(LIVING IN THE CITY) YOU KNOW YOU HAVE TO SURVIVE (LIVING IN THE CITY) YOU GOT TO KEEP THAT DREAM ALIVE
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if anyone is still on the fence about veilguard I can affirm that they made more or less exactly the game that I thought they should make — it’s structurally much closer to Mass Effect 3 than any of their other games in that it’s like, JRPG pacing with occasional sidequests and an overarching need to boost faction rank or risk not being able to save everyone, the combat is just barely good enough and is mostly about doing crowd control and trading off barrier damage vs armor damage and triggering your companions’ abilities as needed, the writing is as already mentioned, it has a cozy hub and moderately interesting skill trees and gear. given that Mass Effect 3 was, imo, maybe the only overall good bioware game from the 360 era, I’m happy with this. they’re empty calories for sure but it does exactly what it was signaling that it would.
and the God of War PS4 comparions are definitely apt (that was kind of the inheritor of the “AAA action game that is basically a JRPG in every way apart from the moment to moment action” mantle after bioware’s decline anyhow), though this isn’t nearly as intense.
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I finally recruited one (1) man and his whole deal is that he’s possessed by a demon and one of the first dialog options I was given was to lecture him about why being abused by your demon is Not OK
it’s fun stuff! I’m having fun
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It’s worth noting re: Tides of Numenera that I still have very few points of reference in the crpg space. I played through Planescape: Torment incorrectly and everything else is like distant cousins like the Mass Effects and Witcher 1 and I think 10 hours of Fallout 3. Basically I’m flying very blind so I literally have no way to tell what is rote or unique or right/wrong about it. My main goal based on my time with P:T is to avoid combat at all costs which seemingly is actually somewhat doable.
Anyways I dumped most of my points into intelligence and am just gonna try to lie and manipulate my way through the world and hope for the best. I bluffed my way out of the one potential battle I’ve come across so so far so good.
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Voidwrought is another metrovania for the switch. Like many of the current ones it looks mainly to Hollow Knight for influence, having a protagonist that is full of goopy void stuff and the ability to slash in four directions and pogo off of spikes and enemies.
It’s pretty lore dense but it’s no La Mulana. The enemy designs are good stuff with each area having its own set of enemies that all seem different while fitting under the heading of “undead” pretty well. I may start a thread on it later.
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hyper light drifter would have absolutely blown my fucking mind a decade ago. I am still really really enjoying it now, i think it’s still a good & gorgeous game in 2024, but i guess im just more prepared for games to be minimalist & aesthetic as fuck nowadays? like it’s a weird example of “i like this but i feel like i should love it”
might be cuz it’s bizarrely close to game ideas i had a decade ago (but never acted on cuz gamedev scares me too much) like one of my main fursonas is basically the Drifter, right down to the blue katana & laser pistol lol and ive wanted to make a game thats basically like this about them for years…
speaking of i love that so many of the NPCs/enemies are furries??
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Yes! I know nothing about the game but I think that chowder man thing missed the lol numetal mark it was going for so hard by trying to marry a softened kid rock figure with an anachronistic Drew’s Famous Hits version of faith no more’s epic. Definitely felt like it was made by someone too square to have like methods of mayhem or dropping plates or hed pe going on about the nwo or whatever as a reference point to riff off of.
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My read on HLD was that it was aesthetically impeccable (still one of the best looking and sounding games ever imo) and played like butter but couldn’t really find a way to stick the landing and, in the end, was less than the sum of its parts. Just kind of farts out an ending. Curious to see what you end up thinking about it.
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I have finished Spaceplan I almost never finish any of these, but it does pull off the important trick of pivoting to a new gameplay paradigm in the late game, and does it well although I was being dense and didn’t immediately realize what I needed to be doing.
Feels good to have seen the end of a game, I hardly do that anymore
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Come on finish your games, think of all the children who can’t even afford a Playstation 4.
