Games You Played Today: 13 Going On 30

[captainlove]

idk I just don’t think crowbcat can ‘say’ anything is positive unless they frame a pre-2010s game in opposition to a more modern entry in a franchise. I think their comparison vids are good and I used to enjoy their e3 supercuts but what do they like that was released in the last 15 years? It just reads as this eternal uncritical worship of a golden age.

Edit: read the rest of the edit above. I agree they’re doing different things but I think it’s just the one-note aspect of ‘the past was always better’ that you see in a lot of gamer youtube.

[meauxdal]

hmm, i don’t follow there either because electric underground is nothing if not thorough about explaining why he doesn’t like specific things

[captainlove]

I think this is a fair point. Like I say, I’m not totally against his vids and I wouldn’t go so far as to say he argues in bad faith. I just wonder what he expects given the changes the industry has gone through. I’d be curious to know what he’d recommend in the modern era rather than only explain why Dead or Alive 6 or whatever is disappointing.

[meauxdal]

talking about youtubers is boring (this is an apology for talking about youtubers, not an accusation or quibble). i don’t really care to talk about T.E.U., nor crowbcat, nor any other. i do like to talk about games and i thought TEU’s take on Delta made a ton of sense to me

like, don’t get me wrong, i have enjoyed and laughed to some crowbcat videos before.

[captainlove]

I’ll give the Delta vid a look since I brought up Delta views to begin with anyway. I feel like I’m going to begrudgingly end up playing it in like a year and post about how I liked what they did with one sound effect somewhere.

[meauxdal]

I’ve been playing more EDF6 (it’s good enough that it’s been prying me off Death Stranding 2 consistently). good lord. it’s the best EDF! every EDF is great but this one has got more of all the things i love about EDF. the plot in particular is absolutely bonkers and hilarious and inspired

i am slightly annoyed you don’t seem to be able to play Hardest nor Inferno without beating all of Hard first, but i also get why they did it

split-screen co-op is magical. been playing with @FrequentPilgrim and every time we play it’s an absolute riot

[loki]

i was gonna ask if 6 was the one where the plot goes insane.

i’m nearing the end of 5, and it just casually makes a reference to the mahabharata out of nowhere in like stage 90-something

[isfet]

Double Dragon Zeebo

this is almost a good game. if you look at it in stills, it’s pretty beautiful and seems like the folks “get it,” but in practice, it really reminds me of a PC indie or fan game from the 90s. there is just something off about most of the actual game play. for example, if you get hit, you’re stuck in stun for maybe two or three whole seconds, which in a beat’em up, is a LOT. the whip only hits enemies where its end point attacks, meaning if someone is standing too close to you, you’ll just whip through them. boss enemies and big characters take way too many hits to kill, but then later they seem to have evened out a little.

the devs added two of their own stages and got rid of the Park stage (Stage 3) and these stages are boring as hell. a warehouse (i guess) and something that i guess is supposed to be a dojo but it lacks any character, so it’s hard to tell. the dojo stage is especially annoying because the ninja enemies are unbalanced and can throw an infinite amount of shuriken at you at high speeds. you also take a lot of damage from enemy hits, so combined with everything else i’ve described above, you kind of have to play the game perfectly.

luckily the weapons also do way too much damage and if you get the axe you can just kind of hold on to it until the end of the stage to wipe out everything in a few hits.

the new bosses they created scream “original character do not copy” very loudly. like grey-haired lady with a sword who sometimes has angel wings, for some reason.

i made it to (presumably) the last boss, Willy, and then the emulator crashed.

maybe i’ll try again later? i’m not sure, yet.

the game systems are clearly very inspired by Double Dragon Advance, but nowhere near as refined, and you can’t juggle enemies, so it’s also less satisfying to do any of that stuff.

i’d love to know more about the folks who made this game

the music is kind of horrendous. well, the original compositions, anyway. the composer also seems to have never heard of mixing either, and the midi guitar is way louder than any of the other midi instruments. it’s pretty funny

oh, almost forgot to mention that the music doesn’t loop properly, so there’s a space of half a second in between the loop.

again, it really feels like they tried to do something with this game, but

[aislesgrises]

that doesn’t work out for me because the whole thing pauses time so snake is essentially immediately changed regardless of what’s happening around him, tho it does work out to disincentivize me from trying to maximize my camo values all the time, i don’t have that patience

would think it’s funny if changing camo calls attention to you so when you leave the menu any soldier close enough will have turned to look at your dumb ass changing clothes next to them

[zombieman000]

I think i enjoy delta just as a MGS3-themed MGSV dlc pack. MGS4/PW/MGSV didn’t give me enough TPS aim and crouchwalk in my arcade stealth action so I needed it stapled into MGS3 and the 3DS version is a rough experience even in emulation.

