Black Mesa is pretty good, but the extended Xen section is dragging on way too long for me. I’ve also gotten myself into plenty of situations that wreck your current game:
NPCs sometimes don’t execute their scripts and still won’t when you reload your save.
The player gets permanently stuck in or on something.
I don’t play scripted events exactly how they’re supposed to be played which leads to the game breaking completely.
Scripted “you can’t actually hurt that enemy yet” moments where I try anyway only to waste all my ammo OR WORSE I kill them prematurely and any further progress is impossible.
This one is more hilarious than anything, but NPCs are usually programmed to cheer you on when you kill enemies, but they’ll ALSO cheer when you kill other NPCs. Blowing a scientist’s head off in a room with other scientists and getting a “Stupendous!” is very
Never try to play through this riding on one autosave only. That was my challenge to myself I have since abandoned.
the limited ed. of Ys: Memories of Celceta for PS4 was on sale and so i picked it up. i had it on Vita but it didn’t click. for whatever reason, this time, i’m really enjoying it! Ys games are such a nice vibe.
I “beat” Cruelty Squad (that is, got an ending cutscene). Missed a bunch of unlocks, still have some secrets to do, so not done with the game yet.
It’s a perfect juxtaposition of simple and complex, surreal and material, figurative and literal. It’s so easy to describe how to play the game, but impossible to describe how playing it makes you feel, because to put it to words doesn’t really capture the complexity of it.
It’s genuinely funny! The way the gibs sound and splatter like Shogo, the misaligned textures on vents, the ambient noise of guards, the NPC responses. It’s an homage in the only pleasurable sense; that is, somebody enjoyed the same things I did, and captured the weird idiosyncrasies that stuck with me forever. I grinned more than I thought.
Easily one of my favorite shooters in recent memory. Last FPS I remember impressing me this much was Devil Daggers.
When I get a baby nap during the day I’ve been plugging away at Panzer Paladin because it is during the day on my laptop so the full screen flashes are only mildly annoying. Cyber Shadow let’s you turn them off!
They made too much game. They made too many normal stages then made some of them “wiley” stages. Also they made horrible instant murder spikes that cause you to eject from your mech. You aren’t dead yet. But your little girl can’t activate a checkpoint and you have to find two things to get your mech back.
Luckily I’ve been playing it in discord with friends in voice chat and us yelling at the game is pretty fun.
Had the same exact experience on Vita. For some reason, it just didn’t click but I did see a price drop on Amazon for the console version. What do you think has changed for you playing it on console?
i think unlike 98% of SB i just do not enjoy playing most games on handheld as opposed to a TV. i mean there are definitely some games that function better as handheld titles and are good for commutes/the back of a car ride when you’re a child, but Ys has never felt particularly “mobile” to me. playing it, i now feel similarly to how i felt when i played Ark of Napishtim or something like that.
When I was a kid, my neighbor had some kind of little alarm clock TV with a screen that was just a few inches wide. They had their NES connected to it and I thought it was great to play games on that tiny screen.
When the original Game Boy came out, I liked that a lot as well. I still have mine, though the screen has gone dim for some reason.
But I have never had any interest in portable video games after the spinach Game Boy, aside from the few weeks that I played Desert Golfing on a phone.
I guess it might be different if I lived somewhere that had mass transit.
yeah! i guess, to me, portable gaming always felt like a compromise. like, “i’m stuck in a space i have no control over for a time and i don’t have access to a TV and game console,” and so i have a Game Boy or Gear or PSP or whatever. sometimes a game is just really good or something i’m into (SMT IV, or Astro Boy, for example) and i’m glued to the portable as a result, but that’s rare.
and i’ll play stuff on mass transit sometimes, but in reality, i usually just read, because that’s the time of day where it makes the most sense for me to get my reading done :\
yeah i don’t have much appetite to play handheld stuff either, even if i’m gonna play a game boy game or something i’d pretty much rather play it on a tv. and i like the game boy! i actually try to push back against myself on this sometimes-- i want to queue up a mother 3 playthrough sometime soon but i kind of want to come up with a good way to play it handheld
Yeah I used my Switch mostly on the TV until we adopted the kid, then it’s gotten a lot more play time in portable. Otherwise, the only portable play it got was on breaks at work.
