Time for "Dad Games", maybe

 

When people here the term "Dad Game" they may be thinking I'm talking about games about Dads.  You know, shit like The Last of Us or those non-greek God of War games, but that's not what I'm talking about, instead I'm talking about games FOR dads.  Depending on how old you are you may think dad games are things like Power Wash Simulator or some kind of job simulation type thing but in my mind there is no genre that suits the descriptor of "games for dads" better than Grand Strategy 

Before I continue actually, I have address the fact that I have no idea why I associate grand strategy with stuffy dads.  Maybe its because presented almost entirely by maps and dry numbers and also usually about simulating actual history rather than being about anything fictional.  But I've never actually known any dads who fit that bill.  When I was younger my dad wasn't like that, none of my friends dads were like that and none of the dads I know now are like that.  If anything, the one dad I knew in my younger days who was a gamer was playing Tomb Raider and Counterstrike and if you suggested that he play a grand strategy game he might have glassed you.  Despite that, if I close my eyes and imagine "dad game", I imagine a guy aged somewhere between 40-65 sat at a PC playing something like Hearts of Iron or Victoria

 Now that I am a father of two I feel like it may be time for me to revisit the genre.  The only genre of game alongside sports that I have actively avoided up until this point.  Not that I've avoided it as hard as sports, I have at numerous points in my life attempted it.  When I was in high school I had a friend try to get me into Hearts of Iron and I just couldn't figure it out.  The most complicated thing in a similar style I could say that I had any kind of skill was was maybe Civilization Call To Power or a Total War game but Hearts of Iron was way denser and way more complex than any of those games.  Hearts of Iron is the kind of game that makes Civilization look like a babies toy and so I ran away to play more JRPGs.  Later, after moving to Japan, I managed to get my hands on some of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games from KOEI and the gameplay was so complex and the language barrier so high that I put them in a cardbox box and they've been sat in a storeroom for about 10 years at this point.

But then I stumbled on a video from a YouTuber called KBash about Nobunaga's Ambition, the Japanese history version of the previously mentioned Romance games, also made by KOEI.  Watching his gameplay I had no idea what the FUCK was going on at any point but also the way he recants his experience of the series made me want to sit down and give it a proper, concentrated effort.  In his video, he played as the Chosokabe clan and historically, these are the guys that unified the Shikoku region of Japan and that's what he managed to do.  But the game didn't end there, he went on to fuck up the rest of the country, even going as far as killing Oda Nobunaga himself and in his simulated version of history it was the Chosokabe clan that unified the country.  Accurate history simulation that also allows for player input changing the course of events is immensely cool and just the idea made me want to go dust off some games.  I'm also going to assume that games like Hearts of Iron that cover things like World War 2 also allow for things like that.  Accurate to actual history but could allow the player to rewrite events if their knowledge of game mechanics are deep enough

So despite not being in the 40-65 year category just yet I think its time to break out some grand strategy.  Sengoku era Japan interests me far more than the second world war so I think I'm going to start with a Nobunaga game.  I actually got one for free with my PS+ subscription a long time ago.  I remember it blowing my mind because the discount on the store page for that month read "12,000→0" which for a subscription that was costing me 5000 A YEAR is insane value.  Its a pain the ass to have to hook up the system again but these games are 50 quid a pop on Steam so I'm going with the free choice just in case I bounce off again.  

I actually have one other backup game if I end up bouncing off the historical sim called Gemfire

 It's another KOEI thing but instead of being a stuffy historical sim its that style of game as a fantasy strategy game.  If Nobunaga beats my ass yet again then maybe Gemfire will be the gateway drug I need to assume my full dad form.  I also know that Pokemon Conquest exists but you can fuck off with that.  Either way, time to take up my seat in the ivory tower and strat crafting some strategems.  

Shadowman Sucks

 

I managed to knock yet another game off the endless stream request list and it was such a slog to play through that I feel compelled to write a thing about it.  Shadowman was released in 1999 for N64, PS1 and PC with a Dreamcast port also coming out a few months after the initial release.  It's a massive piece of shit that a decent number of people seem to have played but seemingly very few people have actually finished and after finally beating it for myself its extremely easy to understand why.  

