Review: Gleylancer (PS4/PS5)

Posted on October 26, 2021 by geelw

probably the sole good use of the word “Pow-Wow” these days.

While the SEGA logo is nowhere to be found (they only published the game way back in 1992), Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer looks, feels and plays like it’s 1992 and that’s a great thing. Ever busy publisher Ratalaika Games and veteran developer Shinyuden go above and beyond the call here with a flawless English translation plus a slew of gameplay improvements that range from a horde of video customization options to some all-new game modes that make this an instant buy at its low $6.99 price point (the original Mega Drive version will set you back about $200, and yes it’s solely in Japanese).

The game is pretty story driven with a lengthy opening movie, but in s nutshell: The story follows Lucia, a 16-year-old star fighter pilot in the Earth Federation. A war breaks out between humans and an unknown alien race in the year 2025. Lucia’s father, Ken, a high-ranking admiral in the Federation Navy, is captured after his ship is warped out of the combat zone with 4 alien modules which have the ability of teleportation. Lucia, heart-broken after hearing of her father’s disappearance, decides to hijack the prototype fighter CSH-01-XA “GleyLancer” with the help of her friend Teim and go after her father.

Like any decent classic shmup, a good player will complete the game in under an hour, but a smart player will deep dive this and go back for more and unlock every trophy. The fast but methodical gameplay is also customizable to the point of letting players cheat right off the bat if they so desire. There’s also a handy rewind function that’s excellently implemented and like the cheat mode, optional. The really amusing thing here is very likely, a good deal of modern gamers may not have heard of this until this release and may automatically snap it up for the quick trophies Ratalaika games are known for. My bet is they’ll be surprised at the challenge the game presents on its standard mode.

I have no idea what Shinyuden has planned for the future, but there are a ton of other shooters for the Genesis out there that can use this sort of very proper localization. I can name way too many here, but let’s not go over the moon with wishful, wistful thinking just yet. Recommended!

-GW

Review: Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (PS4)

Posted on August 7, 2020 by geelw

The Chaos Engine, or Circle of Life in action, if you will…

Well, this one’s a pleasant and goofy surprise. Sometimes the silliest and most simple games ideas just work and Mediatronic’s Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout ($19.99 on Steam for PC, Free this month on PSN) reinforces this perfectly. The 60-person enter, one person wins element is pure battle royale insanity (a genre I usually avoid), it’s weaponless mix of puzzle, sporty and trap packed levels offer up some tough and hilarious navigational challenges and overall, it’s just about as good as it gets for a game of its type.

Sure, there are micro-transactions here, but they’re not at all necessary to jump in and start playing. You can get some cool cosmetics with currency earned from just playing the game, or you can pay real money for stuff if you’re in a hurry to look cooler as you fall or get knocked off assorted hazards multiple times. In other words, there are no performance-enhancing purchases here (so far and I hope there won’t be in the future). Besides, the developer and publisher need to make SOME money with this one, but it’s actually nice that PSN users at least get to more or less play free and not choose to pay… well, until they need some of the stupidly cute skins and outfits that pop up.

fall-guys-ultimate-knockout-screenshot-08-ps4-04may20-en-us

It’s all fun and games, especially if someone gets cartoon hurt.

A constantly rotating set of 24 levels means you can’t predict what’s coming, but loads of dying and plenty of practice await. You just need to hope you can survive the chaos as it happens. Yes, there are some super-skilled players out there who can dive and dash through areas and as you play, some tasks get easier to plow through than others. But the lack of voice chat thankfully keeps one’s ears from burning off from what I’d imagine is some hefty amount of creative cursing taking place at some ignominious last second defeats. Although, yours truly actually screamed “Oh, Bugsnax!” at my TV after one terrible but funny loss because I’d exhausted every curse word I knew and that upcoming PS5 game’s name just popped into my head.

Then again, this is a game where you’ll watch someone winning a match and then lose it by accident when a platform vanishes suddenly, or they get beaned by a falling slice of parachuting fruit. Some players seemingly try to take out other players by lurking near an exit (grrrr!) and lunging at them or maybe hoping to be as threatening as a giant jellybean in a funky getup can. It’s all good though – sometimes you get the last laugh (well, until you lose in a future round) when the game decides to drop random survivors at the results screen to get the next stage kicking.

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The Death Dealer, Too

Posted on August 4, 2020 by geelw

(Thanks, Lex121100!)

Okay, I’m back. Sort of.

