens after the main game is 100% finished, is pretty bizarre. For one, the developers didn’t mention at all what it exactly adds, which is only a Boss Rush Mode in the back alley right after the gate to Ultimopolis. Then it’s so unfair, I couldn’t beat it after 2.5 hours trying, and I was fully upgraded this time. And lastly: There’s no real reward. For around 43 minutes intense and non-stop fighting, you’ll get a short cryptic and meaningless cutscene. Sure, you can try the Boss Rush Mode for fun, but I strongly recommend just watching this YouTube Playthrough instead: ICEY - "UCEY's Awakening" DLC + DLC Ending ( English )

- The developer, FantaBlade Network, doesn’t have any online presence at all – no website, nothing.

- ICEY was once sold as a bundle with the Steam Link, with ICEY being 30% off and the Steam Link costing just $1. Why ICEY, a fast-paced Hack 'n Slay that’s not necessarily the best showcase for the Steam Link, was chosen out of all the games available on Steam? I have absolutely no idea.

I never thought I would like a Simulation type game, but here I am. "Papers, Please" is so much more than it seems at first glance and is definitely one of the games that pushed the entire medium a little bit forward.


I couldn't agree more with this comment from a user on YouTube (Source[anon.to]):

Originally posted by halfdark000:

It asks you hard questions with only wrong answers and expects you to answer them quickly. If that idea intrigues you, do yourself a favour and play this game!

- If you like paperwork and/or reading through long articles, you'll probably like this game. If you don't, maybe you'll find a liking to it by playing this game.

- Not only do I think Papers, Please is great for short sessions, I think you should play it only in short sessions, because there will be times where you hate yourself for making the same mistake over and over again whenever a new mechanic is introduced.

- Crushing failure at the first few tries is part of the game, so don't let that demotivate you. You'll quickly learn from your mistakes and find little tricks.

- I strongly recommend using this cheat sheet[i.imgur.com] at some point, because I found it unbearable looking up all the Issuing Cities in the handbook every time and didn't have much desire to completely memorize them (although you do memorize a lot of them after some time). Just set it as a Wallpaper and the game to Windowed Mode, it fits right in the middle. Also, I would've liked to credit it, but I couldn't manage to find the source.

- The game has around 20 endings, with only 3 of them being the "true" ones. You can keep track of them by white dots in the Main Menu în the upper right corner. Don't try to be a completionist, most of the other 17 endings are nothing special and many are just slight variations; additionally, there's no achievement for getting all endings. If you really want to know all 20, here's a list[papersplease.wikia.com].

- It takes around 5 hours to achieve at least one "true" ending.

- To unlock Endless Mode, you have to achieve ending 20. It has a pleasant variety of games types, but there was little motivation for me to play it without friends to compete with since the global leaderboards seem to be full of cheaters.

- Glory to Arstotzka!