What's the more satisfying feeling?

1. Realising this game is almost identical in title to vanillaware's amazing dragon's crown joining all the dots together.

Or

2. Beating maradona and conecvltist in an impromptu speedrun race despite this kusoge game hitting us with a minute long softlock that killed a whole credit.

Yeah, it's 2.

Around 2/3rds of the way through Xenoblade 3, there's a big old cutscene. It's about an hour long, and it is absolute peak JRPG. A ridiculously emotionally charged rollercoaster of a sequence that is simultaneously emotional enough to get me to cry a bit whilst being mired in enough fake lore for me to be unable to explain exactly why to a concerned person entering the room. It's bombastic and cathartic and absolutely incredible.

And yeah, of course. Xenoblade was going to get that right. Even in 2, a game that does not take itself seriously at all, nails it's huge moments and has some proper emotional gut punches. Add on top Monolithsoft's gargantuan worlds, vistas, fondness for mecha and soundtracks that go insanely hard - and these games just poke at the part of my brain that obsessed with JRPGs as a kid, like very little else (In recent years, basically Ys VIII).

Xenoblade 3's real strength though, is in it's quieter, and character focused stuff. It could not be overstated how much more fun, relatable, and nuanced this game's cast is compared to the previous games. I legitimately love every member of the core cast and I'm pretty partial to most of the heroes as well. Of all things, main lad Noah might come off worst of the lot because so much time is spent hanging out with these goofs. The dub pulls a tonne of weight here, taking the bits that worked from Xenoblade 2's (the great regional accents and the very naturalistic dialogue delivery, with a bit of scrappiness coming through), whilst being far less grating and feeling even more spontaneous. Eunie in particular is an absolute joy, the foul mouthed snarky cockney bird lady stealing the show. The delivery and the casualness of a lot of the dialogue really sells these guys and their relationships, its fantastic. I also appreciate the truly large amount of both fake and real swearing, to the point im surprised the game is rated 12.

Its also worth noting the core cast is together in about 2 hours, and the game uses the oppurtunity to explore the relationships between them build subtly change as the game progresses. Its very good stuff. Honestly though, even the side heroes you get are far more fleshed out and have better questlines than any of the non-shulks of Xenoblade 1 at least.

And the benefit of this character work (as well as just being great itself) is that when that incredible, hour long cutscene hits, dear god does it hit, because I care way more about these goofs than basically any other JRPG characters.

Aside from that enormous step forward, it's Xenoblade, really. For some fucking reason i somewhat doubted Monolithsoft could pull off another one seemingly out of nowhere whilst simultaneously being laboured with keeping all of Nintendo's first party projects afloat, but turns out they knew what they were doing and Xenoblade 3 just iterates and improves on the previous game's cores. Combat is a particular improvement - whilst it's not as good as Torna's, which makes sense for an RPG that's far less restrictive - it's a big leap over 1 and 2 in playability whilst also giving far more freedom to the player in terms of build, and the increased party size works wonders.

Whilst the core plot probably isnt the strongest of the series, not really able to one up Xenoblade 2's truly bonkers final act and much stronger antagonists in the moment, thematically it's far improved, with the focus on the world is a fuck of Aionis and the actual conflicting beliefs at play being big steps forward.

I would be remiss not to mention the music, which again, is great. It's a lot more subdued and melancholic than previous entries, with even the game's equivelent of Engage the Enemy/Counterattack, The Weight of Life, being a bit more minor key and featuring the haunting wooden flutes that pervade the soundtrack. I'd need a few more listens before calling it against Xenoblade 2's ost which just goes ridiculously hard all the time, but it's very very good, even if less bombastic.

Of course, it's Xenoblade - by sheer scale alone the game has more problems than most games have content. Whilst sidequest design and narrative is massively improved in the hero quests, standard sidequests remain quite weak, and even getting to those hero quests can be a bit of a faff. UX is a bit of a mess with an accessories menu that should be shot into the sun, class balance is all over the place (Signifier my beloved) and Xenoblade's traditional conflict of smelling the roses and doing side stuff whilst a conflict that determines the fate of the world hangs in the background, this time with a ticking clock - remains.

