Recent reviews by GRIMM

This game has several issues...

Game seems to have been translated to English, but only in certain parts. There are several instances the devs did not bother to translate. And what is translated is not translated very well. The game also seems to be unfinished in some parts, such as when I walked to the end of a road early on the road sort of floated of a hill and had missing assets. Kind of like what you'd see in games where you would clip out of bounds. Except in this case there did not seem to be any out of bounds. Got to a part of the game where I'm supposed to cook myself dinner and it seemed an impossible task placing objects together. Eventually one of the items just clipped right through the floor and this did not allow me to progress.

Outside of that the game is very directionless at times. I found myself dropped into some areas without any clue where to go next a few times. Only by sheer willingness to walk around aimlessly did I manage to find my way by pure luck.

Aside from that it's just not very fun or engaging. This seems very unpolished and unfinished.

This is the modern Contra sequel we never got and needed so badly. Iron Meat is not just similar but after playing it, it is completely evident that it is a straight homage to the original classic. Heck, they even give you 30 lives on the easy mode. Everything from the movement, jumps, the way the character even ducks is straight out of the OG Contra. It's not entirely like Contra though. Luckily the 3D style stages are nowhere to be seen. and for that I am thankful.

So for those who have no idea what Contra is, I'll break it down... Iron Meat is a retro styled run and gun shooter. You go through 9 stages while being bombarded by a wide variety of enemies while dodging various types of fire, pitfalls, environmental hazards and more. You are equipped with a rapid fire weapon as your basic arsenal and can collect new weapons along the way. You lose your equipped weapon when you die, but can store it as a reserve since you do have 2 weapon slots to switch between on the fly. Each level has an end stage boss with different weaknesses that require a lot of hits to take out. It's your standard retro style run 'n gun platform shooter. But really damn fun. You can also play this with a 2nd player in co-op. sadly there is no traditional online multiplayer. Remote Play together does work though if you don't have a live person next to you to grab a controller.

In total there are 9 stages each with their own theme. Each stage can be completed pretty quickly so in total you'll get about an hour or less from beginning to end. Not exactly a long game, but this was the norm for the type of game it is trying to emulate. You have 3 difficulties, easy, normal and hard . One of the key differences in each difficulty is the number of lives you have. 30 for easy (of course), 16 for normal, and 8 for hard. It does not appear that you can earn extra lives, so what you have is what you get. Lives do reset with each stage though. And this is a good thing as you will die a lot. Luckily none of the deaths really feel cheap at all.

One thing I love about this game is the aesthetics. It sort of has this Dead Space meets Doom in 2D vibe to it in the looks department. some enemies are just mutated people, where others are masses of biomechanical stuff. Many different flavors of enemy types. And the environments are gorgeous displays of modern settings fused with chunks of meat and teeth. and lots of blood! It's at times disgusting but in the best ways!

Pros:

• Satisfying gunplay
  
• Looks gorgeous
  
• Remote Play Together Support
  
• Perfect for Contra fans

Cons:

• A bit on the short side
  
• No traditional online multiplayer

First thing that kind of stuck out for me was the title. A little confusing since Isekai is not a verb, but rather a genre of fiction. Usually where a normal person is sent to a wild type of world completely out of their element where they have to survive. For those not familiar with this genre, think of stuff like Tron, Sword Romance Online, Brutal Legend, etc... That's basically what Isekai is.

So when I first tried the game out I kind of expected something like that. It's an easy enough trope to translate to a game. Right? Well maybe not for this developer. When you start out the story mode of Isekai'd you meet our "hero" who appears to be I think a game developer, or tester, or something. He is given a game to try out, a shoot 'em up. And then he starts playing the game, and as such, so do you. So wait, this is it? This is the Isekai? No accident sending him into the game? A portal maybe? Anything? Nope. He just starts playing the game, and that's it.

Basically if the hook of this game was for a cool Isekai story, you're going to be left disappointed. When you start the game it does not even appear as if you are playing as the person introduced in the beginning. You just pick from 4 generic anime characters who pilot different ships.

