Games You Played Today: 358 Threads Over 2

[RT-55J]

Toyed around with Nightshade: Part 1: The Claws of Sutekh for the past couple days. It’s alright, I guess, but I think I’ve had my fill with it by this point.

It’s a point-and-click adventure for the NES, which means it has a bonkers interface. You move around with the d-pad (okay), press A to bring up a cursor to “examine” things, press B to bring up a cursor to “operate” things, and press select to bring up a menu to access all of the commands (such as “use”, “talk”, or “jump” (!!)). While the cursor is out, you can press B to try using the command on something in your inventory. (To cancel an action while the cursor is active, press select). It feels workable after a while, but has a steep learning curve.

There’s also a rudimentary fightman segments in it, and, well, they kinda bring the game down. They aren’t abjectly terrible (some of the fights are okay even (I really like the 1v2 fights against the Egyptian statues where the solution is to jump over them and hit them as they turn around)), but the game’s health economy feels like it’s balanced around a better fightman (not the fightman it has). Your only sources of healing are (a) food items that only heal one notch of health (and you have very limited money to buy them), (b) one single-use health kit hidden away somewhere in the world (full heal), and (c) a hidden revitalization booth that only works 4 times. Oh, and (d) dying to reset your health.

Dying is interesting, because each time you die the bad guy puts you in increasingly ridiculous deathtraps (until he makes one that is inescapable), and the solution to all of them feel a bit fiddly. One of them requires you to operate a lever with your foot, but if you pick the wrong one you die instantly. Another one requires you pick up a couple background objects, and then use the “use” command with one item in your inventory on another item also in your inventory (no other puzzle in the game appears to require this).

Did I mention that there are no saves/passwords in this? (I’ve been using a lot of save-states and rewind.)

Now, for what I like: I like the writing and the graphics and the general vibe of it all. You’re a wannabe superhero with no superpowers, and none of the cityfolk care about you enough to even get your name right. Raising your popularity meter has as much to do with providing mundane help to citizens as much as it has to do with vigilante brutalizing. The urban-Egyptian aesthetic, with all the random hieroglyphic inscriptions throughout the city and the vaguely egyptian columns and architectural flairs, is allowed to simply exist without being lampshaded. The most terrifying enemies in the game are a gang of “ninja mistresses” patrolling the streets. You eventually learn how to talk with cats. There is a cat that can kill you (I love it).

(I do question the wisdom of only allocating 4.1 KB of cartridge space to music for an NES game of this length released in 1992, but fortunately it’s not that grating.)

Verdict: Who’s going to hack the fightman gamemode into a two-player versus thing? and When can I play this in ScummVM? out of ten

[shelter]

@username

Is Killer 7 a horror game?

I ask that earnestly, I am multiple days into it and I hadn’t considered it might be.

yes, but primarily structurally; it has shinji mikami’s classic resident evil lock and key puzzle design all over it

[Rudie]

Outrunners Arcade is fucking incredible. It has a selectable radio on the machine with one of the options being live commentary about the race!! I think I had dismissed this out of hand at my own idiocy. (i mean also it is right next ti a FZero AX and an Afterburner Climax machine so).

Wonderful!

Also played: Xevious, Marble Madness, Arkanoid, Virtua Cop, some top down racing game that would murder your brain looking at it, Riding Hero, Sega Baseball,

Wish I had had time for Virtua Fighter 3 which I will forever be compelled by for some reason. And they had the Gimmick Arcade! Gah Video Games!!!

The crown was going to the pinball floor and seeing and immediately breaking into tears at the pinball machine my dad had growing up. Gottlieb’s Grand Slam. Then I sobered up and played maybe 500 yen worth noticing it was Gottlieb’s Big Hit which is an earlier version without a plunger or the base-holes. It does have beautiful Gottlieb sounds (the best in the world.)

There was also Capcom’s Breakshot which sounds like having sex with a cartoon.

