why didn’t any of you try to stop me
you said we couldn’t
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not with that attitude you won’t!
Thank you everyone who responded to my poll!
After 24 hours, the top half of the poll is filled by Evergrace, Fantavision, and Ridge Racer V. That’s a really good spread! Even though Evergrace and Fantavision are tied, I’m going to commit to Evergrace as my first game. Its music has infiltrated my brain and I’m hankering to see how the Voice breathes within the space of the game.
I’ll leave the poll open in case anybody wants to push something else into the top three, but I’m excited to explore no matter what.
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good luck! let me know how far you get in evergrace!
Oh I’ll definitely be reaching out to you if I get stuck!
Been trying to make myself play Chrono Trigger. I’m at a weird moment in life where I am too tired to play any game that is mechanically engaging but I also keenly resent games which seem to be wasting my time. Thus RPGs are in a sort of sweet love hate spot. Chrono Trigger is one of those games which is pretty smooth going down but I still often question what I’m doing, pushing these buttons.
I was looking at the radio and other knick-knacks piled up on the shelves in Crono’s room and somehow the residue of my original, now 25 year old, perception of this game (primarily in juxtaposition with the more more notional graphics of FFIV) as place characterized by a comparative hyper-reality, flicked back to me. Its just starting to feel fall like here.
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I’m giving a talk tomorrow in which I’m using those shelves in crono’s room as a reference point!
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picked up a game called Hakinowa Explorer on switch. It’s a little isometric action rpg with random type drops. It’s really pretty but hoo boy the game is way more vulgar than I ever expected. Japanese nerds definitely wrote and programmed this. Lots of “lewd” type descriptions and at least one instance of a jiggly butt. Also a ton of swears. Not really my cup of tea, but I like playing and looking at the graphics.
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Played some Spellbreak today with a few friends, since it’s free. It is a bog-standard battle royale game, only in this case, you can use just five different weapons. There’s a little variety in that each weapon’s alt can sometimes be combined with another element, to for example create a fire tornado.
That’s pretty much it. You can pick up a travel ability as well, such as teleportation or dash, and then you just try not to fall outside the enclosing circle.
I truly, fundamentally don’t know how to have fun when it comes to combat in these BR games. You’re always at mid-range, trying to score hits on leaping targets, and you ultimately either get them to back into an area attack, or awkwardly score enough hitscan shots to kill them. It’s real dull.
I don’t know how they can make combat satisfying in BR games. Apex is certainly better, but, same core issues.
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I’ve been watching a lot of DBFZ videos and I’m so mad that my internet connection at home is too shitty to justify investing any effort into multiplayer games. I really enjoy what I’ve played.
(I know the resident fight man players here don’t like it much but it’s probably the one I’ve enjoyed most in the last 10 years or so)
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It is pretty good in the absence of a proper MVC although I’ve also heard good things about the Power Rangers fighting game.
I think the main problem of DBFZ is pretty simple in that the character variety is somewhat limited by the source material and everyone feels more like a variation than distinct characters. I haven’t played since season 2 though.
Piccolo/Majin Buu/Videl
In theory BR games should be a clever reuse of space. The randomness of player spawns means they should experience combat in the same arenas but from different angles under a variety of different circumstances (like, what weapons do I have this time) and the narrowing circle should force more and more engagements in unfavorable circumstances, forcing players to adapt on the fly instead of relying on their ability to lock down preferred map segments as in a traditional deathmatch game.
In practice what you have is the geometry of a battlefield simulator (owing to the genre’s birth as an Arma mod i suppose) without the simulationism that would give the player the tools to exploit all that space. Long range engagements are tedious snipefests and close range engagements are twitchy affairs with little opportunity for counterplay. It’s like the worse case midpoint between like a tight Quake 2 DM on the one hand and playing Arma or Ghost Recon with your buddies on the other, inheriting the disadvantages of both while leveraging the strengths of neither. Hell, by far the most popular BR game is Fortnite, where the building mechanic means people simply make their own level geometry anytime they encounter an enemy, making what map design there is pointless. Meanwhile the bulk of the actual playtime is a mindless lootfest pick-em-up where only very small decisions are made and no large strategies can be executed. A fundamentally impoverished game mode.
