Recent reviews by OPPAI-INARI

This game is a brilliant experience. Take the core Elden Ring combat gameplay, stack on hero-style unique character abilities, and then add Sekiro ledge grabbing and a sprint that moves you as fast as Torrent. Now, drop three players in from spectral hawks like they're landing in a Fortnite map (complete with shrinking ring of death), and let them explore and slay for runes to level up or shop with, and new equipment to swap to.

It's basically the same gameplay loop as Elden Ring, just supercharged to hyperspeed. You don't have to sit there poring over whether this item or that item is better, because the UI clearly tells you—and you don't have TIME to sit there looking at gear, either, because the daytime where you are able to explore and grind is very short, only about 10-15 minutes. That's not a lot of time to try and explore and chunk down bosses, especially if the game drops you in an area that's hard to navigate or far from the daily boss location.

If you enjoyed Elden Ring for the PvE combat, this is that, just better. If you enjoyed Elden Ring for the story and worldbuilding, there's actually quite a lot of that here too. If you enjoyed Elden Ring for the leisurely exploration or character expression through customization, you MIGHT not like this game because it doesn't have a lot of that, although there is some build freedom and you do get free cosmetic skins. If you enjoyed Elden Ring for the PvP, don't buy this, because there isn't any. And if you didn't enjoy Elden Ring, uh, don't buy this. lol.

[edit] Oh, and I haven't had any technical issues at all besides some graphical weirdness when I had motion blur enabled. If you're having major visual weirdness, try disabling motion blur in the settings. For me, it's been completely smooth sailing on 4K, Maximum, 60 FPS, no issues at all.

I have to be honest. I don't think this game is very fun. It's disappointing, because there's a lot of promise here in theory, but the core combat gameplay just doesn't work well enough to be entertaining for long.

The main problems are that you are constantly under assault by 3+ enemies at a time, and most enemy attacks will send you flying. You have a defend button which can be used to harmlessly parry attacks with semi-decent timing (the window is fairly large, relatively speaking), or block attacks at the cost of a large portion of your stamina gauge. Sounds manageable, right?

The problem with the block is that when you parry an attack, you are stuck for a half-second or so, which means you can't immediately retaliate, and if another enemy attacks you in that period, it counts as a block, not a parry. This happens CONSTANTLY. Not only that, but when multiple enemies are on top of you in some of the tight spaces in the game, it can be basically impossible to tell when an enemy that is behind or literally inside of another enemy is about to attack.

So you inevitably get hit, take a quarter of your life or more even if you're playing a fighter with 1/2 of all upgrade points invested in vitality, sent flying, flipping across the room, and then have to try and reorient yourself against the next 3+ staggered attacks that will come in. Even if you successfully parry all 3 enemies, you're then left with no real time to retaliate, allowing you a single swing of your weapon, maybe. Enemies take 10, 20, 30, or more hits to take down, though, so this leads to combat being a grueling slog where you have to parry 30, 60, 90 times or more in a single engagement—and each room will have 3-5 engagements in it. It's completely insane.

I have three characters; a level 13 fighter, a level 16 mystic, and a level 11 bandit. I do not really enjoy playing any of them. The mage is the most functional, but I had to respec her spells seven times before I found "the good spells", because many of the spells you can take are simply very inferior to others. The Mystic's shield power is completely useless; basically a noob trap, and while the instant stunning beam is very useful when you can use it, the extremely long cooldown basically means you get it once a combat.

Anyway, I really wanted to like this game, and I put a lot of time into it, but I just don't like it, really. Unfortunately. I had a lot of people supporting me and telling me "no, no, it gets better after level 10!" and, well, I got past level 10 three times. I just don't really like it. The quests are grindy, the combat is tedious, and the graphics are ugly. Maybe it's more fun in multiplayer.

