This was a weird one to play and write about, a little weirder than I expected, even! Black Hole Assault is, by all accounts, a “better” game than Heavy Nova. It’s faster, more polished, has more storytelling, and offers more playable characters. However, it just doesn’t spark that same bit of freaky, perverse excitement that Heavy Nova did for me. Getting anywhere in Heavy Nova, even on the easiest mode, felt like a genuine accomplishment and as I found ways to work around its weird systems and dig into its often untouched mysteries, I really came to appreciate what it was trying to do. Black Hole Assault in comparison mostly just feels like a fighting game of the early 90s.

There’s something to be said about a game that I can boot up for the first time on a tight deadline in the middle of the night and instantly find myself entranced with. As much as I enjoy doing this, it can be a bit stressful to tackle weekly posts during weeks where I’m busier than usual, which I’m sure can infect my writing in ways that I fail to realize. Night Raid should have been a victim of this considering I’ve had a string of very busy weekends this month, but as soon as the rockin’ metal soundtrack started playing and weird blocks and spheres started flying at me, I was instantly sold.

Samurai Sword is one of those tragic cases of a game I should have loved, but found myself increasingly displeased with. Capcom so rarely misses for me and I would have thought that an early adventure game from them would be super interesting, but the playthrough is really tedious. Everything is needlessly obtuse and cumbersome, the story and characters are far too thin for a game of this genre, and it never gets the time it needs to truly spread its wings and reach its full potential. I love the idea of an adventure game that mixes in Capcom’s artisanal ability to craft action games, but the concoction never goes far enough to make that idea truly meaningful.

Running Battle is on a whole ‘nother level; this game is truly baffling, nothing about it makes any sense whatsoever! This game was released long before the dark days of vibe coding, but feels like it operates exclusively on vibes anyway. Things just happen arbitrarily and while the game is certainly beatable (it’s really not too bad once you know where the 1ups are), you won’t feel any closer to understanding why it is the way it is once you’ve done the deed. Usually, my posts are all about digging into games and explaining what they do that’s interesting and/or cool, but in this case, I’m gonna be trying to figure it out on the fly!

Coaster Works is essentially a more focused, specialized take on Roller Coaster Tycoon. Where Roller Coaster Tycoon asks you to build an entire amusement park despite its name, Coaster Works really is all about the coasters. Despite these complexities, Coaster Works manages to take simulation gameplay you’d expect to be on a computer and makes it- for the most part- surprisingly approachable on a console.