The plot of the game is that Jack the Ripper is helping some asshole build a big fuck off castle in the land of the dead and this going to cause an apocolypse so you, playing as Shadowman, have to go and collect "dark souls" and shoot some guys in the face with a gun in order to save the day.  If you thought a game with such a simple plot would be a simple experience then you are quite mistaken.

From some of the footage I had seen prior to playing I had expected the game to be a generic 3rd person action shooter but instead Shadowman turned out to be a weird Metroid-like.  You start the game and make your way into "Deadside" where you are being blocked at almost every turn by soul gates or environmental obstacles that you do not have the skills to get past.  As you slog through you'll collect dark souls to unlock the gates which will unlock more areas which will contain items and skills that allow you to get to more areas to get more dark souls.  Standard stuff.  Part of the issue though is that none of the items or skills you get are interesting at all.  For example, in Metroid when you get the ice beam a number of core things about the game are changed all at once and suddenly you have a lot more options.  The gun is stronger which is satisfying and now you can use enemies to make platforms so your brain might light up as you remember some out of reach areas you might have seen previously.  In Shadowman, I slog through some boring ass beige dungeon to find a knife that lets me use teleporters.  I find about 3 of the fucking things and then the knife sits in my inventory for the rest of the game just as unused and unloved as I imagine Micheal LeRoi to be outside of his time as Shadowman.  The other major things you find, Shadowmans version of finding the Varia Suit, are tattoos that grant you certain abilities such as being able to walk on fire or swim in lava.  Two out of the four of these upgrades, which are a real pain in the ass to get, are only used briefly in very specific sections of the game,  so while in Metroid the varia suit is only useful in a few rooms, at least it has the knock on effect of reducing your incoming damage as well.  The toucher ability in Shadowman, for example, does nothing outside of its stated using and practically speaking it means that you push about 4 cubes and can shimmy across one ledge.  What a fucking waste.  

Maybe none of this would be an issue if it was fun to explore but that sucks massive shit too.  The levels have 2 themes, beige looking caverns or rust colored interiors.  That is the only thing you'll be looking at for the majority of your playthrough.  This isn't just visually boring to look at but causes an issue because this game is labyrinthine as fuck and doesn't give you a map at any point so the samey looking environments just cause constant confusion.  There was one level near the end of the game where there were 3 rooms in a loop and I didn't know I was looping because every corridor looked like the previous one so it was only when I hit the entrance again after about 30 minutes of exploring did I realize that I had double backed on myself.  This then led to another 30 minutes of scanning the muddy graphics for a hole in a wall that I had missed.  Maybe if any effort at all had gone into the visuals or a map button had been implemented maybe so much of my life wouldn't have been wasted.  

Then there's the combat and like every other aspect of this title, it sucks massive dicks.  Your main weapon is a pistol that shoots blue blobs and is the only thing that can kill monsters in Deadside.  You do get a regular pistol, shotgun and machine gun but I don't think I used them a single time since they can't actually deliver the killing blow.  I THINK the idea is that you equip one "real" gun in one hand and your soul pistol in the other and then weaken then enemy with bullets before killing them with shadow-powers.  That still doesn't make any fucking sense though because you also find shadow weapons in Deadside that can kill monsters in exchange for the use of some MP or some shit.  All of these weapons are hot dogshit and I got some use out of ONE of them against the games singular large enemy type but otherwise, total waste.  The pistol powers up as your soul meter goes up and allows for a charge shot so there's basically no reason to use anything else.  When the weapons aren't out here being ass though, the combat itself, along with the rest of the controls are basically unusable.  Most of the enemies in the game will just stand in place and shoot at you or run at you in a straight line so you don't feel just how bad it is but every so often a boss will turn up that is significantly more mobile than you and things get real miserable real fast.  Shadowman controls a bit like a tank which is fine for the most part.  Like I said, most enemies just stand and shoot so controlling like a S.T.A.R.S. member with broken legs is manageable.  But then you get some enemies that are fucking Dragon Ball Z teleporting around the arena on you and shooting your from all angles and you just have to sit there and impotently watch your life bar decrease as Shadowman takes 4 business days just to turn 180 degrees.  The final boss in particular is flying around a giant arena while shooting homing missles at you from directions that the camera can't see so good fucking luck with that.  Thankfully, if the final boss kills you, instead of returning to a check point you just get a bad ending and after I saw what I was up against I just threw up my hands and let the world end.  

