Oh yeah, I had forgotten about The Forgotten Sands: A Prince of Persia Midquel
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Path of Exile is all right. My witch can summon zombies and flaming skulls, and the zombies can summon wraith-like things sometimes, so Iām doing less combat myself and more pointing minions in a direction.
Not a fan of in-game alerts about cosmetic item sales and other non-diegetic shit, but I guess this is the price of free-to-play. Itās a comfortable Diablolike and something I might stick with for a bit.
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Iām tired as fuck but before I go to bed, I want a preview of a bigger post sometime soon, maybe tomorrow?
In the meantime I would like to state for the record hanging with @wonder_momo at one of the now two really good arcades in Portland is rad.
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Sands of Time is one of my favorite games. Itās daring, inventive, and accomplished. Fertile Ground is none of those things, but I guess I like it for the same reasons folks like latter-day Ubisoft lawnmower games. There is something weirdly satisfying about its completely artificial triangular game-world. It reminds me of when Iād solve mazes as a kid by blacking out every dead-end path until only the true path remains.
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Lucky + Wild rules!
Been playing a lot Of Super Fantasy Zone on Genesis with the clicky stick. Its so good, as are all the other Fantasy Zones Iāve played. But this one being 16-bit is just a little more plush. Got me a reproduction from a dude on facebook that came in a nice pink cart.
For those who have never played a fantasy Zone I highly suggest it. Its not a normal shooter. You can fly (or walk) in either direction and the screen loops. Once you defeat all the monster generators the level boss appears. Power ups and extra lives are purchased from a shop balloon that appears once or twice per level and per life and sort of bobs around until it gets bored. The game play is a lot of sudden tense interactions with no real set patterns unless you make all the same moves. About half of enemies are reactive rather than just scripted. This aspect makes repeat playing a lot more fun than usual and keeps me glued to it.
the flower bud icons along the bottom represent the remaining monster makersā locations
Looking up images for this was hard as I am trying not to spoil myself on future stages.
Id really love for sega to bring back Opa-Opa and Fantasy Zone in some capacity.
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There is nothing more exhausting in a Far Cry game than a āwackyā character who constantly quips.
Anyway, Nana in New Dawn is miserable to bring along and isnāt even good at sniping enemies, but you sure get a lot of weird jokes about how sheās a horny old lady with bloodlust when sheās in tow.
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Reading it this way made me consider Fantasy Zone as related to western shooters with their focus on systemic play over linear scripted play, although that doesnāt really check out on lineage as free-form shooters had been a niche (Time Pilot, Xevious (stop autocorrecting to Devious, phone))
super fantasy zone was one of my favourites as a kid, and i still love it 
how much was the pink repro, and can you post a photo of it?
Yeah SoT is just super rad. Played through it several times. I like how grown up it felt (for its time, donāt know yet if it holds up). By Fertile Grounds you mean PoP 2008? It is structured weirdly indeed. You pick a node and itās this artificial mini level. But what I like is how they use those spirit points to make you go through the level backwards (and sideways I guess). The no-death mechanic rules so far and they do tutorializing very well, especially for the combat mechanics. I liked it when I swung the sword and the game paused to let me know I was out of reach and had to block. It just breaks down everything that can happen and tells you what to do in that situation. The combat itself feels like itās all one big QTE, which, letās be honest, is a pretty perfect reference to original PoPās rigid feel. Ubisoft did well with these games in the 2000s, all in all. They have artistic merit.
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It was like 25 shipped. Cart only. Not bad really. Ill post up when I get home.
Yeah the game reminds me a bit of Defender in style, maybe choplifter?
Time Pilot / Sinistar feels more like they are trying to build on asteroid in that you can shoot in 8 directions and there is no ground.
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HOG FRIEND HOG FRIEND HOG FRIEND
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Yeah it seems like Hog Friend, Dog Friend, or quiet archer friend is the way to go.
My current companion will randomly throw three sticks of dynamite in the middle of a skirmish and usually blow me, herself, or both of us up. Great stuff.
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I feel a bit bad that an actual semi-successful puzzle game in Baba is You came out and Iām not gonna have the chance to get to it until after everyone else is likely done with itā¦ but that doesnāt mean that Iāve been playing no puzzle games at the moment.
