I knew this game was excellent when I dug into the Chicago level, an art deco wonderland as a dense warren of skybridges, and started pulling loop-de-loops around the bridges to get behind enemies
I want to know how FASA birthed Crimson Skies near-simultaneously as Talespin
The arial trick controls are so good and so clever Iām amazed they didnāt instantly become a standard to my knowledge, but I guess arcade flying games with no respect for actual physics isnāt as big a category as one would expect.
Yeah playing this with Sky Odyssey fresh on the brain was a bit of an adjustment. In terms of pure feel of flight, I prefer that gameās more nuanced approach but it would be a nightmare for dogfighting so gimme those warthogs with wings.
BALAN WONDERWORLD IS NOT THE BEST GAME OF THE YEAR
BUT IT IS THE GAME OF THE YEAR
IT IS YUJI NAKAāS GREAT CIRCUS GRAVITY NAPPLE TALE AND THE GIANT EGG
EVERY BUTTON IS JUMP
EVERYONE TALKS SOME WEIRD FAKE JAPANESE-FRENCH THING
SOMETIMES LIKE, 8 GUYS IN COSTUMES APPEAR OUT NOWHERE AND START DANCING WHILE TRIUMPHANT MUSIC PLAYS AND THEN THEY FADE AWAY SECONDS LATER
I KILLED EVIL SENTIENT PHONOGRAPHS AS A SCARECROW WITH A PUMPKIN HEAD WITH ROCKET PUNCHES
YOUR NOT-CHAO BUDDIES FOLLOW YOU THROUGH THE LEVELS AND SOMETIMES THEY GRAB SHIT AND BRING IT TO YOU
AFTER YOU BEAT THE BOSS (WHO WAS A FARMER WHO GOT SAILOR MOONāD INTO A GIANT BUTT-STOMPING KANGAROO BECAUSE A HOLE OPENED UP IN HIS HEART BECAUSE A TORNADO DESTROYED HIS CROPS), YOU DANCE WITH HIM WHILE A SONG THAT STARTS LIKE THE GENERIC SONIC TEAM R&B SOULFUL JAM THAT GOES FULL SHOWTUNE AND ALSO ALL THE LYRICS ARE I THE MADE UP LANGUAGE
IāM ALMOST ENTIRELY CERTAIN THEY RENDERED THE OPENING CUTSCENE 4 TIMES FOR EACH OF THE SELECTABLE SKIN TONES
THE ENTIRE TIME WHILE PLAYING THE DEMO I AM GOING āWHAT THE HOLY FUCK IS THIS GAME YUJI NAKA YOU FUCKING MADMANā
I LOVE IT AND I WISH TO PURCHASE IT
How dire is the moment to moment actionfeel of this video game what are we talkin here where are we at on the b-tier sonic billy Hatcher spectrum?
to seriously address this
one of the costumes in the demo is Box Fox
itās a fox wearing a wizard hat and cape
its power is that you turn into a box
you turn into a box at random
you do not control when you turn into a box
you keep all of your momentum when you turn into a box so you slide around as an invulnerable box clad in a wizard hat
you do not control when you stop being a box
the other costumes are fine but consider, at some point, you will have to be Box Fox in order to do something
NO ONE IS GOING TO GIVE YUJI NAKA MONEY EVER AGAIN
GAME RULES WILL BUY ON RELEASE DAY
ISLAND OF TIMS
Imagining the not so alternate future where Ueda and Naka are blacklisted, roaming, coming to the inevitable conclusion of forming a dark alliance with Suzuki
reasonable people who do not enjoy getting yelled at do not want to work with Yuji Naka. This is known.
i am waiting for the progress bar to ā¦ creepā¦ slowly ā¦ pixel ā¦ by ā¦ pixelā¦
at least my HYPE METER IS OFF THE CHARTS ALREADY, YEAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH
Slugging through Thumper.
I love the call-and-response mechanic; it gives off this cerebral effect where the beetle and the player merge after a continual succession of succesful inputs in the game. It reminds me of Tempest in many ways.
Almost like a minimal Tempest with how it telescopes its āenemiesā underscored through a telegraphed rhythmic cycle (supposedly each level has a different time signature).
Nicely industrial in sound too.
Thumper is great, but really damn hard. Some of the time-signatures are easier to get through than others, and they each seem to pose a different challenge, so by the end of it I was surprised and kind of pleased how inconsistent the difficulty curve proved to be.
so hey, itās pretty - hey whatās that, let me see - oh, I can do that?
OK, back there was this thing i couldnāt get, so let me backtrack and -ā¦ you are supposed to do it that way!
that have been the first 30 minutes with this. It feels a bit likeā¦ hmmm, some sort of a mashup of Nights x Dewprism x Katamari, though obviously with SQEX-budget (and maybe some polish/QA) behind the team.
Best bit maybe was the fact that it doesnāt tell you what to do, it letās you figure that out for yourself.
Gets a clear thumbs-up!
Wow. How bad is Naka that heāa an abusive boss is known outside Japan?
enough that itās well-known among the gaijin community of Japanese game devs
That reminds me of how Mark Cerny said SEGA R&D 2 was effectively a sweatshop. I guess Nakaās mindset hasnāt evolved much past that culture.
I figured out the Tims. you throw the Tims into a Rune Goldbergian machine and they count the counter up and this makes the machine that counts them bigger so it can count more Tims faster and make the counter go up with greater efficiency so you can count them faster. also you get a trampoline.
Iām sure neither of the two random things above about Balan Wonderworld are any kind of commentary re: Yuji Naka
