Hi, I'm Dranzerstorm
Welcome to the Video Game & Music Lounge
This world is dedicated to Video Games and Music as I'll be showcasing the following.
Video Game Reviews set to the same tones as Retro Retrospective's Anime Reviews
Music reviews of Anime Openings & Closings
Western Cartoon music
Vocaloid Classics.
We may even have some Top Tens
I hope this World entertains you.
Procedurally generated is a dirty word in indie gaming, if you can't be bothered to create a carefully crafted difficulty curve, let the game decide for you instead and the other dirty word is roguelike where literally starting again is a gameplay feature so let's look at three of them.
Robo Quest
A young hacker girl finds a robot guardian in the middle of the desert, he gets fixed up and sent into battle to find out what on earth happened to humanity and why robots are hostile, of the three games, it's the simplest to get into and easiest to adapt to as you'll find yourselves making progress in no time.
A-Tier Game
Gunfire Reborn
If you took the Monster Hunter Cats and give them guns, you'll get something along the lines of Gunfire Reborn, there's less story to work with but the mechanics are tighter despite being the harder of the two FPS titles. It also has some of the best looking guns in the genre.
A-Tier Game
Neon Abyss
A 2D arena Roguelike where you defeat hell like carnations of modern era issues, the game tasks you with being more resourceful as every run requires you to build your character's arsenal from scratch with little to no permanent perks, the controls are a little awkward and the game is great at screwing you over at various points, despite it's faults it's a solid game.
B-Tier Game
All racing games today.
Super Night Riders
Way back in 2016 was the release of Super Night Riders, the game got a full on remake for 2023 but the first build of the game is designed like Sega arcade racer Hang On and Super Hang On, a little too much like the Hang On series but still has that addictive try again appeal. The developers Neko.Works even congratulated me for clearing the hardest course, this is why I generally prefer indie developers, they are so much more polite and nice to their consumers.
B-Tier Game
OnRush
An unconventional racing game from the lunatic department within Codemasters, using a team of six rough riding off road vehicles, your objective is not to win by crossing a finish line but by acquiring enough points in any of the game modes as a team using any means possible, crashing is common place as you get rewarded for taking out other drivers with special abilities, but this way of driving has two issues, the first is that your car can feel like it's made of paper as a light tap is enough to be eliminated, the AI will always be built stronger than you, even if you activate super mode, the AI will counter it perfectly, the second issue is that you are heavily reliant on the AI to help you win, doesn't matter if you are MVP, the game decides when you win and lose. Codemasters lunatic department was curtailed when EA took over so this game was quietly removed making any progress impossible.
B-Tier Game
Horizon Chase Turbo
Brazilians love retro gaming, this can happen when old console generations run way longer in other parts of the world, so much of this love went into Horizon Chase Turbo, a spiritual successor to Snes game Top Gear, going as far as hiring the original composer to score the music, the game itself runs fast and frantic with a fair degree of difficulty sloted in for good measure and plenty of reminders that the team are Brazilian with Ayrton Senna DLC.
A-Tier Game
Today we look at a single genre of game, the endless runner, you are on rails and you have to avoid as many obstacles as possible in an attempt to reach the highest score.
Top Run
Starting with an 80s inspired endless runner and the only game to involve actual running, Kevin and his dog Buddy have to avoid everything from bullies, aerobic girls, prisms, crt monitor heads, punk motorcyclists, digital cats and even clones on hover boards, this is basically a look at this reference type of game with the most obvious one being Back to the Future; it's so packed full of references it becomes hard to keep playing without being constantly reminded of Rick Astley. The game keeps playing until you have a house full of cosmetics.
C-Tier Game
Super Box Delivery: Beyond the Horizon
A more simpler cartoony style game, I'll let the tutorial girl tell you how this works.
Fun fact, Fera the tutorial girl is my inspiration for my Shark House lead character Popuri.
The game rewards risky strategies for higher scores as you can only score points when you drop the packages off at a station, it looks nice but a little too easy to clear and no Leaderboards means no replay ability.
D-Tier Game
Retro Highway
The best of today's three games is Retro Highway and a game I have an affinity for, in the style of Super Hang-On, you have to avoid traffic but this time you have a leaderboard and I was able to work out a trick to get a guaranteed high score by chaining the shield power up as it makes you invincible to traffic, combined with boost it really accelerates the score and because I figured this out before any one else, I topped five out of the six stage leaderboards, at time of writing I doubt I'm still top of the leaderboard as I've not played the game for two years now, the stress to maintain the record is not great for my mid 30s heart to take on a regular basis.
A-Tier Game
Three weird stories from very different games.
F1 2021
It took EA buying Codemasters to finally get a cheesy story out of F1 and EA's story writing history is very much the same as every bad motor racing movie which is most of them; tell me if you heard this before, a young promising driver joins a team and immediately falls out with the veteran old guy teammate, both are manipulated by a perfect prick who ends up losing when the teammates make up and win, what makes this a little more bearable is that you play both the rookie and the veteran and at no point you are ever expected to win, god forbid F1 would actually allow a fictional character to steal the status quo off it's stars Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, that's what your nameless career mode driver is supposed to do. Because F1 is a yearly release it will never get a decent score and a cheesy story mode isn't going to change that.
C-Tier Game
The Fairy's Song
Join Marnie, a disgruntled teenage girl from Grimsby, that's a Northern British port town for all the American readers, forced to go to the go no where quiet village of Fenchapel to visit her grandmother, she ends up encountering a lady knight out of time Leofe, who takes Marnie on a journey to Fenchapel's past as Leofe finishes what she started a 1000 years ago in Fenchapel. Surreal to hear a story where I actually understand the setting references and writing is rare and shared by only one other game, ebi-hime really brings the best out of it's British writers and Fairy's Song is a joy to read.
B-Tier Game
Long Live the Queen
A remake of a PC game from a decade ago, you are in charge of the crown princess Elodie as you develop her schedule to keep her alive for 40 weeks until she becomes Queen, and I do mean keep her alive as any slip up will result in her death if you fail to develop a stat high enough for her to cope with the situations she finds herself in, the game encourages you to be whatever ruler you want to be as decisions can make you look like a sinister bitch when you can order murders and executions if you so desire, no two playthroughs are the same, this also leaves everything up to RNG a bit too frequently.
B-Tier Game
For a change of scenery, lets look at some popular games.
Minecraft
It's fascinating how what is essentially digital Lego is the best selling game of all time yet I've probably answered my own statement seeing as Lego themselves are the best selling toys of all time. The game is a survival epic where the whole world is yours to well mine and craft in your image, going in blind, it's not a game that you can play for half an hour at a time, it's a game that needs investment to give you results anywhere close to what any streamer can get or even young family members who do have the time, I definitely see the appeal and those who don't haven't given it enough time to cook.
A-Tier Game
Stardew Valley
I remember playing the original Harvest Moon multiple times and Stardew Valley is the perfect version of it and it shows when Harvest Moon's creator even says that Stardew retains it's freedom that his franchise had lost over time, but what's more phenomenal is that only one person made it. Again it needs investing to get to a good point but is more generous than Minecraft.
S-Tier Game
Lies of P
Lies of P is what happens when you take the basic plot of Bubblegum Crisis, make all your killer robots killer puppets and turn it into a souls like with pretty boy Pinocchio as the main character. Unfortunately this isn't going to get me into Soulslike games anytime soon, not that I'm anti hard games, is just that I prefer my hack and slash games to be more combo heavy, flashy and less restrictive and janky which is why I prefer Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, so my rating is at least fair as it's more my gaming taste as opposed to the game itself.
B-Tier Game
