idk, even when i do have CC on my XB4 and have only put a few hours into it yet, not playing CC yourself … like, that would feel like someone telling you about their vacation while showing you a few pictures — you can understand, but you cannot feel it.
It isn’t excelling at what it does, but wears its heart on its sleave… and that alone is worth being experienced once, if nothing else.
alas, put me also in the ‘loving it, despite its gameplay’ camp 
Game I played today:
8-Colors Star Guardians Plus: 8-Colors Star Guardians + on Steam $3 on switch sale rn, $5 on Steam. Basically a turn-based combat puzzle game, u have five magical girl/toku characters and a mega man grid of bosses. Pick a boss to fight and three of the five characters to fight it with.
This reminded me of, Ocean OI a bit, in that its pretty much just a series of turn-based combat puzzles. But this is way more straightforward, the characters start out w/ one spell and regain full hp/sp between battles. As u win, some of the characters level up to gain new abilities, so theres a somewhat-enforced order for selecting the battles. Altho its unclear exactly what each boss does until you’ve fought them once.
Theres some dialogue between battles/at the start/after losing to a boss, felt a bit too amateurish fanfic-y for me, but it adds some character. The dialogue on a first loss hints at the correct solution, which I found annoying since ur always likely to lose the first time since u dont know the gimmick ur supposed to be adapting to/the party members to bring. That said, the dialogue doesn’t repeat so it was easy enough to forget about.
Seemed like some wiggle room in efficiency to a battle but generally its clear theres a ‘right solution’. Beating it (took maybe an hour?) unlocked a second story mode, an arcade mode & some stuff remains locked, so those may develop the ideas further & render my babble irrelevant.
Of what I’ve played, Ocean OI is definitely a better game in a few ways, but this isnt bad. I like the ZX Spectrum(I think?) palette & general look of it, it’s pleasant and has momentum, and the puzzles can require some thought with the swapping characters + synergies. i didnt like the dialogue but i like that its there. If the concept appeals I think the execution will as well.
Couldn’t tell ya what possessed me to do it (to be fair, it’s something I’ve found myself attempting a few times over the last ten years or so), but I finally sat down and messed with Ryse: Son of Rome.
It’s…I feel like it’s too mean to say it’s Simon, but it kinda is. There’s not much meat on these bones.
You also gotta install some weird frame limiter programs in order for it to run halfway decent on PC. There’s no good reason for this game to chug like this on my computer, but here it is and here I am.
I guess it still sorta looks nice, at times. But damn, it’s really just running through hallways and hitting the right color buttons.
Forgive the double-post, but I think I’ve found my “ease in for the evening” rotation of games:
-Playing a little Y̶a̶h̶t̶z̶e̶e̶ yacht dice in Clubhouse Games.
-A puzzle or two in Tents & Trees.
-And now the newcomer, a session of Tim Conway’s Dorfromantik.
I know that last one ain’t new by any stretch, but I finally caught it at a decent sale on Switch, and after not “getting it” on PC (I forgot the controls, I think), it is finally clicking with me.
Just nice to build a little town with weird gilded stone roads to nowhere.
After 15 years I finally beat Thunderforce 3which of course meant sitting down and actually playing Thunderforce 3. It isn’t a very hard game. Kind of the reverse. It has a lot of got-ya moments which are cheap and unwelcome. You master those the rest of the game comes easy. Most bosses have safe spots. There’s no real timer so you can just chill out and know you are going to win.
The stress of keeping power ups is the real challenge. While it is obviously balanced for the home console the Sega Megadrive the powers do feel a little stingy. Still it is a very brief game and felt good to finally you know, play it till the credits happened.
Thanks to the magic power of the Mister I also played some Saturn ver. Metal Black. Thanks folks for mentioning it. Metal Black owns especially after that lengthy interview. The maker is right Darius 1 and 2 do kind of suck! Makes the fish apparence all the more a “I can do better”. That’s the kind of pettiness that inspires my own art! Game is incredible.
also played XDR: X Dazerdly Ray a legendary kusoge (derogatory). This one has stuck in my mind because of a stream I saw a thousand years ago where the Warning A Huge Podcast people (yes including That One) played some Megadrive Kusoge without any context of what made them kusoge without reputation. They got bored of XDR fairly quickly. Because it is bad and boring.
Dying has almost no fan-fair. The music stops then you start the whole stage over again (kusoge). The power ups are hard to distinguish and can result in a power down (kusoge.) You will die almost instantly at the start of stage 2 (kusoge.) your only survival strat is using the starting invinciblity frames to try and grab the two powerup ships before they destroy you/fly off screen (kusoge.) It’s a tiny bit funny but doesn’t make up for the game being dull to play/listen/look at.
I’ve been playing 5 hands a day (the max allowed) of Pile Up Poker, a Zach Gage joint available on his fledgling platform Puzzmo. I’ve always liked his games so when Puzzmo launched I did the early adopter thing and shelled out a few bucks for a lifetime subscription. Some of my other favorites by him are in there, like Spelltower.
