One day, when they have run out of shit to nostalgia bait us with, they will have to go searching deep. Deep in the ancient ruins of a warehouse in California, a disc will be found, and upon that mighty circular artifact will be the writings of PYST. Knowing that they have landed the jackpot, the Future Media Conglomerate will set off creating the newest hit universe. There will be PYST limited series, PYST movies, and most importantly, PYST video games. They will all stay extremely faithful to the charming 1990's style and will even resurrect John Goodman with AI and CGI! Sadly, it will be a huge flop just as it was in 1996 because the world doesn't want media that shows the utter decay of such a beautiful landscape, mirroring the dystopia they live in. I know, however, that if I was alive in such a time, that I would be clapping my hands and wiggling all 8 of my oversized toes to get my hands on PYST 2: RePyst.

Lunacid is exactly what I wanted in my mind of "Man I wish I could play Fromsoft's early First Person works". This does not speak to the accuracy (because I cannot vouch for that), but to what I envisioned in my head. This game is probably way easier than those games, and I kind of think it is because this is playable on a PC with mouse controls and the movement is crazy.

A lot of basic enemies feel like they were made for slow King's Field combat, but you can move at fucking Turok speed so they are fodder. Early game is probably the hardest, but there are multiple weapons you can find that will trivialize stuff. The only thing I had difficulty with was the final mandatory boss because he actually moves around to match you. The only thing about bosses if they have insane health pools, but whatever, they are the only difficult parts.

I don't really care about the difficulty because I think I can also feel inspirated from not only Fromsoft, but also speedier boomer shooters, and also Igavanias. Its Fromsoft in the vibes and general construction of the gameplay. It can feel boomer shooter depending on what enemies you are fighting and if you are using ranged weapons; cause sometimes I was just circle strafing the beefier enemies and jumping around and I felt Turok-ish. Igavania's in the way of 100%ing weapons and spells. Enemies dropping weapons/spells, upgrading weapons, felt at home with Aria of Sorrow and such. You can even get a weapon from those games that attacks as fast as you tap the attack button.

Overall, it rules. Great vibes, the music kicks ass (ThorHighHeels goes insane). It may be easier than people wish, but idgaf.

The void is a game developed Ice-Pick Lodge, most famous for developing Pathologic 1 and 2. This is their second game after their first, Pathologic. As you might assume from these dev's this game is hostile to the player. The world is dreary and abandoned (for the most part), and the gameplay is stressful, tedious, and has consequences for playing poorly.

This game tasks you with collecting color in a world basically devoid of it. You must collect color, and grow it in gardens, or mine it from ore deposits, maybe even find scraps; but mostly you will be farming. You fill a tree with color and it will give you color over a couple "cycles", and then once its empty, you cannot use that tree for quite a while. Not understanding how this fully worked, I borked my first 5 hours into this game and basically had to start a new playthrough.

I started again, however, because the ambience, vibe, and visuals of this game are crazy. Each sister has their own unique worlds that are so beautiful I just stood there and looked for a while. The small areas you get to explore kind of remind of Hypnagogia, just like small dream-like locations that exist. The cutscenes, dialogue, and everything just make me go "woah. This is fucking Video Games."

Sadly, I also abandoned this run because the gameplay becomes too tedious, and I kind of just really didn't wanna start the game up to play it whenever I thought about it. At first, the gameplay is engaging because you are managing your colors, trying to grow them without growing too much. At that point I only played small sessions because it taxed my brain quite a lot, couldn't handle longer sessions. Eventually though I got to the point where you can start fighting the primary antagonists, the 10 Brothers. I was following a guide and was way ahead power curve wise, so I got like 6 of them before the game tells you to do it. Then I realized I have all I need except to fight the final boss, except you have to wait until the 30th cycle to fight him, which was 9 away, which is a long time. I just gave up cause I didn't wanna jack my pud for 9 cycles, I get what the game is and I think its too tedious at this point.

