I am quite a big enjoyer of the genre of media that is "The wild will just fucking kill you". Especially when it comes to the cold stuff - there's a combination of comforting and creepy about tucking in bed with a cup of hot chocolate and something like Jack London's To Build A Fire.

And the Red Lantern is like halfway there. The story of the dumbest person of all time going out into the wilderness comically underprepared and succumbing to the elements and wildlife on the way to a cabin with her dogs. It is, on paper, a great framework for a little game like this as you live out the mistakes and choices that lead to your death.

Combined with minor roguelike elements with resource gathering, hunger meters and semi-random events, it kinda works. It's a very simple game system no doubt, and is mostly ancilliary to the vibes and doggie fun, but it holds up it's end of the bargain.

But the vibes themselves are a bit off. The Red Lantern is remarkably muddled when it comes to it's messaging and what it's trying to make a point out of. Many parts of it are cautionary, with our unamed protagonist getting injured, starving to death, having her dogs die, falling into ice, and all manner of other nasty things - but it's also clearly aspirational, having fun with her dogs, going to the cutest little cabin ever put to screen, and having a tone thats awfully light a lot of the time.

It really doesnt help that this might be, clearly unintentionally, one of the most annoying protagonists i've ever dealt with a game - legitimately Alex YIIK levels of frustrating without even YIIK's level of awareness and introspection. She's a clearly very privedged californian, who has been legitimately given everything she needs to live out in the Alaskan wilderness, who goes with her and her city dog, and 4 other poor dogs she adopts to go on a voyage that will most likely get them killed. She then murder a bunch of wildlife and basically tramples all over this beautiful bit of the pacific northwest. And despite never stopping talking, basically only one or two lines in the entire game will she admit she's a bit out of her depth - let alone that she's put 5 previously content dogs in mortal peril or killed like 5 moose today. And the game's tone never really addresses it.

I get the aspiration to live out in the wild. I dream of it sometimes. Looking out at woods i sometimes think of building myself a hut, living off the land, doing a bit of hunting and disconnecting from society. I imagine a lot of people do. And in many ways I wish i could do what this person could. But the callous disregard for nature and those she puts at risk in doing so makes her throuroughy unsympathetic when the game clearly isnt going for that and she's rewarded with a bunch of extremely cute puppies and the cutest shack, and her violent deaths are contextualised as nightmares.

It's a bit insidious, really. The Devs clearly see her as aspirational and relatable, but she's a horrible person who's in way over their head and worst of all, endangers others. And then gets rewarded for it at the end.

I feel sorry that Ashly Burch continually gets given the most annoying roles that seem to exist in gaming. Tiny Tina, Aloy and now this, fuck me.

There is plenty to like here, it's pretty, the dogs are cute and the minor roguelike/choose your own adventure stuff works well, but the framing is just so off. There's plenty of ways the devs could have put together a similar setup without making the whole thing so muddled. The protagonist being more forced into this situation rather than seeking it out alone would go a long way, or just having some introspection.

Because as it is this tonal weirdness not only ruins the game as the chracter is so integral, but also makes me questions the beliefs and values of the developer who made it. Which is a really bad conclusion for me to be coming out of a game that seems to mostly want me to think "wow, cute dogs".

Damn Square Enix really sent out a lot of games to die this year, huh.

I wish so, so much that this game was outstanding. The centennial is so beautiful, so charming, is acted so legitimately well and just overall has this feel that - at least if you're into a bit of J-drama, detective stories and some FMV cheese - it should be a stone cold classic. Take any single scene or some of the individual chapters in a vacuum and you can so easily envision the absolute god tier narrative adventure thing this turning out to be, something with the rep of it's director's previous game 428 Shibuya Scramble (which i am remiss to not having finished yet).

And it's really hard to pinpoint exactly what isn't quite working here. Even ater fully completing it, being engaged and entertained the whole way through, something just felt a bit off. And even now i'm not sure really quite why when it should be right up my alley.

