always felt like FFVI doesn’t do nearly enough of what it’s doing
3 Likes
nowadays i feel a strong tension between the need to be this kind of super polished final fantasy experience and a desire to go full SaGa with ffvi
2 Likes
After playing Sonic Mania for a little bit, I have to admit to myself that maybe I just don’t care for Sonic games in the classic Genesis mold. I dislike their momentum, their friction. I feel like I’m constantly battling Sonic to get him to do what I want. Whenever these games ask me to slow down, I get very impatient.
I want to like them, but I just come away underwhelmed and frustrated every time I play them.
6 Likes
Then I followed it up by playing through the entire story of Sonic Forces in a single sitting so what the hell do I know anyway
(My create-a-character was a very basic black cat with some gear on, I couldn’t bear to make a real freak)
2 Likes
You gotta go fast, that’s all
2 Likes
Tanglewood is the exciting adventure of a nervous fox that turns into a piss fox to push boulders around with a FM ambient soundtrack.
4 Likes
Today I also played Roundabout and Little Nightmares.
The former was surprisingly well executed, I really didn’t expect much mechanically but they did more with the central idea than I thought they would. The FMV scenes are charming in a bad YouTube skit kind of way. I dunno if I’d advocate buying it, but if you already had access from a bundle or something, give it a whirl.
The latter is extremely similar to Limbo and Inside, though I think it has both beat aesthetically. I stopped playing once it started demanding precision platforming and dodging which I just think this game and its controls weren’t really built for.
Also I think this game is low-key fatphobic. Like at first it’s just one type of NPC you encounter that’s basically a grotesquely large person but then the game leans really hard into it in the next chapter. Idk if they are trying to do commentary on excess consumerism or something, but mostly it seems to be getting played for horror. There’s some other things that seem a little suspect but that’s by far the worst.
1 Like
I had a pleasant time with CyberShadow until Chapter 4. Everywhere else on the internet talks big about it’s difficulty which is a non-issue. Until this place with very weirdly rhythmed electric floors that lead up to an underwater snake boss. We’re all familiar with underwater snake bosses. I have to hit platforms above the water so that I can have platforms to stand on and hit the snake which I only have a sword to attack with so I need to be in close.
But once the snake is done with a pop-up attack they travel straight towards where I would need to be standing to hit them.
Hitting the plaform to make platform requires two jumps. Jump out of the water to hit it and then jump again to land on it. What made me quit and uninstall was finding out the falling platform would damage me if I touched it,
Also the snake is moving back and forth underwater and the bouncy of my body hitting the water means I have a second where I can take no action and the snake slams me stunning me for another second before I can take any other invasive actions.
The bosses very large life bar means I could probably play safe and beat it over 5 minutes except again the platforms hurt me if I am under them when I hit them. That I have to do.
Seeing “thoughtful” game design in 2021 and then seeing all these little decisions to make this water snake an absolute pain made me go “I’m done.” Piss Fox.
1 Like
Hey, the snake is exactly where I am in that game as well. Have not played it in several weeks, though.
1 Like
I finally got both Devotion and Detention on the new Red Candle store and played through both, Devotion first.
The extremely precise period aesthetic in Devotion is remarkable, it’s transporting into someone else’s nostalgia of things totally alien to me but whose authenticity is palpable. It makes me wonder why most games don’t aim for this, or if they do, why so few of them succeed anywhere near as well.
I tried Detention second and I guess nothing was stopping me from playing this years ago, except that nobody told me it was this good! Though it lacks Devotion’s precise aesthetic and so superficially blends in with familiar indie horror games, otherwise it has similar obsessions and ambitions as Devotion, and succeeds even more in some respects.
For all their surface differences, both games share the same premise: the unfortunately “normal” relationship traumas we all experience curdling into evil in the presence of a malign force. In Detention that force is a McCarthyite police state, in Devotion it’s a religious cult.
The core theme of each is also the same: the possibility of empathy. By putting out these heartfelt and very specifically Taiwanese games to an international audience, in one sense the games radiate optimism about the possibility of empathy. But with their blinkered first-person perspectives between characters who are intimate yet totally misunderstand each other, in a literal sense they are very pessimistic about the same. It’s a paradoxical, productive tension pervading both games. The most literal forms this theme takes is that all the artwork is distorted by the POV character’s perspective, and also that both games sometimes shift perspective to a different character, indeed in startlingly poignant ways I have not seen in a videogame before (especially in Detention).
Both games veer into sentimentality on occasion, but it comes across as more calculated and ironic in Devotion because there it can be interpreted as a part of the protagonist’s ignoring his daughter’s humanity in favor of an idealized childhood. Whereas Detention more directly asks the player to appreciate the internal drama of the teenage protagonist, sometimes to the point of feeling “emo”. I imagine Detention won’t resonate with some people for that reason. But personally, I found it believable to my memories of how it felt to be a teenager (in far less difficult circumstances!), and I overall appreciated the youthful experimental energy of Detention more than the sometimes clinical psychoanalysis of the more mature work.
After finishing both games I was in troubled funk for an entire day, going once again in circles around the old question of whether true human communication is ever possible or are we all totally alone in our respective skulls. Red Candle heartfeltedly answers the question both ways at once and so ultimately leaves it to the player to mull over.
23 Likes
I think I’m getting close to beating Tangledeep, despite its flaws.
Bravely Default II is an admirable exercise in studied blandness. I’m a little over 20 hours in, so I can’t abandon the game despite not exactly loving it. However, its systems are so rigid and understandable that I can’t say it’s taxing to play. I’m surprised that people think it’s hard (might just be reviewers forced to speedrun the game in time to publish) because there’s so many quality of life additions that it feels generous to me. From what I’ve seen, a lot of people “default” way too much in this game. The only time you should treat the battles system with any careful consideration should be the bosses, the rest of the time you should go full offense to end random battles as soon as possible.
1 Like
I finished Streets of Rage 4 with a friend and it was a fantastic ride. In the end Axel is the best character to control. The music is great and exhilarating.
1 Like
the camera changes aren’t the issue with the game, it’s everything else! and as much as I hate it, it’s still at worst a 3/5
2 Likes
got a fuckin’ shopping cart right here
even the tunes???
6 Likes
yoko taro will never be forgiven for straying from the light of the dod1 ost
10 Likes
Honestly, the only challenge in the game is some of the bosses, and then it is at worst a test for figuring out what classes and abilities you need to ignore their shit, and maybe a slight bit of grinding it out. The grinding is made so pleasantly easy that this isn’t even a speedbump.
I’m still enjoying it, but I am enjoying how little ambition it had as well.
1 Like
I played through Stubbs the Zombie in one sitting when it came out the other day(about 6 hours, but you could finish it in 1/3 that time). I was actually quite happy to come back to it again after 16 years since I’d last played it. I feel like price of $20 is too much for how bare bones of an update it is. I recently played the great remaster of Destroy All Humans and it makes me see the wasted potential. The soundtrack for the game is great too, it’s a very janky game but it has a lot of charm even if sometimes its more from me laughing at it than with it
2 Likes