It’s been a bit of a rocky ride dealing with a recent demise, especially with a few big companies more or less trying to skimp their way out of paying proper annuity settlements. But we’ll not say more about that at the moment save for there’s a lot of things percolating in the background that need eyes kept on. In the meantime. it’s just been a total stress-fest in the writing department, although I have a small army of reviews in assorted states of completion. They’ll get posted at some point.

I suppose I should/could just be like others who post daily or more frequently and try to blank out the current nonsense in favor of a more rosy outlook, but it’s a bit tough what with all these follies going on in the periphery. That and, hell, every time I see someone here not wearing a mask or carrying one in their hand or a pocket then slapping in on as they walk into a shop, I want to dress up like El Kabong and give them a quick guitar lesson. But I don’t, as dressing like a cartoon horse and bashing folks on the head with a gitbox would probably be too sensible a solution and we just have to keep things crazy here in the US just because.

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Review: Nightmare at Noon (1988)

Posted on July 27, 2020 by geelw

So, if good guys wear black, I guess, uh…

While it’s absolutely packed to the hilt with stunts, thrills, and explosions galore (and how!), Nico Mastorakis’ 1988 flick Nightmare at Noon isn’t exactly the brain food of action movies. In fact, if you go in expecting even a decent plot to speak of, your brain may beat you somewhat senseless about two minutes in and turn itself off so it can enjoy the wild ride without you gargling on about what small amount of plot there is. Basically, if you miss the opening credits, there goes the story, and there’s not much there to begin with (and even less if you’re looking).

All you need to know is a secret scientific agency (or not so secret, as they roll around in two black custom vans with their agency’s name on them!) has chosen a small US town to experiment with some nefarious goings-on and it’s up to a handful of gun-totin’ tourists and local heroes to make things right. So you get Wings Hauser, Bo Hopkins, and Kimberly Beck starring with George Kennedy and Kimberly Ross versus that town full of newly green-blooded raging townspeople and a bunch of well-armed bad guys. A strangely silent Brion James kicks the flick off as the mysterious Albino, but despite all his evil machinations, his total lack of dialog actually hurts the film despite the nearly non-stop action that follows. I gather he was paid enough for bleaching his hair and wearing some contact lenses to make him look albino and decided to charge by the word for dialog or something?

(Thanks, ScreamFactoryTV!)

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July Arrows (Or, What Goes Up Must Come Down In Your Blu-Ray Player)

Posted on July 8, 2020 by geelw

July is a pretty busy month for Arrow Video and Arrow Academy – here’s all six releases coming your way this month on Blu-Ray:

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ZOMBIE FOR SALE [Blu-ray] (7/7)

BLACK RAINBOW [Blu-ray] (7/7)

INFERNO OF TORTURE [Blu-ray] (7/7)

HIROSHIMA [Blu-ray] (7/14)

BLOODSTONE [Blu-ray] (7/21)

LIFE IS A LONG QUIET RIVER [Blu-ray] (7/21)

Go make your own fireworks show on Apple TV!

Apple device-owning Arrow TV users are also in for a treat this month, as some of the films here are in this months lineup wit many others they can check out. If that’s you, feel free to check out the channel over at the link provided.

-GW

Trouble (Living With It)

Posted on July 7, 2020 by geelw

(Thanks, Thomas Barnett!)

So, the latest advice from the government is more or less let your abuser move right on it and sure, too many of you will possibly suffer the negative consequences. But hey, we’ll tell you you’re 99% safe and the economy is more important than staying alive because you can’t live without a little sacrifice. Or a lot of little sacrifices that add up to be a lot more. Maybe. My head hurts at all this sheer negligence going on, especially when a more urgent and actually powerful federal response would have worked better from the outset, but nope. It’s been hands off and putting people who have no scientific knowledge or care to grasp it “in charge” of not keeping millions of others safe. plus muzzling or talking over the science-minded folks when they speak out publicly, along with promoting the brick-headed, stubborn ones who are afraid of rocking a slowly sinking boat and its erratic Captain Queeg.

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Capsule Reviews: Ghost Grab 3000/Singled Out (Switch)

Posted on July 6, 2020 by geelw

You can’t be afraid of no ghost when you have the ability to use a nuke as an option.

I’d like to think that Matt Glanville (@crowbarska) has a working time machine permanently set to 1983 he’s not telling anyone about, as his games I’ve played to date all look and play like solid arcade hits of around that time. Switch ‘N’ Shoot is still one of the more thrilling and flawless uses of single-button gameplay I’ve experienced and now you have two more retro-inspired titles to blast away with, both quite good and deceptively simple on their surfaces, but each will have you hooked in for as long as you’re playing.