The thing that really killed my enjoyment of the game though, despite all of its awful design, was the bugs and technical issues.  If I had a dollar for every time I got stuck on some level geometry and was unable to move then I could provide the Alzheimer's charity that we are raising money for here a pretty significant research grant.  Then there's certain enemies that look like they should be just minor annoyances but can kill you in seconds because Shadow Man doesn't get any I-Frames on hit.  Tiny fish in bodies of water and dogs, enemies that seem like they are designed to harrass you and deal minor damage while a bigger threat leads a big attack are actually the most dangerous thing in the game as they can drain your HP from full to zero in a matter of frames.  The worst technical problem, though, came in the form of a wall in the final temple en route to the upgrade that lets you swim in lava.  In that temple there is a wall of rotating blades.  The blades move slow and you have to shimmy across a ledge suspended above a death pit to reach the other side.  It's a pathetically easy trap to avoid but due to the gaps in the ledge the game just bugs the fuck out and Shadow Man gets stuck between the two ledges.  Being locked in places means you cant avoid the blade and then the blade knocks you into the death pit.  SOMETIMES the bug doesn't occcur and you can just shimmy through but its basically a dice roll every time and there's a easy but lengthy platforming section you have to restart from EVERY. FUCKING. TIME. the bug kills you.  When the environment isn't killing you then sometimes bosses or enemies might push your shit in because the targetting system just decides to take a day off in the middle of a fight.  It happens mostly with flying enemies  where Shadow Man just gives up on the fight because I guess he has chronic neck pain.  Maybe these complaints aren't true for the Dreamcast and PS1 versions but I'm sure as shit not suffering this crap game again just to find out 

What blows my fucking mind is that this piece of trash got a remaster.  Who the fuck was out there wishing they could replay Shadow Man again with beefed up graphics and a morsel of extra content.  Weirdos, that's who.  If this game ever gets requested on my stream again you can catch my ass taking a voluntary trip to Deadside

Weird Games Getting Weird Sequels

 

I live for weird niche shit.  I don't care if I need to dig through Steam suggestion queues for hours on end or digging through the aisles of a retro game store, I love filling my game libraries with weird crap that no ones played and no one cares about other than me and a few other weirdos.  So imagine my surprise when I'm going through my Steam suggestions only to find that a curio game from my earlier years or something I never hear anyone talking about ever gets a new release in the current year.  I want to shine a light on these newer games so that hopefully I can convince a few more people to try the same weird shit that I like, here we go 

1. Radirgy Swag

Radirgy is a arcade shmup from 2005 that made its way to the Dreamcast and the Gamecube later down the line.  It was Japan only but its built up a bit of a following with shmup fans thanks to its unique artstyle, bangin' OST and interesting gameplay loop that involves slicing things up like its 2am in central London.  

Surprisingly, it got a couple of sequels which I think are both on the Nintendo Switch although if my understanding is correct, the English version of Swag got delisted due to license issue.  I was pretty shocked, then, to find that on the 4th of March 2026, Swag got released to Steam and for 10 bucks and even you can play it right now.  Radirgy 2 is still MIA on PC but apparently you can get it on Switch and PS4.  I'm not sure if thats true for places that aren't Japan but if it is, go check that out too

This is the most normal one of the games I'm about to cover since the original was a shmup and its sequels are also shmups.  Good games too, I'd suggest playing the first one on and emulator for either DC or Gamecube to see if you gel with it and then dropping some support for this game on Steam if you do.  

