Played the FF1 pixel remaster today and I don’t think I ever got past Garland ever. This includes having the original cart in the early nineties. Didn’t realize you got the boat so early. Also didn’t realize this is where they got Matoya for FF14.
6 Likes
Heroes of the Storm updates are perhaps coded by some sect of … Rogues and Rebels? In a hidden Blizzard Bunker?
2 Likes
Mario 64’s variable set of moves is interesting too when you apply it to the same object over and over. Like the start of the desert level is a good example. There’s a small temple looking thing you might run under the first time, jump on an enemy to get on top of the next time, try and perform a triple jump to get on top of it the time after that. Building on the familiarity with that piece of level geometry and applying new moves to it is great, and you’d miss out on that if you only ever did strictly new sections only
11 Likes
The french game is good
8 Likes
DUKE NUKUM 2D
Technically ground breaking when it came out, I wondered how this aged and… it’s still pretty fun!
I mean, you have to adjust to the scrolling and controls but the game feels natural once you do since the game was built around those.
But yeah, it’s fun running around these environments and shooting stuff. It’s generous with health so I didn’t die much until the last few levels but it still felt challenging. There is a tiny glimpse of Duke’s later personality, and it’s already got the action movie thing going with things constantly exploding.
Also wow, things sure like falling from the sky! Lots of stuff to collect for points but no one cares about points in a game like this. OH this game also has no lives which is great, but you do have to restart the entire level if you die.
Also has stuff we’d see in 3D such as security cameras and what not. Oh, and I liked Dr Proton always talking shit on Duke during levels. At one point he says “even commander keen can’t beat me” and I’m like yo, keen is like 10 years old.
The first episode is the strongest (as is typical with DOS shareware) with the tightest design. The levels are fairly large (though not excessively) but I only really got lost on actual maze levels (which sucked)… the rest have enough landmarks and flow to get you to where you need to go.
Each level feels built around a different idea, whether it be a mechanic or just a design (such as tall buildings full of elevators), and most boil down to finding keys and then the exit but they still managed to feel distinct.
The second and third episode have worse flow, often feeling like the designer just built these cool big environments and just stuck the keys and exits wherever… more than a few times I found the key and exit easily and early on without actually exploring much of the level.
BUT if you don’t mind just jumping around big, open environments until you find the keys and exit, it’s still a fun time since the enemy and hazard placement is typically pretty fun and clever.
So yeah, I can see people bouncing off this if it feels too archaic or the levels feel too large and open (but again I didn’t find it excessive), but you can still have a good time blasting through this. Pretty short too.
10 Likes
also a good lesson in how traversal being dynamic and innately fun will open design doors elsewhere in your game (something like, “it doesn’t matter if i get kicked out because i have so much fun getting back to where i was”)
7 Likes
last few days i’ve played enough fire emblem por to figure out i can maybe kind of respect this series but i will not get anything out of playing them, ever
6 Likes
i like the first couple episodes of Duke Nukem/Nukum 1 a lot. the levels are very mazy like a lot of the Apogee games of that period but it has this bizarre mish mash sci-fi feel (tho i know is partially ripped off of Turrican) that i really like. some levels have this kind of inexplicable fever dreamy feeling to them that has really stuck with me over the years. from the boxes and items constantly falling, to the weirdness of some of the enemies, to some of the inexplicable environmental details like the boxes you exit levels in, those rockets you can explode or the reflective floor effect. it’s also a not particularly difficult action game (like, say, for a kid to beat) and there’s a lot of variety in especially that first episode.
this level in particular always stuck with me. the backgrounds play a huge part in conveying the mood in this game.
i honestly like the giant environments of the second episode too. it’s interesting that they went back to the first episode on earth in the city, second episode on the moon formula for Duke Nukem 3D. tho the third episode is basically just a retread and non-essential in DN1. but overall it’s probably one of the games i have the biggest nostalgia for. i def also like it more than Duke Nukem 2 which feels like it’s trying a lot harder but doesn’t reach the same sort of feeling.
13 Likes
Skin Deep is really excellent. Scratching my Metal Gear itch pretty well. I am wondering of wondering why I haven’t heard Metal Gear Solid called an Immersive Sim. Is it because its room based instead of having an active world or big immediate environment?
I broke my ancient PC trying to make it run better. Oh well.
4 Likes
I remember coming across this in a cousin’s collection of old DOS games when I was small, having only known Duke Nukem from 3D, and having my mind blown that he started life as a goofy, colourful, 2D platformer mascot!
4 Likes
the same guy who programmed/directed Duke Nukem 1 (Todd Replogle) also made Monuments of Mars (and later Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure), which is a lot more primitive but has a similar sort of sensibility of just a bunch of different little moving parts. as does Duke 3D (which is apparently the last game he worked on?), for that matter.
George Broussard gets a lot of credit for some reason because he’s the most visible, but he’s like the least impactful part of any of the good games he worked on. which is probably why when he finally did direct a big project it was a complete disaster.
9 Likes
I played some more of, then watched the rest of Highwater. Ultimately a pretty Meh game. Interestingly though there are two other games which take place in its world: Golf Club Nostalgia (formerly Golf Club Wasteland which is a way better title they got bullied out of using in an IP dispute) and The Cub. Neither really continues the story of Highwater’s protagonists, but both take place later in that game’s continuity. I might check them out they seem like they should actually be better games.
3 Likes
animal crossing on switch is still the best cozy fuckaround build something game. everyone looks like a little flocked Sylvanian Families figure in a tiny tactile world. moving around and tinkering with your dollhouse town makes the dopamine come out. they just need to do something about the completely vacuous elements such as “talking to the characters” and “hitting tree for wood for the millionth time”
8 Likes
I miss how in the older ones “talking to the characters” you’d have like a 50/50 chance of them insulting you to your face as well… I remember watching a friend play the switch one and it seemed like they really toned down the likelihood for some villagers to be absolute bastards to you, which feels kinda sad to me…
Let the little animal people call me an idiot, Nintendo, please… 
12 Likes
So a few days ago I did hit the end of “linear” story content in Void Stranger, but had enough threads in my mind to check out that I kept going back and exploring through them. Some were dead ends, some lead to cute little things I randomly caused a lady devil to pop up and blow a kiss at me I think but none of them really lead to a breakthrough in terms of moving forward. I’ve basically been told straight up that at this point that the brands must all be taken care of and half of them are basically straight up riddles and in the 20+ hours I’ve spent with this I’ve only cracked one of those and that was many hours ago.
I have had multiple people talk up how this & the last part contain some of its most brilliant moments and I can only assume it is for someone whose brain works in a specific way, at this point I believe I could play another 10 hours with no guarantee that I’d figure out any of them, much less all. It leaves me in the awful catch-22 of either trying to figure it out and stumbling upon whatever said brilliance is, or look up what to do and remove said brilliance/“a-ha!” from the equation; the actual game playing part is rote as hell by now, just running through the same already solved puzzles repeatedly.
…I am unsure erecting a high wall around your best ideas so that only the select can ever approach it is the best design notion :\
9 Likes
downloaded the majora’s mask recompilation (which has a 4:3 aspect ratio option!) and i’m always so charmed by the elliptical opening text. link is on a journey to find an unnamed lost friend…
would love to see a sin & punishment recompilation someday… also recompilations of every game lol
8 Likes
It may not be but I respect the hell out of it.
7 Likes
