One cannot live on vibes alone.

It goes without saying that Venineth is absurdly beautiful. Impossible landscapes stetch into the far distace, mysteriously floating shapes and vast mountains ripped straight from demoscene visuals of the 90s, whilst vast unknown planets hang in the skybox and light jungle plays in the background, and your mysterious little ball rolls across all of it.

And the game's opening sequence, a joyous voyage in through an impossible valley, guided only by the curves of this demoscene land before you enter it's main hub, is absolutely joyous. It's absurdly immersive, fast and just really gets the whole thing across. I thought at that stage, going into the hub, i would love Venineth, even if a few cracks were beginning to show on the surface.

But god knows why, but the rest of the game is not like that. It feels like there are a dozen different directions that could have been taken with the "marble ventures over the coolest landscape ever". Something like an extension of the opening where the game was focused entirely on the exploration and wandering. Something like monkey ball which is arcade based and consists of short levels in a set, hell, even something like Sanic ball where the bizzare environments form the playground for a racing game of extreme speed and sick music. But nah the formula chosen for Venineth is just bad. It's formula is extremely long levels of very small scale puzzle platforming, often on the same bunch of bridges and switch assets and the same doors that block your way. And when i say long, I mean it. You're looking at an hour for some of these levels, slowly chipping away at uninteresting puzzles that mostly challenge your ability to work with wonky controls at low speed. Monkey ball this aint.

And it gets worse, because the cracks in the aesthetic really start to show when you stop barrelling through these worlds and start looking at them from 3 feet away to judge an awkward jump. Texture resolution is pretty low even on max which makes some stuff look so not so great up close, there's a pretty silly amount of asset reuse, some effects look outright awful (Stage 2's Lava is such a poor effect that it completely ruins the levels atmosphere, what were they thinking). These are things that absolutely would go unnoticed by me if they were going by quickly, i wasnt forced to deal with them for an hour, or if they served more as a background to the core puzzle challenges like in monkey ball. But no. Must also be said the framerate is really wonky - I'm playing on steam deck and it will go from over 60 to like 20 in a small turn of the camera. It's telling that the game straight up has an option for a 30fps cap just to keep things consistent, and it's like the only straight up latin text in the entire game.

The aesthetic and general vibe does carry it an awful long way. To the point where if this game had the gameplay of a point-to-point Sanic Ball, which isnt even good, i'd probaly give it 4 and a half stars. But instead it seems to shove your face in all it's flaws on go on interminably.

All it really does in the end is make me wish Arthur Maclean's Mercury had higher resolution backgrounds...

Neverawake's tone, story and art style are so reminiscent of Deemo that I seriously had to do a double take at points. But it is a stylish, good looking game that falls into a huge bunch of pitfalls. It's so damn long for what it is, I don't get the point of having a shop other than to make the game more casual friendly, and hitboxes are super unclear. But more than that every part of the game that's not a boss feels like a complete waste of my time, and there's more than enough of them to make a proper shooter out of them.

Very dissapointing considering it's blatantly got a lot of talent and potential.

"Proof of life" - so goes Astlibra's rarely used but pretty important subtitle. It's a major theme in the latter part of the game, where the sheer level of time travel shenanigans and fantasy bullshit happening makes it a pretty pressing issue - but I won't go into that. But deliberate or not, the term so brilliantly encapsulates the game itself.

Its impossible to talk about Astlibra without mentioning it's development cycle. As I write this, for instance, the dead space remake has just launched. When Astlibra started development the original was still a year away. Sole developer Keizo has plugged away at this and one or two other games in his free time over 15 damn years. And this is a guy with an office job. This game is his "Proof of life". And it bleeds out of every damn screen in the game.

There's a ridiculously large amount of ground to cover but Astlibra boils down to a sidescrolling ARPG in the vein of Ys III and Zelda II, shoved in a blender with stuff from Comiket. You get astonishingly flashy and silly combat combined with puzzle design from 1990, whilst some insanely hard doujin music which may or may not include hatsune miku goes obscenely hard in the background. And then you'll come across some insanely detailed boss sprite with cleavage that takes up half the screen and fires dodonpachi patterns of magic at you.

This is not only kinda silly, but also legitimately kinda great. The combat's main hook is effectively building up magic spells by dealing damage, and those magic spells give you temporary invincibility upon cast - which encourages super aggressive play. Bosses in particular are fantastic, but just clearing screens of enemies is somehow a joy after 30 hours of play, particularly as new engagement options keep on opening up even into the super-late game.

