Pepsiman's Neglected Reviews

This is probably true for most everyone that plays and writes about games in a non-professional capacity, but I tend to play and complete a lot more games than what I actually get around to reviewing. But sometimes there are games that I mean to or otherwise really want to review, yet am ultimately unable to formerly address in a timely manner due to any number of circumstantial reasons. Since I still like to have my thoughts on them written down in some capacity, though, I figured, why not do a list? And that's where we're at now. This list seeks to codify my basic thoughts about a game without spending the time and length necessary to do a proper review. Focusing mainly on games I previously meant to review or whose reviews I never otherwise finished and published, entries on this list garner a typical 1 to 5 stars as per the norm on Giant Bomb and a brief paragraph outlining my opinion on a game. This list can also potentially include games I've just completed and know I won't end up properly reviewing, but those will likely be in the minority.

List items

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  Persona 4 Arena

  Score: 4/5 Stars (PS3 Version) Persona 4 Arena isn't an entry in the series that necessarily needed to happen, but it's one that I ultimately came away from feeling glad that it did. Doing a surprisingly thorough job justifying its existence specifically as a fighting game on not just a mechanical level, but a narrative one as well, Persona 4 Arena is certainly a package built for fanservice, but one that still achieves a lot of great things purely on its own merits as game. While it can be somewhat daunting to take in as a fighter mechanically once you delve into the nitty gritty, it's still got a lot to offer for genre neophytes and the storyline, while understandably possessing a smaller scope than its RPG brethren, is well-written and leads the series in some thoroughly exciting potential directions in the coming entries. It may not otherwise shake up any paradigms on either the gameplay front or the narrative one, but both parts are still so solid that it's an easy recommendation to make for those able to invest in at least some aspects of it, be it the combat or the storyline.

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  Space Invaders Extreme 2

  Score: 5/5 Stars The original Space Invaders Extreme was a bold and extremely successful attempt by Taito to take one of gaming's iconic, but simplest franchises and renovate it with renewed relevance without losing the core identity. Space Invaders Extreme 2 takes that legacy and turns it into an even more refined package, with better, more apparent readily apparent unity between the core gameplay and the various metagames for level and score progression, as well as a sublime visual and audio presentation that simultaneously compliment the game's retro core and modernized implementation. This is the basic arcade game done with modern gameplay design sensibilities and the end result is nothing short of superb.

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  Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury

  Score: 4/5 Stars Bangai-O HD is a dumb, dumb game. Your only purpose in life is to pilot a generic-looking mech and, ideally, be the one letting all hell loose with thousands of onscreen projectiles simultaneously, rather than being the recipient of that same hell from the levels. But, as with many Treasure games, it's that single-mindedness in the gameplay conceits and the sheer refinement that comes with it that makes Bangai-O HD's chaos so fun to play through and endure. The game's difficulty is sharp enough that it can't be universally recommended, but that matters little since that's a key component of the game's identity and it fulfills that overall vision very well in practice. If you're looking for a reminder of what older games were like, when games were "just games," Bangai-O HD is a great reminder of that in most every regard.

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  Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 2 - Innocent Sin

  Score: 3/5 Stars (PSP Version) Persona 2: Innocent Sin on the PSP very clearly comes from a different time and place for RPGs in terms of both its story presentation and gameplay mechanics. While Atlus has seen fit to at least update the battle system so that the menus are significantly less clunky than what was to be had in the original PS1 version, it otherwise plays like a shining example of 90s era RPGs, for both better and for worse. Naturally, its existence as an SMT game does mean that it has a lot of interesting things up its sleeve in both its mechanics and its narrative, many of which still resonate today and remain unique, but since their implementation has otherwise been largely left alone, it cannot necessarily be recommended as a good first entry for those new to the series, even if otherwise exists largely in isolation from the other games. If you have patience and give it the time of day, though, you'll find an engaging game with a lot to say philosophically on the human condition that's still very much so worth seeing to the end.

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  Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

  Score: 5/5 Stars Rarely is the western game industry known for its knack for arcade shooters like many Japanese studios of yore once were, but if any such game does deserve to belong in that same pantheon, it's certainly Jamestown. With just the right feel in both the sprites' aesthetics and the gameplay to hearken back to the Neo-Geo days while still containing enough mechanical newness to feel fresh today, Jamestown proves that games as a medium weren't actually "done" with new shooters per se post-Ikaruga. While some might initially malign the level progression as being restrictive due to have access made relative to one's difficulty level, it actually serves as a great training tool to wean you on not just how to generally act and react in a shooter in general, but also how to utilize the game's unique mechanics to your advantage. Couple all of that with a humorously self-serious and dumb story and a great amount of replay value in the form of both ships and a challenge mode and you have a fine shooter that stands tall with the best of them without leaving novice players behind.

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  Vanquish

  Score: 5/5 Stars (PS3 Version) With nary a moment of any real downtime from start to finish, Vanquish is always an elegant, energetic third person shooter. With a lineage that combines the basic shooting and cover mechanics of Gears of War with the swiftness and precision of Ninja Gaiden, Vanquish is a relentless, yet pleasantly fast shooter whose only main concern in life is that you have fun and that you look great doing it, too. Much of the end result is sorely dependent on how competently you can slide around and aim your gun (with those two things rarely not being at the same time), but since Vanquish gives you a lot of fun weapons to play and makes every moment in the game a setpiece in its own right, it's not hard to come away from the game joyously on edge and on a serious adrenalin high. To say it does everything right as a shooter is to therefore not give it enough credit. If nothing else, though, Vanquish definitively proves once and for all that which should have been obvious in the first place: a game developer's region does not inherently make or break their ability to make a competent, worthwhile shooter, as Platinum has thoroughly outdone themselves and many of their Western peers.