I actually did play elden ring for a bit - maybe 40 hours or so - but by the time I reached leyndell there was this nagging feeling I couldn't get rid of. the fights were fun, I enjoyed raiding the mini dungeons with my gf, and everything hit pretty much on the mark for what I'd like for an open world souls game... but when I want difficult and deliberate 3D action, I don't usually gravitate towards souls. I really had that urge for monster hunter, and getting my very own psp lit the fire in my soul to the point that I descended full-on into monster hunter fixation yet again after last year's spree. obviously it hasn't completely preoccupied my time (just check my journal!); I just need something to play while I catch up on podcasts. and besides, I sorta missed my trusty gunlance.

so what this review covers is all of hub more or less. I had mainly used mhgu as a quickie multiplayer option for my monhun-inclined friends for the last year-ish, so this particular burst for me started around the middle of high rank. surprisingly enough, I actually solo'd all of G rank up through ahtal-ka (did lao shan lung with friends because fuck doing that solo) as well as cleaning up high rank village through alatreon and doing more than my fair share of requests along the way. IGT puts me at 160 hours and switch time puts me at 180, meaning that I somehow managed to roughly triple my playtime in the last three months + make this my most-played monhun.

it's really been a tremendous benefit to have taken a break since finishing village valstrax last august. monhun instilled a sort of fear in me that often paralyzed me in terms of exploring unfamiliar mechanics, and of all of the games in the franchise mhgu benefits the least from this approach. this is a game so swamped with things to do that really the only thing to do here is to run into it with arms open. a little of column A, and a little from column B, and hey, could I maybe add alchemy on this hunt? or use some weird selection of hunter arts that I'll never touch again? this game had me playing hunting horn online for the first time and I realized how understandable it was so quickly! I'll take anything the game throws at me now no questions asked.

two major things I was blind to in the last review were hypers and deviants, which I played much more extensively this time around. hypers are easily the lesser of the two: they are entirely unaltered monsters with padded out HP and specific areas of the body that deal a ludicrous amount of damage. by attacking these areas, the player can fill their art gauges more quickly, although the areas may change throughout the fight. personally I found hypers rather tedious given how long they can take to go down and how having near-unlimited art access can render fights dull. there's just no stakes when you can spam absolute evasion whenever you want, and doing that for 30+ minutes on otherwise easy monsters left me dreading having to do any of these quests.

speaking of which, while there's many interesting arts to be found and experimented with, absolute evasion and absolute readiness completely blow the game wide open. monhun with a gigantic I-frame-laden dodge makes aggressive play all the more viable, and for heavy shield users such as myself it's an essential get-out-of-jail-free card considering how dangerous and lengthy the sheathing process is. at a certain point I just switched to striker style and settled for having both of those arts on me at all times along with blast dash, and honestly I think at that point the game really started to sing. part of this is due to striker also removing overhead slam for gunlance, which I find more of a liability than anything when not using normal shots. it sure made it easier to switch back and forth between this and mhfu! also: I use the ZL+X/A/B controls for the arts and they are rather unresponsive, almost as if it only properly checks if an art is used if ZL has been held down for a bit before the other button has pressed. plenty of times I took an unnecessary cart because I tried to evade and my hunter decided to fire off a shot instead.

deviants I haven't quite spent as much time with as I would've liked, but I've at least tried a decent chunk of them. they are functionally this game's version of subspecies, and in some cases they truly expand on the original fight in meaningful ways. rustrazor ceanataur, for example, now swaps between a gravios shell and a glavenus shell on its back, and takes moves from each depending on which phase it's in. during the gravios phase it doles out frequent water beams from its back, making close-range combat a necessity, whereas during the glavenus phase it gains the ability to sharpen and unleash devastating spinning attacks that inflict bleed. its counterpart stonefist hermataur, however, is mostly identical to its original version except for the fact that it jumps more I think? and has incredibly annoying claws that can't be pierced without mind's eye, which is such a drag. multiple other deviants lean on untouchable body parts as a bit of a crutch and it slows down the pace of the fight tremendously without simultaneously making it less dynamic.

of course, deviants are also quarantined away from the normal quest lists as well as requiring a special permit currency in order to accept their quests. they are easily the most crass example of monhun encouraging an armor set grind, as literally all the deviants exist for is to provide a mandatory grind for certain best-in-game gear. upgrading a deviant's armor is dependent on playing each of their dozen-odd quests multiple times, and generally the best skills on the armor are rolled up into a special deviant-specific skill with no associated decorations, making mixed sets or gemming in skills entirely impossible (though you can grind charms that have these skills). it really unfortunately put me off of trying deviants more, especially considering that the fights themselves are a mixed bag. I originally intended to write this review after fighting bloodbath diablos, but given that it's locked behind several other deviant fights on top of ahtal-ka, I think I'll save that fight for later.

the rest is business as usual really. there's plenty of great fights, plenty of bad fights, and even more in-between. you'll repeat specific matchups over and over again on different maps, or maybe do a double hunt, or just mix it up depending on where you're at. you'll grind for five hours to make the armor set you want and then ditch it two ranks up for something better. sometimes you're clinging on for dear life and sometimes you're just keeping your hands occupied while paying attention to something else. mhgu is the closest the series gets to a sort of unalienated labor: virtually unlimited resources, a wide variety of different tasks to choose from, and no time restrictions at all. my only hope now is that I'll be able to pry myself away from it now that the sense of obligation isn't there anymore.

my endgame build:
Agnaktor X armor set (gemmed in light eater and razor sharp with a charm)
Fading Night 7
Striker Gunlance: Blast Dash III, Absolute Evasion, Absolute Readiness

and ofc ahtal-ka was a great fight. basically the bridge between mhgu and mhr's monster design. looking forward to try it with others soon to make it more of a siege, and also so it doesn't take 40 minutes to take down.

possibly the most dreamcast-esque title to end up on the xbox, specifically in that bizarre control scheme. left trigger jump, right trigger shoot, different weapons mapped to the different face buttons (except for A, which goes conspicously unused), tank controls on left stick, inverted constrained camera on right stick, and boosting on the left stick button. there's a little bit of "you'll get used to it," but man is it a completely asinine control scheme that both simultaneously wastes valuable controller space and feels clunky up through the end game. an action TPS without strafing is already difficult enough, and somehow they managed to bungle it even more by tying so many necessary actions to stick buttons (the tank controls are not terrible on their own but still awkward). the mercury crash move required for the final boss (which requires both aiming yourself as a projectile in 3D and clicking both sticks in simultaneously while already in the air) is truly where I snapped on this.

it's a real shame too, because the boost mechanics are genuinely interesting and add some much needed flavor to an otherwise bland experience. while moving vertically expends fuel, boosting in the x-y plane is virtually free for the initial portion, and the game encourages you to spam alternating boosts to charge your special gauge and power up your weapons. the sense of speed you get from drifting across rocks like they're ice or flying across a giant map in seconds is absolutely the crux of this experience as a whole, and it's relatively glitch-free to boot. it's unfortunate that most of the platforming requires expending most of the fuel slowly flying up to reach platforms that seem placed to frustrate players getting used to the odd controls. it also does not help that stopping mid-boost requires snapping back on the analog stick, which often does not register properly resulting in either a full-speed fall or a misaligned hover.

the actual shooting mechanics are relatively downplayed thanks to there being only two guns, infinite ammo, and more than a smidge of auto-aim. most of the actual gameplay instead consists of panning the limited camera around waiting for a target enemy out of range to finally snag on your lock-on since around half of the missions consist only of clearing out all enemies in an area. the other ones generally just involve reaching a destination or defeating a mini-boss, which makes even bothering to fight basic enemies pointless. even with the game's extremely short runtime there's quite a bit of level reuse over the 14 missions, and the first two bosses also get reused multiple times each. thankfully for the most part of the bosses are manageable (outside of the final boss) but given the total lack of circle strafing I would hesitate to call them "fun" per se.

thinly layered on top of all of this is a rather odd story that mixes body horror and steampunk on the surface of an alien planet; at least, this is what I gathered from the optional in-game lore, which is entirely text-only and does not really make its way into the story. the off-screen villain dr. hubble seems legitimately unnerving and disturbed from the documents he leaves behind, but since he's never seen - beyond some bizarre infant creations that would make drakengard blush - I couldn't tell you one way or the other how effective he is as an antagonist. the game stirs up some pawed-at philosophy bits with a sort of mysticism DNA splicing thing, but it's so poorly integrated with the gameplay that to even dissect it seems not worth the trouble. all of the mutated colonists you kill ad nauseum throughout the story are somehow turned back to their normal selves in the end, and I get the feeling that most of the swarms of arachnid-adjacent monsters you take on are just random aliens unmentioned by the game's narrative anyway. and no, even by the end I didn't understand why there was a whale in the gunvalkyrie logo.