Let me get some details out of the way for those in a hurry:

• the main character is exclusively a faceless Australian male (but you can customize his skin color)
  
• at over 5 hours in, I'm only onto Act II, so the game is pretty long (I only have 3 of 10 waifus)
  
• in terms of runtime, this game is MOSTLY gameplay, not mostly adult content
  
• however, there is also quite a bit of adult content available if you want that
  
• BUT not all of the adult content is skippable (so it's not possible to play it as an SFW game)
  
• nearly all adult content is MxF, but there is some FxF and TxF content (with no story implications)

Subverse defied my expectations in a lot of ways. This game was years in the making and it really does show; it's incredibly polished for what it is. The core gameplay goes back and forth between three modes, with a starship menu as the interstitial portion. The three modes are:

1. 360-degree 2.5D (3D graphics, 2D gameplay) overhead view shooting with customizable special weapons
   
2. a simple sort of grid-based overhead tactical combat (simple mechanics, the maps look nice)
   
3. visual novel-style conversations with full 3D animation on characters during conversations

After the intro/extended tutorial, which is at least an hour long, the gameplay loop goes like this: you pick a star system from the solar map, you fly around the star system looking for things to do on each planet, and then you do those things. Some of them are ship combat (1. above), some of them are ground combat (2. above), and some of them are simple menu-driven events where you need a character with the correct skills to get the best reward.

Story progression almost exclusively takes place before and after missions, which are accessed the same way; fly up to a planet and start the mission. The story is delivered through fully-voiced VN-style conversations with the characters, and here is where we get to my first real complaint about the game.

I don't hate the writing in Subverse, but it's disappointing in a way, because the game is actually incredibly fleshed-out. The setting and story are rich and deep, and the characters have complete backstories with some real drama involved. There's a Mass Effect-style Codex where you can check out lore surrounding the setting, and everything is really coherent in that regard.

I was really impressed with how much love was put into the setting considering how little the game itself seems to value its own creativity. What I mean by that is that it doesn't take itself seriously at all. It's like the developers were afraid to make a serious sci-fi game that is also an adult game, so there are constant "ironic" meta-jokes about how you're only playing the game to jerk off, and the developers even refer to their own game as "smut shovelware."

Like, I get being self-deprecating as a form of deflection, but Subverse is a legitimately good game, and it's disappointing to see the developers take this angle. I would really have preferred a more sincere take on the story and dialogue—not more serious, because the game is actually very funny at times, and I have laughed out loud several times—but simply without the irony and meta elements. That stuff falls off a bit a few hours in, but in the first couple of hours the game goes really hard on reminding you that this is a relatively low-budget adult game.

As I said though, it's not game-ruining, and there's a lot to like here besides. I wish the developers had tried a little harder on a few elements; there's a tech tree for ship upgrades, for example, but they're all simply linear upgrades to your stats. You can recruit new units for the ground combat, but there's no customization to them and they're all inhuman monsters, which is kind of disappointing—they do have radically different stats and abilities, though.

The ground combat itself is entertaining, if a bit brainless; if you have ever played a tactical game in your life you will find it very hard to lose battles, at least early on where I am. Meanwhile, the space combat is in my opinion the more engaging of the two modes; which waifu you bring with you determines your sub-weapon, and it can have a big effect on how difficult the combat is. Different enemy factions are easier to handle with certain sub-weapons, and it makes a huge difference in how the combat plays.

So far I am really enjoying Subverse and looking forward to getting back into it. I actually haven't even delved into the "P.A.N.D.O.R.A." system, which is the meat of the adult content; from poking around in there it seems like every girl has at least a dozen different scenes that you can unlock, including solo action, action with the captain, action with the other waifus, and apparently action with some of the inhuman monsters, which is a bit curious. The characters are all very attractive in a kind of generically hot way; I also would have liked to have seen more diverse body types in the game but that's a very minor complaint.

Overall, if you like sci-fi games, if you like twin-stick shooters, if you like funny games, and you don't mind some meta silliness, I definitely recommend Subverse. It's well worth the price of admission and the developers should be a little less humble about what they've accomplished, IMO.

The best free game on Steam. Arguably the best Survivors-like. Very enjoyable even if you're not a fan of Hololive, or Vtubers in general. Strongly recommended for anyone who enjoys video games.

So, this is a VERY TENTATIVE recommendation. I've been saying for years that I want more games like this. Not only more beat 'em ups, but also more "sexy" games that are not outright X-rated. This game is really PG-13 at best aside from a few of the pinups, but it is cute and sexy, so that earns it a ton of points from me. It needs those points really badly, though.

Maiden Cops is what game enthusiasts refer to as a "belt scroller." It's a beat 'em up title in the vein of Final Fight and Streets of Rage, and it takes particularly heavy inspiration from the latter, even going so far as to make the "Maiden Department" unlockables menu a direct reference to the fan-made Streets of Rage Remake. Maiden Cops also borrows a lot of concepts from Streets of Rage, particularly the third game, like weapons with depleting health bars, Nina's entire moveset, and a direct clone of the 'Susie' enemy from that game.

