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

I made it far enough to unlock saving the game in uru




unfortunately this is one of many games that when in hdr the nvidia thing likes to randomly and rarely make a screenshot actually in the jxr format (for hdr). mostly it makes washed out pngs, so getting screenshots is unreliable. otherwise my current method of getting something usable to post is take a screenshot, open the jxr file in hdr +wcg image viewer, set the brightness down to 25 percent then take a screenshot of that with the windows snipping tool and post that screenshot of the tonemapped screenshot.

I thought I was putting a burglar cap on my character but it’s more like a hippie beanie.

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Okay, more stuff from that page. :stuck_out_tongue: This is good Japanese practice for me. For these I’ll do more of an actual direct translation, including the titles. I was already kind of tired/threadbare yesterday when I was doing the ones before, but it’s earlier in the day for me now and I’m more on the 元気 side. :stuck_out_tongue:

A miraculous phenomenon at drain time

If, as a result of a level drain attack, the character’s level becomes 0 or less, their status will immediately change to Lost. However, if they still had some HP at the time of the attack, and within the same turn their HP is reduced to 0 by a breath or magic attack, their status will change from Lost to Dead, and their level will become 1. (A ring of poison or death will suffice.) Since the character can no longer be the target of an attack once the turn changes, this only rarely works out.

Determining evasion with very low AC

If there is a difference of 20 or more between your character’s AC and the enemy’s accuracy, you will avoid their attacks 100% of the time, without ever failing the roll (from me: in the Apple II version at least, there’s always a 5% chance of getting hit at minimum). On the main map, an AC of about -14 or less will suffice to avoid all melee attacks (meaning the character will be protected from critical hits and level drain). However, on the supplementary maps there are many enemies with boosted accuracy, so because you can’t lower a character’s AC below -26, you can’t achieve this on those maps.

Also, when determining AC, a bonus is applied in practice based on the character’s level. At level-up time, though, you’ll hardly see any change, whether the character is a ninja or any other class.

Alignment change and alignment-specific weapons

When a character is using a good- or evil-exclusive piece of equipment, if their alignment changes as a result of making the wrong move with a friendly party, the equipment will immediately become cursed. The curse will not lift even if you switch the character’s alignment back to what it was before; instead you have to pay the shop to destroy it, remove it with Loktofeit, etc. If the item is more important to you than the character, you can also use the following technique.

Equipment when changing class

When you change a character’s class, all of their equipment will be removed. This includes cursed equipment, which will return to normal.

When a ninja activates the Dagger of Thieves

When a thief uses the Dagger, all their equipment will be completely removed, but not if the character is a ninja (although the dagger will still break). Instead, any active curses will remain, and their level, experience, and MP will stay the same.

Magic items breaking without use

If you activate a scroll or flask or the like and then cancel on the character select screen, the item will still break, even though the effect will not be applied.

Failed bishop appraisals

If a bishop fails to identify a cursed item, the curse will activate immediately. The effects will stack if the bishop is able to equip multiple weapons or armor at that time.

You can’t “rejuvenate at the inn” (me: I’m not quite sure what they mean, this is a very literal translation…maybe that you can’t rest in the stables? I’ll have to actually play the game :stuck_out_tongue:)

Characters start at age 14–16, and age in increments of 52 weeks. Messages such as “Happy Birthday!” are not displayed. When you change class, the character will age by 252 weeks. The maximum age is 255, and after that it won’t increase anymore.

The Amulet

If no one in your party is carrying the Amulet of Werdna, Werdna will appear again, and you can fight him and get another Amulet. This is true whether or not anyone in the party has the Trebor’s Honor Guard insignia (>). Note that if you return to the castle while the party is carrying any number of Amulets, you’ll only get the experience and gold for a single one, and all of them will be removed at once. Also, although in the PC version the Amulet is worth 999,999,999,999 (a trillion minus 1) gold, in the WS version it’s set to 99,999,999 (a hundred million minus 1).

The two-step save on party wipe

When your party wipes, the game saves your characters in two stages, once on the screen with the gravestones and once when you press A to return to the castle. At the time of the former, Lost characters are not yet deleted, whereas in the latter case, characters that are in rock or that have drowned in the moat are actually cleared.

As a result, if you reset on the gravestone screen, a party that was warped into rock by a teleport trap or that drowned in the moat or the like will remain in place and be put into Lost status. There is no way to rescue or retrieve them, so all you can do is go to the Training Grounds, select the party, pick “Resume Adventure” (you’ll be able to see the coordinates of the Lost party at this point), then press A when the gravestone screen appears to delete them.

