there’s a part in ep 8 that’s really abrupt if you didn’t spend time with her earlier that makes Blazin’ feel canon but Invisigirl is a very good and appealing character so mostly I hope they get to make a sequel
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dispatch party! we also finished it up sometime last week. it was fun to play together, partner and i switched controllers every episode. it’s cool to have a TV show game like this where you can mostly turn off your brain, but the gameplay is comfortably challenging. as far as i can remember, we bounced off the telltale stuff pretty fast or i don’t remember them at all. even tho neither of us are into quippy superhero stuff (no judgement, just context), it wasn’t offensive enough to stop playing. i really like the expo/dispatch bits. probably could have planned for things better esp. with invisigal’s skill that lets you see how many dudes a future job will need, but the game is so forgiving that it didn’t feel like a big deal.
i am sorry to say that the thing that got the biggest laugh outta me was flambae’s karaoke song and the punch up punching dicks joke . i guess i do have bro energy sometimes. also didn’t romance anyone; mostly because i didn’t like either very much and was hoping for a gay third option later, even tho robert robertson is as hetero as they come. think i got what you would call a good ending: we happily choked out shroud and told blazer that it felt really good (her response to this is also funny). will probably play season 2, but not replay it anytime soon.
oh yeah- it is very Los Angeles, but wtf i feel like setting it in torrance didn’t feel like anything at all. feels like everyone is from the west side i guess??
5 Likes
i’ll never play dispatch because they advertised it to me with a bunch of guys pissing and i’m okay thanks
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this game got a rare “never ever show me this again” on steam from me because i was so tired of seeing awful looking superheroes in the men’s room when i wanted to play a video game. fitting because this stuff is a cultural toilet, spinning faster and faster leading nowhere but down into the great sewer of american heterosexual anxiety
edit: oh one of the voice actors used to pal around with pewdiepie, yuck
edit 2:
ANYWAY speaking of problematic videogames made by people with unsavory politics, i’ve recently been playing dragon quest 3 HD and i forgot the name of the immigrant town changes when you hand a (recently created, level 1, named after the first thing i saw on my desk) Merchant over so now i have to regularly check up on Sudafedburg
on the other hand it made this dialogue window funnier
20 Likes
Unfortunately the PS3 port is by far the slowest loading way to play it, but you are correct that even on the fastest machines it takes ages to load anything.
1 Like
MORE POORLY WRITTEN REVIEWS
MOM HID MY GAME
You were playing your DS too much so your mum has hid it behind increasingly ludicrous challenges! Don’t let her catch you looking for it, either! Also, don’t get eaten by an alligator.
Absurdist puzzle game where the solutions make (internal) logical sense, but they keep trying to trip you up by subverting expectations. You feel very smart when you dodge the traps, but also falling for them is part of the fun!
Puzzles themselves are short, simple, and often funny. A short, silly good time… only paid a few bucks for it and was very pleased with it. Liked the ending, too.
HOT WHEELS: BEAT THAT!
SHORT VERSION: A solid little DS racing game for kids, this is a bit too easy for adults… turns out it’s very easy to Beat That!
LONG VERSION: This is a pretty good racing game… for kids!
You race Hot Wheels cars, being little guys in big worlds… so you race over sinks and such, though most of the tracks are those wide, orange plastic roads so it’s not quite as imaginative as Micro Machines in that respect. The most fun tracks take place on a mini-golf course, lots of fun scenery there, like big ol’ dinosaurs!
Actual track design is fine, tend to be a bit long and memorable moments are few… but fun enough.
Progression is a bit weird. You have to unlock the tournaments by doing a bunch of different challenges… for example, you might have to hit other cars with weapons, or survive an elimination race, etc. Honestly, these feel like padding. I just want to do the racing tournaments!
To make things worse, you need a certain amount of “flames” to unlock the tournament (and other cars and stuff). You get the most from the primary objective, but you also earn them from “secondary objectives.” These are like “drift a certain amount” or such, but sometimes you get annoying ones that require getting a certain power-up.
Power-ups are very unbalanced, with you often getting ones useless to you when you’re in front… and that will happen a lot, because this game is pretty easy! Even on the hardest difficulty, I had no problems staying at the front of the pack for 80% of the race (though sometimes another car will rubber-band up to you). But you know… it’s a game for kids.