if anything this game feels extremely rushed, likely because of the mid-stream development shift to the xbox. it does make me wonder how the dreamcast would have handled the game's expansive level geometry (which I might add has the interesting functionality of having scalable area walls at points, though this is extremely poorly managed by the game's physics engine, which already struggles enough with moving the player up slopes) but then again the dreamcast did not have click-in sticks so I imagine earlier prototypes played significantly differently regardless. at best this game is a brainless shooter with mildly interesting traversal features, and at its worst it frustrates the player or forces them to wade through filler that really does not belong in a game this slight. so many levels on which I considered abandoning the game altogether, although I suppose I'm glad I waited it out.

it feels somewhat rare that an indie game really captures a retro style in a way that does more than pay lip-service to its predecessors. shovel knight was one of those games: a pitch-perfect recreation of NES-style action challenges stripped away of the mechanical uncertainty of the actual games of that era. cuphead captures that for the run-and-gun in a way that makes it not only a loving tribute but a legitimate cornerstone in the genre.

cuphead feels borne by a rigorous design methodology that demonstrates a deep understanding of the fundamentals of boss design in a 2D space. each fight is undergirded by the movement and platform features; this is generally the unifying trait. plenty of fights take place on a featureless flat ground, but very quickly wrinkles such as scrolling, conveyors, limited platforms, or combinations of these are introduced. a great late-game example is the ghost train stage that features of a platform that can and must be moved between left, center, and right using parry controls. these establish for the player the laws of their dominion so to speak: what space can the player leverage? what options exist at any given time to dodge a certain obstacle?

with each phase then comes the primary attack. bosses generally lack dynamic reactive capabilities unlike a human, so they are incapable of mindgames generally speaking. thus, in virtually all boss fights the boss cycles between random attacks that the player must apply a counterstrategy against. in modern games the design parlance is as such: windup animation begets the attack proper begets an opening for a player to either 1) rest if their counterstrategy is not efficient enough to yield a counterattack or 2) counterattack. too unthreatening and the player barely needs to muster a counterattack, and too overpowered and the player will have no time to respond. cuphead weaves in a truly surprising variety of primaries to challenge the player: the enemy may momentarily remove the player's control of the space, such as with the cat at the end of the rat tank fight batting its paws to swat the right and left sides of the screen, or perhaps the enemy creates antagonistic autonomous elements that force the player to utilize their spatial reasoning and pattern recognition to deduce a projectile's movement habits and shift their position accordingly, such as in the bee queen's middle phase where she incorporates stochaistically-drifting geometric projectiles as well as bullets that move in a linear back-and-forth climb on either side of the screen.

primary attacks on their own are only a lock-and-key design principle: find the counterstrategy that works against a particular move and apply it when needed. what creates true tension in the fight are the auxillary attacks. virtually all bosses are able to separately cycle through auxillary attacks that generally involve an entirely separate on-screen entity attacking on their own accord out of sync with the primary opponent. auxillary attacks on their own already heighten the experience by creating a space-constraint intersection that forces the player to adapt their key to more than just a single lock. certain intersections of attacks may prevent successful counterattacks or force the player to fall back on safer strategies, thus making the risk-and-reward judgment more critical and ever mutating. where cuphead really succeeds is having the auxillary attacks cycle as well. it's much like having three basic collared shirts and three basic ties: the combinations they present give you nine outfits, yielding an multiplicative amount of potential attack intersections. phase one of the sea medusa fight is a great example of this: three primary attacks (either summoning ghost projectiles or bringing one of two different fish out of the water with their own projectiles) with three auxillary attacks (staggered puffer fish projectiles, a water jet that forces a positive y velocity, and bombs that explode with a octagonal bullet pattern). each on their own is manageable, but combined there is an additional level of fluidity demanded of the player with adapting on the fly to intersections they may have never seen before.

of course cuphead doesn't simply hew to these elements in every fight; it expands on them and plays with the potential they possess. take the pirate ship fight: this begins with both a small primary attack (pellets fired by the captain one by one) with an auxillary component (a barrel that moves back and forth at the top of the screen, attempting to crush the player when they pass underneath). within time the captain will begin preempting his own pellet attack with a cycle of attacks from different sources, each with their own tell: a shark that consumes the left half of the screen, small bulldog fish(?) that slide across the ground, and a squid that both creates a fountain of bullets and can turn the screen dark if not defeated in time. on its own this is a perfectly interesting fight: manage the primary and auxillary attacks while being cognizant of primary attacks from external components via tells. however, in the second phase, the ship itself begins shooting cannonballs on a timer. at this point the player must not only manage transient attacks from the captain but also track the separate rhythms of the barrel and the ship's cannonballs. these intersect in a truly polyrhythmic fashion that pushes the fight into truly challenging territory that feels immensely rewarding to lock in with.

this is also boosted by cuphead having a stellar kit and smooth controls that feel sharp without being too abrupt or linear. his ability to parry specific objects (which are colored pink to distinguish them) adds a scale of mastery of many bullet patterns, with basic familiarity only yielding the ability to dodge while a complete understanding allows navigation to specific bullets for a parry and the reward of extra super meter. the super meter attacks are all rather useful and feel well balanced, though for the full-meter arts I can't really imagine someone using anything other than invincibility. however, I found myself legitimately switching out his shots and charms for different fights, which is not to say I found all of the variety useful (I mainly stuck to chaser and spread along with the smoke dodge and one extra heart depending on the fight), but to require a level of specificity in strategy for each fight encourages me to experiment more than I may otherwise. there are virtually no points of frustration I can attribute to a failure in the controls or a lack of a specific tool; almost every time I was stumped on a particular counterstrategy I always eventually worked something out even if it wasn't optimal.

I would really go as far as to say I don't think cuphead has any particular failings or even elements of unfair frustration that I can think of. while an immensely challenging experience, the primary and auxillary attacks are synergistic in such a way that a given intersection can't truly render an attack undodgeable or debilitating. never did I feel like a particular portion was just inserted because it felt cool or to fill space; rather, every bit of the game feels handled with care and finesse. the dragon fight was the peak of this for me... that particular fight walled me and put me off the game quite a bit. while the exasperation I felt was valid, I could never pinpoint a particular aspect that really felt unfair to me. at the end of the day, those projectiles that explode into smaller projectiles when hit really preyed on my spray-and-pray instincts in a way that punished me (and many others I assume) far more than most games are willing to muster. if I had to name one little thing that did feel off to me, it was the platforms during the bee queen fight. the scrolling part and random gaps don't bother me, but their collision box doesn't feel quite lined up with the art, which sometimes led to me falling randomly in confusing ways.

I do wish the flying stages had the same level of customization as the ground stages, but understandably that's a scope issue and not something I would expect from a small production. the non-boss levels also feel a bit perfunctory, but they are all still fun and only necessary for collecting coins for purchasing items in the shop. both of these won't get in the way of anyone looking to experience this: the core of the gameplay is still the tremendous boss fights. this has given me a a nice little kick in the pants to go back and dive into the early 16-bit fundamental works that helped mold this into the genius showpiece that it is.

You're the DJ of this gig!

IIDX at its most cyberfocused. strictly vector graphics, unshaded polygons, cycling hexadecimal counters, and four-on-the-floor. trance refers to the state of repetitive bliss that practioners experience under the blinding lights, and no other IIDX theme highlights that endless repetition like DistorteD. bitcrushed vocals, compressed and gated kicks, anything that saturates the amplitude and quanitizes the rhythm is fair game here. the mascots here succumb to the Distortion, mutating their bodies and armor into hardened voxel sheets of white and grey.

