Games – THIRD HALF//

GACHA HELL: ZENLESS ZONE ZERO

July 18, 2024 3/2 No Comments

I’ve been a fan of Mihoyo’s semi neglected action-rpg-gacha title Honkai Impact 3rd for a few years at this point. It’s been kind of frustrating watching Genshin blow up followed by that *other* Honkai game while HI3 still kind of existed off by itself. I kind of bounce off of open world games from the lack of direction and Star Rail was like 90 percent of the way to being a solid turn based RPG but the ten percent of it dedicated to daily grinding and obnoxious mob formations hit me about like a root beer float that’s ten percent sand. Knowing they have a pretty good handle on action, I had been looking forward to ZZZ since its announcement and the first character art being posted, but man, it sure felt like a long wait. (Not as long as Girls Frontline 2: Exilium, but we’ll cross that bridge when it comes out.)

Having finished the available main story and played… probably too much per day since launch, I think I can say that it’s pretty much My Shit from the bonkers animation, urban sci-fi/fantasy setting, and a combat system that’s definitely simpler than Honk3 but calls for tighter timing and seems like it has potential for interesting team building. I normally play about everything on gamepad that isn’t utterly hamstrung by needing mouse look precision, so I was put off for about 30 seconds that ZZZ defaults to mouse and keyboard, but damn, they actually have a pretty good layout. Good enough that after I configured my pad I kind of hesitated a minute then put it back to defaults. I’d compare it a bit to how Smash Bros. doesn’t really have a complicated set of controls but each character has a different enough move set that they don’t feel the same despite having the same inputs.

One of the things that makes me like it a lot though is it has such a laid back sort of vibe to it. It’s a little frustrating how slow the resource grind can be for leveling up your characters and gear, but on the other hand, doing your daily errands can be accomplished in a couple minutes if you just open the video store, get a scratch ticket, and drink some coffee. With a lot of mobile games I’ve played, I’ll hit a point where once I’ve checked off the entire laundry list, and I’m kind of just *done* for the day. Making them this breezy feels like it takes a bit of pressure off and makes logging in feel less like a chore. This is especially good for an active game that you can’t really idle or sweep your way through fights in, which is probably one of my bigger problems with The Honk. And if you have free time but don’t feel like fighting, you can just help out people around town or hang out with people (once the contact list *finally unlocks)

Combat is kind of a streamlined ‘character action’ setup with teams of three characters you can tag more or less freely between. Each has their own Energy meter for specials and the whole team shares a “Decibel” meter for setting off ultimates. Like a lot of these types of games, you can dodge an enemy’s attack with good timing to trigger a slow mo state with increased damage/daze output, but you can also tap the tag button on enemy moves that flash yellow to do a Perfect Assist that swaps characters out and usually makes a very satisfying CLANG noise from the move being parried. Enemies have a daze gauge and once that fills, they’re immobilized and take more damage for a while as well as usually triggering multiple Chain Attack prompts. For the most part you’re just going to be running from arena to arena in construction sites and ruined cityscapes, but every one in a while they mix it up with stages where you bash boxes or collect coins. The most variety comes from the ‘exploration’ sequences. You play a character called a Proxy who essential guides parties through dimensional pockets called Hollows, and the Hollow is represented as a maze of monitors you move between. When I first saw the map screen I thought it was just the way they were going to be presenting a normal branching roguelike sort of route, but it’s actually more like a tile based mini adventure mode with encounters and puzzles to solve. A couple maps have been groaners (the Pokemon-ish fighting tourney gimmick dungeon was boring as hell and the stages that play similarly to turn based space invaders somehow managed to feel tense and dull at the same time) but most of the time when a stage gimmick came up I would light up like “ohhh.” The main story missions tend to be pretty easy to navigate and complete, the format comes into its own in the Hollow Zero which is again, not so much a roguelike as a themed challenge dungeon since the layouts seem to be fixed and each zone has a ‘theme’ to its puzzles.

I know comic book panel cutscenes are usually a cost cutting thing but man, I still love them when they’re well done.

I do have a few problems with the game so far, but they’re not really deal breakers. Not yet, anyway. I’ll start with what’s most important to a new player- this game takes its sweet time opening up. Shops, resource stages, side game modes, all of them kind of trickle out as you complete the main story and level up your Inter-Knot account. There are some points where you might get a piece of equipment and not know what to do with it or how to enhance it because the corresponding shop isn’t open yet.

