#midnightgaming — Public Fediverse posts
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Midnight Gaming - Residential Malevolence: The Gyatthazard Chronicles - 25th October 2025
Hello again folks, welcome back to Midnight Gaming, and a happy halloween to all of you. We're gonna talk some more games and news on here, such as one game from a series I played for last years halloween post.
You recall the Resident Evil 2 Remake? It was fairly well received wasnt it? It had a lot of the events and plot hooks from the original Resident Evil 2 while adding its own touches and gameplay mechanics to create a unique experience, being both a terrifying modern experience for new players and a familiar yet fresh experience for old vets. It reworked the zombies to be more a threat than a nuisance, it introduced Mr. X as a pursuer throughout most of the game rather than a reoccurring boss from the originals B scenario. The remake was good, but do you recall how much people have wanted a remake of resident evil 2 for quite a while? Do you know how so many forum threads and comment posts have called for a resident evil 2 remake? How the simple announcement from the lead developer saying "we do it!" lead to so much rejoicing from the general gaming public? You ever wondered why that is? Well, its because the remake for the previous game in the series was SO well received, it became the quote-unquote standard for how a video game remake ideally should be done.
Yeah we're gonna talk about the Resident Evil Remake from 2002…even though this really about the hd remaster from 2014 but dont worry about it.
![media-1]So Resident Evil Remake was originally exclusive to the Nintendo Gamecube, being part of a deal between Capcom and Nintendo to bring the Resident Evil series to Gamecube as well as create two games "exclusively" for the gamecube, this is pretty much how we got Resident Evil 4 (for a while until they ported it to ps2 and then everywhere else) as well as the series prequel Resident Evil Zero and its how we got the Resident Evil remake and those ports of 2, 3 and code veronica on the gamecube.
To be clear, i'm not big on survival horror games, mostly due to the whole having to ration my limited resources to avoid the possibility of borking myself. I'm the type of person who needs to find most of the secrets in a boomer shooter so I could feel confident that I have enough to clear levels despite the fact that'd i'd probably be ok. Anxiety is a bitch…
Regardless, I did a resident evil game last year so i'd figure it be worth it to do another one this year as well. So the first you can notice is the graphics are a major upgrade to the original. A lot of the areas you go through in the mansion look vastly creepier compared to the original which has somewhat admittedly aged a bit with time, very much appreciated in this game but do you know how the original Resident Evil was a bit campy with its voice acting? Well along with the graphics being enchanced, they also changed a lot of the lines in this game. This… I dont think its a good change, I do feel the new lines work a bit better in keeping the horror tone of the game but it loses the fun campiness of the original, its like if they changed the iconic lines from Symphony of the Night….. which konami did….. FOR SOME REASON.
Though on the other hand, I can understand that if you're putting in the work in remaking the 1st game in your popular survival horror series, you would want to take the time to fix stuff that you feel could've been done better. I just think keeping the old lines would'nt have detracted from the remakes overall quality, though thats pretty easy to say since the remake is pretty damn good.
Cause while the dev team did recreate a lot of the areas and music of the original game, making it look and sound head over heels better, they also took the time to introduce some…. new stuff as well. Theres some new areas added to the spencer mansion along with some new puzzles to solve. You know how you can leave a room and any zombies still in that room will just stay there for the whole game? Well sometimes you may backtrack to a hallway you cleared out only to hear a door knocking and WHOOOPS some zombies you left alone in a room have decided to move into that hallway. I actually can't help but laugh at that because I wonder if that was purely to fuck with the old resi players who are used to never seeing zombies migrate from room to room. Oh yeah and this remake is also where we got introduced to Lisa Trevor, the tragic nigh-unkillable mutant who chases you in a couple of sections as well as her boss fight. And of course, the one part of the remake thats downright iconic is what happens when you kill a zombie and wonder why the body never seems to despawn….. the Crimson Head.
Yes, I genuinely like this enemy for how it works mechanicaly, essentially serving as a "bomb" that's made to be activated by the player in order to create a future problem for them to deal with through a number of methods. Either by disarming the "bomb" via burning either by using some incendiary rounds on your grenade launcher or using up two item slots to carry a lighter and an oil canteen with a limited amount of fuel spread throughput the mansion, you can also try setting the "bomb" at a place your not likely to go through or a room you dont need to return to, disable the "bomb" entirely with a lucky headshot with the pistol or by landing one with a shotgun by letting a zombie get close while you aim up and fire, mitigate the blast by being prepared to fight the crimson when its ready to go off or just avoid setting the "bomb" by leaving the zombie alive but dodging everytime you pass through. You're essentially trading a short term problem for a long term problem, with ways to circumvent that future problem, or even avoid it, if your smart about it, or if theres enough fuel in the game to enable that.
