Recent reviews by just alyx

this happened to me once

this game owns

if you enjoy things such as:
robotron 2084
super hexagon
devil daggers

i think you would probably enjoy this game, cuz i sure do

probably nothing more needs to be said about balatro, it's simply a great idea for a game that was done incredibly well.

booting up balatro and listening to the music and just playing around with the concept that's presented will immediately grab anyone who's going to be interested in it. i think that it's one of those games that will just immediately make parts of your brain tingle and implant itself into your consciousness.

i certainly played it to the point where i was doing things just to do them moreso than just having a chill time playing, but i appreciate that it offers that amount to achieve. but for those starting, you will absolutely reach peaks of joy when you finally clear a stake you're having trouble with or reach a new milestone in your score.

there's something special about playing well-realized ideas from a single source that i doubt i will ever get tired of.

very cool, very stylish. in the vein of the older metroid/super metroids and what have you more than any variants, but with a pretty interesting little arsenal of weapons and traversal tools. mostly i recall enjoying it for the atmosphere, music, world building, moreso than the actual gameplay. easily recommended to fans of the genre or appreciators of the aesthetic/unique pixel artwork.

very cute and very short, basically like a standalone animated movie with a bit of interaction. i thought it was great

i think this is the best possible way they could have honored the original game while staying true to the spirit of it. i don't think it is perfect by any means, but to those who were fascinated by actraiser in the past, i strongly believe this game has a lot to offer. for everyone else, it's a maybe.

i really don't share a lot of the complaints i've tended to see, as i personally thought everything about this was a neat little update to a classic game and had no objections to their additions. the art style of the platformer stages, which i recall having been somewhat maligned at the time, did not bother me while making my way through the stages. but i often feel that slightly less detailed or idiosyncratic graphics are somewhat interesting. it's like it came from an alternate version of the 90s or something.

the rest of the character art is very pretty, anyway. the town building aspects are made more difficult with the inclusion of additional monster attack features and a tower defense-like aspect that requires you to hold off increasingly more harried sieges by greater and greater armies of demons. i felt like it did a good enough job of varying the objectives and offered a nice chunk of gameplay to do before you're allowed to go smash things in the platformer stages. additionally some characters are added which not only give some context to the plight of the humans inhabiting this world but also serves to grant the Master (and your mission to defend the townspeople with him) more weight and meaning.

it can certainly get a little repetitive or stretched out, so in that sense it's not perfect as i definitely recall struggling to maintain my attention towards the end to finally get the game completed. generally when I think about games from this era, what i am looking for is a more tight and snappy experience that allows me to replay it and improve my skill. this takes a different tack, it instead offers what could conceivably be a modernized and fleshed out version of the game. it's almost like it is a version of actraiser that is bolstered by years of glorification of what was honestly a rather simple game. and that's for better and worse, depending on your outlook.

i'm glad that i played this as i honestly expected it to be underwhelming when it appeared seemingly out of nowhere a few years ago. it does stick in my memory, it does have sick yuzo koshiro music, and imo i don't have any great ideas about how it could have been done any better. but i do wonder what those with no expectations would think. a retro platformer with RTS/tower defense/town building aspects is just a strange thing to consider, but i wouldn't shy away from telling anybody to try it out.

i play through this game about once every 3 months and find it just as engaging every single time, continually trying to go quickly as i can whilst dying as little as possible. it has so much personality and such responsive gameplay, it's truly one of the classics at this point. to me it's one of the rare games that completely nails everything. i honestly think it should be played by everyone.

i hate this game but probably won't stop playing it. and for that reason you shouldn't start

if you're queer and want to play fighting games this will automatically appear in your game library

it also will make you feverishly love music that you previously would think is weird garbage

it's pretty good and ramlethal is pretty cool. that's about it

without a doubt my favorite touhou game so far. the way the UFO system leads to interesting struggles during the stage portions of the game makes it probably the most gripping one in the series for me, as it's like playing a minigame on almost every screen. features some of my favorite music tracks and stages of the series, a great balance of fun, chaotic, and difficult spell cards, and yet another group of lovable weirdos. the extra stage is quite tough in this one, but i find it very compelling to try and complete as well (that being said, i have only made it to the 3rd to last spell card on nue...).

i would probably say that while i still think touhou 10 is the perfect introduction and where i think most people should start at this point, this is the one i come back to most frequently.