mohab

I had to make a conscious choice to stop playing Nuclear Throne years ago. You can never be done with this game, haha.

I beat Evil West and Heartless & Dreadful this week. Fun games I will revisit for sure, especially Evil West. What a blast. Most fun I’ve ever had bashing through hordes of vampires/monsters.

That said, both had moments I’d take out if I could. Evil West had these mundane puzzle segments that just filled time in between enemy encounters, and, similarly, Heartless & Dreadful had tedious platforming segments I didn’t enjoy.

Combat is king though, and combat was good in Heartless & Dreadful and awesome in Evil West.

I hope we get Evil West 2 at some point.

Currently playing through El Shaddai and it’s pretty fun. I love the no HUD commitment. Your health bar is basically your armor: the more you get hit, the more pieces you lose. Same as your enemies.

You also could knock enemies down and steal their weapons, which weakens them greatly and forces you to cycle through weapons during combat encounters, which I like a lot.

I’m hoping to finish it on the weekend and start Lost Judgment afterwards, which I’m worried I may not fully enjoy.

I bought it because of the combat footage and praise for the combat system I’ve been seeing everywhere, but I have no interest in stealth missions, open world quests, dialogue trees or anything RPG, so IDK if combat will be enough for me to beat it and I may refund if I feel I know for sure I won’t like it within the refund window.

TBH, even though I’ve never paid more than $20 for a game, I’d probably be willing to do so if it’s a physical release considering I’ll be displaying it somewhere, which’s added value that digital games lack.

No more than $20 for digital though. I don’t care what the game is or how much money I have, I’m happy to replay my favorite games and wait.

If you’re selling for more than $20, you’re probably a relatively big publisher anyway, and I don’t feel obligated to pay what you’re asking, or, in many cases, fund your mismanagement/feed your greed.

Resting my eyes this week, so no gaming. I plan to pick up Kingdom Hearts 3 early next week though… I have no interest in the story, but if the combat is anywhere as good as 2, I know I’ll have fun.

Not looking forward to the download size though… 75GB is just silly… I’ll have to uninstall at least a couple of games to fit in.

I was playing through the Metal Gear Rising DLCs at the end of last week, so I’ll probably beat it and uninstall it. Other game will most likely be NEO: The World Ends With You, which I haven’t beaten yet, but I’m OK coming back to beat it later.

Heartless & Dreadful : Return by 72 Hours

First off, I hate that goddamn title: why the fuck is there a space before the colon… it upsets me every time I look at it 😂 The game has an unserious tone, but still WTF.

It’s a fun indie action game. In a nutshell, it’s a shameless Devil May Cry clone, which’s cool because we don’t get enough of those any longer. By that I mean: style meter, style button, d-pad to change styles, change weapons on the fly, unlocking new moves with in-game currency, and it’s even mission based.

Even the moves are identical to Dante’s and Vergil’s classic movesets.

There’s mild exploration for more items and whatnot, which I don’t mind, but the game is fairly linear. It’s about as linear as Devil May Cry 5.

I’m having enough fun with it to go on and beat it eventually, but IDK if I’ll be revisiting it for playthroughs on higher difficulties. I was always more of a Clover, Platinum, and Team Ninja fan than a Capcom/Devil May Cry fan anyway.

Blades of Time. So many mechanics for a short action game. I thought I was in for another mid budget OG God of War clone a la Marlow Briggs, but so far it’s a lot more fun and exciting to play.

Man, I wish this was a proper action game with combos, juggling and stuff and it didn’t play more or less like a martial arts soulslike.

It’s kinda like Vanquish in that: it has covers, and you can play it like a cover shooter, but it’s more fun as an action game.

Even bullets do more damage point blank.

In terms of movement, it’s odd out of the box, but once you start incorporating guard canceling (and you can guard cancel about any free movement in this game—slashing, shooting, dashing… etc.) the system really opens up.

Yet another GOTY I have no interest in because it doesn’t overlap with my favorite games in any way.

Signalis.

I love lists, so this is an easy one for me:

1. Bayonetta: unfathomably high skill ceiling. I could spend forever getting better at this game and consistently having fun.
2. The Wonderful 101: same as Bayonetta.
3. God Hand: not many games provide the exhilaration of a perfect God Hand run. I would have the best time spending the rest of my life perfecting my God Hand gameplay.
4. Ninja Gaiden 2: peak action groove. Playable crack cocaine. Would never get tired of it.
5. Gunvein: no shmup encourages you to concquer and obliterate the screen like Gunvein, even though it’s tough as nails. It’ll take me forever to no death the highest difficulty, and I’ll savour every moment.
6. Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R: I would like to be Shadow Gallery-looping people into eternity with Zato/Eddie.
7. Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes: immensely deep systems with one of my favorite fighting game characters of all-time: Chaos. Infinite potential to get better at both the game and playing Chaos.
8. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax: Ken Amada is the most lighthearted fun I’ve had in a fighting game. I will need him to always be available.
9. Hellsinker: easily most mechanically dense shmup of all-time. Easily at least hundreds of hours to digest and internalize everything.
10. Gravity Rush: best traversal in gaming. I’m content to just boot it up and float for hours.

I picked up Ikaruga. I can feel the input delay, but it’s still fun.

Half way through my second Hi-Fi Rush playthrough. Game is fantastic.

Depends on what you’re looking for. I’d confidently recommend against buying it if you’re looking for an action game. There’s at least 10 better, cheaper candidates on Steam.

So in attempt to expand my taste and library, and against my better judgment, I picked up 4 games over the past 2 months I wouldn’t typically pick up: Death Stranding, The Surge, Scarlet Nexus, and NieR:Automata.

I regret doing that.

I hate RPGs so much. They are so boring. My personal idea of gaming hell is fetch quests, escort missions, item farming, skill trees, and grinding XP.

Death Stranding: I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that bad, and I actually had some fun collecting resources to build bridges and whatnot. Also, it’s nice to boot up the game and realize someone else finished that bridge you’ve been trying to build. Driving can be fun too.

Game definitely overstays its welcome though… and I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the story. There’s no scenario where I can see myself revisiting it.

The Surge: God, I should put all the clips I have of all the buggy and awkward combat BS I ran into in this game. It’s just sad.

I hate souls-like combat. It’s so slow, all the skill goes into character builds, and this game’s take on it doesn’t exactly shake it up. I felt as if I was using 5% of my brain in every combat situation. A lot of wait-and-bait over and over again, and I just can’t see myself ever enjoying this. Never revisiting.

Scarlet Nexus: This one actually tries harder to bring action mechanics and ideas to an otherwise RPG experience, but goddammit the RPG bogs it down so hard. And that last stretch of gameplay was insufferable, by-the-numbers RPG BS. Spongy, high-leveled enemies for days, which aren’t even that difficult to beat… just chunky health bars, which seems to be action RPGs only idea of challenging combat: chunky health bars with big, often quick, attacks that can 2-shot you—once you figure out how to deal with the attacks, it becomes nothing but a battle of endurance. Just mundane, repetitive shit.

I may revisit to play the second campaign and 100%, but most likely will not.

NieR:Automata: OK, so this one has OK an combat system with combos, animation canceling, launchers, parries, counters…etc. but all of it locked behind a lot of RPG, and none of it matters if you don’t level up and dish out higher DPS anyway; otherwise, it’s yet again another battle of endurance. Fun locked up behind misery.

It’s also a nearly infinitely replayable RPG, which I find nightmare-inducing.

For the first time ever I have a “Regret” section in my library… goddammit. I will, however, still give Nioh a shot at some point. This will be the last step I take outside of my comfort zone for a long while. Back to action games, fighting games, and shmups—games I actually have tons of fun playing and can infinitely enjoy.

Windblown from Motion Twin (Dead Cells devs)

No couch co-op though, in case this is what you're looking for.