But it's all so minor in the grand scheme of things. Xenoblade 3 is such an absolute joy to just be in, hang out, and go through another wonderful Monosoft world, and it's the best main Xenoblade, probably by a fair bit. I think I still prefer the fast pace and incredible combat of Torna - but its super close. It fills me with the same joy I had playing JRPGs as a child, but with the nuance and character driven stuff I crave now.

Monolithsoft are an absolute treasure and easily one of the best developers in the industry right now. Turns out that with fostering a positive work environment, providing benefits to workers and avoiding crunch, they maintain a prolific, exceptional output. Long may it continue.

Mum: We have Guwange at home
Guwange at home:

Comiket 100's non-Touhou STG of real note, Kikura's big issue is that it should have been C101's. Even by the standards of doujin shooters where having arcane boot menus that need your system language changing to work, Kikura is rough. It works my PC harder than Guilty Gear strive, it's 5gb for some reason, has barely functional menus and gameplay balance that is all over the place, as well just a bunch of design elements that feel outright unfinished.

Kikura is probably best described as the intersection of Pocky and Rocky with Touhou, but the influence from Guwange is so obvious and the game is at it's best when it's cribbing Cave's notes. The grounded shooting, whilst dealing with the constantly shifting scrolling directions and enemy formations coming from loads of angles is great stuff, and also something that has gone underexplored by basically anyone in a bullet hell since 1999. And the pretty ridiculous bullet count of Kikura makes that especially interersting and engaging, and with it's very low pricetag of £3 - it's worth checking out just for that.

But it could be so much better. The playfield being bafflingly defined by red wireframe boxes is probably the first thing that'll stick out to people. It's just fucking weird, i don't know how else to put it, its as if the stage graphics were just incomplete and they scrambled to make the stage border better defined, I legitimately couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation for doing such a thing.

Sound design is also bad. Don't get me wrong, the music is good, no complaints there, but enemies are weirdly quiet doing almost anything, which gives this real element of having to double take and visually verify for enemy deaths in a game where due to the changing playfield. This may be being too charitable, but i don't think it's bad, I just think it's legitimately unfinished. Graphics are in a similar state, with the type B shottype having some effects which look very "placeholder".

I don't get it. Kikura has the bones of a good succsessor to Guwange, and the devs here clearly have the talent to put the bits together, but it just doesnt feel done. Not in the "damn the giant's archstone got canned :(" sort of way but in that it feels like a proof of concept version that has somehow made it to wide release.

It's £3 so I can't complain too much, but i'd still encourage caution on trying it out, as it does seem the devs are continuing to fix things, and there's enough evidence in the stuff that works that this game could become good, maybe great. But fuck me, releasing in this state might be it's deathnell. It is a rare STG who's reputation survives an "early access" release like this... if thats even what it is.

It's the late 80s. Shmups, along with a bunch of other genres, are in a renaissance period. Companies like Taito, Konami, Toaplan, Compile and Irem are all pumping out game after game to critical and commercial success.

But there was a problem. The gamers were getting too good, and arcade shooters? They were too easy.

Yeah, seriously. This was the opinion of a large number of arcade operators at the time, frustrated with STGs having long credit times, and as a result, poorer revenue. And whilst it could be argued that games like Gradius 2 and Flying Shark are fairly sedate shooters by the standards that would follow - it's charitable to say this attitude was anything other than pure greed, frankly. Because in the arcade space, the operators are who the games are sold to, and where the developers, at least back in the day, made their money.

As a result of this perceived problem, in 1989 alone, 3 major shooting game releases (probably more, these are just what i know is confirmed) were made wildly difficult in response to these demand. Darius 2 had it's default difficulty knocked up a setting making the game very cruel, Same! Same! Same! essentially starts on the second loop, and Gradius 3, perhaps the most infamous of all, was turned into pure hell.

Gradius 3 is comically hard. From the moment you get past the series' customary starting formations, you're met with horrible enemy spawns, tight corridors and nigh-impossible recoveries. Even a relatively experienced shmuper is liable to get 30 seconds into stage 1, die to something unexpected and then chain death due to painfully slow default speed and the credit's over.

