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Been playing Astral Chain. Almost finished the story but the spike in difficulty between the entire game and the last boss is pretty high lol. But I've found it to be a pretty darn excellent game, one of my favourites in some time. The graphics and art style are amazing and really show what the Switch can do. It's also managed to do this with VERY little FPS drop. I love the variation in gameplay, you have the hub world, the investigation and/or stealth, and finally the combat. The combat is original and great fun. It took me a while to get used to the number of button combinations to remember, plus controlling a second character in real time, but I'm pretty much used to it now and I think I'll actually miss having the Legion during combat in similar games in the future. xD Also on the gameplay, there's a lot there. There's parts of the game that remind me of Zelda, Pokemon, Metal Gear Solid, Kingdom Hearts, general platforming, and more. I've really enjoyed the story. It gets complaints for being too simple and predictable or something, but tbh does every RPG story have to be a massive mysterious complicated thing where everyone's a clone of a shadow of a smurf ghost's dream and you have no idea what the heck's going on? I really enjoyed it for just being a good story and likable buncha characters. Although, saying that I don't fully understand what Jena's actual goal was or why she was so destructive, but whatever. xD The music is also really darn good, and I've been listening to some of the tunes on YT outside of the game. Another plus point. The game has a cat sidequest! 😺 As with all games, even my favourites, I have a few criticisms: - The Jena Anderson thing I already mentioned. Also, why does she look like a zombie? - Sometimes the maps seem to have pointless barriers or one-way systems that force you the long way around for no reason - The platforming, specifically chain jumping is a bit off. If Zelda did this, the symbol that indicates where you land would be 100% reliable. You either see the symbol because the game has determined you can land there, or you don't see the symbol - The game should make it very clear when you're about to trigger a "move on" section, and tell you if there's stuff left to do, including hidden side quests. It could tell you there is a hidden sidequest left without showing you where it is - Astral Chain 2 hasn't been announced yet nor has there been any news at all indicating it's ever going to happen But, overall excellent game and highly recommend!

A lot of my recent record purchases have been a bit "loud", so figured some more relaxing music was needed.

