I finally got to play through Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime with four people, having already done it with two. I can’t recommend it enough and I’m struggling to think of a four player couch co-op game with broader appeal.
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ringo ishikawa is a roleplaying gsme set in highschool where if you try to min max at all the gsme punishes you by closing you off from relstionships
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I guess you have to decide whether you want to be a perfect golden god, or to have friends
it’s really good! you can also just sit on your balcony and smoke cigarettes all day, too.
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I AM HER KNIGHTS ALL FOR THE PRINCESS
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I was bored on my night off and decided to “hack” (an incredibly generous way of saying “opened it up and sloppily applied carbon ink to some tiny resistors”) my Playstation Classic so I can use a USB 3.0 drive on it instead of slumming it with a 2.0 drive.
And, uh, it worked! I’m downloading a beefy RetroArch build for other system support, but I sure can play Resident Evil 3, Rival Schools and Soul Edge (the only Playstation games I’ve got on my hard drive) on this thing now.
Anyway, compared to other stuff I’ve messed with (Shield TV, RetroPi), this thing was a heck of a lot easier to set up, even with having to open it up and everything. Guess it wasn’t a total waste of $40.
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Okay I’ve played a fair amount of Mario Kart Tour now and I have some real thoughts.
First of all, the controls are frustrating but better than I initially thought, especially after getting to 150 CC. Considering you have to do everything with one finger it’s a miracle it works at all. Basically the car is always going forward, but when you hold your finger on the screen and slide left or right you steer. Drifting automatically happens when you take a sharp turn, which is kinda nice. You stop drifting by momentarily lifting your finger, so you can get that boost.
The biggest issue is consistency. For example: the game really really wants to keep you on the track at all times, so driving off the road is practically impossible. The kart will just stop and turn back towards the road. BUT!! These are all old Mario Kart tracks from previous games, so they have shortcuts off the road! So, what’s the solution?
Only let you take shortcuts when you are currently using a mushroom! Seems kinda smart, right?
But let’s talk about using items. You have to tap the screen to use an item, which means you have to stop steering to use the item, which means that it’s extremely difficult to consistently take the shortcut because your kart is already veering back towards the road as soon as you stopped steering. On tracks like Dino Jungle this is a nightmare, because you have to take a really sharp turn to get onto the shortcut, but you can’t turn while using an item. So there’s this very narrow window of time IF you approach from a perfect angle where you can tap once to use your mushroom and take the shortcut.
BUT, tapping only seems to use an item 50% of the time in my experience! So it’s a total crapshoot if you can even take the shortcut! And during regular play, sometimes I just use all my items instead of the one I meant to because I’m tapping like 4 times to get the thing to work. It’s infuriating!
Add on top of all this that this is a Mario Kart game, which means that randomness is your enemy and you might be in first for the whole race to just get blue shelled by a faceless stranger and lose (again). AND because certain karts, characters and gliders have the upper hand on certain courses, it could just be because I haven’t unlocked Dry Waluigi or whatever the fuck and I have no hope of winning!!!
This all adds up to an absolutely infuriating game if you’re trying to get high grades on all of the courses. It’s inconsistent, it’s random, and I’m not even playing with friends or family so I just feel hateful.
…on the other hand, it’s Mario Kart on my phone and I’m also top of the little 20 person competition for high score on this cup, which is great. EAT SHIT YOU ASSHOLES, I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON MY KOOPA SHELL
ahem
Also, it’s definitely not online multiplayer. I’ve never experienced any lag or dropped connections and the drivers never jerk around even when they’re clearly from Japan. My theory is that the drivers are half-ghosts-of-players and half AI to course correct back into the ghost playthrough when getting hit by items, karts etc. My evidence for this is slim; mostly it’s that the level of play has stepped up significantly since I first started, which is typical of online multiplayer games that have just been launched. The alternative is that it just pulls player names and the driving is all AI.
OR it could do the Tetris DX thing where you’re basically leveling up an AI by being better at the game. Or like leveling up an Amiibo in Smash. Of course it’s all completely opaque so I have no idea.
Anyway I hate this game, I enjoy playing it anyway, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, and I will not give them any money.
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This describes me playing any game on my phone.
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I tried out Need for Speed No Limits on my phone over my lunch break because I really need to play a driving game right now and it is acceptable video game junk food. Yeah they’re constantly pushing you towards microtransactions and gacha for car blueprints but they give you a Subaru in the tutorial and that’s my favorite car company so I have zero motivation to care about anything other than the driving which is kind of okay (and luckily does not resort to tilt controls)
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Resident Evil 2 (PS4): Perhaps I’m just being a perfectionist, but Hardcore mode- from what little of it I’ve managed to experience- seems entirely too trial-and-error-intensive.
first time run on hardcore, a bit, yes.
i got myself into a situation whereby I had to kill the final boss without getting hit more than once.
