Shake Shake! - Mischief Makers

Hello beautiful people of the Internet! And not so beautiful ones! It's that time of the week again where Sin and I bring you another look into a wonderful new game! Yeah... 'New' he says. Okay... Well the truth is this week we haven't had one single noteworthy game that we've played long enough to review, so because we couldn't decide, we're bringing you a review of an old game we've put lots of time into. You can be disappointed in him, he let us down. (I'm the one that let them down!? We play our games together you know! Yes, but you should have played a little less Rocket League, and a little more anything else! Then why didn't you stop me? B-Because! ... Because...) A-Anyway! this week we present to you: Mischief Makers!

Mischief Makers is a fun 2D platforming game from the early days of the N64. That's right, we said it was an old game. We meant that. That's no reason to look down on it though, of course, Sin and I both wanted to play this game for a really long time, and it even exceeded our expectations in terms of quality. It's a fun game to play, probably not for you if you're looking for a challenge but there are ways the game still offers that though at least. I can mention that later though. Yeah the game is relatively easy in terms of a casual playthrough. The levels are pretty short... they have no time limit... and- And if you're worried about taking damage? Don't be. The game gives you so much health even though you really only have one life, you won't be seeing the continue screen all that often. Blue and Green health crystals and Red crystals which are used to buy continues are so unbelievably common throughout the game that you shouldn't need to look at your health bar at all. It's kinda nice that way really, and you especially don't have to worry about having to start the entire game again if you run out of lives because you can pick and work through stages individually, going back to them if you want to and so on... (...You filthy casual...)(What?)

Because what makes more mischief than surfing on people's missiles

The game itself is the story of Marina, a cute green-haired android maid who sets out on an adventure to save her creator after he gets kidnapped by a strange group of aliens. That's basically all the plot there is, and it's very Mario-esque, every time you finally save that idiotic professor he just gets kidnapped again. In fact the last time he gets kidnapped he just accepts it and lets them do it, it's so dumb! It's a 2D platformer Sin! These games don't do plots! Oh yeah? Well maybe they should have tried! Oh shush Sin, honestly you're like impossible to please. Yeah. Oh.. right that's your thing... I forgot that...

All the characters and blocks and stuff have these creepy faces that remind of that painting The Scream...
Creepy...? You don't think they're cute...?

Anyway! The stages themselves are really fun to play, ranging from simple platforming stages, to complex platforming puzzles, each one unique in it's own way. The controls are simple and easy to learn, you can move, jump, grab and boost in all directions. The main thing which sets this game apart from others is that Marina fights by grabbing enemies, parts of enemies, projectiles or whatever and throwing them back. You can also shake anything you grab by double tapping down... And i do man anything, it's a very important mechanic of the game because you use it to activate switches and make bosses vulnerable. It's a very well implemented system and it just feels extremely satisfying to shake the hell out of anything you want... Also I just can't get over how cute Marina's little "Shake shake!" catchphrase is. Boosting is the only reasonable way to really get around because without it Marina doesn't jump high or move fast, but then the problem with boosting is that its a short little burst of speed which you obviously have to really spam to keep up. In fact playing Mischief Makers became so painful Ren and I had to swap who was playing while we were going for our 100% run every half hour or so to rest... If ever there was a game to give me RSI... 

Sometimes I hear Ren calling out stuff like this from his room in the evenings when  he thinks I'm not around...
S-Sin! What are you telling our readers!?

Speaking of 100%... We actually gave up our run about 20 stages in. For us a 100% run would be collecting the Gold Gem from each stage, and getting an A rank for the times. It's actually possible to get S ranks on some stages, but you have to practically be a superhuman or something to get those kinds of times. We started finding a number of stages impossible to get higher than a B on even though we did the stage as perfectly as possible. Yeah at that point Sin got pissed off and quit it. I did not! We did get all the gold gems though! (With the help of a guide...) W-Well yeah I mean a lot of them are hidden in random NPCs and completely un...obvious... places! I mean let's be serious here you get one of them by running the 100m dash in under 11 seconds. It's true they're well hidden but that's just good game design in a way, you have to collect as many as possible for the best ending so why shouldn't they be well hidden, so only die-hard players can see it? You've made your point...

