pang

@birthbydrip

game crit

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pang@birthbydrip· 19d

(screenshot for those who are wondering what the "reasons" cited above are, footnote 8 is me noting that this is an American-centric view lol)

pang@birthbydrip· 19d

finally I return to my long-form articles after half a year... backloggd legend drax asks: what exactly does "arcade-y" refer to? in response, I explain my reasoning for three major fundamentals of the arcade style, each of which drives the arcade mechanics we know and love. link below!

pang@birthbydrip· 23d

empire of dreams is honestly tight. starts real slow which is a shame bcs they have so many expansions on the basic klonoa puzzles. far, far beyond what either console game does. ex stages feature makeshift enemy storage and plenty of regrabbing

pang@birthbydrip· 24d

thank god lol

pang@birthbydrip· 25d

capping off my trilogy of kururin reviews is squash, the rare gamecube exclusive that still has almost zero coverage. it's the best starter game in the series thanks to analog control and a gentler campaign, while also moving in some new directions for its set of objectives. link to my review below!

first paragraph from review: Where Kururin Paradise poured the scrappy look of the original Kuru Kuru Kururin into a sleeker, cheerier skin, Kururin Squash completely revamps the look and feel with lush 3D backgrounds and and a focus on gentler curves. The flat-shaded cartoon interludes of Paradise give way to a puppet show aesthetic, down to curtains that open on the title card and characters printed on cardboard with articulated, flapping arms. Their non-stop gesticulating combined with the movement of the backgrounds, replete with signs of organic life and community, infuses the atmosphere with an invitation for the player to live in its world. Kururin had never been a brooding or violent series, but the grinning brutality of the obstacle gauntlets finally melts away in Squash.

pang@birthbydrip· Jul 10

albums I've listened to while on my dissertation grind (all new to me other than quique and la nouvelle pauvrete). loosely ordered by enjoyment

pang@birthbydrip· Jul 8

my neighbor came by recently and started jumping uncontrollably upon seeing my copy of The Munchables, their favorite childhood game. we booted it up and quickly fell in love with those opening levels again. it falls off rather quickly, but the start shows what could have been. review link below!

A Katamari-like from the actual Katamari developers, those Now Production contractors who toiled to get Keita Takahashi’s vision off the ground.1 Munchables twists the “roll up stuff, get bigger, roll up bigger stuff” loop from Katamari into a game all about eating, where the mute, spherical protagonists chomp through waves of pirate/alien/frankenfood creations, progressively inflating after each set of meals. The character’s size is unambiguously labeled with a level number, with enemies larger than yourself having a similar label to illustrate who exactly you can eat at any given point. These larger enemies can be bumped with a dash attack that splits them into smaller enemies, although if the difference between you and the enemy is vast enough, each of their component sub-enemies may still be larger than you. Recursively repeating the split mechanic unveils levels built around flooding the field with bite-sized enemies and eating as many as possible before they reassemble into their larger forms.

pang@birthbydrip· Jul 5

I've been doing some book cover designs on spec recently 🙏 lmk what y'all think

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 30

it's a shame that kururin paradise has never made it to western virtual console or nso, because it outstrips its predecessor in almost every way: rotation speed control, tighter level design, and gorgeous graphics. if you love kururin 1, try out its sequel asap! link to my review below!

first paragraph of link below: The Helirin’s rotation in the Kururin games has a particular dynamic: certain rotation angles will always reoccur provided the player has space to sit and wait. Safe zones often bookend major obstacle sections, so a start-and-stop tendency arises, where arriving in a safe zone with the wrong angle to start the next section incurs a short break to let it spin into place. The first Kururin game suffered from this in its larger stages specifically thanks to cyclical obstacles, each requiring a synchronization between the Helirin and the obstacle. Depending on the difference in frequency between the two cycles, waiting for both to line up could potentially take multiple rotations without prior planning. While the series’s staple springs, which change the Helirin’s direction of rotation, could help by altering the phase over multiple bounces, most applications of these boiled down to bouncing between parallel springs, offering only minor improvements over unassisted waiting. Kururin Paradise smartly fixes this by giving the player control over their rotation speed. Even with only a single speed increase to work with, the player has significantly more leverage on how to synchronize with obstacles or avoid waiting. In turn, the designers decrease the amount of safe zones in each level, resulting in more compact and intense design overall.

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 22

took a little break to get my monkey ball stuff recorded, but I'm back with ace combat (also known as air combat in the states)! I wanted to replay this before I started reposting other ace combat reviews, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it on a hard mode replay. link below!

first paragraph of the link below: Retrospectively speaking, Ace Combat’s1 rough-hewn edges might appeal to those turned off by how quickly the series streamlined starting with its immediate sequel. Starting Ace Combat’s hard mode plops the player into an unmaneuverable tin can that explodes upon contact with a single missile, and the plane selection only incrementally improves its quality from there. Broadly speaking, the most useful planes are split between durable hunks of junk and fragile ships that pivot on a dime, leaving the player to decide between the least bad choice for a given objective. Both of these give the simplistic dogfights and bombing runs a distinct flavor. The former makes downhill approaches a necessity to build up enough speed when avoiding surface-to-air missiles surrounding a drop zone, while the latter turns stray gunfire into a legitimate danger. The decisions here (along with a bevy of stealth planes and other more unorthodox choices) make experimentation with each mission much more useful compared to later titles, which drown the player in extremely useful all-rounders.

