Where do I even begin with this game I can't play, that vanished right out from under me?
It kills me that they ported the incredibly underrated Devil's Third multiplayer from Wii U to PC as you see here in the form of the renamed RockShot, and then killed it off in THREE MONTHS, by the time I heard about it, it was already over. In the words of infamous Wanted: Dead filter boss August, is that all?

This is a cry for help shot in the dark tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear it, but could somebody please reverse-engineer this game?
I'd give anything to play it and host LAN parties with it, [here I'll even give you the URL to install it on Steam] (steam://install/1368430) and yes, that trick I did with the URL there by changing out the app number from the delisted store page, works for LawBreakers, a game that did actually have its multiplayer revived recently (therefore proving that nothing is impossible), and a myriad of other F2P delisted Steam games, and only F2P games.
If it worked with all delisted Steam games it'd be too good to be true.

I found out about that install trick mentioned above because people spread it for acquiring Streets of Kamurocho and the other games from that time Sega released a bunch of freebies for Golden Week and paraded around the corpse of a modern Golden Axe vertical slice from years ago, which they then received backlash for not properly crediting the devs whose unfinished work they humiliated them over, thus ensuring Sega never does a thing like that again. But that's a story for another time, or actually this time, because I did just go off-track to explain it even if it hardly made sense.

I inadvertently expose some facet of my nature when all the multiplayer games I want are the ones that I can't have, I miss you Devil's Third, I miss you Anarchy Reigns, I never even got to play Rumbleverse, that one looked pretty good, the online melee combat multiplayer deathmatch genre, the only genre of online games it seems like I actually enjoy, or OMCMD for short (rolls off the tongue doesn't it) is an elusive species that is not fit for natural selection and would not, could not survive the winter. I love them but they never make it. ...If MMORPG could catch on surely that one should too, right?

And I love Soleil Game Studios too, they're one of my favorite extremely underrated game studios, dare I say they may be the next Platinum (or at least the next Alvion, and if you know who they are without having to look them up, you and I are friends now), formed out of the remnants of controversial Ninja Gaiden I, Black, & II director, difficulty maven, breast-man, and gooner auteur-ner Tomonobu Itagaki's Valhalla Game Studios, they are composed of the people who made Devil's Third operating under a witness protection program and now that I've effectively blown their cover they're going to need to move to the Netherlands, so I'm sorry about that guys. Depending on who you ask, Itagaki either left Tecmo because he didn't get $1.4m in unpaid bonuses for completing Dead or Alive 4, or because he me tooed and his time's up, so he's not traveling with them anymore.
They made Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time, Valkyrie Elysium, but more importantly split from Itagaki and continued to refine their ideas from Devil's Third by forking off in two separate directions, one towards fleshing out their multiplayer in the ill-fated RockShot, towards which they displayed an utter lack of confidence by only giving it three months, and the other towards fleshing out its campaign in the form of Stefaniejoostenlike instant cult classic Wanted: FUCKING: Dead (which, by the way, was basically commissioned by some odd rich dude who almost paid Remedy to make it instead of Soleil), and upcoming instant cult classic Stefaniejoostenlike Vanquishlike, Vengeance is Mine

I might be overselling Wanted: Dead there with the profanity, but despite not being a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination it's a definite improvement on the admittedly not great Devil's Third campaign, and serves as evidence that despite being a game from one year ago, 7th gen nostalgia is beginning to come into vogue, as people yearn for the bygone creature comforts of turning off your multiplayer game to boot into a jank-ass singleplayer game with a title like MindJack or NeverDead or Quantum Theory or Shadows of the Damned or WET or Devil's Third or Wanted: Dead because you were tired of being called a slur by a guy sending you a God of War wallpaper

But they've yet to fully realize their original vision for Devil's Third, which by earlier trailers back when the game was being published by THQ and people were actually hyped for it once, was going to be a much more seamless campaign and multiplayer fusion. Maybe they'll realize it in their upcoming Project EDO, the latest in their OMCMD lineage, which they have nothing but concept art and breathless hype for, proclaiming loudly to the world on their front page that their ultimate goal is to make Project EDO one of the most loved and played games of all time. Big talk coming from a small team under the auspices of Tencent, who keeps repeatedly poaching creators like Yakuza's Toshihiro Nagoshi or Suda51 to then have them work tirelessly on some vaporware game that seems to be perpetually just out of reach like a desert mirage, but I guess sooner or later we'll see if it pays off for them. Eventually. For being what they perceive as a future Fortnite, their new NINJA x High-end Action Online Multiplayer title doesn't even have a Backloggd page, so I have my reservations. Hell, Soleil themselves doesn't even have a Wikipedia page yet!

That was a lot of tangents for a game I haven't even been able to try...in summary, what did we even learn today, if anything?

- The only time I'll ever get to play Devil's Third MP and Ace Combat Infinity ever again will be when my brain is being flooded with time-dilating flashback DMT as I experience multiple organ failure
- You can still download delisted F2P Steam games and if like myself you like multiplayer necromancy, the art of bringing back dead games, you could go play LawBreakers through said method
- Please reverse-engineer RockShot, I'm begging you, it can't be that hard right? Surely one of you is a genius?
- Devil's Third multiplayer was cool, you could parkour off a building and throw a katana through some dude's torso
- OMCMD games are too cool and "niche" to live (honestly, I don't believe in the concept of a game being niche, either you have faith in your concept or you don't, any game can be a success with the right word-of-mouth and marketing)
- Tomonobu Itagaki is attracted to women
- Soleil Game Studios is about to hit it big and is another in the long line of things I caught onto before it was cool
- Herzog, deal with this shit
- Nicely done Cortez

Class dismissed

It's so easy to squint and imagine how earlier Platinum would've knocked this out of the park, how it was probably pitched as a full-fat spiritual sequel to Okami, but they didn't, their worst instincts activated and they put annoying gacha grinding and gear leveling and stripped it down until there was nothing left, superb character/enemy design and music wasted on a nothing game, like a case study on how exactly my favorite studio has fell off
Not a terrible game though, there's things to like here despite its best efforts to make you dislike it, you guys would've been all over this if it came out on the Vita, or the Wii, oh wait it did it was called Muramasa: The Demon Blade and it was boring and without actual meaningful level design that time too
The most exciting moment in World of Demons is when you get to fight Ninetails and she has her own boss theme and your heart swells because you are remembering that sick as fuck boss fight in Okami, and then you are brought crashing back down to reality
Thank god I was able to return my Apple TV to Walmart just in the nick of time, playing this before it shut down didn't cost me a cent