How Sweet It Is!

It's been a while since I've posted, so I might as well take care of that while waiting for my homemade caramel to finish cooking. It's really not hard, y'know! You just drop a can of sweetened condensed milk into a pot of water, set it to boil, then turn down the heat to low and let it simmer for around three hours. Make sure there's always water over the top of the can, and...

Okay, okay, I'm stalling. I've got a larger hard drive in that Xbox now, and have been cramming every emulator I can find into it. One harsh truth has revealed itself in the process, though... no matter what game console or set top box you use, there's always going to be a flaw that keeps it just shy of perfection. For the Android TV I was using earlier, it was limited storage and the fact that nearly every emulator costs money. The Xbox comes closer to hitting that entertainment sweet spot than most, but without an HDMI port, the graphics in emulators suffer slightly. There may be options to sharpen up the picture in MAMEdOX and Final Burn Legends, but nothing I've tried gets rid of the blur entirely. I'll keep working at it.

Ow ow ow my hands ow ow ow
(image from YouTube)

Speaking of the 'box, I've been sampling a few of its games. You remember all those complaints about the awkward control in GunValkyrie? Yep, they were right on the money. My hands still ache from squeezing triggers and pushing in thumbsticks for the past hour. I get the impression that Sega was trying to offer the same nimble movement that Capcom had in Product No. 03, but couldn't make it fit in the framework of what is essentially a mech game. Twitchy camera control and unreliable targeting add to the frustration... there were far too many times where Kelly either wouldn't lock onto visible targets, or couldn't find them at all. I might come back to the game later, but I'm sure I could do better.

On the plus side, I tried the unreleased Xbox version of The Red Star, and enjoyed the game a lot more than I had when I first tried it on the Playstation 2. I'm guessing that I gave up on the game after getting soundly thrashed by the first stage. However, once you've muscled your way through the prologue and gotten the hang of the play mechanics, The Red Star reveals itself as a fairly diverting blend of beat 'em ups and bullet hell shooters. The challenge comes from juggling the two styles of gameplay, striking from a safe distance with your guns, then switching to melee combat to disarm shielded enemies. It's not the first time someone's tried to mix gunplay with CQC, but it works better here than it had in Capcom's quickly forgotten Cannon Spike.

Ooh, ooh! Caramel's almost done! I'll catch you all later. Apologies for the long wait between blog posts.