Decided to play Castlevania: Curse of Darkness the other day. 3D Castlevania for the PS2. Haven't gotten that far into it yet, but at first glance, it seems to be a lot less exploratory than games like Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow, etc. There's an element to the game called Innocent Devils, which are summons that have unique mechanics and also boost your stats. They level with experience that either Hector, the playable character, or themselves gain by defeating enemies. You can create weapons and armor by combining items together.

No sign of Dracula yet, but it's Castlevania, so it'll happen eventually.

If you're not on Team Browt then you're on the wrong team

The less I say about the industry as a whole, the better.

So 'Chronoquartz' was a treat. It had good puzzles and a handful of clever reveals. Though its English translations (from a french developer) did lead to one section being very obscure/difficult to understand what you were meant to be doing.

But it was good enough to be one of the very few games that I’ve “replayed” for its good ending. So I’d probably give it a strong 7.

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And for the last few days of February (good riddance), I attempted to play through twenty-five demos for NextFest. (Before it ends tomorrow.) So here’s a list of what I tried and how I felt…

Cream Of The Crop









Solid Demo











Underwhelming















Terrible











Didn’t work

re9 is honestly a great game, had fun playing through it

I saw that Gamespot dropped a hands-on preview of Highguard today. The game is sitting at Mostly Negative on Steam, and I don't personally have any interest in it, but GS were describing the game as if it's some novel new experience that has no genre. While I was listening to them describing it, a term immediately came to mind—it's an FPS MOBA. That's literally it. It's not anything new, and it doesn't have to be.

Another hero shooter in a crowded market eith lots of options. Its like shouting in a busy room trying to br hered.

lol highguard failed

I recently purchased and played through Dragon Age : The Veilguard after avoiding it for so long. (Due to all the drama and endless negative talk about it.)

After eighty hours of playtime my honest rating of The Veilguard is a 5/10.
Certainly not acceptable for what was once a top tier fantasy franchise mind you, but the flaming hate train was so overcharged.

The Veilguard is definitely an even split of pros and cons and I still would not recommend buying unless it is on sale. But it was good to give it an honest chance and appreciate the upsides. 💯 (Even though I am salty that it was essentially the last game in what was one of my favorite RPG series.)

Random mostly positive bullshit in my feed...

Slay the Spire 2 has sold 3 million copies in 1 week. (I should go back and play more of the first one.)

Monster Hunter Stories 3 seems to be well reviewed? (But it's currently running like sh*t on PC like Wilds did. Good thing my old roommate plans to get this on console.)

A new Deep Rock Galactic game is being made. (Hey, that's something that might interest me. Depends on how long they plan to stay in early access.)

The solo dev of Chained Echoes is hopefully winning a future lawsuit against a sh*t company.

Some indie game dev streamer made $30k in one day & basically paid off his four years of work.

Cavemanon is making another dinosaur visual novel. (And Hug A Gator was genuinely good.)

Piece by Piece: This is incredibly dull. There’s not much more I can add. It also shares the exact same name of another different cozy-style game with a demo. Bad luck there.

And despite my opinion of this game. Apparently both devs worked together and bundled their games with a discount. So that's wholesome.

Quick Reviews

Drill Bird: Decent little game. A little too simple when you figure everything out.

Sisyphus Is A Bug: Game has charm and challenge in equal amounts. I really like figuring out how the gameplay loop is supposed to work. But I think the timer might be a little too tight. (Certainly deserves more recognition than it's gotten so far.)

Babushka's Glitch Dungeon: Suckered in by an art style yet again. I found this game incredibly obnoxious in parts. (Or far too easy/unexplored in terms of what mechanics it introduces.)

Where We Went: Free game. Neat proof of concept. Got stuck on the last level though.

Epic: "We're changing the V-buck monetization scheme because Fortnite is too expensive and we need help paying the bills".
Also Epic: "For several days to promote C7S2, SAC earnings for creators are tripled!"

Bro, you're either broke or not, and given you're a multi-billion dollar company pumping out collab after collab, I doubt you're broke.

