It's running pretty decently now, for whatever reason. Fun game, but it does kind of feel like another (good) band doing a cover.

I was just sitting here trying to figure out if you can use the term 文脈 (context) even when you're talking about speech rather than written text （文）. Found an old forum thread where a Japanese guy pointed out that "context" also contains the word "text," which I've never once noticed or questioned.

I'm still wondering why that didn't just become a standard gaming feature after 2010.

Should've hawed on it a little longer.

Initial impressions: Very fun, but it does feel like a hybrid of NG and Metal Gear Rising, i.e., chocolate and peanut butter. I like how quickly you can buy moves. Story stuff is a little better but I still don't care. Feels generally slower than classic NG, but apparently you can disable hit stun?

After half a year of hemming and at least three months of hawing, I finally treated myself to Ninja Gaiden 4 on sale, and…it barely runs on my PC! Dang. I think there's hope, because it was running okay for like the first half hour, but I kinda wish it just had PS3-era graphics. Those were fine!

Is there a lore reason why Papa Pragmata looks so much like Antoine von Vanquish? Robo-cousins?

They should start marketing presidential candidates as a crew of like 3-10 people instead of one honcho. Y'know, so it'd be like "Are you gonna vote for Digital Underground or The Strokes?" Also they should perform original music.

One can wolfdream

No one must ever hire me

At Capcom I was GregaMan. At Sega I would be the Grega Grega Drive, aka the Grega Gregesis.

Anyway, I mainly started this playthrough to stave off the urge to spend money on NG4 (I will eventually), but it's definitely worth a play if you like this series. It has some very low low points (including the final boss, unfortunately), but mostly ranges from fun to extremely fun.

The changes to the combat mostly felt like good ones to me, as a casual player. Consumables are gone entirely 🙌, and you heal and replenish magic by fighting well instead of having to rely on RNG orbs, which I never liked. "Steel on Bone" is kind of like Issen chaining in Onimusha and feels amazing.

I tried to keep in mind that the dumb horseshit this game subjects you to between fights isn't any worse than that of NG1, where you had to platform over instant death pits and find key items and could get lost and stuff. NG3 is actually quite well paced imo.

I don't like that weapons are gated by hidden scarabs instead of on the critical path, and I especially don't like that there's no Vigoorian Flail in this one, since that's the greatest weapon of all time. I missed the Kusarigama entirely, but I guess that's a worthy reason to go back.

In general the combat's still some of the best you're gonna find in gaming, it's just adorned with little sprinklings of 2010s bro gamer horseshit. Forced walking, poorly communicated QTEs, general edgelordery.

Just played through Ninja Gaiden 3: RE for the first time. I skipped every cutscene, which mostly worked out great, except 1) I don't know if they ever explained why Ryu can just fly in this one and 2) I don't know what this "slice little girl" QTE was all about. Did I slice the little girl??

Just like they did in the Cold War.

I think it's behind a radiator now. I'm just gonna leave that whole quadrant of the room alone and hope the corpse serves as a warning to others and not an enticing food source. The Swiffer is an imperfect solution. One day I hope to be skilled enough to snipe them with a yo-yo or something.

So I pressed the flat sole of the Swiffer over it and gave it a light smear, the standard protocol. Unfortunately this one was big enough that it didn't fully stick to the Swiffer or the wall, instead dropping ambiguously close to my wife's antique electric toy carousel when I released pressure.

(My butthole.)

The centipede started to hoof it after it noticed me studying it like an Indiana Jones trap, and I realized I had about three seconds to do something before it was hidden, and then I wouldn't be able to sleep, for fear of waking up to it wiping its innumerable feet on the front stoop of my backdoor.

Cold War-ass bug ecosystem

"That's not so bad," I said. Then I glanced over at the corner of the room and there was a house centipede the size of a '74 Chevy Impala staring at me. Two different predators just lollygagging over our whole domestic situation instead of eating each other. See this is the problem. We're Australia.

I like to think I'm developing a sixth sense for when there's one in my midst, but I think it's just confirmation bias and I actually just live in constant terror of encountering one. Last night I felt The Dread overcome me and started scanning the bedroom, only to find a spider instead.

It's just the worst.

Well, despite the still frigid weather, the house centipedes have decided winter is over, thereby commencing the only other season. House centipede season.

Free Smiles at Merv's

And River City Ransom was one of those games that made me realize how much "smarter" action games could be, and how much more fun that made them. They seemed to have thought of everything. Fences were mountable, everything had collision, tires rolled and bounced, and service with a smile was free.

Ah man. Double Dragon was genuinely the first video game to sell me on the whole concept of video games, when I was like three. "Beat up bad guys with your brother." SAY NO MORE, WORLD

Somewhere between the grinder and the filter, a big spider got into my coffee grounds without me noticing. When I started pouring hot water on them, they started SQUIRMING and I FREAKED TF OUT and batted the whole apparatus over, getting coffee everywhere. My computer, my socks, the whole of Easter.