I found the best trainer in Pokémon Blue Kaizo today, a bug catcher with exactly one Pokémon:
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well i never heard of a game boy light until right this minute
sounds kind of awesome
Half the fat of the original Game Boy with none of the calories!
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It looks way better in photos than it does IRL but I got a ridiculous deal on it so I couldn’t turn it down
Before I played Secret of Mana, I saw the title screen art in a really cool poster one of my friends had in his bedroom. I asked him what Secret of Mana is and he said he didn’t know either, he just saw this poster for sale somewhere and bought it
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my internet is dead so I can’t just play MTG: Arena in between watching MTGA streams all night
Hypnospace Outlaw was fun, I tried to see how far I could get without running Hypnocure or uninstalling Professor Helper. The writing came on great at first and then the paper-thinness came right out in the character development over the chapters. Tim was the most believable imo
I get how this is a commentary on the restrictiveness of closed garden ecosystem and also FB moderation hell but I would have liked to develop those themes a bit more. Felt like playing a cyberishpunk adaptation of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective.
Also gdi you monsters, reporting children’s drawings when there are more than enough straight copies in clear view.
I continue to be terrible at Blood Bowl 2 and keep winning and watching exactly how terrible the single-player campaign AI’s moves are. Last game they killed a blitzer and constantly targeted the player with the most SPP, then next turn throw 1-dice blocks and not move players.
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What are you getting out of watching MTGA streams that you don’t get out of playing the game itself? I tend to find myself watching MTGO content more because there is a wider variety of stuff that can be done in it compared to Arena so it has more novelty (especially since it is inconvenient for me to play MTGO on a Mac)
Watching Arena just feels like it would tire me of the metagame way quicker unless you’re watching something like a Gladiator stream (it’s a dope format)
Aqua Aqua with Wetrix
When I first started playing Aqua Aqua, I was having the same experience @meauxdal described. The analog control moved so fast and the digital movement felt awkward on this isometric plane. The geometric simplicity of Tetris has been transformed into an ambiguous terrain and I can’t read when a drop will merge with another, creating a mountain or miss, creating a ravine. The tutorial is so demanding. It says, don’t let a single drop fall of the edge.
For a moment, I gave up. I downloaded the Windows version of Wetrix and played the game. I learned a terrifying truth: it’s not just the tutorial of Aqua Aqua that is difficult, it’s the whole game. A brutal onslaught of conditions rains down from the sky. Bombs poke holes in your platform, rain drips water everywhere, ice cubes freeze your lakes, and if you don’t manage your terrain well enough, you cause an earthquake. It wields the same chaotic energy of a Jeff Minter game while lifting some ideas from Populous. Did I mention that Aqua Aqua is our first English game in the series? Did I mention that the two brothers (?) who lead the development were also responsible for Plok?
I went back to Aqua Aqua. I tried the tutorial again and I was very careful. I made it. Unlike Wetrix, there is a story mode. Here you must earn a certain amount of points within a section of time or a monster will wreck your island. I kind of like this because even if you don’t get enough points, the attacks are survivable.
The more I play these games, the more I like them. I spent two hours my first night trying to get a handle on the game flow. I went to sleep and when I woke up, I beat the game. I think psychologists call this incubation. Like Tetris, these games ferment in the back of my mind. I hear the screw-like sound effect when I close my eyes. These game ideas deserve to be revisited. It’s such a satisfying concept not far from building sandcastles.
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I only watch pure combo jank streams from people with much more complete collections than me. I couldn’t hack it in Historic but it’s fun to see degenerate combos. Also there is a lot to pick up from other people’s deck construction that’s easier to learn when someone goes through their cards and says what it’s doing, what could be swapped out, etc. rather than reading a decklist.
Also watching someone play land first main phase, cast creatures second main phase or not, only two mana open no counterspells, pause and think, ah! helps develop my game. I still misplay like crazy and happily draw from a giant pile, though now l understand how red control works by watching and brewing my own deck
MTGO matches I’ve watched have the same benefit for the latter but they barely touch on construction
Woah! This looks like it should be on an Amstrad. I love how much British and Euro game design revolves around impressive programming tricks.
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Eric Chahi’s weird, mostly ignored and not that great From Dust played with these same ideas…
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That was on my mind too! It’s not great but it doesn’t feel like a dead end. An action game with large scale terraforming is a compelling idea. I appreciate the lego-brick construction that has spread out since Minecraft splashed, but I want something more dynamic and fluid.
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Is anyone playing or planning on playing Watchdogs Legion? I am very interested in the emergent mission design and permadeath in it…
Space Giraffe. Talk about extending on the Tempest template ascending to new heights of interactivity bliss!
I’m positive that this is one of the most perfect games ever made.
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Finished Grabbed by the Ghoulies last night. Confirmed my feelings about it: a ham-fisted brawler for babies, the frictionless and limited attack combos executed with the right analog stick become boring but the junkpile of props and weapons available (toilet brushes, bathtubs, hamburgers, zombie limbs, squirt guns, etc.) keeps things fresh as do the “rules” for each room which are kind of a double-edged sword:
As the game progresses, you get more and more rules piled onto each scenario which means you’re being yelled at by the Butler for about 70% of the game and it kinda kills the flow. By the end of the game, you’ll be required to do things like “kill all the zombies, but don’t kill the mummies and only use your fists but you mustn’t attack more than 8 times and also one of the ghoulies has a key to find”. Breaking a rule sets the Grim Reaper on you which can actually be finessed into killing baddies which is cool. The melees get pretty chaotic and actually quite funny! Sometimes you can turn ghoulies against each other and find a hiding spot from which to watch the carnage unfold and even though the convoluted rules are a not-so-graceful design affect, they can make for some challenging puzzles when trying to determine how to best use the various powerups, weapons, environments and enemy AIs (which can be rather devious).
Overall, it’s a lumpy goofy game and I like it (my favourite part being the soft lighting, painted shadows and chunky clutter of the various rooms). Here are some of the many Rareware references crammed into the game (maybe they went kinda overboard to assure fans that they were still the same Rareware despite being on a Microsoft console?)
A throwable sack of flour referencing Rareware's founding in 1984
Evil Bottles was a scrapped "anti co-op" feature in Banjo-Tooie that eventually made its way into Perfect Dark
More Stop-n-Swap teasing (the island Banjo is reaching for is Shark Food Island in Treasure Trove Cove, also depicted in the navigation room in Rusty Bucket Bay
Bottles' kids from Tooie, Speccy and Goggles plus Mrs. Bottles and Jolly Roger the flamboyant frog...
Merry Maggy (Jolly Roger's lover) has a shampoo now
Rareware resurrected their old ZX Spectrum title Sabre Wulf for GBA the same year as Ghoulies and the carpet here reflects the new character design
There are also loads of portraits of characters cut from the game. Hilariously, they were going to have a museum room for all these models that didn't make it but that also had to be cut at the last minute
Edit: Almost forgot, Banjo’s beloved goldfish Royston shows up with his characteristic fish bowl bump:
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Yes, it’s the Most Professionally Relevant Game
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well I turned on Watchdogs and it bluescreened Windows with an error code, “Kernel Security Check”
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what a cool metal gear solid reference
I think you have to use a different IRQ or it’ll read your thoughts
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I saw a recent youtube comment that other day somewhere with someone talking about how great max payne 3 multiplayer on pc is and how it’s still going. I can’t stop thinking about this. what the hell are they talking about, it’s dead as a doornail. am I missing something?
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