I just beat Hi-Fi Rush on Very Hard a couple of days ago and working through some achievements on Hard now. My Just Timing is still shit and tanking my score, but I intend to start focusing on that at some point. I get like 50~60% in every fight.

How is it for you? Which Track are you currently playing?

Also, how was Skate Story? Does it have fun mechanics or does it focus more on story?

The scream that gave birth to a whole genre.

Fascinating we got from here to mash to protect Earth. He doesn’t get enough credit for it because it’s not high art, but Kamiya’s writing actually did get better over the years.

Not much new for me this year.

I had a lot of fun with Soulstice, Assault Spy, Hi-Fi Rush, and Hellsinker.

NieR:Automata, The Surge, Death Stranding, and Scarlet Nexus were disappointing.

Every time I stepped ever so slightly outside my comfort zone I ended up regretting it. I will still flirt with action RPGs, but no more open world or soulslikes. If relatively linear action is not the core, I’m out.

Next year, I intend to invest more in indie action games. Currently eyeing Genokids, Spirit X Strike, and No Straight Roads 2. Also indie shmups: currently, Devil Blade Reboot, Birdcage, and Gunvein are on my wishlist.

For fighting games, I intend to get into Granblue next year. Possibly also Melty Blood and Blazblue.

Looking forward to flesh out my library with more of my favorite genres.

I mean, if you can find and afford the games, yeah, buy them. Problem is most of the games people need to emulate are unavailable or astronomically expensive, and that’s even if you live in the west/Japan… if you live in the rest of the world, forget it.

How’s the action? It looked like you can launch people in the trailer and perform some kind of air combo. I doubt it leads to anything truly fun, but I’m curious.

The game has been repacked by many people though. I don’t even know where to go to get it straight from the original person who cracked it.

I’d rather sail the high seas than interact with Epic, TBH.

I replay games I’m intimately familiar with so I can just autopilot and chill.

I am more likely to watch a movie or binge a show when I’m sick than play a video game though. Sometimes I read a comic book if my eyes are OK or listen to an audiobook.

Missing Persona, but I’m happy for the BBCF crowd, and having Vampire Savior on the big stage is super cool.

I’ve been considering picking up Gran Blue for some time now, so maybe I’ll watch that.

It’s published by Kepler, so IDK why it’s even a Switch 2 exclusive. Maybe some short-term deal with Nintendo or something, IDK.

Same. I’m often in the process of breaking down why I like/dislike the game, what works about it, and what doesn’t as I’m playing. I can’t give honest feedback with incomplete thoughts.

How often do people leave reviews? I rarely see a profile with +100 reviews.

I only leave reviews after 100% completion or a lot of time (hundreds of hours) in case of fighting games where sometimes 100% is ridiculously difficult to attain (oh hi, Plus R)

I think the average time between my picking up a game and leaving a review is like 3~12 months. Definitely even more if I’m not vibing with the game.

Action game! Yaaay! Reminds me of Onee Chanbara minus the fan service.

Damn, is this an action game?! Only reason I didn’t like the first game is I hated the shooting. If this is truly an action RPG, like it says on Steam, with no shooting, I’m down.

I hope there are launchers and air combos and shit.

One of the OGs and some of the most interesting synergies in a roguelike-like. You can get some cracked builds going fairly quickly. Super fun twin-stick shooter.

The Rogue Legacy people made an actual roguelike, damn. Good for them.

GOG is great, but it would be silly to buy fighting games on there, for example, since it doesn’t have any infrastructure to support their multiplayer.

Similarly, if trading cards or achievements are detrimental to your enjoyment, stick to Steam.

I stick to Steam for the most part because 95% of my library is not on GOG.

You got anything action? I’m only aware of Lost Soul Aside.

Genokids and Spirit X Strike are indie in Early Access, and I’d be hesitant to qualify Ninja Gaiden 4 as AA.

I’ve probably come across a couple of other indies along the way, but AFAIK, that’s the whole year.

I was psyched Fatal Fury is back until freaking Cristiano Ronaldo showed up 😂 I was never an SNK fan and I’m still knees deep into other fighting games anyway so that’s alright.

I’m not impressed by either. I want AA games back.

Dodge offset from Bayonetta, boost from Vanquish, and make your own moveset from God Hand.

I’ve been playing Soulstice, past the halfway point. Fun action game with a few weird choices.

Fixed camera gets too close in narrow hallways, which makes it difficult to see every enemy I’m fighting, some enemies are transparent, which makes it difficult to see what they’re doing sometimes, and startup animations for non-parryable attacks are a little difficult to spot.

I still have not unlocked all of my skills though, so I’ll be reserving judgement until I do that and play through NG+.

This is like Jared Leto giving Daniel Day-Lewis acting advice 😂

Go back in your hole, Tim.

