So this was a trip. Reminded me of Angels Egg by way of Team Silent/FROM. Definitely recommended if you haven’t played it already and have 30 minutes to spare.
Opening this gate scared the shit out of me:
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Finally trying out the early access build for Baldurs Gate 3 and it seems pretty polished and in a good place now. Having fun with the halfling rogue I made. All RPGs need to let you be a shorty. In a world filled with demons and dragons and undead freaks it’s fun to just be over here like “ohhh don’t mind me I’m just a lil guy”.
Everyone you meet just towers over you as they speak to you and it’s really funny.
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Being miserable and stucj with a blanket over my head made me play some games on the RG351v finally.
Alundra seems pretty good but did not have energy for something as focused as it and the Working Designs translation was already putting gears in my head.
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I played Dragon’s Dogma this way and it was one of the things I enjoyed most in my time with it. More character creators should let you play as an 8 year old.
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just wrote the first ever english review of a really cool ps1 game that i enjoyed playing a lot
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Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen is making a much better impression on me now than it did in 2013 because I’m now seeing it with the eyes of an adult Monster Hunter fan and also it’s only $8 of my $50 PSN card instead of being a new PS3 game
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my gf was staying with me for a couple of weeks, so we played hours and hours of Puyo Puyo eSports.
it also gave me a reason to finally pay the entry price (£16 each) to the arcade that is ~12 minute walk from my house.
it’s a really impressive place, even if the saturday afternoon crowd was a 50/50 split of children wanting to play fortnite and 40 year olds on a stag do.
outside of the expected stuff on the ground floor (three Outrun 2 cabinets!), the next floor has an incredible selection of retro arcade games, all in immaculate condition. a lot of those games suddenly made sense to me playing on original hardware and not just emulated. playing the star wars arcade game on a vector monitor still rips.
top floor has a bunch of astro city cabs with a decent selection of cave games and sf3, vampire saviour, tekken 7.
i wish it was a bit cheaper, as i’d love to be able to go and hang out in that top floor more regularly, but there is a monthly (or 3 month pass) that is a lot better value and it is so close to my house…
now it’s just me again, i’m finally putting some time into Sable and i think i love this game. it feels like the antithesis to botw’s game design, despite the surface level similarities, and has a real belief/confidence in itself that is rare to see.
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you live in leeds?
Yes!
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Even though I cut open my thumb after 2 months of Like A Dragon I went to the NES Mini for shorter games. And further destroying my thumb’s nerve endings. And making my left index stiff…
Hmm…
Anyways. I continue to be incredibly impressed with Kirby Adventure. I know I slagged on Kirby for years. I was wrong as hell. This game is a delight of animation and visuals and ideas. How is this an NES game? But also I can’t play it for more than 20 minutes without losing interest. Really trying to work on why the hell that is. I keep thinking this is great until I need to stop playing right ar 20 minutes.
So flipped over to Ninja Gaiden NES. God this game is fucking great. Been stuck at Stage 4 for two nights. I laugh constantly at the birds and the evil on display. The enemies are all great. They all DO SOMETHING.
All those Retro Games seem to be afraid of that patented NES Bullshit. They’ll keep the bottomless pits but unpredictable enemies are nowhere to be seen. I think about Fire Troll in Panzer Paladin all the time. A giant sprite that throws fire directly in front of it striking the ground. You can sit just outside of this range and hit it with your sword to no danger to yourself.
Now the NES Mini definitely has serious input lag and dropped inputs and that makes me mad sometimes. Think I had less trouble with the shoddy PSClassic.
Oh I also a long while back spent an hour with Final Fantasy and the Meetup made me try to go back to that where I immediately got in a fight with a lizard that nearly killed my party and I had no idea where to go but north.
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been away on a business trip for the last few weeks and i am about to lose my FUCKING MIND
naturally, i’ve been getting back into marvel ultimate alliance 3, because i can play that game and not have to think while doing it. i have been mindlessly grinding experience for all of my characters, which is super easy; all you need is ms marvel and wasp on your team, and a bunch of exp boost gems equipped.
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If I had an improbable videogame wish it’d be for a sci engine demake of quest for glory v. If I had a 2nd one it’d be for the ds/mobile versions of dragon quest iv-vi to be ported to ps1
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not totally improbable, ds dq iv was ported from a japan exclusive ps1 version and someone’s working on a fan translation
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Saw Corpse Party was on Switch, thought about it, and dug out my Vita to play that version instead.
Got to exactly where I did years ago (the first enemy encounter) and once again, I’m out. Thought I quit the first go around because it was too scary, but nope - clumsy action sequence with an easy fail state, and no way to quickly skip through dialogue to try again.
Oh well! At least I didn’t spend $20 to make this mistake again!
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It’s PC only but if anyone is hankering for RPG Maker anime horror with little action minigames, I would direct them instead to The Witch’s House. I had a grand old time with that one.
It kept making me say out loud “oh no” whenever I realized the intended solution to a puzzle
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I’ve never touched a Kirby game all these years because his eyes weren’t angry enough for me but I think now might be the time.
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I had the same reaction as Rudie on Kirby’s Adventure on NES: “oh this is great”, but I quickly lose interest. It’s one random cool-looking thing after another with no change of pace, tone, or narrative thread tying the game together (not even the narrative of your own progress in the game, as the linear structure and low difficulty makes it a foregone conclusion you’ll advance).
In SMB the difficulty creates the narrative, in SMW the search for secret paths, in Wario Land the drive to collect treasure, but Kirby lives in a “dreamland” and it can be boring for the same reason hearing people talk about their dreams is.
I recommend the original Kirby for GB though, that one is good partly because it’s very short, just the best dream ideas and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
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nintendo loves to make theme parks, even if just virtual! a smattering of fun attractions and exhibitions and a carefully tuned experience designed to minimize friction. it bums me out
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I think Nintendo is usually self-aware enough to understand the problems with the theme park model and compensate for them in some manner, indeed it’s part of why their platformers aged well while most other nonviolent platformers are totally forgotten.
When golden-age Nintendo went full theme park, for instance in NES Kirby, Super Mario Land 2, and to a lesser degree even SMB3 in my (contrarian) opinion, those are all sequels of short-and-sweet games, which perhaps lulled them into assuming they could merely follow the same proven approach but with five times more content.
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IHTCBOWIAAP There are 5 years between SMB3 and Kirby and Kirby is HAL who I would keep distinct from Nintendo. All the more remarkable about the timing of Kirby’s Adventure. Everyone had a famicom/NES lying around or passed off to a younger family member and here was this masterpiece of what the NES could do in the west more or less left to die. Though I guess SuperStar would come out the next year (huh) and be if not celebrated then, then by the end of the century.
I forget the point I was making. I just played for another 20 minutes and got bored right on time. I hate the arena fights in this game or on the mini. It is far to easy to accidentally inflate.
On stage 6 of Ninja Gaiden, and played Double Dragon 2 until the platforming killed me on my last life. That game is really cruel where I find Ninja Gaiden hilarious.
Gonna finish Kirby and NG before I put this away. Only using save states as convience.
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