April's been a bit of a slow month for gaming, personally. I've been taking my sweet time with certain games, which includes a couple of 2021 indie games that I actually got close to launch... Huniepop 2: Double Date Wait, I can explain! One-handed gaming makes any playthrough slower. Please understand. But seriously, I actually really liked the first Huniepop (surprisingly in-depth dating mechanics, with solid Bejeweled puzzles), so I had to check this bird out as well. The main "gimmick" in this one is that you only date two women at once, aiming for the threesomes. I always thought a "double date" is when two couples go out for a pleasant time, but it's always good to expand my wang slang. First of all, let's talk about tone and plot (actual plot, get your head out of the gutter). Our main character, now a successful womanizer, must engage in threesomes in order to prevent planetary destruction (don't ask). Sure. There's now a new batch of girls to seduce, learn about, and go deep into (several of which are uncommon archetypes for the genre, like a gold digger, a trans youtuber, or a sexually-repressed Pakistani). The new mechanics allow for more fluid interactions, more dialogue, and deeper characterization than before, too (best seen with the two returning girls, Lola and Jesse: Lola has a lot more personality now, while Jesse underwent some personal growth and development). Some of these multiple choice questions are actually hard to nail, now (and you'll want to get them right, character progression is tied behind multiple currencies now). The first game felt like a legit Dating Sim with an erotic streak (albeit one where you're cheating on everybody with 10 other girls), but the sequel... man, the sequel just operates on full-on porn logic, with flimsy reasons for steamy threesomes all around. On one hand, it feels less guilty, since it seems everybody's on board with casual sex this time, but on the other hand, it's hard to buy that Polly (old-fashioned housewife) or Lailani (shy girl with low libido) would be so eager to get involved in casual threesomes. In a way, the concept behind the game prevents too much of a consistent characterization. Ah well, doesn't matter had sex. Another issue is that, with a silent protagonist, the dialogue feels like the two women are dating, and you're just obnoxiously third-weeling. Some of the sex scenes had me going "Wait, why are they in that posit- oh right, there's a dude involved. And that's me". Does this game work better if the MC a girl, doing a lesbian fantasy? I wonder. But enough of that, you know what we're here for: hot puzzles. The puzzling mechanics take the base from the first game (each puzzle represents a date, and each token colour represents an action), and overhauled it. You now have to switch between girls as you solve the board, and in doing so, you're also managing their stamina bars. Focus too much on one girl, and she gets tired. Furthermore, having to effectively manage separate meters for the pink and teal icons (as well as separate gift lists) makes things a lot trickier. It's also not as easy to cheese through dates with the right gift combo. You assign gifts to girls, instead of coming up with a decked-out combo for everybody, so you do need to find good gifts for every individual girl. Furthermore, since it's harder to cheese, you do need to keep a consistent strategy in mind for each date (usually, it's aiming for 4-in-a-row matches, and grabbing Power tokens, but how you go about it varies greatly depending on your item setup) Another excellent addition: baggage. That is to say, flaws in the girls you're dating effectively function as handicaps or game-changers during dates. For example, Lailani's "Prude" gets offended by Sexuality tokens, as if they were purple broken hearts. Meanwhile, Ashley's "Commitment Issues" penalises you focusing on her for 4 moves, which neuters a lot of strategies. This effectively means that you don't get just one strategy for each girl, you need to come up with a strategy for each pairing. off the top of my head: Polly and Brooke will handicap the date in different ways if you give a gift to the other woman. In order to navigate this pairing, you need to tire each one out on purpose before giving gifts; Ashley doesn't like being the focus of attention, while Nora dislikes having focus taken from her. Seems like a good match, but then keeping Nora's stamina up becomes the crux of the date; Lailani gets offended by sexuality, while Jesse doesn't feel it. This effectively turns every red token into dead weight; Zoe swaps the properties of teal and purple, while Lillian does the same for pink and purple. In other words, they are effectively chasing the same purple resource for different meters, which completely changes how you approach the date. And so on. There's a lot of variety and challenge at work here, which will keep your grey cells working on getting you laid. And if you're looking to have an easier time, well, there's an Easy Mode (though be warned, it still doesn't mean Simple Mode). So yeah, while the simplicity of the first game worked well, the management and puzzle mechanics of the second one feel a lot more fleshed out, without obsoleting the first entry. I appreciate that a lot, makes the sequel feel very distinct (without ever losing its silly tone), and gives me hope the genre(s) can still be pushed in other directions. And on a general note, if you're willing to experiment silly embarrassing games, I do recommend trying this series out, whether you're looking for Bejeweling satisfaction, or just some horny nights. ... Horny nights... Huh, why does that feel familiar? ... Oh right! Horned Knight N-Europe Review If you haven't checked it out, I wrote a review for a 2D platformer on the eShop called Horned Knight. I recently beat its Hard Mode while playing leisurely. In my opinion, it's a good title if you're looking for some simple platforming action, but don't take my word for it when you could take the entire review for it! Click the link above for my full thoughts on this affordable little game.

Picked up Yoku's Island Express for about £2.50 in the sale. Nice little metroidvania / pinball adventure game. Pretty short though story wise. Almost finished the story after a day or so. Still have alot of collectables and stuff to get though.