She's super cute but this guy never learnt that you don't EVER hold her hand... or let her hold yours, I mean.

Mischief Makers is wonderfully simple in nature with the goal of every platforming stage just being to get to the end. Mini-bosses you have to grab and throw at the ground repeatedly after shaking them for their Gold Gem, and main bosses you tend to fight by grabbing something like their arm and throwing it back to them. Gold Gem is yours if you somehow do it without taking damage but that's really tough. It's a game that takes a lot of pain and dedication to do well, so while it's easy for a casual playthrough, it's very difficult for anything other than that. And that, I suppose is something that makes Mischief Makers something truly special. Sin... Not like you to give a game praise like that... S-Shut up Ren! The Professor you're saving is clearly a disgusting pervert anyway so this game gets a 1/10 regardless! End of story! Hmph!

Haha... We really hope you enjoyed our little look back on the past with this review. Weeks like this could happen again if we don't have specific new games to review or something like that. We really hope you'll enjoy hearing about some of our favourite old games with us too though, of course. Well, that's all for this week so goodnight everyone! And remember... We love you all!

...Oh... Sin... You did- I SAID SHUT UP REN!

All Aboard The Hope Train! - Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls

Hello beautiful people of the Internet! (Ah! U-uhm... Sin..? Uh... Never mind...) A-And not so beautiful ones? Oh that so does not suit me... Oh shut up you I'm in a good mood for once. Just deal with it. Uh... O-Okay sure... Today- Today! After a long long week of waiting Ren and I are finally pleased to present to you our review of one of the best games to come out this year! This game is pure perfection! A gift from the heavens! Oh you just all have to play this wonderful game! You'll have to excuse Sin's excitement... when a game like this comes around it's almost impossible to calm her down...

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is the third Danganronpa game to be released and falls chronologically between the previous two games. Experienced fans such as ourselves will recognize a number of things that prove this including characters from the second game, and relatives of those from the first, a very charming touch. Unlike the other two games in the series however, both of which are visual novel/detective style games, this one is more of a Third Person Shooter, and this creates a few little problems on the surface of the game. Hey! What kind of problems could you possibly be talking about! We always say how important it is for a game company to try something new! Well... yes that may be true, but unfortunately UDG does something a lot of games that try that do - It loses it's identity. Huh? Gosh Sin you really can't see past those rose-tinted glasses today can you? This game is far from perfect. (IT IS PERFECT!) No. Let me explain.

Arrrrggghhhh...! WHY ARE THESE A THING!? Turn them on and the point an arrow where you're supposed to go. I've never seen a more unnecessary game mechanic.
Pfft yeah... the whole game is basically linear so any other ways you could go at one of these are just a dead end with a collectible... So dumb....

The primary thing I feel like I have to say, is for those of us who really enjoyed the previous Danganronpa games, this one feels extremely dumbed down. But that's because it's a different genre of game! You can't expect all the players of a shooter to have the intellect of a detective game player! Well sure of course that is the case, but the way the game has been executed puts it in a position where, sure it's still good and fun to play, but it loses a lot of appeal to both audiences. I should probably mention we played through this game on Ultra Despair difficulty first time round, and I was very disappointed in how easy it was to complete (Well... it was very easy...) and this is the first problem, even on the hardest difficulty, if you play shooters and are good at them, the majority of the game-play will be of little challenge. Alternatively it loses appeal to the Danganronpa fans too because, the game just holds your hand through the entire thing! the answer to every single puzzle room is all but shown to you just through what the characters say when you get your first overview of the room! "If you shoot X Monokuma with Y we can take them all out at once!" But every puzzle room at least up until the final chapter is impossibly obvious anyway. The puzzle-solving is dumbed down for the shooters, and the shooting is made too easy for the puzzlers. It just becomes one big pile of mediocre.