First, let me get some praises out of the way. I've played about an hour and a half at this point, and I didn't complete the game, so keep that in mind. The best part of the game is that its pixel art is well-made and charming, to the point that I would really have preferred if the whole game had been pixel art. The style of this game is what we call "ero-kawaii", where it's cute but also sexy, and the artists did a great job capturing that in the pixel art, while the hand-drawn art leans much more heavily on the "sexy" angle and I found it kind of off-putting. Also, there are some fun unlockables including a surprising number of outfits for the girls, and you can tell that the developers put a lot of love into the design and worldbuilding.

Unfortunately, it's at that point where my criticism begins. There is too much dialogue in this game, and a lot of it tries to be funny, but at least to me, it isn't. The characterization is really poor -- all of the characters are basically pre-packaged implementations of bone-stock anime tropes: you have the irascible loli veteran, the dumb-as-rocks bimbo, and the shy curvy girl who is actually a giant pervert. You know these characters already, and if you enjoy tired anime tropes then you will be all about these characters and their world. Personally I found it incredibly tedious.

One of the most important parts of a beat 'em up is the music, and this game falls flat in that category, at least for this reviewer. The music isn't BAD; it's certainly not annoying. However, I also never noticed it or grooved along with it. It's just kind of there, and doesn't really get you pumping the way a brawler's music should. Similarly, the sound effects in combat are uninspired and don't really give you a good impression of impact.

That makes sense, I suppose, because your attacks don't really impact very well. What I mean is that enemies are pretty spongy and need a lot of hits to take down. This might be okay as you can juggle enemies, like in Fight'N Rage. However, in that game, the movesets were made for extended juggling, while in this game they really aren't. Many attacks knock enemies down or away and have too much recovery time for you to juggle with them. You're left mashing your basic combo, which feels awful because there's no variation in it at all.

Speaking of Fight'N Rage, that game only had three characters, but it was okay because they felt really distinct and had a lot of unique moves. This game also has just three characters, and while Meiga feels kinda unique, the other two are too similar. The real problem is more just that the characters' movesets are too small. This is compounded by the fact that throws aren't very powerful, so the only reason to do a throw is to hit one enemy with another, but this is rarely useful outside of bosses and not very effective besides.

Maiden Cops has a heavy emphasis on scoring, and your score is how you earn money for the in-game unlockable shop. Kudos to the developers for making this stuff unlockable in-game and not DLC. However, every single pickup item in the game simply gives you score. There are no health pickups. This feels pretty awful as the game becomes a war of attrition avoiding attacks at all cost instead of attacking aggressively.

The core of a beat 'em up is the combat and I hate to say it, but it feels pretty poor. The aforementioned bad combat sound effects are a huge part of it, as are the characters' small movesets. The game tries to make up for this somewhat by adding a third special move, but special moves and blocking are both tied to the same gauge, which charges pretty slowly. This means that you kind of have to choose between offense and defense, which I guess is fine because blocking is largely pointless anyway. Many attacks seem to go through a block including basically anything a boss does. You're better off dodging with the 22 or 88 inputs than trying to block most of the time.

Another huge problem is that, any single hit your character takes is an instant knockdown. This feels AWFUL. Not only does it not really feel like your character is getting beat up, but it also means that they had to make hits do an appropriate amount of damage for a knockdown. Plus, you have no change to riposte with a special attack, and it totally resets the flow of combat.

Nearly every enemy seems to have an invincible wakeup attack, too, which is incredibly tedious in a game where you're expected to juggle. You have to immediately dash away from any enemy that hits the ground lest you get whacked and knocked down yourself. Plus, enemies sometimes (and bosses usually) have super armor, which is just terrible in a game like this. Bosses are always surrounded by mooks like Death Adder in Golden Axe, so I guess the idea is to either throw the mooks at the boss or use them to build up super gauge, but that's tedious and time-consuming. I want to beat up the boss!

I noted earlier that bunny loli Nina Usagi's moveset was borrowed straight from SOR3; she's Skate, basically, with specials borrowed from SF's Juri for some reason. Meiga Holstaur is basically Ricardo from Fight'N Rage with Cammy's Quick Spin Knuckle. Super idiot Priscilla Salamander has the most original moveset, but I thought she felt the worst to play. I don't mind that their moves are borrowed, I just wish the developers had gone further in drawing from their inspirations.

