Games You Played Today: 358 Threads Over 2

I guess Ubisoft got a little better at representing SF since Driver San Francisco

? I guess this looks a little like SoMa?

????????

4 Likes

The Last Remnant, semi-forgetten/passed over SQUEnix game from the Xbox 360 when Japan was trying to appeal to America. Made by some SaGa peeps, and composed by the FF13 person. They had high hopes for this game lol. From what I hear, the remaster tweaked a lot of things to make it more playable. Goes on sale for pretty cheap. For the love of god, set the QTEs to automatic

EDIT - this video convinced me to try it out

3 Likes

the trick with Driver SF is that it is all the hallucination of the main character anyhow, so what does it need to be real?

Before anyone accuses me of spoilers, this is literally the framing devise set up in the opening of the game.

4 Likes

that first screenshot looks like the folsom/howard part of soma on the right side of the street and then like, potrero on the other side? weird

2 Likes

Still a bit excited to see what happens with SF post-pandemic.

Also still playing mainly art of rally, Noita, and PUBG. If I ever wind up playing something new, I’ll post about it.

(I’m really bad at Noita, I can consistently get to the Base and then have never gotten past it.)

2 Likes

I’ve been playing Control, just got the last major ability and visited P6’s cell. Now I can backtrack and go to all the spots I couldn’t get to before woo

I put all my points in throw damage and can one shot almost any normal enemy, but shielded flying guys just got introduced and my strategy is not effective lol

The explody guys are either a joke or terrifying. If one sneaks by the explosion usually knocks me down enough that the “low health” red screen effect appears and makes it impossible to see anything, really hate that. I’d be much less likely to die if the game wasn’t so aggressively warning me I was about to die!

Death sucks. You lose 10% of your upgrade points every time you die but you are forced to hang on to so many of them because all the upgrades cost so much and it creates a shitty spiral where you keep dying because your gear sucks but you can’t afford to upgrade because you lost all your points from dying with no way to get them back. The solution is to git gud I guess but there’s nowhere to experiment with all your powers so you just have to grind. I hate grinding!

Game is pretty and the AM radio conspiracy vibe is fun I just suck at video games

9 Likes

For my annual Zelda 1 replay, I decided to tackle the second quest for the first time in like 17 years, and I’m on track to actually finish it for the first time ever since I was like 10 or so. I think I’m about 13 deaths, which is worse than my usual 0 on the 1st quest. I’m currently deep into level 8.

As a kid I remembered the red and blue skull bubble things as being Too Much Trouble so I never really revisited it. However, so far unless you’re unlucky with monster placement and doing level 7 out of order without the ladder, they don’t really do anything too mean with them. In the extremely rare instances that they’re not paired up, you’re never more than three rooms away from a blue guy to restore your sword if you get hit by a red one.

I’m trying to not use maps (ie the first issue of Nintendo Power like 10 year old me) as much as possible. So far I caved on checking how many items are in level 4, and the location of level 6. I don’t feel bad about the latter since I swore I already tried it. The weird ass locations of levels 7, 8, and 9 are just sort of unforgettable I guess, luckily. To be fair the game does give you a really obtuse clue about 8, but that spot still feels a bit too meanly hidden if you’re totally playing it in a vacuum. I found all the hearts myself this time but had some blind luck with using the whistle to try to warp on a screen I didn’t remember had a whistle based trigger. I remembered a bunch of the other spots for those but totally lucked out here.

8 is pretty easy monster-wise but turns up the difficulty in navigating the level with a bunch of hidden stairs in weird non-dead end spots and some one-way shutter rooms that are essentially traps. I might have to breakdown and draw my own maps for this and death mountain

14 Likes

it was very kind of nintendo to bundle zelda 1’s lost levels with the game itself

8 Likes

image

Found a way to make a hovering chart that’s just a table in Google Sheets so I’m putting it to good use with this year’s game diary.

My percent finished this year is at an all time high, likely because I’m playing games I’m already familiar with, and I counted “Townscaper” as finished because I “finished” a town in it. It’s my list so I can do dumb things like that.

Also I’m noting games that don’t have specific end points, so those don’t get counted in the percentages of total finished.

5 Likes

hey me too. being locked up has made me nostalgic/homesick for a place I lived for the least amount of time and I enjoy driving down not-19th Ave in not-Outer Sunset. going up to Coit Tower gives me weird anti-deja vu, the houses to the north are wrong? weirdly stands out when the rest of the dream landscape is convincing

also viewing everyone’s salary is both anxiety-inducing and laughable

ugh I went to AT&T park (near the Ubisoft office) and spent far too long looking for Primo Patio which got priced out like 3 years ago

3 Likes

Throw twice in a row. They only dodge the first one.

