It’s weird you have to coach that game in terms of it being before Retro Games were a genre. It was one of the first to fully commit to the aesthetics. I assume it still only raises to the level of “not bad.”
i didn’t know that!
SaGa Scarlet Grace is a bright, loud arcade game RPG…for your home console or portable!
4 Likes
The follow up Odallus is fantastic
2 Likes
Okay, this makes a huge difference. Half the time when I dodged, even with basic enemies, they’d still get a hit in. But normal jump is much more effective. I was able to finally beat that general by simply jumping away and going in for a hit when possible.
I then got to the chained ogre, which is a fight that took me forever but that I enjoyed because it was vulnerable to a Capra Demon strategy. I much prefer puzzle-style fights to straightforward skill-based ones.
This is the first time I have turned off the game that I haven’t told myself there’s a good chance I will never play it again. I still think I will quit at some point when a boss fight is just too much for me, but I’m glad I have been able to see at least more than the intro now.
8 Likes
odallus is fucking sick.
2 Likes
5 Likes
i played this game for judging, and i enjoyed it quite a bit:
i never know what to expect with these abstract Unity games that have cool lo-fi aesthetics because there are so many out there. i generally like these kinds of games, but never know if there’s much more to the game other than the aesthetics. but with this one i had my answer: it’s one of my favorites of those types of games that i’ve ever played. there are a lot of little details and moments that i enjoyed that elevated this for me above those. also the visual design is just so fabulous:
so yeah, recommended. also it’s pay what you want on itchio
15 Likes
I beat TGM2+'s Normal Mode for the first time over my lunch break. I want to get better at Tetris this year and it’s nice to be making incremental progress. My next goal is to beat Normal Mode again and survive the credit roll, and then I’ll be trying to do that consistently before moving on to the next mode.
7 Likes
I’m getting back into Warhammer models, which means it’s inevitably time for me to boot up some Warhammer games.
I’d played Space Marine in the past, but I don’t think I was actually familiar with the tabletop game as much back then? Because the most striking thing about it is how hard it nails the source material in it’s mechanical feel.
Like the melee feels like the melee in Warhammer, the bolter feels like a bolter. I feel like I can almost count the damage saves and wound ratings of the tabletop models by how tough the enemies are.
And also how the meta is extremely biased towards space marines.
It even manages to have a cynical 2000 AD dystopia vibe despite all the crowing about how cool the ultramarines are. You’re on this planet to save mecha and factories, not people. The contrast between practically being worshipped by the imperial guard and the game being an explodey meathead murderfest is great. The recordings insisting that a planetary invasion isn’t a good enough reason to stop meeting manufacturing quotas just adds icing on the cake.
The first bit has been extremely good at being a 7/10, not sure why I had trouble with it back in the day.
3 Likes
DARK SOULS™: REMASTERED™
First and last time I played the original was 8 years ago or so. Whenever Prepare to Die came out. This game does not feel difficult anymore, especially the combat. As an old person with deteriorating vidya skills, I’m surprised. Bosses take 1-2 tries without summons and using an unupgraded weapon. I’ve had a harder time with the wolf boss in Genshin Impact than Sif. Remembering / finding the bonfires is the most time consuming part of the game. Messing around with low level invasion builds, I get wrecked in PvP, so I think we’ve just collectively gottin gud with a decade+ of souls likes.
I also did some LOOP HERO, which is fun, and the least roguelike roguelite. It’s linear, has permanent meta progression (base building), and resource grinding. The randomization is mostly in the cards you get dealt from your constructed deck. One of the core elements of Rogue, that Dark Souls has way more than Loop Hero, is your progression is personal knowledge. You die, you learn, you start again. There isn’t much to learn in Loop Hero; the unique tile combos fit on a single web page. The unique interactions in Nethack are a 30 year old book with a broken spine the library stores in reference so you have to use the xerox machine. Sorry for posting about roguelikes.
12 Likes
never be sorry
9 Likes
I played this last year and fell outside the level as soon as I reached the car part. I need to try it again because I’m sure I missed a lot of the content.
it’s possible some bugs were fixed since then because i didn’t have any problems with that particular glitch.