And its kind of a shame they hardly ever returned. There was maybe a few cameos involving that crimson bastard but I think the last time they had a major appearance was in that Operation Racoon City spinoff, you know? The 4 player coop game where you play as Umbrellas own clean up crew? Except I'm pretty sure crimson heads there worked differently compared to this game. Can't help but wonder if other survival horror games tried to copy this idea because I think its a mechanic that needs to be seen in more survival horror. I think Signalis has something like that? I did hear that enemies can come back and you need a limited item to remove them permanently.
Overall its a good remake, but that's been well established by this point, so many people have laid their praise for this game, what more can I say about this that hasnt already been said by others?
Well, I can certainly that backtracking kinda sucks, mainly due to the door opening sequences which yes, while they do contribute to the games tense atmosphere, they end up being quite annoying when your going through areas you know are safe or you accidently go through the wrong door and have to turn 180 and go through another door opening sequence. I did this alot in my playthrough.
Heck the geniunly worse part in my playthrough was at the 1st yawn fight where I was trying to do it right by grabbing the mask and leaving without being poisoned, course Richard Aiken who I saved with serum shows up and now I had to damage yawn enough to trigger dicks death so I can grab his assault shotgun. I had to reload SIX times till I got it right, and then I went through the hallway that filled with zombie spouring from the windows and got jumped by a crimson outside the door to the art gallery, leading to me using 6 shotgun shells and a full heal before doing the art gallery puzzle and opening a path to the back courtyard that you can go through to the main lobby. It… really didnt sit well with me considering I could've just used the door witn the loose handle, avoiding that hallway entirely and taken the crimson zombie proper without needing tp heal. But I didnt save after the yawn fight so……. 4 more reloads….. eugh..
Thing is? That was the probably most challenging event in my playthrough, most of it was pretty easy. Hell even the two tyrant fights at the end werent much of an issue. And to be honest, this is entirely my fault since i'm playing jills campaign with the diffuiculty set to easy rather than normal but I honestly wondered if I shouldve picked "like climbing a mountain" for the difficulty and have been fine with it…. Maybe i'll try that with Chris after this is posted.
In the end, I got it done with the best ending and with no first aid sprays used, and I do feel glad to have this done. It was a pretty great experience and the tension I felt through traversing the mansion was a welcome experience. If you havent played this remake then I recommend you do as it is spooky good fun. Just maybe have a little bit of confidence and try it on normal instead of easy or very easy.
![media-2]NEWS ROUNDUP!!!!!
So its been a doozy folks. I have some news I collected during my week playing Resident evil but I also have a couple of breaking news thats worth hearing about. Lets roll this roundup out.
The Crew 2 now has an offline mode - If you remember the Stop Killing Games initiative, you'd recall it was a grassroots movement to push for end-of-life updates for games that ran on online servers, to ensure there was some means to still play them either through an official offline mode or some support for community run servers. Just anything other than straight up killing the game and ensuring no one can play it anymore. Now part of what initially drove this movement was when the racing, The Crew, was shut down by Ubisoft and while arguments can be had on whether the movement was successful or even helpful in the grand scheme, its hard to deny that it left some impact considering Ubisoft has revealed that the games sequel, The Crew 2, now has an official offline mode. You can check more details on this from the rockpapershotgun article if you're interested.
Valve adds means to trade up Red quality items for knives and gloves, CS2 market crashes in response - So this one I saw posted on tumblr by user @squeakitties so big thanks to them but yeah. The Counter-Strike 2 item market is in shambles since Valve added a trade up offer into the game. Now that means nothing first, its just trade in some low quality skins you unboxed for a higher quality skin right? Well in this case its more like trade in a number of Red quality skins that are usually priced around $10 for a pair of gloves or a knife, one of the more "rarer" items you can unbox and as a result folks are now panic selling their inventories to cash out asap, leading to steam being a tad slow atm. Press F for the folks who spent considerable money to unbox a rare knife only to watch it become financially worthless. Actually, don't do that because investing your life savings into virtual items waa always going to be a bad idea, just look at NFT's.
![media-3]Scarface The world is yours remaster is suddenly released, then delisted immediately - Games based on movies tend to suck. Thats the commonly held belief for many folks, particularly those growing up within the late 90s to early 10s where games based off of films and tv shows were quite common on most gaming platforms. But sometimes you do find the rare example of a good licensed game such as Goldeneye, Spider-man 2, The Warriors, Those two lord of the rings beat em up games and Peter Jacksons King Kong just to name a few examples. Personally, I say that Scarface: The World is Yours counts as an example of a decent licensed game, being a grand theft auto clone where you play as Tony Montana in a what if scenario where he survives the movies end and goes on to rebuild his criminal empire. I played that game a lot on the Wii and taunting enemies as I shoot them was a straight up mechanic to build up your "balls" meter. Fun game.
