How do you get me to install an endless runner on my phone? Make it hockey-themed. Dangle Dash isn’t really anything special but I do appreciate the hockey theme because it seems like a sport that doesn’t get explored much outside of traditional sports titles.
1 Like
I have been playing Minish Cap before sleep and have to stop and find another game because I have been stuck in “the easy” Zelda for about 5 sessions trying to figure out how to access the 3rd area and this game loves to unlock doors to present you with a different door what if another door.
4 Likes
Personally I found a lot of enjoyment in collecting trinkets for the little guy’s house, but that is my favorite activity in games, so
I like the idea of low impact games that you can play while streaming a tv series in a second monitor, as opposed to what seems to be the more typical distracted (mobile) entertainment which are flashing slot machines.
Also I walked through an infinite corridor for an hour and found a rug, and I like saying that.
3 Likes
I considered this! But I felt like multitasking when playing the Longing was too much of a betrayal. This game’s speed is anemic so you can stare into the void, not so you can watch TV at the same time!
But since the game is not good at enticing void-staring, you had a much better time with it than I did, and the author is dead anyway, I guess you had the right approach
3 Likes
I thought it would be interesting to bold the original Star Control 1 ships in this tierlist.
With the very significant exception of Thraddash, the list illustrates how the devs generally got better at balancing the battle mode in Star Control 2, since most of the new ships fall in the A and B tiers. They’re all strong enough to give you an appetite for picking them, but only the Thraddash is so strong as to be practically invincible in skilled hands.
The extreme weakness of so many Star Control 1 ships unfortunately leaves a grand total of 6 playable ships in that precursor. It would be kind of cool if we had an SC1-style strategy layer above the SC2 ships.
1 Like
Still trucking along with RE7. I’m enjoying the game more now that I have the third dog head and more firepower and have finished that stupid basement fight.
2 Likes
trying to think of what i’ve played over the last month or so:
i played some super mario galaxy on the switch and i depise this game in a very specific way that i haven’t felt since i played smb3. the game is obsessed with the concept of providing the player novelty (theme park design ethos) at the expense of offering the player any tangible sense of progression and mastery. maybe that comes later, i only have 50-something stars-or-whatever. all of my annoyances with the game are exacerbated by my constant struggles with the camera and how awful it feels jumping between planetoids. wondering if there’s a link between my thoughts on that and how much i dislike being high/drunk, the horror of abdicating control of the body.
i am varying levels of annoyed to angered by just about everything this game has to offer, i’d say i’m sticking with it out of stubbornness but i actually haven’t touched it in a week or two. my favorite thing about playing it was knocking out a galaxy during my lunch break and then coming back to the office to yell at my boss about how bad the game is.
i keep second-guessing myself because there’s so much here that i could see in a certain light as charming, i just feel so bitterly cynical about how inoffensive and toothless it all feels. desperate to maintain my engagement rather than risk pushing me away a bit.
the modifier comets are neat. i like those.
/
i have always shit-talked the dragon quest games because each one i’ve played (1, 2, 4, 8, 9) i’ve quickly fallen off of out of boredom except i think one time when i was really young i made it through dq1 fast-forwarding through all the grinding. it was so long ago, though, that i don’t remember a bit of it. anyway despite all the mud i sling, there have been so many heartfelt posts about the series that i wanted to give it another try.
i picked up dragon quest 1, which yeah is potentially the most boring but also the most bite-sized and that’s the only bite of dragon quest i’m willing to make space for right now. i resolved to play it salaryman-style, popping in for 20-30 minutes after dinner every day or two to make a bit of progress. i enjoyed poking around the map bit by bit and feeling the tension of “how far should i go into this dungeon/new map area?”. still, the game was so boring that i…honestly forgot i had been playing it until i sat down just now and thought about what games i had been playing. i haven’t touched it in weeks, but i’m willing to keep taking a few bites. i’m level 10, not feeling like i’m super far in yet. i’ll keep my switch in sight and see what happens.
