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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 23, 2026, 12:13:21 AM »

So, let's talk a little about Stupid Never Dies, a very serious game for extremely serious people.









The name on the tin doesn't lie. This is an extremely silly little game, and I kind of love it for being just a breath of fresh air.

It's the post-monster invasion apocalypse, where humanity has mostly been wiped out and extremely talkative (in the Zootopia Sloth sort of way) zombies roam the streets. One of them, teenage-ish Davie, ran from the war early on and hid out in a mall, where he found the frozen corpse of a teenage girl and fell in love with her.

With the aid of a mad scientist; his were-chihuahua assistant; a zombie burger delivery driver; and a talking gargoyle statue, Davie sets out to try to save his would-be girlfriend by flushing himself down a magic science toilet that takes him through several layers of monster-infested Rogulite dungeon capping off in extremely "punk" introductory boss cutscenes with devil horns, graffiti, and bosses clearly designed to look like MC Hammer. All in the hopes of eating the Big Bad so he can obtain the energy to bring her back to life.

This is a very serious game you must take very seriously.

This game is just dumb simple fun. While it is a Roguelite, there are so many permanent systems in place to carry over progress that I feel it only "technically" meets that definition at this point. While Davie moves slowly when off his trusty Roomba back at the mall, while in the dungeon he can run around and attack like a normal character action game protagonist. You land in a level, you run around killing monsters, you find the door to the next level, wash, rinse, repeat. Simple. There are "base" level every few floors that allow you to spend currency to regain health, etc. as well as bank any materials you've earned since the last base level, so even if you do die I don't think you're really risking all that much.

A somewhat odd design choice is that while you always start a run at Level 1, there's a persistent XP multiplier throughout the game. It starts at 100% when you start up a new game and it skyrockets with each completed run, successful OR failed. I haven't died yet, and after 3 runs I have that already up to 500% and it cannot go down. If you want to get an idea of how ridiculous that stat can get...there's a trophy for hitting 5,000% XP, and it's a bronze so it's meant to be easy to get. So with each run you do, it becomes easier to level quickly.

Perhaps it's designed this way because each run is on a very strict timer, around 12-13 minutes from what I've seen. I came very close to hitting that time limit in my last run, where I skipped a bunch of floors to jump straight to a dungeon boss and barely beat him with basically no health left and 20 seconds on the clock. I'm not sure what happens when the timer runs out. The game warns you that you'll be "weaker" when it does and that you can actually die at that point, but it's not clear if that's an instant fail to the run or not.

Yes. You, a zombie, have a health bar and can die.

This is a very serious game that definitely wants to be taken very seriously.

As far as combat goes, this is a pretty basic brawler with a few twists. For one, there is no lock-on camera and no guard. There's really no dodge either. What you do have is the "Stupid Parry", where you dash towards an enemy. If they're performing an attack at the time and you make contact doing this, you interrupt the attack. Do it when the enemy's doing a glowing yellow attack, and you can add a counterattack to that Stupid Parry. Also, you are, after all a zombie, so you have the ability to bite enemies with a big ol' chomp attack. And you can use that chomp attack to not only restore health temporarily lost in combat but also to steal the enemy's special attacks to use as your own temporarily. You can even steal the form and move set of the larger "Elite" enemies by doing this.

Apparently, Davie was Mega Man in a past life, and there is a very serious reason for why he can do this that is not in the least a running gag.

So far, I'm having a blast with this one. It's not the least bit complicated, but that's just what I needed right now and I don't think it aspires to be more than what it is, though some games journalists apparently really wanted to write a doctoral thesis on how much it offended them. It feels like a spiritual successor to a Suda 51 game, embracing the sheer "game-iness" and arcade feel with buckets of color and truckloads of "punk". It's actually kind of shocking that he had absolutely nothing to do with this game.

The game's on PC and PS5 so far, and I can't imagine it'll be long before it's on the Switch 2 as well. If you're curious, there is a demo out for the start of the game.

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General Gaming / Re: R.I.P. BioWare: A Studio Rarely Seen on Nintendo Consoles

« on: October 21, 2026, 10:13:01 PM »

I can't say I held any love for modern Bioware, not after having actually played the disasters that are Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda (though I will note that the Mass Effect Andromeda books are reasonably entertaining for what they are).

That said, I've enjoyed a lot of past Bioware games. I believe my first game of theirs was the original Knights of the Old Republic, back when I still played PC games (hey, my username had to come from somewhere). That game's writing really captured the wonder of the Star Wars universe, and while Bioware didn't make the sequel that was only compounded in KOTR 2 when I saw locations and characters I'd only heard of in the Star Wars Expanded Universe comics/audio dramas.

Never got around to playing Jade Empire, though I do own it on my Xbox One. Like most, though, my heart from that time belonged to the original Mass Effect, where I got to see them do for Star Trek what they had already done with Star Wars. It may seem a silly thing, but the thing that told me that ME would truly be for me? The first time I unlocked a Codex entry, opened it up expecting to see another ream of text I'd barely skim and forget in 5 seconds, and instead being treated to a fully-voiced data log explaining a fascinating aspect of the game's universe. It's that level of craftsmanship, that attention to detail, that really sold me on Bioware.

Before too long, I'd read all the books (aside from the one that was recalled due to being written by a fraud), and I was even working at EA when both Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 2 released. DA 2 rightfully gets a lot of **** for all the corners cut in its development, all the recycling of dungeons, and the extremely limited play space. However, I found the writing as strong as ever, and it's still the only game in the series I've managed to get through (I bounced off the 1st DA HARD, as I like to play as a mage and the mage's origin both looks and plays like ass). It also allowed me the rare flexibility to play as both a hero and a total smart ass. So many RPGs are so incredibly serious all time. It's also the rare RPG where you get to see a central location change over a long period of time as you build and grow relationships with a small cast of characters that have their own lives beyond you.

As much as I loved the original Mass Effect, for all its faults, Mass Effect 2 was the one that really got its hooks in me. While it was a shame to lose the total freedom of exploration the 1st game had, ME 2 just plays so much better, and I found the game's strong emphasis on character-specific quests very rewarding. It reminded me of how Majora's Mask based everything on building personal connections through small personal stories.