You can also super-charge your weapons by earning points on the track… you get this by drifting and uh, other stuff, I can’t remember. If you super-charge boosters, you’ve pretty much won the race.
An annoying thing: the game doesn’t remember which car you used, so you have to keep going to re-select it.
Eventually I got bored… the game plays well, is smooth, looks great for DS, but the mission padding was annoying, and it was ultimately just too easy with not enough depth to the racing mechanics to keep me interested.
But I would have loved this as a kid!
SPEED RACER: THE VIDEOGAME BASED ON THE HIT MOVIE
So close to being a great game… looks fantastic for DS, the tracks are wild F-Zero style roller-coasters, the cars are fun to control, and the Car-Fu QTE combat somehow didn’t get old… but it’s too dang easy!
Even on the hardest difficulty, I found myself in the lead for 90% of the race. This wouldn’t be so bad if the tracks weren’t so long, so it ends up feeling pretty boring.
If it was more difficult or if the tracks were shorter, this would be a keeper. As it is… a pretty good racing game for kids, I think! But not for us oldies.
ANIMAL KORORO AKA ROLLIN' RASCALS
SHORT VERSION: A cute puzzler where you roll animals around a screen to match them… but one mode is way too frustrating with RNG, and the second mode grows a bit dull. I’ll be rollin’ away from this game!
LONG VERSION: I don’t know if the US version of this was ever released, but in PAL territories it came out under the title “Animal Kororo.” Rollin’ Rascals is a way better name.
Anyway, in concept it’s a simple puzzle game. Cute spherical animals pop up, and you use the stylus to roll matching ones into each other to make them disappear.
The major catch is that you can only roll in the direction currently available too you, as seen on the right side of the screen. The directions are given you the same order each time (left, up, right, down), allowing you to plan ahead.
There are three modes… one is a multiplayer battle mode which I didn’t play because I have no friends. The first of the other two gives you a bunch of animals to clear, with an increasing amount of obstacles in the way.
There are some problems with this mode… first, while the number of animals and obstacles for each level is the same, they are placed seemingly randomly and sometimes I’d struggle with a level where animals are put in annoying positions, only to steamroll through it when I got better RNG next time.
The second problem is that the time limit is WAY TOO SHORT and doesn’t give you enough time to think (and this was on normal difficulty). These two things combined put me off this mode after much frustration. Really needed to have hand-crafted levels instead of random ones. And a longer time limit!
The second mode requires you to clear a certain amount of each animal. There are no obstacles here, though new animals will plop down at an increasing rate. This mode was much more fun as it felt more fair… but eventually it felt very samey and a bit dull.
There is also some kind of Tamagotchi mode where you can use points earned to buy stuff for an animal’s house. I didn’t spend much time with this… seemed cute enough but ultimately not too interesting.
But yeah! The core mechanics aren’t terrible, but the modes built around them are either frustrating or dull.
TETRIS AXIS
SHORT VERSION: It’s Tetris for the 3DS! And it does a fine job of being Tetris for the 3DS, but none of the (many) extra modes are compelling enough to go back to this specific version of the game. Tetris Axis? More like I didn’t Tetris ask for this! Look, not all of my jokes can be gold.
LONG VERSION: Released as just “Tetris” in PAL land, the standard mode in here is a fine version of Tetris… doesn’t use my favourite rules, but at least there are no infinite spins or such. Plus, you get to see your Mii dance around in super 2010s clothing with a city nightscape behind them!
But, of course, it’s the weird modes I’m really interested in as you can play standard Tetris pretty much anywhere. There are quite a lot here, but most aren’t terribly interesting. Here’s a rundown…
FEVER: Get as many points as you can in one minute using a skinny playfield, with weird power-ups activating constantly. Fun for a couple rounds but definitely a novelty.
COMPUTER BATTLE: What it says on the tin. I’m not a fan of the power-ups in this mode… this is definitely not a Tetris I’d play competitively due to them, as they’re mostly just annoying.
MARATHON: It’s Tetris!
SURVIVAL: Another skinny playfield mode, this time with blocks constantly coming up from the bottom. Fun enough but not terribly interesting.
JIGSAW: Put pieces in the right place like a… jigsaw. Very boring.