Then you play a very serviceable at best shoot 'em up. I mean it's not terrible. But it's just not that great either. Has no real defining qualities that set it apart from your standard fare shoot 'em up. You have 4 different types of ships, with 3 of them being very interchangeable in terms of their basic firepower, and one that has more of an arcing spread that makes the game way too easy. Each ship can also clear the screen with a bomb attack, or use an unlimited and powerful vertical laser. And when I say the game is easy, I'm not joking. I'm not very good at shoot 'em ups, and still found it very easy to dodge and weave in this one. Even on the highest difficulty where it mainly seems enemies are just given more health, but still have the same basic patterns.

I know it sounds like I'm ripping this game a apart here, but that's only because it is ridiculously priced. $13 usd is way too much for this. I know $13 isn't much. But for this type of game it is definitely asking too much, especially when looking at other shoot 'em ups that are similarly priced or even cheaper. (e.g. Ikaruga, R-Type Dimensions EX, Jamestown, etc...) This is more of a "wait for it be bundled if you're really curious" type of game.

I'll admit unlike some people I had never even really heard of this project before a few months ago. I had no idea this was actually something that started development roughly 8 years ago. I can kind of see that making sense for this compilation based on what I've played so far., That is to say that nothing seems like dumped in shovelware so far. Basically for those a little skeptical, no, this is not like Action 52. This is something entirely unique and seemingly a labor of love. Also put together by a team of indie veterans.

Why is this unique? Aren't there tons of other compilations available? Indeed there are. But nothing of this magnitude. You've got really 2 types of compilations. On one hand you have compilations that feature games that were previously released by various publishers. And some of these are massive as well. It's not entirely a difficult thing to put together considering the games are already there and just need to be emulated or ported. Most of the work is already done. And then you've got original compilations, such as Retro Game Challenge, the Dread X series, Retro Game Crunch, etc... But those are typically small in comparison when it comes to number of titles. The closest I can think of is Arcade Paradise which has a collection of 35 included games. That itself is no small feat, but when considering the types of games, it pales in comparison since those are just games modeled after arcade titles, which aren't very big.

UFO 50 though not only ups the ante with more titles, but rather than being based on simple arcade games this entire collection is more representative to the quality and lengths of titles you'd find on home consoles during the mid 80s to very early 90s, more so on the 8-bit side. So that is to say systems like the NES/Famicom and Master System. So much like those consoles you'll find games here that are short, but also some that are quite lengthy and packed full of depth. But the packed in value is not really enough to make it unique on its own. There's also an entire meta surrounding this package. A fictional universe these games existed in where a studio called UFO came out and put out a ton of games, starting with the rough and archaic Barbuta and continuing to evolve and get better and better throughout the span of this fictional developers history on this fictional 8-bit machine. And they did not just become some 1 trick pony. No, UFO decided to branch out and explore tons of different genres. But also reviving the legacy of some games with their own sequels making franchises in the collection. And having crossovers with some games featuring cameos from other titles. This is basically a publisher compilation for a publisher that never existed.


Well, if you look at my total playtime at the time of writing this I think it's safe to say there's no way I have played through each and every game in the collection. I haven't even booted up every game to be honest. I've tried about 20 or so titles so far. Some of them I will admit did not click, but I'm willing to give them another chance. Some of them clicked immediately though. A few of them I'm sure I've already dropped more than hour into at this point without even scratching the surface of them.

some of the titles I've tried so far:

Warptank - A hybrid of puzzle action and shooting mechanics where you maneuver a tank (that oddly resembles the one from Blaster Master) around a series of stages to get to the goal in each one. The trick here is that the tank can jump from one side of a platform to the opposite side by warping. So they can go from ground to ceiling, or from a left wall to a right wall, as well as diagonally in some spots. Along the way there are your typical hazards like spiked walls, enemies constantly lobbing projectiles at you, exploding mines and more. This one really makes you think of which path to take, and there's also some secrets to find if you explore well enough. I had a lot of fun with this one.

