It's all gone quiet. Was due in 2021 then got postponed to an unspecified date.

92. Huntdown - Switch (2hrs)

I struggle with prolonged gaming sessions/big games, so amazing as TotK is I needed a tonic of sorts already and I chose this & the Cuphead DLC to replay.  Initially I thought I'd check out the arcade mode (added in a patch a year or so after launch), but once I realised you have to get through big chunks of it in one go I switched the the save-your-progress approach of the main game.  I appreciate that the enemy layouts are changed up to a certain degree and the scoring system has been overhauled, but it didn't draw my attention away from the story mode. 

I've not been quiet about the fact that this is pretty much God tier indie gaming for me.  If it's not in my top ten of all time it only misses out by a small handful places.  This, Valfaris, Not a Hero and Rive are probably my arcadelike shooter goats of the past decade.  Much as I learned to love the likes of ScourgeBringer, Hades, Rogue Legacy 2 and Dead Cells I like my tightness to be set in stone in terms of layout.  I've warmed to roguelikes for sure, and the games I just listed are probably top of that particular tree for me, but I prefer 2D git gud games to be exacting learn 'em ups without perks or randomisation.  

This only things preventing this from the reaching full [10] territory are the super lameness of most melee weapons, the fact that the three playable characters lack legit individual traits (mechanically) and the missed opportunity of not including a cheeky curveball stage or two.  A car chase perhaps, or a shooting gallery.  The Arcade Crew do those sort of brief excursion stages well, for example - check out the tunnel level in Blazing Chrome or the bike bits in Moon Rider: Vengeful Guardian.  That's just greed speaking though; it's almost perfect as it is.  In terms of visuals I think Steel Assault and Katana Zero are the only left to right pixel art games that trump this - it's a neon drenched galaxy brain version of Data East's Robocop and the sort of thing that reminds me of why (and when) I got into games in the first place.  I'm not against revolutionary titles, but ultimate form nu retro experiences will always be my S tier jam.  An absolutely wonderful horizontal fire run & gun with an abundance of boss battle goodness.  As a solo experience it tickles my fancy in ways and places that even SOR4 can't touch, and it's also magnificent as a couch co-op game. The 6000 SUX of faux arcade side scrollers.  The only sequel I want more is AstroBot: Rescue Mission 2.  [9]

Wario [9]
retroking [8]
JonB [8]

I'm pretty sure Eric gave it a [10] but I can't find the review.

It's been as low as £3.69 on Switch in sales. Modern gaming is a madness.

£17.99 unfortunately, I checked earlier. It's worth that, but there's no reason to pay full whack really. It's in sales fairly regularly afaik.

Yep it was my game of whatever year it came out. The boss fights are so memorable, so good!

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Wario [9]
retroking [8]
JonB [8]

I'm pretty sure Eric gave it a [10] but I can't find the review.

It's very good but ahead of SOR4?? Madness.

13. Aero Fighters 2 (Neo-Geo) - 30mins 

Played the SNES port of the first game back in 2021 and gotta say I'm a little dissapointed with this. Like the two Shock Troooer games there is significant slow down, its something I just don't expect from Neo-Geo games considering it's reputation.

Outside of that it's your usual top down shoot 'em up in the vein of the 194X games, which is to say good fun, and it has co-op so by default it's a decent enough game in my book.

6/10

My list

94. As Dusk Falls - Xbox One (6-7hrs?)

Started this about 6 months ago with the wife but drifted away for no real reason.  Of course she unexpectedly decided that she wanted to go back to it the week after Zelda was released.  Sometimes I need an irl overrule button.  I quite like this sort of thing though, especially as this one ditches the Quasi-Resi direct character control that often ruins the flow of something like The Last Stop or the Dark Pictures games.  It's basically an interactive TV show of passable quality elevated by a branching story based on decisions that have genuine consequence (rather than the illusion of A Big Decision), and QTE's.  I can occasionally get Mrs. Moot to be interested in this sort of thing (although Heavy Rain is the only example I can think of right now), but it's rare to see her leading the charge.  Albeit over the course of half a year.  I usually have to be tenacious to get her to devote even half an hour to anything without pinballs or falling gems, so it's interesting that this was something that clearly took her fancy, and was happily played in long-ish chunks.  If I had to put my finger on it I'd say the slight whiff of soap appealed, which might be the reason why she's so unexpectedly into Yellowstone.

Stylistically the staccato animation/panel frames effect worked for me.  I've seen this approach get some hate online but I thought it was an effective and bold move rather than being different for the sake of standing out.  It also helps the whole thing look less janky, as I doubt the budget would have stretched to either reasonable lip synching or a decent realtime engine.  It's unlikely that a modern TV show of this quality would sustain my interest tbh, but only because the bar is set so high these days.  If the idea of a choose-your-own adventure style version of something you probably would have watched in 2002 floats your boat then you could do a lot worse than this.  The story goes to some interesting places and while there aren't really any wow moments to speak of it's a pretty strong interactive drama.  Some sections are great, some scenes hit bum notes along the way but it's rarely terrible.  The recurring song that acts as a theme tune of sorts and bookends the chapters is a great fit too.  It all adds up in the win column.

