games you played today 12 times the fun and the excitement!

[Grandpa]

Been playing some stuff from the Steam sale, I guess.

Spider-Man 2: Ugh I’m weak, I know what I’m doing here, I know I’m gonna throw like 20-30 hours into an extremely expensive looking “OK” game. But here I am

Not sure my PC is fully up to task for running this thing at PS5 levels (my insistence on using Linux means I gotta use FSR frame gen instead of DLSS, so it looks kinda grainy), especially when it comes to ray tracing, but it looks nice enough? It also maybe doesn’t look that much better than the last two games.

The writing is…not as cloyingly “twisting my finger in my dimple, nobody ever actually talks like this” artificially sweet as SM/SM:MM were, but it’s still really fucking corny.

The groan I let loose when Peter reunites with a character and they start playing the fucking Shins. You cannot do that, in 2025 (or 2023 or whenever this originally came out). I don’t think people have The Shins nostalgia. People still make fun of that scene in Garden State about them.

Anyway, actual substantial complaint - they’ve made the controls way too fucking complicated. They opted to do away with the gadget wheel from the prior games for “hold the webbing button and press a face button,” and it just never feels right. The old way was clunky but at least in the heat of the moment I could pull up the wheel (which slowed combat) and select what I needed. I just kinda feel like I’m flailing, looking at the super tiny iconography and trying to remember what is what, what is assigned to what button, etc.

Same goes for abilities, which are tacked as a layer onto the new parry ability I always forget to use because they spent two games (and 15 or so general years of Batman combat) teaching you that B/O will let you flip or dodge when needed.

I dunno, I’m gonna keep playing it. I’m already in for it.

The Rogue Prince of Persia: That, uh, roguelike-like Prince of Persia, from the Dead Cells team. It’s not bad! I forgot they did away with the Prince being purple, which seemed like a cool artistic choice when they announced this thing, but I guess people pissed and moaned and he’s not purple anymore. Lame.

It feels like a more simplified and streamlined Dead Cells, which isn’t a bad thing, with a heavier emphasis on traversal. The combat feels pretty good, though some of the enemies are real bastards. The second boss I’ve managed to get to is a real pain in the ass, with some screen-spanning attacks and some little intermission segments where you have to scramble up the level to avoid a sort of rising corruption gunk. I mean, I got him down to about 1/4th health my first try, but dang…

[Grandpa]

Spider Man 2 is so far the only game that’s made my PC crash since swapping to Linux, for whatever that’s worth. Heard the port had issues, and running Linux probably ain’t helping any. Oh well.

[Mikey]

I fired up Hand of Fate, which is a deck builder/roguelike action game thing.

The dealer lays out cards face down, you move your character token through them one by one searching for exit/boss cards. You hit enemy encounters, CYOA style events, etc. You are limited in how many cards you can turn over by your available food, which counts down by one every time you move your token. You have health, equipment, curses/blessings/artifacts etc.

You build both the deck of available resources and the encounters side by side.

When you get into a fight it turns into an isometric-ish hack and slash, it’s janky and rudimentary and this far extremely forgiving with the timing of dodges/counters etc. I can more or less button mash through and occasionally dodge/counter and come out mostly unscathed.

Mostly I really like the dealer who is loquacious in a charming way, although he’s animated sort of poorly/this game runs like doodoo on PS4. Or maybe my PS4 is just old and tired.

But I’m into this! It’s refreshing to walk away from a play session feeling energized for once. Been playing a lot of duds lately.

[boojiboy7]

Been playing The Hybrid Front and man I gotta make a thread about that.

[lonelyfrontier]

been spending the last three hours losing to crasher wake’s gyarados over and over because some jerk off at game freak decided this game for literal children needed an snk boss introduced out of nowhere

[boojiboy7]

Today I played through all of Dead of the Brain for PC98 and I will be adding so many things to the screenshots thread.

[Grandpa]

Sometimes when I get a fresh loaf of French bread I do this thing where I tear a hunk off, eat the soft inner section first, and then kinda just gnaw on the crust bits after, which sorta petrifies without that moist interior attached to it.

Anyway that’s me trying to make a sloppy, buttery metaphor for how I dumped like 12 hours into doing nothing but side stuff in Spider-Man 2 so that I’ll wind up in the end game with all the powers available with nothing left to do. Because I can’t help myself.

Edit: I will say that I appreciate that it seems like most? Maybe all? Of the costumes in the game all get some manner of battle damage after fights, which makes them seem more “real” than they did in the first. I still won’t switch to them for story stuff because I worry about “canon” or whatever, but it’s a weird nitpick I had with the previous games that they addressed, so, neat!

