Hoping to do this soon myself. Gonna get it while it’s on sale.
3 Likes
i wouldn’t feel too bad, ime this is often how playin smt goes. games rule so hard but overstay their welcome – that being said i’m bumpin like 50-something hours in the threeds version of devil survivor (which only has a 42hr main story listed on hltb) so maybe u just gotta find the right style of pervert number game.
if u want something short and different i’d recommend pandragsag or parasite eve which are both brisk and exciting and beautiful.
11 Likes
Finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider, turns out the magic artifact is in fact magic so you are in fact responsible for all those natural disasters and the thousands who died in them. Also the monstrous natives are decent folks so it’s… still kinda racist actually. Anyways it wraps up with Lara finding inner peace so it was all worthwhile~
9 Likes
i remember this review of the game more than the actual game itself which i finished
edit: oh this is for the first of the reboot series, whatever, they’re all the same probably
7 Likes
I still never played the original due to how rapey & torture porny everything made it look, so the only thing beyond that I know of it is this vid as well. The repeated horrid deaths are actually what finalized my “you know what, just never play this” feeling.
FWIW the death animations in Shadow are for the most part no longer Mortal Kombat-esque (older MK, not the recent ultra-detailed gore ones) but there are a couple that are a bit much.
5 Likes
I appreciate how Kingdom Hearts 1.5, despite being a from scratch remake because they lost the original source code, is so accurate that it still has the vines in Tarzan world that desync in their paths so you have to reload the room to progress. That is dedication to preservation.
9 Likes
why does every single developer, without fail, lose the source code to every single game they’ve ever made anyway. like, what the fuck else are you doing. good thing they never release the source code to their games anymore, why do that when you can instead lose it
11 Likes
I remember when this game was universally considered a feminist triumph, because I guess the rape allegories of slasher flicks were peak feminism, while the icky original games were disgusting relics because, uhh, triangle boobies.
Been having some big Myst thoughts! Stop me if this is too obvious… But the the linking books are totally a metaphor for programming a video game, right? Writing a book that creates a world you can enter… I recall that in Riven there’s even talk about, like, patching the text of a book to troubleshoot bugs with the world’s tectonics or whatever.
So good daddy Atrus is a benevolent creator, a renaissance man who writes worlds and then treats them well and works to improve the lives of their inhabitants. He’s high-minded and philosophical, and he’s practicing his art for the betterment of mankind. He’s the idealized ethical artisan programmer that any artistically-minded Californian computer guy of the 90’s looks up to.
His two sons, however, are monsters. Sirrus uses the skills he’s inherited from his father to close off entry to his father’s worlds, subjugate their inhabitants, and extract and hoard their wealth. He’s the greedy, objectivist programmer out to strike it rich, in opposition to the open-source community’s ethos of free information sharing.
Achenar is a brute who uses his skills to develop weapons and implements of torture that he uses to torment the inhabitants of his father’s worlds. He’s the programmer who doesn’t give a shit about ethics and uses his skills to go work for a weapons manufacturer.
In the end, you get the good ending by sealing away the two evil progeny and saving the father, who’s been trapped by their machinations.
So yeah, you can totally read Myst as a fable on the ethical paths available for Californian programmers of the 90’s.
14 Likes
You see why Rand Miller fell into LLM usage it is literally what he has dreamed about his whole life.
9 Likes
hello
hi
I have drunken deep of the 5G and I must phone game post
Snowbrick: holy shit the game survived to its one-year anniversary
I thought it was going to die, but we got horny and now we’re back
I’m excited for the anniversary patch, where we, blank male anime stand-in, gets to commit polygamy
and they made Siris a 5-star limited unit. Siris was, beforehand, the game’s only added 4-star unit, a goofy shotgun character whose joke is that she has no long term memory (her 4-star version is literally named “The Goldfish”) and she has an interesting kit that more or less makes her the only self-sustaining, bruiser-esque character in the game. as someone who likes shotguns and that character archetype, I liked playing her when I could. I like her design too:
anyway, they changed some stuff up for her new limited version:
might be the hair, mostly.
so she’s not a stupid, unkillable shootgunner but instead a kind of broken skill-based damage laser, but I’m willing to forgive them for this because her kit design is of the “fill meter up, cash in for giant hit” variety and that’s also my shit
here’s to another year of repeated content and questionable fashion choices
Old Genshin Impact: I pulled pantsuit lady Arlecchino in April. I only just got good gear for her a week or so ago. very happy that I finally get to enjoy my investment.
