Nostalgia is something I reserve for smells, tastes, ephemeral things tied to unreliable and failing neurons.

I would rather drive roofing nails through my dick than return to the 'nostalgic' days of early DOS gaming, which was a large part of my childhood.

Fromsoft have gotten SO good at squeezing buckets of pathos out of just a handful of voice lines, often without even any facial animations (and in AC's case, faces at all), just audio.

This year has seen some amazing rhythm releases too. Beatblock and Hyperbeat are both very special takes on a similar concept.

Also Vivid/Stasis left early access this year and it's still RIDICULOUS that it's free, because it has like 200 tracks (SO many guest artists) and 700+ charts and so more.

It kills people every year. People downplay it but if the dice land wrong, it can do permanent lifelong damage quite easily.

I'm lucky that the eye thing was just cosmetic, but I had one blood-red eye for several days and nobody could look at me without flinching.

And a few more!

store.steampowered.com/app/1799840/...
store.steampowered.com/app/2520400/...
store.steampowered.com/app/3231480/...

Missing Hark The Ghoul!

Aah, Lorn's Lure shocked me with how VERY hardcore it became. The early stages are simple mechanically but it ramps up to feeling like a first-person Celeste. Each level demands more than the last.

Clocked well over 1000 deaths by the end of my first playthrough.

It's high on my list once I've got some immediate work stuff out of the way. Have you tried Lorn's Lure? Feels like the two games are cut from very, very similar cloth.

One thing that does surprise me is how much voice acting there is. Lots of characters, and they're all fully acted. Not the most professional-sounding performances, but it's kinda what you'd expect of an early/mid-gen PS1 game so it fits the bill just right.

From the chunk I've played (not as much as I would have liked - so many games this month), Verho is pure King's Field. A little faster and more agile because it's a PC game, but it's still a chunky 'charge your attack, duck in, whack and repeat' combat waltz through caverns full of low-fi monsters.

But... but xenophobia is my favourite thing!

C'mon, obviously it's bad. That does not stop it being funny and for people to keep falling for it is even funnier and I almost want to see it continue just because it's developing into a national-scale running gag.

Things can be bad and still be funny.

Nah, it's extremely funny so it's good.

I've seen enough contraditions to this supposedly immutable national-scale rule that I'm chalking it up to 'thinly veiled protecionism'.

Which is still a lot better veiled than American attempts.

Idiots immediately conclude that it's sinister CHINESE COMMUNISM sneaking into America to... do commie stuff?

The simple, boring reality is that Chinese companies are capitalist as all fuck and find operating in America and other countries easier and cheaper than dealing with red tape at home.

It's also worth mentioning that one area of Chinese government media control is that there's a limited number of software licenses assigned per year for local studios to release stuff.

Y'know why Chinese studios have been rapidly expanding globally recently? It dodges those local restrictions.

Also plausible! And also funny enough for me to want to believe it.

Also, again, Blizzard, part of the BlizzActiSoft global hyper-corporation.

My point is that stuff produced in China for a native audience seems to dodge those restrictions a LOT easier.

It does seem to be a bit more strict for broadcast TV but games just seem to get hand-waved through.