never occurred to me, but you may be on to something
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re. strawberry cubes a few posts back, i feel like that game might be in the weird place of becoming more interesting the less ambitiously you read it. i do think there are elements of structural game playing and thematic meaning in there (like the occasional moments where you find what seems to be an older version of yourself, staring silently at you from a room within the maze) but these were obscure enough that it was hard for me to pick up anything from them, at least from a casual play. i sorta feel like it works better less in the context of artgames than of hobbyist games, drawing on the familiar hobbyist impulses: to play as some cute creature within a spatial world, to define little self-perpetuating movement patterns and set them rolling forward indefinitely, to heap things up and then see what structures emerge from the heap. the way these desires reveal themselves as something alien and insect-like once they’re actually set into practice, sorta like old MUD maps which emerge in the most organic way possible just still seem like inscrutable tangled non-spaces written down.
it’s been sorta weird over the last decade plus to watch artgames morph from more or less being a subgenre of amateur, hobbyist tinkering into a glossier thing with only begrudging ties to that world. tbh the main reason i even played this one is just that it seemed to have more of the vibe of those earlier works, in the sense of seeming hard to boil down to a single contextual meaning or elevator pitch. i don’t know if i’d even call it more mysterious than something like Jet Set Willy per se, but i liked it as a slightly more melancholy/horrified take on that kind of experience.
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luminous beings are luigi
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I’ve never thought the overly glossy look of Galaxy was impressive tbh, it always suffered from the comparison with its direct predecessors, released 5 years earlier and with a much stronger aesthetic
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I did actually end up playing like five hours of Ikenfell today.
It’s mixing a pretty smooth Cartoon Network show vibe, with surprisingly chewy…I dunno…tactical combat? Like the combat system almost seems like it’s throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks at first. It’s got grid positioning, it’s got Mario RPG/Shadow Hearts style timed attacks and defenses, it’s got the FFX style initiative system…just a real hodge-podge of exactly the kind of JRPG gimmicks that get tossed around whenever a western developer makes a JRPG. All at the same time.
My first impression was pretty lukewarm, it didn’t seem that consequential. Just more cruft to slow down some pretty basic fights.
But then, after the introductory combat segments of the first, I dunnon, 30-45 minutes, a second party member is introduced everything changes a lot. All of a sudden the enemy attack patterns get more and more complicated, with weirder and weirder timing and animations. Enemies start to change attack patterns when they take damage. The exact way you position your party based on enemy attack patterns starts to matter more and more.
Then it introduces traps, which are damaging spaces that deal a bunch of damage and end your turn if you forget where they are.
And then you get a third party member with even weirder positioning for his attacks.
Fortunately there’s usually like, one encouter per screen, and each ‘dungeon’ so far has been no more than 4-8 screens. And the enemy mixes have gotten more interesting and even fighting the same enemy in the context of different enemies can make a fight feel completely different.
It’s extremely galaxy brain, and I think I really like it.
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I’ve, uh, apparently solved over 160 puzzles in Mario’s Super Picross this week. (I guess I like picross.)
Also, I played another new ZZT game:
Unlike the King in Yellow Borders, which was an adventure game that happened to be in ZZT, this game is very much a ZZT game: solve some slider puzzles, mow down some ruffians, get some sweet ~purple key~, and make sure to save often. While the level of craftsmanship is decently high throughout, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a tolerance for those fiddly ZZT-isms.
Overall, it’s pretty modest in scope (thank goodness), at least until the endgame where it does some things that you pretty much have to see to believe.
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Back on my bullshit again, playing Rocket League now that is is F2P on Switch. What a fantastic fucking game.
My first 2 hours were spent destroying children who just wanted to play a free car game. Now they’ve started matching me with, like, real players. And now I am the one getting destroyed.
I love Rocket League even though I am objectively quite bad at it.
