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Mina the Hollower Sweet Jesus, this game is hard. Shovel Knight could be decently challenging but this one is just straight up brutal if you play without modifiers. It's still great, though. The controls, level design, and combat all feel fantastic. Don't even get me started on that soundtrack full of absolute bangers courtesy of Jake Kaufman again. Hollowing is also one of those mechanics that make you go "man I wish I could do this in every game." I'd give it a strong 9/10, though I have to dock a point because the game is determined not to have tutorials but at the same time isn't always as intuitive as it thinks it is. Did you know the mirrors are the fast travel system and to activate one you have to walk into the mirror for about two seconds? Well now you do so congratulations, you won't have to backtrack to every region of the game to activate the mirrors like I had to do when I realized I'd overlooked this absolutely crucial step to accessing the endgame. There's also a section of the game where you have to burrow through deep water in order to cross large gaps. They drop a subtle hint by putting a tiny collectible in the water, but up until now jumping into water has also resulted in taking damage so the game has trained me by this point to NOT jump into water only to suddenly make an exception without really telling me. I actually had to look up a guide to be told that it's okay to jump in water now. Honestly, if you can make it through this entire game without having to consult a guide even once then my hat's off to you because some things it expects you to do are incredibly cryptic. Despite this flaw, I'd still recommend it to anyone. If the Souls-like difficulty is a turnoff to you then there are plenty of modifiers to adjust the experience. I refrained from using them myself because I wanted to beat it as the developers intended but there's so many options I'm sure you can fine-tune it to be as hard or as easy as you want it to be.

The Signal State This is a Zach-like where the premise is that you're in a post-apocalyptic world (basically all the computers broke which made all the machines stop working which meant society collapsed), and you're on a farm trying to jury rig reactivating the machinery so that you can grow crops and stuff. You do this by wiring up analog electronics to replace the digital computer parts the machines were using. It's a neat setup, but the import thing is the puzzles are very well designed. This is easily the best Zach-like I've ever played that wasn't actually made by Zachtronics. I highly recommend it if you like their other stuff. It's maybe a little short, and the puzzles don't really get quite hard enough, but otherwise it's great. Grade: 4/5

Air Combat Trying to get through all (or at least the ones that I can get my hands on) of the Ace Combat games before 8 comes out lol. I'd say this holds up pretty well, big part of it is that whether you're playing this or Ace Combat 7, the basic combat controls (gun, missiles, map, change target) are the same. The flight through the ravine was a pain, but it's also a fairly short mission so it evens out. The alarm beep that keeps playing during briefings was really annoying though. Grade: A

Two Zacklikes, an expansion for Project Wingman, and a JRPG I've been eyeing for a while.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening I was looking for something short to play on my Switch until Star Fox and ended up picking this because the Ocarina of Time Remake announcement put me in a Zelda mood. It's basically a smaller version of Link to the Past, so I don't need to tell you how great it is. I ended up going for all hearts containers (and every other optional things I could find) which I don't think I've done in any Zelda games since the original OoT on N64. I hope they'll remake Link to the Past in this style eventually. I'd be way more excited for that than I am for Ocarina. Although before that, I need Nintendo to stop fucking around and put Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD on Switch already!

Directive 8020 It's another one of 'those' games from Supermassive Games. Only this time it's got a science-fiction theme to it and you're in space. If that appeals to you then you'll likely enjoy this, if not then...probably skip it. For what it's worth I enjoyed it, but I've enjoyed almost everything they've put out. If I had to pick some nits I'd say the stealth sections are far too frequent and some of the animation/dialogue didn't seem to match up, which seems like an oversight given this is what that studio is famous for. I believe it's another 'Dark Pictures' game rather than a full-on standalone game. So closer to Man of Medan and Little Hope than it is The Quarry or Until Dawn.

I'm weak. Also grabbed:

Project Wingman Played this game in VR with a flight stick and goddamn is it cool as hell. All y'all in the discord already know this because I've been spamming gameplay clips, but it's basically off-brand Ace Combat. It doesn't have quite the presentational flair that AC does, but it's fun and epic and silly and that's what matters. If this had released this year it would easily be my GOTY-so-far. My only complaint is that there's not more of it. Grade: 5/5 Project Wingman: Frontline 59 Guess what, there's more of it! This DLC is only 6 missions compared to the base game's 21, so it's not much more, but it's still just as great. Arguably better because it doesn't have the same kind of boss fights that the base game did, which were the least best part of that. Unfortunately, it's so short that I can't rate it quite as highly. Still a must-play though if you have and enjoy the main game. Grade: 4/5

Grabbed this on Steam. Looking for something to play whilst on holiday and I'm hoping this'll be it.

Gun-Nac I was playing around with shaders whilst setting up my new retro-doodad and found myself really digging this thing. Ultimately ended up playing it through over a few sessions. It's a super cool (and fairly accessible) NES schmup with some nice enough art and a steller weapon/upgrade system. It also may have opened up a new genre to me.

Same. I'll buy it, but I won't be happy about it...

Forza Horizon 6 I'm not versed enough in the series to give you a real idea about how they've changed things up. I am however, once again having a good time with the game. It looks beautiful, it's immediately fun to just drive around and the racing is engrossing enough that I'm perfectly happy to just bounce from one race to another whilst knocking over road signs and whatnot. However. However. The game fucking tanks my XBOX Series X man. It'll be running fine and then suddenly and without warning it'll full on crash the console and the entire system turns off. I've googled it and it seems to be an issue with the first year's Series X. Perhaps overheating? I've cleaned the unit inside and out and there's no dust, so the working assumption seems to be a CPU paste issue. Oh well. I can probably muddle through it until I run out of interest in a few weeks (as always happens with these games; they take over my free time and then just vanish without a trace once I'm done with them - see Animal Crossing).