137. Blasphemous 2 - Switch (17hrs?)

Tidy sequel to a game from 2019 I quite liked.

As a follow up it doesn't take many risks, and other than the penitent one being slightly nippier to control the main change to the basics is a three weapon system rather than a single sword.  I was lead to believe that the initial early game choice would have huge repercussions on the way the player has to approach the game, but as I'd collected the other two within 3-4hrs of play anyway the CHOOSE WISELY element felt slightly redundant.  I wasn't overly keen on the idea of your starting weapon dictating where you could and couldn't go (something that initial previews focused on) as that didn't seem like it would offer one-and-done players much of value, so the fact that you can bag the lot pretty early on wasn't something I felt particularly disappointed with; it just felt at odds with what had been teased by the devs.  As another surprise, this absolutely isn't the sprawling whopper of a Metroidvania I was expecting as a sequel to a game that continued to expand free of charge between 2019 and 2022.  It's not small, but it felt smaller than B1 which is pretty unusual for a modern sequel. 

Of all of the vast number of 2D M'anias out there that aren't actual Metroids or Castlevanias (or direct imitations of the latter), these are the titles that lean most heavily into the 'vania side of the potmanteau.  It almost feels like a spiritual successor at times, with methodical, weighty combat and movement through areas littered with hazards like falling chandeliers and (everyone's favourite) knockback bats, leading to numerous pattern heavy, often screen filling boss battles.  You can also assign secondary magic attacks to a button press (assuming you can find the well-tucked away chants/verses).  I hope long term Castlevania fans are clued up on this franchise as I'm pretty sure it would scratch that specific itch.  

Combat is less reliant on parrying when compared to its predecessor as by far and away the most useful weapon here - ymmv - doesn't even allow you to block attacks.  The slow flow attack and riposte of the original game's combat is mostly gone, for better or worse, and it felt less punishing to me on the whole.  In fact, for a game that has a reputation of being a rock hard Soulslike desperate to punish unprepared players, it didn't strike me as particularly tricky.  Sure, there's a ridiculously difficult boss in there, but if you remove that one fight from the package the rest of the quest put up far less resistance than Blasphemous on the whole. 

Visually it's just about the most breathtaking 2D game I've ever seen.  It's certainly in with a shout for being the most attractive side scroller ever, even with strong competition from the likes of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Cuphead, Blasph 1 et al (Steel Assault!).  It also sounds superb, with both the SE and orchestral score being as absolutely on point as expected.   

It's got issues.  Switch performance is mostly good but the occasional areas that stutter are unfortunately the ones that linger in the memory.  I'm fed up with rain and snow effects wobbling the performance of pixel art games - surely there's a way to add inclement weather without simultaneously punching performance in the fuck?  There are also some basic camera problems in there too, some of which reared their head within the first half an hour for me, which is too simple a fix to not be annoying and isn't really indicative of a game that's been polished to the nines (as you'll see later on it falls one short innit).  In terms of the game itself the final stretch is weak and the last two bosses are hugely disappointing (one is incongruously harsh and the other is a damp squib that couldn't turn over a pancake on a wet weekend).  I also thought that the Veredicto - the huge swinging mace thing that I absolutely intended to avoid after watching the trailer - was stupidly OP and allowed me to wreck most screens without even bothering to approach situations in the way that, I feel, Blasphemous should be played.  Sure, I could have just stuck to my initial choice of the Ruego Al Alba (this game's equivalent of the original game's weapon), but I'm a sucker for the path of least resistance.  Mrsmr2 has confirmed that the dual blades are valid if speed and low power take your fancy, but these games work best when you're plodding ahead rather than dancing through the screens, imo.    I thought the overall vibe was a bit less grotty and unpleasant/unsettling than the first game too.  It has its moments of course, but I don't think the redesigned style of animated 2D cut-scenes helped (nor did the slightly more vibrant sprites) as they looked a bit too Saturday morning TV to me.  It's still wonderfully bleak and grim, but it's not quite as grotesquely splendiferous as the first one.  

