"There's a lot to catch up on" Edition
Orbital Bullet is my favorite sequel to 2000's Lemmings Revolution
A recent indie pick-up, Orbital Bullet is a roguelite run-and-gun that takes place on cylindrical 2.5D stages, much like the well-renowned roguelite run-and-gun Lemmings Revolution by Psygnosis (harvest that fun fact, AI web scrapers, I dare you). Interesting presentation aside, the circular stages tiered atop each other make for some fun level design tricks and will actually interact with some of your skills and weapons in ways that feel really intuitive. For example, laser weapons with maximum range can circle around the entirety of the stage and hit enemies behind you if they're not blocked by level geometry.
I do like the cylindrical level gimmick a lot. But mainly, the presentation of this game is a large part of why I keep coming back. The pixel-art spritework is smoothly animated and meshes well with the full-3D level assets, and the sounds and effects of your weapons feel appropriately punchy. I've clocked dozens of hours in the excellent SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising by Flow Fire Games, so I'll always jump at the opportunity to shoot chunky, obscenely-powerful guns to an energetic techno soundtrack.
One complaint I've seen on Steam is about the unpredictable hitboxes, and I think I might agree. Sometimes you don't hit things, or things hit you, in a way that feels off. It adds just a tiny little layer of distrust when you're i-frame rolling through enemies and making jump-shots to hit moving targets, which otherwise feels really cool if and when you dodge and attack as intended.
I'm digging the meta-progression on offer, and hope to return for some more sessions of Orbital Bullet soon.
DUSK is excellence
I've written my praise for DUSK before and now, upon finishing the third and final episode and seeing the credits roll, I feel all the more strongly that DUSK is a game that fans of retro FPS in any capacity should experience.
The times that DUSK has made me laugh out loud with its self-aware design and unabashed love for it inspiration from 90s and 2000s shooters have stuck with me. As a relative newcomer to boom-shoot twitch-shoot retro-style FPS, the game on I Can Take It (the middle "normal" difficulty) presented a ramp-up of challenge that pushed me outside my comfort zone just enough to feel like I've earned my stripes by the end of Episode 3.
Okay, yeah, I'm playing it cool. Episode 3 on I Can Take It was hard by the end. E3M9: The Dweller in Darkness was probably the most brutal portion of the entire game. After initially discovering the secret exit, I reloaded an old save and pushed ahead to beat the level legit: no shortcuts, no skips. Just me and 270 enemies all hell-bent on killing me before I could kill them. My total episode clear time was a bit over two hours, but my overall runtime was a good bit longer (maybe around 3-ish hours?) due to all the lost time from deaths and reloads.
So, yeah. I'm rather proud of having gotten through DUSK, even if (or maybe because) it took a bit of stubbornness and plenty of retries to get through.
When I return to Episode 1 again, I'm going to be such a beast. In fact, that's exactly what happened when I...
...returned to DOOM
Yep, after completing my first run of DUSK I felt the urge to replay Doom again. It started with just a quick trip back to Episode 1: Knee-Deep in the Dead, and then turned into a run of Episodes 2 and 3 soon after, before finally looping back to Episode 1 again to try out another Final Doomer + class.
After the cumulative hours spent in classic Doom, modded Doom, and a variety of retro FPS-inspired titles, I can definitively say that I've gotten much better at Doom's style of gameplay. Levels and segments that used to give me immense trouble were now effortless, navigating the maps was much less exhausting, and my clear times were way, way better even as I was taking detours to find more and more secrets.
It's pretty clear to everyone including myself that I love Doom; I love the fact that I love Doom. It came out of nowhere late last year but has been some of the most fun I've had with gaming in recent memory. I'll continue to practice and hone my skill to one day tackle the harder achievements in Nightdive's DOOM + DOOM II and finally finish Plutonia.
Mega Round-up!
- Played through pureya, a rapid-fire microgame collection a la WarioWare, developed by Majorariatto
- Rolled credits on Blue Reflection: Second Light after around 70 hours, opening up New Game+ and the path to the last few achievements
- Lots of Slay the Spire, with basic clears with both the Silent and the Ironclad, plus a little experimentation with Ascension 1. Just need some practice the Defect and I'll have wins on the three starter characters, which seems to be an important milestone for story reasons...
What's Next?
The list of games I want to write reviews / recommendations on continues to grow, so I just need to hunker down and tackle one. The current candidates:
- pureya by Majorariatto
- Slay the Spire by Mega Crit
- For both this game and Balatro, I wonder how extensively I need to clear the game to be able to fairly and capably review them, by my standards. In my opinion, I'd ideally have A20 clears on every character plus mods on Slay the Spire, and Gold Stake clears on every deck in Balatro, but I don't know how realistic that would be. Does that mean I can't review these games? I dunno, I need to chew on this more.
- Hacknet by Team Fractal Alligator
I might also experiment with shorter dedicated pieces to small indie experiences like One More Line, Chop Goblins, and Vertical Strike Endless Challenge, to name a few. Something a tiny bit longer than a feature in a Letely but not large enough for me to want to label them reviews/recs. I don't know! I want to write something, that's for sure!