After reading about how different choices affected other people's playthroughs I think I'm happy to go to an [8] for this.  It will undoubtedly be eyeroll city for some - especially just catching the odd scene in isolation and comparing it to top tier TV drama - but it's a legit (sub)genre done well, and the more I think about it the more I appreciate what it offers.  The fact that it might appeal to non-gamers can't be dismissed either, and nor can that fact that it'd be a blast to play through with multiple players (who can download the app and use their phones, if the availability of pads is an issue).  Would play a follow-up.

It judders all over the place at times on Xbox One though (installed not streamed), so I should've brought the Series S downstairs really.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

I only really started playing Neo Geo games a year or so back and up to that point I didn't realise how bad the slowdown was for some games. Seems insane that games on that particular console would be pushed to chugging point just for slightly prettier graphics. I don't really expect slowdown in arcade games tbh.

Shocking really. Imagine paying hundreds of pounds for a game with slowdown. Mega Drive puts it to shame quite a bit imo.

Forgot to add before:

5. Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS5) - 11 Apr (15 hrs)
Was meant to be DLC but got big enough for a separate release, so suffers from being in the same game world as Spider-Man.  Plays well enough but it was overly familiar with not enough new stuff.  Story was also meh but still fun just swinging around.
[7]

An amazing game for 1990. But even 2-3 years later was looking pretty dodgy.

The PS3/PS4/360/Xbox One one is a forgotten banger. <5hrs long, no chaff.

96. Runner - PSVR2 (2.5hrs)

I had high hopes for this based on a couple of positive reviews & a smattering of OMG IT'S SO AMAZING YouTube first impression videos.  It's basically rails shooter bike racer hybrid with a huge Akira meets that bit from FFVII* vibe that somehow manages to bodge most of what it sets out to achieve, which is a huge shame as with minimal tweaks this could've been a lovely little curio.  

The main problem, which seemed immediately apparently to me just from the tutorial sections, is that it tries to do too much at once.  More specifically it expects you to be on top of too many different elements at once.  There are so many systems potentially in play at any given time it felt like a high speed Steel Battalion to me.  Which is obviously a massively hyperbolic statement, but even so there's an obvious dissonance between the nippy arcade experience that it should be (imo) and the muddled stomach rubbing/head patting exhaustion of what it actually is.  Almost straight away I decided that the dual wield guns were unnecessary, and nothing changed my mind throughout my playthrough.  One gun on a futuristic speeding bike in VR is enough, two just over-eggs the pudding and manages to get some on its own face in the process.  It's bad enough that it essentially wants you to take charge of both characters in Lucky & Wild simultaneously, but when it chucks in overkill additions like the second gun, the disastrously fiddly grenades and the hey-that's-cool-oh-wait-no-it's-not damp squib plasma sword it feels like spinning plates.  To be honest, before I switched to invincibility mode I was ready to smash the plates myself and storm off, but I'd just paid £11.99 for it so decided to push through.  The difficulty level is terribly misjudged because the core mechanics just aren't good enough to support a brutal checkpoint game, and I absolutely would not have bothered to finish this without cheating.  It's so fucking hard on the default settings, and the checkpoints are miles apart.  

Unfortunately they've thrown too many bright ideas at a tiny canvas, where a less is more approach would have undoubtedly resulted in a better game.  Maybe I'm just getting old and can't be dealing with games that use too many/ALL OF THE buttons these days, but if you want to throw a grenade in this (which you will one or twice, before you realise that they're totally fucking useless) you have to holster your right gun, hold a button (triangle maybe?), grab the grenade from the dashboard (or whatever it's called on a motorbike) using the R1 button, then physically throw it and release the button simultaneously, all while steering with the opposite analogue stick and not crashing into stuff, only to watch it pea-roll into the road and disappear behind you.  There are missiles.  You can change between two shot types per gun, but only by clicking L3 or R3 while they're holstered.  Holstering reloads either gun.  You can build up a special meter for a sort of bullet time dual-wield mode.  Your bike also has cannons, which occasionally seem hugely powerful but often don't.  The plasma sword is supposed to be able to deflect projectiles, which sounded like a great idea at first.  AFAIK I never managed to successfully deflect anything though, so that's a literal swing and a miss too.  Bosses are bullet sponges and have odd patterns with attacks that often feel unavoidable, and most of the stages go on for far too long.  There's so much carnage at any given time that it's often hard to know what the devs expected you to focus on to survive, which smacks of poor design to me.    

Believe it or not this almost works on numerous occasions but the barbaric difficulty level and refusal to keep a multitude of ideas in check kill it.  Disappointing, because this could have been right up my alley.  The visuals are okay in a PSVR1 kind of way, which is fine given the price, but I can't say I paid any attention to the Codec style anime bits.  The story is possibly half decent - there's an interactive graphic novel that downloads alongside the main game - but also: whatever.  The soundtrack is exactly what you'd expect but also pretty good, and I've run out of things to say.  [5] I think, even considering the cheap price I can't bring myself to recommend it - for the most part it just annoyed me.  It's one of those games that seems to pop up in PSVR2 discussion online at the moment, with plenty of people sticking it on the tail end of their rec lists, but that has much more to do with the fact that there are only a couple of dozen games available in total than any sort of deserved hidden gem status.  Good idea, poor execution.



*Which was bobbins wasn't it?  Nifty gfx but it played like a substandard Road Rash.

Shame about Miasma Chronicles.  What's up with it/do you have a link for that review?  I mostly enjoyed Mutant Year Zero.