[EXPRESSO] Awaria STEAM | Ghostsmoochers Inc.

After taking the internet by storm with “Johnny Bravo goes to hell for a demon girl harem” AKA Helltaker, vanripper is back with a new game on Steam, Awaria, sporting a new original soundtrack by Mittsies, and being more of a bullet hell- action puzzle game thing “about working in a haunted maintance tunnel”, which yes, means ghost girls to talk, interact and sometimes kiss, though, the Steam page content warning makes it clear by saying “it’s all tame”. It is. Pretty cute designs, still.

It also has the same business model as Helltaker, as in it’s free, but to support the developer you can buy the optional DLC as a “thank you”, which also nets you a digital artbook and a Babezki (a kind of Polish muffin) recipe, but again, you can also unlock the same content in the in-game gallery.

Gameplay is pretty frantic, and has you move your character about to collect items, activate item printers and interact with broken generators, requiring certain items to be fixed in a limited time, while avoiding the ghost girls attacking you, as you die in one hit, a drone will take a hit for you and respawn every 10 seconds, which are lot more than they sound given you’ll need to be constantly zipping around the level.

It’s a 2 hours affair, a bit more if you want to finish the game on Hard difficulty and unlock everything, but it’s quite intense, the gameplay is easy to learn but actually challenging and rewarding, the final boss levels this time around are better designed (as is the game overall compared to Helltaker), Mittsies soundtrack is another banger, pity for the sometimes laggy performance, but it maybe be my old rig.

Once again, i highly recommend playing it and supporting everyone involved.

Ye Old Remaster Wsihslsti (for Saint Nick)

A bonus round, meant for the previous “draught”, but it still isn’t Christmas, as Mr. Wright would point out, so enjoy!

Since the industry is experiencing the inevitable resource creep and is eventually forced right now to reap what they sow, as the new consoles “have no games” because mainstream big budget videogames have pigeonholed themselves into a situation where is too expensive and takes too long to even make one of these (emulating the big budget cinema industry they wanted so much to be to a tee), remasters have been the way too go.

Old crap with new paint or fixes to the rope itself takes still less than making a new game from scratch, is easy as you can cater to the evergrowing nostalgia market (due to the gaming populace aging because natural entropy is a thing and your flesh will fail you, eventually) longing for ages long gone, be it the Atari early days or the mascote platformer craze of the 90s, you can safely bet on an already established name, and the market is big enough that even obscure shit like Felix The Cat videogames of yore and Bubsy can get a collection with improvements, quality of feature, and shady publishers like Piko Interactive can publish in 2022 (on Steam at the moment, with console releases coming) a somehow buggier, worse looking version of Glover than when it launched on Nintendo 64. In 1998.

Be it collections of enhanced ports or remasters that just update the graphical side of things, the public craves and buys these for a variety of reasons, publishers are more than happy as it cheaper all together, so in the spirit of the time i will be dotting down my own wishlist of remasters/ports/re-releases that i would like to see.

Order is casual, btw.

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[EXPRESSO] Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom (2024) | Lichdom: Battlemage

After the 4^th season of the anime, we got a Overlord film, depicting the Sacred/Holy Kingdom Arc that was discussed/teased but not shown during Season 4 itself.

For reference, the series is about a regular guy that get stuck in a VR MMORPG when the servers close, as its character, Momonga, an elder lich, with previous NPCs start acting on their own, including the servants/characters made by his fellow guild members basically electing him as supreme leader, and he’s basically forced to live up to their expectations while plotting schemes for world domination as the Overlord.

The plot here sees Momonga/Ainz Ooal Gown, finally having established its territory and himself as the “Sorcerer King” getting into an alliance with the Sacred Kingdom, needing help to slay the Demon Emperor Jaldabaoth that’s attacking them with his hordes of humanoid monsters..

Again, this is as about as good a synopsis as it gets without doing huge spoilers, and while it strikes a good compromise between being watchable on its own, since the story here presented (picking up the previously established but basically ignored “Jaldabaoth” storyline) has mostly original characters, provides enough closure, and you can guess/deduce some things… having context for the characters and situations definitely benefits the experience (since it doesn’t recap shit, just giving a very brief text explanation of the premise), which does deliver on both the spectacle, violence and some honestly fun, enjoyable “anime isekai non-sense”, including fantasy politics.

