Not done one of these for a while.
Henchman Story
You play as Stan, a villain henchman going through the day to day under Lord Bedlam and a needlessly happy supervisor named Dave, when a new villain named Madame Scorpion changes things up and makes Stan think he can be more than just a grunt, the visual novel has 12 endings and a story engaging enough to keep you switched on.
B-Tier Game
Amabilly
Amabilly is a classic Mario style game where you take out the various viruses in each level with your trusty guitar Jimi, the story implying that the girl you play as is in a coma and fighting her illness in her mind, the most unique trait is that the game's music is royalty free and has been heard in other games. Decent showing for a small studio.
C-Tier Game
Steel Racer
The same studio as Amabilly also made this game, while they can make a passable platforming, this racing game with Outrun and Top Gear elements is insultingly easy, not once did I have to restart a track, the physics being bare bones basic.
D-Tier Game
Today we look at handheld titles.
The Rub Rabbits
Sega were pretty experimental during the DS era, more so when Sonic Team were involved, so during the time where Sonic was finding it's late 00s audience following the Sonic 06 fallout, Sonic Team made a bizarre dating game for DS called Rub Rabbits, unlike most dating games, in Rub Rabbits you have to constantly flirt and save the girl you are dating by using your stylus in mini games, rubbing if you will, the actual Rub Rabbits are your wingmen, it's a bizarre game but unintentionally hilarious.
B-Tier Game
Bubble Ghost
The Gameboy was a surprisingly versatile console even during it's early brick shape era but very few games could be considered that hard, even Megaman feels easier, enter Bubble Ghost, a puzzle game where you blow a bubble through increasingly difficult mazes, it's legacy as a speedrun classic has kept it alive, long after the Gameboy and DS family had been retired.
B-Tier Game
Pokemon Red and Blue
You'd think this game would be an easy S-Tier but rose tinted lenses are pretty common among my age group but having stuck with Pokemon up until today, going back to play the original is really rough as red and blue is a glitch filled mess, stuff like the Missingno trick, the Mew trick, catching safari pokemon outside the park and positioning yourself in certain pixels to trigger completion without even leaving Pallet Town are just a few of the glitches you can trigger in the average playthrough, even the mechanics allow you to cheese the game with just one Pokemon.
Back then it was revolutionary but now it's unplayable.
D-Tier Game
Time for a return to reality with today's episode.
Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends
A surprisingly cute little relaxing game where you free a town of a curse by making sushi for everyone as a little robot on wheels, apart from the Diner Dash gameplay being a little chaotic, it's easy to play and very charming.
A-Tier Game
Sunrise GP
A quaint little retro game set in the age of the iron curtain, Sunrise GP is a racing game with a solid game engine amongst janky collision physics and pointless features like colour palettes that don't work due to the retro aesthetic pretty much choosing your colour for you and a number of cars that apart from the Alpine are all shit, although it's not for me to judge late Soviet era auto manufacturing.
C-Tier Game
Roommates
A visual novel that actually plays like a proper visual novel, you play Max or Ann and have the choice to pair up with any one of four choices each with at least one of them being a gay option, you then go through a full college year in an attempt to get one of many endings based on your choices in various events while balancing your money and stamina, but once you play it once, the story ceases being interesting as you'll witness it another six times assuming you played as both characters.
C-Tier Game
Who says that this feature has to be just recent games, I've been gaming for decades and there are way more games that make you ask WTF am I Playing? All three are N64 titles and all fighting games.
Fighters Destiny
Fighters Destiny is unique in that you could pretty much finish each match with one attack, instead of traditional defeat you get scored on how you defeat your opponent whether it be throwdown, ringout, counter or special, perhaps the reason it didn't come back was that you could cheese the game with one move if you were skilled enough, it's fighting roster highlights include a French clown with a giant nose, a old master whose outfit and hairstyle sort of makes him look like a rapper and a fighting cow, the style may not be up to much but the music is fantastic.
B-Tier Game
Clayfighter 63 1/3
A Mortal Kombat game if it were entirely made of clay, clayfighter takes a variety of unique and now very offensive looking characters considering that at least two of them are a witch doctor and a kung fu guy with exaggerated accents and puts them in a fighting game, the game is janky, slow and disgusting in places, any wonder when you've got Sumo Santa and Boogerman who use farts as a fatality, Santa's one being particularly nasty.
D-Tier Game
Mace The Dark Age
I'm baffled why this didn't catch on, Soul Calibur was still at least a year or two off and Samurai Spirits was hardly going to fill the void, so why didn't Mace catch on? It had Mortal Kombat's team.
Might be because it's notoriously hard, the object is to obtain the Mace of Tanis by defeating Asmodeus (knowing what I know about Asmodeus in demon lore, this is a far cry compared to other versions) the cast includes the likes of Lord Deimos an overlord in fancy red armour and a large sword fighting against, samurai, vikings, sorceresses, ninja, monks, undead soldiers from the crusade and my personal favourites a dwarf in a wooden mecha and a chicken. Lots of fun even if the lore can be exhausting to follow.
A-Tier Game
So a mixed bag today.
Crazy Strike Bowling Ex
This was recommended to me by an xbox friend who described it as a Gamecube era game, a mixture of generic anime characters who look worse in game than in official art compete in competitive bowling, sometimes with power ups, the game becomes trivial when you equip the large bowling ball, in fact it's the first bowling game I've managed to get a perfect game.
C-Tier Game
Little Kitty Big City
You play a kitty who survived a drop from a top floor apartment and now has to find his way home, doing cat things while also doing random tasks for the local wildlife, insanely adorable if a little janky, it has a similar vibe to Untitled Goose Game.
B-Tier Game
Another Crabs Treasure
Kril the hermit crab is minding his own business when a loan shark steals his shell on the bull shit reason of paying taxes and now has to enter the trash filled ocean to get it back where the pollution is slowly making the ocean creatures insane, armed with a fork and any piece of trash for armour, he must hack and slash through this souls like adventure. The message here is very heavy handed, the game like all Souls like games is frustratingly difficult, luckily the developers realise this and has an assist option that allows you to carry a gun instead that one hit kills every enemy in the game, I'm pretty sure that defeats the object of playing the actual game even from an achievement hunting degenerate such as myself.
B-Tier Game (Would've been A-Tier if not for the broken assists)