In general there's just so, so much you find, miss, or just ignore in Astlibra that feel like they meaningfully give you new options or feel impactful. I have absolutely no fucking idea how it does it. Things like triple jump boots and launchers are hidden in corners, random crossbows you get to solve two puzzles is powerful in combat, and mage staffs are widlly powerful but basically ignorable for the vast majority of players. The game clearly doesnt expect a player to get absolutely everything but also expects them to at least have some stuff - and the balance is struck just right.

Maybe most surprisingly, the story kinda hits. The current english localisation is a bit rough (it only really worksas it does because 2007-angsty fan translation tier fits well for the game) and you can undoubtedly pick a million holes in it's time travel/meddling gods bullshit, but it really nails it's emotional beats and hooks. KEIZO really knows how to turn a knife and throw in some good twists. The first two thirds of the game are a bit house in fata morgana-y in how they're individually story based whilst teasing at the greater whole - and that the batshit final chapters actually keep the emotional core and it's themes front and centre is remarkable. The core theme of butterfly effects and every choice coming with costs are very well done. And honestly the characters are also great - adorable crow Karon is effectively the voice of the unnamed protagonist for the entire game and is always a delight in particular. It hooked me, which is something i was not expecting at all.

Astlibra also does something very, very clever. It cheats. The revision release, whilst of course being extremely similar to just Astlibra's free version, is a result of KEIZO recruiting a handful of people, including ex-vanillaware artist Shigatake to refine the graphics, smooth the edges and add a few bits of content. And with it the game gains a much more defined aesthetic (the free version looks even weirder than the current release trust me) and refinement whilst still retaining that glorious individuals heart. It's kinda genius.

Yeah, looking at Astlibra truly critically it'll be very easy for someone to absolute rip into it. It's a bit overlong, it's difficulty balance is suspect, the postscript isnt worth playing, it's a bit too horny, it's aesthetic varies from looking like a straight up vanillaware title to looking like a geocities website and it's a bit repetitive. But as the sort of jaded asshole who was ready to make those sorts of comments, i really don't care, and it's not just the context of it's 17 year development. Astlibra is overwhelmingly charming at every single turn, fun, hype as hell and continually engaging with it's story, gameplay loop and seemingly endless secrets.

Something about this game just dredges up the wonder I had for playing RPGs as a kid which very little can manage these days - Ys VIII does, and Xenoblade can for moments - and I have loved it unconditionally. I have been up til 3am playing Astlibra just wanting to push ever onwards.

It's certainly not for everyone - the demo will probably serve as a good litmus test for whether you're into this sorta thing, and I'd reccomend checking it out first (especially as the game itself basicaly doesnt have a tutorial so it serves dual function). But I would like to think ive got it across in this review that if you're into this, you're probably going to be really into it.

Can you tell I love this?

Somer Assault really is a story of what could have been. The game's core concepts, the idea of a silly slinky-cum-VVVVVV based puzzle platformer with basically this art style and basically this gameplay forms neatly in my head. It's so easy to imagine something just like this coming out in the summer of arcade on Xbox 360 and be the thing all the cool kids are playing for a week or so. The recipe for Somer to be at least a serviceable little game is all there, and for moments, it works.

When you're in a tight, interesting space with different enemies and only having the ability to shoot perpendicularly to the main body of your slinky, that's cool. Working out what position your body will be in when over there and running that stuff on the fly can be engaging.



Shame that those scenarios basically don't exist. I made it up. The level design in this game is universally awful. It's very 90s Euro (derogatory), which is to say interminably labyrinthine and large whilst having a background that scrolls too much versus the plane making it hard to keep your bearings. Theres huge sections of just straight up open plains with 3 of the same enemy harmlessly going overhead. Sections where you have to just have to jump or something without a threat. And the end result is so easy, at least in it's US version, to be remarkably boring. Dying is hard and getting a game over seems basically impossible if you're legitimately trying to beat the game. You get way too much health and the time controls are way too lenient.

The bosses fare little better but I can at least see how that would be more of a challenge to get right. Their attack patterns are just really simple and every fight seems to have straight up safespots.

They had something here, but the execution is just poor. Imagine if Kuru Kuru Kururin only consisted of hallways as wide as your stick, or VVVVVV let you take like 3 hits per screen. That's Somer Assault.

