i was just shy of 1cc'ing the original ghosts n' goblins a year ago and fell off practicing because life got in the way & it wasn't exactly the most pleasurable game to 1cc. i feel a lot more motivated to try and actually best this one after a couple of runs. in theory ghouls n' ghosts is easier than ghosts n' goblins but it's more accurate to describe the latter as uneven; across its campaign there were scenarios you could trivialize through exploits side-by-side with segments which were often brutally difficult. ghouls is a lot more consistently fair as an arcade title, but consequently there isn't a single segment you can cheekily sidestep here. you have to play by the game's ruleset, which naturally means there are still some quite onerous stages to overcome. aside from this now very natural difficulty curve, the movement is silky smooth, its aesthetic is immaculate, and challenge always resides in that idealized zone of strategy and reaction. the treasure chest system is hilarious once you come to grips with what's actually going on and will probably only continue to unfold its intricacies across repeat playthroughs, and unlike the original i never felt like my run became fucked just because i picked up a different weapon. might be the gold standard for the kind of arcade experiences i gravitate towards?

this game requires no introduction anymore so i'm not beating around the bush. drakengard has been on my mind a fair bit recently - on the off chance you'll forgive a second log i think it's worth examining some of what the title accomplishes uniquely well, or what it's able to achieve with respect to the various titles that it's in conversation with. first of all: there's nothing quite as flatline-inducing or revealing of the author's own tendencies as reading that drakengard was intentionally poorly designed, a commonly held idea in various hobbyist communities frustratingly stemming just as often from its supporters as from its detractors. not only is this a frightfully pedantic and dull reduction of the text - it's also just an elaborately constructed fiction masking deeper truths. for instance, i think it's plain as day our burgeoning critical language still struggles with titles seemingly antithetical to traditional enjoyment, and are only able to escape from suffocating evaluative lexicon through irony or genre labels. survival horror isn't normally 'fun' & people appear willing to understand this so the genre gets a normative pass en masse, although it seems worth mentioning that the longer they exist in the public eye the more their mechanical frameworks get totally demystified by the public, arguably reducing them to vehicles for pleasure and gratification anyways, resident evil being the prime example.

drakengard, of course, isn't survival horror. it's largely a musou with some horror trappings, but it's rather plain about its affectation. however, because the traditional 'game' part of it is in such conflict with its aesthetic, we end up with the idea that this dissonance is a result of intentionally languid, engineered dissatisfaction. oh wow that wacky yoko taro wanted you to feel bad so he made his debut game bad. bzzzzt. wrong. square enix wanted a commercial success with drakengard. if they didn't, they wouldn't have requested that a project starting out as a simple remix of ace combat (owing massive inspiration to electrosphere in particular, another game that combines peerless arcade bluster with bleak narrative proceedings) would incorporate elements of its contemporary blockbuster peer, dynasty warriors. none of this is to say that drakengard can't be an awkward game, but it's in large part due to a friction with cavia's inexperience/lack of technical expertise, their attempts at holding true to their initial vision for the project, and square enix being desperate for a worthy competitor to koei tecmo's success.

here's where i'll stake a claim on something potentially contentious and risible. on the basis of the title's struggles in production & development, it is somewhat shocking that drakengard is not just 'not bad', but is a totally competent musou game. given the milieu in which it released, you might even dare to call it 'good', or 'well-made'. i'll double down with something absolutely no one wants to hear: most people have no point of reference because musou is rarely put in its historic context, appreciated for its strengths, or even, broadly speaking, played. disregarding popular experimental offshoot licensed games which carry their own unique magnetism, dynasty warriors has an especially prevalent stigma in contemporary action game circles, and few seem willing to return to reevaluate the franchise. if we accept this as the case, we can begin to understand why nostalgia is the primary driver of fondness for early musou, and why you always hear dynasty warriors 3 is the best one. 'load of bull', you say, 'drakengard is not good', you say, 'dynasty warriors sold millions and is beloved for inventing the drama; surely it's better', you say, but take a look at these admittedly small sample sizes (evidence A and evidence B) and you tell me which is actually the niche ip at present. one of these broader game worlds got a FFXIV collaboration. it was not dynasty warriors.

anyways the idea that drakengard could be a respected peer to dynasty warriors - or even, perhaps, better - is not ahistorical. drakengard came out in 2003, only a few months after the release of dynasty warriors 4. by this point in the dynasty warriors timeline, your only sources of inspiration for the musou canon are dynasty warrior 2 and dynasty warriors 3. they're fine games for what they are - content-rich, pop recontextualizations of romance of the three kingdoms that fold the intense political drama, grandiose character dynamics, and poeticizing of feudal history intrinsic to the novel and morphs them into larger-than-life battles of one against one hundred. it works for that series, but having played dynasty warriors 3, it's also very simply orchestrated. DW3 is kinetic and energetic, sure, but form is not function. as a still nascent series, DW3 has yet to experiment with elements that would come to define later entries, such as a strong emphasis on field management - its presence in 3 is largely muted and, dependent upon your stats, can often be negated. it is mostly a game of fulfilling your objectives, grinding up your stats, and engaging in undemanding combat pulling the same strong combo strings against some unique generals and a multitude of carbon copy generic ones. and i happen to appreciate it for what it is, but there is no question in my mind if you slotted that exact same mechanical framework into drakengard's tone and setting, it would be similarly deemed bad on purpose.