I seriously could not get across to you how ridiculous it is. For such a major release from a big dev it feels an awful lot like an extravagant Kaizo hack of Gradius 2. Sections like Stage 9's Cube rush are infamous, and you'll be killed by some truly cursed hitboxes a good deal of the time you think you've actually managed to squeeze through.

And its a bit of a shame, because Gradius 3 is kinda great otherwise. Its got my favourite soundtrack out of the series outside of Rebirth, with the best usage of those glorious flute-synths that define the series. The feel is also on point, with the slightly silly space opera vibes of Gradius at their peak, especially with the game's huge variety in levels making it feel like a proper space odyssey.

And the levels are good! Packed full of variety, some of the series' best bosses, and a fair number of interesting, unique encounters. But it's hard as shit and the vast, vast majoriity of players wont see past level 2, because for some godforsaken reason the game doesnt even have continues.

Fortunately though, there's a better way. Two, in fact! Gradius 3 is blessed with two alternate versions which are dramatically decreased in difficulty - most know of Gradius 3 SNES, which is a great version and far, far more accessible, but I personally prefer Gradius 3's Asian Arcade Version, Presumably released in Korea or Taiwan originally. It solves the game's truly biggest issue in letting you keep a good portion of your power ups on death, as well as reducing the general difficulty, whilst preserving the original excellent aesthetic and sound of the arcade game. It's still a tough time thanks to Gradius 3's propensity for pure bullshit, but thanks to the series' quite lax extend rules it becomes more achievable.

Gradius 3 is also a game that has benefitted a lot from home conversions (excluding the SNES one which adapts a lot of things). Thanks to it's long length (at least 50 minutes), treating it as an individual level game can also help a lot, and Hamster's recent arcade archives port provides a tonne of ways to just tone the game down a little.

And the thing is with those nice, comfy versions in tow, in turn the stupid, obscene original japanese version of the game becomes easier to appreciate also. It is ridiculous and evil sure, but it remains to this day an ultimate challenge, a mountain in the distance that dares to one day be climbed. And much to the chagrin of those dumbass arcade operators, people have. There's a good number of videos on youtube and niconico of guys playing Gradius III for 14 hours on a single credit, and only even stopping because the game center they're playing at is closing or they had the power cut. It's a truly beloved game among the boomer shmupers in japan.

On it's own, Gradius III JP is cruel and bad. Designed to seperate players and their money at an obscene rate. But time, and ports, have been kind to it. In a twist of fate, the game is no longer for the fat cat arcade operators, but for the old-school shmuper that wants one final mountain to climb, and wants to rack up Mikado's electricity bill.

Still, if you catch me playing it, i'll be on Gradius III Asia.

The first 3d platformer, controlled from a first person perspective and made with tank controls for a controller with no analogue sticks in an era where Mario 64 was just a glint in the milkman's eye should not be this good. Jumping Flash is absolutely fantastic.

Bounding across the apotheosis of early gen 5 aesthetic, with glorious low poly animals and critters, delightful pastel platforms floating all around, and a weird surrealness to the environments and places you bound across.

And the controls are excellent. Despite being initially clunky by modern standards, they're surprisingly snappy and within minutes i was fully in tune with it. The ability to at least turn whilst moving forward with diagonals, the surprising amount of precision you have in air control, and the general freedom of the level design, which gives you the ability to jump on almost anything if you've got enough of a grip on the control.

Its quite hard to put into the words, but there's just something so natural about it. You can tell hours upon hours have been spent into fine tuning things like air acceleration, turning speed and the jump arc that just feels "right". You can dash around the levels surprisingly quickly with just a little practice, and the fantastic kinesthetics alone make it fun to do so.

Once you've beaten each world, a time trial opens for each stage. And the thing is, it's actually fun. I've only done a bit of it but working out quick routes and bounding across them, damage boosting off mysteriously flying skillets and riding air currents and rollercoasters.

And then, when the game is over? You get Extra mode, which rearranges all stages and encourages you to test this skillset. I love it.

