It’s true. GX is peak.
2 Likes
Finished Gato Roboto. It’s kinda funny how they lock the two most helpful abilities to make the game less of a pain in the ass (able to Space Jump multiple times, and rapid fire) behind grabbing a ton of collectibles.
Those two things made the entire last area a cakewalk. New intimidating enemies are introduced last minute that just get horrifically stunlocked under rapid fire, and the final boss can be defeated with the tried and true “bounce on his head so many times he can never do anything.”
I guess it was OK. Some of the most irritating slippery controls/wonky hitboxes I’ve seen in a minute.
7 Likes
Finished Skin Deep, the ending was really good! The final level is a playground of mechanics, basically a free-form apex of everything the game offers. I think I started it a few times before I was able to actually finish it.
By the time you get to the end you’ve really mastered the movement set and interactions, and the final level really doesn’t give you a lot to work with which means you have to be extra strategic. It also takes away the minimap you have, so I had to keep finding maps around the ship to get my bearings. Also the first time I was like wait, I can just duplicate cat keys
For the final part of the mission I re-entered the ship via a trash chute, which gives you a “smelly” status effect that I was never able to clear, I just kept running around the vents aggroing all of the space pirates who kept trying to flush the vent system and who kept smelling me. I ended up shooting the one guy with the boarding ship key with an auto pistol, then ran in and grabbed it, before bolting it to the exit.
Really just astounded they mastered first person stealth movement. I never felt like I was stuck or couldn’t move around the level. It was effortless by the end of the game.
This game’s charm is off the charts. Hoping Annapurna give them a bunch of money to make a DLC pack, more ships would be really good.
8 Likes
I beat Zexion
(I turned on the half-damage assist just for the final boss)
It was an especially good metroidlike (i.e. openly an homage to Metroid itself). It reminded me of AM2R more than anything.
As Heavyviper said, it’s fairly low on the solemn, sinister side of Metroid but it makes up for it with hectic action, a lot of exploration choices and surprises, a sense of stakes that comes from both difficulty and storytelling, and a charming cast of silent characters who express their personality via costume and body language.
And most of all it has a conviction that even in 2025, there’s still fun and creative ways to approach all those seemingly done-to-death Metroid concepts. My favorite is what it did with space pirates:
Already in this intro screen it’s communicating something a little different and (dare I say) more “pirate”-y than Metroid. The concept is that this whole smorgasbord of ruffians and lowlifes have all landed on the planet around the same time you did. They’re competing with you, the environment and each other to get their dirty hands on that Zexion.
So there’s a bunch of scripted scenes where they fight each other, snatch items you were about to pick up, get slaughtered by creatures, and so on. Many of them are optional midbosses: easily bypassed, but if they spot you they instantly start dashing around the screen at crazy speeds and firing 3 types of gun at you at the same time. Some of their ships are also parked across the planet, and you can infiltrate them in Zero Mission-like stealth sequences (also optional).
8 Likes
I finished Outer Worlds. There is definitely some fat that could stand to be trimmed in the middle (Monarch is too large with too much side stuff) but overall I enjoyed it more than Outer Wilds so this was a success.
I got to another ending in Void Stranger, I have a problem so I will keep on replaying these same puzzles over and over as long as the story keeps moving forward while doing so and will likely eject myself with a bunch of the meta stuff left unsolved the second it doesn’t. I am consciously aware that this is probably the wrong way to play the game but it’s the only way I got, I’ve hit a wall on the other stuff I don’t think I am likely to get past myself without the game itself starting to drop some more obvious clues.
4 Likes
I made it a Blockbuster night with Perfect Dark Zero. Shock it is a bad game! I also don’t think making it a good game would make it good. There is no aim accelration and auto-aim didn’t seem to do anything. Stealth doesn’t work at all. Enemy AI is thankfully dumb as shit so you can just stand in a doorway as every single badguy pathfinds into your hipfiring. Also escort missions.
No the real problem is the level design is real bad. Every level was a contest in “WHERE SHOULD I GO!” Then the game sighs and lights up a “Go Here” dotted line because it knows it is doing a bad job. I did wonder if Rare is just bad a shooter level design. How many of those Goldeneye/Perfect Dark levels were good and how many were because I was a child. Considering, considering. Goldeneye does have some good levels. Perfect Dark…they are a smaller scale of aimless unmarked boxes.
It is also astoundingly racist. But you could play with 3 other friends in Xbox Live. So who is to say it is bad or not. Everyone. Everyone has said this game is bad.
I guess Kameo is next. Thanks Blockbuster!
6 Likes
Goldeneye had one weird trick to making FPS levels that aren’t bad: make it a lightgun game first. It’s not hard to imagine the original line through Goldeneye’s stages, so following that will get you back on track.
Perfect Dark" had 3 good stages, and they were the first 4 stages of the game. I dunno, maybe the Pelagic II or the alien mothership would be OK levels if they weren’t running at such a low resolution and framerate it looks like the game is dissolving into bitrate artifacts on the original hardware.
5 Likes
Want to highlight your clever turn of phrase.
1 Like
I’m curious what that slowdown feature is. Is it just an assist you can turn on with a button? Does it add slowdown when you hit a sprite limit?