other than its tone what does drakengard do differently from this purely mechanical perspective? honestly, not too much from DW3! archers are still often priority targets, because if you don't prioritize them you will get knocked off your horse dragon. mission structure is usually quite similar, arguably with a bit less back and forth. combos require virtually the exact same input. the camera in both games is kind of fucked up. aside from abstruse unlock requirements and a...unique, system of progression, the biggest differences are mostly relegated to additions rather than subtractions. there are more enemy designs than just grunt soldiers. you can dodge now. the game is weapon-driven rather than character-driven ala DW3, which allows for its own form of unique experimentation. the soundtrack is excellent, i'm not accepting complaints. to aid in breaking up the pace, there are aerial missions that play somewhat comparably to panzer dragoon on-rail segments which are actually quite fun; likewise, the hybrid missions allow for angelus to be used as a means of offence in ground warfare and rain hellfire from above. it keeps things relatively varied. there's no troops to manage because caim is fighting a losing war and willingly formed a pact with the only being capable of potentially turning the tides, and the game is content to use the musou form to communicate ideas about caim and angelus to great effect.

of course, it's the narrative which gives drakengard a lot of its greatest texture (and is also demonstrative of its greatest strengths and appeals as a DW clone), but we can save discussion of that for some other time; for now it's more important for me to say that it's not quite the outright condemnation of violence through ludology that so many claim it is (it's far more interested in more subtle forms of violence than the explicit and ceaseless murder it depicts anyways). really, this was just a self-indulgent exercise in placing drakengard in its historic context once and for all, away from all the retrospectives it's been getting as a result of nier's runaway success. drakengard is a game that won't be for most, but it's a game that's lingered in my memory long since i first played it. it takes an, at the time, relatively new genre, and through sheer passion and dedication spins it into a uniquely transgressive idea while still remaining an enjoyable title to let unfold. if it feels numbing or meditative, that's more or less the exact emotional resonance that something like DW3 is targeting - drakengard just uses it to achieve more things than a sense of gratifying white noise. it remains peerless because of all of its contradictions, because of how messy and thorny it is as a game, and because we'll never see anything approaching this utterly unique interplay of emotional rhythms and macabre, uncanny storytelling wearing the skin of its crowdpleasing predecessors ever again.

originally had this scored as much lower because the author of the thread where you can download this recommended you try out a much rougher version first because it's more challenging, and not the rebalanced 1.31 version that's actually fun to play and teaches you its systems. imagine that!

this is an interesting one. night slashers x is a fanmade revision of data east's night slashers, replete with the usual tweaks and adjustments you'd see in a project like this such as widescreen support and a four player co-op mode. but they've also made a significant overhaul to the original game's rather simplistic suite of mechanics. the original night slashers was essentially a final fight clone (honghua's animations are without exaggeration 1:1 with guy's). so aside from the horror trappings which inform its aesthetic, the only component distinguishing it from a bevy of similarly inclined beat em ups is its treasure-lite sensibilities. mob waves are intense, difficult, and uncompromising, but boss encounters are plentiful, fair, & challenging. night slashers is very much a beat em up which reduces its capability for player expression as a result of teetering-on-unfair encounter design, but the end result is a manageable title which asks the player to strip down to only the barest necessities for each combat encounter and to carefully engage in hitbox outfighting and counterpunching. of course, this description reflects the game at its best when more careful examination reveals this may not exactly have been the intention. there's a suite of chargeable attacks which are almost completely incompatible with the title's whims; charging takes far too long and enemies are far too zealous in approach, rendering it largely superfluous as a means of offence. likewise, your two shmup bomb-eque special attacks are both conveniently introduced 'get-off-me' panic buttons which decimate the calvaries of the dead while incurring significant damage to the player, which should act as a deterrant to player abuse, but can quickly be overcome through modern emulated credit feeding. even disregarding that, it's still clearly a mechanic introduced through necessity in a game with mobs as dense as these. these mechanics both depict a game that isn't exactly designed sharply, or even with honest intentions at heart, but with the right mindset one learns to quickly ignore these infelicities. you surpass night slashers by rarely resorting to the charge attacks, having a plan for every encounter, and using foreknowledge of the stages to manage health for future encounters - you have to know ahead of time when is the best moment to strike with a special attack. the end result is a simplistic & snappy albeit broken game that nevertheless manages to thrill with its contradictory ruleset.

X, meanwhile, should be the better beat 'em up in theory. widescreen support allows for increased environmental legibility and allows for more careful circumnavigation of mobs, rebalancing some encounters means they often do not skew as much towards nickel-and-diming you, and there's an immense amount of additional content this time around. but i think it's also just this complete and total testament to fangame maximalism. every new mechanic under the sun that could have been implemented is here. wake-up attacks, recovery, blocking, dodging, counters, input commands, smash bros-esque combo strings and grabs, a meter bar separate from HP tied to your specials, risk/reward mechanics tied to regaining meter, counterhits...the list goes on. likewise, this is the most insane roster of guest characters ever conceived? ash williams from the evil dead, i understand, but what's ortega from saturday night slam masters doing here? or kurokishi from guardians: denjin makai ii? or aska from tournament fighters? it boggles the mind. total indulgence. it's technically a bit more fairly designed, but it's this immense deluge of newly introduced options and heaps of 'polish' that ironically detracts from the kinetic flair of the original night slashers, irrespective of any enjoyment to be had here. the length of the campaigns are vaguely similar despite some extended segments or newly introduced levels in X - so why does it feel like X is so, so much longer than the original?

