Between the whole video games being hard thing and the nice weather I got a little bit burned out on serious gaming.  Lately I’ve been screwing around with playing games for fun (sorry sik) during downtime.  On top of the stack has been the deeply flawed budget-label near mindless zombie hack and slash Simple2000 Series Vol.101 THE Oneechanpon ~THE Oneechanbara 2 Special Edition~.  The game is a bit hard to take seriously–  the main character runs around in a bikini and a cowboy hat, the secondaries include a schoolgirl, a leather-clad biker chick with a shotgun, and some cameo characters from D3 Publisher and Tamsoft’s other games including a reimagining of Sofia from Battle Arena Toshinden named Eva.  Oh yeah, also the ridiculous level of violence wherein you slash your way through hundreds of zombies at a time, pausing only to sling the blood off your sword or throw knives/energy waves/shotgun blasts in the direction of more distant threats.

It’s easy to see why the game was a budget release.  The game has slowdown in densely zombie-populated rooms that screws with the timing-based combo system.  The experience system is basically broken once you’ve fully upgraded the main character’s combo stat, which is okay because the game is actually way more fun once everyone’s stats are maxed out.  There are exactly 6 levels (plus True Last Boss), of which the later ones take around 30 minutes to push through when starting out, but are actually really fun to speedrun/time attack (the game keeps track of time taken to clear each level) once you’ve levelled up your characters.  Since the game has a map to tell you where your next objective in a level is, exploration is good for… well, finding more stuff to dismember/decapitate/rip the heart out of, etc.  Actually, there are hidden areas in each level that require a combination requiring a certain combo stat (and the skill to perform it) to enter.  The reward for clearing all of these is an extra costume for the main character; the journey is far more satisfying than the destination.

Oh yeah, I’ve also been testing the latest Xeno Fighters EX release.  It plays really well so far, I can’t wait for more levels and ships to be added.  In the meantime I’ve been abusing the custom soundtrack feature to make stupid videos to put on Youtube.  Too bad I can only capture the window at the default 1x size, playing in a 240×320 window in the middle of a 1200×1600 display is almost the definition of eyestrain, and SnagIt hates it when I maximize it like I normally would to play.