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inscryption, rogue legacy 2 and k-pop demon hunters. inscription is the first thing i'll talk about here and it's a game with an incredibly strong start. it has a killer art style and some fun mechanics, a story that grabs you almost right away and some pretty interesting characters and very atmospheric world set up, it even has a killer twist at the end of its first act that gives the game a real hook that makes it a very easy recommend to most people, but it's also a rare case i find of a twist and changes to the core game that hurts it for me in a big way and that, by trying to make the game stand out and be a little more ambitious, ended up making it feel more generic and played out. this article will have some major spoilers for the game, if you don't want spoiled and want to check the game out, please do, even with my issues with it i do think it's well worth playing and i do still like it a lot overall and i wouldn't want to take away from how fun that twist is to find out, so skip ahead and read my coverage of the other few games listed here, they're good too! but for the rest of you i'll get to talking about game free to go about spoilers. the first part of the game is it's most interesting by far. it has this cool dark, low poly, low resolution almost papercrafty look to it and it's beautiful. it has very violent imagery and some genuinely scary moments and the whole game looks one of a kind, the cool card art and the interesting boss designs and the cabin full of puzzles, it all feels like such a cohesive experience, if it wasn't for the roguelike elements I'd almost call it perfect. how this section works is in two sections, the card game and the cabin and both are just as interesting as the other. you'll go through the card game in a roguelike manner, similar to slay the spire if you've played that. you pick up cards, power up, sacrifice some for strength, get items (some of which will require you to sacrifice body parts like teeth and eyes in very hard to watch ways) and do battles and eventually you'll hit a boss that acts more or less like a skill check puzzle, it can be pretty frustrating your first 5 or so runs, mainly since how the life points system works with it's tug of war style point gain and loss upon damage which can lead to a lot of OTK's on both sides, but once it clicks it really clicks and it's by far the best playing chunk of the game. you'll need to sacrifice cards to put better ones on the table and you can do this with either using a card you put out, or by using a squirrel which are free currency you can choose to draw instead of a normal card, it's a system that feels really fun and super tense and it even lends itself to a ton of breaking if you try hard enough, like my final run where i made it so that my squirrels worked as 3 sacrifices instead of 1 and that they also were able to damage any enemy that attacked them, it made me feel unstoppable and i liked that a lot especially after how disempowered the rest of the runs made me feel. the cabin section too is fun, you'll leave the table sometimes to do puzzles or find items, you'll get hints in the card game and then use those to get things outside it, find new characters and get free items and uncover the story and it's all so atmospheric and cool, this all felt like a very one of a kind experience, even the story here is solid! it really hooks you fast by giving you a few hints like how there's no new game button, just a continue or how some of your cards will talk to you all leading to the first major twist once you finally beat the end boss of this segment and move on to the games second act. the second chunk is where the twist hits and it's a twist that I'm really unsure of. now the playable creepypasta bit i do love and the clips they have from the fake youtube channel are all amazing, they nail everything perfectly and it's enough to drive me even trough the games worst moments. it wears all its influences on its sleeve in this chunk and i do respect how well they perfectly captured it all. it's the rest of the twist that is where the game loses me. here you see the game transition from the cool horror roguelike into a tired, bland and extremely boring 16 bit JRPG, the kind of Q U I R K Y earthbound/undertale inspired game with sprites and whacky dialogue and characters, the deckbuilding mechanics don't even help liven it up and if anything end up making it feel *even more* generic and bland and end up with me unfavourably comparing it to a lot of the cooler yugioh RPG's that blow it right out of the water in terms of its mechanics, card designs and especially dialogue, the pack openings here also don't feel nearly as fun or rewarding because of how more boring the cards feel. it's a total slog of a chapter, all being just, the most boring, derivative style of RPG possible and it stands out like the worst most painful kind of sore thumb, i heavily dislike this section. even the card mechanics are far worse, with all the new added mechanics just not being fun to use like the gem system or the battery. a few clever puzzles and some nice environments are really it's only saving grace and even then, what enjoyment there is to be had there is damaged by how unfair a lot of the bosses in this segment feel because of the changes to the battle system. the story sure doesn't save it either, being the most nothing part of the game, barely adding anything to it overall, it's a feeling i get so often with devolver published games honestly, something that pervades most of their published library, subversive for the sake of it rather than because the idea was actually something interesting and a feeling of being overly reliant to its influences to the point where the games stop standing out on their own at all, plus the dialogue just gets a little bit insufferable in this segment, which is also very devolver. if you do get passed that you have the last segment which is a bit like a mix of the last two, but not as good as the first and not as bad as the second. it ops for the explorable environments of the latter but on a