But I think i've gotten to the root of my niggles. I just don't think the Murders of the Centennial Case and the resolution of the overall mystery works that well. Whilst I absolute adore the "protagonist reads book, injects all the same actors from current time into recreation of the past" element, the murders themselves fail to truly integrate with the long running mysteries to untangle of the Shijima family and the pretty wild legends of agelessness it explores. I really get the impression that exploring other mysteries and sticking with maybe one or two murders would have worked better, because there's cases where they feel almost incidental compared to the real matters and hand.

Working out the murders is also a little slapdash. I appreciate the straight up FMVs going through the protagonists collecitng the evience rather than a lot of wandering around, but the process of putting those clues together in your mind palace is pretty dreadful, esecially as dear lord, this game has so fucking many red herrings. I think it's fair for detective stories to bury the lead a litlte bit and not to have every piece of evidence come back in the resolution - but this clearly goes too far. A lot of cases it feels like half your evidence just doesnt get used. You end up with basically a danganronpa case's worth of evidence for a murder which is often as simple as a matter of eliminating the impossible suspects.

I also don't think the core mystery is quite set out right. The semi-fantastical elements just aren't introduced neatly enough for me to really buy it, even whilst fully immersed in the hammy j-drama stuff. It feels like a nitpick because it's something a few lines of dialogue in the right place could sort out and it's probably going to vary a lot from person to person - but especially when the game relies so much on this stuff in it's final chapter in particular, it can take you out of some of the melodrama of that final act. Which is a shame, because the game also decides to drop plenty of it's boldest and most fun twists and turns there as well, which i think i would have enjoyed even more if i was fully invested in the core mystery.

Still, I like it. Quite a lot. The protagonist Haruka is super fun and there's a really nice impression that recreations of the past you go through are "hers". The period stuff in general is really beautifully put together and are extremely delightful, and the core cast of the present day are also really quite great. There's a very theatric character to the performances which is very fun, particularly when you get a deduction wrong and they basically call you a fucking idiot. It's just really fun to be with these people, honestly. I can definetly imagine a fun series of games where put-upon detective Haruka solves a bunch of murders with more casts that are just a bit larger than life. Preferably, better murders than are here.

Also, this isnt so much of a criticism as much as an observation but there's clearly a deep love of old Japanese serial magazines and fiction and some other stuff here and probably a lot of references which bounce off me. It's probably quite like playing the great ace attorney without knowing what a Sherlock is. Im thus nodding along with it more than i am really thoroughly getting it, but that's not a fault, and you sincerely get the impression even a few years ago this game wouldnt have touched western shores at all.

I do like the Centennial Case, probably more than it really deserves but as much as I do, the sense that it could be better is pervasive, especially in retrospect. It's good, and I think people who think they'll like it will do - but a few more drafts of the script, or the game picking a lane between the murders and the family mystery, could have resulted in something special.

This week, fortnite got an update to Unreal Engine 5.1, and it is remarkable. You don't have to be a lover of the corpo-cartoon artstyle to appreciate the massive improvement in tech, with lighting being a particular focus. But as impressive as that is, perhaps moreso is the integration. You'll be lucky to find anyone saying it "doesn't look like fortnite". Models still pop out in the lighting the same way, the reflections arent out of place, and many of the most obvious changes, like denser foliage which the light beatufiully scatters off, are both quite well measured and are brought in with a whole new map. It is a wonderful demonstration that heavily stylised games can (sometimes) benefit from new tech, as well as a masterclass in making changes in the right places to integrate with an extremely well defined art style.

In the same week, Nvidia rereleases Valve's best looking and possibly most cherished game with a similar setup - new look with a particular focus on lighting. Except it looks like shit.

