Luftrausers and Rival Stars Horse Racing

Games that start strong.

Luftrausers

In this beautiful artistic sepia arcade bullet hell shooter, you fly your plane on a 2D plane to blast enemy air and sea craft to smithereens while also trying to evade their fire ALL to some super epic music which really gets the blood pumping. This is very much an achievement based game, as getting those goals unlocks more plane parts that give more goals - and despite the seemingly simplistic three part modular plane chassis,  you can get a ton of variety from the bits available. Very cool, but even with the epic handling and music the gameplay loop gets repetitive a few hours in. Still one of the better bullet hell things I've played for a while.

Rival Stars Horse Racing

After inheriting a run down homestead it's up to you to restore it and regain its status by winning horse races! This super chillaxing game has two main sections - the racing and the upgrading bit. Racing is simpler so we'll start there: with minimalistic controls of left, right and sprint you really are at the mercy of your horses stats as an untrained one will simply have no chance on the harder tracks. Sprint is interesting in how it recharges: your horse has a preferred position and to regain sprint power faster you need to stay in that position - which can be a tricky proposition!

Upgrading the homestead simply requires resources you win or buy from gold (and also costs gold on top) which can let you keep more horses, foal more horses (breed champions bro), and improve training facilities to let you improve your animals even more. The part I don't like is that participating in races costs money, and if you are out of it you need to wait for your timed income to drop. Yep, its the "waiting to have fun" section of the game and that's what kills it for me. A simple fix is letting you race for free but alas, that was a lost opportunity. Otherwise, a pretty decent game for city bound horse lovers. You can even do free rides around your ranch just for fun.

Arcade Paradise

The ultimate mini game chill out collection.

In first person business simulation game, you are put in charge of a laundromat that happens to have a small backroom with a few arcade games. I was quite worried about this game with the whole "business simulation" bit and grungy animation intro but when that last drawing fades into the crisp 3D view - I was quickly hooked. Especially since almost everything you do is income. Do the laundry mini-game? Get money. Pick up trash? Get money. Yank gum off furniture? Get money.

The game loop is very cool and quite relaxing and I for one enjoyed the laundry, but the whole point of the game is to expand the arcade space and number of arcade games (your only real expenses) on site which just generates passive income. And you can play ALL of them. Sure, a lot are re-skins of old classics but that doesn't make them any less fun. The carrot there is by completing goals on them they start making even more passive money. To do all this AND have a simple story arc mixed in there? Awesome. I ended up playing this A LOT. Highly recommended!

Spell Drifter and Huntdown

Killing the enemies with "cool".

Spell Drifter

A crashed meteor that is said to give people magical powers attracts an entire city worth of pilgrims who seem to all be scum. At least that's what it feels like when your protagonists arrive. The story, art and jarringly out of place rock riffs are ok as is the meat of the game which is turn based grid combat where you have to rely on card draws to pull special weapons or make use of powers. Other than you thinking of the moves this part goes really fast and you aren't really punished for losing since your active party all gains XP regardless of the result and replaying is free. It does get more interesting once you get past the solo prologue bits where you can start deploying a team but ultimately the game is just ok. It's not bad, but not great. Recommended? Eh, get it when its free to try it out.

Huntdown

It is the future, the world is crap and full of bad guys, and you and one friend who are bounty hunters can cooperatively HUNT all of them DOWN. This plays like an old sidescrolling arcade shooter with ridiculous characters (but decent art) and intentionally cheesy voice acting, but even the easiest mode was giving us a challenge. While the controls were quite responsive my wife and I tried the two people on one keyboard approach and found we were getting in each others way a lot of the time so expect to alter the keybindings if you want to enjoy this for longer periods of time (our arms started hurting). Again not bad, but not great.

Sky Force Reloaded

 Expect to die a lot again!

This vertically scrolling (bullet hell in later levels) shooter tasks players with earning medals by doing various things during missions: rescuing everyone, not taking damage, killing a % of enemy etc. Earning enough medals unlocks harder modes of the same mission and unlocks later levels too which might require you to have earned x number of medals.

While it's addictive, the upgrades to your craft which become mandatory for some of those medals, quickly becomes a grind and an incentive to use the cash shop. Since I've played this on an ipad where pressing your finger moves your plane around, there is a nice feature included that helps with reaction time: lift your finger and everything goes into slow mo. Sure you can't move, but it gives you precious time to think of where the next opening would be.

In contrast to Rogue Legacy this game lets you keep all the currency you earned, and even better - often offers to double it on a failed run! This alone makes it a million times better than that Rogue Legacy garbage. Unfortunately the levels get repetitive here too so that decreases its longevity somewhat.

Epic Aged Like Milk

Games from the Epic games store that are just too old.

Nostalgia is a great thing, but not so great is discovering just how bad some older games are. Sonic Mania is a great example as I'm told people love this blue hedgehog. This old platformer with huge, timed and multipathed levels that relies more on map memory than skill does not scream good game or even passable game to me though. It's just bad.

Multiply this by 100 and you get the Antstream Arcade which hosts hundreds of old games which to their credit, they run tournaments for their community. What do you win you may ask? Crystals that let you play the old games. Yep, there is currency to play their arcade! Odd design but in truth how many times do you want to play old games like Mortal Combat, Metal Slug, Pac-Man, Galaga, Joe and Mac or Gods (just as a few examples) vs your current MMO / Elden Ring / etc?

