Hololive fan games are generally impressive to me. No matter what the game is, there's always someone talented behind the helm. And the passion the devs have can always be felt. And that sentiment very much applies here. Idol Showdown for what it is, is a pretty good game from a team of passionate devs.
In general the game is a pretty fun, easy to learn fighting game. I do feel like it could be just a tad tighter, but in general it feels perfectly fine. The art is pretty good. Music is good. And I really appreciate the Virtual Frontier mode as a Holo fan. I love recognizing all the jokes, and piecing together who the items belong to. My only major complaint is again, I think the game could just feel better than it does. And I also don't like how the arcade mode has no continue option. I don't see any reason why that can't be there. Not having it there makes the arcade mode less fun. I also think some more little touches could used such as victory animations, maybe some unique win art, pre battle interactions. But again those are just little touches. Asides from that good game from a small team. Though one I admit has limited appeal.

Armored Core 4 is a very interesting title. Starting with this iteration the franchise took a radical departure from the slower more methodical gameplay of the previous entries in favor of a much faster pace and more streamlined mechanics. In some instances it works incredibly well and in others it feels like a case of one step forward two steps back.

One thing that really upsets me about this one in particular is it removed the mail and pre-mission briefs which added a lot of flavor to the setting and agendas the various factions at play had. Instead of being this lone wolf mercenary taking orders from the highest bidder you're now sticking with one side for what's essentially one long military campaign during a world war caused by various corporations. The premise is extremely cool but the downside of this is almost every mission involves you taking down a specific mech or landmark with nothing interesting really added towards it. While past games also suffered from a lack of mission variety the background info given really helped made them memorible. A good example of this is in one of the early missions of Armored Core 3 you're hired to go take out some group of laborers going on strike, the setup you got is way overkill for the situation at hand and when you enter the factory the workers there start panicking over your appearance knowing they WILL die now. The real kicker is after the mission is over you get an email from the group that hired you saying they're aware their measures were extreme but they were forced by what's essentially a totalitarian AI that gave them the order to hire you for it.

Now one thing AC4 absolutely excels at is upping the intensity as the game goes on. While the first 2/3s are a bit of a drag the final batch of missions are freaking phenomenal with you doing stuff like rushing through a battalion of hundreds of helicopters, boats, and mechs to go take down one big fortress. By the end of the game your mission to stop this war results in the world being festered with contamination, set ablaze, and fighting the one companion you had after they had been blackmailed to kill you.

If you don't mind some rather baffling design decisions that set the game back from its full potential AC4 is a rather short but sweet game worth a go and thankfully these days it can be emulated rather well from start to finish. This run I did was done on a steam deck with only a few hickups and one crash which honestly ain't too bad considering the framerate is miles above the game on real hardware.




100/10 soundtrack go listen to Thinker if you don't believe me.

A rather bizarre game, honestly! I think the difficulty is what throws me off, as there's basically two ways to play: For score, which for the absolutely maximum rank requires the player to not die once while getting a ridiculous number of points, or for speed / pure completion in which case you have INFINITE continues (you only get one life, so every death is a continue) that also does not refill health and gives you back your kinda broken Boost ability at the same time. This means it teeters between something more challenging or something very easy. While I know a lot of people think they're archaic, a lives system feels like it may have been beneficial for a more smooth difficulty curve, or at least being a little bit more demanding with the checkpointing. Note that while you need to never die for the highest rank, you CAN still get high ranks by only dying a few times, so it isn't some totally hit-or-miss thing here.

Leaving all that aside for a moment, I enjoyed this game much more than the original Strider. Hiryu feels smooth to control here (for the most part), and in particular the addition of juuuust a little bit of aerial drift on his jumps makes it a lot smoother to run through and makes you feel more like the futuristic ninja you're supposed to be rather than the lost cosplaying Belmont brother. While the cool options are (sadly) gone, Hiryu gets some secret moves like a backwards flip or a bunch of spinny slashes that add a little dynamicism to the gameplay. I will admit I didn't find THAT much use for them, mostly because Strider just cutting up enemies is so strong, but they have potential and the fact the multi-slashes give you more points encourages you to not just spam the slash button in score runs. Wall jumping and climbing feels niiice in this game, with the only exception being going around corners on a D-Pad sometimes being finicky. I did also have trouble getting the dash out a few times, but I suspect that is more of a Me issue. But with how buttery smooth his jumps and dashes are, it feels gooooood to just slice through hordes of enemies, jumping wildly and doin' some wall climbin' fun.

What's up with the fact enemies seem to just...mostly lack collision damage, though? There's multiple bosses where running into them and spamming the attack button led to easy wins, sometimes dodging their attack patterns, and it felt really weird. The game's entire difficulty curve is mostly low, outside of the end I'd say most stages are pretty easy, but then spiking pretty hard in only a few sections or bosses. Most didn't feel too challenging (I was shocked how easy Meio was!), but there was definitely some that kicked my ass. The game's difficulty only really starts to ramp up in the last level or two, with the final levels feeling particularly harsh (and swapping the game's usual dichotomy of easier stages but harder bosses).

Frankly, my favorite part of the game was probably the vibes and the art. The game for the most part looks goooood, an excellent PS1 spritework combined with some beautiful anime cutscene art. Seriously, look at these! and, uh, ignore the screenshotting making them look kinda worse fsr. Even when the game isn't being mechanically dense, the vibes and control make it a Fun experience. I do think the length is a major downside, being defeatable in under an hour pretty easily and with the end result being that it DOES feel a bit shallow. The game doesn't really expand on its concepts a lot in that runtime and it even ends up re-using some elements within that timeframe in a bit of a lazy way. It also felt disappointing how often the right option felt like just moving right and mashing the attack button, the Scientists miniboss in particular felt actively harder when I was trying to dodge them rather than just spamming. Also while I am going to bet Auto Fire makes the game easier, I think I should have used it because by god does it hurt your thumb to mash attack the way you should in this! They put it in the game, so I'll take advantage of it.

Honestly, I might go for a second playthrough with Hien later since it was short and enjoyable. Totally recommend trying it out of you want some fast-paced, low commitment 2D ninja action in your life!

The guy below DEFINITELY got stuck on mission 4.

Here's a little Japanese-only 3D action-adventure game by Fromsoft based off the Spriggan manga. The intro is sick so naturally, as the kino whisperer that I am, I had to check it out. It's nothing special; it's faster than King's Field but slower than Armored Core, there's rudimentary melee and gun combat, and you eventually get armor that can boost your stats or speed. It feels clunky at times, since melee range is so short, inputs don't feel consistent, and gun combat and lock-on is very finicky, but at least the soundtrack goes insane, and the level design is a strong suit (as usual with Fromsoft).

It's certainly a worthy experience, especially for real Fromsoft fans that want to explore the nicher aspects of the company's history. And if you do play it, PLEASE make sure you level up the speed suit before the penultimate mission.