beard ひげ @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club

@minespatch granted i don't know for sure, just a hunch. i'm not talking exactly about tourists either, though that is certainly part of it. i'm thinking more along the lines of like, actually younger people who straight up weren't alive when flcl came out originally. it's a pretty niche anime regardless. you can't expect every 20 year old to have poured through the annals of anime history instead of watching what is coming out and being talked about right now.

A simple but extremely fun metroidvania that uses the aesthetic and foundation of the original Castlevania to make something super expanded. For a metroidvania, especially in the modern day, it is quite short which is actually a positive for me! Still, it is a lot longer than the original Castlevania if we're not counting how many times you'd have to replay the same levels because you keep dying and there aren't any passwords or save files in that game.

This fan game rearranges all of the levels into different rooms and areas in a much larger castle that can be freely traversed through. There are tons of power ups and different whips (with 8 directional action!) that don't just unlock different routes but also can fundamentally change the way you play the game. It is very well designed and I never found myself getting lost. Because of how relatively small the map is when compared to modern metroidvanias, it was pretty easy to make an entire trip around the castle to find what I was looking for.

The game also features a card system that lets you purchase cards with the money you collect throughout the game from various enemies and candles. You can only equip three at a time, but they will enhance your moveset or survivability. I went for a build that was solely focused on surviving and only saw one game over, so perhaps the game could be a little bit harder, but I'm also fairly decent at Castlevania so maybe it is a bit harder for newer players. There is a card that makes the game harder, which might be a tantalizing option for another playthrough.

I'm actually a really big fan of the original Castlevania. It's on my top 100 games list! Seeing the game remade into something way more feature complete with a map and everything was like a dream for me and I loved every second of it. The pace never felt like it was going too slow, the vast majority of the rooms weren't annoying to deal with despite revisiting them several times, and I never ran into any bugs whatsoever.

I do wish that the game gave me a little bit more incentive to use other items. The healing item was so good, especially when I had been pretty meticulously going through and collecting all of the secret items (which the game graciously marks on the map), that I didn't want to get rid of it to use something else in fear of not being able to find it again in the future. Given that hearts can be collected all over the place, perhaps they should have reduced the amount of hearts you can have at any given time or made the healing item only available towards the end of the game. They could have even done something where the healing item was just separate from the heart function entirely, but I can respect the choice to keep it simple and closer to being in line with the original.

It was also pretty annoying that you would auto pick up any item you walked over. I know that's how the original game is, but a lot of hacks have done away with that feature so that you have to more intentionally pick up items. It's always annoying to accidentally pick one up and then you have to wait for the cooldown to pick up your original one that got booted out.

I can also appreciate the creator's restraint when it comes to not adding tons of content that would have not appeared in the originals outside of the powerups. However, it does mean that the game ends up feeling a little bit lacking as a brand new entity and it does feel a lot more like a hack. That is genuinely a good thing still, but I can't help but feel like something is missing.

In any regard, I'd highly recommend checking this one out if you like metroidvanias, and especially if you have an appreciation for the original Castlevania. You'll love it!

#beardgamereview

@mushroom_soup @LoliHat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muMZ5zYrTgc

@LoliHat @mushroom_soup whoa i've never heard motorhead without lemmy singing wtf

@minespatch i have only seen the reze arc movie, but i get the feeling that chainsaw man is popular not because it's more amazing than anything else, but because it is digestible for a large amount of people and is still relatively good. i also think that since it is relatively new, it has gained a lot of traction with new anime fans who haven't actually seen any of the old stuff so they don't really have as much to compare it to other than other anime that are also fairly new.

the movie getting such an insanely high aggregate review score seems just a litttttle bit crazy to me, tbh. it's a good film but it's not even getting close to approaching any other movie that deserves that, even other anime ones.

@mushroom_soup

@StephenMckenna to be fair, if i had money like the ceo of mcdonald's i would never touch my own company's food either

@MuhSocialJustice i wouldn't want someone tying my shoes or tie let me do that shit myself get off of me

@minespatch it did remind me a lot of flcl actually

@Tamamo skill issue

my roommate was kind of freaking out a bit because he saw some report saying that rent for a single bedroom apartment would be $6000/month in 2045.

that's considering everything freezes in time exactly how it is right now. any projection for more than 5 years away is fucking useless imo. anything could happen between now and then. that's 20 years... think about the technological advancements that have happened in the last 20 years. think about how much society in general has deteriorated. how can you possibly predict what the price of rent is going to be?

@LoliHat microwave it lmao

"he looks like crazy frog if he had epilepsy" - joel

@Nudhul that's mike for ya lol