Fun DLC. Also let me just about max out all of Jesse’s abilities…maybe now I can beat that damn optional boss.
Gonna wait to do the AWE DLC til I, y’know, play and beat Alan Wake. In the mean time I guess I’ll get back to Shin-chan, maybe try to remember where I was on Phantasy Star, maybe try to get Haruka’s idol career back on track…
Played the Rollick N’ Roll demo. A virtual, Brio-style, traintrack-routing toy, the puzzle comes from understanding the sequence and later juggling multiple cars through the sequence such that they don’t ruin it for other cars in the sequence. Each button colour corresponds to a track element which makes things simple, but the way physics can jank out on some things keeps it from being trivial or straightforward. The little seesaw floor, for example, really requires finesse of momentum. Kinda turned off it knowing that the meat of the game is juggling several cars through the route and not the pleasure of just making stuff go. It’s billed as a highly accessible and low-key experience but I played to relax and found it wanting, more frustrating than elegant.
vehicle controls are more responsive and drivable than ever - yet still comical and “unplayable” “kusoge” in the best ways. ragdoll launches are still hilarious. the enemy palette is bountiful. many of the new enemy types are among the best of the series (some are also the worst, which is somehow also a plus!). the 2p split-screen is phenomenal. absolutely fabulous game
Saw @Tegiminis playing through Doom 3 recently and leaving reviews on backloggd, which inspired me to check out the BFG Edition bonus map pack the Lost Mission. It’s an okay set with a really cool couple of Hell maps that, as teg pointed out, feel the closest to Doom 1/2 hell than any other sequel ever managed. But really what struck me the most is just how bad the BFG Edition of Doom 3 is. It’s not just that they stapled the flashlight to your shoulder but more that they’ve made changes to the lighting such that the game seems almost nearly in full bright mode. I can’t believe the hatred Doom 3 is so deep that some director for the studio that made this version believed this could be called an improvement.
I am afraid to play base Doom 3 in the BFG Edition.
Jumped into Alan Wake and I gotta remind myself there’s about two halves (half and almost a whole of one?) of two console generations and just shy of a decade between it and Control.
That said, I did laugh when Alan Wake grabs his ENERGIZER® brand flashlight and batteries. Seems like a raw deal for Energizer given how often you swap those suckers out.
The lighting in Doom 3 BFG isn’t quite as “who cares” as Resurrection of Evil or Lost Mission - there’s still the strong stencil shadows - but it’s completely neutered by the flashlight being on your armor. All of the mood is gone.
doom 3 bfg does not have real stencil shadows like the original. they made it during that legal battle over carmacks algorithm for them so they are completely faked. its also why bfg is brighter than the original, theres no dynamic lighting anymore. the flashlight change is simply a symptom of a much larger problem.
After hooking up all my old consoles to my very bad LCD TV I turned the Xbox on to play Burnout 3 and during the entire time I was like “am I chasing a time when things were simpler and I had the whole world in front of me?” but also the Road Rage mode is still the best: smashing your car against other cars while yours gets progressively more damaged and fucked up still feels pretty good. I think the FOV is way way way too much, the critical area of the screen is too small so it’s very easy to go faster than you can anticipate. This looks like an N64 game to me now given the very muddy textures and I feel like if it were made at the same fidelity today it’d be called a “PSX racer”
I do still think that Dominator is too mean spirited from 3’s pop punk happy-go-lucky vibes. Paradise remains an all timer. I don’t think this kind of game can be made again. I keep thinking about what Alfredo says to Tito in “Cinema Paradiso” before he leaves town. “Don’t give into nostalgia” and I don’t know what that means still.
The cars go progressivly faster and you’re trained to just go full boost all the time, but the faster you go the more restraint you have to use in order to not die every 20 feet, this makes full speed with the higher level cars pretty rare but it feels electric when you do reach their full potential. This aligns with a little bit of videogame car design philosophy: never let the cars reach top speed for more than a very little bit, that way you always feel like there’s more for the cars to give.
Been dabbling a little before I get too into anything else.
