been playing Obduction again and thinking about this in Maray, where there are some bridges that need a value keyed in to extend them where each segment corresponds to a digit (base 10) but the consoles use an alien base 4 system. I solve every bridge by putting in the only number you get a guide for & randomly perturbing it to hopefully make it bigger
patch out the hint entirely and hope people correctly guess which entry to convert. This same puzzle used to lock you in the room so you couldn’t get back to the base10 <> base4 converting machine and you couldn’t progress if you hadn’t learned the alien number system, but with no gate ensuring players actually knew it before locking them in there
That reminds me of how salty I was when I inferred a sensible base-16 scheme for Fez’s 16 alien number symbols and later figured out it was actually a non-injective base-10 scheme
I haven’t really wanted to play video games for the last week or so and I kinda blame Anodyne 2. Just kidding! Mostly. I actually think it’s neat and admirable so far and I’ll finish it but I went in after hearing interesting things about it here and maybe expected too much (For Answer, which I interrupted to play Anodyne 2, had similar buzz around it but totally delivered and I feel fine coming back to it like a perfectly prepared steak that never goes cold or rancid). The writing is too cloying for me and I’m not connecting with the story emotionally or intellectually (yet). The (NPC) character designs and music are lovely though! Still…the music also adds to the slight sense of overbearing…or like someone is watching me play it over my shoulder. Maybe that’s because I’m using headphones which I rarely do and with the last few games I’ve played (Crackdown, Crimson Skies) I’d listen to other music or podcasts but now that I’m giving this game my undivided attention it’s strangely alienating. And that’s maybe my fault entirely! I feel its intentionality strongly but it seems to be operating at a frequency that doesn’t quite register with me and I sometimes find it exhausting and then I get distracted thinking about things like: how deliberate is that misaligned texture seam there in the middle of Center City Cenote? Is that an homage to older games? A stylistic choice or just a mistake? The character doesn’t feel bad to control in 3D but also not especially good. I’d hesitate to call this a 3D platformer (or else I’d have to say it’s a mediocre one) as it doesn’t really have a strong sense of physical action feel but maybe it’s just not that kind of game and I should ignore the limp feel of shooting projectiles and the jarring little pop of the leg animation after jumping into the air and how level geometry/collision doesn’t offer much if any encouragement to use your verbs to poke at the environment and how the car is a cool idea that, like the humanoid controls, doesn’t feel like anything beyond being functional. It may not be that kind of game!
So far, what kind of game has it been? Wandering through empty-feeling hubs to find a character you can jump inside of to play through 2D action-puzzles. I appreciate how smoothly these sections go down with just enough friction to keep me engaged but also the gameplay therein doesn’t feel like The Point because there’s nothing challenging or terribly engaging in and of itself. The Point seems to be the meta conceptual conceit of going from 3D to 2D and the narrative context of having to (follow orders from your “parents” and) clean these “dirty” character interiors and neither is keeping me hooked all that strongly. Now I only just got to Blue Vale so I’m fully prepared to eat my words and find that the game develops into something more! So far though, Anodyne 2 reminds me that, narratively, games have a pretty limited effect on me and sometimes, like in this case, I become aware of that general inefficacy and lean harder into films and books and always find those works of fiction more rewarding, which I don’t mean in a condescending “Oh, just read a book if you want a good story” way… It’s too big a subject to get into now but this post has been stuck in my mind for a while:
I’ve been genuinely moved/felt a sense of awe and wonder in situations like these, alone in an environment (maybe with some effective music), in a virtual space that allows for an emotion to bubble up not through authorial intent so much as architectural accommodation…idk. I play games for different reasons to fit/embrace/soothe different moods and maybe some games don’t really fit into my particular equations of desire.
Anyway. I played some big dumb fun “sports” games with people over Parsec last night (WWF: No Mercy, NFL Blitz 2000, Mario Golf and Super Mario Strikers) and had a blast! I can’t wait to do this again in-person on one TV. Super Mario Strikers fucking rules! And Mario Golf is one of my favourite games, a real chill ASMRcade hangout when you know what you’re doing but less so for newcomers (they did well though).
tldr, I guess I’m just in the mood for snack games right now but I’m not giving up on Anodyne 2, it still feels promising.
As someone that is closing out my nights with 15 minutes of Minish Cap, Anodyne 2 making half a game about the gust jar was a good call.
For my friends I just finished two games that ended with dead girls in cars. Both were as hacky as could be. Anyone that worships Torreau needs to go into the woods and live deliberately.