Interesting you mention this and how Japan has its own view of video game genres because Toei's Kamen Rider Ex-Aid which came out in 2016 and ran until 2017 was a video game themed tokusatsu where all the main characters' transformations were based around certain video game genres and the plotline was about people being infected by video game viruses... anyway before I go off on a tangent the main character was based around platformers, there was another character based around RPGs and the other two main "good guys" were themed around shooting and racing games. It goes on from there too, there are forms based around survival horrorr, puzzle, fighting games, dancing... and even dating games... Ends up with a real life MMO being a plotline of the villains to turn real life into a video game and kill everyone off by allowing them to be video game characters. If nothing else, it also gives the internet this memeable image... Anyway, one game that I think is a good example of blurring the lines between multiple genres is Ratchet & Clank This is a VERY unique game by today's standards as it incorporates aspects of many different game genres. Now this series is mostly know both for being a platformer shooter hybrid but the first game, while primarily being a platformer, doesn't have any similarities in level design too much to all the platformers that were being released around the same time. Rather than being an explorable sandbox that you have to go round to collect items, this game has stricly linear level design... or does it? Because when you touch down on certain planets you are presented with a range of options to travel from your ship. And when you reach the end of the route you're taken back to your ship and can explore the other routes from there. This is because Insomniac went into this game wanting to make more of a Zelda like game and this game was their third attempt to get it off the ground. But wait, some of these routes are blocked off by certain powerups... wait a minute, that would make Ratchet and Clank more of a Metroidvania right? Should we consider this game to have that kind of level design that requires you to accumulate powerups to progress? But... its split across multiple planets so that can't be right... And this is where things get curious. If you look at Metroid Prime Hunters and Metroid Prime 3, those games are set across multiple planets, albeit a fewer number but they have a very similar kind of level design. So really, Ratchet & Clank has taken aspects from many different gaming genres to form its own identity. Of course, the multiple routes in planets would get replaced with just one streamlined route from Ratchet 3 onwards as the series began to be defined more as a shooter but those early games had such a strong element of exploration and you are getting stronger as the game goes along with an assortment of upgrades, some of which are useful if you backtrack to older planets to uncover new stuff. But those upgrades are sometimes one use only so in that sense its similar to Zelda and... aghhh!

Nice catch! It's true, the platformer genre was dire at the time, which goes to show genre naming conventions are a reflection of what the gaming community/subculture thinks. I also noticed some regions give different names to genres, or otherwise classify them differently (I've seen at least one publication refer to a fighting game as a "Beat'em Up", and heard at least one person say "Simulation game" to refer to any single-player game). And I'm not sure how much of an actual thing this is, but popular Anime My Hero Academia had a scene where somebody said "I faced the problem like a Role Play game [shows visuals similar to Dragon Quest / Final Fantasy], but when I thought of it as a Simulation game [the visual turns into Fire Emblem / Civilization], it started to make more sense", which indicates Japanese gamers have an entirely different nomenclatures going on. Just to add to this point, the irony is that the likes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy took heavy inspiration from D&D to begin with, before taking the videogame genre in a distinct direction. I think I've been hearing the "Western RPG" and "JRPG" distinction as far back as Baldur's Gate II. I'm betting that, while JRPG were proliferating on consoles, western-style RPGs were developing their own thing on PC, before the likes of Mass Effect and Elder Scrolls brought those PC conventions to console gaming in the late '00s. Good breakdown. It's a good conclusion that you've reached (the part I bolded), but it does beg the question of whether Link's Awakening (where you need to backtrack to fulfill the trading quest) or Skyward Sword (where you need to revisit the same areas often) count. Of course, it's all about the game's focus on freeform exploration, which gets subjective. To me, it just seems like Metroidvania is a game that fulfills all 3 points you mentioned... and is also a 2D platformer. Which sounds arbitrary, but I think that's how the term is used. People seem willing to overlook level design and exploratory elements as long as it "looks" enough like the references to the genre. Some people say Metroid Prime fits the genre, but only because it's Metroid. The likes of Bioshock and System Shock, despite being designed like that as well, aren't often called Metroidvanias. You're telling me the "git gud" crowd practices gate-keeping? My word! But seriously, these are all very good points. I've always seen the likes of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta as "hack&slash" games (which if you think about it, are basically Beat'em ups in 3D), but there is a desire to "unite" them further, based on the one developer creating both series with similar foci and conventions. Soulslike is another one where it makes little sense to pretend it's a genre, even though its gameplay conventions are notable and memorable. It already fits the trappings of agreed-upon genres, such as 3D Adventure game, or a 3D Metroidvania... or even a hack&slash, though one where each hack and each slash need to be thought about carefully Didn't know about the origins of the term. That's fascinating! As a fan of Point&Clicks, I did wonder how come that traditional type of game got excluded from the "Adventure" naming conventions (because I do remember a time where "Adventure game" meant "Point&Click". Maybe only the PC crowd from my country did that?). But looking at this, and back at the evolution of the term, it seems its initial usage in LoZ was it... the missing Link , so to speak. Not sure I agree about the Visual Novel part, though. Phoenix Wright has plenty of puzzle-solving! But do Japanese players truly refer to VNs as Adventure games? As with any social sciences, I figure these naming conventions are ever-evolving, but having a grasp of how people use these terms helps when, say, describing a new game, or hearing someone else talk about it. How people come up with terms, and how they use it, is a fascinating subject for me nevertheless. (Thank you for clarifying what you meant in the other thread, btw!) The Star Wars comparison is a good one, because I've seen it be described as different genres, from different publications. As you say, it's what resonates most with an audience or community. I suppose Metroidvania is just a catchier term. I've seen some try to make the term "ENG" (Environmental Narrative Genre) happen, but it doesn't catch on because "Walking Sim" just resonates more with people.

