Recent reviews by Syrup Saccharin

Almost 10 years of call center experience did not prepare me for trying to calmly escort one of my coworkers away from a coilhead.
But 12 hours of this game did help get me a promotion at my actual job.
12/10 absolutely teleporter-less behavior.

I originally wrote a very vitriolic review about this game decrying it for having such a heavy difficulty spike within its first chapter, and I’m going to amend that now as I’m going through S-ranks for each and every mission. This is less of a review and more of an apology for speaking before I should have listened. From the storytelling to the combat, from the audio to the visuals, this game is the Armored Core game that both vets and newcomers alike have been waiting a long time for.

As always, tl;dr at the bottom—and this time, to all the Ravens out there, I mean it.

The gameplay. Unlike the previous Armored Core games, this one TRULY wears Souls on its sleeve—but don’t let that turn you away. This game is much more forgiving in comparison to the previous AC games, and while it’s still difficult in its own right, it rewards perseverance above all else; and if you feel like you want to redo the same mission differently, you can always go back and do it—and get rewarded just the same.

The UI is very much non-intrusive, the movement feels so smooth, and the target locking pits you against your enemies to help you predict their movements and lock them down. With the inclusion of OS chips that enable you to perform a strong kick without the need of a melee weapon, quick turning, and even manual lock on (for the real Raven boomers), there’s very little about the actual gameplay that I didn’t like—and whatever is there to complain about is a non-issue.

The story. Armored Core 6 will drag you in with promises of grandeur, but will always make you question your methods or morals for doing so. Whether you decide to pacify that with the excuse of “independent mercenary,” or you tackle it head-on by finding the path that makes you happy, your decisions will weigh heavy upon you from start to finish.

The corporations, as one would expect, rule this planet; and among this tug of war, you are the rope. Your handler will give you the jobs, and you can accomplish them as you see fit. A lot of what Souls players like in a game is the replayability: New Game+ allows you to relive the experience, but also gives you the opportunity to make different decisions to see where your path would have taken you.

Where will you stand in the Flames of Rubicon?

The music. Rejoice; Kota Hoshino reprises his role as Armored Core’s premiere music producer, and if the Chapter 1 boss fight is anything to go off of, he hasn’t lost his touch. The previous Armored Core games put the music up front alongside the combat, but this game takes a more subtler approach with its OST; opting for atmosphere that you can still hear. When those boss fights come in, though… you’re going to want to crank up the volume.

My ONLY complaint here (and just regarding the game as a whole) is the fact that aside from the boss fights, the music isn’t as prevalent or adrenaline inducing as, say, Armored Core 4. But this is such a small gripe towards a game that otherwise has a great soundtrack, so feel free to clown on me for it.

The customization, and this is a big one. The freedom of creativity goes beyond simply coloring your mech; there is the opportunity to add reflection, wear/tear/weathering, and custom decals which are either provided by the game or created entirely by your own hands (and they can be shared by means of codes as well).

Whatever your dreams are for making a mech, work hard at it; I’ve seen Gundams, I’ve seen Megas, I’ve seen so many different unique and original builds all culminate at the foothold of its user’s creativity. Wanna go high-speed and be untouchable? Wanna sit like a rock and launch every weapon that exists all at once? Anything in between? You’re welcome to do so. The best build is the one you enjoy.

And Guntank. Always bet on Guntank.

TL;DR I gave this game a LOT of sh*t for someone who only played 4 hours of it on stream and was malding at the first boss like some sort of video game reviewer. But if I hated it that badly, would I REALLY put on my big girl pants and commit another hour to it, let alone another 50+ hours to it? Hell no.

Put simply, If you like mechs, if you like over-the-top action, interesting characters and just outright blowing everything up, then give yourself a reason to exist.

That’s all for this job, 621.
Let’s all return to base.

All of the time I've spent playing this game was done on stream. A lot of the experiences I've shared were with my friends and fans alike, and for the years I've been alive, not too many games drive me to tears as hard as OMORI did when I finished it last night. As typical with my reviews, TL;DR will be at the bottom.

Allow me to preface this review by stating that this is not just another video game. This is not your typical "grindy RPG" nor your "horror trope" experience. This is literature that no other book, movie or game can be equal to. Not even Undertale, and I give that game extreme praise for being the type of game that it is. OMORI didn't just affect me directly, it mirrored both a fear and a trauma that I kept hidden to myself for ages. I've been made stronger because of it. I hope it will make you feel strong in overcoming your weaknesses, too.