The game breaks the 4th wall on occasion and while for the most part it's really gloomy there's a lot of humour hidden within too... Look, they even use Ren's training potty as Save Points!
(What did you just say!?)

Ugh... Ooohh... I can feel my heart breaking right there... You know for the 'nice guy' of our team you can be super brutal! Haha... Sorry Sin... but if you're not going to talk about the bad aspects of the game then who will? Oh shush! The game has plenty of redeeming qualities! For- For example! Let's talk about the plot a little! Okay sure well the plot is good... Komaru Naegi (Little sister of Makoto, the first game's protagonist) was kidnapped at the beginning of the Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event In Human History or whatever it's called... She was imprisoned in a two-room apartment for a year and a half... Then one day, a black and white bear thing tears down her reinforced door and attacks her. She escapes, and runs into a survivor from the first game, he gives her a 'Hacking Gun' that can rewrite the codes of machines by shooting them, tells her to get the hell out, and she is left on her own. Outside the bears are murdering everyone around, in a brutal animated cutscene, and the city is in chaos... After finding a little bit of refuge and meeting up with some secret agents to help her escape, she thinks she's finally in the clear... but the escape helicopter is hijacked by the Monokumas, and takes her off into an airship, where she is made a target in a game, by five rather unique characters... I guess we'll get back to that a bit later but the game doesn't hold back with getting the action started right away, but at the same time it also offers a huge number of questions, such as why Komaru has been locked up, why the Monokumas are attacking, and just what the hell is going to happen next. the plot really feels like a Danganronpa plot and that's a huge plus. The game just oozes despair at every point and that's exactly what a Danganronpa game should do.

The Teddy Bear's Picnic was clearly lost in translation over on Japanese shores

It's true, the underlying fact is that on this island - Towa City, a riot is taking place... and not just any riot... A riot where all the adults are being killed by children. It's a really despair inducing subject huh? In fact all the themes within the game and some of the issues dealt with made us think we wouldn't ever see this game leave Japan. The main villains of the game are a group of 5 kids, probably around 10 years old maybe even less than that each. Haunted by their pasts they set out to crate a paradise for children to live happily forever by murdering ever single adult in the city. They call themselves the Warriors of Hope like a cute little RPG party, it draws a nice little parallel to how most kids play around but obviously this isn't all just play. 

I don't care how many adults they killed they're still totally adorbs!
Except Jataro, The Priest, nobody likes him.
Oh ew. God no I skip all of his cutscenes!

There's the Hero, who was bullied endlessly by adults. The Priest, a creepy kid that wears a hideous mask and everybody hates. The fighter (Wait for it... Oh God...), who although it isn't directly said it is very clearly implied that she was repeatedly gang-raped for money as her father sold her and her mother out. There's also the Sage, who was used as an experiment by his father to see just how smart a kid could be when pushed to the limits. And the real leader of the group is Monaca, a wheelchair ridden girl who is just so... so... She's really messed up... you'll understand trust me! regardless they're a colourful cast that you can actually kinda grow attached to, but you see what we're talking about here... Child abuse, extreme bullying and all kinds of themes are explored in this game and it is seriously dark to think about. Oh. and of course we can't forget child death and the issue of whether it's okay to kill children if they're murdering adults. Because child mortality is a great concept people like to make apparent in games, isn't that right immortal children of the Fable universe. Anyway the kids throw you into the city where you meet Toko Fukawa/Genocide Jack, a schizophrenic survivor from the first game, who isn't actually too popular in the Danganronpa community until her character actually grows in this experience. You can play as Genocide Jack in a sort of hack and slash Devil May Cry fashion if you get into a pinch.