Intelligent systems, is this a bit?

As soon as it was announced Engage is a game that was raising a bunch of red flags. Nostalgia baiting, the awful focus on a myunit, gimmicky new mechanics and fucking GACHA? The whole thing really looked like intelligent systems giving into the worst tendancies of post-awakening Fire Emblem.

And y'know, if that was it, i'd probably be at least fine with that. Fates, even revelations, one of the dumbest fucking things i've ever played, are all still at the very least, compelling. I have like 100 hours in Fates, embarassing as that is, because the Fire Emblem formula is still pretty great, conquest has like 5 good maps and the bad stuff is mostly ignorable. I have played fucking Gaiden to completion even after Echoes was out just to see what was up.

With engage ive got 15 hours in it and I can barely stomach a moment more. I want to keep going because I love FE. But I absolutely cannot stand this game.

Yes, like Fates, Engage is a game that falls prey to IS' stupid tendancies. But the real sin with Engage is that what has been cribbed about just does not gel together at all.

Main issue is bloat, on a gameplay level. Part of the genius of Fire Emblem is how really quite simple it all is, and how limited the resources and options really all are. The best section of the entire franchise, and it's not even close, is Thracia 776's Munster arc, a section which truly relies on you making the most of an incredibly limited toolset and pushing it as far as you can against overwhelming odds. Of course, over the years the complexity inevitably increased, to mixed but often positive results. Engage firmly goes too far though.

The big problem is the mixing of the social sim stuff from 3 houses whilst also incorporating its new stuff with the engage system and so on. Being able to boost stats and stuff in a hub was questionable but mosty worked in 3H, a game structured around it. In Engage all the stat boosting, friendship boosting, animal handling(why), minigames (WHY) are mindnumbing roadblocks to the fun strategy. These sorts of things have never really sat right in FE, where the ways damage formulas and speed formulas in particular work make tiny stat boosts often have huge implications, but this goes way too far in a game system very unsuited to it. It essentially stretches the preperations stage, already too long in most FEs, to being the majority of the game. It's unnaceptable.

And it's a real shame as a lot of the changes in the gameplay department are actually really good. Map design is probably the best it's been since radiant dawn, unit balance doesnt seem so overfocused on a small amount of strong units, bosses actually move about and honestly the engage system, regardless of it being insulting to the original characters and whatever, is a pretty neat gimmick honestly. It's a way more balanced version of pair up that gives effectively more burst damage and interesting techniques, which combined with enemies being generally stronger than previous games makes for an interesing loop. Obviously, its in this game so the execution is flubbed - the rings being limited in number kinda undoes the balance improvements on its own, and the skill inheritance, bonding, and gacha ring stuff is yet more pointless fluff to waste your damn time.

If the game just had the engage system over lets say, Radiance series levels of prep and other stuff going on, the gameplay could have been great, probably the best the series had seen in over a decade. But there's way too much going on to waste your time and it does not gel together.

The story and characters are so bafflingly bad I don't know who it's even for. As ludicrously bad as fates' are, at least it's very easy to pinpoint what's going for - the sheer power trip of being infalliable corrin, the stupid golden route both sides-ing and being able to have children with your big booba wyvern riding sister. Engage's is less bad in the "IS is down bad" regard, but it's worse in that it just completely forgets to have anything at all. It's completely hookless, the world and characters feel like they've got nothing going on at all, and it all feels very rote. The mystical/dragon elements feel tappen onto a pretty normal fire emblem plot and all they do is make the MC less personable and relatable. FE has only really had a good story in like 4 games, but it's structure as a series has always made it very easy to connect to characters and it has never dropped the ball this hard, and it's not like it's even trying something.

The whole game is just a confused mess, and doesnt even seem to be sure of who it's appeal is for. It's nostalgia bait to an extreme whilst barely resembling the simple, down to earth nature of those games. It goes for a simpler structure, dropping choice and most of the social sim elements (which people quite liked even if they're not entirely my bag), but keeps just enough of them to be really annoying. Characters are less of a focus for some reason? Romance is less of a thing? I can't even tell who this game is for because it feels like it consciously does something to alienate a fan of every game in the series, and it certaintly isnt for new players. Even as a "we needed 20 more characters to eventually put in heroes" joint it's a complete failure.

I hesitate to say this is the worst FE - Revelations is truly awful - but even Fates had like, an idea of what it was going for, as bad as what that is and as bad as it's execution is. Engage is aimless and awful and for the first time ever, it's easy for me to put an FE down.

