Games You Played Today: 358 Threads Over 2

[Rudie]

Well get ready for a triple post.

To be on topic first. I finished Eternal Castle on switch handheld and don’t recommend that. I looked up the ending on youtube afterwards and turns out the game at a stable framerate without horrible loading hiccups is great. I was pretty stonefaced through a lot of it but I put that down to switch handheld performance. Will almost certainly at some point put a longplay on the TV and chill.

Video Games should not be allowed to reference the Oldboy Hammer Fight.

On reflection maybe the overly explainatory diaries and wallcarvings in the haunted mansion was a joke about video games but if so instead of being bad story telling it’s just a real bad leaden joke that ruins the atmosphere that there are diary entries and a paragraph screed on the wall of a bedroom with conjunctions.

[Rudie]

The related to recent conversations post I was going to make is I deleted YsVIII today and everyone should be proud of me. I in some small point of my life Took Control and realized it was only there as a burden and if I get the urge I can download it again. (reminder to self to re-up J-PS+ to back up my saves.)

But seeing that again I have like 15 shooters in my To Play pile made me realize I’d been stress buying games for the past six months. You get a kid and such limited time it was weirdly more rewarding to just look through PSN and buy a new game then to play one with my two hours a night.

I haven’t spent a tremendous amount of money (maybe one 60 dollar game’s worth a month) but I have produced a pile of games that I am maybe slightly frozen by or never in the exact mood for. Which has caused me to play these giant open world games i don’t like that much. Or wanting to give time to Horizon Zero Dawn because I got it for free. I’ll probably have no emotions about it but some how that is more emotionally fulfilling than playing a game I would actually like like ESPRaDe or Return of the Obra Dinn. Nah time to waste on a match of Battlefield V as long as that is installed my download of Red Dead Online will never finish.

Anyways going to try and be more mindful as much as I want Disco Elysium and Blue Fire and something else I will think of as soon as I hit Reply I probably have already bought enough video game for the end of the year and if I like the shooters enough to buy them from 40 to 3 dollars I can pop that many credits into them before I think about G-Darius HD you moran.

[captainlove]

For God knows what reason I developed the urge to replay Pokémon Shield. Everything from the vacuous NPC’s to the incessantly slow chirping of the main story just makes me feel empty inside. I should stop playing, especially since I have so many other games I should be playing that I would probably enjoy a lot more. Shield just seems to allow your brain to void out while you basically do nothing, which is probably the best explanation I can muster for why I am tolerating gigantamaxing and the most hollow towns of any game. It has a ‘one-handed mode’ which is helpful except that it switches back to two-handed controls whenever a keyboard shows up to name something.

In terms of my limits at the moment, JRPGs are prevailing with turn-based battles and purely single analog stick navigation being the preferred input. I can probably manage some real-time challenges for brief periods but I’ll be sure to stop before anything flares up again.

Like @rudie i am being buried by the backlog and I need an excuse to break through and stop worrying about a self-imposed list and whatever else might be coming out. That’s where you come in! I will play whatever the poll decides:

• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD
• Final Fantasy VII (original)
• Final Fantasy VIII
• Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown (character customisation)
• Sky Odyssey
• G-String
• More Pokémon Shield

[BLUE_BLACK_PURPLE]

@Rudie

I have produced a pile of games that I am maybe slightly frozen by or never in the exact mood for

I sort of know that feeling. What’s most holding me back from playing games is just a form of anxiety or mood problem I think but I do experience what you’re talking about sometimes as well. It’s what’s keeping me from playing Disco Elysium. I got to be in a strong mood to pay attention to a story and make decisions on a higher level than say VF5. Although those decisions are stressful as well they’re more immediate and you don’t really have time to think for more than a split second. Somehow that’s vibing more with me right now

[Tuxedo]

I finished my weird Octopath challenge of only having two people in the party max, beating every boss and superboss but the 8-characters grand finale

I’m sort of an Octopath hater and I’m sorry to say loved this challenge. It felt like a really challenging boss rush, with some in-town downtime where I bled every NPC dry to finance said boss-slaying

Dungeons still got really dull and I went through them as fast as possible (which does not bode well for DQ3 remake) ; they did include resources that could have helped against bosses, but getting 5000g from a dungeon chest carries much less flavor than stealing an elderly woman’s wallet

The absurd giant boss sprites are inarguably the best part of the game and it was great having actually tight battles to go along with them. Matador level of JRPG excitement for multiple bosses

It’s so weird how the game as intended is so dull but gets so great with the absurd restriction of cutting your team in half for no reason

All in all I still couldn’t shake the feeling that the game did lack a soul though, especially contrasted to Kowloon High School Chronicle which I’ve also slowly been playing

10 hours in the game is more approachable, its structure less opaque (it’s Persona 3 without time management), but it’s still its really weird own beautiful thing.