Yeah, the underground stages kinda suck, yeah the boss fights arent too great. The game's too much of a joyful breeze for me to care. If there's a core issue, it's the framerate, wildly varying from a breezy 60 to about 10. The game isnt so precise that you need 60 for the most part, but it is awkward and it seems to very occasionally eat inputs. I wish the PS5 version i was playing overclocked the emulator or something, which i believe is possible with duckstation etc.

Jumping Flash is a Joy. Cute, 90s namco-esque energy with extremely simple, fun mechanics. A few days ago, i used to think first person platforming was almost inherantly flawed, something really only Counter-Strikes' KZ/Surf and Rocket Jumping had ever really gotten right, the bane of Arkane games, half life and a thousand other shooters.

Turns out, the template on how to do it properly has been there all along.

Stray is a very respectable game. For a game who's credits arent rolling long enough to demand multiple credits songs and 3 point font, it is astounding in terms of visuals, technical design, and to an extent game direction. It achieves seemingly everything it goes for with only minor "objective" issues. You could have told me that this game was made by naughty dog as a little side project and i'd only need two drinks in me to believe you.

And it really is a very ND-style game, down to the straight up game flow. Linear platforming where you snap from location to location, chase sequences, extremely light puzzling, general level-to-level structure and the occasional quiet bit where you just get to explore a very small area - it's like Uncharted 4 but drake is small and there's no ludonarrative dissonance trophy. Even has the very naughty dog thing of having a conspicous landmark in the horizon you always work towards in the levels. I swear im not crazy, it's really noticeable when you catch onto it.

The problem with Stray is that, for my money, you don't feel like a cat. Which is a pretty big issue for a game where that's the hook. There's a few good gags, the animation passes muster for the most part, but the behaiour of the cat and in particular the interactions it has with others don't. You could practically replace the cat with a small dog, hell, it would probably make more sense for the things the characters demand and how they treat you.

My favourite moment in the game, is, when in what is ostensibly a tense, high-stakes situation where you're meant to solve a puzzle, the cat can simply lie down by a record player in a comfy alcove, as long as you and they want. It's lovely. And there's just not enough of it. The adventures of cats are crescendos to lives spent revelling in comfort and warmth - even in wild and big cats - and you can let me meow as much as you like but the pure action adventure betrays the nature of cats. I feel like small creature. I don't feel like cat.

On top of that the sci fi narrative is very bland. Fortunately the environments are excellent and carry the game pretty hard. Again, the naughty dog influence is well integrated, with fantastic subtle signposting of areas that feels naturalistic whilst ensuring you're never really lost.

Again, the game is very competent, and a frankly remarkable facsimile of games with hundreds of times the budget. It's well paced and i appreciate it's brevity, and i would be remiss not to touch on it's excellent soundtrack. And it's that extreme competence that makes it dissapointing for me that it doesnt actually get it's hook. And without it, it's ultimately forgettable, as good as it is.

Foolish me. Going into my local games store and seeing the 2019 remake of classic visual novel "Yu-No: A girl that chants love at the bounds of this world" on sale at a deep, deep discount. I really like Ryu Umemoto's music, after all, and maybe I owe it to myself to go through one of the most influential and important visual novels released - and this is the 2019 remake, which is censored so probably gonna be less depraved, right?

Well, it's not. The game legitimately just opens with an upskirt CG (bold choice, i guess?) and never gets less aggressively, distractingly horny. It feels creepier than it would if there was actually some porn at the end of the road, even.

After doing a quick search to verifty that yes, there would be at least 30 hours of this, i bounced. Yes, Ryu Umemoto's soundtrack is absolutely incredible and from what i've heard the story goes some interesting places but that thing is at the very least that thing's going at the very end of the backlog for now.

But what also comes with the 2019 remake is this. A very weird, short little action platformer game from excellent Doujin Circle Platine Dispotif, and it's actually fantastic?

More than anything else, Yu-No's great adventure just has a very interesting game system. At it's core its a fairly normal and frantic autoscrolling game, kinda like if ghosts and goblins autoscrolled, defeating enemies and collecting various items before facing various bosses. But the real hook is in th ADaMS system, adapted from the original visual novel, where the game will branch off into different paths depending on actions taken. Many of these lead to warps that just straight up kill you, whilst others lead to safety and others lead to key items. However, to avoid a game over, you can use the system to rewind back in time and take the different routes. It's a pretty ingenious combination of the original game's system and that of a rewind function on an emulator, and it makes for a very cute little experience. The game is an absolute breeze to blast through, searching through past levels to find upgrades and key items for progression. It's a wonderful melding of the multi-route nature of the original visual novel with an action platformer.