Unfortunately, then Mass Effect 3 happened, and while I won't call the game a total travesty (like many would) it was still such a profound disappointment. So much build-up across 2 games and 3 books ("4, sir!" "Shut up!") for so little payoff. I've always heard the DLC redeems that game somewhat, but those came out long after I was done with that game, and considering how that game ends I just couldn't find the desire to roll back the clock for more adventures before The End. I would have enjoyed doing them as I did my original playthrough. It's pretty much why I can't get behind all the stuff Nintendo's adding to the Xenoblade Switch 2 versions. Yeah, all that stuff sounds cool, but I did my time with those games. The emotional investment is gone, and I have little interest in starting fresh again.

Also...

Where are my Krogans riding genetically-engineered Dinosaurs in the final battle cutscenes, Bioware?! YOU PROMISED ME KROGANS RIDING INTO WAR ON GENETICALLY-ENGINEER DINOSAURS!

*ahem*

Nothing Bioware made after that really interested me. Yeah, I picked up Dragon Age Inquisition: GOTY edition. It's there on my shelf to get to...some day, but I have to say all the years of "GET OUT OF THE HINTERLANDS" kind of dampened my desire to ever start that game. Then Andromeda came out and was just awful. They took a focused narrative experience with the original ME trilogy, and they followed it up with Open World bloat featuring characters I just couldn't care about. Played the game for a few nights and then just gave up on it, but like I said...the 3 books set around it are pretty OK if you're into that sort of thing.

Tried Anthem earlier this year to see if I wanted to try to hunt the Plat before the servers got shut down. After 2 missions, I knew I never wanted to see that game ever again.

Setting aside the negative reception of Dragon Age: The Veilguard at launch, I couldn't muster up interest in it because I never got around to playing the game that set it up: Inquisition.

Overall, I'll miss the Bioware that reignited my twin loves for Star Trek and Star Wars in the 2000s when both were going through a rough patch. One day, I hope to do a critical reappraisal of the Mass Effect Trilogy through that copy of Legendary Edition sitting on my shelf. That said, it's been no secret that the studio has been hemorrhaging talent for years, most notably to Archetype Entertainment and its upcoming Mass Effect spiritual successor, Exodus. The studio's last 3 major projects have all been high-profile bombs. They haven't had a hit since Inquisition in 2014, and to be frank that year was full of so many AAA disasters (Destiny 1, Assassin's Creed Unity, Watch_Dogs) that its only serious competition for GOTY was a mediocre Assassin's Creed/Batman knockoff (LOTR:Shadow of Mordor).

I hope that the people still at Bioware that had the talent and the passion find gainful employment elsewhere, but I won't miss what Bioware became in its later years. Sure, you can blame EA's idiotic engine and service model mandates for a lot of it, but Bioware's historic strength was its writing and from all accounts the writing in Veilguard was considered poor, and I can personally attest that Andromeda's and Anthem's were awful from what I saw. I can't say I'd want to see another poorly-written Mass Effect game after Andromeda.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 20, 2026, 10:59:27 PM »

Have to admit, as we get to the end of the month, struggling to find much interest in playing anymore horror games. Belmont's Curse is good, but kinda feeling a little "Castlevania-d out" at this point.

Thought I'd try spending a few evenings playing a game I originally intended to get to back during Backlaugust, but...well...you saw how that went: A Plague Tale: Requiem. Been putting that one off for a few years now, so long in fact that the game's already got a character action game sequel a few months ago. I guess even the developers realized they couldn't keep the horror act up.









Well, I'll give Requiem this much: while it takes a longer time to get to the point than the first game did, it can certainly be just as ****ing grim as that one was at times. Perhaps too much so.

Taking place in 1400s France, Requiem picks up 6 months after where Innocence left off. The De Rune family is on the run after you murdered the pope in Notre Dame in a battle of psychically-directed flesh-stripping magic plague rat tornadoes-

There. I just lost you, didn't I? Yeah, A Plague Tale: Innocence kinda completely goes off the deep end by the end, and it's clear the developers really want you to forget how stupid that was because they are super eager to re-establish the threat of the magic horde of plague rats fairly early on in Requiem. Sorry, devs, I can't. It was really stupid, and I've beaten Innocence twice over the years between the PS4 and PS5 versions.

As with Innocence, this game is 1/3 walk-and-talk adventure game, 1/3 linear horror puzzle game, and 1/3 stealth game. And like its predecessor, it's that last 1/3 that's the real problem and the one that makes me want to put the game down. I enjoy the grim atmosphere. I enjoy having to create safe havens of fiery light and finding creative ways to bridge the plague rat tide as you dash from safe point to safe point. I can't ****ing stand the incredibly annoying stealth arenas, where you have to get from one end of a large open area to another  avoiding patrolling guards.

I'm not good at stealth games to begin with, but I managed alright with the first game's rudimentary stealth sections. You could kill any guard without a helmet with a single swing of your sling, but your sling made a ton of noise so you'd alert any nearby guards. You could extinguish the torches of patrolling guards using crafted ammo for your sling, which would leave them at the mercy of the swarm. Finally, you could distract them by throwing pots or chucking rocks at crates of armor. That was all you could do.

The developers decided the best way to "improve" upon this system was to have the game passive-aggressively judging you now. You now have a skill tree with perks related to improving your (stealth) combat; your alchemy; or your stealth, with point gains depending on whether you murder every last mother****er in the arena, only most of them, or very few of them. Nice idea in theory, but the problem is that the arenas are absolutely stacked with guards, there are items you want to find hidden in the environment, and when you get spotted you have very few options for returning to stealth. The best option you have is to get out of sight and duck under a bed or table, but I just spent over an hour in one arena attempting to clear it without being an absolute psychopath and it was just impossible. Guards are frequently stationed directly in the path of where you need to be, with few non-lethal options to get them out of the way. I'd escape detection 1 moment only to find the enemies change up their patrol patterns and instantly spot me again from the other side of the arena.

This offered me this chilling challenge: to find a way out, which ended up being behind a bunch of plague rats I had absolutely no chance of stealthing through with a torch without getting spotted by 3-4 more guards! Ironically, this is one of those games that could have actually used more modern guidance, as I spent quite a long time trying to find the intended way out of that arena, which was only briefly hinted at by a door opening for an NPC that I absolutely could not see at the time they came in.

