games you played today chronicles X: ten things I played about you

[drastic_bb]

i’ve been playing mgs4 and it remains kind of incredibly idiotic but also entertaining. i think it’s so funny how the first thing you do on being given control of snake after watching several cutscenes is crawl under a truck immediately triggering another cutscene

you have to fight a woman but she’s insane and evil because of trauma but killing her brings her peace and you can go to an alternate dimension where the music is like ladies moaning while she poses for your camera and then she dies

definitely feels like the worst MGS but also still the product of the twisted mind of kojima hideo (so there’s still a lot to appreciate, like raiden and vamp homoerotically dueling each other via incredible mocap animation). love how the mission briefing segments let you alternate and resize different windows displaying a controllable drone POV and a cinematic POV. definitely scratched some touchdesigner itches for me

also very funny how the first three areas are called “middle east” “south america” “eastern europe” lol

one of the reasons i’ve come to favor mgs1 and mgs2 (and one of the reasons why dark souls endures in its appeal imo) above other games in the series is the way they center around single large structures rather than a series of ambiguously connected areas if that makes sense

(i remember reading somewhere that producer of killer7 mikami shinji had grasshopper manufacture reiterate the monolithic structure which the entire first level of the game takes place in many times)

great game to play when you’re considering the possibility that you’re on the brink of death (connective tissue disorders ), you’re quitting smoking, and the USA feels like it’s on the brink of death tho lol

also perhaps the videogame with the strongest “nbc hannibal” vibes (a tv show which i recently watched in its entirety)

[eska]

ok don’t tell anyone i’ve been playing hades. it’s got a very moreish game loop: blast through the fast-paced arpg situation for half an hour, die, go round and talk to all the little characters once, go fight again so that you can talk to the little guys more. now i have my head around what buffs and debuffs stack nicely together it’s pretty fun to agglomerate a build, and some of the bosses you fight make it pretty clear that you also develop into a boss-type character which is cute

i’ve killed dad a couple times now but i think you need to do it like a few times more to wrap up the main story, and then there’s still piles of medium-urgency unlocks in terms of like difficulty modifiers and alternate weapon attributes and character stories. like i think i juuust unlocked the option to do a romance with one character, and i know there’s special powers gated behind maxing s-links with certain characters

that said i think it’s pretty silly that the characters you CAN romance are romance-optional, since the primary relationship-building mechanic is just giving people kindness tokens until a reward pops out. like who’s this precise level of player agency for? it’s hard to relate to the characters through the protagonist when your interactions are so gamified

i’ll be taking a break for the next couple days to go see some cool music, we’ll see if i’m still hungry for more after that

[Tuxedo]

Rusted Moss
Imagine these 4 things put together :

• Metroidvania
• Machinegun
• Umihara Kawase-ish grappling hook (the rope tightening and loosening « realistically »)
• Anime Girl Protagonist
  And that’s the game

The machinegun is weird, pressing lightly does a weak shot and holding down does a good charge shot. It’s just like Megaman, except the charge shot is much better here and I’m using it quasi-exclusively. The gun also has a very short range! Combat feels very methodical as a result, staying mostly out of range and closing in to do a single charge shot before backing down. Why is this weapon a machinegun. It could literally be a spear. It does look cool…

Gunbrella
Eh… This game has good movement, but 2 hours in fighting is still not great. It’s weird how the umbrella (which is a parry + float) can only activate by dashing. The game has done nothing to convince me that it’s good, actually. Imagine if in Sekiro you were propelled forward everytime you try a parry.

And I just can’t deal with the jokey pseudo-noir Devolver tone

Linda Cube

I haven’t used a PC for gaming in ten years, I had to relearn everything : what is a fucking bios, what are the cool new emulators, how to patch, not give up when the pre-patched version doesn’t work, etc.

It was worth it!! What a game!!

I hadn’t really understood what Linda Cube was before really, and it took me about 10 hours to get it. It’s really one of a kind.

It mostly reminds me of Metal Max Returns (same director) and Earthbound. RPG with big cities, a modern 90s setting (big computers! pagers!!) lots of NPCs with very strong writing, lots of flavor and generosity in the places to see and game systems to experience. It feels like no « weak » element was streamlined. The plot’s like that too, with unexpected swerves into either romance/ family elements or Akira-esque body horror or unknown twins-related plot twists

The basic premise is : « Ken and Linda live on the planet Neo-Kenya, which is going to get hit by an asteroid that’s going to destroy all life on it in 8 years. A giant wooden ark appears and the two protagonists are selected to grab two of each animal on the planet before leaving » They really sticked to this core concept. 99% of the enemies in this game are the animals you have to recruit, bosses are almost non-existant

The animals are grotesque and there’s a different sprite for the male and female versions

There are so many systems and the game’s just hard enough to want to engage with them. I never felt lost because there was always something to do, it’s very more-ish

Usually reducing an animal HP to 0 will automatically capture them, but doing too much damage will just kill them outright and you get no reward. Which means that, when coming back to an earlier area you have to use weak skills, remove your auto-attacking dogs from the party or even remove your weapons entirely. Which is often not enough! There’s an endgame animal with 1HP and I don’t know how to deal with it. This is such an annoyance for the entire game and it rules

There are 3 scenarios (+1 extra that’s just a bonus) the first two being more of a tutorial with the 3rd being the real big open world free experience. I went through all 3 and became a real piece of shit at the end, not gonna lie, grinding on protected species and turning them into weapons / rare meat and selling them for exorbitant prices on the black market just to outfit my ark with nice furniture

In the late 90s early 00s RPGs really could be whatever they wanted

[TheGrimCorsair]

I recently picked up on sale and played through The Callisto Protocol and the whole time I was playing my brain was saying “This has the makings of a pretty awesome successor to DOOM 3, if only it’d stop trying to be The Last of Dead Space.”