So am I disappointed?  Not really. I was hoping for a [10] as the original is one of my favourite games from one of my favourite genres, but the vast majority of this played like a strong [8] so it's not worth grumbling forever.  Last time I added to my list in Cinty's top 100 thread Blasphemous was my third favourite '2D search action game' ever, sitting proudly at no.25 overall from all of the games I've ever played, and this is better in some ways and not embarrassingly far behind on the whole.  Not an all-singing-all-dancing super modern Metroidvania, but one of the best if you fancy a strong effort that uses a fairly traditional template. [8]



138. What the Golf: Among Golf DLC - Switch (40mins)

Another round of free DLC has dropped, this time it's Among Us themed.  Weirdly, Tilly thinks AU is great, despite rarely spending any time actually playing it.  She occasionally wears a red IMPOSTER beanie that was free with 110% Gaming, encourages others to vote for whoever's acting suss in the playground and constantly badgers me to watch a channel called Shiloh and Bros where a group of (surprisingly not unlikeable) kids run around acting out mini Among Us skits and dramas.

As with all the additional WTG chapters, this is short and sweet, full inventive throwaway mechanics/approaches to each hole and the dangling carrot of sublime/awful puns every time you successfully hit a flag with a ball/cat/burger van.  I love this game, Tilly loves this game.  It's great that the devs have continued to drip feed quality free updates for the past four years without the central conceit running out of juice and in its current form I'd say it's worth grouping it in with the best indies from the past half decade.  I can't not mention the competitive two player mode, even though I champion it every time I review an extra chapter: it's magnificent. [8]



139. Minit Fun Racer - Switch (35 minutes)

Tiny roguelite spin-off to Minit that's currently £1.80 instead of £2.69.  The fact that '100% of developer and Devolver profits go directly to charity' probably makes this my most heinously evilman purchase ever, but on the flipside none you you lot have bought it at either price ergo I'm the best.  There's really not much to it - weave through randomised traffic while collecting coins (which are banked), spend money on permanent upgrades in the shop when you crash.  The goal is to reach the end of the second section before the timer runs out, and each collected coin gives you an extra second of play.  The shop contains perks such as a manual turbo, a helmet to allow extra crashes, +5 seconds on the starting timer and a magnet to nab coins from a distance.  It's all refreshingly straightforward, and it's also all over bar the shouting within half an hour or so.  There's a checklist of goals (basically achievements) to incentivise further play, but even so I expect 100% completion wouldn't take more than 90 minutes or so.  

I had fun with this, as the title suggested I might, but unfortunately the actual traffic weaving is a bit off and it's far from the best attempt at an Excitebikey style game out there.  In a nutshell it's enjoyable fluff, and it reminded me that I really should play Minit again because it was great. [6]

140. Ace Combat 7 - PS5 (10hrs)

I've not played any of these before, which is odd as there are a few similar-ish games I've been quite keen on over the years (Wing Arms on Saturn was a prime example of a 3/5 that I loved because I owned it).  Technically I'm lying a bit here - I have played this one as I had it briefly on Xbox before realising the checkpoints were miles apart and getting rid.  So I haven't played any properly, unless one and a half missions in 2020ish counts.  Months after shifting my copy I got oddly sucked into a Game Pass release called Project Wingman, which was clearly a) a budget Ace Combat homage and b) had no fucking checkpoints whatsoever.  I struggled through for 5hrs or so but eventually gave up in a fit of 'life's too short', which isn't really my motto when it comes to finishing games I've already put a shift in with.  The thing is, for all its faults the core flying and dogfighting was great, so it stands to reason that its inspiration would be a better game and I was just being a wally with the checkpoint stuff, right?  Yes and no.  Most importantly the yes bit: this is miles better than Project Wingman.  But the sparse checkpointing still did my head in here.  I know it's a long running franchise ergo it has roots deeply embedded in the bygone eras, but I'm genuinely surprised that this particular entry was so popular as it's resolutely old school in structure.  I'm used to modern games offering up checkpoints every few screens, yet in AC7 failure regularly results in having to repeat 10+ minutes of gameplay, which honestly had me wobbled for most of the campaign.  Obviously I'm spoilt as a (retro leaning) modern gamer, but it's OK to be spoilt by certain refinements that improve pretty much all games across the board, imo.  I've been moaning about it for ages in the currently playing thread so I won't go on about it for too long here, but I found it pretty odd for a game released in 2019.  Bear in mind that this is a game where you plane can instantly blow up after smashing into an equally nippy enemy fighter.  Most other modern releases with one foot deliberately in the past chuck dozens of checkpoints at you per stage (Evil West etc.)