Of course, in the end, there was always MY way: killing every single one of them so I could clear the traversal puzzle in peace. As I received that huge boost to the combat XP bar after I was basically forced to murder an entire legion, it makes me feel like I wasn't really allowed to play the way I wanted to play, as well as wonder how possible the REST of the game is going to be to try to play even semi-stealthily.

And then there's the length. This game is 17 chapters long, and after 2 nights of play I'm only at the start of Chapter 4. 

Definitely feeling like this game is a bit "much" right now. Think I'm going to jump over to the Zombie Roguelike Stupid Never Dies once it arrives tomorrow. Played the demo, and it feels like the spiritual successor to a Suda 51 game. Feels like possibly the right game for the mood I'm in right now.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 18, 2026, 06:00:21 PM »

OK, time to tie a little bow on this month so far, because after a lot of time, effort, and frustration I finally obtained my 434th Platinum by completing the Kleidos Challenges in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 on my PS3 on "Prince of Darkness" difficulty.







It was a 14 year long journey, but I'm glad I came back to finish it off. I'm also glad I did, in fact, create a new profile on my PS3 just to replay the first 5-6 or so hours of the game on a fresh save after getting the Platinum. It reminded me that I really do love this CV sub-series when I'm playing the story campaign on normal instead of a series of absolutely insane combat challenges on the difficulty level harder than the game's Hard mode.

And Christ, this game still looks absolutely stunning at times. Some of this texture work wouldn't look out of place on a PS5 game. Hell, a LOT of this game looks artistically better than most PS5 games I see, adjusted for resolution scaling. It annoys me somewhat that if Konami hasn't remastered this series by now, they probably never will.

And IMO, Mercury Steam is one of the best...if not THE best...when it comes to selling the physicality of melee combat. When you slam your chaos claws into an enemy shield, the game absolutely SELLS the sheer raw power of the strike, between the camera, the audio, and the force feedback on the controller. When you perfectly block an enemy attack, the game slows down and rings like you just caught one of the bells of Notre Dame. The combat is deliberate and heavy, and I love how it feels when it's not being pushed beyond its limitations like it is in the combat challenges.

I might keep playing this game for fun, but I'm glad my memories of this game weren't as rose-tinted as I feared. A lot of the stuff in the "modern setting" still isn't great and the way the game incorporates context-sensitive climbing SURE is Uncharted-era gaming, but I remember an ungodly amount of whining about the forced stealth sections back in the day and it really does feel overblown. The game's also just plain weird at times for what feels like the sake of it.  Honestly, all the "I'm DRACULA! Why aren't I slaughtering everything!" reminds me of the blowback against Bioshock 2 back in the day when people were unhappy with how underpowered you were as a prototype Big Daddy at the start of the game, forgetting that these are still GAMES and the player has to be able to lose.

With time and people seeing just how worse the series would get with Bioshock Infinite, Bioshock 2's definitely gotten a much more positive reappraisal over the years, and I hope this game (and this series) does as well. It's a game made with passion by a team of talented artists who thankfully were not fired when this game underperformed, thanks to Nintendo's intervention.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 17, 2026, 07:11:38 PM »

Put some time into Castlevania: Belmont's Curse. Up to Dracula's Castle, which isn't as late in the game as you would think it would be. So far, I'm quite liking the game, particularly how platforming has become a major part of the gameplay again for the first time since...probably the 16 bit games. I can think of a certain former podcaster on this site that would be absolutely giddy at just how much grappling hook traversal is a major core of this game.

Also, it looks like my time with Lament of Innocence wasn't a complete waste of time in preparation for this game.

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TalkBack / Re: Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave Expansion Pass Available, New Story Content In 2027

« on: October 17, 2026, 12:19:25 AM »

The previous Fire Emblem expansion passes went on sale recently as part of Nintendo's "fund the tariff legal fees" "Appreciation sale", but I wouldn't bank on us seeing another of those considering the circumstances involved.

As far as value is concerned, from what I understand these are 4 whole campaigns that were originally cut from the game because the developers thought the game would be too bloated. You can argue whether it was a good idea to add content that was cut for a reason back in, but I'm not sure you can argue it isn't worth the money when you're theoretically getting an entire another game's worth of content.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 16, 2026, 06:55:06 PM »

5 more Kleidos Challenges down in Lords of Shadow 2, with 2 left to go.

I have only played the 3DS Lords of Shadow game. Is this one also developed by Mercury Steam?

All 3 Lords of Shadows games were made by Mercury Steam. However, 1 and 2 are very different from Mirror of Fate, the 3DS game. The first Lords of Shadow is very much in the spirit of the original God of War trilogy. Konami interfered pretty heavily in the development of Lords of Shadow 2 (with Kojima no longer protecting them), leading to a much less cohesive 3D exploration platformer with heavy combat...but one that also does a lot more series references than the original Lords of Shadow did. You also saw this with Mirror of Fate. Lords of Shadow was very much trying to be its own "thing" with its own lore, with only minor references to past games like featuring Cornell from Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness and Carmilla from any given Castlevania as bosses.

Apparently, the 3DS Lords of Shadow game impressed Nintendo so much with its tech that Nintendo gave them the Samus Returns shot. Unfortunately, Mercury Steam these days seems to have trouble finding success outside their Nintendo work.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 16, 2026, 12:50:51 AM »

5 more Kleidos Challenges down in Lords of Shadow 2, with 2 left to go.

These would be so much easier if the game's auto-targeting didn't actively hate you. It always targets every enemy near you except the one you actually want to hit. Was nearly at the point of throwing my controller for the first time in decades when I was just about to clear one of the challenges, only for the main mini-boss you're fighting (and who all the other enemies were clustered around) to explode upon death, delivering the killing blow.

Yeah, didn't make that mistake again, but it took me another hour to get that far in that challenge again, as it's one where you can only do damage to the mini-boss while they're frozen with your ice sword's special attacks. Oh, but don't you dare actually HIT them with the ice sword, because that's dealing damage to the boss when they're not frozen! Oh, and considering your special attacks can only be used when your feet are planted and any enemy interrupt attack automatically triggers a sword swipe, guess what tends to happen a lot in that fight. 