Something to note (and this knowledge will change your experience so be careful with it):
The health and ammo you get is based on your current game state; the worse you do, the more generous the game is (up to a point). Conversely, expending all your resources on a ‘non-perfect’ boss run kicks the game to be extra-generous for a short while. On hardcore, this tuning is designed to keep you on the edge of starvation at all times.
I regret to report that Layers of Fear 2 is not winning me over so far. The environments look nice enough, but the parts I have seen in the first few areas aren’t doing anything as interesting as in the original or in Observer.
Also, they once again clumsily tried to make a walking simulator into more of a game with frustrating results. This time, you have to run away from a monster, performing an arbitrary sequence of actions that you simply have to memorize after repeated trial-and-error deaths.
I read somewhere that the latter part of the game picks up and becomes more bizarre. I’m holding out the hope that this is the case, and I will try to remember to report back after I progress further.
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Making headway on Ocarina of Time 3D, this game still feels oddly finagly to me (I beat the original on Wii VC some uhh 7-8 years ago?). Just got to Kakariko and used the cuccos to climb the construction area to reach the hole in the wall leading to the heart piece by the cow. It took like five tries because roll and grab are the same button. I also always found the aesthetics of it to be oddly grim or muted even in its idyllic spots. Still, charming game.
Also just finished most of the first world in A Hat in Time. This is kind of a bad mario! It’s totally playable, and I don’t hate it, but the difference between it and Ninty’s obsessive level of polish shows. I can’t blame it for being a love letter that doesn’t reach the tactile heights of its forebear on a kickstarter budget. What I can fault it for (at least so far) is how it seems to be deliberately avoiding theming. I’m in a fishing town populated by thugs who are a supposed “mafia” (without the workings of a mafia) and refer to themselves individually in the third person as “Mafia”, and they’re led by a chef who apparently… ran a factory but wanted to live on a deserted island? And there’s also a cat chef who switches out their food with his because the Mafias are bad cooks. And the Mafias are afraid of mud monsters. And there are giant faucets that when turned on switch all the water in the town with lava. None of this connects. I’m waiting to see if later worlds have actual theming, or if it’s all going to be brainstorm salad.
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downloaded void bastards since its on game pass already
i just finished CATS WHO STARE AT GHOSTS (which is my favorite free YET SOMEHOW AD FREE incremental game on mobile). it fucking sucks ass because theres no incremental game on mobile even approaching the charm of this one
like theres uhh armory and machine but im sick of games that start themeless with fucking boxes to click. i already played a dark room, its not a SURPRISE that your seemingly simple clicker game fucking opens up aklgjlfojdfkjsdf
play cats who stare at ghosts so you can recommend me things like it
I just started yakuza kiwami but I’m surprised how much it actually feels like a sequel to 0 instead of a remake of some earlier less substantial game. You can actually talk to people in the street, it translates a lot of the random npc dialogue, and it seems like there’s a lot more places to go on the map, so far anyway. I’m surprised they didn’t set up yumi at all in 0 considering how important she seems in this one though.
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what the HELL happened to my nice quiet karaoke bar. there’s just some karaoke supermall now where I sing in a booth I have to rent to a tv. it’s the dismal tide
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i’ve finally been playing doom 2016 now that I have a computer that can make it work properly. it is very good in that the mechanics are very good and that’s about 90% of what’s important in a game like this. it is not good in that as a designed video game everything else is bad. the level design vacillates between atrocious and acceptable. the environments are same-y and nondescript and boring; every level rotates between walking around empty, pointless corridors and antechambers picking up ammo/health and looking for secrets that you don’t care about unless they’re a classic level that you’re not going to have the patience to find, and entering Q3 multiplayer maps where you either hit the INITIATE VIDEO GAME MODE pulsating sac or you wait for the music to tell you it’s time to be useful again. the pacing is very bad as a result. the doing nothing/doing something ratio is depressing. I’m sure it’s better in subsequent playthroughs where you minimize the time in the pointless areas, but the structure sure is uninspired. are the quake arenas fun? yes. very. but they shouldn’t be the only idea the game has.
you’re never in danger outside of the arenas, and within them the game has the same infuriating rubber banding that every modern game has. if you have 3 HP you feel like you’re fucked, but you know that you can kill a fodder imp or whatever and it’ll drop 80 HP worth of health since focus testing once told someone that dying reduces Player Engagement by 15%.
there is a story. yes, internet, I know they ‘apologized’ for this story by making the haHA joke of doom man breaking the talking TV once at the beginning of the game. unfortunately, he still had to wait in the Story Room during that scene anyway, and he has to do that about 35 more times over the course of the game. the talking head shows up in the corner. there are audio logs. there are ten info things to pick up for every enemy, item, weapon, environment, or character in the game. you hit a series of computer screens to do Plot Things in almost every level. it is stunning how little of this game takes place in hell. why would they do that?
the less said about the endless progression system gimmicks the better. this shit is not good. stop it.
how does the arcade mode thing work? that’s probably the game I should play instead.
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