Games You Played Today: 13 Going On 30

King of Posters
507

Totally agree with your assessment. I think Final is really boring and the score system is so pointless. The only game they ever made that’s worse is the shinkansen one, but at least that one has slightly nice graphics. The ones you mentioned you wanna try next are far and away my three favourites so you’re on the right track imo. I would also rec either ddg3 or professional 2 if you hunger for delicious ps2 graphics with an actually frictive experience (and more interesting train lines!). Ryojouhen is awesome but it stands on its own, not really the regular ddg experience.

Would love to read more of your thoughts as you keep playing!

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508

nice one, dylan!!!

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509

ok so i downloaded this and played it on my Pocket because i didn’t feel like updating my Mister which i haven’t turned on in uhhhhh a while

i played up to Stage 3 and then died. the game is pretty tough, but mostly because i have to figure out how the game wants me to play it. it feels a lot more coherent than the Zeebo version in terms of gameplay, although the Stage 2 boss was kind of baffling. the enemy blocks your first attack and i couldn’t figure out how to break his guard. mostly it seems like you just have to counterattack, but when and how is also kind of unclear to me. power moves with D don’t break the guard, and if he guards this first attack, he seems to guard all subsequent ones, too. i lost a life because time ran out, and mostly won due to (imo) luck.

also, i wonder what it is about Double Dragon remakes and Stage 2. why does everyone hate Jeff, the inexplicable Green Double Dragon palette swap brother? they always want some new boss, instead. bring back Jeff. i demand Jeff.

anyway, cool game. i could see having fun playing it with a friend and just kind of messing around and working our way through it, but i’ll probably keep picking away at it until i figure out if there are some hidden tricks i haven’t learned, yet, or if the game is just kind of unbalanced.

fighting wise, it feels like a cross between Double Dragon and Rage of the Dragons, if that makes any sense. i guess because it’s a Neo Geo game, but between the sound effects and animations, everything kind of has a RotD feel to it, but applied to the sort of slow and methodical attacking methods of DD. it’s sort of a weird mix, because i feel like DD needs to feel kind of heavy. it’s its own thing, though, and not a bad one.

graphically, again, it’s a lot more coherent than the Zeebo game. the sprites and backgrounds all go well together and have a ton of detail.

edit - my only true criticism is this, but it applies to all Double Dragon remakes: it’s really funny how Double Dragon in the 1980s had seamless transitions between stages that did a lot of storytelling that really makes the player feel like they are “somewhere.” i understand that doing this in a modern game is probably really difficult for reasons i can’t fully comprehend and that i assume have to do with bespoke/custom circuitboards made for arcade games in the 80s, but still, it feels like one of those kind of essential Double Dragon “je ne sais quoi” things.

this is part of what makes Jeff interesting, at all. like he rides up an elevator, and then you fight him. and when you beat him, you ride the very same elevator down into the park and continue on from there.

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510

the fella got the Diablo collection on my switch about 20 years ago, to play with his sister. he only got round to opening Diablo 2 like last week. i protested that the first one had better hub music but you know what, number two actually interpolates the Tristram theme a bit! and it’s still that like, metal-adjacent kinda sparse reverb-heavy guitar stuff. it’s nice, it’s a vibe. and its general aesthetic is kind of nice to revisit nowadays y’know? sort of grungy and silly but it feels like something

all this to say, we tried number 3 last night for the couch co-op and jesus christ. there’s just nothing there. everything is so QoL’d and WoW’d that there’s almost no game to actually play, that low-poly WoW look is intriguingly charmless, even the cutscenes are so boring and generic and full of symphonic metal dross next to number 2’s which at least had some kind of character

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511

Continuing to alternate between bot matches in Deadlock and Animal Crossing. The Gamecube’s clock battery is out so I am stuck on the same day and I need to replace it if I want the whole experience. Fishing in AC is one of my favorite videogame things to do, but fixing the gamecube might mean some soldering.

Deadlock medium bots matches actually let me do a full build, as in easy matches you tend to dominate one lane and then finish the game which doesn’t let you build out. However the medium matches tend to drag on forever and I would call it a “carry team” simulator since the bots aren’t smart enough to coordinate a push. But I could finally get some Tier 4 items and experiment with them late match. Still very frustrating, like I hit shift enough times to trigger old sticky keys right in the middle of being melted and I spammed enough keys to open up teams like 5 times.

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512

Somehow completely missed that the Indiana Jones DLC came out. My GPU came with the Ultimate or whatever edition, so I reinstalled it and hopped in.

It’s…fine? Not bad? I’m stuck on a puzzle right now that’s…not exactly difficult, but is kind of bullshit (a ball rolls through a track that you need to guide in a particular course on the floor, but you only have three track pieces to swap around, so you need to run back and forth and pull up the ones it has passed by and lay down new ones before it goes too far - and they haven’t made placing pieces like that any better than the janky water puzzles from the main game).

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513

I think I have installed and uninstalled and installed Nier Automata half-dozen times with not the intention of a playthrough, but a return hang out. I did that tonight, playing about an hour as fast as I could from the beginning. Game still owns. Last time I loaded it up was apparently 2018. This year is just full of looking at old saves. My immediate thought was “Yeah this is definitely one of the best games I’ve ever played.” And it was on the list. So good job me.