Mini & Max - I will admit this is one of my favorites so far. You play as a girl who gets locked in a room with dog by one of her siblings while her parents are away. You along with your dog strangely have the ability to literally shrink. And shrinking in different parts of this room sends you to a new area ant man style. So while the room itself is kind of small, the actual game grows quite big. It's also a fun platformer with lots to explore, characters to interact with and more. It's also super adorable!

Valbrace - A first person dungeon crawler reminiscent of old school CRPG titles. Pretty straight forward if you know the genre. Explore a maze, fight monsters, level up, etc... The combat system is what I quite liked about this one. Instead of being turn based its sort of punch-out style. You move left and right dodging attacks and looking for openings to attack the enemy. Quite fun stuff.

Paint Chase - This is the "splatoon" type one you've heard about probably. It's pretty fun. You move around an arena in a vehicle painting the floor and attacking other vehicles who are painting the floor the opposite color. Some enemies don't attack you, while others can. At the end of the match you win if you passed a certain percentage of the floor covered in your paint. Pretty simple, but fun.

Fist Hell - This one's a beat 'em up that sort of reminds me of games like the Kunio Kun brawlers or Scott Pilgrim. Kind of has a visual quality that reminds me most of River City Ransom Underground in fact. It's not an easy one mind you, but quite fun still.

Vainger - This one's a Metroidvania apparently more on the Metroid side since you use guns. I have not gotten far into it, so I'm not sure how the later abilities will impact the game. Off the bat though it has a neat gravity mechanic where you jump if you press the jump button again you shift to the ceiling to make it now an upside down platformer.

Grimstone - A full fledged old school JRPG. Complete with party system, towns to explore, loot, weapons and armor, and more. Not sure how long it will be, but it's nice to see something like this in the collection.

Night Manor - This one was a surprise to see in a collection like this. It's a legit old school point and click adventure title, and it seems a lot of care was put into this. Looks to be horror themed and filled with the same type of mechanics you'd expect from a proper P&C title.

There's several others I've tried but the names escape me at the moment of putting this review together. Some of them were shoot 'em ups, some smash TV style games, a 4X strategy title, some action sports titles, and a lot more. Basically this collection has you covered on sheer variety.


Up to you. I think the value is amazing though. $25usd for a collection this stacked is something that does not happen often. And from the way it looks like this was put together we may never see something like this again. While not every game is going to be a winner, I'm sure for most people several will be.

Oh, and it works on the Steam Deck!

Playing this game for the first few hours will seem like quite a chore as you will be managing a laundromat. The laundromat stuff is pretty easy, but also very tedious. For the first few hours it will be a pretty rough grind of loading machines and setting out the dry clothes for customers to earn profits to build up what you really came for which is the arcade. The arcade starts out small, and before too long it overtakes the game and starts to become the main source of daily profit for the business. At this point you can pretty much ignore the laundry machines and just focus on the arcade. There is still some daily tasks to keep in mind, such as cleaning up trash, occasionally fixing broken arcade machines, doing optional tasks for special currency, and more. That stuff though is pretty easy to knock out.

Once you get to the point of not needing to focus on the laundromat, you can do your daily cleanup tasks which you can knock out quickly and then just focus on playing games in the arcade for the rest of the day! And there are some great titles here and there ranging from a multitude of genres. Not everything is going to win you over course, but its worth trying everything out at least once. And playing games also to meet certain tasks will reward the machines with a popularity bonus that can increase money earned per hour to help maximize your daily profits. There's also some minimal micromanaging for the cabinets such as where you place them in the arcade, like having an unpopular machine next to a popular machine will give a boost to the less popular ones, and also setting the difficulty and price per play for customers for a variety of different hourly profit possibilities. And you'll want to look into the optional micromanaging to get things going as there are over 30 different cabinets to buy, as well as business expansions, and more. Luckily this part is not as tedious as the previous laundromat stuff was in the beginning.

The game has an nice aesthetic to it matching a cool retro 90s vibe. The music is also great! I'm not really familiar with the artists they picked for the game, but they nailed a lot of sounds that feel straight out of that era. The variety of arcade cabinets and other games is also amazing, with lots of them being nods to classic arcade games. Like I said before not all will win you over, but some definitely will. I found myself playing several of them for quite a bit literally running through the entire in game day on several occasions on quite a few titles.