• The gameplay. At its very core, it is a turn-based RPG; but rather than seeking to frustrate the player with damage sponges, archetype differences and other stuff like that, OMORI seeks to make the player character *win.* There are some difficult fights, some that require planning, item usage and making use of statuses, but for the 24 hours I've played, I've died maybe twice due to trying to push my luck to its absolute limits rather than using tact.
Outside of that, the maps/areas are very, very intricately designed and are more than simple walkathons; y'know, like most other RPGs. There's a gimmick in every area, some puzzles, and some fun bits in-between to increase the development as both OMORI and his friends.

• The music. I've beaten this game after 5 different streams, and once every stream--because I keep forgetting that I said it in the stream prior--I've lauded this game's music. It doesn't miss between its dark, brooding ambience and its overwhelmingly uplifting music, with everything in-between.
If you want non-spoiler tracks to as an example, I recommend the following: Gator Gambol (battle), Where We Used To Play (overworld), and Lost Library (sad).

• The characters. I didn't expect to grow so attached to them so quickly, and for so long. I never completely understood why people were so fond of them--not just some of them, either. The protagonist, his friends, their friends, everything. It makes you feel for them, no matter what happens. I was asked time and time again, "who's your favorite character?" And typically I would pick a different one every time. It got to a point where I was asked for the final time, "any character you're fond of the most?" and I said "no."
Because I was fond of all of them equally.

• The material. This game is very, very unrelenting when it can be. It's bright, and dark. You must be prepared for both. The disclaimer at the beginning of the game every time you launch it is not to be quirky, funny, silly, or to even cover the developer's butt.
It's a warning to those not prepared for the source material; I thought I was.

TL;DR
OMORI is a game that spoon-fed me sugar and washed it down with poison. There are moments where things are happy and saccharine-sweet. There are moments where things are painful and jerk at your heartstrings. You will feel happy. You will feel sad. You could be overwhelmed with joy. You could cry tears of pain.

No matter how could you feel about this game, I'll be right here with you. We all will be.
Now get ready for your duet.

On average, it'll take you about 4 hours to beat this game. For the true ending, maybe 6. For a completionist run, you'll probably beat it in about 30-ish hours. So why do I have over 42 hours? Because to me, it's not a game you simply *beat.* It's a game that you *enjoy.* And I haven't enjoyed a game this good since the series it took inspiration from: Wario Land. As usual, TL;DR at the bottom.

Rather you're a casual player who just likes a fun and engaging time, or a speed demon seeking a reason to make your brain rattle in your head, Pizza Tower aims to please everyone both in and out of the scope of the game. While it won't take much convincing to get people to buy the game--there's a LOT of other reviews that are better than my own--people hear about how great this game is, but not exactly why.

• The hype. Six people in one day, two of which were in my stream's chat, recommended me this game as a game "you have to play." I'm very picky with my games. I don't just play them because others tell me to, and for once, I'm glad that I did. This game DESERVES its Overwhelmingly Positive review and if there was a rating higher than that, I'd make it my mission to get there.

• The gameplay. As mentioned above, this game caters to both casual players and speedrunners alike, and excels in making both audiences happy. If you feel like exploring the area, admiring the art and the funny characters/enemies, the game will not force you to hurry up--that is, until it's time to escape the level. It encourages people to try and flex their perfection bone (to go faster, to go harder, and to move better) but it doesn't *demand* it. While you will be rewarded handsomely for going faster, nobody is forcing you to but you.
As far as the game -itself- goes, if you're here because you saw that it's "like Wario Land but better": I'm here to say that the rumor is 200% true. This game is Wario Land 3 & 4 dipped in Pop Rocks and cocaine, liquidized and ready to be injected straight to your arms.

• The soundtrack, and oh my god, the soundtrack. There isn't a single song in this game that misses, ranging from the opening movie, to the hub area, to the stages, to the secret areas, all the way to the *♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥* pause menu. HUGE ups to the composers, because when I finally got around to streaming this game, it got to a point where I turned the SFX off on some stages *JUST* to show off the music while I played.
(Personal recs are Cold Spaghetti, Oregano Mirage, Tropical Crust, and Wudpecker to name a few.)