Seems like a perfect time to start Persona 5 Royal now.

Watched this morning (the NA one but I assume there was no difference) and I liked how there was an array of styles on display. Also the Aztech pun is wonderful.

If it's any consolation, once I get back online in May (hopefully), I'll have every quest to do along with the arena quests. So people here will have opportunities to play with N-E.

Up to HR7 but only done 2 Keys that I did for farming. Almudron and Magnamalo so I could upgrade and max out their Switchaxes. Will probably hold off doing more keys till the weekend, if there any N-E Hunters looking to fo HR7 keys and urgent (or help out) be nice to do them as a group Thank the RNGeebus, 5th High Rank Magnamalo...2 Orbs! I love a good mounted discharge with my Switchaxe...but I gotta pay attention for damage taken while stuck to monsters That poor Aknosom didn't stand a chance

Started playing the game just now. 30fps suck, but hey, it's a small price to pay for a game that's supposed to be great My first few minutes have been quite intriguing. The game manages to set the stage very well. There's an immediate sense of mystery that's also surprisingly and weirdly terrifying. I'm gonna probably keep writing in here, depending on how much I enjoy Outer Wilds. So far so good.

I'll open in about one minute.

Ironically, with @Jonnas mentioning Metroid Prime Hunters... that’s a good example of misappropriation right there; because that game isn’t a Metroidvania at all! It’s a FPS; and not just any old FPS, it’s basically a full on Quake-alike! It’s literally Quake with a Metroid skin... but with 6 characters that all play uniquely (does that also make Metroid Prime Hunters the first “Hero Shooter” as well!?). Also @Jonnas, Ace Attorney isn’t a true visual novel (and neither are the Zero Escape games for that matter). Those games are demarcated from the VN genre by virtue of their detective/puzzle gameplay (though you could certainly argue that they draw plenty of influence from the VN genre themselves regardless). I’d definitely say that they’re much closer to Point n’ Click Adventure games than VNs overall though.

I loved the first game too. Will get this eventually! Glad to read they haven't just cashed in on the success of the first and made a solid game.

Definitely stick with it @bob , season two is by far the low point of the series - 3 and 4 are infinitely more interesting and enjoyable.

I bought some food from a place called Hickories, sent in an insulated bag to cook at home. We cooked part of it for my birthday meal: corn dogs, smokes chicken, chicken wings, ribs, pulled port, tater tots, cheese sauce, BBQ pit beans, corn on the cob, coleslaw, popcorn and some chocolate eggs: And it also made six milkshakes (we had them over a few days: But also didn't cook everything, so had more last night: It's all delicious and mostly pre-cooked, it takes 30 minutes cooking (most in the oven, couple of bits microwave and the pull pork boiled in a bag).

Too many interactive stories for my liking, but each to their own. The Longing was the one that really caught my eye there, will keep a look out for that.

A pretty decent showing but not the greatest. House of the Dead remake was a nice surprise, as I loved HOTD2+3 on Wii. The trailer did look like it didn't have gyro controls though. Oxenfree 2 is a very nice surprise, curious about that one and it makes me want to play through 1 again. More Annapurna is always good news. Road 96 has potential but I wonder if it works in practice. Not that impressed with OlliOlli, I'll rely on Tony Hawk for this year's skateboarding fix. The rest didn't really tickle any fancy for me either. Official confirmation that Turtles is coming to the Switch was the best news though! Looks great, can't wait to play that one.

