You miss the great wyrm of many colours. <3x>
The great wyrm of many colours summons a dragon.
You miss the great wyrm of many colours. <3x>
The great wyrm of many colours breathes acid.
The great wyrm of many colours breathes fire.
You invoke wizard mode and cheat death.
You are full!
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I played through Order of Ecclesia, completing my summer of port-a-vanias. It is so muscular and austere compared to Portrait of Ruin. Fighting became something I had to strategize about. Thereâs this brilliant feeling they introduce by letting me equip a glyph to each arm. That means I can rock my thumb between x and y to hit someone with a barrage of slashes. Beautiful character portraits are back. The script is pretty decent, too. I was also able to play this in Spanish, so I felt a huge surge of satisfaction right from the start.
I missed the silly stuff that was in earlier games, but there were still little eggs here and there. It was nice to pick up lost cats. An obstacle course at the end of the game was a lot of fun to run through. It was sweet to go to landmarks and draw pictures for an old lady.
Anyways, Castlevania doesnât matter anymore to me because I just played Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite. 
Itâs a GAME BOY COLOR game made by Pax Softnica. They were one of the best developers for the grey brick, working on Balloon Trip and Donkey Kong. You waddle around the big world and try to bring all the ham-hams home. You also fill a glossary of 85 terms in the ham-hamâs language. Itâs a little bit like a SCUMM adventure game where you earn new verbs, but you can only use them contextually. The true beauty of acquiring 85 words is that you watch your little guy pantomime every emotion from abject horror to brazen braggadocio. You can also piss.
Almost every word is taught by one hamster, so the world is full of characters to meet. The puzzles are usually about how to get someone to react to you, so they can teach you a new kind of reaction. I loved playing this game so much.
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fuck YES ham ham unite!!! yesss!!!
its so funny how a couple of our hamtaro gifs are ebichu recolors
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I have never heard of Ebichu and this was a great time to learn.
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oh my god im going double sicko yes yess!! mode
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MILK INSIDE A BAG OF MILK INSIDE A BAG OF MILK
Loved the atmosphere, art, and audio, plus the expression of anxiety through the VN medium, but it also felt too forced and heavy-handed in places (especially with the reveal about the dad which felt like it was just there to shock and cheapened the whole thing for me⌠didnât need that to make the game seem more âseriousâ), the moments where you type in responses were wonky (it didnât take an answer with a period at the end), and Iâm not sure if I liked the fourth-wall breaking stuff⌠I understand why they did it, I just donât think I liked it.
MILK OUTSIDE A BAG OF MILK OUTSIDE A BAG OF MILK
Stronger overall than the first game narrative-wise, feeling more honest and intimate. I could relate to wanting to stop taking pills, thinking you can do fine without them.
But it also lacks the raw darkness that hung over the original game, and I really enjoyed that atmosphere. This feels a little softer around the edges⌠but maybe because I got a vaguely hopeful, optimistic ending. I mean, I complained about the first game forcing the dark stuff too much, but they went too far in the opposite direction this time.
Still, glad I played both games.
LIMBO
The first 20 minutes are fantastic, but then itâs two hours of tedious filler. I wasnât impressed with this game back when it came out, and itâs only gotten more underwhelming with age. More like LimBLOW!!!
I read an interpretation of the game that I really enjoyed, tying all the different environments together, but ultimately I donât buy it⌠I think the developers just didnât know how to tie all the mechanics together into a cohesive whole.
Mostly boring, trial-and-error heavy puzzles that feel like they belong in a Flash game. Great first 20 minutes, though! Both gameplay and atmosphere wise.
INSIDE
SHORT VERSION: A classic cinematic platformer in my opinion. Features a brilliant, dark atmosphere and an ambiguous narrative told through environments and interesting puzzles.
LONG VERSION: Iâm a staunch hater of Limbo, so took a long time to get around to playing this⌠and it turns out itâs brilliant! An improvement over Limbo in every possible way.
Sure, it cribs from Another World and Oddworld a fair bit, but it does it in ways that give it its own identity, and there are plenty of fresh ideas here too.
Like Limbo, it also focuses too much on pushing/pulling boxes, but again it at least tries to do something interesting with those puzzles. It also gets bonus points for never giving the player a weapon.
I also found the wordless narrative, told through the environments and puzzles, extremely captivating, and loved how it left plenty of ambiguity for different interpretations, both on literal and metaphorical levels.
Puzzle design was also great, never feeling cheap or too trial-and-error heavy (unlike Limbo), and usually feeling integrated into the world.
Kept me hooked right until the end as I explored more of the mysterious world, rich in atmosphere and a seemingly dark history.
DONKEY KONG BANANZA
Hey DK, do you ever think about death?
A.K.A Donkey Kong 64 2, it took me a couple worlds to warm up to this one, but I loved it by the end, and not just because of the gratuitous amount of fan service (though that helped).