2. Slave Zero X 

Slave Zero is a 3rd person shooter from 1999 where you control a big ass robot shooting other big ass robots.  This is one I never finished myself since I only ever had the Dreamcast demo of the thing but there's a user on YouTube called pmcTRILOGY who has done speedruns of it that I've enjoyed watching.  One I need to bump up the backlog priority list for sure.  It's a game that I think very few people are actually aware of.  I can maybe think of one other person that I know who is aware of what Slave Zero is and I'm not certain he's actually played it for himself, like he just knows it exists

So then in 2024 it got a weird followup game called Slave Zero X.  X is not another 3rd person shooter about big ass robots like you might expect but instead a 2D side scrolling sprite based character action game.  Inspirations for its designed cited on the store page are Devil May Cry, Strider and Guilty Gear.  Guilty Gear.  Funnily enough, when I saw the Steam page for this first time around its launch the first thing my brain went to was Blazblue because the main character is a dead ringer for Hakumen from that game. 

I can't speak to its quality since I've not played it for myself but it honestly looks really cool.  If you're into that style of game then it might be worth checking out.  Its price tag is a little high at 20.99 which is why I have not purchased it for myself yet but hardcore character action fans looking for a fix might be willing to drop that.  I'm personally gonna either wait for a sale or a significantly reduced backlog and I'm certain the former will come first.  

3. Baroque: Become A Meta Being: Revive

Baroque is a strange game originally released in 1998 for the Sega Saturn exclusively in Japan and is probably one of my favorite games on the system.  It got a remake that actually released in the west for the PS2 and Wii but it's quite different from the original version and just not quite as good.  So with that combo of Japan only game on an obscure system along side a sub standard remake that got mixed reviews, Baroque was doomed to the curio dimension.  

So when I was going through my steam discovery queue one evening imagine how hard my jaw hit the fucking floor when I saw Baroque: Become a Meta Being crossed my path being a game that apprently released in December of 202 mother fucking 5. 

If you have not seen or heard of Baroque then the quick description is that it's a sort of first person real time dungeon crawling roguelike kind of like mystery dungeon but not really.  That's not a good description but at the very least you can get a vague idea of what I'm on about.  So what kind of game do you think this is?  If you said "oh, another dungeon crawler of course" then you lose 10 points and get bonked on the head because its a fucking FROGGER CLONE.  This isn't close to the first time the series has had a spinoff that's out of left field like this but man, all I want is more weird dungeon crawling and instead I get this shit.  

Actually, having not played it I can't say for certain that its shit.  I don't actually like Frogger all that much but I'm such a slut for Baroque that I'm basically forced to at least give it a go.  I'll go in with an open mind and maybe I too can hop my way into becoming a Meta Being. 

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All of this makes me wonder if there are other weird curio games from my past that have recent or semi-recent sequels or spinoffs just hiding out there on Steam or some other storefront somewhere.  Is there are Jade Cocoon 3 or something extremely similar hiding away somewhere?  Maybe a modern Mohawk and Headphone Jack I don't know about?  Or fuck it, after seeing that Baroque game there could be typing tutor based on The Granstream Saga for all I know.  I need to do more digging and I need to try these games and so do you.    

The Strange State of YouTube Gaming Content

 

While I'm at my office I like to put on long form YouTube videos about video games.  Reviews, retrospectives or just long ramblings about some game that the user enjoys, its nice background noise to break up the monotony of putting together road infrastucture and recreating bits of Japan in Blender.  I have my usual suspects that I like to rotate through, just comfy listening while I work but sometimes my brain craves some fresh blood and I go clicking around the suggested videos to see if I can find a new creator whos channel I can ransack with my ears.  While occasionally I do find some new stuff that I find interesting, I've started to notice something worrying about the YouTube video game video essay and if its starting to infect this genre of content I'm sure its probably way worse in other places