• Anti-frustration, a big point. You know how in some Sonic levels, you'll go really really REALLY fast, just to get dead-ended by some random wall spikes or fall into a pit or some other dumb stuff? You know how in games with separate characters, you'd play a totally different character that just took away any rhythm or flow you have? Not in this game. Enemies that would normally attack you cower in fear of Peppino as he sprints, and the free range of movement allows you to turn the very environment into your playground. When you get to play as the sidekicks Gustavo & Brick, they have their own moveset that works in their stages--but not so different from Peppino that it takes away all of your flow. If anything, it seeks to keep your flow going--to try something new, but familiar.

**TL;DR** Peppino Spaghetti, a nervous wreck that is a force to be reckoned with, teams up with his friend Gustavo to lay the serious hurt on some cheesy-lookin' mf who picked the wrong day to be alive. With their incredible speed, boombox full of bangers and no time to lose, they will make 100% sure these hands get delivered in 30 minutes or less. Y'all ready to get funky?

I got this as a gift. I never critique gifts, so I'm breaking the mold here with this review. You can find my tl;dr at the bottom if you want to know why I can't recommend this game, but hate ♥♥♥♥♥♥ walls of text.

I've done 4 different playthroughs, one of which was done live on stream. The entire game at its core has been excellent; the music is a bop, the weapons are cool (as is their upgrades), and the overlay filters had my heart from the get-go (I haven't stopped using the Gameboy one).

That being said, sadly, I cannot recommend this game as it currently is. For the 15-ish hours I've played this game, I have only been able to beat it *once,* and it was thanks to the community tier-whoring. I have a pitiful sense of direction, and this game definitely took advantage of that weakness to enhance my suffering.

A comprehensive list of issues from someone who has done four 4-hour runs of the game from start to finish (give or take, speedrunner brainrot)

- *Overall tediousness.* For the uninitiated, "starting a new game" = "deleting any and all progress you've made, including level progression, weapons and spells obtained." This means even after you've beaten the game, if you start a new run, congrats; you've forfeited everything from that previous run. Meaning if you wanted to go back to Single Stage and play any of the individual stages, don't be surprised when *none* of them are there. It feels like a roguelike, except they heard the words "start over" and took that ♥♥♥♥ literally.

- *Bugs, and lots of them.* Scroll wheel still gives issues even after the update supposedly fixing that, scrolling through spells still feels awkward (especially in situations where I need a specific spell), HUD elements disappearing for no reason, unable to re-buy spells after beating the game, etc. The list goes on, but all of them haven't been game-breaking. Nothing a restart couldn't fix.

- *No weapon downgrades.* You are given a choice of what you want to upgrade your weapon to, if you make that decision, you live with it for the rest of your save. One of my runs died literally because I chose the "wrong" upgrade, and the final boss took no damage from what I thought was a good upgrade. Why even have the freedom of choice if there's a meta determining whether you win or lose?

- *Skills are very underwhelming for something that's supposed to last you the whole game.* I won't deny that they're useful, but some of them feel like too much prep for low reward. I mean, really? There's a stat requirement to get a skill that allows me to walk through enemies? In a boomer shooter????

- *Spells are either strong or weak, no in-between.* Magic Light can help find secrets (or I can just turn my brightness up). Freezing Blast freezes on contact, or you can just get the more easily accessibly Freeze Staff upgrade. Storm Rage NUKES everything and is what carried me through many a horde of enemies, except for when you want to use it to ward off bosses, where it targets only two things: jack and sh*t. The other guns are fine, however, the spell cost does not justify the little ammo returned. The only two spells that actually yield no issues are Holy Guard (hey kids, wanna break from the damage?) and Curse, which was the sole reason I even beat the game. Without it, I'd be writing an incomplete review.

- *Hot starts, holy ♥♥♥♥ the hot starts.* Nothing is more fun than being airdropped on top of a metric ton of enemies who light me up before the game finishes loading. There's a difference between keeping someone on their toes and just dumping garbage on them frame 1.

- *WHAT THE HELL ARE SATAN'S STATS.* Every time I got to the final boss, my upgrade points were invested into weapons and spells I thought best fit my scenario. Yet every time I get there, he takes next to no damage from every gun that isn't the BFG--and since it has such limited ammo with limited supplies available, if I run out of ammo, I lose. And no, before you say anything, Sammoner does not work. If anything, it takes your mana and gives you no ammo for it in return. As I mentioned earlier, without Curse, I wouldn't have--no pun intended--stood a chance in Hell against this boss. It took me 4 runs, approximately 15 hours, to beat the game for the first time simply because the kit I prepped for after four hours of each session was "not good enough, start over."