at the very least, as a fangame, this is an impressive effort - and it's a better translation of what makes the original night slashers enjoyable than streets of rage remake is for that franchise. but sometimes less is more, and maybe sometimes cruel is more, too.

they made me work my ass off for a few nip slips. chica featured on the cover is not in the game. im pretty sure girl 2 called me a super pig pilot. reward for completion is a lady gyrating her hips on loop to the credits theme. surprised this made it onto this site given IGDBs policy but the panties stay on at all times in sexy invaders so maybe that's part of the reason why. deeply amusing seeing the nintendo logo before slotting this bad boy in. the intersection of established arcade design & early 90s digital eroticism is as always conceptually interesting but totally insubstantial & boring, at least in practice. they hadnt yet realized that the strongest & most powerful gamers are volcels. lady killer (1993) better

everyone even the least bit inquisitive about beat 'em ups as a genre should play this, full stop. i cannot think of a more textbook representation of the idea that for a beat 'em up, encounter design is level design; divergence from this principle in final fight 2 results in perhaps the most anemic beat em up i have ever been subjected to. absolutely lifeless brawling in overlong stages as you contend with wall-to-wall waves of three polite barely dissimilar crooks at a time. devoid of any spirit even compared to some of its home console contemporaries. sure FF2 has a couple of things going for it compared to its predecessor but streets of rage 1 came out two years before this and while it is comparably centered around simplistic crowd control, it thoroughly overpowers this game on the basis of its encounter design, aesthetics, soundtrack, pace, etc. shout outs yuzo koshiro. FF2 does have maki though so who can say whether it's bad or not. bring her back in SF6 capcom i'll be very grateful

against all odds, i squeezed in multiple matches today on PC. i wasn't able to find anyone to link with for its admittedly interesting 4 survivors mode, but i managed to squad up with a few intrepid brazillians and was subsequently able to access a lot of regular team match games. team match is split into two playlists: there's one mode that's essentially permadeath, and there's a mode which rotates missions for your team to carry out successfully in which you have infinite lives. all of my experience was with the latter. as a result it's difficult to tell if umbrella corps is actually capable of living up to its tactical shooter billing, but my strong impression is that it isn't, which is why most of its extremely sparse, sporadically active community prefers the multi-mission mode. the game is so brisk in pace and so homogenous in its weapon selection that stopping for even a second to pretend it's truly tactical would be dishonest, radial menus rife with commands be damned. the modern warfare xp progression system similary disincentivizes even the slightest pretense of strategy here since you recognize you'll be locked out of some interesting tools for a while, and it won't be an even playing field while you're out there.

but as a scuzzy and unsanitized arcade deathmatch...it's honestly a good time. detach yourself from the nightmare unity engine vibes and what you find is a PVP/PVE title in which every map does its utmost to replicate the skin of your teeth scrambles inherent to rust in modern warfare 2. every map is small, cluttered, and anarchic, and the multi-mission mode is structured around completing various objectives in these cramped locales within short three minute windows. sometimes it's a traditional deathmatch; occasionally, it's oddball with briefcases; sometimes it's collecting DNA samples from UC's repertoire of enemies, pulled from all corners of the resident evil world, and from time to time you'll be playing king of the hill. it's a roll of the dice every time, but it's varied enough in these offerings to keep things exciting. getting used to the wildly shifting perspectives and claustrophobic field of view is arguably the toughest adjustment, but it effectively complements frenzied close-quarters skirmishes, arguably makes this one of the only third person shooters i've played in which toggling which over-the-shoulder perspective you resort to is important, and denies you an ease of environmental legibility which would reduce tension. it's impossible to overstate just how quickly you move in this game; even crawling prone is faster than crouchwalking in some games. my favourite implementation here is a jammer auto-equipped on each player. while the jammer's active, the zombies present in a level will ignore you, but if you take enough oncoming damage to break the jammer, every single one of those NPC enemies will start descending on you at once. it's insane. i kind of feel like multiplayer games forgot to have decent soundtracks over the years too, so it's nice to revisit all of these recontextualized locales from past entries and listen to some throbbing tunes. just running around the village from RE4 with my bizarre sci-fi ice axe and parrying opponents who try to swing at me with their bizarre sci-fi ice axe. lovely.

it remains a highly difficult game to recommend because there are basically only ten people, if that, left playing it...similarly, its single player mode is in shambles, existing as nothing more than repackaged multiplayer mechanics absent of the mayhem other players can provide. i like it though. it just needs like, thorhighheels level clout to have some form of multiplayer renaissance. that's not my job, it's his.

prefacing this by saying this is less of a substantive review and more of an informal attempt at placing it within a broader context, which i feel is somewhat necessary given how often it's excluded from discussion.

the claim i used to stake was that any developer attempting to remake resident evil 4 is intentionally subjecting themselves to one of the most grueling and unenviable tasks conceivable, but in retrospect it’s so abundantly clear to me that reimagining resident evil 3 was the harsher position. resident evil 4 is both universally adored and ubiquitous to such a ludicrous, unheard-of extent that shinji mikami’s original vision is permanently entrenched in the gaming landscape regardless of how many newcomers falsely attempt to claim its systems are in desperate need of modernization (never listen to these people btw they need god). by contrast, resident evil 3: nemesis was already regarded as an awkward and polarizing project when it launched in 1999, representing a shift away from shrewd investigation and route planning and a shift towards action and spectacle that seemed holistically incompatible with its predecessors. very few people appear to genuinely like RE3, and the majority seem to mostly appreciate it only for what it could be. this is, ironically, far from the ideal starting point for an audience-pleasing remake that it initially sounds.