Ghost Grab 3000 ($4.99) is a nifty shooter that’s a hybrid of bullet hell and strategic shot placement as its lead character needs to line up or gather well-armed ghosts and blast away as many as possible while trying to survive each round. There are a couple of weapons to whip out in an emergency situation, plus a nice upgrade system with over 100 combinations allowing you to tailor your ghost grabber as you like. Part of the fun is buying those upgrades and enhancing your character, as you can create a hero that makes the game easier or, if you want to play with as few upgrades as possible, harder. That’s a bad idea, by the way – go buy and use those upgrades, I say.

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Soul Searching: Going Native (With Dragons on the Side)

Posted on June 30, 2020 by geelw

Make mine a double, please…

In the load of stuff I need to get to in this current crazy time, review code for a little game called Soul Searching popped up in the inbox a while back and you can say I’m intrigued by the project enough to move things around and play for a bit. I’ll get to the main story mode later in this post, but let’s talk minigames for a bit. There are seven ‘Short Stories’ as the game calls them, and they can be accessed from the menu and played in any order you like. but the game will run them consecutively if you start from the first one and complete each minigame.

Publisher nakana.io has released a few unique titles so far where its different developers’ personalities are on full display in each work, so there’s a lot going on in each game, from the art styles to the approaches to gameplay. Soul Searching is brim full of weirdness as the simple pixel-heavy art in the main game gives way to some rather intense slices of mind from its developer in minigames that feature assorted visual styles ranging from simple childlike scrawls to vector graphics and crude polygonal characters. In those brief segments, you almost get a sense that indie developer Kayabros (Talha Kaya) is working through some of life’s problems and you’re along for the ride for better or worse.

(Thanks, Nakana Games!)

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Empanadas

Posted on June 30, 2020 by geelw

(Thanks, Spaceprince72!)

Have you ever been hit in the brain by such a vivid dream that you wake up and think whatever was in that dream actually happened? Or worse, you woke up the next morning or at some point during the day to get dressed and go somewhere that doesn’t exist? Yes, that sort of happened a few days back and I wasn’t going to write about it, but this sort of thing happens quite a lot to quite a lot of people, I hear.

Anyway, I had a dream about empanadas a few days back that had me about to take a bite of one of the dozen I bought, then waking up and wanting to head out to a take out place somewhere in Harlem, if the dream was correct. Well, my brain’s GPS placed the restaurant there and as I’d lived in that area for a few years, I thought I knew exactly where it was located.

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The Unexpected Fruit Market and Other Occasional Hazards

Posted on June 26, 2020 by geelw

(Thanks, The Midwest TV Guys!)

This morning, I went to return some plastic bottles at the Stop ‘N Shop about a half mile or so walk away (there are many closer places, but it’s good exercise for me) and stumbled across a rather interesting exercise in capitalism taking place. On the way to the store, there’s a hospital complex made up of a few buildings spread over a few blocks and at the kidney dialysis building, I noticed two tall stacks of red containers marked BIOHAZARD a few feet apart and someone standing between and slightly to the rear of them. I was across the street waiting for the light to change, so I merely thought that person was a hospital worker waiting for that hazardous material to be retrieved by whatever company collected it. As I waited for the light, a woman walked up to the man and quickly handed him something, whereupon something else was quickly exchanged and she walked off back the way she came.

Yes, I was a bit more than a little curious at this. So I crossed the street in stealth mode. hoping to sneak a closer peek when suddenly, another person walked up and quickly passed what looked like cash to the man, whereupon they were handed and walked away with a small plastic-encased item. Did they just both just buy an organ or some other icky flesh waste? Was it homemade Soylent Green? Was there a secret society of vampires or zombie keepers in the Bronx I had no idea existed who came out during the daytime? As got closer, I saw that it was just plastic boxes of mixed fruit being quickly traded and there were two or three other people who were either taking cash or distributing fruit boxes as they were paid for. I guess Midge didn’t like the mixed fruit on the menu, or something. A few Midges actually, from the look of things.

(Thanks, boydclanvirginia!)

Passing the people conducting their business, I stopped about 15 or so feet away, turned around, stepped to the right and watched for a bit. It seemed that the guys doing the sales worked in the hospital and were making a few bucks on the side selling that fruit. From what I gathered, these seemed to be low-level staff workers with a few regular customers, giving the speed of the transactions. After about two minutes, I tuned and headed to the store. It was hot out and those plastic bottles weren’t going to return themselves. This was a mystery for some other day. I did hope that those red containers weren’t full or at least clean and just used to block passersby from seeing from afar what was going on, or those fruit cases would be a total fruit surprise for the buyers soon enough.

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