In the past year I’ve backed a fair amount of projects on a few crowdfunding platforms and among them are The Game Kitchen’s wonderful souls-like (or Metroidvania, really) Blasphemous and Koji Igarashi’s Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, both taking us to gothic lands to fight unspeakable evils, though the former having a much deeper religious subtext than the latter. Over the past few months a few backer-only or backer-first demos have appeared and I finally got around to downloading my own little copies and giving them a go, perhaps a little too late to give proper feedback but I’ll try to do so anyway. Continue reading Backer Demo Opinions – Blasphemous | Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Tag: Metroidvania
Review: Guacamelee! 2
I love Metroidvania, it’s up there among my favourite video game genres and the original Guacamelee! holds a special place in my heart, not just because of how amazing it is in gameplay and how genuinely funny it is, but being Latin American and a native Spanish Speaker, I always found another layer to the game that made the humour even cleverer. Continue reading Review: Guacamelee! 2
Twinned Reviews: Super Daryl Deluxe & Azure Saga: Pathfinder
In the past few weeks I’ve played my fair share of RPGs, so much so that they seem to be my main genre at the moment. I’m still playing through Xenoblade Chronicles 2, still battling the many multiverse forces in Super Robot Wars V in anticipation of Super Robot Wars X’s English version release in a week or so and recently I finished building a Facebook kingdom and battling ancient evil in Ni No Kuni 2.
But for today and in the spirit of trying something new in terms of review formats, I bring you my reviews of two recently released RPGs. The first, Super Daryl Deluxe, is a Metroidvania-style RPG, with an interesting comic book style look, mostly black & white but with colour used to highlight important stuff, that seems heavily inspired by Napoleon Dynamite. The second, Azure Saga: Pathfinder, is more of a traditional RPG with square interconnected tiles serving as dungeons and random encounters.
To make things better for you, to help you get the relevant information you need I’ve decided to break up the reviews in easy to consume bullet points for each of the games. Will I continue with this style moving forward? I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot as an experiment! One thing I do know is that scores are out the window. Continue reading Twinned Reviews: Super Daryl Deluxe & Azure Saga: Pathfinder
Review: A Robot named Fight
The great machines left earth, leaving the poorer and weaker robots behind, defenceless against the Great Beast, a pulsating mass of flesh of planetary proportions. Now you must fight, as A Robot Named Fight.
Continue reading Review: A Robot named Fight
Let’s Play Hollow Knight – Episode 2
So there we have it, Pilot Season is over, the polls are closed, the votes tallied and out from the shadows comes the brand new, reigning, defending, undisputed Let’s Play Champion, Hollow Knight! This is the game I’ll be playing for the foreseeable future, doing my best not to record episodes while I’m sleep deprived…starting from episode 3. Continue reading Let’s Play Hollow Knight – Episode 2
Pilot Season – Week 3 – Dead Cells
This is week three of the pilot season, where I show the first episode of a few Let’s Play series, you vote which one you like the most and I keep playing that game to the end. The second most voted for comes afterwards and the rest fade into oblivion.
So far we’ve had Ori and the Blind Forest and Hollow Knight, two wonderful Metroidvania games, the genre I’ve been obsessed with for the past few months. Now it’s time for a rogue-like on Early Access on steam, Dead Cells. Continue reading Pilot Season – Week 3 – Dead Cells
Platformers – The Bullet Hell Factor
Last night during my Twitch broadcast–trying a new schedule–I played Outland and Rabi-Ribi, two Metroidvania-style platformers and while playing them I noticed something I hadn’t before, even as a fan of the platforming genre and the metroidvania subgenre and it’s how often these games have bullet-hell elements, where part of the challenge is to avoid countless damaging projectiles as part of traversing the environment and defeating the bosses placed in front of us.
Pilot Season – Week 2 – Hollow Knight
It’s week 2 of the Pilot Season, where I show the first episode of potential new Let’s Play series and you help me decide which one will go past the first episode into a full series on The Mental Attic’s YouTube Channel. Last week it was Ori and the Blind Forest, a lovely little metroidvania, so this week let’s finish getting the platformers out of the way, with the first episode for the game I’ve written and spoken about the most in the past few weeks, the Metroidvania Souls-like H0llow Knight. Hope you enjoy this fun little episode, where I use some pogo skills to get early access to a lovely little item that makes me more powerful when I’m close to biting the dust!
Next week it’s the Rogue-like Dead Cells, where I’ll try to put on a good show before I inevitably get my butt kicked in horrible ways! See you then and don’t forget to vote!
Pilot Season – Week 1 – Ori and the Blind Forest
On Friday I mentioned my intent to return to the wonderful world of Let’s Play series on YouTube, but that to make things interesting and leave it to the audience to decide which series they’d like to go with, I would imitate Amazon on its Pilot Season, where they show the first episode of potential TV series, picking the most popular to go forward at the end of the preliminary season. Continue reading Pilot Season – Week 1 – Ori and the Blind Forest
My year (so far) in Metroidvania – Best of the Best
I love platformers, they take me back to my childhood playing Super Mario Bros. with my sister on our NES, each struggling to reach the next level in the classic Nintendo title and all but whistling the 1-1 tune out of memory months later.
When it came time to pick our genres for the Gamely Giving Gameblast marathon a few months ago, I went with the platformer genre, not only because of how I felt about it but also because it’s a fun genre to watch and usually very family friendly, which was important with my broadcasting shift times. Continue reading My year (so far) in Metroidvania – Best of the Best