I’m waiting for the cowards at Nintendo to release a Switch version, at which point I’ll actually buy a Switch.
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Sure. They aren’t great, but I’d genuinely enjoy someone trying them.
Does this bookmark thing work for you?
https://supermariomakerbookmark.nintendo.net/profile/Robosaur?type=posted
Lonely Airship is hard, Get on the Ghost uses some gimmick where you can manipulate a platform with Boos I can’t really remember, and both Death From Above and Quick Castle Course are probably alright. Hammer Tramp is my friend’s.
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Excellent! Thanks to VC’s link, I can easily provide my link as well. I can tell just from looking at your stage thumbnails that you’re a better craftsperson than I am, but I’m still a little proud of A Casual Climb and Under the Overhang (which is admittedly pretty unforgiving). I’ve never really gotten the hang of “appropriate” Mario difficulty; something like Stompin’ Practice is either too easy or impossible depending on your skill level, while Lucas invades Osohe is more interesting to look at as a tribute to/recreation of Mother 3’s Osohe Castle than it is fun to play, probably.
I’m playing XCOM 2, the War of the Chosen expansion, with the new old soundtrack that they added recently. I bought it a long time ago but never got around to playing it. It’s actually really cool and I want to see how this story develops and ends. I’m at the stronghold of the first Chosen right now. I like that you can hunt the hunters, so to speak. The power reversal was always my favorite part of the XCOM games. I’m playing on the second of four difficulty levels because I know that I’m not good enough to stand up to more of a challenge but I try to keep the save scumming to a minimum
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for the past four days or so I’ve been playing the PS4 re-release of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I’m in Act 3 of 5. I remember playing it in 2006 for the co-op but I don’t think I ever got past Murderworld, so this is the furthest I’ve ever gotten. playing this again has scratched an itch I didn’t know I had for those kind of 4 player co-op beat 'em up RPGs from the mid-2000s like Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance, X-Men Legends, Hunter: the Reckoning, and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (though those last two are kind of shitty) one of the things I like about this game a lot is that the game really encourages you to try new team compositions out of the 20+ heroes available since all your heroes get XP, not just the guys on the field, meaning nobody ever falls behind. i think i’ve settled on daredevil, blade, spider-man, and wolverine because the game seems to be really biased towards guys who can hold their own in melee. im having more fun with it than i expected
I was playing that too and found that if I had Wolverine it really didn’t matter who else was in the party. Wolvie just shreds everybody. The challenge was comically low. Good for a chill jaunt with superheroes through superheroland though
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in part I feel like those games were always reaching toward an ideal of a local co op diablo 2 which seemed unattainable until it was finally proven undesirable but the x-men ones were always the most digestible of the lot yeah
I think x-men 2 on the gamecube may have been the peak?
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none of them are particularly RPG heavy, but they got way lighter on it as the series went on. I think there’s more loot in the x-men legends games? in ultimate alliance you basically only get anything of note when you kill minibosses or act bosses and the drops are all pre-determined, so its not really a loot game either. that being said I think you’re right that x-Men legends 2 is probably the best one of the bunch, which is why I bought that and the first game for PS2 this weekend
wolverine is always really good in these games. i cant find anybody else i like well enough to replace him so i will deal with the boring angry guy for the rest of the game. i ran with cap, deadpool, spider-man, and him for a while but daredevil has this ranged ability called “extensive strike” that kills enemies in 1-2 hits so i replaced deadpool with him because deadpool never stops repeating the same line of dialogue every time he levels up or kills someone
Xcom 2 in its various forms was always such a mixed bag to me after I felt like enemy within was sort of the peak of new Xcom in terms of game design. I’m very hot and cold on it, like:
- the unit customization options are so good and add so much personality that’s immediately lacking when you go back to enemy within
- the way you can get unique armour sets from specific bosses and make individually super-powerful units feels Matsunoish in a way that few western SRPGs ever have
- similarly I like that they added explicit unit bonds in the last expansion, it feels like they’re paying attention to fire emblem and the like and borrowing the best parts
but at the same time,
- not borrowing a system of enforced limited rewinds from invisible inc seems like a massive missed opportunity for a game that has an uneasy relationship with save scumming
