the highest praise I have for it right now is that it feels designed by committee in a good way – it has the marks of big budget European titles where you can tell that they, like, hired comic book artists to design the characters, made sure that the premise reinforced the mechanics, ensured the aesthetic was trendy and consistent enough to sell – and it all works! most studios don’t get to work on new properties this deliberately and they’re benefiting from a lot of ground work that’s already been done; all the powers are from dishonored and some of the assets are from prey and somehow Sony doesn’t have another big exclusive next generation title coming out this season so this is going to get all the attention it possibly could.
I almost feel obliged to point out that I generally do not expect videogames to have to be this coherent and expensive and novel at the same time because it’s too unrealistic to really be desirable but they got a real winner here
also, the first PS5+PC exclusive I’m aware of officially runs great on my old 3570k
i feel validated in this being one of the two upcoming AAA releases i actually care about/intend to play (the other being Ghostwire: Tokyo). i will have to buy this eventually.
It definitely feels like the halfway point between Harmony of Dissonance and Circle of the Moon. It’s not necessarily doing anything new but it seems to be doing all of it well.
HoD points: brighter colors, excess everywhere (skeletons flying apart, getting 3 new weapons in like 5 minutes, boss boss boss), more talking.
CotM points: getting new items is exciting, it’s a little challenging, enemy placement is more purposeful, it’s a little more down-to-earth, soul system echoes DSS and makes the slot machine of defeating enemies worthwhile again.
Honestly I am going to have a hard time judging this game in anything but “ah christ i fucking love this game” terms though. It’s so close to my heart, and it’s a really cozy game weirdly enough. It’s not as interesting to look at as HoD by any stretch of the imagination, but everything just feels weirdly welcoming. This is where I fell in love with the monsters of Castlevania.
I was going to eventually (ie a few games later) make a joking suggestion that you play Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate for the Nintendo 3DS, but I just found out that there is an HD version of that available on Steam right now and suddenly I’m depressed.
the lack of a real castlevania game is the 21st century equivalent to the saturn’s lack of a real sonic game, so important a part of the gba and ds libraries those six games are
Is HoD the one with the cool dedicated area where you have to use weird environmental traps to kill some of the tougher giant knight guys? I always wished there was more of that in the series.
HoD has the weird homages to Castlevania 2 and Adventure with some of the equipment. Makes sense one of the more polarizing modern style ones would invoke the polarizing classics.
Finished Warioware GIT. I’m done. Feels too grindy compared to previous games and I’m not into playing as everyone. Some character/minigame combinations just kill a run for how sucky they are. How am I meant to enjoy cranking these high score missions if you throw the worst shit at me. I love Pyoro
Also this Warioware has probably the longest and most tedious boss stages to replay.
I replayed a stage 10 times because I only had 22 games out of 23 so looked up what I missed and you press A to do a somersault. I’m too old for this shit, man.
Listening to James “Hubby” McAvoy smack his lips and moan with pleasure as he ate his wife’s dessert without her permission
How no one in the game had locks on their phone, which meant I didn’t have to solve any dumb timed puzzles to find the greatest text message in the history of games:
How the player character immediately believes Wifey may be a murderer. I’m pretty sure I’d immediately roll over if my partner were accused of any sort of crime so it’s nice to see more coward representation in video games.
When its stomach churning violence was suddenly justified by the main character somehow slitting his own throat with the blunt side of a kitchen knife
Cold calling the teenage girl for the first time and immediately picking option 3
I hate when girls die but I laughed at this okay, I wasn’t alone, you can’t get mad at laughing at me for this, all the gals in the chat were also laughing rather than being sad about girls dying
How everyone in the group chat who hadn’t previously read spoilers groaned near simultaneously when they figured out upcoming twists
When the true ending bugged out and froze on a black screen with two watch hands on it as all the final bits of dialogue played. I have no clue what happened. Did the game reject my final declaration of “No Incest”? Perhaps.
How the game wasn’t that long once I started cheating (but it was still too long).
How this game was quite possibly profitable so these devs will probably get to spend another half decade throwing the Sight & Sound 100 into a blender in hopes of making the next great dorm room poster game. Meanwhile I’m on year 16 of totally scratching ass!!! Do you know what “scratching ass” means?? It means you’re broke! My uncle used to say it all the time! I don’t think I ever heard it from anyone else! Will I let this rage that lives inside of me fuel my work today? No, probably not, will likely spend an hour drawing a pixel art gazebo or trying to remember what a variable is before passing out in my chair for half the day, fuck this!!
I cant get enough of the 12 minutes burns. I hunger. Cant remember the last time such a high profile indie title generated so much ribaldry. This feels like Cage levels of nonsense