Yes, I love campy games/movies! The Nixon impression in the trailer sold it for me 😂

Reminds me of The Deadly Tower of Monsters.

Damn, I just realized I kinda always subconsciously ignored this series for some reason. Added to my list, thanks.

I was just looking at Remnant before posting this. Good to know it’s fun with a controller!

Interesting, I may consider picking one up, thanks.

I tried all 3, the aiming cursor is too small. I remember looking into the options, and I couldn’t find any way to make it larger. Maybe I missed the option or there’s a mod for this?

Thanks, I’ll add it to my list.

Damn… I gotta try and be diverse… as much as my narrow taste allows anyway:

1. The Wonderful 101: my choice for a PlatinumGames ambassador.
2. God Hand: beat’em up representation.
3. Ninja Gaiden 2: nonstop action and my favorite Team Ninja game.
4. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R: my favorite fighting game.
5. Hellsinker: infinitely replayable shmup.

Wait, I thought they won the battle against evil, or whatever that fuckhead Assassin’s Creed dude said the other day 😂

🎶 Assassin’s Creed is a good franchise 🎶

Yeah, I thought this was dope.

We don’t have enough good Kaiju games, IMO. Inaba robbed us of Project G.G. or Kamiya messed up, IDK. But they need to work it out and finish that project at some point.

Maybe Clovers can buy the IP if Okami 2 is a hit, who knows. I doubt Platinum would mind.

Having to grovel to lower the difficulty in God Hand.

I wish they start supporting regional pricing and more currencies.

I can confirm: I grew up playing Ninja Gaiden and now I have a lot of i-frames whenever I jump forward. It’s wild, I know.

There was a shootout in my neighborhood the other day and I jumped through it, didn’t care.

“Making games with AI” sounds like hell… like this is what hell must be.

Sitting there prompting AI, getting shitty ass results, prompting it again and again until you eventually settle for slightly less shitty results. The frustration and the loss of agency… oh God, someone should make a psychological horror about this: a frustrated artist forced to ditch their skills and tools and use AI to bring their unique vision to life, and throughout the film you watch them descend deeper and deeper into madness and depression until they burn down a data center and laugh manically as it disintegrates around them.

Bruh, I still haven’t bought the first game because I don’t wanna give money to Microsoft… now I won’t buy the sequel because I don’t wanna give money to Krafton. Madness.

See, this is why I think the comparison doesn’t work. They may be called UTs and function the same as they do in NGB, but enemies behavior is different. If my only strategy is UT spamming regardless of context, I’ll get my teeth kicked in because enemies are too aggressive, volatile, and while they’re not as tanky as they are in NGB, they attack in larger numbers.

Timing is also key if I aim to use essence to instant charge UTs/OL UT. I windrun at the wrong time, and enemies will hunt me down because their tracking is also ridiculous, never mind suicide runs.

All that space between UTs is not exactly a walk in the park and there’s so much to be aware of and get right before you can reliably pull them off to the extent that undermines difficulty in a game where one mistake can easily snowball into a good chunk of your health gone.

The problem is all the absolute nonsense in the game, and the abundance of pretty much garbage levels. I think like half the levels in the game are outright bad.

I don’t think it has more garbage levels than Bayonetta or The Wonderful 101, for example. Like 3 or 4 bad levels? Predominantly where you have water, bow and arrow, and bullshit enemy behavior/checkpoint placement segments.

Most bosses suck in both games, and in most action games, TBH. I don’t understand why they’re hellbent on serving us giant monstrosities. Action games need more humanoid bosses overall.

Also stuff like how completely broken UTs are. It’s obvious the game wasn’t fully playtested and balanced, and so the super powered UTs were slapped on as a bandaid. But they’re not really fun to use and end result is a mechanic that you at best feel forced to resort to just to get through levels, but most of the time try to actively avoid using in order to actually have fun.

How are they broken? You absolutely have to earn using them and be strategic about it. Enemies will mess you up if you misuse OTs on higher difficulties.

IME, most action games feel messier than they actually are on the first playthrough and the more you replay them, the more patterns start to emerge and first playthrough issues fade.

Now, if you didn’t enjoy the first playthrough enough to go back for more that’s fair, and a rather big risk these games typically take.

From the shit Flying Swallow to the nonlinear level design, my issue with NGB is it’s less committed to being an action game.

To me, NG2 is 3D Ninja Gaiden finding and accepting what it is: a brutal action game where nothing matters but combat interactions. Level design and balance be damned: it’s combat, combat, and more combat.

In that way NG2 is one of the most unique games out there. I can maybe liken it to God Hand, but NG2’s commitment to nonstop combat is so singularly deranged.

For that same reason I always found it difficult to compare them because they clearly set out to achieve different goals. It just happens that what NG2 tried to do is exactly what I need as an action game fan.