There’s also the matter that the grind stages feel really similar but do different things and are physically spread between two or three locations. The majority of character materials will come from the VR sims at the HIA, but some of the premium stuff comes from the Outpost, but *other* premium stuff is back at the HIA again. Naming them things like Expert Challenge, Notorious Hunt, etc doesn’t really help my brain connect the dots what place does what either. On the up side, it does seem like it’s a bit less complicated than the whole Traces thing in Star Rail.

The pull rates feel really lousy because the majority of 10 pulls I’ve done have been 9 B’s and 1 A which is guaranteed per 10 (unless there was an S,) but I say feel because other games tend to try and obscure it a little more instead of showing you a row of TVs literally just showing the grade of the thing you won. They have a neat little touch where if you get an S rank pull, it adds a little rap vocal over the music, but it also sort of lets you know to be disappointed earlier if the music starts up and you don’t hear lyrics. You might consider it a feature! That said, I actually got some pretty decent luck in the first couple weeks here and pulled enough dupes of a couple characters to fully promote them as well as the banner girl and current Internet waifu of the month Ellen Joe. I actually went in mostly just wanting to play with Billy, the Deadpool adjacent sentai fan combat android, but he turned out to be one of the characters you start with so anyone else I’ve gotten was just gravy for the first leg of the game.

As mentioned before, it can be a bit slow getting upgrade materials, and it sounds like it’s an intentional move by the game director to make a game that ‘respects your time’ by discouraging you from playing all day. Of course, when I am in the mood to play a game all day, things like stamina systems are just bullshit and I refuse to let go of the fact the game thinks I can only handle one cup of coffee a day MOTHER FUCKER, I HAVE TWO MINIMUM even though I know it’s just a dressed-up “Claim Stamina!” button served to you by a lovable coffee robot. I’m kind of hoping it doesn’t become limiting to the point other games can feel, where dupes and top tier equipment become totally essential, especially with regards to character element typing and stuff like that- already there are stages that recommend Ether damage when there is only one Ether based character and she’s a support. Star Rail pulled a bit of that at launch with the Imaginary damage type that ONLY Welt Yang could use then they started feeding more of them into the roster as the updates went on. I think it’s a pretty valid concern as an endgame Honkai player who can’t get above Agony II in the Superstring Dimension because I don’t have ideal equips or SSS on all the recommended characters and the above Star Rail shenanigans because they’re all being made by the same company and all.

That said, I like what’s there, and I hope that it stays as engaging as it currently is.

POWER RATING: 3 OUT OF 2

Let’s Talk About Neptunia, Okay?

August 13, 2023 3/2 No Comments

I’ve been following the Hyperdimension Neptunia series for a while now, and for the most part I’m pretty positive on the experience. There’s a lot of how they approach the series that I really like to see, though I have to admit if I take a step back and look at the series as a whole the quality is collectively… Iffy?

Most of the goodwill I’ve built toward the series is kind of due to the Re;Birth trilogy and VII (just to get this out there, that’s V-short-for-“Victory”-Two, and not a Roman 7) serving as enjoyable, light adventures that tangibly improve as they go on aside from some odd steps back in Re;Birth 3’s battle system. Generally though, each time I started a new one there’d be some moment that made me think “Huh, I was actually hoping they’d fix that.” All of them are a marked improvement on the original PS3 games, though Victory comes very close to the game engine used in the Re;Birth games. VII is just… a genuinely good game. The story feels like it has some stakes to it for once, the ‘combo’ system is actually extremely important and satisfying to learn, and it’s easier to pull off your flashy moves again. I’d like to see another ‘mainline’ game follow up on it, though I kind of feel like the good ending feels cheaper than the downbeat ones given the buildup.

I’ll admit up front I totally understand why people don’t get into the series since it relies on fanservice, winking constantly at the fourth wall, characters who never really develop much, and the entire premise of the setting is more or less the gimmick of “what if we made a video game about the gaming industry? Wouldn’t that be WACKY?” But sometimes you just want a nice big bowlful of junk food, and the angstless, hapless heroines of the series going on quests to fight software pirates and anonymous internet forum users fits the bill pretty well.

The girl on the right is one of the main antagonists.

