been loving Monsterboy: The Cursed Kingdom as a post-work wind-down. hand-animated sprites are gorgeous so if a bit feels tough I can cool off by switching directions in place to dance
new spells are unlocked by sniffing for sentient truffles in pig form, then eating them, and once again getting creased when a fart noise comes out of the controller
people call it a search action game but it’s extremely linear, all backtracking or exploration is optional for secrets so far
I’m a professor who arguably does try to keep up with ‘’‘‘the culture’’‘’ but I think even then the logical conclusion is to simply confront students with the games industry’s unethical wake as a matter of duty. I think all that being part of the culture grants you is some level of affability and not emphasising an age difference. Then again I mostly focus on the non-practical/non-game dev side of education which I think frees me up to do this more whilst we pretend that everyone joining the course is destined to personally receive a prize from Geoff Keighley
Playing DQ6 but that equip screen is a hard lock minefield. Lost all my progress post dungeon trying to back out. I think I’ll have to limit equipment changes to churches.
Stalled out in Dungeon master nexus. Cant move around quickly without magic, magic uses too much water. Mages too sweaty.
Im too infirm for action gaming…
Dug up a 4 year old Grandia save to scratch the rpg itch. Figured out where I am and where I’m going pretty quickly. And as much as I love the DQ vibe Grandia does have better music. Maybe ill finish it this time.
The real wisdoms. Grandia 1 and 2 are so good…
The thing I learned about being on SB (and the internet in general) is that I am one person who can only focus on what I’m focusing on, and to not put myself in competition with everyone else focusing on everything else. So like it might seem like everyone here is playing fifty games at once, but in reality, it’s fifty different people each playing one thing. If I try to play all fifty, in just screwing myself.
So in short, enjoy SMTV because that game rules. Your gaming tendrils overall are super wide (I think you might even have a blog about that), so you have nothing to worry about in focusing on one thing for a while.
played HORSES last month for festival judging - but since it’s out today and there’s been a lot of discourse around the game but not much about the content of the game itself, i figured i’d write up a backloggd review of it. some spoilers, tho not full spoilers
For example all I’ve played in the past month is Helldivers 2, so at the very least you aren’t the most pathetic person on the forum
I ride games until they die…I ain’t ashamed…it’s bad ass to play something you like a lot…or to log on…fuck around…log off…do what you feel…that’s ‘the way of my life’…
As people who teach classes about video games in college I think y’all are actually morally obligated to engage with triple AAA / meme games as little as possible and talk shit about The Industry as much as you can
Sektori is good if you like twin-stick shooters. It’s kind of like Geometry Wars: The Next Generation. It has a nice flashy arcade/Robotron feel to it, and also reminds me of that Pac-Man game where the walls keep moving around.
I’m playing it on PS, but here’s the Steam page:
Incidentally, I couldn’t get anywhere the first time I tried the game. I still don’t feel like I’m very good, but I can at least beat a boss sometimes now on the easiest difficulty. Here’s what I would have wanted to know going in:
Edit: No wonder this is good. It was made by an ex-Housemarque dev who worked on Super Stardust HD.
My partner’s kid and I enjoyed Cricket Through the Ages so much that we checked out the studio’s latest offering, Stick It To The Stickman.
There is a free demo and there is a lot to like. It’s a very basic brawler with simple progression and local multiplayer. Kid got obsessed with it a bit and I bought the $5 full version.
It runs ok on my 9th gen Thinkpad i5 with Linux Mint which is all I have at their house. I can hook up Parsec to my home PC but there are lag spikes and Parsec is a bit glitchy on this platform in Linux it seems. It’s been better running locally. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten level where the performance issues have started making it difficult to deal with precision movement type sections where imprecise movement controls are part of the challenge and I’m getting frustrated with the harder levels. Meanwhile, kid wants to play the harder levels to unlock new stuff.
I’m open to tips on improving performance. I will prob be looking for a different game less reliant on precise controls today as we will be playing tonight a bit while his mom is in a meeting.
Started playing (i.e. reading) Fate: Stay/Night. Took me a while to circle around to this one because the anime adaptation I watched a few years ago was kinda mid. It felt almost like shounen, with one arbitrary battle after another. I assumed the visual novel would be the same (except much longer thanks to tons of extra slice-of-life filler).
It turns out most of the scenes that didn’t make it into the anime don’t usually come off as filler, but as intriguing suspense and world/setting/character-building. And because that groundwork was prepared, the battles themselves feel a lot less arbitrary.
Also I’m playing the REMASTERED version so I get to enjoy this improved art
the swapper - been in my library forever so i played about 6 hrs, very atmospheric puzzle platformer, dig the narrative, unfortunately i hit puzzle fatigue just after disconnecting the solar panels and the difficulty kind of spikes. i have like 2-3 enneagons i need for the next console but stuck on the puzzles narrative flow kinda bogged down 
cool concept tho very Moon (2009) feel
I’ve always really liked The Swapper. It ends on a cliffhanger and clearly they envisioned a sequel, I wish we could’ve got that one…
Etora (goddess of FF13-2) this sucked. I needed wild O-parts which…are hidden in random background areas across the game. Buy the strategy guide moron. Since this is a finite resource that opens other stages there was a 1 in 3 chance I open the stage that does not naturally have a O-part as part of the stage and instead playing a Knuckles stage except without the radar or even knowledge that it exists (buy the strategy guide.)
Glad Square Enix’s worst tendencies came to the forefront. I’m in the last dungeon now, as if I hadn’t taken that road block I probably would be severely underlevels but have 7 hours of my life back.
When I finally broke down and looked up what I was doing wrong I did not feel bad because the game gave me nothing to find these chaos emeralds.
played a romhack of pokemon diamond that adds previous gen pokemon to areas in the game without having to defeat the elite 4 or finish the post-game first. didn’t realize i played for three hours before i got the first gym badge, because there were so many pokemon to look for. the allure of catching a pikachu and a hariyama that early in the game is too strong to ignore.
every time someone mentions ff13 or anything vaguely connected to it i think to myself something like “lightning returns was so sick i should play it again… remember how every enemy has a finite number of spawns and killing an entire species gets you a neon pink ultimate weapon??? what a tale…” thanks
final fantasy is the best
I paused that final dungeon to do the Saz DLC and what the fuck is this shit? I mean it is fine enough and just being stupidly cute about chance and fate. But also it is about a black man playing poker and roulette until he regains custody of his kid. I think he is the only PoC in the entire game and regulated to day-one DLC.
Whenever a cast member of 13 shows up I remember how cool they are before I’m pulled away to another scene where Sera goes, “Where’s Lightning?” And Noel goes “I miss the time priestess who isn’t into me that way.”
I know I have just been complaining but the game is very comfortable to play on mute and I’ve consumed 30 hours of it. And the music is great when I do listen to it. Somehow has less story than 13, which you could write on a napkin.
Glad I came around on 13. It owns.