for a game so divisive to nonetheless finally receive a highly requested and sought-after remake suggests a latent urge to somehow salvage the original release and restore it to working condition. after all, it’s widely understood in the community that nemesis humbly began as a mere side project, not a fully-fledged numbered entry in the resident evil canon, and this pervasive stigma seems to have clouded critical discussion wherever its memory is invoked. surely it was precisely this truncated development window, frequent asset reuse, and shift in design methodology that so directly bore an ambitious, if lacking project? if only nemesis was given the time and attention it rightly deserved – maybe, just maybe we could have an impressive title.

my contention with this line of thought is simple: i really like nemesis, and it’s my favourite of the classic resident evil trilogy. i don’t really think it needs a lot of fixing, or tuning up, or what have you. i think it’s, for the most part, perfectly fine the way it is. i find it impressive how well it’s able to convey the panic and dread associated with classic resi at a faster clip, without desensitizing the player to the genuine threat each enemy represents. it’s definitely more oriented towards action, but i think it works given both the expansion of resource management present in the title as well as the overarching design theme of a ‘desperate escape’. i really enjoy how much narrative continuity is shared with 2; across games it imbues the events of the raccoon city outbreak with a really strong sense of tragedy and melancholy. and while less accomplished than the zapping system, branching choices were still more than enough to enrich subsequent playthroughs and keep the pace contained to a singular narrative. but chiefly i have a particular fondness for its bleak atmosphere. with the drama not being contained to a series of interiors, the level design is free to be sprawling, untamed, and suffocating. it’s stunning to whittle a city down to its barest essentials through this unconventional level design – it may be anathema for classic resi structure but through gorgeous pre-rendered environments it imparts the illusion of an open environment while evoking this constantly simmering dread and paranoia as you dart through alleys and skulk around scaffolding.

given its significant departures from the original game and reliance on setpieces, i think it’s this core theming of despairing to escape an inescapable situation which the RE3 remake (henceforth, RE3R) developers latched onto, but whether or not they were successful has obviously been a source of debate. it’s uncanny but capcom were inadvertently able to replicate the zeitgeist surrounding resident evil 3 in 2020: the overarching notion that the remake is unsuccessful compared to its predecessor. in both instances RE3 came out only one year after its predecessor, and in both cases neither represented a radical overhaul or improvement on the form.

in examining why this cold reception remains the case, it’s worth pointing out that any existing problems are more or less foundational. the problems run a lot deeper than either the exclusion of content or the somewhat misplaced accusations of scripting might imply. when capcom set about remaking resident evil 2, 3 eventually wormed its way into the fold in discussion and at a certain point development for both entries was concurrent. it’s impossible to speculate what priorities were being assigned or what was happening behind closed doors, so i won’t, but im struck by the sense that resi 2 remained the centerpiece for the project from beginning to end. the implication this has for 3 is simple: there could be no departures from the design document or from the production pipeline. effectively this means that whatever mechanics were designed for 2 became the basis for 3’s moving forwards, ensuring that in order to successfully replicate the action of 3, all that could really be implemented were simple tweaks to the pace and mechanics. there was never a chance for this remake to be its own project. even the original release managed that much.

it’s tempting to claim that the original RE3 was developed under similar conditions – after all, there are certain expectations set in place for resident evil titles, and clearly RE3 endeavored to meet many of those expectations. to illustrate why this isn’t a clean parallel, you need only look at nemesis himself. nemesis in the original RE3 is the game’s core mechanic. he’s an unpredictable, erratic wall of gnarled flesh who will pursue you until you are mangled and pulseless, and the game wisely mixes up his encounters through clever scripting, organic player-driven decisions, and determinate branching choices. there is explicit consistency to his encounters discerned across repeat playthroughs, but within that framework there is that little spark, that little ghost in the machine that ensures he is a presence to be feared. even though he is somewhat scripted, agency drives almost every encounter in such a way that the player’s decision-making is always being given primacy while establishing him as the game’s narrative rival. as you respond to the threats he poses and occasionally take him down at various intervals, he evolves alongside you, eventually giving way to one of the most satisfying moments in the entire series, which is in itself a potential choice because the player is more than capable of running out of time at this segment. beautiful, no notes.

i think, for a lot of reasons, that the original game’s depiction of nemesis remains the gold standard of a stalker enemy, but it’s worth noting that the idea never strayed too far from capcom’s mind. mild parallels can be drawn to the verdugo in RE4 or the ustanak in RE6, for instance. but the pace set by a stalker also informs the rhythm of resident evil 7’s opening arc, as you struggle to navigate a derelict house with the seemingly invincible jack baker at your heels.

conversely, the resident evil 2 remake features an expansion of the mr. x concept. originally a quaint nemesis-esque figure meant to shock the player in the B scenarios, he was altered in the remake to unceasingly hound either leon or claire through the halls of the racoon police station. he arrives unannounced at certain points of the game to deter you from completing obstacles and force you down various chokepoints that test your knowledge of the police station. he’s an omnipresent force-of-nature who might appear at any moment, and as a result he’s an organic nuisance in a way that nemesis isn’t – it’s a differing take on a similar design goal. and by the end of leon’s campaign, leon is expected to have a showdown with the seemingly invulnerable tyrant who’s stalked him for near half the campaign and put him down for good.