But we digress. Yes we do! Let's talk about the game some more! The atmosphere of the game is exactly how it should be (at least it is for the first two chapters) the environments to explore are dark and creepy, the background music offers nothing but a sense of unease, and all you can see lining the streets of Towa City are countless corpses on the floor and crucified on walls that brings a harsh reality to the player that just screams 'look at all these people who have died'... it's really very tragic, even if every non-important character whether they're dead or alive is just a blue or purple person depending on their gender. not to mention that EVERY girl in Towa city has a pony tail, because they couldn't even be bothered to change that... pisses me off...

I hope Blue Silhouetted Man was paid a lot for all his deaths in this game... 

The gameplay itself actually feels similar to Resident Evil shooting wise. There's 8 kinds of ammo to choose from that are all useful in different situations and have unique ways to utilize them to their fullest, which you can switch in a flash with the D-Pad. Press down the left trigger to ready the gun and use it's laser pointer to aim. You can move and shoot thank God! Take that Resi 5! Hitting the Monokumas in the eye will do a lot more damage and increase the power of the next shot too which is a great little mechanic. Hitting the eyes is very inconsistent though. We could do it very often but a lot of the time shots don't crit when they look like they should, and vice versa. But other than that the shooting is fun and feels genuinely rewarding when you see those Monokumas finally explode.

Dance ammo is great when you're in a bind, it forces whatever it hits to dance so it won't chase or attack you! I need to get some of this stuff for Sin...
(I heard that!)

Speaking of the Monokumas... they come in a number of different varieties which should all be handled in different ways, but one of the main problems which makes the game a bit too easy is they just attack so slowly! They run up to you and get close, then they wait five seconds or so before slashing at you or whatever that type does. it gives you more than enough time to move back a little and continue blasting their face off. Later in the game they start diving at you with attacks though, so it's a little harder but they still have that pause. The designs are particularly good too though, each of them are unique and immediately recognizable to the player so you can quickly change your strategy if necessary. Let's not forget the Junk Monokumas... Oh God.... (Shudder) I still have nightmares...

*Famous 'Psycho' music plays*

How about playing Genocide Jack? The 'OP' get out of a bind free character. She's totally invincible but that's the only drawback of an otherwise solid part. Her combat is fluid, responsive and above all fun, even though a lot of it is just spamming square to cut everything down with no real thought. But that in itself is pretty awesome, Because it really reflects the murderous and relentless nature of Genocide Jack just cutting everything to pieces with no remorse.

The other aspect of combat, the bosses, are all about finding a way to expose their weak points and blasting them with your gun. If only the way to open their weak point wasn't made brutally obvious through in game dialogue! Yeah... Ren never really got over how easy the game was... it's true! We never really did anything 100% right in any of those boss fights, but every time we ran close to low ammo or even low health more would just appear on the ground for us to collect. Yeah... We never died in combat once actually... Even when you drop to 0 health you get a quicktime event that will keep you alive if you can press triangle with a pretty lenient timing.

The Kids control their own giant robots for the bosses...
They look so badass...
I need one...

See Sin look... I know you love the game and all but it's far from perfect, it's still really super fun and all, but the fact we can say all this stuff... that it helps you too much, it's almost impossible to die... We should not be able to say this stuff about Ultra Despair difficulty... I... I know Ren... But... But at least it's fun... That's what matters... And the story will really appeal to Danganronpa fans too... That's right... and let's ignore the fact it suffers from Final Fantasy XIII syndrome, having cutscenes every minute or two for today... I don't want to make you too upset... Ren! You... You... Ugh! I... I don't even know anymore... Just let me go play it again...

Hahah... Well that's all for this week everyone! I swear these posts are getting longer and longer each time! As a disclaimer I still recommend that you play this wholeheartedly if you're a fan of Danganronpa. it offers a lot of insight into events regarding the Biggest Most Awful Most Tragic Event in Human History and is a very welcome look into the despair filled Danganronpa universe while we wait for Danganronpa 3 to arrive now it's finally been announced. This is the darkest entry into the series so far and that itself is worthy of significant praise. All that's left to say is, this may look like a fun little kiddie shooter, where you shoot mechanical bears instead of people but I assure you it's not, so don't push it aside like it was some kid's game... Because it is... But it isn't.

