folks i regret to inform you and myself that i am enjoying Paprium
i wrote some really in-depth notes that i feel like are maybe only worth sharing if people are interested, but my main takeaways are that the game is better than i expected, but also clearly unfinished, unrealized. that said, there is enough there to warrant replays, and the combat is growing on me even though it’s not particularly good or challenging
you can always stick em in a “hide details”
JUST POST
RE: RE6 I think that game is not good, I can’t even pretend it’s a good time kusoge, I know every single time I went back and tried to play it in co-op my partner and I were largely very very bored BUT we did get big laughs from that one sequence where…Leon, I think? Gives some gal a piggy back ride? And the gal is wearing nothin’ but a nightie and some panties? I can’t remember if you get to play as the gal. I just know we died, and I took this screenshot of the death, because it was very tacky and very gratuitous and very funny to me, and that’s one of the few fond memories I have of that game besides the school bus and not being able to climb over 2 foot high piles of books. It’s this upskirt. And it’s NOT for pervert reasons. Not mine at least! The idea of anyone getting a thrill from this is amusing to me though, salute you if you’re someone who’s into it, kinda envy you, I’m glad Capcom’s gotten back to making good games and seems to be employing more interesting perverts, God bless 'em.
Pretty sure we never played the game again after that. Kinda went out on top. Kinda went out on top.
My brother and I enjoyed the hell out of RE6 as a kusoge.
The only campaign in the whole game that was slightly enjoyable gameplay-wise was Leon’s though. During Chris and Pierce’s campaign we actually actively got bored several times.
Jake and Sherry’s campaign was the funniest because Jake is the funniest edgelord character ever written for a piece of media. Also we figured out that we could skip the awful stealth segment by rushing past the invincible enemy and crossing over and dying in the loading zone for the next segment, which was really funny.
On my first full day back from vacation, I played an embarrassing amount of Harmony of Dissonance, pretty much completing the whole game in one day.
It seems like they acted on my criticisms of CotM to make a worse game. Yes, it looks prettier and there are more enemies now, but now it feels generic. Instead of getting spells from low-probability drops you find spells in your run-of-the-mill upgrade room. It’s good on paper, but spells are tied to subweapons, so it feels risky to experiment. Moreover, why experiment once you land on a powerful combination that works in every situation? I played almost the entire game using the holy cross and wind spell book. Every boss in the game would get shredded by this combination.
I never felt like I was in danger. I found myself longing for the burning waters and freezing bullets of CotM…
Well, because 6 hours of Castlevania wasn’t enough for one day, I immediately loaded up Aria of Sorrow. This is the hottest one by far. The sanctuaries are separated so perfectly. More than once have I found myself ten rooms deep into an unknown area of the castle. One poke from an enemy would kill me. Every doorway teases the possibility of safety. This is heaven.
i can see the game qua game (shoutout to jujotech for this turn of phrase lol) being whatever. the only reason it even matters to me is because the score is unbelievably great, like it shouldn’t fucking exist, it’s too exquisite to be a part of this fucking game boy advance game
like how do you even compose that? it takes me to another fucking universe
or this:
what the fuck, why does it make me feel so emotional lol. this shit is beyond great.
I’m just using HoD discussion as an excuse to post this abrasive masterpiece again, which I think was done by an sb poster or someone adjacent
i have forgotten to update you all on what ive been playing again, but i hope i at least appear as a charming specter-like entity that phases in and out of existence. (ive been thinking about you guys tho trust me<3 i swear ive just been very busy lol.)
anyways.
i’ve been playing a lot, maybe even too much, i started fe4 a few weeks ago and have been loving it a lot, but ive been very slowly getting through it. i thought i would hate how bigs the maps are but honestly im actually loving it, people arent kidding when they say the jank is what makes this game so enjoyable.
and then i started The Outer Wilds and was immediately blown away by it, but i will not lie the spaceship controls are kind of getting to me lol. (as in, annoying and confusing.) i think i am kinda playing it the wrong way though, i keep trying to comb through an entire planet before moving on to the next one but i think i shouldn’t be so afraid of missing things, i should really just go with the flow. it seems pretty replayable, too. however, i haven’t gotten very far because…
i went to a big fighting game major in boston this weekend!!! it was SO much fun and i met up with so many cool people from around the country (but mainly the northeast) and i went 2-2 in Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising as my main, Vasersaga. it was technically 1-2 because 1 of those wins was from someone dropping out but 1-2 is still exactly what i was aiming for so i think i did good for my first ever major, AND!!! in the mystery bracket i got TOP 8!!! i only placed 8th but im still INCREDIBLY proud of myself for that, especially because that bracket was so big it met the cap on registration. it was so much fun. that whole weekend was incredible.