I’m actually excited I no longer have to go back to that godforsaken domain what drops those artifacts and the ones for the next unit coming out, whom I thankfully do not care about.
what’s this, the official X account blazed out the reveal for Emilie’s voice actress? well, good thing it won’t be anyone I care about, I say aloud before clicking through and reading the image posted, thus immediately guaranteeing that I’m about to get owned
(she’s voiced by Yoko Hikasa. yes I was extremely owned.)
also they added a new permanent mode this month. one of the complaints against Genshin is that there’s not really any endgame. there’s the Spiral Abyss, which has been there since launch, and that’s it.
(now, there are a number of problems with calling the Abyss “endgame”, in spite of the fact that it’s actively the only thing to build characters for, mostly being that, despite abyss discussion and content making up a lot of the Genshin discourse in certain places, I don’t actually think it’s a thing that the wider playerbase does or cares about, but, well, the only data point in favor of that is the PSN trophy percentage for going down to the bottom floor)
anyway, Imaginarium Theatre is the new “endgame” mode. somehow they created a game mode that doesn’t really appeal to a lot of people? the major stumbling block is having 18 characters at level 70 or above of the three elements they decided to feature for the hardest difficulty, but is otherwise kinda easy, to the point where it’s pretty doable with the trial characters they give. older players don’t really have a problem the requirement, people who have built and invested in their roster run wild over the challenges, meanwhile more casual players, people who just want to play with their favorites and newer players are boxed out
on the upside, its introduction now means we get an extra 1/3rd pull worth of currency every month. it’s hard to say whether or not it’s bad!
New Genshin Impact: so Wuthering HeightsWaves a brand new open-world action RPG anime gacha game where you have access to a wide roster of animes and get to explore a living world, looting chests and killing enemies and
if you are able to read my sarcasm, you will understand that I am criticizing the game for being highly derivative
so the funny thing is, the fact that it’s so blatantly “Genshin Impact from the makers of Punishing Grey Raven, yes they even stole the UI layout, that’s one less UI designer they have to pay” hides the fact that it’s actively a better action game than Genshin. the bosses are more interesting and aggressive, fights aren’t entirely damage checks and they made some fun kits (in theory)
so my real problem is that, they designed every character to more or less revolve around 3 different resource meters and, for me, this makes every character feel the same: I openly recognize that each unit has different rotations and game plans but being beholden to the same meters everyone else means everyone feels like “okay I just swapped in for intro skill, I’m pressing buttons, the mechanic meter is where I want it so I do their thing, their concerto meter is full so now it’s time to end their rotation and outro skill out and swap someone else in, rinse, lather, repeat”
I feel like this is insane, especially coming from talking about Genshin for a few paragraphs, a game that’s 90 characters deep and has, charitably, 4 action buttons, and is rife with actual kit overlap (I can seriously think of at least 4 or 5 characters that are “4 star character but premium”), but I think the wackier, dumber temp combinations possible and the extra team slot make things more bearable? I don’t know, I might be insane
Three Zeds: okay so Zenless Zone Zero just - just - went live, so obviously my opinions about it are bad and early. also they are in no way biased by the fact that RNG gave me two complete teams from the gambling hole for very little outlay
first, I am happy that people are looking at shark maid girl (it feels unfair to call her a shark girl, she is a girl with 80% of a shark sticking out of her tailbone) and going “hey maybe we shouldn’t openly sexualize a character literally portrayed as high school aged”
but also
guys
you’re a little late on this one
anyway, the video game. you press the buttons and it feels good to play. even though everything revolves around filling enemy stundaze meters to put them into breakstun state for big damage, individual characters and team comps feel like they have daylight between them and the initially weird limitation that you can only cycle through your 3-man team in one direction actually means you have to actively think about who you have out when to maximize making big damage. I like that, it’s a tiny bit of thoughtfulness on what’s otherwise Platinum Character Action Game, but it shows how they’re thinking on how these systems interact
also I feel like they probably spent more on animation than some whole games cost to make (I don’t mean like, indie games, I mean other giant Too Big to Fail tentpoles)
it has a sexy wolf man (his Japanese VA is literally Legoshi) and a bear named Ben Bigger
finally I appreciate that they forgot to turn the anti-cheat on and the game is embarrassingly playable on a Steam Deck
Uma Musume Anime Expo Global Preview Beta Thing (no I’m not actually there):
what the fuck is “wit”
8 Likes
The year of the Super Famicom continues. I played one more week of Gokinjo Boukentai. You play a mute-personality-less kindergartener. You do dating sim stat raising during the week and then a dirt simple modern-world RPG on Sundays. You are given very little guidance of where anything is and your town is big and dense.
So most of your play time is walking around aimlessly trying to find where your next flag is. Then you’ll enter a very simple RPG dungeon (this week it was a sewer) and fight very simple Dragon Quest battles.
