A shmup/bullet hell-cum-arena fighter is a helluva pitch and G.rev delivers - this is a blast and after running through arcade mode I'm v pumped to try out the rest of the cast. Popping off your special to turn into a shmup boss and rain hell on your opponent is terrifically satisfying, though actually dodging attacks in that mode is a motherfucker when the placement of fire being thrown at you is not consistent by design. Still, you're never entirely without the means to dodge around and the options for regular combat (main shot and subweapon, with different effects depending on whether you're attacking while guarding or dashing) are streamlined enough to be fairly easy to get a handle on while still offering decent variety, at least at first blush. This is such a rad idea for a game and I'm glad it exists!

I have been thoroughly allergic to fighting games for literally the entirety of my engagement with video games, but a partner of mine who loves them has slowly been wearing me down and, after receiving a snack box micro from my parents as a Christmas gift, we finally properly sat down for her to start schooling me in SFIII, one of her all-time favorites, and folks I'll tell ya - after her coaching me through various fighters I took Chun-Li for a spin and the tumblers finally, resoundingly, started clicking.

I'll save further thoughts for another time when I have a better handle on this, but: I think I could, in fact, learn to love fighting games after all.

Pure fabulous id-scratching meathead spectacle. Rewards the same bullheaded daredevil style of play of a Ketsui with a significantly lower skill ceiling overall. Not one for those who come to shmups for strategy or "challenge" per se, but balancing how much of your regenerating life bar to use for your souped-up laser sword in any given situation is still thrilling enough to make up for it. Great entry-level title and definitely recommended for the curious.

EDIT: Echoing BeachEpisode's observation that this desperately needs an epilepsy warning up front btw

Disappointed by how the genuinely impressive specificity of place, atmosphere of dread, and the sharply observed details re: class and encroaching capital are left entirely by the wayside around the halfway point (maybe even earlier?) in favor of it's ok-but-not-revelatory plot, which I found significantly less interesting than the place and context and small glimpses of community around which it initially revolves. Unlike KR0 it is to some extent actually about the region its ostensibly about, at least at first, but also unlike KR0 its formalist and structuralist swings feel...not half-baked but maybe a bit of an afterthought, or at least not consistent enough in implementation to fully land. The 4ch/proud boys/Q analogue stuff is just restrained enough to avoid being embarrassing and is generally p funny but ultimately feels pretty toothless idk.

All that said, the first few hours absolutely transfixed me, and I got more genuine laughs out of the jokes here than I have from any game I can think of in recent memory, and that Thou end credits track fucking shreds so this still gets a rec from me! Extremely keen to see what Geography of Robots do next, they've definitely Got Something here.

He went over to the map and studied the northern part of the city, with his back to his visitor.

"Being a policeman," said Szluka, "is not a profession. And it's certainly not a vocation either. It's a curse."

A little later, he turned around and said:

"Of course, I don't mean that. Only think it sometimes. Are you married?"

"Yes."

"Then you know."

-The Man Who Went Up In Smoke, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo

The Name of This Club Is DISCO ELYSIUM

Can't in good conscience give five stars to a work that went out of its way to airlift in the chapo cunts to do ironic/tenuously deniable racist impressions and reserves a special thanks for chrs avll*ne in the end credits, but...did kind of love it nonetheless, in spite of itself - bourgeois indulgences and all.

EDIT: They actually got rid of the chapos and Dasha for the final cut I was wrong, bumped up a half star lol

Sheu mynds on than that even a comet

is rived by the weyght o whit hid passes,
an whan hid's fired ootower the starns,
the starns is tirled by thir awn wheel,
an that wheel tirled in anither wheel,

til ivry escaep is anither orbit,
an ivry orbit anither still,
an ivry still aye makkan the promiese
that wi a tirl thoo'll win tae free.

-Deep Wheel Orcadia, Harry Josephine Giles

I thought of Giles' novel in verse often while playing this. It's an easy contender for my best book of 2022 and, like this game, I reached a point where I wished it would never end.

Sadly mid as hell despite the strength of the premise and gestures in more interesting directions - feels oddly undercooked for something with around 2-3years development time so far as I can gather. Carried along by the strength of the presentation (shout out Hiro Kiyahara for some v cool but not overworked character designs and Izanagi Games for genuinely impressive spritework), performances of the voice cast (Yu Kobayashi giving it 200% as Binko the easy MVP), and G.Rev, but the VN mystery/death game portion feels like a minimal effort first draft and the shmup segments, while occasionally gorgeous for the least interesting segments, are solid but unexceptional. Would be interested to see a sequel that develops some of the ideas here further tbh.

Devil Daggers but take it to the club - feels positively blissed out in comparison! Ludicrously addictive from the get go, few other games in recent memory come to mind with movement this satisfying and I've barely scratched the surface of the tech on offer. The dynamic leaderboard where you watch your name scroll up the list with every new personal best score is exactly the kind of feedback I wish more games provided as reward for performance too...anyway get in on the ground floor this is GOTY material easy.

"Whereupon to Finian Lynch, who most certainly came from somewhere in Mayo, I wanted to say, 'No, Finian, Love is not just a miserable lie, although prevarication, if you know anything, does come into it. No, it's not a lie just because you feel cheated. Love is not much to do, after all, with how you feel - with whether Eddie Mars let's you win on red and then gets his goon to hold you up in the parking lot. It's none of that - prearranged or no. All that is sentimental - or, as the girl said in her cups, Thass sediment. It's still less to do with what you have to say about what you feel, either in or out of your transports - which can be gay - but is like the flower growing out of the girl's ass in The Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado in Madrid - where I didn’t go this trip, but its a detail I've never forgotten. Or like the worm in Caravaggio's still life at the Pinacoteca Brera in Milan. The flower growing out of the girl's ass is fascinating, but you'd hesitate to pick it and put it in a vase. . . . No, Finian, love is what you do - and what you don't - what you put up with, and why. That's all love is. Now go with God.'"

-James McCourt, Time Remaining

EDIT: I experienced issues with missing chipsets and a yellow screen on the second screen of the game (the one immediately after Granny's Pistol Shop) while playing this with the default Easy RPG Player included in the itch.io download, neither of which rendered the game unplayable but did require me to refer to a YT walkthrough in order to initiate the final area of the game - @MendelPalace pointed out to me on tumblr that these can be fixed by downloading and installing the run time package for RPG Maker 2000.