Activision said that Jonas Savimbi was a “good guy who comes to help the heroes” and the case was thrown out of court because obviously the only issue Savimbi’s kids had was the game didn’t bootlick enough
3 Likes
the noriega thing was good too because he basically got mad that the game has the CIA version of history (he was an asset and Highly Perfidious) and not reality (he was an asset and America hung him out to dry). i bet these guys feel real stupid trusting us now that they’ve been bullied publicly in call of duty
6 Likes
I eventually figured this out on my own as I remembered I played Counterhero Chapter 1 and… well let’s just say that sometimes different people come up with identical ideas.
I am sorta pondering walking away from Void Stranger as while I finally was gently nudged towards a thread I eventually figured out I’ve mostly just been playing the same levels in the same way for most of my past 90 or so minutes with the game and now that I have a rough idea how the game wants me to examine thing… I don’t think it is gonna change.
I’m gonna give it another session or two, but if at least the first run took 4ish hours and people saying the whole thing will take at minimum 25-30 hours and much of that is just playing those same puzzles over and over again trying to find spots where something different can happen I’m just not sold on that being a good gaming deal. I could play multiple puzzle games of entirely fresh content in that time.
4 Likes
I beat Armored Core 1 entirely on the 3DS. That makes the third game I have beaten on the 3DS, the other two being Snake Eater and Pokemon Pearl.
Final Build
14 Likes
Started Ocarina of Time 3D because I never beat it before and because it will continue my curse of playing only non 3DS exclusives on the 3DS
10 Likes
Done with Marathon (1994), Vidmaster’s Oath style. Out of all the 2.5D sprite-based Doom successors, this one is probably my favorite, and not being designed around save anywhere is probably one of the key reasons why. I really enjoy how the static save points and health stations alter your relationship with these spaces and change up the rhythm of exploration. It’s one kind of game when you set out on strategic expeditions with a simple route to the safe spot and it’s a completely different thing when you’re navigating blindly, trying to locate a pattern buffer and/or a recharging device. In general, the levels are rather fun, capital-D Dungeons, alternating between mazelike corridors and cavernous chambers with clear evolving themes (although I did look up an easy way to set up the main chamber in Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap since, yeah, no). These are the kinds of spaces worth dreaming about, possibly the perfect degree of 3D abstraction in this regard.
Happy about how many situational quirks each weapon has, happy about the enemy variety and infighting mechanics, happy about how each difficulty has a different approach to Ninja Gaiden-style color-coded enemy ranks and ammo limits and so on (even though only Total Carnage exists). Amazed at how everything has a LUDONARRATIVE justification: floaty controls, cruel disregard for Bobs’ lives, the player being a respawning one-man army, almost anything I could think of. The terminal writing with its lovely formatting, although it’s a bit too objective focused as it is, embarrasses nearly all contemporary videogame writing, if only in terms of reaching for a memorable, apt turn of phrase: “the candles burn out for you”, “freedom is being the mason”, “do you feel free”, or the Gheritt White story. Sometimes it feels like all of successful videogame storytelling is about things happening elsewhere, out of your reach and control, and Marathon is great at making you feel like something really important is happening right behind the outer walls of the level.
I don’t know if I’d appreciate it the way I did without Aleph One modernizations, the game’s demands and oppressive vibe still got to me from time to time, but I’m much happier with it than I am with anything new I played this year. Onwards to Durandal, hope all the water doesn’t get to me.
15 Likes
In Gran Turismo 5 you can toggle any of the 189 music tracks on/off for three different phases of the game, which is handy 'cause I finally hit one that triggered a copyright claim on YouTube. Darn “Two Door Cinema Club”! ; D
4 Likes
This is fair enough, although I will say that the “25-30 hour mark” quotes refer to reaching all the endings (of which there are at least 6), which involve such things as finding secret exits to floors. If you want to just “beat the game”, all you need to do is reach the bottom without being dead, as you may have already assumed, and the trick discovered provides a means to do that a little quicker than without.
By the way, here’s a final question. Have you solved this puzzle? I’d left it unmentioned since I consider it to be the easiest puzzle in the game to “first try”, but if you really haven’t (and certain clues in your posts imply that you haven’t), then you’ve surely had a much harder time than someone who has.
1 Like
started playing Phantasy Star IV last week for the first time. right now i just lost a few folks and gained an android, and we’re about to go stop some earthquakes for some villagers who talked us into it.
the game is really good. i always knew/had a feeling it was good, but back in the days where i relied on others to buy games for me, PS4 just didn’t top the charts of what game i was going to ask for that year.
anyway, PS4 feels like “the best” version of the thing they were doing starting with PS1; i.e. the way i think of Final Fantasy VI with regards to all the FF games that came before it. VI is the pinnacle of an idea they had been trying to get at for all those years, and PSIV feels like the game i’d been wanting to play whenever i loaded up PS1 or 2.
