it’s like an overcorrection against the “goofiness” or “garishness” of the past
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tie-in with the new edition launch box being Hive Fleet Leviathan, James Workshop’s obsession with army factions with slightly different rules having different colour schemes thinking “it will make ‘em buy the same box of termagants to paint in different colours”
blue & pink forever
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Goblin Green terrain or don’t even bother
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housemate is playing a naruto ps2 game made by cavia and it looks like a strong contender for this thread. i will report back when i know more.
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Practically an open pass to this thread, yeah.
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also finally playing maken shao (ps2) today and yeah this shit rules. it has a clear time of 5 hours! and a bunch of not-very-good characters that u can press 
with – i didn’t realise there was more than one!
the animation is not what i would describe as stellar but i really like how this game looks. it makes me hungry to play digital devil sagas 1 and 2, which i also have but ain’t touched yet.
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also played operation winback 1 and 2. the first one is really interesting, but not like, good exactly. the second is, as previously established, absolutely fantastic and i wouldn’t tarnish its name by describing it as trash, but it is definitely in the same family.
i’m too tired rn to give a proper review of anything 
i’ll be back with more thoughts when i’ve had a studious play.
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beat (not the same as finished) maken shao yesterday and it’s pretty weird. it doesn’t reach the highs of other trash action gems, but like… it’s real compelling.
it’s full of the usual awkwardnesses of this era:
- heaps of poor / unfriendly UX decisions; why can’t you restart a level from the beginning if u die? why can’t you quit to the world map from the pause screen?? why do only some levels have save points at the beginning???
- inadvisable control scheme; i love tank controls but this game would be better without them… probably. i actually have a really hard time deciding how i feel about it in this case.
- a plot which like… sure is there i guess. it’s not exactly delivered very well. apparently the PAL release runs slower than the JP, which causes heaps of audio-visual desynchronisation issues, but even if it were running slightly faster, the plot isn’t interesting. you just gotta save the world from nebulous evil guy and also geopolitics is like hanging around somewhere in the background.
- you can only skip some of the cutscenes (pre-rendered ones) so if u die in the wrong place then u gotta watch em all over again. and all the UI is plagued by unnecessarily long fade-in fade-out animations which makes navigating the game feel ambiently time-wastey.
but these are all par for the course imo, and what it lacks in contemporary luxuries it makes up for in loads of other ways:
- there are heaps of characters to unlock as you play, and they’re all meaningfully different from each other, and a lot of them are very missable (i made it to the end of the game with only 3 available characters, while my housemate is still playing and has like 6 or 7). i know that praise for having lots of stuff isn’t exactly nuanced criticism, but in this case it makes the game feel dense and rich and full of possibilities and secrets. it’s cool!
- there’s a surprising amount of level design. each stage is unique without falling into gimmick territory (much), and i can feel the hand of a designer in every room. there’s an experience being crafted in each space, and while it’s never mind-blowing, it’s always clear and aware of the limitations of the game’s verbs.
- the game looks awesome imo. admittedly there’s a great deal of variation in quality (i get the distinct feeling that separate teams worked on different parts of the game without talking to each other), but when the game is lookin sick it’s looking sick:
i tried to find literally any footage of the two levels i was thinking of and couldn't (there isn't even a complete longplay on yt what the hell man) so here is the one fantastically inscrutable picture i took of the final level lmao
i’m glad i finally got around to playing this one, even tho (or maybe especially because) i’m much more mixed on how i feel about it.
i saw someone on backloggd say that it’s nowhere near as good as the dreamcast version, which is a deeply fascinating opinion to me, so i’ve acquired a copy of maken X and i’ll give that a go soon.
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Wanted Dead is $20 on Steam for the Winter Sale. Should I bite?
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Fuck yeah you should
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!!! extremely yes
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Wait until the sale ends so the devs get more money.
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the truth
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i know this thread is mainly about 3d games, but earlier today i decided to turn on my pc engine and just play whatever i left in the cd drive last time i turned it on without looking.
this turned out to be crest of wolf. this game’s a perfect equivalent to crappy late 80s/early 90s dtv action. like, it’s definitely inferior in a lot of ways to streets of rage or final fight, but you get to be a guy beating up a bunch of martial arts movie stereotypes in the kowloon walled city, all depicted with some dirty, grimy pixels and accompanied by a really great cd soundtrack.
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i don’t think there’s any reason to not include 2d games. it’s just what i focus on cos that’s my proclivity, but i 100% endorse adding a buncha 2d stuff if u feel it’s appropriate. beat em ups are certainly well suited to be ideal trash action candidates; a genre that coalesced fairly quickly and became the kind of thing for companies to just kinda crap out (at least, that’s my perception). plenty of room for nuance there imo.
