Mid game review: Lollipop Chainsaw (2012) PS3
Background
Lollipop Chainsaw was one of the games that was released during the 2012-2013 zenith of 7th-gen consoles. While I definitely recall watching a trailer or two back in the day due to its unique premise, it didn't stick in my memory as I wasn't so interested in hack & slash games at the time and it was ultimately overshadowed by the deluge of absolute bangers that was released during that period. I only rediscovered this game in the past couple of years when I started collecting old PS3 games and I saw it being priced suspiciously high. When the remaster was announced, I added it to my wishlist so that I could see what all the fuss was about. However, the middling reviews of the remaster put me off so I decided to take the plunge with the PS3 version instead.
Production
Lollipop Chainsaw is an action game revolving around an all-American high school cheerleader irreverently hacking and slashing her way through a zombie apocalypse that befalls her small town.
I have
I appreciate the feedback, and I can definitely see how a lot of the games I consider "mid" would still be a lot of fun for other. Ultimately there will be a lot personal preference involved with any kind of review, so what you're reading here is just me as an amateur writer trying to articulate my personal views.
I use a scoring system because I find it a useful shorthand to summarise my overall thoughts on a game. The limited scale is because there are 8-10/10 games which are a class above the games I intend to cover in this series (e.g. Doom, System Shock, Elden Ring) while 1-3/10 would be those which I don't enjoy, are completely broken or are morally reprehensible (e.g. visual novels, predatory monetisation, NFT games). I personally find it more interesting trying to explain my views of these "mid" games than those at either end of the scale.
Mid game review: Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster (2024)
Background
The nostalgia is strong with this one. As a 90s kid whose parents would never think of spending money on violent fare such as Doom, the otherwise adventure game focused LucasArts Archive was the Trojan horse that delivered my first FPS experience in the form of a demo disk containing the first level of Dark Forces. I had countless hours of fun blasting away at pixelated Stormtroopers, with authentic blaster sound effects and John William's film scores reinterpreted in MIDI adding to the unmistakeably Star Wars soundscape. Though I vaguely recall getting the full game at some point and skipping through the levels with cheats on, the game has long since been consigned to the Sarlacc pit of my memories since the turn of the millennium. That is until Nightdive Studios announced this remaster.
The remaster
Nightdive Studios has a good track record of lovingly remastering retro classics for modern platforms, and this remaster definitely lives up to their reputation. Pla