The general assets are the main issue. Stock Portal has this subtlety to a lot of it's assets and textures especially in the first half of the game that slowly creeps up more and more towards the conclusion. What initially seem like sterile test chamber walls show deliberate signs of age, scuff marks, and are slightly stained. Even in the very first room, the table is slightly scuffed. It's subtle, but pervasive stuff and is one of those things that gives the game a bit of an uneasy vibe. The new assets just straight up do not look like they fit together at all. When you're in sections where bits of white wall combine with the square pyramid-ish walls it just looks super off to the point where i'd assume they were outsourced to completely different studios or something, they dont look like they're from the same game at all and the same could be said for an awful lot of the assets.

The lighting is also outright comical at times. In the final boss fight the floor is so fucking reflective it's hard to parse. The reflections in general are seriously a problem and combined with a massive increase in constrast creates a whole bunch of very ugly scenes, particularly in the first half. The second half of the game fares better with it's more industrial environments and larger focus on shadow casting, which is probably the one thing i'd say is the one legitimate improvement in RTX portal, but it's a needle in a haystack and you'll be lucky to find a few frames of gameplay where there isnt some horribly judged asset or blinding reflection to be a bigger distraction.

What really sucks about Portal RTX is that it should work. A more subtle use of the tech, textures which were touched up rather than replaced and maybe focusing the super eyecatching effects on specific areas could have made Portal look generally improved. Even a drastic change in art style like say, the Demons Souls remake could have worked in it's own way in a different vision sort of thing to better show off the tech (and yes, that sort of approach is it's own can of worms). But what's here feels lazy, unthought, and destructive, and it's hard to tell what it's even really going for other than OOOH REFLECTIONS. Like a horse that lays down in front of you asking for a beating, this is the truest example we will probably ever get of companies putting tech, bigger numbers and flashiness before artistry. Hollow and pathetic. If everything made with this modset/whatever it is looks like this, it can all rot.

They really had a good thing going here. For an hour or so, there's some true wonder to unpicking the gorgeously filmed, intriguing trio of movies that has been put together here. The fims - Ambrosio, Minsky, and Two of Everything, are all gloriously shot and composed. Whilst you can see the cracks at some points, it's oh so easy to fall into Immortality's facade of the lost old media - The giallo inspired and notably horny Ambrosio in particular being an utter delight. And it's all filmed so well and with a degree of authenticity that just feels so right.

And those initial few hours, where you're both trying to piece together the plots of these movies, noticeing the flaws and trying to figure out the threads and what overarching story really is about is pretty great stuff. When clicking on each weird item in the background can send you to god know where. And the prospect of this all tying together with some cool allegorical narrative or whatever, some light horror and so on - god it could work.

Shame the narrative that you uncover is absolute trash. It is a very bleh fantasy/horror thing that I would feel would fall flat on your average creepypasta site - and it still could have worked even if it was mostly invested in exploring that immortality of art/people in cinema, the aspect of lost media "reviving people" so to speak but no. Its way too bogged down in the very literal mechanics of it's bad storyline and I hate it. It's bad enough to retrospectively make me feel like an idiot for wanting to pull on the threads, and care way less about the pretty well built up and interesting character relationships you learn through the snippets.

There's also some good old gamey issues to get in the way. Searching through clips, especially at the point where you'd probably just before getting to the big storyline hooks, is a pain in the arse, and bizzarely this point and click game works best by far with controller. It's also pretty buggy and in general way more finicky and less responsive than it should be. It detracts a fair bit from an otherwise incredibly immersive experience. The music is also quite bland and is constantly repeating the same shot clips as you go over the movies. And you can't turn it off because you need it for the sound cues to know how to find a lot of the secrets. Yay.

And its such a damn shame. It's probably the best looking FMV game ever released. The performances, particularly from Manon Gage and Hans Christopher, are spot on, and the way each of the movies captures their respective spheres of cinema - Giallo (mixed with hitchcock), 70s Neo-Noir and late 90s cheapo indie is absolutely spot on. And maybe if it was edited more consicely, the game more directed in terms of getting you to the right clips at the right time, and less navel-gazing in terms of it's very bad overarching narrative, it could have been incredible.