I've noticed the more I play IIDX that it truly is the platonic ideal of rhythm as unconscious intuitive action. watching the notes scroll down the screen triggers movement in my fingers that I often am not quite able to comprehend, especially as charts continue to get more and more complex. there simply isn't enough time for me to process and dissect upcoming structures; it's all raw instinct.

admittedly whenever I sit down with this set it can sometimes be a bit of struggle to find songs/charts I enjoy. there's plenty of great tracks here but perhaps my 6*-8* range isn't as well represented here as I would like... my 9*s are limited and I'm not necessarily too keen on any of the ones I can play. I can't not mention how amazing dj TAKA's unlockable music select BGM is though. the three Vs. tracks are also excellent CS additions, and will be listed below.

favorite tracks:
DJ YOSHITAKA - Bloody Tears(IIDX EDITION) (HARD RENAISSANCE)
SADA - Broadbanded (TRANCE)
朱雀 - CONTRACT (SUBLIME TECHNO)
DJ MURASAME - D.C.fish (TECHNO)
Ryu☆ - Harmony and Lovely (PROGRESSIVE HOUSE)
AKIRA YAMAOKA - Heavenly Sun (IIDX VERSION) (TECHNO)
HHH (Ryu☆ & Dai) - So Fabulous !! (BUCHIAGE TRANCE)
dj REMO-CON - Tonight? (ELECTROCK)
kors k vs teranoid - tripping contact (FREEFORM)
DJ Yoshitaka feat.杉村ことみ - wish (CUTE POPS)
橙色特別室 - カゴノトリ～弐式～ (和式電子音楽)
Ryu☆ Vs. Sota - Go Beyond!! (TRANCE CORE)
dj TAKA Vs. DJ YOSHITAKA - quell ~ the seventh slave ~ (TRANCE)
kors k Vs. L.E.D. - SOLID STATE SQUAD (HARDSTYLE)
Manabu Namiki - Shoot'Em All (DETROIT TECHNO)
L.E.D. - QUANTUM TELEPORTATION (TECHNO)

such whiplash jumping from viii to this one... I guess I brought it on myself. there's just so many issues tied to this weird hybrid 2D-3D isometric engine holding me back from enjoying this one more.

hitboxes are hard to parse because the sense of depth is compromised by the perspective and the flat characters. it doesn't help that during boss battles there's usually a lot of hitboxes on screen at once. this is exacerbated by the fact that generally adol's only way to get out of harm's way is to jump, and an aerial adol's location in space can hardly be determined without some practice. combat in general is light on options given adol's limited kit in this game. attacks are limited to the usual mash-x combo and with the added wrinkle of a couple different aerial attacks. fighting the regular mobs is so tedious and dull by the end of the game... once you get the double jump you can at least stun enemies by doing double jump->downward plunge? but late-game enemies don't respond to these as often so it doesn't feel like it significantly changes the gameplay loop.

and those boss battles... they truly love throwing crazy bullet patterns and such at you in this game. I'd love to see a 3D action game take on that level of challenge and variety of projectiles, but in this hybrid engine it feels claustrophobic and arbitrary. in the first half of the game I found the bosses truly overwhelming, and much of this has to do with streamlined mechanics from typical action rpgs that really should've made an appearance here. there's no way to heal in a fight outside of popping a full boost gauge, but the second level that includes healing doesn't unlock until the midgame unfortunately considering how useful it is. there's also no way to upgrade equipment until you unlock the ability to teleport after the second major dungeon, which is still relatively early on but feels awkwardly late given how useful upgrading equipment is.

the bosses aren't only overwhelming because of the hitboxes of course, as there's a sort of maximalist old-school design pattern going on here. each boss has a ream of moves that must be dealt with, with virtually all fights having multiple phases and occasional overlapping attacks that really stress proper positioning. what's unfortunate about this is that adol's limited toolkit results in very few options available to approach each encounter. it's a necessity to experiment and find which strategy works with each attack, which is a common design pattern for any boss fight but feels extremely restrictive here with so few different approaches to each fight. in some cases the proper solution to a given attack can be relatively obscure or unintuitive, such as the swoop attack gildias uses in the third phase in his fight. he remains aerial the whole time, but he will only pick you up if you don't jump, which does not make much physical sense and was a strategy not apparent to friends who had previously played the game when I talked to them. this one attack could potentially kill the player in a single shot depending on luck (he throws you down a chasm with ledges that will severely damage you if they are not narrowly avoided or blocked using the charge magic) which feels cruel on the side of the developers. likewise multiple other projectiles towards the end of the game (such as in the clockwork robot fight or either of the final two bosses) will knock you down and chain into other projectiles, causing massive damage to the player. it seems like in a lot of ways the developers put in a wide variety of creative ideas without caring much about how viable it was to play against them. compared to the much gentler difficulty curve of the modern ys games, it's a little shocking to spend 10+ attempts on a boss that can consistently kill you in only four hits. the final boss is especially excruciating, as for most of the fight you cannot attack the boss directly and instead must just survive until your next opportunity to attack arises. it's a shame too, as much of the end of the game (barring the clock tower boss which was far too fast for adol and mostly consisted of me running in a circle waiting for my boost to recharge) has some very solid bosses that feel more flexible regarding feasible approaches. it's not that the ideas here aren't good, but the way bosses control the pace of the fight really removes much of the fun of trying to optimize damage or fight aggressively.

what's most damning really is that this frustration is surrounded by little else. the plot is certainly fine but is pretty thin with shallow side characters and a relatively predictable structure. dungeons generally consist of long straight lines with small detours for field items or extra goodies, and so exploring each one feels more like a chore of wading through enemies rather than any sort of puzzle layout or organic area. regular enemies generally require little thought except for some focus on character placement, which would be fine if the combat had a bit more spice. the magic as well rarely gets used outside of clearly telegraphed lock-and-key puzzles that don't particularly evolve over the course of the game. this is a game entirely built around engaging boss encounters, and I really don't think the combat mechanics are robust enough to make an imprint on me that this is a must-play or even particularly engaging at all.

it's a shame really, since all of the requisite falcom bits are present: energetic music, lovely sprite art, and the feeling of a well-crafted and succinct B-tier jrpg snug within your psp (or pc, which seems to unfortunately not play nice with modern hardware). it just suffers from a lack of ambition in its fluff and structure while potentially possessing too much ambition in its boss design. for every boss I felt satisfied to beat there was a counterpoint that felt tedious or stiff or poorly considered. or perhaps I'm just more cut out for modern ys rather than these older titles.

pour one out for the mid-size developers; the hard-working designers cranking out licensed titles and budget IPs left and right before the HD era killed off small-team development and financial consolidation came back in vogue. the jank if you will, that lovely feeling of finding a solid 6 or 7 out of 10 with a couple kooky mechanics and a simple gameplay loop tucked away in your favorite console's library.

cavia may be one of the most prolific of these developers: their ouevre includes drakengard 1 and 2 (with d3 being handled by fellow jank purveyors access games), resident evil dead aim, gits:sac on ps2, beat down fists of vengeance, bullet witch, and nier... a truly stellar roster of B games. and in this sense, drakengard is a perfectly solid action title. in fact, I would call the dragon flying sections downright fun! it plays like a cross of ace combat's free-roam target-based objectives and flight control and panzer dragoon's targeting system, with some smart movement mechanics added in such as lateral dashes/dodges/blinks and 180 turnarounds. the enemy roster in these areas is solid as well, mixing more traditional flight combat fare such as oddly geometric aircraft with heat missiles with more magical fantasy elements such as flying reapers who can only be hit when they throw their scythes at you. just enough variety between missions to keep things interesting, and the bosses for this mode hit just right. in my mind even if an encounter is initially frustrating, as long as you can experiment and find the right tools to handle it I think it's a design success - ie the ending B boss whose air slices I found hard to reliably dodge until I began combining the lateral dodges with dashing at a different pitch angle.

the ground combat is a bit more of a hang-up overall, and it quickly becomes apparent that this mode is the more hastily constructed of the two. there's an inordinate amount of weapons with uncomfortably long grinds required and unique magic for each, a parry system that I almost never used, blocking and lateral rolls, and yet somehow in all of this they left out the right-stick camera control. very unfortunate! though given that it's a musou it's not difficult to adjust to using the minimap for guidance on enemy arrangement along with frequently using the center camera button. at the end of the day you can hew close to caim's default weapon with little trouble, and after you adjust it becomes as relaxing and mindless as any other musou. it helps that it has the extremely inspired ground/air hybrid levels, which allow you to lay waste to dozens of foes at once between handling magic-resistant enemies or trebuchets on foot.

if anything the biggest problem holding this game back is the mission structure. rarely do the designers muster anything more than waves of identical targets with the occasional twist such as "fight through a crevasse instead of an open field" or "we have some wizards here too" or possibly "explore this dungeon that is mostly just regular goons strewn throughout." it's a bit upsetting when they do go out on a limb and end up producing some of the lowest points in the game, such as the mission that requires you to take down a golem in a labyrinth of ravines - caim cannot mount angelus in the middle of the maze, so whenever he gets knocked off the dragon he must trek all the way back to the start to try again. these moments are mostly annoying rather than truly game-breaking, but it is disappointing that the game never elevates its scenario design, especially since missions can often run in the 15+ minute range unfortunately.

what also drags the missions down is that the story integration into each mission is rather poor. while there's evidently a large-scale war going on, you have no real present allies to fight beside, and the enemies have no dynamism beyond chasing you when you come within range. instead the plot points are parroted to you by off-screen characters represented as talking heads in a banner at the top of the screen. since caim and his party end up losing virtually every locale they defend to the empire, perhaps this conveys the futility of the conflict and the abject weakness of the union in face of the threat of the gods. at the same time, it left me feeling rather disconnected from the salient plot points when little what I do moves the plot forward; it often feels like these missions are just buffers between cutscenes.