Out of semi-spite I’ve had the Crow Country demo sitting on this same playstation for just under a year. I’ve finally played it and…surprise! It charmed me immediately. Other posters have said it does not rock the boat. I was worried it was going to be too referential to the works it is taking from. Thankfully not. I quickly felt like I was playing Crow Country and not a game that wanted to be Resident Evil or Silent Hill (that…other survival horror game I played earlier this year that so annoyed me because it also had to reference Twin Peaks.) I will happily playthrough Crow Country when I feel like buying video games again. Great Job Little Game.

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Did I never write about Crow Country here? Its one of my favorite games from last year. I recall typing something when I played it last year but god knows where that went.

Bottom line game is really good. its exactly long enough. It looks great. Plays great.

It puts tank controls on the D-Pad and free direction controls on the stick and I alternated between them when they made sense. Which really impressed me. You don’t have to switch to classic mode you can just play classic style and the second it annoys you switch it up.

Its not hard. I’m not a survival horrorist and I was rarely running out of stuff on normal. Though I did die a few times. I found all the puzzles really fun and videogamey.

I always want to put Crow Country in terms of some 90s game console or other but It has too much of something for all of them. Really its like playing box art from the 90s. What should be SGI workstation pre-render sprites are just regular 3D objects.

I think it takes the twisted theme park idea and turns it on its head by making it clear this place was built for people to enjoy and run by people who were mostly just trying to earn minimum wage. As opposed to the resident evil environs which are sinister in all aspects. The cute graphics made cuter by the cuteness of the designs because its literally a park. I find the intersections of game theming, theme park theming, character dynamics to be some good brain candy. Its not trying to be anything higher than it is but I think it makes you at least think a little bit about its intersecting elements.

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Finished the Indiana Jones DLC. It’s alright. Was worth a few hours to go back to Rome and wail on some guys for a while.

I will say that, since I have wasn’t really planning on going back for 100% on any of this, I did drop my usual nonlethal approach just a hair by shooting at some barrels and blowing up nearby fascists and also lobbing dynamite at a ton of praying cultists near the end.

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516

Been playing Baldur’s Gate with a friend, coming up pretty close to the end, I think. Not quite there but things seem to be wrapping up.

The soundtrack for BG3 is decent. Nothing like, crazy our outstanding, just alright enough to act as background for the fights, scenes, ambiance, so on.

Then we made the choice to

Spoilers here

Sneak into Raphael’s House of Hope to get the hammer, and as you are sneaking out, he shows up and is like “you pathetic little worms, FITE ME!” And once the dialogue finished and the combat begins, the MOST INSANE TRACK STARTS PLAYING LIKE WHAT THE HELL?!?! Full on fucking musical opera track with lyrics and everything. I was in total shock for a moment, and just had to listen because I couldn’t focus on the actual combat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk2AqXsJsWU

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It’s so good.

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518

I probably would never have heard this without this post. I keep music off in games I spend time in because of earworm issues. They really had some fun making this game. Maybe I’ll finish it some day.

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519

oh yeah that song is definitely the highlight of the entire game. that character needed more screen time in general. you can skip his existence entirely, if I recall.

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520

He waits for you to pass by key points, so I guess theoretically you could always dodge around them, though I think you’d have to deliberately do so, or just like, speed run the whole game and never explore anything.

But yes, he is such an amazing character.

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521

sometimes deliberate wether automata is that good or not but then i remember the sidequests have some horrible sicko stuff going on and like, that’s probably good. thanks yokotaro for the lobotomized boywife quest

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i definitely understand why folks like original Nier over Automata, but i love it, and yeah, it hides its real meat in those totally optional sidequests (and i guess routes C and D)

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Willing to read an essay (50,000 words max) on Reincarnation being Taro’s zenith.

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524

Outrun GBC

this is a really nice-looking game and fun concept, but the game is kind of mediocre. it really de-emphasizes the driving aspect of Outrun, and the only challenge comes from dodging the ridiculous amount of cars on screen. the stages all basically play the same and don’t require a lot of thought or precision to get through. don’t wanna hate on a fan effort that clearly had love poured into it, but it isn’t very Outrun

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525

I love deckbuilding roguelikes and remixes of classic card games like Poker, so I am surprised that I’m not immediately sold on Balatro. I’ve played a few (unsuccessful) runs and I’m lukewarm.

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526

I finished the demo for Unbeatable. Remember when I’ve complained about games for teens, or about having a band, or set in Japan and relying on a “foreign” aesthetic. What if all the characters talk too much? WELL THIS HAS ALL THAT.

But also I like it. It has a story to tell. It has music it wants you to listen to. It is so infatuated with FLCL and Number Girl and Pokemon TV Show and Bloodthirsty Butchers and The Pillows and the phrase “Be Gay Do Crimes.” Maybe for once one of these isn’t made with cynicism or blowhard dreams (OFK and Artful Escape). Maybe it just really loves all the things it has in it, and I’m just the exact person to recognize all the things in it.

I walked out of the demo just like Crow Country thinking “I want to play more of this.” Which is extremely high praise because everyone of those annoying things in it should have made me yell Fuck You at the TV. And I didn’t.

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