Most of the missteps the series makes are relegated to spinoffs which almost all take more experimental approaches ranging from hack and slashers to an idol-raising sim that’s apparently so bad it hasn’t been ported to Steam. I found U: Action Unleashed pretty dull, Neptune and Blanc vs Zombies was essentially a cuter Oneechanbara game, and Hyperdevotion Noire was a STING co-developed tactics RPG that relies a lot on terrain gimmicks. (You would think the last one would be totally my bag but the addition of a player insert character always sours me on stuff like this.) I haven’t gotten to play much of 4 Goddesses Online but it seems like an okay action-RPG in the fake MMO dot hacky sort of tradition.

This is all more or less filibustering the focus of this spiel. Last year was the US release of Brave Neptunia, under the far worse title of Super Neptunia RPG. Drawing heavy inspiration from Valkyrie Profile and coming out sort of suspiciously close to Indivisible but likely unrelated, I was really looking forward to this one. The 2D graphics look really nice, which is unsurprising since the series has pretty much always had cute hand drawn art locked down tight. The end result though, is a game I’ve been frustratingly unable to ‘click’ with for the most part, even as I’m considering starting the whole thing over to try and play it ‘right.’ After buying it on or near launch day I have just shy of 8 total hours of play and am alternately breezing through or getting completely ruined by random encounters, so I feel like I’ve missed something essential in the battle system.

I should probably mention at this point this is a Rambling post and not like, a review. As mentioned above, maybe my eyes just glazed over a tutorial somewhere because IF games just love to front load tutorials including mechanics you won’t even be able to access for hours in-game in codex or full-screen splash graphic form. Missing a tutorial somewhere doesn’t fix some of the other issues I’ve had come up, little trinkets of Jank that crop up regularly enough that they kind of wind up congealing into a layer of Vaseline that was smeared on as a creative interpretation of “polish.” Long load screens, minimalist maps that show you how to get around but not where towns are or what connects to the next area, oddly unresponsive menus at times. Also, on every other bootup the Compile Heart jingle plays in a harsh, corrupted version for some reason I hope is a genius intentional move and the later chapters turn into creepypasta material or something. The voice clips available to the characters in English seem really limited as well, leading to weirdness like Neptune yelling “Yess! A crit!” when she crits using Poison Strike followed by “Yess! A crit!” every time the poison status causes damage, or equipping Noire with a multi-targeting, multi-hit attack making her exclaim “A gra-A graceful strike!”

I revisited the Westwind Valley from near the beginning of the game and found it inhabited by golems that can flatten the party so hard Noire doesn’t even realize she’s dead.

The most obvious change to this game is that it’s been turned into a side-scrolling, Valkyrie-Profile inspired format where Neptune has to navigate interconnected areas via running, platforming, and some limited traversal items like a pudding she can bounce off of. In battle, each girl is tied to a face button and does different actions based on what position they’re in. It’s customizable, but you’re sort of stuck once battle begins and I haven’t successfully run from one yet. I’ve been stuck many times in a fight where my characters didn’t have anything the enemy was weak to or even stuck healing the enemy. I think there may be a touch of SMT weakness exploiting going on since it seems like once someone hits a weakness the rest of the fight turns into a curb stomp endlessly spamming the same move- for you or the enemy.

I can’t deny though that the game succeeds in being very pretty, and I can’t see the plot coming hours in advance for once. Maybe I’m a sap but it’s hard for me to stay mad when I enter a new area like the coral reefs outside Planeptune and it’s so darn nice on the eyes I’m not angry again until I meet a dopey looking underwater knight who can relentlessly hammer the team into nothing because he got a weakness off first. But for those three minutes, I was really into the reef, okay?

A Question of Value(s)

October 2, 2022 3/2 No Comments

*Overwhelmingly positive with mechs AND anime girls? But…*

This is one of those thoughts that has percolated in my dysfunctional little brain for a while now, but when I was idling scrolling through the Switch eShop sales page looking for interesting indie stuff to impulse buy and probably play five minutes ever, it jumped back out and now it’s blocking the bathroom door, so I guess it’s time to address it before the situation escalates. A new shmup, Moon Dancer (which looks pretty dang cool) is on sale, but squinting above it, I see the original price is $18.99 USD. The Steam version is $14.99 regular price with the option of a soundtrack bundle.) Now, I’ve seen the sentiment crop up in reviews that the price of a game shouldn’t affect its rating, and as someone who is into kind of nichey stuff, it’s a factor I get stuck thinking on a lot.