I was worried the animation might had the “CG-isms” seen in later Season 3 and Season 4… not as much, the animation isn’t notably better but you can tell there’s a bump in quality and direction to take advantage of it being a film, more battles to show the animation off, etc.

Quite satisfied with it, i must say.

Pulling Out, The Early Dicember Academic Break and The January Void (not part of the Wizarding World)

So, i had a rewritten/revised/expanded review of the GITS Stand Alone Complex PSP game ready for the next weekly review (which would have dropped today) … but then i remembered there’s a new Ghost In The Shell anime in the work by Science Saru coming in 2026, so there’s an idea for a GITS retrospective, maybe not as comprehensive i’d wish, but we’ll see.

Hence that review will be “hoarded” and i will release two EXPRESSO reviews of the Metal Slug spin-offs most recent releases, upon which i had been sitting for some months because i couldn’t find the right timing. … this ain’t it, but you’ll get both, so rejoice.

You’ll also get the EXPRESSO review for The Gladiator 2, i had setbacks but i plan to see it ASAP.

On a more christmas-y note, due to academic woes and other IRL stuff i won’t disclose, i will be taking off the first 2 weeks of December, resume on the 15th with a review of some garbage trash movie, another full review a week later, then on the 25th until we’ll kick off this year’s 12 Days Of Dino Dicember, ending on January 6th, after which there won’t be any full review until February, due to similar issues.

I might search in my backlog and see if there’s some rewrites to be done as i would like to bring over here my full catalogue, but i don’t want to simply translate into english my ol’ crap, it’s boring for me as well. We’ll see.

My Deer Friend Nokotan/Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan (2024) [ANIME REVIEW] | … Once Bit My Sister

No comfy camping this time of year, we have a deer left to dispose of, so to speak, by following up my first impressions with a full lenght review on the anime adaptation of My Deer Friend Nokotan.

Might as well do it now, it’s about as timely i might care to review an anime series, and since City The Animation isn’t out yet, people might still be talking about this with posts on social media comparing to Nichijou, gotta get that engagement up in spite of reality, as in both “Nokotan” and “Nichijou” are similar in the sense they are both comedy slice of life non-sense anime series.

I’m gonna have to repeat this later too, but i feel it’s worth making this extra clear because people that like Nichijou and will be misled into watching this by Twitter dimwits and grifters that really want to make bank after letting people know they do pay for using Twitter.

(not calling it X, since at the time of writing and posting there’s an exodus from Twitter to Bluesky going on and “Muskardini” basically invites people to fuck off his SNS if you’re not a nazi, pedophile, and affiliated-adjacent garbage)

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The Spooktacular Eight #23: Mutant Girls Squad (2010)

I planned to review Blood Friends for this year’s Spooktacular Eight, after finally seeing and reviewing Vlad Love earlier this year, but since i can’t manage to find some actual english subtitles for the thing and time is a-ticking, instead of a Mamoru Oshii film we’ll feature a Noburo Iguchi one, with Mutant Girls Squad.

Which is also co-directed by fellow gore-tastic filmmaker Yoshihiro Noshimura (Tokyo Gore Police, Helldriver, Vampire Girl VS Frankenstein Girl) but also Tak Sakaguchi, better known as an actor in many films, like Versus, Godzilla Final Wars, the Azumi films, and even some of the aforementioned Iguchi-Noshimura gore flicks, but he also directed a live action Otokojuku film adaptation and Yoroi: Samurai Zombie.

Here they direct a chapter of the three the movie is divided in, and you can tell which one did, definitely if you have previous experience with their works.

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[EXPRESSO] My Hero Academia: You’Re Next (2024) | Mafia Might

Ok, that was fast, i didn’t heard any marketing for this new My Hero Academia film, but i guess its hitting theathers internationally and simultaneously this 10^th of October onwards (after its Japanese premiere in early August), so let’s go!

I wasn’t exactly too excited about this one, as this is the 4^th MHA movie, the premise screams of “taking time” until the TV series catches up, but then again the manga actually concluded and this released in Japan precisely close to the last chapter’s publication, which means this is the last MHA film, ever, and is set chronologically at the start of Season 7 of the anime.