Iāll write it up in the puzzle game topic when I finish up with it (which may take a while, game is packed with content) but if anyone is a fan of the various HexCells games and their -Cells kin and would like something in the same vein let me take this moment to say that Tametsi is the truth. In fact it might end up actually being a step better than Matthew Brownās oeuvre when all is said and done.
Itās also hard as hell and I havenāt even touched any of the 60 bonus extra-hard puzzles, the one puzzle I played through last night took a good hour of my time and a lot of patience, and it was #65 out of 100 main puzzles. I know we and I generally smirk at the whole notion of āgameplay per dollarāā¦ but thereās an absurd amount of well designed stuff inside of this $3 game.
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I think you have to push pretty SE before someone says hog friend is nearby but I found dog friend not too far north of the main base.
Iāve pretty much done the thing I did with Far Cry 5 where I drop everything and run to those two people who wander the world and tell you about missions, so luckily hog and dog friend are accounted for.
Just need to find a shitload of ethanol so I can unlock the next tier of guns, since the enemies Iām running into are taking way too many hits to kill.
The ābuy more resources with real cash!ā options are just, just, just out of the way enough to not be really gross and obnoxious. That said, theyāre pretty gross and obnoxious.
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I second this, both about Tametsi being a challenge and about it being worth recommending. Iām not terribly far in, but Iāve been impressed with what Iāve seen.
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I finished Thimbleweed Park; very meta, didnāt get the platinum, not sure if Iām up to replay it right away for that.
Definitely a game made for folks who grew up with adventure games, which sadly I did not.
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Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is, rather fittingly, a very sedate game.
And by that I mean Iām just politely calling it a mediocre game of the easy variety.
I should have listened to @toups warning, but it was on ~sale~
Assorted Gripes
Enemy behavior generally comes in one of two varieties: (1) lazily homing in on the player or (2) doing a random walk of some sort. Enemies that react to your movement or attack/move in interesting ways are a rarity, even in the endgame. Most enemies can be defeated in a single slash, and nearly anything that canāt can be one-shotted by a spin attack or a special weapon. Not a single damage source in the game does more than 1/2 a heart of damage.
These decisions arenāt bad in and of themselves, per se, but they are not befitting of a game that is over 70% combat by weight.
The dungeons pose no navigational challenge, and are painfully formulaic in design and structure. The typical dungeon starts with a large hub room, where only only one door is accessible. Through the door is a series of rooms that will loop back into the hub room, where you hit a switch that will open the door to the next series of rooms that will loop back into the hub room, etc. etc. Repeat a couple of times until you get a key, leading to a series of rooms that will take you to another banally structured area.
Every dungeon has multiple Dedicated Sokoban Rooms, and Dedicated Walk-On-Ever-Tile-Only-Once Rooms. (Simon Says is also a recurring āpuzzleā, but I think thereās a dungeon or two that doesnāt have it.) Also, these puzzles occur frequently in various overworld caves and such.
With regards to the overall feel of the game, I was disappointed that walking between screens on the overworld or in dungeons always produces a fade-out. There is no scrolling between screens, which hurts the gameās sense of place.
Also regarding scrolling, every area in the game (except for inside folksā houses) scrolls on both axes, even though there are plenty of rooms that would have been just fine scroll on one axis (or none at all). idk why i find this so irksome, but i do.
I kinda feel bad ragging on the game so much. I mean, nothing is actually awful (except for all the Simon Says), and there are some clever ideas and some creative whimsy at work. For instance, the gameās framing device is that itās a story a grandpa is telling his grandkids. Occasionally, the grandkids will pipe up and offer their own silly ideas for stuff to put in the story. Sometimes both grandkids will pipe up and you get to choose which of their ideas to include. Itās a charming idea that I wish was put to better use, and wish was attached to a more excellent game.
tl;dr you can kill the final boss with bees 9/10
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i played some genesis games
replayed contra hard corps. it rules.
finished king colossus. itās a neat zelda-style game.
then i won the championship in cuty suzuki no ringside angel
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thereās two subtitled lpās for ryuu ga gotaku kenzan. one of them translates something as āmen sought to cross the barrier that no man should ever cross, and commit the sin of murderā
and the other says āmen sought to test themselves against one another in battleā
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