It's Alive! ALIIIIIVE!

They're heeeere...

Well, this was some good news in a week starved for it. Capcom's releasing a fighting game collection for the Switch, Xbox One, and Playstation 4, with no less than five Darkstalkers games in it! While it's true that three of those games are just Vampire Savior with a handful of characters removed to lessen the burden on the CPS2 hardware, I'll be too busy playing the second game in the Darkstalkers series, NightWarriors, to notice. 

Other games in the Capcom Fighting Collection include Pocket Fighter, Red Earth, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (not technically a fighting game, but whatever), and Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition, which had previously popped up in an anniversary collection for the Xbox and Playstation 2.

So what have I been doing in the week since I last posted? Trying to get my Timex-Sinclair 2068 to play games, which has been a fool's errand. I've done everything but actually use a cassette recorder with it, and that's a bridge I'd rather not cross. Look, there's retro, and then there's just dated.

When not frustrating myself with that, I've been playing Lords of the Fallen, a somewhat lackluster Dark Souls clone developed in the West, starring what appears to be a bald, constipated Tom Selleck. Frankly, the market's been so glutted with hard-em-ups (mostly by From Software, the folks who "blessed" us with this genre in the first place) that it's hard to justify this one, with its obtuse play mechanics and sluggish swordplay. Yeah, it's repeatedly shown up on Xbox Marketplace for three dollars with all the DLC included, but unless you devour these games with all the rabid enthusiasm of the Cookie Monster, there's no point in buying Lords of the Fallen. Use that money on some horse armor or a Dead or Alive bikini instead.

I also picked up Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered when that was on sale, and that was more to taste. It starts out tough and only gets worse from there (the accursed "Do Take Care of It" event will give you nightmares...), but if you want to just drive without competition or time limits, you have that option. There's a track based on the back roads of Oregon, complete with driving rain and skinny pine trees stretching up to the heavens, and it's a pure delight to soak in the photorealistic scenery, watch as the day turns to night and back, and drive through tunnels, where the sound of rain is replaced with the roar of your engine bouncing off the walls. Now that's driving excitement, without the annoyance!