stayed up until 1:30 playing ball x pit. i had no idea it was 1:30. i might have to not play ball x pit anymore.
14 Likes
Iād be curious to see what you make of the sequel as it improves everything about the controls but alters the overall aesthetic and changes the structure into a loosely open world thing.
I actually played JSRF before the original, so it was a shock to the system when that modern port got released in 2012 and I experienced it for the first timeā¦
Remember really enjoying Zineth as a counterpoint to that port (came out the same year) although sadly it looks like the website it was originally hosted on no longer exists. Iām sure itās still floating around online somewhere thoughā¦
5 Likes
They removed a bunch of sega mobile ports in the last few months but you could still download them if you claimed them on your account. You can probably side load it if need be.
2 Likes
speaking of delisting, all the city connection psikyo ports are being removed from steam at the end of the month. not sure why!
4 Likes
MAYBE porting the big switch collection to PC?
2 Likes
Clover Pit
have been dabbling a bit with all the systems and trying to understand how the Gears shall be connected, have unlocked the four drawers so far, but now stalling out a bit (since there are so many bits to test & try out), which is ā¦ kinda good (because letās face it, itās gambling)?
otoh, another aspect that makes me re-evaluate the design of Sonic Ćworlds online mode 
a lot and hard here.
1 Like
i installed whatever theyāre calling the ARC RAIDERS open beta because you know itās what all the kids are on about I guess and I may as well try to find yet more evidence of how old I am. you absolutely could not pay me to play this game, it is a pure distilled amalgamation of everything I hate in video games and in life. to even contemplate the existence of this thing makes me feel cold and alone. above baseline, I mean.
4 Likes
BIO MENACE EPISODE ONE
SHORT VERSION: A solid, varied, badass platfomer that requires a bit of tactics to survive. This game aināt no menace to me!
LONG VERSION:
A pastiche of various 80s sci-fi action films, in Bio Menace you play as an aging action hero with a bad sunburn (though that might just be the EGA talking).
Mutants have over-run the cities and taken humans hostage! So you gotta find a human in each level (often delivering a bit of amusing dialogue), who will then give you the key to exit.
Getting to the hostages usually involves collecting keys, so youāll be running back and forth through creative traps and varied (cool looking) enemies to eventually free them. Most of the levels have good flow and donāt have too much back-and-forth.
Collecting keys is a big thing in this game, since each level is full of locked closets, and youāll have to search them for bonuses and, of course, things that let you free the hostage (SPECIAL keys). This may sound like a drag, but searching them all satisfied a tic in me (and you donāt need to keep searching once you find the special keys).
I loved the first level as kid because you could go inside broken windows and search inside buildingsā¦ but that mechanic never really comes back. I guess it could get annoying if you had to constantly do it. All the levels are varied in both design and aesthetics though! There are lots of memorable ones.
I first tried playing this again a few months but found it too difficult and rage quit. I came back to it recently and discovered itās actually very doable if you play it tacticallyā¦ attacking from a distance when you can, backing up and shooting, using cover, and using grenades.
The special ammo and grenades you collect are lost when you go to the next level, which worked for meā¦ it was like the game was saying āthese are the tools you have here, make sure you use themā stopping me from stockpiling a bunch of weapons I didnāt use when I finish the game.
I do wish you could change which weapon youāre using, though!
Itās still tough, but itās very fair. One nice thing is that when you die, the game immediately respawns youā¦ all the enemies you killed are dead, you have all your items, etc.
It uses the second Keen engine, but thankfully they have the camera further away which helps A LOT.
But yeah, a solid, tactical, explosive DOS platformer that looks and feels cool (if you like 80s sci-fi movies).
BIO MENACE EPISODE 2
More of the same, and thatās fine by me! Some highlights of this episode:
- You get to meet Commander Keen
- You can crash the Apogee offices
- There is a level where you get turned into and play as a mutant blob
Probably my favourite episode. A bit harder than the first but still fair despite some rough spots.
BIO MENACE EPISODE 3
Oof, as is typical with Apogee games, the third episode takes a diveā¦ mainly thanks to the difficulty.
It gets off to a really bad start with a first level thatās basically impossible if you donāt find a secret with a power-up in it (I had to watch a longplay to see how to beat it).
The following few levels are not too bad, but the final few are very tedious, with lots of obstacles that are hard to predict, making for lots of saving and reloading. There is also one near the end (circle of death) that requires pretty pixel perfect jumping if you donāt want to instantly die. It is extremely tedious.
The final boss is also pretty anti-climatic.
So yeah, only play this one if you really crave more Bio Menace, otherwise just stick with the first two episodes.
15 Likes
iāve been trying out the newest vampire survivors-like, megabonk. now, as someone with the unfortunate predilection that has made them play 100+ hours of vampire survivors, I find a lot to like about this mechanically. it requires a lot more movement and it has a lot of satisfying navigation options. slopes, sliding, jump multipliers, etc. i appreciate the base 10 minute time limit which makes the pacing a lot better than vampire survivors. it also doesnāt feel as easily broken as vampire survivors either with few (known to me thus far) easy win builds. however, itās also 100x even more obnoxiously meme culture enveloped than the already memeified vamp sur. itās just insulting to be assaulted with this shit as a thirty something. i donāt want to play as the megachad and i donāt think itās epic. also, we now know that being into memes is a surefire gateway into false consciousness that forces you to carry out misguided political assassinations. iām also fairly sure that the logo and key art were llm products, which means that probably some in-game assets are as well. donāt advise playing it even if iām enjoying my time with it.