I um. Don't have access to most of my video games for five or so days. (But I do have my Switch.) I downloaded Monster Hunter Stories 3 demo. But I only got as far as the minimal character creation & the opening cutscene.

So what's everyone else been playing lately?

From Crimson Desert. (With every X post acting as if the Black Desert devs - who literally can't make a working MMO tutorial - somehow made the second coming of Christ in video game form.)

And I nailed that prediction. (The devs made sweeping changes with some day one patches. So that critical reviews weren't taken as seriously.) I knew fully well that it be a technical mess. At best.

In today's gaming news:

I've been playing Borderlands 4 again because the DLC is out tomorrow. That game is still so smooth and fun to play.

I finished Ghost of Yotei and despite the story kinda drifting too far into 'mehhhhh' territory in the final bits, that was a damn fine game and I really appreciated how much Atsu was willing to acquire tools for killing people better without having to worry about honor.

Falling back in love with games I haven't played in years.

DQM: Joker on DS, Palworld on Steam, even Minecraft for a certain mod's public server (and soon another mod that I'll singleplayer) are among them.

It's nice to have really good old games to fall back on when new games are too expensive for my pitiful wallet, lol

Had a board game night at my friend's house, and it was a really nice time. Played a lot of card games, board games, dice games, Jackbox.TV, and various other sh*t on my account. (Through gameshare.) Been a while since I've had time to sit down and have fun.

And my friend gave me his copy of Armored Core 6. So that'll be something to look forward to.

But I'm replaying Death's Door again for no f*cking reason. Certainly not the same as playing Tunic again. (I guess because I never got to experience the "true final boss". Because of the game crashing on me during the credits.) Reminded of the bright spots/best parts being the boss fights. (With the frog especially.) And the endless enemy gauntlets being a real pain in the ass.

I have a couple more games that I might get to first on PC. (Simply because I expect to be able to get through them faster than Mecha-Souls.) And maybe I'll be able to post a review or something.

What's everyone else been playing this week?

I've been playing Starfield since the new update and DLC came out.

I dunno, man, Bethesda games scratch an itch that other games just dont scratch.

Back home from pet-sitting. Huzzah. (I have 100%'d Death's Door and feel nothing.)

I guess Capcom has been on a roll for crowd pleasers lately. Friend of mine enjoyed RE:9, another is enjoying Monster Hunter Stories 3, and (after online buzz & a demo later.) I'm enjoying Pragmata. I can say the combat experience feels different in a positive way. And I think it's doing a lot of things pretty well thus far. (Though the non-traversy feels artificial.)

I have minor gripes. (But most of those have positive stipulations.) So it's just a solid shooter with solid mechanics. With better character interactions than most modern games. (As none of the character dialogue makes me want to mute the sound/nuke the writers.)

A pleasant surprise for sure.

I also downloaded another interesting-looking demo and played a chunk of "Creature Kitchen", which has been an enjoyable puzzle game. So I certainly have more to play.

Didn't have internet for a while, so I kept busy with some classics.

Played through seven Tony Hawk games, notably THPS3, THPS4, THUG, THUG2, THAW, Project 8, and Proving Ground. The last two were underwhelming, with Proving Ground being especially rough to even run, and there was something I noticed over the progression of going through them all—the pre-made parks drop significantly in quality (except Montana; can't ruin perfection). It's like, over time, the devs of each subsequent game stopped caring as much about letting players design their own parks (with the exception of THUG and THUG2, but even then, the quality does dip). Additionally, just the career portion of the games drop off drastically at Proving Ground. Project 8 does kind of keep the same sort of gameplay as the other games, but it was very clear that Proving Ground was made as an answer to EA's .skate, and that answer rang hollow.

Also played through the first three games in the Onimusha franchise. Solid games, but the gameplay does get more difficult in later installments. I enjoyed the story all throughout, especially in the third one. Jean Reno makes a damn good character model. I will say, though—the inclusion of his voice work in the beginning, only for pretty much all foreign actors getting removed with the addition of Ako and her ability to not only make the characters understand each other, but also them being replaced with English voice actors... kind of an eyeroll, but to justify it in my mind, Jean Reno was probably expensive at the time.