It's a better game than it's progenitor Her Story on account of the game not being so focused on a twist you'll work on in the first two seconds, and god knows it's better than Telling Lies, a game so shit even annapurna didnt try to push it, but I do think the end result is still a failure. Barlow has got the technical side of an FMV game absolutely down pat now though, and I think if he was given a competent writer, maybe then, this long project can bear some truly great fruit.

Any person who downloads and uses the emulator MAME has seen its initial games list screen. For some fucking reason, instead of booting to the games you can actually play, you start off with this enormous, impossible list of games that it can emulate. On a pure numerical basis, it can emulate 39,000 different roms on the build i've got on my PC, probably way more if you mess about with it. Sure, you can ignore the vast, vast majority of these as either semi-duplicates of the same thing, some trash MAMEdev bizzarely puts their time into (yes, there are over 100 different variants of Deal or No deal gambling machines supported, i have no idea either), and an awful amount of truly terrible games no one cares for.

But the thing is, even if you recklessly discard 95% of that ludicrous figure, the amount of games left is still enormous. The history of Arcade games alone at this point is large enough to make games that brought joy to so many reduced to nothing more than a list entry, flashing by for a few frames as you scroll along for something else. If you're an arcade game in SNK, Sega, or Capcom's pantheon you may be lucky enough to get in a compilation or so. If you're ridiculously lucky and M2's Founder loves you, you might get a bespoke ultra-high quality re-release - and most of those would amount to commercial failure if they actually had to answer to investors.

And then there's Hamster.

As I write this, it has been almost exactly 300 weeks since the Nintendo Switch's launch. And on every single one of those weeks, at midnight JST on Thursday, the ever dilligent, plucky Hamster Corporation has released a title to their arcade archives lineup of games, sometimes multiple. Right now there are 344 games available in total in the series. For comparison, the might of every other developer and combined for the Wii Virtual console was able to put together 75 Arcade games. And only around 400 games all together, the rest all for consoles that shared emulation. On Switch and PS4, Hamster has almost matched the entirety of that catalogue, emulating at this point dozens upon dozens of different models of Arcade Hardware. It is an absolutely insane production rate, and with it, Hamster are ablet to turn the spotlight on those games that fly with the scrollwheels, give them a chance in a spotlight. As you'd expect Hamster's cuts are often deep, with the likes of UPL, NMK, Video System and Nichibitsu among many others getting the spotlight.

And the thing is, it's also good emulation. The existence of MAME (itself a god-tier games preservation project) threatens to make ACA irrelevant. But it doesn't. Whilst not up to quite the ridiculous standards of M2's work, ACA games almost always turn out to be "slightly better than MAME" thanks to online leaderboards, bonus caravan modes, often hashing out the emulation bugs that MAME will have for the game in question and if the game has some quirk, like say with Thunder Dragon 2, where the ship selection is based on 1P/2P side of the cabinet, will contain a function to simplify and generally make things more comfortable. There's a template that's always followed because of course there is, they're pushing out one a week. And at £6 a pop, you definetly get your money's worth.

But there's more to it all than that. If Hamster was doing nothing more than shitting out all these titles to modern platforms, it would be a great service they're providing, but not an amazing one. What makes Hamster special is their revereance.

Every week, on Thursday night, Hamster puts on a stream on youtube. It will usually run for over 4 hours. And they are absolutely joyous. The first two or so hours of every stream consists of discussions with their original developers, many of which have seemingly been dragged out of retirement just to talk about some weirdass tennis game they made in 1988 that two people remember. And it is extensive, with their most recent talks with the staff on Metal Black lasting over two hours, and they'll dig up some truly wild unseen dev materials to talk over too. Absolute peak games preservation content, and what's more, everyone involved seems to be having an absolute whale of a time. The staff at Hamster seemingly have an endless well of enthusiasm for each and every game they port, and are just as excited about a mid tennis game as it's biggest fans 30 years ago.