And on top of that, the game's just nice. I obviously don't have too much familiarity with the original Yu-No, but this little bonus game seems to have as much if not more respect for the PC-98 original as the remake. A wonderful nes-style aesthetic which almost looks like chibi-fied versions of the PC-98 art, fantastic music, and a proper sense of whimsy with just the right amount of reference and irreverance to work.

In contrast with the leery, kinda unpleasant visual novel, it's a game that despite the drastic shift in genre, celebrates the parts of the classic in a very nice way - truly embracing the bits that work - the aesthetic, the music, the branching paths system - and it's a tribute far more playable than the actual thing.

There's a timelessness to Outrun. Despite being 35 years old and emblematic enough of the 80s for a whole aesthetic movement to bear it's name, there's nothing about Outrun that feels antiquated, old, or as if it needs anything more to nail exactly what it's aiming for. The rush of driving fast, feeling the passing breeze through your hair, and not a care in the world - that is outrun. And it's beautiful.

Yu Suzuki/AM2's early titles always have this slight sense of wonder to them. With the exception of Space Harrier, none of them are ostensibly fantastical, yet they also all have an impossible, or at least idealistic quality to them. A perfect, honest martial arts fight, blazing past countries in cars and bikes, being the top gun in a mad action movie. Not all of them are great, but they do all make me smile, and all are simple enough pleasures to relish.

Compared to it's sister game, Super Hang-On, I do think Outrun isn't quite as good. This is largely just personal preference - I like motor racing a lot and SHO is far more about that vibe, with a much greater sense of speed.

I would also probably say that despite SHO being a far, far harder game than Outrun, it's much less frustrating. The difficulty of different outrun tracks is a bit all over the place, Traffic is far more annoying to get past than it is engaging and the courses are just less tightly designed - SHO is a game that will quickly embed a list of rules regarding changes of direction which OutRun just... doesnt.

I think it's also fair to say that Outrun's handling is weird. This is the case with all super scaler racing games to an extent - they all feel like you're going more from side to side than in an actual 3D space, because you are - It's not as bad as the bizzare handling of Power Drift, but the way motorcycles corner and lose grip is just frankly more suited to the style than cars, so especially with tight turns, it can get a bit wack.

But come on, it's outrun. I almost feel like i'm uttering blasphemy picking nits in it, because thats all any fault is when you're blasting across the world in your ferrari, delightful melodies playing on the radio. For Outrun's 5 minute length, the world's worries all fade away.

The music is also why I would particularly reccomend the Switch SEGA AGES version of this - itself essentially a reporting of the 3DS version. It includes 2 new tracks - Cruising Line by Manabu Namiki and Camino a Mi Amor by Jane-Evelyn Nisperos (Chibi-Tech). They are absolutely perfect, fitting wonderfully in with the original tracks, with similar instrumentation and melody styles, and providing a bit of depth to the soundtrack. It's like they've been there the whole time, I love it.

All in all, Outrun is timeless. The very fact this version of Outrun is about the 5th to have the sega ages moniker speaks to an enduring appeal that has now legitimately lasted generations. And I imagine it will be far from the last port of this wonderful game.

I would really like to enjoy Yurukill. The batshit idea of a Escape room adventure visual novel crossed with a Shooting game, with the former being written by some guy who wrote a manga about getting off to gambling, and the latter being developed by STG veterans G.Rev. It sounds stupid enough to work.

And y'know, it actually does. Replacing what would be for instance, a trial in a danganronpa game with a STG sequence intercut with answering questions and minor deduction that kinda works really well? The flashiness and flow of a Shmup battle actually works well with the heightened emotion of these sequences, as each prisoner tries to prove their innocence/why they deserve to live to their victims. It's a bit wonky and certaintly contrived in the flow of the story, but its where the game's best moments are.

