doublepepperoni

Reminding me of Resident Evil, Dino Crisis and Devil May Cry is a great first impression.

There were 4 of these games on the PlayStation 2 and one of them has fucking Jean Reno in it

Interesting to see what the quality curve on these will be given they were pumped out in about 5 years

Edit: It's got tank controls and pre-rendered backgrounds

I finished Kuon, which is a really cool survival horror game from a pre-Dark Souls From Software. All of its 3 playable characters are women, of which the final, unlockable one is apparently some legendary Japanese mystic whom the devs decided to gender-swap for the game. The funny thing is that they still made the female Abe no Seimei unflappably cool and ludicrously OP, demolishing all the enemies in the game with ease

Also Japanese writers just love turning male historical figures into girls, don't they

I actually ended up really liking Kuon's writing and characters, so it's interesting to see the devs being kinda weird about their female protagonists

In all honesty though, as a connoisseur of fixed camera angles, Kuon's camera angles aren't that amazing most of the time. The game's environments are fairly open and empty so the angles are mostly pretty pulled back and utilitarian, more focused on giving you a clear view of each area rather than setting a mood with creative shot composition like your Resident Evils and Silent Hills. The game reminds me of Silent Hill 4 which had a similarly detached camera to go along with its larger, sparser environments.

Despite the kind of simplistic gameplay and repeated puzzles and progression during its two campaigns I'd recommend Kuon if you're into PS2 horror and traditional Japanese ghost stories

It'll probably melt away in less than a week but fuck me, I was already happily riding my bike everywhere

What the fuck is that last sentence supposed to even mean

Oh yeah, we're firmly in budget PS2 land now

The game here is Kuon, a rare PS2 horror game from 2005. It, along with Haunting Ground and Rule of Rose, form a trio of low-print late-period PS2 survival horror games that ended up becoming ludicrously expensive on the secondary market in later years, fetching prices in the hundreds of dollars. I'm pretty sure buying copies of all of three games LEgiTiMAteLy could set you back a 1000 bucks, which is complete fucking nonsense and a reminder to thank the kind folks that run your friendly neighbourhood rom site.

Despite the obviously low production values, the game seems pretty fun so far. I'm digging the old-timey Japanese setting and the subject matter involving ghosts, demons, shrine maidens, magical paper charms and all sorts of other associated folklore and mysticism . It sort of feels like you're playing some hokey old Japanese horror movie. The perfectly antiquated 6th gen gameplay is very much up my alley too

BY GAMERS, FOR GAMERS

It's like if someone distilled the entire reactionary anti-woke gamer mindset into one picture, it's amazing

The developers are all "cool" white guys with shades while the only women in the picture are anonymous blonde bikini babes only there for eye candy

I'm sorry but I don't make the rules

Me when I see an air fryer for cheap

Me when I realize at home it's so tiny I will basically need to fry everything one portion at a time

Hopefully it'll still work out to be more energy efficient than the oven

My first dedicated gaming system was the PS1, and in general I have no trouble going back to the sprites and chunky polygons of the mid-to-late 90s, whether on consoles or computers

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as long as I can upscale them to 1080P

Beyond that it gets a bit hit and miss- SNES and Mega Drive games look and sound fine to me and I've played plenty of 16 bit console games as an adult. On PC, I can enjoy 2D stuff like Sam & Max Hit the Road or the original X-Com but most early 3D, like the original System Shock, looks a bit too much like visual vomit.

Going to 8-bit, while the vast majority of NES games are too primitive to my eyes and ears, I have no problems with Game Boy/Game Boy Color games.

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(Well, at least the good ones, mostly made by Nintendo)

Is it just nostalgia because I had a GBC as a kid or is it because Game Boy games came later and had more developed visual aesthetics?

My limit is probably the very late 80s