I haven't posted in 10,000 years (finally, I'm free!) so I'm just gonna dump anything I played in the last few months and hopefully I won't repeat myself
Sonic Frontiers – I was expecting to hate this. It seemed both cynical in design and half-baked. In fact, the open zone design works well to make exploration fun, and the number of different gameplay 'styles' keeps you engaged, even if not one of them is perfectly executed. The creativity of the enemy designs has to be commended, and some of the main boss fights (second and third in particular) channel some of that Revengeance energy. Unironically I think this is my #3 favourite new game of 2022.
Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth – decent Metroidvania where you jump and attack through a series of (fairly bland) levels. Notably less good than their Touhou game, but still an okay time.
High on Life – I played like two hours of this and I've gotta say, the guy can write funny jokes but it's like there's no filter... There are jokes that you filter out on a conscious or a subconscious level, and here there's a distressing number of "jokes" that you wouldn't even have to think about before chucking if you were writing a comedy videogame. For eg. there's a knife character who constantly talks about stabbing... that's sub-Borderlands level humour. The gameplay seemed bad too. Zach of OneyPlays/Smiling Friends fame does a few voices and apparently there's a RedLetterMedia cameo too, but there's no incentive great enough to make me sit through this stinker.
Gal Gun Returns – re-release of the original Gal Gun game that wasn't originally released in the west. Also the best Gal Gun game. You're some dweebish high school kid who gets shot with too many Cupid's arrows so now you have to shoot girls to protect yourself from their advances... Basically it's a rail shooter, a playthrough takes an hour roughly and there are four routes that you pick from right at the start.
The level design, as it were, has a good pace – girls will pop up all over the place and it keeps you on your toes. They have weakspots, one of four zones, that will instantly incapacitate them. If you shoot any girl outside of their weakspot then your combo is over. Each route has several unique minigames and they're all fun shooting challenges.
Anyway, this is a really solid rail shooter! It's simple fun (and very easy with mouse aiming) but that's all you want, sometimes.
Gal Gun Double Peace – what if they made a sequel to Gal Gun that was worse in every way? The characters are less fun, the script is dry, the levels poorly paced & dull, and you play the same crap minigame over and over. The sisters from this game are starring in a spin-off 2D platformer game called Grim Guardians which is coming out later this month and will likely pwn because Inti Creates very rarely makes bad platformers (besides Luminous Avenger iX 2)
Gal Gun 2 – the fourth game in the Gal Gun series. In this one an angel from heaven gives you a VR headset and a suction gun; you've been picked as the one who's going to have to go into the girls' showers and suck up any demons that happen to be possessing said girls. It's tough work, but somebody's got to do it.
In all seriousness, there's definitely a progression here... the first game was mostly just cute, okay? I feel like I have to defend its honour.
The obvious gimmick here is that the game is designed for VR headsets (though it's locked behind DLC!! !! ! YES!! !! !! ! I LOVE MICROTRANSACTIONS FOR FUNDAMENTAL GAME ELEMENTS!), although mouse & keyboard will work fine. Now you have full 360 degree rotation and the girls are much more aggressive – they'll line up and shout projectiles at you, or possessed girls will run up at all angles and knock you to the floor as you frantically shoot at them. You'll have demons to hoover up but at the same time you're being assailed from all over... it's frenetic. I haven't finished this one yet but it's good fun.
Dead Space Remake – it's Dead Space. The game is slightly less scary than Gal Gun 2, and the lore is less appealing, but we can all agree that Dead Space is a good game yeah? Isaac has to run around a space station looking for his fairly haggard 57 year old wife... man, this game really is the anti Gal Gun ain't it? There's a bunch of badly written texts about how a cult runs the space station and they all worship a magic marker. It's the sort of thing that feels like it's going through the motions, regurgitating stale cliches, which is why I stopped reading or listening to any words the game presented me with after the first half hour. Fun game though. 7.9/10
Resident Evil 4 VR – I bought a VR headset for Gal Gun 2. Let that sink in for a second. Anyway, RE4VR is a surprisingly complete conversion of RE4 for the Meta Quest 2, with immersive features like pulling guns and ammo from your body. My main peeve with this is that entering the inventory is slow and takes you out of things... you can only equip one small and one large weapon at a time, plus a grenade and healing item, so it's necessary to open it quite often. Aiming is easier than with a controller, but everything else is more difficult, so it ends up feeling reasonably well balanced for VR. All in all, this is great fun – RE4 is an all time classic, after all.
Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 – definitely in the top 3 Inti Creates games with MMZ3 and 4 imo. I've been playing this on and off since it came out. You shoot enemies with talismans and then hit a button to warp to them and trigger stacked talisman damage. The aim is to stay in the air as long as possible and do simultaneous kills to maximise your score. When you wrack up enough points an idol will sing for you. Each levels ends in a boss and the key to getting the highest rank on the hardest difficulty is to try not getting hit. That's easier said than done – a lot of these moves require some puzzling to figure out. Anyway, here's some gameplay footage (yeah, these are my vids... I love this game) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw2s ... aa6U3v845a
Neptunia Sisters Vs Sisters – why do they keep making these games and why do I keep buying them? Why have I completed more than ten different Idea Factory games? (Not even counting outsourced Neptunia spin-offs.) The script here feels about on the level of VII, except the funny characters aren't present so actual jokes are too sparse and there's an overreliance on simply referencing things that actually exist in lieu of wit. The battle system is bad but at least it's breezy, fights don't take too long. Why do I keep buying these?
Cyberpunk 2077 – I'm replaying this right now because I got a new graphics card and man it looks good with everything turned up, but frame generation is busted and makes the game stutter more and more heavily every time you go into the menu, and it lasts until you close the game. CDPR really is incapable of releasing something that just works huh
Muv Luv series – I hate myself for reading as far as I did into this. Extra is sort of okay... it's by-the-numbers but it has good production values with a very kinetic presentation for a visual novel and the script is funny enough and fairly concise, at least in the common route. Infinite is basically the same thing but with a different coat of paint and less humour –
problem is it has a non-ending, resolves nothing and is written in this cowardly way where the writers won't even commit to the existence of the primary antagonist force.
Muv Luv Alternative is the one that people claim to like, and I can sort of understand why – the scenario itself has some compelling moments – but the way it's written is absolutely insufferable. The main character constantly suffers profound character development only to immediately revert to being stupid, arrogant, self-centred and/or cowardly in the next moment. There's a fantastic line he monologues half way through the story: (paraphrased from memory) "it seems everything I do is selfish in a way I don't understand." Whoo boy, you don't know the half of it. This kid can't stop interjecting with his inane thoughts which are usually some explanation of the previous line/s, as if the reader is assumed to be too stupid to interpret statements without help. Thanks.
Of course, our guy also has to have flashbacks to scenes that happened immediately prior to the current scene, too. Then he'll speculate on what the scene might have meant. Don't think the over-verbosity is limited to the main character, either; dialogues in general are repetitive, they go in circles and restate the same key points over and over. Chapters in which very little actually happens are drawn out to the point of absurdity by the overbearing wordiness of the script.
Then there's the science fiction elements... basically, it's the sort of sci fi where they explain one actual scientific theory or experiment and/or use one piece of real scentific terminology in order to offset the fact that everything they're doing is blatantly a magical asspull. Double slit experiment! Parallel computing! Anyway, here's the Tardis I invented, and here's the replica of a human brain onto which a perfect copy of a human consciousness can be transplanted. (It doesn't help that she's the second most obnoxious character in the story. Don't get me started on the part where she deliberately releases Beta onto the base.)
I had to stop reading this. It reaches a point where it feels like the writers are taking the mickey. And it's a shame because if you cut about 3/4 of the text it'd be perfectly readable and you'd have a good story with just a few issues.
EDIT:
I forgot some games!
I had a go of some Puppet Combo games during November & December. They are all presented in a kind of... faux PS1-ish style with some (usually optional) VHS overlays. I didn't enjoy most of them, to be honest, but I'll shout out the best one:
Stay Out of the House – as far as this kind of game goes, this was pretty good! You get abducted after stepping into the eponymous house and, after breaking out of your cage, you skulk around with the aim of somehow escaping. There's a killer, and there's also an old lady in a wheelchair who scoots around at speed and will alert the killer on discovering you. When you're spotted, the killer is extremely aggressive and accompanied by a bright red glow – it's a simple thing but it really conveys the murderous rage of the killer.
The house itself is a fairly compact setting, so you're never that far from danger. There's a pervasive feeling of claustrophobia and you have to stay aware of your surroundings, at least to the extent of considering escape routes; the killer can also leave bear traps and will even set up cameras, so you really do have to be cautious at all times. Since the game does such a good job of rooting the environment via the gameplay, the atmosphere is enhanced and exploration feels meaningful... in that sense it's reminiscent of something like the Resident Evil 2 remake, but obviously the gameplay isn't nearly as developed as in that game. Progression is mostly made by finding the correct location to use the correct item, and you will undoubtedly miss something at some point and waste a lot of time searching... I wouldn't feel too bad if you have to use a guide on this game.
Anyway, I'd give a strong recommendation to anyone who wants to play a solid indie horror game. There's a little more to the gameplay than I described, but I wouldn't want to spoil it.
Last edited by arekks on 07 Feb 2023, 6:22 am, edited 3 times in total.
26 Jan 2023, 6:45 pm