Before I start ranting though, let me put some usernames out there for people that I think are cool.  At time of writing I've just finished re-binging most of the videos of ThorHighHeels, a guy who covers various video game oddities and has a very chill, very positive outlook on the medium that may inspire you to look at some games a bit differently than you usually would.  Then there's a user called KBash who I quite like.  Again, he covers various oddities in a sort of review format.  I discovered him when he did a video on fucking Red Ninja of all things.  That alone didn't get me to hit the subscribe button but then he did a MASSIVE video on JUST Ys 1 which is an undertaking I would never be willing to take on myself and I respect the effort put in to a game that only a small number of people give a shit about.  I've also been quite fond of a user called ZERO who does challenge videos for the Resident Evil games.  His video where he beat Resident Evil 7 without running is extremely cool and this man has an iron will when it comes to bullshit Resident Evil challenges.  One final suggestion is Civvie11 who does review style content almost exclusively for boomer shooters.  He's pretty funny, clearly is steeped in the ancient texts of the genre and through his channel I've tried a number of games that I've ended up really enjoying.  There's plenty more users than this whos content I enjoy but if I was to go through every YouTuber I liked then I'd be here all fucking day and that's not what I'm here to yap about.

What I'm not here to complain about is just people I don't gel with.  For example there's a guy I can't stand called Jacob Geller but I'm not concieted enough to put him on blast for being shit.  He's not shit and clearly puts a lot of effort into his stuff, I just don't like it.  The users that I'm about to talk about I'm not going to name because 1) I don't have proof of what I think they are doing and 2) if they are doing it, I don't want people giving them any views but I have run these videos by a few people I know and we all are suspecting the same thing.  

So I hope we're all on the same page about generative AI being complete fucking bullshit right?  Not that I'm a complete AI hater, I can see there being use cases for such a thing existing but the majority of people using it are doing it for bad purposes; generating shit that can then be easily packaged in the form of an article or video that can then be served onto a social media platform for the purpose of generating clicks and therefore generating money.  "Slop", the kids these days tend to call it.   

What I've noticed in the last few weeks when clicking around and looking for new content is that there are a lot of videos out there with human voice over but that sound like the scripts have been generated by AI.  Weird sentences, information that's incorrect or missing important points, delivery that sounds like a high school student reading a presentation where they Ctrl C Ctrl V'd a wikipedia page.  Not so subtle hints that these users are just going to GPT and asking a vague question to the machine rather than going out and engaging with gaming and then forming opinions on their own.  The one other big hint I have that AI is being used in this way is that I had one user in my discord (username related to Lovecraft, for the regulars) who was begging for info on a game from the General channel because GPT wasn't giving him enough to work with.

Another bit of evidence I have to indicate that this is going on is that I found one video about "disturbing video games" and I clicked out of the video about 15 minutes in because the things the guy were saying sounded just sort of...off? its hard to describe.  So when I started writing this post I went to ChatGPT and asked it about disturbing video games and the result I got not only matched his list, but the bullet points I got for each game matched pretty closely the things he was saying in his script.  A real "copy my homework but change it a little bit" ass moment.  

I've got too much going on in my life to get mad about this kind of thing but it is annoying to find a video on a topic I think is going to be cool only for the delivery to sound like its being delivered by a robot thats been through the trash compactor once or twice.  Is this really what people want? To just listen to a guy rattle off the result of a GPT prompt? you don't want something a little more from your media than that?  Maybe hearing the experiences and opinions of people who are interested in the same or similar things to you?  I love, for example, hearing people talk about the Megami Tensei games because which ones we consider to be the best and how we approach each game is interesting to hear about.  It would be considerably less interesting if someone just went "What is the best MegaTen" on GPT and then every video was some monotone fuck head going "Nocturne, Persona 4 and RONDE" every video for hours and hours at a time.

 Demand more out of your media diet.  Find things to inspire or give you new perspective or something.  Something that might get you to try something new and expand your horizons.  Put the fucking skibidi toilet, italian brainrot, 30 second shorts of fat old americans talking about how much they like Chrono Trigger videos down, and pick up something that's even just SLIGHTLY deeper.   Also if you get a whiff of AI, just fuckin close it out, fuck anyone who would use that shit.