SHADOW WIDE: Fill in a shadow with bricks to reveal a picture. Again, quite boring.
FIT: Basically that “hole in the wall” game but with Tetris pieces. Yet another boring one.
TOWER CLIMBER: I was most excited about this one, because I like Lemmings-meets-Tetris modes. You have to guide a little man up a rotatable cylinder by dropping pieces, and making sure he picks up enough energy to get to the top. It’s fun! But also very short-lived… it’s very easy to get to the top, with no increasing difficulty once you do so. Huge step-down from the 2D version found in Party Deluxe.
BOMBLISS PLUS: It’s Bombliss! But unlike in Party Deluxe, the layouts feel haphazardly designed and you can’t see the whole field at a time, so it’s a dud.
STAGE RACER: This made me laugh, because it’s like one of those “racing” games found in Tetris LCD knock-offs. This one is only slightly more exciting than those thanks to the inclusion of a jump, otherwise just as dull.
CAPTURE: Capture stars by landing bricks of the same colour on them. Not fun!
MASTER MODE: Crappy Tetris Grand Master
SPRINT: Clear 40 lines as fast as possible, this was fun enough because it was just speedrun Tetris. But then that’s how I play Tetris anyway ssooooo…
The 3D features aren’t used in any interesting way, but this one does include two AR modes…
AR MARATHON: Clear 50 lines quickly, with some blocks containing bombs that shift the field around, so you gotta shift yourself to still see what’s going on. More annoying than fun.
AR CLIMBER: Like Tower Climber, except you gotta move around to see all around the actual tower. Again, more annoying than fun… I like the standard version more. Cute idea, though.
SO YES, it’s Tetris for the 3DS! But there isn’t much here to go back to if you have it on systems you use more often today… in fact, this is basically just Tetris Party Deluxe but with worse versions of the modes from there, and new boring ones.
CRAZY PIG
SHORT VERSION: A surprisingly competent bit of shovelware, you’ll still run out of content after a couple hours, and what content there is isn’t terrible thrilling… and definitely not crazy! Great coverart, though!
LONG VERSION:
A picked this game up for $1 at a thrift store because the combination of the idiot title and idiot coverart made me laugh.
Good news! You can IMMEDIATELY equip your crazy pig with shades and a bandana, making him cool. Sadly, you can never equip him with a cigarette.
Also, he only wears the outfits on one screen! Not the screen where you actually look after him or in the games. Boo!
Anyway, this is a virtual pet (pig) game, where you have to keep your pig happy by feeding it, hydrating it, cleaning it, and brushing it. You have limited resources to do all these things, and to get more you gotta play the GAMES.
The games tend to be about looking after the pig while he acts like a dipshit. For example, cleaning up all the mud he leaves around the house, making sure bees don’t sting him while he steals all their honey, jumping off a building with an umbrella to see how far he can get, etc. These are all simple Flash style games, and some are more interesting than others. but none were outright terrible. Oh, there are also different difficulties to unlock.
Oh, another game has your pig in a turret to shoot eggs at wolves trying to eat chickens.
Some games are only active during certain seasons, and some need to be unlocked using medals won when you do well in other games.
OKAY, so for a shovelware game, this isn’t too bad! I mean, if I was a kid who really wanted a… pet pig… I would have been happy with this, and I assume it was a budget release.
Of course, there isn’t much here for adults, and the main problem is that once you unlock everything after a couple hours, there isn’t much more to do except to keep playing games for items to keep your pig happy so it becomes a bit pointless. Also, you have to remember which game rewards which item because it doesn’t tell you. OH, and some resources negatively affect other stats, i.e. some food might make him thirsty.
So yeah… surprisingly decent bit of shovelware, but still shovelware.
BRILLIANT title and coverart, though! Also you can feed your pig ice cream.
https://au.static.webuy.com/product_images/Gaming/DS%20Software/5390102487492_l.jpg
LET'S PLAY JOURNALISTS
SHORT VERSION: More shovelware I bought for a buck, this is a very simple detective (not journalist) game for kids that has some charming writing, but is a bit boring to play (or painful thanks to some tedious stealth sections). This game certainly wouldn’t make the headlines!
LONG VERSION: Taking place back when journalism was still a viable career, you actually act more as a detective in this game, going to different locations and trying to get information from people.
