Hattori
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I liek vidyagaems
Favorite Games are the best games I played recently.
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GOTY '22
Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event
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GOTY '21
Participated in the 2021 Game of the Year Event
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GOTY '20
Participated in the 2020 Game of the Year Event
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Favorite Games
730
Total Games Played
004
Played in 2023
150
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Some things you can never forgive, and such charity will never be given to the taste makers that absolutely failed Rain World at release, so called professionals of the medium who were unable to engage with its singular vision and holistic design, to put it mildly. Time however has vindicated Rain World, now a work of cult following and ever increasing recognition and prestige within the most fervent supporters of emergent gameplay, transcending its pilgrims through one of the most affecting and affirming experiences of uncompromised talent and understanding of what videogames can and should be.
6 years later, Rain World's simulation of nature's beautiful cruelty remains an untouchable feat of game design that threads its hidden mechanics and systems with the erratic and unpredictable ecosystem of alien yet animalistic critters that instigate the player to subconsciously participate on a food chain of cause and effect, so seamlessly permeated through Slugcat's learning process of overcoming the odds and discovering where their limits lies.
Downpour represents purely an assertion of the undeniable qualities of the base game, filling it with abundant content that dares not touch the core tenets of Rain World but instead just adding on top new toys and rules with which to navigate its sandbox. Be it Gourmand and its insatiable gluttony or Artificer and its pyrotechnic killing spree, the careful balance of Rain World is never tarnished or dilluted in favor of an experience that runs contrary to the cat and mouse art it excels at.
I will save the remaining Slugcats for a later time. Rain World is a once in a lifetime deal that I wish to forget for a while until the day I once again need to be reminded of its beautifully realized environment of industrial decay and out of control flora and fauna that puts to shame much of Metroid's milestones and whose crushing Rain instils in me a humble reverance for its deafening cleansing brutality, listening to it from the safety of a newly found shelter in the nick of time in the same manner I would listen to the rain outside my room from the comfort of my cozy bed.
Certain video games don’t necessarily require innovation, originality or trailblazing to stand out from the crowd as works to be celebrated and classics to be. Specifically, titles in the indie scene such as Hyper Light Drifter, Dusk or ZeroRanger have proven time and time again that execution and presentation can far outweigh the well from which their ideas are stolen from, and whose aesthetic perfectionism and gameplay polish and varnish ultimately become the craft to be praised.
Signalis is one such title, unabashedly putting on full display its 5th gen survival horror roots and influences, both visually and mechanically, with a sci-fi coat of paint that covers it with a collage of homages to groundbreaking works that range from Evangelion, Blade Runner and Blame!, all the way to Tarkosvsky, Lynch and Lovecraft. Marrying Resident Evil’s resource management tension with Silent Hill’s purgatorial psychological assault lends Signalis the opportunity to evoke an unparalleled lyrical and dreamlike experience that never sacrifices the tenets from which those series made their name from, perfecting the art of environmental storytelling and backtracking revelatory dread.
In an age of understandably unsubtle and overbearing dystopian nightmares presented through art, Signalis instead places much of its totalitarian regime imagery into the background of its setting, visuals, lore and puzzles, making its love story of inevitable tragedy the central core of the narrative. The retrofuturism of Signalis serves not only as an artistic pursuit for tactile and analogue nostalgia, but also as a tool to convey the priorities of a fascist empire that has consciously dwindled the mental liberty, self-expression and unconformity of the main characters now stuck in an ever perpetuating restrictive world of redundancy and self-mutilation, doomed to a slow, empty death.
The cohesiveness in which Signalis threads its story, gameplay and art design is ultimately the game’s greatest feat. It elevates an otherwise universal and familiar language to new heights, thanks to a talented dev duo that understands the strengths of their interests and influences and manages to funnel into a production effort that would put many triple A endeavors to shame. Can’t wait for what rose-engine has in store next, this is a homerun already.
Ikaruga is a game I respect. While the brilliant simplicity and genius of its polarity mechanic and the way it intrisically threads Ikaruga's aesthetic with the game's challenge and scoring is a craft I'm deeply fascinated with, its art remains inaccessible to someone like me who is incapable of conquering its methodical demanding difficulty reserved only for the greatest of masochists. By stage 3 my grip on the controller is long gone, as the synapses of my small brain fail to register the assault of shifting color threat and I'm inevitably resigned to abuse the unlimited continues boon that ultimately turns Ikaruga into a vacuous theme park ride devoid of its initial purpose.
While Radiant Silvergun doesn't at all abandon the Ikaruga ethos of being a near impenetrable gauntlet of overwhelming enemy and boss patterns to be decoded with twitch precision, the versatility of its weaponry lend the player a level of expression, freedom and puzzle solving that avoids the pitfalls of its spiritual successor that would constrict you into an eternal scrolling of repeating mistakes and hardships that deplete all your lives in the same recurring manner. Added to that, the Story Mode provides a clever compromise over an unlimited continues system that has the difficulty scaling towards you in unison, giving the illusion of progress and personal improvement instead of feeling like outright cheating.
But Arcade Mode is of course where Radiant Silvergun truly shines. Unlike the immediacy of other shmups where the road to success mostly lies in the ability to dodge and shoot everything, mastering the color chain scoring is a requirement you will be forced to engage with in order to level up your weapons and diminish the chances of imminent death, a prospect that finally reveals the link between Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga, in addition to the counter intuitive Destruction scoring where you allow the bosses to last longer and strike harder for a chance at a higher score.
Treasure have a natural talent for taking any genre and making it their own, and Radiant Silvergun is no exception. The unique mechanics and challenge of Radiant Silvergun are accompanied by an ever crescending orchestral bombastic soundtrack and beautifully 32bit backgrounds that elevate the scope and portentousness of its exhausting and rewarding apocalypse to a league beyond most shmups, allowing the noobest of noobs like me to feel fullfillment with the completion of Easy Mode.