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DBFZ is a fine game. It’s mostly succeded MVC by being more approachable for mortals. Most character have a base combo structure that will work for most general applications so you can switch characters and take your muscle memory with you until you start going for more specific stuff. It’s main problems being mentioned above is that characters start to feel samey and feel a bit more restrictive compared to other FG characters. In comparision, in Marvel you might have 6 or 7 ways to tweek your combo in regards for damage, meter gain/spent, oki set up, reset or snapback. DBZF you’ll likely only have three optimized paths, save meter and go for oki, spend all meter to kill or go for a snapback. Funnily enough, newest addition Roshi seems to be the most like an old school FG character because he can vary his movement since he doesn’t have the homing dash like everyone else and has more combo route options to play with.
Power Rangers is where the spirit of marvel lives. It isn’t as polished and has some of the grimiest things you’ll ever see in a fighting game.
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My childhood budd who works at Sony gave me like 5 game codes randomly so I guess Im playing them lol.
I stated playing Ghost of Tsushima.
Boy does this feel like I STUDIED THE BLADE the video game. its all abut HONOR! Except during the into sneaking section in which case its okay to sneak now?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
I didn’t actually like the fighting at first either. The characters are brain dead but eventually it just became hilarious. I’m holding out hope someone eventually comes along and tells main boy hes a total fucking nerd.
I followed a golden bird to a hot spring and then to a shrine where I got an upgrade dangly for my shword and Ive decided its pretty fun. You can use stealth to make things easier on you but lord does this game just want you to call out entire bands of fighters like a clown. The teleporting horse makes me giggle everytime.
Boy does Kurosawa mode look like trash with that fucking super 8 grain everywhere. GTFO
8/10 would recommend getting for free to laugh at.
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In other news Ive got my emulation box a-go-'n with the full mame rom set. Its so nice to have an easy way to just pop down and play any one of 2000 little somethings designed to be fun in the first 3 seconds of picking it up. Especially after the relative DRAG of using a modern console to play a modern game.
I’m getting sucked back into a magical drop habit. Its one of like 3 game series Iws ever actually “good” at. Having access to the arcade dip switches and trying out the difficulty modes is extra interesting. I can now just tune it for how Im feeling. Some nights Im feeling like difficulty 2 but sometimes Im a 4. I starting to think the one time I 1-coined it in the arcade the difficulty was turned down and now I feel like a fraud. I must become the pro I thought I was…
…at this game no one will ever care about!
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Synchronicity. What does it mean?
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I’ve been thinking about how genre in videogames so often fails to capture the actual spirit of whatever makes a game appealing.
Arguably, Shiren the Wanderer launched a thousand games but not a single one of them captures the sense of bona fide journey that the SNES Shiren conveys in its genuinely distinct level designs. But that is a comparatively easy to understand example: the mechanical contrivances of roguelikes overwhelm the perception of the comparatively subtle design elements associated with mood and setting (themselves not entirely unmechanical: the different level types in Shiren have genuinely different gameplay).
In other games its harder to put one’s finger on. I have an almost mystical vibe with Final Fantasy Tactics which I mistook for a long time as an enthusiasm for its mechanics. Now I’m not so sure what it is, beyond a quality not easily reduced to specific game elements, that draws me to the game so much. But I have to wonder: what would an endless repetition and refinement of FFT look like if people hadn’t attached themselves to the mechanics of “tactical rpgs” but instead to the way that you often encountered a friendly ghost during random battles at that one stage with the big tree? Or the way that the regularity of a grid based graphical system became a stylistic choice (pushed to hyper-detailed extreme) rather than a technological limitation?
I guess what I’m getting at is that most of the time these days I have no idea what it is I like about any particular videogame, even (particularly!) when I really like one!
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I recently saw a video with pictures from the artbook showcasing some art from the upcoming multiplayer DLC and it made me sad that these AAA open world video games can never look as good as their concept art. I’m looking forward to seeing how muddy the end result of these concepts turn out because boy do they look more neat that I expected out of the game and there’s no way they’ll look anywhere near as interesting in the final product.
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for me though I love the setting and how everything fits together. it IS on some level enthusiam for the mechanics. the problem with the tactics genre is the multifaceted balance. You need options but not too many options. you need multiple ways to suceed that are all challenging and not too obvious but not too obscure. you need information about your situation but not too much information at once. I think FFT just nails it. unlike even most oger battle game I never felt like I was stuck with only one way out of a situation. even when i got into a situation where every single move was vital to victory I always made it eventually and it always felt like it was my plan.
I think what really intgrates final fantasy tactics, what makes it whole is that its so well meshed together. Its a game about the power of big established systems that you interact with via more smaller systems. All have hidden power and mystery. They simply are, we the little temporary people can only just do what we can to position ourselves in it. Just as country and God are inescapable, so is the grid it is all expressed on. I think for this reason FFT will always sort of stand alone.
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