May 4-10, 2025
This was my only full calendar week of Game Pass, and I certainly took advantage. This is definitely the most time I’ve put into gaming in a single week for a very long time. There were some good games and some not so good games, but I definitely enjoyed my time overall. Before I get into that, let’s see what I picked up this week.
Game Acquisitions
I claimed the May Humble Choice this week 😊 Eiyuden Chronicle looks so good, and I picked up the standalone prologue in a bundle a while ago so now I have both games to look forward to! I also now have both Frogun games thanks to IGN Plus which sounds like it will be part of Humble Choice moving forward. They also own How Long To Beat which is interesting so hopefully nothing bad happens there. Shadow Gambit looks like a fun stealth tactics game and Ultros looks like a good metroidvania. The others were once again freebies and since I paid for the annual Humble Choice plan in advance, I’m going to count this as another week with no spending.
# of Games: 15
Total Money Spent: $0
Price/Game: $0
Game Recaps
Another week with four different games played, including two completions! I started off the week with a full playthrough of Mullet Madjack, which was by far my favorite game during the Game Pass trial. It’s a roguelite FPS with a heavy 80s anime aesthetic that borders on satire. My in-depth thoughts are in my review below but yeah, I loved this game. Check out my full playthrough. All of these videos are releasing in June so sorry if you’re reading this right away!
Premiere date: June 4th
Premiere date: June 6th
Premiere date: June 9th
Premiere date: June 13th
Premiere date: June 15th
The next game on the docket was another Tales of Phantasia session with my friend. We spent the entirety of our time in the capital city of Alvanista. We broke into the castle, fought the demon that was controlling the prince, bought some new artes for Arche and Cless, and listened to a beautiful piano performance before departing. Check it out!
Premiere date: June 11th
Premiere date: June 17th
After Tales of Phantasia was back to Game Pass with an interesting story-driven game called Road 96. I managed a full playthrough of this game this week as well. This was very much a walking simulator game similar to Life is Strange. The primary gameplay loop consists of ~15-minute scenarios where you walk around different environments, talk to people where your choices determine the ending you get, and either die or escape the tyrannical government and start over with the next person. My full thoughts are once again in the review below but the short of it is I thought the game was good but not great. Here's my full six-part playthrough. These parts are a little longer than my usual videos because each episode ended up being around an hour and 20 minutes and it seemed weird to break up the episodes across multiple videos.
Premiere date: June 3rd
Premiere date: June 5th
Premiere date: June 8th
Premiere date: June 12th
Premiere date: June 14th
Premiere date: June 18th
The last game I played this week was a ridiculous boomer shooter parody game called Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer. Before you ask, I am aware that vengeance is spelled incorrectly here, they did that on purpose. This is a game that plays heavily on 90s nostalgia. It starts with a monologue from the main character talking about how he came up with the coolest game idea ever when he was in school but lost the notes and never got to make it. Then he found the notes and the whole game is basically his dream game where he’s the main character and he’s so cool and kills the bad guys and is the most badass person ever. I didn’t quite beat it this week, so I don’t want to spoil my final thoughts. Here’s the first three parts of the four-part playthrough. The plot, like the rest of the game, is non-sensical so I don’t even know how to summarize what happened here. You’ll just have to watch to see for yourself.
Premiere date: June 7th
Premiere date: June 10th
Premiere date: June 16th
Game Reviews
Mullet Madjack
Mullet Madjack is a super-fast paced FPS with some roguelite elements and looks straight out of an 80s anime. The game takes place in a dystopian future where robot billionaires have taken over the world and the primary form of entertainment is watching streamers literally put their lives on the line by hooking engagement directly into their bloodstream and dying if they aren’t putting on a good show. That’s all just interesting worldbuilding to explain how the health system works which I’ll get to later. The main plot is that the most popular streamer has been kidnapped by one of the robot billionaires so one of the employees at the streaming company is tasked with finding someone who looks capable and entertaining enough to save her. She finds the titular Mullet Madjack, a muscular dude with cool shades and an even cooler car for the job and recruits him. After a brief video call where she explains basically everything I just did, he arrives at the skyscraper the streamer is being held hostage at and has to fight through 82 floors to save her.
The health system in this game is one of its more unique aspects. Instead of a health bar, you have a timer that is always held in your left hand that is constantly counting down from 10 seconds. Every time you take damage, the timer goes down faster. However, if you pull off some sweet kills, the timer goes back up. If the timer reaches zero, you die and have to start over from the floor right after the last boss. The bosses are typically spaced on every 10th floor so if you die on floor 36, you have to start back at floor 31 and lose every temporary upgrade you unlocked along the way. The upgrades are where the roguelite aspect comes in. Every floor you beat unlocks an upgrade such as a new weapon, increased movement speed, or reduced boss health. Every time you beat a boss, you unlock a permanent upgrade like a new tier of weapons or more upgrade choices per floor.