if characters aren't babbling about off-screen events, they are often scolding caim for killing scores of people in an insatiable bloodlust driven by revenge. I went in with this knowledge and expected some cloying "you are the real bad guy" moral, but drakengard really surprised me with how it played with caim's character. he's potentially the best silent protagonist ever conceived: a man who literally let his sword do the talking, one who is so committed to violence that he willingly exorcises his voice in pursuit of absolute power. yet while verdehet pleads with him to spare his fellow man and angelus sneers at his animalistic instincts, neither can do much more than tsk tsk since they absolutely need caim whether he's a psychopath or not. the reality of their world is so deeply bathed in despair that the lives that caim takes are merely specks on top of the mountain of humanity's sin, totally and comprehensively meaningless. this ties in to the overarching flood-like narrative that the game pushes for, where the planet's most powerful force yearns to let the gods completely and utterly extinguish life in order to cleanse the world of its caked layers of immorality. in this setting, caim's actions are a form of idealism that proposes that perhaps humans can still change reality through sheer force of will, as angelus realizes when caim pushes her to reach new heights of power towards the end of the first ending. his actions directly convince her that perhaps humanity is worth saving and perserving after all... caim demonstrates a fascinating moral decay of the hero complex that manages to stubbornly save mankind from an extinction wrought by its own hand.

unfortunately much of the intrigue of the rest of the cast has been bowderlized in localization - even more unfortunately this is still present in the undub I played. how much this affects the story beyond pure shock value is up for debate, and I'm not sure I have an answer. whether leonard is any more compelling of a character without his nonce arc present for instance doesn't perhaps matter too much to the plot as a whole given that he does very little except make off-handed remarks of self-loathing (though his scenes towards the end are rather affecting and well done in CGI, which btw is pretty excellent throughout the game). arioch is just a vessel for female trauma with no characteristics beyond that, though given the cavalcade of woe already present the male cast is entirely unempathetic to her plight and seems to view her as a liability. out of all three of the side allies seere is easily the most interesting. his naivete and extreme need for validation stemming from his abusive mother's favoritism legitimately develops over the course of the game, to the point where he eventually accepts that true heroism requires tremendous sacrifice and is willing to accept the reality of his world. his bickering with angelus over the myths he's enraptured by is turned on his head as the world's grim recreation narrative is laid out for all to see, and thus to see him step into the shoes of those who came before is fulfilling. I also love the scene where he's trapped in the coliseum and caim comes in to slaughter an entire horde of "subhumans," to which angelus exhorts him for finally "learning how to save a life with [his] blade." truly great black comedy.

these characters don't make much of an appearance in the main story though, and if you play that first set of endings before going through the side content it will feel a little bare given the small cast. thankfully inuart is a satisfying secondary antagonist, one who's envious of caim's masculine strength over his own and seeks to exceed him and demonstrate sexual dominion to assert himself. his frenzy towards the end of the game as he plays directly into the hands of the cult of the watchers is a fulfilling downfall to witness, even if in the process (ending B) he manages to create an eldritch horror in the process thanks to his warped conception of mysticism stemming from the aforementioned web of myths humanity has woven for itself. those first three endings were all worth it on their own, and then the fourth one really blew things open and got me thinking more heavily about the narrative themes.

in fact, I nearly considered rating it higher, and then I played that final mission in ending D. what can I say? some people are just not very good game designers. I'll try to remember the fun I had with it prior at least... and to be clear, I didn't get ending E and instead just watched it on youtube. looks goofy!

what exactly is "friction"? the backloggd community frequently evokes this term to describe a wide array of moments and mechanics, yet without any sort of ontological basis to unify disparate uses of the term. I don't seek to define any axioms regarding the term, but I would like to take the opportunity of my completion of freedom unite's arduous village questline to ruminate on the uses of friction as an intentional and unintentional design technique. let's first establish friction at a high level:

Friction consists of gameplay elements that oppose player progression or elongate time spent on it.

this is a nice open-ended definition that gives us plenty of room to explore. possibly the most basic example of this is movement: the physical limitation of your avatar being unable to exist at all coordinates at once or being able to instantly teleport to any coordinate is within itself an act of friction. this spans a wide range of mechanics; consider tetris, where at high speeds the frame count behind a single lateral movement of the falling piece becomes a limitation against being able to place a given piece at the desired location before the piece lands, or games with areas that change the kinematics of a player's movement to become slower or faster than their base speed. for a walking simulator, the act of movement is the primary element separating their narratives and environments from less frictional genres such as interactive fiction and visual novels. of course, this above classification isn't necessarily useful for discussion given how wide-ranging it is, so I'll present a taxonomy to cover the most common types.

Immersive friction consists of frictional gameplay elements that seek to heighten the sense of existence in the game's environment.

a good example of the above would be plant growth mechanics, where seed items are planted and then can be harvested after a given amount of in-game time. while this poses a time restraint on the player in terms of obtaining the items, few would object to such a feature given that it simulates crop cultivation in reality. unless the player has no exposure to agriculture, they will be able to make a connection from reality to the in-game environment and integrate the mechanic into their understanding of how the world operates. this doesn't necessarily have to consist of elements that correspond to our reality, as I would suggest it also encompasses elements that exist to introduce the player to the particular quirks or "unrealistic" elements of the in-game world.

Oppositional friction consists of frictional gameplay elements that seek to heighten difficulty.

this design methodology is the reason that many of us find many 8-bit games unbearable; games that lean on oppositional friction too heavily can suffer from serious artificial difficulty. otherwise this is pretty bread-and-butter design fundamentals in order to present a proper challenge to players. damage balancing, enemy counts, time limits, and cooldown timers (among others) all fall under this umbrella, and often these values are the first to be tweaked in post-game updates in order to dial in the exact amount of challenge players need.

Unintentional friction consists of frictional gameplay elements resulting from oversights in the development process.

bugs, glitches, and their ilk all fall into this category. the shining example of this in my head is the sonic adventure duology: both of these games would likely be far better tolerated by the gaming community at large (who already are relatively forgiving of these games' failings) if they simply weren't riddled with countless collision issues, screwy camera sections, and physics goofs. of course, it's not always easy to tell whether a given mechanic falls into this category or one of the others given that specific design intentions are not always known. it's also certainly true that "unintentional smoothness" or something similar exists in many games, where development oversights actively reduce friction in other areas.

every game has frictional elements that fall into each of these categories, and identifying them within freedom unite (which I'll hereby refer to as mhfu) is easy. monster hunter games have retained a loyal fanbase that appreciates the dense internal logic of the series's world, all of which relies on immersive friction. weapons become dull with repeated use and must be frequently sharpened, materials must be gathered by hand or farmed over time, certain monster materials come from breaking or severing specific parts of the monster, and powerful items must be combined by hand. while understanding the intricacies will never come easily to a new player, the games do provide ample resources to those willing to learn, and the difficulty is balanced in such a way that new players won't have to leverage every mechanic in order to succeed during the early hours of the game.

mhfu is not a truly standalone product, as it is not only the culimination of the first two generations of monster hunter and an expansion of monster hunter freedom 2, but it is also at some level a retooled port of the ps2 title monster hunter 2 dos (or mh2). that game pushes the envelope on immersion past the first generation of entries by heavily expanding the single-player village scenario and introducing a cycle of seasons that solidified the game's setting. day and night alternate and change the map layouts, huntable monsters vary based on time of year, and the overall progression befits that of a living area that grew with the player day by day. players need to plan for seasons in advance; for example, beehives with vital honey deposits dry up in the cold seasons, forcing players to either stockpile in advance or lie low until the season passes over. every material carved or received post-hunt must fit in your limited pouch, and items in your box only stack to the point that they would in your regular inventory. all of this was carefully considered by the developers in order to create an enticing hunter/gatherer simulation that pushed difficult decision-making and world knowledge onto the player (for more information I highly recommend this rather lengthy retrospective of the game).

mhfu rolls back many of these changes in favor of streamlining the hunting experience. virtually all the mechanics I've listed above are absent: there is no seasonal system, day/night features are now simply part of the quest instead of cycling, item box space is nigh unlimited, and quest rewards teleport directly to your box. I want to stress that changing these isn't inherently a problem (something that the above video struggles to articulate). the monhun portable devs had decided to center the boss fight aspect of the series rather than the survival mechanics, and given the boost that mhfu gave the franchise, it seems like they successfully identified what enticed most players to begin with.

