Games You Played Today: Actress Again: Current Code (Part 1)

[Rudie]

A bunch of us got together and screamed through To The Moon 2: Finding Paradise. It is horribly written, which when it’s all writing is bad. Is there a nice we to criticize it? Dunno Dawg.

I feel this is going to push an essay out of my brain because all the writing about this game seems to be the same. This is the plot, the music is emotional, not as good as To The Moon.

I think this one is actively worse because the twist is even more showing up to a potluck with crasins. I guess I will put a few of them on my plate.

I guess we knew a twist was coming so trying to guess it was part of the game. Then it became if “A is the twist how will they fumble it.” The hypothetical fumble was always the most obvious.

Then the climax happened and an imaginary friend told their host? to grow up.

Thinking on it maybe these are the regrets an asshole rich person who hires a company to change their memories in their last moments would have. A person that did not have any honest regrets or trauma.

But again the whole crux of this plot is this is done to someone dying (usually unable to communicate comatose and on sedatives to lower brain activity.) Whether they change the memories or not they will be lost like tears in the rain. The game isn’t about reforming the person, gaining important information or even getting information to others at all. It is just about privately changing memories seconds before death.

I guess it is great science fiction because i keep thinking about all the ways it is poor, mishandled, thudding, groan-worthy, and yet inspired positive response in people. I want to be better than to just yell at people that love these games to read the 2001 Honda Civic Blue Book.

Like I can’t reconcile peoples positive feelings about this from like moment one I found the writing to be ugh inducing. @Tulpa and @AutomaticTiger both explained it comes from the field of fanfiction.net and TVTropes. I have no connections with those fields and will continue to do so. It is so alien to what I consider good or emotionally involved writing (the games). Openly show these quirks that do not relfect an old man, or a widow, or an adult son, or multiple PH.D holders. So much of the comedy feels like the randomness that comes from a chatroom. Hadouken. Obtuse (but not too obtuse) Song of Fire and Ice reference.

wow maybe I do have a lot to say about this game. Like why is the most animation in the entire game devoted to a car parking and the doors opening? You certainly watched a Charlie Kaufman film then made this. Can I wear my “inspirations” that boldly on my sleeve?

[Rudie]

Oh I had a fantastic time with this hunk of crap and would love to scream through the next one with friends. Bad bad game great experience gave me a lot to think about so I guess it is high art.

[Tulpa]

best kow otani soundtrack without a doubt, and yes sky odyssey is best arcadey flight sim ever.

[Tuxedo]

Heroland sucks

The ads boasted that its writer worked on Mother 3 and composer worked on Megaten, surprise the writing and music are the two worst parts of this dreadful game

It’s very weird seeing this Mother-inspired spritework for a game so artificial and basic

[winkerwatson]

I am playing Reach.

Hope it has bosses like Halo2.

[rubbertherapy]

run escape world tour

[HOBO]

Finding Paradise: a dying man’s #1 regret was abandoning his imaginary friend after she kindly told him to grow up.

Then he dies and she becomes a next generation Bonzi Buddy.

I am repeating you, yes, it’s okay though, this is kinda like purging I think. I need to get this out of my system.

This game has seemingly sold hundreds of thousands of copies. This author has a devoted fanbase. Good for him.

There are so many people out there who love reading but have never read a book. I do not think ill of these people but I do believe our world has failed them.

It is interesting playing a story game made by someone whose work seems to be mainly informed by J-RPGs and fanfiction*. He is clearly pinching from certain films but I am not certain he has seen any of them. I cannot imagine this author sitting through Adaptation. I can picture him reading charliekaufman.fandom.com though. He is yoinking various props and plot points but passing on implementing any storytelling techniques that weren’t already featured in a video game.

I beat Yakuza 3 yesterday. I started it 6 months ago. My final playtime was over 40 hours. Much of that was spent idling, because I frequently found myself incredibly bored by all the cutscenes about criminal conspiracies. There was one scene late in the game where characters spent what felt like an hour talking about the 1987 stock market crash and how it was tied to arms dealers and that’s why the CIA’s painted a bullseye on my orphanage and I promise you this was all way more dull than it reads. Also I may have gotten the roles mixed up there. I do not care. I barely paid attention, because it was terrible. And that disregard for the player’s time is par for the course with video games. This is the only visual storytelling medium where this sort of thing is tolerated. You don’t get bullshit like that in Kazuo Koike comics. He took a few pages to let you know how the conspiracy worked and then it was right back to all the sex and violence cuz that’s whateveryone paid to see.