Super Video Golf: Upon hearing that the new HSG is kinda not great, I saw this recommended and…it’s weird, it’s alright. I don’t like that you can’t (or at least I haven’t figured out) how to get an overhead view of things, especially when putting, but it’s otherwise not bad. Real weird, unplaceable vibe to the whole thing. Like super early bowling alley strike CGI brought to life kinda vibe.
The Patrick Star Game: Is there a name for the genre of clumsy physics games? This is one of those, and it’s honestly kinda alright. Probably had more fun with it in a half an hour than I did with like two hours of Just Die Already or Goat Simulator.
I still wanna master the weird physics thing I saw in a video, where if you climb in a cardboard box while carrying a leaf blower you can pretty much launch yourself across the map…
i tried playing an all bots match of Deadlock thinking that would be less stressful, it isn’t. I’m still behind on souls somehow despite killing enemies and farming and doing everything correctly. Even on medium difficulty the bot matches are incredibly stressful, the default keybinds make me fat finger abilities and melee in high pressure situations. I fucking hate this game. there’s too much shit going on at all times. you’re always behind. I hate the initial lane phase where you’re just not doing anything except poking at the enemy team trying to get some kind of momentum.
There is too much shit to do and remember in the game and too much unpredictable shit happening to really form any kind of plan or strategy. It just feels like you’re constantly behind and once you’re behind on souls that’s it.
I started a new town in Animal Crossing as an antidote. Kinda wish I had just done that at first. I forgot there’s e-reader related things in Animal Crossing, and I think I have an e-reader kicking around but not the GBA adapter. Boy howdy this stuff was expensive back in the day but you could do some really neat things that are totally obsoleted by having a smartphone and connecting a console to the internet.
My family’s old town is on the other memory card, one that I can’t delete or change, and it’s like over 20 years old at this point. Every so often I’ll step into the village again and see my sibling’s houses and mine.
Has anyone dabbled with the MGS3 remake? Feels like I’m not missing anything.
I’ve been playing UFO50 and trying to play every single game is taking a lot longer than I thought lol. I wanna talk about every game but my notes are becoming unruly.
SHORT VERSION: More like… Jizz… Jackoff? Whatever, this game still looks and sounds amazing for a DOS platformer, but after the first episode it’s just a collection of cheap hits and becomes an exercise in frustration.
LONG VERSION:
Loved this one as a kid… well, just the first episode, because that’s all I had.
First things first, the music in this game is AMAZING, and the visuals are great too. Love the little animated cutscenes. Lots of visual variety between planets. And the bonus levels looked so cool (and have the best song in the game).
The game also does a good job of giving the different planets unique mechanics, keeping things feeling fresh and interesting.
Too bad it sucks to actually play!! After the first episode, the game is just filled with cheap hits, blind jumps, asshole enemy placement, and enemies with massive hitboxes. This is all made worse by how fast Jazz moves, and how zoomed in the camera is. I can see why they zoomed it the fuck out for the sequel, maybe I’ll like that more.
Oh yeah, and despite the variety of mechanics, most of the levels themselves aren’t particularly interesting layout-wise.
I’ve been revisiting a bunch of DOS games from my childhood and this is the first one I didn’t finish as an adult. It was just too tedious and felt like it was wasting my time.
OH YEAH, and taking away all my weapons when I die is a dick move.
watching adilegian’s videos, it looks like they actually made some decent changes without fucking the original game up too bad (surprising given Konami). i haven’t played it and won’t play it any time soon but i have mostly heard good things about delta. have you ever played MGS3?
I’ve heard similar but nothing making me wanna check it out
Yes, have played mgs3 a bunch which might be why I feel a bit tepid on going back to it even to see what the differences are. My experience of these kinds of 1:1 remakes are you are just searching for little differences to check against your memory of the original and the game often devolves into frustration with what you don’t like and mild appreciation of what you do like. At least it felt this way for me for Dead Space and Demon’s Souls.
they made it so you can switch camos with the d-pad and avoid having to go into a menu which is unacceptable to me. along with changing the speed and feel of snakes cqc
