I haven’t yet, I need to pick it up
1 Like
the DLC is really good. it sort of inverts the tone from subtext to something very direct. there’s also a small mechanical shift in the last level that is so rad.
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Macro is my favorite part of Umurangi Generation because it feels like an epilogue to the mechanical progression and the narrative. The stakes are higher and the irony inherent to the Hope Joy In The Face of Apocalypse vibe is made excruciatingly apparent with some of the locations and things you see during it, and you get some really cool movement and camera equipment options. I love UG for all the reasons mentioned, but especially as a young person pretty much reconciled to the idea that my generation will be the last generation to watch the world die - as the game suggests.
4 Likes
Yeah I really love the almost fruitless effort to document the end of the world just to have documented it
Everything about the game feels highly personalized because the shots I take are my shots, and no one else has taken the same photographs as me, so it feels like I had a genuine connection to the world through that mechanic.
6 Likes
The Last Remnant until the beautiful, elaborate tile patterns tired my eyes
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Spent some ratio and downloaded The Medium cause I’m interested in horror games by default and somehow I had heard Akira Yamaoka did the soundtrack. When I launched it an saw BLOOBER TEAM in the intro sequence, I groaned so loud. I had no idea. What little interest I had in spending time with the game tanked, but I persisted on a little longer when I saw it had fixed camera angles.
Then after 40 minutes of…nothing really happening at all except moving dumpsters and experiencing a ton of lag…I just decided not to play anymore of it. Sad that a horror game has to be like this to get the budget this got 
3 Likes
i have been playing a lot of warcraft 3 reforged and starcraft 2 custom maps and it is making me wistful for 2004-era tegiminis playing whatever fucking TFT map he ran across online. it’s the same quality as hl1 mods to me, this really wonderful period where lots of pc games shipped with accessible mod tools and average people made (at least in WC3) tower defense games where your builder was “angel” and your ultimate tower was “the god killer” with the description “he killed god, so he’s god now”.
there’s a really precious quality to game design like that to me, like reading a middle schooler’s fanfiction, where someone with no preconceptions makes something that speaks directly to them
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Still trying with Vantage Master V2, but the “plugging away at” has turned into “trying to find any foothold in”. Phase 6 starts with a very open-ended amphibian fight against a Witch, a Master that has much better MP stats than I do. There is an obvious location for a first “base” in the west of the starting area which allows you control over a decent chunk of mana stones (5-7 out of 15), but focusing on just holding those leaves my class (the Knight) at a pretty severe resource disadvantage.
I want to become the Vantage Master, but the way forward is becoming less and less clear…
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i’m pining for this period like all the time, it was so fun to experience
1 Like
No real thread to put this so:
was listening to the Great Sea music from Wind Waker and realizing that the escapism I yearned for as a child is not something I care for anymore. I loved the idea of this large, open world full of mystery and treasure and fights and islands etc. It very much hit my imagination in a specific way, where anything was possible and I could just…be in a place where I had freedom.
Pointedly, I had very little freedom as a kid, especially at that time. I was homeschooled with no friends and overprotective parents, so my only real escape from this was games and the internet.
As an adult I have, like, a car and I’ve been on cross-country road trips and on a couple of boats and y’know what? The world is full of possibilities and there’s treasure and I can get in a fight wherever I like, and it’s really not all it’s cracked up to be. Especially the fights.
As an adult, instead of freedom, I’m sort of looking for…systems? Little clocks that keep turning, that I can throw wrenches into or install new cogs or just observe. Even games I like that don’t fit this very well (Burnout Paradise) are more about observation or a very specific sensation (crashing cars, and going fast) than they are about freedom.
I have freedom and frankly, it’s kind of a pain in the ass. I don’t know what to do with myself. Gimme something that makes sense, or that I can poke at.
Minecraft is the big exception but even then, it’s all about maps and documentation and transportation - making infrastructure to shrink and explain a world, not an endless world full of possibilities.
anyway just some thinkin
19 Likes
I vibe with the sort of escapism I think you’re describing, I want to get lost in a combinatorial shuffle and shake.
I haven’t been playing much lately, I played herzog zwei last night. The ai is kind of a fucker, but also predictable, I look forward to The Beautiful Game stream of it
Retooling unions bit by bit in the Last Remnant to take advantage of synergy attacks, something that I randomly stumbled upon, that the game does not explain AT ALL, along with most of the other battle mechanics – and some of the early tutorials explain mechanics erroneously
This game rules, couldn’t imagine trying to play this years ago when Google queries gave much more primitive results
Like, the game is a fucking iceberg, and you get back exactly what you put into it
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Going from playing through FF7 for the nth time to FF6 for the first time is quite the tonal whiplash! Haha. I probably shouldn’t have immediately followed Sabin’s storyline, considering.
Good game but I’m a bit out of my depth with it.
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balan wonderworld demo was atrocious
i’m sure some 14 year old with discerning taste in games will like this, writing “this harkens back to the days of klonoa and tomba” in their blog
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hearkens to the days of Frogger: the Great Quest imo
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Under all the glitz theyre pretty similar imo, more similar than dissimilar anyway
3 - 7 is a good run before the series became Setpiece Fantasy with stops in mmo land
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same. the movement feels absolutely terrible, divorced from fun.
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Heat Signature continues to confuse me. 1 hour of mild slogging misery followed by joyous hooting at finishing an absurd personal mission after getting thrown out of an airlock 3 times. It’s a roller coaster.
I like that you can roll out an extremely powerful character in about an hour though, if you play the game right. Ended up with a teleporting stealthy key-stealing sword murderer in about that much time. Learning to use consumables is also deeply important.
Felt great to retire a character after putting their “idiot daughter” into the rescue tube.
2 Likes
I played a bunch of Heat Signature one weekend when I was sick, and the game just feels like a fever dream to me now.
I think it was fun figuring out the systems, but once you’ve “solved” it there’s not much meat left. I don’t think it’s very tightly designed!
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Started playing the original Final Fantasy VII on switch with my feet. It kind of makes remake very impressive to me and seven is still technically impressive game. Unfortunately having no way to completely pause time during battle and the complexity of some menus make the aforementioned foot control difficult to stomach. I find it hilarious that I’ve only played for an hour but have made about 12 hours worth of progress (by remake standards) so far even with my feet. I will probably play a little bit more but it’s pretty stressful having to select any menu option that is not one of two Extremes. Some of the SHIT they used to do to get cameras to angle up was pretty remarkable though.
13 Likes