In other versions of the game, characters that were submerged in the moat can become Dead and arrive at the Temple of Cant. This makes it possible to sell the Amulet at Boltac’s, or restore Lost characters to a Dead state.

In the case of a teleport trap, there’s actually a 3-step save in total. That is to say, when your party is moved into the bedrock at the time the “You have teleported into solid rock” message is displayed, their health status is still as it was before, although they are saved at the new coordinates. It’s possible at that point to reset, resume, and then teleport away. However, you can’t teleport away on the supplementary maps.

Castle save timing

The game saves when you return to the castle screen from the tavern, shop, or inn. Because of this, if you don’t like the results of a level-up, you can immediately reset and try again. An exception to this is that the item list at Boltac’s will update immediately the moment you’ve bought or sold an item. Even then, though, your character’s data is not yet saved. You can take advantage of this opening and reset, making it possible to duplicate items. That said, you can’t use the shop to duplicate unlisted cursed items or the like, and of course you’ll have to fork over gold to get the duplicate item (^^;

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You can play it with only three if you want, and it kinda makes way more sense that way, in that half the weapons are just combinations of two of the main three weapons.

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the only game I’ve really played in the last month+ is Among Us only because I’ve been hanging out with 7-11 year-olds the past week. not much to say about it really except that my youngest niece would immediately tell the rest of us who killed her so we are a bunch of filthy cheaters. also my nephew is getting into gamemaker and I helped him hook up character selection from his main menu (titled Time Travilers (which involved me having to retreat to a corner of the house to stress out and curse an engine I haven’t touched in 12 years on an awkward unfamiliar laptop, the spell of vacation broken as the demon of computer work reared its head again…I do think I’m ready to go home now!))

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i finished the demo and after careful reconsideration have decided that the game might be good, actually. idk what clicked better, but i guess once a had a better handle on the combat systems and saw a little more of where the story might be going, i enjoyed myself more.

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A little mobile game called Card Fall. It’s a puzzle thing with dungeon crawler trappings. It’s alright, as a time-waster.

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I’ll probably make a more detailed report when I reach the end, but I’m pretty impressed with World of Goo 2. I’m hesitant to share any screenshots, though, because I didn’t look at any pictures or videos before playing and I like being surprised by the visuals and the new mechanics.

Basically, if you were a fan of the first game and, like me, occasionally feel like playing it again then this is a game for you.

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I returned to Assassin’s Creed Origins. I believe that Origins, Revelations and the original are the best Assassin Creed games, or at least the ones most worth playing, but I have to wonder if I’ve simply outgrown them.

I did some sidequests and camp clearouts for about 2 hours and didn’t have any fun. Ersatz Souls combat sucks, stealth sucks, the only thing I really want from these anymore is their setting. I would probably buy the Discover/Museum mode standalone if I could. The controls are overly complex to accommodate ranged combat, melee combat, stealth, and open world drudge. The loot is ridiculous too. Far Cry 3 really let the genie out of the bottle to demand my bracers be made of the skin of 14 crocodiles and/or hippopotamuses and about 39 other large quadrupeds so I can improve my damage by one increment.

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You guys are gonna make me replay the whole series again…

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Parker is who influenced me to give the first one a try. Join us. I now froth to play the Riven Remake.

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I guess it is a lot easier nowadays. Last time I did it I had to track down obsoleted versions of Quicktime on archive.org and shit

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Arzette The Jewel of Faramore

God the art is so on point in that gamew
Very good modern take on CD-I Zelda though I couldn’t shake the annoying feeling that I was playing the videogame equivalent of Sharknado

The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow

This is a ~6 hours long adventure game set in rural England around early-mid 20th century. The main character’s a visitor coming to excavate a barrow (……. Barrows are some sort of weird tomb exclusively for the english) Someone invited her to the village but he’s nowhere to be seen and she only has enough money for 2 nights at the inn and like one pint of ale. All the locals are either very rude or suspiciously friendly to her.

I really enjoyed doing the ominous Wicker Man investigation, all the small talk with the villagers, exploring the place. The overall coherence of the setting. You do get to use that throwel a lot.

The game’s worth it but it really suffers from a lack of subtlety. God they really lay it thick with the annoying trope of the main character being a cartesian that’s inevitably getting owned later on for not respecting the folklore enough.
The main mystery is solved at the end, the forces at play are revealed, which is fine but it does make all the creepy occurrences earlier in the story seem retrospectively like unearned shock value.