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 19

I mean 😭 Dad has walked in with the milk! (sorted by Top)

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 14

random google search to see if I could find details on monkey ball 1 vs 2's physics without joining a discord server and one of the first reddit posts that pops up is a completely wrong chatgpt-generated essay that ends with this

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 12

while I'm easing off the gas for a bit to focus on my dissertation, I've got a run of three articles on the kururin series, starting with the only one that made it to the west: kuru kuru kururin! it's the skeleton entry of a series that would try many weirder things down the line. link below!

The fundamental genius of the Kururin trilogy derives from its unique, bare-bones approach to modulating outcomes over time. Consider racing games: part of their appeal is how the timing of an action alters the outcome of each action that comes after it. Taking a turn changes not only the car’s current speed and direction but the speed at which it arrives at the next turn as well. This propagates to the requisite braking power needed for the turn, the best line to take through the curve, and the torque and power the engine is putting out; each variation adds nuance to later actions. Even when the system is abstractly solvable, the variables are so granular and dynamics so nonlinear that reproducing the solution is never trivial. The Kururin series does this without the same density or non-linearity by instead constantly turning Kururin’s long, stick-like ship while punishing contact with any obstacles. The player tracks little other the rotation of the ship and the location of moving obstacles, yet small variations in timing change the phase of the ship’s rotation for future movement, restricting viable movement through future corridors. While this lacks the analog granularity of car control, Kururin’s ticky-tacky movement and three discrete speed settings make up for it by clamping the player’s precision, asking them to alternate between the separate speed modes rather than key in a specific analog value. This reconstitutes the subtle variations of each run that racing games exhibit, elevating Kururin to their level in the confines of a handheld d-pad.

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 11

all done!

disassembled gamecube running cubeboot on a flatscreen

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 11

flippydrive surgery

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 11

saying this in the same way that I'd say I'm a friend of dorothy

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 7

that was quick lol

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 5

this is absolutely fucked and leaves me worried that it won't be a transient issue

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 3

really enjoyed this piece, and one of the best bits is up front. if you're also in the amateur crit sphere, the "voice-y" style is so insanely stale. even if the intent is to present the author as they are, in actuality it gives your voice the cadence/pitch of many, many others that came before you

Right off the bat we’re in trouble:

"I don’t like Mixtape (Beethoven and Dinosaur, 2026). I am going to be a hater in this review. If that’s not something you’re looking for, I have good news! Quite a few other critics adored this game. IGN’s Simon Cardy gave it a 10/10. Game Informer’s Charles Harte gave it a 9.

…

I have made it clear on-record in the past that I do not fuck with Beethoven and Dinosaur’s output. I thought The Artful Escape sucked on toast.

…

It turns out that Beethoven and Dinosaur are even more predictable than I held out hope for and they deserved to be put in a box the entire fucking time."

This is full-on Gawker-style “voicey” writing that’s been stale for years.

pang@birthbydrip· Jun 3

it's not a particular robust game, but for fans of unusual playstation games, skydiving extreme/aerodive has all the markings of a bargain bin classic, as long as you don't spend more than an hour with it. fans of metro's bust-a-groove or plane racers may enjoy too! link below

header and first paragraph: "Although the package is unassuming and generic, Skydiving Extreme is actually a hidden fourth Bust-a-Groove entry, using a similar QTE combat concept without the rhythm component.1 The latter absence fundamentally alters the flow of each match: without synchronized measures tying the players together, the race is on to mash the button commands as quickly as possible. Dance battles from Bust-a-Groove transform here into skydiving choreography, with each team of four leaping from a plane and forming what are effectively body sculptures of progressive complexity. Presumably these formations also increase drag, as incorrectly executing them will put the divers in free fall, with the team that reaches the break altitude first losing. Over the course of a clear, the player earns the right to take on more and more complex maneuvers, performing in thunderstorms and other dangerous locations."

pang@birthbydrip· May 30

lol (this was the first time I put my name in)

pang@birthbydrip· May 30

it's over

pang@birthbydrip· May 27

while I enjoyed tall infinity enough, its sequel tall twins tower is an unsung action puzzle classic that nails so many genre fundamentals: rapid decision-making, fascinating board control on a huge playfield, and adorable playable characters. hop on now while everyone else is! link below:

pang@birthbydrip· May 22

there are few games that are as dazzlingly varied and robust from a scenario design perspective as deus ex, a tour de force of FPS concepts from the turn of the millennium. this helps keep the pace rolling even when the second-to-second gameplay can't on its own. link to my review below!

pang@birthbydrip· May 20

I'm so shocked, thought it was supposed to come next month

pang@birthbydrip· May 15

for some reason the wii section of my site is barren despite cursed mountain being the very first post on there, so I'm rectifying that now with an overview of boom blox! the game is daunting in its breadth, and it's built on a very solid physics system and set of interactables. link below!

front matter and first paragraph of link below

pang@birthbydrip· May 12

while picross 3d has its issues with a difficulty curve that quickly plateaus, it's also a more physically satisfying nonagram experience than virtually any of its peers. I had a very pleasant time finishing off the optional puzzles recently! link to my review below!

pang@birthbydrip· May 11

thanks everyone for all of the support over the last year and a half 🙏

pang@birthbydrip· May 6

impressed by how thorough this relationship drop-down is while adding emergency contacts for my new job

pang@birthbydrip· May 6

so fucking funny lol