somebody is really into the monster rancher metagame
3 Likes
Apparently the strategy for playing this properly involves carefully managing your stat growth so that you donāt meet too many of the girls too early, specifically to minimize how much juggling you have to do to prevent bombs from tanking your progress.
2 Likes
Iāve been curious about Mighty Gunvolt for a while because the main mechanic the player has access to just looked really overpowered in trailers. How could the game compensate for this?
The answer is: Levels are trivial but meant to be replayed for score, and bosses are still challenging because they have a lot of HPs compared to regular enemies. Fair solution I guess, but: booooooo
The bestvpart of the game is menus. We may never see these giant NDS menus ever again, RIP
Iāve bought the Fairune collection. Itās like what if ARPGs had no battles, no story and no puzzles. Not much. I get it, the pixel art is good, exploring can be fun, etc. Itāsā¦ hollow. This is a purgatory game. You play it on deathās bed, because you sort of want to relive the memory of playing Mana games in your childhood but as a less taxing experience
I cleared all of Dicey Dungeons, I love it. The whole backstage final boss rules. I donāt know when was the last time a final boss gave me these goosebumps
Instead of being one deep roguelike the game feels more like a multitude of tiny roguelikes. Each character is drastically different from each other (ok, warrior and thief are kinda close) and they each have to go through 6 episodes, most with completely different rulesets. Then thereās the final stage and youāre kind of done! Itās kind of refreshing seeing a roguelike with a reasonable end point like this.
For the most part thereās just enough familiarity and just enough novelty to make each run exciting right until the end. At least until you try the witchās hellish later episodes (I used savescumming, which the game seems cool with)
The little touches in this game are wonderful.
I really like how thereās an enemy alchemist who can use a potion to turn into a bear and if you play as the thief you can steal that potion and transform into a bear with its own moves for the reminder of the run
13 Likes
With Dicey Dungeons, thereās this nice balancing act where I each episode doesnāt have so much depth that youād want to play it ten times, but with the variety of 36 different rulesets, i was hooked. It felt nice to start a run knowing that it probably wasnāt going to last more than 30 minutes.
3 Likes
also this remake is way too dark in indoor areas
2 Likes
Wow thatās horrible.
2 Likes
This is Half-Life butā¦ not? What is this
MGS5 Ground Zeroes: I like that these missions all take place in this one playground and thereās no inventory to speak of. Itās a cute little bite sized videogame version of MGS
4 Likes
black mesa, the remake of hl1
Itās only needed to do that for Shiori runs. I wonder how many players chose to date the girl featured on the gameās cover for their first run, and ended up with Shiori inexplicably hating them more and more despite dating her every week and giving all the correct answers to the dialogue questions. (That was my experience)
I dunno if the designers thought through properly how Tokimemo 1ās mechanics would actually play out. None of it makes much sense or is particularly satisfying or wish-fulfilling. Like you have to date everyone instead of your favorite(s)? Also staying alone and focusing on raising the stats they value instead of spending time with them actually strengthens your relationship? Like why tho.
6 Likes
I played the SNES version of Tokimemo 1 in ~2001 back when it seemed notable and exciting. Something about the idea of a personal-relationships-oriented game with a formalized mechanical system sparks interest in a western audience, I think because it resonates with CRPG/pen-and-paper-RPG values. Games like Facade were attempting a similar thing around that time too.
Itās curious that Tim Rogers is revisiting it now. It seems like heās maintained the flame in his mind of the original early-2000s IC interests/values/ideals that everyone else lost interest in since. He was the one who drew my attention to the Phoenix Wright series, another angle on the same ideal, and his incandescent enthusiasm for what it was trying to do sparked my project to fan translate a part of Phoenix Wright 3. I havenāt watched his videos on Tokimemo yet because they are so long, but maybe I should.
I noticed Tom James, an enthusiast for the genre today, is particularly interested in games by Enterbrain, which is one of the few studios that carried forward that torch instead of committing to the linear VN format. I wonder how the mechanics on their late-2000 games have developed the idea and whether theyāve solved some of these problems.
9 Likes
played some celeste today and itās pretty ok, but i donāt really care much for what these hard games built around minimally short challenges tend to turn out like. you get these fairly strict layouts where you have to do something with high precision. itās very unforgiving cause it can afford to be and that kinda just makes it annoying.
you repeat failure at a fast and constant frequency until you manage to get it just right one time and then you move on forever. it affords them to design challenges i kinda just donāt want to do.
i respect it, but i donāt think i need to play more of it.
17 Likes
Super Mario Galaxy removed from the novelty is something to play while listening to 4 hour podcasts (?)
3 Likes
however many years after the ABDN Manifesto, I have now finally for myself played Spartan Total Warrior. can confirm, it rules. fantastic sound design. crunch, splat.
2 Likes
this was our directorās last game at Total Assembly. It was easy brownie points to tell him how rad it was and then complain about Viking
ā¦not that Iād abuse something like that
11 Likes
why would you ever not flatter someone when you can do so earnestly
have you seen my sexts
5 Likes
oh dear
you and Iā¦are from two different worlds
7 Likes
Iām from Michigan
14 Likes