Sooo…. imagine my surprise when writing out this Midnight Game post, when I decided to glance pcgamer and saw that a straight up remaster for The world is yours was reported to have dropped on the epic games store, be suddenly removed and its listings on both egs and steam being promptly scrubbed clear. Like…. what??? I never knew there was remaster to begin with??? Well apparently this remaster by the group EC Digital had included community mods without the mod makers permission and that they havent worked out the licensing issues for the games soundtrack, let alone the license for the scarface movie itself, the very thing this game is based off of?????
sigh This is honestly weird… The pcgamer covers this along with some direct quotes from members of EC Digital and they now have an update to the article containing an archived steam community post before it was all scrubbed away. Give it a read, i'm just trying to wrap my head around this myself…
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow gets dropped onto Steam - So moving on from the remaster mystery, we now have news that Ubisoft recently released Splinter Cells first sequel Pandora Tomorrow onto the Steam marketplace. You might think "Oh neat, a remaster of a splinter cell game" but the thing is, its not a remaster, its just straight up the pc version of Pandora Tomorrow, now available to buy on steam. Ok…. cool…. yay…
According to the rockpapershotgun article, folks have mentioned needing to go through Ubisoft Connect just to run the game and that the multiplayer features are unavailable. So if you're interested in picking this up, you may have to look around for some mods to add things like controller support. Details in the link.
Sega collabs with Satnav company Waze to release a Sonic the Hedgehog voice option - And on our final piece of news we have Sonic the hedgehog now being an option for your Waze Satnav device. In my honest opinion, having Sonic himself to tell you to "Take a left turn at the nearest junction" in his usual speedster attitude, sounds like an idea almost on the level as "listening to the initial d soundtrack while driving down an empty highway at the dead of night". I wonder if you were try to set the satnav to direct you to a restaurant, it'll just lead to the nearest place that sells chilli dogs, and when you try to resist it threatens to drive through a school classroom and frame you for it unless you comply with its demands. Eh whatever… more details in the link.
NEWS ROUNDUP OVER!!!!
Alright so, now that we have had a little discussion about the Resident Evil Remake, you would think that would be it right? Or maybe you've caught on already, that i'm probably gonna cover a second game here that I played since i'm apparently done with the prevous game? Well yeah more or less. Honestly I did plan on covering just one game here but I wasnt sure how much I can fill out this post just talking about the RE remake since most folks have already covered it to death in videos up on youtube. The only unique thing I can really offer is my own unique experience. The other reason was that a major update released for a game I played before so I wanted to give that a bit of play only to end up levelling a character to endgame alongside the resident evil playthrough, so yeah, here you go, our second game of the evening.
ATLYSS
So question for all the folks reading this right now. You ever played Phantasy Star Online, no i'm not talking about the sequel, nor am I talking about the PSO: Episode games on xbox or gamecube, nor am I talking about zero or universe. I'm talking straight up Phantasy Star Online from like the dreamcast and pc. It was an action rpg dungeon crawler with a lot of sci-fi elements mixed with some of SEGA's general style. People enjoyed that game and while the offical servers are long gone, private servers are still available. I played a lil of it on a dreamcast once upon a time ago and it was enjoyable.
Flashforward to recent years and we see a couple of furry games blow up on the internet gaming space. We have on one hand webfishing which was a comforting fishing game with a sort of animal crossing aesthetic that you can enjoy with friends. And on the other hand theres Atlyss where you can create a caked up mouse shortstack spinning through dungeons with a bloody spear.
It had a major update that reworked a lot of the areas and added some new ones along with changing up a number of skills. So I decided I wanted to play it and see all the stuff they changed, I went with creating a new character to go for a more spellcasting kind of build and proceeded to enter the world of atlyss once more. They're a kobold and they're named Irn-Bru.
![media-4]So in the early game, its a bit rough since you dont have any spells aside from chucking stones and a health regen skill along with your races ability. The only main ranged offense I had for a bit was a basic bitch wand that took a while to kill enemies with, and I had this until I finally got my first real spell, an ice spell that had a short range meaning I had to get close to an enemy to actually hit them with it….. but I can atleast do some ok damage with it, I even bought a skill scroll off an npc merchant for a firebolt spell so now I have a means of reliable damage.
I progressed through quests and ran through the crypts dungeon a few times till I get to lvl 10 where I can actually pick a class from one of the three main quest givers in the sanctum hub area. You can go visit the pantsless hunk in the back arena to become a fighter for a physical attack and tanky kinda of playstyle. You can go visit the trader suzy who you often buy and sell stuff to if you wanna become a bandit for a more fast paced playstyle that involves an evasion stat. And then finally theres the big lady by the main teleporter in the library who will let you become a mystic which is the class I went with, letting enjoy some more magic options at my disposal.