- the geoscape layer with the moving base really isn’t improved, there’s still a fixed solution to your base layout that you’re hugely penalized for not anticipating in advance and they constantly pull your attention in eight directions at once in a way that feels like busywork
- the unit types themselves are a weird step back from EW, robo suits were cooler than mechas and the starting swords that your shock troopers have look stupid as hell
- as much as I’m a sucker for 80s cartoon style scenes of the villains scheming together and TNG voice actors the additional mechanics from war of the chosen are pretty hit and miss, like the zombies you can combo are bafflingly tedious plus they broke compatibility with most of their famed mod support
I’ve said before that these games are like my skyrim in that they’re the only thing I have on steam that’ll clear 100 hours of playtime without me even noticing it but I feel like they’re building on an increasingly unstable foundation lately and they’re natural time sinks so when the spell does wear off it feels really bad
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also like most UE3 sequels in the DX11 era it ran like shit until receiving several patches and a lot of the menu fonts are unreadable below 900p which was annoying to me as I tend to play strategy games in an SXGA window still for Reasons
just seemed like further evidence they were building higher and higher precariously
Yeah it ran like shit for me in its original state. I am surprised by how much they improved it though. Even loading times are super quick now!
I agree about Enemy Within being the high point. I still like War of the Chosen but I hope to god they tear it down completely and rebuild everything for 3. They did go too far in adding too much stuff. My biggest gripe is the geoscape, yeah. You just can’t get anything done on it. Progress is slow because you’re always distracted and have to do this or that that you don’t really want or suffer severe consequences.
I actually agree with all your points, couldn’t have said it better myself.
It just just still has something magical that keeps you engaged and playing.
The destructible environments are so much fun. It just never gets old to grenade a dude on the second floor and watch him take damage as he falls down a story. Fire feels broken though. It just doesn’t spread or extinguish in a way that makes sense. Maybe I just haven’t figured it out. Maybe they didn’t want it to be a nuisance by spreading too much so now it’s kind of just there.
It’s sad that you need a mod to see if where you’re moving will give you a flank shot. They need to take the guess work out of it. Or that you need a mod to set all remaining units to overwatch. Functionality like that goes a long way.
I’m not a fan of one of my Chosen betting immune to overwatch and basically being invisible until they first strike. That means they get a free hit in every time they show up on a map. You just know one of your units is going to have to tank 6-8 damage and there’s nothing you can do about it. I don’t like “nothing you can do about it” scenarios in a game like this. It’s counter to the whole philosophy of the game, of giving you lots of options to deal with everything.
So much of the game is excellent though so that you kind of forget about these things as you play.
A friend got me the Switch version of West of Loathing for Xmas and I’ve played through the first area. Game is not half as clever as it thinks it is, and its humor only works on me maybe like 20% of the time. But the simplified adventure game puzzles are surprisingly fun and satisfying. It’s neat to find out how the various little things in the areas interact with each other.
Would not buy, but it’s not bad.
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Its humor (and visual style) fell out of a time portal from the 2003 internet, and if I’d played this game at that time I would have absolutely loved it.
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I remember in fifth grade, I was an active player of KoL and I got all my friends into it. I got shat on in the IRC channels, which in retrospect I should not have had access to.
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I finished Ultimate Alliance this morning! its a really weird game but i enjoyed playing through it for the most part. by the end of the game I was using Daredevil, Blade, Dr. Strange. and Spider-Man. the one thing that struck me the most by the end of the game is how bad the sound design is. theres often no environmental noise at all so a lot of fights are just the same three sound clips playing over and over again in a vacuum. it gives the game this incredibly odd atmosphere. like 60% of the cast is voiced by metal gear solid people so i couldn’t take thor seriously at all when it’s just cam clarke literally doing the liquid snake voice. theres like Fallout-style ending slides at the end of the game based on optional objectives you completed throughout and because i accidentally forgot to use a terminal in the second level I accidentally caused all mutants to be wiped out. oops!
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my friend just gave me Battlefield V does this mean I have to play it?
my friend gave me killing floor 2, and yes