The art is cute. Most of the stories center around your Ojou-sama rich jerk classmate bullying the other students. I kept thinking I could read a manga by the artist who designed the main character or watch Sazae-san or Chibi-Maruko-chan or even Crayon-Shin-chan.
The best part is the cat with their big ole cat-balls that just does cat stuff all the time. Sometimes they help you in battle but other times they just play with a butterfly or flop down and rub their back. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a game accurately reflect your cat will just run away for a bit.
I appreciate playing it but will certainly not finish it.
7 Likes
Puppet Zoo Pilomy （パペットズー・ピロミィ）
Human Entertainment, PSX, 1996
This is a small game about making chimeric animals from parts and having them run around in different biomes.
I found out about it from a big Japanese list of PSX sim games. Despite being Japan-exclusive, it turns out that it has a full English mode including voiceover for some reason, so if you don’t know Japanese you can still play it if you like.
The premise of the game is very simple. A local scientist, Dr. Polygon, has created a machine that generates animal parts.
However, he needs your help to put the animals together and bring them to life, using a touch of heart. The heart you have to give is represented by “heart points.” You start with 2000 heart points, and it takes 50 to generate a set of animal parts, but you can get more heart points by talking to villagers and donating animals you make to the zoo and things like that. It’s so easy to get more that the points are basically a strange cardiac form of window dressing. Otherwise, the main action of the game is slapping together animals, setting them loose in various biomes, and going and looking at them.
The game has a remarkably byzantine interface for what it is. For example, if you want to place an animal in a biome, you have to interact with the mirror in your living room for some reason and pick from a menu. (The game calls the animals “puppets,” despite how the dialogue makes it clear that they are meant to be living animals. The little yellow creature is Pilomy, by the way, so that’s where the game’s name comes from all told.)
Then, because there seems to be no way to leave the biomes other than resetting the console, you have to save beforehand or you’ll end up losing your progress. To save, you have to walk to the left side of your screen in your living room to enter your bedroom (no indication there’s anything there as you can see) and then interact with the moon on the wall. The menu that comes up gives you the default option to quit, but you can also choose to continue, and only then does it ask if you want to save. Etc. etc.
The whole game is kind of like this. I looked all over online for a manual, but one was not forthcoming, so at first the game felt deeply opaque and honestly I still have some unanswered questions. Sarah Winchester might approve.
On another note, the game has a fun wacky “'90s multimedia” art style. You can probably tell already, but here’s a couple of loading screens just to round out the impression.
Sadly, on that topic, it has oddly long load times (although you can ease this in a emulator by using turbo). Combined with the mazelike UI, this gives the game a kind of rough, hobbyish feel, except that you can tell they had full-time graphics and audio professionals working on it and did their best to get all they could out of them.
One rather amusing outcome of this dynamic is how you access the animal-building screen. Rather than just pick from a main menu or something, you enter this rocket ship Ferris wheel building:
Once inside, you first have to speak to the attendant, then select a set of animal parts:
After that, you pick one of the three vehicles to travel to the Assembly Factory in. As you can see, your choices are a sunfishlike submarine, a spinning teacup, or a tie-dyed station wagon, all of which can fly. Each one comes with a unique cutscene, and a different background and soundtrack for the animal assembly screen afterwards.
I like how this lets you change things up in presentation terms when you go to build animals—it helps keep the process fresh. I don’t think your choice of vehicle has any impact on the resulting animal, but that’s not so bad in this case really, since it leaves you free to pick the vehicle based purely on your aesthetic whims in the moment.
To touch on the music overall, I think some of it is a bit typical for the time period, but it’s done with much enthusiasm and there’s a remarkable amount of it for the size of the game. I do like some of the tracks a fair bit too. It’s very much of the “upbeat '90s cuica-driven videogame bonanza” school of composition on the whole. You can listen to the OST here if you like:
As a side note, one of the unanswered questions I still have is what exactly determines whether or not the animal is animated when you place it in the biome. If you pick totally mismatched animal parts, generally the animal stays still. I think that maybe it will walk around if you use matching legs—perhaps not exactly with the animal but maybe more in terms of the color of the parts in the part-choosing screen…anyway, more testing is needed, but here’s a zebrawolfcowlizard walking around:
While we’re here, there are two last points of dazzling inscrutability in the interface I want to mention. One of them is that you can, uh, I guess feed the animal(???), but all that seems to entail is that you press square, these buttons appear, you pick one, and then a little semi-random emoji drops down:
You get some heart points if a smiley comes up but beyond that I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with this. Also, if you press start, a spinning peach-colored wheel appears in the sky with a “dubdubdub” sound, and no other obvious effect:
Truly amazing. 