Now that the story and gameplay mechanics have been explained, I can finally say what I thought about the game overall. I absolutely loved this game, for the most part. The developer NAILED the look here. The cinematics made me think I was watching an old anime but with crisp 4K graphics. The writing was funny, the music and sound effects fit the tone perfectly, the gunplay was pretty good from what little I engaged with it, and the animations were fluid. The reason I say I didn’t engage with the gunplay much was because I couldn’t seem to aim good enough and fast enough to clear the levels. Luckily, you can unlock a katana as one of your weapons, so I played through almost the entire game with it. A couple of the bosses proved to be difficult with a melee weapon, so I had to switch back to a gun for those. Speaking of difficulty, I played on what is labeled as the “intended” difficulty of Challenge Mode and it definitely lived up to the name. This game was very challenging, but there are plenty of difficulty options if you’re looking for a more casual experience.
The reasons I didn’t rate this game higher come down to the aforementioned difficulty, the length, and the typical downfalls of the roguelite genre. The difficulty is completely on me, I could’ve changed the difficulty at any time but I’m stubborn. After I got the hang of things, the game wasn’t too bad save for the penultimate boss on floor 70. It took me six attempts to beat that boss, and I had to fight through ten floors between each attempt which became a drag. If you’re an epic gamer or don’t mind lowering the difficulty of games when you’re struggling, this won’t be an issue for you. My second criticism is game length. Depending on your skill level and the difficulty you play on, you can beat this game in under five hours which some people would see as a turnoff with the $20 price tag. I wasn’t too bothered by this since I played the game for free through Game Pass but it’s worth mentioning. My last gripe is with the roguelite elements, which is basically the same issue I have with all roguelike/roguelite games. After you play the game enough, you start to notice the same room layouts and see the same upgrades over and over again. This leads to repetition which can be a death sentence for some games, but this game requires enough focus and provides enough adrenaline from the fast-paced nature to help mitigate the issue. They also add additional hazards to the rooms as the game goes on such as tougher enemies, lasers, and pits to keep you on your toes. There are also only four permanent upgrades in the whole game with three tiers each and I only cared about two of them so there wasn’t much to look forward to there. Still, these are fairly minor criticisms of any otherwise great game, and I encourage anyone who likes FPS games to consider playing this at some point.
Time to beat
(Main+Extras) - 5h:29m
Rating – 8.5/10
Road 96
Road 96 is a story-driven adventure game about a group of kids attempting to flee their country that is ruled by a tyrannical government. The gameplay consists almost entirely of walking through a handful of ~15 minute scenarios where you talk to people, pick some dialogue choices to affect the ending you get, then choose how much stamina you want to spend by picking a mode of transportation to get to the next scenario. You can gamble and hope that you get enough money or find enough food to keep your stamina up to keep going. The dialogue choices are mainly split between just wanting to flee the country with minimal conflict, encouraging voting for the opposition leader in the upcoming election, or starting a revolution. After a handful of these scenarios, you arrive at the border, pick how you want to try to escape, then start over with a new character. After six of these runs (or more if you fail too many times from what I’ve read), you then make the ultimate choice of fleeing or staying to fight and watch how that plays out with the ending you worked towards through various conversations.
There are a handful of characters you meet on each run, and you can see what percentage of their scenarios you’ve encountered after each level. You can’t see every scenario in one playthrough so if you want to see everything, you’ll have to play multiple times and hope for the best. Some of these characters are more interesting than others. You have Zoe, the stereotypical rebellious teenager of a higher up political figure who’s also trying to escape. It may seem cliché, but I found her to be surprisingly endearing and well-written with a pretty good vocal performance. On the other hand, you have Stan and Mitch who are two goofy robbers that are obsessed with Sonya, the talk show host of the government’s propaganda machine. They were much less interesting in my opinion.
A game like this hinges almost entirely on its story, characters, and presentation, and I don’t think it fully pulled it off. The graphics aren’t the best, which is fine. It went for a more cartoony art style despite the darker subject matter which looked OK. Some of the vocal performances were just bad though, like Jarod the murderous taxi driver with anger management issues. The animations were just OK, and every run ended with the same two scenarios with only slight changes which led to repetition. This is definitely not as well-written or character focused as something like Life is Strange despite seemingly wanting to be, but I still enjoyed it enough to get all the achievements which is worth something. If you’re looking for a simple walking simulator with a politics-heavy story and can get over some of the mediocre writing and voice acting, you’ll probably find something to enjoy here.
Time to beat
(Main+Extras) - 8h:28m
Rating – 7/10
TV/Movie Recaps
Here is everything I watched this week:
· Arcane Season 1 Episode 5-Season 2 Episode 1 (completed)
· Family Guy Season 23 Episode 11 (all caught up, show ongoing)
· My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 2 Episode 4 (still watching, show ended)
· Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Continuing my trek through the Planet of the Apes series. Dawn was another pretty good entry. It was very different from the first movie since almost the entire downfall of humanity happened between the movies which was certainly a choice. Arcane continued to be phenomenal, and My Little Pony was fine.
Conclusion/Upcoming
18 hours of game time and two completions in a single week! I’m happy with that. It probably won’t happen again looking at my schedule, so I appreciate the time I got to spend here. I played a couple of great games, a good game, and a mediocre one. Not too bad. As with my previous post, the entire following week has already passed by so I can’t really say what’s upcoming without spoiling anything. You’ll just have to read my next post to find out. Thanks for reading!
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