I know, right! I played through the demo one and a half times (the way they end the demo is legit wonderful IMO, but seeing all the content requires multiple runs) so it’s not impossible but is is so much harder than it needs to be and the way it handles momentum at times feels borderline broken. Shame as with even middling controls it’d probably be alright :\
1 Like
i think they work they’re just uhh weird. basically you only have 2 buttons, left and right. when holding either you both move in that direction and flap upward (so sort of a diagonal trajectory). to go down, you have to let go of those buttons, and the only way to go straight up would be to alternate those keys for each flap.
it’s kind of like if in joust your flap button was tied to the left and right buttons, so you couldn’t do one without the other.
so yeah it’s kind of brutal and on top of that you have a limited flight time of like 4 seconds – if you don’t re-perch on a ceiling within that time you die from exhaustion i guess??
i dunno it’s quite weird and difficult but i kind of like it? feels like a tutorial would make it easier to pick up but the screens immediately feel pretty hard so idk if that would have helped all that much.
it reminds me a bit of like a foddy game but it’s also not clear to me if it knows it’s foddian or not
yeah this is the part that even i think is wonky – you like really stick to walls if you have too much momentum. you don’t bounce, you don’t go to 0. it feels like you have to wait for it to decay before you’re allowed to move off the wall again.
edit: i’ve decided i don’t really like it, but largely because of the weird staccato feel of the gameplay when you have to land every 4 seconds. it’s hard to get in a flow or have much play variety when you needs to land so often.
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Fortnite is now uninstalled, so I guess I might as well well do a post mortem on those 18 months I’ve been playing it.
The part of Fortnite BR I enjoyed the most is the whole movement suite. The basic running/mantling/sliding all feels good, and the good seasons all add in some movement tech, like the knife wire grappling up to ledges or Iron Man boots launching and flying over half the island, feel good enough to be any game’s movement gimmick. I can understand the general appeal of the game too, since each match’s pacing is like playing a full game, finding basic equipment at the start, deciding on a quest to follow nearby, and then finally running into the final showdown, all condensed into 22 minutes. I played very little build mode, because I am not 16-19, but watching competitive FNCS is a wild display of skill that makes for a great spectacle. It’s like watching ant tunnels being built in the sky.
But what hooked me on Fortnite was Rocket Racing, the first game that seemed to be actually trying to build on the model of Outrun 2. The problem was that they thought the mode would be BR popular, and it sure wasn’t. It needed a constant stream of new maps being added to stay fresh, which is expensive as heck, and a couple seasons in they recognized that they aren’t going to do that. Unfortunately they only made one mode that could resuse existing tracks. UEFN stuff for Rocket Racing is mostly just obby kaiso shit, while the UEFN community ignores it because they feel it stole the spotlight from community racing modes that were being made prior to RR.
Beyond that FN just has a bunch of stuff I acknowledge but don’t really enjoy. Lego Fortnite is a building game that’s a chore to play in survival mode, and boring in free mode (although I do appreciate how they made the building process mirror Lego instructions). There’s a simplified Lego mode that’s a city living roleplay for children that seems based on Roblox monotony. Fortnite Festival is fun for the same reason playing Stepmania was, but modern top40 is not the kind of pull that Bemani has. Fortnite OG is a solved game, and appeals to the same weirdos that play WoW Classic. The Counter Strike mode has all the fun of half your team dropping out of the game the millisecond that someone else on the team starts playing differently than they want, and… no that’s just it.
But more than anything else what killed my enthusiasm for Fortnite is that it’s just a toy commercial. I don’t know if it was ever more than that, but people sure seemed to talk about it like it was. I had expected at least some crossover media style storytelling, but as the seasons went on it became more explicitly just action figures wandering around a playmat. Maybe they hit their limits with what kind of story can be told with the format.
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Greatly enjoying Supplice. It’s sitting somewhere in the exact middle of Duke3D, Marathon, and Doom 2 somehow; thoroughly rips off all of them without succumbing to many of their issues. Combat is very Doom, level design is dense and thematic like Duke3D, and story is communicated through terminals and conversations with an eccentric AI like Marathon. Genuinely one of the best of these games I’ve played!
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Gave EXTREME EVOLUTION: DRIVE TO DIVINITY another chance after watching The Unearthed Treasure Room, and I’m extremely glad I did. I adored how it feels like it’s guided almost purely by intrinsic motivation: the sheer joy of navigating various objects with vastly different movement systems through abstract 3D spaces, the mysterious rhizomatic structure of levels creating a constant sense of discovery no continuous sandbox could deliver, multiple endings scattered around so that you can choose when to walk away satisfied (lovely how there’s no achievements for completionists). The game trusts that you’re someone who think the joy of rolling a big Katamari, mastering a weird Super Monkey Ball level, driving a car really fast through a user-generated megastructure in Trackmania or toying with weirdness of Source physics is more than enough to have fun, and it stands in such a stark contrast to most stuff coming out recently. It also kinda ties into the spiritual theme of the whole game: take just what you need, however you need, and go with peace. (The endgame’s trivialized power curve becomes a little monotone, but there’s enough expressive possibilities in your Form Menu that there’s always a more interesting option of reaching your goal).
