yeah this is why i like it. it’s very restrained!
haven’t played the Shinobi demo, yet
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Been playing more Wheel World and unlocked The Second World but now the races are much harder and the game isn’t really performant so the framerate drops and chugs which makes controlling the bike harder.
I also wish this game had a photo mode, that would be cool.
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Finished Wheel World. All timer of a vehicle game.
Never really had a game where you build a vehicle for a certain purpose, usually you just keep acquiring the best parts and then optimize everything but it was fun to mix and match parts for certain races.
I didn’t figure out how to bunny hop until mid game, and it doesn’t tell you how to in game, I had to google how to do it. That really opens up pathways in the game’s tracks.
I do wish they had solved the performance issues because it doesn’t seem like a very complex game, but at times it chugs and slows down.
The game world is really nice, I really just want to ride a bike around it’s meandering countryside. Hell I wanna live there.
This makes me want to make a moped game.
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Sonic CD runs on my 3DS with emulation but the steam version doesn’t run on linux, on laptop or steam deck. This is somewhat absurd.
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I can’t remember the stupid name but Sonic CD has native ports on almost everything because of the android port.
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It had a Windows port around the time it came out! Even that would probably work better!
a friend came over today with his switch today to show me the network test for the in-development minecraft / robox thing by the splatoon devs. the fictional framing is outlandish, the characters are all “developers” who are reclaiming digital space from little robot monsters on a virtual planet. you freely bind commands to your controller buttons from an inventory of dozens of items, there are precision platforming challenges and combat reminiscent of 2d zelda games against some generally nonthreatening blocky robots
you have to sit through a quiz about their policies re: multiplayer that repeats once a real-world hour in order to customize your avatar, if you get a single answer wrong you have to wait for the next quiz. the customization system looks incredibly robust, it looks like you can compose a skin out of like up to 50 primitive shapes? in practice, they’re nearly always a charmingly busted attempt to recreate a character from a media property
once i got past the initial visual overstimulation i could see the appeal, but i was too old for the entire in-universe framing of what the player characters are doing to be legible to me, like there are assumptions about how people from younger generations engage with digital platforms at work here and they don’t pertain to me, or maybe the idea of colonizing a space inside the computer is supposed to evoke 0% of the atrocities of the belgian congo or what have you and i’m too poisoned by historical context to take the concept of making land hospitable at face value
it’s cool that they have blocks that you break to spawn staircases or platforms, or which grow foliage and nuts onto trees
it’s a strange game but i could see some people getting really into it. to people who grew up with roblox it probably seems like a stripped-down, polished, kid-friendlier roblox? interesting to see something like that on a nintendo console
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Is this like a coherent world that everyone’s in or is it like separate areas or are people generating game spaces that they visit via list? When I think roblox i think something like game builder garage with a server browser but sounds like this is more along the lines of 3D Dot Game Heroes or DQ Builders ?
it’s a mixture, it’s a coherent world, everyone gets a chunk of it identified by a pair of coordinates, but also there are these bubbles within chunks that let you subdivide ownership with a high degree of granularity. you can see the contents of neighboring chunks, at one point we saw a bridge between chunks with a sign proudly announcing it as the very first bridge between chunks, but there are clear boundaries between them and you need to interact with a menu to pass through.
you start the game in a hub area that includes portals to people’s worlds, and they’re able to create these ads or title cards for them by layering impact text over screengrabs.
it’s definitely closer to minecraft than roblox, i don’t think there’s a system for modifying game mechanics, but domesticating new chunks can entail playing predefined multiplayer arcade game modes in them; i saw 2 distinct modes there, one involving navigating a maze without access to most of your equipment and another involving the basic zelda-style combat except all the players are tethered to each other and die instantly if they move too far away. i’m not sure how many there are in total
tbh i probably should not describe anything as like roblox since i only know of it from a couple of youtube videos. but i found it initially difficult to parse in exactly the same way as that game, if that makes sense
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I am gradually whittling down the materials I need to subdue an enemy force in On the Beach. Its obviously fun to fight with a clever arsenal, but I am preparing myself for the ultimate procure on sight experience. Putting the cargo pack down and sneaking to a MULE box before jacking it for weapons. Using ceramics and whatever else I can get my hands on.
