Well this game was tough. I bought it I dunno how many years ago on Switch and over the years the developer has just kept putting out games or trailers for games that I also wanna play so I finally decided to commit and beat this.

After I beat this I looked up some info about it and the dev was inspired by Diablo and A Link to the Past and the world is inspired by Nausicaa. Put that together with how I saw someone musing that the gameplay feels snappy in combat like Hotline Miami and yeah that's basically this game.

You drift around a land that's worn and you can tell just by the imagery and atmosphere that it was once a prosperous place and then it was ravaged by something. More can be gleamed from the environment as you go through each of the four distinct connected lands and beat their dungeon-like areas.

Combat was punishing for me. You start with a sword, a gun with four shots, a dash move and five units of health. You build up shots for the gun by hitting things with the sword. It doesn't have to be enemies though which I used to my advantage at one point and just smacked breakable objects in the world to get more shots. This actually pretty cleverly ties into the collectibles aspect of the game as there's bits to collect and as you get four of them they make one currency unit. You then build up enough of those and THEN you can buy upgrades for your items/movement/health in the hub town.

I did some searching around but ultimately got probably a fourth of the upgrades total so my playthrough was subsequently that much more difficult. It's a game where you advance in a screen and enemies notice you. If you aren't methodical with it you get ganged up on and die and go back to where the room started. There was a trick to this that I learned while playing is that if you enter a room and die, you go back to the start with the same amount of health and health packs. However, if you clear an area and go back through the door then go back in, it'll save the progress of how many enemies you killed so far. It was this way that made my playthrough more tolerable without getting every upgrade.

That's about as helpful as a fourth bear in Goldilocks for boss fights though. It's here that I felt the difficulty was a bit disjointed though it could be due to the game letting you tackle the initial areas in whatever order you want. Each boss was a definitely test of skill up to the point you got to them and even with upgrades the game still wants you to be able to use your skillset to the fullest. It took me quite a few tries (and docking the console and using a controller because fuck playing this in handheld mode) but I was able to best all of them and while they initially felt disproportionate to the area leading up to them (usually) I found myself enjoying the battles overall. I'd go as far as to say the final boss is its own reward too as it had a moveset and fighting style that just felt so satisfying to contend with (after I went out and got one more upgrade).

Hyper Light Drifter is a satisfying game that wears its influence on its sleeve. You get as much out of it as you put into it where upgrades can make or break your enjoyment and the environment does the heavy lifting for the story. You can engage with it to the fullest or go through it quick for more of a challenge but I think either way you end up with a good experience. Recommended to fans of maybe SNES era Nintendo games, neat environments, and a bit of challenge. Definitely looking forward to playing their next game soon.

So this was quite the ride for me. I initially started this game in March 2020 when I had an Xbox and it was on game pass. I think I got a little under halfway through. Then I stopped for some reason?

Okay so I looked it up and I BOUGHT this game on Xbox and the reason I stopped was because I tried the mode with extra lives first and got halfway before noticing I can't go replay missions for collectables so that put me off for a bit. THEN new story DLC for Borderlands 3 came out and a new Monster Hunter World festival was like just after that lmao.

Anyway, I decided to jump into this for realsies these last two weeks with new Doom game being announced. I gotta say I enjoyed it overall but there were bits that bugged me. Rather, there were habits I have while playing games sometimes that just didn't mesh well with this game. It's not a game that can be rushed through.

I dunno what it is about my brain but I was able to recall the levels I played through pretty well despite not having played for like four years. I wanted to just GET THROUGH to the stuff I hadn't seen but every arena-esque encounter, while fast paced in nature, still requires some thought to handle. The combat in this game is more particular with how you manage resources. It not only wants you to move quick and shoot everything but have you do so while juggling different parts of your survivability. Do finishers to get some health or chainsaw for more ammo. Also light guy on fire first for him to also spit out ammo. It's kind of a lot.

