Camacho

Got to disagree with him about the story and character changes, but I still maintain that the game is way better than it gets credit for. The world/art design (not the characters themselves) is really cool, the gameplay is still very good (certainly more fun than using V in 5), and the music is at least less cringey than the nu metal in 3/4 or "bang, bang, bang" in 5. Honestly, I'm surprised that the online nerdosphere didn't lap up the ham fisted Daily Show approved story, given its dominant political preference.

Was running 1080p on recommended settings (tried lowering settings as well), no ray tracing. It ran fast when it wasn't stuttering. I was running it off of a conventional HD, so that probably didn't help, but I also read that other AMD CPU/GPU users had issues with stuttering.

Had several crashes and bad stuttering, particularly when I upgraded to the 6700xt from a 1070. Crashes coupled with the way the game saves were god awful- I worked around it by copying the hidden save files frequently.

I'd say my favorite new to me games of 2023 were RE4R, GoW: Ragnarok, Infernax, Gravity Circuit, and Getsu Fuma Den: Undying Moon. Returnal was cool as well, but a few design elements coupled with issues on the PC port dragged it down.

The more I listen to Castlevania music (which is quite a bit since I DL'ed the box set), the more I realize just how much more I like the older stuff than Michiru Yamane's (still great) contributions. Most of it is way more rhythmically interesting to my ears, very complex for such short pieces. Yamane's stuff, particularly CoD, which I previously considered a high point, is so goddamn repetitive with the drums that I'm having a hard time listening to much of it anymore. Contrast it to Haunted Castle's rhythmic insanity and you'll see what I mean. Those early composers were so much more limited with what they could do that they really pulled the stops out with what was available.

Talking about emotional impact, the last 2 GoW games and Ghost of Tsushima hit me. Sony has some writers that regularly outdo modern Hollywood.

Playing the dlc will make you hate that enemy.

Do you have the DLC's? They're good, but pretty brutal in terms of difficulty.

Nice interview with the producer of the new Contra: https://gonintendo.com/contents/29455-wayforward-on-cracking-konami-s-code-with-contra-operation-galuga

LoS2 has a really nice art design in the castle areas, and I like the story concept. Combat isn't bad either, certainly no DMC, but more fun than GoW3 was. But yeah those stealth sections suck, and a lot of the present day settings are bland as hell.

I'm so looking forward to this. Contra 4 was stellar- the dead zone was the only real complaint I had. I do kind of wish they'd drop the limited continues model also, though this was alleviated in Contra 4 by the missions allowing you to practice tough spots without having to re-run the whole game up to that point. They could even re-balance the game to be more difficult if limited continues were axed, like the Japanese hard corps.

VGMF contribution, this one is legit Castlevania tier:

Just finished my first playthrough of Infernax. It's really good, very much like what we all wish Simon's Quest was. Tons of secrets and replay value as well, lots of morality choices that change the story and missions. There's also a secret that fulfills that grade school wish of "wouldn't it be cool if I could use the Contra guys in Castlevania?" The music is superb as well, real A grade NES style stuff.

https://babylonbee.com/news/new-gta-game-will-have-unlockable-soros-da-mode-where-all-crime-is-legal " NEW YORK, NY — Rockstar Games has announced new details about its upcoming Grand Theft Auto installment, confirming that the new game will have an unlockable "Soros DA Mode" where all crime is legal. "Players demand more realism in games these days," Sam Houser, President of Rockstar Games, told reporters after making the announcement. "The days of simply being arrested for committing a crime are no more. It was time to bring the GTA franchise into the new world."

Play modern retro indie stuff, problem solved.

I really hope Operation Galuga keeps the challenge missions Contra 4 had. Those were perfect bite size challenges that served as excellent practice for tough parts in the main game.

Played through Zero Mission again this week, still holds up well. I really appreciate how they tightened up the physics vs Super Metroid. My only real annoyance is how annoying the main theme gets by the time you get the gravity suit- it's almost as beaten to death as "Sinking Old Sanctuary" is by the the end of Circle of the Moon. Decided to continue the Metroid wave by firing up Dread yesterday- it's painful to hear how badly the ball was dropped with the music in this one. Still otherwise excellent, though.

VGMF:

Just finished another playthrough of Super Metroid, as I've done dozens of times before. Almost 30 years later and it still holds up great- what a masterpiece.