Im also trying to fight all the bosses I can in the post game and defeat them handily. Even though I get a lot of repeats, I dont mind because I can fight them differently than the last time! There’s definitely a method to their appearances but I havent quite grasped it yet, the information is still kind of scattered around.
Meanwhile, Im still building roads and making deliveries, working up my stars with folks. What an impeccable gameplay loop.
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words words words words about profoundly uninteresting topic doom eternal
sat down with doom eternal for a few hours… i think 2016 despite my gripes was really good at maintaining a really dramatic pulse in combat encounters where there’s a semi-thrilling if kind of binary push and pull between how much danger you’re in/how much danger you can get yourself out of, and sequel creep basically prevents eternal from living up to that At All to a degree that’s kind of baffling.
it’s probably the easiest shooter i’ve played in forever for one thing?? they give you such a huge stack of Violence Options so quickly, i actually do get how people can get tangled up in them and die a lot early on, but you can get away with so much stupid shit if you take basic advantage of them/keep little guys alive on purpose so you can chainsaw or flamethrower The Juice out of them (big thematic failure that the game is mechanically incentivizing Ultra Hell Kill Satan Murder Man to keep anything hell related alive for longer than it takes for him to run after it imo!!! i thought i was supposed to be a Catholic Bulldozer!!!). i feel like even if you don’t understand the cooldowns fully, if you just don’t get overwhelmed and spam them i don’t think anything in the game is gonna be threatening, you seriously have like 5 of them at any given time. i feel like i’m constantly doing Super Robot Wars full screen ultimates on every single enemy. i feel like that mega64 DBZ video where he goes like super saiyan 15 and turns into a flaming shoe. i feel like a van peeling out of a kroger parking lot at 90 mph and the game is the lobby of the nearest taco bell.
i don’t even feel like it needed to be this way? making the chainsaw more necessary by choking your ammo cap is a really sweet idea, it actually works out fine, but the chainsaw was also in the last game and being a commercial sequel demands including More Shit. being under that pressure doesn’t really absolve the design though, the actual amount of little micro-guns on your guy goes well beyond what they probably could’ve gotten away with. (it’s such a fucking ridiculous mental image thinking about this buzz lightyear guy covered in millions of little turrets swiss cheesing like, every fly that buzzes near him). genuinely the exact moment i quit is when they gave me my third type of grenade on it’s own cooldown in the last half hour, i started feeling like i could just mash the keyboard and ordanance would fly out of me and microwave the whole entire world. also. the music is just brutally penis. i hate shitty video game metal so much lol. american wasteland on gamecube just had pig destroyer and high on fire on deck what in the hell was wrong with that. i’m not playing the dark ages now but if they didn’t make it sound like this they genuinely missed the easiest layup in history
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Not a shock Axelay is very good. Managed to get an Easy Clear tonight work on a Normal clear tomorrow. Each level has something impressive to show you. I feel like the weapon selection system between stages was a bad move and they should have just decided on 3 weapons and built the game around it. That first stage is particularly brutal because it is teaching you weapon switching in a way the other levels can’t once you have multiple options of loadout.
Liked that the bosses stressed me out.
I followed it up with two inscrutable SFC Hanafuda games that are both poorly designed in different ways from a player perspective. Certainly neither is gonna teach a Salaryman Hanafuda. One of them uses Mode 7 For The Cards.
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Got back into Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon after a 2 year hiatus after a previous 10 year hiatus.
I was stuck in a teleporter maze where you have to go up and then back down a tower with the up and down doors at the top unmarked. I think I had just gone down on the wrong side last time. Cleared it easily after checking a guide to get me started on the right path. I’m looking into mopping up the side missions. Took on a side mission fight that was much harder than the main line boss I just fought. I actually had to think about it. Found a new dog hole afterward. I need to find more things to transform into, so far I only have the (so far) required two of dog and gambler. I also need to capture some new monsters after sacrificing two to get the transformation ability back… but I cant recall how to get into the dark world. So much stuff a devil summoner needs to know.