I like a lot of smallish studios’ work, the indie scene feels like the place to find titles that are either imaginative or at least similarly cozy to the stuff I grow up with, with a dash of excitement of discovery on top from finding something quality that hasn’t been completely overhyped and overexposed online. I don’t honestly know if WayForward and Inti Creates are considered indie anymore, but they’re at least able to keep their own identity and mostly avoid the big trends that make high profile companies’ outputs feel so bland and samey. I also personally know a few people home-brewing their own passion projects and/or self-publishing and the amount of work that goes into it is huge and admirable. Major props to people who spend years going “I’m making a game!” and banging at it ’til it actually happens.

The thing that gets me is that game pricing feels like it’s just all over the place. Honestly, most feel ridiculously generous, like full length RPGs with original art and engines selling for $20 or less. My beloved ZeroRanger is still technically under construction after four years while keeping the same $12.99 price point, and it’s probably my favorite shmup. So when you get a release like say, Darius Burst CS, which isn’t quite mainstream but well regarded in its genre, releasing for $50 (base game, it has/had numerous $4.99 DLCs), it’s kind of a tough sell for me. (Also it seems to be delisted now? I went to check the price and I can no longer add to cart on Steam.) And the hell of it is like, I still kind of want it, in a “gotta support the scene!” kind of way. I was willing to buy it on a steep sale one of the few times it did and I burned some Amazon credit on Deathsmiles 1+2 since I like 1 a lot and never played 2, but they were both a bit beyond an impulse buy for me. I have a similar problem with fighting games, I love both genres and appreciate the replay value your get out of replaying them and improving over time, but at the same time, they’re both kind of a short experience by default, and if it doesn’t click, then I’m going to probably get each character’s ending and shelf it forever.

*hey wait why does this image follow that sentence? weird*

I realize that shifting from talking about indie projects to ports of existing games to home console or updating them is a different ball game, but it’s hard for me to separate the two when I’m scrolling through the listings. Ultimately, they’re both a product and an experience, and when I see someone pouring their blood, sweat and tears into something then selling it for $3.99 or giving it away for free out of love for what they’re doing and another listing is a decades old arcade game, optimized for current systems for $7.99, it feels kind of off to me. Arcade Archives does do great work, and I nabbed some of their ports in spite of being really easy to just emulate the stuff, but at the same time, I’m thinking “this is a good port, but they didn’t make this.” And where do you even place things like the Pixel Game Maker series of releases or commercial RPG Maker projects? There’s effort there, in the writing, graphics, generally, though there are some games that just do the bare minimum and release it to Steam because they’re allowed to. There are some really impressive games coming out of Maker engines, and you definitely can’t knock them making game development more accessible to people who otherwise couldn’t (hell, I purchased Pixel Game Maker myself recently hoping it clicks and I can make something some day.)

*Pixel Pirate Pack, featuring Popeye and Blutus*

I’m not really saying that indie devs are underselling themselves or that porters are gouging their audiences here, more that ‘value’ isn’t entirely about cost but a factor I can’t entirely ignore when I’m game shopping or reviewing something. I’ve dropped ten or fifteen bucks on more duds than I can remember but also gotten hours of fun from games in the same bracket. I’m also guilty of overpaying for weeb trash games because, well, that’s just how niche things go. Sometimes you have to bite that bullet if you want to play Darius Burst CS badly enough or want to import a Super Robot Wars or tiddy ninja RPG. When something enters niche hobby territory, there’s usually a price hike, look at photography on real film. You used to be able to get disposable cameras for cheap at any drug store, now it’s basically a hipster luxury territory.

