Next on the Xbox One games I never played list is Killer Instinct. This combo system is supple and I love how much expression it affords the player. There’s room to improvise with multiple tools on the fly and the input buffering is generous that it gives that marshmallowy window to dial in moves on the fly.
Sadira is cool and is the only character whose design and style doesn’t make my retina gag. I think the style is a good approximation of the original games by the team and I don’t wanna crap on their work. It fits well with a game which has to constantly cancel animations multiple times per second and still keep chunky readable silhouettes on every move. It just has that 90s toy aesthetic that has that ‘gross-out’ appeal which I find off-putting.
Sadly, even though I like the basic system, I’m not sure there’s enough of a scene anymore at least on PC. Couldn’t really get any games. The visuals aren’t really my jam either but would love to see a similar game crop up with a more flexible combo system. Kinda wish Netherrealm games were closer to this since I’m not a fan of their style, animation, or mechanics.
I also just finally polished this off after plugging away at it at a snail’s pace periodically – it really is, like, a short hike + phoenix wright + grasshopper, and while the detective plot writing is very obviously not as good as disco elysium despite it being more mechanically invested in the premise, it was a really nice effort. maybe a bit too long and a bit too sloppy, but the pacing is still an achievement.
***, an admirably bulbous entry into a suddenly crowded field
Yeah, I’d appreciate the game requiring a bit more out the player in the trial, but I like that we had a game with such different priorities that played out so well.
Since Sea of Thieves is 40% right now on Steam and my son has been interested in it for a while, I picked us both up copies and we palled around on the high seas over the last couple days.
I had no idea this was Rare! In retrospect, this seems pretty obvious, as the game is gorgeous and the character models are right in their modern style window. The game is sailing around an instanced ocean, trying to find treasure of various kinds while battling skeletons/other pirates. There’s tons of cosmetic upgrades of various types and various costs involved, which is fair enough? I’m not going to begrudge even MS for chiseling a bit with vanity skins for your boat.
Anyway, so far we’ve managed to run away from/annoy a couple other players in a sloop (after one them cannon-launched over to our ship, me and my son hacked him to death with our cutlasses and they gave up after that), defeat a kraken attack, find a ton of treasure, and blow up our own ship with a gunpowder barrel. Nothing is horribly deep at all gameplay-wise; however, it’s great fun with a kid my son’s age, yelling at each other over voice chat as we have to handle steering the ship, aiming the sails depending on where the wind is blowing, repairing damage to the ship, bailing water, firing on other ships, etc. Seeing a sail on the horizon bearing down on the isle you’re treasure-hunting on and yelling “Anchors aweigh!” as you see if they’re giving chase is a good feeling of excitement and danger.
Renal Summer is an odd little mobile game. Its intro message sums things up (I’m paraphrasing):
You are the dog’s kidney. The dog is in renal failure and doesn’t have much longer to live. Break up the blood blocks to clear the kidney to let your dog live a little longer
It’s an extremely simple block clearing puzzler (although the color scheme is terrible if you have even a little bit of color blindness) mixed with a virtual pet. Although you only interact through the puzzle. Otherwise all there is to do is watch the dog and its elderly owner go about their daily life, which is ties to your phone’s clock.
I’m a fool and decided that…hey…it’s probably safe, to play a little AC Valhalla, just a taste, having not finished the Odyssey DLC.
Very first modern day segment and ah whoops there’s them laying out what happened at the end of that DLC ah whoops.
Anyway it seems…neat? There’s still a lot of shit in it, but at least in the Norway map, it feels more spread out, more…meaningful?
Eivor is no Kassandra, or Bayek, but I’m still early in. Hopefully she’ll be less boring once the exposition is out of the way.
Anyway can’t wait to set this aside next to WD Legion so I can play Miles Morales, and then never buy another game again (until Hitman 3, then Nier, but then no more! No more games!!)
Forgot to say I came across three “mysteries,” which is what the game is calling side quests now.
One was following a sleepwalking guard around the mountain.
One was driving into a freezing pool to get a comb for some lady so Eivor…I guess she had sex with the lady? They didn’t really make that clear. AC Odyssey was way more forward with its horniness.
And finally, I smashed up a couple’s house and set it on fire so they could get all worked up to fuck.
No “Kassandra unwittingly fulfills the prophecy of a terrified man by killing his birth mother and fucking his birth father” tier stuff yet, but kinda funny I guess.
The controller almost feels fine. There’s a curvature or bulbousness to the end of the handles that don’t agree with my palms. The sticks feel okay but the buttons have a lot of throw with nothing to dampen the sound or impact, giving it the cheap sound and feeling of rattling plastic against rattling plastic on both press and depress. Triggers are okay but I think I’d prefer more tension for comfort. The L1 and R1 have little throw but the fast snap of the presses amplifies the cheap feel and sound of the plastic.
There are also no lights I can tell of so there doesn’t seem to be a way to tell if it’s on, has battery, or is working without plugging it into something. So hopefully I never have to trouble shoot if the controller is broken or my PC/the Stadia servers are acting up with a connection.
It’s actually just a trick of the cell phone camera. It’s not too big and my laptop there is actually fairly small.
Fisherman’s Tale: what if your dad was a jerk, also something about being a model in a model in a model. Plays with scale quite a bit but I found it tedious rather than enjoyable? Virtual Virtual Reality plays with similar ideas RE: scale and nesting realities, but is also very funny and occasionally creepy.
Also big news RE: the Quest, it finally has a super easy way to stream to a computer. You basically just need to both be on the same wifi, then go to oculus.com/casting (in chrome or edge) and then you can just…stream. Took like, what, almost a year? but now folks IRL can see and hear what you;re doing without downloading the oculus app to a phone or (god forbid) streaming to facebook. This makes me very excited for the next meetup, where I will have the perfect catalogue of games and we can finally watch people be super cool in VR.
