castlevania ii: belmont’s revenge (game boy) whips ass, what a dank little fucker
9 Likes
some cosmic crime that this composer didn’t touch more games, have roses thrown at their feets, asked to kiss babies
8 Likes
Someone give me a reason they shouldn’t just turn castlevania into ys
2 Likes
Konami doesn’t make games anymore
10 Likes
you can’t goad me into doing it
no one can goad me into doing it
somehow I mentally recognize as a point of no return
for my hands
1 Like
i’ve played through Umurangi Generation [+DLC] over the last 2 days, and yeah that game is as good as everyone said.
there’s tiny mechanical/rule change in the last level of the dlc that had me yelling.
3 Likes
the 3ds version of retroarch inexplicably had the wonderswan’s second d-pad mapped to the shoulder buttons. so i changed this to the analogue stick and played some judgement silversword while holding my 3ds sideways.
surprisingly comfortable!
3 Likes
Finished Control the other night
Definitely one of my favorite games I’ve played this year. Mechanically, I would say the only remarkable thing it does is ‘stay pretty good throughout’. I found it pretty easy once I got the hang of it, but it was always enjoyable to just murder dudes with floating objects. I maxed out the telekinesis shit as fast as I could - I did not buy any other skills until I had maxed that out. That was the right move, as telekinesis shit is effective against every enemy except one.
Also I missed an entire set of skills somehow? I guess there’s a shield in the training area but I was never able to get in, and stopped checking after a while. But ehhh who cares
Oh yeah, and the trick to not getting annoyed with the minor collectibles you can attach to your guns is to just destroy entire tiers of them - as soon as I ran out of space, I would break down the whole lowest tier that I had and not think about it too much. I also mostly stuck with the starting gun and attached 3 damage boosts to it. There was really no need for any other gun IMO.
The writing outside of cutscenes/dialogue I would say was moderately interesting, but clearly ripped directly from the SCP wiki. I would say it manages to hit middle of the road SCP entries consistently, which…I mean, frankly most SCP entries don’t hit middle of the road, so the consistency was good. I think limiting themselves to 1 page per entry was both smart and slightly disappointing - not enough space for weird details, but also never goes way into the weeds. I always got excited to read a new document though, which is great!
pictured: the only document i took a screenshot of :-/
Anyway, the writing in cutscenes and dialogue was excellent. It very consistently hit “great TV” levels which is essentially what I’m looking for in something that lasts 12-15 hours. The characters had strong voices and were obvious enough archetypes to be immediately recognizable, but were written and acted well enough that there was some depth there.
Emily Pope and Simon Arish were both deeply likeable (and easy to crush on imo), and Langston was such an unlikable twerp but like…trustable? I feel like “old school office worker who just gets shit done and has no ambition” is actually a hard-to-portray character. His tie being pushed to one side by the HRA was doing a lot of work here:
Trench and Darling were also fantastic as the unreachable men of power. Trench’s overly gritty phone calls to you compared with Darling’s unending enthusiasm for paranormal bullshit were such good contrasts. I especially loved when Darling called on the hotline with the tone of “HELLO. CAN. YOU. HEAR. ME. I’M. NOT. SURE. HOW. THIS. THING. WORKS!!!” - such a good contrast with Trench’s Max Payne bullshit. And near the end when Trench had a 5 or more minute monologue just basically detailing all of his disorganized and frightened thoughts caused by the Hiss during the illusory dream-office part was great.
And of course the music video near the end of Darling singing to you about how great you are made me about fall out of my chair
I liked Ahti as well - just enough of him to not get sick of his weirdness. Seeing or hearing him was always a treat, and I liked how he was consistently on your side. Just a real good dude who has no idea how to say normal things.
The real star of the show was the visuals. Yeah it’s a gorgeous game, but I was running it on pretty low settings, so it was more about the presentation and hoo boy do they do a good job. It’s pretty tame at first - an office complex with some badguys in it. But they escalate into weird territory pretty quickly. I wish I had taken more photos - for some reason I really didn’t.
I was a big fan of the Astral Spikes, those weird glitchy looking black spiky orbs. Even though it was just a pacman ghost, the fact that it looked like a physics glitch was very cool and that kind of effect was used very sparingly.
Actually, the enemies in general were not very interesting but the visual presentation of a few of them really disguised that. In particular, the Anchor boss was like, literally a Donkey Kong 64 boss, but it was also a twitching orb of black cubes that vomited infinite clocks at you from a red sphere in its interior, sooo…it was worth it. I wish there was more stuff like this.
But mostly it’s the environments that shine - endless repeating columns, unexpected chasms, blocks floating in endless white space overshadowed by a giant inverted black pyramid, ever-changing labyrinthian hotel lobbies, aggressive architecture that reshapes a room…it was so good.
Anyway, here are the four screenshots I took that I liked:
I might go back and take some more while I’m finishing the DLC.
So yeah, I really liked Control. One of the few mid-to-large-budget games I’ve thoroughly enjoyed in years. A welcome balm from Doom Eternal. And it really doesn’t outstay its welcome. I wish it was a bit longer, in fact.
TL;DR - decent game mechanically, amazing visuals and excellent writing. would play a sequel.
9 Likes
Really hoping they stick with it and don’t revisit Alan Wake or whatever again. This world has legs.
4 Likes
Yeah like, given that the oldest house is literally an infinite space you can do whatever the fuck you want. This is one of the few big budget games that I didn’t constantly think “wow they really had a good premise and used it on this??” but they could have still gone way, way weirder. Here’s hoping.
5 Likes
I accidentally left fast-forward on when I loaded King’s Field II up in Retroarch and found that it makes the game move at a “normal” speed, so it doesn’t feel like you’re under water.
I’m not paying this asshole $150 for the privilege of hanging out with him in his empty, wooden shack surrounded by flower monsters.
I had no idea where to go or what to do, so I leveled up several times, and then gave up.
7 Likes
oh now i remember why i hate fe fates
2 Likes
Is this good?
It is so luxe you have no idea.
Look at this menu
The train driving is not too different to the older ones but it feels heavier in a good way. If you like these games or wanna try them I guess this is the easiest way now. The graphics are very good.
7 Likes
now you’re speaking my language
can’t tell exactly how cut-down the PSVR mode is vs the rest/full game
A PlayStation VR-exclusive mode. The gameplay is the same as the arcade version and features 10 missions fine-tuned for virtual reality. It includes six sections of the Yamanote Line from Harajuku to Shinagawa, and three situations: clear morning, noon, and evening.
how convenient
5 Likes
Do not have a helmet so yeah cant speak for vr mode
I take back what I said about Dark Souls: Remastered looking like ass on the Switch, because I played the PC version of DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die™ Edition on PC and holy shit does it FUNCTIONALLY look like ass. They definitely fixed some terrible lighting in the port.
5 Likes
playing the 360 version of dark souls on a laggy old vizio tv in 2012 made that game look as absolutely divine as videogames could ever look. with every rerelease we stray farther from god’s light
9 Likes
Sakuna is apparently 50 hours long and after 3 nights of 2.5 hours I am getting slightly burnt out so shelving it for a bit.
My rice will be drying out in the Autumn sun…forever.
6 Likes