PSO is a cool game, but playing PS4, it makes me a little sad that 4 was sort of the end of it for Sega. as much as i love the Saturn and (honestly) the 32x, it is downright stupid that they never made any actual sequels to this game in the years after the Genesis. but i guess that’s part of what made Sega, Sega. they needed to think about other stuff that would also be cool, but ultimately not save them.
oh, also, on Sega, a week or two ago, i think i told someone here that i have always bounced off Sonic 3D-Blast and don’t care for it very much.
well, the other day, i loaded up the Director’s Cut again to spite myself, and turns out, i do actually kind of like the game. i realized the part i like the least is playing it on a d-pad, because it’s sort of painful. game feels like it was destined to be played with an analog stick, and if you’re not a idiot purist like me, i recommend playing it that way.
10 Likes
I’ve been getting the feeling that I should play this and Skies of Arcadia in honor of Rieko Kodama.
6 Likes
I sampled a smattering of things on my PlayStation 4 game console last night and honestly none of it really hooked me.
I played the intro mission in Star Wars: Squadrons and it was pretty good but I started playing the second intro mission and just felt my desire drain out of my body. Honestly I think I played Tie Fighter back in the day and that’s all the Star Wars flight sim lite that I need.
Similar thing happened to me in Nobody Saves the World when I realized progress was gated with “Kill X baddies in Y specific way” quests. I was going to have to replay the first dungeon because I didn’t kill all the baddies with the fiddly skills? Fuck that. Absolutely no desire to play another moment.
I played some Pac Man World: Re-Pac or whatever it’s called and something about the perspective made it difficult to judge where to jump up to gather floating collectables but otherwise it was fine I guess. Funny how much they sort of lifted from 3D Sonic games actually. There’s just straight up a spin dash in there. This was Fine/10 and again I had no desire to press forward
5 Likes
If you’ve never played Skies of Arcadia, you definitely should.
I’ve also been intending to try Phantasy Star 4 for decades. I’ve always liked the look of it.
After beating Lies of P last week, I haven’t played any other video games.
4 Likes
yeah, i also need to play Skies of Arcadia one of these days! should have picked it up when it came out, but i just didn’t have faith in Sega RPGs back then i guess
4 Likes
oh, other games i picked up last week and played and forgot to mention:
Fatal Fury Special (Game Gear) - holy smokes! what the hell! this game is amazing! it runs at 60fps and plays and feels like arcade FFS. obviously there are some compromises, like a reduction in roster size, no scaling, smaller sprites, and a lack of jumping into the background (tbh who cares), etc., but if i had bought this for my Game Gear when it came out, i would feel like i was really playing Fatal Fury Special. idk how Takara did it
Sonic the Hedgehog: Pocket Adventure (Neo Geo Pocket Color) - game was fairly inexpensive so i grabbed it because i remember people liking this one. it plays like the GG Sonic games, but perhaps a little more fair with better-designed levels that feel more-authentically “Sonic.” i’ve only made it to the second zone, so i’ll wait to reserve total judgement, but it’s a pretty neat portable Sonic game that i probably like more than the Advance series.
10 Likes
I remember thinking to myself while playing this that it really should be more compelling than it is. I liked the puzzles but the world is just kind of there and the story gets in the way, slight as it is, and makes the whole experience more dull. I’ve heard the game is short but even so I didn’t reach the end.
In the world of Portal-likes, Talos Principle 1 and 2 are the reigning champions for me.
2 Likes
they’re Sonic 2 (16-bit) stages with Sonic 3 BGM
Dimps just deadass put Sonic 2 into portable form
4 Likes
Seconding Phantasy Star 4.
Great presentation and sound. had to write down the spells and spell combos I found to keep them straight because the names are so weird.
I wish the manga panel dialog had been ripped off by the wider JRPG world.
I know I took a bunch of screen shots of it and posted them… somewhere but I have no idea where.
I bought my copy on Genesis cart and it was worth the 50 I payed for it 10 years ago.
The dungeons are of the old style and are unforgiving in a way I found created tension more often than frustration. I don’t think it has a teleporter maze hell zone like a lot of older games of this style.
3 Likes
Well, there’s two phases to the answer.
The first is I was behind you, at the time of writing I had only two sanctum keys, not yet all microchips (versus 5 keys, 4 sigils and all chips now) and hadn’t even thought of revisiting room 46 to get the definitive list of keys. So I had the general shape of that big puzzle of puzzles but a lot less certainty of what lead might be part of it and what might not.
