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Digital Down-Low for 03/25/2023: Ryzing from the Grave

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Get the latest, and greatest, video games at your local Blockbuster. Make it a Blockbuster Night!

Beatboxing wildly on a street corner when you're just trying to use the crosswalk this week is a new update to the NSO! Hot on the heels of the PREVIOUS NSO update; which has to be a record. And, as is required, one of the titles is something that I certainly never played but definitely saw readily available for rent at the gas station near my house: Super Side Pocket on the Super Nintendo (it's Pool, but COOL), on the NES we got Grand-dame of the shmup-genre, Xevious (statistically speaking, you *probably* have this multiple times), and on the Gameboy we have the surprisingly good Burgertime Deluxe (Burger Time Regular, but gussied up and a lot more content rich), and the unsurprisingly good Kirbys Dreamland 2 (which I feel is underrepresented in the field of Good Kirby Games)

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And speaking of very old video game compilations, that is not the case with Hero with a Thousand Arms, but that IS certainly trying to invoke that. And while at first blush it looks like the kind of thing I gloss over, I took a deeper look and then said "Oh... neat!". This here is a microgame collection, like your WarioWares or the like, but all the minigames are inspired by NES-and-Earlier games, and also you have to play them all simultaneously, rapidly flipping between several in order to keep your various l'il guys on their feet and keep your high score building.

It looks like a recipe for stress-related heart attacks!

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And speaking of games that look like old games, but are in fact, newer games than that, we have Kung Fury: Street Rage: Ultimate Edition, the second video game adaptation of the short film that anyone who saw even two minutes of would understandably say "Oh, yeah, that's... probably Octos favorite movie".

They're wrong, of course, my favorite movie is Gremlins 2, but I do adore Kung Fury.

The original game was well suited for mobile play, as it was effectively a gussied up Game & Watch title, with two attack buttons you had to swap between to stem an endless swarm of nazis, by releasing a volcano made of nuclear dynamite disguised as a human fist at them, but this version looks to have elevated itself to Regular Beat-em-up gameplay. But the trailer looked to be focusing more on delivering clips of the movie and pointing out that David Hasselhoff is a playable character now.

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Remnant from the Ashes is a game what got ported over from mightier consoles, and that's about all I know of it. Umm... the screenshots so some mask guys, some got guns, some are riding on wolves. It's got procedurally generated levels and online co-op.

I guess... you fight monsters? And probably build a base?

Y'know; video game stuff.

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Luckily, I'm on much firmer ground with Have a Nice Death, as it's a rogue-em-up where you're a little Skellyman, and I get some powerful Dead Cells vibes from it. And I've gone on record as saying I *💘wuv💘* Dead Cells, so it stands to reason that "Basically Dead Cells, but with a skellyman" is right up my alley.

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Now if you want a video game about grappling with mortality, but maybe without a cute little skeleton in a robe hacking up monsters, we have Rakuen, which appears to be about a Permanently Hospitalized Kid who is going into a fanciful dream world to help crazy varmints who are tonally similar to the other patients in the hospital and using their sunny attitude to solve their problems.

I'm sure there's nothing emotionally destroying about this one.

On a similar note, there's also Monorail Stories, which is less fanciful and everyone is miserable to be on a train instead of In Hospice Care.

And I'm assuming similar to THAT (but that's conjecture because the screenshots aren't super clear, but it IS an Annapurma game) we have Storyteller, which I think is a puzzle game where you get to assemble a working narrative out of a handful of desperate plot elements. Like Scribblenauts, but with a handful of options for each level.

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And finally, we have a new Atelier game, and, unlike in the past when my knowledge of this series is "Everyone is dressed frilly and there's lots of potion making" now I HAVE been playing them! And I get the appeal! And so, that brings us to the latest in the series; Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End And the Secret Keys (kind of feel like that's a bit too much for a subtitle). I'm still only midway through the first one, but assuming this one holds true to that one, it's an RPG about building grenades out of spider-webs and pinecones and about how sometimes adults have to do a little bit of war crimes and environmental collapse as a treat in-between bits of charming coming of age anime drama.

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JBear

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer
(He/Him)
And I'm assuming similar to THAT (but that's conjecture because the screenshots aren't super clear, but it IS an Annapurma game) we have Storyteller, which I think is a puzzle game where you get to assemble a working narrative out of a handful of desperate plot elements. Like Scribblenauts, but with a handful of options for each level.
I played the Steam Nextfest demo of this a few months ago and it's super cool. It looks very basic, and it is, but it uses a very limited toolset to do some very wonderful things. You're building a little comic strip out of building blocks, and you could go boring (man marries woman, man kills man, woman dies of loneliness) or you could go in a different direction (woman marries woman, *beat*, man dies of loneliness), and the game rewards you for trying to find alternative stories, and some of them can get very wild.

Now if you want a video game about grappling with mortality, but maybe without a cute little skeleton in a robe hacking up monsters, we have Rakuen, which appears to be about a Permanently Hospitalized Kid who is going into a fanciful dream world to help crazy varmints who are tonally similar to the other patients in the hospital and using their sunny attitude to solve their problems.
I haven't actually played this one, but I think I've had it in my library for a while. My understanding is that it's basically a visual novel, and my weird bit of trivia, and how it got on my radar, is that it's an RPG Maker game made by the lady who sang the Plants vs. Zombies theme song, Laura Shigihara.
 

Violentvixen

(She/Her)
Get the latest, and greatest, video games at your local Blockbuster. Make it a Blockbuster Night!
Okay fine since I live right next to the last store oh wait they don't have games never mind. I actually do try to go there when I can, the lady is super nice and knits these beanies herself.

Now if you want a video game about grappling with mortality, but maybe without a cute little skeleton in a robe hacking up monsters, we have Rakuen, which appears to be about a Permanently Hospitalized Kid who is going into a fanciful dream world to help crazy varmints who are tonally similar to the other patients in the hospital and using their sunny attitude to solve their problems.

I'm sure there's nothing emotionally destroying about this one.
This was a game I didn't finish, not because of the emotional part but it was moving so slowly. I thought a lot of things about the premise and world were going to be interesting it was just taking way too long to get there. But a lot of people like it.

On a similar note, there's also Monorail Stories, which is less fanciful and everyone is miserable to be on a train instead of In Hospice Care.
I picked this up when it released on Steam last fall. It's oddly paced with some unnatural dialogue but the idea of having two players each control the character on the other train is neat.
 
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