Anyway the game is fun – make 2-4 card poker hands on a 4x4 grid (and if you meet a certain condition in a round, also in your 4 card discard pile) over the course of four rounds of play. Other optional objectives act as multipliers on your score, and you can potentially build a hand in the four corner spaces in addition to just the rows and columns (no diagonals). To cut down on draw luck screwing you the game only uses 6 through Ace in the four standard suits. Some people on the leaderboards have mind boggling scores but I’m working every day on trying to improve my strategy
So I almost feel bad for saying this…but if anyone is on the fence about the Riven Remake:
It’s a remake like the Resident Evil remake, not like the Myst remake.
Holy shit
I think when I want to build a PC, I’ll just ask someone how I could optimize it just for this.
yeah I put in half an hour this morning and it’s phenomenal
The new Monkey Ball is OK. I’ve never been good at these games and I’m sure not any good at this one, but it’s cute, the levels are clever enough.
Sega are out of their damn minds with this Character Pass, though. $25, half the price of the game, for some Sega characters and costumes. No additional levels, just characters and customizations.
They should bring back Suezo…for this game but also the last one, I didn’t realize that was timed DLC, I will give them $5 for that little creep. C’mon Sega. Bring that back.
even after finally finishing myst 95 percent of my total time with myst and riven has been starting them up over the years wandering around the beginning pressing buttons or flipping switches that don’t seem to do anything before quitting, can’t wait to finally make it past that point in riven
I remember trying a few of the various Puzzmo games when I was linked with a guest thing in the very early days, I think I mostly tried Flipart & Really Bad Chess. I remember getting turned off because you could only sign up for the site (even with an invite) by signing up for a mailing list to get stuff in the actual mail, but I could visit again to check out Pile Up Poker.
…I got $660 which I guess is fine? I also got the low turn score for Flipart after not playing it in like half a year, which was nice.
Continuing on Mystery of The Ghost Lion (NES.) I played just a little bit of this, but enjoyed it I’ll play more when I am not sleepy. It’s a Famicom Dragon Quest Clone except you only level up by finding Hope in chests and the early game you are relying on summons. It really feels like “what can we do different?” It seems pretty short. There was one very angry reddit comment about not being able to find the level up doohickies so the game was awful awful awful.
You’ll probably like it. It is password based terrible Zelda 1. It’s Zelda one without any friction to the combat. You can end up just having the infinitely spawning enemies on top of you eatting at your health because your sword only deals damage away from you not on you.
Until modern games it is one of the most explicit rippoffs of Zelda I’ve seen. Somehow they beat Neutopia.
Turns out I will take a 3rd Rate NES/Famicom game over a SMS game that is probably respected.
Been playing Valve’s new unannounced MOBA Deadlock. It’s in alpha but there’s tons of leaked footage already lol. People are already making Counter-Strike shitposts with it!
It’s pretty good! Making it a third-person shooter with some honestly ridiculous levels of mobility is the saving grace. One of the things I hate about Smite is that it’s still fundamentally an RTS-style MOBA, just over the shoulder and with mouse aim. Deadlock is way more interested in being a shooter that is a MOBA than a MOBA that is a shooter, if that makes sense.
Headshots are a thing, there’s funny movement tech, you can be VERY squirrely and difficult to kill, but you still gotta think about itemization, match-ups, laning, last hits, all that. There’s jungling and creep score and so on. But the raw skill to play it is still interesting thanks to dodging, double-jumping, and a general flexibility in the cast (and an unusual lane setup, 4 lanes / 6v6).
Really good! There’s some fearmongering about it being the death of Valve because it’s not very unique, but I think it’s maybe the most unique MOBA I’ve ever played, and a genuine treat. I’ve wanted something like this - MOBA for action shooter people - for a loooooong time.
Plus there’s a cute girlgoyle, a time-manipulating thief gal, and a rotund robot. How can I resist.
On average I’m getting about $2,000 but people are getting orders of magnitude more than that which I haven’t figured out how to accomplish
Riven 3d thoughts but avoiding puzzle solutions and full on plot discussion:
While I’m bracing for impact with critiques of some of these changes, they’ve made some pretty interesting choices. Especially making all the steps in the Moiety resistance puzzles more involved, so it makes a little bit more sense that Ghen doesn’t notice what’s going on. Changing some huge portions of the final puzzle in ways I haven’t even wholly worked out is also just plain bonkers.
One thing I really like though is every new puzzle they add sprinkles in new flavor to the world, so far without having any ‘but what was Atrus doing as a baby’ moments, but more 'why is this space here and what purpose does it serve, and why is it accessible but maybe not in a way that just anyone could get to it.
I’m loving it, it’s very nearly a new Cyan game in a lot of ways, and I imagine it’s even better if you don’t know the solutions to the stuff that they’ve left intact. It’s soooo much better than the AI slopfest of Firmament.
Also one last observation comparing it to another game:
It’s fucked up how a lot of the new bits feel very Quern-esque.
I should just leave work and go play Riven, this sudden buzz has me intrigued
I definitely bought it, and I don’t remember any puzzle solutions anyway so I wonder how many of the changes I’ll even notice. probably play it some tomorrow.
So it’s Super MNC?
Yes and no. Grappling isn’t a thing, instead there’s melee and parrying. TTK is much lower. Mobility is higher.