I refuse to believe Metal Hawk has no connection to ace combat. Yes, I might have come up with nothing having spent and unreasonable amount of time looking for interviews and pouring over the Hamster stream covering the game, and come up with nary a shared member of staff, and yes it's a helicopter game - but you cannot convince me otherwise. So much of what makes Ace Combat what it is - all here. Sweeping in and out of the clouds on bombing runs, dodging SAMs, dogfighting, improbably large airplanes and a wonderful soundtrack.

Metal Hawk really just plays like an early Ace combat where every mission is one of those "get x points before the time runs out", albeit with far more arcade-y sensibilities. No mission gives you a timer more than 2 minutes, you die in a single hit, and the Metal Hawk itself jumps in and out like a flea, diving from maximum to minimum height within a second for bombing runs in what is about the most extreme sprite scaling i've seen in a game.

Metal Hawk's control is definetly the most contentious part of the game, having being built originally for a motion simulator cabinet with two sticks, and even though in the recent Arcade Archives release Hamster have gone to a lot of effort in making it configurable and making it adapt to twin sticks (the joysticks on the cab were analogue so this is fine), it's a bit of a cludge. But the more you get to grips with it, the initial clunkiness that you might feel gives way to a gloriously powerful movement system. In something that makes zero sense dont think about it, the Metal Hawk's movement speed scales heavily with altittude, so to dodge the onslaught of turrets and planes whilst keeping your barrage accurate, you need to constantly flick in and out of high and low altitude to keep yourself alive and finish your assault in time. The controls are a bit weird but when you get good at them it's a wonderful feeling, dancing among the clouds and the barrage.

Oh, and the whole time Shinji Hosoe jams out in the background. The soundtrack is lower tempo than you'd imagine, a bit like songs tend to be in Ace Combat outside of the climactic missions, which really suits the game well -im a particular fan of "BGM 4" - and all the while lovely Seiyuu Maya Okamoto confirms your kills and eggs you on. It makes for an almost calming tone that really blends well with getting into a flow state with the controls and action.

The whole thing is a joy. Technically amazing looking with it's bonkers sprite scaling, a truly interesting control experience that rewards mastery, and all the fun that comes with Ace Combat's atmosphere and charm put into the world of arcade sensibilities and pacing. It's fast paced, quite hard and in what was in retrospect a relative lull in Namco's output, as exceptional if not better than their legendary titles of the early 80s. A tiny production run of those motion siulator Cabinets and being kinda funky to port/emulate has kept it in the shadows for a long time now, but it truly is one of Namco's greatest games.

If you intend on trying metal hawk, definetly go for the Arcade Archives version. There's a lot of good QOL stuff in how they've implmented the controls which goes a long way to making Metal Hawk play fantastically on a modern system. And it's so worth it - if Metal Hawk actually were an ace combat game, there would be a very real argument for it to be the best one.

For what is a pretty unabashed Overwatch clone to the point where it literally just slaps Soldier 76s kit onto a cool mecha, Gundam Evolution sure has some mid-7th gen "we bolted on a multiplayer mode" energy. It's got like 4 maps, balance that is so clearly busted in a way that hasnt been a thing in a mainstream multiplayer shooter since year 1 of Rainbow Six Siege, and a user experience and progression system that damn near kills the game completely.

It is fun, mind. Despite being 90% identical it's a far better game than Overwatch 2. Even if you put aside overwatch's inherant issues of having terrible character design and world compared to gundam, and that it's a Blizzard game so playing it, even for free, makes me a bit of a shithead - Evolution is just the better core experience. The lack of role stuff, and to an extent support units in general, combined with a game that is far more focused on close combat and aggression makes for a more exciting, frantic experience. Most units do horrible damage at long range, all have dashes and the general design really encourages in there. Zaku II [Ranged], easily the most fun to play unit in the game, has a gameplay consisting of getting like 5 feet away from the enemy with dashes then throwing grenades and dumping your machine gun's mag in half a second, and praying.

