Gotta ask everytime how did y’all deal with the female detective apologizing for being a bitch because she was on the rag and then say she’ll go on a date to make it up to the male detective. Which crossed a line in misogyny for me that I deleted the game in disgust.
4 Likes
I finished Metal Gear Solid 1 and have to say Metal Gear Solid 1 is great wow! I did not notice in the past 20 years how much of it is a love story. I mean it is also a story about nuclear proliferation and a woman’s place on the battlefield and the fall of the soviet union and DNA and gene therapy and test tube babies and how our genes affect us and player-game interaction and being complicit in war crimes and genetic based virsuses and giant robots and cyborg ninjas and liking castlevania and whats this box doing here and war orphans and the scars of the past and just being a soldier and smuggling cigarettes in your stomach.
20 Likes
It certainly doesn’t endear me to the game. I think there’s a lot of cases where the writing of the game actively apes styles or subject matter seen in other hardboiled media and this is an example where it should be removed and nothing would be lost. Suda’s games often have characters discussing what it means to be a man or using sexual conquest as metaphor, and I think he tends to work in a very gendered frame in many cases. I’m not sure if this is just emulating influences or just blindness to personal prejudice but I wouldn’t suggest someone push through those aspects of the writing if they didn’t enjoy it.
This tends to be less of a problem with Ooka’s writing (the part concerning the journalist called Tokio, I think) although there is a scene there where a bartender is partially defined by his sexuality (gay) and it invites a discussion of deviancy between the characters which feels off.
For what it’s worth I know that Suda had misgivings about the direction of some the more sexualised content during the Shadows of the Damned, Lollipop Chainsaw era of Grasshopper. This doesn’t really help the misogynistic parts of these games as they are but I’d like to think he’s reflected on some of this and chilled out a bit over time.
I don’t remember 25th Ward having many particularly egregious parts like that but then it kinda just avoids its female characters altogether save one female detective whose only character trait is ‘badass’.
Edit: I remembered a spoiler thing. I just remembered they set up a female protagonist for whatever the sequel to the 25th Ward is in the bonus chapter of the game’s rerelease which was pretty neat. She just happens to have the ability to see dead people like Tokio does and will presumably have wacky ghostbusting adventures while trying to keep straight grades in school.
4 Likes
voidposting again, i wrote a review and said i hadn’t beaten it yet and then 2 runs later i got 2 the end
6 Likes
i beat deus ex. then saw that invisible war was on sale for $.97 on steam lol. ive heard it’s kind of disappointing but i figured it’s worth a buck
Im having an alright time with it so far? my understanding is it’s a lot dinkier and streamlined for consoles, and i see why that’s a letdown after the first game. Upper Seattle isn’t this cool city block like Hell’s Kitchen, it’s a little shopping mall hub area. but i still get a kick out of sneaking into places i shouldn’t be and piling up everyone’s furniture into a corner
it’s really weird that all weapons share an MP bar. i can see why that might be a problem but i take a fairly conservative approach with this kind of game because i like to make a silent takedown, so i already have a ton of clips
i appreciate that Alex Denton has a strange flat affect and personality like her big brother. the intro level to this game isn’t as immediate or iconic as liberty island but it does right away get into the same stiff, weird tone that i enjoy so much about the first game. Like, everyone in the facility keeps trying to convince you the attack that is blatantly happening is not happening and Alex keeps repeating “but I heard an explosion and definitely saw a man die.” in almost exactly the same tone and cadence each time
the opening cutscene w/ the grey goo attack is pretty striking too even if it can’t hold a candle to bob page ranting about becoming a god
the hologram ai pop singer in the nightclub is cool
11 Likes
Yeah Invisible War got a bad rap but it’s not a horrible game by any stretch. Part of its problem is the story parts always give you three choices to make when it’s choice-making time and one of those choices is usually perceived as the “safest” choice to make but picking it consistently leads to the most boring outcomes. So when you make your choices always pick one of the extreme ones, never the middling one.
3 Likes
I beat Spiritfarer! I loved this game. If it weren’t for Alyx it’d probably my GOTY so far? It’s got a bit of Beyond Good and Evil, a bit of Edith Finch, a bit of Lost Odyssey and dare I say a lil bit of Mother 3. Basically a management sim with an addicting gameloop where you upgrade your floating mother base boat while crafting stuff to make food, structures, upgrades and quest items BUT at the same time also exploring a beautiful world with a bunch of fun, loveable characters. It’s through these characters that the game succeeds in exploring the many different perspectives and circumstances of death.
