only semi-related but: it would be interesting to see what a 2020’s equivalent of an ABDN manifesto would be.
i’m generally kind of exhausted by critical manifestos at this point. they’re often just another excuse to roll one of the endless varieties of “how this thing i represent is different and better from the rest of the video game industry/how we can fix the entire videogame industry” and like… been there, done that. many times over. but if they include a lot of good writing about specific games and like mixed the artsier and the more esoteric choices with things that are more known then it could be cool! there are so many games the last 12 years or whatever to account for, not to mention changing tastes about stuff from the past (can’t imagine you’d include Gears of War on a more recent list). anyway this is all dreaming because lord knows i would never care enough to care about doing anything like this myself.
I agree with all this but I’ll stand up for Gears any day, even if it couldn’t sustain more than a game and a half the labored pace of unloading a full clip into a pile of gray meat just feels like exhaling through gritted teeth and it’s seeped into my bones
I’ve been feeling lately that this is an underrated major problem of videogame design across a wide swath of games, not just precision platformers. It’s started to feel so hollow whenever I rise to an arbitrary threshold of skill or luck on a local challenge, and then the moment I reach it I forget about what I learned forever, even if in fact there is further room for improvement and enjoyment. Basically every game featuring “boss battles” has this problem, for instance.
Part of the reason I’ve been fascinated by speedruns is that they bypass the designer’s ham-handed imposition of thresholds and make every last increment of skill (even in things like menu navigation!) get infused with meaning again. Indeed Celeste in particular truly comes to life in speedruns, as you’ve likely heard.
I guess the Regular Opinion on MGS5 is that the story parts are among the worst and the game parts are among the best. I have no idea, that could certainly be true. But after doing the intro chapter/tutorial thing, god DAMN I love this shit
I finished Chrono Trigger, and then I moved on to Chrono Cross instantaneously. I just got to Termina, the second town. Call me what you want, but I’m immediately enjoying this game significantly more than Trigger. It’s less elegant in many ways, but I adore the maximalist approach it’s taking, and its bizarre tone.
The battle system is unique and hits a “brain candy” level of digestible complexity. The writing, music, and thematics are deeply melancholy, but in a reflective, contemplative way that softens the mood. Between surprisingly poetic lines about regrets and missed chances there are frequent extremely silly little jokes, and you’ll often run into characters just shouting nonsense with too many exclamation marks.
The one big criticism I have so far is that the environments you traverse can often be just as soupy and illegible as they were in Chrono Trigger. It’s funny how that aspect of the art carried over. The number of times I’ve tried to walk through something that’s supposed to be a sheer cliff, or thought I was entering a cave that turned out to be a mere shadow on the wall…
looking back it’s actually weird to me how little attention i paid to chrono cross, given how obsessed with chrono trigger i was. i think it was mostly just because i didn’t (and would never) have a playstation and it was pretty easy to ignore.
but i do remember reading about it before it came out and kind of writing it off as not being a ‘real sequel’ because it didn’t have the same characters and setting. obviously that’s dumb but i was a kid so i’ll forgive myself.
it did kind of make me think about what the ultra entitled gamers of today would think of a bizarre move like that. like an ostensible sequel to a beloved game just being this wild departure from the original that never the less still has enough to do with it that you can’t just dismiss it. i don’t think that could ever happen with anything mainstream anymore
I’m a massive fan of chrono cross in all its dreamy maximalism, but imo the battle system has aged dramatically worse than the rest of it – lots and lots and lots of non-decisions. I’ve heard people criticize the cast for being too large and cheaply differentiated, but I prefer to keep in mind that they inexplicably went to the trouble of writing dialogue for the big pink dog as if you’d want to keep him in your party for the entire game.
it also does a really good job of creating its own mysteries within a very loose extrapolation of the original game… up until it doesn’t. every time it references specific characters or dates from chrono trigger (mostly in its final third) it feels immediately like a mistake, and they could’ve just excised those bits because what’s left around them is still great!
Forgot to mention I tried to play Mooncrash and did like two runs and uninstalled. All I cared about was the framing story of the corp slave imprisoned in their homey little capsule. I spent more time staring at all their stuff than playing the actual game part. I felt no frisson being forced to ride the ragged edge and Make Do, I far preferred instead the ability to choose and plan which tools I would have and take my time exploring in the main game. That’s probably the biggest thing - I loathe a game with a universal time limit. No matter how much they seem aimed at and built for me, I just cannot get into a roguelite to save my life.
well, Grandia is extremely charming. i’m enjoying it more than i thought it would, to be honest. only about 2 hours in so far, but i am really enjoying the world it’s building and the shounen tropes.
We made one of these for Hinge Problems about 2010 The Decade and never got around to recording it. But I can send you the list I still stand by it!
@Father.Torque oh good you went for the main game absolutely do not 100% Ground Zeroes lord have mercy
@OneSecondBefore thanks I was about to start this on my vita, saw your post, sighed, and now have to track down a Japanese ISO and play it in Japanese because that’s the kind of person I have become. I have to see what the original language I can probably only follow 80% of was.
A girl confessed their love for me and apparently we lived a pretty good life even if I failed every single test. I somehow got into a trade school and we lived happily ever after.
There was even a small twist near the end telling me I needed to do a second playthrough (eh maybe not, will maybe scrub a longplay of a SECRET ROUTE.)
Boy there are a lot of shooters on this PC Engine Mini. Next pick up will focus on Sapphire and maybe start Snatcher.
I’ve been playing through Vantage Master V2’s scenario mode since I’ve been in a turn-based strategy mood. I like the fairly limited and linear progression (you just pick stages off of the world map, each stage gives your character 1 level and 1 item that either lets you summon a new type of unit or a new spell). I appreciate this because I usually get really lost in the weeds with grand strategy elements in other games (I stopped playing my Total War Warhammer 2 campaign because at some point having to manage armies on 2-3 different fronts just became overwhelming).
This game gets hard kind of fast. At a baseline it’s about territory control and units that are more or less hard counters of one another (sort of a Rock->Paper->Scissors->Heaven situation), and the AI makes very few mistakes in regards to picking what units to summon and who to target, which can make some maps feel like climbing uphill in rain, where every step up is hard-fought and every mistake costs a ton. It doesn’t really feel “unfair” (in the sense that the AI isn’t inflating its numbers, it just knows all the HP values and how much damage X could to Y at any given moment), so you it feels like you can get better at it. Case in point, after a 30-minute match on a map that was more or less a straight line with a chokepoint (reducing the strategy almost entirely to team composition), I managed to secure momentum over my opponent in the following level (pictured) within a handful of turns, which felt really good.
I keep rolling the title of the game around in my head as I play it, as a reminder of what’s important to win. It really does all come down to securing a vantage point and maintaining it.
I am enjoying dicking around in the Gears 5 escape mode. Too many classes to keep track of, I don’t know what to start with. Haven’t touched campaign yet.
Yeah this game is swell. The sfx are sort of burned into my head and I last played it over a decade ago!
Speaking of free Falcom games for Windows, I remember Lord Monarch being pretty neat too. I don’t remember the specifics too well, but I remember you don’t really have that much direct control in it, almost like a god game. You’re making some high-level decisions and then watching the simulation, making small adjustments as it goes. It’s all about high-level strategy and exploiting the layout and choke points in a given map. It’s fun to watch, almost like cellular automata.