And you know what, I quite like it's stupid balance. Objectively it's not good but Overwatch's balance is about as bad whilst being nowhere near as fun about it. The broken characters really bring out that chaotic energy that modern shooters kinda lack - shutting down a madly powerful gundam swinging a giant stick around in your objective is great shit, and going off on a ridiculous streak with the ridiculous GM Sniper is a buzz you'l struggle to get without becoming really good at an actually skillful game. And in the game's greatest, probably accidental design choice, unless you do get hit by that big stick guy it's actually fairly hard to identify exactly what kills you in big teamfights (the killfeed is tiny and difficult to read), so it's hard to get frustrated at some of the bullshit when you think it's actually the Guntank littering the boulevard with missiles that got you.

Dear lord though, everything else is a bit of a disaster. The user experience and progression is bafflingly poor for a game so simple and frankly pretty high budget, and the monetisation is horrible, with locked units behind a paywall of unreasonable amounts, and then lootboxes which can give you items for units you dont have, and then a battlepass. And the things you actually get are supremely shit. Putting aside the "im going to give my legendary robot an RGB gun" element of things, the best options for literally everyone is the base design, and all the skins are shite. There's no model swaps or anything and seemingly very little reference to the source material in variants. Obviously this stuff shouldn't matter that much but when you've made the treadmill so integral to your game, it does sap a lot from it when its so awful. It's odd, i probably wouldnt have minded paying $20 for like, just the basegame with no skins at all but you wouldnt catch me dead putting a cent into it's actual economy.

I also think the themeing is a bit of a dropped ball. Im n ot overly familiar with gundam (Ive only seen char's counterattack and the 7th MS Team), but the mishmash of different eras of gundam feels a bit odd here in the first place, but there's also complete failure to integrate gundam's vibes outside of the cool mechs themselves - Arenas don't play into the vast scale of gundam, being decidely built around the mecha to the point where you feel just human size and there's occasionally some tiny toy cars around. It's all very abstracted from the source material - and i particularly feel not having unique voice actors representing the characters for each gundam is a missed oppurtunity. When a mecha says "piloted by Char Aznable", why isnt he actually in it spouting off about amuro being a bitch or something idk i havent seen much gundam.

It's a fun time overall, but also really hard to see a reason why anyone would make this their "main game", which is maybe evidenced with its rather extreme queue times. Better than overwatch 2 by a landslide but in this day and age that's not enough to make people come back. But for a fun 10 hour lark of just going "ooh" at cool mechs for a bit and revelling in the moden equievelent of Akimbo 1886s on Terminal, it's a fun little lark.

Also, there's really just a Gundam called "Gundam", huh. Respect that, honestly.

The power of a wiki as a storytelling device should not be underestimated. It's almost like a cheat code, allowing endless worldbuilding without the need for a driving plot or much motivation, and allowing articles to both interweave together and for the writer to leave the right gaps. You can tell amazing sounding events with a few mere words, you can get all the information you could ever want across, and a lot of hard work and bad writing can be bypassed by just being blunt and consice. Its very easy to lose hours to something like the SCP wiki, or some anime you'd previously never heard of, or pokemon, or star wars. It's also fun and easy to write, frankly. A common vice of the budding fantasy/sci fi writer is to be way too into the worldbuilding side of things rather than the core conflict, yet the model on display in neurocracy is rewarding to those tendencies - which sounds like it has some great potential.

So when CHUU "Joey" Detchibe put this up on the games club list, I gladly picked it. Cyberpunk future wiki with unpicking murder mystery, yes please, that sounds a dead cert.

But Neurocracy, beyond it's central idea feels like it manages to flub nearly everything to the point where I question why the story was told in this manner at all.

First thing, the worldbuilding - basically the thing this style excels at, is a remarkable combination of being such a tepid cyberpunk world I hesitate to even call it that - and a bunch of elements that are so wild that they completely rip you out of any sense of immersion you might have. You can get away with a lot of handwaving in this style, but Texas being overthrown by a doomsday cult and seceding from the union in 2036, especially when it actually factors into the key murder plot stuff - kinda needs a bit more than that.

It really is not helped by the lack of content. Whilst an element of suspension of disbelief comes with the territory here - these guys cant exactly build a whole wikipedia - the sheer derth of articles and things to read is a big issue that arguably makes the whole project feel moot in the first place. Seriously important elements of the world don't get full pages at all, and literally every single page you can find ties back into the core conspiracies of the narrative without exception. The game compares itself to going down a wikipedia rabbit hole, but its not, because there is very, very little to actually explore. Rabbit puddle, maybe? Even as the in-game days change you get very few new pages and you mostly return to see the changes in the few that exist. The facade that you're uncovering or finding anything wont last more than two pages.