track with some secrets and a store you can go in, but with the roguelike elements and off table exploration of the former, though the roguelike elements come in the form of, naturally, soulslike elements! which don't work with how RNG the game is and become very annoying, very fast. it's not bad though, the battle system is a lot of fun and might even be my favourite of the 3, more complicated than the first but less annoying as the second and i like that the items came back again, though in a more limited capacity. it's also the shortest of the three, which is fine, since it feels nice and brisk to run through in a way i really like, never outstays its welcome at all. the style opts for a post apocalyptic sci-fi theme to it, with a robot card dealer and holograms. it's fine enough, i think it's a little unappealing myself but it at least has a style to it, unlike part 2, the factory exploration also isn't as fun because of this and the puzzles here aren't as freeform as they were in the first, but it's fine enough and i love how dark and isolated the whole place feels, the cards i also think are a little more boring, since they all meld into the robot theme which doesn't really give you much variety. the games ending here is also fine, i like the deletion of the game and the final chunks of cutscenes, but i don't think the emotion it really wanted here ever landed for me, but going through the half broken final 4th game was super cool. the game will run you about 10 or so hours if you want to beat it but it very much depends on how long that first chunk takes you to finish since the latter two are a good bit easier and more straightforward. this all doesn't count for the postgame though which just lets you go wild with the card game in some optional challanges and modes, i didn't play much of them but if you want to there's a ton to do there. it's not a difficult game overall, but the RNG can make it frustrating at times and it does at least get easier as it goes along since the skills you gain carry over even into the later card games. i didn't talk about the music in any of these segments mainly because the music here just isn't memorable, i didn't remember any tracks from it and i don't fully remember if it has much more than a normal ambient score, so i can't really comment much on it. it's made by daniel mullens games, a dev i've never really heard of but that was involved with the game "pony island" which i'd at least heard of before, even if i have no experiance with it myself, might be enough to sell at least some of you on this though. the game is available on a few modern platforms, though it's physical release via devolvers old special reserve line makes it pretty rare and expensive, you'll run about $70+ if you want it boxed, though there is always digital if that's a route you want to go on, plus it was on ps plus up until very recently so you could have even played it that way for a while, i will say that for a lot of people that price might be worth it, I'm iffy on parts of the game but i know that i am in the *vast* minority on that one, the people who love this game *really* love this game, it was on tons of game of the year lists around launch so even for that it's not the hardest recommend in the world so i do recommend finding a way to at least give the game a try, you'll probably have a great time. rogue legacy 2 is the sequel to one of the first real breakout rogue-lite games on the market, a game i remember actually enjoying a lot when i first played it on vita yeeeeears ago. the gimmick here is that it's a roguelike kind of deal with metroidvania'y combat and platforming but with each time you die, your child inherits the quest, so you end up with tons of different characters you go through with different classes and weapons, traits and spells and funny quirks like maybe the level being in sepia or only being seen with spotlights or fears and even things like being very small or large, or having the ability to shrink, or my favourite trait in masochism, or even things like disabilities that effect all how you play or how the game looks in some way (like festive giving the game a Christmas theming!), it's super neat! it makes the game's roguelike runs feel much more fresh than almost any other game in its genre, you're actually excited to die rather than dreading it. another thing that i think helps is that runs are never fruitless or pointless, maybe you'll perminantly unlock a new teleporter or ability that gets passed down or maybe you'll level up your class which gives you a stat buff but in a worst case you'll still get some money that you can use on things like new shop vendors, new abilities and classes or even just new armour or the ability to save the map in place for a while at the cost of gold you find, nothing ever feels wasted and i think that makes the game a lot less annoying and frustrating compared to most roguelikes. the gameplay therein is a bit evolved from the original, it plays like a pretty standard metroidvania with collectable abilities that open new routes and doors like a pogo jump and air dashes, you have the multiple weapon types (guns and the Valkyrie's spear thingy were my favourite of the ones i did unlock, though i loved the spiny rolling jump attack the barbarian had too) and cool bosses, though those bosses can super feel like DPS checks at points if you stick to the games default difficulty, i found myself changing enemy health and damage values to half about a good 6 hours in after i couldn't even get midway through the first bosses health bar. i can imagine this DPSchecky nature would have only gotten worse in the later levels too, levels that are admittedly super varied and fun to explore, the rainy cityscape, mages tower and snow level were my personal favourites. the rest of the game is admittedly more hit and miss for me, I'm not super into the flash gamey aesthetic, but it fits the vibe perfectly. the game overall has a very "early indie darling" style and tone to it that follows on from the first, it very much feels like a game out of time, a game from 2014 that just happened to come out