After the dev details though, comes the truly fun stuff. After a playthrough of the game, they'll proceed to go through the leaderboards of the title. On every console, for both high score and their additional caravan mode. And for every single person that makes it into the top 100, they will bash a drum, ring a tamborine, and shout "NICE PLAY!!". 400 TIMES.

This of course, makes for a rush, as in the twelve or so hours between the game's launch and the stream there's a mad dash to learn some janky arcade game from the early 90s. And it with everything else, all comes together.

Even if it's just for one day, Arcade Archives gives these games, mostly reduced to footnotes, one time in the sun. A few days where tales of the game end up on twitter, a few hours where a bunch of maniacs are grinding out it's scores.

However fleeting, even if just for a small circle of arcadeheads, Hamster raises these forgotten titles to the status of subjects of unconditional, infectious love and enthusiasm. And in the online era, all those streams documenting it are preserved - documenting a celebration of the joy of the forgotten for as long as we'll last.

I absolutely adore it all. Of course not all the releases are as amazing games as Thunder Dragon 2, NMK's eternally underappreciated masterpiece. But that's just my opinion, and with Arcade Archives, I truly get the feeling that with every release they are dredging up someone's favourite game, and they treat it as such. They truly highlight there is more to games preservation and history than the game just being there to play.

Long live Hamster.

They had something here. A legitimately extremely neat arcade racing experience with a unique yet intuitive handling system that honestly works really nicely, and some good vibes. There's a solid take on ridge racer and the Initial D arcade games here, pretty much. And hey there isn't much content (a mere 5 tracks in the base game), but that never stopped virtua racer, daytona USA and Wipeout becoming classics.

And if Inertial Drift just recognised that, it'd be fine. Quite good even. Just a super short campaign like R4 or just a bunch of straight up races would hit the spot just fine. But instead, in what must be a desperate attempt to squeeze the content juice out of this game, it introduces an unbeliveably horrible progression system, with a dire story mode that forces you to race each track at least FIVE TIMES to progress, and the events aren't even good, the first stage literally consisting of a tutorial then three time attacks then a race against one other driver. WHY. There's also a seemingly endless list of dull challenges required to get your hands on all the cars, and generally turning a game that should be a quick, hour or two's riot into a checklist.

There's just no need. Put together the right configuration of say, 5 well balanced arcade races here (like Daytona USA, power drift, outrun, etc...) and i would gladly spend way longer in it than the abysmal story mode and challenges combined. Sometimes, less is more. And pulling wool over my eyes to pretend you actually have more is even worse.

Maradona/Ikearagao in normal puzzle bobble: the worst player you've ever met.

Maradona/Ikearagao in Azumanga Daioh Puzzle Bobble: Unbeatable god emperor.

Explain that atheists.

Every Jackbox pack got the;

- New version of one of the mainstays which is better in most ways but has one very stupid decision
- Dogshit
- Game which is one joke
- Anxiety inducer
- Actually great newcomer they will drop immediately

I like plenty of these things at this point but it is truly getting old how after 9 times Jacky is still lacking a combined launcher and the packs still fail to put it all together is getting more and more annoying. To get one good pack of these games you need at least 3 installed - and being the one to suggest switching them in the middle of your game night is definitely cause for people to spam the 🤓 in the voice text.

Please Jacky just get a dang launcher or make a pack that has both quiplash, fibbage, good trivia and champd up/ tee ko it shouldn't be this hard.

Gunvein is a lesson. Even in shmups, arguably the most gameplay driven, distilled form of the videogame there is, you need a bit of flavour. I can safely say Gunvein is a very competent, aggressive shmup. But I can also safely say it's dull and forgettable.

