Alastor

It's hard to see in cutscenes at night but it's actually not so bad overall, maybe I've got use to the orange haze? Game still slaps.

I don't know if it's my emulation or what but so far the lighting in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is pretty bad so far, if its not the sun glaring a bit too brightly it's super dark instead, going to look into this.

Shinobi is good but I wish it had the level structure of Ninja Gaiden, which I've only played the demo off, but I am pretty sure I'll prefer to Shinobi overall. They can keep everything, including the really fun combat I just got a bit tired eventually of revisiting the Metroidvania map segments to get more stuff and even if you ignore that stuff the levels are pretty long with quite a bit of dead space that doesn't really show the level design in the best light IMO.

It might be a me thing though, @BeanyFGC has also beat both and both prefers Shinobi a lot more and also thinks the semi-metroidvania elements are what make it good in the first place. It didn't help that I was playing the PS2 Shinobi around the same time and it was what I wanted from this, shorter levels, more difficulty, more focused approach…also it's a damn good game with the best scarf in any game ever.

I thought Azure Striker Gunvolt 1 was 'okay' to play, everything else I liked, I like the character and boss design and all that, all very much me type of things I played a bit of Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 and it does seem better so far, and I think Copen is more fun than Gunvolt to play, less tagging and holding a button down to burn people down and more just flying into them and hitting them with your sub weapons. (He does kinda' tag people though)

Good news if like me you bought the entire enhanced trilogy set and Copen's two standalone games on a whim

With the announcement of an expansion for Granblue Fantasy: Relink I want to say that even if you didn't play the gacha or the fighting game, and especially if you like Monster Hunter then you'll probably enjoy Relink. It doesn't really become Monster Hunter til' the endgame but it's still a fun action RPG with a dozen characters before that, post game has a lot of stuff to keep you busy too, mainly a MH style gearing loop where you farm fights except it's a lot more chill than triple carting to Rathalos every time.