'cania dispensing these Castlevania takes
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I enjoyed Castlevania III more than the first two when I was visiting all the famous NES games circa 2004. Unlike the first one which ended very quickly and was a sort of videogame snack, it gave me a sense of adventure and provided a lot of challenges to sink my teeth into.
Like arcade games which come alive on 1cc attempts, you need to decide to “scale the mountain” in order to fully appreciate it. It’s quite a project to win the US version on the longest path without save states and the details acquired meaning when I made that my goal. Like learning to play each section just well enough so that I don’t die in between the wall meat, and arriving at the boss with the right subweapon. Then finally making it further and going through the same learning process on the next stage. And by beating the shortest path first, I got experience that came in handy later on the long path.
It probably didn’t age well though, because a flood of NES-inspired games iterated on its formula further since Steam came out. Now there are other mountains with better views and more carefully considered handholds out there, and it’s become hard to come up with a compelling reason to scale this one in particular. So I still think about it fondly but have no desire to replay it (only to listen to the soundtrack on Youtube now and then).
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the best one on nes, except when you go alucards route and it becomes the worst one
like, it’s really just a super beefed up nes castlevania and it’s amazing at that. you got balancing board platforms, ice magic that actually freezes in-stage water, cool background effects, and whatever i’m forgetting. it’s been a few years but i loved it
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I really hate the stages where blocks slowly fall down to build a tower.
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i ended up playing it when i decided to get into beating a bunch of NES platformers in like 2010 in order to Up My Gamer Cred for some reason… tho i can’t remember if i beat it. i remember it being framed as “the best Castlevania” at the time by people on the extremely bearded man-centric forum The Shizz which was like an outgrowth of ocremix/vgmix and filled with people who idealized Castlevania and the NES in general… i guess the metal/prog stuff was heavy in that community. i thought CIII was pretty good though i def was coming in from liking the music. i liked it more than Castlevania I, which has some nice atmosphere or whatever but i never particularly enjoyed playing that much. the only real Castlevania game i grew up with was II though.
i honestly might be there with Cania because i think Castlevania has just been over-exposed at this point. i like Symphony of the Night i guess. and am not as apathetic to the original CV games as much as i am with the NES Megamans.
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Based on the first quarter or so of Tomb Raider 2 I got through before quitting on it I’d say the first stage is the only good one so… do with that as you will.
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yeah i really liked the first level, and then the two after that just made me rage quit. venice suuccckkssss, that level made sure i will never visit it in real life, they should sue eidos for destroying their tourist economy
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Four hours straight of Hyper Demon (oops). All I have to show for it is a sore pinky and knowing I got within 10 points of my personal best 
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kind of blame the whole OCR era for making me turn against metal in general. I know some people who are still metal but I just can’t go back to it and it’s kind of sad.
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I’ve supped immortal blood today, if you know what I mean.
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gave my last copy of death stranding to one of my hot nyc friends bought a new one the other day. what a game what a fucking game love it sm
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I’m at this point right now. I can’t improve my personal best without either 1. very significant improvement or 2. beating the boss. I keep getting 20s ahead of my pb and dying at 180.
At least I can reach the boss once a day, and my average drifts higher and higher. More of the game is whispering its secrets to me and I am enjoying myself. Up to almost 40h played. I liked Devil Daggers a lot but never binged OR kept up with it like this.
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ugh i just finished the Venice level and yeah it’s bad. tbh it’s just like… why? the whole thing with the boats was broken. i had to look at the walkthrough to see that i needed to blow up the mines with a boat, but i didn’t take the boat at the beginning with me. so i assumed i was screwed because you need to drive the boat to the end within a certain amount of time but… apparently not? you can just swim through anyway without even activating the timer thing? so what’s the point of doing half the stuff you do? a level like this would never make it thru testing/quality control for an AAA game these days. not even sure it would for a commercial indie game. just a lot of bad ideas at once.
the mansion level seems a little better so far though.
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yeah in hindsight i find the kind of live band loyalists from that community a lot more obnoxious than the trance kiddies because they were way more like gatekeepery and cliquish about a lot of things (i.e. what they do being “real music” and being “real musicians”). as MAGfest shifted from being basically just About That Group of People to a big gaming convention i wonder how much of that group has splintered. it seems like The Shizz basically stopped functioning over 5 years ago so that tells you how little i follow any of that stuff anymore. i kinda checked out once someone i knew from that space went all down the right wing conspiracy/Alex Jones rabbit hole.
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I’m still on the Fortnite train, and I think the biggest reason is that it always feels like you’re making progress. You’re always building up to something. The goals are clear, and it’s an incredibly powerful little psychological hook.
This has made me pause and reflect on my time with Splatoon 3 (and 2, of course) which makes me sorely wish it did something more to soften the blow of a loss. Give points for solid inking. Have daily goals for something achievable without actual team wins. It just feels absolutely crushing to have a day of consecutive losses and it makes you play worse with each time you feel worse.
Fortnite turns losses into perceived wins by still letting you work towards something perceptible every time.
It’s a good thing they have weekly/daily limits and sets of goals, or it would be a very dangerous kind of game lol.
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The thing that unlocked it for me is that winning and losing are barely different in terms of XP. Quests are maybe 90% of the experience i get. I think it reduces the pressure to win so much, its really nice
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Murdering peelies feels so good…
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Having finished Northern Journey, I can recommend that it is worth puting up with it’s awful combat encounter design to see all the places and things you’ll do on the journey it takes you on. Seriously, there’s so many novel interactions built in between the basic FPS things you expect to be doing in a shooter. It’s constantly surprising you with cool one-off things and visual tricks. I’m extremely impressed with it as a debut despite the horrible combat, and expected roughness, but also just in general. I think a lot of the delightful novelty probably comes from this being the dev’s first game. There is a lot here I could imagine more seasoned devs cutting or working around before, say, implementing a fully controllable hang-glider just for one level as this dev has done.
It made me kind of want to check out G-String again, because that has a similar for-the-sake-of-itself verve.
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kirby superstar fucking slapppss though i wish the dreamland 1 remake was more substantial, though i guess the joke is how easy it is when using powers. commit to the joke and port the whole game imo
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i just started this a couple days ago and it rules! the combat is absolutely egregious, but the level design and all the different things you do (i just finished the bit in nokkpond and omg) are just endlessly endearing. also i was surprised to discover that it is made in unreal? i guess what with all the textures it makes sense, but i’ve never seen anyone make unreal look like that.
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