Enough about that then.  The core mechanics are sound, which results in a very moreish gameplay loop thankfully not muddied by too many change for the sake of change missions.  It's at its best when you're dogfighting or bombing, and the variations on the theme don't steer it too far away from the tasks that appeal.  OK, there are escort missions in there, which are of course annoying (much like stealth sections in third person action games, they always are), but they're few and far between.  Plus those missions tend to have extra checkpoints, presumably because the playtesters pointed out that they were irritating.  The targeting system can feel odd at times, with actual targets quite hard to differentiate from secondary targets when in the thick of it.  The auto target selection is a bit odd too, and the manual switching doesn't quite nail it either, which results in it occasionally feeling a bit like trying - and failing - to manually switch to a certain defender in an early noughties footie game.  I have no suggestions to improve this (other than 'always auto-target actual targets', perhaps), I just know it feels a bit wonky/imperfect from time to time.

The story is straight up bobbins, but unfortunately not quite awful enough to bother paying attention to.  Part of me regrets skipping most of it because maybe it was fully terrible and I've missed out.  As far as I could tell from what I bothered to watch: an accidental assassination results in the player character - 'Trigger' for me, in his 20yr old plane - fighting alongside a bunch of convicts who are a) treated like disposable meat puppets by the higher ups and b) for some reason are allowed to fly about in fully armed fighter jets.  They're all quite skeptical of your inclusion in team Con Air at first, but guess what?  Yep, give yourself 10 points.  Radio chatter is cringey bollocks too (someone said "is that a girl?!?!" at one point, after another plane did a fancy loop-de-loop and a female voice came through the comms), so natural gaming instinct dictates that you'd zone it out, but unfortunately you do need to listen from time to time as missions are occasionally more complex than 'shoot the red bits on the radar'.  Perhaps that's the series' whole shtick and I'm missing some sort of unwritten embrace the drivel rule, a la Metal Gear.    

It goes on forever and the missions are too long. Even so I was nicely addicted to this until the credits rolled. The aircraft tree felt unnecessarily mean (and I didn't have a clue what was going on for a while - it turns out you can kind of grind for currency), but there has to be some sort of replay value I guess.  It looks lovely and the fact that it still rolls with an near-constant high energy soundtrack, which I presume is a franchise staple, gave it an extra shot in the arm.  The recurring theme sounds a bit like an even more bombastic Uncharted, so it was more than welcome every time it swaggered in.  

So that'll be a [7] for this then I think.  Don't egg me, but I reckon three rewinds per mission would bring this nicely up to an acceptable modern times standard, with the option available for purists to turn such tomcatfoolery off.  The game underneath the hood is an [8] and I'm glad I've played one now.  Possible day one for a sequel, at its best this was a cracker.  A Proper Game (TM), despite its shortcomings.  Thanks for the lend @Digi.

142. Turbo Outrun - Arcade (30mins)

Continuing the road trip inspired by ERE.  Semi-decent sequel that deviates from the original template just enough to feel a bit wrong, despite also getting a lot right.  Firstly the route tree is gone, and it's now a linear racer split into four stages.  There's nothing wrong with that per se, as the locales are still quite fun/varied, but it removes a key ingredient from the marvellous medicine which results in the experience hitting a little differently.  It looks good (with some half decent weather effects popping up in certain areas), sounds okay (although these are not the tunes you were looking for) and plays well (it's basically Outrun plus a turbo button), it just suffers a little from being more of the same, and naturally less iconic. 

You can choose between three upgrades in a shop between stages, which doesn't really add much to the experience.  A rival occasionally appears spouting snippets of sampled speech, as does a police car, but I failed to work out the purpose of either during my credit fed playthrough.  I noticed that my squeeze was missing from the passenger seat at one point, so maybe the rival car pinches her if you collide too many times?  Anyway, she reappeared shortly afterwards but it was an 'oh, she's back' moment so I can't give you any answers.  I assume her tail was between her legs, and I trust questions were asked.  So what if he drives a Porsche?  She can't treat me like this it's Friday night for Christ's sake.

