beard_of_zeus

@zombiepie I just finished playing this a few days ago (I had been morbidly curious for a while and ended up grabbing it on sale), I'm glad I stumbled on your write-up on here because I was losing my mind at how bonkers this game gets! Was nice to indirectly commiserate with you by reading through this.

Building a good chunk of the story around the huge conflict of interest of Dr. Lomas and Reyes working together is just baffling to me. It is unfortunate that Dr. Lomas is wasted in this game, she could be a really interesting character in a more competent game.

And you really hit on the rollercoaster insanity of the ending of this thing. The part with Lomas offhandedly mentioning "Faye" being molested and then immediately segueing (I say "segue" like it makes any logical sense) into a kiss with the sheriff absolutely fucking gobsmacked me, I could not believe it. Who in their right mind would think to play that scene out like that??? And then you do get the amazing scene with the cat that is immediately followed up by the final fucked up flashback. The emotional whiplash is bonkers.

Wow, you weren't kidding about that wiki page, holy smokes! That's some nice work!

Glad to see Paranormasight getting some love, I also have it in my top 10. It does some genuinely unique and cool stuff with the visual novel genre.

I like Square Enix supporting smaller, weirder projects like this, but I wish they wouldn't send them out to die with no fanfare (see The Centennial Case from last year).

I was attempting to find a game in the database to add to one of my lists, typed in "8 doors" instead in the search, and came across this page: 8 DOORS

It looks to be a duplicate entry of this page: 8Doors: Arum's Afterlife Adventure, based on the same developer/publisher/release date information.

I would request that the "8 DOORS" page be deleted, since it is the wrong spelling and is less filled out anyways.

Tunic is the big one that I want to go back to, it was very intriguing on its face but some of the design choices were off-putting. I actually finished most of the games I started this year, surprisingly enough. Any of the other big games I can think of that I didn't finish were just because they are on the longer side, but I am still actively playing them (see: Soul Hackers 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 3).

This was basically the exact same experience I had with Stray. I started playing it when it came out since I already had the PS+ plus that let me play it for free, and I didn't finish it until a few months later. It really shouldn't have taken me multiple sittings months apart to finish such a short game, but it just didn't grab me that hard. As you said, it was worth seeing in the end I think, mainly for the lighting and environment/character design, which I thought was quite good. But I think the "oh you play as a cat" gimmick really pushed it into getting way more talked up and overrated.

Just wanted to say I loved your Pentiment write-up, I had a extremely similar takeaway as a dirty non-believer vis a vis Wojslav's journey. (actually your whole post was very good, thanks for sharing!)

I was looking through some of the staff lists today and realizing that I miss the days where there were insightful writers on staff after seeing some lists that were mainly GIFs and short blurbs, I'm sure some community folks will put out good stuff though. (hopefully there will be some good guest lists as well).

Love this game! It has its issues but I found it quite addictive.

Game Freak actually has a second 3DS eShop exclusive game called Harmoknight that I equally enjoy and would recommend people check out. It's a rhythm platformer in the vein of the Bit Trip Runner games. I like bringing this game up whenever I get the chance, haha.

It's nice when Game Freak puts out non-Pokemon games, most of them are quite good, and even the ones I think are a little more mediocre or have design issues (see: Giga Wrecker , Little Town Hero) are at least interesting.

@icemael: Okay, that makes me feel better at least lol

I was inspired to play some Crimson Clover this morning after mentioning it, yeah that game rules. It is somehow incredibly manic and totally manageable at the same time. I also played the Arrange mode for the first time and it is pretty interesting. The difficulty seems halfway between the novice and Arcade modes, but it also grafts a Gradius-like powerup mechanic onto the game where you have a changing row of upgrades to choose from.

@icemael: Espgaluda 2 is like the only one of these types of games I have felt was just way too hard and overwhelming for me. Not sure if I wasn't utilizing some mechanics correctly or what. Even like halfway through the game, there were just...too many bullets.

I kinda went down the rabbit hole of this genre over the past couple years, I think it was mainly of the combination of a lot of Cave games getting re-releases (many by M2, which feels like the gold standard) and the Switch having a ton of games of this type. My previous experiences before that mainly amounted to playing a ton of Ikaruga on the Gamecube and Radiant Silvergun on Xbox.

I definitely can't tell you the best one, as I don't think I am a genre expert by any means, haha. I wish I had maybe a slightly better vocabulary for discussing the mechanics. I'll usually play a game for a bit just to try it out and get a handle on it, and then graduate to frantically Googling how some of the scoring systems and mechanics work when I don't find them super obvious.

But here's some I played recently that I enjoyed the most:

• Danmaku Unlimited 3: I know this isn't the only game to have a "Graze" system where you incur benefits by letting bullets get super close, but I really like the implementation here, and the bullet patterns support the mechanic pretty well.
• ESP Ra. De. : This is definitely my favorite of the recent Cave re-releases, this game rules.
• Crimzon Clover: World Explosion: This is not a Cave game, but is definitely inspired by it. If I had to pick a favorite shmup at the moment, it miiiight be this game. Super well made, easy to identify things on screen even thought it gets super hectic. great music. The big mechanic is something called the Break system which is very good at making you feel very powerful.
• A ton of Darius games got re-releases lately, I really enjoy G Darius and Darius Gaiden.
• Rolling Gunner: I think this is only on Switch at the moment, I really like this one though. It's a horizontal shooter where the main hook is controlling the direction that your gun shoots (e.g., locking it into place or not). I think it was designed by a former Cave employee.
• Natsuki Chronicles: This is another off the beaten path horizontal shooter I don't see mentioned at all but I really liked. It actually has a full fledged story mode where you unlock and upgrade a TON of weapons and ship customizations as you play. Another very neat thing is that all the bullets get their trajectories painted (And they pop more on the screen as the danger increases). It sounds like it would be info overload, but it is super well implemented and quite readable (and you can also just turn it off if you want, but I like the feature).

I'm playing Dangun Feveron (a Cave game that got an M2 port) and Deathsmiles I&II at the moment, they both seem pretty good. Dangun has a very goofy disco theme that I am into.