It’s really a shame that reactions to Stellar Blade are more focused on the fanservice or the coomer reactions. You got one group of people who just focus on the fanservice and hail the game to be the savior of sexualized women in gaming, and then you got the other group who view the game in a negative light because of the first group. And you know what? I can’t even blame them because the first group is really insufferable.

I don't care in the slightest about Stellar Blade having a "sexy" protagonist. I saw a trailer for it once and was immediately interested, because of how fun and unique it looked.

But coomers saw the female Protagonist’s butt and were obnoxious about it ever since. Like come on, it’s bottom of the barrel fanservice you’re going all crazy for. Literally everything I've seen about this game online is people with underaged anime character avatars cream their pants over how this game is "destroying wokeness" or whatever. Nothing against Eve, because she is really pretty and I actually really like her, but she looks like every female character in every korean MMO ever made. It's like people going to war over white bread. Apparently, these guys are now whining about censorship, signing petitions, and making videos of themselves (they look about as you'd expect) about why their cause matters lmao. These pathetic gamerbros will never not be incredibly annoying and cringe to me.

Because Stellar Blade is just so much more. Picture all those apocalyptic gachas and their really great world-building, fantastic atmosphere but really cheap and dull (chibi) gameplay, then amp it up to AAA levels – that's the magic of Stellar Blade.

The environments are beautifully crafted and the atmospheric soundtrack is another aspect I deeply appreciate and thoroughly enjoyed in this game. There's nothing quite like losing yourself in a captivating melody as you journey through vast, lonely landscapes and cities. Just like Nier, Stellar Blade really nailed its soundtrack.

The gameplay is just so much fun and showcases an exceptional level of refinement and polish. Every movement, dodge and parry hit the mark perfectly. The more skills you unlock, the cooler and more fun the combat gets. There's never a dull moment - the gameplay remains consistently exciting and stylish from start to finish.

I found the plot to be really intriguing, and I really enjoyed uncovering plenty of secrets and snippets of lore. But what really surprised me were the sidequests. Sure, some were usual filler content, but most served to make the world feel alive and deepened the lore. Completing them was enjoyable, they never felt like a chore. So good job there.

Oh, and I'm pleasantly surprised by Eve! Initially, I expected her to be the typical "waifu" (ugh, I hate that word), merely there for visual appeal with little personality beyond conforming to generic “anime girl” tropes. Most of these tropes revolve around being “innocent”, "naive" or a "sweet flower girl." But Eve defies those expectations, and I couldn't be happier about it.

Even though Stellar Blade took huge inspiration from Nier and other apocalyptic gacha games, it's still an extremely unique and fun game that everyone should give a chance. Don't listen to the manchildren throwing tantrums or all the buzz about the “fanservice," which is honestly vastly overexaggerated due to some optional skins. Honestly, aside from the optional skins, there are absolutely no horny aspects present in the game.

There are just so many little touches to the point where you can tell the developers really cared about making this game great, and they succeeded. Stellar Blade is simply a beautiful game.

If I wanted to take the easy way out, I could leave a one sentence review dunking on this game. "Every Mega Man fan's worst nightmare," right? But this game isn't that.

Say all you what about what this game was supposed to be; I hate Keiji Inafune just as much as you do. But through all the bad advertising, broken promises and baffling release cycle, Mighty No. 9 is still has good-- hell, even great, in the game itself.

That great is Beck himself. Despite it all, this game actually plays unimaginably well. His movement is excellent, and the core game design behind shooting enemies just enough to absorb them, then doing that quickly to keep up the momentum is a truly good evolution of Mega Man X (not Classic, though) gameplay. I'd say it's better than those games at this aspect, even. Beck's the most fun blue robot to play as, get over it.

Unfortunately for Mighty No. 9, making the character feel good to play as is not really a large part of these games. Jump N' Shoot Man has always typically been about the jumping and shooting; i.e, the level design.

This game's level design is game ruining.

It's just so... basic. So boring. It's like the developers didn't understand what a fun base they created and failed to utilize it effectively. While Beck plays like a Mega Man X character, the level design seems to want to be like Classic, and that creates such a big rift between how the levels are designed how the game encourages you to play through them. And regardless of that fatal disconnect, these stages aren't really good in a vacuum either. They're genuinely almost all nothing-- way too many of them are literally straight lines to boring ass enemy rooms, then a continued straight line to the end. It's so... goddamn... boring.

The bosses don't fare much better either. Again, almost all of them are boring. Usually Mega Man bosses make you interact with their attacks and movement in interesting ways, but this game doesn't do that either. You get in their faces, you mash, they die. It's not everything in the game, but it's damn close. It's unbelievable to me that people complain about Trinity so much she at least requires constant interaction from you and forces you to use actively use the base mechanics. It's a glimpse of what this game should've been.