It uses a clever selection of influences as a skeleton for a strong core gameplay loop, decent stage design, and good (if derivative) bosses. The big influences here to me feel like Shinobu Yagawa's games at cave - Ibara, Muchi Muchi Pork and Pink Sweets - with a heavy emphasis on aggressive bombing, score extends and some element of deleberate deaths thanks to a limited life stock. Throw in a scoring system that encourages quick killing absolutely everything you can and it's easy to get into the swing of things the game wants you to.

I would say the gameplay isn't quite there yet though. Difficulty balance is very weak, with the hardest part of the game by far being the stage 3 boss, and stages in general being a bit too easy compared to the bosses. The game's hitboxes are also a bit wonky in that both the ship and bullet's are absolutely tiny - and i do think it should have picked one or the other because you can really just sweep through whole bullet curtains and just scramble dodge without thinking way too much. I get danmaku needs lenient hitboxes but this is a bit too far. Ship balance is also wonky, with the only fun ship - type C - having the good old technical character problem of technically being balanced, but has to really work for it, being more aggressive and effectively multitasking to get the same results Type A and B do with far safer, simpler gameplay - both in scoring and survival.

But it would be easy to overlook the issues if the game had any fucking sauce. Even if I pick some of the most bland shmups out there, lets say; Rolling Gunner, Strikers 1945, Tatsujin - it is absolutely blasted out of the water in terms of thematics, character, story, and just a general feel. Gunvein feels utterly anonymous. The 3 pngs of those characters in the cover there is literally all the character you get. The game doesnt have an ending or any story at all, there's no motivation behind anything, and the aesthetic is this really bland neon-sci fi stuff. It just feels very disconnected from anything. It's just five levels and bosses and the bosses dont even explode with majesty. That aforementioned 3rd boss is positioned as a rival fight (and is also takes a lot from battle garegga's black heart)- a shmup staple where you fight a ship similar to your own, and in a vacuum its a fun fight, but the lack of build up, payoff, pacing and just a reason for it at all makes it feel hollow when this is frankly a really easy trope to turn into something that, for lack of a better term "goes hard."

If the gameplay was absolutely top, top tier it could maybe get away with it. But whilst it's good, all but a few of the cave and raizing games it imitates have better gameplay and every last one of them has better themeing and flavour. Even Deathsmiles 2. In the realm of indie/doujin shmups it fares better but when Rolling Gunner eats your lunch for flavour, aesthetics and thematics, the likes of cambria sword, SF BELUGA, Ikusaaaaaaan, Zeroranger and Blue revolver make Gunvein look particularly souless.

Roguelike arrange is also a huge meme. Its bad and feels pretty desperate to get some more modern gamers on board.

The bright spot of Gunvein is it's tutorial, which legitimately teaches the danmaku concepts of streaming, cut backs and hitboxes very well. It's a shame I can't reccomend this to a new shmuper though, it's so fucking dull.

I wish I could just grab the artists from Drainus and the lead game designer from this and smash them together. Each game has like the opposite half of the games' issues! AAAA.

Apparently this little guy, this dubious creature "Tricycle-San" is the inspiration for Sonic's Chao. I love him. He can also do sick tricks, bounding into the walls of the labyrinths he finds himself in to kill enemies and yeet bricks on the other side, all in the aim of being able to collect flowers for a girl.

The wall-riding may legitimately be the only thing that seperates spatter from Rally-X, but for the standards of early Arcade games its a fairly radical piece of tech. It's a dodge roll and offensive move combined that can also technically be a projectile if used at the right moment, and in response to it's power the game is constantly spawning enemies every few seconds - encouraging fast, offensive play to get all the flowers before things get truly out of control.

Its fun! There's very little more to the game than that but like so many of Sega's 1980s arcade games it leans hard on expressive presentation and a simple hook.