What's better is that this game works wonderfully on the steam deck which is where I played most of it. Definitely check this one out if you are a fan of retro arcade games or want a simple but fun business management game with a nice twist.

You get 7 faithfully ported Arcade games from CAPCOM covering the Marvel Universe largely comprised of the familiar X-Men and Avengers members with some other superheroes and villains in the mix. 3 of the games are entirely Marvel, with 4 being crossovers between Marvel and CAPCOM rosters. And 6 of the 7 are versus fighting games, with the odd one out being The Punisher which is an old school beat 'em up game much like other CAPCOM classic Beat 'Em Ups including Final Fight or Captain Commando.

And wow, the rosters in this compilation are stacked! The biggest title boasting a whopping 56 characters. That of course being Marvel vs. CAPCOM 2. the crème de la crème. The very reason I'm sure a lot of people are buying this. But make no mistake, the other titles are not to be overlooked. There are some characters exclusive to certain titles. Some have different types of rulesets and features. Hell, if music is your thing, I'd say you'd want to check out everything else over Marvel vs. CAPCOM 2!

If you like fighting games but find them to be very difficult or too technical, the Marvel fighting games from CAPCOM might be your ticket to easing into this genre. The games are generally a lot more forgiving than the core fighting games from CAPCOM like Street Fighter and Darkstalkers. they still reward practice and tact over sloppiness of course. But the games can sometimes be so chaotic you can get away with some button mashing even and not look like a total fool. And if you're really just that bad then the game also has optional assist buttons to set you for special moves with ease. But practice makes perfect so they say, and each of the fighting games includes a practice mode.

Each game comes with an assortment of customization features, with options such as attack power, cpu difficulty, number of rounds where applicable, unlimited or limited continues, screen filters, easy unlocks for hidden characters, and lots more. You can basically custom tailor each game to your liking when playing in single player. I found the difficulty adjustments to be extremely fair for each title whether looking for a challenge or wanting to just roll through each game with little effort. The only game I thought needs some work from CAPCOM on balancing the difficulty adjustments might be X-Men: Children of the Atom. The CPU seems a little over the top aggressive no matter what difficulty you pick. The only real notable changes I saw in adjusting the difficulty boiled down to the health of the CPU, and not really much else. All the other games though handled just fine!

As for other extras, not much has changed in the overall packaging that brings everything together. It's very similar to CAPCOM Fighting Collection. You have your gallery with tons of artwork and concept art, a music player to listen to all of the music from each game, practice modes for the fighting games in the collection complete with visual hitboxes, rollback for online play, and the normal odds and ends to wrap things up. It's a clean package overall. If I had to change anything I would love to be able to listen to the game music when say browsing the artwork gallery for example. Sadly the music from the soundtracks only play within the music section and nowhere else. Instead you have standard music made specifically for the compilation piped through in a loop everywhere else.

One thing I hope CAPCOM patches in is a quicksave slot unique to each game. As of now there is only 1 quicksave slot for the entire compilation. That means if you do a quicksave for The Punisher for example, and then want to quicksave Marvel vs. CAPCOM 2 later, well, your only option to make one for MvC2 is to overwrite the quicksave for The Punisher. Tat's kind of a bummer.

Now to kind of bring up a common complaint I've seen... the price. Yeah, that thing. In usd it's $49.99 at the time I'm writing this review. I'm not going to sit here and BS you. That's not cheap for some people. I get that. But at the same time it's neither an unfair price. When I look at the games in this collection and realize how long they have been buried in the vault. When I look at the prices of these individual titles on places like eBay, well... But wait, that's not a fair comparison, since these are arcade ports. Right? Well, arcade machines are just a bit more expensive then the already ridiculously overpriced copies these games go for in the individual console releases. I'm not going to try and convince you that $49.99 is not much. For some people it is. I'm just saying it's a fair price for what you get. And is this collection worth getting? Yes. Yes indeed. It is worth getting!