The writing style is also a bit off. It's in the ballpark, and omnipedia isn't meant to be an exact parallell to wikipedia, but it still too often reads like it's leading you down a story rather than presenting facts. The game also has weird tonal issues where it makes frankly oddball takes at satire like introducing "sorrytube, a youtube only for apology videos" which is both not funny and also very discordant with the rest of the content which is played very straight.

Ok, so how about those murder conspiracies? Well, they're better, but that's damming with faint praise. They would probably be fine if the elements of digging around the wikis was actually engaging, but it's not and they end up feeling kind of lacking. I also just don't think this is a really great way of presenting this sort of deep dive? Yeah there's a bit of stuff on information control int he plot here but wikipedia generally isn't as much of an active place to dive on murders and stuff like this so much as forums and social media, which could be done.

Neurocracy just fails on basically every narrative level. God forgive me for what I'm about to say but it is legitimately a way worse tale about going down a internet rabbit hole about murders and stuff than fucking YIIK has.

Joey, can I change my vote?

"Shooting game never die."

It is the words that modern classic shmup Crimzon Clover leaves you with. It's a telling turn of phrase that has become somewhat memetic within the STG community - putting in so few words how the genre has persisted despite what would be kind to call limited commercial success for going on 30 years now. The fact that in the year 2023 Toaplan have revived and are probably working on a Truxton/Tatsujin 3 whilst something like starcraft is dead as a dornail is frankly, a bit stupid.

And maybe there is something intrinsic to the genre when it comes to that. Shmups can be made with tiny teams, fast and cheaply. Possibly the most famous shmup - Ikaruga - was born out of a side project at Treasure when two devs had finished their work on Sin and Punishment and finished in 6 months, for instance.

But that's not really why. It's passion. Passion like Kenta Cho's.

just... look at all this.. This list of free, well designed, generally quite good games feels absolutely endless. Most are shmups or at least shmup related - see the excellent Charge shot which is an abstraction of the charge shot from R-type made into a game all of it's own - and that's what he does. The vast majority of his games are about exploring a single mechanic. Combine that with the sheer volume and it's easy to imagine it all as a bit dry, but Kenta Cho is a man with the design craft of the classics and is always super distinctive about it all. In an interview, bizzarely with MTV, the interviewer states he could be a very rich guy - and you can tell that the creative chops and talent he's got for pure game design and coming up with wild concepts could have lead him to great success commercially - but it's not what he wants.

What he wants is to make stuff like Torus Trooper. By his standards, it's a complex game. It's 3D for one thing, the intersection of Nichibitsu's old Tube Panic combined with the franticness of Tempest (I feel there's a little of jeff minter's games in here in particular), with a bit of sanvein thrown in there. Go down the tube fast as fuck killing everything to gain time against an ever decreasing clock, and when time runs out it's over. As ever with Cho, the core hook here is absolutely tantilising. The sense of speed is utterly insane and the game goes well beyond what it feels it should. You can go so fast the game becomes barely legible, but you're rewarded for it tangibly with points and the game has a few neat tricks in regards to things like it's hit detection (you will never get hit by a triangle bullet at high speed) and spawns to keep you going. Eventually it will look like a game being played in fast forward. Jeff Minter's games love the phrase "feed your head to the web" and Kenta Cho truly taps into that hyper-immersive quality of a great tube shooter like Minter does.

I don't think it's his best game though. The ability to control your actual acceleration i feel neuters the game a bit even if after a while you're just going to be holding up, and the charge shot/brake thing is a little off. It's used to score points but also acts as a brake but you can also control your ship's speed anyways, and slowing down also decreases your ability to get time extends from just going fast. It's not a huge issue but in a game so bare it just puts the game a little below the gloriously well designed Tumiki Fighters and Rrootage, games that exemplify Cho's "One thing well" philosophy.

But what I really love about Torus Trooper, Tumiki Fighters, all of Cho's work, is his practices. All his games are free for one, which is nice, but better, they're all completely open source. If I wanted to, he would have absolutely no problem with me taking this game, fixing my personal issues with it, and selling it for like $5 on the switch eshop, without paying him a cent. Hell, this seems to be what he wants - every single scrap of media about him shows a lovely guy who adores making games and wants to help others to make games. His github has loads of useful tools that prospective shmup devs can use to construct their own games. Especially in his earlier years around when TT came out, he was an exceptionally valuable and influential resource to the programmers that are now making the new wave of great shmups.