And around the mid to late game I ended up being pretty damn powerful with some of the mystic abilities. For one you have a couple of passive traits such as increased mana regen along with a blink ability for better mobility. I picked up Fluxbolt which ended being a major damage dealer since its a ranged spell that can hit multiple times, along with Cross which pretty much works like Ness's neutral B ability where you hold to release a ball forwards before releasing to create an explosion, not just damaging enemies in the radius but also lowering their magic defense so that Fluxbolt ends up being more damaging. I also had Imbue as my buff along with Restora and Prism as for healing/protection which when paired with my race ability Alacrity lets me cast them instant for free to spare some mana/ emergency heal.
Enemies do start to get a lot tougher around the end game, espcially in the hard mode crypts, the normal/hard mode crescent grove dungeons as well as the Buldarr fortress where the mekboars reside. I basically needed to stay on the move with my finger on block incase i'm about to get hit, all the while attacking with Cross, Fluxbolt and a charged attack off my Scepter while refreshing Imbue and Prism when they get off cooldown.
You can join some online lobbies and go explore with other players, but for me I played on solo the whole time. And you know what? Didnt die once. Cleared Hard Mode Crypts, Cleared Buldarr Fortress, Cleared Hard Mode Crescent Grove which had the hard version of Colossus which I heard was a real doozy, and he was, he was an absolute bastard with his attacks. But, I still cleared it. It honestly sounds like i'm gloating and I guess I suppose I am but I think part of it is that mystic is just a good class to play. Theres other spells in that class that I didnt pick up such as Fluxclaw so you could create a different sort of mystic build but for me right now, i'm really hoping the dev doesnt nerf mystic in the future. Given that the game is in early access, things will change and I can only hope Mysfic that mystic will continue to be powerful in the future.
Oh yeah…..uhhhh…. Atylss is fun. Its gameplay is fast paced with you moving around to be harder to hit along with timing a block in order to parry and punish an enemy. It definatly recreates a lot of the older 3d enviroments and aesthetics from the early millennium games along with its MMO-like styles and features. You know something? Webfishing, Atylss and another early access game called Erenshor seem to be potential start in indie games that are based on the nostalgia for online multiplayer games that you play in your youth. Stuff like Habbo Hotel, Gaia Online, 2007 World of Warcraft and even Runescape before it was called old-school Runescape. Just some games that are essentially MMO's but are playable offline or with a small lobby of friends rather than being a large community of players on an online server.
You know…… something that the .hack series has been squatting for the past few years.
So yeah. Atlyss is pretty good, up to you if you wanna hop in now or wait till 1.0. The resident evil remake is good and deserving of its reputation.
Have a happy halloween everyone :)
Thank you again for reading Midnight Gaming. I'll talk to you all another time in the future, feel free to leave comments or game suggestions. See ya!
#midnightgaming #gaming #video-games #resident-evil #resident-evil-remake #survival-horror #atlyss #indie-game -
Midnight Gaming: Being a switch for hot robot women - 6th October 2025
Hello hello hello!!!♡ and welcome again to another edition of Midnight Gaming. This week we will be revisting a couple of games that I covered on this series before, with the first of them being a remaster by nightdive studios.
Yep its System Shock 2, the 25th anniversary remaster edition.
So last time I talked about SS2, I was talking about how a good number of games that Ken Levine had a major hand in often have a twist or a sort of betrayal in it. SS2 had with Dr Polito who talks to you at the beginning of the game and its revealed around halfway that shes been dead for a while, you then had Bioshock try to pull a similar twist with Atlas and the words "would you kindly". Bioshock 2 didnt really have a twist I dont think (which makes it the best bioshock out of them all FIGHT! ME!), and then there was infinite which opened up freaking multiverse shit with the villian of the game being you all along…. oh yeah spoilers I guess.
But were not gonna focus on that, were gonna talk about the remaster that nightdive did and what changes are made to this version compared to the original…. well for one they redubbed the tutorial voice that greets you when you step off the train and into the recruitment facility. Yeah thats a bit annoying, also they changed the end credits so instead of seeing the developers lying dead on the floor, its just a slow text crawl. What the hell nightdive?
Ok well there is some notable inclusions, for one, similar to the doom 1 and 2 as well as the heretic + hexen remasters, theres now a vault where you can look through some gamedev notes, concept art, pre-release screenshots, trailers and even magazine review scans and ads. They apparently managed to get coop multiplayer working and with crossplay being an option. I havent played the multiplayer, and thats the last i'll talk about the multiplayer.