Fire Pro Wrestling World is a wrestling simulation at its core. If you want something more bombastic with amazing visuals, check out the WWE 2K titles. If you want something more arcadey, there's games like Action Arcade Wrestling and others that will have you covered. FPWW aims to give wrestling fans something a little different though with the ability to have different promotions, rosters, stables and more at your fingertips. It's one of the deepest wrestling sims around.

Fire Pro Wrestling World like many of the previous titles offers up one of the deepest create a wrestler modes seen in any wrestling game. From looks to moveset FPWW has got you covered. Even for the arenas themselves! For those who don't want to spend the time though there are several creators who have amassed an army of real and fictional wrestlers over on the FPWW Steam workshop. And they got you covered on just about everything you can imagine. Want to create a classic WCW roster? They got you. Want to create a roster of nothing but Marvel superheroes? They still got you. And the likenesses can be pretty amazing for most of them. The only caveat to workshop downloads is that some wrestlers do require the purchase of some DLC. But tons of them do not, so you should be fine with just the base game.

Speaking of the DLC, none of it is really required, but some of it can be fun. Such as the NJPW DLC which adds in a healthy amount of real life at the time New Japan Pro Wrestling stars, with new moves for create a wrestler, new voices, and more. Even a neat little story mode called Fighting Road. There's also a couple of Stardom rosters as DLC to add in a bunch of real life female wrestlers from that company. You also have Fire Promoter which let's you play as well, a promoter. And several other bits of DLC mixed around to buy if you want. None of it is required, and honestly most of it I'd say avoid as it adds very little to the main game outside of CAW stuff. But if you do decide to jump down the DLC rabbit hole, wait for some sales.

They do have this handy bundle available, but for everything else it's best to piece meal or just avoid.

As for the actual gameplay, FPWW has several modes of match types. You got your normal wrestling, tag teams, cage matches and more. They even have crazy stuff like barbed wire matches and even one where the ring explodes after a certain period! You can also play matches inside of an octagon with MMA rules. And also while not the best simulation, there's even boxing/kickboxing rules which is kind of neat. There's also foreign objects you can grab as well to cause more damage to opponents with things such as chair shots to the head! And yes, you can in fact bust wrestlers open and make them bleed. Wouldn't be a wrestling game without it.

You have full control over your wrestler, and perform moves by standing, running, or during grapples. A lot of is based on timing and position of the wrestlers which is pretty easy to get used to. You can throw wrestlers into the turnbuckles, or climb them yourself for diving moves, fight outside the ring, etc... They have most of the aspects of wrestling covered here. You even have a neat trading blows segment at certain times. The wrestling is honestly extremely fun, especially with all the various moves you can go through for each wrestler with the grapple system. Everytime you get in grapple position you can choose a move based on which button you press plus which direction. And moves are tied to 3 buttons, which would equate usually to a weak, medium and strong grapple move. The directions multiply this quite a bit. You also have some devestating moves which when mixed with the opponents own logic rules can cause things like critical damage putting them out of action essentially depending on their own weaknesses. And man is it a delight to crit someone!

You also have online multiplayer for anyone interested in that!

Fire Pro Wrestling has a deep history having been around for well over 30 years. And FPWW has pretty much claimed the top spot in the series being arguably the best game in the entire series.

If you ever saw Doom 64 back in the day and overlooked it due to the countless ports of Doom on home consoles, guess again. Doom 64 is no mere port. It's frankly not a port at all. Doom 64 was a completely original game for the series that for over 20 years never made it's way to PC. At least not officially.

Doom 64 retains the classic corridor shooting, demon infested, keycard grabbing goodness that you would see in Doom 1 and 2, with newer sprites to the enemies, colors that pop more, and an overall cleaner look to just about everything. and Nightdive managed to make it look even better. And also some great new features like Widescreen and even Ultrawide support, and jumping from the original hardcoded 35fps to now 60 frames per second for a much smoother experience. It also works great whether you're a keyboard warrior or want to keep it old school with a controller. Works amazing on the Steam Deck too.

There's not much else to say here. If you've played Doom 1 or 2, this is going to feel right at home for you.

For a crisp fiver this is an A+ port of the game that was originally never a port.

