Wasn’t there a mobile game that ties into El Shaddai too?
The thing I remember most about El Shaddai is the vibe of the ending, where you find out the leader of the rebellion had died upon entry to the Earth and everyone you were fighting had just been struggling to keep themselves together after realizing they’re entire plan was DOA. Just this extreme feeling of pity. I don’t know many games that were able to so quickly evoke this sense of sympathy and sorrow for my enemies with so little work, and right at the end too.
If you go to the director’s twitter he’s selling some El Shaddai themed plates and is photoshopping it into footage of the game.
Also I always feel I have to remind people every time that there’s a yearly El Shaddai doujin event in Japan that’s been running since 2010. Before the game even came out. Looks like it used to be held twice a year but more recently has become annual.
I played through The Blind Prophet, which is a grim-ish edgy Frank Miller-y point and click adventure game. Mystery-hunt down the primordial demons secretly corrupting the populace of a fictional future/past Eurotown as a high-and-tight Geralt from actual Heaven, etc. The environments are real nice, and the UI is snappy if buggy at times. Plays like a classic adventure game without animated character-sprite movement; as you move scene to scene your character will stand near his entry point in an idle animation with overlayed graphic-novely cutscene frames handling the action moments. Interesting way to handle the production, never seen anything quite like it - somewhere between visual novel, extremely polished interactive animatic, full-fat Sierra/Lucasarts romp. Loose ends suggest either follow-up intentions or production fatigue. Ends up clocking in around a solid 7-8 hrs. There’s some dumb stuff in there, sure. Action ‘puzzles’. Prob. not to all’s taste but I had fun, great graphics.
I had a copy of El Shaddai around for ages, then barely started a new game like the week before it was sorely stolen by a former roommate. “Brah” crept in via landlord chicanery and ganked like 30 random discs from me and a friend. Purely for resell/tradein somewhere, absolute fucker but wish he’d at least taken maybe the uh hot new Fallout 4 instead.
took a break from animal crossing to play some pc-engine games, because it’s that time of year. ninja spirit is still really great, except for the one area at the end of the game where you have to fall down a chasm full of instant-kill ninjas you have no time to react to. even once you figure out the secret (stay to the left), it still sucks.
I played single match of Bleeding Edge and decided I’d had my fill of that game. It has the design sensibilities of hero shooters and moba-likes, with slow movement and combat revolving more around placement and special ability cool down timers. Someone out there is going to love it but that person is not me.
But it makes me want to go back and play the Dreamcast demo of Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict. I never bought the game but I played that demo online a whole bunch.
Edit: Now that I think about it, Bleeding Edge actually has a lot in common with Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Strikers but I somehow enjoyed that game more than BE and I’m not sure why. Maybe worth hopping back on the Naruto train to figure that out.
I finally started playing Control the other night. I had picked it up when it was heavily discounted last year, but I’d been waiting for some patches after hearing that it didn’t run well on a normal PS4.
It seems to run just fine now, and I like it. I suspect that it won’t get as weird as I’d like (nothing ever does), but it’s stylish and fun.
I’m resisting the emphasis on gun battles by using the throw attack as much as possible. (It’s more entertaining anyway.)
So, as much as I loved the dialogue and story, and presentation of Wandersong I found it a bit mechanically tedious and I was getting eager to move on to something with a bit more crunch. I scrolled through a really good LP of it and you know what, that’s some game writing done well. It’s a really great, kid-friendly little story. It’s very sweet.
Grid Autosport and Motorsport Manager make for a pretty good double bill on my Switch right now.
And my inexplicable hype for the upcoming Xenoblade Chronicles remake prompted me to start a new file in Final Fantasy XII’s Zodiac Age. But that’s killed my Xenoblade hype because now I just want to play through FFXII again.