I found the amount of collectables overwhelming at first (like Mario Odyssey) and being able to just tunnel through levels (I initially got lost a lot), but collecting bananas is more fun than collecting moons, and the worlds and challenges are built really well around DKâs abilities. Like Odyssey, there are lots of repeats of challenges, but they are more enjoyable here than in Mario where many were kinda tedious. There are a couple worlds I didnât like (the hotel one with all the poison was annoying for example), but overall I had a fantastic time with this one.
Also has a lot of personality thanks to the NPCs but especially Pauline. Hope she doesnât get involved with some shitty plumber in the futureâŚ
If you canât play it right now, donât worry, itâs not like itâs a revelation or anything. But itâs a lot of fun! I canât imagine trying to 100% it, though⌠that would probably make me hate it.
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The UDX version of Aqua Kitty was on sale on switch and I had a gift card so I got it. Differences from the PC version include boss fights, a âdreadnought modeâ where evey stage is like R-Type level three with one huge boss ship with a core that becomes active and vulnerable once enough of the surrounding bits get damaged, and couch co-op.
THe co-op alone is worth it to me.
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Why are you into playing co-op alone?
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iâm afraid of a haduken
iâm afraid of the world
iâm afraid i canât help it
iâm afraid i canât
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I was in la parguera, puerto rico, which is like a boardwalk-style food & fun area by the bay. I didnât think to take the photo when the attract mode was actually showing gameplay, lol. But youâll have to take my word for it, that it looked like outrun 2 pretty much, but at a pretty bad frame rate. I tried to imagine the best possible explanation, without actually playing, and decided that it must be based on the PSP version running on android. Then I immediately got distracted by:
Japan import sega strike fighter. But the rom was in English. The monitor was in absolutely beautiful condition. But unfortunately the stick was broken. I still felt cool finding it.
Bonus broken neo geo cab. Look at that lineup. Thereâs somebody who stayed in touch with the original SNK right until the end.
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OPERATION BODY COUNT
SHORT VERSION: More like Operation Body COUNT ME OUT!!! Adds some impressive features to the Wolf 3D engine like AI allies and destructible environments⌠unfortunately, the level design is dull, as is the AI, and there are lots of bizarre, frustrating bugs. Also, racism.
LONG VERSION: Another Wolf 3D engine game from Crapstone (preceding Corridor 7), I tried playing this multiple times in the past but kept bouncing off due to the absolute dogshit opening levels. Daikatana ainât got nothing on this!
They take place in toilet dungeons (sewers) under some UN buildings, and they are SO DARK, UGLY, MAZEY AND TEDIOUS, and you run around shooting giant rats, hobos with uzis, and annoying as hell slime mutants.
Eventually you get into the first of the two UN buildings where you just fight a bunch of human terrorists and security drones. The fact that there are slime mutants living under the building is never addressed. The only other weird bit is when you beat the final boss and he teleports away like an alien or something. This is never explained either, as the game simply ends with a CONGRATULATIONS message. I guess they were hoping to make a sequelâŚ
The human terrorist enemies are also racist as fuck, with most being brown folk wearing shemaghs or such, and spout out vaguely Middle-Eastern sounding gibberish. Their leader is some blonde white guy, though?
Anyway, onto the actual game. Once you get into an actual building, the game gets MARGINALLY better. For one, there is usually actual lighting (though sometimes you need to find the generator first) so you can see.
Level design also tries to mimic actual office floor design, so the mazes of the sewers are thankfully gone, replaced with long hallways with rooms branching off them. Many levels feel samey because of this, though they do try to make some floors feel different like having a gallery on one, or one clearly used for IT full of servers, or libraries and what not.
They still feel very similar in design, though, and offices also donât make for very compelling battle environments. Whatâs really funny is that you can just fire a shot right at the start, and alert half the level hanging out in the hallways and shoot them all as they cross your vision.
This makes some levels very quick, since you only have to kill half of the enemies to be able to move onto the next floor (and most exits are also the way you came in). If you donât need ammo or health, there really isnât any point in exploring the rest of the level. There are also no keys or anything, so you have free roam of the floors⌠they really didnât understand how Wolf 3D made the simple AI fun through level design.
Also there are booby traps (mines) all over the place, often hidden under dead bodies, and itâs really annoying. Oh, there are also enemies that pretend to be dead sometimes but they are easily spotted.
Iâm shitting on this game a lot (and I will do more so later), but like the other Crapstone FPS games Iâve played, there is a vision here! And there are unique ideas, some even groundbreaking at the time! Itâs just that, as usual, Crapstone had no idea how to make any of them work.
First of all, for 15 or so levels you have three allies you can command. You can either have them follow you around (and not attack anyone) or have them explore freely (and attack people). The problem, as you may have suspected, is that the AI of these guys is hilariously bad.
You can send them out to clear some of the level at the start, but will quickly end up stuck humping a wall or circling around in a room. You can manipulate their AI a bit by setting them to follow from far away and then switching them to attack at different places on their way to you (enemies wont attack them if they are set to follow for some reason).
You can also switch between them, so if youâre close to death you can just change to one of them since they almost always have full health and the ammo transfers to your new host. Also if you kill them, you can pick up their armour so I always killed them before the end of a level (you get a new set of three on the next floor and there seems to be no punishment).