Let’s step away from the cozy side of the games market for a bit here. I know, I don’t do it much either, but it’s okay. Just hold my hand and don’t follow anyone from Blizzard anywhere. I love my Switch, ok? It’s probably one of the top three consoles I’ve regretted least buying. But Nintendo continues its proud tradition of pricing everything at $50-$60 and never budging from launch price and that makes buying into first party games really tough for me unless peer pressure is involved. I play Mario Kart pretty regularly with friends after finally caving on it, and Smash Ultimate is a good time even if I rarely do multi player with that one, but I’ve been kind of hemming and hawing about Breath of the Wild for years at this point. I don’t play a lot of open-world games, and I honestly haven’t played much 3D Zelda, but the near universal fellating of BOTW has me wondering, like- is this the one? Is this going to be the open exploration phenomenon that makes me not mind forgetting what the hell I’m doing while wandering around lost in the woods? Genshin Impact sure wasn’t. I got super into Honkai Impact, its stage based brawler cousin, and after a while I thought “Hey, maybe it would be fun to go back to Genshin and see how much these two games have in common.” Since I haven’t gambled myself into a cardboard box as of writing this, I think you can guess how well that went. So, I haven’t pulled the trigger on BOTW. Splatoon always looked kind of neat, but I don’t really want to pay full Nintendo price on a ‘maybe,’ especially knowing that they have something of a shelf life with finite Splatfests. Also Inklings keep cutting me off in Mario Kart offline circuits and I’m kind of developing a grudge. It just irks me that Nintendo never cuts the price on these games unless they make it to best-seller status or completely fucking bomb (I got Other M for 12 bucks new at GameStop back in the day) when most companies would give it a break a few months or a year out.

This has all been kind of a roundabout way of saying “I don’t like paying more than $20 for short games but also don’t want them to stop making them.” So many indie games sell low it kind of feels like being spoiled, but as an artist I’m also pretty painfully aware that selling low is an easy way to get takers, period. I’d hate to wind up as the equivalent to one of those assholes who gets a quote from an artist and insists “no way it should be that much, anyone can draw if they try and if you do it for fun why are you charging me at all?” So, love and respect out there, earnest indie devs and those of you out there who bust your bottoms making quality game ports and collections.

*I didn’t even get into this shit, huh?*

To The Third Power

March 31, 2022 3/2 No Comments

Hiiiii, absentee internet guy here! I actually started a bona fide article back in December then didn’t finish it because it was pretentious as fuck and now isn’t even topical! So I just thought it was a good time to check in and report on some games I’ve enjoyed recently, dump some sketches, then come back in another three to four months. You’re fine with that, right? I like that about our relationship.

Alchemy Stars: Aurora Burst (Mobile)- First off, yeah, a lot of these are going to be mobile games. I’ve played entirely too many of them lately, and keep trying new ones just to see what looks promising and which turns into a dull slog of daily quests and template generated moeblobs and/or gijinka. Alchemy Stars is really cool, though, since it has a unique battle system involving drawing a line through like-colored tiles to move your squad around and attack enemies. It’s goofy as hell watching a conga line of characters run in awkward panels to either do a hit and run or just burn up tiles on the far end of the map, but I love the ‘gameyness’ in the same way I love STING RPG’s. It’s simplistic, yet has some nuance in how you build your teams and trigger your active skills. I broke my rule about joining games for collaborations since a Dragon Maid crossover was going on at the time, but I like the game itself enough to keep picking away at it a while every day.

I give it a 3 out of 2.

Guardian Tales (Mobile)- Okay I broke the rule again with this one due to peer pressure: there was a Slayers collab going on and other members of the fan discord I’m on were really enjoying it, so I bit. Guardian Tales is a surprisingly fun sort of Zelda-like title that gets bogged down a bit for me with Gacha Things. Overall, I’d say it’s worth a play but I prefer the bite sized stages, puzzles and exploration parts of it to the resource grinding, active and passive PVP, and vestigial but compulsory co op elements that every mobile game (or ‘mobage’ if you’re like that) and kind of wish it was just a stand alone thing that was just that. It’s got an interesting sense of humor and likes to casually slide dark notes in your way, which really made that Slayers crossover make sense.

I’d call it a 2 out of 2. Fun, nothing glaringly bad but I wouldn’t say I’m hooked.

World Flipper (surprise, it’s also Mobile)- I’ve always kind of had a soft spot for video games that take a physical game and do things with it that you couldn’t do on a real pinball table/race track/line at the urgent care. World Flipper is a pinball RPG where you build teams of adventurers then fling them violently at enemies and obstacles to score points and charge up for Power Flips and active skills. I love the presentation (tiny sprites for the actual game, colorful clean character art for dialogue and menus) and it’s pretty easy to get a fix in short bursts since each stage is usually just a two-screen ‘table’ that can be beaten in a couple minutes. The flip (heh) side of the whole thing is it’s a very light, fluffy kind of experience so don’t go in expecting LORE! or anything especially deep. It’s just a really good game to toss on when you’re in ‘head empty, actual RPG take too long’ mode. Given that’s been the philosophy of most of my attempted game projects myself, I can’t help but love it. Also worth pointing out the game just automatically ticks off daily quests and achievements as you hit them, so you’re never consulting a checklist and being compelled to do all of the menial bullshit on it on a daily basis, so it is a surprisingly guilt/FOMO free experience for what it is.