I've been mostly playing this on the new Mega Drive version - a conversion that is so on point that it loops back around to being kind of pointless because there's so little difference between it and the original. But it seems like it was mostly made for fun, truth be told, getting it's original artist back to put together some actual box art and flexing the power of Stephane Dallongeville's new devkit for Mega Drive that M2 have built this upon. A tribute to a game that is certaintly mostly forgotten, but frankly, deserves a fair bit of love.

Good stuff.

After 30 years in a "nearly done" pile at Mindware, the Mega Drive Version of Star Mobile sees the light of day through the Mega Drive Mini 2. And you can kind of see why it was never released.

Don't get me wrong, it's cool. There's something inherently neat around a long-abandoned game finally getting finished off after so long, and compared to it's other versions, (star mobile was actually released on PCE CD and the X68K), it's easily the best looking and sounding. There's a lovely ambience to the whole thing, with relaxing music and graphics depicting various constellations in the background - there's a big vibe of the sorta PC game your dad would be really addicted to in 2002, and to an extent the sort of phone game Gen X-ers like nowadays. Very comfy, easy to understand, with just enough of a puzzle hook to keep it engaging.

And the puzzle gameplay is fun. Ish. It is almost entirely down to balancing scales with 5 different types of weight. Now, that is really simple on it's own as you can almost universally just put the heaviest weight on the lighter scale to not get a game over. Almost by definition, the game needs something else to actually constitute puzzles, and it's there, but also not really. Essentially, if you sandwich any weights between two of the same type, they all get deleted and added to your total weights target, but also their weight removed. This feature can both be used tactically, and also serves as a risk - if you accidetnally cause a sandwich you can easily flip the whole scales - which can cost most of your health in one fell swoop. It's good

There are a few other things, but they are sadly almost entirely score focused - having the scales perfectly balanced at end round and sticking weights of the same type. And that score focus doesn't really work in a game that is so much about endurance, having seemingly endless levels - because the score pretty much comes down to how far you end up going more than how good you are at making it perfect, and making it perfect is a lot harder and far more liable to tip the scales.

But y'know, it's cute. As an MD mini bonus addition, it's a nice little thing that has great presentation and music, and again, finishing off an old abandoned product is cool. But this shit would have absolutely bombed as a full priced cartridge in the early 90s - surely would have tanked. The only document i can find regarding the cost of the PCE CD version's price puts it at 6600 yen, and the MD version would have likely cost more due to being a cartridge.

Yeah i can see why this didnt take off. You can easily make an argument that this game's real home would be in the preinstalled software of a turn of the milennium PC.

But it's nice yknow. And when the game costs effectively $2 in a bundle of 60 games, its far easier to swallow. A lovely slice of unearthed MD history from one of it's most best devs (Mindware also worked on streets of rage 2 and 3, and Slap Fight MD). And that's just nice.

Signalis has lived rent free in my head since the moment I started it. It is both a game I want to go on about endlessly, dissecting it's thousand details and it's lineage of inspiration - and a game that I think everyone should just straight up play for themselves. Brilliant in worldbuilding and aesthetics, strong puzzle-boxy game design ripped straight from Resi 1/2, Surrealism that both comes in spades and is perfectly balanced to keep you on your toes, and a story that slowly forces its way under your skin, unravelling in a manner that is currently living rent free in my head.

I would concede that Signalis appeals particularly to my sensibilities - theres a bit of the thing, bit of lynch, bit of alien, and a whole lot more. But it's reference and reverance is never out of line and never takes away from what's an insanely compelling experience. It is a game that uses the best of the past to set a baseline for a good horror game and set up the game language, only to twist the knife.

Its not flawless, but to even broach the flaws feels like doing a disservice. Like, there's little niggles with the difficulty, enemies, and one or two puzzles in retrospect. But Signalis is such a ridiculously compelling game that it never really matters, it was never something I was thinking about actually at the time. Only progressing onward, unpicking it's puzzle box levels and slowly unravelling it's story.

Easily game of the year, and one of the best horror games in a long, long time. This game made me buy a damn book, play it.