1 Like
The secret sauce of Goldeneye and the early stages of Perfect Dark was really the staff, though—and they all booked at that exact point in the original PD’s development. I ran through Timesplitters 2 a few years ago and it’s got the Goldeneye energy for sure in a way neither PD game does.
11 Likes
Done with Marathon 2. Had a ton of fun, but was surprised at how much of it is a sidegrade (or a downgrade balanced out by a different upgrade). Random thoughts:
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For the majority of the game, Durandal is a bit too goal oriented and lacks all the lovable megalomania from the first game, a lot of the usual braggadocio and not enough sephirothposting. He only starts to shine when he reveals he manipulated Thoth into doing his bidding, suddenly he starts rambling about how he used to be called a fruitcake and how all the grand instruments of war have something feminine about them and let’s talk about eternal return and that’s what all videogame characters should be like.
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These levels kept me arguing with myself about what kind of health station/save point placement works best in terms of interesting friction. Some stages get pretty close to the modern idea of Good Design, which is “place them the way Miyazaki would place a bonfire”, and usually it’s nice to be forced into a few consecutive battles before being allowed to find temporary reprieve. But I’m glad it’s not always that? Having to constantly backtrack to restore HP and save is not ideal, a busywork made tolerable by the fantasy, but there’s something to be said for a change of rhythm where you feel you’re fighting for every inch of the map. And since these maps can get pretty open and unpredictable with all the large scale infighting (which is very fun), it’s rarely 100% boring.
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This game hits what is probably the exact upper limit of my tolerance for time spent underwater in games. I don’t mean it as a slight (well, not fully), the designers have a great sense for basing levels around some sort of inconvenience and having the player master it, which makes for memorable experiences. Also appreciated how Aleph One port of M2’s look is more crispy, gives it a different identity from the 1 despite shared assets.
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I really miss the times action games could display so many corpses at the same time. They’re something I barely register most of the time, but their permanence is so important at gradually shifting my relationship with the given space and enhancing the fantasy.
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Really liked Thoth’s logo, such a cute sci-fi take on yin/yang.
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The final room with the exploding Juggernaut that is guaranteed to kill you at the very end unless you’ve done everything before perfectly is such an asshole move I almost respect it.
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No music was also a bold move which I almost respect, but, no. The ambience is not detailed or strong enough, it just robbed levels of their personality. Kinda sad Infinity has a similar approach from what I’ve seen so far but I hope its trippiness makes up for it.
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Loved the expanded terminal formatting with attached visuals. A lot of fun glimpses into the wider world (those tantalizing hints have been the core appeal of this universe so far, and it’s a shame 2 is more focused on straightfoward plotting), but the most memorable one is all the communication with Robert Blake, the hero of the resistance who looks like a lovable IT bozo chilling in front of a webcam. He should come back in the new game tbh.
15 Likes
Have fun with Infinity, one of my favourite games of all time that I consider a masterpiece that’s also objectively a bad game
5 Likes
fyi there are several fan OSTs for 2 and Infinity. haven’t dug too deep to sample their quality but they are clearly labors of love
3 Likes
Still really enjoying Metaphor ReFantazio. I finally reached the JRPG beat where you get a vehicle, except Metaphor does the genius move of giving you one that is very interactive and cool instead of what is basically a boat with a hole in it that lets you travel across ponds. I got to meet this cool guy who is a disgraced bat knight, smarmy and with a cute cat-like face. Comments about the liberalism are spot on. And I think it’s funny reflecting back to when I was in a store in town recently and heard people chat about this game, and one of them called it the most radical game they have ever seen. So I can’t judge just yet if the writing overall is good or corny and trite. But I can say that I really really like the dialogue writing and the individual adventures are lots of fun and exciting. Some of the beats are predictable, but in the way you want genre work to be. Half the fun is seeing the thing coming down the pike and finding small things to be surprised and excited by. The English VA is also quite good, the performances have nice subtleties. Good direction overall!
8 Likes
I don’t suppose you’re thinking of airplane 2?
I wish I could agree with you! Just never been much of a fan of competitive shooters… Also the art style feels like the people responsible for Minions trying to ape Jet Set Radio to me… I know this may seem hypocritical from someone who likes Pikmin, but what can I say? It can be hard to make sense of one’s own mind…
I will admit to liking this song from the soundtrack though which sounds kinda like someone fell on a sampler:
Cryptic… I recognise that this is DMX but beyond that you may have to provide a bit more context here…
4 Likes
there’s a whole scene where the movie runs out of money and George Clooney sells the director on product placement
this leads into the pirate/ninja/cowboy fight scene
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My familiarity with all things Killer Tomatoes is limited but learning this was George Clooney’s first film is sorta funny to me. Might have to watch these…
3 Likes
They seem to be but I’m unsure they’re how I want to experience these games for the first time… Like yeah, most of the times pure ambience doesn’t work for me, but I feel like playing music in level 1 of Infinity completely kills the very deliberate vibe
2 Likes
to clarify, i wouldn’t personally recommend any of the fan works for 2 and Infinity for a first-time, just kind of connecting dots, linking info about existing resources related to those facets of the games.
3 Likes