/
i cleared out most of the 2 star village quests in monster hunter generations ultimate and i really would like this game so much more if i never had to collect anything. i know the loot treadmill is like 50% of the game’s design but loot treadmills do less than nothing for me. i get in the mood to play this game once every two months and knock out a few more quests each time. i don’t know what my ideal monster hunter would look like, probably something a lot more like shadow of the colossus but i think everyone else would hate it.
/
other than how disgustingly the characters are handled in persona 4 (was there shitty stuff in 3 too? can’t remember) my biggest gripe with the ps2sona games was how mind-numbing the randomized dungeons were. i heard persona 5 fixed that, so i’m trying it and…enjoying it a lot!
there are a lot of pleasant quality of life improvements and the one dungeon i’ve played so far was just engaging enough without being a hassle. it has the hangoutitude in terms of “cozy catchy music i can leave running in the background” and “visual design that actually has intent behind it, even if it’s too obnoxious” that i’m looking for right now.
unfortunately, while i was honestly impressed with the story throughout the first dungeon, in the lead-up to the second i’m already seeing cracks start to form that make me feel like the gang (writers) are up to their old tricks (something reprehensible that’s going to make me want to smack them across the face). i really enjoyed my brief stint with it to the point where i’m almost worried to progress and potentially ruin the good thing the game has had going.
/
because my tolerance for bullshit was REALLY high one day, i was moved enough by my memories of playing nier last year that i bought drakengard 3. at the least it’ll make me lap up whatever plot garbage persona 5 spits out and beg for more, right? i’m 3 chapters in and everything is just awful. the combat feels awful, the environments are awful, the characters are all truly fucking disgusting, and most of the music is forgettable which is an unforgivable sin for one of these games!
and yet despite the fact that pretty much everything about this game is unpleasant, i keep coming back for more. it’s curiosity both genuine and morbid; is the game just a trainwreck or is it player-hostile design taken so far that i, the player, just want to put the game down? i’m thinking it might be a little of both. every session i assume that’s the last time i’ll ever touch it, but inevitably a few days later my curiosity leads me to play through another level or two.
/
i played fatum betula for about twenty minutes and i would have liked it so much better if it was less of talking to obtuse npcs to puzzle things out and more of just walking around. not the best comparison but i thought the game would be more lsd dream emulator and less pc adventure game. it made me install unity, so that’s something.
/
i played an hour of silent hill 3 and then passed out one night. thoughts about how it compares to 2 which i played earlier this year: way more enemies right out of the gate, way more everything right out the gate (can’t believe i’m already in a dungeon and the game just started), i cannot stand the new mechanic where heather now looks at doors as well as items so i can never tell if i’m missing something in a room. it exhausted me and gave me nightmares even after just a brief dip in its world which is all i could hope for from playing a silent hill game.
/
i finally tracked down a copy of bokura no kazoku after a long period of curiosity from seeing all its beautiful background illustrations in the artbook it shares with boku no natsuyasumi 3. i don’t think i’ll get a ton out of this game at my level of japanese but i’ll give it a shot sometime anyway. i checked out the beginning of the game and was absolutely shocked by the music choice the opening is set to because it’s incredibly out of place in the series:
if you’re not interested i won’t make you click, it’s heaven by dj sammy. i was genuinely so startled when it faded in during the opening that i couldn’t figure out where the music was coming from because in my brain there was no way at all it was coming from my ps2; surely bokura no kazoku is set to wistful piano-and-woodwind music like all the boku no natsuyasumi games? and largely it is, i think, just…wow, what a choice.