Now, being a game made for pc, its use of the mouse and keyboard control setup is gonna be a bit hard to translate to a gamepad what with the number of bindings this game has for leaning, switching ammo or psi powers or even just managing your inventory. But I have managed to get a playthrough under my belt of this game using a ps5 controller and it seems like nightdive did a decent job with the controller. Switching ammo and the fire setting for your guns can be done with the left and right arrows and the up arrow respectively, you can press the left stick to switch from moving to leaning and while you might end up stuck leaning instead of moving a few times, you can get use to it and find it quite intuitive. They also added a way to add hotkeys to 4 weapons and 4 psi powers, each attached to the right and left shoulder buttons. You can't hotkey consumables though so if you need to heal during a dangerous situation it'll be a bit of a hassle… atleast the quantum bio-reconstructer will revive you for some nanites :/.
![media-1]Another thing to note is how this remaster incorporates some updated models as well some community fixes. The weapon models look fairly decent , you can see the pistol slide actually move back as it should rather than in the og where the gun just suddenly snaps back and moves back into position to simulate recoil. The new enemy models look alright, I dont believe they had it in the og game but the the service bots do seem to now break apart as you shoot them before they explode which is a nice touch. Oh and the cyborg midwife keeps her breasts covered here unlike some other graphical mods. So the remaster is perfectly competent I suppose, it works well and plays like the original with some updates and balances.
But should you buy it? Cause lets be clear here, you can still just buy system sock 2 on steam and just mod it. You can look up mandalores review on ss2 and look for the mods he recommends and get more or less the remastered experience at a fraction of the cost of the official remaster.
Infact regarding remasters, they are popping up quite frequently arent they? And while there are valid criticisms about how the industry is just constantly rehashing the old stuff for a quick buck and how folks still buy therefore enabling ths, I'd rather touch on what games are remastered and if its done well by fixing some issues and improving the game overall while also maintaining the original charm of the game being remastered without changing too much, theres already countless youtube videos out there that talk about remastering/remaking and whether its good or bad. Since I started writing this, two remasters were announced recently by two different developers who have a reputation of handling remasters.
Theres Nightdive who did this remaster but have also announced a remaster of… Blood refreshed supply which is a remaster of another remaster…… um…. so fresh supply had issues at its launch which did get somewhat fixed, though it apparently still had issues that nightdive wanted to fix, so I guess now they can do that now that atari and warner bros have reached a deal or something? Oh but this will have a new episode and it'll include the deathwish mod and sure but the fact that having fresh supply already doesnt mean you'll get this as an upgrade is just…. nah.
And I like Nightdive, they do decent work with their remasters, their work helped fix the issues that held some games back and make them more available for people to play. This blood remaster is just…. not ideal and I can imagine its not what they had in mind either, they would have just updated fresh supply instead, but atleast it'll be a perfectly serviceable, if not completely unnecessary and a bit of shill order.
But thats nothing compared to the Deus Ex Remaster which is….. jesus christ what the hell?
Now that ones being done by Aspyr who are also in the remaster business but they seem to have a different work ethic on producing remasters that folks have been critical on. Mainly that they seem to do the bare minimum and upscaling the graphics and making it playable on a system before calling it quits and moving on, even when theres still bugs and issues in the remaster. They have been panned for how they handled remastering stuff like the star wars battlefront games, the lok soul reaver and neverwinter nights 2 but this deus ex one really and I mean really took the cake….(to be fair, I saw reviews on that soul reaver remaster that mentioned serious bugs back when it launced but I checked it again recently and it seems like there was some fixes, so I bought that during a sale)
It looks awful, really awful. Its been pointed out that they apparently used ai to upscale models and textures with misspellings being observed and pointed out in the trailer. Its looking to be on the same level of quality as GTA trilogy "definitive" edition. And thats sad because I seem to recall Aspyr being a bit better in the past or atleast they werent criticised as heavily. They were doing ports on some star wars games and they were set on releasing ports of KOTOR 1 & 2 with the news that they'll include the restored content mod for kotor 2 along with the reveal of a proper remake of kotor. And then disney said no on the mod idea, Aspyr gets taken off the remake and now it feels like they've been a bit more apathetic as of late. I guess considering they went through financial issues during that fiasco they've decided its best to just do the minimum and move on while cashing their revenue cheques.
Kinda sad really.
Anyways… why did I buy this remaster? Well I wasn't planning to let alone cover it here but I had a real shit monday and decided to just buy some games that were on sale to cheer myself up. This game, Sulfur and Cult of the Lamb. I figure I'd cover this remaster to tie in with revisiting stuff I covered, along with a second game that I wanted to take a second look since I received a comment explaining some things that I felt confused before.
And that game…. will be revealed after the break.
NEWS ROUNDUP!!!