Perhaps the greatest testament that he's in it for the love of the game is Blast works for the Wii, which is essentially an expanded version of Tumiki fighters developed by a small iowan team called budcat, introducing an editor and the ability to make new stages and stuff (which itself kinda feels like the developers carrying on a bit of Cho's ideals). The end result is pretty great. And Kenta Cho refused to be paid a cent. In fact, the game contains his biggest and best games - Torus Trooper, Tumiki Fighters, Gunroar and Rrootage as unlockable bonuses.

Cho has a level of idealism and love for the genre, and for game development as a whole that I can barely understand.

We do not deserve him.

Shooting game might never die. But it should not be forgotten that longevity isn't because shmups are blessed, or just the best, though they are. It's because of people like Kenta Cho, and others I could go on about for a good while (Masato Maegawa, Kazuki Kubota, Naoki Horii, Rin Hamada, ZUN, countless indie devs). People who have worked their absolute hearts out to keep the torch lit and pass it on, often at the expense of commercial and critical success. I only hope your favourite genre has people like them.

Its a weird thought to have, but about halfway through my play session of egg a thought entered my head - "how long is inbetween each turn?" Is the game real time, or do the machinations of these egg gods fighting it out take place over eons, their civilisations living their lives under the shadows of the eggs, that only move occasionally to distribute destruction and bountiful life all the same?

Of course, there is no answer and it's not important really. But I bring it up because this weird-ass strategy golf-god game about eggs legitimately wormed quite deep into my head. As you knock your egg, raising and destroying huge cities as lovely music plays on weird abstract playfield, there's just the right amount of time left for you to think, the gameplay is just the right pace, for the ambience to really get to you - in my experience at least.

And the aesthetic here is just great. There's your obligatory excellent 1990s pre-rendered CGs which go hard as hell and are particularly fitting, but the sprite art is also excellent, particularly the remarkable amount of effort that's gone into giving the various stages of your civilisation different animated sprites, which really makes it feel alive.

And the end result is a bit unnerving, which I think is the point. I know it's a bizzare comparison to make but it reminds me a lot of Flower, Sun and Rain in how it makes and treats a semi-real bizzaro logic world, and how it gets the mind racing. It's hard to make much of a statement on an art piece that people are going to take very different things away from, but I just really like this kinda shit.

Also in the ultimate plot twist, its actualy a pretty good strategy game? The combination of golf, city building and conquest with a fucking egg actually works really well. The key really in my opinion is that there's a good number of different win conditions which overlap with each other just enough, and are generally enough in reach at any one point to make for frankly, really interesting gameplay. And the egg golf itself is just a thing of genius - I think without it the game's strategy could get too "worked out", but with the layer of chaos that comes with smashing eggs all over the place mistakes and misjudgements are inevitably made, and capitalising off them and changing your plans on the fly is where the gameplay really shines.

It is too slow, the mission mode is shite and the enemy AI isn't great, but it's still a pretty great time for what it is. I think the main thing i'd change is making either the maps smaller or making the egg shots a bit more powerful, because things can really get drawn out if you allow them to - but honestly with a bit of adjustment would make an absolutely fantastic board game.

Perhaps the most baffling thing about Egg then, is how cohesive it all is. There are frankly, plenty of cool as hell aesthetic games of this era which are captivating on a conceptual or visual level, but the gameplay in Egg turns out a perfect compliment as something to get the mind racing. It's engaging and honestly fun, but also fundementally extremely simple, and it just makes it oh so easy to immerse oneself in it, get in the headspace it feels like the devs want you in - at least in my experience.

It is a very limited work, granted. Exceptionally cool and well worth a look, but it's hard to imagine this truly captivating anyone for too long, and it's more of a thought provoker than something that will truly linger in the mind, but for what it is, it's an exceptionally cool time, and well worth the sub-hour it really takes to get the whole gist of it all.

The egg can create. The egg can destroy. The struggle of egg never ceases. is also peak tagline, and also honestly represents the game quite well.

It's interesting to look back at the year 1998 as a shooting game fan. It is a year where it feels like every company in the business was firing on all cylinders, yet simultaneously, the genre hung in the balance. In 1997 Cave released Dodonpachi, undoubtedly the most important shooting game made since their former selves in Toaplan put out flying shark in '87. And whilst it's basic formula defined both cave and the post-milennium shooter space, in 98 it was far from set in stone.