The omnipresent jumble of terms hinting at some kind of transcendence plays into “the last gasp of a dying graphics card” aesthetic: it all feels like a faulty machine trying to express something that is far beyond its reach, an otherworld that you can’t perceive properly due to the lack of proper facilities, so all you get is suggestive glimpses. Amazing how it all remains readable despite shifting constantly in abrasive ways. Liked how Earth turns out to be a seemingly endless maze of big concepts you get entrapped in until you find a way out of the samsara, like all of the game’s structures, it’s surreal and evocative in a way my last few trips to modern art museums failed to be. The score ranging from classical and spoken poetry to stuff that sounds like Philip Glass and OPN was also appreciated, and so were all the unexpected sound effect choices, underlining how everything on the screen is not representational but expressive, machines sounding like wet flesh, all aspects of life intersecting in unexpected ways. It’s the kind of large canvas everyone will take a different thing from, be it a metaphysical message they need at a particular moment of their life journey or an understanding that they like weird grappling hooks in games more than they expected, and it might be one of the best things I’ve played in years.
20 Likes
purple sentinel dick head helmet is ruling my thoughts…
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it looks like momos hat
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Skin deep has been a heck of a game. I love a blendo game. They person/studio has a good sense of style and fun. The plot has gotten increasingly metal gear and silly. The levels have gotten steadily more interesting. I think in at the 60% point judging by the trophies. This is going to be a heavy re-play game. The way to use objects and interact-ables is unfolding pretty nicely. Its got a good ramp.
If you dont know the setup is that you are an insurance assassin insuring cat based space ship crews. They freeze you on board ships they suspect will be robbed and you are thawed out when the silent alarm is tripped. You have nothing on you to start including shoes. You have cybernetic enhancements that let you survive vacuum, revive after losing all health (once) and zoom vision, Your goal is to save the cats and steal the invader’s ship to get home. Every ship is 4-6 rooms + ducting and gimmicks layed out in a way that you can understand with a 2D map.
Anything password protected in the ship is randomized every mission so you cant just cheeze it with an FAQ.
I finally did a stage entirely stealth and non-lethal and there was no reward beyond my personal satisfaction. Which is interesting. You actual get score FOR lethality in the stage end screen. Having no pressure to be non-lethal feels unique in a stealth game. One mission even had a safe you could break into and a reward for doing it “loud”. Im not even sure what that means. It had one of those press 2 buttons at once setups and I threw a bolt at one button while I pressed the other. I found another way by accident later.
Game is a blast. Too bad it hates my old PC. I had to put i on my work machine to get sound.
This game feels like it should cost a lot more but I guess it doesn’t have ray-tracing or whatever.
11 Likes
pro-beauty play anti-personality disorder encouraging game design
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I still think about Extreme Evolution a lot. If any game deserves to have a sort of “long tail” and continue to be discovered, it’s this one. I realize its audience is always going to be a small one, but it really is one of the best things to come along in years.
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50 hours in and I now have 21 buddies and a five star island and I’m an expert in farming, botany, and being a bowman. I beat the first 100 years of the plant dungeon, I have 4 areas at level 4 on ginormisia island. I have an art gallery that’s finally getting traffic at my base and my house is upgraded all the way. I can make dirt roads with my helper robot now!
I just got to swole island in the main story though, and I wonder how long the game actually is. I hope it lasts forever
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I thought Pokemon Ultra Moon would be extremely dumbed down when they gave me an experience share that duplicates exp points and makes all your pokemon level at the same rate at the beginning of the game, but it is actually the most technical pokemon game I have ever played and it is starting to annoy me. I am very much this type of player and I refuse to learn strategy in a game I have beaten four generations of without doing so.
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Still revisiting Rise of the Tomb Raider, and while I know some bemoaned the Crystal Dynamics games for turning back on some of the old Core style, I’m happy to report I was attacked by a mountain lion that I defeated by standing on a slightly taller rock and shooting down on it.
Truly some Tomb Raider DNA still in there.
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… the only good core game was the first one, so in and of itself that criticism isn’t necessarily a bad thing
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Been running around the Scadu-lands in Elden Ring with my sneaky wizard. Just cleared the level that ends with the lion puppet. Took about 10 tries. Didn’t check my level but it’s somewhere around 120-130 now. Starting to up my Vigor so I don’t get two shot as often. It’s at 42 now.
Big thing with exploring is that I found a talisman that slowly regenerates FP to match the HP one. For exploring with a caster, this feels very strong. This was the first major dungeon I’ve cleared in the DLC and I only died once to an NPC invader because my health was so low (only 40 Vigor at the time) and I thought I had switched to melee but for some reason still had my staff equipped.
Picked up a couple of new weapons I’m thinking of trying out. The Milady sword and the Bone Bow. The sword is a DEX based greatsword and the bow is of the short variety and shoots really fast. The bow intrigues me as a possible way to pump out some ranged damage against a boss on later tries with arrows that hit its weaknesses. I would need to respec to really get the new weapons to shine, I think, but I’m feeling reluctant about it. I really like being cowardly and my current kit (Moonveil, Horn Bow) works so well with that strategy for exploration.
