Games You Played Today: 358 Threads Over 2

[OneSecondBefore]

My gf and I played some Eastward last night too. So far it’s not doing anything innovative, but it is definitely very solid comfort food. It looks gorgeous. The pixel art is excellent, and the game also incorporates cute little instruction-manual style illustrations of various things, including all the items you collect. It’s charming!

The feel of the game is a little loose so far (I think Tim Rogers would call it ropey). Wacking stuff with your pan doesn’t feel great, it’s kind of imprecise. I’m very early on though and I know you get other weapons that might feel better to use.

For some reason, the way that dialogue animates onto the screen is really irritating to me though I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why. Text does animate letter-by-letter as in a traditional RPG dialogue box, but it doesn’t animate in smoothly – I think it’s putting extra weight on spaces between words, so the text animates with this irregular stop-and-start rhythm. I’m being picky, but there is a lot of dialogue in this game! Speeding up the text in the options menu really made it less noticeable though.

So far story and worldbuilding is fun. I like the starting town. It’s a shitty falling-apart mining slum ruled by a corrupt asshole mayor. The people have their own petty prejudices but you can also feel a sense of small-town comradery too. There’s more to it than your average video game town!

I absolutely feel a heavy Mother 3 influence in this game, which is fun. It’s yet to be seen whether this game’s writing can live up to its influences but so far it’s not bad at all.

[captainlove]

I still say From should try their hand at pulp 50s scifi for the next Souls

[nastypaul]

Btw the elements of Eastward reminds me another indie game Owlboy

When video game become a garden of fairy tale to me

[Tony]

I am fighting with the last boss in Huntdown. Great little game, I love the vibe, its difficulty is really spot on.
The Rambo-looking boss made me laugh a lot.
@Broco gave me great advice

[Polygonzo]

Bought an Everdrive 64 X5 for my birthday. To play the cancelled but pretty much finished Dinosaur Planet on a little CRT at the end of my bed…pretty neat.

Nice little nook and nuance from the Glover 2 prototype:

Gloveways Down the Stairs

[Tony]

I am playing Mark of the Ninja Remastered and it seems a good game to me!
There is a lot of freedom in how to carry out the levels and this saves it from being a puzzle game in disguise.

[Father.Torque]

I made a let’s play series of Mark of the Ninja. I really like that game. Very flexible, very slick

[HOBO]

Been playing Forza Horizon 4.

I think I like it despite how Microsoft it is. Just so fellow kids but not as oppressively so as, say, post-EA Burnout games. There are Mixer ads everywhere. The classical station has a Halo song on it. NPCs are constantly saying things like “influencer points” and “redditors” and “nut in me gob” (it’s set in Great Britain) and oh yeah, there are NPCs and you see their faces all the time, which is so fucked up. The human face has no place in car games, if you ask me.

Like every time I finish a race I gotta watch my joyless Nise Laura D do some dumb dance. I think she’s doing ballet here. It is the most dignified emote I’ve randomly unlocked so far.

I could also choose to not emote at all, but that somehow looks more awkward than hooting, or hollering.

They don’t have humans in Gran Turismo, right? I wish I was playing Gran Turismo. But not one of the old ones, fuck that shit, I want something new, with very fancy graphics, that I can play on my computer. So Forza it is.

It looks great aside from the people though, the novelty of seeing all these fancy effects and different weather patterns and trees and reflections hasn’t worn out yet. It’s nice to enjoy graphics for the first time in XX years.

I think the first car I bought was a Mini Cooper AKA The Car That Killed Marc Bolan (RIP Little King). I chose the most popular power ups for it and, also, the most popular custom skin. This is one of the only animes I’d ever let grace my ride.

This one though…no thanks! NO THANKS.