Bugsnax update: In a surprising and offputting tonal shift, every character in Bugsnax seems to have their own serious mental health issue that they want you to help them with.
Yeah really! If you thought Ape Escape was fun but it needed realistic videologs about dealing with crippling depression, then play Bugsnax!
Game is fun, but lmao what are they doing. I just caught a cute little walking raspberry in my silly barrel trap, and now I’m giving it to a really intense guy with an attachment disorder.
Killed the true final boss of Ghosts and Goblins Resurrection. The platform you fight on is slippery and the boss can tilt it, which is fun when it summons lightning bolts. It has this big black hole burp attack that sucks though.
I get a kick out of the fact that you’re expected to kill yourself many times to enter the required hell holes. Those holes are the best part and I wish they were quicker to access, like as their own game mode. Same with the bosses, no boss rush mode afaik.
I was still playing this on the second easiest mode, but I’d like to return to Ghouls and Ghosts soon. I love the stiffness in GnG, it’s sort of similar to Metal Slug imo. I also prefer the approach to weapons in both games over something like Megaman, pickups can become obstacles but are unlimited or plentiful while you have them. You can have up to 3 weapon slots in Resurrection, but sometimes it’s a hoot to accidentally pick up some horseshit weapon n have to deal with that
laying in bed getting 120 stars on the artificial scarcity edition of mario 64 and immediately contemplating my inevitable death during the ending. memento mario.
While looking for info on Gnosia I found out that there was another werewolf VN on a time loop on the Switch (made before Among Us became successful). What are the odds?
It’s called Raging Loop and it’s closer to regular horror-ish VNs like 999 and Danganronpa, and not extremely weird like Gnosia. Instead of 150 15-minutes time loops there are 3 10-hours time loops
As expected for the genre it’s full of ridiculous plot twists and it gets 1) Pretty Chilling 2) Pretty Deep with game theory 3) Pretty Long 4) Pretty Problematic. The art direction is intensely ugly which fits the dilapidated decaying forgotten maybe cursed rural village setting pretty well.
It somehow has a few interesting things to say about systemic oppression and superstition! It’s good if you want another one of these
I’ve also been playing Touhou Luna Nights, it’s nice, like what if an Inti Create game was good? I just wish it wasn’t attached to Touhou because I don’t care about these characters and the music sucks (or at least its frantic energy doesn’t work when transplanted inside of a pretty chill Metroidvania)
The main character is very frail and each of her attacks consumes MP (which recovers very slowly), on the other hand she has immensely powerful time controlling abilities and can recover HP/MP by getting close to enemies like she’s a Crazy Taxi car. It’s weird and you can’t ignore the weird mechanics and play it like a regular game
It’s also the kind of game where the main basic attack is throwing three knives at once, there are somehow too many animation frames, enemies drop a bunch of colorful bouncing jewels, there are COOL water and menu effects straight from 2002
After it sitting on my harddrive for a year? Two years? i finally played the J-demo for Shin Sakura Wars.
You can absolutely tell this is Sonic Engine with all the problems Sonic Engine entails. Mostly that it tries to be an arena fighter and the camera is horrible for self control.
Having been in stuck inside for a year the Meiji Era Old and New East and West aesthetics are very appealing. I really liked walking around the theater and remembering I used to go places.
The anime facial tech actually impressed me and I could feel emotions stirring in me as the new Sakura looked directly at me the player blushing.
But the action part looks jank, the dating system (and being a pervert) feels like emotional manipulation, the new girls I found all exhausting, and I have to square the circle that this is ultimately a game about working to maintain the glorious new Japan Co-proporous Sphere. But also there are mech and alien monsters and lots of allusions to Takarazuka.
Maybe I’ll get bored enough to pirate the PSP versions of 1 and 2 and play those.
But after all that Tokimeki Memorial time really thinking about how fluid the movement and Sakura looking me Right In The Eyes. If you play the English dub or don’t speak moderately fluent Japanese ymmv.
apropos of nothing (someone bp’ed one of my posts in the God of War thread) I was just realizing how much I absolutely hated the first ~sixth of both that and Sekiro before coming to like them both – in God of War’s case it’s because I was playing on hard and hard mode feels like shit until they give you more combat options, but that’s not unlike Sekiro’s default difficulty, and it’s very strange to me that inverse difficulty curves not only appear to be making a comeback, but doing so in the service of what’s often excessively dry and harsh tutorializing, when the games would be far less frustrating if they let you experiment a little more from the get-go
I’m old and impatient and have nothing to prove but even so, it’s weird.