[Cerium]

Speaking of french bread, Type Lumina has been my comfort fighting game of choice the last few months.

[Broco]

Started Riven 2024. After 3 hours, I feel like I’m stuck on the exact same early-game section as my abortive attempt at the original, even though I’ve solved more puzzles and gathered more information.

The world starts to open up a lot, so the top thing I’m puzzled about is which area I should even be spending time in, and what category of thing is preventing me from making progress. Did I miss an interactable object? a path? or am I missing the braincells to solve one of those cryptic machines already?

At least this version has a lot more hangoutitude, especially the sound design, so it’s more pleasant to wander around aimlessly for a while. And it was fun to figure out the purpose of this strange toy involving lowering little wooden men into a shark maw

[Kilroy]

Finished Deltarune Chapter 4. Embarassed that I got filtered by the final boss for a while. I think what it was is that I didn’t realize that the light around the heart makes the enemies fade. Once I realized that it became easier.

@Gimelrey says, “As fucked up as my childhood was, and believe me, it was pretty fucked in, in a way I’ve only intimated once or twice, at least I never experienced the dynamic of my mother’s boyfriend”

[iguferon]

It’s funny that when marvel heroes was gone i wished i could play it but now that it’s largely back it’s kind of miserable because 95% of the player base are the stinkiest guys who say gross shit in social chat like zero time has passed between now and 2013. like if you want to hear guys talk about how there’s no girls on the internet then i recommend you log on asap. the only woman on the dev team stepped down. i wonder why

[iguferon]

it is honestly the kind of game at this point where I can look at the character selection and go through a whole process of picturing everything id do playing them in my mind. like when I was playing Morrowind too much and had to stop for a few years as a kid because it was becoming a purely autistic mind palace exercise to think about

[Broco]

Incidentally, this week I got my fridge replaced, and to do that I first needed to shut off the water line to my broken fridge. We bought an appliance dolly and moved the old fridge forward, but we couldn’t find a shutoff valve behind it, nor anywhere else in the kitchen.

So I went down to the basement and checked all the pipes running above me. I found one with a valve going up (what seemed to be) directly under the fridge. However, the washer and dryer are close to it so it could’ve been going to one of those as well. But to me, it seemed too narrow for a washing machine.

I asked my partner to double-check my reasoning and she said “no! That must be a gas line! See how it also connects into the furnace over here!” But this turned out to be because there used to be a whole-house humidifier attached to the furnace, which has since been removed.

Finally I turned the shutoff valve shut and it immediately started spraying water everywhere, which was a whole other problem I won’t get into here.

So anyway, this has been a post about Riven

[Felix]

I currently have a water dispensing fridge for the first time in my life and while I haven’t had to wheel this one out yet unlike prior fridges in prior kitchens, I wouldn’t have expected it to have a dedicated line from the basement, I just assume they tap the kitchen sink / dishwasher line when they add one of these unless it’s new construction

[Godamn_Milkman]

If you wanna play some rounds we can find a time

[iguferon]

I don’t think you know what I’m talking about

[LaurelSoup]

@boojiboy7

Today I played through all of Dead of the Brain for PC98 and I will be adding so many things to the screenshots thread.

If you dig deep online I’m a guest on a let’s play video of this from a couple years back that I hear got a bunch of hits since.

Feels a lot like snatcher in that it’s one of those exhaust all the options twice games but how much the main character can be a bad boyfriend makes it pretty noteworthy in addition to the sweet art.

[boojiboy7]

Yeah, he’s a really terrible boyfriend, and also just kinda a big old dummy the whole time. It does get exhausting having to click on things over and over again.

[iguferon]

I stumbled out of the starting dungeon in daggerfall, which was absolutely infested by hordes of rats and bats, with enough time before sunset to get to the nearest town. But they didn’t have a pawn shop so I could only sell a few of my things to the general store, and I’m like 120gp short of being able to afford a horse. I trudge through the snow to the nearest tavern, accidentally run into a bunch of naked working girls who tell me to talk to some shitfaced farmer named Uthore Hearthsly in the corner for “work” which turns out to be a push up contest?? This guy loses on a wager of exactly 120gp!!! because I have 60 END and he’s drunk. I still can’t get my horse because I need to pay for lodging…

I will have my fucking horse…tomorrow…

[hellojed]

I am at the part of Marathon Infinity where there’s back to back vacuum levels, so you have to run until you find an air-recharger. It’s incredibly annoying. Some of the level work looks cool and I guess what story is metered out once in a while is also cool but I am finding the rest of the experience lacking. The SMG is a nice addition.