I enjoyed it a bit once I fell into a groove with it but I think in something like this I might prefer less? I dunno I'd have to play the 2016 game again. I do like that a lot of enemies have specific weaknesses though. That was fun to figure out and play with. Three different ways to get pickups, a special punch, grenade, ice bomb, a rechargeable one hit sword, and two alternate fire modes for EIGHT different weapons is a lot though. I damn near lost track of it all.

Hell half the time I would forget I even had a rocket launcher. I also barely ever swapped the weapon modes when I found one I liked for each. Not gonna use the regular shotgun auto mode when it's more useful and satisfying to use the grenade launcher to stick to a spider robot demon's laser turret thing and knock it off. Honestly thinking on it more, while it is a lot, I like that there's enough variance that someone else could use a different configuration that suited how they wanted to approach things better and still come out the other side of it all.

I gotta say too that the emphasis on verticality and movement in this one was a blast too. Bouncing up off monkey bars, air dashing, and for me the gratuitous use of the meat hook had me zipping around all over the place like fuckin Jason Statham in Crank not being able to stop or my heart explodes. Swinging up, shooting something real quick, hitting another bar and swinging up into meat hook grabbing some other demon who is being lit on fire thanks to my upgraded hook and shooting some OTHER demon while I have the skill that enables slo-mo while I'm in the air just comes together in this symphony of frenzied destruction and it's all so beautiful and fun to experience.

My biggest gripe with this game (besides it being harder wtf) is that while I can zip around and shoot all I want like an old arcade-y type game complete with colorful pickups everywhere is that they also insist on going harder with the story. WHY?? The start of Doom 2016 takes the piss out of this by having some monitor expositing something in the beginning before Doomguy just angrily smashes it up. He's like the essence of not giving a fuck and I'm right on board for this. I just wanna play through and fuck shit up to a cool metal OST. Hell (lol) the whole joke about Doomguy is that others put some grand importance on him when there is none and he's just a stand in for a player playing a fun shooting game. For the story in this to then focus so hard on him as well and have us stop for cutscenes on how important he is and such just feels like the writers are dunking on themselves. I'm sure the lore in this is fun or whatever for the people who want to sit and read audio logs but it feels like a miss to try so hard for it and a wasted effort. Oh well.

Anyway yeah this game is great. It's best when you give it the attention it deserves and worst when it's trying to smell its own farts. The added movement stuff adds a bit of fun to the combat and some interesting stuff to map design and finding secrets but I wish it was a little more in depth or difficult maybe. Overall I'm glad I finally took the time to get through this and I'll be looking forward to playing more when the new one is out. Definitely recommend to fans of DOOM and fast paced arcade-y shooter games.

So iOS got that Delta emulator recently and can do all sorts of handheld games. I figure I'd try it out and got Pokemon Green on it, yknow something classic. I never played Green version before and it's all in Japanese but I was able to get through with the bit I know of the language and how the gen 1 pokemon games are just etched into my brain.

The only thing I can really say to praise this game is that some of the sprites from the original Red and Green that were Japan only are really neat! Every one of them is different from the international releases of Red and Blue later on that most of us got and it was cool going through and seeing them.

That's about it though. We've come a long way from gen 1 pokemon. HMs are bullshit to make you backtrack all over and waste a pokemon move. Walking speed is abysmal. The bike costs more than than the possible money you can have. There's only one pokemon family for ghosts and dragons.

It's gen 1 though so I guess the roughness is part of the charm? I'm personally glad to be done with it though. I don't think I can recommend this to anyone lol. I ended up using the emulator's built in x4 speed thing to move through everything faster and a cheat to go through walls to not have to have HMs taking up move slots. Some may say cheating means I didn't beat the game but I played the shit out of Red and Blue when I was a kid and this is the same thing but different sprites and Japanese. Only the most diehard gen 1 fans would get anything out of this in the current year. Anyone else should just look up the sprites if you wanna see how different they were originally.