Yeah same here, I plan to get a PS5 purely because Sony picks better exclusives, especially now that I’ve been told that the haptics cause hand pain over time, so it’s another gimmick like the 3DS 3D that I turned off a week in because it was giving me headaches
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nooo just like the 3DS, the haptics are beautiful, obnoxious, and should be treasured before they disappear from the earth
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playing outrun in 3d is the only time ive ever actually used the 3d on the 3ds
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Space Harrier was amazing as well.
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Fantasy Zone (2) 3DS has been talked about here but I like how the 3D reminds me of those liquid motion timers/toys using blobs of food coloring
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This makes me think that an underrated reason why arcades used to get so many creative input devices is because the play sessions were typically short
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I just played through the entirety of Gravity Ghost in one sitting. Cute game! Each level is a little challenge of navigation using the gravitational pulls of the planetoids on the screen. Although to be fair you can kinda brute-force and luck your way through a lot of them. As you go you unlock minor powerups that increase your movement abilities a bit, and the game introduces new kinds of planetoids that have different properties. Although I will say I think this was a game that got stretched thematically beyond what the mechanics supported, a lot of the later power-ups completely make previous ones obsolete and one in particular allows you to disregard one of the game’s mechanics more or less completely.
The writing and voice acting are a bit stilted but have some charm (one character that appears very briefly in particular really made me smile for some reason even though their characterization is a pretty worn-out trope).
Said character. Video time-stamped to avoid YouTube Let’s Player Commentary and to show you more or less the most charming scene in the whole game.
Pretty nice soundtrack, too.
So yeah, that wasn’t a bad way to spend a few hours.
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okay I made it to the part in yakuza 3 where the old yakuza patriarch’s mute adopted daughter cries out “dad!” for the first time which lets him suddenly summon the strength to stop a charging bull in its tracks by its horns and hurl it across a bull fighting arena, now this is pod racing
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the best use of 3d on the 3ds i saw was actually the port of maze hunter 3d from the master system, which was an extra in one of the physical sega 3d classics collections. it just worked so well, it really seemed like you were looking into a little 3d maze with a guy running round that was inside the screen
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This seems to further prove my now useless theory that 3D only really works with a windowing device.
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i’m like sixty something hours into final fantasy xv and i’m really really enjoying it. it’s so endearing and so so cute, i love the dumb pictures that prompto takes and the silly monster truck car i’m making my boyfriends drive and the gorgeously detailed food and the stupidly expensive animations and artistic details and the downright kusoge that some of the side content is. i’ve been really sick for like a week now and i’ve spent a lot of time playing xv just doing every side quest and bit of side content; it’s just so nice to aimlessly drive around from quest marker to quest marker, i really appreciate how much like low stakes adventuring the game is letting me do before noctis goes and meets his destiny or whatever. the highlight of the game so far for me is iris, it’s so perfect that they put a little sister character in the boys road trip final fantasy game. i can really relate to being the little sister with a crush on your cool older sibling’s hot friend, i was already sold on the game by the time i met her but her presence has done a lot to draw me in i think
i’ve also been playing cozy grove after buying it on a whim and it’s really nice. at first blush it’s just an animal crossing clone, and it is, but it has a lot going for it that makes it appreciably different in ways that really appeal to me i think. it’s a little more downbeat and does a lot to dispel the like, feeling of social obligation that animal crossing elicits in me because i’m an overly sensitive and sentimental basket case; it’s a little more somber and rainy and the cheerful sort of humor that animal crossing uses is displaced by a dryer and milder and misery tinged sort of humor that’s sort of like if daniel johnston or maybe kimya dawson did a cover of that hello muddah hello faddah song or something. it kind of has a “wholesome indie game” bent to it? but it’s not cloying or cringy which i appreciate. the big difference between it and animal crossing is that it’s a lot more directed and narrative driven; the neighbors, who are all ghosts and also bears, are all static and each have some kind of back story that’s given to you in very sparse details over a long period of time. each has some kind of neurosis and a history and a reason why they’re haunting the island you’re marooned on, and the point is to help them find peace which so far means doing little tasks for them every day. a lot of times you’re given items that a bear doesn’t need yet, or a bear needs an item you can’t acquire until days later, and the game just tells you to wait and be patient. the whole game is pretty heavily time gated but not in a way that feels mean spirited or oppressive; a lot like in animal crossing each day you have about an hour’s worth of tasks to do, and after that you can either aimlessly wander fishing and collecting shells and etcetera or just wait until tomorrow. unlike in animal crossing though, there’s like more of a narrative element to the game, and since you can’t progress with the bears’ stories until tomorrow the time gating is a lot more apparent and the game just reminds you to be patient and go do something else in the meantime. it all kind of reminds me of glitch? the browser mmo from like ten years ago that keita takahashi was involved with that the people who went on to make slack made. the merit badges remind me a lot of glitch and the art style a little bit too, and also the whole like idle game sort of aspect of it i guess
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I think arcades sell unique experiences more than anything so anything that is obviously new and different is good for attracting interest from across the room. And I think you’re right, they don’t have the ergonomic constraints of home equipment because their playtimes are so short.
I thought VR arcades would be bigger than they were because they checked off most of those boxes - unique, kind of too obnoxious for home use, too expensive for home use. And it’s not like people didn’t stand up some places but ‘event space’ is a precious commodity this past decade and the devices weren’t really made for commercial use.
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Speaking of Road Not Taken, this is the same team & designer. Dan Cook is a great design essayist, too.
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sold
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my one weird association with this game is apparently one of the tracks on that soundtrack was a sort of tribute to my old ocremix music? i only know this because the composer told me. he actually sent me a fan email back in the day (maybe the only fan email during that period i ever got, i think). he’s a nice guy, but it’s always weird when people who were fans of you become also way more successful than you.
anyway i played Gravity Ghost for like 15 minutes back in the day and it seemed okay but never felt inspired to come back to it. it feels like it comes from the period of indie games where every single game had to have one new gimmick to it that the entire game was baseed around, even if it didn’t completely make sense.
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Yeah I think 15/20 minutes is very much enough to “get” this game. The late-game changes to the formula are slight.
It’s simple and gentle, my progress was so rapid that I was all the way through it before I got tired of it. I think the absolute lack of failure states helped to keep me going. A single “Game Over” probably would have broken the spell.
got both master roshi DLC for fighterz and hwang DLC for SC6 today because they’re on sale for golden week and it’s really important to me that I save those $3
they are both tons of fun! I’ve only bought a handful of DLC characters in both of these games and liked all of them but these two might be the best of the bunch!
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Uh so I broke down and bought Returnal, and it’s… really good. More to follow!
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god what a horrible name though lol
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