if it sounds familiar, that’s because it is, which poses a significant conceptual obstacle for RE3R. by the time capcom’s developers were supposed to be fleshing out work on a remake of a game which featured a stalker as one of its central concepts, its predecessor had already gone and totally invalidated the idea by taking the arc for its own – an arc that wasn’t present in the original game. as if that wasn’t enough, mr. x’s nature was intimately tied to map design and objective design. his functioning at-all is credit to impressive programming and level design which ensures he’s never too far away and lends itself nicely to both trepidation and the ability to recalibrate routes and goals. this set standard now has negative implications for nemesis, who to be successful must now conform to and iterate upon an existing design ideal rather than flesh out his original concept. not an easy task!

keeping all this in mind, it seems fair to suggest that the idealized stalker type many envisioned for nemesis requires at the very least an increased budget, a greater degree of technological sophistication, total commitment, an expansion of scope, increased attention to design, and a strong level of polish which is all but unprecedented for the kind of project RE3R was. in a proposed 1:1 remake of RE3 – which is to say this overriding and frankly unrealistic idea that capcom would take the mr. x concept present in RE2R and meaningfully evolve it to match RE3’s design - this would be virtually impossible to achieve with the structural constraints of the map’s design unless one was to expand raccoon city vertically, which, again, need i remind people – scope, commitment, budget, design, etc.

so RE3R doesn’t bother. by this point in the modern resi timeline, we’ve already dealt with two stalkers (RE7, RE2R), and RE3R bucks this trend and ironically returns the titular nemesis to his roots: scripted encounters. this was a central point of criticism for RE3R so it’s worth reiterating that the scripting in itself is not the problem. after all, the original nemesis was great, and many of his encounters were scripted. but if there’s a failure of RE3R’s nemesis, it’s the failure to meaningfully interweave choice into these encounters. for the most part nemesis as a ‘stalker’ is only present for a very small segment of the game’s first arc, which also happens to be the only portion of the game where you can down him for rewards, a key mechanic of the original release. at every point afterwards he’s either something to run away from or a boss to wrestle with. admittedly, each one of these boss encounters is better than any of the bosses in RE2R, and arguably better than the original’s boss suite, but they’re lacking the flavour the original presented because nemesis’s rendition in RE3R is a total negation of possibility. he is a determinate obstacle, whereas the original was an indeterminate vector.

it’s a shame for the project to have been utterly kneecapped from the start like this, but it also happens to be far from the disaster it’s frequently made out to be. i think it’s short enough and hectic enough that stepping in for a couple more chances at bat would honestly be pretty engaging. the level design is obviously less compelling than either RE2R or the original RE3, but it trades that for a mostly engaging sense of momentum at all points in the adventure; for all its lapses as a remake it remains a solidly paced action title. neither of these remakes have really even come close to holding a candle to the original releases they’re based on (and i wish people would scrutinize RE2R with even half the severity of RE3R given that lobotomizing the zapping system is a far greater sin than the removal of the clock tower), but i grew to appreciate RE3R’s attempts at divergence. a few changes made to the narrative are well-considered and refreshing compared to RE2R undercutting the emotional arcs of the cast present in the original game. ultimately, i kind of just wish it was given enough time to be more of its own thing, because while the magic of the original release is faded here, the thrill new dangers and new textual interpretations could have presented is really enticing.

addendum: m-two worked a lot on RE3R, and i would have appreciated seeing m-two’s take on the RE4 remake before they got axed from the project; they reportedly wanted to do different things with it, but the lesson capcom unfortunately seems to have internalized from RE3R is ‘people will complain loudly if things aren’t 1:1’ and not ‘uh-oh we shouldn't kneecap the game's identity prior to release' or 'man developing two games at the same time can sometimes be problematic'

addendum 2: despite what i've said here i dont really like mr. x or jack baker ¯\(ツ)/¯

addendum 3: if you felt cheated by RE3R, try the evil within 2! you might find it a good degree more satisfying

if there’s a common element which threads together developer ilzard’s body of work thus far, it’s likely spatial navigation. both words prove relevant. nix umbra immensely complicates its sense of traversal primarily through disorientation and obfuscation. despite the relative frankness of its premise – time-based survival – its mechanics are cloaked enough to ensure that managing to wander undeterred in its shaded woods for even thirteen minutes will comfortably slot you in the top 50 of the title’s global leaderboards. the player’s only choice in nix umbra is to shrewdly maneuver impenetrable darkness, flailing wildly at the binaural screeching of violin strings indicating oncoming threats, and simultaneously attempting to process an occult set of mechanics which intentionally withholds its peculiarities. it’s hard not to reflect on the cosmos while playing, too. obviously traipsing around in pitch-black makes you vaguely feel like you’re navigating some sort of eschatological abyss unknown to man, but one mechanic the game declines to explicate involves using the stars above as a compass guiding you towards health & mana replenishing crystals in the woods. the game’s title translates roughly to “snow shadow” from latin – and as snowfall will occasionally dot the screen, it's difficult not to think of marine snow in the deepest zones of the ocean despite the game’s terrestrial concerns. as above, so below.