When you look at the other games from 98, it's easy to see a world where Radiant Silvergun, Armed Police Batrider, Dangun Feveron, Raiden Fighters Jet, Raycrisis or even Gunbird 2 and Blazing Star come out on top. A whole pile of ridiculously high-quality games that you can all make the case are the dev's finest, all at once. And whilst many of those games are still influencial, particularly RSG and Batrider - ESPrade is the one that truly came out on top.

Which is a bit odd on the face of it. Particulary in the western space a lack of localisation, ports and rights issues left it particularly obscure even among cave games, when it's stupidly important to shmup history and is one of Cave's absolute finest games.

The most important facet to ESPrade is it's presentation. Flying people over a cyberpunk tokyo fighting psychic battles with huge tanks, the psychic Yakuza and old women sitting on the cooles sprite of a statue head ever - it's all extremely cool. There's clearly a lot taken from Akira here (probably among others) but its far from a ripoff and is definetly itself. Artist and Mangaka had been working with Toaplan and it's offshoots Gazelle and Cave since 1991 but ESPrade was his first real shot to lead a whole project artistically and it's absolutely glorious. ESPrade is to this day Cave's best looking game and it's not particularly close. The stage backgrounds alone are some of the best sprtie art you'll ever see, but there's particularly fantastic use of renders here - particularly in the main characters which allows a ridiculous number of animation frames in their movement whilst somehow still blending in well. Cave rarely dropped rendered characters in the years following and they have never looked as good as they have here, it's incredible.

Junya Inoue is also, frankly, whilst an extremely talented worldbuilder and artist, is really best at either adding flavour to existing, drier worlds like he does with Dodonpachi in Daioujou, or leaving a decent amount to the imagination, and ESPrade is the true encapsulation of the latter. You get a tiny amount of short scenes to set up plot and conflict and if you want more all you'll get is a ridiculous barrage of art because Inoue has drawn each of these characters like 900 times, sometimes in his Manga BTOOM! without permission, but nary a lick of story to defile a perfect setup and payoff. As you do.

And there's just great majesty to it. Radiant Silvergun's remarkable storytelling beats it out for sure, and Taito were way ahead of the curve on this in general, but ESPrade's management of tension and minimal storytelling is just done so damn well. It's helped by effectively having 3 Stage 1s thanks to each character have their own and then playing the other twos, and they all benefit from the traditional lengths cave goes to making stage 1s incredible - but stage 5 is the real killer. A brutal part 1 the game testing all your abilities of routing and throwing piles of the enemies you've previously fought in greater density - only then to face an eerie, nigh-horrific stage 5b where you mow down hundreds of creepy psychic clones before facing down Ms. Garra.

Oh and Ms. Garra might be the best shooting game boss fight ever. A 7 phase behemoth, and even if you split them up they'd all make the top 20 cave bosses. Despite the ludicrous amount of amazing artistry the game has to offer, the image of Ms Garra casting huge wings across the snowy tokyo night, firing a beautiful mirage of bullets will always define ESPrade. It, and the earlier, also exceptional fight against Satouro Oumi are basically copied beat for beat by Windows-era Touhou. I do not blame ZUN one bit.

Aside from incredible bosses though, ESPrade just has a fantastic game loop. It does take a bit to get to grips with but tagging enemies with power shot then killing with normal to score is exceptionally fun and in a true CAVE moment, they didnt really give it another go. Stage design is also top tier.

Being such a fantastic refinement of Dodonpachi's ideas and a great encapsulation of it's own makes ESPrade the true shining star of 1998. Flying people, 10 phase bosses, emphasis on pacing and bombast, bullet patterns like blooming flowers fired by cute anime girls - whilst Story of Eastern Wonderland beats it by a few months, and DoDonPachi set the ground work, ESPrade is the true catalyst of the Shooting tropes that would define everything up to the modern era.

But more than that, it's just one of CAVE's finest. I'd say their second best game after Ketsui, and one of the top 10 shooting games outright. Only really Taito has beaten out it's presentation and matched with some of Cave's best ever work, its an utter classic.

When looked at among the class of 98, it's easy to contemplate and lust for the world of shooters we could have got if say, Dangun Feveron was the game to catch on - like if dragons dogma had been the game to define RPGs of the 2010s instead of demon souls, for instance - but like with Demon souls, when you look back on that spark - its hard to blame it for the road it lead us down.