And the STG segments themselves are decent. It's certaintly not G.Rev's best, and suffers from a severe case of being an extremely bland shooting game in it's own right, but I feel that was also definetly the point, to keep the shooting simple as an accompaniment to the story rather than the main focus.

Well, shame the Adventure/VN side of the game completely lets the side down. It's remarkably dissapointing and feels bizzarely rushed for a game that's been in development for a game that was announced in 2019. The first chapter is good, focusing on our two main protagonists, with lightining fast pacing and a good conflict.

But the cracks show. The rest of the "Prisoner confronts Victim" stories are pretty ok, albeit quite repeitive and really fail to inject much jeopardy into what's ostensibly a death game, but it's after that where things really fall apart. Two chapters of blatant filler are the most egregious, with cases and mysteries that barely tie into the core plot, what i'm sure is actually a straight up plot hole in one of them and pointless padding in the other, and a final chapter with an utterly pathetc resolution to the game's crimes and plotlines that leaves an incredibly sour taste in the mouth. Imagine if the mastermind of Danganronpa just came out with this and that was all you got. The game builds up to what feels like should be some dramatic untangling and it's so fucking shit.

And whilst many of those individual chapters especially in the first half arent neccessarily worse than the first, the game's poor tendancies in the adventure sections really begin to dig in. The puzzles pendulum between either being the easiest things on the planet or requiring some pretty ridiculous leaps of logic with basically no middle ground, there's no CGs or even moving character sprites for most of the game leaving a lot of stuff very abstract and making a lot of the more climactic moments feel very weird, and one of the 5 character pairs' contribution to the narrative is so bizzarely pointless and throwaway I legitimately don't know why they're in the game. I think it's meant to be comic relief but it honestly reads more like characters that were left in the first draft that dont have any contribution to the plot. By the end I was glad it was at least short - barely 9 hours.

And in the end, despite the strength of the shmup argument extravaganzas, there just feels like there's so little reason to bother with it. The Adventure part lets the side down too hard to care, and the STG side whilst is fine, but also mid as fuck and outclassed so handily by G.rev themselves on every platform you can buy this game that you have no reason to bother.

There are sparks in Yurukill. Moments which really hit, strong emotional beats in dramatic boss battles, and I really like that this game's equivelent of monokuma is just an overworked tour guide. But the end result is super dissapointing and not worth your time and money. I haven't been this dissapointed with a VN since Zero Time Dilemma, and at least that was a beautiful train crash.

Rabio Lepus is the little Rabbit that could. Among the late 80s environment of Konami, Technosoft, Toaplan, Irem and others bashing out horizontal shooters like there was no tomorrow, the mostly forgotten Video System (of whom's staff later formed Psikyo) slapped out Rabio Lepus, and it's bizzarely better than nearly all the output of those shooting legends. Yeah, I don't really get it either.

And almost all of it is frankly, down to pacing. Horizontal shmups of RL's era often feel like they're going on forever, with horrendously slow scrolling speeds and a stupid amount of game time where nothing really exciting happens. This is probably Gradius' fault, though that game actually justifies it's slow scroll speed.

In comparison, Rabio Lepus is an absolute head rush. 12 stages, each of which barely lasts over a minute, with nary 2 seconds of dead air in any of them. Usually each of these stages consists of a handful of enemy formations, power ups in the forms of cans to punch, and the occasional environmental hazard, and it's all mixed up to the point where each of them is distinct, with a final boss level for each environment. Enemy bullets are also fast, and whilst it's hardly dangun feveron, there's a frantic quality to the whole thing.

Oh, and it's very cute. The eponymus Rabio Lepus is an adorable punching robot rabbit, there's plenty of silly boss and character designs, the little cut ins of story are nice, and the whole thing is just outright pleasant.

Core gameplay is really the game's only failing, though that's not to say it's bad. I like how the player is restricted only to a very thin shot with no power ups for the entire game, with a ammo-limited missile weapon which is neat. Enemy bullets are fast, which I like, but a bit all over the place which makes the game somewhat hard to read at times. Difficulty balance is also a bit of a mess with each level tending to have one section which will stack a load of fanning bullets which you'll probably take a hit on - though this game is also unusually lenient about the amount of bullet hits you can take, so it's not really a huge deal.