Then there was the other challenge from Hell, the one generally considered the hardest in the game: baiting another mini-boss into shattering the armor of his 3 helpers without him killing them, and then killing him. Oh sure, you CAN put each enemy at near-shattering with a *single* hit from your chaos bombs...if the targeting system is feeling like it. And the enemy isn't moving. And nothing gets inbetween your shot, like the mini-boss or another enemy you've already hit with a bomb, causing you to fail the challenge immediately. And that's assuming the boss feels like trying to attack you at that particular moment, which he usually doesn't. Oh, and the boss also can't be in his power stance with his swords linked together for more than 20 consecutive seconds, which you can break him out of if you hit him 3 times in a row with your chaos claws. Assuming he's in the guard stance at the time and not attacking you with any of his many attacks. While a countdown timer is in play. And you're probably low on health and magic. And his helpers are ganging up on you.

That one was SOOOO much fun, especially when he would wipe the floor with me on the rare occasion where all 3 of his pals DID have their armor shattered so I could Talisman of the Dragon them to death and fight him 1 on 1. 

The remaining 2 challenges look more annoying than difficult, as one's reliant on destroying components of 2 mini-bosses while they're trying to use them (and from what I've seen, they are very picky about using them) and the other is about racing an NPC to kill more enemies than he can under a time limit.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 15, 2026, 07:29:44 PM »

I'm getting some serious "Return of the Obra Dinn" vibes out of that Gloom Gate footage. I'm surprised it was made by a different guy. I'd be interested in playing that if it got ported to something other than that handheld.

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TalkBack / Re: Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave Expansion Pass Available, New Story Content In 2027

« on: October 14, 2026, 09:35:39 PM »

As usual, the best way to play a Nintendo RPG is to wait a year or 2 for Nintendo to stop making it. Glad I resisted the urge to play my copy of Fortune's Weave. Guess it can sit there on the shelf for a year.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 14, 2026, 09:05:43 PM »

As a side note, I'm giving up on trying to complete Luigi's Mansion 2 before the end of the month. I still plan to finish it, but it's not a priority for this month. There's just too much other stuff to play and that game is better experienced in small doses. Up to the 3rd Mansion, btw.

To kill some time before Belmont's Curse came out, I thought I'd pick up my 12 year old save of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (Prince of Shadows difficulty, aka "Hard Mode") and try to complete those combat/"Kleidos" challenges I tabled all those years ago, which were the only things I had left before that game's platinum.



This was a mistake. No, not playing the game again. That's fine. I actually rather enjoyed Lords of Shadow 2 back in the day, for all its many faults. But this game does not play as similarly to Lament of Innocence as I thought it did. Took me the better part of a day of practice and research just to get re-acclimated to the user interface and familiarize myself with how the combat works. And given that the combat challenges are designed for absolute masters of the game, that went...poorly.

Still, after quite a few attempts, 9 challenges down (I had 3 beaten already from 2014) and 7 to go. Gotta say, it's just such a "great" design decision that any resources you use up in a Kleidos trial don't come back when you fail and have to restart a challenge, meaning you either do without or leave the challenge altogether to go scavenge health; void energy; chaos energy; and items in the open world. 

The quitting to the dashboard and reloading the save is strong with this one.

Why didn't I just spin up a new save file and experience the game's proper opening tutorial to speed things along? Maybe play a little of the opening hours to get the feel of things again? Well, about that. The game's tutorial is excellent, IIRC..

...but Lords of Shadow 2 only has 1 save slot. Hell, I'm pretty sure there's no way to start a new game even if you wanted to. You'd have to actually hard delete the save from your PS3 storage, and I'm not doing that. Could always create a new profile, I suppose, and I might do that if I clear the challenges and want to just give the game a fresh spin before doing the write-up.

On a side note, it was rather amusing seeing an "install" option in the "Extras" menu, which required a whole 2.5 GB! Definitely worth the "sacrifice", too, to cut 10 seconds out of every loading screen.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 11, 2026, 05:46:24 PM »

Well, rolled credits on Castlevania: Lament of Innocence on my PS3.





Yeah, this game is a bit of a mess, and apparently it's not the Castlevania game I should have played in preparation for Belmont's Curse later this week because none of these characters reappear in that one. For that, I needed to play Curse of Darkness, a game that was never ported to anything. So much for that.

A 2003 PS2 game, LoI is still somehow canonically the first game in the official Castlevania timeline, taking place prior to the creation of Dracula and the rise of the Belmont clan and focusing on basically no one worth caring about. You play as Leon Belmont, pursuing a vampire lord who's kidnapped his...well, calling her "lover" is a bit of a stretch..."lady friend" Sara and spirited her away to his castle, pretty much just for kicks. You run into an old man running a merchant shop, he gives you a magic whip, and you're told you need to kill 5 boss monsters to gain access to the villain "Walter's" throne room.

It's surprisingly open-ended for a Castlevania game, as after a brief tutorial the game plants you in front of warp points leading to the 5 major areas of the game; strongly hints at one you should do first; and then just leaves you to your own devices. You run through each region, get stopped every other room with a gated door that only unlocks once you've killed every enemy in the room, wash , rinse, repeat until you fight the boss and take it down.

And that's basically all there is to this game. Very occasionally there's a lever to pull, a switch to stand on, or some platforms to awkwardly jump across, but for the most part this game is pure arena combat...for 10 hours...with absolutely no new weapons to add variety as you use the same 3-5 hit combos over...and over...and over again. Bizarrely, there is no RPG progression whatsoever. Your Leon at the end of the game is basically the same as the one at the start, just possibly with slightly better equipment and items. You do earn combo extensions and additional guard and evasion perks as you kill enemies and use those skills, but the game never explains how the skill unlock system works so unless you've looked it up online it just comes off as completely random and doesn't really feel like your combat arsenal expands that much.

