that guy in your screenshot shows up in an earlier game by the same developer, Straimum Immortaly. I’m less fond of that game but it has similar charm and is, if anything, much more bizarre.
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Visiting my dad in Tasmania right now, so can’t really play much new stuff because he has the volume on the TV up so loud i can’t hear anything even with headphones. So mostly playing spelunky 2 and going back to some shmups.
Did a quick playthrough of Pocky & Rocky reshrined, and found that all my scores have been wiped from the leaderboard for some reason. I had some pretty good scores too, many in the top 100 and top 50s. All those bragging rights turned to dust 
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Oh shit, I think I unreservedly love Tunic thus far? And I’d have figured maybe it was too soon for another Souls-inspired-Zeldalike right after Death’s Door. But they are really distinct from each other in a way I might not have initially expected.
But yeah, so far it gets an A+ for like, actually making me feel a bit adventurous. Just getting your hands on a sword feels actually transformative. Pathways are interconnected in very pleasing ways. The secrets are fun. The hieroglyphics game manual stuff is a little whatever but so far that’s maybe the only thing that’s not landing for me, here.
I just straight up ran away from a boss because I unlocked the back door of his arena instead of fighting him! Great times. Cheesing other imposing dudes to death by hitting them with a firebomb and then just standing there while they burn feels good in a videogamey way. Can’t wait to see if my newly-acquired shield is any good against the gun turrets(!) in the overworld.
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not to discourse unprompted but one of the trends ive noticed about ppl talking abt killer7 is that a lot of them will call it a “bad game” or make it sound like it’s idk, intentionally unwieldly to an absurd extent such that it must be suda playing a takeshi’s challenge-ish prank. which does not hold up in recent dips ive taken into it!! like, sure it’s unconventional but on some level this is also just a game where you blow zombies away with amazing sounding guns and do amazing reload animations and sick as fuck cqc moves lmao
like idk its not like this game shares probably some majority of its development team with a little known action videogame called resident evil 4 or anything right…
anyways i need to sit down and replay it + re4 + also play re 2002 esp. since i finished god hand normal + most of god hand hard recently. i really do just love to emulate!! i have the steam ver. but id rather play it with the gc controller u know lol. which dolphin has Excellent support for thru the wii u adapter.
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I had an okay time with killer7 on GameCube but a great time with it using a mouse. I love everything about those smileys
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I wasn’t sure how much of the shooting gallery was intentionally limp or just kind of ignored until I got to the boss fight about getting the most headshots
I don’t know, I think it’s a satirical wrapper around a weak team. I don’t think they were intentionally turning in bad work – and you’ll get real inspired flourishes from individual artists, but it works because it’s all about strong directorial decisions, decisions that make it invalid to even ask whether it’s a good action game or has high-quality models or whatnot. It has a vision, it’s shaped towards that vision – it’s more than almost any game can say.
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Serenely imagining a Forza Horizon event called Drive Yrself to Death
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You know, Grasshopper used that strategy in the future but it fell apart as their competence grew. As the action got better in No More Heroes, Killer is Dead, Lollipop Chainsaw, well, they had a harder time sticking it together as a coherent thing. It’s so attention-consuming to make a game that it’s really destructive towards intentionality and authorship.
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The sharpest notes in No More Heroes were taking the piss out of GTA minigames and the Wii where the production can focus on making you feel ridiculous
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That Travis is as empty as the city he lives in, that it was impossible for this True Gamer to be any other way, that this open world is exactly the fidelity it’s supposed to be
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i dont think k7 is especially deep as an action game but i do think it is like, solid in a way that i absolutely dont think anything grasshopper did afterwards is!! nmh feels like an absolute chore to actually play. like the idea of making reloading into a micro cutscene complete with a cut to a different angle is like, brilliant action game design imo. idk tho… i also think re6 is just kind of one of the best action games of its gen so a lot of my preferences are obviously pretty idiosyncratic lol
everyone just wait until i learn unity and make a game about shooting handguns based on mgs1 + 2 specifically and also killer7 lol
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This particular developer has a pretty good selection of games that I quite like. I picked up their “all in one” collection on Steam and was pleasantly surprised! My favorite is probably Straimium Immortaly, which is “what if Hero Core is a roguelike?”, and the sequel to Straima, an also-pretty-good single-screen arcade platformer.
They have two new games on the horizon - a Vampire Survivors-like where you’re raising minions to fight for you instead, and a classical-style roguelike - and I’m genuinely excited for both of them.
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If I were reviewing their work I’d ask for more creative enemy designs with more interlocking behavior, some more creative level designs with tighter challenges, and revisions on the bosses. To be clear, this would be a waste of the team’s energy.
I wonder, did you play No More Heroes on something other than the Wii? I think it only really works on that – the simple motion controls are kind of a nu-QTE, asking for a bit of physical involvement as a companion to the gore, not nearly as engaging on a regular controller. Definitely has an upper limit before it gets old and it’s a good thing their boss fights were decent.
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I tested it 
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Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time
I’d love if I could integrate Hero Core in the Metroid-like lineage after Metroid II and before Rain World
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yeah it is a decent bit more fun on wii i think but there’s also the personal disappointment for me ig where idk, k7 feels like sort of a reimagining from the ground up of what a videogame centered around handgun combat can even play like vs. nmh which feels fundamentally like its the same thing as idk, any musou game
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I finally managed to convince myself to play through Killer 7 within the past year and… it’s mechanically bad. This is coming from someone who spent most of the year-plus before that playing hundreds of itch games, after that I’m pretty sure I’ve built up a tolerance for “neat idea that didn’t work” or “polish, what’s that?” type experiences. I think the on-rails movement was fine and it certainly is stylish, but I don’t think there is a single other mechanical part of it I’d describe as even mediocre.
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first level of Godhand was better at this imo
I’m still having a good time
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That’s a good one. I think the village opener in Resident Evil 4 is the best, still (and it’s classy enough to hold off the title card until it’s cleared). Doom 2016 had a decent one in its first gore nest, a very small room that demanded the player adopt shark-brain to pass.
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Killer7 feels superb, but then I am a big aesthete and I think it overwhelmingly cranks that side of things well past the dial’s limit. I think the game is interesting as an action game too, mostly because of its use of perspective and strict limits on when the player can attack.
Scanning is a bit of a chore and the ‘puzzles’ are very RE but I’ll play it any day of the week with a smile on my face.
NMH is similar to me where the emptiness is a big part of the aesthete’s enjoyment. Cruising through some backend Texas city from your motel to do chores or kill people. What less could you want? The mechanical progression mirrors this where every improvement is relatively tedious and doesn’t really make the playbook much deeper. Once you get Tsubaki the game becomes all about the charge moves and then assassination side-missions become as much a task as picking up coconuts or trash for cash. But then ofc I’m gonna defend this stuff lol.
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