Two Worlds Collide! Puyo Puyo Tetris!

(Sob... sniffle) Uhh... Okay is this thing on? H-Hey beautiful people of the Internet! ...
...
...
... Sin?
(Shut up Ren I'm not doing that this week! I can't believe you're still doing a review even after what happened!) But Sin we said... Oh never mind...

As you can probably tell Sin is feeling just a teensy-tiny bit down this week. (Pfft...) She's been super excited to review the game we planned to do this week, but as you can probably guess... Our preorder didn't arrive on time. In fact, it's still not freaking here! I SWEAR I am going to break that Vita if it doesn't get here soon! Calm down Sin... go break some Puyos and take your mind off it, okay? (God damn freaking...) So... Yeah! Just a little upset! Anyway without further ado I present to you... Puyo Puyo Tetris!

So everybody knows Tetris, the famous puzzle game developed in Russia about stacking tetrominos to destroy lines and score points. But what do get when you combine this amazing puzzler with Puyo Puyo, a Japanese puzzle game where you join falling blobs into matching coloured groups of 4 to create combos and attack your opponents with flurries of unmatchable Garbage Puyo to fill their half of the screen and declare victory!

A colourful game with a colourful cast and plenty more to unlock, isn't this game perfect already!?
...Your passion for collectibles is still a collective nuisance 

The first thing you get is a game you can't read. (Ah! Sin you came to join in!) (Yeah yeah hey shut up I'm speaking my mind here) I mean it's not really anyone's fault but Puyo Tetris was never released outside of Japan and probably never will be. So if you want to experience this amazing game you'll have to import, Sony being the great guys that they are didn't region lock the PS3 or PSVita so those are great choices to try it on!

...Anyway... As I was saying: because the whole game is in Japanese, the language barrier does become a bit of a problem. Only a little though! Although navigating the menus is pretty much fine, because they utilize pictures, colours and logical order so we can figure everything out ourselves, the game's story mode is really just a picture show unless you can read Japanese, otherwise you're left with just the cute voices and character portraits to tell what's going on. I'm pretty sure there's something to do with a spaceship crash and some brainwashing, but don't hold me to that. It's kinda disappointing we can't understand it. But it's a puzzle game first and foremost so why care about the story? True...

"Now tell me! What are the size of Sin's breasts!"
"Ah... uh.... maybe... this big?"
Ren what the hell are you saying over there!?

The game itself in terms of all stylisation including characters, sounds and the general look and colourful atmosphere of the game are all much more like Puyo Puyo, taking on a theme of bright vivid colours and of course characters drawn in that cute 2D style so standard of the Puyo games. If you ever played a Puyo Puyo game you'll probably recognize a few of the characters present at least, each with their own unique sounds and spells they call out over their combos that really gives the game the feeling of 'Yes! This is a real battle now!' The game also shares the love by introducing it's own Tetris characters with that Puyo style, it's really neat that the help bring the Tetris universe to life like that, but all those characters are named after the freaking blocks! It really ticks me off when I have to tell people the protagonist is called T (and I don't mean they guy that calls everyone FOOL although I really wish he did...), and his sidekick that is just constantly saying what he needs to do in the bathroom is called O. Like what even?

As for the great gameplay mode on offer you've got your standard solo marathon version of each puzzle, but the real draw of the game is everything else of course. Tetris VS Tetris, Puyo VS Tetris, the same again but with power-ups that can make pieces drop instantly on your opponent's screen or even adding an extra block to each tetromino, it's got everything. Hell the designers really went to town on this one and thought of every possible combination huh? They did, you can even play both together! The mechanics are strange because the tetris blocks crush the puyos and any garbage blocks the opponent has dropped on you, making it appear on top. It's really cleverly done and everything but doing that screws up my combos so much I just hate it! Yeah but this mode is much more lenient for combos too, giving you a set time after every match to make more, and wow does the damage really stack up for a method so easy! Although it looks more complicated it's really noob friendly because you don't have to stack Puyos so one group disappearing will lead to another and so on, you can just match four wherever you want over and over again to win, that's why Ren's so good at that mode. Hey I'm right here you know! Yeah yeah... hehe.