- ***TL;DR***: The game's amazing, the graphics are amazing, the music is amazing, the guns are amazing, and the final boss can eat my razor-taped ass. Please commit to the bug fixes, correct a slight error here and there, and I'd gift this game to everyone I knew at *full* price. Until then, I *do not* recommend it--but don't let that stop you from tearing Hell up yourself if you so desire!

the green giant has invited you to play cards, and you can't leave until you do.

but once you get started, you won't want to leave anyway.

Summary (or TL;DR, I guess)

If you have never played a fighting game before and would like to, let this be the game you try.
I've been playing fighting games for about 20 years, and Strive might be the only one I play for the rest of my life. Am I bull****ing you? Maybe. Is that bull**** blazing? Yes. I was gifted this game because I didn't have the funds for it at the time, and one of my streaming friends got me a copy on a whim. When my paycheck comes in, I'll buy it for him back as repayment so we can play it together.


Guilty Gear is universally known for its Punch, Kick, Slash and Heavy Slash movements. Usually, they're inputted in a revolver mechanic of PKSH in that order. Sometimes, I like to think that my ex-roommate helped develop this game, because he said "that's a bit extra/too confusing/why can't I just focus on two buttons in a combo." To fighting game fans, you'd probably dunk on him for being a casual. But sometimes? I liked to think he was correct. If you want people to get into a fighting game, make it easy to learn and hard to master. XRD definitely tried to do that with its tutorial, but they one-upped it in this game by knocking in the idea that "repetition is key" and "practice makes perfect."

So now, your revolver combos are just Slash and Heavy Slash. If you as a new player want to start a combo, it's just those two buttons. It's a gateway to learning the game without being overloaded tons of info at once. A lot of people (including a certain Steam casual-hater thread) would argue that it makes the game too simple. That's what I thought until I spent 19 consecutive hours of this game labbing combos. Hell, I did a deep-dive of characters on stream, and was stuck on what to do with Leo; then, a friend of mine sent me a simple screenshot of their combo recipe--and they barely even touch fighting games--and now I'm hooked on him.

Anybody can learn this game, but that doesn't invalidate how technical it is; put time into it, and it'll give you results. Just the same as if you played literally any other game in any other genre.


Look, I'm not ashamed in saying that I play this game on a prebuilt gaming laptop with a 1060 in it. The graphics are phenomenal. It runs at a silky framerate, the atmosphere of each and every stage is beautiful, and the stage transitions were something we didn't deserve, yet got anyway. I haven't had any issues with lag on my machine, aside from the time I did a 3-hour livestream doing a deep dive of the characters, the mechanics, the stages and some of the arcade mode stories. Even then, the lag waxed and waned; I could turn my quality settings down to help ease the issue, and it still retained its shining glory.

If you have a potato, it'll be difficult to run it; but not by much. However, if I could give a comparison, if your machine can barely run/can't run Guilty Gear XRD, your chances of running this will be slimmer than that.


I knew from the very beginning that when a new Guilty Gear was announced, the music was going to be a banger. I was blown away by "Smell of the Game" to the point where it was my go-to song for everything. Making breakfast, watering my plants, doing both at the same time, hell even doing neither. But when the rest of the soundtrack finally made itself apparent through character trailers, I was sold. "Play the Hero," "Alone Infection," "Armor-Clad Faith," each and every song gave me goosebumps. I will be purchasing the entire soundtrack as soon as possible and make my neighbors feel every vibration through my surround sound speakers because f*** you, it's Guilty Gear time, even if it is 2AM.

NOW IT'S TIME!
to feast.


Impressive rollback netcode, but terrible lobby support. That's it. That's the entire online summed up. You don't have to read the rest if you don't want to.

I was playing with another friend of mine prior to my stream and we couldn't even set up a private lobby, because when they entered in my specific ID, it would give the lobbies of several other players playing in public lobbies. My lobby never showed up. We circumvented this by making a public lobby, limiting the seats to just two people and letting them rush in as fast as humanly possible. Other than that? We played our hearts out. If we experienced any lag, it lasted for two seconds or less. We played, at most, 10 matches when it was supposed to be 2 or 3. Whoops!


I am a huge Ramlethal simp. Ramlethal mains DM me. I just wanna marry you.

i've only been playing for a short time and i think it's ok.

Just when I thought I was going to get a good night's sleep, this game pops up in my recommended.

Metal Gear Solid: Devil May Cry Stand Alone Complex Gaiden Sigma with Panties