/
i sold my gba sp and, like i said in the goings-on thread, traded my xbox one + games for a (kinda busted) 14" pvm and a (kinda busted) japanese ps2 which is one of the most true-to-my-own-heart actions i’ve ever taken. i had been borrowing them from a friend for a long while, but now i don’t have to keep stressing about what to do when i give them back which is very comforting.
there’s so much about my life that’s fucking miserable but at least i have found a space where i can talk about games with people and not just get laughed out of the room because i’d rather talk about bokura no kazoku than battlefield 6.
i have also been playing a good amount of final fantasy xi with my partner but i’m saving that for a post quite a ways down the road. i will say that it has been one of the best video game experiences of my entire life, so there’s that! looking forward to sharing about it when the time comes.
34 Likes
Max level in Dragon Quest 1 is just 30 and you can beat the game easily by the time you reach 20 so you could be potentially halfway through already.
1 Like
that’s actually really relieving to hear, thank you! i haven’t been able to come across anything in particular that i felt i could use as a gauge of my progress so it’s all felt like floundering about with nothing to go by besides my level.
1 Like
this post is a treat, I love reading you talk about games
4 Likes
now all i want in my life is to play this game
1 Like
Yeah You wanna quit now.
Huh. I mostly remember the Boss Music Themes and the Chihiro Onitsuka main theme. Think those are pretty great though. It is a pretty bad game but it eventually if you torture yourself goes to some interesting places. You gotta be willing to torture yourself though. And it will be okay if you give up on the final boss (I am almost certain this is the intention.)
4 Likes
@Rudie thank you for giving me something more than my own suspicion to quit playing p5; you did the same for me with siren a bit ago. there are for sure some good tracks in drakengard3, i leave it on the menus from time to time when i’m working from home, i just never remember any of the songs to the point where i hum them to myself which wasn’t the case with nier. i am down to suffer so i’m interested in seeing more of what d3 has going on.
@Sakurina thank you! that made me smile real big.
3 Likes
Check my thread as I went through the same emotional arc as you!
I eventually read a plot summary ans went yep. It’s a hangout game and I am back in high school and I actually hate my friends.
2 Likes
I remember hating Drakengard 3 when I played it but was driven by the same morbid curiosity. Somehow it carried me all the way to final final final boss and I still don’t know why I played it other than residual Drakengard/Nier hunger. I guess I know why the world came to be despite elements of the multiple endings all somehow being canon. There is one very catchy track but I had to give up a part of my soul to play the section it’s in.
Fuck ogres and trolls.
1 Like
I think it’s time for me to rebuy a DDR mat.
2 Likes
the former. it’s a less than half-finished undesigned insubstantial incoherent failure cynically retrofitted with a patina of self-aware “player hostility.” have you played the first drakengard? that one is really good, imo. it’s intentional and stoically unselfconscious about the weird things it does, and registers to me as heartfelt in its own way. almost everything valuable in yoko taro’s later games is rehashed verbatim from that one, usually in diluted form.
yes, but it has my favorite menu theme, its sole saving grace (besides the pegging bit, at least the first time around)
5 Likes
I was inspired by @MintyJuffowup’s posting about Truck Kyousoukyoku to retrieve my long lost Playstation 2 from a shipping container out in the country, and along with playing that game, fulfill my lifelong fantasy of “playing Time Crisis games at home”. I feel like it is important to maintain a stash of mundane and attainable goals.
Ordered some GunCons from some guy on OfferUp. While awaiting for them to arrive: got a cheap component+composite video cable for RGBs output, a cheap SATA hard drive adapter. Got FreeHDBoot setup on an old drive. Things worked surprisingly smoothly, other than some issues with my monitor losing/struggling with sync during certain scenes of various games - some/all of that could prob. be solved by using a properly constructed RGB cable, and conveniently the issues with Time Crisis 2 went away once I patched in the GunCon’s passthrough cables.
I also did not realize you still can’t boot Playstation 1 games from anything but the disc drive (other than some questionable PS1 for PS2 emulator) on a soft-modded machine. That’s on me, that’s “my ‘B’”. My PS2 has a 2002/3-era modchip in it that can boot burned discs via various controller-button launch-shortcuts, and was able to get a few of my old burned PS1 discs to load. So, the PS2’s laser still works, but I haven’t been able to burn a new working PS1 disc with my current solution of ‘using some old version of a PowerPC Mac app, that some guy on a forum said works, on an eMac’. Oh well, there’s a PS2 port of Time Crisis + Point Blank 1-3.