(also, i’m not sure if i need to explain what a mystery bracket is but tldr its a bracket where each round its a completely different game, usually really obscure stuff or kusoge. in order, what i played was: toe II toe, Poy Poy 2, Baku Baku Animal, Dino Rex (got knocked down to losers here), The Final Round, then for top 8 i played Welltris, which is where i finally got eliminated. evil video game.)
shit has been so tough for me lately but thank god for video games for alleviating the pain 
and im probably not the only one feeling that way rn given the current state of the world. stay strong everyone. i mean it
Gamer dorks despised this soundtrack back in 2002, because, Gamers.
it relieves me a bit that time has mostly allowed its reputation to flip and reflect how preternaturally sublime the composition is here, like nothing else in a video game or elsewhere.
streets of rage/bare knuckle iii went through a similar cultural progression, from “what the fuck is this shit” to “whoa, how did he even write this in 1994?!”
For Bare Knuckle 3 to be fair it is “they” as in two men.
At Motohiro Kawashima’s concert that had Yuzo Koshiro as a guest and the interviewer mostly just asked questions to Yuzo who graciously kept trying to turn the answers over to the guy whose name was on the bill. Yuzo clearly likes Motohiro a lot and thinks his strange strange music is great.
oh yeah you absolutely end up flitting back and forth with outer wilds. all the clues lead you to different planets, there’s a bunch of stuff in each planet you probably couldn’t access without specialised knowledge from other planets etc. like i don’t think there’s anything technically stopping you from a systematic planet-by-planet combing but it would probably be less fun for your first time!
i put some games on my new desktop finally! i’ve been playing a bit of ‘14 Minesweeper Variants’ which so far is like, very good minesweeper, and also replaying Antichamber. the latter is like, certainly less exciting a decade or w/e after the fact, and after stuff like Outer Wilds which has the mind-bending puzzles in a not-completely abstract and sterile environment, but the progression i’ve noted so far from [fucking around poking at random things] to [focused progression toward specific goals] is so far pretty enjoyable!
for those who keep up with the storylines i should chime in and say i spent minty’s vacation clowning on all his mario kart time trial records
Karate Survivors asks, “What if Vampire Survivors took place in a Jackie Chan movie?” It is perhaps a little culturally confused.
So you play as legally distinct Jackie Chan, and you fight waves of thugs off using combos of punches and kicks that you build as you level up. You can build your combo out of attacks from the same set for damage bonuses, and this is later compounded by them also being numbered so you’re encouraged to also put them in specific orders. You get buffs too, all pretty standard.
What stands out is you slowly unlock a repertoire of Jackie Channery, you can roll over obstacles (and later, roll over them and kick a guy). You can chuck bottles at people or kick a shopping cart through a crowd of baddies. You can walk over a broom and you’ll grab it and start twirling it around and mowing down crowds until breaks. You do need to make use of both these environmental interactions and also be aware of your positioning because your dude only attacks in front of him so you can’t absentmindedly weave around like in a lot these games. You gotta get in there and mix it up and time it to the rhythm of your combos for maximum effect. This game is tougher, I think, than many of its ilk. It seems harder to build a truly busted, unstoppable combo of abilities. I’ve only completed a run successfully once thus far.
Unfortunately the more advanced cool moves are locked away via meta progression but it seems to unlock a decent clip. Like I only just unlocked the ability to kick movable objects at the bad guys. Handy now that I’ve got it!
The presentation is a mixed bag. The sound fx… are there. I actually can’t remember what any of it sounds like really. I have no idea what the music was like. That’s pretty damning lol
A lot of the sprites are fun, some less so. The player character’s attack animations are pretty smooth, the baddies tend to feel pretty stilted in comparison. The UI is all all VHS tapes. Like the main menu has the appearance of a stack of VHS tapes and you’re looking at the labels. Why? “Old martial arts movies” I guess.
Your xp pickups are wads of cash - ok. Health pickups are Chinese takeout containers full of noodles which feels pretty crass even in a kung fu pastiche. One power up lets you do a big crowd-clearing drop kick, and for some reason it’s a soda can? No idea if this is a reference to a movie or something. If so, sorry devs that one went over my head. The currency you use to buy permanent upgrades is… teeth. This was funny for like 1 seconds.
Anyway I will probably play just a little more of this
yeah it’s mostly a kawashima jam, with just a few koshiro touches around the edge
and it’s kawashima specifically who blew this thing up so hard
that’s the “he”
SHORT VERSION: A return to form! One of the most creative and enjoyable 90s 0-Y-Axis FPS games I’ve played so far, this is a fun romp through time.
LONG VERSION: You’re back in the catacombs, this time armed with a moustache to help you on a time traveling adventure.
This is a real return to form after the abysmal second installment, and a great way to end the Catacomb series as a whole!