Enough about the gameplay though-- everyone knows the deal with the presentation in this game. Popcorn explosions and all that. However, this game's graphics are like, fine? They're certainly not the biggest issue with the overall feel of this game. That would be the story. While you can ignore it, it makes this game feel childish in a way Mega Man games usually don't. "Is this game for babies? Did they know who their audience was?" came up more than once when I was playing through MN9. The music in this game is also rather mediocre. It's one of Matsumae's worst works, which is sad. She's typically a pretty good composer.

At the end of the day, Mighty No. 9 is a tragedy. Through it's development for one, but through the game itself for another. They had it all-- and it was all sqaundered because this game just has bad levels. Maybe someone will make a spiritual successor to Mighty No. 9 someday.

Not you, IntiCreates. It's over, bro. Let it go.

List of movies the credits of Mighty No. 9 are longer than.

(clears throat)
Parasite, every Star Wars movie, every Batman movie, The Shining, Se7en, Taxi Driver, The Lion King, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Inception, Memento, Get Out, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Django Unchained, Jurassic Park, Roma, Judas and the Black Messiah, The Lighthouse, Klaus, Nightcrawler, Knives Out, Marriage Story, every Pixar movie, Lady Bird, Beauty and the Beast, The Social Network, every MCU movie, The Irishman, Aladdin, Inside Out, Shrek, every Godfather movie, every Back to the Future movie, The Emoji Movie, Foodfight, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Uncut Gems, every DCEU movie excluding the Snyder Cut, the entire Sam Raimi trilogy, every video game movie. And that's not even half of them.

Did take a bit of this from Emanuel Cool's review of The Lego Movie, he's on Letterboxd, shoutout to him.

(Also I marked this game as abandoned because I'll never play this game.)

A fantastically brutalist game, not in the sense of having angular concrete buildings but in the original sense of showcasing the raw materials with which it's constructed. Automaton Lung wants you to be hyper-aware at every instant that it is a video game, that the world you are seeing is virtual, that the actions you take follow the "explore and collect" script at the heart of so much of the medium.

It doesn't take on the self-defeating preachy tone of some games which seem to say "how dare you engage in such a pursuit." It's no simplistic morality tale. It just wants to revel in what it is, and it wants you to join in as well. All it asks of the player is "see me for what I am."

Everything in the game shows off the materiality of its creation. The icons on the touch screen show off their individual pixels (well larger than anything another game might call a "pixel art style") like a peacock spreading its feathers. The platforming puzzles ask you to familiarize yourself with the fine details of how your model interacts with the models around you. The cramped level geometries clip the camera briefly out of bounds and show the skeleton of the world you're traversing.

Even the total lack of introductory explanation emphasizes the clear truth: you already know what the game wants of you simply because it is a game. You see a colorful cube sending smaller yellow cubes your way, and you know that an enemy is shooting you and you must shoot back or die. You see a small spinning square floating in space, and you know you must touch it to obtain it for some future reward. You find yourself within an architecture and so you must chart its rooms and hallways.

If digital brutalism is its underlying motivator, the architecture of the world is the great triumph of Automaton Lung's moment-to-moment experience. Every area you visit creates its own sense of space with its own distinct mood. They are "levels" in several senses, but they're also rooms and buildings and monuments and cathedrals through which the game guides the player.

The deeper you get in, the clearer it becomes that the chips aren't only collectables, but wordless signposts. Not just "good job", but "check out this view." "Walk through this passage." "You can get here, I promise, and it will be worth it." The raw material of gameplay is turned inward to compel the player to experience the raw material of gamespace. The architecture of the design is as beautiful as the architecture of the world.

Earlier today I was telling a friend about my most Boomer gamer take (which I do not have a lot of). Especially after playing some older 3D games like Deus Ex and 5th/6th gen stuff I get annoyed at how many modern AAA games are so overly detailed and therefore unreadable.

I was thinking that for the first and only hour I gave to The Surge 2 before shelving it that so many environments are so cluttered and overly detailed that not only are they slighlty uncomfortable to look at at times trying to parse them, but they necessitate almost fourth wall breaking guidance elements like big arrows and sharp colour contrasting paint splodges to guide players through. These get made fun of a lot and chalked up to "gaming being dumbed down" and all that but honestly I think most of it is just how modern level design is too complicated to be easily readable.

This semi-related tangent aside, I love how primitive the level design of Automaton Lung is. In the literal sense of the word as they approach the base geometric shapes to make up the level. Despite having very little in the way of tutorialisation or guidance (hell, you can miss 60% of the fucking game by not taking a certain door on the first level) the levels are (for the most part) so clearly readable from the wide open cities to the cramped hallways of the tower levels.

The atmosphere is top notch, added to the music which, whilst repetitive at times just had me hooked for the 3 hours or so I have clocked defeating the final boss with 180/210 stars...er, I mean chips! The movement is jank, indeed the game itself is jank but its so charming and there is enough of a learning curve to the controls (though the game itself is really not very challenging, at least not to get to the end). Its a loveable, clunky piece of shit that I will cherish for years to come.