however, this absence of immersive friction seriously wounds the believability of the world. mhfu lacks the undergirding framework that made mh2 so interesting as a simulation of hunter-gathering lifestyle, and without that structure the cracks in the foundation begin to show. monsters here are endless scores of polygonal marionettes to be plopped into one of the many areas on a whim. they frequently walk in place, awkwardly jitter between moves, and refuse to interact with other monsters in their vicinity. stripped of the ecological backgrounds underpinning their mh2 appearances, these monsters can do nothing except serve as punching bags for the player to idly and repeatedly kill. later games would substitute back in more immersive elements that make these fights feel more dynamic and alive: the exhaustion system in the third generation slows down the monster and makes them feel as if they are legitimately expending energy battling you, and the fourth generation adds a significant amount of environmental interaction with the focus on verticality. mhfu sits at an awkward crossroads where it streamlines the mechanics to the point of killing some of the charm while simultaneously not possessing any innovations that make up for the lack of immersion.

simultaneously as the immersive friction is dialed back, the oppositional friction stings ever greater. the hitboxes are one of the most infamous examples from this entry (and prior ones); virtually every monster has an attack with a disjointed hitbox or a frame one activation that seriously strains depth perception and reaction time, especially for players new to the game. with the artifice of progression already so apparent here, these questionable design decisions scan more as cruel tricks to increase playtime and encourage reliance on multiplayer. the game seems as if it were self-aware, less truly a hunting game and more a endless boss rush that relies on compulsion to drive playtime. in response, the player begins to push back, bending the game even further away from a microcosm of elevated reality. why not just spam flash bombs if every monster can be repeatedly blinded by them? why bother exploring all the different quests when I can just look up key quests online? what's the point of fighting two monsters at once when I can wait for minutes on end in a different area waiting for them to split up? at this point the game begins to lose sight of the thrill of the hunt at all, and for every pound of pain it dishes out it receives a karmic retribution threatening its ability to convince me that its conceit has any basis to it at all.

so while its many weak points have been rectified in later entries and it performed incredibly well when released, from a design perspective I see mhfu as a cautionary tale in many ways. friction is not just a blunt weapon but a nuanced tool that requires care to truly apply properly. to that end: simply removing elements of friction from a game does not necessarily have a net positive effect on a game. removing key elements of immersive friction can in turn kill a player's desire to exist within the world the game creates. removing some elements of immersive friction may be for the best, but it may be equally or more pertinent to target elements of oppositional friction instead, especially if the goal is to streamline gameplay. finally, there are other ways to include immersive elements that are not necessarily frictional. including these can retain essential depth even when frictional elements are absent. I intend that none of these conclusions are dogmatic, but merely that they are my examinations of how this game feels slight compared to others in its series.

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gonna be upfront here: I didn't really finish the village quests. once I got to 9 star quests I did a quick tally of how many wyverns I had defeated and the number was probably around 60 or so, which is way under the 100 threshold you need to unlock the silverlos/goldian key quests. no way in hell I was going to needlessly grind when I already had 80+ hours and was desperately tired of this game, so I went ahead and set a goal to defeat rajang and call it quits. honest to god I was surprised I got that on the second try given how much of a pain it is... when enraged he could easily knock out 75% of my life bar if I got hit with the beam or some of his other attacks, especially since I was still using LR gravios armor (heavily upgraded of course).

nekoht's quests in general are probably the most abysmal key quest choices I've seen in the series up to now. for one: great forest is barely ever featured even though it's supposed to be the new map for the entry. it's a solid map but given that I've literally fought no one other than hypnocatrice and narga there I don't have super strong opinions on it either way. meanwhile you're pushed into a bunch of the shitty first gen maps... I read a gamefaqs thread stating that first gen desert is far superior to its dunes remake in fourth gen and I am perplexed about how anyone can hold that opinion. another place where the lack of other immersive friction fails: here is a map with two gigantic flat areas that I never get to explore organically at all and where I can be knocked into the adjacent areas off of virtually any border with no indication of where said border falls. the white monoblos fight here walled me for a bit and it was so infuriating. the basarios fight is bizarre since it takes place in old swamp and basarios literally never leaves a single area... the khezu fight is fine, even though having to run back and forth between the two separate cave areas isn't particularly fun. the double hypnocatrice refight is pointless (what a boring addition) and the rest of the 8 star rank keys are sort of here-or-there, just more hunt-a-thons.

except for yian garuga... what the fuck were they thinking. supposedly this Elegy of a Lone Wolf quest features the souped up scarred garuga variant and it hits like a truck with a cushy hp boost as well. I legitimately timed out on this fight using gunlance much to my absolute bafflement. my bit of hammer practice from mhgu recently came in handy here however, as I grinded out a nice iron hammer for HR and proceeded to crush the poor bird's skull in a truly cathartic 25 minute blast. this is truly the mhfu dichotomy: you feel like absolute shit when you do poorly and an absolute god when everything's going in your favor. just a year after starting my true monhun journey I finally felt like I accomplished one of the major elements of being a strong player, which is actually being able to switch weapons to counter a specific monster rather than leaning on a single weapon type for everything. it felt like such a natural fit too, as I was sussing out the safest quarter-turns to get fully charged standing shots on, nailing rolls through certain attacks, and watching my positioning to ensure I couldn't be caught by frame one moves at any point. that's some fucking monster hunter. same with the rajang fight; he's total bullshit but then it just clicks and suddenly I'm side-hopping through his punches and exploiting his janky beam hitbox.

that nargacuga fight is the most telling of where the series was destined to go from this game on. narga might be using tigrex's skeleton (I think anyway) but its moveset is completely its own. it moves with grace, braces itself for attacks, and features unique windups for virtually everything in its arsenal. I've fought narga dozens of times in p3rd when grinding for his endgame weapon, so I never expected this fight to be tough, but it really did put into relief how clunky many of the other monsters are. the move pool for 1st gen monsters is absolutely barren; expect to see virtually every wyvern have a tail whip, a hip check, a basic bite, and a turn-around swipe, all with virtually identical animations. some of the skeleton reuses are particularly glaring as well, like what are the differences between diablos and monoblos really? is it just that diablos jumps further from the ground when reemerging and also has more hp? it's pretty cleared why they've phased sone of these out in more recent years... it's an absolute crime that gigginox hasn't replaced khezu though, that fight is miles more interesting.

really it comes down to how much information you have going in. I already knew the controls from p3rd so I wasn't too thrown off by not having little context icons to let me know how to gather in certain spots or climb ledges. I started farming armor and power seeds from day 1 as a cash crop, and I ended up having to extensively use them not only for demondrugs/armorskins but also to consume on their own; who knew that they give +10 to a stat and stack with your drugs? in many of the other games I could coast without really preparing for each monster, but here it's an absolute necessity. flash bombs for everyone, sonic bombs for diablos, tainted meat for tigrex, etc. etc. I needed to spare no expense just to get by here. without all that prior knowledge it would've been curtains for me with this game a lot faster I think, and I would absolutely not recommend this game at all to those who haven't played any of the other pre 5th-gen games at least. I'm soloing G4 stuff in mhgu without thinking twice and then getting my ass handed to me by high rank village in this game. rough.

one day I'd love to flex my assembly knowledge and maybe make an easy-type hack for this game, which seems potentially feasible given that FUComplete exists. my ideas:
+base value of 50 defense. this is what mh3u did, and it would hopefully dull the edge on some of the truly insane attack values in this game.
+dung bombs actually scaring off monsters. this works on khezu, so it may be possible to either expand this check for all monsters or hook in the code for it into other monster AI routines, wouldn't be easy though. would really make double monster quests far more bearable
+felyne chef auto-cooking. just always give me 50/50 please, stop making me look at the wiki for the various recipes
+high rank village harvest tours. what the hell were they thinking leaving these out??

anyway back to mhgu... I'm an agnaktor x set grind away from getting to enjoy that kickass ahtal-ka fight. I'll come back to this and do multiplayer sometime, I'm sure I'll get an itch eventually and hunstermonter is still very active. maybe then I'll finish off village... which btw I already fought akantor a bunch in p3rd so it's not like I'm missing that fight completely, and I skipped HR shen gaoren because that fight is easily the most boring siege I've ever played.

another quick note: sony rules so much for making their handheld save data easy to access and move. originally started this on my dad's vita, moved the save to ppsspp, then back to vita, then to my psp, then back to ppsspp. playing this with claw on psp actually feels pretty viable but it was starting to give me some arm pain so I decided to call it quits on real hardware. it looks so gorgeous on that screen though...