2 out of 2.

Final Gear (Mobile)- I like mechs. This shouldn’t be remotely surprising for long time readers, new readers, people I’ve sat next to on a bus, or those who quietly just stop responding on Discord after several paragraphs explaining the different VF-1 Valkyrie variants and who used them in Classic Macross. Final Gear is a mecha RPG that plays a bit like a side scrolling beat em up with guns added, until you can turn on Auto battle and much like Azur Lane, there’s rarely a reason to go back. Of course, these mechs are piloted by cute, merchandisable anime girls. They seem to have pretty frequent collab events, which could be a selling point if you’re into mecha because if there’s anything we mecha fans love is seeing a mecha we know in something else. The guest character art seems to be all done by their own staff though, which isn’t outright *bad* so much as kind of uncanny in some cases. A smiling, moe-fied Major Motoko Kusanagi is one of the more cursed examples. (Original characters look fine though.)

Final Gear is a tough recommend for me. I like mecha, the construction system is cool (if you get the full parts set and pilot for a Custom unit, you can transform it into a cooler looking, more powerful version) but resources for upgrading can get really grindy and as far as I can tell, whaling is about mandatory for some machines (you get points from making gacha pulls on a banner which can be used to buy parts of a character’s Custom from the banner, but going through the Eva collab f2p only ended up giving me enough parts for Eva-02’s backpack and arms.) It’s worth playing if you just can’t get enough robots in your life, but it has a lot of annoyances that might dampen your enthusiasm including crashes, typos, and a high maintenance base that seems to consume a baffling amount of system resources when you visit.

If I gotta be real, this is a 1 out of 2 but has potential to improve if it survives. On the other hand, my Research on -booru sites has yielded mostly official art rips and barely any risque fan art so that may not bode well for its popularity.

Azure Striker Gunvolt: Striker Pack (Switch)- I bought the individual games at launch on my 3DS, plodded through them, then never touched them again, but I’ve been on a major Inti Creates fanboy kick lately and decided to go back to the beginning of the series to see how I like them now. And, as happens to me a lot, really, I enjoyed the replay a lot more. I’ve heard that some tweaks were made to the collection, like additional platforms in Zonda’s upside down flipped sequences and the script to GV1 was essentially de-4Kids’d, but I barely remember the first time around so I got to just appreciate it as is. Hunting for jewels for… Joule was less obnoxious than I remembered, but the bosses remain as tough as I thought. I think I’m just more welcoming of challenge than I was back than- at least not counting attempting the good end- fighting those bosses a second time without prevasion on sucks. I like GV2 more overall, due in no small part to just liking Copen’s play style a lot. Gunvolt’s tag and zap mechanic is neat, but physically ramming enemies to tag them, ricocheting off walls and air dashing is just plain fun. I jumped at his spinoff when it came out. Overall, it is two good games bundled together, so it’s easy to suggest.

I’d give the Striker Pack a 3/2 but the limitations of my forced point scale means I can’t give iX a slightly higher score, I guess.

Luminous Avenger iX (Switch)- Gunvolt’s edgy boi rival Copen gets a spinoff where it turns out he was right to want to kill all the ~~Mutants~~ Adepts, actually, because in the future they’ve taken over the joint and hunt the surviving humans through their ruined cities. This game is a joy, it’s all about mastering Copen’s movement and weaponry to rack up combos and score, and it’s been polished and streamlined a lot since the 3DS entries. Since I didn’t get too deep into it before, basically the GV series are Mega Man X-likes as they appear, but designed more around getting through stages quickly, untouched, and chaining up points. Survival itself is actually pretty easy since both characters have an ability called “Prevasion” that basically trades their electric gauge or bullets to take a hit before you start losing health, and either of those things can be reloaded by double tapping down at any time. So if you play deliberately, it’s usually pretty simple to get out of the way and quickly reload before going on the offensive again.

Also, considering Copen’s play is based around different kinds of dashes, combos, and the bosses in iX2 are more or less expies of Mighty Numbers, the entire thing kind of feels like a big flex on Mighty No. 9 and I love passive aggressiveness in the games industry.

Luminous Avenger iX gets a 3 out of 2 in my book, nudged slightly higher than the previous games as mentioned above, though honestly, play ’em all!

