Wow! You played THAT?! Vol. 8 - Crimes of Passion

Been a while? Let's get right into it

i actually played Buckshot Roulette quite a while ago now, and forgot to talk about it in my last WYPT. So, sorry. This says nothing about the game's quality, more about my own as a blogger, gamer and lover. Buckshot Roulette dares to ask the question, what if you played russian roulette with a pump-action shotgun? i'll give you a hint, it really doesn't end well for one of you. Gameplay consists of you facing off against 'The Dealer' in a nightclub-cum-prison, also known as Will's bedroom. The shotgun is loaded with a random number of shells, some of which will be harmless blanks and others will be harmful un-blanks. You can either shoot yourself or The Dealer on your turn, the outcome of which depends on how well you've predicted the order of the shells. Shoot The Dealer with a live round and he loses a life, then it's his go. Shoot The Dealer with a blank and it's his go now, but if you shoot yourself with a blank, you get another go. And if you shoot yourself with a live round...you take damage and it's the dealers go. Not ideal. Gameplay continues until you die or you win, over 3 rounds of nail-biting shell tracking.

Mixing things up are items, you each get a new set after the shotgun has been emptied of all shells and can have a maximum of 8 at a time. Beer ejects the current shell from the chamber. Cigarettes restore 1HP. Expired medicine has a 50/50 chance to restore 2HP or deal 1 damage. Handsaw makes the next shot deal 2 damage, if it's a live round. Handcuffs make your opponent skip their next turn. Magnifying glass reveals what shell is currently loaded. Cellphone reveals the order of a random shell (shell 5...blank). Polarity reverser swaps the type of shell currently in the chamber. And finally, adrenaline lets you steal an opponents item and use it immediately.

Clever use of these items along with careful observation are essential to surviving the grim world of Buckshot Roulette, going it blind is incredibly risky. Knowing when to use certain items can be the difference between life and death, i'm fairly sure each one has saved my life at least once. Probably my favourite to use is the cellphone, i feel like it compliments the other items and the nature of the game perfectly. Knowing that one specific shell in the future will be a certain type allows you to make slightly more informed decisions in the remainder of that round - knowing that there's a live round towards the end of the chamber allows you to play slightly riskier in the earlier game where there's more likely to be blanks. Counting shells up until your prophesied shell lets you turn the table on the dealer, swapping a blank for a live round when he thinks he's got you. Buckshot Roulette is a great seedy little roguelike, the gameplay and atmosphere are skillfully and lovingly crafted. i give it 10 beers out of 10.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about traditional card games is the lack of flexibility when it comes to the, well, cards. i've been thrown out of many a casino after trying to use my spanish Trubbish at the blackjack table, and there's only so much rejection a girl can take. Enter: Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, a game that's not afraid to introduce universal card-law to the casino. Of course you've got your standard aces and faces, but they'll be in your deck alongisde library cards, birthday cards, TRAP CARDS, tarot cards and anything else that's ever been in a flat and rectangular form. And not to spoil the surprise, but it's a delight

Gameplay works how you'd probably imagine a blackjack roguelite to work, you draw a card and add it to your total. Hit or stand, close to 21 as possible, you know the drill. When both players have stood, the losing player takes damage equal to the difference in score - with going bust treating your score as zero. NOW LETS GET WACKY. Getting a blackjack will have a different effect based on the suit of the cards you used to get there, with the strength depending on the number of that suit. Clubs deal an extra point of damage per club, hearts heal 1HP per heart, diamonds give 1 chip per diamond, and spades give 1 shield per spade. There are also a few wildcards, that will give you all 4 benefits if you get a blackjack with them! There are also nothings, that don't do anything on a bj. i should not abbreviate blackjack to that.

