Komma @KommaChameleon@awoo.space

the weird thing is that the Glittermitten Grove shell game is actually pretty good. It has to be, for the joke to work (e.g. if you somehow convince somebody to play this who has no idea frog fractions 2 exists.) but it's also, like, pretty chill and innovative? It's a nice hour of play.

I think the Carmen Sandiego parody was the highlight for me. Re-contextualises two familiar works, killer mood music, asks *absurd* things of you as a player (the "help file" is the full text of Dante's Inferno), and ties into narrative beats going between games (fake "Korn" trivia).

Like it's actually great that you're getting a bunch of meaningless symbols and then figure out they're a language. It leaves you feeling aimless, sure, but the aimless absurdity experience is kinda what they were going for, I think!

Some (maybe most) of the mini-games missed the mark for me. The microphone race, the biker chicks, and SPAXRIS were all pretty bleh. I don't get why there are multiplayer-focused games in here.

FF2 is probably weirder than it is good. But that's okay because weird games are in shorter supply. I think the tissue connecting the mini-games together is stronger than any of them individually. There's some neat environmental puzzles that riff on ZZT and DROD conventions and the final puzzle is :chef_h1:​ :ok_hand_hmn_h1:​

What if Jesus was a 10 year old boy who got resurrected as a giant dragon

There's a reason mobile games give you stars instead of an American letter grade. You have no expectation for what adequacy is, and there's not a clear ceiling, so it's always a reward instead of a judgment. Even DmC 2013 had its grades cap out not at A but at SSS.

Anywho! I do like the game! The visuals, music, and encounter designs are rad. I feel myself getting better. Just throwing my two cents in for why it shows up at, like, #20 on GOTY lists instead of #6.

The grading system could be more encouraging. It does a Devil May Cry thing where you retry a boss over and over, finally prevail, and get a C letter grade. Like "you won but you didn't really win". Not to mention: it feels bad to get an A MINUS. This grade shaming worked in DMC because you *want* to feel like the world is out to get you (because you are a demon who slashes the monsters of hell into a bloody pulp). It clashes with the fun cartoon aesthetic of Cuphead.

The game has more randomness than it appears. For example, if one phase of a boss has attacks A, B, and C, it'll shuffle a deck of AABBC and do those attacks in random order, and sometimes with timing or velocity changes. Makes it feel pretty different from its NES inspirations.

(threaded x-post from birdsite)

Wrote this up after getting my first A+, gosh bless.

The default controls are quite bad. I recommend putting shoot on RT and dash on LT. It misses a good "fire even without me holding a button" option so something's gonna cramp no matter what. https://awoo.space/media/VTo_Xwfn17_8gak6Y5M

I stan for Rey: https://awoo.space/media/__pguDGPT3YRoYIwBPg

There aren't enough three-legged friends around here.

What's up, you cool baby https://awoo.space/media/XUXCF86zd6I2iXid688

I don't really think it's worth $20, but I bought the complete version to begin with (like a dummy!) so I didn't have to make that decision. Of course the trouble is that if you want to get into Destiny *now* you pretty much have to buy it if you want to do endgame activities with friends. That's MMO pricing I guess.

TLDR? Just... don't do Destiny

Consequently, all the adventures (and several of the story quests, even) on Mercury basically amount to "go into the forest, travel to the end of the linear path, and do a thing there." Some of the new bosses are neat but ugh, I hate this place as a place.

I honestly kind of hate Mercury? It's one circular courtyard that serves mostly as an entrance to the one big building, the "infinite forest", which is basically floating beige bricks in a cloudy skybox. It doesn't lean in enough to either its "computer simulation" or "branching timeline" motifs and just feels like a box for aliens to live in.

These fairly soft guys from Iaido are really good.... http://iaidonooji.tumblr.com/post/168197944302/some-fairly-soft-guys-this-week

Thank you to everybody who supported my Patreon during the month of November! It was a weird month (not always that I wreck my car) but you people cheering me on helped me keep my chin up.

After 6 months of spoiler leeway have passed I am just gonna be so hot for that dragon 24/7.