If I was of the mind to, Lepus would probably be easy to pick apart. Maybe it's a bit repetitive, enemy reuse is a bit much, could do with some more environments. But when a game is this pleasant, easy to pick up and play, and is cute, I don't care. Rabio Lepus is just nice. It might not challenge the legends of the genre, but there's room in this world for a simple palette cleanser like this. What a lovely little surprise to come across.

Post Void is frustratingly close to being great. Incredible art style, madcap speed and gameplay loop with fantastic base kinesthetic design, and a awesome surreal tone. I like it. It's quite fun, its weird, its fast paced and the presentation is top drawer. Its over with in 10 minutes for a complete run, which I also think is great. Proper rush of blood to the head sort of thing.

Yet, it annoys me. It's a very, very good game that annoys me that it makes what I feel are such blatant errors that prevent it from being great, and those errors claw in on me more and more the more i play.

Maybe the most obvious of these is the weird verticality in the level design from the midpoint onwards. I understand the game is meant to be disorienting, but the verticality becomes increasingly annoying and will occasionally just kill the pace when you find yourself a bit lost. It's a game that's already too easy to turn yourself around in if you spin too much in a fight - and it's annoying. I really barely understand why this game needs a jump button at all, it feels antithetical to everything else going on and muddles the cool "hotel floor" feeling of the levels.

Maybe my biggest issue though is the music. I think it sucks. Compared to such extremely surreal atmosphere the main, and only theme sounds like something i'd hear on Nickelodeon and the main guitar sounds awful, and there only being one theme gets incredibly repetitive on repeat runs. I am aware that there is a semi-official soundtrack on spotify full of music that the devs couldn't license. This game has a publisher now and has sold somewhere in the region hundreds of thousands - please license like, three of these tracks, they're actually good. The soundtrck of post void feels like its almost integral to the experience and right now it takes away from it in my books.

Oh, and there's remarkably half-baked roguelike mechanics that add absolutely nothing.

And the thing is, aside from that, I think the game is basically spot-on. Super fast, intense shooting with incredible visuals thats over in a flash. Which makes the cracks in such garish wallpaper stand out.

Its also worth mentioning this game's pathetic excuse for an accessibiity mode which is more of hazard than anything else. I'm fully in favour of using flashing screen effects as an artistic thing (I am your local Recca enjoyer after all), but having a mode thats meant to be better for photosensitive players and then having it fail to eliminate 95% of the game's extreme flashing effects is very poor form.

Save Room is a very pleasant surprise. I had a lot of doubts about trying it, thinking that spinning off the attache case sorting from Resi 4 would not really stand up on it's own, or at least not for very long.

And Save Room seems to get that. It isn't so much a full on puzzle game as a proof of concept, an itch scratcher for something I think at least a few people have now wanted for 15-ish years.

And the problem with the concept, is just like in the original RE4, without a truly endless stream of items or things to manage, you'll soon work out how to best put things together on repeat occasions. There's no making this endless without a lot of adaptation.

So Save Room isn't. Save Room is a delightful hour and a bit of puzzles which slowly drips a few more mechanics taken from RE4 until the end and then ends before it can get old. Theres a few neat tricks it has up its sleeve, like some very silly health management shenanigans and messing with ammo combos and reloading weapons etc, and it does eventually pull together some cool final challenges where you have to craft, heal, and deal with multiple enormous weapons at once.

Again, the concept is one of those things that makes the game feel easily "Solved", and by the end you'll probably have a good hang on to how best manage your health, etc, but that's fine. The game's about 60-90 minutes long, and in that time it thoroughly scratches the itch it was made to. It's a game with lowish ambitions but I appreciate that with just a few Unity store assets in hand, it achieves them and then peaces out before it can get old.

If there's a missed oppurtunity, I feel there might have been a chance for some cool storytelling by showing the varying inventory state of a character, maybe with some notes and some stuff with the examination mode? But that's clearly well beyond the scope of what's a simple, well excuted fan game - and what I like about it is that it knows exactly what it is, and when to stop.