MORE MECHANICS! MORE! As mentioned with the diamonds, chips are the currency of the game. You can use them to buy new cards or make bets and stuff throughout a run, at designated shops or events. Some cards will also make use of chips through their exploit features, abilities that you can use while a card is in play. These require 1 advantage to use, and the way you gain advantage is different each time. After the first fight you'll be given a choice of 3 ways to generate advantage, that will affect your deck and playstyle for the run. Stuff like gaining 1 advantage every time you take damage, every time you win around, whenever you play a card worth 10 or more, that sort of stuff. The best one is the one lets you pay chips for advantage, as if you get the right cards you can basically just buy a win that encounter. Other keywords to get your head round inclde round-up, cards with this keyword increase their value by 1 when you stand as long as it won't cause you to bust. Handy cards are put into your hand when they're drawn, and can then be played at any time for 1 advantage. Foresight lets you see the top card of your draw pile. Discard discards a card (duh) while burn removes a card for the rest of that encounter - while shred removes a card FOREVER. Lock makes a card stay in play at the end of a round, and i think that's everything.

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers is a really cool way of turning probably the simplest of card games into something new and unique, which is always a good achievement. It may seem like the game is essentially built around puns, but they all work and nothing feels like it's been shoehorned in. A lot of card games have the saying that the best card is the credit card, but this actually has a playable credit card! Amazing! i give Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers 10 Flamewreathed Faceless' out of 10.

big vampire lady

Being the 8th game in a franchise must be rough, what do you do? How do you keep it interesting? What new mechanics do you introduce, where does your story go? RE8 serves as not only the 8th Resident Evil game, but also the followup to the wildly successful Resident Evil 7 - a soft reboot for the franchise. That's a lot to live up to, but somehow those crazy folks have done it again. While 7 was more of a horror-focused experience, 8 leans more into the actiony side of things - mirroring the shift in gameplay between RE3 and 4. Like father like heavily mutated son. The parallels between 4 don't stop there either, they actually have incredibly similar opening sequences. 4 sees Leon swarmed by Ganados in the town square before the church bell rings, pushing the player to their limit and making them think 'OH DEAR GOD IS THIS WHAT THE GAME IS GOING TO BE LIKE THIS IS SO HARD'. 8 sees Ethan in THE VILLAGE as it's attacked by Lycans, with nought but a hand-me-down handgun and a can-do attitude. The Lycan are similarly called off when 'Big Hoss' arrives and leads them off in search of tastier prey, but the gameplay has the same effect on the player. Essentially, letting us know we're in for a BUMPY RIDE.

After this encounter and a subsequent meeting with the 4 lords of the village, you are then set on your quest - finding your daughter Rose. The first place checked is Castle Dimitrescu, where the aforementioned big vampire lady and her 3 fly daughters live. Ethan really goes through some punishment in this game, this section starts with his hands being impaled on ceiling hooks and having to rip through to get free. And he gets his hand chopped off. He glues it back on later though. Actually now that i mention he got his OTHER hand chopped off in 7, but that one was stapled back on. That guy must hurt. Anyway, Castle Dimitrescu is greaaaaaaaat. Each lord's section demonstrates a slightly different vibe, and Castle Dimitrescu is dripping with gothic horror. Resident Evil is at its best when you're left to piece together information from gathered notes and clues, and for RE8 it peaks in this section. You've got teacups with dregs of blood left in them, notes written by maids about all the spooky shenanigans going on, and talk about the dreaded dungeons. One bit i love is that some named characters pop up several times in these notes, one such character being Hilda. When one of the mindless shambling corpses in the dungeon is killed, it drops 'Hilda's Necklace', which i think is just a really cool way of telling a story through an item, and giving some life to an otherwise faceless npc. Castle Dimitrescu is also the only part of RE8 that features a traditional stalker enemy, that being Lady D herself. As you progress through her spooky puzzle house she'll begin to hunt you, and it's particularly terrifying seeing her bend down to fit through the doorway of the room you're currently in. Lady D is the first major antagonist you're properly pitted against, and even though you've got most of the game still to go through after defeating her she remains as a memorable antagonist. Her voice acting is incredible (as is everyone else's), able to convey threat while maintaining a certain upper class charm. It's also terrifying when this mask slips, first hearing her cry of 'MY DAUGHTEEEEEER' after killing said daughter chills the bones i tell thee.