Steam Deck LCDs experience price drop - I enjoy my Steam Deck. I had no interest in buying a series x or going with a ps5 and I wasnt sure at the time the next nintendo console was going to be worthwhile (spoilers: I was right) so I decided to purchase a Steam Deck OLED and since then i've been pretty pleased with that, being able to play my steam library in a portable format and even buying a dock and ps5 controller to connect to my tv and play my library on a tv screen.
Now if you yourself have been interested in the Steam Deck but refrained due to price concerns, there is some good news as Valve are now selling the LCD model at a reduced price of $319.20/£279.20 on their online storefront. So if this appeals to you then maybe give it a look or just look at the linked pcgamer article below for further details.
Frictional Games seem to have announced Soma 2 through a "Hotel Samsara" website - Soooo…… you ever hear of Amnesia the dark descent? You did? Good, then you know who Frictional Games are since their the devs behind that as well as their previous Penumbra series and of course, SOMA which I've heard described as Amnesia but sci-fi.
Anyways a recent update to SOMA was noted in the patch to have fixed some "faulty spam filters" and sure enough near the start of the game your protagonists pc has a spam email for a hotel. Following the link leads to a real website acting as a sign up page for a hotel samsara which according to the RPS article, is described as being spooky. While folks are busy speculating what this all entails for SOMAS sequel, you can maybe check out the RPS article or even the hotel samsara site yourself if you're interested.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/amnesia-creators-frictional-are-teasing-what-could-be-soma-2-through-a-sinister-luxury-hotel-websiteAnimated Death Stranding movie announced with working title "Death Stranding Mosquito" - Kojima loves hollywood, this is isnt really a secret or anything if your invested in his games or just happen to pay enough attention to news involving him.
Western hollywood movies are a major inspiration for his work in the metal gear series, he's fanboying over actors, hes ecstatic to work with Guillermo Del Toro, Mads Milkkelsen and Norman Reemus for Death Stranding. Hes a pretty big movie fan is what i'm saying and I'm fairly sure I heard or read somewhere that he wanted his own studio Kojima Productions to not only develop videos games but also branch out into films as well. So with the announcement of an animated movie set in the Death Stranding ip, you would think thats them doing just that, except its being handled by the A24 folks.
The film is being directed by a Hiroshi Miyamoto from ABC Animation and its being written by an Aaron Guzikowski whom this Game Informer article credits as being behind works such as Raised by Wolves, Prisoners and The Red Road.
I've had Death Stranding on my list of games that I wanted to play but havent gotten around to since I heard it described as a walking simulator/ horror game? I hear it was well received along with the sequel, I should really get around to buying and playing it, in the meantime feel free to look through the game informer article and check out the trailer they included too.
https://gameinformer.com/2025/09/23/death-stranding-animated-film-announced
Payday 2 now has a Subscription Service….. why tho?? - So…. I saw this when I opened up steam and read through the announcement before thinking to myself…. goddamn not again. Its lootboxes all over again.
![media-2]This announcement reeks of desperate… like payday 3 bombed pretty badly and Overkill and starbreeze are having some issues but this wasnt gonna help. The last time they had serious financial issues, they had to reopen devlopment on payday 2 and create dlc to sell to folks, thats how we got the dlc collections that take place near the white house finale that took heisters to Mexico, San Francisco and Texas.
Now though it doesnt seem like they're doing that, instead its just pay a sub to access dlcs please. You can still buy the dlcs seperate but some folks pointed out that the infamy collection which had all the dlc up to the white house heist along with the game itself apparently had a sudden price increase which overkill lowered again claiming it was a mistake… yeah…. sure….
And the real kicker? This might've gone a bit better if they did two things. First off, they could've made the base game of payday 2 free, just straight up free to bring in new players who havent already bought the game and most of the dlcs already. The second is they could've announced new dlc for payday 2 will be developed. This might seem embarrassing and they'd get lampooned for basically doing the same thing they did before, but atleast the subscription option would actually have some use instead of just being seen as a greedy crash grab.
Isnt there already a large amount of dlc for payday 2 that would be expensive to acquire fully… yes but the the infamy collection, which includes most of the dlc up to white house, often goes on sale along with the post white house dlc. So why would you pay a subscription to have temporary access to some dlcs for a 12 year old game????
NEWS ROUNDUP OVER!!!
So now our second game we're are revisiting is none other than… Nikke Goddesses of Victory, yeah that gacha game with the android women.
So you might wonder why am I revisiting this? Well as it turns out, when I posted my part 2 on Tumblr, someone actually commented and gave a pretty good explanation over some of the questions I brought up regarding it. Plus I felt that maybe I didnt give it a fair shake so I decided to give it another look to see if my thoughts change this time.