Breakshot Pinball Machine

God arcades rule. Nice to go to one after two years. But now the seal is broken and I want to go back tomorrow!

[slime]

This Breakshot footage looks enticing. I have yet to try any Capcom pinball tables.

All the cabs lined up look glorious, I’d kill to be there

[OneSecondBefore]

@slime

I thought it was hot trash and the combat doesn’t feel good and the “harden” mechanic is poorly explained

Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely worse than the souls games in every conceivable respect. It’s a total mediocrity. I almost wish it were worse so I could call it a Kusoge Souls. But I like that style of game enough that I’m having fun with it. It makes a ton of really weird choices, in every aspect of the game, so it’s kind of fun to see how those play with the genre (mostly pretty awkwardly).

About the harden mechanic: For those who haven’t played the game, here’s how it works. You don’t have a shield and you never get one. Instead, your shield button causes your character to go full metapod and harden up into rock. This 100% blocks and repels the next attack to hit you.

Most of the combat is really oriented around this mechanic, and they extrapolate on it a lot. Instead of leveling up your stats, you spend your souls on abilities, and most of them add little effects related to hardening, like your harden cooldown is lower, your next attack after hardening is stronger, etc.

The thing I like about hardening is that you can harden WHILE attacking. Your attack will slow and then freeze for as long as you hold the button down, or until you get hit by an enemy, at which point you’ll unfreeze and finish the attack. This means I can wind up a huge, slow attack with my mace, and right when I’m about to land the hit I can harden until the enemy attacks me, and then I can release the attack without getting hurt.

The game starts you off with a basic sword, but imo its combat doesn’t really work unless you’re using a giant slow weapon.

[VastleCania]

@slime

“harden” mechanic is poorly explained

@OneSecondBefore

harden up into rock

@OneSecondBefore

little effects related to hardening

@OneSecondBefore

harden cooldown is lower

@OneSecondBefore

harden WHILE attacking

heh

[isfet]

i feel like i’ve said it a few times here and didn’t wanna bore people, but yeah, i mean

the fact that the game literally just keeps looping and making you fight the same battles over and over (which takes hours each time) and then the final boss fight seems to completely turn everything you’ve been doing on its head in a way that meant i’d have to go out and grind for hours…

it really just felt like the most overt filler i’d ever seen in a jrpg

i found the aesthetics and combat to be really pleasant, so getting so disappointed by the end of it was really jarring

[cask]

I also liked Mortal Shell as a little 6-hours-and-you’ve-seen-everything experience to tide me over until another from soft game arrives. I feel like the length was critical to my enjoyment though, if it had been even one hour longer I probably wouldnt remember it fondly.

I found the hammer and chisel with the highest stamina shell to be the most fun way to play, but I’m a sucker for any game that has a poison mechanic that is actually worth it.

[shnozlak]

I think K7 is a horror game, its about zombie monsters and solving puzzles.

They way I started playing it was to try to establish a rhythm with scan, pop monster, reload, scan, move. I settled on the strart of maxing out the fire / reload speed on Con Smith so when I didn’t feel like taking care I could just machine gun blast in the general direction of the weak point and use his high movement speed to zip around to old areas if I wasn’t sure where to go. Kevin smth’s invisibility is also good for dashing past stuff as well, also hes got really good defense so he can tank a few no problem.

That town is for sure the least interesting part. I think MASK’s grenade launchers are good when dealing with the giants??? Its been a minute.

[vodselbt]

Finished Deathloop! That’s a good game, and I think the recent patches addressing some of the basicness of the AI behavior it launched with has resulted in higher tension gun fights and stealth sequences. Hard to judge exactly but I think that’s true. There were a lot of really sweaty moments in the last 10 hours I have been playing of it since the quarter wrapped up. Had a lot of fun bouts against invading Julianna’s even. Normally I am kind of indifferent to invasion mechanics but I felt with this game that I could actually keep up with the invaders, which resulted in some fun cat and mouse situations. Seems essential to the experience, from my perspective. Overall, the whole thing is a really concise injection of much of what you come to Arkane games for. Maybe you want something less concise, but it’s cool that we have this too. I remember some people saying that it feels like its mission design is still too restricted because of its reliance on progress flags or w/e you’d call them, and I definitely agree. At least the sandbox of combat and physics and interactives is more open.

