Coelacanth

250GB install sizes plus an additional 100GB shader caches. This is what the future looks like, buckle up.

Existing IPs, maybe. But the real point of this patent is to stifle innovation and preempt competition. No indie developer is going to dare enter this creative space anymore as they don’t have the resources to challenge Nintendo’s patent - even though I think this won’t hold up in court.

What if I answer The Noid?

I played Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time this week. Apparently Itagaki and some of the other ex-Team Ninja members who left after Ninja Gaiden 2 made it, so it felt like a natural next game after finishing the Ninja Gaiden trilogy.

I was very positively surprised by this game. Art direction is great, it has some very nice looking levels and apparently got both the original creator, some of the show writers as well as the original voice cast on board. Story isn’t going to pull up any trees but it felt appropriate for a cartoon and had some fun characters.

Gameplay definitely felt like it had Ninja Gaiden lineage, and felt pretty fun overall. Between the graphics and the ground pickups it felt a bit like a throwback to games of a bygone era. It’s a bit of a shame that many important combat abilities are gated behind the skill tree as it means the gameplay doesn’t make a great first impression, but it opens up and becomes a lot more fun as you start unlocking things.

Bosses were fun for the most part and felt appropriately balanced. Some fun designs and playing on Normal I didn’t need more than a couple attempts at most for each boss, which feels right for a game like this. Maybe the final boss’s vulnerability windows were a tad to small, but it was a cool boss otherwise.

Definitely recommend it if you’re interested in a more laid back and chill action game. Or if you’re a Samurai Jack fan, of course. Sadly I believe it’s been delisted from all storefronts but Epic, but you can of course always fly the black flag.

It’s a great console. I’m not buying any new Nintendo products but the 3DS was amazing and the N3DSXL just feels so nice in your hands.

Thank you! I’ll bookmark that for the future.

How hard is it to hack your 3DS? I haven’t done it and I haven’t really experimented with stuff like that for like 20 years. I feel like it could be a good idea to look into after Nintendo closed the eShop and second hand 3DS games are getting more and more expensive.

I’ve dug up my New3DS again and am ordering some games for it. Castlevania is somewhat of a gaming blind spot for me, is there one playable on the 3DS you’d recommend?

Still on the ninja grind, at this point I’m hopefully done with Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge relatively soon. Not yet, though.

I really wish this solid fundamental combat system wasn’t trapped inside a godawful game. I really truly hate everything the story and presentation is doing. The setting is shit, the narrative is shit, the QTE gameplay is shit. The levels are boring. The voice acting is bad, but not even in a fun and campy way anymore but just bad. And worst of all - unlike the previous games this attempts to be “story focused”. So instead of just getting a cutscene at the start and end of a chapter and then action in between you are non-stop engaging with the terrible garbage they’re serving.

And they even managed to fuck up executing the combat even though they have the most solid fundamentals in place of the entire series. I hate the Steel On Bone counters, and the combat is designed around spamming them all the time. It’s boring. QTE-ing a single SOB counter into multiple instant kills feels unearned, and so much less satisfying than deliberately delimbing enemies with specific combos in NG2 to set them up for instant execution.

Plus the bosses are actually even worse here. Some are okay, I know it’s infamous but the T-rex actually felt fine to me but stuff like the tank and helicopter bosses are just pure trash. I’ve also heard the final boss is a world record holder in unfair bullshit so you know, I have that to look forward to too, I guess.

I know people love Fem V but I find Male V underrated and even prefer his delivery in some scenes, particularly

I tried to watch some gameplay footage of it earlier this year as a Let’s Player I watch played it but couldn’t stand it. I concluded the game probably just wasn’t meant for me, but it’s possible it just isn’t good. It looked incredibly boring.

Still working on Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360 version, emulated on Xenia Canary). I’m currently halfway through Chapter 12 out of 14 on Path of the Warrior, so I’m almost at the point where I can see the finish line. Still unsure whether I can beat it as I’ve heard the final stretch is pure hell.

I have never played a game that made me feel quite like this, I have to be honest. It’s one of the best and one of the worst games I’ve ever played simultaneously. If this was released today it would be absolutely lambasted for its blatantly untested, horrifically balanced and absurdly unfun encounters.

And it’s such a shame and a waste because the pieces are all there for a spectacular tour de force of an action game and you can see that side of it shine through from time to time. Whenever the game clicks and is good, it’s fucking incredible. Lightning fast, blood and limbs flying everywhere, incredible animations and brutal execution moves as you’re zipping through combat and weaving through combos. They really had the fundamentals here for something special, and the first half of the game is mostly good - albeit still with some complete garbage like Gigadeath sprinkled in.

From around the halfway point on though it’s become perhaps the most infuriating game I’ve ever played. Some of the gameplay design is just completely incomprehensible and encounters devolve into being spammed with projectiles from offsceen while you’re showered in constant explosions that deafen you and make you unable to see shit while you’re stunlocked to death unless you ignore using your combos and instead just abuse i-frames. Boss fights like the Double Armadillo I just finished feel like a straight up “fuck you” from Itagaki. Time and again I finish a fight and say “who the fuck thought this was a good idea?” out loud.

And the worst part is I’m developing such a Stockholm Syndrome I’m already looking at Ninja Gaiden 2 Black prices.