intraquartz represents a similar kind of disorienting spatial navigation. it is every bit as concerned with swirling depths as its predecessor is, albeit with a conceit which forces the player to adopt a mindset antithetical to survival in nix umbra. nix umbra’s swift and reactive gameplay recalls the pace of an arena shooter, where daring to stop is flirting with death, but while playing intraquartz it becomes clear that every action taken must be carefully weighed and considered, often for seconds at a time. this is because instead of obscuring your vision to a couple of meters ahead of you as in nix umbra, intraquartz renders every single path within the game’s various crystals completely invisible. nix umbra’s cold, apocalyptic void is substituted for the celestial gossamer of gems, each containing a microscopic, alien, and seemingly expansive inner galaxy. within each gemstone is a complex network of invisible tunnels which spiral endlessly, threatening to fold inwards on themselves. lateral movement is impossible because you take control of a rover, which forces the player to commit to wise decisions, and the player only has a select number of tools to aid them in mining the alien energy present in the crystals: distance-based coordinates, a refracting laser, a limited number of markers, and a limited number of quantum jumps.

so begins the process of orienting oneself and efficiently mapping out the twists and turns of each particular cavern. extracting even one energy core imposes a movement-based time limit on the rover as the crystal begins to destabilize, which incentivizes the player to have a rough outline of the crystal’s inner network before beginning the excavation process. energy cores which seem directly ahead of the player are likely blocked by some invisible wall or tunnel, forcing the intrepid rover to not simply bypass it, but to go under and over and around and then some – each detour is the full nine yards. markers allow for the player to either carefully breadcrumb their way around dizzying and dazzling labyrinths, or to lob shots and test the depths of the tunnels. refracting lasers can be used with surgical precision to reach tucked away energy cores as they perpetually ricochet off walls (a really commendable system given its smooth implementation), and quantum jumps aid in closing gaps that the rover would struggle with otherwise. each tool is perfectly considered and complementary in ways that reveal themselves to the player with each hour invested, and as such intraquartz becomes a game of mastery. the most coveted score for each level involves extracting each energy core without moving the rover, save for quantum jumps – an arduous task for a beginner, but a worthy challenge for the experienced. planning extensively to reach this offers satisfaction like nothing else can provide.

it's really admirable that the procedural generation utilized for the game’s energy cores ensures that this is not a game about strict puzzle solving, but rather a game about adaptive problem solving. there’s an argument to be made that once your brain is attuned to this game’s language it can sometimes feel a bit too much like second nature, but right up until that point it’s one of the most exhilarating games of 2022. at times soothing in its diligent pace, at times heartpounding when facing all-but-certain destabilization, and always an audiovisual tour de force about the worlds in grains of sand.

felt a pleasant sense of mirth when i saw the name of the final level. so excited for ilzard’s third outing!

coining 'the max payne curse' for when developers demonstrate a strong understanding of how to make third-person shooting engaging and then fail to implement at least some of those elements in their future titles. i'm really happy remedy's moving on to making survival horror now with alan wake 2; what little i played of control was wonderfully presented and narratively intriguing but came across as totally rote and obstructive, and a more restrictive genre just feels like something remedy would find more life in given their strengths and obsessions as a development stable.

anyways, alan wake's american nightmare. i played one loop and a bit and im probably not gonna finish this. it's not even like, completely awful. technically it plays better than its predecessor but it really only accomplishes this by quickening the pace and including Enemy Types. the encounter design is more or less still one-dimensional and the lenient dodge button chokes interesting decision-making by providing an easy out whenever combat gets too hectic. it deserves some credit for being a seventh-gen third person shooter that tried to forego cover but no mechanical introduction here really plays to what feels like the series' design throughline, which is constructing ludic drama around perspective. you aim closely with your flashlight at an enemy for an extended period of time to eventually be able to do damage to them, but doing so limits your movement and observation and leaves you open to flanks. simple premise and little is done to really heighten this element of surprise sadly. but there are other titles we can learn from which not only orchestrate their challenge around limited perspective but also accomplish so much more in the grand scheme of things. i am thinking in particular about a little known game called resident evil 4.

tap, rack, bang.

essentially an extended exercise in bullet meditation. its arcade-esque structure belies how much rigor and alertness receiver 2 demands of its players regardless of how uncompromising the randomized threats can be. most games become faster as you improve, but receiver 2 instead gets slower; refining your play here often means being methodical, taking your time, steadfastly running through your keyboard rituals as though they were rosary prayer beads, surveying environments carefully, and retaining a stalwart level of composure against the odds. brilliant map design evokes a constant dread & claustrophobia by endlessly looping hallways of industrial boiler rooms, penthouse apartments, and construction scaffolding, suggesting both subconscious impermanence and familiarity ('you' have had gunfights here before, sometime, somewhere else). you're thirty floors up in this intensely alienating, inescapable nightmare realm and the only one who can save yourself is you. and things continue in this genuinely frightening way until you learn to start flipping the script and turning the stringent limitations of its level design into opportunity. whether that means having a quick exit plan between floors, shimmying across ledges to avoid detection, or bolting and jumping through a window to avoid a barrage of turret fire. this isn't even yet digging into the intensely granular gun mechanics - the long and short of it is that by so sternly forcing players to abide by its ruleset, receiver 2's simulacrum is one of the sharpest games to ever transpose ideas of mindfulness onto a set of mechanics. a good few too many games about mental health only demand faux-resilience through narrative affect or through memorizing sequences of buttons in simplistic twitch platforming fashion, but receiver 2's interweaving of constant repetition and punishing failure reveals a strict & cohesive prescription and regimen: your mind and body have to be in sync if you're gonna stand any real shot out there.

tap, rack, bang.

generally speaking, in martial arts, a weapon is an extension of your body. it's cliche, but holds true. the only way to master a sword is to consider it as a limb. and in other games this is, i would argue, felt as a guiding philosophy. thinking and problem-solving is abstracted across these body-oriented mechanics. lavish one-button reload animations in games have conditioned players into seeing a gun as an extension of the player; i've argued in the past that leon in resident evil 4 is a particularly good example of this. a rifle to leon is as central to his kit as a knife, a grenade, a herb, a roundhouse kick, all executed with more or less the same mechanical apparatus.