While you can't level at all, there are HP; MP; and Heart expansions tucked away in secluded corners of the castle, but let me put it this way: your starter health is 200 and by the end of the game I had nearly 100%ed the map and I'd only expanded that health to 290. It doesn't really make that much of a difference. You have the usual series subweapons at your disposal and after defeating a boss you obtain an elemental orb that you can combine with your subweapons for different special attacks. This is basically the same system used in Harmony of Dissonance, and just like in that game I found it basically worthless. You'll quickly find the one useful subweapon; the one useful combination for it; and then that's basically all you'll use the entire game. For me, the Cross has never let me down in this series so I saw no reason to ever deviate from being able to throw up a shield at any moment, particularly with the way this game likes to gank you with rooms of annoying enemies.

Beyond the lack of variety and repetition, the biggest issue I found with the gameplay is that the game wants the player to be way more precise than the mechanics are really capable of accommodating. For instance, the only way to charge up your MP is to block an enemy's purple attack or (once you've unlocked the ability) perfectly parrying an enemy attack at the last second. However, this game at its heart is a button masher, and critically one that does NOT allow for attack cancels. So usually by the time an enemy's wound up one of those purple attacks, you're mid attack and there isn't a damn thing you can do to guard in time. You get hit and flung to the other side of the room. Unless you just stand and wait for the enemy to do their attack (and, again, why would you? This is a button masher), there's just no mechanical way to use the guard the way the game intends and this gets to be a major issue towards the end of the game with some of the End Game Boss attacks.

Then there's the camera, which is completely out of the player's control ala the PS2 God of War games and has an absolute fascination with making sure you get the best view of the floor at all times. I know why the devs designed the camera this way, because the few times the game does have the player do platforming it's absolutely atrocious in the same way that isometric platforming has ALWAYS been (with the added twist of occasionally requiring the player to do a series of timed button presses to "flick" Leon in the air off a bar or railing with his whip), and the devs want to make sure the player can always see where they're going to land. The downside, of course, is that it makes doing anything in the air obnoxious and you have basically no field of vision around you since the camera is fixated on showing off the floor tiles.

Not helping the repetition problem, by the way, is that it's clear this game was basically done on the budget of a ham sandwich. Each of the 5 regions has...maybe 3 different room templates and 2 different hallways? You're going to be seeing the same rooms constantly. The game's also really fond of presenting the player with a choice of 2 paths to go, and they'll either loop back around to the same point or one will blatantly be the wrong route so you have to backtrack back through all the rooms again to get back to where you were. Yes, the 2D games do this as well, but you just fly through those maps at warp speed in the 2D games, whereas it's so much slower and more tedious in 3D. You also have a leveling system in the 2D games so there's more of a point in engaging in combat. I'd frequently run into situations where I just happened to take the wrong route that didn't have a save room, so I'd be spending over an hour looking for the *first* save room of the area just so I could bank my progress.

Finally, there's the story, which is just worthless. Without spoiling too much, you're here to save a character the player doesn't know from an enemy the player doesn't see until 3/4 of the way through the game. Then in response to a "tragedy", a character the player has known for .5 seconds has to die in order to awaken the Vampire Killer so the player can kill that villain they don't know...who it turns out was being orchestrated by ANOTHER character the player has NEVER SEEN and who has barely even been mentioned in the opening narration. And THAT character is doing what they're doing in response to the death of ANOTHER character the player has ALSO NEVER SEEN. WHO WROTE THIS ****?

Still, I know I've been hard on the game, but there is a solid foundation here for what would be better Castlevania games in the future. It's actually kind of shocking how similar the combat in this game is to what would be the far superior Lords of Shadow games from Mercury Steam (right down to them ALSO using the guard as a way to build MP). The music is certainly passable, the game looks pretty decent for its time, the combat is mindless but still perfectly functional, the boss fights are generally pretty good (outside the final one, where the camera and the lack of attack cancelling really betray you), and there are a ton of secrets to seek out. It's a bare-bones but perfectly competent 3D Castlevania game, though I have to admit I prefer even the N64 CV games over this. They at least had ambition and variety.

As an aside, casting Crispin Freeman as proto-Dracula? A bit on the nose, don't you think? 

13

General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 10, 2026, 07:38:17 PM »

Finally closed the book on The Thing: Remastered, and yeah...vintage-era Spoony certainly wasn't lying about how bad this game was.

Where to begin on this thing...well, let's certainly get one thing out of the way: this game just fundamentally doesn't understand John Carpenter's The Thing, which is why it's kind of bizarre that this game had his personal blessing and for a long time was considered an official sequel.

I had not heard of this game before your post. There is a lot of interesting discourse on Carpenter's involvement online, even that he has an uncredited cameo in the game. I am also looking at the Toxic Commando game which includes his name in the title and wonder how much involvement he actually has, especially at his age now.

I really enjoyed the Back to the Future and Ghostbuster games that act as sequels their movie series, but the connection here sounds much looser.

Yes, Carpenter's likeness is used for an NPC you have to escort for half of one level (one of the ones that has to be kept alive and who kept getting insta-killed before I even reached him, incidentally).

The plot of the game is as bad as it is cliched. In the wake of the events of the original film, the Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Files (yes, really) captures The Thing and tries to turn it into a weapon of the US Government. It turns out exactly as you think it would.

Incidentally, Early Spoony can be a really hard watch it you're not familiar with it, so here's a pretty good video review of the remaster from someone a lot calmer. And he's played the original, so he can compare what the remastered improved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUjdm1OEu4g

14

General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 09, 2026, 12:07:49 AM »

Finally closed the book on The Thing: Remastered, and yeah...vintage-era Spoony certainly wasn't lying about how bad this game was.



Where to begin on this thing...well, let's certainly get one thing out of the way: this game just fundamentally doesn't understand John Carpenter's The Thing, which is why it's kind of bizarre that this game had his personal blessing and for a long time was considered an official sequel.

The movie is about paranoia and body horror, never knowing who the characters can trust and who is a Thing in disguise just biding its time before it pounces and makes them one of its own. The game is a generic early 2000s squad shooter where you spend the vast majority of your time running around generic gray & blue hallways shooting Half Life head crabs and trying not to led your AI teammates' awful pathing drive you mad. Yes, at exactly ONE point in the movie, a Thing's head came off, grew spider legs, and scampered off. There are hundreds of the damn things in this game, not to mention scorpion Things that spit acid and who knows where The Thing found those in the antarctic.