So yeah, a pretty nifty feature but broken as all heck in execution. The best thing they did is not let their bullets hurt you, and letting you walk through them so they donât block passages.
The game also has destructible environments! What this means is that you can shoot windows and leave bullet holes⌠but also! Completely destroy wall textures with grenades (and these also shake the level hard enough that you might knock the power out), blow up props, and even set things like tables on fire⌠and there is rudimentary fire spreading!
Itâs pretty cool, but also pretty gimmicky⌠and fires can get annoying in tight spaces.
So, the destructible and âreal worldâ environments are a bit like Duke 3D! Also like Duke 3D, you can shoot guys on toilets. You shoot SO many guys on toilets, I think the terrorists all went out for Taco Bell before the attack.
Oh, sometimes you have to wipe blood off your face, which is⌠cute? I guess?
The game also makes use of digitised graphics, with many textures and props like computers using the technology. The result is the game looking very grey/brown and drab most of the time due to the washed out colours as a result of the early technology. BUT⌠I kinda love how it looks. The low colour, low resolution, crunchy aesthetic reminds me of old digital videos and images, especially in multimedia games and on the early internet⌠to me, this is what a lot of the 90s looked like, except this time I can explore it instead of just looking at it! But most people will just think itâs ugly, Iâm sure.
The penultimate level is also interesting⌠itâs where most of the fighting happened during the attack, so is largely destroyed. Itâs a neat piece of environmental storytelling.
Okay, but back to why the game sucks⌠I already mentioned the terrible AI (both for enemies and your allies) and dull level design⌠but this game is also VERY buggy.
The game lets you pick up health and weapons even if youâre full. Some enemies seem unable to leave rooms. Sometimes you canât shoot through open doors. Sometimes enemies wont activate until you walk over a threshold (and canât be shot until then, too). On the rare occasion, an enemy will become outright invincible but will happily mow you down. Enemies tend to attack without a frame of warning.
All of this together makes for a tedious game. Again, kudos for adding so many advanced features to the Wolf 3D engine, but very little of it actually works, and too much of the game is outright broken.
NOTES: The demo is LESS broken! You can always shoot through open doors, for one. And there is a game over cutscene removed from the final game!
There are also unused sprites for a helicopter enemy, and an actual death animation for the final boss. Also, itâs more problematic, as Iâm pretty sure the enemies shout âAllahâ when attacking. This was thankfully cut from the final version.
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I was worried clicking on this post because Iâve also come around on Inside being one of the best to ever do it.
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YESYESYESYESYES. That Lajas arcade is a spot I have a real soft spot for. I first went there, I believe, as part of some school field trip situationâpossibly Boy Scouts?âwhen it seemed like the coolest place ever, and later six years ago during a big family weekend stay. That SNK cabinet was still working, back then; itâs actually still the only time Iâve managed to play Mark of the Wolves. What brought you there?
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We came back from swimming in the bioluminescent bay and I saw the outrun cab through a tiny window in the back of the building as I walked by lol. It was framed perfectly like something in a dream.
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Fun Peak sesh last night, we started with six people using the mod that lets you get up to 20 players into a game. While the mountain seed was rough two days ago, yesterdayâs was more forgiving, it was doable to get up the Shores area without using up any reserve Stamina or using utility items, although we had a brief problem where the person coming up last fell on a slightly tricky traverse and nobody noticed, which necessitated some backtracking and also some fanning-out to see if we could scavenge some health items. We decided afterward to use a âduck countingâ technique to make sure that we donât lose stragglers, and also that the last person in the group should be one of the more experienced/skilled players.
Our route on the Tropics ascent wasâŚtricky, it was actually straightforward aside from this one section where we used a vine to move laterally over to a couple of tricky spots over a big fall. These spots are tricky because while theyâre technically standable (allowing you to regain stamina), you need to constantly walk in order to stay on them, or youâll slide off. 3 times out of 3, when trying this section, it started raining right as I landed on one of these tricky spots and every time, I either slid off or missed the jump to the next section. It created a very foreboding atmosphere approaching it on the subsequent attempts, a faint ludic echo of how a tricky section must seem to actual mountaineers, a battle to manage your fear while also trying not to swing the other way into exuberant overconfidence.
We only made it to the Alpine area once, and while we were doing really well and were 2/3rds up with plenty of good gear, we had a disaster where a freezing wind hit at the absolute worst time and the last person slipped and fell onto an ice section, which would absolutely freeze them to death. We should have abandoned them, the chances of recovery were slim, and instead all except one of us went to our deaths trying to recover them and the other rescuers in a horribly exposed section while standing on ice, leaving a solo person to struggle up another few faces before succumbing to another wind event.
Picture taken from a hole we all jumped into on the Tropics so that we could do some area-of-effect healing, which we referred to as hotboxing the crevasse.
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the youngest child let me know which pipe in SMB 1-1 goes to the coin cave & that I missed it. âoh yeah, hey check out if we can get to the top row of blocks in 1-2â
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starting the final stretch in La-Mulana, only Tiamat to beat and Palenque to ⌠⌠???
finally read the manual
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