I do play mobile but only within the confines of my home. People talk all the time about playing on the subway but that would be way too distracting for me and I’d also freak out about germs and etc. If I’m out in the world, I typically don’t have any excuse to bury my face in a ds/switch. I did recently beat Dementium and SMT4, so I do enjoy a good handheld experience though.
not that it matters in the present, but i will say that the Switch is a complete game changer (hah) when it comes to long flights. the time passes like no other
i’ve liked being able to play games and watch tv at the same time since i was a kid. for some reason, i really specifically remember playing jump mode in pocket bomberman while also watching an episode of the bill, at some point in the late 90s
As a fourth-generation Bay Arean, I am compelled to say that this is specifically a horseshit “moving to San Francisco/Los Angeles to find yourself” trope (and NYC isn’t immune from it either).
Aside from the usual suspects, I picked up Valheim to play with my son. Voxel-based Viking-afterlife Minecraft with actual goals is a pretty good concept. Hopefully the creators don’t turn out to be shitlords.
Also got my first Chicken Dinner in PUBG last night. Felt good.
I played ff7r last night and it’s a lot better than I was expecting, but the combat UI is way too small. The health bars are like 4 pixels tall and the numbers are in a super thin font. Also the stupid scorpion took me forever. I am yet to successfully dodge an attack?
it is for the most part surprisingly decent throughout despite constantly evoking all their weirdest action combat design decisions of the 2000s… except for the handful of parts that are pretty garbo
imo cloud is really terrible at dodging. in melee you’re usually better off switching to his punisher stance and making use of the really forgiving counter timing (iirc he gets a ton of damage reduction when countering, like 50-60%? it’s more than blocking would reduce.) you don’t even have to sit in it if you need to move around, switching to it right as he gets hit will trigger a counterattack
they do a very bad job of explaining this and there’s a boss fight later that will just kill you over and over until you start abusing the punisher counter
Last night, in Far Cry 2, I had just finished blowing up a water pump at the request of the APR, before previously damaging something at the work site of my buddy, Frank Bilders. After completing this mission, Frank called me up and told me he needed help, he was being swarmed, “their baleful gaze has turned to me” is how he put it. He was near by, I had only to cross a river and descend into a fishing village sheltering within an arena created by some large hills, where the river ran through. When I got there, I saw a firefight occurring on the wood dock platforms across the way and Frank firing back to defend himself. I got in close and took advantage of a raised portion of land to fire at his attackers while I saw him limp away out vision to my right, to get to safety, I thought. Then I saw him go down, which was not any real concern seeing as I had health syringes to save him once the shooting stopped, so I just focused on clearing the baddies from the area. But when I had cleared the area, I looked closer at my buddy and saw that he wasn’t down for the count, but just flat dead.
I was completely surprised. I had done a lot of work for this guy and my “Reputation” was good with him, except the time I blew up the truck containing the helium that he wanted to use to blow up his work cite at a local garage. He was kind of charming, besides being a total scum bag who was willing to play both sides at the expense of every innocent in the middle. I expected to do more jobs for him, in fact I had planned for that. Even when I mistakenly thought he was down and in a revivable state, I kept shooting cause I guess I wanted to keep him alive for a number of reasons. I liked him and I thought I should protect him. And it was completely shocking to learn that he was actually dead, killed right outside my peripheral vision, quiet and unspectacular like. There was nothing to do after that but I stayed a while before just leaving to proceed with the rest of the game. I’d just find someone else to do jobs for, but it was weird to think that person would not be Frank.