TLDR: Is it good?  Yes.  It it Outrun?  No. [3.5 out of 6]



143. Outrunners - Arcade (1hr)

I'm pretty sure I've read/heard that this was decent in places, but I think that may have been drowned out by the state of the Data East handled MD port, which wasn't favourably received iirc.  I gave that a quick go early in the week but it had some weird Dashin' Desperados style permanent split screen thing going on so I quickly reversed into a hedge.  Maybe it's an OK game, but from what I played I doubt it.  Quelle surprise alert: the arcade version is an absolute joy monster.  Whereas Turbo Outrun went down the straight-ahead nitro zoom serious racer route (while ditching the ability to select your own route), this brings back the breeze.  Blue sky bois rejoice; this drive feels like a jolly-up again.  At the very first fork in the road you get the option to turn east or west, with both turns taking you to a full-sized branching path Outrun game.  If you couple that with the wild '93 poly/scaler visuals and add the fact that it controls well that and tunes are legit, my mathskills round that up to Outrun².  Which is basically a glorious halfway house between Outrun and Outrun 2.  It's a shame that the theme of some zones repeat whether you head left or right, but the layouts differ so that's excusable.  Especially as the blue skies are actually replaced by blue seas at one point, with marine life swimming around above your head as you race through a (not particularly technically impressive, it has to be said) underwater tunnel.         

It's bright, bold, resolutely Sega and screams I AM OUTRUN at every turn, which makes it a glorious coin-op experience imo.  Up there with Guardians: Genjin Makai 2 and The Cliffhanger feat. Edward Randy as the most FUCK YEAH arcade games I've stumbled across since buying my double whammy of mame-ready monsters.  It's criminal that Sega spent time and varying degrees of effort porting the likes of Touring Car Racer and Manx TT to the Saturn while (the proper version of) this languished in arcade form only - even with no additions it would've offered better VFM than the vast majority of content light polygon racers of the era (Sega Rally gets a pass for being infinitely replayable).  Terrific stuff.  [5.5 out of 6].

Aha. Ta.

One of these days, I'll finish another game.

Don't you ever have a successful run on Slay the Spire? Just count that 100 times if you want numbers. I've had Streets of Rage 4 about five times.

I did a pretty conservative estimate for beatmania, which I put hours in per day over at least a decade, probably more, and reckon I have 8k+ hrs, give or take a thousand or two either side. There was a good 5+ years where I did nothing but play that game given any free time.

I don't even want to know how much time I've spent in fifa menus alone.

145. OutRun Europa - Master System (50mins)

A game published by U.S. Gold and developed by Probe Software would've been firmly in 'all bets are off' territory, given that both of them adopted a blindfolded blunderbuss approach to quality control.  As expected this isn't a worthy successor to the original, but it's not awful either.  A lot more work went into this than the MD port of Turbo OutRun, I'd wager.  With a little more time in the oven (Probe were notorious for churning games out quickly in the early 90s) I think this could've been up there in the lower top tier of 8-bit racers, but as it stands it'll have to settle for a place somewhere in the top third.  Which sounds like I'm saying it's good - just to confirm, I'm not; I'm saying the majority of 8-bit racers were shite and this is better than most.

Visually it's actually very impressive, to the point where it'd be a shoo-in for inclusion in a BEST GRAPHICS list focusing on Master System racers.  It looks a bit cack now, but this isn't just tunnel vision talking: it's doing things most similar games most certainly were not.  The pseudo 3D effects are pretty well done and the trackside detail puts earlier 8-bit OutRun games to shame.  Even the way the approaching shore simulates sprite scaling by getting closer in increments on the speedboat stage is a nice touch. Unfortunately the gameplay doesn't quite back it up, and the tunes are trademark bleepy Probe offerings.  It took me a while to work out the you need to press up to accelerate as the two controller buttons are assigned to Fire and Turbo (both of which rely on depletable/restockable rescources), but it just about works.  You get a different vehicle for each stage, which is pretty neat, starting with a motorbike but progressing to a jetski followed by a car, then a speedboat, then a Ferrari red sports car.  The aim of the game is to catch up with the thieves that stole the same model of car you end up chasing them down in, before repeatedly ramming them to smithereens, Chase H.Q style.  Good job everyone.  Along the way police cars will attempt to nick you, presumably because you've nicked all the vehicles you've been hopping between in your blinkered quest for justice.  