As you progress, you'll occasionally run into soldier; engineer, and medic survivors and that's where the game's much-hyped "Trust" system comes in. Many survivors start off with their Trust in the yellow, and you need to raise that Trust to green in order to get them to follow you. Unfortunately, this system is just way too easy to negate. Doing a blood test in front of a survivor or giving them a spare weapon is all it ever takes to win their complete Trust, and you can gain additional Trust by using a med kit on them or killing Things in front of them. And that's literally all there is to the Trust system. Allegedly, you can lose trust by leaving your squad behind and going solo for a while, but I never saw any evidence of that. Any time a Thing hits one of your squad, there's apparently a dice roll in the background on whether they become infected and turn on you, but I only ever saw that when an entire mob of Thing head crabs swarmed a squad member and took them down. You CAN use a blood test on a squad member you suspect of being a Thing, but I never saw that actually expose them and there's no point to it anyway because even if they were a Thing you'd just gun them down then instead of gunning them down later.

It's strange how this system works because there are frequent moments where you have to repair these wall-mounted junction boxes (what Spoony memorably referred to as "Fuse Boxes"), and every time you do it the camera goes to an over-the-shoulder angle showing the area behind you as if something was MEANT to potentially happen there. Like, maybe it was meant for any infected squadmates to attack you here? As it stands, it just lets you see any enemies that spawned to attack you while you're holding the button down to complete the repair. I just don't understand the point of the Trust system if you never have to worry about Things in disguise ambushing you. 9 times out of 10, any weird behavior on the part of your squadmates is just due to them getting stuck on doors or getting stuck on a particular spot on the floor until you push them to a new spot that reboots their terrible AI.

There are 2 aspects of the squad system that do work as intended, though: First, you definitely want to make sure your entire squad is armed, because their aim is uncanny. They are WAY better at shooting jittering, bouncing head crabs than you will ever be, ESPECIALLY with the shotgun. 2 AI party members can clear out an entire room without issue. The only enemies that give them trouble are the human-sized things that you have to damage to a particular point and then burn to finish them off. Second, there is a Fear system in place for your squad when it comes to gore. They don't like hanging around it, which causes their stress levels to raise until they snap and go crazy (if left unchecked, they'll even kill themselves after trying to kill you), which is why it's especially annoying when AI teammates plant their feet and refuse to move in rooms with gore until you go over and force their bugged AI to repath.

Speaking of bugs, this game is full of them, and this is supposed to be the "fixed" version of the game. Ammo containers will just refuse to open at times until you close the game entirely and reload from scratch. Sometimes, the game will just spontaneously decide that an AI character that's not with you and you have to keep alive is dead now, forcing an instant game over. Saw that one quite a few times, actually. And I had to play the entire game twice because the game didn't unlock the last collectable trophy despite me following a checklist the entire game where I KNEW I'd used all the save points in the game. The only thing worse than playing a bad game is playing it twice. At least the game is very short.

On its own merits, this game has some real environmental design issues. Your "Objectives" tell you basically nothing useful, and levels make absolutely no attempt at indicating where you should go. I got really stuck at one point in a late-game level because I didn't realize there was a man-sized vent in the back of a dark cell I could shoot and crouch walk through to get to where I needed to go. Not only could I barely see the vent, but I'd tried to crouch walk through similar vents earlier in the level and hit invisible walls. Again, this is the Night Dive "fixed version." Auto saves are incredibly random, including there not always being one at the start of every level. Several times I would hit one of those auto-game overs for no apparent reason, only to load my last auto-save near the end of the previous level.

The game also has absolutely no musical score whatsoever outside a few cutscenes, which is just weird.

In Night Dive's defense, I have seen footage of how this game originally looked and played, and this is easily the most playable this game has ever been. Night Dive added enemy health indicators to your targeting reticule so you could tell whether your shots were doing any damage, as well as an indicator on larger Things for when you need to use the flamethrower to finish them off. They also added D-pad shortcuts for using medkits on yourself and to pull up the flamethrower. Very useful, both of those. They also updated the health and trust indicators in the squad menu to make it more clear exactly how close to death or psychosis your squad is. They also apparently tried to fix the Trust system, because in the original game squad members would sometimes trigger scripted Thing transformations regardless of their actual infected state. And squad members no longer riverdance by panicking in place, as Spoony memorably showed in his video.

And yes, the game looks fine for its age, so the actual graphical remaster was a good job overall. In fact, the game seems to have fairly advanced fire tech for its time, as flames from explosions or your flamethrower frequently spread from the original point of impact and require an extinguisher to put out.

Overall, this is fairly playable, but buggy, remaster of a bad game that can be quite boring at times. I think it was just too early for video games to really do this property justice, as I could see a modern game doing a really Alien Isolation-take on the concept and leaning into the tone of the movie.

15

General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 08, 2026, 12:33:36 PM »

I had to look it up to remind myself how Spirit Ashes work, but there are 3 basic steps:

1. You have to have obtained the Summoning Bell from Ranni at the church near the start of the game. She gave it to you when she gave you Torrent. I assume you already have this.

2. You need to have the Spirit Ash set in your active item slot.

3. You can only use Spirit Ashes in certain areas. You'll know if it's a valid area because there will be a tombstone in the corner of your screen, but generally it's any boss arena and some open world sections.

4. When you're ready to summon, use the spirit ash as an item. It's a re-usable consumable. This will cause your character to lose either HP or MP, depending on the spirit ash. If successful, you'll see your character stop, take out the bell, and ring it. Your spirit ash will then materialize.

As for Roundtable Hold, it's an area that gets more upgrade and shopping access as you progress through the game and more NPCs get sent to it. The upgrade station you found in the world can only upgrade to a certain point, whereas the blacksmith at the Hold can upgrade all the way. The station's there for people who haven't found the Hold yet. There will also be a separate vendor where you can upgrade your spirit ashes, and you want to do this as Spirit Ashes get outclassed pretty quickly. But don't blow all your materials on one of the early game Spirit Ashes, as there's a certain particular late game one you want to save for. And you'll know it when you see it. This spirit ash fundamentally broke the game at launch, and is still pretty powerful now even after all the update nerfs.

