trials of the blood dragon i tried mainly because i assumed that it would be an xbox live arcade game on a bigger budget, and that's more or less what i got, it's trials HD with some gimmick levels, on foot segments and more explosions, it's cute how it sticks to the roots of the older XBLA game and is just a game from that era on a real budget and if it werent for the games content beyond that i could almost find myself reccomending it, but the game itself is just kind of vile, with awful writing and a lot of racism under the veil of "irony" and sometimes not even having that as a pretense. what first started as curiosity over its xbla roots very quickly turned into playing almost in horror of just how a game like this managed to make it through from any AAA company, but i guess if it was any that would okay this it was going to be ubisoft, the games content beyond the gameplay is just, downright gross, i won't go into the detail about the contents just because it is, quite honestly disgusting at times with the mostly anti-asian racism, but you can expect downright disgusting depictions of vietnamese people, racist accents and dudebro "haha japan weird bro" shit that you'd expect out of a frat bro, this game is fucking gross and consider this a warning to stay away from it, play any other trails game if you really want that gameplay experiance, the other PS4 games have the same "AAA XBLA" style but with less of the grossness. it could have been a cute curiosity but instead now it'll just be remembered as "racist bike game" in my eyes.

frogger returns is an PSN title from 2009, it's a short PSN take on some very simple frogger gameplay, it's short, simple and very arcady but it's just a very good exmaple of a certain kind of game from this era, it looks very of its time, shiny textures and modles that are a lil off and the frogger on the menu looks a perfect mix of creepy and adorable, but it's got charm. it doesn't play the best but it gives you exactly what you want from it, 4 levels of very difficult frogger gameplay, it doesn't have anything added to it, it's just a simple, more modern game of frogger and sometimes thats all you need. it has some catchy music and a nice aesthetic but the game is massively difficult, despite only being 4 levels it took me all day to finish as the later levels are downright unfair, though still reccomended if you want a skungy, charming frogger to play!

back 4 blood is the best of the three games, though initially i wasn't a fan of it at all and it wasn't until my second chance with it and its dlc that it really started to shine for me. the basegame i will admit is not great, while the characters and writing is a lot of fun, i mained the medic, doc, the levels were very bland with only a few exceptions, the quarantine zone was fantastic though, but the rest are just very bland nothing levels which i remember almost nothing about, the music and look of the game is bland too in the basegame, with very little colour to it, but the gameplay is very solid! the guns all feel unique, fun and the zombie numbers are also very good, though world war z did have better tech there. what does give the game its own spin versus other co op zombie shooters though is the card system which even in the basegame works great, you can really tailor the build well and it lets you change the gameplay up enough with things like sprint shooting and being able to carry multiple main weapons at once and the game also ads a lot of cool changes to the basic gameplay with the corruption cards, fire zombies, increased spawn rates, ACID zombies and even random boss spawns, it ads a lot, but when the levels are as boring as the basegame levels are, you won't really see much of that because i can't imagine you'll be rushing to replay them. now all this changes with the games dlc, at least the latter two, the first dlc is just a roguelike mode with instanced levels within levels, it's not great and not really worth buying since in the third dlc's bonus mode, you can play through these levels anyway without having to levels to find them at random, it does also add some cool legendary weapons however, like a fire shotgun with a devil as the reticle, these are so much fun and well worth trying to find. now the other two dlcs are full story expansions with their own characters and story, it's more or less a two parter that focuses on a priest that might have magic powers, a woman who can summon a friendly zombie and a cult that worships the games infected worms, it's got a lot more personality. these levels are well designed, have cool themes (a boat road trip, cult ran prison, mines, tv station, museum and even a massive boss fight with a poop monster in a staduum) with a ton of colour and interesting themes, they're far more replayable since they're interesting and distinct, you even get a flamethrower! i had a much better time playing these levels, the spotify integration ps5 has helped a lot too, shooting zombies to hare hare yukai and BTS albums just hit's different and i reccomend doing this since the games music is wholley unmemorable. you even get new enemy types in these, from cultists who throw bile at you, snipers and bow users it really ads an interesting new challange to the gameplay, there's even a stalkler type enemy too! i would reccomend this, especially as it is super cheap now, but it does come with the asterisk that you get the dlc with it, it's the games best content and well worth pushing through the not great basegame for, but it's fun, has personality and it really felt like the devs had a great time making the dlc, were able to take more risks and because of that it's where the game shines its best.