Anyways it’s getting late so I thank you for reading this game gadget blog and I wish you a pleasant spring week.
18 Likes
I am downloading Quake stuff for this week’s Beautiful Game. Here are some skins I found. No, none of them are the Karnov skin I made 20 years ago.
I have not found any Barney skins yet but there are a few Pooh-related skins. It’s a great humiliation to get “fragged” by someone posing as a children’s cartoon character. Especially if they’re a “LPB”* and you’re stuck using dialup cuz your mom won’t spring for DSL**.
If you play Quake with us this weekend you should make your own skin. It is easy. It can be done in MS Paint. These all look fabulous in game. This is the ultimate form of personal expression.
This site no longer exists but I want to believe it made extensive use of the “blink” tag and had a really offensive soundboard loaded with clips of the Jerky Boys, Jeff Dunham, bababooey bababooey, and every single time Schwarzenegger used a slur.
Do people still rage about ‘camping’. Do you think this skin was made by a camper, that it is an ironic skin, that he thinks anyone who hates campers must be a nerd? Should we ban camping in the Beautiful Game competition? Please sound off…in the replies.
I never understood how anyone could like Spawn without a cape, or why an artist would want to draw a body rather than a cape. It’s so much more fun to draw a cape than a torso, or feet. But I get why they wouldn’t use a cape in a movie: cuz superhero movies suck.
There aren’t as many superhero skins as I expected. Lots of cops and army guys though. I suppose superheroes often another kind of cop but at least they’re usually colorful.
This is scream.pcx. It is not from the Scary Movie. If it was it would probably have white stains all over it. I have never seen Scary Movie but I know it has ejaculate in it. One of my nephews told me about it. He was too young to be talking about ejaculate. You should not show children R rated comedies, but if you do please make sure they’re mature enough not to describe an ejaculate scene during Thanksgiving dinner. Thank you.
This one was very disappointing, let me tell you. Wasn’t even mug shot Marv Albert. Was just some goofy looking guy, tongue all hanging out, like he’d be the Bill the Cat of a Quake themed webcomic, one that would still inexplicably be running today and have a group of half dozen devoted fans who still have fark as their homepage.
These aren’t as good as Asia Carrera’s Unreal Tournament skins but they are still pretty erotic. It would not be shameful to have cybersex using these skins. I think you can only do straight sex in Quake though; its engine was very powerful for its time but I’m not sure it can handle gay cyber.
This is Posh Spice yes. This is the most charming skin of all. This is the only Spice Girl I’ve found.
This one too. If you got calves like that gimme yr digits.
This is a screencap of a comic I read last night. It was kinda fucked up. I’m obligated to include at least one non-sequitur image in every post.
This is the most powerful skin of all but also probably the most racist that isn’t a cop.
This is “reservoi.pcx”. I do believe that is Harvey Keitel as “Mr White” but it is slightly warped, and low resolution, so there’s a small chance it’s Tarantino. Getting fragged by Mr Pink would be the greatest humiliation. I’d rather die at the hands of Doug from Doug. Going through these skins has made me think that the 90s may have been a low point when it comes to toxic masculine icons, as they are all so fucking lame on almost every level.
Here’s a photo of that time I auditioned to be in one of the Crow sequels.
I did not get the part. They said my body type was “far too powerful, especially in the haunch region.”
Anyway come play Quake with us this week.
Seeya.
*“Low ping bastard”, typically someone with a cable modem or access to a T1 line which allowed them to mainline 1337 juarez and cheat at Quake.
**“Digital subscriber line” – get your head out of the gutter.
32 Likes
I’ve been playing R-Type Delta on my Retroid Pocket 2 using save states lightly and just having a good time. What a vibe, R-Type.
6 Likes