Nevermind. Just had to survive the first phase of the optional fight and then it was a cake-walk. Needed a bit of luck but it didn't take long. What a game

Well that explains why the music sounds so legit!

Turtles looks great. Fez is a great game, can really recommend it. A sale coming is great news. That last surprise is bound to make people happy. Cris Tales still looks awesome. Skul looks like it can do well with the fans of Dead Cells. Overall I think it was solid and far more entertaining than the last Indie World.

The term was coined by Jeremy Parish (of Retronauts & Good Nintensions fame), so the answer to that is no.

That counter, how it fills the phials, really is overpowered!

The term Action/Adventure used to be used to describe games that took the puzzle gameplay from point n' click Adventure games; and presented them within the context of an Action game. That was the whole thing that defined Zelda 1 after all, the whole point was to take the actions that you would see in a point n' click Adventure (like push, pull, walk, sword strike, climb etc) in real time, instead of using menu commands (as per this classic 1991 interview with Miyamoto & Tezuka). The term Action-Adventure came about because it was meant to be a real-time point n' click Adventure game. Of course then, the distinction between an "Action" game and an "Adventure" game then, must be that "Action" games take place in real-time and are focused on fast paced real-time gameplay; while "Adventure" games are menu driven, cerebral and puzzle focused. Zelda was both, hence the term "action-adventure". RPGs then, are Adventure games with mechanics that were borrowed from pen & paper RPGs (most notably Dungeons & Dragons). Western developers stuck heavily to the mold defined by Dn'D (right down to the Tolkein esc Fantasy aesthetics) and sought to make them primarily for the PC platform, while Japanese developers primarily focused on consoles and made their games with simplified interfaces & a stronger focus on storytelling & pre-defined characters (naturally also drawing heavy influence from Anime & Manga). As such, we now have the distinction of WRPG and JRPG. Meanwhile, "Visual Novels" are literally "Adventure" games with the puzzle solving gameplay stripped out of them. Confusingly, we even have Action RPGs now! (which have now become the norm), while almost every single modern AAA game (regardless of genre) has some sort of RPG elements bolted on top of them! The truth really here is that video game genre names have never been particularily descriptive of the type of gameplay seen in any particular game, even from the very beginning. They are instead, a product of historical circumstance; and are only really useful to people who have been able to stick around and watch the medium develop from its early days. They are a window into the history of video game creation and how games have drawn influence from each other and other places, more than anything else. I mean, we still don't have any term for a Roguelike other than... well... a Roguelike; because it's a game like Rogue! (A game from all the way back in 1980!). It's like what would've happened if we never moved on from Doom Clone for the FPS genre (a term itself that is often misappropriated to games like Metroid Prime; which can be described as both a Metroidvania and a First Person Adventure! The whole thing is a mess!). The point is that it's not worth getting hung up on exact genre labelling, because they have always been poor descriptors of gameplay. That is not really what they do, but rather they are a historical footprint that showcases where a game gets its influence from. That's the real value of a video game genre name (Co-incidentally, this is why calling Metroid a "Metroidvania" is really silly!)