I'll probably finish it at some point. I have to disagree with you on throwing out Dracula and just about everything established being for the better. The whole thing feels like they're doing their damndest to pander to Reddit communists. Forced diversity aside (Eastern European CV setting and vampire lore be damned), setting this one in the French revolution and giving it a black and white "good guys vs bad guys" spin is particularly nauseating to anyone who has actually read much about it, its immediate consequences, and its lingering aftermath. If anything, it's pretty backwards- in CV lore, the sorts of people who want to burn down everything that came before, fundamentally change man's nature, and create utopia from rivers of human blood are the ones who would side with vampires and resurrect Dracula so that he could cleanse the earth in chaos. As for my complaint about the magic, I meant that it's lazy in that it is limited only by the writers imagination. Want to make a shield out of a floating block of ice? Sure, but it can melt, and that same magic spigot apparently can't make more. Need to throw fire? Make some Dio horns and you're good, but the fire only does something whern we want it to, otherwise being roasted can be ignored. Need to make a bridge? Sure, let's make one appear while on the run, but you also can't just use that some magic to move lots of dirt or rocks into a boulder that crushes your enemies, nor can you just move the ground out from under them and form spikes for them to land on. The shit isn't grounded in any way- even with pure fantasy mechanisms by magic, having rules, costs, effort, and limitations laid out- more than "I'm emotionally scarred, so now I can't hadouken, even though someone who was literally enslaved and also saw their mother murdered can make dirt float"- would be much better. It's crap, and I thought it was crap in the first one too.

Man, doesn't feel like it's been that long since MM9. MM9 is peak classic MM, only thing that sucked about it was the yellow devil and not being able to go back out for e tanks afterwards.

Getting stuck on something stupid because you didn't catch that you could interact with it has long been one of the most annoying things in gaming. I welcome the yellow tape, it's better than those dumb hangups or devs restoring to "detective vision".

Well, if I were writing it and wanted to extrapolate a story out of what's established, there's the whole Belmont family legacy thing with their eternal struggle against Dracula, training to fight vampires, facing the inevitability that Dracula will return, Shaft's life shaping him to want destruction, Shaft raising cult who wants to destroy humanity, their efforts in procuring Dracula's remains and figuring out how to resurrect him, the struggle and failure to prevent said cult from reviving Dracula, Dracula's subsequent rampage and targeting of Richter's friends and family, Richter's journey to and through Castlevania, the rescuing of villagers, his sister in law, and his fiancé (smart twist would be to have her die and be turned into a creature like when you fail to save her in SNES Dracula X), ongoing struggles with the necromancer Shaft and Shaft's ghost, encounters with the powerful overlords (bosses) along the way, the battle with Dracula himself, and following events that leave Richter feeling without purpose and susceptible to Shaft's corruption and setting the stage for SotN. Instead, from what I've seen so far, we get almost nothing about the Belmonts, the little backstory we do get involves Richter being in revolutionary period America (??) before being shipped to France, a whole lot of story about Caribbean slavery (but with vampires) jammed into a comic book level take on the French revolution (also now with vampires), the expected Netflix-isms with gay stuff, the catholic church, and what I'm expecting to be some non binary thrown in for extra diversity points. No signs of anything to do with Dracula, more crappy magic that has no rules to play by (superman level writing laziness), and almost no focus on Richter. Only a single villain character has any sign of being more than a one dimensional 80's cartoon character, and it looks like the main reason for that is so he can commence some backdoor action later in the show. Basically, it seems like the point of the story is to lift up Netflix favored groups and slap the Castlevania label on it. There's a part where characters are talking about the revolution and Richter says something along the lines of "I don't know anything about what you're talking about, but my job is to support you". Which is exactly what I'd expect from a Netflix writer when they have to paint someone from an unfavored group as anything other than a 2d villain.

I watched 3 episodes of it today- doesn't seem to have much in common with the source material. Not that there was a lot to work with, but this really feels like someone just shoehorned some CV characters into an unrelated story they wanted to create, and of course it seems like Kendi signed off on it. I didn't think the first CV Netflix series was that great either, but at least it stayed somewhat in line with the established story and characters. But to be fair, I don't like anime or this image comics anime-ish style in general. Honestly, I'm surprised Netflix didn't use the bolshevik revolution and frame Lenin and Stalin as heroes fighting vampires- shit, let's make them black too. Maybe they'll do a Bloodlines series one day and run with that.

Rockstar, whose games sell Big Mac type numbers, complaining about the cost of development is completely absurd. And I agree completely about the need for different budget class titles- a lot of my favorites over the last 8-10 years have been low budget indie stuff. Midrange "A and "AA" titles with a laser focus on what they're good at should be a bigger part of publisher's offerings.