I wanted to see whatever guy savage was going to be built out into a full game, like apparently it came out of leftovers from an abandoned 3rd zone of the enders and the ps2 version definitely has the feel/locomotion of a zoe game, but glad they did something with it though of course it doesn’t justify the $70

[Felix]

2/3 of the way through 2025 checkin:

best game of the year so far:

• it’s definitely, no question KCD2 imo
• have also really liked clair obscur, bananza, skin deep, promise mascot agency
• hades 2 and poe2 also obviously good however far they are from full release

upcoming stuff:

• end of this month is baby steps, sonic racing, silent hill. I expect I will really like but not love each of these.
• absolum is early october and looks like extremely hot shit
• end of next month is mina the hollower, bloodlines 2, outer worlds 2. it would be real easy for all of these to be bad but I feel suspiciously like I am gonna love all 3…
• end of nov is kirby, the anodyne devs’ new zeldalike, maybe surprise release of half-life 3 with the new VR headset…

[iguferon]

funniest npc model i’ve seen in a game in years. fakefactory lives…they say he will never die…

[hellojed]

I might maybe come back to deadlock thanks to the bot matches. You can just play the game without the worst feature: people who never stopped playing deadlock. I am still not doing big brained shit but at least I’m learning the motions of the game in a controlled environment.

frustratingly even in these easy bot matches I am falling behind the rest of my team in souls. I’m keeping pace but I’m still trailing the rest of the team and I’m not sure why.

[HoboSupportAct]

upcoming stuff

FFT Remaster is going to require an Italian translation this September

[Alyx]

Hey isfet, have you tried the recently released fangame Double Dragon One?

Double Dragon One by OzzyOuzo, Johnny16bit

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it.

[aislesgrises]

digimon time stranger demo has an arukenimon npc and tbh wether she can be on the team or not is kind of a deal breaker so either she is and this is the best cyber sleuth game or she isn’t and i will once again be disappointed

other than this its just slightly nicer cyber sleuth? the digimon town is very cute, love seeing them all just hanging out and doing things

[isfet]

funny you should mention it!

seeing this is what inspired me to finally try the Zeebo version, since this game seems to heavily borrow or trace sprites from that one (well, technically the sprites look closer to the iOS version that Brizo put out a few years later).

so, definitely on my radar and i’ll give it a spin this week at some point. it definitely looks a lot better.

[drastic_bb]

playing ps3 ico on the SD tube earlier this year was such a magical experience… i gotta play ps2 shadow of the colossus on here soon it’s still the definitive version

[lofia]

wandering around the map lookin for lizards on a little crt at 2 in the morning. dat’s da good shit

[scross]

I’ve been playing the two Densha de GO! games that got fan translations, fully prepared to accept Final as the definitive version of the series like most of the internet… and so far I feel like 64 is waaay better? The differences between the two games and their philosophies make me think of Outrun and Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast. The older one offers this fascinating tension between incredibly chill vibes and brutal arcade mechanics, and thanks to how exacting it is, even minimal course differences are enough to make every stage have its own personality. The newer one is a maximalist package meant as a victory lap for the series, based on console style progression, almost challenge free with constant dopamine drip, score over survival. But at least Coast 2 Coast is jam packed with cool details and good vibes. Final is super dry in comparison, nearly all the neat pre-PS2 era flourishes are gone, it’s a straight to business slick Y2K thing.

I completed a perfect chain on Final’s Yamanote Line and used the sea of credits I received to unlock some of the most expensive diagrams. They seem like a challenge if I wanted to nail all the checkpoints, but finishing them is not a big deal, they’re perfect for a relaxing zoneout session, but that’s something that rarely interests me. Meanwhile in 64, even two-star difficulty courses can be unusually mean and memorable. The Allotted Time counter serving as your lifebar makes navigating around every speed limit and checkpoint super exciting (you keep asking yourself, do I risk going slower to get an exact arrival time bonus, knowing I might miss a few precious seconds instead?). Being punished for going too fast makes it so that you can’t take forever making a slow approach to each station. The obligation to use your horn in specific situations forces you to actually process what’s going on within each level. The visibly changing conditions and little animations of passengers reacting to braking enhance the fantasy a lot. It’s demanding, rewarding and soulful. Maybe it gets -too- frustrating and memorization heavy later on, but I think I prefer it to be overtuned in this direction.

Anyway, once I’m done with these two games, I think I’ll prioritize Professional, Nagoya Tetsudou-hen and Ryojou-hen over the later titles (unless there are some DDG sickos here who can point me in a better direction or explain why I’m wrong).