For me this screen carries the game into masterpiece territory, whatever else you might say about it.
38 Likes
I’m not sure if it’s ever intended but I can’t help but read Atrus as well-meaning but often negligent given the power he wields which I think gels well with the programmer ideals interpretation. Ultimately the Art often leads to just as many problems as new frontiers it opens up and Atrus usually remains very romantic about it all despite his immediate relatives’ actions. His approach is to hotfix rather than to prevent which extends to his own fatherhood.
9 Likes
1996
1999
16 Likes
Sand Land
so far
Is My kinda game.
I’m starting to emerge from the tutorialzation stage and its looking really good.
Modes so far have been exploring, direct fighting via melee, sneaking and projectile combat via vehicles.
All of which feel good.
The stealth especially. Its sort of Metal Gear Jr. No radar or sight cones but there are emblems over enemies’’ heads that show their suspicion or likeliness to notice you given your position. Noticing you becasue you passed in front of someone (at a distance) isn’t guaranteed, there is a suspicion (?) status as well. You have a means of taking enemies down during stealth by scaring them to death. Its been really fun so far.
Traversal is generally kind of a joy with a normal walk for hanging out, 80 mph dash mode and a double jump (of course). When driving the vehicles your party all talk to each other and do things like open doors and hatches to get a good view. It really gives you the feeling you’re on a manga adventure.
Hand to hand combat is pretty breezy so far with a dodge/dash, heavy and light attack, skill wheel and a sort of limit break like mechanic that I haven’t dug into yet.
The vehicle controls are tight and simple using just the left stick with an option to set cruise control via up on the D pad. Ammunition appears to all be infinite but you have to reload. There is vehicle customization via parts dropped by opponents that you can equip anytime / anywhere and I suspect some item crafting later.
Difficulty can be set directly in the options menu at any time which is pretty nice. I dont suspect this game is going to get very hard.
It has a lot of cute details. There are like slime monsters but its a desert so they have to carry umbrellas to not dry out and while exploring town I found where all the extra umbrellas are kept.
My only real gripe is that I had to immediately turn the voice volume down 50%. There is a lot of voice acting and its easily twice as loud as the everything else. If I kept the voices at the standard volume and adjusted my set to compensate I would barely be able to make out the music (its pretty good music).
20 Likes
i played through a pico-8 game called up and away. you go on a hot air balloon ride to see your grandma. you have to control the altitude of the balloon to chase the air current going in the right direction.
it’s nice but also a little boring. only like 10 minutes long, though, so still worth a playthrough
7 Likes
So the Spanish translation of Final Fantasy V (Pixel Remaster) is based almost entirely on the English translation, except when the translation names a boss using actual Spanish words, which made the translators go with the completely different (and more generic) Japanese name. I guess it’d be kinda silly having a boss whose gimmick is blue magic literally and recognizably be named “Blue Magic” in the game’s actual language, (especially for a non-joke boss) but not that silly.
Jobs: caballero; mago del tiempo; ninja ; samurái
8 Likes
I had an ok experience at an American arcade for once.
- It was open late on a street full of bars which is a great idea for people (like me tonight) sobering up.
- It was basically a hallway with 15 or so games. And a bunch of mostly brand new licensed pinball on the other wall.
- It was clean and they had hand sanitizer. Having no food, drink, or bathroom actually might be a good idea
- The staff was absolutely nowhere to be found
- The marketing/vibes was not in your face at all. Nothing screamed Retro Games
- The old games were all CRTs. Even the multicade cab, which made it kind of cool. The screens were not burnt out nor burned in (well, a little burn in here & there)
- Modern raw thrills / play mechanics games were confined to a recent looking big buck hunter and fast & furious (2004). I understand the need for the former but for the latter they could have picked a better representative as the single sit down driving game (a few of the other driving games that were upright were fine though)
- It was all squishy American style buttons and sticks but at least they all worked. Even the speakers worked and I could hear them
- The selection was not perfect but I can understand their choices/availability. Highlights were upright After Burner which I never knew the cabinet had red strobe lights and pretty outrageous force feedback, and sega’s subroc which I had never heard of & was in immaculate condition
- It cost 50 cents per game which i think is a good price for maybe being able to afford rent and as a customer I kind of prefer nowadays to wristbands/passes
- There were zero other customers for a large portion of my visit on a Saturday night
- I’m sure a lot of parts were aftermarket replacements, but nothing on the cabinets was like Frankensteined together with the marquees and panels and stuff, everything looked pretty authentic but again not trying to hard
Idk it was subtle. But if I ran an arcade, that’s sort of how I’d do it
14 Likes
It feels like when you walked out you should have turned around only to see a completely different, empty storefront
11 Likes