BUT HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY GAMEPLAY??? SHOOT THING!! SHOOT THING WITH GUN!! You'll be scavenging and scrounging for ammo on your journeys, making smart decisions as to when and what gun to use can make or break your playthrough. Wasting shotgun ammo on slow-moving scrubs will put you at a horrible disadvantage when a beefier enemy shows up, but you've still got room to experiment and tailor your arsenal to your tastes. This is helped by The Duke, a friendly man who sells goods and wares. He can also upgrade your weapons, and fit special attachments for drastic stat improvements. All for the right coin, of course. When you've fully upgraded a weapon and equipped all attachments (which takes a sizeable stack of dinero especially for the later game ones) you can then unlock the infinite ammo upgrade in the bonus shop, using points you get from completing challenges. The satisfaction i felt when i unlocked the infinite ammo M1851 Wolfsbane was worth struggling to save up all that Lei. It's just such a pleasure to make things stop moving with this gun, it's a magnum thats animations and sound design make it sooooo satisfying to use. BANG! BANG! BANGBANGBANG!

What a game! i give Resident Evil 8 10 goats of warding out of 10.

Neon White is a game about going fast. Speedrunning is an incredibly popular subgenre of gaming content, but it's not often that speedrunning is the game. Neon White tasks players with making their way from A to B, killing all demons in between and doing it as quickly as possible. Both of these tasks are accomplished with the help of soul cards, which take the form of several guns. This is the least interesting part, the guns are guns, pistols, shotguns, SMGs etc etc. The good stuff happens when you get rid of the cards - each one has a specific discard ability. The pistol allows you to double-jump, the rifle lets you dash forward, the SMG stomps you downwards, the shotgun propels you in an arc and the rocket launcher grapples you onto any surface. These abilities are incredibly simple but that's the sign of a very well made game - these abilities feel satisfying and impactful to use despite their simplicity. This is further supported by the level design, where breakneck decisions as to when to use a discard ability aren't just encouraged but mandatory.

Combined with the energetic soundtrack, this puts players (i can't speak for everyone but this is what i felt) into a flow state, instinctively using abilities to shave a critical few seconds off of a run. The aforementioned demons don't just take the role of things to be killed, most of the time they're as important of a tool to get that fastest time as the soul cards themselves. Balloon demons die on contact and propel you upwards on said contact, flower demons will launch you in a specific direction depending on where you land next to them, and certain demons will drop a certain soul card when they die. This leads to borderline anime sequences where you're dashing through an enemy, picking up a gun that they drop and immediately discarding it to rinse and repeat. And speaking of borderline anime...

One part of Neon White that often comes up in discussion is the dialogue, with most labelling it as 'cringe'. Despite the fact that cringe doesn't really mean anything anymore i have to agree, if only because this was a very intentional choice. It's endearing, in a sense it feels like a bunch of teenagers have drawn a comic atfer school and think it's the coolest thing ever. And i think we were all those teenagers once, even if you'd rather not admit it. Moving on from teenagers, a major part of Neon White's speediest speedy times are clever skips, where you avoid a large part of the level and save a bunch of time. It's really satisfying to spot a shortcut, as they're almost always clever ways of using discard or demon abilities to your advantage. You find yourself noticing areas where there aren't any demons, and your instincts kick in and tell you 'hmm this is a waste of time i wonder if i could skip this bit', it's great stuff.

Not to end on a downer, but it isn't even that much of a downer. Neon White suffers from why i don't enjoy speedrunning as much as a lot of other people seem to, and that's a lack of individual player expression. The fastest route in any speedrun-oriented-session is always going to be the same, and if you beat someone you're essentially just pressing their buttons slightly better. Apologies if you love speedrunning, but tell me i'm wrong. All in all, i give Neon White 10 biblically accurate angels out of 10.