I also finished Enter the Matrix: Path of Neo. An absurdly awful game. I have no idea how the general consensus is that Path of Neo is better than the original Enter the Matrix. People who truly believe that are baffling.

Creature Kitchen was a nice cozy time. And who wouldn't want to sit around a cozy campfire full of cryptids? 7/10

And Pragmata was a really solid experience. I reached the end credits last night. (Now I have to decide if I want to do the optional challenges to get "The True Ending".) But regardless of all the optional "Super Mario Kazio"-esque challenges that I may or may not complete. I think this game secured an easy spot in my top games of the current year. Since most of my critiques are purely in the nitpick category.

Although, I do think even a few narrative changes could've made the story less predictable/the spectacle ending hit harder. 8.5/10 (Maybe up to a weak 9. If I play through the borderline impossible/hard ass optional challenges to see its good ending. Though I usually really don't like when games pull that shit. The gameplay is good enough to warrant me giving it a college try.)

Edit 1: Actually the "Signal Unknown" challenges were a surprisingly easy and rewarding set of challenges that would (in theory) help you toward New Game Plus. But the (revamped) final boss is not enjoyable to fight & the "alternative ending" is a ten second sound clip. So no that did not improve the score.

Easily the best part of another fuck awful month this year.

And next up is another cozy game on PC & another difficult experience via PS5. Rekindled Trails & Armored Core 6. (The more things change, Etcetera. Etcetera.)

Edit 2: Well Dweller was an interesting demo. Very striking visually. (The other demo I meant to try, I was almost instantly turned off by how inconsistent the wall jumping was.)

But on a less positive note, Sony ain't getting another cent outta me until the online DRM policy fucks off. ("It's for people who abuse our refund policy." Translation = "Ha. Refund Policy. We barely even have one of those.")

I honestly assume the DRM attempt is going full Xbox. In that they hope to get credit/positive news coverage about reversing the fuck awful decision(s) that you just recently made. But maybe even that's being too optimistic.

Final edit: Rekindled Trails is dull as dishwater. But also annoying in how tediously its "quests" are designed. And Armored Core 6's Balteus and the entire mission can go fuck itself with a rusty tin. I'm not grinding any more just to continue this rock, paper, scissors, shotgun ass encounter design.

Double post to keep the thread alive.

Idols Of Ash is a perfect bite-sized climbing game. It's grappling hook is utilized better than most games that have them & the thing that chases you is legitimately creepy as fuck. So it earns a solid recommendation for 3 measly dollary-doos. Hard to score a game w. an hour runtime. But it's at least a strong 7 (an 8/10 dare I say) in terms of doing what it needs to right.

Tried REPO public lobbies & it was a decent time. Once you get past all the cheaters. ^-^'

And Peak is more fun w. a group than I expected it to be. (I guess Aggrocrab has already proven than it can make a fun game with Another Crab's Treasure.) But it also feels like it earns "friendslop" as a title. Because the character's stamina bar is pathetic & the snowball effect of "mess up once and you're probably screwed" is probably not great for solo play?

A certain friend of mine made me buy "Across The Obelisk" on sale & it's alright. But it's incredibly slow paced & the amount of DLC is fucking absurd/borderline predatory. (It's very reminiscent of Talisman.) So I couldn't possibly tell someone to buy it full price. When Slay The Spire already exists.

I'm tentatively waiting for Mina The Hollower to come out. Just because I need another good Zelda-like in my life. But I'm not in love with Shovel Knight & how that controlled. So we'll see if this "bet it all on this game or go bankrupt" was a solid strategy for this development team...

The new 007 game combines the IOI level design of Hitman with the spectacle of a game like Uncharted and it does both pretty well. It's nice to have a Bond game that isn't just shoot first, never be suave. It's also very, very funny that the main plot is SUPER anti-AI (as it should be) while the company that owns the IP is going full steam into AI content.