Let me get one thing out of the way that I want to make perfectly clear. I'm really not a big fan of old school Atari games. I'm talking mainly on the ones developed or published by Atari for the 2600. Not knocking some of the quality 3rd party stuff found on Atari 2600. A lot of that was good. Especially from the likes of Activision. But Atari themselves released a lot of pretty basic stuff. That's not to say it was all bad. They had some fun titles scattered. But it was mostly pretty bland. This is one of the reasons I could not without any good conscience recommend the previous Atari Vault collection that was delisted and replaced with this title. And because of this I had my doubts on Atari 50 being any good.

I'm glad I was wrong. Atari 50 is fantastic.

They trimmed a lot of the fat from the 2600 line. Not to say they got rid of all the duds. Some of those are still here. As it stands they dropped the 2600 collection down to about 50 titles (after the free update added a few more titles), and expanded their arcade collection by a good amount adding in some really fun titles. They also added in games from the 5200 and 7800, as well as the Lynx and Jaguar, and some of the Atari home computers as well. In total over 100 classic titles. Much like before they are not all winners, but there is a lot more to be exicted about with this one, such as Tempest 2000, Cloak & Dagger, Ninja Golf, Miner 2049er and more. What's more is that for this collection Digital Eclipse actually did some remakes of a few of the titles such as Haunted House, Yar's Revenge and more. They even did a new Sword Quest title!

The real winner here though is not the games. Instead it is the overly impressive interactive documentary style wrapper that holds everything together. Digital Eclipse really nailed this. You can either just browse the game list at will, or what I'd really recommend doing is going through the documentary which is loaded with documentation, scans, blurbs, video interviews, old footage, and a lot more spanning nearly the entire history of Atari's console and computer legacy. At different points in the documentary you will also come across games that are in the collection ready to play.

It's a really novel way to do a retro compilation and it just works perfectly and adds value to this collection. I'd love to see other companies take note when handling their own compilations and maybe give us a similar type of presentation on the legacy of their own games.

While not as perfect collection, 2 of the 3 DS titles are among some of the best 2D Castlevania games in existence. Talking about Order of Ecclesia and Portrait of Ruin. Dawn of Souls is still a good play though all things considered. There's also Haunted Castle which was previously released in the Konami Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection, which was an odd one considering the other games in that collection were all shoot 'em ups. Haunted Castle definitely feels more at home here. and what's more they even did a full blow remake of the title with some QOL improvements like better difficulty balancing for starters.

Haunted Castle and it's remake are the only 2 classicvania titles in the bunch, with the other 3 games being full blown metroidvania titles which are styled after Symphony of the Night. this means they have a less linear approach to progression with the environments offering many branching paths. As well as offering RPG progression, inventory systems and several types of powerups that are necessary for navigation through the big maps. Each game also offers it's own unique style of gameplay, like the glyph system for Order of Ecclasia, or the dual character control of Portrait of Ruin for example. Dawn of Sorrow also makes more use of the "touch screen" controls than the other 2, which can be done with the right analog stick if playing with a controller. If you own a steam deck or any other type of touch screen device you can also just use the screen to do this.

Speaking of screens, these games were originally on the Nintendo DS, and much like ports such as Etrian Odyssey for example, or some of the games from the Mega Man Zero/ZX collection you will play these games with multiple windows. In this case you have a main gameplay window and 2 smaller windows which show the map and also a status screen. You can also orient these windows in one of several ways to fit whatever style you want. And despite having a smaller main window, it still looks perfectly fine on the Steam Deck.

This being a collection you will also be treated to some extras such as a gallery that features tons of artwork and manuals in different languages for the various games, plus soundtracks to listen to for everything included. There's also English and Japanese versions for the 3 main DS titles, plus some other languages where applicable. On top of that you have a handy rewind feature for those times you might make a mistake and the ability to save at any time you want without the need to find save rooms.

Konami shadow dropping this was a pleasant surprise. I'm sure a lot of Castlevania fans were dying for ports of these games, and I am on of them. Here's to hoping Konami follows up with the rest of the 2D titles. I'm looking at you Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood.