Lets get this straight from the off - The original Andro Dunos is bad. It's a very boring Horizontal STG with frankly, very few redeeming qualities. Whilst not abjectly awful, it completely lacks character, has horrible pacing (which to be fair, was almost a standard for Hori STGs from it's time), and just has absolutely no hook at all. Even compared to when Platinum pulled Nichibitsu's mostly just ok Cresta series out of the pile for Sol, making a successor to AD is a very weird decision. Where the Cresta series at least has two good games for their times and a unique mechanic to jump off with it's docking, Andro Dunos is just a worse Zero Wing, and Zero Wing isn't even good.

So, as bizzare a decision as making a sequel to AD in the first place is, it's not a surprise that it's better than the first. Infinos Gaiden Dev Piccorinesoft is at the helm here, and the game feels a lot like that one, with similar feel and aesthetic, with lots of sprite scaling enemiesl, as well as similar level design. Gameplay wise it feels more remake than sequel, with the exact same set of weapons and switching through them as the original - just generally balanced much better, without AD1's awful rank system which disentivised actually using multiple weapons, and a generally well thought out game flow between using it's powered shots. It's fine.

But that's about it. Maybe its in attempt to be authentic to the source material, but Andro Dunos 2 is still so very white bread. AD2 is in absolute desperate need of a hook. Aesthetically it's about as bland a space shooter you can get, it's only real gimmick gameplay wise is a weapon system that is basically a rip-off of thunder force's, the music is... fine again, there's no real presentational tricks. Where Sol Cresta went balls out on its soundtrack, reverance for the originals and with it's core gameplay systems - sometimes for better and worse - AD2 is so fucking safe. It seems it's only real hook is that "it's on the 3DS and dreamcast", and im sorry, that doesn't count.

Also doesn't help that despite a pretty good core, the Quality of life stuff on offer here is sub-ZUN levels of awful. You can only rebind controls in a certain number of setups, the training mode/stage select doesnt give you any starting power so is basically useless, there's no online leaderboards or replays, you legitimately just can't adjust things like the volume or display - it's maddening and makes it particularly tempting to drop.

Overall, yeah, the game's decent. Pretty good gameplay. But that's just not enough, not even close. There are so many Hori shmups that can either outmatch it entirely or have pretty good gameplay as like the last bulletpoint on it's list of virtues, and when the rest of the product is also just not backing it up, it's just not worth the time.

Epic, this tech demo could have been a video. I would have believed you if you'd told me it was all in engine in unreal 5 and I wouldn't have had to download 27gb for a 10 minute car chase and perhaps the lamest open world experience conceivable.

Ok in fairness, the car chase portion is decently cool. It's very matrix reloaded, and despite one or two framerate hitches it's pretty visually impressive, as are the recreations of keanu and carrie ann moss, which you really need to squint at to see the uncanny valley-ness of it.

But there's so little here to talk about. The tech demo opens with a statement from keanu about tech and reality converging and shit but then completely drops it like a minute after and doesnt seem to actually have a point to make other than "damn, unreal 5 is pretty sick huh".

The open world section after the car chase is so pathetic I have no idea what it's purpose is. And it doesn't even look that amazing! It looks like Watch dogs! And all you can do is rob cars and run about!

Just watch the car chase on youtube.

Back in the day, the Playstation Mobile version of Cytus was the first proper rhythm game I REALLY got into. Now i'm getting my teeth into the genre more properly, I thought i'd give it's re-release another go.

And holy shit the timing window is huge. It's something I failed to notice as a beginner, but now with the retrospect of at least kinda knowing a few things about these sorts of games, Cytus feels absurdly easy, with timing windows for goods is bigger than any other game i've played, and perfects even feel like 100ms+ windows even. It's a decision I don't really have a problem with on it's own, but even with it's additional TP system, which tracks accuracy more tightly, the leaderboards are absolutely flooded with max scores.

Which really, in a sense, shows the emphasis of Cytus. It's a far more casual game than most of it's counterparts, even on mobile, focused on an experiencial, almost concept-album like experience.

And in that regard, Cytus is very strong, with the framing device of the game being robots experiencing music as a way to experience human emotions being quite compelling, and the 10-song "Alive" album which forms the title track of each chapter and tells the story is quite compelling, and has some of the best tracks in the game at that. Many of the individual bonus chapters, specifically Chapters L, Knight and Timeline, also serve as individual little storyline concept albums, which is something I have basically not seen in other rhythm games.

And in general, the songs are good, which frankly, is the main thing. There's a good chunk of songs fro Rhythm game favourites like Cranky and M2U, as well as plenty of other good ones. Originally being a subscription thing, there are some issues in that you can tell the game took a while to find it's style, and whilst the early chapters are great and the final few are excellent, some in the middle are a bit dull and uninspired in comparison, though usually each of these at least has one fantastic track.

And in many ways, it is the legacy of this game being a game as a service that bogs down the new Alpha remaster most. The garbage song selection UI somehow managed to stick round 10 years, along with the weird insistence on secret tracks which are a pain to find. There's also only two patterns per song where even cytus 2 (which actually came out before this port) has 3+, and it leads to a huge gulf in difficulty between some of the easy and hard patterns in the same song occasioanlly, and is just overall dissapointing. There's a scant few patterns in this game that are very difficult, and im not even good at this game - more patterns pushing the envelope would help it a lot.

Frankly, the main thing the port adds is the new art and a little new unlockable story stuff. The new art is absolutely fantastic and helps address the haphazard style of the original game, and the story stuff helps the original sparse narrative get a little more meat on the bones. Its still limited, but it's nice.

The other new things in this port are online multiplayer and physical controls. Neither are worthwhile, with the multiplayer already entirely dead and the the physical controls just being fiddly and i feel would only really work on a keyboard or arcade stick where you could mash really fast.

Overall, Cytus is kinda rough, and Rayark would massively improve on polish and presentation in their later work, but Cytus is arguably still their most interesting and the focus on concept albums and narrative really makes the original in particular stand out. The timing window may be way too wide for a pro to take it remotely seriously, but it's an interesting, and rather special game in it's own right.