Ren your stacking is making me wanna gag.
Shut up! I promise you I know what I'm doing.

For seasoned puzzle veterans there's also still the endless mode where you can see how many opponents in a row you can defeat before failing. And for the filthy casuals out there, Big Bang mode sets up the combos perfectly for you, all you gotta do is drop the pieces in the right place and hope that overall you make the most combos, it's pretty mindless but also a lot of fun, at least for the first try or so.

The thing about combining two different puzzle games like this into a primarily versus experience can cause a little trouble with game balance, but overall Puyo Tetris has done this very well and the only reason to choose Puyo over Tetris when you play or vice versa is your own skill and preference, the real thing that wins you the game is how fast you can set up combos. Neither game really deals more damage to the other, there's significantly more space to fill with garbage on a Tetris board but since the garbage fills from the bottom rather than the top, it's extremely hard to remove, so in the end everything balances perfectly.

Bayoen!
What does that even mean?
I have no clue, but if it throws Puyo in your face I don't really care

Puyo Tetris is an undoubtedly brilliant puzzle game and is a brilliant expansion to the worlds and gameplay of two amazing games. though I would recommend it significantly more if you're already a Puyo fan, Tetris fans will also find a lot of enjoyment in the game even if they're not into Puyo and the addition of characters for them to play as will be a very welcome feature. Even if you're a fan of only one of the puzzles at first, or have never played one of them, there is no doubt in our minds that you will grow to love the super fun puzzle action and unique charm this game has to offer and- *Ding Dong*

... What? Was that...?
Sin? Where are you going?
...
...
...
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Argh... What the hell Sin? Why did you tackle me?
It'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereit'shereeeeeeeeeee!! SQUEEE!
Wait is that!? Holy crap let's go play this thing! No! no! Don't turn it on yet wait for-! Uh.... Ah... Thanks for sticking around to read our review of Puyo Puyo Tetris! I'm sorry it was so long there was just so much to say... uh... hey wait Sin is that the opening cutscene!? I told you to waiiitt!

Welcome to Two-Faced Reviews!!

Hello beautiful people of the Internet! And not so beautiful ones... hehe. Welcome to Two-Faced Reviews, where you literally get both sides of the story! I'm Ren, the part of us that brings out all that's good and special about our games, and that's-. Hey! Will you cut with the formal introductions already? I think I wanna puke. But sis, how will we make a good impression to the public without intro-. I'm Sin. The bitchy one. That's all. Are you happy now, 'bro'? Uhm... sure... haha... (Good) Ahem...

Together, Sin and I make up Two-Faced Reviews, the dynamic duo (such a cliche) that picks apart the good and bad of all the games we play. We'll look at all kinds of games from new to old, across every format, and every quality. Hell, maybe if we actually get popular we'll even do requests, so you know, look forward to that or something. (Sis...) What? N-Nothing!

So this was just a little introduction into the two of us, so there's not review just yet. We really hope you enjoyed meeting us as much as we'll enjoy telling you all about our adventures! (You little worm, don't bother telling our precious audience you were too lazy to write a real post for our first week!) (Hey! You were just as bad! A-And we weren't lazy there was just too much to choose from!) (Just keep telling yourself that, I'm sure we'll be a great succ- Ow!)

Okay! Well I'm so sorry but that's all for this time! But don't worry, we're preparing to bring you a great review ready for next week! So you finally decided? Yes! Be quiet now Sin, come on, just like I told you... *Sigh* You know I'm supposed to be the older twin right?

Thanks so much for visiting our page! We really hope you'll [love/hate] the experience and look forward to gaming with us! We love you al- Oh come on I am not saying that! But Sin-! NO!