Fiz uma apresentação deste jogo, para uma cadeira da universidade. A cadeira era "Narrativas Multimédia Interativas". A professora mandou o "pensava que vinha uma coisa péssima, mas depois percebi algo a mais. O Japão é realmente um sítio especial do mundo.". Dica para os universitários: Falem de merdas obscuras e acrescentam camadas a elas. A techer pensou que era uma visual novel? Pensou, mas também percebeu a crítica ao homem herbívoro japonês e como o jogo obriga ao jogador a tomar uma decisão de vida, sendo essa uma solução para o problema e que ele é efetivo, pois usufrui de elementos deste público para apresentar a mensagem.

Leaving aside the fact that my previous reviews Itagaki's Ninja Gaiden 2 and WET were the result of drunken nights and carousing, I still have a genuine interest in how some video games confidently carry a "Vulgar" aesthetic in times where the masses concentrate on photorealism, pixel art or cutewholesomethang (maybe?)
Let's also leave aside the fact that for video games, exploitation, in every sense of the word, is like a lung.

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Both Itagaki's ninja gaiden and WET have the will to inherit the most vulgar and savage aesthetics of Asian exploitation cinema, and its derivatives, only one does it passively and the other seems to be desperately looking for it, like comparing Chang Cheh vs Tarantino.
God forgive me.

Itagaki's ninja gaiden is at its core, in spirit more like the films it wants to be a playable response to -let's say Chang Cheh's cinema-, Ninja Gaiden is a wild, aggressive product for the player, who doesn't really care in excess for pleasing everyone and that guards its greatness in deep places that not everyone is willing to reach, although visually it is everything that at the beginning of the HD era and the great recession was asked of an AAA; it relies on clean, powerful imagery, a hyper-stylized plastic sense with attention to toned bodies, fluids, fabrics and movement, and had a strong cinematic component.
instead, WET is more like a Tarantino movie. Not like it stays in an egofalocentric pastiche that depends on the ignorance or incuriosity of people like Kill Bill was, but although it hurts me the reality is that WET has a -great- very interesting action premise that is tamed by a worthy planning of an AAA or study budget-at best-where the epidermal is the substance. Littering the already-suffering 30-frame image full of jagged edges and blurriness with burnt filters, stock sounds, and transitions that attempt to emulate a Grindhouse experience is certainly daring for a game whose playable core is efficiency and reflexes. the result pushes the game to exist as a short, cheap and unhygienic party, but very enjoyable, which unlike Tarantino does have a somewhat vulgar rebellious spirit.
Not that good as NGII, but hey.

Damn, I had to add this game to IGDB myself. So yeah, to the two other Backloggd users in the universe that have played this game, you're welcome.

VERY cool game to try out, ESPECIALLY if you enjoyed Hellsinker, as this game was made by the same developer before it. As it turns out, there are a ton of stuff in this game that carried over to Hellsinker. Atypical weapons, enemy types and attacks, SOL/LUNA/STELLA, branching level paths, and even some of the music, among other things.

But holy goddamn, don't expect to beat this shit anytime soon. Tonnyori must've been out of his fucking mind back then because it's ten times harder than Hellsinker ever was. You've got a 2x2 hitbox and a rechargeable shield, and you better utilize that and every other tool available to you because the game will NOT relent. The game bends you over and prepares the punishment as early as Stage 1, jesus christ. But it's so much fucking fun, even if I can't actually beat the game. I was able to get past the first phase of the final boss on one credit though, and I'm really proud of that.

EDIT: For anyone else having difficulty running the game, make sure to switch your computer's locale to JP (or use the Locale emulator) before you run the game, and download the d3drm.dll file and put it in the same directory as the .exe.

Got my likes on twitter interrogated after uttering in a discord VC call

"Pentiment is extremely ugly"

So much for the tolerant left

Yeah sure very solid movement and rope physics for the time but what I kept getting impressed by was this game having such creatively evil level design more than a decade before the "rage game" genre got popular. Like, Umihara Kawase was never a household name or anything, but it has to have laid the groundwork for SOME form of kaizo nonsense in the future, right?

But despite the game clearly reveling in these sadistic setups, it rarely feels like actual bullshit. In fact, you can beat most of the later stages on your first try if you're observant and have sufficiently mastered the movement system, which feels super satisfying despite occasional jank like the Small Protruding Ledges From Hell. Nothing beats running into a section that seems borderline impossible and then turning it into a joke within the hour, despite the experience of getting there occasionally feeling like pulling teeth.

Most of the actual criticism I can target squarely at random enemy spawns (which ARE bad but never enough to ruin the game for me), boss fights (lol) and the presentation. I get that it's an old low-budget indie game made out of scattered assets with the excuse of being "set inside of a dream" but the color palette and enemy designs make it look more like a nightmare. The dreary monochrome photo backgrounds are the worst part, this shit is sometimes one degree removed from looking like Umihara's obituary. The cutesy soundtrack does a lot of heavy lifting for this not coming off as a horror game

lots of games these days look great, but this one is a huge example of the difference between "good graphics" and the beauty resulting from a deliberate aesthetic effort, style and vision.

also, if you were ever wondering how pentiment could be improved upon, right here is your answer: make it more gay and anime.

i can't in good conscience give it 5 stars because i had close to zero fun with any of the actual dexterity based gameplay and i think it's just no good. but i love the game anyway. what a treasure.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/480403271564001301/1008229556106317924/SPOILER_penismaster.mov

Pagemaster on Gb has a hidden dick game

"There are two more Cheat flags that may be enabled. Enable the Cheat flags menu first, do not set any cheat flags, then at the main menu input two more codes: Down, Down, Right, Up, Left, Left, Down, Right and Up, Up, Left, Down, Right, Right, Up, Left. After each sequence the sound will be heard. First one changes the bonus game dangerous falling objects into Fergus McGovern's (the founder of Probe software itself) face, similar to the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat II. The second one turns the main character in the bonus game into a penis, for some reason."