This is stuff we’ve all said before but I’ve been thinking about it constantly lately…!

All these games that are just about games made by people who seemingly have no interest in anything but games and boy that’s not healthy eh. Well-meaning people emulating all these horrible techniques and tropes that were established to pad out commercial products so consumers wouldn’t be able to sell their copy to Book-Off the day after release. No consideration paid to pacing or the player’s time – this is how video game storytelling functions, this is how it will continue to function, this is what we like because this is what we know.

Thinking a lot about wikis, and lore, and how to millions of people something like a thoughtful or affecting or well executed narrative is not nearly as interesting as TV Tropes. Remember that first Harry Potter movie? I think that was the first time I felt like I was watching a moving version of Cliff Notes. People loved it! I think lots of things changed after that movie. I wish more games were like that shitty movie. I don’t ever wanna hear about how, like, crystals charge themselves ever again.

I do like that this guy is possibly a millionaire but he’s still making games in RPG Maker. I greatly respect that. Hopefully he pays his collaborators well.

There’s a point 2/3 through this game where you’re granted the ability to run and somehow that was more painful than the 4 hours I’d spent shuffling around at a snail’s pace. Knowing this was always possible but this dickhead was denying me. And then soon after he took it away. Cruelty.

I am very glad I played this game, because it was very educational, because it was very bad.

*Yes, this describes most game developers. There’s a reason why I only post here.

[HOBO]

Anyway new Bachelor Soft motto

[Father.Torque]

I played a few hours of J/O Crystal Apocalypse with shrug and tulpa. They were like: what if Destiny, but also Dark Souls, but also the shooting of a mid budget PS2 thirps and the level design of Gauntlet. It is a very bad game that proves the iron clad rule that there is no such thing as a bad cooperative game.

[Tulpa]

tenouttaten would blast butts while @Father.Torque idled watching a twitch stream of world of warcraft again

[Myspace_Mavis]

They seem like pleasant enough people and the comments are already harsh so not trying to pile on but the article the localizers wrote explaining their process really put me off that game. Too much time spent in the world of computer…is the impression i got

[Tuxedo]

@Myspace_Mavis

They seem like pleasant enough people and the comments are already harsh so not trying to pile on but the article the localizers wrote explaining their process really put me off that game. Too much time spent in the world of computer…is the impression i got

Yeah… that was hard to read. Too much time spent in the world of computer is right

They also come off as embarassingly overeager and trying too hard to elicit a laugh (They added puns and references when they felt the game wasn’t funny enough?) which just kills the mood

From what I’ve seen I really don’t think the original script was very good anyway though

[LuizPSC]

Finally back to play the second campaign in Blue Planet (the freespace 2 mod), War in Heaven part 1 sure has a lot of text to read, i only managed to get into 3 missions for now, i am liking it though, i think at the moment it has a more narative focus on the gameplay, showing more about how this war is heavy on the Solaris side.

And the protagonist is kind of going Raiden route of enjoying murder and death in conflict with her pacifist sides that is the norm in the Solaris culture, even the primary form of laser they have is to stop ships for going to places and not destryoing them, that changes when they have to fight the militaristic GTA gamers with those big ass ships.

but those fights are really cool! and i love seeing those big ships fight

[Broco]

@Tuxedo

They added puns and references when they felt the game wasn’t funny enough?

This is standard practice for translating comedy material. You have to drop puns in some places and there’s no way to add them in the exact same line usually, so you compensate by making up a pun where you spot an opportunity elsewhere, to maintain the same overall density of puns. If the translation isn’t funny, then that would be a deeper betrayal of the spirit of the original text

You have to be extra careful with references though because it needs to be both known to the target audience and also knowable by the original author of the text, otherwise the translation ceases to be “invisible”. We all vividly and irritably remember translations that don’t navigate between that Scylla and Charybdis correctly and therefore “adding references” got a bad reputation. But you have seen it done 10x more often while appreciating it and without realizing the translator was responsible.