in the mid 20's and it has a lot of charm, it's a weird almost throwback in that way with the art style, music (which didn't really stick out to me beyond the hub themes) and the writing style. the story is there and it's fine, there's tons of notes and bits of lore you can witness in the various NG+ runs and NPC dialogue to see during your various run-throughs, but i never found it very interesting other than liking a very nice callback to the first game that happens pretty late into the game and the pizza delivery girl being pretty funny. the game is super difficult and can be very long, though the game also has tons of options to adjust difficulty so really you can tailor it to yourself and it even still gives you trophies for it, so i would recommend it to pretty much anyone for who it sounds appealing, even if you lack the skill to usually beat these kinds of games you can brute force your way through it with all the stats lowered. it was nice for me anyway and i don't know if I'd have ever really wanted to finish it otherwise, much as i did like it. my run took me a good 12 hours or so and that was with adjusted values, you can for sure get a lot more out of it though, dozens of hours without assists and tons more if you want to max out all the items and see the games true ending (which appears on i think NG+ 5). the physical copy is sadly long since out of print though, but it's on the cheaper end as far as that kind of thing goes, so it's not all bad, it was also on PS plus for a while but has long since left it. i do super reccomend the game if you like the genre and any of this sounds appealing, or even check out the first one on the vita, it's pretty great too. the last thing i wanted to talk about is basically not related at all to the other two things here, like this really is just "i couldn't find another place to talk about this and i couldn't figure out how to make a blingee for these other things work either" and so here we are, look this movie is just really good and i wanted an excuse to gush. while the title might be a little lame the movie is anything but. it's a k-pop musical action movie with music by twice and animation by arguably the best studio to currently do it, Sony pictures animation aka the spiderverse and Mitchell's vs the machines people, a studio talented enough to somehow make me care about spiderman of all things, it's like a dream project almost and it delivers on that in spades, this might be one of my favourite pieces of non Japanese animation ever and it's really showing just how Sony pictures just might be the best thing the western animation genre has going for it right now, they're certainly leagues above Disney's recent output (and comparing them to Pixar isn't even fair, Pixar to me have never made a movie I've enjoyed at all) main thing the movie does right is the music and in a musical you'd hope for that, though even by musical standards this OST is *killer* and up there with the genre's best like repo and every heathers. every track is a hit to the point i could not tell you my favourite (though how it's done, soda pop and golden are for sure the top 3 in some form) it's also performed partially by TWICE which for anyone who knows who that is should be enough incentive to rush out and watch this thing like, yesterday. so the music is good and very authentic to the vibe it wants, but what about the tone and cast, well both also nail it in a way you really wouldn't expect from an American studio, it has tons of Korean actors and actresses (special shoutout to the frontman from squid game in here playing the villain even in English), both in song and for normal dialogue and the movie looks like it could very well have been based on a Korean comic, with how the characters look and some of the expressions they have it reminds me a lot of some Korean magical girl shows i used to watch. it's also just pretty in general, the city looks amazing constantly, like every scene just has beautiful backgrounds which i find is really rare for modern CG animation and the characters all look great, especially the saja boys and their cool demon markings, i find movies like this never get their prettyboys right (looking at turning red and its fugly male cast that as a kid i would have felt insulted at the insinuation I'd have been into them) but here like, i mean look at them, they're actually pretty, in an American movie, DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE THIS IS, OH MY GOD, males in American animation are so ugly it almost feels like a psy-op to make people lower their standards. the action scenes too! like holy shit, they're all so fun and inventive and the animation here is almost on a whole other level, even their work on spiderverse just cannot compare to some of the scenes here, like the plane fight???? absurdly good, the dance numbers are pretty killer too and i love stuff like the environment changing with the songs and the really cool foggy red lighting in the idol song, the lighting makes it looks almost Claymation sometimes too which is really cool. the main cast kill it too, i love that they just met them be goofy chaos gremlins while also being cool as hell, it feels very shoujo-esque and leagues above a lot of what places like Pixar will pull for their female casts (when they bother to have one at all) and the cool neon light weapons they use? the raddest thing, seriously. i love the producer too, he's so goofy. the story is pretty hit and miss though, but it's fine, the character arcs are nice and it had me tearing up a little near the end so it for sure did its job, though it is really carried by how good its cast of characters are. really my only gripe is that it's stuck wallowing on Netflix when we know that it had planned to have a full theatrical release but got cancelled because of a lack of confidence in it, which when you look at the reception for it has been shown to be bullshit since it's a certified hit. this deserved to be seen in cinema's and while i was happy to be able to watch it for free, like just imagining this in a cinema makes me full of "what if's", it's such a sadness.