Among the simple objectives that I can still accomplish when my main objectives failed, revisiting old notes was interesting because there’s a lot of redundant catch-up clues, outer wilds-style, that gave me new insight for ongoing puzzles, there also were some like:
- solving the chessboard
- ramping up the allowance which is a real boon in the long run, especially when combined with the washing machines and freezer
- Also a gigantic buff: Accumulating stars
-
finding out there were more than one destructible wall
- unlocking extra rooms and upgrades
- buying books and solving “a new clue”
- hunting for sigil clues
- one of them was literally “whelp nothing more I can do with this run, just gonna gonna go through here to look at the skybox before calling it hey wait a second didn’t see that note the other day, wow a new area just opened up”
- Finding 7 red envelopes
Of course now I’ve done all that it should be a lot more boring because I have a lot less leads and a very clear idea of what I’m trying to accomplish, but I get pulled to ancillary stuff like trying to find a good way to make preposterous amounts of money or, in the latest run, it took a surprising turn towards needing to spawn and excavate as many dirt piles as possible over all else, and that’s actually contributing to my solving something.
And, well, I still have a couple oddities I just can’t necessarily connect to the current big end puzzle so far. They might fit once once I progress further through them though. Gonna list my current open leads although it’s not an invitation to clue me in of course. Gonna do a spoiler-in-spoiler thing for the stuff I think you might not have reached based on your own progress report, although generally you seemed ahead of me.
Ongoing ruminations, likely incomplete as I don't have my notes right now
The easy ones, that I think are related to either upgrades or items for the sanctum quests (of which I am missing the vault, the clock and the final one) or sigils:
- I’ve got a torch stashed in coat check to go and light my presumably final candles in the tomb, which I still haven’t done. At first I was assuming it’d open the tomb passage to the underground (which I also need to figure out even though it seems kinda useless right now) but based on one of Alzara’s predictions I’m leaning toward the diary key.
- The new gardener’s log: What’s up with that one spot on the garden map where nothing grows? I keep forgetting to check but it looks just like a treasure map with the X and all so I might need to spawn a green room there and have a look
- Gotta unfreeze that freezer, came close but not quite close enough
- I suspect a fully opened mechanarium will be interesting.
- I see you, statue on the side of the house. Maybe i’m imagining things, but maybe I’m not. Can I have a clearer look with the right green room?
The ones that right now feel too weird to fit with the sigils or sanctum keys:
- Whatever’s going on with the gallery, that one might just be a trophy
- The hand sculptures in several rooms are kinda suspicious but since there was similar imagery in the blackbridge book and around the cursed lockbox maybe it’s for curse mode? Haven’t tried it yet
- Is there even an eighth red envelope? Alzara said I wouldn’t find it but I thought he was wrong about me not finding the room 46 door in that first vision so he’s not infaillible except…
- That wasn’t door 46! Not saying that because it was shown in the wrong place, which I can easily attribute to the allegory aspect of the vision, but the moon’s the wrong way! And I know that’s not an oversight because it was in the chart for three moon phases in the classroom. Might just be whatever room the room 46 map puzzle will open (likely through the fireplace) but we’ll see.
- Speaking of rooms, what’s up with room 8? Outside of found prints I’m only missing that in my directory and at this stage it feels really odd the specific room with the number associated with a lot of in-game imagery is missing. Of course between the classrooms, Alzara and the gallery I’m kinda expecting the infinity sign to come up.
- So there was those servers in cold storage in the freezer, right? Although that seemed like a clue towards Blackbridge, given the accompanying note, looking at them it suddenly hit me that the lights spell out something in code, likely to do with both the locker room note and the server sticky note and extend to the whole server room.
- Figuring out A New Clue was great and seemed like a very clear reward for all of five minutes, but I’m not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel yet.
- Wow those patterns in the computer chip sockets sure look like patterns for some puzzle I don’t know about.
- Same for the dark spots on that vertical conveyor thing in the boiler room that doesn’t serve any purpose but can be powered. I remember very well the previous time I thought a doodad in that room had no purpose.
- I guess it’ll maybe be clearer with the diary, but her Ladyship drew a star map for some reason.
- CASTLE CLOAK COURT, what’s that for? I’ve seen it twice already.
- Lots of numbers on display in that coat check.
Not a lead, but on the lore side, related to the blackprints, I find fascinating the concept that the manor’s actually the original Orindia castle but they swapped all the original rooms out of the pool to keep it hidden from the redguard
Wow that’s actually a lot still!
5 Likes
Agreed fully, with the caveat that I probably haven’t played them all. Maybe there’s a weird awesome nearly unknown one, out there, somewhere…
2 Likes
I have like Really Actually Good Games sitting right here (Forgotten City, Outward, Xcom 2) and for like two weeks I just have not wanted to touch any of them. I end up watching like instrument repair videos on youtube instead. I dunno, just in a don’t care about videogames phase. Maybe it’s time to finally play FF9
3 Likes