Gal*Gun 2 (Switch&Steam)- Yes, I own this game. Twice. If you have to pick, I would pick PC for mouse aim. I don’t know where to really begin breaking this down while still keeping things kind of snappy since this list is getting longer than I planned, but do you like rail shooters like House of the Dead or Lethal Enforcers? It’s like that, but horny. You play a nondescript loner boy who is given a Pheremone Shot and Pheremone Goggles that will help drive out and defeat the mini-devils serial prankster Korona is spreading to cause mischief. The side effect of this demon busting gear is it makes every female member of the school irresistibly, violently attracted to you, so you must take them down by ‘satisfying’ them with Pheremone Shots to their weak points. It is exactly the kind of game you think it is assuming you know they stop short of actual nudity because it’s a console game for Grodd’s sake. GG2 has a surprising amount of content in it though, in the form of numerous side missions, different types of stages including defense stages (which suck), hidden object searching (which kind of sucks), and the route-ending Doki Doki stages where you just get right in there and drive the devils out of your chosen gal pal’s body at point blank range while they writhe and my friend judges me and tries to think of an excuse to go home.

Really, it’s just a goofy as hell anime fanservice game that’s more fun than it has any right to be. I was laughing my ass off when it gets to extremes like the girl next door revealing her pet project of an Anti-God Laser or classmates chasing you in the air vents like Xenomorphs. If you miss light gun or shooting gallery type games, it’s a pretty fun one though it feels like a missed opportunity to let you use the detached joy-con to aim like a pistol instead of doing the awkward Splatoon whole-Switch tilt on console. Steam’s port has mouse aiming which makes things much easier (much, much easier- they probably dumbed things down a bit expecting console aiming response times.)

I give it a solid 2/2. I had a blast playing through it (Chiru best gal, classic gaming five-ever) but I’m not really itching to return to it any time soon.

I think that about does it for stuff I want to dish on right now, I’ve been in aggressive CONSUME MEDIA mode for the past month or so and felt like sharing. I haven’t gotten as much PRODUCE CONTENT done as a result unfortunately, but hope to turn that around once things stabilize a bit. Had a lot of vet trips for Nia over the past couple months and work is jerking my schedule around for the first time in a good while, so here’s hoping it’s stable hours even if they’re not the ones I prefer to work. Friday Raffles have also been getting back in swing over on RGL, so I can be caught there most Fridays when an event isn’t going on. But I’ve been thinking lately, I really need to just nail down a project and get it out there instead of talking endlessly about My Game that doesn’t actually exist as yet so I can’t show it off.

Until next time, adios.

Holy Crap, It Doesn’t Suck: A High Accolade

December 22, 2016 3/2 No Comments

So, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero is out now to the general public, and holy shit is it everything I had hoped for. As hypey as that sounds, what I was literally “hoping for” was “more of the same with another layer of refinement.” Wayforward’s been a company I’ve enjoyed following a while now since they manage to slip out original titles that show a clear personal investment in between licensed products that they still put a good effort in where I imagine a lot of companies would be content to just cash in. Who the hell would get the license to a Harvey comic strip and think to turn it into a Metalstorm clone?

Lately I just really find myself being drawn to examples of series that genuinely improve on themselves over time. Shantae for the GBC was okay, but plagued by blind jumps and probably a few too many moves for only two buttons. Risky’s Revenge was a solid little game, though it showed some signs of ideas that didn’t get quite fleshed out (the multi-layered town and forest areas, the awkward map chiefly.) Pirate’s Curse was another solid step up, enough so that her pirate equipment was easier and more fun to use than her transformation dances to the point I was actually kinda worried about what her having her powers back ruining Half Genie Hero.

Well, luckily that’s not the case and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. It’s structured in kind of an ‘episodic’ feel with each short story netting a piece of Uncle Mimic’s latest machine to set up the final chapter with Risky inevitably swiping to nobody’s real surprise. The jokes are mostly pretty funny, the animation is gorgeous, and backtracking is made more palatable by the levels usually changing to remove the more obnoxious hazards from the first time around and changing enemy types. If you find yourself stuck in a level you can whistle for Sky to pick you up, even if it makes no sense like your being on a waterslide or in an underwater cavern polymorphed into a crab. So yeah, I’m stoked- a long-awaited crowd funded game release that’s actually really good. That’s one point for 2016.

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