[Rudie]

Demon’s Souls Remake is still Demon’s Souls and Demon’s Souls is the best game ever made.

The swamp is real pretty.

I’m at 7 hours and about half-way through it. I got a month or so left on my PS+ so gotta get on enjoying the Free Games.

[Grandpa]

I remember the first time I played Red Dead Redemption and was all “huh, Dutch is dead and John is reunited with his family, but there’s still a bunch of missions, wonder what’s up” and then finding out exactly what’s up.

A decade more of accrued (pop) cultural literacy and you can spot the 10000 death flags they throw up every minute in those epilogue missions, but when it does go down it’s still a very effective sucker punch.

Sitting here debating just going right into Undead Nightmare, which I never finished back when. May as well!

[daphaknee]

undead nightmare sucks ass, I played it for the first time on my last (third) rdr playthrough and it’s such a quality drop it’s embarrassing

[Grandpa]

The funniest (well, not really but, given how excited for the sequel, y’know) part of playing Red Dead Redemption again was thinking the whole time “god I wish they made another one of these.”

Some day I will sit down at my computer and learn all the weird controls and systems of RDR2! Some day!

[username]

I was sad that Yakuza Kiwami 2 put all the japanese wrestling cameos in the majima construction side game I don’t like, well it turns out that there is a second set of them in the coliseum so I got to enjoy at least some of them.

[notbov]

Suicide Squad Colon Kill the Justice League - it’s okay

every part is exceptionally well made and it coalesces into a thing that’s just okay

I’m trying to figure out how they made the traversal and melee stuff feel pretty good and then bungled the gunfeel of shooting your guns

in this game

that’s a looter shooter

also for some reason the game makes my CPU run hot. I can only assume that SQCKTJL is actually an untapped benchmark waiting to happen

[tacotaskforce]

The best part of Undead Nightmare is the like 8 minute long cutscene at the start that’s just John Marston’s domestic life. Once that cutscene’s over and you can start playing the game you can just turn it off.

[eska]

for a good week or two i assumed that the ads for undead nightmare i saw on the internet were for like. some unlicensed rip-off

[Drem]

From the currently ongoing open beta for Sony’s new competitive FPS, Concord.

[Titus]

Good to know I can still beat Gill with x copy Twelve

[boojiboy7]

Just beat the EGGConsole version of Ys III and damn that game rules so much, even if I did have to use my phone to translate all the dialogue.

Got some fun screens from the ending:

[MintyJuffowup]

Woah, how does it parallax?

[boojiboy7]

Not as bad as I feared. Falcom did some magic there.

[Rudie]

Booji and I tried to get Lost Planet 2 PC working and it didn’t. It was too much of a hassle and I have to write it off. RIP to Lost Planet 2.

[isfet]

@ellaguro came by yesterday and we talked a lot, but eventually played some games she brought

Apocalypse (PS1) - wtf; why is this game actually so good? i remember when i was a kid, i saw the previews for this game and thought it looked like the 3D Contra game i wished someone had made (not Legacy of War). but being 15 years old, i still trusted gaming magazines and they hated this game, so i didn’t rent or pick it up. what a mistake! the game isn’t perfect and Bruce Willis’ one liners are really annoying but it’s a really competent twin-stick shooter that looks and feels great. also very obviously wishes it was a 5th Element game at times, but wow, i think i want to pick this game up.

Flipnic (PS2) - this game is also pretty neat, but it has a lot of shit going on and i couldn’t quite get into the “addicting pinball groove” with it. published by Capcom in the USA, but was seemingly developed by the Fantavision folks, which makes a lot of sense. another cool game, though i’d never even remotely heard of it previously.

N20 (PS1) - a Tempest 2000-like, but i just couldn’t quite get into it. aesthetically, it’s a Y2K wet dream, and the Crystal Method soundtrack seals the deal, but the sound effects are way too low and nothing feels crunchy enough for me.

[captainlove]

I think I’m done with ZZZ. I got to the training mode and it comes just as the game’s mobile grind becomes really apparent. Like here’s the rest of your time with this game kinda roadmap. There is a lot of ‘story stuff’ left to do but the stinginess is just annoying. I also started skipping dialogue and it just gives you a summary of what is said, almost as an admission that the story is kinda whatever.

The actually animated cutscenes are well-animated but guess where I can save a lot of time and watch them if I wish.