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well now i need to play hypnospace more so i have an opinion on the story!!
finding out the creator previously made dropsy makes sense, as my problem with hypnospace so far is that it feels more like an adventure game with the logic, and i was expecting (and hoping for) a more organic investigation game. not that the way it is is necessarily bad, it just wasnt want i was hoping for
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Zone of Enders 2 Anubis Mars - It’s great this game is available again, but they should have included the first one. Also they should have redone the English script it is embarrassing how bad it is. Yes, Embarrassing. That was a joke about the script. My console is currently in All Japanese mode because I will maybe play PS2 Siren but that still doesn’t give me Japanese in this game. Real curious how the original reads, probably way better!
I beat it, and don’t think I like it very much. The bosses are all Does The Square Block Go In The Square Hole? Good. You have all these options and then barely ever get to use them. Then they throw the options away to have a minimalistic nail-biting final two battles that still feel like you need to cheat the game to even scrape by. It simultaneously demands nothing of the player and everything. I think the light Actraiser stuff in the first game is better.
Speaking of 3 hour games I booted up and played through Hebereke 2 . The art style is really something in motion. The game never demands more than your bare minimum then it is over. I did play this in Japanese and got pretty sick of the manzai comedy bits and all the “cute” ways the characters talked. Probably wasn’t worth what I paid for it but good enough for an evening. I tried to follow in isfet’s footsteps and get the platinum but that seems to require just playing the very easy game over and over for another two hours. It was better than Monster Boy!
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Playing Toki Tori again, and I think I’ve surpassed the moment where I got stuck the first time I played this two decades ago.
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There’s something very satisfying about randomly experimenting with item placement and then suddenly realizing you’ve come up with the solution to the puzzle.
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The original GBC version still looks better than the ones that came later.
ETA: Also played Gunstar Heroes, and picking up items feels far more complicated than it needs to be.
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Dysmantle, because @VastleCania spoke of it positively ages ago and it got put on my list.
A survival game where there is direction and a plot and you only ever craft permanent upgrades and don’t constantly have to eat and drink and whatever, aka the minimum bar for me not to hate a survival game (this is why it got put on the list in the first place). The plot, such as it is, is more barebones and less mysterious and wonderful than in Subnautica, which is my gold standard for this sort of thing, but I appreciate just having direction, however perfunctory.
To have enough materials to get even the necessary upgrades, much less the nice but not strictly necessary ones, you spend a lot of time methodically stripping suburban homes for parts, which can feel bad grindy or nice meditative depending on my mood.
There’s actual - whoa - level design! As you improve your tools/weapons to do more damage, they are able to break new kinds of barriers, so each space is constantly being recontextualized - what was once an obstacle is now both an alternate path and a richer vein of resources. You are also updating your own visual cortex when this happens: what you had filed away and filtered out as background and/or walls now has to be mentally highlighted as your new targets to get the new best stuff. This is actually the best thing about the game I think, and the closest thing that gives me this same specific feeling is probably Katamari Damacy, oddly enough.
Super slow motion Katamari Damacy, that’s this game. You like fight zombies too but you have a god iframes dodgeroll so that’s all whatever.
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I had a grand old time with Dysmantle, also thanks to Cania’s recommendation. I fell off it before finishing, because it was just too much of a good thing. But that’s partly my fault for trying to do the DLCs too. It just outwore its welcome. Until then I was having a blast though. Great game to mute and put on music or a podcast.
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dysmantle is like what if the skinner box was like, kinda charming actually? what if seeing behind the curtain actually felt refreshing instead of destroying meaning. lightweight in a specifically good way
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yeah I only played it because of your talk about it and it’s just… surprisingly pleasant. it was also the first game I played a lot of on the Deck and it’s perfect for that
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Funny you should mention this because when I went to buy it (on deep sale obv) I saw those dlcs and immediately said to myself “I guarantee all this extra shit breaks whatever carefully considered curve this game has and makes it all feel weird and overstuffed” so I skipped them and now feel totally justified
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