Ramblin' Frank Spicer - No Class | Deathloop Sountrack

[stavekoff]

finished my big hole in minecraft, moss really sped up the process immensely

[username]

@shnozlak

That town is for sure the least interesting part. I think MASK’s grenade launchers are good when dealing with the giants??? Its been a minute.

Yeah, Mask seems to be the only one who can deal with the giants. I got into a pattern of leaving the save room, quickly kill the first three appearing giants with him, then running before more spawn. That gives you a good idea as to how many times I have died or otherwise had to continue from that one specific room.

Also I am glad you said the town is the least interesting part as I legit was gonna ask that in this topic. So far the town has been just dreadful and was dreading the notion that “this is what the rest of the game will be like and what everyone loves” as a possibility.

[Sakurina]

Played in a BlazBlue beginner bracket today. Won one game, lost two. Had a bunch of fun. Play BBCF.

[nastypaul]

Drifting: Weight of Feathers, really crazy parkour game camouflage as an eroge.

[Titus]

Sonic Mania looks amazing on a big old CRT. I couldn’t find a way to change the PS4 to 4:3 but 16:9 letterboxed still looks really good.

Also been playing a bit of Dark Souls, magic only. Int is easy, since you start with a spell and you can buy more from Rickert straight away. Faith would be more difficult, you would at least have to use items. You could take firebombs as the starting gift and kill Asylum that way, then you can get more at Firelink Shrine, maybe the shops in Undead Burg sell some as well. That should be enough for Taurus, then you might end up having to farm souls at the Hellkite, but at that point you’ve basically got your first spell anyway. Might be doable, I’ll try later

[ellaguro]

i played this game for festival judging and found it completely and utterly inscrutable and super tedious to control. perhaps they fixed some issues with the controls because it wasn’t the final version but yeah like… it was real rough to play. definitely one of the more unpleasant experiences with a game i played judging. felt like someone’s weird tech demo. also the design of the protagonist made me feel like it was 2007 again… in a bad way. seeing this game pop up on Steam hot new releases made me feel like me and other people’s priorities must be… extremely different.

[Flylighter]

Shovel Knight Pocket Dungeon is HARD. I think the problem is that I keep trying to play to the beat a la Crypt of the Necrodancer, and it’s absolutely not that kind of game, so I keep nailing myself to the cross, usually in the second level! But I can’t break the habit of playing to the beat so I’m fumbling miserably.

Also I can’t ignore the possibility that maybe my ass is just getting old

Edit: I just tried again a few more times and I really really suck at this game, I can’t stop trying to play to the beat

[Father.Torque]

Mute it and play some Beethoven

[Annetts]

Tried out Sable.

The dialogue so far is attrocious, a kind of sanguine faux-Nintendo NPC style but through the rose-tinted notalgia goggles of a millenial. One character told me they loved me twice within the first 20 minutes of the game!

It made me realise that the bluntness of npc dialog in nes/gb titles left a lot of room for projection and in my head it came out more like Carver than Proust.

It features more busywork/collecting than I would like but the chill vibes are welcome.

Best bits so far:

• I accidently added a map marker and no matter what I can’t remove it.
• Vsync doesn’t work but of course there’s a 24fps mode in a game with free camera control.
• Fell into an infinite void and autosave didn’t work for the last 30 minutes.

[Felix]

@Annetts

It made me realise that the bluntness of npc dialog in nes/gb titles left a lot of room for projection and in my head it came out more like Carver than Proust.

this is a phenomenal observation