You also do lots of morally dubious things! Such as impersonating an old lady’s son so you can get information from her. Also, you’ll do a LOT of trespassing.
The bulk of the game really is going back and forth between areas, but there are also some minigames… not many, and sometimes you’ll have to replay identical ones. Most are inoffensive light puzzles, but there also some veerryyyy slow and not very fun stealth sections.
The writing here is actually kind of fun! It has a lot of charm, and it’s clearly where the developers had the most fun. It even made me laugh a few times. I enjoyed the coffee addicted boss, and I liked how your character kept insulting an egocentric womaniser. Oh, the story is about solving the mystery of the kidnapped animals, by the way.
Also, your character constantly disguises herself as a man, and her partner disguised himself as a chick, so I’m declaring them non-binary icons.
So yeah, more shovelware that would have kept kids happy for a few hours, but nothing notable.
SPEEDX 3D
A solid tube racer game where it does a great job of warning you of upcoming obstacles. Super polished with slick graphics that look good in 3D, and the track morphs, which is cool too! Also, good sense of speed without actually being too fast (well, until you get to the insane difficulties). Also also, multiple modes available.
Despite lots of features, it’s still a game you’ll only play for a few minutes before moving on, but I come back to it now and then for something mindless. Well… I did when I still used my 3DS on the reg.
I’m not a fan of the random events that happen in some of the modes, they’re more annoying than anything. I just want to blast down an abstract landscape! Other than that, good, simple stuff.
SPONGEBOB SQUIGGLEPANTS 3D
SHORT VERSION: SpongeBob is all washed up with this game! A very mid-WarioWare clone that looks great and plays fine, but lacks imagination and the actual charm and humour that made the show popular.
LONG VERSION: First, the good! The game looks great, with each collection of MicroGam… I mean nanogames having their own unique theme and art-style.
There is also lots of original Patchy content, in the form of FMVs. Always nice to see Tom Kenny, and was fun seeing him on my 3DS screen.
Unfortunately, the game itself is a very mid WarioWare clone… for one, so many of the games lack imagination. Some are just straight up Memory or Simon clones. There are a few clever ones, but very few. Games are also often identical each time you play, with none of the mix-ups or subversiveness that made WarioWare actually work.
Secondly, there is very little personality here! The wit and charm of WarioWare is not here, nor is the comedic stylings of Spongebob. It’s just too damn dry. Very inappropriate for a game that takes place under the ocean, amirite? They had so many opportunities to give the games funny contexts considering the license. I mean, they do it SOMETIMES, but not nearly enough, and never in clever enough ways.
What would be even more impressive is if they took inspiration from the history of the art styles they used, but they rarely did that too.
There also isn’t much content here, you’ll finish the main game in under an hour, and unlocking the other (not very exciting bonus modes) won’t take much longer.
There is also a paint studio thing which is also too dry… needed more funny sound effects like KidPix.
So yeah, very mid WarioWario clone overall!
BERZERK RECHARGED
Turns Berzerk into a bland, generic twin-stick shooter. Feels slow, has no interesting ideas, looks and sounds like a promotional Flash game from the 00s, the collision detection feels iffy… just a dull game all round. Not terrible, just boring.
I’m not sure how I’d update Berzerk for today, but it sure as hell would have been more exciting than this. Simply can’t standout in a world where twin-stick shooters are a massive genre that have come so far since Berzerk (which didn’t even have twin-stick controls, but I get why they updated the game with it… I also get why they got rid of every wall being electrified).
Better off playing console ports from back in the day! The 2600 one was actually pretty good… very moody soundscape.
DONUT DODO
SHORT VERSION: An utterly charming little tribute to arcade games of the 80s… but lacks new or interesting mechanics to make an impact of its own. This Donut Dodo made me say Dod’oh!
LONG VERSION: I really wanted to like this more than I did… it looks and sounds fantastic, and oozes with charm. The small selection of levels all feel distinct, both in design and aesthetics.
But it just didn’t have anything to hook me in mechanically! You just run around, collect the donuts, then grab the big donut.
There is a combo system ALA Bomb Jack where you get points by collecting the flashing donut next, but that’s not an interesting enough mechanic to keep things exciting for me… also it bugs me that the combo order is randomised because you can lose time bonus points if the flashing donuts keep appearing at opposite ends of the levels. Give me consistency!