There is so much stuff in these games I’m starting to discount the negative things Ive seen about the new Raidou Remaster’s corner sanding. Anything to get into the meat faster has got to be good.
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So I tried cleaning my ps3 and I think it’s broken now. It’s still turning on and off and doing all the startup screen stuff but whenever I try to run a game it just freezes up. I think it’s broken in a fixable way though? I just need to open it back up again, but I’m dreading it to no end.
I reapplied thermal paste on that big fella twice in the last 8 years but I was unemployed both times , I didn’t remember it being so grueling. My little flat doesn’t even have a good surface for this, I had to prop my coffee table up against a wall and disassemble it animal style on the floor, spent half the time looking for dropped screws that inexorably ended up in nooks and crannies I didn’t even know existed. Thoroughly unenjoyable experience!
Anyway I bought Metal Gear Solid on steam and will just be doing that later this week.
In the interim I’ve been playing Sol Cesto
It’s very very pretty but there’s barely any game here? There’s a lot of secrets but the core loop is picking one of four lanes and hoping you don’t get unlucky? You can pickup upgrades that make you a little more likely to not die an ignoble death but they’re honestly kind of a pittance, it’s mostly just rolling the dice with your fingers and toes crossed. And it’s a rogue-lite too so it there’s a lot of repetition in the first half of a run. I kind of love it but it’s only on version 0.5 in early access and it shows. Once they put the rest of the game around the beautiful screens I’m sure it’s going to be really enjoyable.
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Axelay stage 2 in particular is one of the best video game things I’ve ever experienced. Easily in my top 5 shooter stages.
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Weekend Laundry List:
- Rise of the Ronin
- Unknown9 Awakening
- Dynasty Warriors: Origins
- Black Myth Wukong
- Astro Bot
Ronin was kinda underwhelming, everything on this list felt more interesting than it.
Unknown9, with its Ghost Radar gimmick and french dub (yay 
) feels like it can offer more than the first tutorial hour did. The unspoken promise feels somewhat like a Cavia-type game 1-2 decades ago, TBC if it can live up to that feeling.
DW Origins has a cute worldmap, looks great, and recognizing+remembering Guan Yu before the game spells it out was a nice ‘hey I Remember!’-type of moment. Let’s see where the events take my mysterious amnesia-ridden hero Ciao Ciao next 
Wukong has its own thread, so gonna keep it short: feels vidyagamey right out of the box.
Astro Bot: biggest surprise of the weekend, didn’t expect i would enjoy this so much!
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Aw, I’m going to pass on this because
roguelite
but I love to see a game striving to look retro and cool and different outside of the usual trends.
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Been playing Peak with a collection of friends, I guess this is ‘friendslop’ or maybe ‘streambait’ – however, it’s a pretty good version of it, the game is cheap (8 bux before any discount) and there isn’t any gouging beyond that. This is another strand-type game where traversal is the entire name of the game as you work with a group of 1-4 players to go up a mountain. Playing with friends is easier, because you can grab people to get them over the last little bit of a climb, as well as stacking on top of each other to get a little extra vertical distance to start. The series of mountains you climb are generated anew every 24 hours, so you’re always learning a new set of routes and approaches.
The game gets by a lot on charm, as all the players are cartoonishly goofy scouts who starfish whenever they jump, you always start the game with a bugle that just emits horribly out-of-tune blasts whenever it’s played, and later items include a blowdart that puts somebody to sleep (yet also clears all your status debuffs when you wake up). Probably the best bit is that the game has proximity audio, so there’s a lot of the group getting split up and then yelling at each other about where they are – “I think you’re below me, try climbing straight up” or “face the mountain and come left, we’re over here”. It cuts in and out and gets real echo-ey if you get too far away, which makes yelling as loud as you can when you fall off the mountain very funny.
I really like how much the game plays with the social aspects, of dealing with decision-making as a group, the difficulty of striking a balance between sticking together and the potential benefits of scouting ahead, whether you should use a resource you need yourself or see if somebody else needs it more, of the tough conversation of when it might be better for the group to leave a straggler or injured player behind (there is a murderous fog that rises from the bottom of each mountain to provide a time limit).
Plus you can get a wizard hat.
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