Honestly throw is so fundamental to Control that the first part before you have it just feels like the game is lying to you. “Oh yeah, we’re totally a gun game, promise!” it whispers in your ear.

4 Likes

This stuff was entirely superfluous to everything that makes this game good and the more I reflect on it the more I can’t even conceive of what made them do this. How much it damages the game depends on how much it gets in your way but just an all-round unforced error.

FYI Quantum Break is Control if it was less superficially weird but more structurally weird with zero of the GAAS loot pinata stuff, I can’t not recommend it in any Control discussion

7 Likes

The absolute funniest thing about Quantum Break is how the included television show stars some random programmer guy instead of the main character or anybody charming or important, so the game goes from time shenanigan shooter to “cancelled mid-season ABC show”

5 Likes

Yeah, that’s enough to knock off the shield and then I miss with my gun (I’m playing with a controller like a smart person) and the shield regens before I have enough juice to throw again and repeat

My improved strategy is to wound one (they’re always in pairs now), mind control it, and then take potshots at the still hostile one while it’s distracted

3 Likes

They’re a crutch when you suck at videogames cuba, and I need it

Plus I love picking up Unrealized Potentials I found in a box underneath this poster

4 Likes

20 posts were merged into an existing topic: uma no bov-san’s pretty derby

Settled into a routine the last few nights of beating a character’s story mode in WarTech and then goofing around in Crackdown which is still free on the still up and running XBox Live for 360 (sweet). This is such a snow day sleepover Happy Meal at midnight extended rental video game. Like if GTA and SM64 had a baby and left it on a random shelf at Blockbuster Video.

So you get missions to carry out across this sandboxopolis with all the freeform pursuit of hoppiness as Mario (the jumping doesn’t feel as good though nor does the ledge grabbing, or the running, or the swimming, etc. etc.) but it’s all delivered in gross Rockstarisms (crass caricatures of filthy Russian mobsters, an Eastern European women who gasp has muscles and does steroids or something, a shrunken Asian crime lord rendered a hair’s breadth away from Roswell alien) and NPCs shouting “Fuck” and “Shit” every 6 seconds) and those Rockstarisms have the usual effect on me: I tune out and just don’t fucking care about some corny crime caper. Especially since the gunplay is a lightweight lukewarm lock-on fest. But the jumping. That does kinda make it alright. And tossing a grenade into a crowded street to watching the flaming bodies fly… Ok, I am susceptible to some Rockstarisms! Ultimately, like every GTA (except for Vice City) I probably won’t beat this one but I will collect as many agility trinkets as possible to max out my dude so I can leap from skyscraper to skyscraper while raining down grenades upon my fellow bastards in blue.

9 Likes

from what i remember, pretty much every mission in crackdown is “go here and kill everyone present”, which becomes trivial once you get the long range sniper rocket launcher. so i guess maybe they really did just have combat because it’s a aaa game and they have to have combat in there somewhere amongst all the jumping?

if you really don’t intend to finish it, here’s a spoiler your noticing that everyone you kill is a minority or an immigrant is not coincidental: in the ending, the voice over that’s been giving you commands thanks you for your work in the field of ethnic cleansing, as it turns out you were the bad guy all along!

9 Likes

Don’t stop upgrading all your skills. Each upgrade changes your physical appearance in addition to making the mechanic more fun. The driving skill will alter the appearance of agency vehicles when upgraded and at some point the Agency dune buggy/SUV vehicle will get the ability to grip walls so you can drive up the sides of buildings. Bounding across rooftops while headshotting dudes effortlessly will be a thing eventually but by then you’ll also be able to pick up and throw vehicles and punching and kicking just about anything will be enough to send it flying. At its higher levels strength gives you a satisfying ground pound ability.

Kills for skills, agent! Kills for skills!

I was playing Crackdown 2 recently and decided it was a good game, at least as good as the first, but because it was balanced towards co-op solo play is a slog until you’re powerful enough to take on the hordes (and one thing that makes it just as good is there are literally hundreds of enemies on screen at certain times of day, talk about easy kills for easier skills yes this pushes all my dopamine buttons).

I think Crackdown 3 is still on game pass and in that one the multiplayer has cool destructible environments that unfortunately didn’t make it into single player. Like, you can collapse whole buildings. Also it’s pretty and has a much better vapor wave-y aesthetic but other than that is basically the same game as the first two.

Oh and you can be Terry Crews.

3 Likes

I think the thing I like most about Crackdown, and hate about Crackdown 2 and 3, is it is short. Like, 3 hours short. I got that game and beat it in an afternoon and felt fucking ~great~. More sandbox games should be short.

7 Likes