Your character also doesn’t feel quite right to control… floaty and too heavy at the same time. I guess a bit like Mario in Donkey Kong (the other obvious inspiration), but DK felt more designed it.
I still had a fun enough time, but it really felt like a random game I’d load up in MAME for a few minutes, go “well that was a decent time” and then forget about it.
POWERSLAVE EXHUMED
SHORT VERSION: A 90s FPS Metroidvania! While the shooting action isn’t as refined as other games of the time, the fun of exploring trap-filled dungeons and powering up your character makes up for it.
LONG VERSION: All three versions of Powerslave were different… it started with the Saturn version (which I owned), had some mostly small changes in the PS1 port, and then the PC one was basically a completely different game. This is a combination of all versions, but primarily the console ones, and even more primarily the Saturn version. I think this was wise as the console games are much more interesting than the PC one imo.
There is another, separate port of just the PC version which I may check out another time.
Anyway, what sets this game apart from all the other 90s shooters of the time? Well, a big one is that it’s a Metroidvania! (Well, the PC version isn’t). Most levels have multiple exits (or just areas with special items you can’t reach), so you may have to come back after getting an item. Many involve movement… like a high jump, one that slows your fall, another that just lets you hover around. The feeling of movement is really fun when you start to unlock these, and the levels are designed well around them… lots of verticality in later ones!
This does mean the game has the big problem that puts me off Metroidvanias… unlocking an ability then struggling to remember where the hell you saw somewhere you can use it. Fortunately, you can select any level you’ve unlocked from the map, so you at least aren’t wandering around a massive world lost for ages like in Metroid Prime. The map also lets you know if there are exits you haven’t found, and if there is a part of the transmitter still there (you need to collect six pieces).
Powerslave is also more focused on exploration than shooting, at least for the first half… you’ll do lots of figuring out a to b navigational puzzles (something I enjoy), the usual key and button hunts, some less traditional puzzles, and lots of platforming. The game always focuses on exploration, but while the first half is mostly spent fighting giant insects, by the end you’ll be fighting multiple lava dragons at once.
I didn’t find the platforming very painful, and in fact mostly enjoyed it outside of some annoying bits… these also get easier once you get more movement powerups, and the new optional checkpoints (taken from the PC version) tend to be put just before tough spots.
I’m really glad they added checkpoints… I remembered enjoying the Saturn game, but messed up a jump near the end of a level and instantly died… and if you died you had to redo the whole level so I just quit and never went back. You can also go back to previous checkpoints to save.
Being set in Egypt, there are also tricks and traps all over the place. Really, this felt a bit like a first-person Tomb Raider… and for the most part I had a great time!
The weapons are fun, though it takes sometime to get them all, and the machinegun you get early on is the most practical. Also all the guns use the same ammo pick-ups, they’ll just fill up whatever weapon you’re using at the time.
Levels are reset if you go back to them, which includes items so you can just go stock up on health and ammo if you know where to look.
Combat encounters are fun enough, but definitely not the strongest part of the game and not as clever or interesting as say Quake for example… can also feel a little janky with the enemy behaviour, and too many encounters happen in tight corridors.
Oh, levels also do a great job of feeling different from each other. OH, and it does some annoying ancient Egypt tropes like getting aliens involved.
BUT YEAH, overall I had a great time with this. It helps that I’m a big fan of navigational puzzles in 3D spaces, and the rest of the game was solid enough to keep me hooked all the way to the end.
AMNESIA A MACHINE FOR PIGS
SHORT VERSION: Despite a very moody atmosphere, great environment design, and a story that STARTS out intriguing, the actual game here is quite dull, and the story gets increasingly daft in eye-rolling ways instead of fun ways like the first game. I found A Machine for Pigs to be a total… BOAR!!!
LONG VERSION: I finished this on PC years ago, and decided to try it again on the Switch after finishing the first game recently.
Now I remember why I… don’t remember much about this game, because little goes on. Most of the game is just going back and forth in these huge areas, hitting switches to eventually gain access to the next section. SO much back and forth, trying to figure out what the last switch you pulled did. A lot of the areas don’t make sense as, you know, real actual places, which does not help with the backtracking.
