Ar'lyxkq'wr - Vwn'yv´rl

Experimental blackened death metal from members of Mouth of Cedar, Ar'lyxkq'wr’s newest E.P. is a jarring, discordant glimpse into the depths of madness. Those who can embrace the sonic chaos that flows forth from Vwn'yv´rl will appreciate what an impressive album it is. Recommended.

Ghost of Lietus - Dream of the Viridian King

The debut release from this progressive atmospheric black metal band, Dream of the Viridian King incorporates elements of post-rock, punk, and doom metal for a unique and eclectic sound. I suspect many black metal fans won’t appreciate Ghost of Lietus’ unorthodox style, but whatever. If you’re looking for some innovative black metal, check this out.

Of the Adversary - Demo

Two tracks of crusty, blackened doom metal, I’m enjoying this little demo from Of the Adversary. I hope there’s a full length album on the horizon soon.

Organ Harvest - Demo 2024

A short and sick debut from this Filipino deathgrind duo. This is a rehearsal demo, so the production is a bit rough, especially where the vocals are concerned, but it’s still solid stuff.

Tetsuo - No Longer Human

Myspace screamo in 2024? I was 100% expecting to hate this, but it’s actually pretty good. There’s a pronounced powerviolence influence to Tetsuo’s sound, which is probably why I’m liking No Longer Human so much.

Рыцарь Горя - Рыцарь Горя

Black metal with some post-metal undertones, Рыцарь Горя does a good job of balancing ferocity and melody. I’m not particularly a fan of this style, but Рыцарь Горя is a great example of when it’s done right.

I’ll be upfront, the main reason I chose to play Kowai Shashin was because of the rumors of it being “haunted”. Now obviously that’s not true, the rumors are false, but a game with a history like this will always intrigue me, and push me to play them. There’s also a sort of novelty with older horror games, there’s a specific style that modern horror games can’t properly emulate. And I’m so glad there already is a fan translation of Kowai Shashin, so that it not only allows me to understand how to play the game, but to experience the story as well.

Its tough to really judge this game’s gameplay. Everything surrounding the gameplay is really nice, but the gameplay is just a long chain of QTEs, and nothing else. As you get to the later chapters as well, they become ridiculously fast, and you have little time to figure out which button you need to press to react. This gets noticeably tough at the final boss, where some of the QTEs appear for may just a second. However while the gameplay is lackluster, the general vibes of the game are immaculate. Having to scan through cursed photographs, and find anomalies in order to exorcise them is such a unique vibe. It helps that while some of the photo anomalies are obvious, there’s also some rather freaky things that are seen throughout the game. The droning ambience, and the sound design is easily one of the best aspects of the game. In general, this game has a really strong atmosphere, that I think is able to help supplement the overall game.

The story wasn’t entirely clear to me, though I could see some of it having been from the fan translation, I’m unsure. However the concepts there were really interesting. Sometimes the gameplay is just meant to space out the parts of the story, however as the story goes on, the ghosts you have to exorcise do feel like they tie into the story of the main character. The final chapter is where the story is most spelled out to you, and I do think it’s really interesting. There’s this whole idea of “devouring souls” as a way of exorcising them which is a really interesting way of doing things. I’ve maybe only ever seen one other thing that has done something like that before.

Ultimately this game is a rather short experience, being only about 2 Hours in length, and because of that it never overstays its welcome. It’s a rather unique experience thanks to the atmosphere and having to scan haunted photos, though the QTEs do become really frustrating. I think it’s worthwhile to try and endure all of the QTEs if you can because of how unique this game is. Though if you can’t handle them, there’s a modified versions of the game that helps make the QTEs more tolerable if you need. While this game is definitely far from perfect, I’m kind of enamored by it because of how intriguing it is to me.

Boring media: what if my clone body is wrong because its """deformed""""?

Baroque (1998): what if my clone body is wrong because its a single able-body and i was originally a conjoined twin

anyways how yall doin