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.
Normally I do three games in this feature but this game has such a unique history, I dare not leave it out.
Carmageddon
In the entire history of video gaming in the United Kingdom, only five games were ever banned.
Manhunt 2, The Punisher and Carmageddon were all banned on extreme violence while Sex Vixens from Space and Omega Labyrinth Z were banned for sexual content but even that is debated.
Punisher and Manhunt were let off with censors while Carmageddon was censored temporarily until the developers challenged the age ratings board and won, getting the game reinstated to it's original form.
Sex Vixens from Space was quietly destroyed by customs meaning it never had an official ban as in the eyes of the regulators it never existed, that leaves Omega Labyrinth Z which was banned on the grounds of being a borderline Hentai game with ambiguously aged characters making it the only officially banned video game.
As to why Carmageddon was banned in the first place, it's a game that borrows heavily from the Death Race film franchise as the object of the game is to either win the race, kill all your opponents or kill every pedestrian roaming about the sandbox style race track with a host of colourful psychopaths in equally ridiculous cars and weapons, this was released back in the late 90s when a few years after Mortal Kombat opened the flood gates for violent games with age ratings and Doom created a darker more gritty era of video gaming, everyone was trying to push the boundaries to what was acceptable in terms of violence, however Carmageddon found itself becoming a scapegoat when a real incident of a driver killing a number of pedestrians made national news, leading to the BBFC, Britain's regulatory body to ban it unless the violence was removed, this led to a time where the pedestrians were replaced with zombies, some time passed and Carmageddon did get it's original content back mostly because the BBFC saw how ridiculous the concept was when stuff like Grand Theft Auto had you do just as bad if not worse, this is because Carmageddon is a pretty shit game and it only had popularity through it's own controversy; I was too young at the time to get the original Carmageddon and finally played it in 2021 with Max Damage, a crowdfunded reboot of the franchise, but other than graphics, nothing really changed, the cars are still just as janky to drive, the physics seem to stop trying at times and all that violence that got it banned in the first place was tame compared to even death scenes in 12 rated games, in the 90s it would be a B-Tier game but it's now a D-Tier Game bordering on F-Tier.
Whether were all de-sensitized to violence, or we kinda want more meat with our blood and guts, but even after the first game, it was already sliding down the ratings and out of the eyes of the people in barely a year.
It's probably why, when I did a case study on this subject back in 2004 when I was learning work skills that the instructor mentioned how much she hated the game and how vitriolic that hatred was, and all I can think of at the time was. "No one talks about that game anymore? Have you even seen what's on the market these days (2004) I'm pretty sure I alone have played worse"
It's too easy to use a scapegoat whether it be heavy metal, video games or even anime (Thats it's own story in the UK) but there is something else at work in a psychotic person's brain than just their interests, the silly pixel blood fest isn't the one with the knife, firearm or vehicle in this case and the trigger for such violence could be something as mundane as not liking Mondays.
This is why you need to better fund mental health services.
Were starting to get into the weird and wonderful, although you would probably find something weird among the previous episodes.
Enter the Gungeon
Roguelike is another word you'll hear often, Enter the Gungeon takes one of four characters, Marine, Convict, Hunter, or Pilot into a dungeon of enemies shaped liked bullets and huge towering enemies with giant gatling guns among other BFGs, the game can be quite hard and the permadeath start from scratch approach doesn't exactly inspire replayability.
B-Tier Game
Rain on Your Parade
You play a Cloud who wants to rain on everyone with great happiness being such an ass hole, everything from ruining a wedding to recreating movie and video game parodies, there's even a level where you don't move, I file this one under the same category as Donut County.
B-Tier Game
The Garden's Between
Another genre that will appear frequently are the story driven games that are rather abstract but strangely beautiful. Taking place in a backyard treehouse, two friends Arina and Frendt reminisces about their life as neighbours with the treehouse being the centrepiece and much of their activities forming the puzzles you need to complete each level with constellations painting out the relationship between the friends.
A-Tier Game
Were coming into some regularly occurring genres in the WTF series from narrative puzzle adventures to spiritual successors.
Call of the Sea
Set in the 1930s, you take control of Norah in a fictional version of Tahiti as she looks for answers to her illness and her missing husband Harry only to gradually discover that she's slowly becoming a sea creature the more she explores. A great mix of story and puzzles, Call of the Sea will draw you in with it's unique tropical setting and grandiose ruins.
A-Tier Game.
Bloodstained Ritual of the Night
Because Konami doesn't care much for it's own properties, leave it to the indie crews to develop a spiritual successor to Castlevania. You play Miriam, a Shardbinder who is a result of alchemists trying to summon demons through demonic crystals being fused with humans only to set the whole of England into chaos and it's up to Miriam whose outfit looks like an unfinished cosplay dress to end the chaos and to find the other Shardbinder.
The lore is so vast that it requires a much bigger post to explain, plays a little too much like Castlevania at times but still manages to stand on it's own.
A-Tier Game.
Gato Roboto
Published by Devolver Digital, a name that will occur frequently in the next few episodes, you play a cat named Kiki, using a mecha suit to try and find a way of freeing her owner Gary from his crashed spaceship all the while uncovering the mystery behind the planet they've crashed on. With no colour present in the game, it only serves to make navigating the map an absolute chore, I might feel alot more inclined to finish the game if I didn't feel like I'm always lost.
C-Tier Game.
Now to look at some games with a history of being difficult, at least the games they're trying to rip off.
Metagal
It's genderswap Megaman, in fact it looks like it could've been made from an engine designed to make a Megaman like game, unlike Megaman, this game is infinitely easier and the achievements reflect this.
D-Tier Game.
Cyber Shadow
Quickly followed up by classic Ninja Gaiden but with robot ninjas, at least this one feels alot closer to the game it's trying to ripoff pay homage to, but it commits the unforgivable sin of not having achievements that end with 0 or 5, blasphemy in achievement hunting.
C-Tier Game.
Wizard of Legend
Roguelike games will start to feature quite alot in this series and the first of these is the ball bustingly difficult Wizard of Legend, you control a Wizard of any colour you want and take out some of gamings most difficult bosses, fast paced and frantic, it's up there with some of the best of the genre and the only game where I can actually play a "Cerulean Wizard".
S-Tier Game
Six episodes in and you probably get a sense of what to expect as I go more and more into weird territory.
Autumn's Journey
No this isn't the sequel to Winter's Daydream, this time you follow Auralee, an aspiring lady knight as she encounters a bad tempered dragon stuck in humanform named Kerr, along with another dragon named Ilmari, they travel the lands hoping to restore Kerr's dragon form, written like a trashy shojo anime with a protagonist to match, you'll be endlessly bored by this low budget deviantart anime style visual novel.
F-Tier Game.
Xeno Crisis
A research facility gets overrun by aliens so it's up to space marines John Marsh and Sarah Ridley to eradicate the aliens Smash TV style from the facility, a good example of a retro inspired game done right, however the developer Bitmap Bureau are more interested in releasing on every console in existence even if said console is no longer commercially available, it comes across as really pretentious. It's still good but I wouldn't dig out my old consoles just to play this on them.
B-Tier Game.
Donut County
Mira and her raccoon friend BK work in a donut shop, while attempting to save up points for a Quadcopter Drone, BK sends donut orders to the town's people only for said donuts to actually be holes that swallow up the people and their property. The game is charming with a very Katamari like aesthetic, BK is the perfect ass hole protagonist with a plot twist that reflects the absurd premise.
A-Tier Game.