Time to get moving! I've just spent the past few days burning through Blast Corps on Rare Replay. What an absolute gem this game is. Even to this day it is still a super unique experience. Like B-K, it's been a number of year since I've played this, must be at least 15. The game holds up incredibly well considering its age and the fact it's a very early 3D game. The amount of variety on offer in terms of challenges and different vehicles is solid, and I think it took me about 8-9 hours to gold every stage on Earth (just got a couple of the extra planets to gold now, but they are much harder). I think the challenge the game offers is what really struck me this time round. It is expertly balanced, ramping up steadily as the game progresses but never into the realms of impossibility. Some of the carrier missions are very tough but there's always the belief in the back of your mind you can do a little better, go a little faster or get rid of that building a few seconds quicker. Golding some of the racing stages or building destroying stages, where there is no carrier, encourages you to really master the controls and find the perfect run in each level. There were instances in the races where I was shaving 0.1 seconds off my lap, every lap. I love that kind of stuff! And the handling (for the most part) is very good. The game is absolutely chock full of secrets to find in order to unlock the post game content, and while I remembered where most of the satellites or scientists were, there were a couple of occasions where I really had to search high and low to get them. I'd also completely forgotten about the Pac-Man inspired levels, which were a great surprise towards the end of the game. The variety in the missions is definitely a big plus for this game. Don't feel like stressing out over the harder carrier missions? Do a couple of races or wander around a finished level looking for secrets and demolishing the remaining buildings. The amount of freedom the game offers is something that is rarely seen in modern games. It took me a good few goes on some of the final carrier missions and some of them are long, like 10-15 mins long and if you mess up right at the end, there are no checkpoints or save states, so it's right back to the start you go. That really adds to the rewarding feeling when you finally do it. Oyster Harbour is a fine example of that. You have shoot a hole into a bunch of buildings to give yourself access to a crane from the start. Once you get there on foot, you have to lower TNT from a crane onto a bridge, then hop into a bulldozer and put some blocks into the ground, but two of them are hidden so if you don't get them, you're done. Following that you have to line up three boats, two of which are quite far away. Do them in the wrong order, you're screwed. You also have to take your bulldozer with you or you don't have time to run back. Then finally, once the carrier is safely across the water, it's a mad-dash back in the final boat for some TNT stranded on an island so you can demolish the final building, which your bulldozer is too small to tackle. It's here where the game really shines, learning the levels and then finally being able to do everything as quickly as possible. There are countless other examples where you're hopping in and out of different vehicles to clear the path quickly and effectively. A couple of levels see you starting in a train with a great view down a valley with the whole level mapped out before your eyes, a great way to build up the tension as your mission begins. The J-Bomb is undoubtedly the best vehicle of destruction - a huge mech suit which slams down on buildings from above. A couple of other smaller mech suits allow you to summersault and jump into buildings from the ground with satisfying 1-up like noises as they crumble. All your traditional construction vehicles are there as well. The Backlash, while a novel idea, is the only one that is genuinely frustrating to use. It's weak at the front and powerful at the rear meaning you have to powerslide your way into buildings to down them quickly, and I can just never get this right. This was the only real moment of frustration as I just couldn't see the link between what I input on the controller and what happened on the screen. I often ended up missing, do too short a slide or too long a slide. Horrible when the clock is against you. The little voice overs have been engrained in my memory from childhood and the OST is still just as good as it ever was, especially Simian Acres. A Banjo before Banjo. Fits perfectly with the "Mid-Western" vibe the game has. Also reminds me of Cotton Eye Joe, which I'm almost certain was the inspiration. Overall, Blast Corps is a classic. A game that stands up extremely well to the test of time and is just a hell of a lot of fun to play while providing a solid level of challenge. It speaks volumes about the sheer talent that was situated in Twycross in the 1990s that this, essentially a B-tier project, managed to accomplish so much. It's an easy 10/10 from me and I'd recommend everyone who hasn't played it to at least give it a go if you can, there is truly nothing else like it. You're just trying to impress me.

"Crush it with the inside of your thighs!" I mean, Ring's commentary is a minefield of accidental innuendo, but that one made me drop the Ring-con (it was in between said thighs) in laughter! Inadvertently made me take a five-minute break because I was having one of those laughing fits where it actually starts to hurt. Although that might have been exacerbated by the previous excerise. 17 days in now, I'm on World 5 now. The "Mountain Climber" exercise I was introduced to today is the first time where I couldn't pull it off. It was excruciatingly exhausting! I don't like it one bit! Had to cut my session short because it left me gasping for breath. I apologise, squat exercise, there are far worse things for me to attempt.

Hey! Do you like 2D platforming? If so, you might like this review! Horned Knight N-Europe Review You may have noticed a cheap game called Horned Knight on your local eShop, since about a month or so ago. You may have wondered if you can shovel through some dark ghouls, or even some hollow ghosts and/or goblins. If you did, boy did I write the review for you! Quick, read it while it's hot, or else you may, like, read it while cold, and that would be a shame.