[TheGrimCorsair]

Let’s see, let’s see, what the fuck have been I up to?

Well, Borderlands 3 was free to play for a week, so fire balled through that with my brother. Was a good time, might pick up the inevitable GOTY edition. Played the character with their own pocket power armor and had a riot. Sound design for the guns is the best the series has ever had, ditto the gunplay itself. The designers are all quite a bit more distinct from one another than previous iterations and there’s not really a joke manufacturer anymore, imo. Main story isn’t as tightly paced as BL2, plus is side quests don’t as often feel as jarring to step out on. Still has Gerarbox writing, though not as bad overall? Kinda? Look, it’s Gearbox, it’s Borderlands, it’s (probably) not gonna make you a fan if you already can’t stand the game.

What else… been playing Remnant: From the Ashes with my brother. Got to the final boss of the campaign on normal and then I just decided to re-roll the campaign and start over 'cause that bossfight just sucks. Dodge two attacks, get sucked into shadow realm where you take constant damage and fight infinitely respawning minions to get a buff (that doesn’t appear to have a HUD element attached to it), then pop out, shoot the boss, rinse and repeat until the boss drops. Most of the other bosses have been a little more interesting, but tbh, there’s not a lot to them. The dimensional roaming and random-ish encounters and variability are the most interesting parts so far, imo.

Picked up Blasphemous, Project Warlock, and Noita.

Barely played Noita, seems neat, doesn’t make a lick of sense so far. Not much to say at the moment.

Project Warlock… eh, haven’t really dug too much into the rogue-like aspects of it. The map design kinda sucks for a game that gives you a minimap that feels slightly more useful than not having a map. Have dug the whole being able to customize my arsenal aspect, and the attribute system seems like it’ll be interesting to play around with down the road.

Blasphemous feels, heavy? Digging the sense of weight I get from the character’s movements, and the art direction seems pretty great. Seemed really difficult at first but so far that’s not really been the case if I’m not playing it while I can barely keep my eyes open.

There might be more thoughts rattling around in the ol’ noggin’ on the above games, but hey, it’s 2:20 AM and my thought-process-thingy has about the same consistency and clarity of purpose as a carton of milk left out in the sun in Death Valley.

So, that is to say, what was I talking about?

Oh right, played some Warframe and got a few different warframes building to feed to the new system coming out next week-ish, that lets you give up a standard 'frame in exchange for being able to take the (dev chosen) power it donates and apply it to another 'frame. The amount of people mad about it is hilarious*. It makes a few frames a bit more powerful when solo-ing but by-and-large isn’t gonna have too much of an effect on parties.

*It’s mostly exhausting, miss me with the “This is how we balance” takes, you aren’t saying anything that hasn’t been gone over of [n] times since forever ago (where n = some huge number that walks the border between complete absurdity for the sake of humor and reasonably likely to be accurate)

[tt_zop]

Tried Flight Simulator (included with GAME PASS), which is my first time trying one of these. Made a failed effort to buzz my house which I imagine is what 99% of people do when they boot it up but holy lord, I will need some serious tutorializing. Even with all the assistance turned on I’m scrolling through 900 inputs just to find the throttle button and scrambling to figure out how to do just about anything else.

It’s really surreal to accidentally nose dive into the ground and just kinda bonk off it like you’re in a mario kart instead of a hyper realistically rendered 747/planet earth.

[Felix]

I’m waiting for mine to finish unpacking assets on every core of my CPU before I have to join a meeting

microsoft sure keeps finding new and interesting ways to reinvent game packaging and distribution

[HOBO]

Have I complained recently about the Windows Game Store version of PSO2 reinstalling itself every time I restarted my computer which lead to it gobbling up 300GB of my brand new HD

I had to download some special apps and edit a bunch of permissions just to uninstall it

I’m lucky I don’t have a data cap I guess

I am going to have so many thoughts about Phantasmagoria. I think this game may change my life.

[wourme]

@HOBO

Phantasmagoria.

@Sykel

https://youtu.be/AnhI-5cuhiI?t=1h46m47s

Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh (1996) PC Playthrough - NintendoComplete

[u_u]

a good concept for a found footage horror movie would be a Let’s Play of an imaginary 90’s cd rom adventure game that gradually becomes incredibly cursed