Destructible walls are hinted better as in Abyss, and there is a new kind of secret (walls you can walk through) that are hinted at when you walk near them. Like destructible walls, they are generally made to stand out from solid ones.
Again, there are levels with unique textures and enemies not seen anywhere else in the series, and since in this one you do time traveling into the past and future, there are some fun enemy designs! There are also a lot more projectile throwing enemies this time around, which I like. And they mix and match enemies better! … but you still mostly fight groups of the same enemies. But it’s still better than the other games!
There are also fewer enemies you have to wait to attack this time around.
Items aren’t thrown at you as much, which is good in my opinion… the previous two threw way too many at you so you topped out really quickly, whereas in this one it feels like you get a good amount for what you encounter.
The biggest improvement is the level design, which has much more variety and creativity. No more key-door-key-dooring across entire levels!
Let’s see… there is a survival level where the exit only appears after a set amount of time, a maze level where you rely on “drones” to help you find your way, a level with invisible enemies you have to keep an eye out for on the radar, but perhaps most notably is a hub!
Here you can go back and forth between four different levels, with the aim to eventually return with four keys of each colour to open the exit of the hub. So, the original Catacomb 3D was more clever with their hub, but this was still neat.
There is a water world which is pretty typical, a fire world with no secret walls/doors so everything is open from the start, an ancient world that also has no secret walls but instead uses transparent force-fields to control flow, and a future world that is typical but has good combat.
A funny thing is that you can leave hub levels with keys you’re not supposed to, so I think it’s possible to skip some of them, and in my case I left with enough extra keys to completely bypass the final boss fight (but I went back and did it anyway). I don’t think they fully thought that bit of the game through, but hey.
Another odd thing is that they give you all the radar gems pretty much from the get go, as long as you find an obvious secret in the hub area… they shouldn’t have bothered with them at all, really.
But there is only one major problem I have with the game, and that’s that there is a bug in the Wizard’s Maze that makes the game slow to a crawl… the drones cause it, but I’m not sure how… I think maybe if they bump into each other? I killed one and then the game went back to normal. The game is open source now, so hopefully a sourceport fixes whatever this bug is.
But yeah, overall I had a great time with this sci-fi fantasy romp! Lots of variety, fun ideas, and fun exploring. Definitely one of my fav 0-Y-Axis games.
very much noted thank you, and yeah i guess saying “the right way” probably wasnt the best way to word that cuz you are right lmao, its not been very fun LOL. i should probably just go check out dark bramble cuz everything and everyone keeps talking about it
Been playing some of a game I got during summer sale called Ballioniare. The simple description is it’s basically ballatro for pachinko nerds. There’s a few flavors of boards or game styles but i’ve only touched 2. I’m stuck on the starter pyramid board but there’s another modifier that seems to affect your starting board or style of play. First one seemed vanilla while the other one was food themed.
The Balatro part is you have to earn a minimum money/score amount to make it to the next phase. After every phase you get to choose a perk that will affect some rules or resources. You drop a ball and see it bounce on stuff and get money. After every drop you get to choose a new trigger or pin to place on the pachinko board. They can be simple like a bouncer or jump rope or an ogre that takes damage everytime you hit it and gives a bonus once defeated. Then there’s some more complicated ones like candle that will sit your ball on fire and will then set of other triggers that have flame effect if they touch. There’s to many and so many synergies that i’m finding it more overwhelming than I’d like as my before bed steamdeck game. I’m sure there’s optimized builds but I don’t care to look them up. The discovery is the joy here but it’s still alot to take in for the first few games when I just want to set up simple chain reactions but at a certain point you fill up the board and you keep getting triggers/pins so you have to start deciding which ones to take out for best flow or synergy. To Much thinking for my brain after popping a melatonin. Probably a good between tasks at work game.
I was playing a bunch of really good games but then my brother bought DS2 for me… now Im playing One Good Game full of Bad Bitches
the fidelity of control in DS2 is so high it took me my entire playthru of the first game back when it came out along with like 30 or 40 hours in On the Beach to really develop fluency
I love this shit. I somewhat wish I had set it to only use Some of the
online sharing stuff because that woulda been more like my legendary first playthru of DS1 (I had to travel to people’s houses where they had internet, or once a starbucks, in order to connect to the chiral network) but I also feel like this game is more about the playground than anything and fully connecting gets me into that more quickly.
the game is also ridiculously CUTE!! you can rescue animals and everyone is very charming and quirky. I love it… It feels like such an honest, unabashed fantasy on the part of Kojima, really unleashing his imagination with the characters. Its wonderful! And those Shinkawa designs are captured so well by the clothing design and modeling! Its really incredible how they manage to have the character designs show thru as well as the actors!