As for Margit, that is not the last time you will fight him, so it would still behoove you to get the shackles item in question for later.

16

General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 06, 2026, 06:37:59 PM »

I guess I would say the most milquetoast advice: if you find yourself getting stuck in one place or against one enemy, there’s no shame in returning to it later, especially because the game’s only indicators of being in the “proper place” are maybe not-getting OHKOd, and whether or not you think you can stay alive long enough to overcome your particular obstacle with careful play.

Some more specific advice I'd give is to make sure you thoroughly explore the area you start the game in as well as the southern continent before advancing to the castle up north for your first legacy dungeon and pair of bosses. A lot of early players run to the objective early on and get immediately wiped out by Margit the Fell Omen, who guards the first dungeon.

Regarding Margit, there is an item you can obtain from an NPC named "Patches" if you find and do his quest line in an early cave dungeon IIRC somewhere around the starting area. This re-usable item will lock Margit in place for a few seconds a few times, so it's a handy way to take him down.

While you shouldn't rush to the castle early on, I DO recommend advancing along the critical path long enough to run into this one lady who's hanging out in a shack in the windy area near the castle, as she will give you several useful items including a jellyfish spirit ash I found immensely useful in the early game. The thing just sits there and tanks damage while dishing out poison damage. IIRC, it's around here that you unlock access to Roundtable Hold, which is where you can upgrade your weapons and armor, too.

Don't **** with the many, MANY dragons in the game until you're comfortable with the combat system, and stick to attacking them on Torrent where possible in hit and run attacks.

Several of the chests in the game are trapped and will teleport you to areas of the map. In particular, there's a chest sitting IIRC just down some steps in the middle of a large field in the early game that teleports you to one of the most dangerous late game regions in the game. If you can just run out of the cave and past the enemies the game teleports you next to, you'll regain the ability to fast travel and from there you can make some decisions. That region of the game contains a lot of powerful equipment if you can just avoid enemies long enough to get it.

Do not be ashamed to run away from or past enemies in general. FromSoft were trolls when they designed ER, and they're fond of baiting you into fights you shouldn't be able to win early on.

Finally, unless it is your intention to 100% the game, don't try to do everything. I have done everything, and at least 75% of it is ****ing boring recycled slop because FromSoft was especially fond of Ctrl C + Ctrl V. Do what interests you. Skip what doesn't.

Edit: Addendum - If you have any interest in doing any of the NPC Quest lines, pull up a guide. Elden Ring is very poorly designed when it come to the side content. I know the game was patched to add NPC markers to the world map to try to address their habit of teleporting around the entire ****ing world at any moment, but I didn't find those helpful when I played the game so your mileage may vary.

17

General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 04, 2026, 03:11:30 PM »

Fascinated by your take on Onimusha. The demo did not really appeal to me despite my recent Capcom kick so to hear it turns into a more open-ended experience is interesting. I felt the game’s combat from the demo felt like I was juggling too many balls, personally.

It's worth noting that in the interest of being a demo, the devs give the player a bunch of mid-game abilities that you won't have when you play through that section of the main game. So if you think the combat is over-stuffed, it really isn't. It's just that the demo dumps a bunch of systems on you at once where the main game trickles them out. You can't even upgrade your character or unlock abilities at that point in the game, so no ranged deflection; no blazing state; no chain issen; etc. They also apparently updated the demo to include part of the open world area, though I didn't play that version of the demo.

On a side note, with us getting a new Castlevania game this month, I am tempted to finally do a serious playthrough of Lament of Innocence on my PS3 since I still have that hooked up. But first, I think I'm going to raise my Fuse Box count with the Remaster of The Thing.

18

General Gaming / Re: Shadow of Mordor: A Mean-spirited, maybe self-aware game

« on: October 04, 2026, 03:07:44 PM »

Never got around to playing my Copy of Shadow of War (which, from what I've heard of the sequel and its many post-release patches, was probably a good thing), but I did play all the way through Shadow of Mordor. Annoyingly, it's a game that some day I should go back to and Platinum, as I only had 2 trophies left in that game and both of them are annoying (doing a kill-streak while on the cat mounts and raising a non-story goblin from grunt all the way to Chieftan and then killing him).

I remember liking Shadow of Mordor but not loving it. At the time, Assassin's Creed was just starting its long directionless period that started with AC 3, and this was a decent enough "one of those" with Batman Arkham combat. At the same time, the Nemesis system was really the only thing altogether notable about it, so once you saw all its tricks there really wasn't anything left over the course of a rather long game.

19

General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 03, 2026, 03:09:18 PM »

I wasn't sure how popular or successful Onimusha would be but sounds like it is doing alright. I think Capcom released some positive sales results and it even got a 10 from IGN. I guess focusing on making the combat and boss fights solid covered for the flaws with others as well. I heard from someone on a podcast that they did quit on that final boss. Do you know what your total play time was?

I believe when I looked at my save file, it was around 80 hours, but bear in mind I was basically 100%-ing the game twice between my original "Action" playthrough and my New Game + "Carnage" playthrough. I believe my first playthrough was about 45 hours long.

And yeah, that final boss is a hard one. He has 3 phases with no checkpoints, and you can only damage him in his 3rd phase when you're in Oni form. He also has a pretty damn lethal grab; a trio of unblockable attacks; and a super move in his 3rd phase that on Carnage will insta-kill you if you don't i-frame through it or counter it (I always chose to rely on i-framing through it with an Oni weapon attack). And just to add insult to injury, when you die he dances on your corpse. Also, the first time he grabs you he guts you while giving a long speech, which gets oh so fun by your 5th time redoing the fight.

However, his attacks are fairly easy to parry once you catch on to how his fight works, and he has 2 attacks that are pretty damn easy to Issen after some practice. It's really that grab and a drop kick he's especially fond of that can catch you off guard. It's the excessive damage he does when he breaks your stamina that really kills you.

He's rough, but he's not the roughest I've seen in an action game. That would still be Sword Saint Isshin at the end of Sekiro, which is a 4 phase fight, or Melenia from Elden Ring (which is a truly bullshit boss). I never played the Elden Ring DLC, but I've heard the final boss of that is some real bullshit, too. And as tough as Onimusha's fights can get, even they don't pull out absolute nonsense like Sekiro's Instant-kill Terror attacks.