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I know fpses are absolutely not what this thread is about but I’ve been playing that new Robocop game and it has such intense PS2 vibes that I had to mention it somewhere
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we eatin good tonight.
i have recently put myself in charge of been put in charge of a large collection of games, including a huge stockpile of @dylan’s old games. i have also finally gotten my act together and installed freemcboot on one of my memory cards (after a mildly disastrous attempt to purchase a preinstalled card). this means i have access to every ps2 game under the sun as well as a large number of ps360 hard copies. so, naturally, i’ve been going through my backlog of trash action.
in the order i played them…
swords of destiny:
it’s got a great dodge cos the camera gets all off-kilter but that is unfortunately the only cool thing about this game lmao. i’ll be the first to defend hut-hut-hyah gameplay but the encounter design is so trite and none of the enemies even look cool! also the whole world is grey and square.
dmc2:
idk man something about the action in dmc games prevents me from going sicko mode w them. it all just kinda feels like nothing and i think the fixed-camera is actually a poor fit; it’s constantly flailing around and elimination all sense of motion and weight. it’s such a shame cos i love fixed camera angles!
anyway i wish i liked this game but i just can’t chill w it. sorry everyone.
spartan total warrior:
lmao what a weird mixed bag.
on the one hand: the action is cool! it’s like a hefty kinda-sorta dynasty warriors type thing. it does a good job of keeping you involved and concentrating while also being fairly mindless in the moment-to-moment. but after the first level there are so many little issues that combine to sour the whole experience:
whenever the game requires you to do any platforming, for some reason the gaps between platforms are always at the absolute limit of what your (extremely limp) jump can accommodate. failing to clear a gap often just kills you outright!
the checkpointing system is needlessly austere: your health is saved at each checkpoint (already bad) and healing items do not replenish if you die, which means it’s really easy to soft-lock yourself and be forced to restart.
there are so many escort missions which are just designed to waste your time. i gave up on a mission where i had to escort archimedes through athens. having already used up all the healing items in the city (because the level had already gone on for 25 minutes!) i had to do this section with about 10% of my health, and archimedes is not only slow and stupid, but will stop moving if you go too far from him and cry out “spartan! please! come back! i need your protection!” before being insta-killed by assassins.
anyway it’s nothing new. it’s just a highly concentrated mixture of ps2-era design fumbles. my recommendation: play the first level then turn it off.
samurai western:
this shit fucking rules i love wearin my 50 gallon hat that gives me +10 MP i can’t believe this game hasn’t come up before. i wish there was even an ounce of level/encounter design tho cos otherwise it’s just kinda wandering around dusty towns gettin shot at by yahoos. it’s not perfect but i can hang out w it. gonna play way of the samurai soon.
demon chaos:
lol. lmao. pretty good/stupid. i appreciate that i don’t need to play any more than the first level to understand exactly what this game is about, but i don’t think anyone needs to play even that much. just watch a vid and be like ah yeah ok i see.
sword of etheria aka OZ (“over zenith” (lmao)) aka chains of power:
“sort of a terrier” is what all the old folks at the dog park say when asked what breed they have ha ha haa. this game is no good. it makes you hold down the right bumper at all times in order to lock on and also to perform the necessary “chain attacks” (the only interesting thing in the whole game) wherein you juggle enemies between party members to build a meter that lets you perform super moves. on paper it’s cool. in execution it’s a little imprecise and my hand hurts.
so not much that really blew my mind, but it’s good to be back in the saddle / dumpster.
more games soon.
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post can’t be empty
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i actually got to play this kinda-sorta recently and in combination with the weird detective vineer i think that this is actually maybe a contender! i’m gonna wait until it’s on mega idiot sale at some point and play it some more cos even if it’s not trash action exactly (i mean, who’s the taxonomy arbiter here, me? who cares) it seems like something i will appreciate.
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also i played space marine 2: it’s ok.
it’s slightly too hard and much too self-serious and at no point does anyone point at the player character and shout the name of the game, so like what is even the point (wow! triple “point”).
they added a parry/counter to your moveset, which on paper i approve of (i played space marine 1 again immediately after beating 2 and was like oh yeah a counter would be nice hey) but in execution i think it’s spoiled somewhat by the encounter design; too often the game skews its encounters towards a cooperative experience (which, again, i am theoretically in favour of, but i played solo! and i suspect most players did!) which means that it’s hard to focus on a fromsoft style 1v1 encounter when the little popcorn enemies keep biting your toes, and it’s hard to pay attention to the swarm of little enemies when the big tyranid warrior as about to cut your shit up!
when it’s one or the other, it works really well and i like it a lot, and i feel like this is something that the team learned as they made the game too; the final level is very good. it looks way weirder than the previous ones, and the final boss is a really great 1v1 which uses your whole moveset in a way that the previous fights didn’t do nearly as well.
it makes me hope that they just crack out another few campaigns and build on their knowledge to make better stuff with the same tools. unfortunately their current roadmap only mentions online stuff, but the end of the game is clearly teeing up the next chapter, so who knows.
all-in-all i’m glad i played it, and it was nice to play something so concentrated like this, but i think that saber may have finally pulled space marine out of the dumpster and into the limelight.
ah well. o7
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