So gonna give a big thanks to kumokimiko and hopefully if you're reading this you don't mind me directly quoting you here:
"in-universe, Nikkes look the way that they do because the procedure generates a body profile based on the human's exceptionally strong sense of self or ideals. at time of creation, they become an idealized version of themselves. however, if they lacked such a personality or conviction, they become a mass-produced model.
the Nikke manufacturing companies capitalize on this phenomenon, by ensuring the strong and independent designs are marketable and aspirational. Mass-produced models are fodder that nobody need think twice about (well, until it's YOUR daughter who got turned into a mass-produced, but you're more likely to just disown them to avoid the heartbreak), but the sexy top-end models, they're the "Goddesses of Victory", fighting Raptures for mankind, who every girl wants to be like someday.
why only women? in-universe, not much explanation beyond "we tried using dudes, it didn't work". out-of-universe, however, it plays into the borderline feminist critique the writers are making of women as second-class citizens in South Korea. Nikkes have no agency and have their free will subjugated by nanomachines in the brain, may be subject to horrible experimentation or memory wipes with minimal justification, and are widely distrusted by the general populace on account of being susceptible to corruption and turning on humans at any time. in Nikke, the protagonist must essentially learn how to become the Ultimate Feminist, using his own status as a 'Human Commander of growing renown' to advocate for Nikke rights and support their mental health and autonomy"
Sooo…. to my understanding:
The nikkes look like attractive women because the process is based on what that person believes is their most ideal form, provided they have the willpower and drive, otherwise they become a basic mass production grunt. The ones who do are essentially used for marketing and pr purposes to attract more candidates for nikke creation. Though in that sense it doesnt quite answer as to why some nikkes look like minors. Maybe they litterly used kids in some cases?
While it makes little sense ingame, the fact that all the nikkes are women does serve a narrative point since this game uses the framework of a post-apocalypse with android women soldiers to touch on the subject of rampant misogyny and treatment of women in places such as South Korea. In my past playthrough and this one, the games story did explain that nikkes are treated somewhat expendable and unfairly. One example is how in the story my commander is told they'll get punished severely for breaking some rules yet in the court trial, they get suspended for two days while 2 nikkes in their command are ordered to have their memories erased, essentially being given a soft death penalty despite following orders.
This is definitive proof that someone has actually read some of my work on this series.
No really, this is a problem. See while I would've liked to see some traction and attention on this series, I kind of gotten used to being cursed with obscurity so I just wrote my thoughts and feelings on games and news without worrying about comments because who the hell is gonna read it lmao….
Well someone did, they actually read that part 2 I did and they wrote a comment that helpfully answered my questions regarding the game and…. i'm not sure I feel comfortable with this. I know I get the rare like and even rarer repost but I never really had a comment like this, if ever. Right now it makes me wonder if I should be careful from now on, this comment might have been nice and informative but how do I know the next one won't just straight up be my home address. How do I know I'm not being scrutinised on every word even as I type this. It's just….l i've been observed….
I've been observed.
I've been observed.
I'VE BEEN OBSERRRRRRVVVVVEEEEDDDDD!!!!!!!#!@#@!#£
(Insert technical difficulties)
"Ah you must be the new commander"
"hello…."
"Yes the doctors told me you suffered severe brain trauma from that helicopter crash. Its amazing you managed to survive that as well as all the raptures in that area. Anyways commander I have some bad news, it seems that crash has had some serious side effects as all of your misogyny has been knocked out of you, effectively making you woke"
"women….deserve better.."
"Normally we'd execute you infront of firing squad who would shout slurs at you till you die by a self-inflicted injury but the central government has decided to go with a rather unorthodox strategy. Apparently that crash has also made you a gifted commander as according to the performance reports, it seems the nikkes you commanded actually like you and that made them more effective soldiers."
"women so beautiful… give equal pay"
"Commander this pains me to say this but I need you to….. respect women. You need to respect women as hard as you can in the hopes that maybe they can kill all the alien robots. That means you cannot assault, call them slurs, grope or stare at their breasts and asses. You have to actually listen to them talk and hear their problems as well as give them gifts without any expectations for sexual gratification in return. And you positively can't smell them especially on anywhere they sit. We need you to do this, it may very well be the only way to protect our future dystopic society where BANGCAPITALISMBANGSTILLBANGEXISTS!!!"
"women deserve autonomy….. pretty women"
"Look we've tried hitting them, sexually harrassing them, stalking them, we've tried everything but for some reason nothing worked as well as what you did. Now get the fuck out there you liberal cuck. I need to detox by binging andrew tate videos and then go on fortnite to shout slurs at childrenCOUGH"
"blood…"
"Yes sorry for that, I was aura-farmmaxxing last night. Also I ate some shrimp that may have been contaminated with radiation, I have seconds left to live."