no other game experiments with diegetic rhythm gameplay like space channel 5 part 2. eschewing the opaque freestyle gameplay of the similar parappa series, space channel 5 instead presents easy-to-grasp rhythms conveyed via creative visual cues. the call-and-response challenge paradigm is accented with twists that extend beyond pure memorization: long strings of inputs may be symbolized by the movements of a boss robot's appendage, or panels featuring dance poses lighting up in time with the backing beat. once basic concepts are established, the designers throw curveballs to screw with the player and add some much-needed challenge to the experience. you may have to single out an out-of-place opponent who sings the wrong input, or carefully count spores crashing down from a gargantuan mutated plant. as each stage goes on the music gets progressively faster and the commands begin demanding better reflexes all the way up until a climatic motif that ends each stage. even with its simplicity it's an absolute ball to play.

the game also oozes a retro sci-fi style that showcases go-go boots, smooth curved architecture, and rave-tinged big band tunes. I absolutely need to shout out director yumiko miyabe, who created the original design for protagonist ulala in the first game as well as having art/CG credits on other sega staples like panzer dragoon saga and NiGHTS. it's obvious that she was a primary influence on the game's unique vibrance and campy encounters. this game also boasts fully 3D environments that vastly outdo the crunchy FMV backdrops of the first game. there's a much heavier focus on environment interaction in this one given that elements can change on the fly much more quickly, and towards the end it segues into some truly abstract areas filled with gripping tessellations. these combined with the extensive choreography and the eclectic musical themes work fuse in a way that absolutely screams "Dreamcast."

the game is not long, but at the very least they added some neat extra content on to satiate those wanting to squeeze more out of the campaign. there's a pseudo hard-mode that's unlocked after finishing the main story; I wouldn't call it a true hard mode since not all sections have more challenging patterns, but at least they tried to stretch it as far as they could. there's also a special survival mode with a hand-selected set of rhythms that will truly test a player's mettle given that a single mistake will send you right back to the start. setting high scores on the main stages and getting far in survival mode will unlock extra costumes, which functionally serve as a proto-achievement system. to add an extra layer of complexity, there are also multiple hidden inputs in each stage that can be subtly noticed by additional accents present in the backing tracks even when left unsaid in actual gameplay. that commitment to unorthodox ways to extend the replayability of these short titles is exactly what I expect from a sega title, and part 2 absolutely leapfrogs the first in that respect.

it helps that this is the only one available on modern platforms, as the aforementioned FMV backdrops of the original have seemed to let it fade into obscurity. this is the superior game by any metric anyway, so stream it live with your friends. revel in the charmingly awkward localized singing and cheerful grooves present throughout. indulge in one of the best early console rhythm titles available!!

odyssey's main contribution to the collectathon canon was the acknowledgement that to make a robust collectathon experience, there needed to be a constant shuffling of verbs to avoid tedium and vary the challenges available to the player. while this has always been a feature of the genre, the usual approach is to overburden the main character with loads of unlockable powers, or to lock new toolkits behind minigames that limit player expressivity within strict spatial barriers or time limits. odyssey's capture mechanic neatly allows temporary changes in player verbs without overloading mario's basic (though very nuanced ofc) toolkit while also bounding capture use organically via locality with a lot of room for the player to experiment.

while the new kirby obviously doesn't implement the open-area trappings of odyssey, it incorpoates the capture via the new mouthful mode, which overlays whatever copy ability he has with a new basic toolkit from whatever he's swallowed. doing this allows the developers to dip into the deep well of alternative verbs without violating the player's choice of copy ability, but at the same time implementing these takes away from the number of copy abilities available. the weird and wild among kirby's long list of ablities over the years have been culled in favor of these limited mouthful abilities, and since the set of mouthful objects becomes well-worn quickly, it can make the second-to-second gameplay feel monotonous.

however, kirby levels are not iterative in the way that mario levels are, where challenge concepts are evolved over the course of a small period to test the player's abilities in more and more demanding contexts. instead, kirby levels have always bounced from idea to idea with more focus on surprising and disorienting the player; each three-star door could completely flip the level's idea on its head, or shift to something else entirely. with this design technique in place, the mouthful abilities really shine as ways to quickly shift a player's attention towards the new limited verbs before shoving them into something different. these are joyrides, not obstacle courses, and the game only gets better and better as it continues to develop the amount of variety for the player into the endgame. the beginning is shallow and rote of course (as all kirby games are to some extent), but quality only scales up as the adventure goes on. the later levels are a whirlwind of mechanics that consistently delighted me; a veritable funhouse of new ideas and environments. the added treasure rooms bolster the experience as well by offering more compelling tests of the player's comprehension of each toolkit, at least when they go beyond simple gauntlets of enemies.

on pop star this would have only pushed the pink puffball so far, but in this new world the developers wring a lot of fascinating vistas and locales out of this decaying metropolis. each world hews close to tried-and-true world themes with the added twist of navigating human-like architecture, which is new territory for the series and novel for platformers in general. at their best, the overgrown foliage and buried structures paradoxically make the land feel more alive than many of kirby's previous retreads of familiar territory. at worst, they make the engine sputter while simultaneously limiting the scope of the world outside the explicit frame of the camera. while the on-rails approach suits kirby's overall hurried design, it also means that true hidden paths and secrets cannot truly lie outside of the player's view, making them often feel like perfunctory methods of handing out additional coins or ablities. to further develop the world, the devs have added the waddle dee town, which expands as the game progresses to offer a variety of optional content and items. unfortunately it's not much more than an interactive menu, but at the very least it offers a beefy package to those interested in content besides the main levels.

what really sealed this as one of my favorite kirby games were the bosses, all of which really thrive in a 3D space. there's much more room for interesting patterns and dynamic encounters when you aren't limited to 2D, and the developers did a great job overall designing bosses that smartly harness the space (besides sillydillo, who is undercooked and not particularly interesting to fight). with the added bonus of kirby's new witch time-esque dodge ability, trying to take down each boss as efficiently as possible is more interesting than it ever has been before in the series, even if some of the new weapon upgrading can trivialize encounters. in fact, it works so naturally that it fits the kirby series in an odd way: older games have a reputation for secretly housing stellar beat-em-up mechanics, and this game seems to have snuck in its own little character action sequences.

to that end, what this series really needs to shine in 3D is to lean into those aspects. let me carry multiple copy abilities at once and swap between them for combos. give me more enemies with complex attack patterns that don't go down in a single hit. strip out some of the platforming and give me better mini-bosses instead (the variety for them here is noticeably poor). provide an option for a true nightmare difficulty from the beginning. this game is quite good on its own merits, but what truly elevates it is the joy of combat, especially when that final gauntlet of bosses hits absolutely perfectly. another game in this style won't cut it, give us the action game kirby we deserve...

the fact that it leans into those strengths at all at least illustrates that the designers have more confidence in their level design abilities than in star allies, where the combat was again very fleshed out but placed in levels that never even vaguely attempted to leverage the character's strengths. for that alone forgotten land would be up there on my list of kirby games, and given the solid size of the package (ever more important now that the series retails for $60 a pop), I'd say it's worth trying out for any switch owner. it's the first game I've played in a while where I'm actually looking forward to playing a bit more of the post-game content, even if I'm not compelled to do every optional objective. this is about as polished of a kirby experience as we've ever gotten.

Just Got Splash Beats!

at this time in IIDX's history, the themes oscillated between mechanical/heavily synthetic styles that played up the artists' love of hard techno, breakbeat, and gabber, and joyful/euphoric/glamour styles that favored those producing uplifting trance, happy hardcore, and house. on the heels of IIDX RED and its crimson arrays of looping architecture is Happy Sky, a celebration of the endless air above us and the cool water sustaining us. it know its enthusiasm is infectious; it dares you to deny it with that opening salvo of gorgeous skylines with a handscrawled "Happy?" superimposed on top.

with this entry the difficulty levels have been overhauled, with a new scale from 1-12 replacing the 1-8+ used in the series up to this point. the previously named Light7 and 7Keys charts have now been renamed to Normal and Hyper, which perhaps more accurately reflect the challenge of each given the overall difficulty creep since the early iterations. with these and a final few QoL updates to the menus, IIDX was now in effect as good as it would get for the remainder of its ps2 run. for trance-heads like myself, this package is one of the best in the series for that distinct flavor of uptempo kicks, punchy leads, and hypnotic arpeggios.