The game also lost a lot of momentum by showing from the start that the expedition was doomed to begin with, having the narrator telling it outright. The extra dread wasn’t worth losing all the tension
And I could figure out what was going to happen in the first 5 minutes!!! Seeing the cover art and first cutscene I went « yep she’s going to get possessed in Hob’s Barrow » and she did get possessed in Hob’s Barrow in the final scene lol.

This made me curious enough to eventually check other Wadjet Eye games but this one was the only one with appealing art direction IMO…

Oh this game also had a very memorable SMT related videogame moment :

When it was revealed the main otherwordly antagonist was Abraxas I was like « isn’t this guy only level 15 in Devil Survivor » and sure he is. But they did him dirty in that game just because of that chicken head I bet. He’s like level 60 in Devil Summoner, as he should be

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barrows are prehistoric tombs

or at least old enough that most people just assume they’re naturally formed hills

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SNK Arcade Classics vol. 1 (PS2)

Got this on launch back in the day but on my actual PS2 it ran poorly, with bad framerate and half-second input delay. I returned it, which I have only ever done with a handful of retail games.

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(There never was a vol. 2–but there was a “SNK Arcade Classics 0” with a similar logo, 3 years later–2011–in Japan, for PSP, compiled by SNK Playmore themselves rather than by Terminal Reality, and consisting of SNK games that pre-dated the NEOGEO hardware.)

Now that I’ve got another unopened copy off eBay, ripped it, and am running the iso in PCSX2–it seems to run fine? Metal Slug’s control is noticeably slug-ish, but that was about the only problem I encountered; checked the Metal Slug arcade ROM from Humble Bundle in latest MAME and that did NOT have the input delay I experienced in this collection in PCSX2.

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I specifically wanted this for Burning Fight, so I’m not stuck playing that on PS4, and that game feels pretty much the same here in PCSX2 as it does in the ACA NEOGEO version I just played on PS4. (ALL of these games are available in the ACA NEOGEO series on PS4 etc.)

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One quirk of the emulation is that for sprite scaling FX, when the sprite is scaled out (small), it renders in as high a resolution as your screen allows, rather than at low NEOGEO arcade resolution–so you have these very high-res sprites from time to time here and there, which is a bit jarring.

(US dev Terminal Reality also compiled the Sam Sho Anthology, Metal Slug Anthology, and The King of Fighters Collection: The Orochi Saga–the Sam Sho and Metal Slug ones were all right (except for blurriness on an actual PS2 in all the games except SSVI); the Orochi Saga one, at least the version ported to PS4, has some real bad menu and emulation problems; that was the first one they did.)

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Venkazoid Blast (PC/Steam)

Spotted while doomscrolling through @username’s heroic Steam reporting work

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Simplified and slightly wilded-out Galaga sorta thing. Love the sfx and graphics/animation, and the action ain’t bad either. Now if only I could get my head around those stage 6+ green guys and their side-to-side weaving descent, they’re making for a brick scoring wall for me currently. ;_;

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Abarenbou Tengu (Famicom)
Zombie Nation (NES)

Extracted both ROMs from Steam’s “Abarenbo Tengu & Zombie Nation” aka “暴れん坊天狗 & ZOMBIE NATION” compilation by City Connection, using a script from GitHub - Infinest/Gimmick-ROM-extractor: This application allows extracting a raw NES ROM from the game files included with the Steam release of GIMMICK! Special Edition

Recharge the health meter by entering the Konami code (this was not a Konami game ; ) on the game’s pause screen once per stage? checkpoint? somethin’: per GameFAQs: “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A (when paused).”

For Abarenbou Tengu, used Standard format Infinite Credits cheat from https://gamehacking.org/game/28866 : 054F:08 (Mesen’s cheat library has one for Zombie Nation but not for Abarenbou Tengu).

And of course spammed the heck outta save states, whee! : D

Fun game. ^ _^ Kinda mind-blowing crazy action for Famicom/NES hardware, gosh!

Essentially runs at a squared pixel resolution, that’s kinda neat.

Blast scenery to extract falling “help” dudes,

scoop 'em up to raise your firepower (2 and 3 icons lower right; not sure what the star down there is). You regain some health from blasting stuff, sometimes, I think. FAQ says if you’re near death and hear the near-death music, if you go for a while without getting hit, you recover health.

US version changed player sprite from tengu mask to severed samurai head, and stage 1 boss from Statue of Liberty

to uh the Statue of Liberty cosplaying as Medusa, I guess.

Rockin’ music.

Wikipedia says “Abarenbou” means “Hooligan”; Google Translate says “Violent.”

