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Single Press: Celestial Hacker Girl Jessica is like a Sailor Moon fanpage in 3D

Celestial Hacker Girl Jessica
Developer- The Loneliest Pixel
Publisher- The Loneliest Pixel
PC (itch.io, Steam)

[TRANSCRIPT BELOW]

Vaporwave often celebrates the commercial aesthetic–the highly polished corporate art, turned kitsch by time and changing tastes. It’s both a reclamation of, and a celebration of, art as a capitalist tool.

Celestial Hacker Girl Jessica draws from the other side of vaporwave’s turn of the century obsession. It’s sincere and positive, almost naive, in the way the early internet felt. It evokes feeling of a space constructed by young people with newfound access to the world and new tools to express themselves. It’s like something you’d make with a trial of Jasc Paintshop Pro and some basic modelling software–using every available brush and filter to create the most maximalist expression of an emotion.

And it’s brilliant.

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Album Review: GARNiDELiA - G.R.N.D

By: RJ (@rga_02)

There are things in life that you indulge in ad nauseam. Your favorite soup from a relative, video games such as Football Manager, or whatever iteration of the hip new shootabang that is out in the market. This could also be applied to the music you listen to. GARNiDELiA’s G.R.N.D is exactly that, and it is starting to wear out a bit.

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Indie Pogo is a platform fighter that’s constantly in movement

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Indie Pogo
Developers- Lowe Brothers
Publishers- Lowe Brothers
PC

The first thing you learn when you start getting serious about fighting games is DON’T JUMP. Jumping is an aggressive move that makes you vulnerable, and should be used when you’re ready to go in or desperately need to get away. Despite that, most players are gonna end up turning every fighting game into an air brawl, where fighters feel like they’re on pogo sticks half the time. So I guess Indie Pogo saw that figured, why not make a fighting game where every character is perpetually jumping. In doing that it creates a fighter that moves the competition for territory from the horizontal plane into the vertical one. It’s a curious creative decision, and whether or not it pays off is a complicated question to answer.

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Super Skull Smash Go! 2 Turbo is a charming retro style game with retro problems

By Amr (@siegarettes)

Super Skull Smash GO! 2 Turbo
Developer- TACS Games
Publisher- Poppy Works
PC, PS4, PS Vita

Super Skull Smash GO! 2 Turbo has a pretty ridiculous name. Thankfully, it also has a pretty simple pitch. It’s a retro style puzzle platformer where you jump on skeletons then collect their heads to smash into a holy temple. It’s about as fun as that sounds. The platforming feels good, the feedback on delivering craniums to the cross is great, and the boss fights are tense and satisfying. It feels a bit like My Owl Software’s Apple Jack series in the way it takes simple platforming and throwing mechanics and creatively builds upon them.

What holds SSSG2T back is how it manages to feel retro in a different way, which is how it tests your patience. SSSG2T is a challenging game, filled with instant death pitfalls and tricky platforming. It’s thankfully never feels unfair or ridiculously precise, but its easy to make a few wrong moves and find yourself restarting the stage. Stages are relatively short, taking only a few minutes or less to run through, so it’s never a huge loss…until a few worlds in.

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MOTHERGUNSHIP Review

by Amr (@siegarettes)

MOTHERGUNSHIP
Developer- Grip Digital, Terrible Posture Games
Publisher- Grip Digital
PC, PS4, Xbox one

A few hours into MOTHERGUNSHIP and I’d already built the most absurd gun I’ve ever seen. A collection chainguns, triangle chainguns, and shotguns, all stacked together and jutting out on makeshift arms while connected to a modifier that had them going at an absurd rate of fire. Then of course on the other hand I had another gun, loaded with a flamethrower, grenade launcher, fireworks launcher and two cannons just in case it wasn’t enough. On top of that I had TEN DOUBLE JUMPS, letting me stay in the air for a good 20 seconds before I touched the floor. And this was still just the opening of the game.

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Tempest 4000 is a psychedelic revival of an arcade classic

by Amr (@siegarettes)

Tempest 4000
Developer- Llamasoft Ltd (Jeff Minter)
Publisher- Atari
PC, PS4, Xbox One

By the time I’d got around to playing games, I’d associated Atari more with middling licensed Dragon Ball Z games than their early videogame contributions. By the time the last generation ended, Atari had pretty much become a company failing to capitalize on those early games with middling remakes and reboots. So it’s a trip to see the Atari logo on a new game, let alone a new Tempest. Doubly so, considering it was just three years ago that the previous incarnation of Atari had threatened legal action against Jeff Minter for his work on TxK for its resemblance to Tempest 2000, a Tempest remake he created for Atari.

Given that context, Tempest 4000 almost feels like an apology to Minter. It’s recognition of the absurdity of the situation created by the previous holders of the Atari name, and an invitation to make it good by paying Minter to return to the well. And Minter isn’t shy about returning to the source.

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Frost is a solid survival card game with annoying interface issues

by Amr (@siegarettes )

Frost
Developer- Jérôme Bodin
Publisher- Studio des Ténèbres
Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox One

Some games use their user interfaces to great effect. They become expressive tools that communicate mood, give tactile sensations, or reveal and obfuscate information as contributions to the narrative. Then there’s Frost, which gives a somewhat interesting digital deck building game all the fussiness of a physical board game.

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All Star Fruit Racing is a good looking racer that forgets the basics of driving

by Amr (@siegarettes)

All-Star Fruit Racing
Developer- 3D Clouds
Publisher- PQube Limited
PC, PS4, Switch

I’m a sucker for a good racing game. Hell, I’ll hang around for longer than I’ll admit for an OK arcade racer. So when All-Star Fruit Racing showed up looking like it had stolen SEGA All-Stars Racing’s drifting I jumped on it. Seriously, the drifting in those games is incredible.

All-Star Fruit Racing’s drifting, as it turns out, is not incredible. It’s not even good. In fact the driving in general is underwhelming and by trying to build on this middling foundation All-Star Fruit Racing ends up with an inconsistent and mundane racer.

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