Eventually you’ll also have pig men to run from, who look more silly than scary. They don’t play as much of a role as the monsters in the first game did, not until the endgame at least. Despite a great atmosphere, the game isn’t very scary at all, and resorts to cheap jumpscares.
It ditches the lantern and sanity management mechanics from the first game which is fine with me, they got tiresome by the end. I’m fine with no inventory, either… the problem is that none of this was replaced with anything interesting.
The story itself gets increasingly ludicrous and daft. It has some interesting ideas, but they are outweighed by the nonsensical ones. Some very bad, on-the-nose attempts at social commentary, too.
ALSO, IT GOES ON FOR WAY TOO LONG. It actually only goes for like 4 hours, but it feels so much longer.
I do like the steampunkish setting, and the outdoor areas look great and feel just as oppressive as the indoor areas… the environmental design is the best part of this game, and the sound design is great, too. But yeah, there really isn’t much interesting going on here.
19 Likes
Just since I like to mention this sometimes when it happens, I eventually picked up and started playing Dubio, a game I stumbled upon thanks to my obsessive Steam new release list watch. Basically a single screen/single button platformer, the ball rolls around the screen and you have to time your button press to make it jump and pick up the diamond thing to complete the stage. Seemingly 100 stages in the main route grouped into sets of 4, each group seems to either introduce a new way to use said jump (ex. holding down the button basically makes you a superball) or some other gimmick. I’m only through the first 40 or so but it does keep things moving pretty well, if one gimmick irks you you’ll likely be past it and onto another one shortly after. It also seems to reward you for completing the stages in a minimal amount of button presses (I assume this unlocks the hinted at bonus stages), not sure I’ll bother with that but it’s nice to have.
What’s funny is that every time I stumble upon the game (first time I saw it and tried the demo, when I purchased it on sale off my wishlist, when I finally got around to playing it) I go “this aesthetic feels slightly familiar”, look at the game page and realize it’s the same guy who made ibb & obb. I think I’m just gonna keep stumbling onto this fellow’s games no matter what.
7 Likes
the first i heard of dispatch was last week when a friend who only plays animal crossing but spends a lot of time watching people play videogames online recommended that i watch a playthrough of it
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Saints Row 2 (360)
still can’t decide between this and Saints Row IV (yes, i have no taste- tell me something i don’t know)
shouldn’t there be an apostrophe in/on the end of Saints?
why does (seemingly) every article of clothing have to have a customizable palette? i appreciate that San Andreas’ range of customization options left something to be desired, but Gad
foreknowledge of the plastic surgeons’ existence was the only thing that got me through character creation (and even then i didn’t dare stray too far from the presets)- i am not ready for this
5 Likes
probably
there’s no citation or source, but a mobygames trivia page alleges this:
The game’s title was originally Saint’s Row, and the position of the apostrophe was actually a bit of a debate. Saints’ Row was favored by the resident English majors while Saint’s Row was the preferred form by most everyone else. The final version without the apostrophe was chosen because no one respects proper grammar anymore or quite simply because the apostrophe made the title look ugly on the box.
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the english majors were right
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Has there ever been a definitive answer on whether the Demon’s Souls apostrophe was intentionally placed to indicate a specific meaning (such as souls possessed by a single demon or a category of soul) rather than a mistake/aesthetic choice (if simply referring to the souls of various demons)?
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I always think of it as referring to the player’s bounty
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it’s both the most thematically appropriate title (Demon Souls and Demons’ Souls are both inferior, I think, despite maybe flowing or parsing better) as well as a callback to the titular construction of King’s Field with the possessive apostrophe
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further, adding an article like
The Demon’s Souls
or
A Demon’s Souls
are also thematically inferior, despite again potentially parsing better
basically it has to be Subject’s Object in order to near-explicitly link it to King’s Field, and (singular) Demon and (plural) Souls are very appropriate mad libs in the context of this game
actually thinking about it more, they are playing with the ambiguity of King and Demon in similar ways, so i think it’s almost a double callback. which King are we talking about? which Demon? these are actually relevant questions
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I totally missed that they were putting an isometric mode in Kirby Air Riders. it’s great
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It’s a descriptive phrase, the street gang takes up crew
1 Like
it should be saintz row so people understand that the grammar has never mattered
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