I am progressing through this game, somehow. There are so many icons on my map. I don’t know what most of them mean. I am pretty sure I placed, like, last in most of those ones with championship cups on them. Don’t like getting participation trophies in video games. Have no clue how to look up past results, or if they even matter. There are so many different bars being filled up and things being unlocked and none of it means anything to me and I guess I’m okay with that. At one point I tried to enter a Championship Circuit or some shit and it was like “Do you want to abandon your previous Championship Circuit?” and I was so confused, I had no clue I was participating in one, applying different map filters didn’t really help me figure out where the previous circuit was but I stumbled across it eventually and and

This is all so confusing on purpose, right. This is all supposed to leave you feeling overwhelmed and lost so that time and space lose all meaning and you end up dropping money you wouldn’t have otherwise, right.

This is just like Vegas, right.

I’m sure plenty of folks have already written tons of insightful shit on this school of design, I’m not adding much here I know, this is just…new to me, I guess. I think the only other non-mobage game that’s left me feeling like this is Destiny 2. Just adrift in all these contextless events and currencies and shit yet not bouncing off it immediately. I can’t tell you what my goal is in this game, personal or otherwise! I am just logging on, drifting a bit, and logging off. I am sure this is how 95% of players interact with games. And it’s fine. I kinda wish I felt even the tiniest bit of satisfaction from filling up all these bars, maybe half the menus being tied to DLC I will never buy is part of the problem, but this is fine, I like it a lot, even when it forces ads for Legos on me I don’t get too cheezed off, just wish it could be my ~forever game~ to be honest.

[BustedAstromech]

@HOBO

This is all so confusing on purpose, right .

I don’t think so, people are just as bad at designing these stacked progression systems for legibility as they are at other design.

But they’re operating in such a closed evolutionary cycle just like social media: does it increase engagement? And as long as that number moves up they don’t have to answer questions about whether it’s legible or aggravating or pleasant because, if people are playing it, they must like it, right?

[doolittle]

The opposite measurement problem is maddening - [change] is unequivocally a qualitative slam dunk but doesn’t tie back to a Key Performance Indicator so it was a waste.

[Felix]

@HOBO

I think I like it despite how Microsoft it is. Just so fellow kids but not as oppressively so as, say, post-EA Burnout games

this is a huge huge factor in the success of modern forza imo – they’ve managed to make it uncool but not grating, which given the budget they’re working at, is what they needed

[BustedAstromech]

bad is still bad

I can’t believe how invested Microsoft is in trying to make Gears not-stupid

So characteristically Microsoft

[Grandpa]

Got the Platinum for Psychonauts 2. Not a perfect game (just ain’t a Double Fine game without some jank), but overall I pretty much loved it? Had a real “oh no once I do this the game is gonna end” feeling that I don’t often get with games (mostly because, as y’all know, I play too many giant open world games that have me barely dragging myself across the finish line).

Oh, and I beat the PS2 on PS4 version of the first game before doing that and, uh, did not get the Platinum there. Fuck that. Those almost transparent figments can go to hell.

[Sakurina]

@HOBO

NPCs are constantly saying things like “influencer points” and “redditors” and “nut in me gob”

I really hope that last one is real

[vikram]

I just got to the Ashtray Maze in Control and am feeling discouraged.

can I get a hint

why are there so many walkthroughs but no hint sites. hints are a lost art

[km]

There’s an item you need to go through the maze and the game is not subtle about giving it to you, if you don’t have it go somewhere else You get the item from Ahti but I don’t remember if it’s the thing you do immediately after encountering the maze

[Broco]

Yeah I dunno about Ashtray Maze’s design. I had the exact same problem, I didn’t get too frustrated with it though because I dgaf anymore about solving puzzles myself, I just googled it after 5 minutes of going in circles

[VastleCania]

i thought the ashtray maze ruled - they give you a pretty strong hint that you won’t be able to do it until you get that item. but i can see how that would be frustrating. i just like creative dead ends

[Broco]

I think I remember interpreting that hint in a different way that made it sound like I needed to be more clever. I can’t remember the phrasing at this point though

One problem with it is that it interacts with arbitrary other exploration design misunderstandings you might have anywhere else on the map. If at any point you come to believe incorrectly that the ashtray maze is the only unexplored region left, then the tendency is to rathole in there and run in circles instead of examining the rest of the map more carefully

[km]

Yep, same. Encountering the maze the first time was a frustrating low point, but when you get back to it it’s a fucking blast