update we played them again
7 Likes
can’t believe we queued against them *4 times in a row
6 Likes
Wherefore art thou Gorlio…
3 Likes
I came back to Cruelty Squad today and it’s still fucking great. Repugnant, disgusting game, like an open wound oozing over with pus.
You play a dissociated gig hitman in a corporate bio-dystopia who is contracted by a megacorp’s higher ups to whack subsidiary executives that get too uppity or full of themselves. Cook and eat human flesh, bunnyhop everywhere, go fishing, and in the end shoot some dosh junky in the face with a silenced pistol.
Functionally, it pulls from a lot of disparate games. The levels are laid out like Hitman, with tons of alternate paths and secrets to uncover, with level mastery being an important goal. The gunplay itself feels akin to Rainbow Six, because you are very squishy and enemies are dumb as hell, so you have to play tactically. Finally, there’s a ton of augments and weird interactions you can find in the levels, which smacks of Deus Ex and other immersive sims.
Lots of unlocks between levels too. Spend your money to get the aforementioned augments that do stuff like grapple around levels or jetpack with pus feet, carry weapons out of a level to unlock them for your loadout, and even play a stock market simulation with livers and brains.
It has an aesthetic that I would generally describe as “technicolor puke”. All of the textures are bright and surrealistic, lacking detail except in the grossest possible way (like the lips on humans). The music is dissonant and loud. Lots of pulsating meat.
There’s just so much creativity and love for shooters here that it’s hard not to be impressed. It’s Quake for people who like giallo, Rainbow Six for disaffected anarchists, maximalist game design in the best possible way.
Highly recommend playing it, especially if you’re looking for a game that’s genuinely unique. Sure, it has some clear inspirations, but the end result is so divergent from its individual components that it’s almost impossible to describe.
23 Likes
I don’t understand why everyone hates colorado. usually the complaint I hear is “there’s no safe areas.” either you’re going for suit only, which how many times do you need to do that, or you just put on a disguise and it’s no different than any other level?
3 Likes
I’ve got a variety of issues with it. Minimal verticality, lots of open sight lines and officers, and rigid uniform requirements means you have to approach it pretty much the same way every time. There’s a fair amount of “false” distractions which will get you caught if you try to capitalize on them.
Finally, it lacks what I find to be the defining trait of a good Hitman level: feeling of pulling on a thread in the level intro that unravels to the target’s eventual death. Each target in Colorado is very self-contained, doesn’t really interact with stuff outside their particular area (house, basement, training area, comms area), and there’s no intro thread to pull on. By the time you’re thinking about where the targets are and the mission stories they’re associated with, you’re already halfway through the level and have taken on four different disguises.
Iconic Hitman levels are densely interconnected. Colorado is compartmentalized. It’s smart for the theme of the level (paranoid militia dudes doing militia stuff) but weak for the design of the game.
4 Likes
ninja saviors is a fucking videogame
3 Likes
have been playing fire emblem 4: genealogy of the holy war on and off for the last few weeks
usually a fire emblem hater, always found the gba/ds/3ds games really fuckin’ gross!!! though somehow i found myself putting a stupid amount of time into three houses last year and wanted to go back and give some of the kaga games a fair go.
this… is really good? the maps are enormous but (at least as of the first half) feel like you’re legit covering ground, i’m genuinely curious where the plot is going and there are enough obscure semi-explained mechanics and hidden events that two playthroughs sans guide could be very, very different
there’s a bunch of stuff i’m not keen on, a bit too much restarting for ~better rng~ when that one enemy in the arena actually hits that 1% crit and having to sell/buy items from a pawn shop in lieu of trading directly between units feels like extra busywork but i’ve been pleasantly surprised by this
6 Likes
Ended up taking apart two of my 3DSes today and found bloating batteries in both of them. Maybe check yours! For your health!
7 Likes
that’s a positive of the n3dsxl design: to get to the micro sd slot, you have to take the back of the case off, so the battery will never be silently rotting in the dark unnoticed
I have literally not touched the SD card slot since I bought either of these so I can’t say it makes much of a difference to me.
ANYWAY I’m sad because I thought the replacement battery I was getting was for the New Nintendo 3DS (not XL) but instead it was one with the Nintendo 3DS XL, and while luckily I also had one of those lying around, I will miss not having that C stick
3 Likes
mine is mostly used as an emulator machine, so i take the card out a lot
Pleased to report no battery bloat
yeah no battery bloat in the 3DevoS, just a broken hinge (huh) that means I don’t play it much.
1 Like
I played the first 30 min or so of Annapurna’s new prestige-em-up Maquette because it’s free on PSplus. Boy, I did not get along with that game!
I enjoy the Alice-in-Wonderland gameplay conceit – walk into a tiny model of the game world and move objects in it, and their corresponding “real” objects in the actual game world move too. The real problem is in the game’s theming. It’s all WAY too respectable white upper-middle-class whedonesque normie hipster vibes, it makes me gag.
The game begins with you walking a path through a blandly pretty garden while generic 2010’s indiepop about San Francisco plays. Then you start seeing text appear on the walls that tells the story of a couple meeting for the first time at a cafe, where they bonded over the dude’s quirky sketchbook. It turns out, you get to explore the drawings he did! They’re all nice, safe, boring fantasy architecture sketches for you to enjoy while you listen to adorkable dialogue that is written and acted in such a way that you’re always bracing to hear one of them say “uhhhh, THAT just happened!” My girlfriend was pissed too. Her take was that this is THAT completely self-absorbed couple that only ever talks about their relationship and nothing else.
If you want to be middlebrowbeaten half to death, play this game.
22 Likes
2 Likes
it’s like a Giant Sparrow spinoff?
I liked Florence and now I’m worried that makes me middlebrow
1 Like
Don’t worry, Florence was fine. A little short form webcomic with some interactivity. Not essential, but somewhat emotionally nourishing.
1 Like