I did a little bit of reading just now and apparently, the Carian Regal Scepter I am using is not as good as the Academy Glintstone staff at my current INT of 60. So I might switch over until I start leveling INT again (after Vigor to 50 or maybe 60). I seem to be doing good damage but ran out of magic on the last boss with 6 Cerulean flasks. Maybe this little boost will help with that for a little bit.
I think my next play session will include trying to max out my Estus flasks. I am at 12 charges at +9 so there is some improvement to be had.
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Played through the Baby Steps demo + some extra exploring (I managed to get the cup), it’s good stuff. Much more accessible and easy than Getting Over It, I had no trouble walking on a flat surface after a minute of learning the controls and only ever flopped over when I was either being sloppy or going somewhere I really shouldn’t have been
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Funi Raccoon Game demo impressions: a good time! The spirit of freeware/glorious trainwrecks type stuff lives on in this thing. Controls are completely unwieldy, loads of physics objects spewed at you constantly, explosion gifs galore, sound balance is violently erratic. It’s a collect-a-thon in the loosest sense in that every physics object you pick up can be flung into the trash (your home) in order to unlock access to new levels from the hub world (the inside of the dumpster).
You can tell the dev had a good time just from how much delight and mischief oozes out from every pore. Even though it’s pretty simple, they get a lot of mileage out of pushing the physics engine to its breaking point in different ways, populating levels with low-res images of everyday items or rudimentary 3d objects and regularly sending you into new, unexpected locales before you’ve had time to process what’s happening.
One of the levels I gained access to was, uh… The Cliffs of Moher, where a floating stone deity of some sort requested I bring him a firearm. I did so by stealing one from an officer in another level (Norwich) which summoned endlessly spawning cop cars that tried their best to murder me…
This demo is packed! There’s still at least one area I’ve yet to access due to a difficult “platforming challenge” (more like trying to best figure out how to abuse the physics engine to fling my raccoon at a rooftop out of reach).
The Kickstarter appears to already be over halfway funded last I checked, excited to experience the complete package in all its glory about a year from now or whenever it gets finished!
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BLAKE STONE: ALIENS OF GOLD
One of the more prominent Wolf 3D clones, probably because it’s one of the better ones. Managing to find an audience the same year Doom came out is pretty impressive.
It has quite a few mechanics and features that makes it deeper than Wolfenstein 3D, such as scientists who may or may not be friendly, one way doors, switches that enable/disable forcefields, a silenced pistol, vending machines, a boss who keeps popping up at random points… the best feature is the automap which makes navigating much easier, and also makes secret locations more obvious (making wall-humping every single wall unnecessary, though they could have also hinted at secrets better).
You can also go back and forth between levels, since every level starts and ends at the same elevator (the goal of each level is to find a red key that lets you go up one level). On the rare occasion a switch will even disable something on a different floor, but nothing interesting is done with that and you only need to go back if you want some ammo or health you left behind… but it’s nice to back and look for secrets if you like. Also I wish it was more clear with how many secrets you found.
Enemies are also more varied, with lots of aliens in addition to humans, plus mechanical enemies including homing mines and ceiling turrets (oh yeah, there are ceiling and floor textures now). There are also some cool ones like liquid enemies that slide around as a puddle before attacking as a humanoid form.
Some features are kinda annoying… for example, there is an enemy that will fake their death, and it’s best to just wait for them to get back up so they don’t shoot you in the back later. Would be nice to have a way to finish them off if they’re faking it… there are other little annoying things too, but nothing too bad. Fortunately, they don’t make lazy switch puzzles or annoying mazes with the one way doors.
Thing is, they don’t do much interesting with them either. They certainly help make each level not feel too samey and repetitive, but I kept thinking that Wolf 3D managed to do more with less, and wished someone like Romero got to play with these mechanics instead. That said, there are some clever moments… one was where you end up in a mazey area and find a bunch of switches. If you just go ahead and hit them all without exploring first, they open up forcefields that unleash homing mines all over the maze, I thought that was pretty funny.
Protip: the first two weapons are slow/weak and will lead to you dying a lot, but you can find at least the third weapon on the first level of ever episode.
Also the villain in this game is just some random old guy so isn’t very threatening, and killing aliens/mutants isn’t as fun as killing Nazis.
Some episode thoughts… first one is the blandest, with it feeling like going through a sci-fi office building with similar feeling levels. Episode 2 has an odd, surreal feel partly because you keep walking into rooms with enemies staring at walls. Episode 3 has the best sense of place and environmental narrative, exploring a partly abandoned research lab inside a cave system. Episode 4 is the weakest with half boring as hell levels and half okay ones, and Episodes 5 and 6 are just polished ones with good level variety.
BUT YEAH, definitely one of the more ambitious and interesting 0-Y-Axis FPS games even if it could have been better. I hear the sequel is worse but I’ll see for myself eventually.
In conclusion:
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trying out Alone in the Dark (2024) on the PS5
it’s alright. it hasn’t offended me yet, but it’s also kind of boring. anyone played this and have any thoughts about it?
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