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Shadow of the Ninja Reborn demo: I wish to purchase this video game product. weighty, crunchy, big beautiful sprite work, good music. three old dudes locked away in Natsume Atari’s closet do it again

now I just need to reckon with the fact that every game I want in August comes out on the same day

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I’ve been wanting to play Shinobi (PS2) since it came out and finally got round to it. It has that ‘small’ PS2 game feel where having a flowy scarf and dynamic kill camera have to tentpole the experience. It has more cutscenes than expected but still feels more arcade-y than DMC. The levels are just very boxy and almost feel like the result of procgen at times.

The shuriken is useful for once. I feel like a lot of games make shurikens just a thing to annoy the enemy with but here they are free hitstun. Very useful for large enemies which suck.

Player state feels very binary since you are either locked to floor or in mid air without a quick way back down. Dodging round enemies also obeys DMC rules where dodge direction is relative to enemy lockon but from the perspective of the camera, so you often hold down to dodge left etc and the point at which right/left becomes down/up is anyone’s guess.

Falling in a pit = stage reset and it ultimately feels too harsh a game. I like it but I don’t really have the energy to persevere through action this punishing anymore. I like that I can still enjoy the PS2 library, and it has that special sauce even when the game is not particularly groundbreaking.

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I won at Brogue today! This is the 4th time I’ve won out of 514 playthroughs. :stuck_out_tongue: If anyone else wants to try the seed, it’s 370233118, on 1.13 (I just went and checked and realized 1.14 came out a couple of days ago, so I guess I’ll try that one next time—sounds like it’s a teeny tiny bit easier overall :stuck_out_tongue:). The seed was quite generous but things still got very dicey in the 20s and I felt like I escaped by the skin of my teeth—I went to try for lumenstones, but some very chaotic things happened on floor 27, I teleported away in extreme danger, and then immediately got the message that I was hungry and out of food, so I just ran up and grabbed the Amulet (which greatly slows the hunger rate). Luckily I spotted some food I had missed a couple floors up or I’m not sure I would have been able to make it out even with the reduced rate. Phew :sweat_smile:

My build was based around an early sword of paralysis, which has to be one of the strongest runic weapons I’ve ever used if not the outright strongest. Wow. :dog: I enchanted it up to +10 and then put my last few enchants in a firebolt staff, to give myself a stronger ranged attack and have a more reliable answer to revenants. With the sword at +10 paralysis would proc at about 50% which made it easy to steamroll almost everything in the game, although fights against dragons and horrors were still extremely dangerous. To make things even better, I found a +3 ring of transference about a third of the way through, which greatly helped me stay alive given my high DPS. Also, going into the 20s I used wands of domination and plenty to give myself an adventuring party of five horrors, which was crazy and fun :stuck_out_tongue: not enough to keep me reliably safe but definitely entertaining.

To some extent though, I think maybe the fact that I still found the floors below 26 extremely threatening underscores how a primarily melee-based build just isn’t really enough to hoof it down there perhaps, no matter how great your weapon is. With more skill or luck I think I probably could’ve gotten a few lumenstones, but it’s so dangerous to close distance with things like that on those floors (especially since it becomes common for them to be explosive/juggernaut/etc. on top of everything else) that I think even a theoretical melee weapon that would kill anything in one hit would become hard to rely on too much. It makes sense to me that when I’ve heard of people getting masteries it’s typically with teleport or tunneling/obstruction or that sort of thing. Still, maybe someone with more experience in the 26+ depths would be able to pull it off with this build, I’m not sure :stuck_out_tongue:

If you’re curious, my translation of the Daijisen (Japanese dictionary) entry for it is, “A person whose rowdiness or violent conduct is almost beyond control. A hooligan; a ruffian; someone running riot.” I’ve rendered the name of that game in the past as Rowdy Tengu which I feel like kind of gets at the spirit of the game. :stuck_out_tongue: I’ve barely actually played it sadly because flashing or scintillating light patterns can give me long, intense migraines-with-aura, which makes it hard to play basically any shooters :face_exhaling: but it does have a great soundtrack and I like its whole outrageous attitude :rofl:

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also known as Ufouria 2 (terrible name imo), i beat this a few days ago. this game would be perfect if:

  1. it was harder
  2. it was longer than 4 to 5 hours

i think this is the first game i’ve gotten a Platinum trophy on, because it was easy to do it and i wanted excuses to keep playing the game. seriously though, the game is super short and not very challenging, but it has such overwhelming charm. i think if it had just a little more to do, or had some kind of game loop that encouraged replays, it would be a 10 out of 10.

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