If you look closely you can notice that the strange glyphs on the conversation cross are actually English words like « JOY » and « HOT »
I now pick « Amity » for 90% of the choices I make and I always get the « correct choice » jingle. Life hack : just be friendly

You can just go and steal a lot of school furniture that’s completely useless in combat (you start the game with an unbreakable 120 damage knife) though I really appreciate how the 5H pencil does slightly more damage than the 2B one

Stats wise there’s a stat that gives you more stats so I put all my points into it.
More interestingly you also get a few skill points per level up you can put into your favorite classes, as in, Math class or Biology class

I think the only way to get money is to finish quests m, which are semi randomly generated riddles like « Garden of 12 giants From the dawn door Change of Heart »
This particular example means that you need to go to the room with the 12 giant statues, walk to the easternmost door there, go into combat mode then go back non-combat mode.
And then magic sparkles start appearing and you get a hotdog from heaven which you can then hand over to your quest giver for $$$. Again, this is the only way I found to get cash

The little 8 bit VN RPG you can play in your room turned out to be a like 5 hours hardcore dungeon RPG that rules. I like it better than the M2 Phantasy Star remaster

[dogs]

played through all of stonefly yesterday and it’s not bad. hottest graphics i’ve seen in quite a while and the action is p alright too. the combat can be flaky and frustrating at times (i got all the way through the game and i still don’t understand how damage works), and the boss fights – of which there are thankfully only two – are egregious, but flying and jumping around feels good, and the design of the levels encourages you to take your time and meander as much as you like. i played on the switch both in handheld and on the tv and i reckon tv is better. get this on a ps4 or something if u can, it’s well worth viewing in hd.

Stonefly | Launch Trailer | New Indie Game 2021

[teh_blend]

I read an unidentified scroll in Shiren 5 and sold my +30 shield

[Rudie]

I can’t even find this soccer mode and could not get an online match going (because the matchmaking is very bad.)

The matchmaking is done by selecting a specific mission and then looking for people for that specific mission who are also waiting in a lobby right now. Even though you can run around the homebase you cannot do any of the various upgrade menus while waiting for a match. it doesn’t work and is bad. I try also doing the public lobby which is also a bad set-up and found zero matches. Anyways if someone has PS4 Rogue Corps and wants to try this very early America time (7am Eastern) then I can swing that and we can have a mediocre time.

[Rudie]

But also absolutely do not buy this game are you kidding me.

[Father.Torque]

Trying to decide what the point is exactly of Nier Automata making all these side missions like, hard

[slime]

I took my seat back, I’ve now reached #1 in three states. Most of the top NA players are from California, though

[VastleCania]

HMU if you wanna play the soccer mode w/ me

[ellaguro]

i started playing the game Disc Room on a whim to see what it was about

i like to have things to play while i listen to my podcasts like an old person and this seemed to fit the bill pretty well. (this game Monolith is another i often play for this purpose, along with Trackmania, which i stopped recently because wrist hurty).

my first impression of the game was “this is just Smash TV without the guns” but sorta like with the game Minit (by the same dev), dying is actually an important part of the game that is required for many different goals. though at the end of the day it is mostly just about dodging spinny razor discs. i don’t think it has anywhere near the coherent narrative storytelling of something like Minit… it’s mostly just a series of challenges from room to room for what i’ve played so far. but i still have enjoyed it more than i expected to.

[captainlove]

I’d say that’s pretty conclusive. Demons here I come.

[slime]

trick weapon secret technique

[loki]

i’ve already said this on twitter, but it’s a massive failure of marketing on capcom europe’s part that me and my friends didn’t know about megaman x4 when it came out, because i just finished playing through it as zero on the ps4 legacy collection, and we would have totally loved it if we did!

[meauxdal]

this poll is selectbutton as fuck, jeez

[teh_blend]

The difficulty gulf between Shiren 5’s main quest and the post game content is just wide enough that I will keep trying, I will soldier on

[slime]

Bloodborne is really the most beautiful game I’ve ever played, but the chromatic aberration really bothers me. I wish there was a way to turn it off because it makes my eyes feel unfocused, which makes it harder than it already is for me to pick out visual details like Ladders which blend into the fetishistic architectural design. It’s absolutely gorgeous, but I’m so unfamiliar to AAA games that the visual clutter on screen is overwhelming.

[BustedAstromech]

And it’s got that dark-metal and stone with bright specular highlights look that always makes me want it to be sharper or higher-res. At times things blend into a blur of extreme contrast white and black without shape outlines. Gears of War made me feel like that a lot, too.