tap, rack, bang.

receiver 2 brings guns and mental health to the forefront, but it shrewdly elides the easy question or metaphor regarding the grisly culture surrounding firearms in the united states to instead focus on your simulated gun as an extension of your mind and the implications of that idea in a diseased sociopolitical climate. reloading has been calibrated across not just one key, but several, and each gun will have different quirks or tics to master in this regard. revolvers are simple and reliable, but slower to reload and less equipped to deal with multiple threats, whereas the automatic pistols have more complex inputs in tandem with more versatility, but similarly present more opportunities to malfunction (and yes, your guns will jam in multiple different ways - good luck diagnosing and treating that while threats have their watchful eyes on you). likewise, dozens of other minor nuances are present: a colt m1911 has a safety switch, but when using a glock that same key is utilized to turn the glock's full-auto feature on, so holstering unsafely with a glock you attempted to make safe means your thigh is about to eat two or three bullets. without weapon acumen you are every bit as likely to kill or incapacitate yourself as a turret or drone is likely to gore you.

tap, rack, bang.

the central structure of receiver 2 revolves around the collection of analog tapes concerning firearms history, media representations of guns, common logical and emotional fallacies, and tips for maintaining a more lucid mind. these tapes are randomized and don't explicitly spell out their associations given how wildly varying they can be, but its lessons and mantras all hone in on a few key ideas which are subsequently internalized over the unfolding hours. the act of physically pointing and shooting has been entirely stripped of context and weight - what has this gratuitousness and gratification done to us? we live in a fractured environment which has the potential to fracture ourselves in turn - how can we safeguard ourselves against these negative influences? just as there are rules in place for the safe operation of a firearm, so too are there rules for the exercise of one's mind. and if you can safely train to have a mind impervious to adversity, you can begin to survive and aid others in survival.

tap, rack, bang.

receiver 2 is mechanically, narratively, and artistically sympatico in a way very few games have achieved. its prescription of an analog remedy for the digitized nightmare we've slowly come to inhabit over the past couple of decades is novel and commendable, regardless of a couple of minor issues i have with the game's prose (that said you will find no other game which explicitly draws a parallel between the birth/subsequent expansion of the universe and a chambered round shot in the dark). and it is a game presented with total earnestness and clarity regarding its subject matter. few sequels expand on the core concept as meaningfully as receiver 2 - a third game would be redundant, but its ending gracefully reminds us that the work we've set in motion doesn't end with our investment in these abstracted life-or-death scrambles. we break free, and we are made to live with the lessons we have slowly accumulated and grasped. "perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time". excellent stuff.

tap, rack, bang.
your mind's eye sharpens.

shenmue may require no introduction, but it's amusing for me to have played so many of suzuki's games beforehand...they're all these exceptionally spirited games preoccupied with total acceleration, scenic vistas, the simple pleasures of competition (whether inward or external). their pace and their fixations are romantic and idealized, representing a striking antithesis to shenmue's monotony. just about the only thing that matches shenmue's dreamy sense of melancholy is outrun's results screen.

while suzuki's prior obsessions & formal language might ironically seem entirely absent from shenmue, im not sure this is a completely accurate assessment. ryo might be a slave to time, but just as in outrun, super hang-on, space harrier, etc, his path is pre-determined, foretold by prophecy. he has no choice but to staunchly and pragmatically follow his compulsions. a discordant sense of urgency underscores and animates his every action, and you can see his internal frustrations with the mundane & lackadaisical rhythms of his neighbours. ryo's a shark, all he knows how to do is move forward. reality might suffocate him otherwise.

iwao hazuki's last words to his son are pleading with him to keep his friends and family close to him; the rest of shenmue is a quietly straining, slow-brewing tragedy as ryo does the exact opposite. he's alienated and alone; his family never quite knows how to effectively respond to and treat his grief; he distances himself from peers, structure, romantic interests. he is made painfully aware of every passing minute of every day, but he fails to truly understand or comprehend the weight of time and of his life in yokosuka as a whole. people care about him, but he's distant & removed, and eventually they figure it may be for the best to let such a headstrong young man go his own way. ryo's defining contradiction is a naïveté characteristic of his youth at odds with his relentless drive to make forward progress. he has this unspoken expectation that yokosuka is comprised of unchanging and permanent fixtures, that things will be the same as he left them upon his return, but everything around him explicitly and implicitly signals the obvious: people, locales, and contexts change. over the course of the game ryo runs into a hot dog vendor named tom constantly, someone whose vibrance and zest for life marks him as distinct and dissimilar from ryo. he's content and lively in a way that is alien to ryo. near the end of the game, he learns that tom a.) has surprising martial arts prowess and b.) has been planning to leave yokosuka for quite some time. ryo is taken aback by this information, but it was no secret - ryo simply never asked. by the time ryo makes his way to hong kong, so much has been left unsaid. even he, for a brief moment, just beginning to grasp the gravity of his decisions, wishes he had more time.

it's an excellent game, filled to the brim with quietly devastating scenes and working with subtlety that seems unmatched compared to contemporary AAA experiences... while many cite shenmue as a game that has aged, or only has value from an innovative perspective, its deliberate and measured inclinations reveal just the opposite: that games today have regressed, and have only taken the wrong lessons from shenmue.