Its not a flawless game by any means. I mentioned some of the music not having enough variety and honestly the combat is so basic as to be kind of a waste of space and I died like 3 times total, only one of those being from enemy fire and that was against a boss. Maybe it would have been better excised from the game but I'm not sure now that I think about it.

As for the plot, well its very much a no exposition affair. "piece it together" sort of thing like Dark Souls except without the item descriptions. I'm really not clever enough to put together any sort of coherent conclusion to it all, you spawn from a room with 3 futurama -esque glass tubes and one is broken and with particle effects, so Im guessing youre a clone or robot or something. I do think that the environments are interesting enough even if I don't quite understand the story they are trying to tell.

This game is also hilarious at times, from the jank to the ending cutscenes to everything else I streamed this game to friends and we had many laughs with it. I wholeheartedly recommend this game if you are interested in a "middlingly received N64 platformer/run and gun that was hailed as a misunderstood masterpiece 2 decades later". (this last description being coined by BL user Mattt)

EDIT: Having 100%'d the game (well, all achievements, all chips and weapons, if there are any secrets beyond that I will never know) I can say with some sadness that it is one of the rare games I have played where I am left wanting for more. What a gem

One of those games that are somewhat familiar to the hands but refresh the eyes and mind

-One of the last games on a dead Nintendo platform is a collection of unfinished levels, featuring a gameworld that seems to somehow fit a dead Metroid. Well, not dead, an unborn Metroid Prime more like. A copy with no original. An untimely and unborn digital world, a simulation of the worst for those who want to create video games in an industry that demands results and for those who are looking for content and hours of play. throws some sensations that I had with those that already existed in the 80s (Zelda, Xanadu Revival) until the end of the last decade with Connor Sherlock, Kojima and Taro: a ghost zone where the content -if there is any- can kill your interpretive creativity from within, reach an icon, a collectible, a new area and that the reward is emptiness.
Where is the Lore?
Any. There is not.
Constant movement and no linear thinking. I think that is what we need, that they give us less and put more on our part. And now, I know that we give a good part of our energy to overcome challenges and, why not say so? A good deal of our money goes into this, but our meaning comes in many forms.

-I honestly don't know what the title refers to, but playing it in the month in which Splatoon 3 is launched, which finally seems to find something in its own saga -3 deliveries have taken a long time- beyond a more or less original concept and in the that the latest ranges of Graphic Cards are announced at exorbitant prices and... It's just a micro event, yes, let's go with Automated Lungs

-In something if it looks like the first metroid: The world is only transited, you do not get to dominate. The discomfort of moving through this unborn world of unfinished spaces has the consequence that picking up a simple collectible on a narrow catwalk can become a challenge that is highly dependent on our ability to maintain somewhat rigid inertia through the joystick. The character of this reminds me of Nagoshi's Super Monkey Ball (yes)

-I've never laughed so hard at those sections where they put a collectible in a place you can almost touch but it's hidden behind a transparent wall or whatever, in an area only accessible after a hell of a takeshis challenge. Not even VVVVV's. And at the same time a strange terror. And relief. If the void is like that, if the richness and texture of these dead zones is only a catalyst for sensations and the most literal content is scarce, I am relieved.
On the other hand, this void is not as resounding as the literalness that floods the interpretation and design of contemporary video games. I wouldn't blame anyone who saw the game as a product of "a little polished indie series dealing with self-contained challenges" to be honest.

-Negative areas. Dark green void. Towers that lead to cities driven more by a dreamlike sense than by a gamy logic. I go where I want as I can and that scares me, again it's very strange. I am invaded by the thought of how much contemporary pop culture and the era of immediacy have clearly guided us and have marked a path of more evident and linear readings.
I will definitely come back to this game when its PC version comes out

Bat Boy is basically Shovel Knight with a baseball bat instead of the iconic shovel. You got a classic 8-bit platforming gameplay split up between stages, a plethora of abilities, bosses, optional levels and a health/stamina upgrade mechanic. Sounds cool, right?

Unfortunately, unlike Shovel Knight, Bat Boy's weaknesses show up relatively fast. There's not much incentive to use most of your abilities save for a few of them (the invincibility bubble basically makes every boss and platforming challenge trivial), the story's very so-so, uninteresting cast of characters, meta progression is boring and there's almost no side content or meaningful collectibles.

But the most glaring issue to me was how the game underutilizes its main mechanic: batting. Aside from reflecting projectiles thrown by enemies and into switches, that's basically all there is. For a game with such heavy emphasis on baseball, they should definitely have invested more into this concept.

If you love Shovel Knight like me, perhaps you'll come to like Bat Boy as well for its creative level design filled with different gimmicks, classic platforming gameplay and beautiful pixel graphics. But don't go expecting the same level of polish and brilliantism - otherwise you're bound for disappointment.