favorite tracks:
Ryu☆ - Aurora (TRANCE CORE)
A/I - CaptivAte～浄化～ (NOSTALISH REQUIEM)
SLAKE - GREEN EYES (BROKEN TEK)
Ryu☆ - in motion (CLICK HOUSE)
dj TAKA - INAZUMA (TRANCE)
D.J.SWAN - Love Magic (DRUM'N'BASS)
Sota Fujimori - PLASMA (SYNTHESIZED TECHNO)
dj REMO-CON - Pollinosis (HARD DANCE)
DJ MURASAME - Scripted Connection⇒ (TECHNO)
Tatsh&DAYBREAKERS NEXT - Twelfth Style (HAPPY EURO PARADISE)
Mr.T - vault of heaven (ELECTROSHOCK)
L.E.D. / Remixed by Ryu☆ - 合体せよ！ストロングイェーガー！！ (Ryu☆ remix) (HARD DANCE)
L.E.D. fw.堀澤麻衣子 - DAWN -THE NEXT ENDEAVOUR- (DRUM & BASS)

frenetic fun with a neat power-up system and some explosive weapon combinations. powering up your ship requires catching flying capsules from a small shootable ship that appears pretty frequently, and these capsules not only upgrade your shots but also increase your number of options. there's also a large number of different orientations for your options, and the game is pretty good at presenting different scenarios where you'll need each of them. in some instances you may need to let your options roll around you to help clear enemies at all sides of you on the screen, or perhaps let them cover the side away from your movement to snipe bosses from the side, or beyond those it might be best to just let them sit in the classic 3-way formation. you can also stack unused options, and once you have a decent stockpile you'll have trouble dying thanks to the carnage you can rain down endlessly. it helps that powerups also give you an extra hit as well, making this a relatively forgiving game for the time. these powerups can be leveled up if multiple identical ones are collected in a row, and the leveling is shared between them, making on-the-fly strategy changes allowable without punishment.

a few quibbles though:
-all the sprites are so chunky in size, and while your own hitbox is more lenient than the chassis suggests, it's not quite clear where its bounds actually are
-dying means losing absolutely everything, and later stages really expect you to have a fully kitted-out ship going in lest you get quickly swamped by large heat-seeking projectiles and the like. I got through 4, 5, and 6 on a single life and then had to repeat 7 over and over again, after having died on the final boss no less.
-the bosses are all relaxed affairs (which is nice for this kind of game) but the final one (the three-phase one that is) is pretty rough. the first two phases are interesting but that third one really feels meant for a ship with a clearer hitbox considering how narrow the corridor you must fly in is
-having to hold two buttons down to fire both primary and secondary shots really fucked up my thumb. I need to break out my arcade stick next time I try to play a shmup for this genesis series
-the backgrounds have some fun parallax (especially the chasm stage) but there's a few instances where it's difficult to tell the enemy ships apart from the environment. this is especially bad in that final stage, and it may have been done on purpose

it's not perfect, but it's still a fun ride. I'm relatively inexperienced in this genre but I enjoyed my time with it, and I'll likely try out some of the other aleste titles after making my way through this one.

while "puzzle action" was not necessarily a new concept in the late '90s, mr driller decides to literally drop its titular hero into the claustrophobia of a tightly-packed falling-block playfield and let him scramble ever deeper to avoid being crushed. the arcade mode establishes two opposing forces of urgency: an air gauge that decreases with each block you break and the constant threat of unstable blocks succumbing to gravity above you. my first inclination (and I assume that of most new players) was to dig like crazy while making lateral movements in a mad dash to each 500 ft marker. of course this is wasteful and will result in many missed air canisters along the way (which refill your gauge), and eventually my mind began scanning the area below me sussing out the most efficient paths towards the bottom. larger block structures destroyed in a single puff will open long corridors that the player can quickly move through, and on easier difficulties it seems these often will lead to air canisters.

eventually I began to actually slow down and take greater stock of my surroundings, especially when it came to trapped canisters that could be opened up with a bit of careful block trimming in the vicinity. canister acquisition became a much more measured activity where at a moment's glance I needed to determine if a given canister was easy enough to secure or should be left behind as I continued further and further into the depths. however, past a certain point you've seen everything the game has to offer, and it remains an open question on whether you really need to grind for score or increase your maximum depth if there's little variation past trickier canister placement and more traps to enclose unsuspecting players in near-inescapable formations. during the occasional "bonus stage" areas the structures are much larger and more entangled, and it makes it easy to get caught falling with no control for longer than feels comfortable, and it was after playing several of these that I figured I had done my time in the arcade mode and really wanted to move on.

other than a one-life survival mode that parallels the arcade mode, there's the fascinating time attack mode which functions as timed and coherently designed puzzles for the player to solve. rather than air the stages are littered with time reduction items that are generally vital to collect in order to place under the target time and progress to the next stage. finding the optimal route from item to item becomes key, and the structures around them serve as a guiding hand from the developers shuttling you along. unfortunately the window for sliding through some of these obviously-intended pathways is rather tight, and changing the exact blocks you destroy along the way or showing up a bit late can radically change the block layout, generally resulting in accidentally getting crushed. what's particularly annoying that is that showing up early can have the same effect, which seems antithetical to the time attack concept but also intrinsic to the rube goldberg-esque structures in some of these levels. thus these encourage more trial-and-error rather than proper puzzle solving, and it highlights one of the core issues with the concept: it's really difficult to actually manipulate the blocks to fall how you want them given the fast pace of the game, the limited player kit, and the fraility of the avatar. the frenzy that ensues is the strongest drawing point of the title, but it creates a wide gulf in the intermediate zone of play that pushed me off the title given that, as mentioned prior, there isn't enough variety to really press me into continuing to hone my skills.

regardless, I do recommend those interested in the title to definitely sit through those first set of ten time attack levels. the difficulty seems so high at the start but quickly becomes approachable; the only one I needed to watch a video for was Mansion and its elevator ride mechanic that requires some rather precise movement to succeed at. reaching a bona fide credits scroll at the end of these felt satisfying, even if I'm not positive that my skills in this mode necessarily transferred over to the arcade mode like I had hoped. there's a set of advanced time attack levels with mirrored layouts and stricter time limits as well, though after trying a couple I think I had my fill and was ready to move on from this title.

addendum: supremely comfy in a handheld format. I played it on my psp but it looks perfectly playable on wonderswan and GBC as well, not that those are any easier to access... (presumably some version of it can be played on 3ds, sanctioned or otherwise). also the soundtrack is an eclectic mix of propellant rhythms with surprisingly synergistic strings on top. I'm shocked the composer (go shiina, also known for his contributions to ace combat, tales, the later tekkens, and god eater) wasn't involved with katamari given the similarities between their soundtracks, down to certain motifs in both works.

Revolutionary Energetic Diversification

unrelenting streams of notes punctuated by turntable scratches set against pulsing polygonal meshes in all shades of RED. this is IIDX's turning point where it codified its eclectic blend of hard dance, soulful piano, and surreal and jarring videos into cohesive yearly themes.

nowhere is this better presented than in the CORE ARENA tetralogy, coordinating songs from four separate artists under a common cinematic banner helmed by video jockey and bemani mainstay HES. alien structures of rotating cobalt prisms shimmer under the twitching camera lens, intercut with rapidly fluctuating floating point numbers and reams of C script. suddenly from above: a perfect polyhedron descends and overtakes the core, drowning everything in RED. the video savors the collision, obsessing over it from multiple viewpoints, until hurriedly escaping the fray as destruction is imminent. an infinite loop of symmetric discs overlayed with hexagons swirls and overtakes the viewer. thus begins the whoosh of current in the interconnecting circuitry of a security system, and as a timer eventually is snuffed out a freefall through pipes ratcheting in lockstep with the gated snare occurs. as this security check completes, the opposing RED figure looms large, its own core exposed. the music becomes orchestral and grand, revealing our erstwhile cuboid protagonist making its way towards the aggressor against the trappings of the infinite grid of space. accented by overflowing hexadecimal figures, the lone ship and the RED menace exchange shots of iridescent plasma as each vies for victory. as the blue gunman seems to be torn asunder by power beyond its comprehension, it harnesses its destruction into a beam of light that paints the world in stark greyscale. the blue sky of earth returns, bathing the dying ship in its glow as it slowly disintegrates from its final volley. four amazing songs all enhanced by a gorgeous video series.

on the mechanical side, IIDX 11 introduces series mainstay QoL features that make this the perfect entry point for players like me fascinated by the original japanese rhythm series's punishing but rewarding gameplay. the sudden+ and hidden+ features (affectionately referred to as the "towel") help adjust the play area to prevent sensory overload at high speeds, and configurable parameters such as scroll speed can now be adjusted during gameplay unlike its predecessor 10th style CS. for those that can get their hands on a IIDX controller and can run backups on their ps2, the games from here and beyond are one of the best ways you can play IIDX at home.

as a hingepoint, there are still a few sore spots that may turn off new players. for one, the higher difficulty songs are mushed all together into the 7, 8, and 8+ classifications, as the difficulty scale wasn't reoriented to extend up to 12 until IIDX 12. at my level playing 7s on the later discs, I struggle to perform at the same level on IIDX 11 since many of the 7s would later be reclassified as more challenging later on. the charts in general also feature some truly cruel idioms and awkward note placement that the designers backed off from in later iterations.

