it has a sort of charm despite none of its component parts being all that interesting on their own, but i have no interest in farming and was really only checking this out due to the devs' previous games (bombastic but kinda mediocre shmups). this is for someone, but it ain't me

i did have a fun "are you fuckin' kidding me, man" moment where i started a boss fight in the late afternoon, but partway through it turned to night and they became more or less unbeatable, because at night, enemies are stronger and your weapons do dogshit damage. honestly kind of funny but at the same time, are you fuckin' kidding me, man

outside of the day/night cycle, i found myself asking whether things were the "intended" difficulty or if i was expected to grind better gear, despite having nothing else to really do on the map. that's not a question i particularly enjoy asking myself, and i'm not sure i would've liked the answer if i stuck with it

also, not to be The Annoying Vegan but it honestly sucked when in one of the mealtime conversations, there's one dude who explains he doesn't eat the meat because of the Buddhist precept of nonviolence and everyone is basically like "that's all bullshit, nobody believes that, now are you gonna eat meat or not?" i'm not here to tell anyone else how to live but you know, fuck that

Wasn't super interested at first but seeing the comparisons to games like Outer Wilds and the Witness piqued my curiosity. I've gotta say, I think those comparisons are a stretch. This is ultimately still just a metroidvania, even if it's more puzzles than combat. Felt more reminiscent of Tunic, borrowing some of those thinky elements but ultimately layering them on top of a more traditional game. While it has some clever mechanics, I was waiting for it to blow my mind and it just never happened.

Getting the items and uncovering the map was decently satisfying, but as it went on there were more and more situations that felt reminiscent of the worst moments in a Super Metroid first playthrough, where you've got no idea where you even can progress and so you end up just poking around, shooting rockets at every tile on the screen, hoping that this hidden passage isn't yet another missile stock upgrade, and the pacing screeches to a halt. I suppose this is me being a metroidvania hater and I'll cop to that. Had my fill.

After sleeping on it, I decided to give the postgame a fair shake. It was as tedious as I expected, full of backtracking and pixel hunting. The additional powerups didn't break the game open quite like I'd hoped, and accessing one of the postgame areas depends on RNG spawns, which, IMO, sucks ass. Maybe the idea is that you'd run into the thing over the course of the game, but it just didn't happen for me - only seeing it once, very early in the game. Ended up spending as long as the base game just to track down the odds and ends to get to a generally lackluster finale.

A gorgeous facelift of a game that needed a whole lot more. This is the kind of remake where the modern visuals work against the whole - the bad combat feels even worse because the game looks like it should know better.

There's also a funny relic of a bygone era in the checkpoint system: no heals. You don't get full health after dying, or even between stages; you keep whatever health you had when you reached the last checkpoint. Fair play, it's old school to a fault, I can respect that. However -

If you find yourself stuck with low health at the beginning of a stage, it's trivial to backtrack to a previous level to replenish health, but it also sucks shit. This is the kind of change remakes should enact to "bring it up to modern sensibilities" without "losing its essence" - nothing's lost by cutting pure tedium.

Inessential.

an actual mechanically distinctive racing game, inertial drift asks a question abandoned the minute the PS2 entered retirement: "what if the right stick wasn't just for camera control?" as a proof-of-concept it totally nails it.

but in similarly PS2 fashion, the game is structurally anemic, with a barebones story mode that ferries you through the tracks and race types with the most skippable dialogue ever written. the bar for racing game story is subterranean. there is no reason to have shame. we all see what you're doing with the name, go all the way. have a tofu delivery minigame that penalizes excessive g-forces and collisions. make all the characters work at a gas station and fumble every shot at romantic connection

i continue to wait for someone to just remake racing lagoon but with a good driving model