Anyway here’s my D&D boyfriend sleeping in his nest
Uhh yeah don’t sleep on this game.
12 Likes
I’m playing Trials of Mana (2D version) To add some challenge I’m playing as the werewolf guy only and am never upgrading the others. It is still very easy!
I remember seeing this game as challenging as a ~15 years old and this is making me realize even more how even seemingly trivial games can be difficult for a neophyte.
It’s interesting to see how much time and effort was spent on the final classes both by the game and the community. There are 24 final classes (Out of 36) and I remember like half the discussions around this game being about them, like « DUDE I’m planning to use Wanderer - Magus - Swordmaster this time as my final team because Hawk’s MT stat downs will compliment Duran’s sabers » or whatever
But in the game you only see 3 final classes total per playthrough, and they’re only available for the final ~10% of the game or so. They’re completely superfluous! Yet they’re all everyone was talking about. I think with RPG players there can be this unreasonable obsession with The Character Build At The End Of The Game that’s on full display there
6 Likes
I don’t like it nearly as much as the original, but I enjoyed Invisible War.
It’s much shorter then the original. I seem to remember it being about three hours long (probably longer the first time).
Every now and then I’d just sit down and play through Invisible War.
That’s something the original was too long for.
There’s a charm to it that I find difficult to pin down.
Something about the tone of the writing and the strange line delivery just works really well together.
P.S: The hologram pop singer is a recurring character. 
2 Likes
Yeah each area so far has been like a bite-sized chunk of deus ex. Which is like the difference between a fun size and a king size candy bar, where you know the king size is where the real fun lies but there’s still something appealing about popping a lil morsel of crawl thru vent -> tranq guy -> loot office
it rules that you can jump up and climb into a ceiling vent in this one…
4 Likes
I wish I could like it because the premise is very solid – crafting game about building towards NPC needs in ways that reveal their personality – and it’s just absolutely stuffed with really solid animation.
But I found the writing desperately maudlin and unsubtle and frustratingly inconsistent on characters, only developing a voice for a sentence or two before slipping back into a native ‘modern casual’ tone. It also suffers from that sin of an unconfident writer: dialogue is far too long, nervously meandering over a single point three or four times because words need to fill the space. Just find the joke or character beat or piece of info and give it.
1 Like
There are strong parts of Invisible War but there are also very many weak parts
I do like it more than DXHR
I’m working my way through this right now! I’m pretty enamored with the idea of Animal Crossing But The Island Is A Boat so I’m thinking I’ll like this a lot
you’ll be happy to know the remake recreates this perfectly
MIGHT finish FFT patch debugging this weekend
7 Likes
i decided to continue down my Trackmania wormhole and started playing Trackmania (2020) because i found out it’s also free on the Epic Games Store as long as you dehumanize yourself and make an Ubisoft account. it’s essentially the same core game as Trackmania Nations Forever except it has a kind of nice flat-shaded colorful visual style that reminds me of Nintendo games without being obnoxious or twee about it. the tracks also have some extra variations as far as hazards and things that move you around. there are only like 25 tracks available each season for free outside of the tutorial ones but the “summer tracks” i’ve been playing generally pretty fun and well designed. if i get enough addicted to this game i might consider subscribing so i can play some of the custom content, but i’m definitely not there yet.
3 Likes
I played a bunch of Fall Guys with some friends and there’s no way I’d enjoy this by myself.
I don’t think the game is horrible but I am very clearly not its target market. Many of the challenges can be won by standing in a specific area and not moving much. The obstacle course modes are extremely easy to qualify in if you’ve spent much time in linear 3D Mario levels.
Team events are awful because they screw you over with matchmaking and basically encourage trolling. One mode requires you to roll a ball down a slope with your team but it eventually opens up into a single lane where all teams meet. The dominant strategy is basically to pin an opposing teams ball against a wall. This is not the enjoyable frenzy of a gameshow style obstacle course. It just sucks the joy out of the experience, increasing antipathy toward the player base.
I wasn’t expecting to dislike it quite as much as I do but it’s a neat diversion with friends. If they properly support it through balancing (not just a train of content) and refine the lobby experience then it could have long legs.
6 Likes
i was watching this a bunch and the best strategy is to fucking fool people or troll people and for such a colorful twee looking game it sure is mean as hell, all the strat videos i see involve misleading other players in a way that probably wasnt originally intended, but thats how you win!
minigame collections outside warioware and rhythm tengoku get old to me fast anyway
7 Likes