I have a few other complaints, too; I don't know why the in-game voice lines are all in Japanese, and the dialogue advances way too slowly even if you mash the button. They're skippable, but I don't want to skip; I want to know what's going on in the game. I just also don't want to sit there for 5 minutes between stages. I don't particularly care for the setting, either -- it seems to be a world where men are normal humans while all women are monster girls. It feels contrived and a little shameless, but maybe I'm the one in the wrong on this point; I'm sure monster girl fans will love it.

I also find that the loading times are surprisingly long considering I'm using almost literally the fastest possible PC available right now (AM5 + PCIe5 storage) with regard to load times. I suspect this is not a technical problem but a design choice to allow us to appreciate the sexy pinup art on the load screen. Make that an option -- press button to continue on loading screens -- and make the default "instant loading."

Ultimately I am going to play more Maiden Cops and probably spew a lot of expletives while doing so. If you're SUPER into monster girls and beat 'em ups, I think you should probably get this, and if you're kinda into both, then grab it, because it's cheap. If you're not specifically into both monster girls or beat 'em ups, I would stay away from this title. Go play Streets of Rage Remake or one of Dha Lau Hoo's ROM hacks. I think I wish this WAS a SOR3 ROM hack.

While a lot of people have drawn comparisons between UFO 50 and the old "Action 52" cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System, there's really no comparison. UFO 50 is a package of 50 original (meaning "new", not "classic") retro-style games bundled up into one purchase with a little bit of overarching meta-story. There are all kinds of retro games; if you enjoy classic titles from the 8-bit era, then buy this now.

To be clear, this is fifty games. Not a collection of minigames, and not "a couple of good games and 45 trash programs." Every single game is complete with its own title screen, mechanics, levels, and so on. Some sprites do get re-used but it's pretty sparing, at least up to the first 25 games. It's fifty real retro-style games, and while some of them can be beaten on a lunch break, the game rewards you for excelling at these titles with high scores or quick clears, and the difficulty means you'll be struggling at those challenges for a good while.

The meta-plot is basically that you (or someone) find an old computer gaming system in a storage unit and you boot it up to see what games there are. Back in the real-life 8-bit era, the distinction between a "home computer" and a "game console" was not so clear, and so the "LX" computer lies somewhere between the Nintendo NES and 8-bit home computers like the Commodore 64 or the MSX.

Indeed, many of the games in UFO 50 feel more like home computer games than console games. Certain titles evoke the feel of MS-DOS or even PC-98 games, while others are very clearly aping the NES or PC Engine style. However, none of the games are bone-stock reimplementations of retro game tropes. Every single title has something pretty fresh and interesting going for it, with some very clever mechanics on display.

I'd like to say that the games are incredibly authentic to their retro inspirations, but the degree of authenticity varies a lot. Some games feel like they really could be NES ROMs, while others have too many colors, too many sprites, and anachronistic gameplay functions. There's also the fact that all of the LX games (games in UFO 50) are made for a wide-screen aspect ratio as befits a modern PC game.

Personally speaking, the games (at least, the first 25, which I've tried) do kind of skew a little bit toward the puzzle genre, and even the action titles often have puzzle elements to them. I don't hate this, but I'm very stupid, so this makes a lot of the games extremely difficult for me. However, that doesn't apply to every game, and in most of the titles the stakes are (perhaps a bit anachronistically) pretty low, like having infinite credits or lots of checkpoints. I've managed to clear a few games already, so if I can do it, almost anyone can.

If you look at it from the point of view of being a gamer in 2024 buying fifty games at once, this package is a phenomenal value. Even if you only enjoy a handful of the games, you've still paid just a few dollars for those games, and if you like them all, well, that's $0.50 a game. Are you really going to miss out on fifty games for $0.50 each? I thought not.

I bought this some years ago on the recommendation of a friend who has since passed away. I saw it in my library the other day and decided to load it up, expecting something mediocre given that the game's been in "Early Access" for years now. I was completely mistaken.

Onirism is an extremely charming third-person action game that blurs the line between action platformer and third-person shooter. It has both shooting and melee combat (with dodging and blocking) with impressive movement tech and a ridiculous amount of toy guns.