Next up is Wargame: Red Dragon, a tactical RTS hybrid that does both of those poorly thanks to a terrible user interface. On the war map screen you can push little figurines of tanks, planes and boats around into regions to feel like a real war general - only to find that the tank you pushed into enemy territory is actually just 1 APC and that 1 jeep of the enemy is around 50 fighting vehicles. Yes, those details are available somewhere but that's just shit. The RTS segment is the part where you can then control your troops on the field which plays like a bad and more bland version of Red Alert without the building component.

As bad as those are, nothing beats Magic Legends which is simply not available anymore - meaning regardless of whatever merits it once had the launcher is quite literally just garbage now.

Centipede, Black Widow and Death Coming

Three silly pixel games.

Black Widow: Recharged and Centipede: Recharged

These two top down arcade shooters could almost be the same game. In Black Widow you play a spider on a web that shoots a machine gun against incoming mosquitoes and bees to get points, while in Centipede you play just as a gun that fires at a variety of bugs, but mostly decapitation resistant centipedes who moves akin to the space invaders, only this time they have cover - not you. Not great games by any means. I suppose they might be more fun in co-op but with so many better games to co-op the question remains... why?

Death Coming

Does it pay well?

As death's apprentice, you must kill as many people as you can in the time allotted using the many death traps lying around each isometric map - and you get a bonus for killing three specific people too. "Death traps" is used loosely, because these could be anything from changing traffic lights when they shouldn't to summoning alien invaders. It's morbidly fun but quickly repetitive and is only made worse when angels show up to make your job more difficult. Not a bad game, but there are certainly better ones.

Bio Menace Stargunner Jill

Well, that sounds like a wacky and possibly adult Japanese movie.

Bio Menace

Die, battle toad!

When mutants invade Metro City (hmm, aren't there always mutants in Metro?), the CIA sends their top operative Naked Snake to recon kill them all. As a 2D action scroller, Snake must blast his way through the teeming mutant horde to also rescue survivors and find keys to doors to score points and advance to the next level... where he needs to do it all again only against stronger enemies! While the controls are decent enough there are simply too many annoyance factors in this game for me - all of which are present in stage 1. Stupid looking enemies? Check. Helpless while climbing ladders? Check. Keys hidden to force backtracking? Check. Dying restarts level? Check. Definitely not one for me - I give it 1 plane crash you can walk behind out of 5. Not worth playing.

Insight: Jumping up ladders is much faster than the regular "climb" action.

Stargunner

Ugh, who designed this ship? Oh right, I did.

Much like Biomenace, this 2D space shooter was also made by Apogee in which you must destroy some aliens, preferably all of them! Starting with a Star Wars type scrolling intro is usually a bad sign, and the game doesn't improve much from there as it becomes a stock standard spaceship bullet hell type fare. I do quite like the ship customization ability in between missions, but not being able to flip around to use the cannon you put on the bottom of your vessel and make it shoot up, even temporarily, is just stupid. Sorry, another one not worth playing. It gets 1 random voice over out of 5. If you want a similar old school game try Tyrian 2000 instead.

Jill of the Jungle

Pacman would like his ghosts back.

This three game series has players platforming around as the titular Jill, who moves with all the grace of an ox and can't throw daggers below waist height. The graphics are somewhat/really bad, the controls clunky, and the story near non-existent. While the sound effects choices are also questionable the music on some levels is really good - which is a welcome surprise!  Also, because most of the levels are short and dying still achieves progress (at least in the early maps) this actually turned out to be a fun distraction! Unfortunately it did start getting repetitive later on but still not bad given its age. It certainly did better than the two above! I give it 1.5 sexy pixels out of 5.

Insight: Don't bother jumping if you are in climb mode. Just use the direction buttons.

The King of Fighters 2002

Brawling for the sake of brawling!

Instead of having any story whatsoever, this fighting game instead has 42+ characters, which is a massive line up. Each match is 3 versus 3 (apart from the boss fights), has mostly well animated sprites and generally has good, blood pumping music for each round.

I'm not sure about the fighters being "balanced", as the hit boxes are quite spot on and the time limit of 60 seconds per round makes it tough to be aggressive with the fellas who have shorter range or more defensive moves.

My sparkles are better than yours!

Fortunately for rookie button mashers like myself, defeat/continue gives you a choice of options to make your next time slightly easier after your score is reduced to 0. Maybe your power bar is always full, or the enemy AI is dumber, or the enemy only has 1/3rd of their HP. That's a pretty good system for player enjoyment I think.

Definitely fun but also definitely short if you are just going for the "once through" like I am. There is obviously more replayability if you are a hunter of secret moves and such. I give it 2 evil android guys out of 5.

Tyrian 2000

Space Invaders ... to the max!

While it can be played in arcade mode, Tyrian 2000 actually offers a 5 chapter story mode which was far more appealing for me to play. In it Trent the protagonist is put through the ringer in a crazy story of evil corporations, aliens and fruit cultists.

Also, regardless of your mission - be it scouting, escaping, or destroying a sun, the game play of "destroy everything without dying" holds true. This is because the more things you explode, the more money you get to upgrade your ship. The customization options are vast and is one of my favorite parts of this game.

One of the simpler level boss fights.

The music is awesome too, and the occasional choice between missions is also good. Where it gets messy is in the action portion, as later missions have so much crap flying on the screen. There are also a few missions which become a memory game (looking at you Chapter 3 Finale) because you need to know before hand where to position yourself to not die.

A fun enough diversion, though the death repetition can be a turn off. I give it 2 super carrots out of 5.