standalone expansions rarely make sense from a profit margin perspective - or so ive heard - but the chance to safely iterate on and tinker with systems nevertheless has strong allure for many a design team. and for my part, ive grown to appreciate what these AAA novellas can bring to the table, not only for their occasionally radical departures from convention but also because they recognize that most players will have completed the entry the expansion stems from, and therefore no longer have to spend as much time establishing stakes, outlining the pace in staccato rhythm, and overtutorializing players to their chagrin.

these three traits are endemic to naughty dog's seventh-gen-onwards gameography and each and every entry in their canon suffers immensely for it, while something as contained and compact as the lost legacy is able to flourish as the chaste tomb raider spinoff this franchise was always meant to be. in a fraction of the time a regular entry in this constipated series takes, you'll contend with more varied setpieces and encounter design, more experimentation (chiefly in the form of an open-district level, my vote for the most traditionally enjoyable segment in any of these titles), and more controlled direction than ever before. the narrative dimension here continues to err towards shallow but its simplicity is honestly complementary rather than transparently ingratiating. it's as close to a thrilling action romp as any uncharted game has ever been, and for its efforts in finally getting me to tolerate this series it's worthy of my respect.

and look, im not blind, one of the strongest contributors to my bias here is playing as arguably one of the most attractive ladies ever created for vidcon purposes instead of a character who constantly irritates me and whom i would purposefully pilot off cliffs into steep ravines. naughty dog should return to this level of Understanding i think.

the other side of the coin for shredder's revenge. there's three specific shared traits here: both are coasting the wavelength of 80's arcade revivalism, both ameliorate the shortcomings and deficiencies of the parent franchises they spawned from, and both have had to adapt to tailor their mechanics for the home console market.

comparisons between the two don't seem to yield much in the way of positives for DDN. DDN is aesthetically crude, borne from an era in which ironic 80s pastiche was in vogue; shredder's revenge doesn't echo the same insincerity, instead brimming with love for the source material. DDN's sense of humor is juvenile and irksome, while shredder's revenge stands tall on its innate charisma. and while DDN introduces misguided moveset customization and a baffling + unnecessary upgrade system, shredder's revenge has a comparatively simple solution to the levelling dilemma that has plagued beat 'em ups since their transition from the arcade environment: relegate it entirely to story mode and allow players to level up simply through accumulating defeated foes. speaking of, shredder's revenge has both a story and an arcade mode, while DDN has...only a story mode. if you wanna 1CC, get ready to uh, take no damage, or something. we're working off an honor system here.

a plethora of problems, sure. but ultimately, the key difference between the two is really simple: DDN is more compelling as a beat 'em up, despite its foibles. whatever stiffness is felt in its opening chapters is wrung out by the finale. where shredder's revenge is loose and centered on player empowerment, DDN asks the player to engage with the mechanics on its terms. and there's a comprehensive strictness to these systems that engenders a genuine sense of reward when you find that one strategy that'll help overcome a grating section, or when you discover tech that'll aid in combos, or when you learn how to navigate its effective encounter design. it's one of those beat 'em ups where every tool in your arsenal feels like it has both general and niche use, where every weapon pickup feels like a godsend - but you still gotta swing that bat carefully.

one helpful point of comparison is the existence of a dodge in both games. in 2D beat 'em up circles, dodges have a crummy reputation because in the best case scenario, they dilute encounter design and defensive mechanics to telegraphed avoidances of attacks, and in the worst case scenario they break the game on its hinges completely. the dodge in shredder's revenge is apt given the number of aggressive enemies on screen, and tribute did well to imbue it with heft through recovery frames, but it's also still distinctly weightless. you float into offence, sway back with a dodge, and tap the attack button again to leap back into the fray and continue your assault.

while you'll have to avoid attacks by jumping and moving horizontally/vertically, there's two kinds of dedicated dodges in DDN, both of which are cumbersome. the first, and most interesting, is a god hand-esque duck. throw jabs in someone's grill, and duck if you register a high attack being thrown your way to maintain offence. given the recovery frames involved, and the danger of immediate punishment if you fail, there's a higher sense of risk involved with the duck than can sometimes be said for shredder's revenge. but there's genuine reward, too - wayforward gave it meaning by greatly increasing your damage for an extremely minute window of time upon a successful attack, which deftly encourages meticulous aggression. and you'll be needing that damage boost, because enemy hp has been tuned just so - they're not damage sponges, but offence doesn't guarantee security because the microseconds you spend wailing on a guy is plenty of time for some other enemy to waltz in on you and ruin the fun. DDN has this sense that you're flirting with danger constantly, that you're never actually safe - it's pretty remarkable how they were able to subtly achieve this.

and so DDN is able to fold its dodge into acute positioning - the secret formula for every good beat 'em up. after initiating a duck, you can dodge roll (which seems to have very selective iframes), or you can opt for a low-damage grounded attack or a high damage flying knee. every option here is grounded in decision-making filtered through positioning. to roll through certain attacks, i have to have the foresight to duck in advance. sure, i want to cancel a duck into a flying knee for my juggle - but if i do that, i'll jump right into a pit, or a stage hazard. the list of minute calculations goes on, and it's why this clicked for me in a way i couldn't with shredder's revenge.

if you'll forgive its aged aesthetic (leaving aside kaufman's score - your mileage still might vary but theres still at least a couple of standouts imo) what you find is a beat 'em up that understands the genre finds life through restriction. and you can't ask for more than that.