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I love Rocket League. The only way I play Rocket League is I immediately break away from everybody and go collect all of the power ups on the outsides, then I gain up speed, find either the opponent with the ball or the opponent threatening the ball and I crash and explode into them. It’s the most fun way to play because I hate ball-handling and love being able to play in a way that can get some people really riled up.
PS2 update!
After an extra two hours, I have had my fill of EverGrace. I did not complete the game, but I have seen enough. These two hours were all focused on a singular dungeon, what I’ve seen referred to as the “Underground Shrine.” This dungeon exemplifies the sort of player antagonistic, deliberately obtuse design I described earlier. It is a small labyrinth of identical halls and circular arenas. There are variously colored doors peppered throughout the labyrinth: blue, red, white, yellow, green, purple, and blue-white. Was that all of the colors? I think so.
There is a library containing a note which informs me fire will open the green door and ice will open the red. I plod along and find the red door. I shoot it with a blast of ice. Nothing happens. I find the green door and shoot it with fire. Nothing happens. I find a room with a flame in the middle. I try to pick up the flame but I can’t. I shoot it with ice and, on the other side of the dungeon, a red door opens. You can imagine how the rest of this dungeon goes.
Something I haven’t mentioned yet is that the halls aren’t simple corridors. Instead, they are lined with pits and guarded by magic spewing turrets. On two occasions, I bartered fate for speed, racing to the different doors, hoping the next would be my last, only to die by falling down these pits. Fooled twice, I began to make the trek back to the save point after each door.
I did finish the dungeon but I dread what is to come if I decide to move forward.
Armored Core 2
(Sorry for the poor photographs. It was a bit harder to manage with this game.)
Already in this project, we have a second FromSoftware game, and the second to feature a soundtrack from Kota Hoshino. The music rules, so please take some time to listen the first track.
This is the first Armored Core game that I’ve sunken real time into. I remember playing a demo for PSOne installment and losing against my brother. I would cry and beg him to let me win. Now, I cry and beg the computer to let me win. Maybe I’ve gotten better at video games, but the computer listens to me more.
I want to enjoy this game but the controls hold me back. We’re still in the days before analog controlled cameras were standardized. The only way to pivot the camera is to pivot your body. Your body is a tank. I do not feel safe in this body. I overheat, run out of energy, explode. I run into debt. Even on Mars, you cannot escape the gig economy.
I’m impressed by the mission variety. In one mission, I chased a truck down a highway tunnel. In another, I defended a space port from a high flying bomber. I’m also impressed by the variety of parts. From quad legs to back mounted mortars, you have a lot of options.
Occasionally, something beautiful happens where you fail a mission and return to the garage with a new AC in mind, an AC that will perfectly match the challenges it is designed for. I love those moments but I feel like there is so much preventing that from happening. You lose money every mission and parts are expensive. There are several limitations that prevent you from putting parts together however you want. You’re AC needs to have a generator that can supply enough energy, legs and a body that can hold enough weight, and a radiator to release heat.
I don’t think I’ll be returning to AC2 but I’m curious about other entries in the series. This one just feels too heavy.
You can still affect what I play from the Summer of 2000.
The Poll for Summer 2000 is here
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Just commenting to say I love your CRT
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If I could get a 32" Donald Duck CRT, that’d be the absolute shit.
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Thank you! What you don’t see are the removable heart shaped speakers. They really bring it all together.
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Mercenaries: the original gig workers
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Actually a very good definition of the gig economy is “every single worker treated like a mercenary”
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i read somewhere once that the disney/barbie/shrek/etc tvs for kids were among the last mass produced crts, so that’s why there ae tons of them still working.
Freelance is def a word w a past
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Setting up my next gig: “I don’t call myself a freelancer, I prefer the term ronin.”
Incorporate so you can call yourself a solo.
Monument Valley 2 is another 110 minutes or so of the first game, and I’m okay with that. It’s really a treat to look at and listen to.
In fact, I don’t recall the music from the first very well but I really liked the music in this one.
1 Like