At the most recent meetup Busted had a new VR game called Pistol Whip which wasn’t as good as Superhot but is definitely a John Wick Nightclub Shootout Scene Simulator, it has very strong autoaim
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oh yeah i’ve been doing that quick-scope headshot thing w the sniper and it is v good. but i also just unlocked dual-wielding my hot pink SMGs and it owns so hard i don’t wanna use anything else
the dumb dank shit is to take your guns, mod them with weapon and physical/optical damage (they stack because the game is dumb) and then also as much crit stuff as possible and then dump a bunch of points into luck and run around dual-wielding bullet hoses that crit for a bunch of damage on weakspots
this is my favorite kind of UI design
welcome back to the trash train let’s go:
WARFRAME - perhaps the zenith of trash action.
(it’s on everything, i played on pc)
i have a suspicion that mmos are where many trash action design sensibilities are still thriving in a contemporary setting. something about the framework (ha) of an mmo, especially one that is still technically in development, allows for a certain level of looseness and pragmatism that might have been weeded out in favour of safer, more boring design decisions, were it an offline, pure action game.
Things About Warframe That Suck:
- really dreadful onboarding; it’s basically impossible to get into without helpers (thanks, veronica) and it continues to do a bad job of directing you for the rest of the mid and late game (for whatever value those terms have in an mmo context).
- horrendous boss fights; which you often have to do like thirty times to get the drops you need! all the bosses have some kind of gimmick that is either poorly integrated or ineffectively choreographed that makes first runs (and sometimes subsequent runs as well) a nightmare. all the bosses are different and they all suck. it’s wild.
- the UI is so bad. it’s amazing how bad it is. everything is too small and looks like a placeholder asset. your health and mana [or equivalent] is a tiny little element shunted off into a corner, all the enemy health bars are completely inscruitable, and the damage numbers that fill up the screen are simultaneously useless, boring, and in the way. this to me is warframe’s most egregious crime, especially for a trash action game. big, clear, and horribly over-designed UI should be king. instead we get UI which is anaemic, embarrassed, and thoroughly inaccessible.
- the game looks disgusting. everything is shiny and slimy and lumpy and floppy and horny and it is dreadful to look at for any length of time.
Things About Warframe That Rule:
- the game looks disgusting. everything is shiny and slimy and lumpy and floppy and horny and it is dreadful to look at for any length of time. and basically nothing else looks like it.
i complained about the UI not being designed enough, but i can make no such complaint about everything else. and this gives me hope that perhaps one day the UI will receive the treatment it deserves and become like the rest of the game: uniquely gross and uncomfortable. - the action is actually pretty good. once u cut through the tangle of systems like an old-timey colonial explorer hacking his way through a jungle with a machete, the action is kinda sweet. the guns sound good and feel good, it’s cool to slide and jump and dive through the environments, and enemies burst into satisfyingly chunky chunks upon death. it’s a good solid core for an otherwise loamy game.
- this may sound like damnation by faint praise but: there is always something else to do and something new on the horizon; now there’s space mech shooting that kinda sucks. now there’s space battleship (battletrain?) piloting that kinda sucks. now there’s hoverboarding that kinda sucks. rival enemies, stealth missions, pvp, clans, new and radically different frames (playable characters) all the time and on and on and on. it really is a fantastic game for diving deep into the garbage pile of unfinished, unpolished, broken and poorly implemented systems, mechanics, and ç̵̍͒o̸̧͖̜͐͝n̴͎̓̇t̸̛̫̘̻̣͛͑̌ę̵̝͐n̴̮̮̖̼̎t̷̤̰̫́͋͛̀.
anyway the ultimate and unfortunate truth abt this game is that it is an mmo that preys on people with addictive tendencies and offers nothing very meaningful for a great deal of investment. but it’s fun for a while (especially with friends), it’s very easy to return to after a hiatus, and you don’t need to spend any money to appreciate it. idk whether to recommend it but i also don’t know if that’s the point of this thread anyway, so. 
I’ll probably post again soon, i have another two games lined up already and plenty of time to write so stay tuned.
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Damn this is such an amazing adjective to describe a videogame
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GG is unironically good once you wrap your head around quick turning and realize that you are actually a very agile rigor mortis-stricken zombie assassin
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GG is indeed excellent. i love that it can be completed in a blistering TWO HOURS and it remains fun like 90% of the time.
GG:overdose on the other hand, well even if it ran at more than 10 frames per second (not hyperbole) it’s still got a case of the identity crises on top of not-enough-time-and-way-overscoped syndrome. it’s not even charming in its inadequacy. it’s just kinda sad.
also dylan showed me this:
looks p bad tbh. same stylistic pitfalls as overdose without any of the original cool lock-on shooting to make up for it. oh well. play GG.
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oh and if anyone actually does decide to play GG after reading this: before you start, go into the “EXTRAS” menu and turn “RAPID” on. it’s the full-auto fire mode. the game is not unplayable with it off (i beat the game without it), it’s just less kind on the hands and it doesn’t add anything to the experience.
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Yesssss
just realised that i haven’t written anything about baroque (wii/ps2) in here despite having played quite a bit of it. that game is defs trash action and kinda rules. i should see abt getting hold of a translation patch for the psx/saturn one too.
the original baroque, and robotica (aka: robotica cybernation revolt, aka: deadalus (not misspelled, no i’m not making this shit up)) both strike me as games that i’ll prolly like and could belong in this thread.
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P.N.03 is absolutely one of my favorite games.
As for PS3 trash cover shooter ranking, I’ve bounced off Binary Domain several times. I don’t like it. On the other hand, I finished Mindjack and enjoyed it all the way through. This may be because I don’t actually like cover shooters, and Mindjack gives you something else to do in that it has a strategic hacking layer on top of the shooting that changes how you approach each encounter/set piece.
I’ve also bounced off most cavia games I’ve tried, including Bullet Witch, Winback, and PS2 GitS. I think I could eventually get into Bullet Witch and GitS though. I just got stuck on some rougher parts and moved on.
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I think I was the one person I know of who could actually get the voice controls to work reliably on Binary Domain on the 360. Absolute highlight of the game for me was always yelling “Big Bo” and at one time answering one of his statements with a very apt “Shit”
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binary domain has voice controls??? (i’ve never played and always assumed from pictures that it was an incredibly normal, rote third-person shooter)
Binary Domain is unironically one of the best shooters of that generation. it understands that videogames are dumb and stupid and can only be good if they embrace that insanity and you end up with setpieces like fighting a giant robot gorilla, ducking around an office lobby shooting a giant killer disco ball and This Goddamn Last Boss Music playing while a general is yelling at you to die for your country
why does this stupid game’s final boss need JRPG-ass music as you and your friends shoot robots to save your good replicant friend
because fuck you, that’s why
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Binary Domain is the best vaguely related NES adaptation of the year’s biggest summer sci-fi action blockbuster made manifest in 3D
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You could issue voice commands to your squad mates and also use your voice to respond to dialogue prompts. It was corny as hell but I had fun with it.
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In Mindjack you can hack and control a giant robot gorilla… but the controls suck and it isn’t nearly as cool as it could’ve been.
I was never able to get the voice controls to work in Binary Domain.
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