(We now return you to your regulary scheduled blog post)
ok…. ok… i'm calm now… had a small meltdown but i'm cool now….
You know something? The devs for nikke and glitch productions should do a collab involving murder drones. I mean this game has robot women, murder drones has some robot women and men. That could honestly work because nikke does do some collabs, they did one for nier and evangelion, hell atm they're doing one with resident evil. They could definatly do one with murder drones, it'd be pretty neat.
Anways uh….. right last time I talked about nikke I mentioned that playing on a phone didnt feel ideal due to screen space and that'd I'd had to rely on the auto functions for aiming. Since then i've gotten a tablet, so the game should play better on it right? Well yes…. and no. Yes the large screen space is better to aim with, but for some reason its locked in portrait mode rather than landscape. Not to mention aiming via dragging my finger feels too sluggish. I ended up failing a stage while doing manual aiming and when I tried again while letting the nikkes aim themselves, they managed to beat the stage no problem. So I mostly just let them handle the shooting while I sit back and activate burst skills, only occasionally taking manual aim during boss fights to attack vital points to interrupt an attack.
![media-3]I have also mentioned the fact that you could bond with your nikkes to increase their affection before but didnt really touch on it much unlike in this session. So not only do you increase a nikkes stats by leveling their affection, you also unlock episodes for that nikkes unique character story. Between these episodes along with the text message conversations you can have with a random nikke and even events in the outpost you could view for a limited time each week, it does help flesh out a lot of these characters personalities. Now granted i'm a gacha casual. I don't know if nikke is the one that did a system like this in such a way. I know I saw similar bonding mechanics in granblue and reverse 1999 but i'm not sure if they allow the same opportunities for thier characters to show their personality off unlike here.
I did manage to get a better idea on how to build a squad rather than just go with an auto-created one. I have either 1 level 1 and 2 level 2's or 2 level 1's and 1 level 2 and usually have two level 3's. The single ones tend to have skills that have a 20 second cooldown while the pairs tend to have longer cooldowns since I can choose the alternate one for that level, this way I can activate more full bursts to get complete buffs. Usually the squad contains a healer/shield nikke, buff nikke and a couple of damage nikkes.
You know looking back on the points from that comment, theres definitely an avenue for the nikke devs to do a story that touches on transgenderism given the whole "nikkes that arent mass repro are based on the subjects own personal idealised form" angle. You could definitely do a story where either a male subject did manage to be a successful transfer but they end up discovering something about themselves and end up transitioning or just one of the nikkes could have their pre-nikke history reveal that they were originally a man. I dunno I feel as if that is something they could actually do in this game…. though theres a potential chance they do it poorly or the whole nikke community goes in full meltdown over it but it is an idea.
To be honest I do feel my opinions on this has improved a bit given the context provided by that comment. Playing the game again and putting a bit more attention on some of the visual novel scenes does make me a appreciate how the game portrays the characters it has you playing gacha for, atleast on the conversations and personality side and not the pinup model one, though if this game was trying to go for story about feminism, it would kinda hurt the angle they were going if they went all "fan-servicey" over it and from what I played so far, they do manage to atleast avoid going too far, for the most part. I mean the resident evil event story did have a small scene of the commander walking on someone changing clothes and immediately backed out and apologise without showing an image of said character mid-changing, I feel like another game would have actually showed said scene in detail for a quick bit of pandering and I do appreciate they didnt do that.
Still kinda sucks that they dont look like actual robots, that would've been pretty cool and looking through all the nikkes you could get, most of are usually attractive women or just straight up rugrats, but then I found them….. Kilo.
![media-4]A nikke who pilots a mech suit, uses a light machine gun to spread dakka and has some good shielding skills and a damaging burst skill. Unfortunately shes was only available during the 1.5 anniversary event and few other events and doesnt seem like you coud get her via the regular gacha. You just have to wait for her to be available in a special gacha which….. sucks.
So yeah, I gonna keep this on the tablet and maybe look at on the odd occasion but I do feel like its a lot better than I initially thought in my intial playthrough of this game.
Now, was there anything I wanted to cover about this game….
Oh right…
Syeun, the ceo for Missilis Industry, is a cunt. I dont think thats controversial to say and I don't care if she has a tragic backstory, her introduction at the outpost and her attempt to force you to work for her, even threatening to frame you if you try to extract early, makes her a massive asshole in my eyes. If shes your favourite then fine, more power to you, she just ain't mine.
So that'll be it for this edition of Midnight Gaming. Next time will be covering something I havent covered beforehand. Until then i'll see you then, feel free to leave comments and game suggestion
#midnightgaming #gaming #video-games #nikke #nikke-goddess-of-victory #system-shock-2 #nightdive-studios