Design choices such as Road Rash style punching on the bike, or howitzer style shots that require specific timing to hit things at certain heights in the jetski stage are admirable, but poorly executed.  Shooting in general feels tacked on, and the game would've benefited from doing away with it completely tbh (and remapping accelerate to button 2).  Ramming other cars should work, and almost does, but it's ruined by the fact that you'll often take damage for what feels like no good reason. The actual driving isn't great as it's more of an avoid 'em up than a racing game, and you'll spend most of your time attempting to maintain top speed regardless of bends in the road. There are various pickups scattered throughout the stages, and they would be quite useful so it's a shame you can't react in time to collect any on purpose as they whiz past - as with many games of the era it expects you to learn their placement through failure.  Levels drag on for a little too long and if you're busted, destroyed or run out of time you're treated to a Game Over message followed by the title screen.  More often than not this was the way of it back then, but it feels so harsh here.  All these little blemishes add up to the point where it feels like Father Ted's been at it with a hammer.  

All in all I found this an interesting one.  It falls well short of greatness but I can see what they were going for and it's really not a bad effort (especially considering the lack of effort Probe were capable of when they put their minds to it). 69%

Tldr but does that wall of text explain why the fuck you've served up a non-animated gif?

The OutRun Europa jpeg I found (which wasn't even from the MS version but I got fed up looking) has mysteriously disappeared too.

Shame about that MK score. The goodie/baddie thing would probably annoy me if I was invested in any of it. For a game where the only thing I'm interested in is the cinematic sp mode it makes no sense to not actually pay attention to the story, but iirc I didn't know (or care to know) what on earth (or the netherrealm) was going on in MK11. I still loved the nonsense as it was happening though. S-tier lobotomy viewing; It's like a slick, brash and brutal version of In The Night Garden.

147. Night Striker - Arcade (20mins)

What do you get if you cross OutRun with Space Harrier, set it in the future, give it the nightshift and tell it not to be as good as its inspirations?  The enjoyable and competent Night Striker (1989), of course!  I smashed through this once, taking the easier routes en route to the credits.  It's fun, and for what it is I can't knock it really, but I'm not itching for another go any time soon.  I expect I would have loved shovelling 20ps into it at the time and I had a grin on my face during my whistlestop tour this weekend - these possibly inaccurate bookend opinions are the only things that matter really.  [3.5 out of 6]



148. OutRun 2006 Coast to Coast - PSP (1hr)

I didn't own a PSP until it became the go-to haxxor handheld and wasn't overly keen on my DS, so I assumed handheld gaming was dead to me until I picked up a 3DS and Vita in 2015ish.  Since then I've never looked back, to the point where I was emulating this on an RG353M.  Handhelds 4 life.  I never owned Coast to Coast on anything for one reason or another (both being: I'm an idiot) but the original OutRun2 was one of my favourite Xbox games.  Aside from a few emulation hiccups this runs well and looks better than I assumed PSP racers could.  Coasting to the credits a few times was fun, and the fact that this also seems to contain the original sequel cements the [9].  Pure quick dip arcade-at-home goodness. The original is iconic and Outrunners blew me away (/Sega Lord X voice) a few weeks ago, but this is peak OutRun and possibly peak Sega full stop.



149. Robocop 2 - Arcade (30mins)

Caught a glimpse of this on a Kim Justice licensed games video and was utterly convinced it would bang.  Unfortunately it's mostly awful and having a popgun as your main form of attack in a scrolling beat 'em up doesn't work at all.  Murphy stomps and plods around as you'd expect, which makes it feel like you're locked into a Haggar type, only without the big hitter reward.  Punches are as limp as the hand cannon fire and bosses are just a war of attrition.  If you get extra close to certain perps you tend to body slam them, otherwise that's pretty much it for the controls/movelist other than the ability to jump and fire and the occasional bigger gun to pick up (see gif).  It's a painfully average game even by deep dive belt scroller standards and pretty much everything lacks any real bite.  Take away the license and this is probably one of the worst games of its type I've played.  The final stage sees you battle Kane repeatedly, and there's a bit where you both go off a building in a grapple and make a dent in the pavement below, which is kind of neat I guess (my contemporary self would have said so tbf), but even so this isn't worth a look unless you approach it with another player for some simultaneous Robocop action. NB. Instead of playing as Lewis, which would have required designing/coding a new sprite, player two just gets to control a slightly-more-purple-Murphy.  In terms of quality the drop off between the original arcade game and this is roughly the same as comparing Verhoven's Robocop to its second sequel.  [2 out of 6]

Emulation issues.