Well, partly. I love Bloodlines for the atmosphere, writing, music, voice acting and the intent behind the game they tried to make. But it’s really not much of a sandbox, it’s really very linear and not even all quests and missions live up to their own ambition of offering multiple solutions.

I still love it though.

Some games still do encourage that! Have you met a little game called Blue Prince?

Seeing as Roblox being a groomer infested hellhole has been known for years it’s surprised me that it took this long for that story to actually break into the mainstream.

But anyways yeah. Predator hive is full of predators, more news at eleven.

Continuing my ninja adventures by playing Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360 version) this week. Since the original has such a fierce following and the remaster from this year was somewhat controversial I wanted to play it first to see how NG2B with the “White” mod holds up. It was a little more involved setting up emulation than NGB and Xemu, but it’s running well now albeit with minor graphical glitches. I actually for once kinda wish I had an Xbox Series X though for that native 4k60 HDR.

So far I’m enjoying myself. The highs of the game are really high, even compared to the first game: those frenetic massive hallway fights against hordes of aggressive ninjas are just pure adrenaline rushes and thrilling but stressful in the best way. While the combat in the first game was fast, it was still very measured and deliberate. This time it’s just pure coke-fuelled rabid frenzy.

The improved graphics, animations and gore also make the spectacle of combat heightened and the dismemberment mechanic is really fun and surprisingly strategic to play with.

Some enemies are just shit to fight though, like the dogs and the flying bat demons you have to take out with ranged attacks. Also the bosses have been very hit or miss. Genshin and the spider monster were fun but I was really close to quitting the game over Gigadeath between being one of the worst bosses in gaming and glitching out of the arena 25% of the time.

I’d really like to beat it but we’ll see how far I get.

I’m playing Ninja Gaiden Black this week for the first time on Xemu original Xbox emulator, and it’s been an absolute blast so far (mostly… we’ll get to that). Despite being known for its combat there is actually a surprising amount of adventure game gameplay in there, with exploration, Metroidvania-esque area unlocks/backtracking and light platforming. I’ve actually enjoyed these parts quite a bit as they’ve provided nice breathing room between fighting.

So far the game’s infamous difficulty has not yet proven insurmountable, even playing on Normal and not “Ninja Dog” (Easy). I’m on Chapter 11 out of 16 now and so far so good. It’s definitely been challenging, but not really unfair - it just constantly demands you to use all the tools at your disposal, and think carefully about every situation. It’s not a hack-and-slash; you have to be very precise and deliberate and use proper combos - button mashing will get you killed. The AI is hyper aggressive, but you have so much at your disposal in terms of movement and offensive and defensive tools that there is always a solution if you’re just fast enough, proactive enough or patient enough. A lot of fights get a lot easier if you just pick the right weapon, or right Ninpo, or remember to use Smoke Bombs.

Also, having access to Save States through the emulator makes things a lot more pleasant to play as the game is notorious for its horrible checkpointing. I’m trying not to abuse it, but I’m not really interested in wasting time either and the game is challenging enough as it is.

Chapter 9 is an absolute abomination, though. There is absolutely no reason for it to suddenly become Call of Duty, and being forced to fight two tanks, a helicopter and a radio tower full of bazookas using only a bow with explosive arrows and awful controller first person aiming was downright horrendous.

Even despite that though I still definitely recommend trying it. Setting up Xemu is extremely simple, the ROM is floating around online for free so the cost is minimal and the combat really is something special.

I just want more granular difficulty/accessibility settings. Give me more sliders to tweak my experience. I know it might be greedy and asking for a lot but Easy/Normal/Hard or whatever is just so clumsy.

Imagine we had sliders to tweak dodge i-frames and parry window lengths? I might actually dare pickup Sekiro if that was the case.

I finished Blasphemous. I didn’t go through the DLC as I apparently missed the chance for the True Ending by not doing it early anyway, so I couldn’t be bothered as I wasn’t really enjoying the game that much. Also I’ve heard it’s even more annoying. I’ll save it for a hypothetical second playthrough. I did beat the one optional DLC boss I had access to - Isidora - and the difference between the main game and the DLC is staggering. I first tried the last two bosses in the main game, but Isidora took me probably 50ish attempts. And I’m not sure it was “fun difficult” either, that second phase sure was something.

My notes remain the same: terrible platforming (and an overabundance of it) and design elements that are deliberately meant to waste your time and/or piss you off hold back what could otherwise have been a great game. I respect the artistic vision, I just didn’t have a lot of fun playing it.

As a palate cleanser I played through LIMBO, which I bought solely because it is supposedly an indie darling and was being delisted on GOG. I was assured by somebody on here that it wasn’t really “that bad” as puzzle platformers go (I hate platformers) and that it was “mostly vibes”. That was a lie - this is clearly a puzzle platformer. And it didn’t feel like a particularly good one either. Fortunately it was only a couple of hours long or I would never have been able to force myself to finish it. YMMV but it’s a solid 5.5-6/10 for me, I’m glad I only paid a dollar for it. I hope INSIDE is better as I foolishly bought both.

It’s a weird one because it clearly has its flaws, and looking at it “objectively” it shouldn’t be a 10/10 game. But none of the flaws really affect the impact of the experience as an artwork, so it still feels like a 10/10. Does that make sense?