20

General Gaming / Re: Shocktober 7: NWR 3D

« on: October 01, 2026, 07:14:29 PM »

I suppose i might as well start with a game I just finished off this afternoon on my lunch break:



I finally completed my platinum run on Onimusha: Way of the Sword by beating the game on Carnage difficulty and then beating all the bosses of the game again in Boss Rematch on Carnage difficulty.

Incidentally, the in-game rewards you get for doing this are a sword that gives you the same Issen attack frames in your normal form that you have in Oni form, as well as an outfit that makes your bow stronger and automatically draws in souls like your Oni form. Not sure what use you would have for the outfit when you've already beaten the hardest challenge in the game, but whatever. At least the sword gets to be immensely useful in Boss rematch.

Man, what a game. i haven't played through such a collection of excellent boss fights in an action game in years, maybe not since probably Sekiro, this game's spiritual successor, or Lies of P. Nearly every boss feels hard but fair in a way that Fromsoft seems to have forgotten how to make. Just about every attack is extremely well-telegraphed and can be parried; deflected; dodged; or countered (via an Issen, where you attack at the last possible second). Only 1 boss, the last one, starts pulling out the anime ninja **** FromSoft's become so fond of lately, and even he's an outstanding fight once you figure out how his kit works. The game even manages to make so-called 'gank fights' (where you're forced to fight multiple bosses at once) work in a way that FromSoft has never managed, as whatever enemy you're not fighting tends to be mostly passive in the background aside from occasionally rushing in to catch you off-guard.

While I wouldn't call the game's presentation especially noteworthy, I would note that the facial animation on Mushashi (the main character) is absolutely outstanding. The way his mouth and eyes shift during cutscenes and even mid-battle during clashes is extremely expressive and gives him a lot of character.

Unfortunately, the game isn't without some major problems, which I imagine will really hurt it come GOTY awards season. While the game's linear sections are generally excellent (particularly the Underground Lab, which features more legit horror than Resident Evil is willing to feature these days), the bulk of the game takes place in the small-ish "East Kyoto" open world area. And just about everything about this area sucks: the copied & pasted enemy trash mobs; the copied & pasted "rift' encounters; the whopping TWO mini-bosses that get recycled the entire game (but especially here); and the boring sidequests. And it takes an eternity to get anywhere since the city is designed like a maze with locked doors, areas you have to crawl under debris to get into, and even entire streets you can initially only access by crossing through several houses.

it was a chore to come back to this area and have to constantly re-explore it for randomly-spawning chests and rifts to close for crafting components. A handful of the sidequests are passable at best, but most are just generic "go to this spot on the map and kill some guys". And if you do New Game +, you need to do just about everything all over again because none of your sword; health; or gauntlet upgrades carry over. Get to grinding!

Enemy variety is also especially lacking. There are maybe half a dozen different mob enemy types that get re-skinned at least once each (several twice), and I already mentioned the whole TWO minibosses recycled the entire game. Also, for as well-designed as the boss encounters are, i didn't really enjoy any of the beast fights. This is a game about studying patterns, deflecting, and countering. The beasts, perhaps fittingly, tend to attack rather randomly. i could never get into a rhythm fighting them, especially since only 1 really has attacks that you can parry to trigger your Blazing state and obtain a major attack buff.

Overall, an excellent game but i hope that if Capcom makes a sequel or DLC that they just scrap the open world idea entirely. It doesn't add anything to the experience and is just there to triple the length of the game.

in other news, I'm currently playing Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon HD on my Switch 2. I played through this game before on the 3Ds and didn't particularly care for it, but I'm in the mood for this sort of thing right now and I am enjoying it more as a "pick up and play" game than I did trying to play such a repetitive game straight through back in the day. Up to the 2nd Mansion in that game.

There are more fitting games I plan on playing this month, but Onimusha was a considerable investment. I spent nearly the entirety of September playing through that game twice, it's a very hard game, and I need to detox for a while. Playing that Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight DLC tonight, which I don't imagine really qualifies for this.

21

Nintendo Gaming / Re: What is your favorite game this year?

« on: September 29, 2026, 05:45:53 PM »

You might want to update your topic name there. I did not play my likely favorite game of the year on the Switch 2.

As for actual Switch 2 2026 games, I guess my favorite would be Splatoon Raiders but I still found that game pretty lacking. Runners-up would be Yoshi & the Mysterious Book and the Star Fox reboot.

I expect if I played my copy of Fortune's Weave, it would probably take the top Switch 2 spot, but I'm very behind on my Fire Emblem games. I gave up on 3 Houses out of sheer boredom for its tedious gameplay loop, and Engage isn't exactly grabbing me so far (it doesn't help that it has some major audio problems on Switch 2).

22

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The Switch 2 Storage Crisis

« on: September 27, 2026, 06:15:17 PM »

I've been sticking to buying physical only so far, so I haven't had any serious storage issues yet. The only time I've hit the cap was when I was downloading 2 different EA sports trial games for the sake of MyNintendo coins. I'm still using the SD card I had on my original Switch, and that seems to work well enough for the Switch 1 library I have stored on there.

I don't see this pattern changing all that much going forward unless Nintendo decides to go all-in on Key Cards for even 1st party in-house software, so I have no problem waiting for those insane SD card prices to go down.

23

NWR Forums ID Verification / Re: A Memorial for September 23rd

« on: September 25, 2026, 08:00:55 PM »

24

Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 992: One Day You'll See That It Was Truly the Legend of Zelda

« on: September 19, 2026, 08:58:58 PM »

For the life of me, I don't understand why Nintendo isn't milking their 3DS software lineup more on Switch/Switch 2 if they're that desperate for easy games to just throw out to fill a calendar. I mean, Kid Icarus Uprising and Metroid 2: Return of Samus are right there.

25

NWR Forums ID Verification / Re: The Lettuce Cat is so last week. Mock me for being behind the times. is so last week. Mock me for being behind the times. Happy Mask Shop

« on: September 19, 2026, 06:29:20 PM »

So say they all.