That's right, toy guns: this is a G-rated title, through and through. Despite perverted memes from some of the community members, there is no nudity or adult content anywhere in this game, so if you're here for that, you'd better look elsewhere. This is 100% cute and comical monster-blasting action using a wide variety of silly weapons, like water guns, foam dart launchers, exploding fruit, and even a pencil launcher. Actually there are at least two dozen guns in the game, and probably more. There are sub-weapons (a la Castlevania), there are gun variants with altered stats and unique capabilities (like scoped/unscoped, for example), and there are even vehicles to ride.

A lot of the charm of this game is in the main character, Carol. A young French girl who has had her beloved stuffed rabbit "Bunbun" stolen from her by a mysterious entity that came through a dark portal, she fearlessly charges through the portal to rescue her favorite plush toy. Carol's personality throughout the game is direct and no-nonsense in only the way that a hyperconfident child can be, and the dialogue is very often quite funny.

Overall, I feel ashamed to have let this one linger in my library so long, and it's ridiculous that it's only $18 considering the amount of content here. The game supports local co-op with up to 4 players, and it works well over Steam Remote Play Together, so grab a copy and play it with your friends. It's a blast!

(Little tip for getting Steam Remote Play to cooperate: we couldn't get Remote Play to reliably assign controller slots in a convenient way, so what we did was assign the keyboard/mouse to the last player in the game's controls. It'll make sense once you're trying to get it working.)

One of the greatest action roguelikes of all time. Brutally difficult and unforgiving but oh-so-rewarding once you get good at it.

PS: go to "Betas" and select "ntt_development" to get the latest version with bugfixes and new features including online play.

On this version, open chat while in-game (must be in-game) and type `/gml q=120 room_speed=q current_time_scale=30/q` for 120 FPS. Might break online play though. You can save that text in a file called "120.txt" in the game folder and then just type `/load 120` as a shortcut.

100% unmitigated kusoge. However, sometimes games have this way of being charming even if they are trash -- thus "kusoge", while literally meaning "sh*t game", doesn't really refer to "bad games", exactly.

To explain what I mean, I'll explain CULT vs GAL. This game has sub-Wolfenstein level design, approximately five unique textures, a grand total of four weapons (three of which shoot the same projectiles at varying rates), and most of the enemies are pretty much just "robed cultist with gun." The enemy AI is so poor that melee enemies struggle to approach you, while ranged enemies rarely even attack.

Despite that, the core combat gameplay can be pretty entertaining, especially once the more dangerous enemies are introduced (too late into the game, IMO.) There's a chainsaw enemy who might just make you piss yourself, and a brain-like enemy that constantly spawns weak melee attackers all around you. There's also a surprising amount of effort put into the story elements of the game, even if it's writing at the level where a 12 year old would find it sick nasty and a 15 year old would probably cringe. Just to give you an idea, the main character is named Hellcrusher Saki, and she flirts with the girly operator girl who gives her her orders.

Overall, the game is only an hour long, and while there are multiple difficulty levels and an Arena mode to play with, I don't know if anyone but the most die-hard edgelords or retro boomer shooter fans would want to bother. However, I think even that single play through is worth the $5 price of admission as long as you go in with the right mindset. If you're not specifically into retro shooters or gory games, I probably wouldn't bother, but anyone who digs old-school FPS games like Wolfenstein, Blake Stone, Project Warlock, and similar titles will probably have a good time with CULT vs. GAL.

I would love to see this developer tackle something a bit more ambitious, because there's definitely a creative spark here, but CULT vs GAL is so basic it would be hard for even a master game maker to create something really compelling.

Despite having some really rather nice sprite art, Zetria just isn't really a game that I can recommend. The developer has not learned from the lessons of the past, and the game lacks in basic areas like hit detection and platforming collision. I particularly miss the lack of what is sometimes called "coyote time" or "virtual touch", where you are given a grace period after your character leaves a platform where they can still jump without consuming a double jump. This game does not have virtual touch, so it is very likely that you will end up using your double jump the second you leave a platform when you really needed that double jump to get where you were going. I also find the lack of climbing or mantling mechanics a little baffling, and the enemy hit boxes are just terrible. Overall, despite the excellent art and competent sound design, I think this game is kind of disappointing in terms of the actual game play. I hope the developer updates it to improve these qualities and if so, I'll alter my review, but for now, I have to give this one a thumbs down.