regardless, this is one of my favorite tracklists from across the franchise. some of the most choice tracks:
Sota Fujimori - ANDROMEDA (PSYCHEDELIC GOA TRANCE)
Akira Yamaoka - awakening (TRANCE)
Ryu☆ - Be quiet (HARD DANCE)
LIA - HORIZON (HAPPY HARDCORE)
KOHTA - RESONATE 1794 (HARD SONATA)
DJ SETUP - spiral galaxy (PSYCHEDELIC TECHNO)
SLAKE - TEXTURE (DEATH DISCO)
Ryu☆ - AGEHA (HAPPY HARDCORE)
Sota Fujimori - The Hope of Tomorrow (CYBORG TRANCE)
L.E.D. - SOLITON BEAM (TECHNO)

the lack of control really throws me... kirby will stay glued to the lines you draw but otherwise rolls along at his own pace. it varies between being predictable and completely erratic depending on what he rolls into, and the same can be said with how he responds to your lines. trying to keep him in check without flying into obstacles is such a huge pain as the stages grow more complex, and the small resolution of the ds screen doesn't help matters. while you can speed up movement by tapping kirby, a way to slow him down would have been equally as useful, since stopping him with a vertical line can be a bit problematic in the air.

the game itself feels almost like it would have been a different IP altogether had it not been the mid 2000s; the kirby tropes it draws from feel more aesthetically-bound than anything, as the level design is more puzzle-focused overall with the lack of combat. the fact that they retained copy abilities without the combat irks me quite a bit, considering that they usually alter your movement in ways that make levels more frustrating overall. some of the level gimmicks were fun when I played them, but they have left my mind by this point thanks to the frustrating end levels that really lean on the player's quick thinking and accurate line drawing. while in some cases these can be fulfilling (repeatedly blocking off lasers for instance), other areas really strain the boundaries of the control scheme or lack any real interesting features altogether (flying around in space finding buttons to press, or auto-scroller sections that don't mesh well with kirby's default speeds).

what i can't fault the game for is the visual design. this is by far the trippiest kirby game I've played, and does not shy away from completely letting loose the bounds of planet-like architecture to pursue abstract area designs and twisting unnerving architecture. everything is splattered with a kaleidoscope of colors that bleeds between environment elements and creates some truly gorgeous locales. a very stunning way to lean into the kirby games' frequent cosmic oddity/cosmic horror design over the course of this short adventure. the boss minigames are pretty fun too: a nice way to mix things up between worlds, and the ending bosses weren't too bad either.

so much of it starts at the communal living room tv; ours was given to us by a roommate's estranged ex and promptly forgotten, and in some karmic retribution for never returning it we must hit the power button at least five times just to get it to finally boot. when not in the grips of hours of youtube -- we affectionally call it tooba, or scron, or other nonsense conjured in a weed-fueled haze -- there's always games splashed across the screen. sometimes it's gamepass oddities, sometimes it's whatever yawning ps4 epic I'm trudging through, but often it's a rhythm game. everyone I live with is caught up in some sort of rhythm game grind, whether it's ddr, iidx, taiko, or, of course, project diva. we all rotate through our selection, cheer each other on when someone ranks high, and discuss our strategies from song to song. without pd and how it captivated us I don't think we'd have this amazing shared hobby in the same way we do now!

back when I moved in, I had reached the end of my megamix grind and figured the new house wouldn't exactly be amenable to daily sessions. I'm already an atypical vocaloid fan: I never listened to any of the music back when it was most popular in my middle school years and I never ran in any social circles with fans of miku. I was already knee-deep in snobby rym elitism by the time I hit high school and I looked down on vocaloids as a gimmick; a fad corresponding with the rise of social media and video upload sites and not worth my time. it wasn't until I discovered the sega ties that I become interested at all, and my girlfriend's long adoration of the games from the import days on psp pushed me over the edge into full-on fandom. it hit at the perfect time after a year of reevaluating my music taste during lockdown and reinvigorating my desire for musical exploration and eclecticism, and I couldn't help but fall in love with the musical virtuosity of the numerous pseudonymous producers who shared their hobby with the world.

but I certainly didn't expect for my roommates to be as passionate, and after a few early sessions on the aforementioned living room tv I could tell it wasn't going to last. those watching would compliment my skill, but after a couple songs I could tell I was killing the vibe, and besides, you can't really hold a conversation while playing a rhythm game! so I shelved the game indefinitely and moved onto different games. yakuza was the complete opposite at the time: the cutscenes were engaging and easy to understand and the gameplay favored a leisurely pace where I could easily chat or leave in the middle of as session. project diva faded into the back of my mind.

after a couple months however, the fire was reignited. we began weekly jaunts to our local barcade to throw down on an ancient DDR Extreme cabinet; struggling to hear the backbeat over the rickety pinball machines and an unfortunately loud guitar hero 3 setup. the itch followed us home, and soon enough my roommates were inquiring about that "colorful game with the japanese girl" that I used to play. I shook off my rust and began playing again, pleased at how months of inactivity had given me a fresh perspective on the game. my roommates began dipping their toes in as well. much of this is due to project diva being one of the absolute best arcade rhythm games for controller play. many other games simply don't hit the same on a pad, whereas project diva's psp origins gave its arcade counterpart a leg up on transferring home. whereas the cabinet plays a bit like pop'n music with added holds and slides, the home ports incentivize smart left/right hand independence for complex note patterns as well as holding down buttons on one hand while playing the melody with the other. few other rhythm games can attest to such a smooth conversion to console play.

initial interest quickly ballooned into full-on fanaticism. my roommates were listening to the songs during their daily commutes and passing the controller back and forth for hours after work. they were sussing out songs I had never even heard of and introducing me to new favorites I continue to play up to now, in no small part thanks to my roommate purchasing future tone. though I have dozens of hours in pdft, I've actually never owned my own copy... I currently play my girlfriend's copy thanks to her having my ps4 as her "primary" console, and my first time getting to really sink my teeth into it was on my roommate's ps4. he quickly got me out of the comfort zone I was in and had me exploring all the songs unique to pdft's home port, and I would often come home to our subwoofer blaring and him grinding out songs on the couch. pdft encompasses nearly every song ever released for the arcade game when DLC is counted (this also includes the megamix exclusives), and moving outside the curated pdmm list reveals some interesting tidbits about the game's history. early charts from before the future tone overhaul are much rougher and often have more linear visual patterns, revealing a lack of confidence in the concept on the part of developers. higher-level songs are also subject to some blatantly confusing note spam that seems built to obfuscate the patterns rather; see saihate on extreme for instance. thankfully many of these songs received revision charts listed as "extra extreme", and some of the best charts in the game lie here. with added slides and more intuitive and interesting visual patterns, many of the older songs shine.

eventually our enthusiasm died down, and we moved on to different games. once I had a chance to do free play on the cabinet at magfest, it felt underwhelming returning to the pad and the limitations it imposes, and now that I have a iidx ps2 controller at my disposal my daily grind has shifted (as of this week I can finally do 7s!!). no matter what else we play, we'll always come back to diva once in a while just to remind ourselves of the fun we had. my roommate's girlfriend had just moved in with us when we began playing in earnest, and she herself has become truly infatuated with miku. during a difficult period in her life she took to therapeutically playing the game and embracing the nuanced mixture of joy and despair layered throughout the many tracks. their room is now adorned with miku figurines of all types, and she's gone as far as to get a mini arcade controller for the switch so she can grind between trips to our local round 1! it's a connection that I would not have imagined us having, and getting to introduce her to the older console games has been a blast too.

a few weekends ago my girlfriend informed me that pdft actually has master courses similar to iidx's kyu/dan system; I was completely shocked by this. I sat down and handily took out the 9.5* course (an unexpected full combo on envy catwalk had me feeling rather smug even given my lackluster performance on po pi po and saihate), and I gave my best shot at the 10* course too, though I'll likely never be able to clear intense voice on pad despite my best efforts. being able to even tackle these courses felt like a monument to how much effort I've put into learning these games over the last year, and a sense of finality hung over me as I worked through the courses. it gave me a second to reflect on my history with this game and how it gave me so many experiences I never would have experienced otherwise. I've never had another game connect me to the people I share space with in quite the same way, to the point where we have miku fridge magnets and stickers as decorations around our townhouse. I'm eagerly awaiting having a project diva cabinet in my city soon (within the next month... jubeat too!), but I know a few months from now I'll be drawn back into the fold on my ps4, perhaps I'll actually pick up the dlc and work on some of those harder charts I've never been able to try, maybe I'll finally get requiem for the phantasm exex since I always eat shit when I try it at the arcade, or try gothic and loneliness exex for the first time... so much still left to explore! this game truly does not stop, and soon enough I'll have to roll out the concert yet again and pump those tracks through our halls, even if just for a night.