No Lives Left

Since I am not a professional reviewer, I always have to wait until I finish a game to review it which can take anywhere from a week to months after the game has been released. But thankfully, due to being a games backer on Kickstarter, I was able to receive and beat a game early so that I can review it when it's still relevant! So while I'm still waiting for my amazingly shabby blog to take off, I'm going to be reviewing Shantae: The 1/2 Genie Hero! I haven't been a fan of Shantae for a long time. I originally found Shantae: Risky's Revenge and Shantae: The Pirate's Curse on the 3DS eShop a few years ago. The games were on sale and described as Metroidvanias which I thought would scratch my Metroid itch. Though both games were relatively easy, I enjoyed the gameplay immensely. Once I found out about Half Genie Hero on Kickstarter, I immediately backed it. Then waited...and waited...until finally this past week when I got the steam code for early access....

It's no surprise that video games have been a major influence in my life. They may be my single greatest passion. And to me, very few things come close to popping in a new game into any system and beginning a new adventure. One of my fondest memories was playing Final Fantasy VII back in 1999. My best friend had a Playstation at the time and brought it over to my house so that we could play his games. After beating a couple of games that summer, my older brother was generous enough to buy us a new game back when EB Games was still around (Gamestops have taken them over now). Being huge Megaman fans, we saw Megaman Legends and immediately purchased it. But after a few hours of playing we decided that the game wasn't our cup of tea and different controls made it hard to enjoy. Being young, all we really wanted was another game that played like Megaman X and Legends was drastically different than its cousins. So we returned it and after some deliberation returned home to st...