12 Likes
i donāt know what the deal is with the third episode being particularly bad with a lot of these games - it was the same deal with Duke Nukem 1. i think IDās games escaped that but i can definitely imagine feeling ripped off if you spent full price on a lot of these games back in the day.
but yeah iāve always liked BioMenace. felt like it was more imaginative and varied than other similar platforms and the art is also better - particularly on the big boss creatures. the guy who made it did a lot of background art for a lot of other Apogee games and has had a reasonably long career in the game industry since then - definitely one of the more talented people to ever work for Apogeeās games.
4 Likes
Been playing a rom of Disney Snowboarding for GBA. Itās pretty cute. Fun little racing thing. Itās not super intense, but difficulty does ramp up pretty quick. Thereās not a lot of game there but taking a break from Silksong means Iām not looking for another fifty hour epic.
3 Likes
we got a steamdeck recently and that has opened up some possibilities for me, in this case being able to finally give infinity nikki a try. i could post in the dedicated thread but thatās where everyone is having a good time doing the fashion and my experience was mostly that i want nothing to do with this nikki. it irks me how i have 10 different types of transactions at all times at my fingertips, there are notifications constantly, there are materials to grab everywhere i run in the world, npcās look like new donk people a lot of the time, every time anyone has something to tell me in the tutorial i want them to hurry the fuck up because the way they talk just doesnāt do anything for me. there have been some very cute outfit pieces, but iāll have to fit them on nikki who looks like a perfect doll in a way i wouldnāt let something i made myself look. it looks really perfectly rendered but most of my time has been spent being bored or being anxious due to overstimualtion from there being too many things like iām playing witcher 3 or some shit. games that tell you everything should have less things.
10 Likes
Yesterday I consider start a new thread named as āLes Grognardsā to talking about wargame and related thing, but I cannot find a fit category so I give up.
2 Likes
KoF with a board game tag imo. āJust Postā and it can be moved to the right place
5 Likes
Clover Pit:
managed to get the first successful run in and still am wrapping my head around some perks and how to combine them for maximum damaā fault tolerant behaviour.
The bracelet (if thereās just one combo, Ć2) coupled with the link-ability (executing it multiple times) plus the ability to have horizontal 5ās if the last draws werenāt successful means you automatically get three combos, which is enough to trigger the cat (iirc two times the interest) is working OK so far, but needs some working around the 666es wiping out everything (since the book that saves you from it tends to get killed a bit too quickly in the setup where you get 7+2+2 pulls regularly).
just wondering sometimes that you could get some horsinā around with the gambling instead of this pit, but such is the game
3 Likes
Iāve been writing a post to start one but I didnāt finish it before the meetup lol
2 Likes
One of the best rounds I had involved having both lucky cats, the hand (I forget what itās called but yāknow), the little guy with the turban who puts links on symbols, the train and some other stuff. Whatever I wound up doing, I was racking up a lot of jackpots, right til I didnāt (did get the achievement for losing a million bucks to a 666).
An effective run I had once I unlocked some cards was to play with the 7 rounds, single pull variant. I got lucky (literally I guess) with that red stone that boosts your luck, the hand, the lucky cat, and a few others. Youāre almost guaranteed a jackpot with the red stone trigger and the hand working together, itās a matter of having other charms and phone abilities to multiply symbols or veer them towards 7s/diamonds/treasures.
Still wanna see what happens when you put a full corpse on the bench and winā¦
Edit: also realizing that anyone who hasnāt played CloverPit might think this post sounds nutsā¦ itās normal I assure you itās just CloverPitā¦
4 Likes
iirc, you donāt need that much to unlock the final key (250k), the issue is surviving the opening rounds with 10-20% penalties to pay per round.
but yeah, there are quite a few combos that work in certain combinations (e.g. black lotus offers multipliers per resale value of all equipped items, so if you have items that have boosters applied (and are therefore more worth in resale value) you get an even higher multiplier applied) and thatās just scratching the surface!
1 Like
Got to the digital world in Digimon Story: Time Stranger demo. It has a lot of accessibility features and is at core a fairly generic JRPG, however, I like the accessibility features, and being a JRPG isnāt a mark against it imho. Iām the sort of person who had zero problem with the gameplay in Solatorobo being at the complexity level of a speak and spell though because I liked the story, setting, and characters. And thatās basically how I feel about this so far: I like the story, setting, and characters. I donāt need every game in the world to converge to From Software game design principles. If this keeps up I will want to buy the game. @Gimelrey lost his patience with it quickly though so it would end up being yet another solo game, and $60+ is too hefty for it right now, especially when I still need to beat several other games first.
3 Likes
I watched a stream to see how the game opens up later and they really go crazy with the digital world stuff. You have to go through a lot of sewers to get there but the reveal is good. Saw a lot more appealing Digimon designs there too but not sure if Iāll go back with all the other stuff on my backlog atm
3 Likes