This time we have Dark Might, an impostor italian mafioso willing to forcefully “carry on All Might’s will” by replacing him, using his mysterious powers and his Quirk enabled mafia goons to engulf anyone into his giant flying fortress, including the 1A students and a lone assassin, Giulio….

Minor villains are forgettable, and even the better of the movie’ original characters, Giulio, even he is a bundle of cliches, and while Dark Might as the main villain has some potential, the script never explores any potential themes that would naturally come with the “Dark Might” concept or character, so he ends up being… basically a less interesting Gild Tesoro from One Piece Film Gold while also doing the “villain posing as the superhero” sthick, and yet he’s not the worse of these sadly lukewarm MHA movie villains.

Animation is pretty good and more consistent than in WHM, and let’s be clear, MHA You’re Next it’s far from bad, it’s quite enjoyable, it’s not even the worst one of the films, heck, it might arguably be the second best, it’s decent overall, but its disappointing for the final film bout of the series.

Suicide Squad Isekai (2024) [REVIEW] | Through The Unlooking Glass

Why i am reviewing this, you may be asking yourself.

Just for the trash factor? Just because its seems like “easy prey”?

Not quite, it’s more due to how since its debut (and even then, i learn this was gonna be through the collaboration with V-tuber and singer Mori Calliope, as she composed the ending theme) i never heard a single peep online about it, not even to shit on it, which worried me even more.

Also i learned after searching that it was being streamed in my region via a sub-channel on Amazon Prime Video, absolutely zero marketing had been spent to even make people know it was legally available on a commonly used streaming platform (FIY, there’s no HBO Max or Hulu here).

But still, this looked and sounded like like the kind of trash Twitter (not calling it X) loves to shit on weekly, just for the hell of it, but the only thing i saw on there was someone else befuddled by how the internet decided to skip having any discourse on it all together, that it was likely not even worth that kind of engagement, as nobody bothered, not even for the finale…..if anyone knew this series was a thing to begin with, that is. No one using the new Joker and Harley designs for their profile pictures, it was THAT much ignored or just never actually marketed properly after its announcement.

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Parasite Dolls (2003) [REVIEW] | Bubblegum Boomers

Wanted to get around to this for years, as i distinctly remember its cover displaying in the anime section of pretty much any video stores here in “Da Boot” back in the 2000s, and also being pretty featured or sold online. The power of anime cyberpunk and early CG.

Curiously, i’m not really familiar with the series this being a spin-off for, Bubblegum Crisis, which may sound sacrilegious to many, but i never saw as it was distributed on VHS at the time here too, but it was never pushed as much as others, at least as far i remember, i was a more casual anime fan back then and i would have been busy catching localized broadcasts of Dragon Ball, Hokuto No Ken/Fist Of The North Star and -especially – Ranma ½ anyway.

Parasite Dolls does feel immediatly like a product of the late 90s early 2000s, as in it’s not a feature film per sè, not a compilation film of 3-4 episodes, but an anthology/mini series of 3 stories set after the events of the original Bubblegum Crisis OAV series.

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[One Piece: Side Pieces | Retrospective] Dream 9: One Piece X Toriko X Dragon Ball Z Super Collaboration Special (2013) [REVIEW]

Oh yes, this one, i held back on tackling it while i covered the One Piece TV Specials also because i never read nor did know much about Toriko as a series… that has changed, as i’m almost halfway through and quite liking it, and yes, i’m aware of Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro “canon event” that happened in 2002, but unlike Oda’s other acquaitance, Watsuki, an actual pedophile that had terabytes of child pornography (and suffered for it just a hiatus for its Rurouni Kenshin follow-up series, after the charges in 2018, which is even more insulting since recently the author of The Apothecary Diaries got punished far worse for tax evasion), it seems to have been a mistake he owned up to, he really paid for it in terms of being ostracized by the industry, actual consequences of his actions, plus it been 22 years, so i feel it’s pointless to still hold it over the man.

Had to get this over with because i didn’t want to talk about, you didn’t want to learn about that for a review of a special crossover about 3 popular Jump anime series (which already appared together in some of the Jump crossover videogames but not in anime form) colliding in a TV special, many couldn’t care less either way, but some might not have known or still held some incorrect info on the matter (like i did myself), so i had to make things clear(er) and to address the question.

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