Many adventure games are about exploring dead kingdoms. Navigating a once living corpse, roads acting like veins, drained of blood. What makes Hyper Light Drifter unique to me though, is that the wounds feel fresh. Hallownest and Lordran feel long dead, to the point where the actual amount of time that has passed feels irrelevant. The world of Hyper Light Drifter seems so much more violent because of this. We don't see the violence directly, sure, but the corpses still lay on the ground, undisturbed until we desecrate their resting place with more bloodshed. Violence is the natural state for some people, their bodies rebelling against themselves. Malfunctions become self-sabotage when viewed from the first person perspective. How can someone find peace in this cycle? Is it even possible? I don't know, I'm not a philosopher.

So, I'm pretty well clueless on what makes a good shmup tick, but I do want to highlight the brilliance of locking away continues for a while. It forced me to fully learn the game and it's mechanics to where, on my first run with them unlocked, I had reached the final boss before needing to use one. (Yes it was on the easiest difficulty, no I don't care it felt good)

That level of understanding my place, where I was so tantalizingly close to beating the game on it's own terms immediately forced the game's hooks into my psyche.

Good time.

No More Heroes III is kept on a razor's edge between absurdism and mundanity. There are frequent, extreme tonal shifts and style changes. However, most of the game is spent fighting the same batch of enemies in the same batch of arenas.

Load a fight.
Kill the enemies.
Drive to another fight.
Find a generic collectable along the way for a dopamine hit.
Load a fight.
Kill the enemies.
Enter the boss fight.
Watch a cutscene about the conventions of role playing games.
Serialized TV outro.
Netflix.
Miike.
No More Heroes III.
Is it all worth it?

Oh hell yeah!
The movement? Incredible.
The level design? Sublime.
The Combat?

I'm gonna keep coming back to this one every once in a while for a speedrun. Good times all round.

Mascot horror gets a lot of criticism for good reason; most of the games in the genre are pretty bad! You can't convince me that Garten of Banban isn't a deep satire of the entire genre and indie game development as a whole! I refuse!

Small rant aside, My Friendly Neighborhood is a solid title that really knows what it wants to be. It's charming, the puzzles are welcome, and on higher difficulties it actually requires thought out resource management.

Is it scary? Not really, but then again how could it be? I think having a hard edge like that would go against the game's core conceit. Sometimes it's better to wear your heart on your sleeve.

A couple of months ago, I went on the first vacation I've been on in a few years. I've been too busy with work or school to take the time off and travel. Since I was itching to play DMC3 on it's higher difficulties for the first time, I downloaded the HD collection on my laptop and chewed through a complete playthough over the week.

So much of this game's qualities were heightened over this playthrough. The arsenal still stands as one of the greatest of all time in variety and depth. The enemies are extremely unique, creating a good balance between combo fodder and more specific threats. The levels often put Dante in strange and uncomfortable positions during combat. Forcing the player to consider methods of play that may not seem natural.

I came home, playthrough finished, ready to dive into Vergil, bloody palace, rank hunting, difficulty scaling, to really take this game for everything it is on my PC.

The DMC HD collection doesn't support cloud saves.

I'm not even mad.

I remember this game feeling distinctly threatening to me when I was young. I wasn't used to making precise movements under pressure with the Wii pointer so things were rough for 8 year old me.

I think because of that history though I've grown very fond of Pikmin 1. I love the atmosphere, how the game is willing to only use ideas once, and how it encourages multiple playthroughs.

Playing through it again without any form of motion control, I've also found myself in love with controlling the Pikmin themselves. They're distinctly clumsy and disobedient, and the game uses that friction brilliantly. Managing your Pikmin is like herding cats, and the frustration that causes? That's where the soul is, the soul in the code!

My admiration for Pikmin 1 grows each time I replay it.

I really love how cruel Pikmin 2 can be. If the player isn't paying attention, the majority of your squad can die in an instant. It's downright hilarious at points. I remember one cave's gimmick, where the entire challenge was dodging a seemingly endless onslaught of bomb rocks.

However, I think Pikmin 2 is split between two different identities. On the surface, the game is about multitasking, using the new second captain to split your work more effectively. The caves in contrast limit your Pikmin and turn up the heat on the challenge. This made the game feel dissonant, where the development in one half felt irrelevant in the other. I never split work between Olimar and Louie underground, and the above ground segments were never very challenging.

That being said, Pikmin 2 has stuck in my mind ever since I beat it. Despite it's flaws, I found the game consistently engaging and I'm excited to play the game again sometime in the future.