Loop Hero is really good as a game that keeps my hands and eyes occupied while I’m on a voice call. You can just grind for a while and it doesn’t really matter if you don’t give it a lot of brain power. Since I’m not constantly trying (and often failing) to suppress the urge to browse the internet, chat, etc my attention is improved, surprisingly maybe not all that surprising according to that little voice in the back of my head that wonders if I have undiagnosed adhd but hush you’re not a doctor brain voice
6 Likes
My roommate watched me play thru (Tequilaworks’ Stadia exclusive) Gylt, which is a sort of mediocre tween-oriented stealth horror game. Not rly much to it except in lieu of bloodscrawled notes u see these sort of bullying tableaus & the bullies all seem to be incredibly talented artists, to a point where it feels fair to side with them because they’re clearly putting a lot of effort into arbitrarily taking down this one kid with elaborate oil paintings, mannequin displays, etc…
Then I watched my roommate play “Metamorphosis” Switch port, Ovid Works’ kafka bug simulator. This one feels closer to a unique concept, using “turning into a bug” as an excuse for light environmental platforming game puzzles is like…u know…sure why not. Kinda feels like a sort of solid Half Life 2 mod, but i rly cannot overstate how much it falls over itself in trying to prove that they have read books. Constant clumsy literary references, early on a bug tells u to turn a valve that is “Behind Ulysses” and then the objective pops up “Find the Ulysses Book” and then if u press the map button it says “Look for the Ulysses Book”. It’s packed 2 the gill with this, u scuttle about as a bug and - ah, there’s Kierkegaard’s book, Kapital is on the lawyer’s desk, and over there, why…its a Goethe book! (& so on and so on).
I mean nothing wrong with being proud of being a good reader but the books are so generic/brag-y & the game’s writing falls so flat it makes u wanna hold it against them. Every loading screen has the most inane quotes attributed to Kafka, and after looking one of them up (“I am in chains. Don’t touch my chains”) & being unable to find any actual source beyond quote websites im 99% certain they googled “Kafka quotes” and just went w/ it. Which u know, sure, thats ur call, but maybe don’t constantly namedrop books if ur gonna reveal that u haven’t read the author ur entire game is predicated on.
I don’t mean to go too hard on it cuz it seems like they do a good job w/ a good chunk of the bug stuff, the skittering noise of ur feet, the way u kind of leap and scuttle around, and moving thru these larger environments is always a fun way to play w/ scale (altho that sort of falls off in the latter half as u start entering ‘bug world’ environments). But this one rly falls apart at the seams, and the literary posturing makes it a lot easier 2 hold that against it considering just how much it falls flat on that level .
Still, compared to Gylt it clearly aims higher and I appreciate it more for that, whereas Gylt is a sort of polished mediocre experience, at least this one has ambition (even if it mostly falls flat). -
- Also I found an interview with a Metamorphosis dev where the journalist from “GamerHubTV” tries 2 stunt by saying, “Ah…so of course this game is an adaptation of the book ‘Metamorphosis’ by Emmanual Kant. So how far does it go in adapting him, are we gonna see ~Categorical imperatives~ or — how did you approach adapting him?” Which was a cool way 2 see the exact audience for this game manifest & the marketing person get deeply uncomfortable.
Overall I recommend the “Durak” phone game app. Its got a lot of game lobbies, w/ a lot of variant rulesets (including one that lets u cheat until u get caught [someone taps ur illegally played card]), nice offbrand (russian?) emojis to emote w/ and Durak is just a great party game. Especially cuz its got the conceit that there’s only one loser, no winners( app got smart slapstick timing 4 animating a fool hat immediately on the avatar of whoever gets last).
7 Likes
Bad Mojo still comfortable in its throne as the best Kafka adaptation
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This was by far the worst part of Tacoma, too. Pseudo-clever ‘environmental storytelling’ by placing the five works of literature that someone in an undergrad english class had read when they were 18.
I am glad that Durak is finally catching on outside of slavophone countries. I have advocated for it for years, and I maintain its the reason I am bad at shuffling cards. In a typical durak game, the durak has to shuffle for the next round while everyone else chills so I associated having to shuffle with being the loser.
3 Likes
I did this quite a few times. But the game somehow wormed into my brain enough for me to want to keep at it. I’m very glad I stuck to it, but I wouldn’t blame you if you did tap out before finishing it.
3 Likes
one of sekiro’s thematic strengths is that it actually wants you to “cheat” to try to get the upper hand whenever possible; while the lack of stats and gear makes it initially seem more drily skill-based, in practice there are lots and lots of items to play with as you go along. again, it’s just the beginning that’s really bad and appears to take itself much too seriously
7 Likes