Despite that, I still think this game is something you can only create in this medium. This is a game that fucking shows you what Video Games™ can be.

look at the steam page for this game. It feels like its gonna be a porn type game, but it just isn't. The most it has is insanely egregious boob physics and a weird character customizer. Like its obviously for people to ogle the girly but way less "classier" than Lora Croft ever was.

The game kind of rules because you can drive cars. The cars can fucking go crazy and flip over. The R button will return your car to a upright position on the road. It has this magical light pillar when you do it. The first time you do it, a cutscene plays explaining this girl bought a time crystal that lets her control time. I love that they added a cutscene to explain in universe why you can flip a car back normal. Also, the bottom right corner just has a constant music credit and link to the music creator, thats awesome.

I had to stop though because the game is insanely dark and the first puzzle has atrocious perspective. You have to move a light thing to a certain location, but the place where you move stuff has no good view of the object and I just decided it wasnt worht it anymore. Still, props to this solo (probably) solo dev, this seems like they put some soul into it.

I don't know if I can ever connect to a retro JRPG the way that so many people put them up as "The greatest games ever." I went through FF6 and Chrono Trigger , and now FF7 and came away with "I can see how thats cool, but I'm not attached to it." The only JRPG I've really come out of loving is Dragon Quest XI, but that has the benefit of being a modern game.

I feel like my main problem is I never get attached to the party members, and I think its the text based dialogue(?). Maybe not just that, possibly also the amount of time actually spent with the party, doesn't feel like its enough. If there was voice acting and a good performance, that could be alleviated i think.

Another reason for that in FF7 is I don't think the party members feel unique mechanics wise. So I'm not getting super attached to these characters because I love how they play, or through the way they are portrayed. FF6 I got to enjoy Sabin because he suplexed and shit; the FF6 cast had a lot of unique stuff going on for them, but FF7 its pretty much only limit breaks. The materia system is cool, but it blends everyone together. Kind of hate it when JRPG's restrict story moments to who is currently in your party, and not just summoning everyone to talk at once, perfect opportunity to spend more time with people.

I will be trying FF7R at some point because I feel like I will just like it more for the above reasons.

I did enjoy the beginning of the game up until the first Nibelheim flashback, then the openness truly took over and made me start groaning. Felt like the game was floundering for a while until I got to Nibelheim. From there to the ending is cool though.

I did start cheating at Demon Gate in Temple of the Ancients though because that boss just pissed me off and I loathe grinding XP/AP. I have cheated in every JRPG I've played and I probably won't stop (though in DQXI it was just the secret boss, I actually did enjoy grinding in that game).

I do constantly think about Cloud and his fruity little poses, stuck in my brain.

Spider's Thread has 2 main content: A set of side missions based in a haunted school, and a rogue-like mode basically separate from the main game. This rating is based off the side missions because those are genuinely awesome.

I only played like 35 minutes of the rogue-like mode after beating the game cause I wanted more combat. However, you do not carry over your skill tree into this mode. I get it, this is a separate experience, so you start over; but I DO not want to grind back up to make the combat good again. Combat kind of sucks until you get a couple core upgrades. You also can't get the "create your own grapple point" skill (I get why for level designs, but still that skill was awesome).

The side missions added to the main game are really cool though. It's based entirely inside of a 3 story school. Its basically an hour long haunted house, and a fun one at that! It really reminded me of White Day and even pull from same popular myths. There are some times when it genuinely made me jump a little.

Corn Kidz is an very accurate take N64 platformers (limited experience so laugh at me if wrong), down to the incredibly anger inducing frustration I feel trying to do platforming. It also has plenty of other shit (accurate) that usually makes me groan like timers and aiming timed bombs with no reticule.

On my second session I just got like immediately tired and wanted to get to the end and was met with a boss that I fucked up and died, so I'm sent to the checkpoint which is before some platforming I would really not like to do again to get back to the boss. I just quit right there, I'm an adult and I can stop doing stuff I do like anymore.

Besides my frustrations, I really do enjoy the art style, the main character has such fluid animations it looks so cool. It also has a 2000's Hot Topic Invader Zim vibe that of course I'm rocking with. The girl goat goes hard.